TRAVELS OF A HIND00.*

To all who have any tincture of interest in India and its problems, the Travels of a Hindoo will be one of the most valuable works yet published on the subject. Not that there is any novelty in the field of the " Hindoo's " exploration, which extends only from Calcutta to Delhi, a trite route, which the Anglo-Indian traverses often in a few days almost without observation. Not that it is new either for a native of India to give us in English the record of his observations. It is now twenty-seven years since two young Parsees from Bombay gave us the Journal of Eighteen Months' Residence in England, and since then Lutfullah's autobiography will still be fresh in the memory of many readers. Not that Bholanauth Chunder can, like the latter-named writer, boast of personal familiarity with leading actors and participation in fateful events of his country's history, nor yet of marked ability or deep learning ; not that, like the Rajah Rammohun Roy, he etands out from among his race by force of character, moral worth, and height of mind. He is a mere Calcutta cockney, of the trading caste of the Buuniahs, clever indeed and wellinformed, fond, also, of good eating and drinking, and an appreciating judge of female beauty. The real value of the book is this,—that it shows us more clearly than any yet published the reflex action of the European upon the Asiatic mind, the new currents of thought and feeling which have begun to flow within it. And this reflex action is especially perceptible through its application to that which is trite and trivial,—to a beaten track, to cities which all the world knows or knows of.

No stress need here be laid upon the style. It is too much the fashion to overpraise natives who can put together half-a-page of decent English, speak of /Bolus and Neptune, and quote Byron and Shakespeare. When the writer of the preface speaks of Bholanauth Chuuder's "thorough mastery of the English language," and of his having been suspected to be "a European in the disguise of a Hindoo," he renders no real service to native education. From the very first page of the Travels, which speaks of things "gone to obsoletism," or the third, which says that Barranagur was "appellatized . . . . the Paphos of Calcutta," outrages on the Queen's English are too frequent to leave us in any doubt as to the foreign origin of the author. The profuse employment of English quotations,—familiarity with the names of the Roman Pantheon,—the use of hackneyed fine writing about "the classic spot over which the muse has flung many a soft and sacred enchantment,"—are all things which may easily be got up, and which

belong to the mere surface of the mind. The real importance of the work lies in its exhibition of that indifference to and condemnation of idolatry,—that relish for the useful,—that sense of the value of civil order and justice,—which have by this time struck root in at least some portions of the races of India,—more especially among the Bengalees of the North

fast and the Parsers of the West coast,—and which are, moreover, conjoined evidently in Bholanauth Chunder with a feeling of primeval Aryan fellowship with the English conqueror,

more precious, perhaps, if it could spread and be reciprocated, than almost any other bond of union, that of a real community of religious faith between the Englishman and the native alone excepted. In the course of his first excursion, we find the writer recalling thus at Hooghly the setting-up in 1778 of the first print ing press of India :—

" From that year was Hindoo literature emancipated, and emancipated for ever from the mystification and falsification of the Brahmins. The great event is scarcely remembered, and has not been thought worth taking notice of by any of our historians, though it has done far more for our civilization and well-being than can be hoped for from railroads and telegraphs."

A little further on he instances in " Luchmunya, the last of the Sena Rajahs of Bengal," how "Brahmin learning and Brahmin idolatry, Brahmin courtiers and Brahmin astrologers, had superinduced that paralytic helplessness and lethargy under which the last Hindoo monarchs yielded one by one to the first violent shock from without." He looks forward to a time "when idols shall disappear from the land, and the lapse of idol trusts shall form a puzzle to jurists and legislators." "A craven," he exclaims elsewhere before the image of Krishna, "is that Young Bengal who trifles with his Creator to avoid being awkward and the butt of remark, by bowing to an idol whom he despises in his heart, and who sacrifices principles to policy." In another passage, after referring to Buddhism and to the religious reform of Choitunya in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which, besides inculcating purity of thought and action, aimed at nothing less than "the abolition of caste, the introduction of widow-marriage, the extinction of polygamy, and the suppression of ghat murders," he dwells thus on the momentous results of the spread of English knowledge:— "It has silently worked a revolution producing deep and lasting effects, and elevating the Sudra from the level of the swine and oxen to which the Brahmin had degraded him. The introduction of a mighty force has overpowered the influence which was unfavourable to eOte civilization, an

do the ewell-beinfof mankind. The Brahmin

is no the taryofowlegethetyrantofli re. . . . . The Brahmin is no longer in the Council, but a Sudra Deb. The Brahmin is no longer on the Bench, but a Sudra Mittra. The Sudra is now the spokesman of the community. The Sudra now wields the pen. In the fullness of time have the evils which the Brahmitt perpetuated for hie advantage recoiled upon his head. His vaunted learning, instead of being a qualification, is now his positive disqualification. It does not enable a man to shake off political servitude, to develop the resources of his country, to extend commerce, to navigate the seas, to construct railroads, and to communicate from Calcutta to London. The legislature is closed to him because he does not understand a political question, and would not support the cause of a social reform. The Courts are barred to him because he appreciates

not the quality of justice To be a Pandit now is to rust in obscurity and pine in poverty The great body of Brahmins have fallen into disrepute, and de-Brahminized themselves by taking to the service of the Mletcha [outcast] and Sudra."

It should not indeed be forgotten that Bholanauth Chunder belongs to a caste which, in Bengal, has ceased to wear the sacri ficial thread, and that he was brought up in the reformed creed of Choitunya ; so that the passage above quoted should be con sidered in part at least as representing feelings which now first find expression, rather than such as may have only grown up under our rule. Nor must his disparaging account of the Brahmins be deemed yet universally, or even generally, correct. Not only have some of the worthiest converts to Christianity itself,—such as Dr. Chuckerbutty,—come from out of the very charmed circle of Koolin Brahminism, but the most experienced European observers have generally been those who have estimated at the highest price the value of Brahmin example upon the native mind, e. g., in Oudh, that of a Mann Singh accepting English suzerainty, English honours, English titles, an English maharajahship.

As may be expected, our Bnnniah friend is strong for English as against Sanscrit education :—

" To cultivate the Sauserit would be to doom ourselves to seek a

grain of truth from a bushel of chaff Surely we do not want to uphold the geography of the Golden Meru and Seas of Butter, but to learn the use of the mariner's compass, and steer upon the ocean. We do not want to revive the days of Sudra ignorance, but to learn the art of casting types, to diffuse knowledge through every corner of the land. We do not want to returnto the days of Sutteeism, but to introduce the remarriage of our widows. We do not want dreamy religious speculations, but practical energy and matter-of-fact knowledge. We want to be men of the nineteenth century, and to be admitted into the comity of civilized nations. Unquestionably it is through the agency of the English that this object can ever be hoped to be accomplished."

Such, then, are the views of "Young Bengal," for to "Young Bengal" the writer, though now a man of about forty, openly professes to belong. He knows, indeed, the weaknesses of his racer The Bengalee "ii at present the most degenerate of all Indians." He "has a talkative humour —no appetite for peril—no taste for cold steel. . . . In nothing is the Bengalee so competent as to take care of himself. . . . He knows very well that if the English were to leave him master of himself this day, he would on the next have to apply to the British Parliament for•succour." He frankly confesses the inferiority of the Bengalee to the "less idolatrous" Hindostanee ; admits that in the Upper Provinces "the rural population is more intelligent and spirited," the ryot "more independent-minded ;" that "the humblest Doabee lives upon better food, and covers his body with more abundant clothing, than the humblest Bengalee." In Calcutta, he says, "the Baboos, who talk big of politics and reformations, do not know what it is to ride. In Hindoostan, rural women perform journeys on horseback, and princesses discuss the merits of horsemanship." Nor is he less fair in his appreciation of the honesty, bravery, truthfulness, industrious agriculture of the Sonthal, though an alien from the Aryan stock.

There would, therefore, be no greater folly than to suppose that because the Hindoo caste system is breaking up in Calcutta, because Bengal has fully accepted our rule, therefore India is morally conquered, or nearly so. One of the most characteristic features of the great rebellion in Benares, in Cawnpore, in Delhi, &c., was that everywhere the Bengalee was hunted down almost as savagely as the Englishman. Minor rebellions, such as those of Sonthals and Khonds, have been mainly directed not against English rule, but against that Bengalee extortion which follows so

extensively in its wake. If India is to be nobly civilized by England, it must be through the medium of its nobler races ; through strength of character, and not merely through subtlety of intellect. Mr. Wheeler observes that Bholanauth C h under perb aps does not

tell us all he knows." This seems more than probable. He has thought it right to show his countrymen the brighter aspects of English rule.

To those, however, who understand a hint, there will not be wanting indications of its darker sides. To say nothing of the accounts of the horrors of repression after the rebellion,—of the desolation which the writer witnessed in its track as late as 1861,—the passing notices of English hauteur at Benares, where "every native has to salaam to a passing European," and "a rich Baboo from Calcutta narrowly escaped horsewhipping for failing to stop his gharry (coach) and salute an officer driving along the same road," and where a native attorney of the Supreme Court, who had come to conduct a case, accompanied by an English barrister, was arrested without warrant by order of the magistrate, — had to wait two hours for an explanation in an open verandah, whilst the magistrate was playing chess,—and was then dismissed without one word of explanation or apology,—at Allahabad, where a

magistrate insisted on a Calcutta native lawyer addressing him with either bare feet or bare head,—require to be borne in mind, in order to appreciate the full meaning of the following passage, which shall close this review :—

"Nothing less than British phlegm, and imperturbability, and constancy, and untiring energy could have steadily prosecuted the task of consolidating the disjointed masses of India, and casting her into the mould of one compact nation. They want but the high thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy to attach us to their rule with a feeling of levelly that, not merely playing round the head, should come near the heart.'"