The scornful and the contemptuous are not even invited! They are left alone with their Idols.
Coming now more directly to the splendid work of Jacolliot, one thing I think ought to be apparent to every honest and intelligent reader of “The Bible in India,” and that is, that its author is in no sense a partisan of Hinduism, but a searcher and witness for the simple Truth as he finds and apprehends it.
He puts aside mystery, miracle, and Divine Revelation, as dispassionately in the Vedic, Brahmanical, and Buddhistic cults, as in the Mosaic and Christian. Belief in God, and reverence for Truth in the light of reason and conscience, shine from every page of his work.
To flippantly call him an “atheist,” or a “destroyer of holy things,” as though that were in any sense an answer to his thesis, and which formerly was the rule, and may even now be attempted in certain quarters, will simply brand the bigot as by no means intelligent—if indeed honest—who attempts it. The majority of such sectarians have grown wise or prudent enough to ignore all such issues.
There has been a great change in public sentiment since Jacolliot went to India as an earnest student of these subjects, and in the nearly forty years since he wrote this book.
The saying that “Truth passes through three phases before being accepted,” specially applies here. First, people say, “It is not true.” Second, “It contradicts Scripture,” and when it at last is triumphant, that “Everybody knew it before.”
The truths of which Jacolliot writes have already reached at least the beginning of the third stage. Of course, “Everybody” here means those who read, and think, and dare to use conscience and reason.
In referring to a religious debate between a missionary and a Brahman, and the universal interest manifested among all classes as to the outcome of the encounter, “hooting the vanquished in either case with strict impartiality,” Jacolliot adds, “We shall be less surprised at this when it is known that there is not a Hindoo, whatever his rank or caste, who does not know the principles of the Holy Scripture, that is, the Vedas, and who does not perfectly know how to read and write.”
Three hundred and forty millions of people, thousands of them pariahs and outcasts, sharing refuse with the dogs, with no rights that any one else is bound to respect, bowing their faces in the dust when a Brahman passes ten paces away—and yet everyone can read and write!
Max Müller said he had had in his study at Oxford a young Hindoo who could repeat the whole of the Mahabharata without missing a word or an inflection from beginning to end.