The Right Honourable F. MAX MUELLER
P.
KODANDA RAO
I
“If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow–in some parts a very paradise on earth–I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has found solutions of some of them which well-deserved the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant–I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we, who have been nurtured almost exclusively in the thoughts of Greeks and Romans and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact, more human, a life not for this life only but a transfigured and eternal life–again I should point to India.”
The
Right Hon. F. Max Mueller made this statement in London in 1842 in the first of
his seven lectures on the subject: “India: What can it teach us?” to the
British candidates for the Indian Civil Service. While mentioning that India
has also many things to learn from Europe, he said that young
Britishers, who had to spend about twenty-five years in India, would feel at
home in India if, before they left England, they learnt about the life and
literature of India. He was however careful to point out that the India he had
in view was not the India of the modern cities like Calcutta, Madras and Bombay
but the India of a few thousands of years ago and the contemporary India of the
village communities, the true India of Indians. Max Mueller was not indulging
in a panageric of ancient and rural India but describing what he learnt of them
from Sanskrit literature, which he studied with remarkable zeal and
perseverance for several decades, and of contemporary events in India from his
place in the University of Oxford, without visiting India
himself.
Whether
he intended it or not, the timing of his lectures had the effect of creating in
the minds of the British members of the Indian Civil Service
proceeding to India respect for Indians and also of engendering self-respect
and self-confidence in Indians, and particularly the Hindus, who were
dispirited as the result of the Indian defeat in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and
were looked down upon by the victorious British rulers. Even earlier, in 1829,
Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General, had, in his bold and famous
Minute outlawing Sati, regretted that the Hindus had become the slaves
of a succession of foreign invaders and resolved to help them to join the ranks
of the independent nations of the world, which they deserved. The need to put
heart in them was greater after the Mutiny, and Max Mueller’s lectures served
that purpose to some extent, even as in India Mrs. Annie Besant helped to build
up the morale of Hindus. To restore self-confidence among those who felt that
they were down and out was the greatest service that any friends of India could
have rendered. Gopal Krishna Gokhale admitted that the Indian National Congress
could not have been initiated by Indians in 1885, but only by a Britisher like
Allan Octavian Home. Max Muller, like Hume, was one of the greatest foreign friends
of India.
Max
Mueller was born in Germany on December 6, 1823. He got interested in India by
his study of Sanskrit in Germany and France. He secured his Doctorate at the
early age of twenty. He published his translation of Sanskrit classic, Hitopadesa,
in 1844, when he was twenty-one. In Paris he attended lectures by Eugene
Burnouf on the Hymns of the Rig Veda. When the great German philosopher,
Arthur Schopenhauer, who appreciated the Upanishads but dismissed the Rig
Veda as mere “priestly rubbish”, Max Muller decided to study the Rig
Veda, with Sayana’s commentary. He migrated to England in 1846 and became
Professor of European Languages in the Oxford University, but his main
interest, Sanskrit. Though he was the most competent candidate for the Boden
Professorship of Sanskrit, the University did not select him because his views
on Christianity were more rational than orthodox, and his politics were more
liberal than that of Oxford. The University, however, created a new chair of
Comparative Philology for him. He retired from it in 1875, and devoted himself
to his gigantic project of the publication of the Sacred Books of the East in
several volumes! Apart from this monumental publication, Max Mueller published Science
of Language, Science of Mythology Science of Religion and several other
books and, among them, on Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and the “Six
Systems of Indian Philosophy.”
Max
Mueller was greatly interested in Brahmo Samaj of Keshab Chandra Sen,
and Prarthana Samaj of Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar. Of his theory of
the evolution of human thought, somewhat like Darwin’s Theory of Organic
Evolution, he said:
“The
bridge of thoughts that span the whole of history of the Aryan world has its
first arch in the Veda, and its last in Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason. In the Veda we watch the first unfolding of the human mind
as we can watch it nowhere else. Life seems simple, natural and
childlike....While in the Veda we may study the childhood, we may study
in Kant’s Critique the perfect manhood of the Aryan mind. It has passed
through many phases, and every one of them has left its mark.”
Max
Mueller was influenced increasingly by Vedanta which he called “a system
in which human speculation seems to have reached its very acme,” and he
confessed himself to be a Vedantist. A year before his death he wrote:
“I
make no secret that all my life I have been fond of the Vedanta; I share
Schopenhauer’s enthusiasm for the Vedanta and feel indebted to it for
much that has been helpful to me in my passage through life.”
If
ever there lived a man who, by inner struggles and by constant efforts
throughout his whole life, came to embrace the highest spirit of India’s
religious and philosophical heritage, that man was Max Mueller. Though he
remained a Christian by denomination, his actual faith did not accord with
orthodox Christianity.
So
great was his identification with Hinduism that he said on
one occasion:
“As
classical scholars yearn to see Rome and Athens, I yearn to see Benares
and to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges.”
On
another occasion he said:
“I
feel I am always in Benares. I love to imagine this house (in Oxford) as
Benares. I do not desire to see the geographical Benares with my physical eye.
My idea of that city is so high that I cannot risk disillusionment.”
He
loved to sign his name as Mokska Mueller Bhat! Swami Vivekananda, who
had met him, said that he was a Vedantist of Vedantists, and had caught the
real soul and melody of Vedanta.
In
his last lecture he summarised his high appreciation of the value of the Veda
and the Vedanta. Lest he be thought to have exaggerated it, he
quoted with approval the opinion of the famous German philosopher, Arthur
Schopenhauer, who had said:
“In
the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the
Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life–it will be the solace of
my death.”
While
Max Mueller’s interest in India was initiated by his love of Sanskrit and Hindu
philosophy, he took active interest in the contemporary politics of India.
Though he was not a politician in the ordinary sense, he was able to exercise
significant influence on Indian politics because of his scholarly eminence,
which gave him access to Queen Victoria, W. E, Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister,
and several other leaders in British public life. He conceived his position in
England as a spokesman of India her aspirations.
His
attitude towards British rule in India was similar to that of the leading
Indians of the day, like Mahadev Govind Ranade, Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar,
K. T. Telang and other Liberals, who frankly accepted British rule as ordained
in the inscrutable dispensation of Providence for India’s good, but were
critical of some of its aspects which they characterised as un-British and
sought self-government within the British Empire.
In his first lecture to
the British I. C. S. candidates, Max Mueller attempted to remove the prevailing
prejudice that every thing in India was strange and different from the
intellectual life of England, so that they might not feel life in India was an
exile to them, In the second lecture he attempted to remove the prejudice that
Hindus were an inferior in race and indignantly repudiated the sweeping charge
that Hindus had no respect for truth.
He
said:
“Because
in Calcutta or Bombay or Madras, Indians who are brought before Judges or who
hang about law courts and bazaars, are not distinguished by an unreasoning and
uncompromising love of truth, is it not a very vicious induction to say, in these
days of careful reasoning, that all Hindus are liars?….I confess to a little
nervous tremor whenever I see a sentence beginning with ‘The people of India’
or even with ‘All Brahmins’ or ‘All Buddhists’! What follows is almost
invariably wrong.”
He
did not wish to present an ideal picture of Indians but protested against
indiscriminate abuse heaped on them as a whole. He condemned the History of
British India by James Mill, which was prescribed to the I. C. S.
candidates and which, he said, was most mischievous and was responsible for the
greatest misfortunes that had happened in India and which traduced the
character of Indians as a body.
To repudiate Mill’s
allegations, Max Mueller quoted extensively the testimonies of several British
authorities who had long experience of Indians. Sir Thomas Munroe said: “I have
had ample opportunity of observing the Hindus in every situation, and I can
affirm that they are not litigious.” Col. Sleeman, who suppressed Thugee
and had lied most of his time in rural India and among
village communities, had said: “I have had before me hundreds of cases in which
a man’s property, liberty and life depended upon his telling a lie, but he has
refused to tell it.” Max Mueller asked how many English Judges could have said the
same! He however made reservation that Hindus were truthful when left to
themselves before the Muslim invasions. He could quote several authorities to
testify that love of truth was the national character of Indians and asserted
that there must be some good ground for the view. He contrasted how the French
accused by English travellers as wanting in truthfulness, while the French
described the British as untruthful! Mount Stuart Elphinstone had said
that villagers were honest and sincere, and including Thugs and dacoits, the
mass of crime was less in India than in England. If, under
British rule, some Indians were not truthful, it was because they were obliged
to resist force by fraud. Sir Thomas Munroe had said that the Hindus were not
inferior to the nations of Europe, and if civilization was an article of trade
between England and India, he was convinced that England would gain by the
import cargo. Max Mueller added that he had been repeatedly told by English
merchants that commercial honour stood higher in India than in any other
country, and that a dishonoured bill was hardly known in India. After quoting
several other authorities to the same effect, Max Mueller cautioned that he did
not pretend that all Indians were angels, but what struck him was that, after
nearly a thousand years of foreign rule, so much of Hindu truthfulness
survived. In his final adjuration, he said:
“Certainly
I can imagine nothing more mischievous, more dangerous, more fatal to the
permanence of English rule in India than for the young Civil Servants to go to
that country with the idea that it was a sink of moral depravity, an ant’s nest
of lies, for no one is more sure to go wrong, whether in private or public
life, as he who says in his haste: ‘All men are liars’.”
Though
Max Mueller supported British rule in India, he pleaded for a more liberal
policy towards Indians. He rejected all ideas that India should be ruled with a
strong hand. In a letter to the Times, London, in 1883, he gave his
support to the Ilbert Bill which sought to eliminate racial discrimination
against Indian judges in criminal trials of Europeans, and condemned the
“brutal logic which maintained that India was conquered by ‘blood and iron’ and
must be ruled by ‘blood and iron!” He maintained that modern India had not had
full justice done to it, and said so to Prime Minister, E. W. Gladstone. He
presented a copy of his book, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, to
Lord Curzon with a view to impressing his plea that the English should not look
down on Indians but should regard them as equals. He appealed to the English
not to treat Indians as ‘born enemies or conspirators to be kept under by
force, but as loyal subjects to be trusted.’
Max
Mueller welcomed the Indian Council Bill of 1892 as at least a step in the
right direction, and advised the Indian National Congress to accept it. In a
letter published in the Times, he described the critics of the Bill as
insects which were not worth powder and shot, and which could be more
effectively killed by ignoring them than by learned arguments. He was happy
that the of elections had been introduced in some responsible non-official
bodies. He however regretted that he would not live to see a Parliament in
Calcutta. He preferred Indians being represented in the British Parliament to
Home Rule and fully supported, along with John Bright, the effort of Lal Mohan
Ghose to be elected to the British House of Commons.
Max
Mueller memorialised Queen Victoria to alleviate the conditions of child-widows
in India and make the Women’s Fund available for the purpose. He opposed the
salt-tax in India which he said, was considered
in the whole history of the world as a disgrace to any
civilised country. He drew up a petition to Queen Victoria for the release from
prison of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. It was signed by Dadabhai Naorojj, Romesh
Chunder Dutt, Sir William Wilson Hunter and others. In justification thereof,
he stressed the statue of Tilak as a gentleman and scholar than as a
politician, on ground of expediency.
Tilak
said that no native of India could possibly be unalive to the influence which
Max Mueller had all along exerted in making the British people to regard
Indians with greater respect than they would have done
otherwise.
Behramji
M. Malabari said that Indian politicians regarded Max Mueller as one of their
wisest and safesb guides, and Hindu reformers considered him as their final
court of appeal. Romesh Chunder Dutt said: “I do not exaggerate when I state
that for a period of half a century my countrymen have looked upon Professor
Max Mueller, not only as the best interpreter of ancient Indian literature, but
also as the truest friend of modern India.” In 1899, a few months before his
death, Max Mueller wrote:
“What
I feel, and what I wish my friends would feel with me, is that a country which,
even in these unheroic days, could produce a Ram Mohan Roy, a Keshab Chandra
Sen, a Malabari, and a Ramabai, is not a decadent country, but may look forward
to a bright, sunny future, as it can look back with satisfaction, and even
pride, on four thousand years of a not inglorious history.”