Rambles and Recollections of an Indian OfficialSleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
History
Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official
Sleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
India -- Description and travel
10. This comparison is not a happy one. The elements in some of the
Hindoo myths specially repulsive to European taste are their
monstrosity, their inartistic and hideous exaggeration, their
accumulation of sanguinary horrors, and their childish triviality.
Few of the classical myths exhibit these characteristics. The vanity
or policy of Tiberius and Alexander in believing themselves to be, or
wishing to be believed, divine, has nothing in common with the
grotesque imagination of Puranic Hinduism.
11. The roots of Hinduism are so deeply fixed in a thick soil of
custom and inherited sentiment, the growth of thousands of years,
that English education has less effect than might be expected in
loosening the bonds of beliefs which seem to every one but a Hindoo
the merest superstition. Hindoos who can read English with fluency,
and write it with accuracy, are often extremely devout, and Hindoo
devoutness must ever appear to an outsider, even to a European as
sympathetic as the author, to be no better than superstition. A
Hindoo able to read English with ease has at his command all the rich
stores of the knowledge of the West, but very often does not care to
taste them. Enmeshed in a web of ritual and belief inseparable from
himself, he remains as much as ever a Hindoo, and uses his skill in
English merely as an article of professional equipment. 'Good works
of history and fiction' do not interest him, and he usually fails to
digest and assimilate the physical or biological science administered
to him at school or college. In fact, he does not believe it. The
monstrous legends of the Purânas continue to be for his mind the
realities; while the truths of science are to him phantoms, shadowy
and unsubstantial, the outlandish notions of alien and casteless
unbelievers. These observations, of course, are not universally true,
and a few Hindoos, growing in number, are able to heartily accept and
thoroughly assimilate the facts of history and the results of
inductive science. But such Hindoos are few, and it may well be
doubted if it is possible for a man really to believe the amount of
history and science known to an ordinary English schoolboy, and still
be a devout Hindoo. The old bottles cannot contain the new wine. The
Hindoo scriptures do not treat of history and science in a merely
incidental way; they teach, after their fashion, both history and
science formally and systematically; grammar, logic, medicine,
astronomy, the history of gods and men, are all taught in books which
form part of the sacred canon. Inductive science and matter-of-fact
history are absolutely destructive of, and irreconcilable with,
veneration for the Hindoo scriptures as authoritative and infallible
guides. It is impossible, within the narrow limits of a note, to
discuss the problems suggested by the author's remarks. Enough,
perhaps, has been said to show that the many-rooted banyan tree of
Hinduism is in little danger of overthrow from the attacks either of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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