the Puranas is quite inadequate to enable the reader to form an idea of their importance, as lighthouses to a great Past. The Agni Purana, for instance, contains particulars of the military organization of the Hindus, which in consequence of the loss of the Dhanur Veda are of especial importance. The Deva Purana mentions the brahmastra, which proves the use of fire-arms by the Hindus in those days. The Padma Purana contains a treatise on the geography of India in particular and the Universe in general, which is of very great importance. Matsya Purana explains the source from which the Jewish, the Christian and the Mohamedan story of the Deluge and their cosmogony are derived. Garuda Purana contains a treatise on precious stones, astrology and palmistry; a system of medicine is contained in the Agni Purana, while theories of creation are to be found in almost all of them. Some Puranas throw important light on the industries and arts of ancient India, and may, if properly understood and followed, yet help the Indians to improve their position in the industrial world. It must, however, be admitted that sometimes, with a grain of useful information, there will be found a lot of useless chaff. On the whole, the Puranas have as much claim to be regarded as the religious books of the Hindus as the Encyclopædia Britannica has to be accepted as the religious books of Englishmen. As to the antiquity of their contents there is no doubt. Professor H. H. Wilson says: "And the testimony that establishes their existence three centuries before Christianity, carries it back to a much more remote antiquity—to an antiquity that is probably not surpassed by any of the prevailing fictitious institutions or beliefs of the ancient world."

PHILOSOPHY.

How charming is divine philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose
But musical as Apollo's flute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

--MILTON: Comus.

PHILOSOPHY is the real ruler of the globe: it lays down principles which guide the world. Philosophy shows how a transcendent genius exacts homage consciously or unconsciously from lower intellects. It is philosophy that blows the trumpet blast, and it is philosophy that blunts the edge of the sword. Philosophy reigns supreme, undisputed and absolute. It conquers the conqueror and subdues the subduer.

If it is true that a great nation alone can produce great philosophers or complete systems of philosophy, the ancient Indians may, without hesitation, be pronounced to have been the greatest nation, ancient or modern. "Philosophers," says Professor Max Muller, "arise after the security of a State has been established, after wealth has been acquired and accumulated in certain families, after schools and universities have been founded and taste created for those literary pursuits which even in the most advanced state of civilization must necessarily be confined to but a small portion of an ever- toiling community."

To what high pinnacle of civilization, then, must the ancient Indians have reached, for, says Professor Max Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 564, 65.

Muller further on that "the Hindus were a nation of philosophers."1

The philosophy of the Hindus is another proof of their superiority in civilization and intellect to the moderns as well as the ancients. Manuing says: "The Hindus had the widest range of mind of which man is capable."2

Schlegel speaks of the noble, clear and severely grand accents of Indian thought and says : "Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealism of reason, as is set forth by Greek philosophers, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigour of Oriental idealism like a feeble promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun-faltering and feeble and ever ready to be extinguished.

993

Professor Weber, speaking of Hindu philosophy, says: "It is in this field and that of grammar that the Indian mind attained the highest pitch of its marvellous fertility."4 "The Hindus," says Max Muller, “were a people remarkably gifted for philosophical abstraction."5 Schlegel says: "India is preeminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge."

Like all other things in India, the Hindu philosophy, too, is on a gigantic scale. Every shade of opinion, every mode of thought, every school of philosophy has found its expression in the philosophical writings of the Hindus and received its full development. Sir W. Hunter says: "The

2Ancient and Mediæval 4Weber's Indian Literature,

1 Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 31. India, Vol. I, p.114, 3 History of Literature, p. 27. 5Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 566. P. 126.

History of Literature,

problems of thought and being of mind and matter and soul apart from both, of the origin of evil, of the sommum bonum of life, of necessity and freewill, and of the relations of the creator to the creature, and the intellectual problems, such as the compatibility of evil with the goodness of God and the unequal distribution of happiness and misery in this life, are endlessly discussed. Brahmin Philosophy exhausted the possible solutions of these difficulties and of most of the other great problems which have since perplexed Greeks, Romans, Mediæval schoolmen and modern men of science."

Speaking of the comprehensiveness of Hindu philosophy, Dr. Alexander Duff is reported to have said, in a speech delivered in Scotland, that "Hindu philosophy was so comprehensive that counterparts of all systems of European philosophy were to be found in it."

Professor Goldstücker2 finds in the Upanishads "the germs of all the philosophies. Count Bjornstjerna says: "In a metaphysical point of view we find among the Hindus all the fundamental ideas of those vast systems which, regarded merely as the offspring of phantasy, nevertheless inspire admiration or account of the boldness of flight and of the faculty of human mind to elevate itself to such remote ethereal regions. We find among them all the principles of Pantheism, Spinozism and Hegelianism, of God as being one with the universe; of the eternal spirit descended on earth in the whole spiritual life of mankind; of the return of the emanative sparks after death to their divine origin; of the uninterrupted alternation between life and death, which is

Indian Gazetteer, pp. 213, 214.

2 Ancient and Medieval India, Vol, I, p. 149.

nothing else but a transition between different modes of existence. All this we find again among the philosophers of the Hindus exhibited as clearly as by our modern philosophers more than three thousand years since."1

Even with the limited knowledge of Hindu philosophy and science that could be obtained at the time, Sir William Jones could say: "I can venture to affirm without meaning to pluck a leaf from the neverfading laurels of our immortal Newton, that the whole of his theology, and part of his philosophy, may be found in the Vedas, and even in the works of the Sufis. The most subtle spirit which he suspected to pervade natural bodies, and lying concealed in them, to cause attraction and repulsion, the emission, reflection and refraction of light, electricity, califaction, sensation and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus as a fifth element, endued with those very powers."

Mrs. Besant says: "Indian psychology is far more perfect a science than European psychology.'

1 Theogony of the Hindus, pp. 29, 30. As an instance of Mr. James Mill's stupidity, if stupidity is compatible with learning, one may cite his opinion that the Hindus were extremely barbarous, for they cultivated metaphysics so largely. Prof. Wilson takes exception to it, and says: "With regard to the writer's theory that the cultivation of metaphysics is a proof rather of barbarism than of civilization, it may be asked, if Locke, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Schelling were barbarous."Mill's History of India, Vol. I, p. 74, footnote. Mr. James Mill is a conspicuous instance of a man whose mind becomes completely warped by prejudice. Mill's mind could conceive most absurd impossibilities.

Mr. Mill," says Wilson, "seems inclined to think that it was not impossible that the Pyramids had dropped from the clouds or sprung out of the soil." How this perverted intellect could educate one of the greatest English thinkers is a problem of some psychological interest.

2 Lecture on National Universities in India (Calcutta), January, 1906.