The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel
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equanimity which, according to the Indian philosophy, must precede, and is indispensably requisite to the perfect union with the God-head. In general all the names by which Buddha, the priests of his religion, and its important and fundamental doctrines are known, whether in Thibet, or among the Mongul nations, in Siam, in Pegu, or in Japan—in general, we say, all those names are pure Indian words; for the tradition of all those nations, with unanimous accord, deduces the origin of this sect from India.
The name of Buddha, which the Chinese have changed, or shortened into that of Fo, is rather an honorary appellation, and is expressive of the divine wisdom with which, in the opinion of his followers, he was endowed; or which rather, according to their belief, became visible in his person. The period of his existence is fixed by many at six hundred years, by others again at a thousand years, before the Christian era. His real and historical name was Gautama; and it is remarkable that the same name was borne by the author of one of the principal philosophical systems of the Hindoos, the Nyaya philosophy, the leading principles of which will be the subject of future consideration, when we come to speak of the Indian philosophy. Indeed, the dialectic spirit, which pervades the Nyaya philosophy would seem to be of a kindred nature and like origin with the confused metaphysics of the Buddhists. But the names, notwithstanding their identity, denote two different persons; although even the founder of the dialectic system, like almost all other celebrated names in the ancient history, traditions and science of the Indians, figures in the character of a mythological personage. But we must first take a view of the state of manners, and the state of political civilization, in India, in order to be able to form a right judgment and estimate of the intellectual and scientific exertions of its inhabitants, and of the peculiar nature and tendency of the Indian opinions.
By the manner in which the Greek writers speak of the two religious parties, into which Alexander found the country divided, it can scarcely be doubted that the Buddhists at that period were far more numerous, and more extensively diffused throughout India, than they are at the present day, and this inference is even corroborated by many historical vouchers of the Indians themselves. Although the Buddhists are now but an obscure sect of dissenters in the Western Peninsula, they are still tolerably numerous in several of its provinces; while, on the other hand, they have complete possession of the whole Eastern and Indo-Chinese peninsula. Besides this sect, there are many other religious dissenters even in Hindostan; such for instance, as the sect of Jains, who steer a middle course between the followers of the old and established religion of Brahma, and the Buddhists; for, like the latter, they reject the Indian division and system of castes. Even the established religion itself is divided into three parties, which, though they do not form precisely separate sects, still are marked by no inconsiderable differences in their opinions, views, and conduct: according as each of these parties acknowledges the supremacy, or renders a nearly exclusive worship to one or other of the three principal Hindoo divinities, Brahma, Vishnoo, and Siva. And, although in the empire of the great Mogul, the number of the Mahometan conquerors, and of those that accompanied them into India, was very small, compared with the mass of the native population, yet, after the total destruction of this empire, there still remain several millions of Mahometans in the country. Even the Persian language, or a corrupt dialect of it, which these conquerors introduced, is still in many places in use as the language of ordinary life, trade, and business; in the same way as the Portuguese in the maritime and commercial cities of India, or the Lingua Franca in our eastern factories, serves as the usual and convenient medium of communication.
The Indian is not the only, or exclusively prevailing, language in the whole peninsula; in several provinces, as for instance, on the southern coast, and in the Isle of Ceylon, quite a different language prevails; and the old cultivated and classical speech of India is there unknown. The name of Sanscrit, by which the latter is designated, denotes a cultivated or highly wrought language; but the Pracrit, which is employed together or alternately with the Sanscrit in the theatrical pieces of the Indians, signifies a natural and artless speech, and is not so much a distinct dialect as a softer pronunciation of the Sanscrit, which smoothes, suppresses, or melts down the hard and crowded consonants, and pays less regard to the more elaborate grammatical forms of this language. The Pracrit, which is used in dramatic pieces, particularly in the female parts, stands from its more simple grammar, in the same relation to the Sanscrit as the softer Italian or Portuguese is to the old Latin, without however the same heterogeneous alloy. But, independently of these variations in the later and beautiful language of Indian poetry, the language of that country is split and divided into a number of dissimilar and widely dissimilar dialects, such as the Malabar, for example; and almost in every province the common language undergoes a variety of changes; and this is the case even in Bengal. The country of the Upper Ganges, especially Benares, is renowned for being the chief seat of the Sanscrit tongue—the place, at least, where it is best understood, and spoken with the greatest purity.
Those languages which differ totally from the Indian belong in part to quite a different race of men, mostly, perhaps, to the Malays: for, so far is India from being entirely peopled by one single race of inhabitants, that we find in several of its provinces tribes of an origin totally different from that of the Hindoos. This great variety in the whole life, manners, and political institutions of the Indians, forms a striking contrast with the absolute unity, and internal uniformity of the Chinese Empire. It was perhaps this variety in the moral and political aspect of ancient India that gave rise to the denomination which it has received in the old sacred Median books of Zoroaster, where, in the first fargard, or section of the Vendidat, it is described as the fifteenth pure region of the earth, created by Ormuzd, and designated by the name of Hapte Heando—a name which signifies the seven Indias. As India is still split into a multitude of sects and religions, and divided into different tribes, speaking various languages; so, as Herodotus long ago observed, it has for the most part been ever composed of a multitude of great and petty states, although from its natural boundaries it might easily have been formed into one great monarchy, and really constitutes but one country in its geographical circumscription.
The historian of India would have principally to speak of the successes of a long series of foreign conquerors, who, from Alexander the Great to Nadir Shah, have invaded this country by the North-west side from Persia. The Greeks were indeed told that, before Alexander the Great, no foreign conqueror had ever invaded India; and even after this invasion, and on the death of Sandracottus, when the Indians were liberated from the transient dominion of the Greeks, they were for a long lapse of ages governed by native princes; and their country was parcelled out into a number of great and petty kingdoms, such as those of Magadha, Ayodha, &c. It is a striking incident in the moral, and intellectual history of the Hindoos that amid all the revolutions under their ancient and native rulers, and amid all the later vicissitudes of foreign conquest, their peculiar modes of life and their institution of castes should have been preserved, and, in despite of all the changes of time and of empire, should have stood unchanged, like the one surviving monument of the primitive world. In the administration and government of this country, the absolute monarchical sway which exists in China, and the unlimited despotism of other oriental countries, could never be realized; for that hereditary division of classes, and those hereditary rights belonging to each, which, as they form a part of the Indian constitution, have taken such deep root in the soil; and which, as they rest on the immoveable basis of ancient faith, have become, as it were, the second nature of this people—all these present an unassailable rampart, which not even a foreign conqueror could ever succeed in overthrowing. We can hence understand what led the Greeks to believe and assert that there were Republican states in India. If from prepossessions, which were natural to that people, they asserted too much, or thought they saw more than a nearer investigation proves to be actually the case; still their assertion is not totally without foundation, for the Indian system of castes is in many respects more favourable to institutions of a Republican nature, or at least Republican tendency, than the constitution of any other Asiatic state. When those modern writers therefore, who were the declared enemies of all hereditary rank and hereditary rights, spoke with contempt and abhorrence of the Indian constitution of castes, represented it as the peculiar basis of despotism, and even applied the name of caste as a party-word to the social relations of Europe; their assertions were false and utterly opposed to history. The invectives of these writers may be easily accounted for, from their very democratic views, or rather from their doctrine of absolute equality, as this