Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/19

 INTRODUCTION.

IN this Introduction1 I shall endeavour, first, to explain how Sanskrit literature is the only key to a correct knowledge of the opinions and practices of the Hindu people; and, secondly, to show how our possession of India involves special responsibilities and opportunities with reference to the study of the three great systems of belief now confronting Christianity in the world—Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Islam.

To clear the ground let me review very briefly the past and present history of the great country whose teeming population has been gradually, during the past two hundred and fifty years, either drawn under our sway, or, almost against our will, forced upon our protection.

The name India is derived from the Greek and Roman adaptation of the word Hindu, which was used by the Persians for their Aryan brethren, because the latter settled in the districts surrounding the streams2 of the Sindhu (pronounced by them Hindhu and now called Indus). The Greeks, who probably gained their first conceptions of India from the Persians, changed the hard aspirate into a soft, and named the Hindus 'Indoi (Herodotus IV. 44, V. 3). After the Hindu Aryans had spread themselves over the plains of the Ganges, the Persians called the whole of the region between the Panjab and Benares Hindustan or ' abode of the Hindus,' and this name is used in India at the present day, especially by the Musalman population3. The classical name for India, however, as commonly

1 Some detached portions of the information contained in this Introduction were embodied in a lecture on ' The Study of Sanskrit in Relation to Missionary Work in India,' delivered by me, April 19, 1861, and published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate. This lecture is still procurable.

2 Seven rivers (sapta sindhavah) are mentioned, counting the main river and the five rivers of the Panjab with the Sarasvatl. In old Persian or Zand we have the expression Hapta Hendu. It is well known that a common phonetic interchange of initial s and h takes place in names of the same objects, as pronounced by kindred races.

3 The name Hindustan properly belongs to the region between the Sutlej and Benares, sometimes extended to the Narbada and Maha-nadi rivers, but not to Bengal or the Dekhan.