Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3.3

Language: English

c3.3.1

[^1): It must be obvious that these traditions are merely attempts at explanations of the unknown through current ideas, which in S. India amount to the merest elements of Hindu mythology as gathered from third-rate sources. Mouhot the illustrious discoverer of the Cambodian temples, though a naturalist and not an archæologist, saw this very plainly. He says ("Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China", vol. ii. pp. 8, 9): "All traditions being lost, the natives invent new ones, according to the measure of their capacity." The Māhātmyas are equally worthless with the oral legends, for they are modern compositions (mostly later than the 10th century A. D.) intended to connect particular places with events entirely mythical and belonging to modern or even foreign religious systems. How worthless tradition is in S. India, a few examples will easily prove. The chain of rocks from India to Ceylon is (as is well known) connected with the myth of Rāma's conquest of Laṅkā, but this localization of the mythical event must be quite recent; for, *firstly*, whatever may be the age of the Rāmāyaṇa, the worship of Rāma is quite modern. *Again*, had there been any such myth current in the place during the early centuries A. D., we might expect something about it in the Periplus or Ptolemy, especially as the former gives the legend then current about Cape Comorin; but there is nothing of the kind to be found. *Lastly*, there is nothing whatever (Mr.

c3.3.2

D'Alwis assures us) known of the legend in Ceylon. Again, the localization of the events of the Mahābhārata is endless; every few miles in S. India one can find the place where some battle or other event occurred, and so it is also in Java. Such legends, therefore, are absolutely worthless, for they prove no more than that the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa are or were favourite stories over a large part of the East. But the traditional practice in respect of study in relation to India, but there is much besides to be studied. The history of Indian civilization does not cease (as some appear to think) with the early period of Buddhism. About the early centuries of the Christian era, we find the Buddhist-Brahmanical civilization extending from its home in the North over alien races inhabiting the peninsula of India, and in the course of some few centuries it had already extended over Burmah, the Malay Islands, and even to the forests and swamps of Cambodia. But this immense progress was not a mere reception of stereotyped forms and opinions by uncivilized peoples; it was on the contrary (and herein lies the interest of the subject) a gradual adaptation¹ to circumstances, including the creation of national literatures in many languages, which were then first reduced to writing and system. In South-India, at all events, new sects rapidly arose, which have reacted powerfully on Northern India.

c3.3.3

Books containing the various religious opinions that have prevailed more or less in these Hinduized, or rather Brahmanized, countries, are yet easily accessible; but the chronological framework is almost entirely wanting, and this can only be supplied from the inscriptions still existing in large numbers. If an outline of the historical events of the last fifteen centuries of South-Indian history could be gained from these inscriptions, the wearisome dry dogmatic treatises would begin to possess some human interest, and the faint outlines of a long obliterated picture would reappear; faintly at first, but with time and patient research, they would (like fossils in the hands of the geologist) present a living picture of a past, if not attractive, at all events strange. The prospect of such a result should tempt the few European students of Sanskrit in South-India who at present, in the hope of learning something of Indian matters, devote their attention to mechanical poems which repeat themselves with "most damnable iteration," or to plays composed by pedants during the worst times of India. This real history of South-India can only be gathered from inscriptions.