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Updated: May 27, 2025
Go to Turkey, to Persia, to all the lands scorched and blighted by the fiery train of the Crescent, and what school-books will you find but portions of the Koran? Pass to Hindostan, and there you will find the Vedas and Shasters wherever any thing like popular education is attempted.
Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and Talmuds, and Korans, with Cassini's Siamese fables, and Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, down to Robinson Crusoe and the Belfast Town and Country Almanack, are familiar to him, we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course.
We greatly admire the philanthropic Major Ludlow, who devoted his energies to the abolishing of the suttee; but whose labours met with very partial success, until, by searching their own Shasters, he discovered that there was a time at which the rite did not exist.
In the holy books, or shasters, great blessings are promised to those who are kind to a Brahmin. Any one who gives him an umbrella will never more be scorched by the sun; any one who gives him a pair of shoes will never have blistered feet; any one who gives him sweet spices will never more be annoyed by ill smells; and any one who gives him a cow will go to heaven.
The Paharis are described, at that time, as without caste, priests, or public religion, as living on Indian corn and by hunting, for which they carry bows and arrows. "Brother Carey was able to converse with them." Again, Ward's comment on the Bengali services on the next Sunday, from the boats, is "the common sort wonder how brother Carey can know so much of the Shasters."
At length the supreme, who dwelt therein, burst the shell of the stupendous egg and issued forth under a new form with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Along with him issued another form, huge and measureless, which speedily matured into the present glorious universe.”—Shasters.
One of the young Hindoos in Dr. Duff's school in Calcutta, when reading the above and similar passages, was so struck with the difference between these precepts and the precepts of his Shasters, that he could not but exclaim "O, how beautiful, how divine. Surely this is the truth this is the truth this is the truth."
In 1796 he reported: "I am now learning the Sanskrit language, that I may be able to read their Shasters for myself; and I have acquired so much of the Hindi or Hindostani as to converse in it and speak for some time intelligibly...Even the language of Ceylon has so much affinity with that of Bengal that out of twelve words, with the little Sanskrit that I know, I can understand five or six."
I am the Spiritual and Temporal Chief of the Realm. 2. The Defender of the Faith. 3. Equal to Saruswati in learning. 4. Chief of all the Boodhs. 5. Head expounder of the Shasters. 6. Caster out of devils. 7. The most learned in the Holy Laws. 8. Absolver of sins. 10. I am above all the Lamas of the Dookpa Creed. 11. I am of the best of all Religions the Dookpa. 12. The punisher of unbelievers. 18.
For the benefit of all who may not have access to those books, the following, from Duff’s India, credited to the Shasters, may be of service in the search after truth: “Brahm produced an egg. All the primary atoms, qualities, and principles, the seeds of future worlds, that had been evolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together and deposited in the newly produced egg.
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