Indian literature

“ THE VEDIC PERIOD On the very threshold of Indian literature more than three thousand years ago, we are confronted with a body of lyrical poetry which, although far older than the literary monuments of any other branch of the Indo-European family, is already distinguished by refinement and beauty of thought, as well as by skill in the handling of language and metre. From this point, for a period of more than a thousand years, Indian literature bears an exclusively religious stamp ”

“ When once they have drunk of English literature they see the world from a new stand-point, their intellectual centre of gravity is permanently changed, and they judge every question by reference to their new standard of the duty of independent private judgment. Some English writers have imagined that the European culture which Indians acquire is never more than a veneer, and they have drawn fanciful pictures of the way in which the Indian reverts under the stress of excitement to the ways and feelings of his forefathers. ”

“ The great interest, however, which these two subjects must have for us lies, not so much in the results they attained, as in the fact that every step in the evolution of religion and philosophy can be traced in Sanskrit literature.
The importance of ancient Indian literature as a whole largely consists in its originality. Naturally isolated by its gigantic mountain barrier in the north, the Indian peninsula has ever since the Aryan invasion formed a world apart, over which a unique form of Aryan civilisation rapidly spread, and has ever since prevailed. ”

“ No Indian novel, indeed, has been written which displays greater power of picturesque description, or better acquaintance with the distinctive varieties of castes, race, and habits, that make up the composite population of India. It was for a long time the only Indian novel in which the dramatis personæ are entirely native. ”

“ No one has so truly interpreted the Indian mind—no one, transcribing Indian thought into our literature, has retained so high and serious a level, and quite apart from the rarity of themes and setting—the verses remain—true poems. ”

“ To the European mind the history of the Indian drama cannot but be a source of abundant interest; for here we have an important branch of literature which has had a full and varied national development, quite independent of Western influence, and which throws much light on Hindu social customs during the five or six centuries preceding the Muhammadan conquest. ”

“ For various reasons, the Indian peoples of all social conditions, did never combine together to attain an object of common aspiration; the high class literary men of ample leisure and decent competence have always created a literature in India, which the common people settled in industrious or agricultural life, could never take any interest in. ”

“ The characteristic features of the Indian drama which strike the Western student are the entire absence of tragedy, the interchange of lyrical stanzas with prose dialogue, and the use of Sanskrit for some characters and of Prākrit for others. ”

“ It is a source of regret to those who are awake to the knowledge that there is a valuable field of literature in Indian folklore, that so little has been recorded. Even the best libraries contain few works upon the subject. ”

“ The proneness of the Indian mind to reflection not only produced important results in religion, philosophy, and science; it also found a more abundant expression in poetry than the literature of any other nation can boast. Scattered throughout the most various departments of Sanskrit literature are innumerable apophthegms in which wise and noble, striking and original thoughts often appear in a highly finished and poetical garb. These are plentiful in the law-books; in the epic and the drama they are frequently on the lips of heroes, sages, and gods ”

“ There was poetry in their faith, in their customs, in their language, at once laconic and picturesque—and even in the names they bestowed on each tribe, each chief and warrior, on mountain and river. One can hardly suppress a feeling of regret that so much of wild romance and valor should have been swept from the face of the earth, unless we call to mind the shadow of the picture—the Indian’s cruelty, perfidiousness and savage lust. ”

“ There is no danger of painting Indians, so that they will become attractive to civilized people; and there is no need of painting them more hideously than they paint themselves.
There is a bright and pleasing side to Indian character; and thinking that there has been enough written of their wars and their cruelties, of the hunter’s and the fisherman’s life, I have sat down by their firesides, and listened to their legends, and tried to become acquainted with their domestic habits, and to understand their finer feelings, and the truly noble traits of their character. ”

“ How quickly their sound arrests the attention of the traveler and stranger? How softly their syllables fall from the lips of beauty. There seems a magic spell about them. May it be their protection from any change. It is but just that the streams that first knew the Indians in their pride and glory should retain the melody of their language.
In many instances, the Indian character has been found capable of great refinement from education, and of the few who have been placed in our colleges, some have evinced superior talents. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As impressive as his achievements in domesticating plants, in building massive structures, and in developing symbolism and aesthetic values to match his material advances, the Indian’s greatest heights were reached in his philosophy on nature and life. He conceived himself to be, not master of creation, but a single factor in the scheme of things. ”

“ The Indians are prolix, and attach value to many minutiae in the relation which not only does not help forward the denouement, but is tedious and witless to the last degree. The gems of the legends--the essential points--the invention and thought-work are all preserved.
Their chief value I have ever thought to consist in the insight they give into the dark cave of the Indian mind--its beliefs, dogmas, and opinions--its secret modes of turning over thought--its real philosophy; and it is for this trait that I believe posterity will sustain the book. ”

“ The beauty of Indian legend—the thrill of Indian adventure—the poetry of the Indian’s religion, and, above all, the sturdy manhood and the idealism of the Indian boy will be an inspiration to every child. ”

“ Day after day the people congregate to listen, with rapt attention, to the old national stories, and the moral lessons drawn from them, for their instruction, by the Pandits. To this day a considerable proportion of the people of India order much of their lives upon the models supplied by their venerable epics, which have, [10] moreover, mainly inspired such plastic and pictorial work as the Indian people have produced; being for the Hindu artist what the beautiful creations of Greek fancy, or the weird myths of the Middle Ages, have been for his European brother. ”

“ She is an earnest thinker and worker, and realizing that the Indian is being educated out of his customs and costumes, out of his native haunts—out of everything except history and a few well-written descriptions of his life and character and the poetry of his nature—she has joined the rank of painters who are preserving some of the picturesque aspects of Indian life on the plains. ”

“ Perhaps no other people enjoy good stories better, and are more apt at telling them, than are the Indians. This art, most highly prized in a race without books, serves as a necessary outlet to their imaginations, and wonderfully enlivens their social and family life. The time for telling Indian stories is in the evening—best of all, around a glowing wood fire, on the long nights of winter. Here, every accent, every gesture, has its meaning, no faintest shade of which is lost upon the circle of attentive listeners. ”

“ A literary friend, of good judgment, of Detroit, writes (19th) : "Your tales have reached me, and I have read them over with a deep interest, arising from a double source--the intrinsic value of such stories and the insight they give of Indian intellect and modes of thought. They form a truly important acquisition to our literary treasures, as they throw a light oft the Indian character which has been imparted from no other quarter. ”

“ But all this seems to flit through the Indian mind as a dream, and furnishes him rather the source of a pleasing secret retrospection than any spring to present and future exertions. He pines away as one that is fallen, and despairs to rise. He does not seem to open his eyes on the prospect of civilization and mental exaltation held up before him, as one to whom the scene is new or attractive. ”

“ Our palates are accustomed to the food which they have supplied to us from our very childhood, and hence whatever comes to us now from the thought-mines of India is generally put aside as merely curious or strange, whether in language, mythology, religion, or philosophy. But however foreign Indian thought may appear to us, it has filled an important place in the growth of the human race, and that growth is important, whether it took place on the borders of the Ilissos or on the shores of the Ganges. In India we still see, as it were, the last traces of the primordial surprise at this world. ”

“ 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 absence of dates and facts, to mark the course of his migration, remits us to conjecture, or the scarcely more reliable resource of tradition—the want of history has made him a character of romance. The mere name of Indian gives the impression of a shadowy image, looming, dim but gigantic, through a darkness which nothing else can penetrate. ”

“ We knew many of their present stalwart braves in those days of early life when the Indian and white alike forget disguise, but in the unchecked exuberance of youthful feeling show the real character that policy and habit may afterwards so much conceal; and we know that, under the stolid stoic look he assumes, there is burning in the Indian’s nature a heart of fire and feeling, and an all-observing keenness of apprehension, that marks and remembers everything that occurs, and every insult he receives. ”

“ We think of the real India as we see it in the thinker—the seeker after the unknown God, with his wistful eyes. "The Lord beholding him loved him," and we cannot help loving as we look. And there is the Indian woman hidden away from the noise of crowds, patient in her motherhood, loyal to the light she has. ”

“ DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL MANNERS OF THE INDIANS, WHILE ON THEIR WINTERING GROUNDS.
The Indian, who takes his position as an orator, in front of his people, and before a mixed assemblage of white men, is to be regarded, in a measure, as an actor, who has assumed a part to perform. He regards himself as occupying a position in which all eyes are directed upon him, in scrutiny, and he fortifies himself for the occasion, by redoubled efforts in cautiousness and studied stoicism. ”

“ He finds in them a central idea, of a Divine Man of miraculous birth and superhuman attributes, who was sent among the red-men from the Great Spirit to subdue the monsters of the forest and rivers, and teach them their arts; and that it is right to judge the character and capacity of the Indians in the light of this conception as we measure civilized peoples by their highest attainments in art, science, and literature. ”

“ The mental powers of the Indian constitutes a topic which we do not design to discuss. But it must be manifest that some of their peculiarities are brought out by their system of mythology and spirit-craft. War, public policy, hunting, abstinence, endurance and courageous adventure, form the leading topics of their mental efforts. These are deemed the appropriate themes of men, sages and warriors. But their intellectual essays have also a domestic theatre of exhibition. It is here that the Indian mind unbends itself and reveals some of its less obvious traits. ”

“ Woven out of the old-time sagas of a remarkable people, “the ancient Aryans of India, in many respects the most wonderful race that ever lived on Earth,” [2] the Sanskrit epics must have a permanent interest for educated people in every land; while all Indian studies must have an attraction for those who desire to watch, with intelligent appreciation, the wonderfully interesting transformations in religion and manners, which contact with Western civilization is producing in the ancient and populous land of the Hindus. ”

“ As the latter has long been held up as a model, and the excellencies of its plan attributed to some unknown, but great and sagacious, learned and refined mind, we might feel justified in assigning the richness of forms, the exceeding flexibility, and the characteristic beauties and excellencies of the Indian tongues, to a mind of far superior wisdom, ingenuity, and experience. Yet how perfectly gratuitous would this be! All history bears testimony against the human invention and designed alteration of language ”