nous literature, and are as important to their faiths as sacred Greek
is to Christianity.
Compare India with Europe, leaving out Russia, and she has more States, languages, and people. The principal tongues of Europe are the English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Russ, Polish, Turkish, Greek, Dutch, Danish, Swede, Norwegian, and Finn—15. There were (according to the Census of 1861) in Europe 52 States, 15 languages, and 198,014,432 people; but, in India, there are 374 States, 23 languages, and 212,483,247 people. Giving India more States, more languages, and more population than all the great Western nations combined!
To understand what India is, and what was the force and importance of her great Sepoy Rebellion, and what is likely to be her relation to Christianity, and to the magnificent future which awaits her Hemisphere, the reader needs to understand and bear these facts in mind.
Of course, such a people are not destitute of national conceit. Indeed, the Hindoos hold up their heads with a sovereign sense of superiority above all other people on the earth. Admit their claims, and their system of chronology, and the assumptions of their history, and all other nations must hang their heads as modern novelties, and bow down in humility in the presence of a civilization of divine origin and a venerable aristocracy that counts its life and honors by millions of years! No Hindoo doubts but that his country is, or has been, the fount of all the blessings which have spread over the world, and in this rich conceit they hold it as a maxim that
“Min-as-shark talata ba kudrat ar-rahman,
Anwar-ud-din wa al-ilm, wa al-umran.”
That is,
“From the East, by the power of the Merciful One,
Lights of Science, Religion, and Culture have shone.”
The name India is apparently derived from the river Indus, and may have originated in the fact that that river divided this then unknown land from Persia and the world of ancient classical literature. The country is called in Sanscrit Bharatkund, from a
