The Joy of Life in Hindu Social Philosophy.
A great impetus was imparted to social studies by the publication of the Sacred Books of the East. It has rendered inestimable service to the sciences of mythology and philology. But, on the other hand, it is this series of books that has up till now offered the greatest impediments to the growth of a scientific comparative sociology. For it has diverted the attention of scholars from the achievements of Oriental races in exact science, mathematico-physical and physiologico-medical. It has also militated against the recognition by the Occident of the Oriental endeavours in civic administration, social service, conciliar enterprise, industrial activity, and institutional life. Today Eur-America is obsessed by the notion that Asia has stood for non-secular religiosity all through the ages.
Max Müller, the editor of the Series, is personally responsible for a great part of this modern superstition. His India: what can it teach us? was published about the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book he categorically declared that the sole message of India was the "sublime" philosophy of other-worldlyism, quietism, despair! This sweeping generalization is also summed up in a sentence of his Chips from a German Workshop. "The sense that life is a dream or a burden is," says he, "a notion which the Buddha shares with every Hindu philosopher." And Schoenhauer, the father of "modern pessimism," seems to have believed that he found allies in ancient Hindu thinkers. He therefore unequivocally stated that "the fundamental characteristics of Brahmanism and Buddhism are idealism and pessimism, which look upon life as the result of our sins and upon the existence of the world as in the nature of a dream."
Since then India has been treated in Eur-America as a synonym for mysticism or pessimism or both. Now, to the outside world, India happens to be known by a single personality, Buddha. And Buddha commands also the devotion of millions in China and Japan. He is, therefore, taken to be the "light of Asia." To the laymen as well as scholars of the West there is thus but one shibboleth which explains the entire East. It is Buddhism, and Buddhism = mysticism and pessimism.
1. Occidental Pessimism.
Psychologically or statistically, however, it is impossible to make out a distinction between the East and the West on the score of mysticism or pessimism. Has not mysticism of diverse denominations flourished luxuriantly on the Occidental soil? The cult of the Infinite, the absolute and the eternal, has indeed a formidable tradition in the Eur-American world. It counts in its calendar such stalwarts as Pythagoras and Plato among the Greeks, St. Paul the apostle and Plotinus the neo-platonist, St. Francis and Jacopone da Todi among the Italians, Ruysbroek the Flemish and Boehme the German, Pascal and Madame Guyon of France, Bunyan and Blake among Englishmen, and the New England transcendent-. alists, not to mention the latter-day rosicrucians and spiritualitarians.
Not less is pessimism an historic trait of the Occidental mind. The Books of Job and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament are saturated with it. It was a leading motif of Greek tragedies. Theognis, nicknamed the "snow" (i.e., inanimated) has the following lines: "Best of all for all things upon earth is it not to be born nor to behold the splendour of the sun; next best to traverse as soon as possible the gates of Hades." Euripides is equally lachrymose. Socrates also is reported by Plato to have said: "Death even if it should rob us of all consciousness would still be a wonderful gain, in as much as deep dreamless sleep is by far to be preferred to every day even of the happiest life."
Jesus' message was the very cream of pessimism. "He that loveth father or mother more than Me," announced this Savior of Christendom, "is not worthy of Me"; "If any man cometh unto Me and leaveth not his father and mother and wife and children, he can not be My disciple." The New Testament with its emphasis on the "sins" of the "world" and the "flesh" is the most dismal literature conceivable even without a Nietzsche's help. The regime of the Church Fathers, celibacy, monasticism, and nunnery is of course the very reverse of optimism and of the sense of joy in life.
Pessimism has also attacked the general literature and poetry of the Western world. Byronic despair is proverbial. Here is a chip:
"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be."
Heine's Weltschmerz is a vein in the same quarry. Lamartine's Le Désespoir likewise has the Shelleyan burden: "Our sincerest laughter with some pain is ever fraught." De Musset belongs to the same class.
Hartmann, the philosopher of the Unconscious, is an inveterate woman-hater and a confirmed pessimist. His pupil, Mainländer, in the Philosophy of Redemption, has outdone the master. According to him the movement of all being is not the will to live but "the will to die." The guide of them both, Schopenhauer, had propounded "the denial of the will to live."
How is it possible to maintain, in the face of these facts, that pessimistic philosophy is the product exclusively or distinctively of the Orient?
2. Hindu Militarism.
For one thing, it must be clearly understood that in India the state was never theocratic. No religion dominated the policy of governments. The statecraft was not regulated by the personal faith of the rulers. Hindu politics was, as a rule, thoroughly secular, i. e., Lutheran and Machiavellian.
Neither the vegetarianism of a sect nor the ahimsâ (non-killing) of a cult could successfully counteract the military ambitions of the people. The national or racial desire for a "place in the sun" was never held inconsistent with even the most other-worldly and Godward tendencies in certain schools of thought.
The real Bible of the Hindu state was not to be found in any theological "ism" but in nîti-shâstra or political science. It laid down the ideals of man as a "political animal" in the comprehensive Aristotelian sense. On the one hand, it pointed out the duties of rulers to the people, and on the other, it taught the people how to resist the tyranny of the ruler and expel or execute him for "misconduct." It placed a high premium on the fighting capacity of human beings. It was the perennial fountain of inspiration to soldiers.
Shâkya the Buddha's monasticism did not enervate the people of his time. His contemporaries as well as the generations that followed him kept on the even tenor of their militarism. The political history of India does not appear to have ever been modified by his or any other preacher's Quakerish' pacifism. Within about a century after Shâkya's death Chandragupta Maurya founded the most extensive of all the empires realized in India up till now. The Bismarck of this nation-builder was Kautilya, the finance minister. There is absolutely no trace of Shâkyan teachings in his Artha-shâstra, the code according to which the empire was conceived and consolidated. It is as un-Shâkyan or un-Buddhist as Machiavelli's Prince or Treitschke's Politics is un-Christian.
A glimpse into the military India of the third and fourth centuries B.C. would indicate that there was a direct cooperation of the sexes in militarism such as has been conceived only yesterday by the war-lords of present-day Eur-America and that Hindu wars were no mere skirmishes of savages.1
Western scholars have stated that the Hindus were weak as a nation of fighters because of their caste system. It is alleged that the Hindus delegated the entire war-work to the Kshatriya (warrior) caste on the principle of "division of labour," and that they did not not learn how to utilize the total man-power of the country.
This is a fallacy like other fallacies about India started during the nineteenth century. It has no foundation in facts, it is utterly unhistorical. Even so late as the seventeenth century Shivaji the Great, the Frederick the Great of India, electrified the non-Kshatriya low-class Mawalis into the "Maratha Peril" of the Great Moghul.
Besides, the very opposite is the idea inculcated in all Hindu political and military text-books. "My teacher says," as we read in the Artha-shâstra, that "of the armies composed of Brâhmanas (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (merchants), or Shudras (lower orders), that which is mentioned first on account of bravery is better to be enlisted than the one subsequently mentioned. 'No,' says Kautilya, "the enemy may win over to himself the army of Brâhmanas by means of prostration. Hence the army of Kshatriyas trained in the art of wielding weapons is better; or the army of Vaishyas or Shudras having greater numerical strength."2
The discussion indicates that army service was not the "preserve" of a special caste. There was nothing against the Brâhmana class as such being drafted for the regiments. The whole nation could be drilled at need.
Shukra-nîti is a later work than Artha-shâstra. And what are its teachings? "Even Brâhmanas should fight if there have been aggressions on women or if there has been a killing of cows (held inviolable according to Hindu religion) by the enemy. The life of even the Brâhmana who fights when attacked is praised by the people."3
The general Bushidō morality of the Hindus is reflected in the following lines of the same work:
"People should not regret the death of the brave man who is killed in battles. The man is purged and delivered of all sins and attains heaven.
"The fairies of the other world vie with one other in reaching the warrior who is killed at the front in the hope that he be their husband.
"The great position that is attained by the sages after long and tedious penances is immediately reached by warriors who meet death in warfare.
"Two classes of men can go beyond the solar spheres, i. e., into heaven: the austere missionary and the man who is killed at the front in a fight."4
The cult that has actually obtained in the land of Shâkya the Buddha is thus the exact antipodes of quietism and pacifism. The alleged pessimism of the Hindus is an idola of modern Eur-America. The Occident has by holding to this attitude been guilty of the greatest injustice to the Oriental genius. The removal of this injustice is the most fundamental of all the demands of Young Asia. Not until this idola has been overthrown can there be a reformation and rebirth of social science.
3. Buddhism in Hindu Culture.
Probably Buddhism is the theme on which, among all Asian topics, the greatest amount of scholarship has been bestowed. But its place in the scheme of Oriental life and thought remains yet to be understood. In fact, it is the most misinterpreted of all phenomena in the East. Let us try to understand Buddhism in actual history.
In the first place, Buddhism as a cult, of which Buddha is the God, is not the religion or morality founded by the monk Shâkya, called the Buddha; i. e., the "awakened" or enlightened (B.C. 563-483). The distinction between Shâkyaism and Buddhism is the same as that between the teachings of Jesus the Jew and the teachings of St. Paul about Jesus the Christ, who is a god.
The Budha-cult was formulated by Ashwaghosha and came into existence as a distinct faith about the first century A.C. during the reign of the Indo-Tartar emperor Kanishka. This religion, also called Mahâyânism (the Greater Vehicle) was theologically much allied to, and did not really differ in ritual and mythology from, the contemporary Jaina and the Puranic-Hindu "isms". It is difficult to distinguish the image of an Avalokiteshvara of this Buddhist pantheon from that of a Jaina Tirthamkara or a Hindu Vishnu. The Buddhism that is professed in China and Japan is this latter-day creed of gods and goddesses.
What now about the teachings of the man Shâkya himself? Even granting for the moment that these were pessimistic, it need be realized that they were not the sole source of light in the India of the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. Shâkya lived in an age when the "stormers and stressers" were legion. There were eminent physicians, surgeons, grammarians, logicians, pedagogues and psychologists; and there were systems and systems of each of these classes of intellectuals. Shâkya had no monopoly as a theologian or moralist or spiritual doctor in that "pluralistic universe."
Of course, Shâkya, the son of the president or archon (râjan) of the Sakiya republic, had become an ascetic. He fled the world indeed, but did he ever become a recluse? No, he remained a propagandist all his life. He founded, no doubt, an order (Samgha) of monks, but he taught also the world of husbands and wives, of diplomats, consuls, merchants and governors. The Confederacy of the Vajjians in Eastern India looked up to him as adviser on critical occasions in national politics.
Nor were the followers of Shâkya mere meditators. They were, as a rule, energists. Quetism or non-action is not the principle on which his Samgha was organized. The first hospitals of the world were built by his disciples, at least as early as the third century B.C. Schools, academies and rest-houses were the handiwork of the Shâkyan monks.
It is the custom to mention Emperor Asoka the Great (B.C. 270-230) as the most distinguished follower of Shâkya. He is generally known as the "Constantine of Buddhism." But, strictly speaking, as has been noted above, there was no "Buddhism" in the third century B.C. Besides, in what sense can it be said that Shâkyaism was a "state religion" in Asoka's time? The citizens of India under his administration were not all followers of Shâkya. No article of faith was imposed upon the officers. Toleration was as a rule the declared policy in matters of conscience, although not in ritual. Nor can the famous edicts of the emperor be regarded as manifestos in favor Shâkyaism. His own cult, of of Dhamma or Duty again was distinct from, though based on, Shâkya's tenets.
His time to time announcements to the people were really the ordinances of an "enlightened," benevolent despot. The paternal solicitation and moralizing of the monarch are manifest in the Kalinga edict. "All men," as we read, "are my children, and just as for my children I desire they should enjoy all happiness and prosperity, both in this world, and in the next, so for all men I desire the like happiness and prosperity."
Asoka's cares and efforts were thoroughly humanistic. He did not play the quietist, seeking a "denial of the will to live." He did not regard the sweets of life as curses to be shunned. He was the keenest of internationalists. He sent his own son to proselytize Ceylon. It was his embassies that brought Western Asia, Egypt, Greece, Macedon, Epirus, and Kyrene within the sphere of Hindu influence. His secular activity in civic life was the most pronounced. Altogether he is one of the greatest Caesars of all ages.
And as for the regular monks and ascetics of the Buddhist organizations, they also did not keep wholly aloof from politics. They knew how to take part in intrigues and promote revolutions. They were tried as seditionists by some rulers and worshipped as "king-makers" by others. They would band themselves into military orders in order to be qualified as partisans in civil wars. They were adepts in Jesuitical casuistry, too. During the seventh and eighth centuries, e. g., under Harsha-vardhana, Shashamka, Dharmapala, and others the political interferences of monk-generals were constantly in evidence. The mediaeval history of China and Japan also affords instances of warfare conducted by Buddhist monks as politico-military divines.
After all, it must be admitted, however, that Shâkya's Weltanschauung or view of life was certainly "not of this world." But his Nirvânism, i. e., doctrine of annihilation did not imply the "denial of the will to live." It tended rather to emphasize the annihilation of evil and the removal of misery and pain. Its trend was systematically "melioristic." Activism was thus the very keynote of his propaganda.
The idea of Appamâda (i.e., vigilance, earnestness, strenuousness) or energism was the cardinal element in Shâkya's pedagogy of the moral self:
His educational creed may be gathered from some of his sayings in the Dhammapada. Thus we read:—
"By rousing himself, by earnestness, by restraint and control, the wise man may make for himself an island that no flood can overwhelm.
"Earnest among the thoughtless, awake among the sleepers, the wise man advances like a racer leaving behind the hack.
"By earnestness (energizing) did Indra rise to lordship of the gods. People praise earnestness; thoughtlessness is blamed.
"A mendicant who delights in earnestness and looks with fear on thoughtlessness, moves about like fire, burning all his fetters, small or large.
"He who does not rouse himself when it is time to rise, who though young and strong, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle man will never find the way to knowledge."
According to Shâkya the wise man is thus an energist, a moral and intellectual gymnast, a fighter. There is no place for non-action, passivity or cowardly retreat in the Shâkyan system of self-discipline. The follower of the Buddha must "advance like a racer" and "move about like fire."
The same energism was strongly inculcated by Asoka also. We read in his Minor Rock Edicts (No. 1):
"Even the small man can, if he choose, by exertion, win for himself much heavenly bliss."
"For this purpose has been proclaimed this precept; viz., 'Let small and great exert themselves to this end.'
"My neighbors, too, should learn this lesson, and may such exertion long endure."
Is all this the metaphysics of Weltschmerz and désespoir, or the ethics of the "perfection of character by effort"? Whatever be the superstition of Eur-American scholars regarding Asia, Shâkya, the republican, and Asoka, the imperator, are two of the most successful apostles of secular endeavor and humanistic energizing in Hindu estimation.
4. Western Mysticism.
And yet it has often been said that Europeans and Americans cannot understand the Hindu or the Asian mind. Oriental viewpoints and ideals are supposed to be fundamentally different from Occidental!
But what is the characteristic Oriental way of looking at things? Is it mysticism or the cult of the Eternal and Hereafter? There have been in Europe also mystics or "seers" of the Infinite, as many and as great as in Asia, from the earliest times till today. The very first speculations of Hellas were embodied in the teachings of Pythagoras. He believed in the transmigration of the soul and preached the esoteric doctrine of numbers. He was a vegetarian and believed in general abstinence and ascetic mortification of the flesh. Plato's "idealism" also was mystical as much as was the monism of the contemporary Upanishadists of India and Taoists of China.
Who has been greater occultist than Jesus? His message was: "My kingdom is not of this world." His other-worldliness and pessimism are undeniable. Indeed, the greatest passivist and submissionist among the world's teachers has been this Syrian Saviour of Europe and America. His political slogan was: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Such extreme "non-resistance" was probably never preached in India.
Plotinus (third century A.C.), the greatest neo-Platonist, was a mystical pantheist. He actually practised Yogic exercises by which he hoped to attain union with the "ultimate principle," the highest God of all. The monasticism, celibacy, nunnery, and notions about "the world, the flesh, and the devil," the "seven deadly sins," etc., of Christianity have been practically universal in the western world. They have had too long a sway to be explained away as accidental, or adventitious, or imported, or unassimilated overgrowths. Spiritualistic "self-realization" was the creed of many a transcendentalist denomination in Europe during the Middle Ages. To the English Puritans, even music and sports were taboo. The painters of the romantic movement in Germany, e.g., Cornelius, Overbeck and others fought shy of women and preached that all artists should be monks. The race of Jacopone da Todis, Rosicrucians, Ruysbroecks, and Boehmes is not yet a thing of the past in Eur-America. And now that the philosopher of the élan vital has enunciated his doctrine of "intuition," mysticism is going to have a fresh lease of life.
Thus the psychology of the "soul" and the metaphysics of the infinite life and permanent verities, are as good orthodox Occidental commodities as Oriental. Even in the conception of the universe as a living being the tradition of the Occident has been as long as that of India.
According to Plato in his Phædo this universe is a living creature in very truth, possessing soul and reason by the providence of God. Virgil in his Æneid (Book VI, 96ff) writes:
REFORMAT
"First, Heaven and Earth and Ocean's liquid plains,
The Moon's bright globe and planets of the pole,
One mind, infused through every part sustains;
One universal animating soul
Quickens, unites, and mingles with the whole.
Hence man proceeds, and beasts and birds of air,
And monsters that in marble ocean roll;
And fiery energy divine they share."—Taylor's trans.
Similarly the Earth-Spirit conceived by Goethe is a personification of the active, vital forces of nature, the principle of change and growth within the universe.
This doctrine makes Plato, Virgil, and Goethe virtually Hindu Vedantists. How, then, does European mentality differ from Hindu? According to the Vedantists, the world originates out of Brahma (Self), the absolute Reality, the absolute Intelligence, the absolute Bliss.
To the same group belongs also Browning with his message of immortality of soul or continuity of life-energy, thus:
"Fool! all that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure."
The whole stanza can be bodily transferred into a section of the Hindu Gîtâ. The Emersons of America also disprove the notion that "transcendentalism" is an Oriental monopoly.
5. Hindu Materialism.
Let us take the other side of the shield. What is alleged to be the characteristic standpoint or philosophy of Eur-America? Is it secularism, optimism, or, to be more definite, militarism? But, this has not been the monopoly of the Western world. Hindu culture has always been an expression of humanism, positivism and other "isms" following from it as much as Hellenic, European and American culture.
Take militarism.5 Hindustan started the cult of Kshatriyaism, which in Japan is called Bushido ("The Way of the Warrior"). The first Hindu Napoleon, Chandragupta Maurya (fourth century B.C.) had a regular standing army of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, 9,000 elephants, and a multitude of chariots. Excluding followers and attendants, but including the archers, three on each elephant, and two fighting men on each chariot, the whole army. consisted of 690,000 men. A race which can organize such a vast fighting machine and wield it for offensive and defensive purposes is certainly not over-religious or unpractical or other-worldly.
Such vast armies have not been exceptional in Indian history. According to a Portuguese observer, Krishna of Vijayanagara (1509-30) in South India commanded an army of 703,000 foot, 32,600 horse, and 551 elephants, besides camp-followers. One of the smallest armies of the Hindus has been that of the Andhras in the Deccan. It had only 100,000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, and 100 elephants.
Hindu Bushido had a spiritual "sanction" too. It was backed up by a theory which found its place in all Sanskrit treatises on warfare and political science.6
Ahimsâ, i.e., non-killing or non-resistance, has neither been a fact of India's politico-military history, nor a dominant trait of Hindu national thought and character. Kalidasa (c. 420 A.C.), the Hindu Virgil, enunciated as we have seen the energistic ideal of his countrymen.7
Wherein do Hindu ideals then differ from Eur-American?
We shall now analyze Hindu secularism or positivism a little more deeply. Desire for the good things of this earth, life, strength, and general well-being, is not a feature exclusively of the Occidental mind. If this be called optimism or materialism, the Hindus also have been profoundly optimistic and materialistic since the days of their commerce with Egypt during the Theban period. In fact, all through the ages the Hindus have been famous to foreign nations principally as materialists.
It is a glib talk among economists to-day that India is an essentially agricultural country, and that the Hindus are a thoroughly non-industrial race. But were the Christian nations down to the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century less agricultural than the Hindus? Were they more "essentially" industrial? Historically speaking, Hindu materialism has manifested itself as much in commerce and industry as in agriculture.
The long-continued international trade of the Hindus points to their thoroughly commercial genius. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, the Roman Empire, China, they all have profited by the commerce of the Hindus. This was possible because of the adventurous seafaring character of the people of India. It inspired them in their colonizing exploits in the islands of the Indian Ocean, and enabled them to establish a sphere of influence comprising Japan on the east and Madagascar on the African coast. Besides, they were past masters in the art of ship-building and naval architecture. They constructed seagoing vessels of considerable size, and effected gradual improvements in shipping industry. Some of the ancient Hindu ships could accommodate 300, 500, 700, 800, and even 1500 passengers.8
In the fifteenth century, according to Nicolo Conti, the Hindus could build ships larger than the Europeans, capable of containing 2000 butts and with five sails and as many masts. One of the Hindu ships on its way to the Red Sea, in 1612, was 153 ft. long, 42 ft. beam, 31 ft. deep, and was of 1500 tons burden. The English ships of that date were 300 or 500 tons at most.
The art of navigation was part of the education of Hindu princes. There were Sanskrit treatises on this and allied subjects. Light-houses were constructed on the seacoast in Southern India. The marine interests were looked after by a special department of State. Marine affairs were important enough to call forth Asoka the Great's attention to them in his celebrated "Edicts" (third century B.C.). Something like marine insurance even occurs in Hindu legal literature.
A few shipping regulations are here reproduced from the Institutes of Manu (not later than the fourth century A.C., but embodying the oldest tradition):
"For a long passage the boat-hire must be proportioned to the places and times. Know that this [rule refers] to passages along the banks of rivers; at sea there is no settled [freight].
"Whatever may be damaged in a boat by the fault of the boatmen that shall be made good by the boatmen collectively [each paying] his share.
"This decision on suits [brought by passengers holds good only] in case the boatmen are culpably negligent on the water; in the case of accident caused by [the will of] gods, no fine can be [inflicted on them]."
Surely the Hindus knew how to appreciate and manage the earthly interests of men and women.
During the nineteenth century India has been converted into a mere market for the Western manufactures. Her role at present is only to produce raw materials at the dictate of modern industrial powers. This is the exact antipodes of the part she has ever played in the economic history of the world. All through the ages it was the manufactures of the Hindus which had sought markets and created demands in foreign countries.
Varâhamihira's Brihat Samhitâ (sixth century A.C.) is among other things a record of the achievements of Hindu industrialism.9 Cements and powders were made "strong as the thunderbolt." There were "experts in machinery." Experts in applied chemistry specialized in dyes, cosmetics, and even artificial imitation of natural flower-scents. Fast dyes were made for textile fabrics by the treatment of vegetable dyes with alum and other chemicals. The principle of indigotin was extracted from the indigo plant by an almost modern chemical process. Metallurgists were expert in the tempering of steel and could manufacture the so-called "Damascus swords." Pliny, the Roman of the first century A.C., admired the Hindu industrial attainments; Tavernier, the Frenchman of the seventeenth century, did likewise.
If Hindu civilization has not been materialistic, one wonders as to what is materialism. In what particulars did the "Greek view of life" differ from the Hindu? Let the Dickinsons and Huntingtons answer.
6. Hindu Achievements in Organization.10
We have spoken of the genius of the Hindus for martial exploits, naval organization, and colonizing adventure. We have noticed also their capacity for capturing the markets of the world by the promotion of industry and commerce. All these activities bespeak a richly diversified institutional life, and indicate their ability to organize men and things, as well as administer public interests.
In a political work of the fourth century B.C., the Artha-shâstra, eighteen departments of State are mentioned. The war office of the first Hindu emperor was a highly organized and efficient public body. It consisted of thirty members, who formed themselves into six boards: (1) admiralty, (2) transport, commissariat, and army service, (3) infantry, (4) cavalry, (5) war-chariots, and (6) elephants. The heads of some of the other departments discharged the functions of the superintendent of manufactures, accountant-general, collector-general, and so forth.
Pâtaliputra (site of modern Bankipore, on the Ganges, in Bihar, Eastern India), the Rome of the Hindus, was nine miles in length and one and one-half miles in breadth. The rectangular wall around it was pierced by sixty-four gates crowned by five hundred and seventy towers. The thirty city-fathers of this capital constituted a municipal commission, which managed the affairs through six boards. These boards (1) superintended the industrial arts of the people, (2) looked to the needs of foreigners visiting the country, and managed their estates as trustees, if required, (3) collected the vital statistics by registering births and deaths for revenue and other purposes, (4) regulated trade, commerce, and weights and measures, (5) supervised manufactures, and (6) collected taxes on sales of commodities.
In subsequent ages Portuguese, French, and English visitors were struck by the volume of traffic in Indian cities, the well-ordered administration of civic life, and the sanitation and economic prosperity of the crowded urban areas. Tavernier found, for example, travelling conveyances more commodious in India than anything that had been "invented for ease in France or Italy."
The Hindus have exhibited their capacity for administration of public bodies to promote general well-being in other spheres as well. Fa-hien, the Chinese scholar-saint, visited India early in the fifth century A.C. He has given an account of the charitable institutions, colleges-monasteries, rest-houses and free hospitals, endowed by the enlightened Hindu philanthropists of those days. His description of the free metropolitan hospital at Pâtaliputra says (Giles's translation):
"Hither come all poor or helpless patients suffering from all kinds of infirmities. They are well taken care of, and a doctor attends them; food and medicine being supplied according to their wants. Thus they are quite comfortable."
The Hindus were the first in the world to build hospitals and have anticipated the activity of modern "Christian charity." The first Christian establishment for relief of the sick was founded in the fourth century A.C. during the reign of Constantine. But in India hospitals both for men and animals are at least as old as the time of Asoka (third century B.C.).
The same genius for organization and administration has been displayed by the Hindus in the management of their great universities, to which scholars flocked from all parts of Asia. The university of Nalanda in Bihar (Eastern India) was run for at least seven hundred years, from the fifth to the twelfth century A.C. was a residential-teaching university and gave instruction, room, The number of halls in it was 300 and that of scholars 5000. It board, and medicine free of any cost whatsoever.
Eur-American scholars are wont to think that Amphictyonic Leagues and Olympic institutions, Councils of Trent and Conferences of Westphalia, congresses of scientists and academies of learned men are Hellenic, Greco-Roman, Christian, or Occidental patents. These have, however, been plentiful in the history of Hindu civilization.
Parishats or academies, whether permanent or peripatetic, have existed in India since time immemorial. Medicine, grammar, logic, chemistry, mathematics, political science, jurisprudence, in short, almost every branch of learning has grown up in India through the clubbing of intellects.
It is this collective or parishatic origin which explains why the treatises on arts and sciences in Sanskrit literature have in general the title of Samhitâ, i.e., compilation. Mostly encyclopedic works, they bear internal evidence of the collaboration and cumulative experience of many minds.
Individualistic ideals and ends are as a rule associated with moral, religious, and spiritual affairs in India. Yet even here the Hindu capacity for cooperation has been equally evident as in other spheres. Every twelve years the Hindus have had a Council of Trent, so to speak, since the earliest times. These congresses of spiritual leaders are called Kumbha-Melâ, after the planetary conjunction (of Kumbha) which recurs periodically. These are tremendously vitalizing forces: their delegates number about 75,000, and the visitors millions. The name of other moral and religious associations is legion.
Like the Greeks and the medieval Italians and Hansards, the Hindus also developed republican city-states, corporations and guilds. The folkmotes of European politics were represented in India by the village communities. And as for the vices of political life, they have not been confined to the East. Internecine warfare, feudalistic disintegration, absence of national unity, arbitrary taxation and legislation, territorial aggrandizement, and what not, have flourished as rank and luxuriant on European soil as on Asian.
In the thirteenth century Dante11 complained of the disunion and political corruption in Italy. This was the complaint of Machiavelli also in the sixteenth century. This picture of Italy has really been the norm of political and international life in the Occident.
In what respects, then, are the civic sense and political genius of the Western races superior to those of the Hindus, Chinese, and Mohammedans?
Notes
- Artha, Book X, ch. III. Vide Supra p. 8.↩
- Book IX, ch. II.↩
- Ch. IV, sec. vii, lines 599 etc.↩
- Ch. IV, sec vii, lines 620 etc.↩
- See the chapter on "The War-office" in the present author's Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus (1922).↩
- Supra p. 273.↩
- Supra pp. 105, 266.↩
- Mookerji: History of Indian Shipping (London 1910).↩
- Seal's Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus (1915), Sarkar's Hindu Achievements in Exact Science (1918).↩
- See Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus.↩
- Supra p. 106.↩