John Clark Marshman

John Clark Marshman (18 August 1794 – 8 July 1877) was an English journalist and historian. He was editor and publisher of the Calcutta-based Friend of India, and was involved with several other Indian publications. Quotes History of India from Remote Antiquity to the Accession of the Mogul Dynasty (1860) The claim to boundless antiquity...is the result of national vanity, or of priestly cunning. In this respect the Hindoos do not stand alone. Among the nations of antiquity...it is the Burmese who appear to have carried this vapouring to the most ridiculous length. Compared with their accounts, the chronology of the Hindoos is but of yesterday. The Burmese affirm that the lives of the ancient inhabitants of their country were prolonged to a period equal in years to the sum of every drop of rain which falls on the whole surface of the earth in three years. Ch. 1, pp. 2-3 That system was formed upon the principle of striking the vulgar imagination with whatever was prodigious...The period of human life seldom extends, even in extreme cases, much beyond one hundred years; the mythology of the Hindoos stretches it to more than ten thousand years. The progeny of a single individual rarely exceeds ten children; but the Hindoo historians assert that King Sagur had sixty thousand sons, born in a pumpkin, nourished in pans of milk, and reduced to ashes by the curse of one sage. Nature has endowed men with two arms and one face; the Native poets have assigned to some of their heroes, twenty arms and ten faces. The Europeans have sailed round the world, and measuring their progress day by day, have found it to be of a globular form, 21,000 miles and somewhat more, in circumference; the books of the Hindoos maintain that it is forty times that size. The highest mountain in the world is found by the most accurate measurement to be little more than five miles high; but the Hindoo poets declare that Mount Soomeroo is six hundred thousand miles high, though none of them ever measured, or even saw it. Ch. 1, pp. 4-5 The first settlers were not Hindoos. Of the primeval race many tribes still exist in a state little removed from that of savage life, in the forests of the Nerbudda, the Soane, and the Muhanuddee, and in the mountains of Surgooja and Chota Nagpore. They pass under the name of Bheels, Goands, Meenas, Coles, and Chooars...As successive conquerors poured in upon the country, the aborigines naturally betook themselves to the fastnesses of the hills and forests...But though the Hindoos are evidently not the aborigines of the country, there can be little doubt that they are the earliest conquerors...They likewise came from the west, in a more advanced period of society, and crossing the Indus, spread over the northern parts of Hindoosthan. Ch. 1, pp. 8-9 The Deccan appears...to have been almost unknown...It was the land of fable, and the abode of apes, under their several kings and generals: it was in that quarter, that the commander of the bears, and the prince of Rakshusas, or monsters, dwelt; and this fact strongly confirms the supposition, that it was only at a comparatively recent period that these apes, and bears, and monsters were converted into Hindoos. Ch. 1, pp. 10-11 The brahmuns...probably brought with them their own language...The Sungskrit language, spreading with their creed, became, through their unwearied iudustry, the sacred language of the country...But...while the priests prohibited the perusal of any part of the Vedas by the vulgar, they took care to make the Grammar of the language a part of the Vedas: thus they effectually debarred all but the priesthood from acquiring even the first rudiments of the language of religion. Ch. 1, p. 13 This language has been gradually improved; and hence, perhaps, the origin of the name, Sungskrit, "thoroughly refined." In its first stage it appears in the original Sootras of the Vedas, the language of which is now so obsolete, that those who can easily read the modern Sungskrit, cannot understand those sacred works without a gloss. In the next stage it appears in the polished poems of the Ramayun and the Mubabharut, which...still continue the purest standards of the language...About two hundred years after, a cluster of illustrious poets arose in the court of Vikramaditya, whose works formed the third era of Sungskrit literature. Ch. 1, pp. 14-15 The religion of the aborigines...has been driven from the plains, and is now professed only by a number of rude mountain tribes. The religion of the Vedas...is obsolete. The worship of Brumha has disappeared. The religion of the Boodhists has been driven from the country to Ceylon, and the empires in the farther East. The creed of the Jains is confined to but a small remnant of disciples. The worship of Vishnoo, and especially of his representative Krishna, and that of Shiva, introduced in more recent times, is now predominant throughout India, except where, in Bengal, it meets the still more modern religion of Choitnya. Ch. 1, pp. 15-16 The worship inculcated in the Vedas...was doubtless introduced by a body of priests who came across the Indus from the West, either in the train of a conqueror, or for the purpose of making proselytes. The Vedas are the source of the religion, but not of the present idolatry of the Hindoos. The divinities invoked in those works are personifications of natural objects, and may be reduced to three; Fire, Air, and the Sun; and these were only particular manifestations of the one Original Being. Ch. 1, p. 16 External links Category:1794 births Category:1877 deaths Category:Historians from England Category:Journalists from England Category:Historians of India