A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c6.83

c6.83

A people of this peculiar stamp of mind was never destined to act a prominent part in what is called the history of the world. This exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and moral character of the Indians. But if we admire in classical history even those heroes in whom the love of country was driven to the highest pitch of fanaticism, we have scarcely a right to despise a nation, in whom the love of a purer and higher life degenerated sometimes into reckless self-sacrifice. No people certainly made a more favourable impression upon the Greeks than the Indians. And when we read the account of their moral and intellectual condition at the time of Alexander, we are obliged to admit that if some of their good qualities are no longer to be met with among the Indians of later times, this is owing, not entirely to an original defect of character, but to that continual system of oppression exercised upon them by foreign conquerors, to whose physical power they submitted, while they could not help despising their masters as barbarians. Of the demoralising influence of a foreign occupation we have an instance in the time of Alexander, in the story of Kalânas (Kalyâna), who yielded to the flattering offers of the European conqueror, and left his sacred home to follow his royal master as a piece of curiosity. But Megasthenes was afterwards informed that the behaviour of Kalânas was strongly disapproved of by his friends, as ambitious and servile; while Mandanis was praised for his manly answer to Alexander's messengers, not only by his countrymen, but by Alexander himself. It was not long before Kalânas repented his unworthy ambition, for he burnt himself soon after at Pasargada, in the same manner as the only other Brahman who reached Europe in ancient times, burned himself at Athens, to the astonishment of the Greeks, who erected a tomb to him, with the inscription, " Here lies the Indian Sarman Cheya (Sarman Âchârya?), from Barygaza, who sought immortality after the old custom of the Indians."