F. Max Müller

“ If even in this travestied form Indian philosophy has found friends, in India and Europe, owing to her preaching, I am quite content, but Satyam paramo dharmah, “Truth is the highest religion,” or the highest virtue, and nothing, I am deeply convinced, can prosper for any length of time that is mixed up with exaggeration or untruth. If it is right and our bounden duty to protest against foolish disfigurements of our own religion, why should misrepresentation of the Hindu religion and Hindu philosophy be allowed to pass unchallenged? ”

“ Saith Kabîr, without the name of the One God, this world is blinded by Mammon.
By the favour of the Guru the slave Kabîr loveth God.
O Brethren, the Vedas and Mohammedan books are lies, and free not the mind from anxiety.
If for a moment thou restrain thy mind, God shall appear before thee.
O man, search thy heart daily, that thou mayest not fall into despair.
This world is a magic show which hath no tangibility.
Men read falsehood and are pleased; they quarrel over what they do not understand.
The truth is, the Creator is contained in the Creation. He is not of a blue colour, like Krishna. ”

“ What I feel, and what I wish my friends would feel with me, is that a country which, even in these unheroic days, could produce a Rammohun Roy, a Keshub Chunder Sen, a Malabâri, and a Râmabâi, is not a decadent country, but may look forward to a bright, sunny future, as it can look back with satisfaction and even pride on four thousand years of a not inglorious history.
I have never bestowed excessive praise on Indian literature, nor do I feel answerable for having filled the brains of native scholars with exaggerated ideas about its value. ”

“ I have no doubt that I shall be much abused again for having ventured to say so much, and to stand up for the people of India, and particularly for having produced evidence in support of my opinion, taken from their literature, ancient and modern, from their sacred books, their law-books, and their philosophical systems. Such evidence is admitted when we judge of any other nation; why should it be ruled out of court in the case of the people of India? ”

“ In one of the last numbers of the “New Dispensation,” the organ of the followers of Keshub Chunder Sen, we read:—
“Who rules India? What power is that which sways the destinies of India at the present moment? You are mistaken if you think that it is the ability of Lord Lytton in the cabinet or the military genius of Sir Frederick Haines in the field that rules India. It is not politics, it is not diplomacy that has laid a firm hold of the Indian heart. It is not the glittering bayonet nor the fiery cannon of the British army that can make our people loyal. ”

“ To keep alive the memory of our parents, to feel their presence during the great trials of our life, to be influenced by what we know they would have wished us to do, and to try to honour their name by showing ourselves not unworthy bearers of it, that is a Shrâddh ceremony in which we can all partake, nay, ought to partake, whatever our religion may be. There is a real, though unseen bond of union (tantu) that connects us through our parents and ancestors with the Great Author of all things, and the same bond will connect ourselves through our children with the most distant generations. ”

“ All we can say is that it is possible that we owe our gamut to India, but until more evidence is produced, we cannot say more. If we remember that we owe the nought to that country, mathematicians will be ready to confess that this was one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mathematics and of all the sciences that depend on mathematics, one of the greatest benefits, in fact, that the East has conferred on the West. Whether we owe to India Beethoven’s symphonies is another question, that has yet to wait for an answer. ”

“ None of these can hold India in subjection. Armies never conquered the heart of a nation. Muscular force and prowess never made a man’s head and heart bow before a foreign power. No. If you wish to secure the attachment and allegiance of India, it must be through spiritual influence and moral suasion. And such indeed has been the case in India. You cannot deny that your hearts have been touched, conquered, and subjugated by a superior power. That power need I tell you—is Christ. It is Christ who rules British India, and not the British Government. ”

“ It then becomes clear that this phenomenal world in its endless variety is but an ignorance, a dream that will pass away, if once our eyes are opened. Whatever is known by us, becomes, ipso facto, objective and phenomenal, and to know this is the first step towards the truth. It may seem difficult to understand how such a philosophy could be treated as orthodox, and go hand in hand with the popular religion. But we must remember that Brahman, the first and the only real Being, as soon as perceived or conceived as an object, becomes at once a phenomenal being. ”

“ The ripe ego thinks, ‘Nothing is mine, whatever I see, or feel, or hear, nay, even this body is not mine; I am always free and eternal.’ The unripe ego, on the contrary, thinks, ‘This is my house, my room, my child, my wife, my body,’ &c.”
“When the knowledge of Self is obtained, all fetters fall off by themselves. Then there is no distinction of a Brâhmana or a Sûdra, of high caste or low caste. In that case the sacred thread, the sign of caste, falls away of itself. But so long as man has the consciousness of distinction and difference of caste, he should not forcibly throw it away.” ”

“ You say our religion is no 8religion, our poetry no poetry, our philosophy no philosophy. We try to understand and appreciate whatever Europe has produced, but do not imagine that therefore we despise what India has produced. If you studied our music as we do yours, you would find that there is melody, rhythm, and harmony in it, quite as much as in yours. And if you would study our poetry, our religion, and our philosophy, you would find that we are not what you call heathens or miscreants, but know as much of the Unknowable as you do, and have seen perhaps even deeper into it than you have! ”

“ Now, we should never say that Plato and Aristotle were curious. We take them far more seriously. We look upon them as our equals, nay as our teachers. It cannot surely be the brown skin that keeps us from feeling the same sympathy and paying the same homage to the poets and philosophers of ancient India, and that prevents even at the present day any real friendship between the best sons of India and England? ”

“ What we should have anticipated, and what in fact was anticipated by philosophers, was fully confirmed by the hymns of the Rig-Veda, which were found to be addressed to the Dawn, the first miracle and the greatest revelation the world has ever seen, though we have learnt to look upon the light of the morning as a matter of course. They were addressed to the morning Sun, the bringer of light and life, to the blue Sky, the gatherer of clouds, the giver of rain and fertility, to the Earth, the Rivers, the Fire, the Storms, and many more. ”

“ Truth is neither young nor old, it is eternal, and history teaches us that the older a religion, the more has it been exposed to deterioration in the hands of priests and no-priests. Ancient ruins are, no doubt, venerable and impressive, but for dwelling in them and for the daily work of life new buildings are better.
No one would say that because the Rig-Veda is the oldest book of the human race—we cannot call cuneiform or hieroglyphic inscriptions, however large they are, books in the ordinary sense of the word—it is therefore the best or the truest. ”

“ What with us is but one of the many theories of life, was to him the only saving faith; and while with us an old Prime Minister clings to the end to his political interests, and loves to be surrounded and amused by those who belong to him, we see here a real hero of thought who, freed from all desires, turns his eyes away from the whole phenomenal world to dwell only on what is eternal and unchangeable, the Paramâtman—the Highest Self. ”

“ We must remember that the night to the Vedic poet was not the same as darkness, but that on the contrary, when the night had driven away the day, she was supposed to lighten the darkness, and even to rival her sister, the bright day, with her starlight beauty. The night, no doubt, gives peace and rest, yet the Dawn is looked upon as the kindlier light, and is implored to free mortals from the dangers of the night, as debtors are freed from a debt. ”

“ It was a recognised thing in India—I speak, of course, of ancient India—that a man who had fought his fight might retire from the world, shake off all shackles, and become free, even here on earth. Many left their homes and lived in forests—a most delightful way of life in India. These anchorites, fugitives from the world, wanted very little to support life, and that little, so far as we know, was either supplied by nature or given them readily by the members of their family, or even by strangers. ”

“ Not only on the occasion of her funeral, but earlier, when her husband offered sacrifices to the gods and the guardian planets to avert their anger and her death, the priests showed no sign of any prejudice against him or her. This, too, is a victory, for it shows that even the most inveterate social and religious diseases are not incurable when treated with unselfish love and generosity. If all this could be achieved by a frail young daughter of India, what is there that could be called impossible for the strong men of that country? ”

“ When at last not only the texts but the immense Sanskrit commentary also of the most important, the Rig-Veda, had been published, people began to see that there was little of primeval, mysterious wisdom to be found in the Vedic hymns, but only the simplest thoughts that must have passed through the minds of the Rishis when they began to ponder on the great phenomena of nature which every morning and night, every spring and winter were unfolded before their eyes. ”

“ If my edition of the Rig-Veda could help towards bringing the people of India back to the study of what their ancient writers unanimously considered as the highest authority of their religion, it would, I think, be an important step forward, not backward, though I hope that the future has even greater things in store for them than a mere return to their ancient form of belief and worship. We must not forget that, like everything else, religions also grow old and can seldom defy four thousand years. ”

“ There may be more historical monuments, reminding us of the past, in Greece and Italy. But life, with its religion, philosophy, and literature, has completely changed there, and we look in vain for a Socrates or Plato on the steps of the Parthenon, or for a Cato or Caesar among the lonely columns of the Forum. In India, on the contrary, the religion of the Veda is by no means entirely extinct. Not long ago even one of the old magnificent Vedic sacrifices, the Agnishtoma, was performed at Benares with all its pristine array. ”

“ When we consider how unimportant the differences are between the religion of reformed and unreformed Christians if compared with the treasures that both share in common, why should it be such a wrench for a Roman Catholic to become a Protestant, except that his father and mother were Roman Catholics? The points of difference between them are all, without exception, the work of men, and often of men who have no very high record in the pages of history. ”

“ The Buddhists adopted the same doctrine, but, while condemning love, they preached pity—a splendid substitute. Father and mother, wife, husband, and children were not excepted. They, too, should never be passionately loved or idolised, but they should always be pitied. That pity means a great deal, it may mean all that is best in love. The very relation in which husband and wife, father and mother, parents and children stood to each other could be of this life only, not of that life in which they neither marry nor are given in marriage, the life that underlies even this life on earth. ”

“ But with regard to my friends and acquaintances, the older I grow, the more I feel how much I have owed and still owe to them, nay, how often the whole stream of my life has been turned East or West by a word or two spoken by a friend at the right moment, just as a whole train may be turned by the mere touch of a handle by the pointsman. ”

“ It is a pity that we know so little of the mental struggles through which men like Keshub Chunder Sen and his friends had to pass before they could bring themselves to let go the chief anchor of their religious faith. But Hindus keep their agonies to themselves. No doubt they lose thereby much of that human sympathy which we feel for others who lay open their inmost hearts before us, while slowly surrendering their old for a new, a purer, and a better faith. It is very rare that we are allowed an insight into the home-life and heart-life of eminent Hindus. ”

“ If Bismarck made Germany, Gaurî-samkara made Bhavnagar. The two achievements are so different that even to compare them seems absurd, but the methods to be followed in either case are, after all, the same; nay, it is well known that the making or regulating of a small watch may require more nimble and careful fingers than the large clock of a cathedral. We are so apt to imagine that the man who performs a great work is a great man, though from revelations lately made we ought to have learnt how small—nay, how mean—some of these so-called great men have really been. ”

“ But for a young girl of eighteen, brought up in the narrowly guarded sphere of an Indian home, to dream of leaving her country, to travel to America, and enter as a medical student at an American University required such an amount of moral courage as we should never have expected from a young and timid Hindu lady who could know little of the world outside her Zenânah, and had probably never spoken to a man except her husband and members of her own family. ”

“ Even in the prayers which we possess of the people in India we find no very deep delvings into the soul of man. They consist chiefly of praises of the greatness of the gods or of God, of general confessions of human weakness or sin, but we hardly ever come across the agonised sufferings of self-reproachful saints, and we see little of that moral vivisection which, painful as it is to witness, often reveals to us some of the most secret springs of human nature which nothing else will bring to our view. ”

“ These, then, were the ideas that supported our friend Gaurî-samkara, and which support, under different disguises, millions of human beings in India—men, women, and children. On such simple but solid foundations it is easy to erect ever so many religions, to build ever so many temples, and to find room for the most elevated and the most superstitious minds, all yearning for the same Peace of God, and for the same Giver of Peace and Rest. ”

“ To be a widow at all is hard enough, but nothing can be more miserable than the lot of a young widow in India, whose life may be said to be over before it has begun. Widows are looked upon in their own homes as beings of evil omen, as having deserved their misfortune by some unknown misdeeds in this or, what is worse, in a former life, and, particularly if childless, they are treated no better than servants, whether in the house of their parents-in-law, or even in the house of their real parents, if they are allowed to return there. ”