Surfing on Visions........

Max Muller is greatly admired for his translation of Sanskrit works. When Duke of Argyll was appointed Secretary of State for India in December 1868, Max Muller wrote to him: "India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again and that second conquest should be a conquest by education." He added: "The ancient religion is doomed and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be ?" This conquest was achieved partially by Macaulay when he introduced English education.

Missionaries such as like Max Muller had racist motives, that is to insult and denigrate Hinduism and other non-white cultures. Such were the
calumnies uttered against Hinduism. That the Western Indologists were interested in denigrading Indian history, culture and civilization needs no further evidence. Their motive was to promote Christianityin India.

In a letter to his wife Max Muller wrote: "I hope 1 shall finish that work and 1 feel convinced, though 1 shall not live to see it, yet, this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that sprung from it during the last 3000 years."

Since the Biblical age did not extend beyond 4000 BC how can a vanquished people like Indians could claim to possess a hoary past? Archbishop of Ireland decreed in 1664 that creation took place at 9 a.m. on 23-10-4004 BC and one who will say anything else about it will be considered a heretic. "From this notion of theirs, they further smugly believed that Indians had no sense of history and so their claim to a hoary antiquity for their history was untenable. Of late this attitude of the Westerners is changing perceptibly. But the damage has been done."

Successive Indian scholars have continued this spirit of belittling ancient Indian achievements planted by Western Indologists.

Max Muller in 1870, in the Anthropological Review, London, classified the human race into seven catagories on an ascending scale - with the
Aborigines on the lowest rung and the "Aryan" type supreme. Most of the so called authorities, were not historians or archaeologists but had missionary and political axe to grind. Max Muller in fact had been paid by the East India Company to further its colonial aims, and others
like Lassen and Weber were ardent German nationalists, with hardly any authority or knowledge on India, only motivated by the superiority of German race/nationalism through white Aryan race theory. And as everybody knows this eventually ended up in the most calamitous event of 20th century: the World War II.

Max Muller, like many of the Christian scholars of his era, believed in Biblical chronology. This placed the beginning of the world at 400 BC and the flood around 2500 BC. Assuming to those two dates, it became difficult to get the Aryans in India before 1500 BC. First, it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other. This kept the Hindus divided and is still a source of social tension. Second, it gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West. Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis, as any Vedic basis was largely disqualified by the primitive nature of the Vedic culture.

It is unfortunate that this this approach has not been questioned more, particularly by Hindus. Even though Indian Vedic scholars like Dayananda saraswati, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Arobindo rejected it, most Hindus today passively accept it. They allow Western, generally Christian, scholars to interpret their history for them and quite naturally Hinduism is kept in a reduced role. Many Hindus still accept, read or even honor the translations of the 'Vedas' done by such Christian missionary scholars as Max Muller, Griffith, Monier- Williams and H. H. Wilson.

Would modern Christians accept an interpretation of the Bible or Biblical history done by Hindus aimed at converting them to Hinduism?

(Obtained from sources on the Net)

Om Shanti!