The History of Indian Literature c8.26.2

c8.26.2

The mass of the immigrants had a great deal too much on their hands in the subjugation of the aborigines to be in a position to occupy themselves with other matters. Their whole energies had, in the first instance, to be concentrated upon the necessity of holding their own against the enemy. When this had been effected, and resistance was broken down, they awoke suddenly to find themselves bound and shackled in the hands of other and far more powerful enemies; or rather, they did not awake at all; their physical powers had been so long and so exclusively exercised and expended to the detriment of their intellectual energy, that the latter had gradually dwindled away altogether. The history of these new enemies was this: The knowledge of the ancient songs with which, in their ancient homes, the Indians had worshipped the powers of nature, and the knowledge of the ritual connected with these songs, became more and more the exclusive property of those whose ancestors perhaps composed them, and in whose families this knowledge had been hereditary. These same families remained in the possession of the traditions connected with them, and which were necessary to their explanation. To strangers in a foreign country, anything brought with them from home becomes invested with a halo of sacredness;