HINDU COLONIZATION OF THE WORLD. All places, that the eye of heaven visits There is no virtue like necessity. -SHAKESPEARE: Richard 11. THE turning point in the history of India, nay, in the history of the world, was the Mahabharata-the death-stroke to Indiau prosperity and glory. Before this catastrophe, Hindu civilization was in full vigour. It declined gradually after the Mahabharata till it was attacked first by the Arab semi-barbarism, and then by the European civilization. Simplicity with refinement, honesty with happiness, and glory with power and peace, were the splendid results of the Hindu civilization: complexity with outward polish, selfishness and cunning with progress and prosperity, success with immoderate vanity, wealth with misery are the offsprings of the latter. The Mahabharata was a war not only between man and man, but between the two aspects of the heart, the two phases of the mind. There are two remarkable features of that period, differing in nature but coinciding in their effect on India. These were destruction and emigration. The good and the great men of India either emigrated or were killed: the effect upon India was the same-inimical to her prosperity. Whole tribes were killed: whole races emigrated. It is true that, in addition to many civilizing expeditions, there had been tribal emigrations before that momentous period. But these later emigrations sucked out the life-blood of India. These emigrations, as also the settlements and colonies of ancient Greece, differed in an important respect from the modern settlements of the Europeans. The Grecian settlements attracted the best men of Greece; and the Indian emigrations helped powerfully to set in motion those disintegrating forces that have undermined our national superiority, destroyed our independence and ruined our society and religion. But there is no evil that is an unmixed evil: to every cloud there is a silver lining. In the present case, India's loss was the world's gain. Though India's greatness began to decline, the entire Western world from Persia to Britain received in the colonists the seeds of their future greatness. The Mahabharata was thus fraught with world-wide consequences. Says Mr. Pococke: "But, perhaps, in no similar instance have events occurred fraught with consequences of such magnitude, as those flowing from the great religious war which, for a long series of years, raged throughout the length and breadth of India. That contest ended by the expulsion of vast bodies of men, many of them skilled in the arts of early civilization, and still greater numbers warriors by profession. Driven beyond the Himalayan mountains in the north, and to Ceylon, their last stronghold in the south, swept across the valley of the Indus on the west, this persecuted people carried with them the germs of the European arts and sciences. The mighty human tide that passed the barrier of the Punjab, rolled onward towards its destined channel in Europe and in Asia, to fulfil its beneficent office in the moral fertilization of the world."1 It is, of course, true that emigration from India had been going on from time immemorial. Notwithstanding the marvellous fertility of the soil and the wonderful industries that flourished in the country, India had to plant colonies to provide for her superabundant population. Professor Heeren says:-"How could such a thickly-peopled, and in some parts overpeopled country as India have disposed of her superabundant population except by planting colonies; even though intestine broils (witness the expulsion of the Buddhists) had not obliged her to have recourse to such an expedient ?"2 The earliest emigration appears to date sometime after Manu. One of the oldest colonies founded by the Hindus was in Egypt; America, with some other countries, was also colonised before the last great Migration. The principal migration to Greece took place soon after the Great War. The word kapi3 for ape appears in the heiroglyphic writings of Greece of the 17th century B.C., which shows that the colonization of Greece must be dated long anterior to the era of Moses. It would perhaps be interesting to know the exact time when the Mahabharata took place. In determining dates our efforts are clogged at every step by the dearth of historical records. But it is not in historical literature alone that we have to 1 India in Greece, p. 26. 2 Historical Researches, Vol. II, P. 310. mourn this loss. Every branch of literature, every science and art has suffered from the ravages of ignorant fanaticism. Some have disappeared completely; others have come down to us in a more or less mutilated form. The present scarcity of historical works, however, should not be regarded as a proof of the absence of the Art of History any more than the present poverty of the country be accepted as a proof of its indigence in ancient times. For one thing, the enmity of Aurangzeb towards all historical writings is well known. But it is the Arab, Afghan and Tartar semi-barbarism that is responsible for the destruction of literature, whether in Egypt or in India, in Persia or in Greece. The destruction of the Alexandrian Library was one af those notorious feats by which the progress of humanity was put back by a thousand years. But the loss to humanity by the wholesale destruction of the libraries of India is beyond calculation. That eminent antiquarian and explorer, Rai Bahadur Sarat Chander Dass, says: "In the lofty ninestoried temple at Buddha Gaya, which was formerly called the Mahagandhola (Gandhalaya), the images of the past Buddhas were enshrined. The nine-storied temple called Ratandadhi of Dharamganja (university) of Nalanda was the repository of the sacred books of the Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhist Schools. The temple of Odantapuri Vihara, which is said to have been loftier than either of the two (Buddha Gaya and Nalanda) contained a vast collection of Buddhist and Brahminical works, which, after the manner of the great Alexandrian Library, was burnt under the orders of Mohamed Ben Sam, general of Bakhtyar Khilji, in 1212. A.D.”1 The Hindustan Review for March, 1906 p. 187 (Universities in Ancient India). |