EAST Indian history is traceable back to the descendants of Nimrod; and the wealth of the Indian people has been the prize of the East.
The descendants of Ham who settled in Egypt at an early date, carried arms to the Ganges and fitted out a fleet of four hundred ships in the Arabian Gulf to establish trade with India. The Persians explored the Indus through its entire length all the way to the ocean to secure this Indian trade. "The Turks founded Alexandria to rival Tyre, and it became the greatest trading city of the world, and for centuries the chief seat of commerce of India." The people of Tyre wrested from the Egyptians their harbor, to secure the trade of India. It was Alexander who proceeded to India, thence to the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates, to divert this commerce from Tyre. When the Romans conquered Egypt, the Alexandrian trade was increased.
Taylor, in his "Manual of Indian History," speaks of the manufactures of India at a very early date: "The country was thickly peopled and well cultivated, and each village formed a municipal community which was governed by means of its elders and village officers, who were hereditary. They were manufacturers of cotton and silk, of great beauty and costliness, and gold and silver ornaments were worn by men and women."
He further states that the Hindus were often richly clothed and were courteous and intelligent. "In science the Hindus had progressed beyond the Greeks; they were better astronomers and mathematicians; and in metaphysics they had displayed as profound thoughts. They had cultivated their language, Sanskrit, to the utmost perfection, and had rules for prosody, for poetry and prose composition." It was the expedition of Alexander that opened the intercourse with India by the Greeks, and opened out the Eastern stores of knowledge and traffic to the western nations.
The merchants of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, as well as the Greeks, resided in different parts of India. It was through the influence of the Buddhists and King Asota, who had embraced that faith about 300 B. C., that a great religious synod was held in India, and religious and political missionaries were dispatched to neighboring and distant countries; and as the result of this, "Thibet, China, Burma, Cambodia, Siam, Java, and Ceylon received the Buddhist missionaries with a strange and fervent ardor, so that millions of converts were made; nor is it improbable that Buddhism may have been preached in Britain as it was in Greece." Mr. Latham, in his "Ethnology," said: "With the creed went the alphabet; with the alphabet, the civilization. Hence it is to India that nine-tenths of the civilization of the eastern part of continental Asia was due. India also was the earliest civilization of the more civilized parts of the Indian archipelago." And there are traces of this Indian mould among the aboriginal inhabitants of the islands of Sumatra and the Philippine Islands, the Malayan peninsula, of Borneo, and even New Zealand.
He who supposes to meet a homogeneous class of people without any well-defined and systematic organized society in India, greatly mistakes the country and the people. It is a country peculiar to itself. It is a wonder how a country which is so old as India, and has preserved its well-defined customs and castes as that country has, could ever become the home of so many nationalities as now inhabit that country. But from its history it can also be seen how it comes about that these various Asiatic nationalities which have settled in India, each preserve their own individuality in habits and customs, both religious and political, also social.
It has become a country where the purely Asiatic and oriental religions, as well as the European, flourish without losing their identity, and in some respects is one of the most wonderful nations in the world. It is interesting because of its antiquity, and the marks of its age are born not only upon the people themselves, but their cave temples and their various forms and customs. It is interesting from the standpoint of those that are interested in proclaiming the gospel before many nations and kindreds and tongues; for there is no country in the world of the size of India, being about the same as that east of the Mississippi River in the United States, with its teeming 286,000,000, subsisting upon a soil yielding from two to three crops a year, that contains such a large number of Asiatic representatives.
Its internal history is also peculiar and interesting. Within a thousand years the "Buddhist, Brahmin, Mongol, and Turk, Portuguese, French, and English have controlled her dominion." The Mohammedan dynasties reached from 1001 A. D. to 1857. In 1497 the Portuguese touched India and remained in prominence and power till the 16th century. The Dutch appeared in 1594, the English in 1600, the Danes in 1616, and the French in 1688. France led the contest for supremacy with England for one hundred years. In the wondrously interesting century between the battle of Plassey, 1757, and the great mutiny of 1857, the vast Indian empire of England was acquired—built up from a factory to a governor-generalship, a vice-royalty, and ultimately to the recognition of Victoria as empress of India.
IN the Missionary Review there is an interesting extract in which the Rev. W. H. Ball reports what he saw in India of the effect of the preaching of native Christians. More than one hundred and fifty Brahmins listen, many of them with tear-filled eyes, to the story of the cross, the people evidently convinced as well as moved by the eloquence and zeal of their countrymen. In another village a young man was won for Christ, who came out from the multitude and confessed the Saviour, though to him it meant the loss of a fortune of $100,000, and, worse still, banishment from his mother, who would nevermore acknowledge him. Mr. Ball speaks of the native preachers in connection with the Church Missionary Society, as "a band of truly converted men. They are men," he adds, "of wonderful eloquence, and I make bold to say that ninety per cent. of the baptisms are won by the natives themselves." In this fact we have the ground of hope for India. The country will never be evangelized by foreigners.