East India

“ If I could peer into the dim and distant future, and venture to prophesy, I would venture to foretell that, in after ages, when glorious India, in her regeneration, and under happier auspices, has grown up to maturity, and risen to the zenith of her destiny in becoming one of the grandest empires on earth, her posterity, instructed by Hindu tradition, will learn that the annexation policy of the East India Company originated the Mutiny, and that that policy was also instrumental in leading the Usurpers of Kingdoms into the realms of oblivion for ever. ”

“ So far as the East India Company was concerned, the vast peninsula was at this time what a huge slice of iced plum-cake upon a plate must be to a hungry mouse. That is to say, nice enough for outside nibblings, but with unexplored possibilities of plums within. Every now and again a bolder merchant would dive into the comparatively unknown centre, and come back laden possibly with idol-eyes, rich brocades, jewels in the rough. ”

“ On the other side of the Bay of Bengal is a country, which, though called India, and under the East Indian Government, is not India. The very face of nature is different. It is a country not of vast plains, but of mountains and valleys, and springs that run among the hills; a country with another people than India, another language, and another religion. Looking upon the map of Asia, one sees at its southeastern extremity a long peninsula, reaching almost to the equator, with a central range of mountains, an Alpine chain, which runs through its whole length, as the Apennines run through Italy. ”

“ Neither British nor Portuguese India ever produced a half-caste at all deserving of being ranked in the typical order of man.
Our empire in the East has justly been described as one of opinion, that is to say, it is founded upon the good opinion entertained of us by the natives, and their bad opinion of themselves. In the old times of the Honourable East India Company, when no Englishman or Englishwoman was permitted to reside in India, without formal permission, the people respected us more than they do now. ”

“ East Indians are those off springs of Christians of the East, and they atimes gather the offsprings of Eurasians to the entering their marriage to the East Indian females in the East Indian community, thereby they are called East Indians. ”

“ It is difficult to realise all that the East India Company stood for. It comprised under its head a large shipping line with many of the essential attributes of a ruling nation, and its merchant ships not only opened up to our traders India, but Japan and China as well. ”

“ It is about one hundred years since native troops were first trained to European tactics by the French at the siege of Cuddalore, (1746,) and now the East India Company maintains the immense number of two hundred and forty thousand sepoys. Thus she governs India with Hindu soldiers, and subdues new provinces with levies from those already united to the empire. ”

“ Having thus seen, that the natives of India are in no respect averse to engage in commercial dealings with strangers, and that no prejudices exist among them of a nature to prevent them from using our manufactures; we cannot but be forcibly struck with the reflection, that no systematic plan has ever been adopted by the East India Company, to attract the attention of the Hindoos to the various articles of our home manufacture, or to stimulate their speculation in the traffic of them. ”

“ To judge the East aright, we must know not only what she is, but also how she has become what she is; know, in short, some of the principal phases of her spiritual history as they are reflected in her ancient literature, especially that of India. To interpret to the West the thought of the East, to bring her best and noblest achievements to bear upon our life,—that is today the problem of Oriental philology. ”

“ EAST INDIES, a name formerly applied vaguely, in its widest sense, to the whole area of India, Further India and the Malay Archipelago, in distinction from the West Indies, which, at the time of their discovery, were taken to be the extreme parts of the Indian region. ”

“ And bear in mind that the old East Indiamen set forth on their voyages not with the same light hearts that their modern successors, the steamships of the P. & O. line, begin their journey.6 Before the East India Company’s ships got to their destination, they had to sail right away round the Cape of Good Hope and then across the Indian Ocean, having no telegraphic communication with the world, and with none of the comforts of a modern liner—no preserved foods, no iced drinks or anything of that sort. ”

“ By this expedition the East India Company gained a better knowledge of one of the neighbouring kingdoms, and collected precious documents relating to the resources and productions of a country traversed by an immense river, the Indus of the ancients, which rises in the Himalayas, and might readily serve to transport the products of an immense territory. ”

“ India vexes one sadly because of the irrational, illogical turns of the Indian mind and character, the strange impasses in the Indian brain, the contradictions of traits; and, because of the many things he cannot account for or reach solution of, he quits the country baffled and in irritation—forever the great gulf yawning between the Occidental and the Asiatic. "East is East, and West is West." ”

“ What, however, really renders India so interesting as an object of study is that it is now a living entity. Greece and Rome are dead and have passed away, and we are living so completely in the midst of modern Europe, that we cannot get outside to contemplate it as a whole. But India is a complete cosmos in itself; bounded on the north by the Himalayas, on the south by the sea, on the east by impenetrable jungle, and only on the west having one door of communication, across the Indus, open to the other world. ”

“ The East India Company had its troubles, to be sure, which were many and great, yet it increased in power, wealth, and strength, until at the close of the eighteenth century it had become possessed of a large portion of the continent of India, maintaining its own armies, forts, palaces, Courts of Directors, Boards of Council, Governors, and Typeans. ”

“ The land containing many magnificent tracts, and the climate presenting many varieties of temperature, it has often been urged that that noble 519country presents advantages for settlement which ought no longer to be overlooked. So long as the East India Company’s power existed, any colonising schemes would necessarily prove almost abortive; but now that British India owns no other ruler than the sovereign of England, there may in future years be an opening offered for the thorough examination and testing of this important question, that its merits and demerits may be fairly compared. ”

“ ASIA AND AUSTRALIA The beginning of the nineteenth century was signalized by the initiation of the great trigonometrical survey of India, and the first half-century was a period of much important geographical and anthropological work within that empire, but to no great extent beyond its boundaries, though in 1808 a mission penetrated to the sources of the Ganges, and Baluchistan and Afghanistan were in some part explored by officials of the East India Company. ”

“ This outgrowing of Indian influence, so long continued and so wide in extent, was naturally not the result of any one impulse. At no time can we see in India any passion of discovery, any fever of conquest such as possessed Europe when the New World and the route to the East round the Cape were discovered. ”

“ In the infancy of the European intercourse with India, the sole object of those who engaged in its commerce was, to procure the produce and commodities of the East. In this pursuit, so far were the natives from opposing any obstacles to their endeavours, that they were found disposed to afford every facility to a traffic, which brought them specie in exchange for their manufactures, and for the productions of their soil. ”

“ The East India House in Leadenhall Street was chosen by Lord Stanley as the office of the new Council for India, on account of its internal resources for the management of public business. During more than two centuries and a half, the city of London had contained the head-quarters of those who managed Anglo-Indian affairs. The first meeting of London merchants in 1599, on the subject of East India trade, was held at Founders’ Hall. ”

“ The knowledge of the languages of the East which many of the gentlemen in the service of the East India Company, and the missionaries, possess, has been of infinite service in making us much better acquainted with the antiquities, history, and present state of those countries, than we could possibly have otherwise been. There is at present greater intercourse among even remote nations ”

“ India is made up of a multiplicity of races and tribes, professing every religion of paganism; and these are separated by thousands upon thousands of castes each going its own distinct and peculiar way. Great Britain's control of these teeming millions is unique in the history of oversea rule. India is almost exclusively agricultural, and in sections of Bengal averages 900 people to the square mile. ”

“ The humbler East Indians, if asked their race, reply that they are Wallandez or Oollanday, which is a modification of Hollandais, the name having been brought down through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the Dutch. East Indians have, in India, all the rights and privileges of Europeans. Races with a mixture of European with Asiatic blood possess a proud and susceptible tone of mind. ”

“ He stiffly maintains that the West never has, and, probably, never will, seriously and permanently influence the East in thought and life. While there is a semblance, yea an element, of truth in his contention, so far as the past is concerned, it fails to apply to the India of the present and must fall far wide of the mark in the future. ”

“ But in all Asia north and east of India, excluding most of Siberia but including the Malay Archipelago, Indian influence is obvious. Though primarily connected with religion it includes much more, such as architecture, painting and other arts, an Indian alphabet, a vocabulary of Indian words borrowed or translated, legends and customs. The whole life of such diverse countries as Tibet, Burma, and Java would have been different had they had no connection with India. ”

“ BURMAH, OR FARTHER INDIA.
In America we speak of the Far West, which is an undefined region, constantly receding in the distance. So in Asia there is a Far and Farther East, ever coming a little nearer to the rising sun. When we have done with India, there is still a Farther India to be "seen and conquered." ”

“ We do not (at present) look to the north-east (to China) for the shadows of coming events in India. We look to the north, and looking in that direction we are quite content to write down the approach to India by any serious military force across Tibet or through the northern gateways of Kashmir to be an impossibility.
The footsteps of the Buddhist pilgrim point no road for the tread of armies. In the interests of geographical research it is well to follow their tracks, and to learn how much wiser geographically they were in their day than we are now. ”

“ India is about 1,900 miles in extent from north to south, and 1,600 in breadth in latitude 25° north. The boundaries of this vast country, established by nature for the most part, are the Bay of Bengal (now called a sea in the southern portion) on the south-east, and the Arabian Sea on the south-west. On the north the Himalaya Mountains separate it from China, Thibet, and Turkestan ”

“ In the days of the early explorers, after the islands discovered by Columbus were called the West Indies, some people began to call the Indian continent the East Indies, to distinguish it; and some of the papers about India drawn up for the information of Parliament about Indian affairs still use this name, but it is not a familiar use to most people. ”

“ An European, in the East, may appropriately narrow his field, and confine such a comparison to its great twin river, the Ganges, which, with the Indus, folds, as it were, in the embrace our mighty empire of British India. ”

“ The Himalayas not only form a double wall along the north of India, but at both their eastern and western extremities send out ranges to the south, which protect its north-eastern and north-western frontiers. On the north-east, those offshoots, under the name of the Naga and Patkoi mountains, &c., form a barrier between the civilized districts of Assam and the wild tribes of Upper Burma. On the opposite or north-western frontier of India, the mountainous offshoots run down the entire length of the British boundaries from the Himalayas to the sea. ”

“ When we consider the two important centuries and a half, during which the East Indiamen ships were making history and trade for our country, helping in the most important manner to build up our Indian Empire, fighting the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French, privateers and pirates, and generally opening up the countries of the East, it is to me perfectly extraordinary that the history of these ships has never yet been written. ”

“ The whole of India is watered by rivers, some of which empty themselves into the two largest, the Indus and the Ganges; others discharge themselves into the sea by their own mouths. But all of them have their sources in the Caucasus. At their commencement their course is towards the south; some of them continue to flow in the same direction, particularly those which unite with the Indus; others turn to the east, as the Ganges. ”

“ The bar to frontier progress lies in the desert which stretches east of the Indus from the coast to the land of the five rivers. This is indeed India's second line of defence, and it covers a large extent of her frontier. Conquerors of the lower Indus valley have been obliged to follow up the Indus to the Punjab before striking eastwards for the great cities of the plains. ”