Ancient India

“ Ancient India has a connected story to tell, and so far from being uninteresting, its special feature is its intense attractiveness. We read in that ancient story how a gifted Aryan people, separated by circumstances from the outside world, worked out their civilization under natural and climatic conditions which were peculiarly favourable. We note their intellectual discoveries age after age; we watch their religious progress and development through successive centuries; we mark their political career, as they gradually expand over India and found new kingdoms and dynasties ”

“ THE history of Ancient India is a history of thirty centuries of human culture and progress. It divides itself into several distinct periods, each of which, for length of years, will compare with the entire history of many a modern people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus India itself is the sufficient argument for missions in India. Let any one visit this country, and study its religion, and see how it enters into the very life of the people; how all social intercourse is regulated by caste; how one feels at every instant the pressure of an ancient and unchangeable religion, and ask how its iron rule is ever to be broken? ”

“ My chief sources of information with regard to the national character of the Indians in ancient times will be the works of Greek writers and the literature of the ancient Indians themselves. For later times we must depend on the statements of the various conquerors of India, who are not always the most lenient judges of those whom they may find it more difficult to rule than to conquer. ”

“ For the visitors who crowd thither every cold season, and for the still larger number who will never see India, but have felt the glamour of the ancient land whose destiny is now so strangely linked to that of our far-off and latter-day islands, India has not one but many interests. There is the interest of the architectural glories of the Moghul emperors, in whose grand halls of audience, now deserted and merely places of show, a solitary British soldier stands sentry over a visitors' book. ”

“ Although the names of even the greatest monarchs of ancient India are at present unfamiliar to the general reader, and awaken few echoes in the minds of any save specialists, it is not unreasonable to hope that an orderly presentation of the ascertained facts of ancient Indian history may be of interest to a larger circle than that of professed Orientalists, and that, as the subject becomes more familiar to the reading public, it will be found no less worthy of attention than more familiar departments of historical study. ”

“ Who can doubt but that the history of ancient India, if we had only access to the necessary evidence, would be found to cover, in its two thousand five hundred years, and through its wide territory, a constant succession of similar variations ”

“ Yet the echoes of ancient life in India little resemble a Sicilian idyl or the strains of Pan’s pipe, but strike the ear rather as the cries of oppressed and wandering nations, of people in constant motion and pain. Early Indian researches, however, while they make havoc of the pastoral landscapes of Genesis and Job, have a consolation peculiarly suited to this age. They plainly tell us, that as in Europe so in Asia, the primitive state of mankind was a state of unrest; and that civilisation, despite its exactions and nervous city life, is a state of repose. ”

“ And take the Greek and the Roman religions, take the religions of the Teutonic, Slavonic, or Celtic tribes, and you will find that their period of growth has always passed, long before we know them, and that from the time we know them, all their changes are purely metamorphic—changes in form of substances ready at hand. Now let us look to the ancient inhabitants of India. With them, first of all, religion was not only one interest by the side of many. ”

“ But I feel equally impatient when I see other scholars criticising the ancient literature of India as if it were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it represented an enemy that must be defeated, and that can claim no mercy at our hands. ”

“ The inhabitants of India are an ancient people. When thirty centuries ago our ancestors were grovelling in the lowest depths of primitive savagery, our fellow-Aryans of India were enjoying a civilization of their own, which was, in its way, unique and distinguished. Their philosophy shows testimony to their ancient glory. It may truly be said that their chief glory is to be found more in ancient than in modern times. It is a people whose progress has, in some respects, been backward rather than forward, and whose boast is rightly of what they have been rather than of what they are. ”

“ The ancient history of India is full of descriptions of the gigantic energies and their multifarious workings, the boundless spirit, the combination of indomitable action and reaction of the various forces, and, above all, the profound thoughtfulness of a godly race. ”

“ If we go farther back into antiquity, it is India which first arrests and longest absorbs our attention—India, fecund mother of tradition, the source of almost all the rites, beliefs, and observances of the ancient nations. When we visit the collections of the India House, the British Museum, the Mission Rooms, or turn over the startling pages of "The Hindu Pantheon" of Major Edward Moor, we are ready to exclaim, Here all is caricature! ”

“ Thirdly, having explained to you why the ancient literature of India, the really ancient literature of that country, I mean that of the Vedic period, deserves the careful attention, not of Oriental scholars only, but of every educated man and woman who wishes to know how we, even we here in England and in this nineteenth century of ours, came to be what we are, I tried to explain to you the difference, and the natural and inevitable difference, between the development of the human character in such different climates as those of India and Europe. ”

“ IN the sixth century before Christ, India witnessed the commencement of a great revolution. Her ancient religion, which the Hindu Aryans had practised and proclaimed for fourteen centuries, had degenerated into forms. The gods of the Rig-Veda, whom the ancient Rishis had invoked and worshipped, had come to be regarded as mere names; the libations of the Soma juice, and offerings of milk, grain, or flesh, which the Rishis of old had offered to their gods, had developed into cumbrous ceremonials, elaborate rites, unmeaning forms. ”

“ India went on her way, as she has gone always, almost untouched by outside influences. Despite the brilliancy of the Macedonian cavalry, her own retained its ancient traditions; despite the intellectual keenness of European theorists, India has dreamt--as she dreams still--her old dreams.
There is a little temple near the supposed site of Taxîla. ”

“ A distant colony of the same race excavated the silver ores of prehistoric Spain; and when we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement, fishing in wattle canoes and working the tin mines of Cornwall. The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the Englishman and the Hindoo, dwelt together in Asia, spoke the same tongue and worshipped the same gods. The ancient religions of Europe and India had a similar origin. ”

“ After having thus carefully examined all the traces of supposed foreign influences that have been brought forward by various scholars, I think I may say that there really is no trace whatever of any foreign influence in the language, the religion, or the ceremonial of the ancient Vedic literature of India. As it stands before [160] us now, so it has grown up, protected by the mountain ramparts in the north, the Indus and the Desert in the west, the Indus or what was called the sea in the south, and the Ganges in the east. It presents us with a home-grown poetry and a home-grown religion ”

“ At the present day over two hundred million Hindus are familiar in varying degrees with the legendary themes and traditional beliefs which the ancient forest sages and poets of India invested with much beautiful symbolism, and used as mediums for speculative thought and profound spiritual teachings. The sacred books of India are to the Hindus what the Bible is to Christians. Those who read them, or hear them read, are believed to be assured of prosperity in this world and of salvation in the next. ”

“ India beyond the Ganges comprised with Ptolemy not only the great plain between that river and the Himâlayas, but also all south-eastern Asia, as far as the country of the Sinai (China) . Concerning these vast regions Ptolemy is our only ancient authority. ”

“ I conclude by presenting the reader with a translation of some chapters of the Introductory Book,* where Ptolemy in reviewing the estimate made by Marinos of the length of the known world from west to east, has frequent occasion to mention India and the Provinces beyond the Ganges, which together constitute what is now called Indo- China.
Book L, Cap. 11.
§ 1 . What has now been stated will suffice to show us what extent in breadth it would be fair to assign to the inhabited world. ”

“ A singular characteristic of the ancient Indian legends is the mingling of two separate courses of tradition. In their poetic conceptions, and perhaps under the hands of their priests, the old myths of the Creation are constantly confused with the accounts of the first periods of their civilization. ”

“ India has been a land of mystery from the earliest times. From the most ancient days we hear of India as the most populous nation of the world, full of barbaric wealth and a strange wisdom. It has attracted conquerors, and has been overrun by the armies of Semiramis, Darius, Alexander ”

“ The ancient kingdoms of the south, although rich and populous, inhabited by Dravidian nations not inferior in culture to their Aryan rivals in the north, were ordinarily so secluded from the rest of the civilized world, including Northern India, that their affairs remained hidden from the eyes of other nations, and, native annalists being lacking, their history, previous to the year 1000 of the Christian era, has almost wholly perished. ”

“ But, in whatever way the fact may be accounted for, India continued to be to the Greeks little better than a land of mystery and fable till the times of the Persian wars, when for the first time they became distinctly aware of its existence. ”

“ They have identified the position of ancient cities in India, sometimes with marvellous precision, and have been able to assign definite niches in history to historical personages with whose story it would have been most difficult to deal were it not intertwined with marked features of geographical environment. ”

“ For to quote his own Page:Ancient India as described by Ptolemy - John Watson McCrindle.djvu/34 Page:Ancient India as described by Ptolemy - John Watson McCrindle.djvu/35 Page:Ancient India as described by Ptolemy - John Watson McCrindle.djvu/36 Page:Ancient India as described by Ptolemy - John Watson McCrindle.djvu/37 distance right across may, therefore, be estimated at about 2,030 stadia, since we have to deduct a third because of the navigation having followed the curvature of the Gulf, and have also to make allowances for irregularities in the length of the courses run. ”

“ They travelled southward together, but became separated by religious, social, or tribal conditions, before they reached India. Only the Hindus, the worshippers of the Devas as gods, made their way to the River Indus and the land of the Five Rivers, the Panjab.
It was these worshippers of the Devas who composed those hymns which are known as the Rig-Veda, and we shall say a few words here about this ancient work. Probably there is not another work in the
BRIDGE OF BOATS ON THE INDUS.
literature of mankind which is so deeply interesting, so unique in the lessons it imparts. ”

“ On the authority of these documents, Eratosthenes and other writers have described India as a rhomboid, or unequal quadrilateral, in shape, with the Indus on the west, the mountains on the north, and the sea on the east and south. [3] The shortest side was on the west, which Patrokles estimated at 12,000 stadia, and Eratosthenes at 13,000 stadia. [4] I All the accounts agree that the course of the Indus from Alexander's Bridge to the sea was 10,000 stadia, or 1149 British miles ”

“ The Great Mutiny--Sir Charles Metcalfe's prediction--Signs of the times--Barrackpore--Meerut--Delhi--Fateful delay--Lucknow-- Cawnpore--John Nicholson--End of defence--Success of attack-- Retribution--Final question.
INDIA THROUGH THE AGES
PART I
THE ANCIENT AGE
As the mind's eye travels backwards across the wide plains of Northern India, attempting to re-people it with the men of olden time, historical insight fails us at about the seventh century B.C. From that date to our own time the written Word steps in to pin protean legend down to inalterable form. ”

“ He goes to original sources, gives various hypotheses, epitomizes diverse writers on the subject, and finally raises the question whether or not in ancient days atmospheric conditions, food, and a different and more uniform climate might not have caused an unprecedented prolongation of human life. He does not, of course, credit the ancient literature of India, where holy men are said to have lived eighty thousand years and where in the most flourishing period of Indian antiquity the term of one hundred thousand was regarded as the average length of the life of saints. ”