comparatively small extent of the territory overrun by the forces of
Alexander, and even of Seleucus and Demetrius, his Syrian and
Baetrian successors.
[The Punjab remained under the nominal sway of the Macedonians for about ten years
when this supremacy was thrown off by Sandracottus (Ghandragupta), about 317 n. o. ’•
when Seleucus of Syria found it wiser to make peace with the rebel Hindoo raja, and to
give him his daughter in marriage. The Greek kings of Bactria, from Demetrius to
. enander and Apollodorus,—that is to say, for about one century—were likewise suzerains
of the country on the Indus until 120 ». o. Still, they resided in Bactria ; and there is no
trace of Greek mythology, and consequently of Greek art intimately connected with it
anywhere in the Punjab: on the contrary, the Baetrian kings put the representation of
the Hindoo Shiva and of his bull Nandi on their coins struck for the Indian dominions.
Hellenism, therefore, did not spread along the Indus, but it had to yield to Hindooism.
* ^ft®r Macedoilian T¡SÍt’ Hindostàn remained for more than a thousand years undisturbed
by foreigners; outliving the fierce contest between Buddhism and Brahmanism-
civilizing by the former the Malay peninsula, and extending its moral influence to Thibet
and China, whilst the latter converted Java about a . d . 800, Two centuries after that
event, Shah Mahmoud, of Ghuzni, the monotheistic fanatic, called “ the destroyer of
Idols,” overran the north of Hindostàn, burning the towns, sacking the temples, and
breaking the images; and settled his Pattán and Affghàn followers in this fertile country.
Ever since his time, northern Turanian conquerors found no difficulty to invade India
either for pillage or for conquest. Timur, Baber, and Nadir Shah, flooded the country with
their followers, in succession; and planted a numerous Mohammedan population, and
Islamite dynasties, among the effeminate Hindoos. Arab merchants spread, at the same
time, over all the coasts and islands, and converted Malay-Java (which had previously
accepted the civilization and religion of the Vedas) to IsIàm ; about a . d . 1400. Still, the
bulk of the population of the peninsula remained unshaken by the purer religion’and
social institutions of the Mohammedan conquerors. European invaders came next. More
systemically than their Mussulman predecessors, they broke up the legal institutions and
the traditions of indigenous administration. They swept away the old aristocracy and
gentry of the country ; but the character of the Hindoo, and his views of God and nature
of law and society, remain unchanged. The population lives among, but does not intermix
with, their former rulers, the Mussulmans; nor with their present European lords—who
(to use a geological simile) are in India the two newest strata of recent date ; covering the
primary formations mechanically, but failing to transform chemically the old plutonio
rocks of Buddhism and Brahmanism.]
< With the Hindoos, religion, -institutions, and art, are (as everywhere
amid aboriginal races) in the most intimate connection with
the physical features of the country. Here the exuberant power of
tropical vegetation, equally gigantic in creation and in destruction,
subdue the energies of man. The sudden changes of temperature,—
the tropical rains which, in the course of a few hours, swell the rivulet
into a great stream,—the snowy mountain-peaks and mighty rivers,
the jungles that, with their lofty bamboo,- encroach upon every
inch of ground left uncultivated,—the strange trees, of which every
branch becomes a new stem,— the powerful animals, from the elephant,
and tiger, down to the white ant dangerous to the works of
human industry by its enormous numbers, — in short, all nature
appears in such overwhelming features, that the Hindoo gives up
the continuous struggle with it, and finds his reward not in activity
but in passive contemplation. His imagination soon gets the upper
hand of his understanding; and in mythology, art, and science, takes
an unrestrained flight into the transcendental, the monstrous and
shapeless.
The Hindoo adores “ nature,” as well its destructive as its creative
power; he recognises a soul in every living creature; he believes in
the transmigration of the soul; and therefore throws the corpse of
his beloved into the Ganges or into the fire, the sooner to be dissolved
into its original atoms by the pure elements. The “Nirvana" with
the ancient Buddhists, and the “ Yogha” with the Brahmans, that
is to say, the losing of the individuality in contemplation—a deathlike
state being with him the noblest aim of life and the highest
degree of sanctity, death has no terrors for h im:—he flings himself
under the wheels of the triumphal car of Shiva at Jaggernaut, and
the widow willingly ascends the pile with the corpse of her husband.
In the nature around him, destruction being always followed by
immediate regeneration, he believes creation to be an uninterrupted
cycle of one and the same life, only changing its form; and his poets
sing, that
“ Like as men throw away old garments, and clothe themselves in new attire,
Thus the soul leaves the body and migrates into another.”
Nature being to the Hindoo the incarnation of Godhead, he has
a deeply reverential feeling for it; and adorns his works of art with
flowers in such a profusion, that man and his actions become often
only accessories of this adornment. Still, it is not in an arbitrary
way that he sheds his flowers on poetry and sculpture; they always
have a deeper, symbolical meaning.
During the inundations, when the valley of Bengal is nearly lost
under the waters, the petals of the Botus flower alone swimming on
the waves, bear evidence that the vital powers of nature have not
been destroyed by the floods. This flower became, therefore, the
symbol of life and of creation: it is the throne of all the Gods, and
especially of Brahma the creator.
The representation of Hama, the God of Love, is one of the most
gracefully symbolical — though entirely unplastic, specimens of
Hindoo imagination. It is a smiling child with bow and arrows,
riding on a parrot. The bow is a bent sugar-cane adorned with
flowers, the string is formed by a row of flying bees, and the arrow
is a lily. Thus the Hindoo tries to represent the gentleness and inconstancy,
the impudence and the innocence, the sweetness and the
stings, of love, in one and the same image.