Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/507

 were pre-eminently Indian, should stir the national pride of some of you Tamil, Telugu, Canarese. You have less to do with Sanskrit than we English have. Ruffianly Europeans have sometimes been known to speak of natives of India as "Niggers," but they did not like the proud speakers, or writers, of Sanskrit speak of the people of the South as legions of monkeys. It was these Sanskrit speakers, not Europeans, who lumped up the Southern races as Rakshasas—demons. It was they who deliberately grounded all social distinctions upon Varna, colour.

Close observation, and Sir Henry Maine's method, may make your Dravidian institutions tell many a strange story.

Then, there are your old manuscripts. What great facilities you have for collecting these, which the European scholar, even with all the power of Government behind him, has not got.

But I hear certain of you, who have been drinking deep from the fountains of Mill, or Bain, or Herbert Spencer, murmur: "Why should we collect our old books? Your new books are better, our old books are trash."

To that, I reply, first, "Who has a right to say that, till they have been examined?" and, secondly, by repeating a question which I remember hearing Panizzi, the great Librarian, ask, long years ago, in the bow window of Brooks's, not a little, I think, to the surprise of his audience "Trash; what is trash?" The idea was new to me then, but I have learnt since that there is nothing, or next-to-nothing, in the shape of literature, when it is dealt with by the chemistry of genius, which may not fill up some gap, and make light where, a moment before, there was darkness.

Then, there are coins. You will say, that the dynasties of Southern India have but little to do with the great drama of history. Well, it seems so, with our present knowledge, and it may always be so; but here it is, just as with your manuscripts, you cannot tell till they have been examined, and who have such facilities for collecting them, as you? There is hardly a bazaar in the country, where you could not come upon coins, which might be of real interest to the European student, which a European student himself might never be allowed to see. Such an one was lately in one of our towns, and found the greatest possible difficulty, although he was a man of importance, in seeing anything. At last he produced a Rama Tunka from his pocket, and it at once acted as a spell. Each one of you has, in his language and nationality, a Rama Tunka in his pocket.