CHAPTER VIII. THE SANSKRITIC HINDOOS. SECTION I.-GEOGRAPHY OF INDIA. Hindoos tan. THE peninsula of Hindoostan contains almost a million and a quar- India, or ter square miles. This great domain of Southern Asia is divided physically into three very distinct tracts, one towards the north-west, consisting of the basin drained by the Indus; one towards the east, or the basin drained by the Ganges; and one towards the south, or the peninsula proper. The north-western division, or the Indus valley, is the only one connected with ancient history. This region has already been described in our geographical account of the provinces of the Medo-Persian Empire. The portion of India north of the Vindya mountains was anciently called Hindoostan, and the region south of that range was designated as the Deccan. and Area. Hindoostan is bounded on the north by the Chinese Empire; on the Location east by Burmah, Siam and the Bay of Bengal; on the south by the Indian Ocean; and on the west by the Arabian Sea, Beloochistan and Afghanistan. It is about eighteen hundred miles in extent from north to south, and in its widest part about fifteen hundred miles from east to west. Its area is one million four hundred thousand square miles, and it contains about two hundred and fifty million inhabitants. The Himalaya mountains, which extend along its northern border, divide it from Thibet, and are the highest in the world; one of its peaks, Mt. Everest, almost six miles high, being the loftiest mountain peak on the globe. These mountains rise in successive stages from the plains, forming several parallel ridges, their tops being covered with perpetual snow. The Western Ghauts are a mountain range along the western shore of Hindoostan, reaching an elevation of almost two miles. The Eastern Ghauts are a less lofty mountain chain along the eastern coast. Moun tains. The The Ganges is the principal river of Hindoostan. It rises in the Himalaya mountains; and, after a winding course of eight hundred Ganges. miles among these chains, flows through the delightful plains for thir 613 The Indus. teen hundred miles, reaching the sea by many channels. A triangular island, two hundred miles long, is formed and intersected by several currents. The western branch, called the Hoogly river, is navigable by ships. The Ganges is the sacred river of the Hindoos, who believe that it has the power to cleanse them from all sin if they bathe in its waters, and therefore it is the object of their highest veneration. The entire navigable portion of this river, and the magnificent region which it drains, with its millions of people, are now under the dominion of Great Britain, which rules the entire peninsula of Hindoostan from the Himalayas on the north to Cape Comorin on the south, and from the frontiers of Burmah on the east to the confines of Afghanistan on the west. The Ganges receives the waters of eleven considerable rivers. It has annual inundations in July and August, caused by the rains and melting snows of the North. The Indus, or river of the Punjab and Scinde in the extreme west, is the second great river of Hindoostan; and rises on the northern slope of the Himalaya mountains in Thibet, and, turning southward, breaks through the mountains and flows southwest into the Arabian Sea. The Indus and its tributaries drain a fertile region called the Punjab, meaning five rivers. The principal tributaries of the Indus are the Chenab, the Sutlej and the Jhelum. The chief rivers of Southern India are the Nerbudda, the Godavery and the Kistna. Valleys The extreme northern part of Hindoostan is mountainous and and Plateaus. rugged. The valley of the Ganges, embracing the chief part of India, consists of a plain of unrivaled fertility, twelve hundred miles long and four hundred miles wide; over which flow large rivers with a tranquil and even current. To the westward is the great Indian desert, six hundred miles long. To the north-west is the extremely-fertile region of the Punjab. Around the Nerbudda is the plateau of Central. India, twelve hundred feet above the level of the sea. Farther south is the plateau of the Deccan, still more elevated. Beyond this, on the east and west, the land sinks into a low, flat region. Climate. The climate of Hindoostan varies greatly in different parts of the country. The vast plains have an almost continual summer, yielding double harvests, with the luxuriant foliage and the parching heat of the torrid zone. The plateaus of Central India exhibit the products of temperate climates. The elevated mountain region to the extreme north displays immense forests of fir, and the mountain summits have the stern features of perpetual winter. The flat region to the south is hot and unhealthy. The year consists of three seasons-the rainy, the cold and the hot. The rainy season lasts from June to October, the cold from November to February, and the hot from March to May. No country in the world is richer in the variety of its vegetable Products. products. Among its trees are the teak, almug, cocoa, betel, banian, jaca, etc. There is an infinite variety of the most delicious fruits, such as oranges, lemons, citrons, dates, almonds, mangoes, pineapples, melons, pomegranates, etc. Spices and aromatic plants abound. portions of the country are extensive tracts covered with impenetrable thickets of prickly shrubs and canes, called jungles, which are the retreat of wild beasts. In some There are a great variety of animals found in India. There are Animals. numerous wild and tame elephants, which have been trained to the service of man from time immemorial, for war and the chase, as well as for beasts of burden and travel. The royal Bengal tiger is almost equal to the lion in strength, and is peculiar to India. The rhinoceros, the lion, the bear, the leopard, the chetah, or hunting leopard, the panther, the fox, the antelope, various kinds of deer, the nylghau, the wild buffalo, the yak, or grunting ox, are among the more important quadrupeds. The forests abound in monkeys, and huge crocodiles and venomous serpents of large size are found in the marshes. An infinite variety of birds of rich plumage are found in the jungles and the forests. Hindoostan produces an abundance of minerals, such as iron, copper Minerals. and lead. Diamonds are produced by washing in several places on the Kistna and Godavery. Golconda has long been renowned for its diamonds and other precious gems. Off the southern coast of Hindoostan is the fine island of Ceylon, Ceylon. about three hundred miles long and about one hundred wide. The coast is low and flat, and the interior abounds in mountains of moderate height. The island produces fine fruits, and is celebrated for its cinnamon. The chief town is Colombo. The natives are the Cingalese and the Candians. The island belongs to Great Britain. Missionaries have been successful in converting the natives, and many English have settled in the country, and have introduced European improvements. The Hindoos are nearly black, though belonging to the Caucasian race, and to the Aryan branch. The Greeks had not heard of the country until Alexander the Great had invaded it. It was then and long afterwards called India, the term being applied to the entire region between China and the Arabian Sea. Afterward geographers divided it into India beyond the Ganges, and India within the Ganges. The former is at present termed Farther India, and the latter Hindoostan. In ancient times Hindoostan was divided into many petty kingdoms of which we know nothing; and so it has remained for ages, except that the Mogul empire several centuries ago comprehended the entire coun Petty States One People. try, as does the British dominion at the present time. Though divided into many tribes and castes, the Hindoos are one people. Hindoostan has been invaded by the world's great conquerors, such as Alexander the Great, Mahmoud of Ghiznee, Zingis Khan and Tamerlane; and was the seat of the great empire of Aurungzebe several centuries ago. Un changeableness. No SECTION II.-HINDOO ORIGIN AND CIVILIZATION. INDIA has been a land of mystery from the most remote antiquity. From the most ancient times it has been known as one of the most populous regions of the globe, " full of barbaric wealth and a strange wisdom." This celebrated land has attracted many of the great conquerors of the world's history, and has been overrun and subdued by the armies of Darius Hystaspes, of Alexander the Great, of Mahmoud of Ghiznee, of Zingis Khan, of Tamerlane, of Nadir Shah, of Lord Clive and Sir Arthur Wellesley. These conquerors, from the Persian king to the British East-India Company, have overrun and plundered India; "but have left it the same unintelligible, unchangeable and marvelous country as before. It is the same land now which the soldiers of Alexander described the land of grotto temples dug out of solid porphyry; of one of the most ancient pagan religions of the world; of social distinctions fixed and permanent as the earth itself; of the sacred Ganges; of the idol of Juggernaut, with its bloody worship; the land of elephants and tigers; of fields of rice and groves of palm; of treasuries filled with chests of gold, heaps of pearls, diamonds and incense. But, above all, it is the land of unintelligible systems of belief, of puzzling incongruities, and irreconcilable contradictions." The sacred books of the Hindoos are of the greatest antiquity, and their literature is one of the richest that has ever been produced, exRecords. tending back twenty or thirty centuries. Yet the Hindoos have no Ancient history, no annals, no authentic chronology, for history belongs to this world, and chronology belongs to time. But the Hindoos take no interest in this world or in time. The ancient Egyptians considered events so important that they wrote on stone and upon the imperishable records of the land the most trifling occurrences and affairs of everyday life, inscribing them upon tombs and obelisks. But the Hindoos regarded this world and human events of so little account in comparison with the infinite world beyond this life that they made no record of even the most important events, and were thus the most unhistoric people on earth, caring more "for the minutiae of grammar, or the subtilties of metaphysics, than for the whole of their past." The only certain date which has escaped the general obscurity shrouding ancient India is that of the Hindoo prince Chandragupta, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and called Sandracottus by the Greek historians. He became king B. C. 315, when Gautama the Buddha had been dead, according to the Hindoo account, one hundred and sixty years. According to this account Buddha must have died B. C. 477. This is the only date transmitted to us by the ancient Hindoos. coveries. But in recent years light has dawned upon us from an unexpected Recent Literary source. While we can derive no knowledge concerning the history of DisIndia from its literature, or from its inscriptions or carved temples, the science of language comes to our assistance. "The fugitive sounds, which seem so fleeting and so changeable, prove to be more durable monuments than brass or granite." The study of the Sanskrit language the sacred, and now obsolete, language of the ancient Brahmanic Hindoos-has given us light concerning the ethnic origin of this people and their migration from their primeval home to the land of the Indus and the Ganges. "It has rectified the ethnology of Blumenbach, has taught us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe, and has given us the information that one great family, the Indo-European, has done most of the work of the world." It informs us that this family, the Aryan, or Indo-European, consists of seven races the Hindoos, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, who all migrated from their prehistoric ancestral home in Central Asia to the South of Asia and Europe; and the Celts, the Teutons and the Slavs, who entered Europe to the north of the Caucasus and the Caspian. This light has been furnished us by the new science of comparative philology. The comparison of the languages of the seven races just mentioned has made it clear that all these races were originally one; that they migrated from a region of Central Asia east of the Caspian and north-west of India; that they were originally a pastoral or nomad people and gradually adopted agricultural habits as they descended from the plains of the modern Turkestan into the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges and overspread the plateau of Iran. In these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the same, the grammatical constructions are also the same, thus furnishing abundant evidence that the seven languages are descended from one common mother-tongue. The original stock of the great Indo-European race in Central Asia before its dispersion has likewise been conjectured from the linguistic evidence before us. The original stock has been called Aryan, a designation which is found in Manu, who says: "As far as the eastern and western ceans, between the mountains, lies the land which the wise have named Arya-vesta, or inhabited by honorable men." The people The Aryans. |