Quotations

The following are quotations from several Western scholars that appeared in an article written by Niranjan Shah in the News Weekly, India Tribune, followed by an article written by William Dalrymple.

Will Durant, the Pullitzer Prize winning American author wrote in The Case for India: "India was the mother of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages.  She was the mother of our philosophy, mother through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics, mother through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity, mother through village communities of self-government and democracy.  Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all"

“ India is the primal source, the mother country”: Sir. Yehudi Menuhin (1915-1999).

Mark Twain wrote in Following the Equator:  "This is India;...cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, greatgrandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the smoldering antiquities of the rest of the nations...India had the start of whole world in the beginning of things.  She had the first civilization, she had the first accumulation of material wealth, she has populus with deep thinkers and the subtle intellects; she had mines and woods and a fruitful soil".

“ India early created the beginning of nearly all of the sciences, some of which she carried forward to remarkable degrees of development, thus leading the world”. So wrote Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland (1842-1936). He continued: “India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or than any other in Asia….She had great engineering works. She had great merchants, great businessmen, great bankers and financiers.”

H.M. Hyndman (1842-1921) an eminent British publicist wrote: “ Many hundreds of years before the coming of the English, the nations of India had been a collection of wealthy and highly civilized people, possessed of great language with an elaborate code of laws and social regulations, with exquisite artistic taste in architecture and decoration, producing conceptions which have greatly influenced the development of the most progressive races of the West.”

Beatrice Pitney Lamb, former editor of he United Nations News wrote in her book: India: A world in transition: “ In addition to the still visible past glories of art and architecture, the wonderful ancient literature…. For well over a millennium and a half, the Indian subcontinent may have been the richest area in the world.”

General Joseph Davey,(1812-1851), the author of “A History of the Sikhs” wrote: “ Mathematical science was so perfect and astronomical observations so complete that the paths of the sun and the moon were accurately measured.”

William Cooke Taylor (1800- 1849), the author of “A Popular History of British India”

Wrote: “ It was an astounding discovery that Hindustan possessed, in spite of the changes of the realms and changes of time, a language of unrivalled richness and variety; a language, the parent of all those dialects that Europe has fondly called classical- the source alike of Greek flexibility and Roman strength.”

Count Louis Hamon Cheiro (1866-1936) wrote: “ Long before Rome or Greece or Israel was even heard of , the mountains of India point back to an age, of learning, beyond , and still beyond. From the astronomical calculations that the figures in their temples represent, it has been estimated that the Hindu understood the precession of the equinoxes centuries before the Christian Era.”

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) viceroy of India from 1899-1905 and Chancellor of Oxford University wrote: “ Powerful empires existed and flourished here (in India) while Englishmen were still wandering, painted in the woods and while the English colonies were a wilderness and a jungle.”

The German philologist and archaeologist, Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1858) wrote in “The Mother of Us All”: “If there is country on earth which can justly claim the honor of having been the cradle of the human race or at least the scene of primitive civilization, the successive developments of which carried into all parts of the ancient world….that country assuredly is India.”

Ali bin Abi Talib, the Fourth Caliph (656-661) wrote in Hindu Muslim Cultural Accord, “The land where books, were first written and from where wisdom and knowledge sprang is  India.”

 

The German writer, critic, philologist, philosopher and author Friedrich von Schlegal (1772-1829) wrote: “ Great India is not only at the origin of everything, she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison. Here is the actual source of all languages, all the thoughts and poems of the human spirit; everything, everything without exception comes from India.”

The following is an article written by a Scottish Historian, William Dalrymple:

India Empire Strikes Back - A Western Perspective

By William Dalrymple