A literary History of India

A work issued as the first of a series in a Library of Literary History, designed to deal with the story of mankind as a story of culture, of intellectual growth, and artistic achievement, rather than of the battles of nations and the quarrels of parliaments. The story of India lends itself most remarkably to this plan, and the volume devoted to it by Mr. Frazer cannot fail to justify the scheme. India, in fact, is in no respect so broadly and permanently interesting as in the intellectual developments which began with the Vedic Hymns, which produced Brahmanism as a direct development, and Buddhism as a new departure, and which left to the admiration and study of future ages philosophies never surpassed in speculative penetration and brilliant exposition. That so much intellectual wealth should have failed to save India from social and religious depression; that neither Brahman thought nor Buddhist ethics and humanism should have cleared away the mists of superstition; and that the land over which Akbar ruled in Queen Elizabeth’s time should have entirely failed to have a part in the history of modern culture, and should owe its interest in modern progress to English rule, is a most remarkable chapter in human history.