The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago c19.22

c19.22

One of the greatest facts of ancient Tamil society was religious toleration, the spirit of free enquiry, or the liberty of the human understanding. The monarchs themselves openly encouraged religious discussion, for, they invited teachers of every sect to the public halls, and allowed them to preach their doctrines during festivals and other occasions of public gathering. They protected impartially the temples and monasteries of all sects; and although they might have personally inclined to believe in the doctrines of a particular sect, and built and endowed places of worship for that sect, they cautiously avoided interfering with the rites and ceremonies of rival faiths. This religious liberty had a great and salutary influence upon the intellectual and moral development of the Tamils. By softening feelings and manners, Buddhism also powerfully contributed to the amelioration of the social state. The Nigrantas and Buddhists aimed at a high ideal of morality. Justice, humanity, charity to all living beings and love of truth were the virtues which they taught by precept and example. These two religions necessarily exercised a very considerable influence upon moral and intellectual order, and upon public ideas and sentiments. The pure conceptions of morality which the Tamils had formed were the real basis of their civilization. That the sentiments of morality and religion predominated in the minds of the Tamils is evident from their ancient literature. The authors extolled piety, charity, truthfulness and tenderness to life and expressed a contempt for the perishable objects of the physical world. Their pure and elevated maxims were however mixed up with others of a peurile and imaginary character, resulting from that confusion of ideas which is natural in the early stages of civilization. They believed in the transmigration of souls, and were taught to suppress all desire, which was considered the cause of rebirths. Even the best intellects among them had not yet learned to discern the impassable limits which divide the province of reason from that of speculation. They tried to understand nature and its mysterious author, by a subtle self-analysis, instead of by close observation and careful study of the phenomena of the outside world: and their wise men wasted their time in brilliant but barren reveries regarding the life after death. So much were they engrossed with the thoughts of a future state, that they sadly neglected the affairs of their present state. In fact, they gloried in poverty and utter renunciation of the world, as the only means of suppressing desire and securing the salvation of their souls from the stormy ocean of re-births. Herein lay the seeds of national decay, which soon laid low the Tamils and all other Hindu races, and made them an easy prey to every invading power.