THE UNSTUDIED EAST
By H. G. RAWLINSON
1NDIAN history, The Times declared over half a' century ago, has never been made interesting to English readers except by rhetoric. The remark, unfortunately, still holds good. It is a strange paradox that Britain, with wider interests in the East than any other country in the world, is almost totally indifferent to it. When Sir William Jones and his fellow-workers first made known the treasures of Hindu literature to the West, the discovery was hailed in Germany with immense enthusiasm. Goethe and Schiller sang the-praises of that incomparable drama, Sakuntala ; Schopenhauer declared that the Upanishad had been the solace of his life, and would be the solace of his death. In America, Hindu philosophy was largely responsible for the Transcendental Movement started by Emerson. But in England, in spite of the efforts of enthusiasts like Sir Edwin Arnold to popularise Hindu and Buddhist thought, the seed fell mostly upon stony ground. To the average Englishman, India was ciiiefly associated with the nabobs of Thackeray's novels, those jaundiced monsters who purchased the estates of broken-down English gentlemen with rupees tortured out of bleeding rajahs, who smoked a hookah in public, and in private carried about a guilty conscience, diamonds of untold value and a diseased liver.
Equally uncompromising was the Victorian attitude towards Indian
,,hitecture and art. Its ideas of Indian architecture were founded 011 soapstone models of the Taj Mahal, or grotesque parodies like the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which Hazlitt described as a collection of pumpkins and pepper-boxes. Ruskin, lecturing at the South Kensington Museum in 1858, accused Indian artists of wilfully and resolutely distorting the facts and forms of Nature, and Professor Westirtacott declared that the debased quality of Indian sculpture deprived it of all interest as a phase of Fine Art. Even an authority like Sir George Birdwood compared a Javanese Buddha to a boiled
pudding. ' Well might a leading Indian Nationalist declare that, whatever economic benefits England might have derived from her long occupation of India, culturally she had drawn what might for
all purposes be regarded as a blank. The real source of these mis- conceptions was faulty teaching in our schools and colleges. Greco- Roman sculpture and architecture were looked on as the be-all and end-all of true art, and everything was judged by this canon. " In nine cases out of ten," said Major-General Cunningham, one of the pioneers of Indian archaeology, " India and Indian matters fail to interest, because they are to most people new and unfamiliar. The rudiments have not been mastered when young, and when grown up, few men have the leisure or the inclination to set to work to learn the forms of the new world." No truer words were ever uttered. Unlike the cadet of the days of the East India Company, with his thorough grounding in Oriental subjects at Hailcybury and Addis- combe, and at the College at Fort William, the Indian Civil Servant, who had probably got in on a knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics, spent a lifetime in India without acquiring more than a smattering of the language or customs of the people. Contrast this with Colonel Kirkpatrick, our Resident at Hyderabad in the pre- Mutiny period, who " married a Muslim lady of rank, spoke Persian like a gentleman, and in manners and costume could hardly be dis- tinguished from a Muslim noble."
There can, unfortunately, be very little doubt that this state of affairs has led to an estrangement between the two nations which has contributed not a little to the present political deadlock. It has caused much resentment among educated Indians, who draw invidious comparisons between British indifference and the interest and enthusiasm of France and Holland for their colonial possessions. Little or nothing is done to educate the public ; the Iranian and Chinese exhibitions at Burlington House drew immense crowds, but the idea of holding an. Indian exhibition, though vaguely dis- cussed, was eventually shelved. As Benjamin Jowett once said, England cannot govern a people without understanding it, and an understanding of it must be gained through a knowledge of its languages, its literature, its customs, its poetry and mythology, its land and agriculture.
Such a knowledge is hard to come by in present conditions. The unfortunate student who is engaged in Indian research spends most of his time in journeys between the Royal Asiatic Society, the India Office and the British Museum. The East India Company's collection, of Indian sculpture and painting, which was only saved from com- plete dispersion in 1909 by the efforts of Lord Curzon, is housed in localities as far apart as South Kensington, Bloomsbury and White,- hall. It has little or no connexion with the School of Oriental and African Studies, which should be the focus of all activities of this kind. The subject was recently discussed in a paper read before the Royal Society of Arts. A scheme was there suggested which would include not only a great central museum, in which the collections at present scattered about the country should be worthily accommodated, but quarters for the various Oriental Societies. It would comprise, among other things, an adequate central lecture hall, and rooms for teaching and for meetings between students and their friends. The advantages of such a plan are obvious. It would not only save an immense amount of reduplication and lead to a more economical expenditure of the available funds, but it would facilitate research and open the eyes of the public to the importance of oriental culture. It is only in this way that we can hope to secure for the Indian Services a supply of properly equipped men for the immense tasks of post-war reconstruction, and bring about a better understanding between East and West. An acquaintance with the elementary facts of Oriental literature, art, philosophy and religion should be as essential a feature of a liberal education as a know- ledge of the Greek and Roman classics.
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