Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/506

 Then, there are the Religions of Southern India. How little is known of these! I do not speak of those religions, which came to India with the races who dwelt behind the great range, nor of those religions which have been brought by conquerors or traders, from beyond the sea. There are numerous gaps in our knowledge, even of some of the most recently introduced of these, to be filled up, as, for instance, with regard to the so-called Syrian Christians of Malabar, and the Jews of Cochin. We have not even yet recovered the thread, by which they are to be connected with the great web of human history. Why do not some of our (christian Graduates, of whom we have so large a number, try to do this? Far more difficult, however, and much larger are the problems connected with the early religions of this part of India, which still form an important ingredient in the system of belief, even of many who have been greatly affected by Vedic, and other Aryan influences, but which, in many districts, have survived, I apprehend, with little alteration, for uncounted ages.

To the sciences of Comparative Philology and of Comparative Religion, one of the most gifted men who ever landed on the shores of India, I mean Sir Henry Maine, is on the way to add a third science, for which neither he nor any one else has exactly found a name, but which may be described as the early history of institutions as observed chiefly in India. I grudge, however, a little, though it is inevitable, that Aryan institutions, the institutions of early conquerors, should engross so much attention. I want the non-Aryan people of the South to tell us something about their institutions, which go back to a period, as compared with which the hoariest Indo-Aryan antiquity is as the news in Renter's latest telegram.

Has any one studied the Village Life of the South? Are there no facts to be collected from a careful examination of it, which would be useful to some future Sir Henry Maine? If there are, surely you should be the people to collect them.

It makes one who has a strong feeling for South India, a little sad to read such a book as Professor Max Miiller's India, what can it teach us? and to see how very little it has to do with India, south of the Vindhyan range. The Vedas, and all that is connected with them, belong to a world, not so far outside the limits of your India as is the literature of the Western Aryans; but, still, outside them. I should like to see the pre-Sanskrit element amongst you asserting itself rather more, and showing what it could do to help on the general work of humanity.

The constant putting forward of Sanskrit literature, as if it