The Historians' History of the World 02

The nature of the country and its productions, together with the peculiar genius of the people themselves, both contributed to render Hindu commerce of a passive rather than an active character. For as the productions of India were always in high request with the Western world, the Hindus would clearly have no occasion to transport them to foreign countries themselves; they would of course expect the inhabitants of the latter to come and fetch what they wanted. And again, the Hindu national character has no pretensions to that hardy spirit of adventure, which is capable of achieving the most extraordinary undertakings. While their fables abound with prodigious enterprise, the people themselves are content to lead a quiet and peaceful life, with just so much activity as is requisite to guide the plough or direct the shuttle, without running the risk of hazardous and unnecessary adventure. Their India—their Jambu-dvipa, comprised in their estimation the limits of the known world. Separated from the rest of Asia by a chain of impassable mountains on the north; while on all other sides the ocean formed a barrier, which, if their laws are silent on the subject, yet at least their habits or their customs would not permit them to transgress; we can find no certain proof that the Hindus were ever mariners.b

FOOTNOTES

[19] The original system seems to have been very lax in this respect, and each caste might take wives from the caste or castes below them, as well as their own. “A Sudra woman only, must be the wife of a Sudra; she and a Vaisya of a Vaisya; they too and a Kshattriya of a Kshattriya; those too and a Brahmani of a Brahman.” Manu, iii. 13. And although it was a sin for a Brahman to marry a Sudra woman, yet such things did happen.

[20] Colebrooke on the Indian Classes, Asiat. Research., Vol. LIII.

The Indian Army on the March

Ancient Indian Bas-relief

CHAPTER IV. BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAHMANISM

In the vast highlands formed by the conjunction of the great mountain chains of Bolor-Tagh in the northwest of the Himalayas, where, not far from the sources of the Oxus and other great rivers the tableland of Pamir, “the roof of the world,” extends, a well-built nomadic race, possessing the rudiments of civilisation and calling themselves the “excellent” Aryans, in prehistoric times pastured their horses and flocks. Shut off on the north and east by impassable mountains from Central Asia, the country on the west and south was appointed them for the evolution of their natural capacities. When the Aryans, following the inborn wandering instinct of all pastoral races, left their home, one part of them settled in the mountain districts north and west of the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus), which in the Greek writers bore the names of Sogdiana, Bactriana, Hyrcania, and Arachosia; another part went farther, wandered through the southwestern passes of these mountains, and took possession of the rich, fertile country on the banks of the Indus (Sindh). The former, called the Iranians, or according to their sacred language, the Zend people, evolved in time the state of culture which their conquerors—the Medes and Persians—adopted from them. The latter, called among the other nations of the ancient world, Indians or Hindus, after the principal river of their land, became the creators of that perfected system of religion, of those peculiar political and legal forms, and of that Sanskrit literature, which we still admire in its remains and traditions.

The aborigines, dark-skinned races, of rude customs and wild mode of life, were partly exterminated or pushed back into the forests by the Aryan immigrants, partly subjugated and reduced to the condition of servitude and slavery, and in this way an impassable barrier was erected between the two races.

The deep contempt with which the conquerors looked down upon the conquered increased in the Indian consciousness that self-satisfied conceit which led the Brahmans to consider all people who spoke another language, or who were under other laws, as barbarians, called by them Mlechcha (i.e., weak), with whom they must avoid all intermixture and all social intercourse.