Title: India – What Can It Teach Us?
Author: F Max Muller
Publisher: Penguin 2000 (First published 1883)
ISBN: 978-0-14-100437-2
Pages: 228
Max Muller (1823 – 1900) was the most famous Indologist working in England in 19th century. Though a German by birth, he made England his home and rose to prominence as a faculty in the Oxford University. His prominence rose to international level due to his painstaking research done on ancient Sanskrit and literature of India. He became an admirer of India’s past and his books are still held to be the finest and most authoritative as far as the particular area of study is concerned. He is often called the ‘Sayana of the modern era’ in memory of the sage who compiled the vedas. This book is a compilation of seven lectures given by the learned professor to candidates for the Indian civil service examination at Cambridge university. The essays are marked for its clear insight, extensive research and logical conclusions. The love he had had to India and her institutions are made amply clear from the glowing terms on which he refers to them. Time and again, he locks horns with critics, those who ridicule Indian thought and takes them to task. The book, first published in 1883, assumed immense significance in India, which was seeking and reasserting its lost values and credentials which were lost in the mists of a millennium of slavery and alien domination. It rekindled the spirit of enquiry and the need for looking back for inspiration. It provided the guiding light for thousands of youths to ponder over our achievements untarnished by sectarian interests. The Vedas contained knowledge which is far superior than contemporary thought (if there had any) anywhere else in the world. The Indian sages meditated and contemplated on the transcendent nature of the universe and the truths behind the unending rhythm of nature, while almost everywhere else, the main topics of pondering were the menu for the evening meal! But unfortunately, we carried the baton far more than desired and had come up with hoards of people earnestly believing in the supernatural knowledge contained in the vedas. This is another extreme of the question, which is equally ridiculous. Vedas are the products of men, who compiled them as a record of their ceremonial and most often war rites.
Max Muller introduces the students to the world of India where a vast treasure lies unexplored. He advocates against the common misconceptions against India prevalent at that time and asserts that people with every conceivable interest is surely to find fulfilment there, be it literature, music archeology and others. The science of language developed and made to fruition with the discovery that Sanskrit belonged to the Aryan group of languages in the same category as Greek, Latin or other teutonic languages. People should study India to fulfill the historical consciousness. Scholars should look east.
The term most used to abuse Indians were that they are liars and cheats. A prominent text book of that time, Mill’s History of British India was full of venomous instincts and Muller cautions against adopting such coloured ideas. While it may be true that people in the presidencies of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, whom the Britishers meet the most may belong to the odious categories earmarked in England for them, the attitude is totally erroneous for the millions calmly residing in the thousands of villages where the essence of Indianness is still not oozed out. Muller makes a list of foreign travellers and chroniclers from Hiuen Tsang to Abul Fazal and quotes from them. Indian ancient law books are quoted and asserted that truth is assiduously practised. Ancient India was inherently truthful, but after 1000 AD, when Muslim invasions convulsed the country beyond anything they had experienced before, the nature changed and the national character degenerated.
In the third lecture, the value of Sanskrit literature is assessed. Macaulay’s comment that all of India’s contributions in the literary field can be collected in a reasonable book shelf is strongly rebuked. More than 10,000 manuscripts in Sanskrit has been discovered and the number was slowly going up. There are two distinct phases, the pre-Saka (before 1st century AD) and post-Saka (1st to 3rd century AD). The renaissance of Sanskrit literature came during the post-Saka period, though the quality of books had diminished considerably. Vedas and Buddhist texts were the products of the first era. The other productions like Kalidasa’s plays cannot be termed classical due to the comparatively modern time period in which they were written. They are artificial and scholastic, as justly observed by several western critics. But the vedic texts are the original fountains of primitive thought which was brought to light by the untiring efforts by Burouf, a professor at College de France, Paris. Even though some childish fallacies are included in the Rig Veda, it contains religious thought unseen anywhere else.
Answers to critics are given in exemplifying detail in another lecture. A frequent one was that the vedic texts were the products of a few poets who were not linked to the masses. Max Muller refutes this accusation by showing examples from western societies where similar situations persist. The aspect of foreign influence on the text is examined and asserted to be not visible. A verse often used for this allegations contains the word ‘golden Manah’ which is never used again. Manah is a Phoenician measure of weight, but the coincidence doesn’t warrant the outcome of external influence. Also, ideas of deluge present in ancient texts need not be adaptations of a single original event. Floods were experienced by people everywhere and myths and legends connected with this extreme event may influence the victims to such a high level that poems and stories may be expected of them. In any case, references to deluge are found in Puranas, which are later in compilation. Another bone of contention is the 27 lunar mansions which are compared to Babylonian inventions. However Max Muller again asserts this to be an indigenous development.
Glimpses on the origin and development of languages are the most valuable contribution of the Vedas. Some of the critics find it difficult to digest the truth of the far superior level of thought exhibited in these ancient Indian texts than compared to other aborigins in Polynesia and elsewhere. The poets think on par with their modern-day counterparts. The high level of social life seen in the hymns and conventions of naming rivers were the same as Alexander found them. The sixth lecture is devoted to Vedic deities. While most of the gods are same or similar to gods in other Aryan races like Greeks and Romans, Indra is a later invention. Some of the common divinities are Dyaus (Zeus, Ju-piter), Ushas (Eos), Nakta (Nyx), Surya (Helios), Agni (Ignis), Bhaga (Baga or Bogu), Varuna (Uranos) and Vak (Vox). The god of thunder and lightning, Parjanya was also earlier thought to be uniquely Indian, until it was recovered from legends and prayers in Lithuanian, Lettish and Old Prussian under the apellations of Perkunas, Pehrkons and Perkunos, where also it is the god of rain and thunder.
Two important questions daunt any student of Indian thought – When did it acquire the alphabet and when did literature begin. The first manuscript of Vedas dates not earlier than 1500 CE. It is the thought and ideas presented there which helps to assign a much earlier date of 1500 BCE for them. Ashoka’s inscriptions are the earliest specimens of Sanskrit text and dates to 3rd century BCE. Two types of scripts employed in Ashoka’s edicts are probably influenced by semitic scripts. Megasthenes, who was the Greek ambassador in Ashoka’s court declares that Indians knew no writing. The knowledge of Vedas were handed down generation after generation through oral traditions. I Tsing, who visited India in the 7th century CE attests to this fact. Buddhist texts like Pratisakhyas which are a collection of rules dates back to 5th century BCE. The vedic pantheon housed three kinds of divinites – the devas, the pitris (forefathers) and rita (cosmic order). The author ends the discussion with a fervent appeal to students to learn the Vedas which is as essential a study as that of the forces of nature and its effects on the universe.
The book abounds with handsome quotations about ancient India and its worth. The author says, “If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow – in some parts a very paradise on earth – I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant – I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life – again I should point to India” (p.6).
Max Muller discusses on the need to learn history. “Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognised part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and everyone of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each generation need not start again from the same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came before, may advance towards higher points and nobler aims” (p.15).
As I mentioned earlier, there are a class of people who assign divine status for the Vedas and argue that whatever is contained in them are written in code difficult to decipher. Muller hits out at such lunatics, “There have been silly persons who have represented the development of the Indian mind as superior to any other, nay, who would make us go back to the Veda or to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime philosophy than our own…That the Veda is full of childish, silly, even to our minds monstrous conceptions, who would deny? But even those monstrosities are interesting and instructive; nay, many of them, if we can but make allowance for different ways of thought and language, contain germs of truth and rays of light” (p.88).
The author is a devout Christian who harbours aspirations of assimilating India into the faith. He says, “Take religion, and where can you study its true origin, its natural growth, and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the refuge of Zoroastrianism, even now the mother of new superstitions – and why not, in the future, the regenerate child of the purest faith, if only purified from the dust of nineteen centuries?” (p.12). His attitude sometimes resembles that of a salesman, who announces his wares for the public as Max Muller is glorifying his area of research. Also, we come to know the author who is not in love with contemporary India – for which he maintains a not so condemnatory attitude as his fellow Britishers – but an India which lived thousands of years ago whose traces can still be found in isolated villages. The author’s obsession with Aryan race and its manifestations verge on racism. He says, “I am not pleading here for Gonds, or Bhils, or Santhals, and other non-Aryan tribes. I am speaking of the Aryan and more or less civilized inhabitants of India” (p.46). Again on p.86, he asks, “What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient Sanskrit literature and cannot find anywhere else? My answer is, we find here the Aryan man, whom we know in his various characters, as Greek, Roman, German, Celt and Slav, in an entirely new character”. Again, “Sanskrit, and the Vedas can teach us lessons which nothing else can teach, as to the origin of our own language, the first formation of our own concepts, and the true natural germs of all that is comprehended under the name of civilization, at least the civilization of the Aryan race, to which we and all the greatest nations of the world belong” (p.107). The book also contains historical inaccuracies when the author claims the Indus valley civilization to be the handiwork of Aryans, as “We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of the land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods like Indra and the Maruts, defending their new homes against the assaults of the black-skinned aborigines as well as against the inroads of later Aryan colonists” (p.86). Max Muller may be forgiven for this slip, since the Indus Valley Civilization and its creators came to light much later after he died.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
Author: F Max Muller
Publisher: Penguin 2000 (First published 1883)
ISBN: 978-0-14-100437-2
Pages: 228
Max Muller (1823 – 1900) was the most famous Indologist working in England in 19th century. Though a German by birth, he made England his home and rose to prominence as a faculty in the Oxford University. His prominence rose to international level due to his painstaking research done on ancient Sanskrit and literature of India. He became an admirer of India’s past and his books are still held to be the finest and most authoritative as far as the particular area of study is concerned. He is often called the ‘Sayana of the modern era’ in memory of the sage who compiled the vedas. This book is a compilation of seven lectures given by the learned professor to candidates for the Indian civil service examination at Cambridge university. The essays are marked for its clear insight, extensive research and logical conclusions. The love he had had to India and her institutions are made amply clear from the glowing terms on which he refers to them. Time and again, he locks horns with critics, those who ridicule Indian thought and takes them to task. The book, first published in 1883, assumed immense significance in India, which was seeking and reasserting its lost values and credentials which were lost in the mists of a millennium of slavery and alien domination. It rekindled the spirit of enquiry and the need for looking back for inspiration. It provided the guiding light for thousands of youths to ponder over our achievements untarnished by sectarian interests. The Vedas contained knowledge which is far superior than contemporary thought (if there had any) anywhere else in the world. The Indian sages meditated and contemplated on the transcendent nature of the universe and the truths behind the unending rhythm of nature, while almost everywhere else, the main topics of pondering were the menu for the evening meal! But unfortunately, we carried the baton far more than desired and had come up with hoards of people earnestly believing in the supernatural knowledge contained in the vedas. This is another extreme of the question, which is equally ridiculous. Vedas are the products of men, who compiled them as a record of their ceremonial and most often war rites.
Max Muller introduces the students to the world of India where a vast treasure lies unexplored. He advocates against the common misconceptions against India prevalent at that time and asserts that people with every conceivable interest is surely to find fulfilment there, be it literature, music archeology and others. The science of language developed and made to fruition with the discovery that Sanskrit belonged to the Aryan group of languages in the same category as Greek, Latin or other teutonic languages. People should study India to fulfill the historical consciousness. Scholars should look east.
The term most used to abuse Indians were that they are liars and cheats. A prominent text book of that time, Mill’s History of British India was full of venomous instincts and Muller cautions against adopting such coloured ideas. While it may be true that people in the presidencies of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, whom the Britishers meet the most may belong to the odious categories earmarked in England for them, the attitude is totally erroneous for the millions calmly residing in the thousands of villages where the essence of Indianness is still not oozed out. Muller makes a list of foreign travellers and chroniclers from Hiuen Tsang to Abul Fazal and quotes from them. Indian ancient law books are quoted and asserted that truth is assiduously practised. Ancient India was inherently truthful, but after 1000 AD, when Muslim invasions convulsed the country beyond anything they had experienced before, the nature changed and the national character degenerated.
In the third lecture, the value of Sanskrit literature is assessed. Macaulay’s comment that all of India’s contributions in the literary field can be collected in a reasonable book shelf is strongly rebuked. More than 10,000 manuscripts in Sanskrit has been discovered and the number was slowly going up. There are two distinct phases, the pre-Saka (before 1st century AD) and post-Saka (1st to 3rd century AD). The renaissance of Sanskrit literature came during the post-Saka period, though the quality of books had diminished considerably. Vedas and Buddhist texts were the products of the first era. The other productions like Kalidasa’s plays cannot be termed classical due to the comparatively modern time period in which they were written. They are artificial and scholastic, as justly observed by several western critics. But the vedic texts are the original fountains of primitive thought which was brought to light by the untiring efforts by Burouf, a professor at College de France, Paris. Even though some childish fallacies are included in the Rig Veda, it contains religious thought unseen anywhere else.
Answers to critics are given in exemplifying detail in another lecture. A frequent one was that the vedic texts were the products of a few poets who were not linked to the masses. Max Muller refutes this accusation by showing examples from western societies where similar situations persist. The aspect of foreign influence on the text is examined and asserted to be not visible. A verse often used for this allegations contains the word ‘golden Manah’ which is never used again. Manah is a Phoenician measure of weight, but the coincidence doesn’t warrant the outcome of external influence. Also, ideas of deluge present in ancient texts need not be adaptations of a single original event. Floods were experienced by people everywhere and myths and legends connected with this extreme event may influence the victims to such a high level that poems and stories may be expected of them. In any case, references to deluge are found in Puranas, which are later in compilation. Another bone of contention is the 27 lunar mansions which are compared to Babylonian inventions. However Max Muller again asserts this to be an indigenous development.
Glimpses on the origin and development of languages are the most valuable contribution of the Vedas. Some of the critics find it difficult to digest the truth of the far superior level of thought exhibited in these ancient Indian texts than compared to other aborigins in Polynesia and elsewhere. The poets think on par with their modern-day counterparts. The high level of social life seen in the hymns and conventions of naming rivers were the same as Alexander found them. The sixth lecture is devoted to Vedic deities. While most of the gods are same or similar to gods in other Aryan races like Greeks and Romans, Indra is a later invention. Some of the common divinities are Dyaus (Zeus, Ju-piter), Ushas (Eos), Nakta (Nyx), Surya (Helios), Agni (Ignis), Bhaga (Baga or Bogu), Varuna (Uranos) and Vak (Vox). The god of thunder and lightning, Parjanya was also earlier thought to be uniquely Indian, until it was recovered from legends and prayers in Lithuanian, Lettish and Old Prussian under the apellations of Perkunas, Pehrkons and Perkunos, where also it is the god of rain and thunder.
Two important questions daunt any student of Indian thought – When did it acquire the alphabet and when did literature begin. The first manuscript of Vedas dates not earlier than 1500 CE. It is the thought and ideas presented there which helps to assign a much earlier date of 1500 BCE for them. Ashoka’s inscriptions are the earliest specimens of Sanskrit text and dates to 3rd century BCE. Two types of scripts employed in Ashoka’s edicts are probably influenced by semitic scripts. Megasthenes, who was the Greek ambassador in Ashoka’s court declares that Indians knew no writing. The knowledge of Vedas were handed down generation after generation through oral traditions. I Tsing, who visited India in the 7th century CE attests to this fact. Buddhist texts like Pratisakhyas which are a collection of rules dates back to 5th century BCE. The vedic pantheon housed three kinds of divinites – the devas, the pitris (forefathers) and rita (cosmic order). The author ends the discussion with a fervent appeal to students to learn the Vedas which is as essential a study as that of the forces of nature and its effects on the universe.
The book abounds with handsome quotations about ancient India and its worth. The author says, “If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow – in some parts a very paradise on earth – I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant – I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life – again I should point to India” (p.6).
Max Muller discusses on the need to learn history. “Why do we want to know history? Why does history form a recognised part of our liberal education? Simply because all of us, and everyone of us, ought to know how we have come to be what we are, so that each generation need not start again from the same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experience of those who came before, may advance towards higher points and nobler aims” (p.15).
As I mentioned earlier, there are a class of people who assign divine status for the Vedas and argue that whatever is contained in them are written in code difficult to decipher. Muller hits out at such lunatics, “There have been silly persons who have represented the development of the Indian mind as superior to any other, nay, who would make us go back to the Veda or to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order to find there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more sublime philosophy than our own…That the Veda is full of childish, silly, even to our minds monstrous conceptions, who would deny? But even those monstrosities are interesting and instructive; nay, many of them, if we can but make allowance for different ways of thought and language, contain germs of truth and rays of light” (p.88).
The author is a devout Christian who harbours aspirations of assimilating India into the faith. He says, “Take religion, and where can you study its true origin, its natural growth, and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the refuge of Zoroastrianism, even now the mother of new superstitions – and why not, in the future, the regenerate child of the purest faith, if only purified from the dust of nineteen centuries?” (p.12). His attitude sometimes resembles that of a salesman, who announces his wares for the public as Max Muller is glorifying his area of research. Also, we come to know the author who is not in love with contemporary India – for which he maintains a not so condemnatory attitude as his fellow Britishers – but an India which lived thousands of years ago whose traces can still be found in isolated villages. The author’s obsession with Aryan race and its manifestations verge on racism. He says, “I am not pleading here for Gonds, or Bhils, or Santhals, and other non-Aryan tribes. I am speaking of the Aryan and more or less civilized inhabitants of India” (p.46). Again on p.86, he asks, “What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient Sanskrit literature and cannot find anywhere else? My answer is, we find here the Aryan man, whom we know in his various characters, as Greek, Roman, German, Celt and Slav, in an entirely new character”. Again, “Sanskrit, and the Vedas can teach us lessons which nothing else can teach, as to the origin of our own language, the first formation of our own concepts, and the true natural germs of all that is comprehended under the name of civilization, at least the civilization of the Aryan race, to which we and all the greatest nations of the world belong” (p.107). The book also contains historical inaccuracies when the author claims the Indus valley civilization to be the handiwork of Aryans, as “We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of the land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods like Indra and the Maruts, defending their new homes against the assaults of the black-skinned aborigines as well as against the inroads of later Aryan colonists” (p.86). Max Muller may be forgiven for this slip, since the Indus Valley Civilization and its creators came to light much later after he died.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 4 Star
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