India Discovered Read Online Free PDF Page B

there was no need; the Thirty-nine Articles, if written in Sanskrit, would pass for the work of a Brahmin and be quite acceptable to Hindus.
    By now the Joneses had become something of an institution. Young Thomas Twining, only seventeen and just arrived in India, was so honoured by an invitation to dine with them that he filled a whole page of his journalwith an account of the visit.
The party consisted of Sir William and Lady Jones, another gentleman and myself. Sir William was very cheerful and agreeable. He made some observations on the mysterious word om of the Hindoos, and other Indian subjects. While sitting after dinner he suddenly called out with a loud voice ‘Othello, Othello’. Waiting for a minute or two and Othello not coming, he repeated his summons, ‘Othello, Othello’. His particularly fine voice, his white Indian dress, surmounted by a small black wig, his cheerfulness and great celebrity, rendered this scene extremely interesting. I was surprised that no one, Muslim or Hindoo, answered his summons. At last I saw a black turtle of very large size, crawling slowly towards us from an adjoining room. It made its way to the side of Sir William’s chair, where it remained, he giving it something it seemed to like. Sir William observed that he was fond of birds, but had little pleasure seeing them or hearing them unless they were at liberty; and he no doubt would have liberated Othello if he had not considered that he was safer by the side of his table than he would be in the Ganges.
I passed a most pleasant day in the company of this distinguished and able man. He was so good as to express some approbation of my Persian studies, and repeated to me two lines of a Persian couplet, and also his translations of them -
Kill not that ant that steals a little grain;
It lives with pleasure, and it dies with pain.
    Sitting in the shade on the banks of the Hughli, surrounded by venerable pandits and tame livestock,with Anna Maria sketching quietly in the background, he seemed the archetype of the Indian teacher – scholar and law-giver, patron to man and beast. It was the same at the Asiatic Society. He presided at almost every meeting, and at the beginning of each year delivered a challenging discourse on some different aspect of oriental studies. Right from the start there had been something Socraticin his manner – You will investigate this, enquire into that, etc., etc. – and in his last discourse he referred to the Society as a ‘symposiack assembly’. Revered and loved (though rarely seen) by Calcutta society, he was indeed the Indian Socrates.
    In 1793 he delivered his tenth discourse and celebrated the occasion by casually coming out with the long-awaited breakthrough on Indian chronology.‘The jurisprudence of the Hindus and Arabs being the field I have chosen for my regular toil, you cannot expect that I should greatly enlarge your collection of historical knowledge; but I may be able to offer you some occasional tribute, and I cannot help mentioning a discovery which accident threw my way.’ He had already laid down the basis of literary and linguistic studies; now, at last,he had unearthed a foundation from which a start could be made with the reconstruction of India’s ancient history. The discovery may have been accidental, but it was his greatest; no one without his immense learning and his genius for spotting a relevant fact could have made it.
    First there was the Greek background. Following the invasion by Alexander the Great, Seleucus Nicator, his successorin Asia, had sent an ambassador named Megasthenes to India. This man’s report had subsequently been raided by numerous classical writers for their descriptions of India and so, though the original was lost, it could be largely reconstructed. It appeared that Megasthenes had found the Indian court at a place named Palibothra, at the junction of the Ganges and the Erranaboas. He had given a long andinteresting account of the court and its