India: What Can It Teach Us?

$18
Item Code: NAD386
Author: F. Max Muller
Publisher: Rupa.& Co
Edition: 2010
ISBN: 9788171679201
Pages: 204
Cover: Paperback
Other Details 8.0 inch x 5.0 inch
Weight 180 gm
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Book Description
About The Book

This collection of lectures of Max Muller Portrays India, specially the Vedic India, as an epitome of a virtuosity, and morality, whose glory is equal, if not greater, to the classical Greek or Roman civilizations. Max Muller urges the westerners to come out of their superior colonial mindset and admire and adopt the multi-dimensional efficacy that is inherent in India. Muller espouses an amazing depth of love and reverence for India, and highlights such positive aspects about her that it compels us to look at our own country in a different, positive light.

About the Author

Friendrich Max Muller (1823-1900) was a great linguist and Indological scholar born in Germany. He began his study of Sanskrit under Prof. Brockhaus and soon chose it as his special pursuit. His first attempt appeared as the translation of the Hitopadesha, Published in Leipzing in 1844. The East India Company commissioned him to edit the Rigveda at their expense in 1847, which resulted in the publication of six giant volumes on the subject. He is also credited with elegantly translating Kalidasa’s Meghaduta. His list of publications includes History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, Introduction to the science of Religion, Science of Mythology, and Auld Lang Syne. Before his death in 1900 at Oxford, he was crowned with most honours and awards a scholar could aspire to have.

Dedication

As these Lectures would never have been written or deliverer but for your hearty encouragement, I hope you will now allowme to dedicate them to you, not only as a token of my sincere admiration of your great achievements as an Oriental scholar, butalso as a memorial of our friendship, now more than thirty year. old, a friendship which has grown from year to year, has weathered many a storm, and will last, I trust, for what to both of us ma- remain of our short passage from shore to shore.

I must add however, that in dedicating these Lectures to you I do not wish to throw upon you any responsibility for the view which I have put forward in them. I know that you do not agree with some of my views on the ancient religion and literature 0 India, and I am well aware that with regard to the recent date which I have assigned to the whole of what is commonly called the Classical Sanskrit Literature, I stand almost alone. No, if friendship can claim any voice in the courts of science and literature, let me assure you that I shall consider your outspokencriticism of my Lectures as the very best proof of your true hones friendship. I have through life considered it the greatest honour if real scholars, I mean men not only of learning, but of judgments and character, have considered my writings worthy of a sever and searching criticism, and I have cared far more for the production of one single new fact, though it spoke against m then for any amount of empty praise or empty abuse. Sincere devotion to his studies and an unswerving love of truth ought t. furnish the true scholar with an armour impermeable to flatter: or abuse, but with a vizor that shuts out no ray of light, from whatever quarter it may come. More light more truth, more facts more combination of facts, these are his quest. And if in thatquest he fails, as many have failed before him, he knows that in the search for truth failures are sometimes the condition of success and the true conquerors often those whom the world calls the vanquished.

You know better than anybody else the present state of Sanskrit scholarship. You know that at present and for some time to come Sanskrit scholarship means discovery and conquest. Every one of your own works marks a real advance, and a permanent occupation of new ground. But you know also how small a strip has as yet been explored of the vast continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much still remains terra incognita. No doubt this exploring work is troublesome, and often disappointing, but young students must learn the truth of a remark lately made by a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service, whose death we all deplore, Dr. Burnell, 'that no trouble is thrown away which saves trouble to others.' We want men who will work hard, even at the risk of seeing their labours unrequited we want strong and bold men who are not afraid of storms and shipwrecks. The worst sailors are not those who suffer shipwreck, but those who only dabble in puddles and are afraid of wetting their feet.

It is easy now to criticise the labours of Sir William Jones, Thomas Colebrooke, and Horace Hayman Wilson, but what would have become of Sanskrit scholarship, if they had not rushed in where even now so many fear to tread? and what will become of Sanskrit scholarship, if their conquests are forever to mark the limits of our knowledge? You know best that there is more to be discovered in Sanskrit literature than Nalas and Sakuntalas, and surely the young men who ever year go out to India are not deficient in the spirit of enterprise, or even of adventure? Why then should it be said that the race of bold explorers, who once rendered the name of the Indian Civil Service illustrious over the whole world, has well-nigh become extinct, and that England which offers the strongest incentives and the most brilliant opportunities for the study of the ancient language, literature, and history of India, is no longer in the van of Sanskrit scholarship?

If some of the young candidates for the Indian Civil Service who listened to my Lectures, made up their minds that such 3 reproach shall be wiped out, if a few of them at least determined to follow in the footsteps of Sir William Jones, and to show to the world that Englishmen who have been able to achieve by pluck by perseverance, and by real political genius the material conquestof India, do not mean to leave the laurels of its intellectual conquestentirely to other countries, then I shall indeed rejoice, and fee: that I have paid back, in however, small a degree, the large debt of gratitude which I owe to my adopted country and to some of its greatest statesmen, who have given me the opportunity which I could find nowhere else of realising the dreams of my life,-thepublication of the text and commentary of the Rig-veda, the mostancient book of Sanskrit, aye of Aryan literature, and now the edition of the translation of the Sacred Books of the East.

I have left my Lectures very much as I delivered them a Cambridge. I am fond of the form of Lectures, because it seem: to me the most natural form which in our age didactic composition ought to take. As in ancient Greece the dialogue reflected most truly the intellectual life of the people, and as in the Middle Age learned literature naturally assumed with the recluse in his monasticcell the form of a long monologue, so with us the lecture place the writer most readily in that position in which he is accustomed to deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate his knowledge. to others. It has no doubt certain disadvantages. In a lecture which is meant to be didactic we have, for the sake of completeness, tosay and to repeat certain things which must be familiar to some of our readers, while we are also forced to leave out information: which, even in its imperfect form, we should probably not hesitateto submit to our fellow-students, but which we feel we have not yet sufficiently mastered and matured to enable us to place it clearly and simply before a larger public.

But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. A lecture, by keeping a critical audience constantly before our eyes, forces us to condense our subject, to discriminate between what is important and what is not, and often to deny ourselves the pleasure of displaying what may have cost us the greatest labour, but is of little consequence to other scholars. In lecturing we are constantly reminded of what students are so apt to forget, that theirknowledge is meant not for them only, but for others and that to know well means to be able to teach well. I confess I can never write unless I think of somebody for whom I write should never wish for a better audience to have before m than the learned, brilliant, and kind-hearted assembly by , was greeted in your University.

Still I must confess that I did not succeed in bringing all I wished to say, and more particularly the evidence on which of my statements rested, up to the higher level of a lecture, and I have therefore added a number of notes! Containing the less organised matter which resisted as yet that treatment which is necessary before our studies can realise their highest purpose that of feeding, invigorating, and inspiriting the minds of others.

The Life and Work of Max Muller

FRIEDRICK MAX MULLER, was born at Dessau on the 6th December 1823. He was the only son of the distinguished poet Wilhelm Muller who died in 1827. Max Muller showed a talent for music early in life, but he was dissuaded by Mendelssohn from adopting music as his profession. At school he decided to devote himself to the classical languages. He entered the University of Leipzig in 1841began to learn Sanskrit, and published a translation of the Hitopadesa in 1844, after graduating Ph.D. on September 1, 1843 He then went to Berlin and attended the lectures of Bopp and Schelling and thus began that attachment to philology and philosophy which lasted all his life. In 1845 he migrated to Paris and came under the influence of Eugene Burnout, at whose suggestion he started collecting materials for the editio princeps of the Rig-veda. While engaged on this work, he had to strugglefor his livelihood and to maintain himself by copying manuscripts and assisting scholars in other ways. He went to England in 1846 and the Board of Directors of the East India Cornpany commissioned him to bring out at their expense a complete edition of the Rig-veda with Sayana's commentary. He went back to Paris in 1848 to collate manuscripts, but, on the outbreak of the Revolution, fearing for the safety of his manuscripts, he returned quickly to London. Soon after, the printing of the first volume began at the OxfordUniversity Press, and he found it necessary to go and settle in Oxford, which became his home for the rest of his life. He became Deputy Taylorian Professor of Modern European Languages in 1850 and succeeded to the professorship in 1854. In 1859 he published his History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, a work Containing much valuable and important research in literary chronology, based on a knowledge of many works then available only in manuscript.

H.H. Wilson, Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford died in 1860 (May). Max Muller had strong claims to succeed him on account of his ability and published work; but he was a foreigner and his broad views on theological questions were well known; and the election to the post was in the hands of Convocation. The country clergy decided the election against Max Muller, who was, no doubt, bitterly disappointed with the result.

Max Muller's great capacities and industry were now forced to find employment along other channels. His lectures on the Science of Language delivered in 1861 and 1863 at the Royal Institution made him a recognised authority in England and gave evidence of his marvellous powers of lucid exposition and of presenting dry subjects in a fascinating manner. The same subject was continued in his Science of Thought (1887). He retired from the Taylorian professorship in 1868 and became the first Professor of Comparative Philology from that year. He wrote extensively on subjects of Comparative Mythology; but though his work on this subject has not stood' the test of time, it gave a great stimulus to its study. In the field of Comparative Religion, again he was a pioneer, being the first Hibbert Lecturer. In 1878 he lectured under this foundation on the Origin and Growth of Religion, and was again Hibbert Lecturer during the year 1888 to 1892. When he gave up active service as Professor of Comparative Philology in 1875, he embarked on what was perhaps the greatest and most important undertaking of his life-the planning and editing of the Sacred Books of the East, he himself contributing three complete volumes and parts of two others out of a total of fifty-one.

He kept up his pursuit of Sanskrit studies. The Rig-veda was finished in 1873, and a second revised edition brought out in 1892. He initiated the Aryan series in the Anecdota Oxoniensia with four publications of his own, and assisted in planning the next three which appeared before 1900. His Cambridge lectures (1882) on India, What can it teach us? Came out as a book in 1883. He helped scholars who went to Oxford for the study of Sanskrit with suggestions for suitable lines of work.

Among his other works are: Chips from a German Workshop (four volumes), being a collection of his contributions to English journals; Auld Lang Syne (Vol. i, 1898, ii, 1899), a book of reminiscences; Deutsche Liebe (1857) a German romance, translated into several other European languages

. Though a busy scholar and voluminous writer, Max Muller was 'quite a man of the world.' He was acquainted with most of the leading men of Europe in his day, including several crowned heads. 'On account of his social qualities Max Muller was much in request as president of societies and congresses.' Degrees, titles, and honours poured on him from all the European countries. He died at Oxford on October 28, 1900.1

Contents

The Life and Work of Max Mullerxiii
Dedicationvii
Lecture
1What can India Teach us?1
2Character of the Hindus26
3The Human interest of Sanskrit Literature57
4Was Vedic Culture Exclusive?82
5The Religion of the Veda101
6Vedic Deities124
7Veda and Vedanta143
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