India—What Can It Teach Us?

India—What Can It Teach Us? is a series of lectures, delivered by F. Max Müller in 1882 at Cambridge, intended for the candidates for the Indian Civil Services. He projected his idea of India and of Hindu religion in its most ancient form based on a study of Sanskrit literatures, to the religious life of the Hindus of his time. Max Müller vehemently denounced the habitual denigration of the Indian character by those Englishmen who lived in India or had first-hand experience of the country. He thus, set himself not only to defend Indians but also to show in what way the Indian character and outlook could be a complement to those of the European. In his second and third lectures Max Müller grappled with prejudice that consisted in looking upon stay in India as a kind of moral exile and in regarding the Hindus as an inferior race. On the basis of facts and testimonies from Hindu scriptures foreign accounts and Colonel Sleeman's observations, he clearly showed the truthful character of the Hindus. Lecture four seeks to clear doubts on the basis of evidences in the original texts regarding the historical importance of Vedic literature. Lecture Five is concerned with the study of religion and mythology revealed in Vedic literature, and Lecture six discusses, in detail, the Vedic deities. Lecture seven is devoted to answering questions as to how the Vedic literature could have been composed and preserved, if writing was unknown to India before 500 BC.