Indian people

"We are a great people who settled around the Indus and the Ganges several centuries before the Hebraic horde transported itself to the banks of the Jordan. The Egyptians, Persians and Arabs came to our country in search of wisdom and spices, when the Jews were unknown to the rest of mankind. We could not have taken our Adimo from their Adam."

"[Indians were, on the whole], a race whose intellectual qualities, whatever may be said by ignorant or designing men, are at least on a par with those of Europeans. (Not that they did not have a share of human depravity, but they were not) so debased, so immoral, or so vindictive, as they have been represented by many gentlemen, especially some divines who have lately returned from the East, and whose opinions breathe by no means the spirit of that sublime religion they would coerce the natives to adopt. Taking all points into consideration, and viewing the nature of the country conjointly with the nature of their laws, and of their former government, I think we have by far more to admire than to censure, in a race of people, who, notwithstanding some highly remarkable instances of depravity, may be classed a among the most innocent, and most industrious, of worldly inhabitants!!!"

"The ordinary people … are upright and honourable... They are faithful to their oaths and promises... In their behavior there is much gentleness and sweetness."

"They do not practice deceit, and they keep their sworn obligations. ... They will not take anything wrongfully, and they yield more than fairness requires.”"

"And when I saw not unfitting equations and life rules were therein contained, I considered it indicated to translate this from the Malabarian language into High German. Not that we Christians do not have sufficient rules of morality in the Holy Scriptures for us to learn them from mere heathens, but merely and solely to see to what extent a heathen, devoid of the Scriptures, and only by virtue of natural enlightenment, can attain cognition of the law of morality, and how those Malabarian heathens equal those former Latin and Greek heathens in this, nay even surpass them absolutely. He, who would be instructed in this in detail, might read the Biblothecam Malabaricam, composed by myself and now sent to Europe, likewise the other two little books of morals which I have translated from the Malabarian into the German and sent along at the same time."