History of India from the earliest times to the present day

Front matter

Pliip^ OF INDIA

ASIA

BOUGHT WITH THE JNCOME OF THE

Book 1 India Before The Muhammadan Conquest

CHAPTER

I. The Aryan Hindus ... ... ... ... ... i

II, Brahmanism Re-ascbndant ... ... ... ... i6

III. Early History of India ... ... ... ... 23

, IV, Civilisation of Aryan India ... ... ... ... 37

Book II The Muhammadan Period

I, Early Muhammadan Conquests, a.d. 664 — 1288 ... 4$

II. The Khilji Dynasty of Delhi, a.d. 1290 — 1321 ... 57

III, The Tughlak, Saiyid, and Lodi Dynasties, a.d.

IV, The Contemporary Indian Dynasties ,.. ... 80 V. The Portuguese in India ,,, ,,, ,., ... 92

Book III The Mughal Dynasty Of Babur

CdkT£NfS

CHAPTER PACE

VI. KvuK^HGlVB— (continued) ... ... ... ... 14S

VII. Successors of Aurangzeb, 1707 — 1740... ... ... 156

VIII. The Mughal Empire to the Battle of Panipat, 1740 —

IX. The French and English in India, 1715 — 1751 ... 178

X. The Fight between French and English, 1751—1757 187 XI, The English Triumphant, 1757 — 1761 ... ... 196

Book IV The Rule Of The Company

II. Events in Southern and Upper India, 1761 — 1775 ... 220

IV. Warren Hastings — {eontinued) ... ... ... ... 250

VI. Sir John Shore and Marquess Wellesley, 1793 — 1800 272

Book V The English Paramount

1. Marquess Wellesley — to 1805 ... ... 281

II. Lord Cornwallis and Lord Minto, 1805 — 1813 ... 291

IV. Lord Amherst and Lord William Bentinck, 1823 — 1835 308

VI. Lord Ellenborough and Lord Hardinge, 1842 — 1848... 329

Book VI Consolidation Of English Rule

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XI

Book VII India Under The Crown Chapter Pags

I. Lord Cfjum^aa— (continued) ... ... ... ■••379

II. Lord Elgin and Sir John Lawrence, 1862 — 1869 ... 386

III. Lord Mayo and Lord Northbrook, 1869—1876 ... 396

IV. From Lord Lytton to the Marquess of Lansdowne,

V. The Marquess of Lansdowne, 1889—1894 ... ... 424

VII. Lord Curzon of Kedleston, 1899—1905 ... ... 441

INDEX 487

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PACE

Warren Hastings ... ... ... ... FrentispUce

From the Painting b]^ Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

Emery Walker^ Ltd,^ photographers.

Buddha preaching. Discovered at Sarnath, 1904 ... ... 6

From a Photograph in the possession of the India Office.

Sarnath Capital (Asoka Period) ... „. ... ... 8

From V. A. Smith's " Student's History of India."

Rama and Sita enthroned, attended by Rama's Three Brothers, and the Faithful Hanauman receiving his Orders ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 16

From an Oriental Painting in the British Museum.

From V. A. Smith's " Student's History of India.''

From a MS. of Shah Jahan Nameh, formerly in the possession of Alcbar III., now in the British Mcseum.

From a MS. of Shah Jahan Nanieh, formerly in the possession of Akfcar III., now in the British Museum.

Akbar's Entry into Surat ... ... ... ... ... 114

From a MS. in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Akbar's Tomb at Sikandarah ... ... ... ... 116

XU LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

FACING PAGE

Photo, by Underwood ^ Underwood.

Dargah Mosque at Fatehpur Sikri... ... ... ... ii8

Pluto, by Underwood &■' Underwood.

The Taj Mahal 130

Photo, by Underwood &> Underwood.

From a MS. id the British Museum.

A Street in Old Calcutta, showing Martyrs' Memorial ... 19*

From " Echoes of Old Calcutta."

From the Fainting by Nathaniel Dance, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

Emery Walker, Ltd., photographers.

A View of the Trial of Warren Hastings, before the Court of Peers in Westminster Hall ... ... ..• 254

From the Fainting by Thomas Gainsborough, S.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

Emery Walker, Ltd., photographers.

From the Painting by J. Pain Davis, in the National Portrait Gallery.

Emery Walker, Ltd., photographers.

Marquess of Dalhousie ... ... ... ... ... 348

From the Painting by Sir J. Watson Gordon, R.A., P.R.S.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

Emery Walker, Ltd., photographers.

Ruins of the Residency, Lucknow ... ... ..• ... 37*

Photo, by Underwood &> Underwood.

Earl Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. ... ... ... ••• 45°

Photo, by Bourne &' Shepherd.

Lhasa: the Potala viewed from inside the Western Gate... 462

MAPS

A Map of India at the Beginning of the XIIItM Century xxiv

INTRODUCTION

The empire now ruled by the Viceroy of India includes not only the great Indian peninsula stretching under the shadow of the Himalayas, from the valley of the Indus to that of the Brahmaputra, but also the broad regions watered by the Irrawady and the Salween. This vast area of nearly 1,700,000 square miles exceeds that of all Europe outside Russia. From the northernmost corner of the Punjab to Cape Comorin in the south its greatest length is about 1830 miles, while its breadth eastward from Karachi, near the mouth of the Indus, to the easternmost point of Burma, is even greater. The great mountain-wall of the Himalayas, which forms its northern boundary, curves away from the Yang-tse river westward to the Hindu Kush and the Sulaiman Hills, dividing India from China, Tibet, and Turkistan. The Sulaiman and Hala ranges shut out the Punjab and Sind from their western neighbours in Afghanistan and Baluchistan. On the east the new Burman frontier may be said to march with that of China, Laos, and Siam. The whole length of coast-line from Karachi to the southernmost point of Tenasserim has been reckoned at nearly 4000 miles, while the extent of landfrontier is a thousand miles longer.

From the wild recesses of the towering Himalayas flow down the sources of the great rivers, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, which find their several outlets in the Arabian Se^ and the Bay of Bengal; Pftch of them on it^

XIV INTRODUCTION long course to the ocean is fed by numerous streams, of a volume sometimes equalling its own. Two nearly parallel ranges of hills, the Vindhya and the Satpura, stretching eastward from the Gulf of Cambay to the valley of the Lower Ganges, divide India itself into two unequal parts, Southern India forming a kind of triangle whose point is Cape Comorin, with the double line of hills aforesaid for its base. At its western end the Vindhya range meets the Aravalli, a long, low chain of hills sweeping north-eastward across Rajputana almost to Delhi. In the east it merges into the highlands of Orissa, Chota Nagpur, and Birbhum. Again, from either end two chains of hills, the Eastern and Western Ghats, pass southwards at varying distances from the coast, to meet at last in the Nllgiri or Blue Mountains of Malabar, and to re-appear after a breach of twenty miles in the lofty hills that border Travancore and touch the sea at Cape Comorin. The Western Ghats are much higher than the Eastern, and far more abrupt on their seaward face. Their eastern ridges slope into the table-lands of the Deccan and Mysore, or serve as outworks to the loftier Nilgiris, even as the lower Siwalik range serves as an outwork to the Himalayas between the Sutlej and the Ganges, From the wooded heart of the Vindhyas the Narbada winds along its rocky bed, past the rising city of Jubbulpore, through several hundred miles of rock and forest, until it reaches the Gulf of Cambay, below Broach. Enclosed between the Vindhya and Satpura ranges the Narbada valley separates Southern India from Hindustan Proper. The Tapti flows past the southern slopes of the Satpuras into the same gulf a little below Surat. The Godavari, on the other hand, after leaving the Western Ghats near Nasik, crosses the Nizam's dominions, and, swollen by many tributary streams, empties itself by several mouths into the Bay of Bengal near Cocanada. The Kistna or

INTRODUCTION XV

Krishna also flows from the Western Ghats near Mahabaleshwar, eastward to the Coromandel coast, receiving on its way the Bhima and the Tungabhadra. India altogether abounds in rivers great and small, four of which, including the Irrawady, are more than fifteen hundred miles long, while three of those in Southern India exceed 800 miles. It can boast, however, but few good harbours, chief among which are Bombay, Rangoon, and Moulmein. Goa, another good harbour, belongs to Portugal, and Karachi, the port of Sind, has yet to prove itself a worthy rival of Bombay. Karwar, Cochin, and Vijayadurg, would repay the cost of improving them. The approach to Calcutta on the Hugli is rendered dangerous to large vessels by the " William and Mary " shoal.

Of the few lakes which India possesses nearly all are more or less salt. One of these, the great Rann of Cutch, is 190 miles long, and varies in breadth from two to ninety miles. In the dry season a waste of sand dotted with pools of salt water, it becomes in the rainy season an enormous marsh. From some of these lakes large quantities of salt are manufactured. A long tract of desert stretches from the southern border of Sind to the northern boundary of Rajputana. Nearly all the country, indeed, between the Indus and the Aravalli Hills is a waste of sand, dotted with oases of varying size and fertility. The prevalence of sand and saltpetre in the soil of Upper India points to a time when all India north of the Vindhyas lay buried in the sea, which washed the feet of the Himalayas themselves. The fertile plains now watered by the Ganges and its affluents must have been the work of ages, during which the Himalayan rivers kept bringing down their yearly loads of earth from the mountains to the sea. It appears that the Himalayas themselves, whose snowy peaks now soar to a height ranging from 20,000 to 29,000 feet, have gradually

XVI INTRODUCTION been upheaved by volcanic agency from their ocean beds.

A broad belt of marshy jungle deadly to human life divides these mountains from the adjacent plains. The forests of this " Terai " afford ample means of smelting the iron found on the lower slopes of the hills. Many parts of India are rich in forest trees suited to almost every purpose of use or ornament. The teak of Burma, the Godavari valley, and Malabar; the bamboo of Kaman, Bengal, Burma, and Southern India ; the pines and deodars of the Himalayas ; the sal, ebony, and satin-wood of Central India ; the sandal, iron, and blackwood of Coorg, Mysore, and other districts ; the oak and walnut-wood of Sikkim ; the India-rubber tree of Assam ; the palm-trees of the Tropics, are far from exhausting the list. The noble mangogroves of Hindustan give welcome shade to the traveller weary with marching over miles of sun-burnt plain, and the banyan-tree of Bengal grows into a forest by throwing out new roots from its spreading branches. Cottages are thatched with palm-leaves, and houses built with scaffolding made of bamboos. Cocoa-nut fibre makes excellent rigging, and cocoa-nut oil is highly prized for lamps. Bamboo fibre serves for mats and baskets ; a bamboo stem yields the lightest of lance-shafts, while one of its joints does good duty for a bottle. Most of the houses in all parts of Burma are built entirely of wood. From the sap of the palm-tree is brewed the tari or toddy which forms a favourite drink among certain classes. Another kind of palm yields the betel nut, which natives of every class and both sexes delight to chew. The sal and deodar are largely used for railway sleepers, and in districts where coal is very costly forest timber serves as fuel for steamers and railway trains. All over India there are two harvests yearly ; in some places three. Bajra, jowar, rice, and some other grains are

INTRODUCTION XVll sown at the beginning and reaped at the end of the rainy season. The cold weather crops, including wheat, barley, and some other kinds of grain and pulse, are reaped in the spring. It is a vulgar fallacy that the people of India live on rice. The very opposite 'notion would be nearer the truth. Rice is grown mainly in the moist climate of Bengal, Burma, the Konkan, and Malabar. In Hindustan and the Punjab the staple food is wheat and millet ; in the Deccan a poor kind of grain called ragi. Berar, Khandesh, and Gujarat yield ample crops of cotton. The home of the sugar-cane is in Rohilkhand and Madras. The poppyfields of Malwa and Bengal yield the opium which swells the Indian revenue by more than seven millions a-year. Indigo and jute are mainly raised in Bengal. Coffee has become the staple product of the hill districts in Coorg, Wynaad, and the Nilgiris. The tea-gardens of Assam, Cachar, Sylhet, and the southern slopes of the Himalayas from Kangra to Darjeeling, furnish most of the tea which now finds its way to English markets. The quinine-yielding cinchona is grown in even larger forests on the Nilgiri and Darjeeling Hills. Another medicinal plant of great value, the ipecacuanha, bids fair to thrive in the Sikkim Terai. Cardamoms and pepper abound along the Western Ghats, hemp and linseed are largely exported, and tobacco is widely grown throughout India.

Of fruits and vegetables there is no lack. Mangoes, melons, pumpkins, guavas, custard-apples, plantains, oranges, limes, citrons, and pomegranates, are common everywhere ; figs, dates, and grapes thrive well in many places ; and the pine-apple grows wild in Lower Burma. Cucumbers, yams, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and many vegetables familiar to English palates, are raised abundantly for general use. Flowers of every shape and hue, and often of the richest sgent, from the rose Etnd jasmine to the oleander ^qd the

XVUl INTRODUCTION water-lily, spangle the plains, cover the surfaces of lakes and ponds, or glimmer in climbing beauty among the woods. The rhododendrons of the Himalayas grow like forest trees, and crown the hill-side in April and May with far-spreading masses of crimson blossoms. From the rose-gardens of Ghazipur is extracted the attar, a few drops of which contain the gathered fragrance of a thousand flowers.

The jungles teem with elephants, bears, wild buffaloes, tigers, leopards, panthers, and hyaenas. Wolves and jackals prowl among the ravines in quest of deer and other prey. The lion is chiefly to be found in the wilds of Rajputana and Gujarat ; the camel in the sandy regions of the North .West ; the one-horned rhinoceros among the swamps of the Ganges. Deer of many kinds abound everywhere. Snakes, poisonous and harmless, haunt the jungles and other lonely places. Wild boars are common. Monkeys abound in most parts of the country. The rivers swarm with fish, and alligators bask like huge lizards along their banks. Horses and ponies of divers breeds are used chiefly for riding, while the fields are ploughed and the carts and carriages of the country are drawn by bullocks of the Brahmani type. In many parts of India oxen still serve as carriers of merchandise. Buffaloes are usually kept for milk and ploughing. Sheep and goats are very common, and the Shal goat of Kashmir supplies the soft pashmina of which Indian shawls and other articles of clothing are made.

The woods re-echo with the harsh cry of the peacock and the lively chattering of parrots, woodpeckers, and other birds of gay plumage ; to say nothing of various birds common to India and the West. Eagles and falcons are found in some places ; kites, vultures, and crows abound everywhere. The great adjutant stork of Bengal plays the part of a scavenger in the most populous cities. Pheasants,

INTRODUCTION xix partridges, ortolans, quails, snipes, and wild geese tempt the sportsman at certain seasons. The sparrovy has followed the Englishman into the Himalayas. In one thing, however, India is sadly wanting; the voice of song-birds is almost everywhere mute.

India is fairly rich in minerals of various kinds. Her old wealth in diamonds, rubies, and other gems has well-nigh passed away ; but new stores may be gathered from the mines of Upper Burma. Of less valuable stones, such as opals,, amethysts, garnets, jaspers, cornelians, she still yields a goodly share. Gold in small quantities may be found in the gravels of many streams. Lead mines have been opened in the north-western Himalayas. Rich veins of tin have lately been discovered in Tenasserim and Martaban. Antimony and copper abound in the hill ranges. Petroleum is known to exist in Pegu and Assam. Vast beds of rock-salt occur in the Punjab hills. The mountains of southern India are largely composed of granite, while excellent marble is quarried from the Aravalli range.

Iron ores have been found in many parts of the country, notably in Kaman, Bundelkhand, the Central Provinces, and Lower Bengal. In the Chanda district the surface of a hill two miles long and half-a.-mile broad is covered with masses of pure iron ore. The iron beds in the Kaman hills extend for miles, and the clay of the Damodar coal-fields contains 39 per cent, of iron: From the growing scarcity of charcoal for smelting purposes the native manufacture of iron is fast declining, and the attempts of Englishmen in the same field have hitherto been baffled by the same and other causes. A substitute for charcoal, however, may yet be found in coal, large beds of which extend from Rajmahal, on the Ganges, south to the Godavari, and from the neighbourhood of Calcutta westward to the Narbada valley.

XX INTRODUCTION

The coal-bearing rocks of the Damodar valley, covering 1 500 square miles of ground, contain thick seams of coal, whose yield nine years ago exceeded half-a-million tons a year. From the Karharbari coal-fields north-west of Raniganj half that quantity could be supplied for 800 years. There are thick seams of coal in the Narbada valley. On the edge of the great sandstone tract watered by the Godavari and the Wardha some promising beds have lately been examined ; and over wide spaces in Berar and the Central Provinces seams of great thickness, and of a quality good enough for railway purposes, give fair promise of vast additions to India's store of fuel. The easternmost end of Assam also, where the Brahmaputra emerges from the hills into the forest-clad wilds of Dibrugarh, contains several seams of excellent coal.

According to the census of 191 1, British India, as apart from the tributary native states, contained an aggregate population of nearly 250 million souls, of whom about two-thirds live by husbandry alone. To this may be added probably 70 millions in all for the Native States. But the increase of population is so great between each census that we will not attempt to record statistics which would be out of date soon after they were written down. It may suffice to say, in regard to the density of population, that to each square mile we have an average which exceeds that of Great Britain. The 70 millions in the Native States are ruled by some two hundred chiefs and princes, great and small, whose joint possessions cover an area of more than half-a-million square miles from Kashmir to Travancore.

Of the whole Indian population some 217 millions are Hindus by religion, and several millions more are probably Hindus by race. The Muhammadans of all races, Aryan, Semitic, and Mongol, may be reckoned at 66 millions, most Qf whom profess the Synni or Turkish fPfm of Islaip. The

WTRODUCTION 3£X1

Shiah sect are chiefly to be found in the Deccan and Kashmir. In Bengal the Muhammadans exceed 23 millions, the great bulk of whom are to be found in the Central and Eastern districts as husbandmen or landowners, while com- .paratively few inhabit the old centres of Muhammadan power. In Bengal, as in Kashmir, the Muhammadan numbers seem to be largely swelled by former converts from among the low-caste Hindus. In the Punjab there are now nearly 1 1 million, in the North- Western Provinces about 2 million followers of Islam. In the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh they number nearly 7 millions, and in the Central Provinces and Berar about half that amount. In the Punjab, and along the frontier, there are about 10 million Muhammadans to about 6 million Hindus, and little more than two million Sikhs. The 12 million people in Burma are mostly Buddhists.

The aboriginal or prehistoric races scattered everywhere among the hills and forests are supposed to number about 10 millions, a fifth of whom people the highlands of the Central Provinces, while perhaps as many more are found in Malwa and Khandesh. In the hills of Orissa, Chota Nagpur, Birbhum, Assam, and Cachar, they are also numerous. The Jains, an offshoot from Buddhism, number 1,248,000. The Parsis, descendants of Persian Fireworshippers, if few in numbers, fill a front place in the commercial doings of Western India. Christians of all ^sects and races may be set down at nearly four millions, about half of whom are Roman Catholics, owing allegiance to the Archbishop of Goa.

In a country which extends from the eighth to the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude the climate varies, not only with the differences of relative position, but with those also of local surface and surroundings. The dry heats of the Upper Provinces differ from the moist heats of Bengal

Xxn INTRODUCTION and part of Southern India as a furnace differs from a vapour-bath. There are large tracts of country in Sind, the Punjab, and Rajputana, where rain seldom falls, and the thermometer rises to 120° in the shade. In the North-western Provinces and Gujarat the rainfall varies from 15 to 30 inches, most of it falling in about three months. A zone of light rainfair passes down the middle of Southern India. The eastern coast is generally hotter and drier than the western, which receives the full force of the south-west monsoon from June to September. From the Brahmaputra valley down to Moulmein the heat in these months is greatly tempered by heavy and continuous rains, which fall in some places to a depth of more than a hundred inches, and convert the country into a sea studded with islands. In the Khasi Hills 600 inches of rain have been measured in the year. In Lower Bengal and Orissa the rain-swollen rivers flood the country far and wide. On the table-lands of the Deccan and Central India hot days are followed by cool nights. Along the lofty slopes of the Himalayas and the wood-crowned ridges of the Nllgiris, the rain pours heavily with. few intervals for several months. Along the coast sea-breezes also serve to temper the heat. Over the sandy plains of Northern India the dry west wind blows from March to the middle of June with the fury of a sirocco, relieved at times by a simoom or sandstorm, which turns day into night for an hour or more, and cools the air for some days afterwards. From July to October the showers in these regions, are followed by intervals of close, steamy heat, which finally give place to three or four months of clear; cool, bright weather, with frequent frost at night, and mornings often cold enough for a fire. In the hillstations, where the summer heat is generally moderate, the resemblance to an English winter is heightened by frequent falls of snow. Within the tropics, on the other hand, the tMTRODtfCTlOtf xxiii cold season, except on some of the higher mountains, answers on the whole to a mild September in our own country.

The languages and dialects used or spoken in India exceed in number and variety those of all Europe. The Aryan languages take the lead by right of their wide prevalence. Of the dialects which have grown out of the parent Sanskrit there are at least a dozen separate forms, of which Hindi, the most purely Aryan, and Urdu, the mixed language of the law-courts and the public services, are the most widely used. Each of the great provinces in Upper and Western India has its own dialect, which differs from the rest much as English differs from German or Swedish. In Southern India the Dravidian languages, such as Tamil and Telugu, which belong in the main to some old non- Aryan type, are spoken by about fifty million people. In the Himalayan valleys, in Burma, and on the eastern frontier of Bengal, some form of Indo-Chinese or Mongol speech is generally spoken, Arabic, the language of the Koran, and Persian, the language of Mughal state officers and Anglo-Indian law-courts in former days, have enriched the Urdu of our day with a large stock of serviceable words and phrases.

IND lA

I N

A MAP OF INDIA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XIIITH CENTURY,

Book I India Before The Muhammadan Conquest

The circumstances which mark the rise and progress of England's empire in Southern Asia have no precise parallel in any other page of the world's known history. Nowhere else has the world beheld so strange and fruitful an outcome from beginnings apparently so small. Macedon, Rome, Arabia, have each in its turn made mighty conquests in a wonderfully short space of time. Spaniards, in the course of one or two generations, became masters of half the New World. The hordes of Tamerlane, issuing from Samarkand, overran Asia in a few years. In our own century half Europe bowed her head for a season at the feet of the First Napoleon. India herself for more than two hundred years obeyed successive kings of the house of Babur. In all these cases either the ground won at first by force of arms was speedily lost again, or else its further retention was mainly due to the settlements founded thereon by the conquerors themselves. British India alone presents the spectacle of a vast dominion conquered during the last two hundred

B and fifty years by the servants of a trading - company, whose one great aim was to increase its dividends, and upheld by a few thousand Englishmen encamping in the midst of more than two hundred million natives. Nowhere else has so wide a sway over so many populous and civilised states been wielded with a grasp so firm by a mere (handful of foreigners, strange alike in speech, manners, religion, sent forth from one of the coldest to one of the hottest quarters of the earth, and debarred by causes more or less invincible from founding families of their own or of a mixed blood in a climate peculiarly hurtful to English life.

How much of the seeming marvel sprang from sources in no way marvellous, the following pages may help to show. For that end it will not be enough to begin with the first days of British settlement in India. The true way to a clear understanding of later events leads far back through the Christian centuries into the twilight of prehistoric times. There is no real break in Indian history from the era of the Vedas until now. For all the changes that have been wrought by time and circumstance, the India of to-day reproduces in its main outlines the India of twenty or thirty centuries ago. Out of the two hundred and fifty millions who directly or indirectly obey our rule, more than a half may claim descent from those Aryan conquerors who, long before Hellas defied the Persian, were pushing the earlier races of Hindustan back into those sheltering hills and forests where their descendants may still be found.* The history of that olden civilisation has been written for us, not in chronicles like those which form the boast of Muhammadan India, but in the sacred

* The date of the events apparently recorded in the oldest Hindu epic, the Ramayan, is placed by Sir W. Jones in the 2ist, by Tod in the 12th, and by Bentleyinthe loth century before Christ.— Griffith's "Ramayan," translated into English verse.

writings of Sanskrit-speaking Hindus, and in poems which portray the social life of pre-historic India as vividly as Homer portrayed the social life of pre-historic Greece. From the Vedas, or religious hymns of the Brahmans, we learn what faiths were held, what gods were worshipped, what rites practised by the Aryan conquerors of Ancient India. The oldest Vedas, older by several centuries than the Homeric poems,* reveal to modern scholars the poetic sources of that purely natural worship which marks the childhood of all human races. They are full of the life-like symbolism in which imaginative minds love to embody their impressions of the outer world. They sing the praises of the " Deva," the bright divinities of Sun and Dawn, of Fire, Storm, Earth, and Sky. In them all nature is divine. Surya, the Sun-god, his car drawn by shining steeds, dispels the darkness, hurries after the Dawn as lover after love-maiden, and sheds light, health, and every blessing on air the world. "Let us meditate," says one famous verse, "on the desirable light of the divine Sun, who influences our pious rites."

Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven and Earth — the Zeus and Demeter of the Greek Pantheon — are invoked as the great, wise, energetic parents of all the other gods. Aditi, " mother of the gods," stands one while for the sky, anon for the whole universe, and at times for something distinct from either. Ushas, the Dawn, the Homeric 'Hwe harnesses her purple oxen, calling all sleeping things to new life, enjoyment, or exertion, and sending her rays abroad like cattle to their pasture. Agni, the god of fire, the Latin Ignis, is a dear friend, who sits in the

* The true date of the Rig- Veda, or "Book of Praise," the oldest of the four Vedas, is still a. moot question. It is safe, however, to assume, with Dr. Max Miiller, on evidence of a very strong kind, that these old hymns and prayers, written in the oldest forms of a language probably older than that of ancient Greece, were composed between 1200 and 1500 years before Christ.

sacrificial chamber, dififusing happiness, like a benevolent man among mankind, Indra, the son of Dyaus and Prithivi, is the far-darting Apollo of the Vedas, the god of storms and rain, who rends the clouds asunder, gives vent to the showers, and frees the obstructed streams. He is invoked as the Lord of Steeds, victorious in battle, whom neither earth nor heaven can contain, His horses are the scud that denotes the coming tempest. In his chariot rides Vayu or Vata, the rushing wind ; he delights in drinking the sacred soma juice ; * and the Maruts or storm-winds are his children, at whose approach earth trembles like a storm-driven boat, and in whose car ride the young lightnings. Varuna, the Vedic"Ou;oavoe, represents the infinite wonder of the sky. He is the god who upholds order, who knows the place of the birds, the ships on the waters, the months of the year, and the track of the winds.