Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c20.27

c20.27

This appearance is not peculiar to Guzerat: it may be found in many other countries of India. I am desirous that these remarks should not be considered as extending to Bengal, of which I have had no personal observation. The gentlemen who have resided in that province seem to agree in giving an unfavourable account of its agriculture, and of its people. They describe the natives as characterised by the lowest and most disgusting vices. If this be so, they should not be considered as affording a just notion of the rest of India. It has however actually been by this mark that the public judgment has been in a great degree formed of the qualities of perhaps 200 millions of human beings, spread over a vast country, and divided into many nations, some of whom are totally unknown in Bengal. This species of amalgamation has happened from the superior wealth and political importance of Bengal, from our connection with it, and from the fallacious practice of drawing a universal conclusion from a particular fact.¹⁰