Indologists

"This encounter laid the foundations for the medieval world, he wrote, one that represented a world-historical mixing of “rivers of two different kinds of water [the classical and the Semitic] ... but the union was an unnatural one and could not endure. The human spirit at the end of the medieval period awoke to consciousness of its own power and attempted to free itself from the fetters the Middle Ages had put on it. Modern philosophy [beginning with Kant] is this struggle for freedom.”’"

"In the universa] quest for knowledge, recent European “‘progress” in the natural sciences did not matter, for the ancients— Indians and Europeans— already understood nine-tenths of Being; indeed, natural forces and human nature “were grasped in a more pristine and clear way by the ancient philosophers ‘who lived much nearer the gods’ ... than the later ones, that is, by [those] whose vision was not muddied by a jumble of traditions.”4*"

"Moreover, the autonomy and differentness of Indian thought could have a very healthy impact on Europeans, ‘“‘who have been born and bred on classical antiquity and the Bible”; the encounter, he believed would result not in ‘“‘a superficia] transformation, but one that stirs the [western tradi- tion’s] very depths.” Those who had met Indian thinkers personally, he continued, could appreciate their profundity and breadth of knowledge, while also seeing the one-sidedness in them that they do not perceive. ‘“Who knows,” he continued, “‘if a similar sort of one-sidedness and narrowness also inheres in us, and in all of the traditional conceptions, in which we were raised, and if we might not learn just as much from the Indians as they can from us, if perhaps in a different way?’’4°"

"[T]he study of Schopenhauer, combined with the reading of the New Testament, shaped itself inside my mind into a harmonic whole, which united the most powerful claims of science with the equally imperative needs of the religious mentality in a completely satisfy- ing way. Schopenhauer’s name was always on my lips; I plagued people [ hardly knew with it; the whole day, in so far as it belonged to me, I devoted myself to his ideas and at night, they followed me into my dreams. .. ."

"The Upanishads have tackled every fundamental problem of life. They have given us an intimate account of reality." ...."On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy,'... 'The system of Vedanta, as founded on the Upanishads and Vedanta Sutras and accompanied by Shankara's commentary on them---equal in rank to Plato and Kant---is one of the most valuable products of the genius of mankind in his researches of the eternal truth.'"

"The fatal blot in Islām is the degradation of women.… Yet it would be hard to lay the blame altogether on Moḥammad. The real roots of the degradation of women lie much deeper. When Islām was instituted, polygamy was almost necessitated by the number of women and their need of support; and the facility of divorce was quite necessitated by the separation of the sexes, and the consequence that a man could not know or even see the woman he was about to marry before the marriage ceremony was accomplished. It is not Moḥammad whom we must blame for these great evils, polygamy and divorce; it is the state of society which demanded the separation of the sexes, and in which it was not safe to allow men and women freely to associate; in other words, it was the sensual constitution of the Arab that lay at the root of the matter."

"It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of concubines that Moḥammad made an irretrievable mistake. The condition of the female slave in the East is indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her master, who can do what he pleases with her and her companions; for the Muslim is not restricted in the number of his concubines, as he is in that of his wives. … The female white slave is kept solely for the master’s sensual gratification, and is sold when he is tired of her, and so she passes from master to master, a very wreck of womanhood. Her condition is a little improved if she bear a son to her tyrant; but even then he is at liberty to refuse to acknowledge the child as his own, though it must be owned he seldom does this. Kind as the Prophet was himself towards bondswomen, one cannot forget the unutterable brutalities which he suffered his followers to inflict upon conquered nations in the taking of slaves. The Muslim soldier was allowed to do as he pleased with any ‘infidel’ woman he might meet with on his victorious march. When one thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and daughters, who must have suffered untold shame and dishonour by this license, he cannot find words to express his horror. And this cruel indulgence has left its mark on the Muslim character, nay, on the whole character of Eastern life."

"To realize Medieval India there is no better way than to dive into the eight volumes of the priceless History of India as Told by its Own Historians which Sir H. M. Elliot conceived and beganot, and which Professor Dowson edited and completed with infinite labour and learning. It is a revelation of Indian life as seen through the eyes of the Persian court annalists. It is, however, a mine to be worked, not a consecutive history, and its wide leaps in chronology, its repetitions, recurrences, and omissions, render it no easy guide for general readers."

"The Hindu was taxed to the extent of half the produce of his land, and had to pay duties on all his buffaloes, goats, and other milk-cattle. The taxes were to be levied equally on rich and poor, at so much per acre, so much per animal. Any collectors or officers taking bribes were summarily dismissed and heavily punished with sticks, pincers, the rack, imprisonment and chains. The new rules were strictly carried out, so that one revenue officer would string together 20 Hindu notables and enforce payment by blows. No gold or silver, not even the betelnut, so cheering and stimulative to pleasure, was to be seen in a Hindu house, and the wives of the impoverished native officials were reduced to taking service in Muslim families. Revenue officers came to be regarded as more deadly than the plague; and to be a government clerk was disgrace worse than death, in so much that no Hindu would marry his daughter to such a man. ... [These edicts] were so strictly carried out that the chaukidars and khuts and muqad-dims were not able to ride on horseback, to find weapon, to wear fine clothes, or to indulge in betel. . .... No Hindu could hold up his head. ..... Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains were all employed to enforce payment.""

"In point of authenticity the Vedas have incontestible precedence out of the most ancient records. These holy books which, according to the Brahmins, contain the revealed word of God, were honoured in India long before Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt and Europe were colonised or inhabited."

"More serious is Nietzsche’s uncritical reliance on the flawed translation of the text by Jacolliot, an amateur openly denounced by leading philologists like Friedrich Max Muller. Uncritical reading of this text led Nietzsche to quote mistranslations and later insertions in support of the claim concerning the Chandala (low caste) origins of the Semites, used to attack Christianity in TI and AC. Elst goes on to highlight what Nietzsche missed or omitted in his reading of the text, including not just the actual politics and institutions of the caste system, but also some striking affinities with his own views and teachings. Despite these philological blunders and misjudgements, however, Nietzsche seems to have landed on his feet after all; for in Elst’s view, he did succeed in grasping Manu’s view of man and society."

"My complaint against many translators and Orientalists," says Jacolliot, "while admiring their profound knowledge is, that not having lived in India, they fail in exactness of expression and in comprehension of the symbolical sense of poetic chants, prayers, and ceremonies, and thus too often fall into material errors, whether of translation or appreciation." ** Further, this author who, from a long residence in India, and the study of its literature, is better qualified to testify than those who have never been there, tells us that "the life of several generations would scarce suffice merely to read the works that ancient India has left us on history, ethics (morale), poetry, philosophy, religion, different sciences, and medicine."

""To study India," he says, "is to trace humanity to its sources." "In the same way as modern society jostles antiquity at each step," he adds, "as our poets have copied Homer and Virgil, Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus and Terence; as our philosophers have drawn inspiration from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle; as our historians take Titus Livius, Sallust, or Tacitus, as models; our orators, Demosthenes or Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates, and our codes transcribe Justinian--so had antiquity's self also an antiquity to study, to imitate, and to copy. What more simple and more logical? Do not peoples precede and succeed each other? Does the knowledge, painfully acquired by one nation, confine itself to its own territory, and die with the generation that produced it? Can there be any absurdity in the suggestion that the India of 6,000 years ago, brilliant, civilized, overflowing with population, impressed upon Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Rome, a stamp as ineffaceable, impressions as profound, as these last have impressed upon us? "It is time to disabuse ourselves of those prejudices which represent the ancients as having almost spontaneously-elaborated ideas, philosophic, religious, and moral, the most lofty--those prejudices that in their naive admiration explain all in the domain of science, arts, and letters, by the intuition of some few great men, and in the realm of religion by revelation." *"

"The Greek," says Jacolliot, "is but the Sanscrit. Pheidias and Praxiteles have studied in Asia the chefs-d'oeuvre of Daonthia, Ramana, and Aryavosta. Plato disappears before Dgeminy and Veda-Vyasa, whom he literally copies. Aristotle is thrown into the shade by the Pourva-Mimansa and the Outtara-Mimansa, in which one finds all the systems of philosophy which we are now occupied in re-editing, from the Spiritualism of Socrates and his school, the skepticism of Pyrrho, Montaigne, and Kant, down to the positivism of Littre."

"— 'India is the world’s cradle : thence it is that the common mother in sending forth her children, even to the utmost west has, in unfading testimony of our origin bequeathed us the legacy of her language, her laws, her 'Morale,' her literature and her religion-Traversing Persia, Arabia, Egypt and even forcing their way to the cold and cloudy north far from the sunny soil of their birth, in vain they may forget their point of departure, their skin may remain brown or become white from contact with snows of the west, of the civilizations founded by them splendid kingdoms may fall and leave no trace behind but some few ruins of sculptured columns, new people may arise from the ashes of the first; new cities may flourish on the site of the old but time and ruin united fail to obliterate the ever legible stamp of origin. The legislator Manu; whose authenticity is incontestible, dates back more than three thousand years before Christian era; the Brahmans assign him a still more ancient epoch. What instruction for us, and what testimony almost material, in favour of the oriental chronology, which, less ridiculous than ours (based on Biblical traditions) adopts, for the formation of this world, an a speech more in harmony with science. We shall presently see Egypt, Judea, Greece, Rome, all antiquity, in fact, copies Brahminical society in its castes, its theories, its religious opinion, and adopts its Brahmins, its priests, its levites as they had already adopted the language, legislation and philosophy of the ancient Vedic Society whence their ancestors had departed through the world to dessiminate the grand ideas of primitive revelation."

"India, the birthplace of the human race and ageless mother with bountiful breasts."

"“Land of ancient India Cradle of humanity, hail Hail ! revered motherland, Whom centuries of brutal invasions Have not yet buried Under the dust of oblivion. Hail ! Fatherland of faith, Of love, of poetry and of science, May we hail a revival of thy past In our Western future !”"

"The capitals of Asoka's columns, some of which were perhaps made before his reign, are the earliest important sculptures after those of the Indus cities."

"Direct testimony to the assumed fact is lacking, and no tradition of an early home beyond the frontier survives in India."

"In one respect the Harappa people were technically in advance of their contemporaries - they had devised a saw with undulating teeth , which allowed the dust to escape freely from the cut, and much simplified the carpenter's task. From this we may assume that they had particular skill in carpentry."

"In A Cultural History of India, A.L. Basham notes that “[by] the fifth century CE, Indianised states, that is to say states organised along the traditional lines of Indian political theory and following the Buddhist or Hindu religions, had established themselves in many regions of Burma, Thailand, Indo-China, Malaysia, and Indonesia”."

"Prof. Arthur Basham (d. 1986), the leading authority on ancient Indian culture and Oriental civilizations, writes about ancient Indian codes of war that ‘In all her history of warfare, Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants. The ghastly sadism of the kings of Assyria, who flayed their captives alive, is completely without parallel in ancient India. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilization is its humanity.’"

"“At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)]."

"“The ancient civilisation of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, in that its traditions have been preserved without a break down to the present day. Until the advent of the archaeologist, the peasant of Egypt or Iraq had no knowledge of the culture of his forefathers, and it is doubtful whether his Greek counterpart had any but the vaguest ideas about the glory of Periclean Athens. In each case there had been an almost complete break with the past. On the other hand…to this day legends known to the humblest Indian recall the names of shadowy chieftains who lived nearly a thousand years before Christ, and the orthodox Brahman in his daily worship repeats hymns composed even earlier. India and China have, in fact, the oldest continuous cultural traditions in the world.”"

"The age in which true history appeared in India was one of great intellectual and spiritual ferment. Mystics and sophists of all kinds roamed through the Ganga Valley, all advocating some form of mental discipline and asceticism as a means to salvation; but the age of the Buddha, when many of the best minds were abandoning their homes and professions for a life of asceticism, was also a time of advance in commerce and politics. It produced not only philosophers and ascetics, but also merchant princes and men of action."

"Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world."

"Through the necessity of accurately laying out the open-air site of a sacrifice Indians very early evolved a simple system of geometry, but in the sphere of practical knowledge the-world owes most to India in the realm of mathematics, which were developed in Gupta times to a stage more advanced than that reached by any other nation of antiquity. ‘The success of Indian mathematics was mainly due to the fact that the Indians had a clear conception of abstract number, as distinct from numerical quantity of objects or spatial extension. While Greek mathematical science was largely based on mensuration and geometry, India transcended these conceptions quite early, and, with the aid of a simple numeral notation, devised a rudimentary algebra which allowed more complicated calculations than were possible to the Greeks, and led to the study of number for its own sake."

"Medieval Indian mathematicians, such as Brahmagupta (7th century), Mahavira (9th century) and Bhüskara (19th century), made several discoveries which in Europe were not known until the Renaissance or later, They understood the import of positive and negative quantities, evolved sound systems of extracting square and cube roots, and could solve quadratic and certain types of indeterminate equations."

"The famous lions of the Sarnath column and the less famous but more beautiful bull of the column of Rampurva are the work of realistic sculptors, owing something to Iranian and Hellenist tradition... Yet, if we did not know that the possibility of Western influence existed , we might suggest that the animal sculptures of the columns were those of a school directly de- scended from the engravers of the Indus seals , which show a realistic treatment very unusual for so early a civilization."

"This Building, dedicated to Eastern sciences, was founded for the use of Aryas (Indians and Englishmen) by excellent and benevolent men desirous of encouraging knowledge. The High-minded Heir-Apparent, named Albert Edward, Son of the Empress of India, himself performed the act of inauguration. The ceremony of laying the Memorial Stone took place on Wednesday, the tenth lunar day of the dark half of the month of Vaisâkha, in the Samvat year 1939 (= Wednesday, May 2, 1883). By the favor of God may the learning and literature of India be ever held in honour; and may the mutual friendship of India and England constantly increase!"

"The motions of the sun and moon were carefully observed by the Hindus and with such success that their determination of the moon's synodical revolution is a much more correct one than the Greeks ever achieved. They introduced the period of Jupiter with those of the sun and moon into the regulation of their calendar in the form of Sixty years common to them and the Chaldeans. They were keenly interested m logic and grammar, and in medicine and surgery they once kept pace with the most enlightened people of the world." 46<>"

"He (Rama) IS the type of a perfect husband, son, and brother. Sita also rises in character far above Helen and even above Penelope, both in her sublime devotion and loyalty to her husband, and her indomitable patience and endurance under suffering and temptation .... .it may be affirmed generally that the whole tone of the Ramayana is certainly above that of the Iliad." 4"

"The strength of Hinduism lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human character and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher; it's practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic and ceremonial side attuned to the man of the poetic feeling and imagination; and its quiescent contemplative aspect that has its appeal for the man of peace and the lover of seclusion."

"[I]t must be borne in mind that Hinduism is far more than a mere form of theism resting on Brāhmanism. It presents for our investigation a complex congeries of creeds and doctrines which in its gradual accumulation may be compared to the gathering together of the mighty volume of the Ganges, swollen by a continual influx of tributary rivers and rivulets, spreading itself over an ever-increasing area of country and finally resolving itself into an intricate Delta of tortuous steams and jungly marshes. … The Hindu religion is a reflection of the composite character of the Hindus, who are not one people but many. It is based on the idea of universal receptivity. It has ever aimed at accommodating itself to circumstances, and has carried on the process of adaptation through more than three thousand years. It has first borne with and then, so to speak, swallowed, digested, and assimilated something from all creeds."

"We see the effects of this new skepticism in John Muir's influential collection, Original Sanskrit textson the origin and history of the people ofIndia. In the first edition (i858ff.) he had argued from the evidence of language that the Indians were kin to the Europeans on grounds that "affinity in language implies affinity in race" and went on to demonstrate that "there is no objection arising from physiological considerations, i.e. from colour or bodily structure, to classing the Hindus among the Indo-European races." But in the second edition (1868-73), in response to criticism, he scaled that back to the view that "affinity in language affords some presumption of affinity in race" (emphasis added) and treated it as a question of whether physiological considerations prevented classing the Indians among the Indo-European races (Muir 1874-84, 2:277-286). The retreat of the Sanskritists had begun."

"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."

"A new opportunity came again for Christianity when Europe, and particularly England, dominated the world during the last few centuries. During this while, one would have expected, according to Muir, that Christian Europe would have improved its advantages for evangelizing the East, that "Britain, the bulwark of religion in the West, would have stepped forth as its champion in the East, and displayed her faith and her zeal where they were most urgently required." But, alas! it was not to be so and, Muir continues, "England was then sadly neglectful of her responsibility; her religion was shown only at home and she was careless of the spiritual darkness of her benighted subjects abroad; her sons, who adopted India as their country, so far from endeavouring to impart to its inhabitants the benefits of their religion, too often banished it from their own minds, and exhibited to heathens [Hindus] and Mohammadans the sad spectacle of men without falth ... [and] their lives too often presented a practical and powerful, a constant and a living, argument against the truth of our holy faith.""

"“The materials in these still standard books never betray the author’s original purpose in amassing them: to demonstrate that Christianity is rationally superior to Hinduism.”"

"“Only that man... who is deluded, who is desirous of acquiring profits, who has neither deliberated upon his own religion, nor looked at the defects in Christianity, would become a Christian.”"

"“You should never revile people who are satisfied with their own religion... Listen you disciples of Christ! I, solicitous of your own welfare, tell you this truthfully... Diminution of Hari’s religion, anger, cruelty, subversion of authority and dissensions among the populace would result from reviling the religion of others. Increase of God’s religion, contentment, gentleness, harmony between the ranks would result from praising all religions. For each person his own religion is best; the same religion would be perilous for another person.”"

"None of the Sanskrit books, not even the most ancient, contain any distinct reference or allusion to the foreign origin of the Indians."

"The Hindu, sickened by idolatry (Islam's and Christianity's common name for Hinduism), turns to the other two religions which surround him, and inquires into their respective claims ... we must be ready at hand to meet him with the proofs of our most holy faith... the comparison of the two religIOns, Christianity and Islam, cannot fail to be of essential service, under God's blessings, to lead to practical results."

"“We may be assured that as Christianity comes into actual close contact with Orientals of acute intellects…it will be met with a style of controversy which will come upon some among us with surprise. Many things will be disputed which we have been accustomed to take for granted, and proofs will be demanded, which those who have been brought up in the external evidence school of the last century, may not be prepared to supply.”"

"To know the Hindus, to understand their past and present condition, to reach their very heart and soul, we must study Sanskrit literature. It is, in truth, even more to India than classical and patristic literature was to Europe at the time of the Reformation. It gives a deeper impress to the Hindu mind, so that every Hindu, however unlettered, is unconsciously affected by it."

"It is probable that one of the earliest homes (if not the first seat) of the members of the great Aryan family was in the high land surrounding the sources of the Oxus, to the north of die point connecting the Hindu Kush with the Himalayas . . . the Pamir Plateau."

"India though it has more than five hundred spoken dialects, has only one sacred language and only one sacred literature, accepted and revered by all adherence of Hinduism alike, however diverse in race, dialect, rank and creed. That language is Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature, the only repository of the Veda or knowledge in its widest sense, the only vehicle of Hindu mythology, philosophy, law, the mirror in which all the creeds, opinions, and customs and usages of the Hindus are faithfully reflected and the only quarry whence the requisite materials may be obtained for improving the vernaculars or for expressing important religious and scientific ideas."

"“Such, indeed, is the exuberance and flexibility of this language and its power of compounding words, that when it has been, so to speak, baptised and thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of Christianity, it will probably be found, next to Hebrew and Greek, the most expressive vehicle of Christian truth.”"

"I must draw attention to the fact that I am only the second occupant of the Boden Chair, and that its founder Colonel Boden stated most explicitly in his will that the special object of his munnificent bequest wass to promote the translation of Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion.... My very first public lecture delivered after my election in 1860 was on "The Study of Sanskrit in Relation to Missionary Work in India"."

"When the walls of the mighty fortress of Brahminism are encircled, undermined, and finally stormed by the soldiers of the Cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete."

"But how is this previous process of elevating and Christianizing the men to be effected? We must begin with the schools... In this way we shall best prepare our Indian school-boys for a voluntary acceptance of Christian truth."