Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877Kennedy, James
History
Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877
Kennedy, James
India -- Description and travel; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Biography; Missionaries; Missions -- India
The case of a person who has lived through a whole year in a country,
and has during that period moved among the people, is very different
from that of the passing stranger. He knows the climate as a traveller
for a few weeks or even months cannot. The seasons during that year may
have been more or less abnormal, and yet the resident cannot fail to
have obtained that knowledge which enables him to form a notion of what
he has in the main to expect every year. He gets a glimpse into the
character and peculiarities of the different classes of the population,
both native and foreign. He may know little of the language of the
country; but if he has an observing mind, and moves freely about, he is
constantly receiving information about the people in a degree which he
himself does not always realize. If his residence be prolonged for many
years, as he looks back to his first year, and remembers its experience,
he finds that his views have been greatly enlarged, on many points
greatly modified; he is sure that his knowledge is much more accurate
and mature; but there is scarcely any subject on which he finds his
views entirely reversed.
[Sidenote: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE FIRST YEAR.]
This, at least, has been my experience. I have a vivid remembrance of my
first year in Benares--a much more vivid remembrance than I have of
subsequent years, and it would be strange if I did not find that my
views on many Indian subjects have been greatly modified, and on all
much enlarged; but I do not discover that on any subject there has been
a complete reversal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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