The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

The important place which India holds in recent history combines with the fascination of its mysteries to give this country an interest in the eyes of the modern historian which it never held previously to the last century. Thus one finds that in the most recent German Weltgeschichte the history of ancient India is given almost as much space as is devoted to the entire history of ancient Greece or Rome. Whereas, to point a contrast, it may be noted that in the classical Weltgeschichte of Schlosser, written half a century ago, the history of India is allotted only about a dozen pages. It may fairly be held that in each of these cases there is a lack of true historical perspective, for, whereas it would be absurd to claim that India receives anything like just treatment in the condensed summary of Schlosser, it would be equally absurd to claim that the actual world-historic merit of India is at all comparable—from a European standpoint—to that of Greece or Rome. But questions of exact importance aside, the facts just cited evidence a growing realisation of the importance of the oriental branch of the great Aryan tree. They show among other things that the Western mind is being aroused from that standpoint of insular dogmatism on which it placed itself with such seeming security.

It is a hopeful sign of the times, for it suggests that the hour is near at hand when it will be generally demanded of the historian who attempts to deal with general history that he shall look out upon the world not with the eyes of a narrow European partisanship, but with true cosmopolitanism. When this is done it will become more and more evident that a great people of the Orient, who had attained the highest stage of culture, had developed an extraordinary literature, and achieved the height of an amazing practical philosophy at least half a millennium before the beginning of our era, are not to be treated with contempt because their conceptions of religion and their estimate of the right ideals of practical civilisation differ from our own. To such a clarified view the position given to the history of India in the work just referred to must manifestly tend.

It must be admitted, however, that whatever the interest attaching to Indian history, almost insuperable difficulties stand in the way of a clear interpretation of that history. The country itself is of enormous size, comprising about a million and a half of square miles, and giving residence to a population estimated at some two hundred and forty millions. This enormous population is made up of a great variety of races, the origin of which is altogether obscure. When one speaks of the history of ancient India, one practically ignores all these indigenous races, and refers merely to the invading hosts of so-called Aryans that came into the country from the northwest and finally became dominant there. How greatly these invaders were modified as a race by their contact with the native hordes of India, is evidenced in the wide gap that separates the Aryan of India to-day from the Aryan of Europe.

As to the exact time when the Aryan invasion occurred, all is obscure. Nor is anything definite known of the history of conquest, and the subsequent development of the race in India, except such merely inferential glimpses as may be gained through study of the Vedas. India was indeed known to the western world from a very early period. We have seen that the Assyrian monuments depict animals unmistakably of Indian origin, as being brought in tribute to the court of Shalmaneser II. But neither these nor any other records of the western world suffice to throw any light whatever upon the real history of India or give us any knowledge of the country beyond the mere proof that its existence was known, until so relatively late a period as the conquest of Alexander. After that time the West and the East were in closer contact.