Auld lang syne. Second series : $b My Indian friendsMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
History
Auld lang syne. Second series : $b My Indian friends
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
India; Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900 -- Friends and associates
If I finish here the list of my Indian friends, it is not because I have
no more names to add. We have lately had a book called “Representative
Indians,” by C. P. Pillai, 1897, containing biographical sketches of
thirty-six distinguished Hindus and Parsis. Many of them I have known or
corresponded with, but of their sentiments, their hopes and
disappointments, I know but little. The undercurrent of their life, the
deeper motives of their actions, are under a kind of purdah, and we
hardly ever get either autobiographical confessions or outspoken
memoirs. This is a pity, and naturally deprives reminiscences of Indian
friends of much of that human interest which everybody feels when
catching glimpses of the more intimate life of distinguished persons. We
seldom hear of a good or smart saying from a Hindu, such as we have in
large numbers from English, German, or French statesmen or poets. The
people of India are still a deep secret to us, and if I have succeeded
in withdrawing the curtain from only a small portion of their inmost
thoughts and feelings, if, here and there, I have helped to change mere
curiosity about them into a warm human sympathy with them, my
reminiscences will have fulfilled their true object. In some respects,
and particularly in respect to the greatest things (τὰ μέγιστα), India
has as much to teach us as Greece and Rome, nay, I should say more. We
must not forget, of course, that we are the direct intellectual heirs of
the Greeks, and that our philosophical currency is taken from the
capital left to us by them. 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. Their earliest
thinkers seem still to feel strange in it, while Greeks and Romans are
thoroughly at home in their little world. No doubt the Greeks as well as
the Indians saw the riddles of the world, were perplexed by them, and
tried to solve them. But while Greeks and Romans, and later on the
leading races of Europe also, settled down to their practical work in
life, the Indians, at least the leading thinkers among them, never felt
quite at ease even in their beautiful forests, by the side of their
mighty rivers, or under the shadow of their gigantic snow-mountains in
the north. They never cared so intensely for this span of life on earth
as the Greeks did. Hence they never brought political life to its full
development, like the Greeks and Romans; they never strove to conquer
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