“Sleeman tells us men (in India) adhere habitually and religiously to the truth, and ‘I have had before me hundreds of cases,’ he says, ‘in which a man’s property, liberty, and life have depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it.’ Could many an English judge say the same?” (Remarks by Prof. Müller.)
Prof. Müller quotes from an Arabian writer of the thirteenth century, “The Indians are innumerable, like grains of sand, free from all deceit and violence. They fear neither death nor life.”
And again, from Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, “You must know, Marco Polo says, that these Abralaman (Hindoos) are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth.”
“In the sixteenth century Abu Fazl, the minister of the Emperor Akbar, says in his ‘Ayin Akbari,’ ‘The Hindus are religious, affable, cheerful, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity, and their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battle.’”
(How badly these “poor heathen” were in need of the Jesuit missionary, and the British government and civilization!)
Prof. Müller quotes Warren Hastings regarding the Hindus in general, as follows, “They are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, than any people on the face of the earth—faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority.”
Bishop Heber said, “The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement, sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.”
Elphinstone said, “No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns.” (It might have been wiser to have employed English missionaries at home.)
Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. He writes, “If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing-skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality, and charity among each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people—then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe—and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo.
“Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in India, than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.