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CONTENS
PREFACE................................................................................................................................................ 3
MY INDIAN FRIENDS. I..................................................................................................................................5
My first Acquaintance with India............................................................................................................ 5
Dvârkanâth Tagore.................................................................................................................................. 6
Debendranâth Tagore.............................................................................................................................. 9
Râjah Râdhakânta Deva........................................................................................................................ 12
MY INDIAN FRIENDS. II...............................................................................................................................20
NliakanthaGoreh. .................................................................................................................................. 20
"A hermit's forest cell, and fellowship with deer, A harmless meal of fruit, stone beds beside the
stream, Are helps to those who long for Siva's guidance here, But be the mind devout, our homes
will forests seem." ................................................................................................................................. 24
Keshnb Chunder Sen. ............................................................................................................................ 26
Chaitanya. .............................................................................................................................................. 26
Nanâk and the Sikhs. ............................................................................................................................. 27
I ground sandal, took attar of roses and many ..................................................................................... 28
Samâjes existing in India....................................................................................................................... 34
Ramtonoo Lahari. .................................................................................................................................. 35
Dayânanda Sarasvati ............................................................................................................................. 36
MY INDIAN FRIENDS.III. .............................................................................................................................43
Behramji Malabâri................................................................................................................................. 43
Râmabâi.................................................................................................................................................. 45
Ânandibâi Joshee, M.D.......................................................................................................................... 48
National Character of the Hindus......................................................................................................... 50
Indian Theosophy. ................................................................................................................................. 54
My Indian Correspondents. ................................................................................................................... 56
MY INDIAN FRIENDS.IV. .............................................................................................................................61
The Veda................................................................................................................................................. 61
Hymn to the Asvins, Day and Night. ..................................................................................................... 70
Hymn to the Asvins day and night......................................................................................................... 71
Hymn to Ushas, Dawn. .......................................................................................................................... 72
May we and all our liberal chieftains prosper!..................................................................................... 74
Hymn to Savitri, Sun.............................................................................................................................. 77
And grant to us to-day thy gracious blessing! ...................................................................................... 78
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Hymn to Agni, Fire. ............................................................................................................................... 79
Fair-bodied Agni with his radiant splendour........................................................................................ 79
Hymn to Agni, Fire. ............................................................................................................................... 81
Thou lord and giver of our wealth,........................................................................................................ 81
And drive all hatred far from us! .......................................................................................................... 81
By night, Oh say, where have they gone by daytime?........................................................................... 83
Hymn to Ratri, Might............................................................................................................................. 84
Accept it graciously, O Night! ............................................................................................................... 85
Hymn to Varuna,.................................................................................................................................... 85
Protect us, gods, for evermore with blessings!...................................................................................... 86
Hymn X, 129........................................................................................................................................... 87
MY INDIAN FRIENDS.V................................................................................................................................88
A Prime Minister and a Child-wife. ...................................................................................................... 88
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PREFACE
HERE follows the second volume of my Auld lang Syne. In some cases my recollections go back
very far, and, after a lapse of nearly seventy years, they may not always be so fresh as they ought to be.
It is very strange, on looking back to the various stations through which we have passed in our journey
through this
life, to find how much our own fate has depended on our surroundings and on
circumstances over which we ourselves could not possibly have had any control. Our friends, nay even
our enemies, seem to form part of our life, and thus it has come to pass that instead of writing my own
life, I have almost unconsciously come to write about my friends rather than about myself. As to
enemies, if indeed I ever had any, I prefer to be silent, for it is difficult to be quite fair in speaking of
them, and we seldom know, till it is too late, what real benefactors they have been to us. Scholars, who
on questions of scholarship differ from us as we differ from them, should never be counted as personal
enemies, if only they are truthful and straightforward, and if otherwise, is it not best here also to follow
the old rule, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum? But with regard to my friends and acquaintances, the older I
grow, the more I feel how much I have owed and still owe to them, nay, how often the whole stream of
my life has been turned East or West by a word or two spoken by a friend at the right moment, just as a
whole train may be turned by the mere touch of a handle by the pointsman.
The first volume of my Auld Lang Syne contained recollections of musicians, poets, crowned
heads, and beggars, such as had not entirely vanished from the camera obscura of my memory. The
present volume is chiefly devoted to my Indian Friends, and to certain events that first led my attention
to India. Though I have had but visions of the rivers, the mountains, the valleys, the forests, and the
men and women of India, having never been allowed to visit that earthly paradise, I have known for
many years the beauties of its literature, the bold flights of its native philosophy, the fervid devotion of
its ancient religion, and these together seem to me to give a much truer picture of what India really was,
and is still meant to be, in the history of the world, than the Bazaars of Bombay, or the Durbars of
Rajahs and Maharajahs at Delhi. Of course, I shall be told that my picture of India is purely ideal, but
an ideal portrait may sometimes be truer than even a photograph, and, though I trust that my facts on
the whole are right, I shall always feel most grateful, if any facts are pointed out to me which either
contradict or modify my own judgments.
India has never had full justice done to it, and when I say this I think not only of ancient, but of
modern India also. And though it can easily be seen that my chief interest lies with ancient India, it
should be remembered that in no other country is the past still so visibly present as in that southernmost
home of the ancient family of Aryan speech. There may be more historical monuments, reminding us
of the past, in Greece and Italy. But life, with its religion, philosophy, and literature, has completely
changed there, and we look in vain for a Socrates or Plato on the steps of the Parthenon, or for a Cato
or Caesar among the lonely columns of the Forum. In India, on the contrary, the religion of the Veda is
by no means entirely extinct. Not long ago even one of the old magnificent Vedic sacrifices, the
Agnishtoma, was performed at Benares with all its pristine array. The old epic poems are still recited
by the Pathakas of the country, and some of the old philosophies are flourishing in native Colleges,
such as Nuddea, so that men of the present day, such as Gauri-amkara, the Prime Minister of
Bhavnagar, and the Yogin Ramakrishna, bring back to us in full reality the Rishis and Yogins of a
thousand or two thousand years ago.
What seems to me to prevent a full appreciation of the intellectual achievements of ancient and
medieval India is that they are mostly looked upon, as we look on the prodigies in our exhibitions, as
simply curious. Now, we should never say that Plato and Aristotle were curious. We take them far
more seriously. We look upon them as our equals, nay as our teachers. It cannot surely be the brown
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skin that keeps us from feeling the same sympathy and paying the same homage to the poets and
philosophers of ancient India, and that prevents even at the present day any real friendship between the
best sons of India and England? That brown skin may at first cause a feeling of strangeness, but I know
how easily that feeling can be and has been overcome, and, judging from my own limited experience, I
can truly say that there is behind that warm and almost Italian colour of the Âryas of India the same warm heart, the
same trust, and the same love as under the white skin of Europeans. Real friendship between the rulers and the ruled in India
ought to be no impossibility; it has existed again and again; only it should no longer be the exception, but the rule.
If the account of my Indian Friends which I give in this volume, should serve here and there to
overcome that feeling of strangeness and lead to real trust between the two most distant members of the
noble family of Âryan speech, I should indeed feel amply rewarded.
I could not well pass over, as belonging by right to the circle of my friends and acquaintances,
the ancient Rishis of the Veda, call them Dîrghatamas, Vasishtha, or any other name, and in order to
show what these ancient poets were really like, I have ventured to add metrical translations of a few of
their hymns, celebrating the matutinal procession of their bright Devas or gods. For these I have to
crave the indulgence of my critics. These poets were the first to call me to India, and I have never
regretted having followed their call, as far as other calls allowed me to do so. They have revealed to me
a whole world of thought of which no trace existed anywhere else, and they have helped me to throw
the first faint rays of light and reason on perhaps the darkest period in the history of religion,
philosophy, and mythology. That period, which I should like to call the Etymological, will, I doubt not,
become illuminated hereafter by a flood of light from the same source. The work of the present
generation of Vedic students could naturally be that of pioneers only, but they may fairly say In magnis
et voluisse sat est, or in Sanskrit, Yatne krite yadi na
sidhyati, koxtra doshah!
F. M. M.
OXFORD, May 1, 1899.
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