"From the facts I have adduced in the course of this paper I must come to the conclusion that the theory which makes all the languages of Europe and Asia, from Bengal to the British Islands, however different in appearance, to have sprung from the same stock, and hence, all the people speaking them, black, swarthy, and fair, to be of one and the same race of man, is utterly groundless, and the mere dream of learned men, and perhaps even more imaginative than learned. I can by no means, then, agree with a very learned professor of Oxford, that the same blood ran in the veins of the soldiers of Alexander and Clive as in those of the Hindus whom, at the interval of two-and-twenty ages, they both scattered with the same facility. I am not prepared, like him, to believe that an English jury, unless it were a packed one of learned Orientalists, with the ingenious professor him- self for its foreman, would, "After examining the hoary documents of language," admit "the claim of a common descent between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton," for that would amount to allowing that there was no difference in the faculties of the people that produced Homer and Shakespear, and those that have produced nothing better than the authors of the Mahabharat and Ramayana; no difference between the home-keeping Hindus, who never made a foreign conquest of any kind, and the nations who discovered, conquered, and peopled a new world."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Diplomats of the United KingdomTravel writersAuthors from ScotlandPhysicians from ScotlandColonial governors
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
(1861:285) quoted in Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. p. 180-1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Crawfurd
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Crawfurd
John Crawfurd FRS (13 August 1783 – 11 May 1868) was a Scottish physician, colonial administrator, diplomat, and author who served as the second and last Resident of Singapore.
1 quote on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Crawfurd →
Related Quotes
"In a certain sense, many of us mutilate the mind and render it impotent, for there is in the nature of man an irresis…"
"Lamb had written to Coleridge about one of their old masters, who had been a severe disciplinarian, intimating that h…"
"Dined at Gooden’s, where I met among others , the Secretary of the . He surprised me by saying that he knew Goethe on…"
"Lamb was the first English writer of eminence whom Crabb Robinson tried to convince of the excellence of Goethe."
"Sunt Angli graves ut Germani, magnifici domi forisque magna assectantium famulorum agnimi secum trahunt, quibus in si…"
"Sunt potentes in praeliis, undiquaque debellant adversarios, nullumque penitus patiuntur iugum servitutis. Delectantu…"
"In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being: he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act …"
"We suffer from a hubris of the mind. We have abolished superstition of the heart only to install a superstition of th…"
"Men are never alone because that which, acknowledged or unacknowledged, dreams through them is always by their side."
"It is the not-yet in the now, The taste of fruit that does not-yet exist Hanging the blossom on the bough."