The theorizing which the Hindu does about caste is characteristic of him in all cultural manifestations. The relation which can be thought out between one fact or act and others, the compartment to which it can be assigned in a system, are of more interest to him, as compared with the fact itself, than to peoples of other civilizations. Hence philosophy has flourished in India, but native history has been inadequate and disorderly. Hence too the abstract sciences of logic, mathematics, grammar enjoyed an early original development, equal for a long time and in part antecedent to that which they attained in the West. On the other hand the astronomical and still more the physical and biological sciences remained backward: they were concerned with concrete objects. The Hindus seem never to have made a move of their own toward devising a system of writing; but once the Semitic alphabet had been introduced, they modified, expanded, and rearranged it into a more logical scheme, a more consistent one phonetically, than any other people has given it (§ [146]). It is probably no accident that chess and our “Arabic” position numerals with a symbol for zero (§ [109]) are Hindu inventions, and that it is only in India that priests have for age after age been ranked higher than rulers.

It is natural that a culture of such inclinations should exalt the mind and soul above the body. Hence the extraordinary development of asceticism in Indian religion; its deep pessimism as regards life on this earth; its insistence on the superior reality of soul, with which is connected the universal assumption of rebirths; the working out of a system of unescapable moral causality called karma in place of a scheme of mechanical causation; the tendencies toward pantheistic identification of soul and God, or atheistic denial of divinity as distinct from soul; and the thoroughly anti-materialistic bent of almost all Hindu philosophy. It is also intelligible that these qualities should have imparted to Indian religion a superior degree of spiritual intensity which was appreciated by the nations to the north and east when Buddhism was presented to them, and caused them to embrace it.

Like Christianity, however, Buddhism found no permanent favor among the people and in the land of its origin. It flourished in India for a time, but was rarely looked upon as more than a sect; after something over a thousand years it died out completely, except in Ceylon, at the very period that its hold on non-Indian nations to the north and east was strengthening. Its place was taken in India by the miscellaneous assemblage of cults, all theoretically recognizing Brahman ascendancy, that in the aggregate constitute what is known as Hinduism. Hinduism is not a religion in the sense that Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism are “religions.” It recognizes no personal founder, no head or establishment; it tends to exclude foreigners rather than to convert them; it is national instead of universal. It accepts and reinforces the existing institutions of its particular culture: caste, for instance, which Buddhism tried to transcend. Hinduism is therefore comparable to the ancient Greek and early west Asiatic religions in consisting of a series of locally or tribally different cults never integrated or fully harmonized, conscious and tolerant of one another, resting on common assumptions and similar in content, everywhere in accord with tradition and usage, resistive to organization into a larger whole but tied into a certain unity through reflecting a more or less common civilization.

Hinduism is also comparable to Confucianism and Shintoism with this difference. These grew up analogously, but early became associated with the central government or imperial authority, to which India never attained. They gradually became official religions, as which they survive; such religious piety as the population of China and Japan experiences finding its outlet chiefly through Buddhism. Buddhism may be said to have failed in India because it aimed at being a world religion; because it tried to be international instead of national, to overlie all cultures instead of identifying itself with one. The Hindu like the Jew preferred remaining within the limits of his nationality and particular civilization.

259. Relations Between India and the Outer World

The first culture influence whose entry into India can be traced in any detail was that carried by the Vedic Aryans from the northwest. In fact, as already mentioned, more is known about this importation than of what it encountered in India. In the post-Vedic period, the introduction of the Semitic alphabet suggests that other cultural ingredients also flowed into India from the west without direct record being preserved of their transmission. The Persian and Macedonian conquests extended only over the westernmost margin of India and were of little direct influence. But the latter was followed by a semi-Hellenization of southwestern Asia, including for instance the establishment of a Græco-Bactrian kingdom in southern Turkistan and Afghanistan, adjacent to India; and for several centuries a stream of Greek culture elements trickled into the heart of India. Sculpture, architecture, astronomy, drama, coinage, derived new impetus, in some cases even their origin, from this source. In some instances the Hindus were no more than copiers of Hellenistic models: Greek hangs and folds were given to sculptured garments, Greek astronomical measurements taken over without change. Yet as the centuries wore on and new imports along these lines lessened and then died out, the introduced elements became more deeply incorporated into Indian civilization, modified and encrusted more and more heavily by distinctive Hindu styles, until now their superficial appearance makes an impression of independent native growth. The working over of the Semitic alphabet into its Hindu forms may be taken as typical of the nature and degree of this remodeling of the Hellenistic culture imports.

Soon after 700 A.D. commenced a series of Mohammedan invasions and conquests—Arab, Afghan, and Mongol-Turkish—also from the northwest, and of course accompanied by a new series of culture influences—firearms, for instance, and the true arch—which in their turn underwent absorption and partial transformation.

The flow of culture between India and the Mediterranean world has not been wholly eastward. Cotton; the common domestic fowl; probably the buffalo and rice; perhaps asceticism, monastic life, and certain mystic points of view; position numerals with zero; chess; and some of the concepts of modern philology, were transmitted westward. Eastern Africa was influenced, largely through the medium of Arab sea trade. Towards the north and northeast as far as Mongolia and Japan, India has been a dispenser of culture content and has taken little in return. Toward the southeast, Indian influence has been the largest component in the civilization of Indo-China and the East Indian archipelago, which as regards their higher attainments may be regarded as cultural dependencies or extensions of India.

260. Indo-China

Farther India or Indo-China, the great southeastern peninsula of Asia, falls somewhat short of India and China in area, is less densely inhabited, and contains a population which is of definitely Mongolian type except for some scattered fragments of hill tribes. On the basis of speech, four groups are to be distinguished. In the southwestern and southeastern corners of the peninsula, in the former kingdoms of Pegu and Cambodia, are the Mon and the Khmer, certainly related to each other and perhaps distantly connected with the Malayo-Polynesian family. On the east are the Anamese, with a monosyllabic, tonal language whose affiliations are doubtful. It contains a Chinese element, but perhaps by absorption rather than by original connection. The center and west of Indo-China are occupied respectively by the peoples of the T’ai or Siamese-Shan and Tibeto-Burman groups, both probably collateral offshoots with Chinese from what may be called the original Sinitic stock (§ [50]). The movement of population has clearly been out of inner Asia into the peninsula. The Mon-Khmer are situated like half submerged remnants. Burma on the map hangs from Tibet like the outgrowth that it probably is. Seven centuries ago, the T’ai empire was centered in Yünnan, in southwestern China. Siam represents a southward shift of the seat of T’ai power after Mongol conquest ([Fig. 12]).