"Let a thousand sacrifices (of a horse) and truth be weighed in the balance—truth will exceed the thousand sacrifices."[80]
These are words addressed by Sakuntalâ, the deserted wife, to King Dushyanta, when he declined to recognize her and his son. And when he refuses to listen to her appeal, what does she appeal to as the highest authority?—The voice of conscience.
"If you think I am alone," she says to the king, "you do not know that wise man within your heart. He knows of your evil deed—in his sight you commit sin. A man who has committed sin may think that no one knows it. The gods know it and the old man within."[81]
This must suffice. I say once more that I do not wish to represent the people of India as two hundred and fifty-three millions of angels, but I do wish it to be understood and to be accepted as a fact, that the damaging charge of untruthfulness brought against that people is utterly unfounded with regard to ancient times. It is not only not true, but the very opposite of the truth. As to modern times, and I date them from about 1000 after Christ, I can only say that, after reading the accounts of the terrors and horrors of Mohammedan rule, my wonder is that so much of native virtue and truthfulness should have survived. You might as well expect a mouse to speak the truth before a cat, as a Hindu before a Mohammedan judge.[82] If you frighten a child, that child will tell a lie; if you terrorize millions, you must not be surprised if they try to escape from your fangs. Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive luxury in our life—and happy the man who has been able to enjoy it from his very childhood. It may be easy enough in our days and in a free country, like England, never to tell a lie—but the older we grow, the harder we find it to be always true, to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The Hindus too had made that discovery. They too knew how hard, nay how impossible it is, always to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is a short story in the Satapatha Brâhmana, to my mind full of deep meaning, and pervaded by the real sense of truth, the real sense of the difficulty of truth. His kinsman said to Aruna Aupavesi, "Thou art advanced in years, establish thou the sacrificial fires." He replied: "Thereby you tell me henceforth to keep silence. For he who has established the fires must not speak an untruth, and only by not speaking at all, one speaks no untruth. To that extent the service of the sacrificial fires consists in truth."[83]
I doubt whether in any other of the ancient literatures of the world you will find traces of that extreme sensitiveness of conscience which despairs of our ever speaking the truth, and which declares silence gold, and speech silver, though, in a much higher sense than our proverb.
What I should wish to impress on those who will soon find themselves the rulers of millions of human beings in India, is the duty to shake off national prejudices, which are apt to degenerate into a kind of madness. I have known people with a brown skin whom I could look up to as my betters. Look for them in India, and you will find them, and if you meet with disappointments, as no doubt you will, think of the people with white skins whom you have trusted, and whom you can trust no more. We are all apt to be Pharisees in international judgments. I read only a few days ago in a pamphlet written by an enlightened politician, the following words:
"Experience only can teach that nothing is so truly astonishing to a morally depraved people as the phenomenon of a race of men in whose word perfect confidence may be placed[84].... The natives are conscious of their inferiority in nothing so much as in this. They require to be taught rectitude of conduct much more than literature and science."
If you approach the Hindus with such feelings, you will teach them neither rectitude, nor science, nor literature. Nay, they might appeal to their own literature, even to their law-books, to teach us at least one lesson of truthfulness, truthfulness to ourselves, or, in other words, humility.
What does Yâgñavalkya say?[85]
"It is not our hermitage," he says—our religion we might say—"still less the color of our skin, that produces virtue; virtue must be practiced. Therefore let no one do to others what he would not have done to himself."