Indian history

“ I had read some flaming picture books of Indian life, and I had mixed all my life more or less with the Indians, that is, such as are willing to mix with us on the border, but the real Indian, the brave, simple, silent and thoughtful Indian who retreats from the white man when he can, and fights when he must, I had never before seen or read a line about. ”

“ It has been said, and reiterated so frequently as to have obtained the familiarity of household words, that it is the doom of the Indian to disappear—to vanish like the morning dew before the advance of civilization—before those who belong by nature to a different, and by education and circumstances to a superior race; and melancholy is it to us—those doomed ones—that the history of this country, in respect to us, and its civilization, has furnished so much ground for the saying, and for giving credence to it. ”

“ By this Chart, any person, however ignorant of the subject, may, by an hour’s attention, obtain a clear view of the broad lines of Indian History, and of the evolutions which have resulted in the dominion of Her Majesty as EMPRESS OF INDIA. It will be found invaluable for Educational Purposes, especially in Colleges and Schools, where an Indian career is in contemplation. ”

“ There is no danger of painting Indians so they will become attractive to the civilized people.
There is a bright and pleasing side to the Indian character, and thinking that there has been enough written of their wars and cruelties, of the hunter's and fisherman's life, I have sat down at their fireside, listened to their legends, and am acquainted with their domestic habits, understand their finer feelings and the truly noble traits of their character. ”

“ Great and powerful as the Indian concieves himself to be, firm and undaunted as he really is, braving all seasons and weathers, careless of dangers, patient of hunger, thirst and cold, and fond of displaying the native energy of his character even in the midst of tortures, at the very thought of which our own puny nature revolts and shudders ”

“ But whatever degree of interest and originality may have been connected with his early observations and discoveries in science, geography, or antiquities, the circumstances which directed his attention to the Indian tribes--their history, manners and customs, languages, and general ethnology, have been deemed to lay his strongest claim to public respect. ”

“ And it is a commonplace of history that one of the main streams of this great migration of the pioneers of the world's civilization entered India through her north-western mountain passes to build up her spiritual character, even as the Indus and the Ganges have broken through the Himalayas to create her physical character. For centuries these Indo-Aryans pushed on their work of colonizing India amid struggles and conflicts with the original inhabitants of the country, and developed a civilization that is reflected in the literature they have created. ”

“ Personally I believe that as our understanding of India progresses, we shall more and more be led to recognise the importance of place and history in accounting for those differentiations which certain common ideas have gradually undergone. ”

“ Connected with them by a long residence, by the exercise of official duties, and by still more delicate and sacred ties, he has been regarded by them as one identified with their history, and received many marks of their confidence.
The Indians, viewed as a distinct branch of the human race, have some peculiar traits and institutions, from which their history and character may be advantageously studied. They hold some opinions, which are not easily discovered by a stranger, or a foreigner, but which yet exert a powerful influence on their conduct and life. ”

“ The boast of the modern Indian that he is of the same race as his English ruler is entirely without basis in fact and the little swarthy native lives amid the monuments of a departed grandeur, 71professing the religion and speaking the tongue of his long-forgotten Nordic conquerors, without the slightest claim to blood kinship. ”

“ I would encourage the Indians to cultivate them. Let them see how much it adds to their comfort, how it insures to their wives and children abundant subsistence; and then you win the Indian over to civilization; you charm him, and he becomes a civilized man. ”

“ These questions, which have divided the minds of millions of men, which have caused rivers of blood to flow, nowadays sound idle and even absurd to our readers, who hear Hindu religion spoken of as mere mythology, and India as some far-off planet; but, at the time of which we are now speaking, the Indian Empire was the centre of the civilised world and master of the known world. ”

“ But while we have made an extraordinary progress in population and resources, and gone far to build up a nationality, and commenced a national literature, very little, if any, progress has been made in clearing up and narrowing the boundaries of historical mystery, which shroud the Indian period prior to 1492. ”

“ Even at that remote age, Hindu civilization must have been hundreds or thousands of years old, and from that time the literary works of successive periods form a continuous picture of the culture and the history of India for three thousand years, so full, so clear, that he who runs may read. ”

“ It is not within the scope of this book to recount the great good that has come to the Indian through this branch of the Indian service, save to make full acknowledgment here of its greatness. It has done much more than attend the Indian's education. Many a tribe, and many individual Indians, have had saved to them tracts of good land, upon which they have worked their way toward civilization. ”

“ Such things have been, nay, are, in India, seeming in truth more fantastic when set down in pen and ink than they do when seen in the warm clasp of that Indian sunlight which shines down indifferently on so many a strange anomaly of caste, and creed, and custom. ”

“ It is certain that under the direction of the Fathers many thousands of the Indians became Christians, learned the arts, and adopted the ways of civilization to an extent which raised them greatly above their nomadic kinsmen of the North. ”

“ Self-contained though it be, and easily thought of as a geographical unit, we must not think of India as a racial, linguistic, or religious unit. We may much more correctly speak of the European race, language, or religion, than of the Indian. ”

“ To those who advocate the application of the laws of civilization to the Indian, it might be a profitable study to investigate the effect which such application produces upon the strength of the tribe as expressed in numbers. ”

“ It is quite unsafe, therefore, to dogmatise about the deficiencies of Ancient Indian civilisation. Yet this much can be said with certainty, that centuries before the birth of Christ India possessed a marvellous civilisation, a wonderful literature, a well organised social system, a conception of government based on law and on the legal rights of subjects inter se, as well as against the ruling monarch. ”

“ It is undoubted that they have done some good, by influencing the Indians to embrace Christianity, and have inculcated the first principles of civilization, particularly in the tribes now under consideration, which shows itself in the desire which they have expressed to be collected in a village, and have lands allotted them for cultivation. ”

“ Cowering under the shadow of a crumbling wall, the Indian drew his blanket over his head, and conjured to his mind's eye the former power and grandeur of his race—that warlike people who, forsaking their own country for causes of which no tradition, however dim, now exists, sought in the fruitful and teeming valleys of the south a soil and climate which their own lands did not afford, and, displacing the wild and barbarous hordes inhabiting the land, raised there a mighty empire, great in riches and civilization. ”

“ They are [Pg 192] emphatically an agricultural and stock-raising people, and perhaps of all the Indian tribes, great and small, are first in general intelligence, in the acquisition of wealth, in the knowledge of the useful arts, and in social and moral progress. The evidences of a real and substantial advancement in these respects are too clear to be questioned ”

“ His tall dignified figure, familiar at court and in the highest circles of society, welcomed alike by the English Church and non-conformists, and equally at home in every circle of society, became in the eyes of those, who for the most part had never before seen an Indian at all, the embodiment of the Indian Empire. ”

“ It gives me great pleasure to say that our Indian affairs appear to be in a more hopeful condition now than ever before. The Indians have made gratifying progress in agriculture, herding and mechanical pursuits. ”

“ The Indian who fells the tree, that he may gather the fruit, 9 and the Arab who plunders the caravans of commerce, are actuated by the same impulse of savage nature, which overlooks the future in the present, and relinquishes for momentary rapine the long and secure possession of the most important blessings. ”

“ As yet I am inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what we call a civilised people seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilisation of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers, which no power can overleap. ”

“ For every palace built by returned Indian nabobs in England; for every investment by fortunate adventurers in India stock; for every cup of wine and delicious viand tasted by the families of Indian growth amongst us, how many of these Indians themselves are now picking berries in the wild jungles, sweltering at the thankless plough only to suffer fresh extortions, or snatching with the bony fingers of famine, the bloated grains from the manure of the high-ways of their native country! ”

“ Today though India is under the wheel of a common fate, a common political, historical and cultural development is going on which is developing in embryonic form the type which is “politically an Indian;” yet an Indian nation is far from being in the growth. ”

“ There is nothing like it in history in any part of the world and the result was that the aboriginal Indians were regarded as ravening wolves or worse and deprived of all sympathy, while the Whites stole their lands and killed their game. No one who knew the true nature of the Indian felt any regret that they were driven off their hunting grounds. This attitude was found wherever the Whites came in conflict with them and explains why they were scarcely regarded as human beings. ”

“ One imagines these men, hardened with intolerable toil, skilled in all the lore of wild life, brave, adventurous, picking up here and there a word or two of Indian speech, adopting Indian names for places which they had no time to name themselves, handing on these strange syllables to those who came after them to settle and to build. ”

“ THE age of laws, rationalism, and philosophy is, in many respects, the most brilliant epoch of India's history, for it was in this period that the Aryans spread forth from the valley of the Ganges and established Hindu kingdoms with Hindu civilization as far as the southernmost boundaries of the peninsula. ”

“ The efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have been before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders of the several Indian tribes with great care, which of itself will be of interest to the student. ”

“ The Government, and others, have scientifically studied the history and characteristics of the Indians, and written them down in books, lest it be forgotten that human beings could be so extraordinary. ”

“ There is no question but that here was the highest development of the Indian race in America. If we accept the accounts given us, here rose an empire which will not suffer by comparison with the flourishing empires of early times in Oriental lands. Let us try and learn what we can of this culture, and see wherein it differed from that of the civilized tribes already discussed.
We must, first of all, acquaint ourselves with the physical features of the country. We can never fairly judge of the civilization or culture of a people until we know their surroundings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among other things that the Indians told us yesterday, one was that they expected their enemies to come and revenge the death of the seven men, and some of our people thought that they had intelligence of their coming to-day, which made us observe the Indian town, where the people seemed more quiet than usual, not attending to their usual occupations of fishing, etc. ”

“ LIV THE FOX
Among the few survivals of the old untamed world there are left us two that retain all the raciness of their ancestral wildness.
Their wits have been sharpened by the attrition of civilization, but it has not smoothed their characteristics down to the level of the commonplace, nor contaminated them with acquired vices as it has their ancient contemporary, the Indian. ”

“ I am satisfied that among the red men of the mountains and the forest you can find as many good, honest persons as among the Anglo-Saxon race. The Indian faithfully follows the traditions and customs of his race. He has been taught to steal and to shed the blood of his enemies, and the most expert in these inhuman practices is considered a great chief or a great brave. ”