Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/134

 122 VIEWS OF BOOKS Science to the conditions o! life in Hindustan during the period 500 B.C. to 500' A.D. It is hardly neeey to remark that the author views the past through spectacles o! a hue so roseate that, were they but directed upon the present, he must surely proclaim the arrival of the millennium. This arises mainly from the uncritical attitude he adopts .towards his evidence. In the Preface he says: "Nothing has been "said here which is not supported by reliable evidence." Just so: but all evidence is reliable n p to a certain point, even if its reliability possesses a purely negative index. Our complaint against Dr. Banerjea is that he accepts statements which are obviously one-sided at their face-value: he makes no real attempt to discover and allow for the glorification of Brahmans and Brahmanism which runs through his texts. Like so many of his ecrupatriots who tnrn all too willingly from the solid avantages of li[e under present-day conditions to the imaginary glories of a remote and obscure past, he has little sense of historical proportion. He fails altogether to see that the conditions o! li[e which he is extolling are essentially primitive and rudimentary: that a eeraiu degree of progress in the art of building may exist side by side with manners and customs not far removed from barbarism. The following statement is a good example of Dr. Banerjea's method. In the course of a chapter on what' he calls Foreign Relations he says (p. 108): "Krishna, [or example, was a plenipotentiary "when he was sent by the Pandayna to the Kura Court with "full powers iust before the Great Var." So, one must sappose, Noah was First Lord o! the Admiralty when the keel of the Ark was laid down. Again, in the Introductory portion (p. 11, note 1.) Dr. Banerjea compares Kautilya to Maehiwelli, mch, of course, to the disadvantage of the latter. He says that while "Kantilya's political ideas continued to be. accepted by many generations of kings and statesmen as safe gnides in their work of aettal administration, Machiavelli's Pr/.nce and oher works were valued merely as abstract treatises and never ' nfluenced to anl considera. bl e.tent the current of lolit'ieal events. Ths italics are ours, and they speak for themselves. Dr. Bauerjan concludes his - note with the amazing statement: "I! any 'European politician can be compared to Chanakya, it is Bismarck ". We should have thought St. Bruno or 8uger of at. Denys s much closer parallel. L.F. RUSHBBOOK WILLIAMS