duties of this great mission may be faithfully discharged, and that truth and justice, peace and happiness may be its issue.'

Fifty years have passed since these noble words were penned; and if the final outcome of British rule in India appears, in this year of grace, 1908, to be unrest and discontent, at any rate with a section of the population, be it'mere froth or deep rolling surge', other causes will have to be sought for it than the quality of British rule, and the character of the exponents of that rule for those to whom the great task of ruling India during these fifty years has been entrusted have most faithfully discharged their duties, and have striven their utmost that truth and justice, peace and happiness, should prevail throughout the great Oriental Empire of England's benign sovereign. It is more the province of the historian than that of the biographer to deal with the causation of phenomena which properly belong to the domain of history or politics: but no writer on Indian affairs can afford to pass by, without some comment, this present phase, a passing phase it may be hoped, in India, more especially at a time when every newspaper in the land has its headings in large type, The Unrest in India;' and when the man in the street' is continually accosting every Anglo-Indian who may be supposed to know something about the matter, with the question, 'What will be the outcome of it?' and when even the intelligent artisan, with his practical view of things, so pertinently exclaims: They have a toughish job of it out there just now!' The writer proposes to deal with the subject more or less from an historical standpoint with a view to discover whether, given certain causes in the past which produced certain results, some similar causes may not be found in the present day producing similar results, so far, at any rate, as one phase of the present unrest is concerned. That it has more than one phase all writers acknowledge, and no one cause can be given as the prime moving factor. Educa

tion has been assigned as the leading cause but even here there are different points of view. Thus one recent writer finds in our systems of education the principal cause; on the other hand, Lord Morley finds the moving cause in the subjects taught. He has said: 'Much of the movement arose from the fact that there was a large body of educated Indians who had been fed upon the great teachers and masters of this country-Milton, Burke, Macaulay, John Stuart Mill-and they were intoxicated with the ideas of freedom, nationality, and self-government, which these great writers promulgated.' The opinions of a statesman, who is also a philosopher and an historian, must be regarded with the greatest deference. In education undoubtedly, whether the subjects taught or the systems pursued be considered, must be found one factor in the present movement, just as it was, though in a different way, in the earlier movements. And as the system of English education in India has proceeded on the lines of criticism, rather than of history, and has succeeded in developing the critical faculty, which has never been wanting, instead of creating the historical faculty, which has always been lacking in the mental equipment of the Indian, it is not surprising that this should be so. But there is another way in which education may have been indirectly a cause or at least one phase of this unrest, and it is that which the writer proposes to deal with in this sketch especially. He does not propose to consider the matter from the ordinary point of view, having regard to the effects of the subjects taught or the systems employed on the receptive mind of the Indian student, but in regard to the effect of the education policy generally on the attitude of the still powerful Brahman hierarchy towards the Government.

Sir John Seeley has stated that a common religion is one leading element of nationality', and he proceeds to show that this element is not altogether wanting in India :

his words on this subject are worth quoting here, as they will serve to illustrate one point in the writer's argument : 'The Brahmanical system extends over the whole of India, not, of course, that it is the only religion of India. There are not less than fifty millions of Muhammadans. There is also a small number of Sikhs, who profess a religion which is a sort of fusion of Muhammadanism and Brahmanism there are a few Christians, and in Ceylon and Nipal there are Buddhists. But Brahmanism remains the creed of the enormous majority, and it has so much real vitality that it has more than once resisted formidable attacks. One of the most powerful of all proselytizing creeds, Buddhism, sprang up in India itself: it spread far and wide we have evidence that it flourished in India two centuries before Christ, and that it was still flourishing in the seventh century after Christ. Yet it has been conquered by Brahmanism, and flourishes now in almost every part of Asia more than in the country that has produced it. After this victory Brahmanism had to resist the assault of another powerful aggressive religion, before which Zoroastrianism had already fallen, and even Christianity had in the East been compelled to retreat some steps-Muhammadanism. Here again it held its Mussulman Governments overspread India, but they could not convert the people.' Thus it will be seen that Brahmanism has had a great past as a religious organization it has been supreme and only the force of circumstance prevented it from being supreme as a political organization, for it must not be forgotten that the Mahratta Confederacy, the only indigenous power that has ever attained to any great political ascendancy in India, under the guidance of its founder, Sivaji, who was the first to found a political organization on a religious basis, was controlled by the Brahman Caste. There was a moment in its history, moreover, when it seemed on the point of uniting all India under its sway, had not its power

own:

:

been broken by the descent of Ahmad Shah Abdali from Afghanistan, and the fatal battle of Panipat. Would it be any cause for wonder then if the Brahman hierarchy thought the time ripe for another revival of their religious supremacy in India, as one step, it may be, towards the attainment of a political supremacy? It is not an insignificant fact that an attempt should have been recently made in more than one important Native State on the West of India, where this hierarchy has its head quarters, on the part of the Brahmans, to obtain the control of all official patronage. Then again there are not wanting signs that the recent great revival of the outward forms of religion in all parts of the country is due to the initiative of this powerful organization. This revival has been manifested in a variety of ways: amongst these may be mentioned the re-opening and re-furbishing of many an ancient temple that had long fallen into disuse. Yet another significant feature has been the great movement of the mendicant religious orders all over the country. Their extensive and picturesque camps, with the quaint admixture of the products of Western civilization with Oriental symbolism, the handsome umbrella tents which would not have done despite to an English lawn, with the ochre-painted and dust-besmeared figures seated beneath them, have been a conspicuous feature in the neighbourhood of the most important towns within recent years. Here these mendicants have located themselves for long periods of time, and have been holding receptions of all classes upon an unprecedented scale. A distinguished administrator, Sir Frederick Lely, who was an acute observer of men and things when in India, once observed to the writer: 'The movement which appears to you to indicate a revival of religion is in reality national in its main character.' It would appear to be a combination of both. The history of Brahmanism in its contact with the West is curious and instructive. So long as English Rulers

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were content, as for long they were, to have no outward signs in India that they possessed a religion of their own, so long was the Brahman hierarchy content to remain quiescent. This early period of British rule, on account of the tendency on the part of the new Rulers of India to conceal the fact that they possessed any religion of their own, has indeed been called by one historian the Brahmanic period. Sir John Seeley has well described this aspect of early British rule in India: We could not fail to see the enormous differences between our civilization and that of India: we could not fail on the whole greatly to prefer our own. But had we any right to impose our views upon the natives? We had our own Christianity, our own views of philosophy, of history, and of science but were we not bound by a sort of tacit contract with the natives to hold all these things officially in abeyance? This was the view that was taken at first. It was not admitted that England was to play the part of Rome to her Empire; no, she was to put her civilization on one side and govern according to Indian ideas. This view was the more winning as the new and mysterious world of Sanskrit learning was revealing itself to these first generations of Anglo-Indians. They were under the charm of a remote philosophy and a fantastic history. They were, as it was said, Brahmanized, and would not hear of admitting into their enchanted Oriental enclosure either the Christianity or any of the learning of the West.' Could the toleration of the ancient systems around them and in their midst go farther than it did in those early days of British rule, when even troops paraded to do honour to the Deities of India on the occasion of great Hindu festivals? This entirely suited the Brahman hierarchy. The material progress of the British aroused no jealousy. But a change came in the year 1813, the first year of the rule of the Marquess of Hastings. In that year, as the historian of the period has shown, what has been called the Brahmanical period of British