International India.

All through the ages the people of India have had active intercourse with the other peoples of the world. The Hindus have never lived in an alleged "splendid isolation." They have always had their mettle tested by the one world-standard of merit-measurement.

It is generally assumed that internationalism or cosmopolitanism is a very recent phenomenon in human affairs. As a matter of fact, however, culture has ever been international. Lendings and borrowings, imports and exports, colonizations and migrations characterize even the most primitive stages in the history of human evolution. Hindu culture, like every other culture, bears the stamp of the more universal world-forces; and not only Asia, but the Western world also exhibits features which have been directly or indirectly influenced by the Hindus. India has always been a necessary link in the chain of a growing series of human values.

1. Intercourse with the Egyptians.

The dawn of human civilization finds the Hindus (Dravidians and Aryans) captains of industry and entrepreneurs of commerce. They were in touch with the Pharaohs of Egypt. The mummies of the Egyptians were wrapped in muslin which was imported from India. Hindu trade gave to the land of the Nile ivory, gold, tamarind-wood, sandal-wood, monkeys, and other characteristic Indian plants and animals. It is also believed that the textile craftsmen of Egypt dyed their cloth with Hindu indigo. Hindu ships brought the Indian commodities to the Arabian ports, or to the land of Punt on the Egyptian side; and from there these were transported to Luxor, Karnak and Memphis.

2. With the Aegeans.

Recent excavations and discoveries in the Aegean islands, especially in Crete, have pushed backward the limits of Hellenic antiquity. Homer is today not so much the first of the Hellenes as the last of the Minoans, or Mykenaeans, or Aegeans. This Aegean civilization was the connecting link between Egypt and the isles of Greece. It is interesting to observe that the Hindus (Dravidians) were in touch, probably indirect, with this primitive culture also. Hellenic-European civilization and proto-Indian civilization thus came to have certain elements in common.

It is difficult to connect India with the Mediterranean area of culture by archaeological evidences. The intercourse is suggested by certain decorative motifs of folk-art common to the two regions, e.g., the deer with four bodies and a single head, two lions with one head, the lion with three bodies and one head, animal processions, animal combats, and so forth. These designs belong probably to a common "Early-Asian" tradition, which has influenced Aegean as well as Hindu culture-areas.

3. With the Semitic Empires of Mesopotamia.

Hindu commerce with the land of the Euphrates was more intimate and direct. As early as about 3000 B.C. Hindus supplied the Chaldaean city of Ur on the Euphrates with teakwood. The Assyrians also, like the Egyptians, got their muslin from India. In fact, vegetable-"wool," i.e., cotton, and wool-producing plants have been some of the earliest gifts of Hindu merchants to the world. From the tenth to the sixth century B.C. Assyro-Babylonian trade of the Hindus seems to have been very brisk. Hindus brought with them apes, elephants, cedar, teak, peacocks, rice, ivory, and other articles to Babylon, the Rome of Western Asia. It was through this Indo-Mesopotamian trade that the Athenians of the sixth century B.C. came to know of rice and peacocks.

This expansion of Hindu activity influenced the literature of the time, e.g., the Vedas and Jâtakas. A cylinder seal of about 2000 B.C. bearing cuneiform inscriptions and images of Chaldaean deities has been recently unearthed in Central India. In Southern India has been found a Babylonian sarcophagus. The Hindus owe their script to this West-Asian intercourse. The present-day characters of the Indian alphabet are derived from Brâhmi and earlier Kharoshthi. Both of these are Semitic in origin. These the Hindus learnt from the Phoenicians about 1000-800 B.C. through the international settlements of the Mesopotamian cities. Babylon was like modern New York the melting-pot of races. Besides, some of the astronomical conceptions of the Hindus may have to be traced to the land of the Euphrates.

One of the eight dialects in which the famous inscriptions of Boghozkoi are written is Indian. Hindu numerals like eka, tri, panca, sapta, and nava, have been found in the same inscriptions of the Hittites in their exact Sanskrit form. The names of gods almost identical with those of the Hindus such as Mitrasil, Arunasil, Indara and Nasattijanna (twins) occur in the explorations from the Mitani kingdom which was situated between the Kur River and the Caspian Sea. Sureja is likewise another god of the Kur Valley in which a Hindu replica may be suspected. India's intercourse with Kurdistan, and Asia Minor, or for that matter, with the geography of Hittite culture is more and more coming to be established as a fact of ancient Asian history.

4. With the Hebrews.

Hindu trade with the Hebrews also was considerable. Solomon (1015 B.C.), King of Judaea, was a great internationalist. In order to promote the trade of his land he set up a port at the head of the right arm of the Red Sea. He made his race the medium of intercourse between Phoenicians and Hindus. The port of Ophir (in Southern India or Arabia?) is famous in Hebrew literature for its trade in gold under Solomon. The Books of Genesis, Kings, and Ezekiel indicate the nature and amount of Hindu contact with Asia Minor. It is held by Biblical scholars that the stones in the breast plate of the high priest may have come from India. The Hindus supplied also the demand of Syria for ivory and ebony. The Hebrew word, tuki (papcock), is derived from Tamil (South Indian) tokei, and ahalin (aloe) from aghil.

This Hindu-Hebrew commerce was a principal channel through which the nations of the Medi-erranean became connected with India and the Far East. Long before the Greeks had any direct communication with the Hindus, they thus came to know of the latter first through Babylon and secondly through Judaea.

5. With the Zoroastrians of Persia.

The Persians overthrew the Babylonian Empire in 540 B.C. Their territory extended into Thrace in Europe and into the Indian frontiers on the east. Northwestern India was for a time a satrapy of this Iranian (Persian) empire. The Persians got their gold from the Hindus who conducted extensive mining operations in the Punjab and elsewhere in India. Hindu soldiers joined the ranks of their Iranian fellow-subjects when Xerxes led the memorable expedition against Greece (480 B.C.), and the bones of many a Hindu must have been mixed with the dusts of Europe at Thermopylae. This was probably the first direct contact between the Hindu and the Greek.

During this period Persia was Zoroastrian in socio-religious life, and it may be that the teachings of the Prophet of Iran had some influence over the Vedists of India. There are stories in Persia which claim the conversion of a Hindu philosopher "Cangraghacah" to the lore of the Zend Avesta after being defeated by Zoroaster himself in intellectual debate. On the other hand, Hindu influence on Iranians may also have been a fact. At any rate the Persians probably taught the Hindus the use of stone in architecture in the place of wood and brick. The "winged lions" as motives of Hindu art may also be traced to Iran.

6. With the Hellenistic Kingdoms.

Hindu genius for manufacture and commerce was thus of service to every race of antiquity that did anything for mankind. And when Alexander's deliberate internationalism (336-323 B.C.) ushered in the epoch of Eurasian culture-hybrids in Greece, Egypt, the overthrown Persian Empire, and the frontiers of India, the Hindus actively cooperated with the other races in bringing about the new conditions of the Hellenistic world.

Chandragupta Maurya (321-298 B.C.), the first Hindu Emperor of a United India, defeated the Hellenistic-Syrian invader, Seleukos, and compelled him to give him his daughter in marriage. Hindu-Greek marriages became common occurrences, Greek sculptors and merchants lived at Pâtaliputra (site of modern Patna), on the Ganges, in Eastern India, Greek ambassadors were taken care of by the Foreign Office of the Hindu State, and Greek professors were invited to the Hindu capital to lecture on Greek language.

In international politics the Maurya Emperors of India were the "allies" of the Hellenistic rulers of Western Asia, Europe, and Africa. To withstand the all-seizing ambition of the Roman conquerors the Greeks naturally sought the help of the Hindu rulers. Once or twice thus did the Hindus meet the Romans as foes (third century B.C.). Elephant-corps were despatched from India to help Pyrrhus of Epirus and Antiochus I of Syria against their enemies.

Hindu embassies visited the Hellenistic kings of Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, Epirus, and Kyrene on religious, cultural, and diplomatic missions. Sanskrit lore was taught at Antioch, Tarsus, and Alexandria. Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics exchanged notes with the Hindu logicians, philologists, Upanishadists, Buddhists, and Jainas. Hebrew, Hellenic, and Hindu factors combined to hold the Christ-cult in an eclectic metaphysico-theological solution.

7. With the Roman Empire.

During the first two centuries of the Christian era, the Kushans of Northern India promoted trade with the Roman empire by land, and the Andhras of Southern India had touch with Rome by sea. Roman mercenaries were in the army of the Hindu monarchs, Roman citizens lived in India, Roman coins circulated in the Indian markets. Embassies from the Indian States went to congratulate Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, on his accession. Trajan also received a Hindu embassy (100 A.C.). Spices, perfumes, muslins, cosmetics, pearls, aromatics and other luxuries and novelties "made in India" commanded an extensive sale in the bazars of the Roman Empire. The balance of trade was in favour of the Hindus, leading to considerable "drain" of gold from Rome to India.

The Indo-Roman intercourse was deep and long onough to influence the general eclectic character of those times. Hindu philosophy was assimilated by the Greeks of Alexandria and became a formative agency in the development of Neo-platonism under Plotinus (third century A.C.). On the other hand, Ptolemaic astronomy may have been absorbed by the Hindus. The Kushan Emperor struck coins according to the Roman models. The vast extent of Hindu commerce was indicated by the international elements in the currency. The obverse had the Hindu Emperor in Tartar dress, a Persian fire-altar, and Greek inscription; the reverse had the Hindu god Shiva as well as Greek, Persian and Tartar deities. Hindu-Hellenistic or Graeco-Buddhist (Gandhara) sculptures of Northwestern India and Central Asia, also, were products of a cosmopolitan imagination fostered by the mingling of races. That art has been the parent of all sculptures in China, Korea and Japan.

8. With the Chinese.

The Kushans were Scythians or Tartars of Central Asia naturalized on Indian soil. Through them the northern frontiers of India were extended almost as far as Siberia. Along with this territorial expansion, Hindu missionizing activity was greatly enlarged owing to direct political sovereignty or spheres of influence. Central Asia was dotted over with Hindu temples, monasteries, hospitals, schools, museums and libraries.

It was through this "Greater India" on the land side that China, the land of Confucius and Laotsze, came within the sphere of influence of Hindu culture. The Indo-Chinese intercourse, begun through the Tartar intermediaries, continued for about one thousand years. Hindu activity in China was promoted by sea also through Indian navigators, colonizers, and merchant marine. This maritime enterprise gave to India the cultural hegemony ultimately over Burma, Java, Siam, Annam, and Japan.

China received Mahayanic Buddhism and Sanskrit texts from the Central-Asian provinces of India in 67 A.C. Since then China became Hinduized not only in theology and metaphysics, but in every department of thought and activity. Thousands of Hindus lived in Chinese cities, e.g., at Changan in the N. W. and at Canton on the sea, as priests, teachers, merchants, physicians, sculptors and "interpreters." The name of Chinese tourists, students, philosophers, and translators, also, in India is legion. The Chinese founded their drama on Hindu precedents, imported musical instruments (stringed) from India, and introduced even some of the acrobatic feats, dances and sports prevalent among the Hindus.

During his Indian tour the great Itsing (634-712) mastered Hindu medicine at the University of Nalanda. Hindu mathematics and logic were cultivated among the intellectuals of China; Sanskrit treatises on painting and art criticism, e.g., Shadanga (six limbs of painting) in Bâtsâyana's Kâmasutra (erotics), Chitralakshana (marks of painting), etc., furnished the canons of Chinese art during its greatest epoch (Tang and Sung Dynasties, 600-1250); and the traditional Confucianism had to be re-interpreted, e.g., by Chu Hsi (1130-1200), in the light of the imported Hindu philosophy. China became a part of "Greater India" in poetry, aesthetics, folkfestivals, morals, manners and sentiments. The "Augustan Age" of Chinese culture, the age of the mighty Tangs and brilliant Sungs, was the direct outcome of the "holy alliance" for centuries between India and China.

Nobody can understand and appreciate China's paintings, literature, and achievements in humanism without feeling at the same time what humanity owes to Hindu culture. And as for Japan, she has always been an appendix to Indo-Chinese civilization. From chop-sticks and No-dance to Nichirenism, Zen-(Meditation)-philosophy, Bushido (militarism), Sesshiu's landscapes, and Basho's hokku-versicles, the Japanese have derived almost every bit of their life and institutions from India or China or from Hindu centres in China.

9. With the Saracens.

India was the heart and brain of Asia during the Middle Ages. While the Far East was being Hinduized, the age-long intercourse with the peoples of Western Asia and beyond was not neglected by the Hindus. The epoch of Roman Imperialism and Graeco-Roman culture had passed away. But the Gupta-Vikramadityan Napoleons of India in the fifth century welcomed the Chinese scholar-tourists with one hand and the Egyptian (Alexandrian) and Arabian traders with the other. One Sassanian Emperor deputed his physician to India to translate Hindu folk-tales into Persian. Every school-child in Europe and America knows them to-day as the so-called Aesop's Fables. Another Persian monarch sent an embassy to the court of the South-Indian Emperor in the middle of the seventh century. The game of chess so popular in the western world to-day came from the Hindus through the Sassanians.

Then came the days of Mohammed's converts, the Saracens, and the Caliphates, which Islamized the world, deeply or superficially, from Canton in China to Cordova in Spain. About 800,

"By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold,

High-walled gardens green and old;

* * *

By garden porches on the brim,

The costly doors flung open wide,

Gold glittering through lamplight dim,

And broider'd sofas on each side;

In sooth it was a goodly time,

For it was in the golden prime

Of good Haroun Alraschid."

On the one hand, the Saracens kept alive the intellectual tradition of Hellenic antiquity in the Dark Ages of Europe, and, on the other, they became the connecting link between the East and the West. The thirteenth century Renaissance of Europe, represented by Roger Bacon, was an offshoot of the Saracen contributions. On this Saracen culture Hindu influence was almost as great as on the Chinese.

Hindu professors of algebra, medicine, alchemy, logic, and folk-lore taught the Moslems of the educational institutions at Bagdad. Hindu physicians practised at the capital of the Caliphate, and were in charge of the Imperial Hospital. Mansur (753-74) sent a deputation to Sindh (in Western India), which had come under his political influence, for Hindu astronomical tables. Harun al Rashid (786-808) and Mamun (813-33), the Charlemagnes of the Abbasside Saracens, encouraged by all means the propagation of Hindu culture among their people. Sanskrit texts were translated into Arabic under the auspices of the State. The pre-Moslem Persian versions of Hindu literature were also used. Besides, advanced scholars came to India to study the Hindu sciences at first hand.

The great Harun was cured of a severe illness by Mankh, a Hindu physician. This fact gave a great fillip to the cultivation of Hindu medical science throughout the Saracen Empire. Mankh translated into Arabic a Sanskrit work on medicinal plants. Sanak, another Hindu scientist, wrote in Arabic a book on poisons according to the Indian toxicologists. Many drugs were imported into Persia from India, e.g., pepper, lac, nard, myrrh, red sandal, cinnamon, calotropis, myrobalan, occimum sanctum and others.

The Moslems read with their Hindu teachers the standard medical literature in Sanskrit, e.g., Charaka, Sushruta, and Vâgbhata, the treatises on leeches and on poisons, and studied also the diseases of women. They are specially indebted to the Hindus for a knowledge of the internal administration of iron, oxides of arsenic, mercury, and other metals. From the Saracens the Christian nations assimilated these Hindu discoveries. The later Greek physicians became acquainted with the Hindu system and availed themselves of the Indian medicaments. Not before Paracelsus (1493-1541), however, and then in the teeth of great opposition from reactionaries, did these bold and dangerous Hindu practices become common in Europe.

The Saracens learnt the decimal system of notation from the Hindus and passed it ultimately to the Europeans. They learnt also the Hindu science which has since been wrongly called algebra after them. They learnt similarly their Manzil or division of the sky into twenty-eight lunar asterisms from the same source. They enriched themselves with Hindu geometry also. Thus they learnt the correct value of the π, and also how to find the area of the circle.

To understand the contributions of the Saracens to Europe, e.g., of Musa in mathematics, and of Rases and Avicenna in medicine, alchemy and physiology, one need consider the part played by the Hindu brain in mediaeval science. The founders of the first Universities of Europe got their inspiration from the centres of Moslem learning, e.g., at Cordova and Bagdad. These had in their turn been to a considerable extent nurtured on Hindu culture.

10. With Europe during the Later-Middle Ages.

We watched the Hindu navigators of hoary antiquity conveying their merchandise to minister to the wants of the builders of the Pyramids. We have now come down to the era of the Crusades (11th-13th century). The forefathers of the modern Christian nations were then busy withstanding the expansion of Asia in Europe. They were at the same time picking up a knowledge of the superior arts and sciences of the Asians. All these five millenniums the Hindus had maintained a cosmopolitan outlook in commerce and culture. Thus early in the Christian era a Hindu scientist honestly admitted India's indebtedness to the Greeks in astronomy in the following words:

"The Yavanas (Ionians, i.e., Greeks) are indeed mlechchhas, i.e., barbarians, but amongst them this science of astronomy is firmly established; hence they are honoured as though they were Rishis, i.e., holy sages." This has been the historic attitude of the Hindu mind with regard to the world. Hindu culture has influenced and been influenced by all the culture-systems of mankind.

Since the thirteenth century India has been as much Mohammedan as Hindu. During the later Middle Ages it was, first, through the Arabs that the Indians were in touch with the mercantile commonwealths of Venice, Florence, and other Italian cities, as well as with the Hanseatic League of Northern Germany. Secondly, the Buddhist Tartars of China overran the whole of Russia and carried the western frontiers of Asia almost to the Carpathian mountains. They introduced the Europeans to the Chinese discoveries, e.g., printing, gunpowder, mariner's compass, etc., and also to the heritage of Hindu thought in Central Asia and China. Further orientalization of the Occident was promoted by the establishment of Turkey as a first class power in the Southeast of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The more momentous consequences of this event have been the Renaissance, the discoveries, the expansion of Europe, and the birth of America.

11. With Europe since the Renaissance.

The Hindus and Moslems of India under the Great Moguls during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were in intimate touch with Persia and Western Asia. India was enriched by the naturalization of new fruit-bearing plants from abroad. Some of the best treasures of Persian literature were made available to the people in translations. A new language, the Indo-Persian Urdu, was improvised to be the medium of the new joint aspirations of the original inhabitants and Indianized new-comers. Poets, scholars, architects, painters and musicians were invited from Western Asia to settle in India.

On the whole, Persia has left an indelible impression on Hindu culture. For the past three hundred years the social etiquette and fine arts of India, poetry, painting, architecture, and music, both Hindu and Moslem, have been consciously or unconsciously influenced by the canons of Persian masters. On the other hand, Sanskrit literature and philosophy were rendered into Persian. It need be remarked that the Latin versions of the Persian translations of Sanskrit originals have had some influence on European minds also, e.g., on Herder and Schopenhauer.

It was during this period of Indo-Persian or Hindu-Islamic Renaissance that the European merchants came into direct contact with India. The merchants and sea-going vessels of India were then continuing the tradition of their best periods. The Indian mercantile craft was larger, more durable and more elegant than the Portuguese, French, and English ships, according to the estimation of the European experts. India was an "industrial power" still, and her market was Europe.

The year of the first French Revolution (1789) was also the year of the presentation of the first Sanskrit work, Shakuntalâ, a drama by Kalidas, the Hindu Shakespeare (fifth cent. A.C.), in a modern European language. Goethe's raptures over it are well known. And as "imitation is sincerest flattery," he took a hint from the Hindu dramatist.¹

12. The only "Dark Age" of India.

India's contribution to the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century has been, first, a vast market for the industrial powers of the western world, and secondly, a land of raw materials. She has thus been in touch with the modern world-forces, viz., steam and democracy, though mainly as a passive agent.

This is the only century during six thousand years in which the Hindus have failed to actively develop the progress of humanity. This is the first time in the history of India in which she has failed to contribute to the world as many first class men and women of international reputation in science, commerce, industry and art, as the world has a right to expect from her three hundred and fifty million people. This is the only period during which Indians have been false to their historic role in the promotion of the world's civilization—false to their traditional genius in fostering national industries and international commerce—false to their age-long natural capacity for cooperating with other races in the building up of the world's sciences, arts, and philosophies. The brightest period of world-history has thus been the darkest period in the Indian. Thanks to the ideas of 1905 India has now fairly entered upon a creative epoch, an epoch, that is, of revolt and reconstruction.

Notes

1 Supra p. 148.