All the papers are directed to one end, a description of those inherent differences between Europe and Asia which forbid one continent permanently to conquer the other. . . . rather a saddening reflection that the thoughts of so many years are all summed up by a great poet in four lines:

"The East bowed low before the blast,

In patient deep disdain;

She let the legions thunder past,

Then plunged in thought again."

As yet there is no sign that the British are accomplishing more than the Romans accomplished in Britain, that they will spread any permanently successful ideas, or that they will found anything whatever. It is still true that if they departed or were driven out they would leave behind them, as the Romans did in Britain, splendid roads, many useless buildings, an increased weakness in the subject people, and a memory which in a century of new events would be extinct.2

Dubois held similar opinions:

I venture to predict that it (i.e. the British Government) will attempt in vain to effect any very considerable changes in the social condition of the people of India, whose character, principles, customs and ineradicable conservatism will always present insurmountable obstacles.3

It is necessary, for the understanding of the history of the nineteenth century, to realize how influential these ideas were for many years, though they begin to seem rather old-world and bloodless in the light of the Awakening, and especially of the religious upheaval we have to deal with.

LITERATURE. The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, by Sir Alfred Lyall, London, Murray, 1894. Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, by J. A. Dubois, Oxford, Clarendon Press. A History of Missions in India, by Julius Richter, London, Oliphant. Asia and Europe, by Meredith Townsend.

We shall divide the period of one hundred and thirteen years with which we deal into four sections.

1 P. xxi.

2 P. 27.

'P. xxiii.

FIRST SECTION: 1800-1828

1. In this year 1800, from which we date the effective interpenetration of India by the West, a large part of the country was already under British rule, and Lord Wellesley was busy bringing the independent native princes within the scope of the empire by means of peaceful treaties. His policy proved very successful, and extended the empire far and wide. In the wars which arose his brother, later known as the Duke of Wellington, played a great part. His policy may be said to have completed itself in 1849, when the last remaining portion of India proper was added to the empire.

2. We have already seen that Carey, his apprenticeship over, had settled under the Danish flag at Serampore in 1800 and had at once become a Government professor in Calcutta. He gave a great deal of time to the translation of the Bible into the vernaculars of India and even into the languages of countries outside India; but it was chiefly by the winning of actual converts from Hinduism, by his schools, newspapers and literature, that he was able to bring Christian thought effectively to bear on the Indian spirit. But it would have been impossible for him to make his work varied and effective had it not been for his two great colleagues, Marshman and Ward. Carey had been a cobbler, Marshman a Ragged-School teacher and Ward a printer. They were all largely self-taught. They differed greatly from each other, but differed in such a way as to supplement one another. Their methods of work were partly those which had been developed by Danish missionaries in South India in the eighteenth century, partly new. The basis of all their work was preaching and translation of the Bible. To this they added the publication of literature of many types, and very effective journalism. They had a printing press, and in it Indian type was first founded and used. They laid great stress on education, and opened numerous

schools around them for both boys and girls. They opened boarding-schools and orphanages. They even attempted medical work, and did not neglect the lepers. They were most eager to send out native missionaries to preach throughout the country, and with that in view built a great college at Serampore, and received from the King of Denmark authority to confer degrees. Their study of Hinduism and the Hindu community convinced them that, for the health of the people, many social and religious reforms were necessary, for example, the total abolition of caste, the prohibition of widow-burning, of child-marriage, of polygamy and of infanticide, the granting to widows of the right to remarry, the prohibition of human sacrifice, of the torturing of animals in sacrifice, of human torture in worship, and of the gross obscenity practised in the streets. They took great care that caste should be utterly excluded from the Church of Christ.

In 1813, when it was necessary to renew the Charter of the East India Company, Parliament insisted, in spite of the opposition of the Directors of the Company, on inserting a clause in the Charter, giving missionaries full freedom to settle and work in India. There can be no question that this was largely a result of the wonderful work done at Serampore. Soon afterwards there was a great influx of missionaries into the country.

During these years a number of individual Europeans did what they could to start Western education in the great cities of India apart from missionary associations. David Hare, a Scotch watchmaker, was the pioneer of English studies among boys in Calcutta; and a Civil Servant, Mr. Drinkwater Bethune, succeeded in starting a school for Hindu girls in the same city. The Hon'ble Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone led both the Hindu and the Parsee community in Bombay to modern education. His name is perpetuated in the Government College of that city.

3. Three men stand out as pioneer Orientalists during these years, the great Colebrooke, to whom almost every aspect of Sanskrit and Hindu study runs back, H. H. Wilson, who published a number of very useful works, and Tod, a military officer, who studied the poetry, traditions and customs of the Rajputs so thoroughly that his Rājasthān is to this day the greatest and most beautiful work upon that people and their country.

4. But for our subject the most interesting name is that of Ram Mohan Ray, the founder of the Brahma Samāj. We shall deal with his work in our next chapter. Here we note simply that the years from 1800 to 1828 were the years that formed him, and that while he was influenced by Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism, the forces which proved creative in him were unquestionably Christianity and the influence of the West in general. During these years he published almost all his books and conducted a vigorous agitation in Calcutta against widow-burning, which proved of great practical value.

No fresh religious movement worthy of notice appeared during these years.

LITERATURE. - Lyall, as above. Marshman's History of India. Wellesley and Hastings in Rulers of India Series, Oxford University Press. Life of William Carey, by George Smith, in Everyman's Library. Carey, Marshman and Ward, by George Smith. For the rise of Orientalism see Macdonell's Sanskrit Literature, chap. I.

SECOND SECTION: 1828-1870

1. The British Empire in India continued to expand during these years until it covered the whole of India. The last portion to be added, namely the Panjab, was annexed in 1849, at the conclusion of the second Sikh war.

The Mutiny of 1857-1858 extends across the middle of our period like a dark bar, but we need not, in this brief historical

outline, attempt to deal with it. It was essentially a reaction, a natural and almost inevitable result of the rapid conquest of the country and of the numerous reforms imposed on a most conservative people. So far from checking the process of the building up of the empire, the Mutiny, in the long run, produced most beneficial results; for the Crown became directly responsible for India; and both policy and method were clarified and simplified, to the immeasurable benefit of India.

Apart from the completion of the empire, the whole activity of the Government throughout this section might be described as one long programme of reform; and this aspect of its work is of more importance for our subject than the extension of the frontiers and the wars that shook down the old rulers. We take the beginning of the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck as the date of the opening of this section of our period, because he initiated the policy of reform, and began to apply in serious earnest the conviction, which had taken hold of the best minds at home, that Britain must govern India for the good of India. The reforms which he introduced may be best understood if we take them in three groups.

The first group consists of a list of cruel practices which had long been customary in India, and were closely connected with the religious life of the people. The principle on which the government decided to interfere with these religious customs is this, that to interfere with religion as such is beyond the province of rulers, but to prohibit customs which are grossly immoral and revolting to humanity is a most serious duty, even though these customs, through superstition and long tradition, have come to be regarded as most sacred. The chief of these customs prohibited were sati, the burning of a widow along with her husband's body, thagi,1 the strangling and robbery of travellers, female infanticide and human sacrifice.

1 See below, p. 425 n.

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