Orientalists

"You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's — not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you — not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity — not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul — a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's."

"Scrutamini scripturas (Let us look at the scriptures). These two words have undone the world."

"The House of Commons is called the Lower House, in twenty Acts of Parliament; but what are twenty Acts of Parliament amongst Friends?"

"Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet."

"Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear."

"'Tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess."

"Commonly we say a judgement falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide."

"Equity is a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, know what to trust to; Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. 'T is all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a "foot" a Chancellor's foot; what an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'T is the same thing in the Chancellor's conscience."

"Gentelmen heve ever been more temperate in their religion than common people, as having more reason."

"Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him."

"The parish makes the constable, and when the constable is made he governs the parish."

"No man is the wiser for his learning."

"Wit and wisdom are born with a man."

"Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak."

"Take a straw and throw it up into the air — you may see by that which way the wind is."

"Philosophy is nothing but discretion."

"Of all actions of a man's life his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all actions of our life 'tis most meddled with by other people."

"Marriage is a desperate thing."

"Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world."

"They that govern the most make the least noise."

"Syllables govern the world."

"Never king dropped out of the clouds."

"The law against witches does not prove there be any; but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men's lives."

"Never tell your resolution beforehand."

"Wise men say nothing in dangerous times."

"Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain."

"Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do."

"A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat."

"Mr. Selden was a person whom no character can part flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit and virtue. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages, (as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings,) that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant amongst books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability was such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breeding. His style in all his writings seems harsh and sometimes obscure; which is not wholly to be imputed to the abstruse subjects of which he commonly treated, out of the paths trod by other men; but to a little undervaluing the beauty of a style, and too much propensity to the language of antiquity: but in his conversation he was the most dear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard things easy, and presenting them to the understanding, of any man that hath been known. Mr. Hyde was wont to say, that he valued himself upon nothing more than upon having had Mr. Selden's acquaintance from the time he was very young; and held it with great delight as long as they were suffered to continue together in London; and he was very much troubled always when he heard him blamed, censured, and reproached, for staying in London, and in the parliament, after they were in rebellion, and in the worst times, which his age obliged him to do; and how wicked soever the actions were which were every day done, he was confident he had not given his consent to them; but would have hindered them if he could with his own safety, to which he was always enough indulgent. If he had some infirmities with other men, they were weighed down with wonderful and prodigious abilities and excellencies in the other scale."

"The account of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the manuscripts are inaccurately designated, and of the half a century of intense research that followed, is in itself a fascinating as well as an exasperating story."

"If one had to single out the most revolutionary novelty furnished by Qumran, its contribution to our understanding of the genesis of Jewish literary compositions could justifiably be our primary choice."

"The absence from the Dead Sea Scrolls of historical texts proper should not surprise us. Neither in the inter-Testamental period, nor in earlier biblical times, was the recording of history as we understand it a strong point among the Jews."

"This is a simple and moving message, which Jesus formulated in his own language for his simple Galilean audience, about God, the heavenly Father, on the dignity of all human beings as children of God, on life turned into worship by total trust, on an overwhelming sense of urgency to do one’s duty without procrastination, on the sanctification of the here and now, and above all on the love of God through the love of one’s neighbour."

"The historical Jesus can be retrieved only within the context of first-century Galilean Judaism.... Against this background, what kind of picture of Jesus emerges from the Gospels? That of a rural holy man, initially a follower of the movement of repentance launched by another holy man, John the Baptist. In the hamlets and villages of Lower Galilee and the lakeside, Jesus set out to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God within the lifetime of his generation and outlined the religious duties his simple listeners were to perform to prepare themselves for the great event."

"Let this great maxim be my virtue’s guide,— In part she is to blame that has been tried: He comes too near that comes to be denied."

"Good madam, when ladies are willing, A man must needs look like a fool; For me I would not give a shilling For one who would love out of rule.You should leave us to guess by your blushing, And not speak the matter so plain; ’Tis our’s to write and be pushing, ’Tis yours to affect disdain.That you’re in a terrible taking, By all these sweet oglings I see, But the fruit that can fall without shaking, Indeed is too mellow for me."

"Thou silver deity of secret night, Direct my footsteps through the woodland shade; Thou conscious witness of unknown delight, The Lover’s guardian, and the Muse’s aid!By thy pale beams I solitary rove, To thee my tender grief confide; Serenely sweet you gild the silent grove, My friend, my goddess, and my guide.E’en thee, fair queen, from thy amazing height, The charms of young Endymion drew; Veil’d with the mantle of concealing night; With all thy greatness and thy coldness too."

"Cease, fond shepherd! Cease desiring What you never must enjoy; She derides your vain aspiring, She, to all your sex is coy.Cunning Damon once pursued her, Yet she never would incline; Strephon too, as vainly wooed her, Though his flocks are more than thine.At Diana’s shrine, aloud, By the zone around her waist, Thrice she bowed, and thrice she vowed, Like the Goddess, to be chaste."

"Though I never get possession, ’Tis a pleasure to adore; Hope, the wretch’s only blessing, May, in time, procure me more.Constant courtship may obtain her, Where both wealth and merit fail; And the lucky minute gain her— Fate and fancy must prevail.At Diana’s shrine, aloud, By the bow and by the quiver, Thrice she bowed, and thrice she vowed, Once to love—and that forever."

"Civility costs nothing and buys everything."

"Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet."

"Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen."

"But the fruit that can fall without shaking Indeed is too mellow for me."

"What say you to such a supper with such a woman? ... Is not her 'champagne and chicken' worth a forest or two? Is it not poetry?"

"Lord Byron, in response to Lady Mary Montague's line 'And we meet, with champagne and a chicken at last' (from "The Lover: A Ballad"), reported in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: with Notices of his Life, ed. Thomas Moore (Paris: A. and W. Gaglinani, 1830), p. 391"

"What was most repulsive at the meetings was the stench of the guild, which assailed me everywhere: intellectual proletariat, that labors on its humdrum articles in the sweat of its brow, that does not know that science is to make one free and happy."

"Es ist das höchste Glück des Menschen, anzubeten, oder, milder gesagt, andre Menschen über sich anzuerkennen, die er liebt und die ihn lieben."

"Our speech has ceased to speak, it shouts; it says cute, not beautiful, colossal, not great; it cannot find the right word any more, because the word is no longer the designation of an object, but the echo of some kind of gossip about the object."

"In many ways, Lagarde with his tempestuous moods had remained a child, wounded, frightened, craving the affectionate recognition of others, yet so fearful of losing his independence that he rebuffed and insulted the very friends he sought."

"Lagarde … was more closely attuned to the sufferings of other men and the shortcomings of his culture than those healthy people who were caught up in the bounding advance of their society."

"Lagarde … sneered at the real, the practical world; he distrusted positivism, loathed materialism, and mocked progress."

"In his depracation of the political and economic man, of the common man of everyday life, and of the political culture that adapts itself to him, he appeared as an idealist because he had turned his back on modernity, on practicality, because he preferred to legislate for an implausible future rather than to reform an intractable present."

"I invite you to discover more such recent findings. It is unfortunate that India doesn’t accord archaeology the prestige it deserves, especially among young Indians. We must restore that prestige and fascination and make the discipline attractive so our heritage may be explored and rediscovered before it gets completely erased."

"The Hindu mind works in such a way that continuity of worship is more important than physical fact. When the Harappans migrated eastward towards the Gangetic region, they carried with them their memories of the Sarasvati. The myths and sanctity were transferred to Prayag."

"When I was 15 or so, I stumbled on literature related to Indian spirituality, and instantly felt that there was something that held essential keys. I read several of the great masters, something of India's ancient literature, and finally decided that Sri Aurobindo's view of life and the world was what I was looking for. It was not a passing craze or a 'New Age' fad; it not only satisfied the intellect but also touched the core of the being."

"If in the nineteenth century most scholars identified the Ghaggar-Hakra's course with the Vedic Sarasvati, it is basically for three reasons. The Rig-Veda, the oldest of the four Vedas, mentions various rivers but praises the Sarasvati above all others: it was a "mighty river" flowing "from the mountain to the sea", and one hymn listed it between the Yamuna and the Sutlej - precisely the location of the Ghaggar-Hakra. Secondly, the local traditions regarding the "lost river" of the Indian desert matched those in the post-Vedic literature (including the Mahabharata), which recorded the gradual disappearance of the Sarasvati. Thirdly, scholars noticed a minor tributary of the Ghaggar called "Sarsuti", an obvious corruption of "Sarasvati": it rises in the Sirmur hills that are part of the Shivaliks and was marked on British maps as early as in 1788. Putting these three lines of evidence together, they concluded that the lost Sarasvati could only have flowed in the Ghaggar's bed."

"Aryabhata conceived the earth as a rotating sphere in space, which causes the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Varahamihira disagreed and Brahmagupta derided Aryabhata — but unlike medieval Europe, the intellectual climate in India was free and tolerant of dissent."

"Michel Danino reviewed nine genetic studies using large samples from 1999 to 2006 and conclusively found no evidence of invasion. ‘Just like the imaginary Aryan invasion or migration left no trace in Indian literature, in the archaeological and anthropological record, it is invisible at the genetic level…genetics is joining other disciplines in helping clean the cobwebs of colonial historiography. If some have a vested interest in patching together the said cobwebs, so they may keep cluttering our history textbooks, they are only delaying the inevitable.’"

"I will, therefore, take a middle path and propose that the Shivalik landscape was such that only a portion of the Yamunā-Tons ran westward into the Markanda Valley, with the rest flowing southward through a smaller and higher opening than today’s ‘Yamuna tear’. The westward branch was the Sarasvatī (which would explain why the Markanda does not appear in the Rig Veda), while the southward was the Yamunā. When it touched the plains, the Yamunā divided once more, as Cunningham and R.D. Oldham proposed, and others after them: because its terraces occupied a higher level than today, part of the river flowed southwest, joining minor streams to form the Drishadvatī of old. In the plains, the Yamunā was thus a double river—which would conveniently explain the root meaning of the word yamunā: ‘twin’."

"The sword of Mahomet and the Coran are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty, and truth which the world has yet known."

"The tragedy of Karbala decided not only the fate of the caliphate, but of the Mohammedan kingdoms long after the Caliphate had waned and disappeared."

"Neither their (the Muslims') tenets nor their practice will in any respect bear to come into competition with Christian, or even with Jewish morality. ... For instance, we call the Muslims chaste because they abstained from indiscriminate profligacy, and kept carefully within the bounds prescribed as licit by their Prophet. But those bounds besides the utmost freedom of divorce and change of wives, admitted an illimitable licence of cohabitation with 'all that the right hand of the believer might possess,' or, in other words, with any possible number of damsels he might choose to purchase, or receive in gift, or take captive in war."

"But of this genera of writing, William Muir's The Life of Mahomet, first published in 1861 in four volumes, was the best. It was a pioneering study and it has not been improved upon since then. William Muir had strong Christian views but he was also a painstaking and conscientious researcher, and he exhausted most of the sources on the Prophet's life, which were not many. The basic material on Muhammad is limited and new biographies could not really be new except in details, treatment and emphases."

"We should never forget that Gautama was born and brought up a Hindu and lived and died a Hindu. His teaching, far-reaching and original as it was, and really subversive of the religion of the day, was Indian throughout. He was the greatest and wisest and best of the Hindus."

"[Gautama Buddha] ‘was the only man of our own race, the only Aryan, who can rank as the founder of a great religion’ [and that therefore] ‘the whole intellectual and religious development of which Buddhism is the final outcome was distinctively Aryan, and Buddhism is the one essentially Aryan faith’ (1896:185), [which] ‘took its rise among an advancing and conquering people full of pride in their colour and their race… ‘ (1896:187).”"

"In his researches, Grünendahl (2012:194) has checked Rhys-Davids’ writings and discovered a telling example of how the racialist “NS” worldview was already present in Britain earlier: “However, a more important factor seems to me to be Rhys Davids’s racialist—or more precisely Aryanist—bias, documented, for example, in statements to the effect that Gautama Buddha ‘was the only man of our own race, the only Aryan, who can rank as the founder of a great religion’ and that therefore ‘the whole intellectual and religious development of which Buddhism is the final outcome was distinctively Aryan, and Buddhism is the one essentially Aryan faith’ (1896:185), which ‘took its rise among an advancing and conquering people full of pride in their colour and their race... ‘(1896:187).”"

"“…To Iletmish we owe some of the finest Muslim works in India. The Arhai din ka-Jhopra began by Qutab al-Din in AD 1198-99, was also completed by him. Tod had said of it that it was ‘one of the most perfect as well as the most ancient monuments of Hindu architecture’, on the evidence of certain four-armed figures to be seen on the pillars…"

"[Once in a while, ladies with courage and virtue, stood up against the royal advances like the wife of Prithviraj Singh, Rae Singh's younger brother. She was a princess of Mewar and once on returning from the fair found herself entangled amidst the labyrinth of apartments at the end of which Akbar stood before her,] “but instead of acquiesence, she drew a poniard from her corset and held it to his breast, dictating, and making him repeat the oath of rununciation of the infamy of all her race"."

"Ujameda, by his wife, Nila, had five sons, who spread their branches on both sides of the Indus. Regarding three the Puranas are silent, which implies their migration to distant regions. Is it possible they might be the origin of the Medes? These Medes are descendants of Yciyat, third son of the patriarch, Menu: and Madai, founder of the Medes, was of Japhet’s line. Aja Merle, the patronymic of the branch of Bajaswa, is from Aja ‘a goat.’ The Assyrian Mede in Scripture is typified by the goat.‘"

"In Tod’s description, the ‘Marusthali’, as it was then called, consists of ‘expansive belts of sand, elevated upon a plain only less sandy, and over whose surface numerous thinly peopled towns and hamlets are scattered’. He also records ‘the tradition of the absorption of the Caggar river, as one of the causes of the comparative depopulation of the northern desert’. This tradition was transmitted in the form of a ‘couplet still sung among Rajputs, which dates the ruin of this part of the country back to the drying up of the Hakra.’ Although Tod could not recall the exact text of the said song, he acknowledged ‘the utility of these ancient traditional couplets’. ‘Folk history’, as we would call it today... Yet, James Tod finds worthy of mention a tradition alive in the 1810s that blames the region’s ‘depopulation’ on the Ghaggar’s ‘absorption’ or disappearance; he even notes how ‘the vestiges of large towns, now buried in the sands, confirm the truth of this tradition, and several of them claim a high antiquity."

"The affinity that this word (Hakra) has botli to the Ghaggar, and Sankra,” would lead to the conclusion of either being the stream referred to. The former we know as being engulphed in the sands about the Hariana confines, while the Sankra is a stream which, though now dry, was used as a line of demarcation even in the time of Nadir Shah. It ran eastward, parallel with the Indus, and by making it his boundary Nadir added all the fertile valley of the Indus to his Persian kingdom."

"To the drying up of the Hakra, or Gliaggar, many centuries ago, in conjunction with moral evils, is ascribed the existing desolation. According to tradition, this stream took a westerly direction, by Phidra, where it is yet to be traced, and fell into the Indus below Uchh. The couplet recording its absorption by the sands of Ner has already been given, in the time of Rao Hamir, prince of Dhat. If the next European traveller who may pass through the Indian desert will seek out the representative of the ancient Sodha princes at Chor, near Umarkot, he may learn from their bard (if they retain such an appendage) the date of this prince, and that of so important an event in the physical and political history of their regions. The vestiges of large towns, now buried in the sands, confirm the truth of this tradition, and several of them claim a high antiquity ; such as the Rangmahall, already mentioned, west of Bhatner, having subterranean apartments still ill good preservation. An aged native of Daudusar (twenty- five miles south of Bhatner) replied, to my inquiry as to the recollections attached to this place, that “ it belonged to a Panwar prince who ruled once all these regions, when Sikandar Riimi attacked them.”"

"Where can we look for sages like those whose systems of philosophy were prototypes of those of Greece: to whose works Plato, Thales & Pythagoras were disciples? Where do I find astronomers whose knowledge of planetary systems yet excites wonder in Europe as well as the architects and sculptors whose works claim our admiration, and the musicians who could make the mind oscillate from joy to sorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modes and varied intonation?"

"Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs."

"“My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”... “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?” [The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”"

"What nation on earth could have maintained the semblance of civilization, the spirit or the customs of their forefathers, during so many centuries of overwhelming depression, but one of such singular character as the Rajpoot? . . . Rajast’han exhibits the sole example in the history of mankind, of a people withstanding every outrage barbarity could inflict, or human nature sustain, from a foe whose religion commands annihilation; and bent to the earth, yet rising buoyant from the pressure, and making calamity a whetstone to courage. . . . Not an iota of their religion or customs have they lost. . ."

"If we compare the antiquity and illustrious descent of the dynasties which have ruled, and some which continue to rule, the small sovereignties of Rajasthan, with many of celebrity in Europe, superiority will often attach to the Rajput."

"If devotion to the fair sex be admitted as a criterion of civilization, the Rajpoot must rank high. His susceptibility is extreme, and fires at the slightest offense to female delicacy, which he never forgives."

"This image, which was one of the penates of a former age, and which since the destruction of the shrines of Krishna by the Islamites, had lain in the Yamuna, attached itself to the sacerdotal zone of high priest Balba, while he was performing ablutions, who, carrying it home, placed it ina niche of the temple and worshipped it and Nonanda yet receives the peculiar homage of the high priest and his family as their household divinity (Tod Vol. I 1920: 272)."

"The milder side of the Rājput character is represented in the cult of Krishna at Nāthdwāra. The Mahant or Abbot of the temple, situated at the old village of Siārh, twenty-two miles from the city of Udaipur, enjoys semi-royal state. In anticipation of the raid by Aurangzeb on Mathura, A.D. 1669-70, the ancient image of Kesavadeva, a form of Krishna, ‘He of the flowing locks,’ was removed out of reach of danger by Rāna Rāj Singh of Mewār. When the cart bearing the image arrived at Siārh, the god, by stopping the cart, is said to have expressed his intention of remaining there. This was the origin of the famous temple, still visited by crowds of pilgrims, and one of the leading seats of the Vallabhāchārya sect, ‘the Epicureans of the East,’ whose practices, as disclosed in the famous Mahārāja libel case, tried at Bombay in 1861, gave rise to grievous scandal.[17] The ill-feeling against this sect, aroused by these revelations, was so intense that the Mahārāja of Jaipur ordered that the two famous images of Krishna worshipped in his State, which originally came from Gokul, near Mathura, should be removed from his territories into those of the Bharatpur State."

"Much disappointment has been felt in Europe at the sterility of the historic muse of Hindustan. When Sir William Jones first began to explore the vast mines of Sanskrit literature, great hopes were entertained that the history of the world would acquire considerable accessions from this source. The sanguine expectations that were then formed have not been realized; and, as it usually happens, excitement has been succeeded by apathy and indifference. It is now generally regarded as an axiom, that India possesses no national history; to which we may oppose the remark of a French Orientalist, who ingeniously asks, whence Abu-l Fazl obtained the materials for his outlines of ancient Hindu history?[25] Mr. Wilson has, indeed, done much to obviate this prejudice, by his translation of the Raja Tarangini, or History of Kashmir,[26] which clearly demonstrates that regular historical composition was an art not unknown in Hindustan, and affords satisfactory ground for concluding that these productions were once less rare than at present, and that further exertion may bring more relics to light. Although the labours of Colebrooke, Wilkins, Wilson, and others of our own countrymen, emulated by many learned men in France [viii] and Germany,[27] have revealed to Europe some of the hidden lore of India; still it is not pretended that we have done much more than pass the threshold of Indian science; and we are consequently not competent to speak decisively of its extent or its character. Immense libraries, in various parts of India, are still intact, which have survived the devastations of the Islamite. The collections of Jaisalmer and Patan, for example, escaped the scrutiny of even the lynx-eyed Alau-d-din who conquered both these kingdoms, and who would have shown as little mercy to those literary treasures, as Omar displayed towards the Alexandrine library. Many other minor collections, consisting of thousands of volumes each, exist in Central and Western India, some of which are the private property of princes, and others belong to the Jain communities.[28]"

"If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmud’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts [ix], architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the characters of their princes, and the acts of their reigns? Where such traces of mind exist, we can hardly believe that there was a want of competent recorders of events, which synchronical authorities tell us were worthy of commemoration. The cities of Hastinapur and Indraprastha, of Anhilwara and Somanatha, the triumphal columns of Delhi and Chitor, the shrines of Abu and Girnar, the cave-temples of Elephanta and Ellora, are so many attestations of the same fact; nor can we imagine that the age in which these works were erected was without an historian. Yet from the Mahabharata or Great War, to Alexander’s invasion, and from that grand event to the era of Mahmud of Ghazni, scarcely a paragraph of pure native Hindu history (except as before stated) has hitherto been revealed to the curiosity of Western scholars. In the heroic history of Prithiraj, the last of the Hindu sovereigns of Delhi, written by his bard Chand, we find notices which authorize the inference that works similar to his own were then extant, relating to the period between Mahmud and Shihabu-d-din (A.D. 1000-1193); but these have disappeared."

"After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after almost every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other important interests, irretrievable losses. My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwara have more than once been checked by a very just remark: "when our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to [x] abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?""

"Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome, commit the very egregious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover, that until a more correct taste was imparted to the literature of England and of France, by the study of classical models, the chronicles of both these countries, and indeed of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren as those of the early Rajputs."

"The little exact knowledge that Europe has hitherto acquired of the Rajput States, has probably originated a false idea of the comparative importance of this portion of Hindustan. The splendour of the Rajput courts, however, at an early period of the history of that country, making every allowance for the exaggeration of the bards, must have been great. Northern India was rich from the earliest times; that portion of it, situated on either side the Indus, formed the richest satrapy of Darius. It has abounded in the more striking events which constitute the materials for history; there is not a petty State in Rajasthan that has not had its Thermopylae, and scarcely a city that has not produced its Leonidas. But the mantle of ages has shrouded from view what the magic pen of the historian might have consecrated to endless admiration: Somnath might have rivalled Delphos; the spoils of Hind might have vied with the wealth of the Libyan king; and compared with the array of the Pandus, the army of Xerxes would have dwindled into insignificance. But the Hindus either never had, or have unfortunately lost, their Herodotus and Xenophon."

"If “the moral effect of history depend on the sympathy it excites” [xvii], the annals of these States possess commanding interest. The struggles of a brave people for independence during a series of ages, sacrificing whatever was dear to them for the maintenance of the religion of their forefathers, and sturdily defending to death, and in spite of every temptation, their rights and national liberty, form a picture which it is difficult to contemplate without emotion. Could I impart to the reader but a small portion of the enthusiastic delight with which I have listened to the tales of times that are past, amid scenes where their events occurred, I should not despair of triumphing over the apathy which dooms to neglect almost every effort to enlighten my native country on the subject of India; nor should I apprehend any ill effect from the sound of names, which, musical and expressive as they are to a Hindu, are dissonant and unmeaning to a European ear: for it should be remembered that almost every Eastern name is significant of some quality, personal or mental. Seated amidst the ruins of ancient cities, I have listened to the traditions respecting their fall; or have heard the exploits of their illustrious defenders related by their descendants near the altars erected to their memory. I have, whilst in the train of the southern Goths (the Mahrattas), as they carried desolation over the land, encamped on or traversed many a field of battle, of civil strife or foreign aggression, to read in the rude memorials on the tumuli of the slain their names and history. Such anecdotes and records afford data of history as well as of manners. Even the couplet recording the erection of a ‘column of victory,’ or of a temple or its repairs, contributes something to our stock of knowledge of the past."

"Britain has become heir to the monuments of Indraprastha raised by the descendants of Budha and Ila; to the iron pillar of the Pandavas, "whose pedestal[20] [32] is fixed in hell"; to the columns reared to victory, inscribed with characters yet unknown; to the massive ruins of its ancient continuous cities, encompassing a space still larger than the largest city in the world, whose mouldering domes and sites of fortresses,[21] the very names of which are lost, present a noble field for speculation on the ephemeral nature of power and glory. What monument would Britain bequeath to distant posterity of her succession to this dominion? Not one: except it be that of a still less perishable nature, the monument of national benefit. Much is in our power: much has been given, and posterity will demand the result."

"Thus, taking an average of the whole, we may consider fifty-five princes to be the number of descents from Budha to Krishna and Yudhishthira; and, admitting an average of twenty years for each reign, a period of eleven hundred years; which being added to a like period calculated from thence to Vikramaditya, who reigned fifty-six years before Christ, I venture to place the establishment in India Proper of these two grand races, distinctively called those of Surya and Chandra, at about 2256 years before the Christian era; at which period, though somewhat later, the Egyptian, Chinese, and Assyrian monarchies are generally stated to have been established,[17] and about a century and a half after that great event, the Flood."

"To these fifty-six reigns I should be willing to allow the average of twenty years, which would give 1120 from Rama to Sumitra, who preceded by a short period Vikramaditya; and as 1100 have been already calculated to have preceded the era of Rama and Yudhishthira, the inference is, that 2200 years elapsed from Ikshwaku, the founder of the Solar line, to Sumitra."

"The lieutenants of Shihābu-d-din disturbed the close of Kumarapal’s reign; and his successor, Balo Muldeo, closed this dynasty in S. 1284 (A.D. 1228), when a new dynasty, called the Vaghela (descendants of Siddharaja) under Bīsaldeo, succeeded.[81] The dilapidations from religious persecution were repaired; Somnath, renowned as Delphos of old, rose from its ruins, and the kingdom of the Balakaraes was attaining its pristine magnificence, when, under the fourth prince, Karandeva, the angel of destruction appeared in the shape of Alau-d-din, and the kingdom of Anhilwara was annihilated. The lieutenants of the Tatar despot of Delhi let loose the spirit of intolerance and avarice on the rich cities and fertile plains of Gujarat and Saurashtra. In contempt of their faith, the altar of an Islamite Darvesh was placed in contact with the shrine of Adinath, on the [99] most accessible of their sacred mounts:[82] the statues of Buddha [the Jain Tirthankaras] were thrown down, and the books containing the mysteries of their faith suffered the same fate as the Alexandrian library. The walls of Anhilwara were demolished; its foundations excavated, and again filled up with the fragments of their ancient temples."

"Mahratta cunning, engrafted on Muhammadan intolerance, had greatly obscured these institutions. The nation itself was passing rapidly away: the remnant which was left had become a matter of calculation, and their records and their laws partook of this general decay. The nation may recover; the physical frame may be renewed; but the morale of the society must be recast. In this chaos a casual observer sees nothing to attract notice; the theory of government appears, without any of the dignity which now marks our regular system. Whatever does exist is attributed to fortuitous causes—to nothing systematic: no fixed principle is discerned, and none is admitted; it is deemed a mechanism without a plan. This opinion is hasty. Attention to distinctions, though often merely nominal [131], will aid us in discovering the outlines of a picture which must at some period have been more finished; when real power, unrestrained by foreign influence, upheld a system, the plan of which was original. It is in these remote regions, so little known to the Western world, and where original manners lie hidden under those of the conquerors, that we may search for the germs of the constitutions of European States.[3] A contempt for all that is Asiatic too often marks our countrymen in the East: though at one period on record the taunt might have been reversed."

"The most antique temples are to be seen in these spots—within the dark gorge of the mountain, or on its rugged summit—in the depths of the forest, and at the sources of streams, where sites of seclusion, beauty, and sublimity alternately exalt the mind’s devotion. In these regions the creative power appears to have been the earliest, and at one time the sole, object of adoration, whose symbols, the serpent-wreathed phallus (lingam), and its companion, the bull, were held sacred even by the ‘children of the forest.’ In these silent retreats Mahadeva continued to rule triumphant, and the most brilliant festivities of Udaipur were those where his rites are celebrated in the nine days sacred to him, when the Jains and Vaishnavas mix with the most zealous of his votaries; but the strange gods from the plains of the Yamuna and Ganges have withdrawn a portion of the zeal of the Guhilots from their patron divinity Eklinga, whose diwan,[7] or viceregent, is the Rana. The temple of Eklinga, situated in one of the narrow defiles leading to the capital, is an immense structure, though more sumptuous than elegant. It is built entirely of white marble, most elaborately carved and embellished; but lying in the route of a bigoted foe, it has undergone many dilapidations. The brazen bull, placed under his own dome, facing the sanctuary of the phallus, is nearly of the natural size, in a recumbent posture. It is cast (hollow) of good shape, highly polished and without flaw, except where the hammer of the Tatar had opened a passage in the hollow flank in search of treasure."

"It is scarcely to be credited that a statesman like Akbar should have hazarded his popularity or his power, by the introduction of a custom alike appertaining to the Celtic races of Europe as to these the Goths of Asia;[38] and that he should seek to degrade those whom the chances of war had made his vassals, by conduct so nefarious and repugnant to the keenly cherished feelings of the Rajput. Yet there is not a shadow of doubt that many of the noblest of the race were dishonoured on the Nauroza; and the chivalrous Prithiraj was only preserved from being of the number by the high courage and virtue of his wife, a princess of Mewar, and daughter of the founder of the Saktawats. On one of these celebrations of the Khushroz, the monarch of the Moguls was struck with the beauty of the daughter of Mewar, and he singled her out from amidst the united fair of Hind as the object of his passion. It is not improbable that an ungenerous feeling united with that already impure, to despoil the Sesodias of their honour, through a princess of their house under the protection of the sovereign. On retiring from the fair, she found herself entangled amidst the labyrinth of apartments by which egress was purposely ordained, when Akbar stood before her: but instead of acquiescence, she drew a poniard from her corset, and held it to his breast, dictating, and making him repeat, the oath of renunciation of the infamy to all her race. The anecdote is accompanied in the original with many dramatic circumstances. The guardian goddess of Mewar, the terrific Mata, appears on her tiger in the subterranean passage of this palace of pollution, to strengthen her mind by a solemn denunciation [346], and her hand with a weapon to protect her honour. Rae Singh, the elder brother of the princely bard, had not been so fortunate; his wife wanted either courage or virtue to withstand the regal tempter, and she returned to their dwelling in the desert despoiled of her chastity, but loaded with jewels; or, as Prithiraj expresses it: “She returned to her abode, tramping to the tinkling sound of the ornaments of gold and gems on her person; but where, my brother, is the moustache[39] on thy lip?”"

"While the battle was still doubtful, the Tuar traitor who led the van (harawal) went over to Babur, and Sanga was obliged to retreat from the field, which in the onset promised a glorious victory, himself severely wounded and the choicest of his chieftains slain: Rawal Udai[13] Singh of Dungarpur, with two hundred of his clan; Ratna of Salumbar, with three hundred of his Chondawat kin; Raemall Rathor, son of the prince of Marwar, with the brave Mertia leaders Khetsi and Ratna; Ramdas the Sonigira Rao; Uja the Jhala; Gokuldas Pramara; Manikchand and Chandrbhan, Chauhan chiefs of the first rank in Mewar; besides a host of inferior names.[14] Hasan Khan of Mewat, and a son of the last Lodi king of Delhi, who coalesced with Sanga, were amongst the killed.[15] Triumphal pyramids were raised of the heads of the slain, and on a hillock which overlooked the field of battle a tower of skulls was erected; and the conqueror assumed the title of Ghazi, which has ever since been retained by his descendants."

"There is a sanctity in the very name of Chitor, which from the earliest times secured her defenders; and now, when threatened again by ‘the barbarian,’ such the inexplicable character of the Rajput, we find the heir of Surajmall abandoning his new capital of Deolia, to pour out the few drops which yet circulated in his veins in defence of the abode of his fathers."

"But the magnitude of the peril confirmed the fortitude of Partap, who vowed, in the words of the bard, “to make his mother’s milk resplendent”; and he amply redeemed his pledge. Single-handed, for a quarter of a century did he withstand the combined efforts of the empire; at one time carrying destruction into the plains, at another flying from rock to rock, feeding his family from the fruits of his native hills, and rearing the nursling hero Amra, amidst savage beasts and scarce less savage men, a fit heir to his prowess and revenge. The bare idea that “the son of Bappa Rawal should bow the head to mortal man,” was insupportable; and he spurned every overture which had submission for its basis, or the degradation of uniting his family by marriage with the Tatar, though lord of countless multitudes. The brilliant acts he achieved during that period live in every valley; they are enshrined in the heart of every true Rajput, and many are recorded in the annals of the conquerors. To recount them all, or relate the hardships he sustained, would be to pen what they would pronounce a romance who had not traversed the country where tradition is yet eloquent with his exploits, or conversed with the descendants of his chiefs, who cherish a recollection of the deeds of their forefathers, and melt, as they recite them, into manly tears. Partap was nobly supported; and though wealth and fortune tempted the fidelity of his chiefs, not one was found base enough to abandon him."

"Often was Partap heard to exclaim, “Had Udai Singh never been, or none intervened between him and Sanga Rana, no Turk should ever have given laws to Rajasthan.” Hindu society had assumed a new form within the century preceding: the wrecks of dominion from the Jumna and Ganges had been silently growing into importance; and Amber and Marwar had attained such power, that the latter single-handed coped with the imperial Sher Shah; while numerous minor chieftainships were attaining shape and strength on both sides the Chambal. A prince of commanding genius alone was wanting, to snatch the sceptre of dominion from the Islamite. Such a leader they found in Sanga, who possessed every quality which extorts spontaneous obedience, and the superiority of whose birth, as well as dignity, were admitted without cavil, from the Himalaya to Rameswaram."

"It is worthy the attention of those who influence the destinies of States in more favoured climes, to estimate the intensity of feeling which could arm this prince to oppose the resources of a small principality against the then most powerful empire of the world, whose armies were more numerous and far more efficient than any ever led by the Persian against the liberties of Greece. Had Mewar possessed her Thucydides or her Xenophon, neither the wars of the Peloponnesus nor the retreat of the ‘ten thousand’ would have yielded more diversified incidents for [350] the historic muse, than the deeds of this brilliant reign amid the many vicissitudes of Mewar. Undaunted heroism, inflexible fortitude, that which ‘keeps honour bright,’ perseverance,—with fidelity such as no nation can boast, were the materials opposed to a soaring ambition, commanding talents, unlimited means, and the fervour of religious zeal; all, however, insufficient to contend with one unconquerable mind. There is not a pass in the alpine Aravalli that is not sanctified by some deed of Partap,—some brilliant victory or, oftener, more glorious defeat. Haldighat is the Thermopylae of Mewar; the field of Dawer her Marathon."

"All resolved to imitate the noble Partap, ... preferring Hard liberty before the easy yoke Of servile pomp."

"These were the first specimens of Christian warfare against the heathen of Hind... It would perhaps be fortunate for Christianity, if the historic muse in India were mute, as many have endeavoured to prove her to be, since atrocities like these are alone sufficient to have scared the Hindus from all association with her creed."

"While the camp-baskets were unlocking, I could not resist taking a peep at the fire-fount and the shrine of Achil-eswar, one of the most renowned in the fabulous annals of the Hindus. The Man-agni-coonda is about nine hundred feet long by two hundred and forty in breadth, excavated in the solid rock, and lined with solid masonry of immensely large bricks. An insulated mass of rock has been left in the center of the coond, on which are the ruins of a shrine to Mata, the universal mother. On the crest of the northern face of the coond is a group of small temples dedicated to the Pandu brothers, but, like the former, a mass of ruins."

"On the western side is the shrine of Achil-eswar, the tutelary divinity of Aboo. There is nothing striking as to magnitude, and still less as to decoration, in this, but it possesses a massive simplicity which guarantees its antiquity. It occupies the center of a quadrangle, surrounded by smaller fanes, alike primitive in form, and built of blocks of blue slate. But it is the object of worship which confers celebrity, being nothing less than the great toe of the devil, for so we must translate Patal-eswar, the Lord of Hell. On entering, the eye is attracted by a statue of the mountain nymph, Mera, the wife of this multiform divinity, which, at first sight, appears to be the object of adoration; and it is only on stooping to look into a deep fissure of the rock, termed the Brimh-khar, that the bright nail of Siva is visible, which has attracted homage from myriads of votaries from the remotest ages. In front of the temple is a brass bull, of colossal size, bearing the marks of violence on his flanks, the hammer of the barbarian having penetrated them in search of treasure, Mahomed Beyra, Padsha or king of Ahmedabad, has the credit of this sacrilege; but whether it was rewarded by the discovery of any secret hoard, is not told: though the legend details the manifestation of Siva’s wrath upon the “barbarian king” for the ill-treatment of his favorite. In descending from Aboo, after the reduction of Achilgurh, his banners “fanned by Conquest’s crimson wing,” confusion waited on them from an unlooked-for source. A legion of bees, issuing from their pinnacled retreats, attacked and pursued the invaders even to Jhalore. To commemorate this victory over the spoiler, the name of Bhomar-t’hal, or ‘Bees Valley,’ was given to the spot. A temple was erected, and from the captured arms thrown away in their flight, a vast tridanta (trident) was formed, and placed in front of the divinity who thus avenged the insult to Nanda."

"Here every thing is Jain, and the shrine dedicated to Vrishabdeva [Rishabhdeva] is well worth of notice, from its containing no fewer than twelve immense images to this, the first of the twenty-four pontiffs who attained the honours of apotheosis. They are said to weigh many thousand maunds, and to be a compound of all the metals. Near the base of the inner fort, on the left hand, on leaving it, is another temple dedicated to Parswanat’h [Parasnath], whose statute it contains. This was erected or repaired by the celebrated Komarpal, King of Anhulwarra, the patron of the sect, and disciple of Hemachundra, a potent name among the Jains…"

"…Let the reader discard his shoes, and prepare to enter with me the sacred fanes of Dailwara. This is a contraction of Dewulwarra, ‘the place or region of temples,’ a term aptly applied to the site of this numerous group, from which I select two of the most remarkable. The reader will be pleased to consider himself at the entrance of the shrine sacred to Vrishabdeva, the first of the Jains. Beyond controversy this is the most superb of all the temples of India, and there is not an edifice besides the Mahal that can approach to it. The pen is incompetent to describe the exuberant beauties of this proud monument of the Jains, raised by one of the richest of their votaries (by whose name, and not that of the pontiff enshrined within, it is still designated), and which continues to attract pilgrims from every region of India. Bimul Shah, whose work has immortalized him, was a merchant of Anhulwarra, at one time the Tyre of India, and the ancient stronghold of the Jain faith. It was, however, towards the close of her long career of renown, that these two edifices were erected and happily for these votaries of Jainism, who, to use the words of the bard, “exchanged their perishable wealth for an immortal name,” for hardly were the fabrics reared, when the metropolis of Western India was sacked, its merchants driven forth, and their riches transferred to the Northern Invader. Previous to their erection, the immediate spot was occupied by the orthodox divinities, Siva and Vishnu, whose ministers would not tolerate the approach of any of the sectarian enemies of their faith; but the Sahoos of Nehrwalla, giving this the preference over any other site on the surface of Aboo, determined to try the effect of gold on the sovereign, or, as they allegorically say, “Lacshmi herself entered into the scheme, to gain a victory for their faith.” The bribe was high, they offered to cover as much ground as they required for their purpose with silver coin, – a temptation too powerful for the Pramara to withstand, – and, despite the anathema of the priests of Bal-Siva and Vishnu, he took the lacs of the Jain merchants. The name of the prince is not mentioned, but the date of the temples shews him to be the same sacrilegious Dharaburz, who attempted to inundate the Khar of Sacti. The merchants were not ungrateful of Lacshmi, whom they enshrined in a niche on the right hand of the entrance."

"The temple of Vrishabdeva stands isolated in the center of a quadrangular court, the length of which, from east to west, is about one hundred and eighty feet, and the breadth one hundred feet. Along its internal faces are ranges of cells, nineteen on the larger, and ten on each of the smaller sides, each cell being of uniform dimensions…. The whole is of pure white marble, every column, dome, and altar varying in form and ornament, the richness and delicacy of execution being indescribable. Each of the fifty-eight cells merits an entire day’s study, and a first-rate pencil to delineate it. It is asserted that each separate cell was added by wealthy individuals, of various cities and countries, professing the Jain faith, which may account for the great diversity of style and ornament, while the harmony and symmetry of the whole attest that one master-mind must have planned and executed it, except at the south-west angle, where some dissimilarity prevails. The altars are of a chaste and simple design, while money, labour, skill, and taste, have been lavished on the details of the colonnade, wherein each of the columnar rules of Jain architecture has its example. Each cell contains its statue decided to the particular object of worship of the person at whose expense it was raised, and inscriptions recording the period of erection are carved on the inner lintel of every doorway…"

"I could have consumed a month in surveying the works of the princely merchant, but time pressed, and other objects of equal importance awaited me. Passing through a court, a flight of steps conducts to the rival temple, dedicated to Parswanat’h, the twenty-third and most popular of the Jineswars. This shrine was erected by the brothers Tej Pal and Bussunt Pal, likewise merchants of the Jain persuasion, who inhabited the city of Chandravati during the sway of Dharaburz, and when Bheem Deo was paramount sovereign of Western India. The design and execution of this shrine and all its accessories are on the model of the preceding, which, however, as a whole, it surpasses. It has more simple majesty, the fluted columns sustaining the munduff are loftier, and the vaulted interior is fully equal to the other in richness of sculpture, and superior to it in the execution, which is more free and in finer taste... It is impossible to give a distinct idea of the richness and variety of the bassi-relievi either of the principal dome or the minor ones which surround it. We must not, however, overlook a singular ornament pendant from the larger vault, the delineation of which defies the pen, and would tax to the utmost the pencil of the most patient artist. Although it has some analogy to the corbeille of a gothic cathedral, there is nothing in the most florid style of gothic architecture that can be compared with this in richness. Its form is cylindrical, about three feet in length, and where it drops from the ceiling, it appears like a cluster of the half-disclosed lotus, whose cups are so thin, so transparent, and so accurately wrought, that it fixes the eye in admiration…."

"SIDPOOR – JUNE 20th – In the infancy of our geography of India, the illustrious D’ Anville said of this city, “ville qui tire son nom des Shites, ou toiles peintes, qui s’y fabriquent;” but it boasts of a more dignified etymology, being called after its patron, the Balhara prince, Sid-Rae. By some he is supposed to be the founder, but there is every reason to believe that he was only the renovator, of this place, the position of which on the Sarasvati, flowing from the shrine of Ambabhavani, is well-chosen. Here are the remains of what in past ages must have been one of the grandest efforts of Hindu architecture, a temple dedicated to Siva, and termed Roodra-Mala, or ‘the chaplet of Roodra,’ the god of battle; but so disjointed are the fragments, that it is difficult to imagine what it may have been as a whole. They are chiefly portions of porticoes, one of which tradition names the prostyle of the munduff, or vaulted mansion occupied by the bull, companion of Roodra, whose sanctum was converted into a mosque. It is said to have been a rectangular building, five stories in height, and if we may judge from one portion yet remaining, this could not have been less than one hundred feet…I found two inscriptions, from one of which I learned that it was commenced by Raja Moolraj [the founder of the Solankhi dynasty of Anhilwara], in S. 998 [A.D. 942], and from the other that it was finished by Sid-Raj…A couplet records its destruction by All-u-din – “In S. 1353 [A.D. 1297], came the barbarian Alla: the Roodra-Mala he levelled, “carrying destruction amongst the lords of men.”"

"PALIT’HANA – NOVEMBER 17th –…never did pilgrim, Jain or Buddhist, approach the sacred Mount Satrunja with more excited feelings than I, a “barbarian” Frank. I had, however, allowed imagination to outstrip experience, having no right to look for grand discoveries in the lands over which Mahomed [Mahmud of Ghazni] and Alla [Alauddin Khalji] had led their legions, fulfilling the iconoclastic injunctions of Moses, conveyed through the Prophet of Islam…however extensive their demolition of religious edifices, it was beyond the power of these conquerors to destroy the memorials of a sect which, more than any other, depended on tradition for the perpetuity of their tenets. Palit’hana, ‘the dwelling of the Palli,’ is situated at the eastern base of Satrunja, the mount sacred to Adnath (the first of the twenty-four hierophants of the Jains), which rises nearly two thousand feet, and is between two and three miles in ascent, taking the sinuosities of the route into account. My researches in this interesting spot were materially aided by an introduction through my own Yuti to some learned priests, now here on a pilgrimage, who gave me much information on points connected with their religion, as well as details concerning the teerut, from the Satrunja Mahatma, a portion of which work they had with them… Satrunja is one of the Panj-teer’thas, or five places of pilgrimage of the Jains. Of these, three, viz. Arbudha, Satrunja, and Girnar, are at hand. The fourth, Samel-sikra, is in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, now Behar, and the fifth, Chandragir, the Silver Mount, also called Shescuta, or the ‘thousand-pinnacled,’ lies amidst the snowy regions of the Hindu Kho, or Parbut-put-pamer, the Caucasus and Paropamisus of the Greeks… We have no evidence that Mahmoud of Ghizni visited the sacred mounts of the Jains, but it is well attested, that the fury of the “sanguinary Alla” made all sects conceal their gods under-ground, for those they did not hide he destroyed. Many have since been brought to light, but comparatively few of the sculptures of ancient times are now existing. In like manner, the temples suffered, those only escaping which were converted into mosques. The consequence is, that in the Chaok of Adnat’h, although you cannot look around without beholding every where vestiges of antiquity, no entire edifice appears to claim this distinction, as they are for the most part incongruous structures, raised from dilapidated remnants, so that Komarpal’s own temple, from continual deterioration and repair, does not bear any greater signs of antiquity than that recently erected by the wealthy banker…"

"NOVEMBER 29th – At length, I obtained a view of this, perhaps the most renowned of all the shrines of India, ‘the city’ par eminence, more reverentially styled Deva-Puttun, ‘the city of the god,’ or still more accurately, Deva-Pat’han, ‘the chief dwelling of the deity.’…As we approached, we crossed the Triveni, or three united streams, viz. the Vrijini, the Sarasvati (a name of the Hindu Minerva), and the Hiranya, or ‘golden.’…What a host of associations arose to one who had indulged the hope of making a pilgrimage to this the most celebrated shrine connected with Hindu and Mooslem history! Pressing on to the goal, I passed, with mingled prejudice and contempt, the place of sepulture of the Mooslem saint, Abbi-Sah, nor halted for breath, until within the “temple of the sun,” deserted, desecrated, a receptacle for kine, the pinnacle, to its spring from the cella, demolished, and the fragments strewing the ground. There is nothing of immensity, though there is great solidity, in the structure, which is of the order of sacred architecture called Sikra-bund, or ‘pinnacled,’ and with all the details of decoration laid down in the Silpi-sastra. The figures are bold in design, the attitudes of some striking, but the material, a coarse gritty sand-stone, does not give great scope or facility to the chisel; yet, as a whole, the edifice is imposing. The jambs and lintel of the entrance-door are of a well-polished yellow-coloured mineral, apparently jasper, though it may be that species of marble akin to the jaune antique. The munduff, or central dome, is not above sixteen feet in diameter, supported by strong, slightly ornamented columns, having a portico all round, terminated by square pilasters abutting from the external wall. Beyond the munduff, there is a domed vestibule, with pillars and pilasters, leading to the sanctum, where a globular patch of red paint, placed by the cowherds, is now the only symbol of the sun-god. The sovereigns of Nehrwalla had repaired the injuries done by Mahmoud, but the spire, again thrown down by the sanguinary Alla, has never been re-erected. North of the temple is the Surya-coonda, excavated from the solid rock. The descent to it is by a steep flight of narrow steps. The water is said to cure the diseases of both body and mind, the term of ablution and probation being one solar revolution, during which, not only faith, but good works must be manifested, in order to make the remedy efficacious…"

"From the shrine of the god of light, I descended to that of Sideswar, the god of the monastic orders, obscurely buried in an excavation of the rock, dismal and damp, the low roof supported by a few crumbling columns. One might fancy this the cave of Delphos, though the perceptions of our blind oracle proved far more acute than those of most of his brethren. However rudely executed, all was strictly characteristic of “hell’s dark abode.” Besides statues of Hinglaz Mata, and Patal-eswar, ‘lord of the infernal regions,’ there were nine small figures in high relief, carved on the frieze of a miniature shrine, said by the blind minister to be “the images of those who rule the destiny of man.” There was a small square court in front of the cave, whose walls have been repaired or constructed out of the ruins of other temples, having fragments of the gods in every attitude. It is shaded by some fine Burr trees, which are sacred to Siva. Although there is nothing attractive here, yet whoever is conversant with mythology will be struck, not only by the classical nature of the cave-temple, but by the perfect contrast it exhibits between the powers of light and darkness, in juxtaposition, and the rapid transition of the votary from the one to the other. The spot where Krishna resigned his breath From this cave I proceeded to a spot, deemed by the Hindu the holiest of the holy, where the shepherd-god resigned his breath.… A Peepul sapling, averred to be “a scion of the original tree,” marks the spot where the Hindu Apollo expired, and a flight of steps conducts to the bed of the ‘golden’ Hiranya, for the pilgrim to lustrate himself. This place of purification bears the name of Swergadwara, or ‘door of bliss,’ and contends with that of Deva-puttun for superior efficacy in absolving from sin. It is adorned by two beautiful reservoirs, called the Bhalca and Padma-coondas, the ‘dart and lotus fountains.’ The former is a dodecahedron, whose diameter is about three hundred feet. The lotus-coond is smaller, having its surface covered with this elegant flower, sacred to Kanya [Lord Krishna], and whence his most euphonous appellation, Comala, is derived; while on its eastern bank there is a small shrine to Mahadeo. These fountains are peculiarly sacred in the eyes of the followers of the shepherd-god, and were so in Akber’s time; for Abulfazil devotes some space to the holy pilgrimages of Peepulsirr and Bhalcateerut (bhal, ‘a dart’). Mooslmen intolerance is strikingly obvious in the erection of a place of prayer touching the consecrated Peepul, and although the government of these regions has now long been under Hindu princes of strong religious zeal, the offensive Musjid remains undisturbed, furnishing a powerful contrast between the amiable endurance of the one, and the bigotry of the other faith…"

"Behold me in the vestibule of Somnat’h, the far-famed shrine of idolatry which lured “the star of Islam” from its orbit amidst the Paropamisan and Caucasus, to the sandy shores of the Indian ocean within the torrid zone; and though now but the shell of what it was, though denuded of its sikra (pinnacle), whose fragments strew the ground, divested of its majestic superstructure, and but the trunk of a once perfect form, yet from its wrecks we may judge of its pristine character. That so much has been spared, we owe to that excess of zeal, which made conquest incomplete without conversion; which transformed the mindra into the mosque, and the altar of the sun-god into a pulpit for the Moollah, whence, while yet reeking with blood, the song of victory resounded amid shouts of ‘La Illah, Mahomed Rusool Illahi,’ ‘There is but one God, and Mahomed is his prophet.’ But without is another symbol of conversion, the pinnacled minarets at the entrance of the temple, the handiwork of the Mooslem artificer, whence the Muezzin of Mahmoud called aloud on the soldiers of the Faith to give glory to God and his prophet, for the victory obtained over the infidel. Could we be assured that any spark of genuine taste and liberal feeling induced him to spare even this mutilated remnant of the days of old, we might try to veil the barbarities inflicted in the name of religion, under the spirit of chivalry which braved the varied perils encountered in her cause; for this, the twelfth expedition of Mahmoud, must be ranked amongst the hardiest enterprises which frenzied ambition, under the cloak of sanctity, ever undertook…"

"The temple of Somnat’h stood in the center of an immense quadrangular court, defended by its own lofty battlements. The subordinate shrines, which, like satellites, heightened the splendour of the ‘Lord of the Moon,’ are now levelled with the earth, and mosques, walls, and the habitations of mortals, have been raised from their debris. The extent of the court may be estimated by the simple fact, that the nearest of the reservoirs for the lustrations of Bal and his priests is full one hundred yards distant from the shrine. The great mosque, called the Joomma Musjid, must have absorbed the materials of at least five of these minor shrines; for its five vaulted cupolas, with all their appendages, are purely Hindu, and the enormous triple-colonnaded court, in which it stands, must have cost a dozen more. Such was and such is the shrine of Somnat’h, even now a noble object, yet how much grander in the high and palmy days of Hinduism, with all its ministrant appendages!… Nothing can surpass the beauty of the site chosen for the temple, which stands on a projecting rock, whose base is washed by the ocean. Here, resting on the skirt of the mighty waters, the vision lost in their boundless expanse, the votary would be lulled to a blissful state of repose by the monotonous roar of the waves. Before him is the bay, extending to Billawul, its golden sands kept in perpetual agitation by the surf, in bold and graceful curvature; it is unrivalled in India, and although I have since seen many noble bays, from that of Penzance to Salernum, perhaps the finest in the world, with all its accessories of back-ground, and in all the glory of closing day, none ever struck my imagination more forcibly than that of Puttun. The port and headland of Billawul, with its dark walls raised as a defence against the pirates of Europe, form a noble terminating point of view, and form which the land trends northwards to Dwarica. The peaks of Girnar, twenty coss distant (N. 7° E.), would raise the sublimest feelings, or if he chooses more tranquil scenes, the country around presents objects of interest, the plains being well-wooded, and diversified both by nature and art. Such is the chief temple of paganism, the destruction of which, in A.H. 416 (A.D. 1008), was deemed by the Sultan of Ghizni an act of religious duty."

"The temple of Dwarica, the most celebrated of all the shrines raised to Crishna [Krishna], is built upon an eminence rising from the sea-shore, and surrounded by a fortified wall, which likewise encircles the town, from which it is, however, separated by a lofty partition-wall, through which it is necessary to pass to see it to advantage. The architectural character of this temple is that to which we are accustomed to give the name of pagoda. It may be said to consist of three parts: the munduff, or hall of congregation; the devachna, or penetralia (also termed gabarra); and the sikra, or spire…the chisel of Islam had been also at work, and defaced every graven image, nor is there enough remaining to disclose the original design: nevertheless, this obliteration has been done with care, so as not to injure the edifice. The basement, or square portion of the temple, from which springs the sikra, was the sanctum in former ages, when Budha-trivicrama was the object of adoration, anterior to the heresy of Crishna, who was himself a worshipper of Budha, whose miniature shrine is still the sanctum-sanctorum of Dwarica, while Crishna is installed in a cella beyond. The sikra, or spire, constructed in the most ancient style, consists of a series of pyramids, each representing a miniature temple, and each diminishing with the contracting spire, which terminates at one hundred and forty feet from the ground. There are seven distinct stories before this pyramidal spire greatly diminishes in diameter; each face of each story is ornamented with open porches, surmounted by a pediment supported by small columns. Each of these stories internally consists of column placed on column, whose enormous architraves increase in bulk in the decreasing ratio of the superimposed mass, and although the majority at the summit are actually broken by their own weight, yet they are retained in their position by the aggregate unity. The capitals of these columns are quite plain, having four cross projections for the architraves to rest on; and by an obtuseness in the Silpi not to be accounted for, several of these architraves do not rest on the columns, but on the projections; and, strange to say, the lapse of centuries has proved their efficiency, though Vitruvius might have regarded the innovation with astonishment. The entire fabric, whose internal dimensions are seventy-eight feet by sixty-six, is built from the rock, which is a sand-stone of various degrees of texture, forming the substratum of the island; – it has a greenish hue, either from its native bed, or from imbibing the saline atmosphere, which, when a strong light strikes upon it, gives the mass a vitreous transparent lustre. Internally it has a curious conker-like appearance. The architraves are, however, an exception, being of the same calcareous marine conglomerate, not unlike travertine, as already described in the temple of Somnat’h. The foundation of this shrine must have been laid in the solstice, as its front varies ten points from the meridian line; and as the Silpi, or architect, in these matters, acts under the priest, we may infer that the Surya Siddhanta was little known to the Goorgoocha Brahmins, the ministrants of their times, who took the heliacal rising of those days as the true east point; its breadth is, therefore, from N.N.W. to S.S.E. Contrary to custom, it has its back to the rising sun, and faces the west. Crishna is here adored under his form of Rinchor, when he was driven from his patrimony, Surasena, by the Budhist king of Magadha. A covered colonnaded piazza connects the cella of Crishna with a miniature temple dedicated to Deoki, his mother; and within the ample court are various other shrines, one of which, in the S.E. angle, contains the statue of Budha Tri-vicrama, or, as he is familiarly called, Tricam-Rae and Trimnat’h, which is always crowded with votaries. Opposite to this, or at the S.W. angle of the main temple, is a smaller one, dedicated to another form of Crishna, Madhu Rae, and between these is a passage leading by a flight of steps to the Goomtee, a small rivulet, whose embouchure with the ocean is especially sacred, though is would not wet the instep to cross it. From the grand temple to the sungum, or point of confluence, where there is a small temple to Sungum-Narayn, the course of the Goomtee is studded with the cenotaphs of those pilgrims who were fortunate enough to surrender life at this “dwara of the deity.” Amongst them are four of the five Pandu brothers, countenancing the tradition that the fifth proceeded across the Hemachil, where, being lost sight of, he is said to have perished in its snows, and whither he was accompanied by Baldeo, the Indian Hercules, whose statue is enshrined in the south-west corner of the great munduff, several step under ground. Baldeo is represented on his ascent from patal, or the infernal regions, after some monstrous combat."

"But the most famous of Elphinstone’s disciples was James Tod who, between 1812 and 1823, lovingly gathered in three volumes, the Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Not even Walter Scott would have stumbled upon material so romantically rich and bearing so much of the pollen and fragrance of the past. Legend and romance have given to the Annals and Antiquities such an enduring character that the work would never suffer from want of readers."

"The earliest body of gospel tradition, represented by Mark no less than by the primitive non-Marcan document embodied in the first and third gospels, begins, not with the birth and childhood of Jesus, but with his baptism; and this order of accretion of gospel matter is faithfully reflected in the time order of the invention of feasts. The great church adopted Christmas much later than Epiphany; and before the 5th century there was no general consensus of opinion as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on the 6th of January, or the 25th of March, or the 25th of December."

"... what is poetry to us—akin to the folk-lore of water-sprites, naiads, kelpies, river-gods and water-worship in general—was to Tertullian and to the generations of believers who fashioned the baptismal rites, ablutions and beliefs of the church, nothing less than grim reality and unquestionable fact."

"... when a priest undertakes by certain movements of his hands, by use of certain invocations, of certain names and forms of words, which must on no account be varied, to impart to bread and wine, to water, oil, salt, bells, or what not, certain occult qualities and values, which they had not before and could not otherwise gain, he moves in the realm of pure magic."

"... Paul's Christ is an a priori construction of his own, owing to the historical man of Nazareth and to those who knew that man and cherished his memory little except the bare name of Jesus. Paul's Jesus is an ideal superhuman Saviour, destined, from the beginning of the world, to play an ecumenic rôle."

"We can write a life of Julius Caesar or of Cicero, because we have in the first line letters, commentaries, and other authentic documents written by them and their friends; in the second, lives written by Plutarch and others who had in their hands monuments of them, now lost; and in the third, masses of contemporary coins and inscriptions. Contrast with this wealth of sources the scanty material which remains, after the examination of the preceding chapters, for a portrait of Jesus of Nazareth. So slender is it, indeed, that it seems not absurd to some critics to-day to deny that he ever lived."

"The various writings—narrative, epistolary, and apocalyptic—which make up the New Testament had no common origin, but were composed at different times by at least a score of writers in places which, in view of the difficulties presented to travel by the ancient world, may be said to have been widely remote from each other. With the exception of the Epistles of Paul, none of them, or next to none, were composed until about fifty years after the death of Jesus; and another hundred years elapsed before they were assembled in one collection and began to take their place alongside the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible as authoritative scriptures."

"Marcion, in the middle of the second century, had pitilessly assailed the God of the Jews, and denounced the cruelty, lust, fraud, and rapine of the Hebrew patriarchs and kings, the favourites of that God. In the middle of the third century the orthodox were still hard put to it to meet the arguments of Marcion, and, as Milton put it, "to justify the ways of God to man.""

"[In many cases] there is no doubt that the shrine of a Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practised on the spot long before the introduction of Islam."

""The tomb of alae ‘Masud is said to occupy the site of a former temple of the sun, and the mosque of Shaykh Saddu at Amroha was also originally a temple. The Panj Pir are undoubtedly reminiscent of the Pandavas, the five hero brothers of the Mahabharatta, and it is significant that the shrine of Sakhi Sarwar (in the Dera Ghazi Khan District) contains, besides the tomb of the saint and his wife, a shrine dedicated to Babu Nanak, and a temple to Vishnu, and that Hindus believe that Shah Madar is an incarnation of Lakshman, the brother of the God Rama.’"

"Their energies at all times impetuous were now solely concentrated upon executing the injunctions of the 'king of fierce countenance, understanding dark sentences' that they should enforce belief at the point of the sword which was emphatically declared to be 'the key of heaven and of hell."

"In the hours of its political degradation, Islam has achieved some of its most brilliant spiritual conquests: on two great historical occasions, infidel barbarians have set their feet on the necks of the followers of the Prophet, - the Saljūq Turks in the eleventh and the Mongols in the thirteenth century,- and in each case the conquerors have accepted the religion of the conquered. Unaided also by the temporal power, Muslim missionaries have carried their faith into Central Africa, China and the East India Islands."

"[T]he jizyah was levied on the able-bodied males, in lieu of the military service they would have been called upon to perform had they been Musalmans; and it is very noticeable that when any Christian people served in the Muslim army, they were exempted from the payment of this tax. Such was the case with the tribe of al-Jurājima, a Christian tribe in the neighborhood of Antioch who made peace with the Muslims, promising to be their allies and fight on their side in battle, on condition that they should not be called upon to pay jizyah and should receive their proper share of the booty."

"Muslim Spain had written one of the brightest pages in the history of mediæval Europe. Her influence had passed through Provence into the other countries of Europe, bringing into birth a new poetry and a new culture, and it was from her that Christian scholars received what of Greek philosophy and science they had to stimulate their mental activity up to the time of the Renaissance."

"Official pressure is said never to have been more consistently brought to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern districts of the Punjab, there are many cases in which the ancestor of the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed his religion in the reign of this zealot in order to save the land of the village. …. Many Rajput landowners in the Cawnpore district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason to save the family property from confiscation. In other cases, the ancestor is said to have been carried as prisoner or hostage to Delhi, and there forcibly circumcised and converted. It should however be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions is family or local traditions and no mention of such is made in the historical accounts of Aurangzeb’s reign. It is established, without doubt, that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable that Aurangzeb’s well known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily assignable cause."

"This passage was cited by Thomas W. Arnold in his Preaching of Islam to support his contention that the most important agents in the spread of Islam in the Deccan were peaceful Muslim saints. While Arnold's general argument may have a good deal of valid- an argument that will be explored in greater depth in the present study, it would seem that in the case of Pir Ma‘bari he ‘chose the wrong example to illustrate it. For the question arises: why did Arnold cite a tradition, the 1884 Bombay Gazetteer, which presented only one side, the “peaceful missionary” side, of Pir Marais life? One possibility is that the hagiographic traditions such a the one quoted above were unknown to Arnold and that he had available to him only the Gazetteer version. Another possibility is that Arnold was aware of the Sufi’ militancy in the hagiographic traditions but chose to ignore it, an interpretation that would accord with the general effort in his books to revise the simplistic nineteenth-century image of Islam as religion of the sword. But it does not suffice to correct one distorted view by presenting an equally distorted, if opposite, view. If the Sufis peaceful character can be supported by both ‘written and oral traditions, so can his militancy. In view of the tendency of both oral and written traditions to extol or even fabricate the pious qualities of Sufis, it is most likely that Pir ‘Matbari like Sufi Sarmast, was in reality a militant Sufi and only acquired the reputation of peaceful missionary through generations of oral transmission of his life story."

"It was from this and much other material that Arnold reached his conclusion that vast number of Indian Muslims are descendent of converts in whose conversion force played no part and in which only the teaching and persuasion of peaceful missionaries were at work."

"Then, too, although Arnold was sceptical of the many stories of conversion under pressure to Islam in the time of Aurangzib, he did not extend the same questioning spirit towards stories of peaceful conversion by saints. In 1965, Dr. S. A. A. Rizvi was to suggest that zamindars retailed these stories in order, in the period when the British were making revenue settlements, to establish their proprietory rights over larger areas of land by an assertion of superior ancestry through connexion with Muslim saints.... But even he whose avowed intention was to portray Islam as a peaceful missionary religion analogous to missionary Christianity of the 19th century, finds that "It is established without doubt that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers in India.""

"Another lofty claim of mythic proportion being perpetuated about conversion to Islam is that a heterodox variety of Muslims, namely the Sufis, had propagated Islam through peaceful missionary activity. British historian Thomas Arnold (1864–1930)—desperate to alter the centuries-old European discourse of Islam as a violent faith—initiated this propaganda in the 1890s, which has been embraced by numerous Muslim and non-Muslim historians and scholars."

"As a literary monument the Koran thus stands by itself, a production unique in Arabic literature, having neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom. Muslims of all ages are united in proclaiming the inimitability not only of its contents but of its style."

"But Islam has a still further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of interracial understanding and co-operation. No other society has such a record of success uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavour so many and so various races of mankind… Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of East and West is to be replaced by co-operation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced—but if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both."

"Like all Arabs they (Enemies of Muhammad) were connoisseurs of language and rhetoric. Well, then if the Koran were his (Muhammad's) own composition other men could rival it. Let them produce ten verses like it. If they could not (and it is obvious that they could not), then let them accept the Koran as an outstanding evidential miracle."

"That his [Muhammad's] reforms enhanced the status of women in general by contrast with the anarchy of pre-Islamic Arabia is universally admitted."

"In making the present attempt to improve on the performance of predecessors, and to produce something which might be accepted as echoing however faintly the sublime rhetoric of the Arabic Koran, I have been at pain to study the intricate and richly varied rhythms which—apart from the message itself—constitutes the Koran’s undeniable claim to rank amongst the greatest literary masterpieces of mankind."

"There is a strong presumption in favor of (Indian) tradition; if anyone contests tradition, the burden lies on him to show that it is wrong."

"Indian tradition knows nothing whatever of the Aryans' invasion of India through the north-west....All this copious tradition was falsely fabricated, and the truth has been absolutely lost, if the current theory is right; is that probable? If all this tradition is false, why, how, and in whose interests was it all fabricated.?"

""If the Aryans had entered India from the north-west, and had advanced eastward through the Punjab only as far as the Saraswati or Jumna when the Rigvedic hymns were composed, it is very surprising that the hymn arranges the rivers, not according to their progress, but reversaly from the Ganges which they had hardly reached. " Imam me gange yamune sarasvati sutudri stomam sacata parusnaya asiknya marudvrdhe vitastayarjikiye srnuhya susomaya " (x 75.05) O Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutudri (Sutlej), Parushini (Ravi), hear my praise! Listen to my call, Asikni (Chenab), Marudvridha (Maruvardhvan), Vitasta (Jhelum) with Arjikiya, Sushoma (Sohan)."

"The river constituted the boundary between the Panjab and the Ganges-Jumna basin."

"Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aila or Aryan invasion of India from Afghanistan, nor of any gradual advance from thence eastwards."

"The Aryans began at Allahabad, conquered and spread out northwest, west and south, and had by YayAti’s time occupied precisely the region known as MadhyadeSa… They expanded afterwards into the Punjab and East Afghanistan, into West India and the northwest Dekhan…"

"Indian tradition distinctly asserts that there was an Aila outflow of the Druhyus through the northwest into the countries beyond where they founded various kingdoms."

"There is nothing in them (Puranic accounts), as far as I am aware, really inconsistent with the most ancient book we possess, namely, the Rigveda, and they throw much light thereon, and on all problems concerning ancient India."

"The bulk of the Rigveda was composed in the great development of Brahmanism that arose under the succesors of king Bharata who reigned in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab and plain;"

"Tradition… makes the earliest connexion of the Veda to be with the eastern region and not with the Punjab."

"[The fact that there are Indo-European languages outside India: Pargiter clearly attributes the presence of these languages to the] Aila outflow of the Druhyus through the northwest into the countries beyond where they founded various kingdoms."

"There was an outflow of people from India before the fifteenth century BC."

"The arguments used to prove the advance of the Aryans from Afghanistan into the Punjab might simply be reversed."

"[tradition] makes the Aila power begin at Allahabad and yet distinctly suggests that they came from outside India."

"Tradition or myth… directly indicates that the Ailas (or Aryans) entered India from the mid-Himalayan region."

"All ancient Indian belief and veneration were directed to the mid-Himalayan region, the only original sacred outside land, and it was thither that rishis and kings turned their steps in devotion, never to the northwest."

"The next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country."

"One branch, headed by Uśīnara established several kingdoms on the eastern border of the Punjab [...] his famous son Śivi originated the Śivis [footnote: called Śivas in Rigveda VII.18.7] in Śivapura, and extending his conquests westwards [...] occupying the whole of the Punjab except the northwestern corner."

""The Druhyus occupied the Punjab, and Mandhātṛ of Ayodhya had a long war with the Druhyu king Aruddha or Aṅgāra and killed him" (PARGITER 1962:167)."

"[Mandhātā pushed past] "the prostrate Paurava realm, and pushing beyond them westwards, he had a long contest with and conquered the Druhyu king who appears to have been then on the confines of the Panjab, so that the next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country" (PARGITER 1962:262)."

"The Iranians may have been an offshoot from India."

"These lectures were written to help candidates for a prize of Pound Sterling 200- given by John Muir, a well-known old Haileybury man and great Sanskrit scholar, for the best refutation of the Hindu Religious System."

"The system of learning Bengalee among the natives .... their notion of learning Bengalee was by learning Sanscrit. If you make a man a good Sanscrit scholar he will be able to write Bengalee with perfect accuracy and elegance.... Bengalee is the language most akin to Sanscrit. I have taken pains to ascertain the proportion of Sanscrit in the first 500 words... they amount to 350.... Sanscrit forms the very body of most of the dialects, particularly of Upper India, and though it is not so essentially a part of the languages of Southern India, yet it enters so largely into the composition of even the language of Malabar, that four-fifths of the words are Sanscrit."

"“By annihilating native literature, by sweeping away from all sources of pride and pleasure in their own mental efforts, by rendering a whole people dependent upon a remote and unknown country for all their ideas and the words in which to clothe them, we should degrade their character, depress their energies and render them incapable of aspiring to any intellectual distinction.”"

"The Brahmans who compiled," says H. H. Wilson, "a code Hindu law, by command of Warren Hastings preface their performance by affirming the equal merit of every form of religious worship. Contrarities of belief, and diversities of religion, they say, are in fact part of the scheme of Providence; for as a painter gives beauty to a picture by a variety of colours, or as a gardener embellishes his garden with flowers of every hue, so God appointed to every tribe its own religion.""

"We must confess that we are disposed to look upon this limit |two hundred years for the Brahmanas] as much too brief for the establishment of an elaborate ritual, for the appropriation of all the spiritual authority by the Brahmans, for the distinctions of races or the institutions of caste, and for the mysticism and speculation of the Aranyakas or Upanishads: a period of five centuries would not seem to be too protracted for such a complete remodelling of the primitive system and its wide dissemination through all those parts of India where the Brahmans have spread."

"The earliest seat of the Hindus within the confines of Hindusthān was undoubtedly the eastern confines of the Panjab. The holy land of Manu and the Purānas lies between the Drishadwatī and Saraswatī rivers, the Caggar [Ghaggar] and Sursooty [Sarsuti] of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Āshramas, or religious domiciles, of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswatī . . . These indications render it certain, that whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswatī river that they were first planted, and cultivated and reared in Hindusthān."

"Thus Wilson, in a letter to his parents, noted that "the Aryan tribes in conquering India, urged by the Brahmanas, made war against the Turanian demon worship. . . . It is among the Turanian races, . . . which have no organized priest-hood and bewitching literature, that the converts to Christianity are most numerous" (quoted in Devendraswarup 1993, 35)."

"The invaders were few and the country was too large and too populous. The waves of immigration from Turan were few and far between, and deposited on Indian soil adventurers, warriors, and learned men, rather than artisans and colonists. Hence the Muhammadans depended upon the Hindoos for labour of every kind, from architecture down to agriculture and the supply of servants. Many branches they had to learn from the Hindoos, as, for example, the cultivation of indigeneous produce, irrigation, coinage, medicine, the building of houses, and weaving of stuffs suitable for the climate, the management of elephants, and so forth."

"Islam has no state clergy, but we find a counterpart to our hierarchical bodies in the Ulemas about the court from whom the Sadrs of the provinces, the Mir Adls, Muftis and Qazis were appointed. At Delhi and Agra, the body of the learned had always consisted of staunch Sunnis, who believed it their duty to keep the kings straight. How great their influence was, may be seen from the fact that of all Muhammadan emperors only Akbar, and perhaps Alauddin Khalji, succeeded in putting down this haughty sect."

"From the moment of his birth the customs into which [an individual] is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture."

"No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking."

"Our children are not individuals whose rights and tastes are casually respected from infancy, as they are in some primitive societies . . . . They are fundamentally extension of our own egos and give a special opportunity for the display of authority."

"In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture. In scientific language, culture is not a function of race."

"Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenitial superiority."

"The tough-minded are content that differences should exist. They respect differences. Their goal is a world made safe for differences, where the United States may be American to the hilt without threatening the peace of the world, and France may be France, and Japan may be Japan on the same conditions."

"From Mohammedanism (which for centuries she [i.e., Aceh] is reputed to have accepted) she really only learnt a large number of dogmas relating to hatred of the infidel without any of their mitigating concomitants; so the Acehnese made a regular business of piracy and man-hunting at the expense of the neighboring non-Mohammedan countries and islands, and considered that they were justified in any act of treachery or violence to European (and latterly to American) traders who came in search of pepper, the staple product of the country. Complaints of robbery and murder on board ships trading in Acehnese parts thus grew to be chronic."

"In fact, Ram, or Rãma, was the sovereign of Ayodhya, or Audh, a city in the most ancient times of wonderful extent and magnificence, as may be inferred from the present Lucnow’s having been, according to the Brahmin accounts, only a lodge for one of its gates; that he is celebrated as a conqueror of the highest renown, and the deliverer of nations from tyrants, as well as of his consort Sita, from the giant Ravan, king of Lanca; that he was commander-in-chief of a numerous and intrepid race of those large monkeys, which some of our naturalists have denominated Indian satyrs; that the name of his general was Hanumat, the prince of satyrs; and that, by the wonderful activity of such an army, a bridge of rocks was raised over the sea, a part of which the Hindoos suppose still to remain; and he thinks it is probably that series of rocks, which, by Mussulmen and Portuguese, is mistakenly called Adam’s, for it should be Rama’s, bridge. “Might not,” subjoins Sir William, “this army of satyrs have been only a race of mountaineers, whom Rama, if such a monarch ever existed, had civilized."

"Naturally, such drastic innovations were bitterly opposed by other segments of the intelligentsia. For well over a millennium, much of Europe had accepted the Old Tes- tament as an infallible testament documenting the history of the human race. Thomas Maurice, for example, complained bitterly in 1812 about "the daring assumptions of certain skeptical French philosophers with respect to the Age of the World . . . argu- ments principally founded on the high assumptions of the Brahmins . . . [which] have a direct tendency to overturn the Mosaic system, and, with it, Christianity." Such schol- ars were greatly relieved by "the fortunate arrival o f . . . the various dissertations, on the subject, of Sir William Jones" (22-23)."

""arguments principally founded on the high assumptions of the Brah- mins . . . could their extravagant claims be substantiated, have a direct tendency to over- turn the Mosaic system, and, with it, Christianity" (Maurice [1812] 1984, 22-23)."

"“Ayodhya, an ancient Indian city, where the first Indian monarchs on the Ganges resided, was situated on the river Deva, in the latitude of 250, exactly in the spot where Faizabad now stands. It was the birthplace of Shirama, or Rama, an Indian hero, or the younger Bacchus, whose heroic achievements were celebrated in songs before the times of the Pagan Indians.”"

"The manner in which he [Tipu] behaved to the inhabitants of Calicut was horrid. A great part of them, both male and female, were hung. He first tied up the mothers, and then suspended the children from their necks. The cruel tyrant caused several Christians and Heathens [Hindus] to be brought out naked, and made fast to the feet of his elephants, which were then obliged to drag them about till their limbs fell in pieces from their bodies. At the same time, he ordered all the churches and temples to be burned or pulled down or destroyed in some manner. Christian and pagan [Hindu] women were compelled to marry Mohammedans. The pagans were deprived of the token of their nobility, which is a lock of hair called kudumi; and every Christian, who appeared in the streets, must either submit to be circumcised, or be hanged on the spot. This happened in the year 1789, at which time I resided at Verapole [Varapali in Travancore]. I had then an opportunity of conversing with several Christians and Pagans, who had escaped from the fury of this merciless tyrant; and I assisted these fugitives to procure a boat to enable them to cross the river which runs past that city. This persecution continued till the 15th of April 1790."

"The Janma Sthãn or place where Rãm Chandra was born, is 1/3 of a m. to the W. of the Hanumãn Garh. Close to the door, and outside it, is a Muhammadan cemetery, in which 165 persons, according to the ‘Gazetteer’ 75 persons, are buried, all Muslims, who were killed in a fight between the Muslims and Hindus for the possession of the temple in 1855. The Muslims on that occasion charged up the steps of the Hanumãn Garh, but were driven back with considerable loss. The Hindus followed up their success, and at the 3rd attempt took the Janam Sthãn, at the gates of which the Muslims who were killed were buried, the place being called Ganj i Shahidan, or “Grave of the Martyrs.” Eleven Hindus were killed, and were thrown into the river. Several of the King of Awadh’s regiments were looking on, but their orders were not to interfere. Up to that time both Hindus and Muhammadans used to worship in the temple. Since British rule a railing has been put up, within which the Muslims pray. Outside, the Hindus make their offerings. The actual Janam Sthãn is a plain masonry platform, just outside the mosque or temple, but within the enclosure, on the left-hand side. The primeval temple perished, but was rebuilt by Vikram, and it was his temple that the Muslims converted into a mosque. Europeans are expected to take off their shoes if they enter the building, which is quite plain, with the exception of 12 black pillars taken from the old temple. On the pillar on the left of the door as you enter, may be seen the remains of a figure which appears to be either Krishna or an Apsara. There are 2 alcoves, one on either side of the main arch, and a stone pulpit, on the steps of which is an inscription now illegible. The building is about 38 ft. by 18 ft."

"“The Brahmins,” he declared, “contrary to the ideas formed of them in the west, invariably believe in the unity, eternity, omniscience and omnipotence of God: that the polytheism of which they have been accused, is no more than a symbolical worship of the divine attributes…” Further, “The system of religion which they profess is only perfectly known in the effect which it has upon the manners of the people. Mild, humane, obedient, and industrious, they are of all nations on earth the most easily conquered… Revolution and change are things unknown; and assassinations and conspiracies never exists. Penal laws are scarce known among the Hindoos; for their motives to bad actions are few… it is to the ingenuity of the Hindoos, we owe all the fine manufactures in the East.”"

"The Hindoos, or the followers of the Brahmin faith, are in number far superior to the Mahommedans in Hindustan. The system of religion which they profess is only perfectly known in the effect which it has upon the manners of the people. Mild, humane, obedient, and industrious, they are of all nations on earth the most easily conquered. Their government, like that of all the inhabitants of Asia, is despotic; it is, in such a manner, tempered by the virtuous principles inculcated by their religion, that it seems milder than the most limited monarchy in Europe. Some of the reigning princes trace their families, with clearness, above four thousand years; many of them, in a dubious manner, from the dark period which we place beyond the flood. Revolution and change are things unknown; and assassinations and conspiracies never exist. Penal laws are scarce known among the Hindoos; for their motives to bad actions are few. Temperate in their living, and delicate in their constitutions, their passions are calm, and they have no object but that of living with comfort and ease. Timid and submissive, from the coldness of a vegetable diet, they have a natural abhorrence to blood. Industrious and frugal, they possess wealth which they never use. Those countries, governed by native princes, which lay beyond the devastations of the Mahommedans, are rich, and cultivated to the highest degree. Their governors encourage industry and commerce; and it is to the ingenuity of the Hindoos, we owe all the fine manufactures in the East. During the empire of the Moguls, the trade of India was carried on by the followers of Brahma. The bankers, scribes, and managers of finance were native Hindoos, and the wisest princes of the family of Timur protected and encouraged such peaceable and useful subjects."

"Peaceloving Indians, ancient owners of a fertile land, you harvest in tranquility the fruits that it provides for your needs. Content with little, only the skies, by stopping the rain, could render you unhappy. Your internecine squabbling, and which nation does not have them? your disputes settled, or at least suspended by the arrival of the monsoon, do not leave in your countryside those signs of devastation with which the activity of the conqueror stamps, that is what the dominating character of a people is capable of. The Muslims annexed a part of your land, the most beautiful provinces of Hindustan, and left you your manners, customs, should I say? your laws. These were the most fanatical followers of the Arab Prophet, whose banners announced submission to the Koran or death; conquered as much by your gentleness as by the climate, one saw them setting aside this pride, this roughness which was the original character of their sect; they chose their ministers among your Brahmins, your Banias are their bankers; your Rajputs, their best soldiers: such that an observer has difficulty in distinguishing, by their habits, by the religion, between the province which obeys the Rajas [Hindus], and that which submits to the Nababs [Muslims]. Was it necessary for the rumours of your riches to penetrate through to the climate where artificial needs have no limits? Soon new foreigners approached your frontiers; inconvenient guests, everything that they touched belonged to them: your squabbles maintained, and aggravated, by Agents who are powerful, and what is more, motivated by self-interest, so that your disputes become eternal: it is no matter that they have invaded your market, have tripled the price of basic foodstuffs, and as to merchandise, have altered its quality; manufacturing industry almost annihilated, the workers fleeing to the mountains, the dying son asking his father what he had done to these foreigners who take away rice from his mouth: nothing touches them, or softens their hearts: your gold, one said to the Peruvians, to the Mexicans: here, the revenue of Hindustan, that is what we demand, even at the cost of rivers of blood. At least, unhappy Indians, perhaps you will learn that in two hundred years, a European who has seen you, who has lived among you, has dared to ask on your behalf, and present to the Tribunal of the Universe, for your wounded rights, denied by a humanity tainted by a vile interest."'"

"Peaceful Indians, did the rumor of your riches have to penetrate a clime in which artificial needs know no bounds? Soon, new foreigners reached your shores; inconvenient guests, everything they touched belonged to them... "If the British ... neglect any longer to enrich Europe's scholars with the Sanskrit scriptures ... they will bear the shame of having sacrificed honor, probity, and humanity to the vile love for gold and money, without human knowledge having derived the least lustre, the least growth from their conquests."

"In 1778, Anquetil-Duperron, a French Orientalist who spent seven years in India, penned this moving testimony: Peaceful Indians …, did the rumour of your riches have to penetrate a clime in which artificial needs know no bounds? Soon, new foreigners reached your shores; inconvenient guests, everything they touched belonged to them …; it was not enough that they should invade your commerce, make the price of foodstuffs and goods triple, alter their quality; your factories almost wiped out, the workers taking refuge in the mountains, a dying son asking his father what harm he did those foreigners who have taken the bread out of his mouth — nothing touches or softens their hearts: “Your gold,” the Peruvians and Mexicans were told; here, the revenue of Industan is what we demand, even if for that streams of blood have to flow. At least, unfortunate Indians, you will perhaps learn that in the space of two hundred years, one European who saw you and lived among you! has dared to plead your cause and present to the Court of the Universe your wounded rights, those of mankind blackened by a vile interest."

"History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races, is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated."

"[Buddhism is] a Hindu phenomenon, a natural product, so to speak, of the age and social circle that witnessed its birth. When we attempt to reconstruct its primitive doctrine and early history, we come upon something so akin to what we meet in the most ancient Upanishads and in the legends of Brahmanism, that it is not always easy to determine what features belong peculiarly to it."

"Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) abandoned his professorship in Theology when he realized that his uncompromisingly secularist reading of the Bible was incompatible with the job of preparing students for a career as Christian ministers. He shifted to Oriental Philology in order to have the freedom to go where his scholarly insights into scripture took him. His great legacy is a candid demythologizing approach to the Bible as a piece of human literature rather than the Word of God. Among other things, his contribution was decisive in establishing the distinction between four editorial traditions that together constitute the Biblical text."

"Though he was opposed mostly by traditional Christians, later detractors have tried to overrule the German professor's findings with the imputation of anti-Jewish motives. I have not seen any evidence for that all too predictable allegation. It would in any case make no difference: the truth of a scholarly hypothesis is not dependent on the motives of its proponents. Sometimes people say the truth for the wrong reasons, just as untruths are sometimes believed and propagated by people with the nicest of motives. So, I salute Wellhausen as a pioneering Orientalist, an explorer and map-maker of religion as a human construct rather than a divine revelation."

"Tamil can readily dispense with the greater part or the whole of its Sanskrit, and by dispensing with it, rise to a purer and more refined style . . . Of the entire number of words which are contained in this formula there is only one which could not be expressed with faultless propriety . . . in equivalent of pure Dravidian origin: that word is 'graven image' or 'idol'. Both word and thing are foreign to primitive Tamil usages and habits of thought; and were introduced into Tamil country by Brahmins, [along] with the Puranic system of religion and worship of idols."

"it may be expected that the Dravidian mind will ere long be roused from its lethargy, and stimulated to enter upon a brighter career. If the national mind and heart were stirred to so great a degree a thousand years ago by the diffusion of Jainism . . . it is reasonable to expect still more important results from the propagation of the grand and soul-stirring truths of Christianity."

"“Sanskrit has not disdained to borrow from its Dravidian neighbours…Tamil, the most highly cultivated ab intra of all Dravidian idioms can dispense with its Sanskrit…and not only stand alone, but flourish, without its aid…a Tamil poetical composition is regarded as…classical, not in proportion to the amount of Sanskrit it contains…but in proportion to its freedom from Sanskrit.”"

"“You are of pure Dravidian race…I should like to see the pre-Sanskrit element amongst you asserting itself rather more...The constant putting forward of Sanskrit literature as if it were pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Cannarese [Kannada]. You have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known to speak of natives of India as ‘Niggers,’ but they do not, like the proud speakers or writers of Sanskrit, speak of the people of the South as legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, not Europeans, who lumped up the Southern races as Rakshusas—demons. It was they who deliberately grounded all social distinctions on Varna, Colour.”"

"But the catalyst who is credited with the construction of the 'Dravidian race' was a missionary-scholar from the Anglican Church. His name was Bishop Robert Caldwell (1814–91), an evangelist for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, who combined the linguistic theory of Ellis with a strong racial narrative. He proposed the existence of the Dravidian race in his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Race, which enjoys extreme popularity with Dravidianists to this day. Bishop Caldwell proposed that the Dravidians were in India before the Aryans, but got cheated by the Brahmins, who were the cunning agents of the Aryan. He argued that the simple-minded Dravidians were kept in shackles by Aryans through the exploitation of religion. Thus, the Dravidians needed to be liberated by Europeans like him. He proposed the complete removal of Sanskrit words from Tamil. Once the Dravidian mind would be free of the superstitions imposed by Aryans, Christian evangelization would reap the souls of Dravidians.... His work had far-reaching consequences. It established the theological foundation for Dravidian separatism from Hinduism, backed by the Church. It was accompanied by Christian usurpation of many of the classical art-forms of South India. The concept of dissociating Tamils from mainstream Hindu spirituality provided Caldwell an ethical rationale for Christian proselytization."

"Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, in their work on the creation of identities in Asia, explain Caldwell's importance as the founder of today's Dravidian identity: It was through his Comparative Grammar (1856) that he systematically laid the foundation of Dravidian ideology . . . It was not so much the philological findings in the work that had such a profound impact, as the way Caldwell interpreted and expressed them in the lengthy introduction and appendix. He not only managed to erect a racial, linguistic, and religio-cultural divide between the minority Brahmin and majority non-Brahmin (Dravidian) population of South India, but also provided a systematic project for reclaiming and recovering an ancient and 'pure' Dravidian language and culture."

"Dr Caldwell was a Christian missionary and although he has rendered some service to Tamil literature, still he cannot be said to be free from his Christian prejudice. 65"

"The general conviction underlying much Dravidian radicalism—that the subjection of non-Brahman Dravidian peoples and cultures was based on the Aryan conquest of the Dravidian south—was in large part an invention of Robert Caldwell. Caldwell, who labored for fifty years in the Tinnevelly Mission . . . like most other missonaries who had to justify the fact that they could only report conversions of the very lowest caste groups, was especially resentful of the Brahmans, who frustrated his effort to proselytize. . . . Caldwell's antipathy toward Brahmans . . . has secured a hallowed place in the citational structures and justificatory rhetorics of anti-Brahminism up to the present day."

"The Qurān is one of the world’s classics which cannot be translated without grave loss. It has a rhythm of peculiar beauty and a cadence that charms the ear. Many Christian Arabs speak of its style with warm admiration, and most Arabists acknowledge its excellence… indeed it may be affirmed that within the literature of the Arabs, wide and fecund as it is both in poetry and in elevated prose, there is nothing to compare with it."

"The Common Indo-European word for 'beaver', *bi»ibher ~ *bi»ebher, preserves an original meaning 'brown' or 'shiny' in some of the dialects which lack it in the meaning 'beaver'. The word is attested in the Rigveda in the sense 'red- brown' (of horses, cows, gods, plants), Ved. babhrú-; in Mitannian Aryan bapru-nnu is a horse color (Mayrhofer 1966:137ff., 1974:§7); the non-reduplicated cognate is a horse color term in Slavic: Pol. brony 'bay', OCzech brony 'white', ORuss. bronyi 'white'. In later Sanskrit the term refers to a specific animal, the ichneumon (Herpestes ichneumon, a long-tailed species of mongoose that kills otters and mice). In Greek the non-reduplicated cognate means 'toad', which is consistent with the meaning of Old Prussian brunse 'roach; small fish', Lith. dial. bruñSé (Toporov 1975-:I.256-57)... In summary, derivatives of *wot'or- 'water' mean 'otter', and reduplicated derivatives of the color term mean 'beaver', only in a sharply limited dialect group which includes the later European dialects (Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, Italic, Celtic) and Avestan. This is apparently an innovation, one having to do with the particular ecological environment inhabited by speakers of these dialects. It is notable that the Indo-Iranian languages are split by this isogloss: Sanskrit shows the more archaic situation, while Avestan displays the innovation."

"According to the Gamkrelidze and Ivanov model, this protolanguage initially contains two major dialect groupings, which they call A and B. Group A consists of Anatolian, Tocharian, and Italic-Celtic, group B, of Indo-Aryan, Greek, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, and Germanic. Anatolian, which is held to have uniquely preserved some very archaic language features as I have discussed, is the first to break away from the home-land, leaving the rest of group A and group B together for a period during which they develop some common isoglosses not visible in Anatolian. Many scholars hold that Tocharian was the next to break off. After the initial departure of Anatolian, and Tocharian group A my parts company with group B and eventually subdivides into the Celtic and Italic language groups that enter into protohistory. After being separated from group A, several isoglosses in group B require that Indo-Iranian, Greek, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic all coexisted in some degree of proximity. Subsequently this group also subdivides into Balto-Slavic-Germanic and Indo-Iranian-Greek-Armenian, but in such a way that Indo-Iranian maintains a central position for a period. This centrality allows it to share isoglosses with Slavic, on the one hand, and Germanic, on the other, even while remaining more closely affiliated with Greek and Armenian. Balto-Slavic-Germanic also goes its separate way in time, and the remainder of group B, having developed some common features among its members, also eventually breaks down into the individual Indo-lranian, Greek, and Armenian groups that ultimately manifest in the historical record. These morphological isoglosses separating the various groups are further reinforced by phonemic and lexical isoglosses, which are "unambiguous evidence for the historical reality of the dialect areas of Indo-European" (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1995, 364)."

"The Hadd, a punishment based on a Zahir, or obvious sentence of the Quran requires that a Muslim who apostatizes shall be put to death. In the case of an apostate woman Imam Abu Hanifa ruled that she should be imprisoned and beaten every day. The other three Imams, Malik, Shafai and Hanbal said that she should be put to death in accordance with the Tradition which says: He who changes his religion, kill.""

"From the religious books of ancient Egypt we learn that the power possessed by a priest or man who was skilled in the knowledge and working of magic was believed to be almost boundless. By pronouncing certain words or names of power in the proper manner and in the proper tone of voice he could heal the sick, and cast out the evil spirits which caused pain and suffering in those who were diseased, and restore the dead to life, and bestow upon the dead man the power to transform the corruptible into an incorruptible body, wherein the soul might live to all eternity. His words enabled human beings to assume divers forms at will, and to project their souls into animals and other creatures; and in obedience to his commands, inanimate figures and pictures became living beings and things which hastened to perform his behests. The powers of nature acknowledged his might, and wind and rain, storm and tempest, river and sea, and disease and death worked evil and ruin upon his foes, and upon the enemies of those who were provided with the knowledge of the words which he had wrested from the gods of heaven, and earth, and the underworld."

"Greek was nothing more than Sanskrit turned topsy-turvy."

"The fact, however, that he (Pythagoras) derived his doctrines from an Indian source is very generally admitted. Under the name of Mythraic, the faith of Buddha had also a wide extension."

"We will study India with its philosophy and its myths, its literature, its laws and its language. Nay It is more than India it IS a page of the origin of the world that we will attempt to decipher."

"[The Bhagavad Gita was] "probably the most beautiful book which has ever come from the hand of man.""

"At that very time, however, now about forty years ago, a new start was made, which has given to Sanskrit scholarship an entirely new character. The chief author of that movement was Burnouf, then professor at the Collège de France in Paris, an excellent scholar, but at the same time a man of wide views and true historical instincts, and the last man to waste his life on mere Nalas and Sakuntalâs. Being brought up in the old traditions of the classical school in France (his father was the author of the well-known Greek Grammar), then for a time a promising young barrister, with influential friends such as Guizot, Thiers, Mignet, Villemain, at his side, and with a brilliant future before him, he was not likely to spend his life on pretty Sanskrit ditties. What he wanted when he threw himself on Sanskrit was history, human history, world-history, and with an unerring grasp he laid hold of Vedic literature and Buddhist literature, as the two stepping-stones in the slough of Indian literature."

"The multiplicity of the manifestations of the Indian genius as well as their fundamental unity gives India the right to figure on the first rank in the history of civilized nations. Her civilization, spontaneous and original, unrolls itself in a continuous time across at least thirty centuries, without interruption, Without deviation."

"The Mahabharata is not only the largest, but also the grandest of all epics, as it contains throughout a lively teaching of morals under a glorious garment of poetry."

"From Persia to the Chinese Sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales and her civilization. She has left indelible imprints on one-fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries."

"From Persia to the Chinese Sea, 'from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales and her civilization."

"She has left indelible imprints on one fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that ignorance has refused her for a long time and to hold her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity."

"Despite the advanced state of civilization evident in the earliest Aryan tongues, [and] despite other scientific evidence, old biblical prejudices and presumptuous enthusiasm caused people to believe that they had discovered the birth of language if not the creation of man. . . . They therefore declared that primitive Aryan was monosyllabic and consisted exclusively of roots. Monsieur de Saussure’s theory of disyllabic roots, useful as it is for explaining previously obscure forms, has today foundered on this unshakable prejudice.’"

"May any Muslims who happen to read these lines forgive my plain speaking. For them the Koran is the book of Allah and I respect their faith. But I do not share it and I do not wish to fall back, as many orientalists have done, on equivocal phrases to disguise my real meaning. This may perhaps be of assistance in remaining on good terms with individuals and governments professing Islam; but I have no wish to deceive anyone. Muslims have every right not to read the book or to acquaint themselves with the ideas of a non-Muslim, but if they do so, they must expect to find things put forward there which are blasphemous to them. It is evident that I do not believe that the Koran is the book of Allah."

"At his birth Muhammad had received the name Qutham, but since the Book of Allah had given him the name Ahmad and Muhammad, the Tradition, with a slightly apologetic ulterior motive, wants to hear of no other."

"Almost all the religious terms in the Qur’an are derived from Syriac."

"There is no other language besides Syriac in which the word ‘Christians’ is expressed by the word nasara or anything near it….There is no doubt whatever that in the Persian Empire, and to some extent also in the Roman Empire, the Christians were called by non-Christians nasraye (the Nasara of the Qur’an), and that the Prophet took the word from the Syrians."

"On the whole, while many parts of the Koran undoubtedly have considerable rhetorical power, even over an unbelieving reader, the book, æsthetically considered, is by no means a first-rate performance... Mohammed, in short, is not in any sense a master of style. This opinion will be endorsed by any European who reads through the book with an impartial spirit and some knowledge of the language, without taking into account the tiresome effect of its endless iterations. But in the ears of every pious Moslem such a judgment will sound almost as shocking as downright atheism or polytheism. Among the Moslems, the Koran has always been looked on as the most perfect model of style and language. This feature of it is in their dogmatic the greatest of all miracles, the incontestable proof of its divine origin. Such a view on the part of men who knew Arabic infinitely better than the most accomplished European Arabist will ever do, may well startle us. In fact, the Koran boldly challenged its opponents to produce ten súras, or even a single one, like those of the sacred book, and they never did so. That, to be sure, on calm reflection, is not so very surprising. Revelations of the kind which Mohammed uttered, no unbeliever could produce without making himself a laughing-stock."

"It seems to be the first duty of a historian to investigate the causes of great revolutions; for an event which happens at any other, but its due season, is a miracle : we should consider it as a wonder, if the sun should rise one second before, or after its appointed hour; or if any one were to accomplish, in his childhood, what is expected of him in his ripe age."

"Indians conducted far more elaborate speculations than the Westerners of antiquity and the Middle Ages with respect to the theory of numbers, the analysis of psychological phenomena, and the study of linguistic structures. The Indians are highly rationalistic, insofar as their ideal is to recognize eternal laws concerning past, present, and future. The thought represented by Tertullian's aphorism, "credo quia absurdum," or "I believe because it is absurd," had no receptivity in India. The Indians are, at the same time, logical since they generally have a tendency to sublimate their thinking to the universal; they are at once logical and rationalistic. On the contrary, many religions of the West are irrational and illogical, and this is acknowledged by the Westerners themselves. For example, Schweitzer, a pious and most devoted Christian, says, "Compared to the logical religions of Asia, the gospel of Jesus is illogical.""

"Without Indian influence Japanese culture would not be what it is today."

"India is culturally, Mother of Japan. For centuries it has, in her own characteristic way, been exercising her influence on the thought and culture of Japan."

"Edward Pococke (1604-1691) English Orientalist says: "At the mouths of the Indus dwell a seafaring people, active, ingenious, and enterprising as when, ages subsequent to this great movement.....these people coast along the shores of Mekran, traverse the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and again adhering to the sea-board of Oman, Hadramant, and Yeman (the Eastern Arabia), they sail up the Red Sea; and again ascending mighty stream that fertilizes a land of wonders, found the kingdom of Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia. These are the same stock that, centuries subsequently to this colonization, spread the blessings of civilization over Hellas and her islands.""

"I have glanced at the Indian settlements in Egypt, which will again be noticed, and I will now resume my observations from the lofty frontier, which is the true boundary of the European and Indian races. The Parasoos, the people of Parasoo Ram, those warriors of the Axe, have penetrated into and given a name to Persia; they are the people of Bharata; and to the principal stream that pours its waters into the Persian Gulf they have given the name of Ea-Bharates (Euphrat-es), the Bharat Chief."

"The ancient map of Persia, Colchis,. and Armenia is absolutely full of the most distinct and startling evidences of Indian colonization, and, what is more astonishing, practically evinces, in the most powerful manner, the truth of several main points in the two great Indian poems, the Ramayana and the Mahahharata. The whole map is positively nothing less than a journal of emigration on the most gigantic scale."

"Pococke, in his most ingenious work, strongly advocates the same idea, and endeavors to establish still more firmly the identity of the Egyptian, Greek, and Indian mythology. He shows the head of the Rajpoot Solar race -- in fact the great Cuclo-pos (Cyclop or builder) -- called "The great sun," in the earliest Hindu tradition. This Gok-la Prince, the patriarch of the vast bands of Inachienses, he says, "this Great Sun was deified at his death, and according to the Indian doctrine of the metempsychosis, his Soul was supposed to have transmigrated into the bull 'Apis,' the Sera-pis of the Greeks, and the SOORAPAS, or 'Sun-Chief' of the Egyptians. . . ."

"From our point of view there was no migration as such. . . .There was a gradual spread from one center in all directions. In the course of such a spread the groups of dialects and specific isoglosses that had developed were maintained. . . .The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles' migration of the tribes themselves. (152-153)."

"This thesis will receive—and has already received—cheers from dilettantes. Dilettantes desperately need one thing: the proof that the population of the Armenian Plateau spoke Armenian ever since the Palaeolithic period, if possible."

"The Proto-Indo-European term for 'horse' shows only that horses were known (nobody doubts this); it does not mean that horses were already domesticated."

"In Old Iranian, Proto-Aryan s has become h. In old Persian an ethnic name Daha- is attested, also as a proper noun in the administrative tablets found at Persepolis; the masculine plural is used as the name of a province of the Persian empire, placed before the similarly used name of the Sakas in a Persepolis inscription of Xerxes (h 26). In the Greek sources Herodotus (1,125) is the first to mention the people called Daoi, as a nomadic tribe of the Persians. More accurate information on them , however, is delivered by Alexander's historians. According to Q. Curtius Rufus (8,3) and Ptolemy's Geography (6 ,10,2) , the Dahas lived on the lower course of the river Margos (modern Murghab) or.. in the northern steppe area of Margiana. Pomponius Mela (3,42), based on Eratosthenes, tells that the great bend of the river Oxus towards the northwest begins near the Dahas (juxta Dahas), Tacitus (Ann. 11,10) places the Dahae on the northern border of Areia, mentioning the river Sindes (modern Tejend) as the border. These placements agree neatly with that of Namazga V culture of Margiana and Bactria [in greater Iran]."

"The Greek form of the name, Parnos«: (from Iranian * Parna-) , corresponds to Sanskrit Pani-, if it is assumed to be a "Prakritic" development of the reduced grade form *Pmi-, The full grade seems to be found in the name Parnaya- attested as an enemy of the king (Divodasa) Atithigva in Rlgveda] Slamhira] 1,53,8 and 10,48,8. These names may go back to the same Aryan verbal root as the name of the Dasa king Pipru, namely pr- (present piparti, pr1)ati) 'to bring over, rescue, protect, excel, be able'. The ar:r• variation reflects a dialectal difference within Indo-Iranian. Some other proper names of the Dasa chiefs are also clearly of Aryan origin, for example Varcin- 'possessed of (vital) power' (ct. ~S varcas = Avestan varscan 'vital power')."

"The etymologies of the names used by the Rgvedic Aryans of their enemies thus speak for their above suggested identification with the carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran, and for the proposal that these were speakers of an Aryan language."

"The fire-altars of Kalibangan and Lothal are so far without parallels at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Indeed, it has been asked [by Raymond and Bridget Allchin]: "Fire- worship being considered a distinctly Indo-Aryan trait, do these {ritual hearths of Kalibangan] carry with them an indication of an Indo-Aryan presence even from so early a date?" This hypothesis new seems quite plausible to me, if "Indo-Aryan" here is understood to refer to carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran, who had become quickly absorbed into the Indus Civilization, culturally and linguistically. It is supported further by the cylinder shape of the famous Kalibangan seal showing a Durga-like goddess of war, who is associated with the tiger. The goddess on the Kalibangan cylinder seal is said to be similar in style, especially the headdress, to one depicted on a cylinder seal from Shahdad [in Kerman on the desert of Lut in Iran, a major centre of the Bronze Age cultural tradition]. Seated lions attend to a goddess of fertility on a metal flag found at Shahdad."

"Other such Dasa demons are 'the loud-shouting Dasa with six eyes and three heads', a boar ivaraha) whom Trita slew with his metal-tipped inspired speech (RS 10,99,6), Urana with 99 arms and Arbuda (RS 2,14,4), and the Dasa Vyarnsa who wounded Indra and struck off both of his jaws, before Indra smashed his head with the weapon (RS 4,18,9; 1,101,2). The Dasa dragon (ahi) , from whom Indra wrests the waters (2,11 ,2), has a counterpart in the A vestan aii! dahako."

"The hymns specify by name individual Aryan kings and their Dasa or Dasyu foes , with genealogies. Thus Indra helped Divodasa Atithigva, the king of the Trtsus, in , vanquishing Dasa Sambara, who is mentioned about twenty times in the Rgveda. Divodasa's descendant was king Sudas, most famous for the battle of ten kings (RS 7,18 & 33 & 83). Sudas fought against Dasas as well as Aryans: RS 7,83,1 " ... Slay both the Dasa enemies and the Aryan: protect Sudas with your aid, a Indra and Varuna." Similarly Indra aided Rjisvan, son of Vidathin, to conquer Dasa Pipru, whose name occurs eleven times . .Dabhiti pressed Soma for Indra and was aided by the god, who sent to sleep 30,000 Dasas (RS 4,30,2) and bound a thousand Dasyus with cords (~S 2,13,9), so that the Dasas Cumuri and Dhuni were overcome and their castles destroyed (~S 6,18,8). Other probably historical enemies of the Aryans who are called Dasa and mentioned by name are Varcin, whose 100,000 warriors were slain by Indra; Drbhika and Rudhikra (E-S 2,14,3 & 5); Anarsani and Srbinda (~S 8,32,3); Arsasana (~S 1,130,8; 2,20,6); and Ilibisa (E-S 1,33,12). What an important role the struggles with their enemies played in the lives of the Aryans at this period is illustrated also by the names of some of their own kings: the son of Purukutsa was called Trasadasyu "one who makes the Dasyus tremble""

"The word pani means dealer, trafficker, from pan (also pan, d. Tamil pan , Greek ponos, labour) .... " A footnote to pan reads:"Sayana takes pan in Veda - to praise, but in one place he admits the sense of vyavahara, dealing. Action seems to me to be its sense in most passages. From pan in the sense of action we have the earlier names of the organs of action, pani, hand, foot or hoof, Lat. penis, d. also piiyu."

"At this time Assyria was trading with Cappadocia and importing tin from the east. The source of this tin may have been in central and northern Afghanistan (Kandahar and Badakshan), whence the Harappans and the Bactrians appear also to have obtained their supplies… On the other hand, from the 18th century B.C. onwards, north Syrian seals show such a typically Central Asian motif as the two-humped Bactrian camel, which is depicted in the BMAC seals several times…These cultural contacts between the Syro-Hittite world and the BMAC do not prove that the hypothetical Aryan authors of the BMAC came from the west, as suggested by Sarianidi (1993b, 1994), but rather foreshadow the takeover of power in Syria by the Mitanni Aryans and support their Central Asian origin.”"

"While virtually no object of clearly West Asiatic origin has been discovered in the Greater Indus Valley, dozens of seals bearing the Indus script have been found in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf, along with Harappan weights and jewelry. Cuneiform texts also speak of sea trade with foreign countries, and there is nowadays wide agreement that the most distant of these countries, Meluhha, was the Greater Indus Valley."

"Sanskrit Dāsa- as an ethnic name thus has an exact counterpart in Avestan Dåŋha-, which stands for *Dāha-. The corresponding Old Persian ethnic name is Daha-. The plural form Dahā is included among the subjects of the Great King in the “empire list” of Xerxes, immediately before the two kinds of Sakā. Herodotus (1,125) includes the Dā´ai / Dā´oi (intervocalic h is omitted in Greek) among the nomadic tribes of the Persians. According to Q. Curtius Rufus (8,3), the Dahae lived on the lower course of the river Margus (modern Murghab) in Margiana, where they are also located in Ptolemy’s Geography (6,10,2). Eratosthenes, quoted by Pomponius Mela (3,42), notes that the great bend of the Oxus towards the northwest begins near the Dahae. Tacitus (Annales 11,10) places the Dahae on the border river (Sindes, modern Tejend) between Areia and Margiana."

"To conclude, the culture and proper names of the Mitanni Indo-Aryans were dominated by the horse and the chariot. Indeed, the Mitanni Indo-Aryans seem to have been the prime motors in the introduction of chariotry into the West Asian warfare around 1500 bce."

"The picture we derive from Parpola is of a traffic to and fro of cultural modes—continued from a fairly long past and across sufficiently wide areas—against a common religious background of various shades. It is a picture of contacts and exchanges. . . . none of them necessarily bespeak large-scale movements of population."

"Parpola's account has received criticisms from various other quarters. Sarianidi (1993b) notes: It should be indicated that the available direct archaeological data contradict the theory, suggested long ago, concerning the intensive penetration of the steppe Andronovo-type tribes into traditional agricultural areas. Direct archaeological data from Bactria and Margiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases, not exceeding the limits of normal contacts so natural for tribes with different economical structures, living in the borderlands of steppe and agricultural oases."

"A. Parpola is an abundant writer, but not very rational."

"The Hindoos as well as the Chinese have ever laid claim to an Antiquity infinitely more remote than is authorized by the Belief of the rest of Mankind."

"The World does not now contain Annals of more indisputable Antiquity than those delivered down by the ancient Bramins."

"Often enough it seemed as though, like the river Sarasvatī, the lost stream of the old Sapta-sindhavas, the river of Indian thought had disappeared beneath the surface or had become lost in shallow marshes and morasses . . . But, sooner or later, we see the stream reappear, and then old ideas resume their way."

"In spite of his copious studies on the Mahābhārata, however, Lassen’s work was not especially innovative: once laid down, his basic views on the epic remained unchanged for nearly a quarter century. Later studies amplified and provided additional “ethnographic” evidence for views he had already articulated in his 1837 article, but they did not in any way question or otherwise critically illuminate the basis for these views. Regardless, Lassen’s pedantic, self-assured tone and the confidence with which he put forth speculative assertions about ancient India as established fact greatly impressed a generation of scholars. Albrecht Weber, Theodor Goldstücker, and Adolf Holtzmann Jr. all accepted his reconstructions of ancient Indian history and ethnography."

"There is little doubt that Lassen was one of the foremost theoreticians of race of the nineteenth century, responsible in large part for supplying the “historical” data that led to the creation of the “Āryan” race concept. This makes the present-day enthusiasm for him even more puzzling."

"The key role played by Lassen in the development of modern ideas of race is not a matter of dispute, but what is less often noted is the central role the Mahābhārata played in his reconstructions of ancient Indian history. If the racism of Gobineau is unimaginable without Lassen’s researches, it is equally true that Lassen’s researches are unimaginable without the Mahābhārata."

"The comprehensive picture of ancient Indian civilization that he was able to give meant that the Indians were now finally and "fully accepted" into the circle of ancient cultural peoples that were significant for the history of mankind and, as such, could be included in historical comparisons. The expansion of the historical-geographical horizon that Lassen's four volumes made possible was a very important step in the process of overcoming the old biblical view of history - after all, just twenty years earlier, like for Peter von Bohlen in his History of the Ancient World, only the old biblically relevant cultures of Egypt, Israel, Persia, Greece and Rome had been considered the roots of human culture."

"It was already in the middle of the former century that Christian Lassen qualified the opposition of arya and dasyu or dasa as a contrast between different religions expressed by the age-old symbolism of black opposed to white and not as a contrast of darkcomplexioned to white coloured men."

"Of Christian Lassen, it was said as early as 1890 [Oldenberg 1890:27] that “the sagacity of philological thought is wanting in him”. Need we say more?"

"The result of this inquiry, which is presented here, is that Arja in part in itself, in part in forms derived from it, is proven to be the ancient, indigenous, honorable designation of the Iranian peoples and lands in its widest extension, as it also [designates] the three higher Indian casts and the Brahmanical constitution and the Sanskrit rhetoric of the Indian lands. It shows us the sense in which we are to differentiate the Aryan Indians from the rest. For the name seems not to apply to other peoples of the Indogerman family.’"

"The Sumerologist is one of the narrowest of specialists in the highly specialized academic halls of learning, a well-nigh perfect example of the man who "knows mostest about the leastest.""

"So whenever I give a lecture, somebody from the audience gets up and says, "Dr Kramer, ... how do you know how to pronounce these words?" And my answer then is as follows: If one of the dead Sumerians that Leonard Woolley dug up at Ur, if he was miraculously resurrected and came into the room and he heard me say, [speaks Sumerian], he would say: "That man Kramer, he’s doing very well; he’s pronouncing his words and I understand them. But my goodness does he have a Jewish accent.""

"Iesus in this very district receives the Nazarene Baptism of John; and must therefore be included among the Sabians. The New Testament expressly connects itself with the ‘Nazarene sect’ over the Jordan."

"On the approach of winter, s bury themselves in the ground, and those that have shells retire within the shell as far as possible, and close the aperture of the shell with a film of the mucus which the body secretes so abundantly. In this condition they remain dormant until revived by the warm weather of spring. If the pupil will collect a number of snails in the early spring, and keep them confined in a box, with earth, damp leaves, or bits of rotten wood or bark, the snails in the course of a few weeks will lay a number of little eggs. These eggs will be white and round, about the size of a pin’s-head. By careful tending, that is, by keeping the leaves slightly moist, the eggs will hatch out tiny snails, and these will attain half their mature size the first season."

"In the gardens of the better classes summer-houses and shelters of rustic appearance and diminutive proportions are often seen. Rustic arbors are also to be seen in the larger gardens. . High fences, either of board or , or solid walls of mud or tile with stone foundations, surround the house or enclose it from the street. Low rustic fences border the gardens in the suburbs. Gateways of various styles, some of imposing design, form the entrances; as a general thing they are either rustic and light, or formal and massive."

"One of the reasons why the Catholic Church attains greater success than the Protestants in China is that its missionaries are men, its preachers are men, the dresses in Chinese garb, he lives among them and becomes one of them ; he is careful not to interfere with their superstitions only so far as these interfere with his own, and is especially careful not to inveigh against the . His , , and picturesque ritual does not widely differ from the Buddhist."

"Fifty years ago in , while walking along the road I passed an open field and noticed to my astonishment hundreds of flashing in perfect unison. I watched this curious sight for some time and the synchronism of the flashing was unbroken. Many times after I have watched these luminous insects, hoping to see a repetition of this phenomenon, but the flashes in every instance were intermittent. Since that time I have read about these insects in various books without meeting any allusion to this peculiar behavior. At last I have found a confirmation of my early observations. In of December 9, page 414, is the report of an interesting paper read before the by entitled “ Luminous Insects ” in which reference is made to the remarkable synchronism of the flashes in certain European species of fireflies. ..."

"Whatever value these records may possess lies in the fact that when they were made, Japan had within a few years emerged from a peculiar state of civilization which had endured for centuries. Even at that time, however (1877), changes had taken place, such as the modern training of its armies; a widespread system of public schools; government departments of war, treasury, agriculture, telegraph, post, statistics, and other bureaus of modern administration, — all these instrumentalities making a slight impress on the larger cities such as Tokyo and , sufficiently marked, however, to cause one to envy those who only a few years before had seen the people when all the wore the two swords, when every man wore the and . The country towns and villages were little, if at all, affected by these foreign introductions, and the greater part of my memoranda and sketches were made in the country."

"Soon after his first arrival in Japan, Morse became interested in everything bearing on the ancient culture of the people. This was shown in the epoch making discovery and excavation of the . Implements and pottery were found there. In 1878 he wrote that he was starting a collection of pottery. ... In 1890 this great collection was deposited with the Boston Art Museum and two years later the Museum bought it, Morse being made Keeper of Japanese Pottery and holding the office for the rest of his life."

"Archaeologists point out that there is not a single cultural element of central Asian, eastern European, or Caucasian origin in the archaeological culture of the Mitannian area.... In contrast to this lacuna, Brentjes draws attention to the peacock element that recurs in Mitannian culture and art in various forms (to be eventually inherited by the Iranians), a motif that could well have come from India, the habitat of the peacock. Since this motif is definitely evidenced in the Near East from before 1600 B.C.E., and quite likely from before 2100 B.C.E., Brentjes (1981) argues that the Indo-Aryans must have been settled in the Near East and in contact with India from well before 1600 B.c.E.32 The corollary of this is that the Indo-Aryans "could not be part of the Andronovo culture [a culture dated around 1650-1600 B.C.E. with which they are usually associated], but should have come to Iran centuries before, at the time when the Hittites came to Anatolia"."

"There is not a single cultural element of Central Asian, Eastern European or Caucasian origin in the archaeological culture of the Mittanian area [….] But there is one element novel to Iraq in Mittanian culture and art, which is later on observed in Iranian culture until the Islamisation of Iran: the peacock, one of the two elements of the 'Senmurv', the lion-peacock of the Sassanian art. The first clear pictures showing peacocks in religious context in Mesopotamia are the Nuzi cylinder seals of Mittanian time. There are two types of peacocks: the griffin with a peacock head and the peacock dancer, masked and standing beside the holy tree of life. The veneration of the peacock could not have been brought by the Mittanians from Central Asia or South-Eastern Europe; they must have taken it from the East, as peacocks are the type-bird of India and peacock dancers are still to be seen all over India. The earliest examples are known from the Harappan culture, from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa: two birds sitting on either side of the first tree of life are painted on ceramics. [….] The religious role of the peacock in India and the Indian-influenced Buddhist art in China and Japan need not be questioned" .... "The peacock was therefore subordinated to Indra and connected with the thunderbolt, so that in some Buddhist images Indra is sitting on a peacock throne. It is even possible to trace the peacock as the 'animal of the battle' in Elam till the late 3rd millennium B.C - if it is possible to identify two figured poles from Susa with 'peacock' symbols" ... "Yet the development of the Andronovo culture did not start before 1650-1600 B.C. So that we are forced to accept that the Indo-Aryans in what is now Iran, especially Eastern Iran before 1600 B.C., were under the Indian influence for such a long period that they could have taken over the peacock veneration. In that case, they could not be part of the Andronovo culture, but should have come to Iran centuries before."

"Kuiper [...] clearly puts it [the word for wheat] in the group of foreign words adopted before the Aryans reached India, [...] there are problems [...]. The trouble begins with the non-attestation of the word in the Rigveda. [...] It is puzzling because this earliest extant text in Sanskrit is supposed to be linked with the earliest Indo-Aryan speakers who entered India. Moreover, the geographical area of the genesis of the Ṛgveda is considered a fertile wheat producing region [...] As a matter of fact, there is abundant archaeological evidence of wheat remains from the Punjab [...] from the period before the invasion of Indo-Aryan speakers."

"Pāṇini, ArthŚā, Bṛsam and Vṛkṣ(s) define the word [for wheat] as a type of grain distinct from barley and rice […] Additionally, NāmaMā makes a curious remark: it is a mlecchabhojya, a food of barbarians‘."

"An intriguing point emerges from the find of the term Pippali in the list of agricultural terms in the Saunakiya Atharvaveda by the famous Hungarian Sanskritist Gyula Wojtilla. Considering the importance of such an intense study relating to the agriculture of the later Vedic period, it may be useful to draw attention to the broad conclusions of Wojtillaís study (www.sanskrit.nic.in/SVmarsha/V6/ c3.Pdf) ëagricultural knowledge as it is reflected in the Saunakiya Atharvavedaóa reappraisalí.preponderance of rice cultivation indicated by the terms dhanya, vrihi and sasya and the strong position of barley (yava) production. The unambiguous term for wheat (godhuma) is missing here, but it can be attested in the Paippalada Atharvaveda (IX, 11, 12). ìVerse 5 of hymn II, 4 makes a clear distinction between the forest products and that of ploughing. Special hymns have been recited in order to make agriculture successful (III, 17), to promote the abundance of grain (III, 24), to increase barley (VI, 142). The king of gods, Indra, holds down the furrow and Pcan defends it (III, 17, 4). Indra has a hundred abilities (Aatakritu), is called siripati the master of the plough (VI, 30, 1). Visnuís stride is ëstirred up by ploughingí(X, 5, 34). Hymn XII, 1 extols the earth. Verse 3 and 4 say that the earth is ëon whom food, plowing, came into beingí. According to verse 17 she is ëthe all-producing mother of herbs ....The number of attestations is edifying: dhanya is attested nine times, phala seven times, krisi and tandula six times, ksetra, yava, vrihi and surpa five times, urvara, baja and sira three times, kinasa, khanitrima, khalva, tila, tusa, pippali, bija two times, while the remaining twenty-nine only once. It indicates the established position of agriculture among other economic activities, the preponderance of rice cultivation indicated by the terms dhanya, vrihi and sasya and the strong position of barley (yava) production. The unambiguous term for wheat (godhuma) is missing here, but it can be attested in the Paippalada Atharvaveda (IX, 11, 12) ....the text bears the testimony ofsignificant contemporary changes in agricultural production. The main points of these changes are as follows. New tools such as spade, (abhri), or probably varieties of tools or new names for already known tools appear: sickle (parsu), sieve (pavana, surpa). There are formerly unknown plant names: some of them arenot satisfactorily explained such as abayu, pippali and baja, while other are of great economical importance such as sugar-cane (iksu), cucumber (urvaru), black chick-pea (khalva), sesame (tila) and hemp (sana). There is a full-fledged inventory of the place, implements, products and by-products of rice processing: threshing-floor (khala), sieve (pavana, surpa), grain after threshing and winnowing (tanula) and chaff (tusa)."

"Martin Haug explained it, than to shifts in power balances such that resistance now seemed futile. But interestingly, Haug was willing to “unlearn much that he had learnt in Europe” and to accept ‘‘the fact that European scholarship must often stand corrected before Indian tradition....”"

"If I have succeeded in throwing one or two rays of light on these fragments of the true songs of Zarathustra, rescued from a 4,000 year-old past, ... I will be richly rewarded for the indescribable difficulty and the great sacrifices I had to make."

"Let them not be discouraged if the results be not so flattering to their self-love as they anticipated. So far as their researches disclose what is good and proper in their religion, they must strengthen the belief in its divine origin; and so far as they disclose what is bad and improper, they merely indicate the corruptions introduced by human tradition. Such corruptions can be neither concealed nor defended with safety; but when discovered, they must be rejected as mere human inventions and superstitious errors. All religions have passed through human minds and human hands. .. ."

"In the Vedas as well as in the older portions of the Zind-Avesta (see the Gathas), there are sufficient traces to be discovered that the Zoroastrian religion arose out of a vital struggle against a form which the Brahminical religion had assumed at a certain early period.‘ ... “These facts throw some light upon the age in which that great religious struggle took place, the consequence of which was the entire separation of the Ancient Iranians from the Brahmans and the foundation of the Zoroastrian religion. It must have occurred at the time when Indra was the chief god of the Brahmans."

"Dr. Haug, in his introduction to the Aitareya Brahman, has observed that: "The sattras (sacrificial sessions), which lasted for one year, were nothing but an imitation of the Sun's yearly course. They were divided into two distinct parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each. In the midst of both was the Vishuvat, i.e. the equator or central day, cutting the whole sattra into two halves.""

"Soon the men of the column began to see that though the scarlet line was slender, it was very rigid and exact."

"The spruce beauty of the slender red line."

"He had to learn to sing, readily and accurately, all the tunes that were used in the many distinct Soma-sacrifices, and he had also to know which strophes were required for each sacrifice and in what order they were sung. Therefore, that the young priest might master all the tunes thoroughly and have any one at command at any moment, each was connected with a single stanza of the right metre, and the teacher made his pupils sing it over and over again, until tune and stanza were firmly imprinted, in indissoluble association, in the memory."

"Meantime they are more open to the reception of Christianity, the surest road to civilization, than any other section of the population. They would then prove the most assured supporters of the present state of things."

"To identify his (Zoroaster's) country, one has to take into account the importance they attach to cattle."

"It is evident that the Chinese attitude of mind is undergoing a great change through contact with Western ideas and learning; what is less evident is that deeper layers of the nation have not been reached."

"Turn, therefore, thy face towards the holy temple of Mecca, and wherever ye be, turn your faces towards that place."

"Wherever ye be, God will bring you all back at the resurrection."

"As for him who voluntarily performeth a good work, verily God is grateful and knowing."

"Your God is one God, there is no God but He, the most merciful."

"O true believers, take your necessary precautions against your enemies, and either go forth to war in separate parties, or go forth all together in a body."

"Fight for the religion of God."

"O men, ... respect women who have borne you."

"Wheresoever ye be, death will overtake you, although ye be in lofty towers."

"Whosoever flieth from his country for the sake of God’s true religion, shall find in the earth many forced to do the same, and plenty of provisions."

"God loveth not the speaking ill of any one in public."

"Let not thy hand be tied up to thy neck, neither open it with an unbounded expansion, lest thou become worthy of reprehension, and be reduced to poverty."

"Of his mercy he hath made for you the night and the day, that ye may rest in the one, and may seek to obtain provision for yourself of his abundance, by your industry, in the other."

"If God should punish men according to what they deserve, he would not leave on the back of the earth so much as a beast."

"God obligeth no man to more than he hath given him ability to perform."

"Woe be unto those who pray, and who are negligent at their prayer who play the hypocrites, and deny necessaries to the needy."

"O unbelievers, I will not worship that which ye worship, nor will ye worship that which I worship. ... Ye have your religion, and I my religion."

"Wie aus Duft und Glanz gemischt Du mich schufst, dir dank ich's heut."

"What I offer here is not a translation; that would be superfluous. Rather, [I offer] an attempt to bring closer to us a beautiful foreign tale, through reworking it as German poetry ... I have attempted to reach this goal of nationalizing [the poem] by making the episodes stand alone, but also by dressing [them] in class-appropriate German costume, excluding everything foreign which is only understandable to us by learned means and is not immediately [understandable] through the feelings, while still retaining the local color, insofar as it does not destroy the poetic impression, but seems to strengthen it."

"What separates art from science? The gift; To it, proud knowledge must concede the crown. Scholarship certainly knows how something ought to be But it cannot create it — that you alone, art, can do."

"Rückert today is largely forgotten and was, even in his day, an almost uncategorizable individual. Was he a poet or a scholar, a writer or a translator, a German nationalist or a universalist, a Christian or a pagan? He did, in fact, inhabit all of these identities, often simultaneously, and it would take at least one very fat book to do his intellectual career justice."

"There is hardly a branch of theological science which has till quite recently been brought to so little certain and recognised results as the history of the Christian Liturgy. This arose in the main from the practical necessity that the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist in the representative continuance and application of the sacrifice of Christ, in opposition to the Protestant polemic, should be shown to be the primitive Christian form. But in a period of more than three centuries little more was done than to collect the material, which recently from their great numbers, critical inquiry rather tended to confuse than to enlighten."

"He was an enthusiastic student and one of the foremost Semitic scholars of modern times."

"The longing for the Orient accompanies the Occidental from the cradle to the grave. When the young farmer’s wife of the Far West, deep in the most remote forest valley of the Rocky Mountains, holds her first-born child on her lap and imparts to him the elements of the Christian faith, she tells him about the shepherds of Bethlehem in the land of Judea, far, far on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. She tells him about the star, which the wise men from the land of Chaldaea followed, and then of the rivers of the Nile and the Euphrates, of Mount Ararat on which Noah’s ark came to rest after the Flood, of Mount Sinai from which Moses brought the earliest tables of the law to the people of Israel, of the great cities of Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre and Sidon, of the world conquerors Cyrus of Persia and the Pharoah in Egypt-land."

"... The Bible is the book through which the world of the West, even in times of the most melancholy isolation, remains persistently tied to the Orient. Even when one ignores its character as a sacred book of revelation, and examines it from a historical and geographical standpoint, the Bible can be seen as a world-historical book of wonders, as the book which ever again reawakens in the Aryans of the West, who have deserted their homeland, that longing for the Orient which binds peoples together..."

"It was also religious need which in the educated circles of the West provided the most powerful impetus for the study of the Orient. The world of the West was captivated in its inner being by the information that it received through the Bible about the peoples of the Orient. But that which sufficed to please the taste did not satisfy the curiosity, which was afterward awakened. The Bible’s accounts of language, morals and religions of the Egyp- tians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Medes and Persians were too scant not to inspire the desire, in the era of the renascence of the sciences, for richer and more trust- worthy information about the lives of the peoples of the East. So arose, at first, in closest connection to the Biblical scholarship inspired by the Reformation, an oriental philology and archaeology. These [sciences] limited themselves for many centuries to the study of the language and religion of the Semitic people. But towards the end of the previous century the languages and literatures of the Sanskrit-Indians and the Zoroastrian Persians were redis- covered, and then arose, quickly and at the same time as the philological study of Semitic languages and religions, Sanskrit and Zend philology, to which soon too Egyptology and Sinology were added."

"But it was Sanskrit, not Hebrew, whose pure linguistic forms were lovingly cultivated by many of the late romantics, and it was the ethical wisdom of the Rig Veda, Hermann Brunnhofer claimed, which represented the ‘‘ethno-psychological foundation’”’ of the Germans, Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and Indians; “in reading the Vedas,” he wrote in 1893, “‘tat tvam asi, ‘that art thou’ resounds in our racial subconsciousness and fills us with pride. ...”"

"Peter von Bohlen claimed in 1835, the historian of the Orient must treat all people equally: ‘... he must learn to regard the wonders, which belong to the very spirit of the ancient legends, as an inviolable national inheritance, neither setting them aside by forced interpretations, nor proscribing them as the offspring of pure imagination or intentional deception, but simply endeavoring to discover the original nucleus of fact... .”” Moreover, he continued, the historical critic must strive, “unbiased by preconceived opinion, fully to understand and fairly to estimate the individual character of every people, according to their own standard of perfection, their peculiar turn of thought and their mode of action... .”"

"We console ourselves, for the most part, with the superiority of our cultivation, which we consider to be qualitatively ‘higher,’... One reveres the uniqueness of Greek Geist, but with closer contact with this Asian world one cannot help raising the suspicion that our feelings of superiority are built on the quicksand of ignorance."

"It is also important to bear in mind that this present struggle, tremendous and unique as it may seem, is not the first of its kind, but is really nothing other than the present phase of a contest which has been going on between East and West for thousands of years. Action on the part of one side has always immediately called forth a reaction on the part of the other, and one may rightly doubt whether the Occident has always supplied the action, and the Orient the response, as is now the case, or whether the initiative has not rather changed from one side to the other in the course of history."

"If the West’s roots lay in Griechentum, he wrote, “‘... [our western culture] has also been influenced and made fruitful by the Orient, in many and lasting ways, and that ought not to be forgotten or left unsaid. It was, precisely, German scholars whose hard work established these facts and contributed the foundations for a truly historical, and comprehensive, understanding of European cultural development.’"

"The right-thinking are irritated by the nonconformist's lack of predictability, even by his occasional failure to show himself as such."

"The Buddha was a proponent of simple, direct teaching aimed at liberation and free of theoretical frills: his intent was purely pragmatic. His distrust of various speculative positions, which could be reduced to mere opinions, is well known. (p. 26)"

"If one wanted to summarise the essence of Buddhism in one sentence, it could only be this: everything that is transient is painful. In fact, after all, suffering (“”dukkha“”) is nothing more than transience. (p. 27)"

"The Doctrine (“”Dhamma“”) allows one to attain a state in which suffering can no longer take root, because one embraces eternity. “”nibbàna“”, liberation, is nothing more than this imperishable state, removed from the becoming of things. (p. 27)"

"After all, “'nibbàna”' is not a concept: this is why attempts to illustrate it through language and logic lend themselves to various misunderstandings. Some Buddhists understand it literally: as a state of “extinction”, comparable to the extinguishing of a flame. Yet the Buddha often criticised proponents of the nihilistic interpretation: “nibbàna” should not be conceived as pure nothingness. [...] It does not designate the abyss of a void, nor a worldly dimension comparable to those that exist: it can simply be said that pain is definitively eliminated there. (pp. 72-73)"

"[The Buddha] advised bhikkhus to be an island (“'dìpa”') or a refuge for themselves. After his passing, their only support or bulwark would be the Dhamma. His legitimate successors would ultimately be only those who had managed to take refuge in the Dhamma, that is, in themselves. (p. 75)"

"The Master wanted to provoke our critical spirit so that, by studying his doctrine, we could probe ourselves. [...] In Great Vehicle Buddhism, the need for such an orientation was recognised. For example, an important passage from a collection of Ch'an, a school of Chinese Buddhism, points to the need to free oneself from attachment to the Dhamma as well. Until one forgets even the Dharma, one still cultivates a sense of self, that is, the illusion of constituting a separate individuality in relation to other creatures. One becomes attached to a vision, an opinion, and is incapable of uniting, in perfect compassion, with all beings. (p. 88)"

"Patañjali, or whoever wrote on his behalf, seems to follow a “Kantian” line of thought: it is necessary to understand that knowledge is attributable to a subject; but this activity is not creative, and must take into account an objectively existing world. (pp. 10-11)"

"In Yoga there is a precise correspondence between theory and practice. This is far from the case with those European philosophers who admired India, such as Schopenhauer, who limited himself to ethical indications, while Yoga goes into the details of a method of the body and mind, of consciousness. (p. 17)"

"Yoga implies objectless subjectivism, calling into question the transpersonal components of being. The self, the centre of an identity that is not only ours, is naked. (p. 44)"

"The entire work is a treatise on perception, on optimal cognitive modes that replace erroneous ones. (p. 55)"

"H. Kern in his book Over het woord Zarathushtra (1867) states, “the Bactrian (i.e. Avestan) is so (greatly) related to the Old- Indian language (Vedic), and in particular, that of the Vedas, that without exaggeration it can be called a dialect thereof.”"