fosters, have all been promotive of the effeminacy into which they have so generally sunk.
Their separation into castes and classes have tended to individualism, and to an utter indifference to politics or the public good; so that you seek in vain for what we call patriotism or love of country. The Hindoo, as a general fact, cares not who rules the land if only he is allowed to cultivate his fields and eat his rice in peace. If left to himself, the last thing he would have thought of would have been rebellion; indeed, the Hindoos, as a people, did not rebel. They looked on in astonishment, and left the whole affair to be carried on and fought out by the Sepoys and the Budmashes (the thieves and vagabonds) of the cities.
In every respect they are a contrast to the Mohammedans among them. No tendency to amalgamation with them has ever been developed. They regard them as aliens and oppressors, and are even thankful that they are no longer under their control.
About eight hundred years ago there came pouring down into India from the countries of the North-west a hardy, large-boned, intolerant race of men, made up of various nations, who had heard of the “barbaric pearl and gold” of Hindustan, and who panted to extend over its wide realms their religion and rule. Before this Mohammedan invasion the Hindoo race succumbed, though the strangers were not one seventh of their number. But they were a unit; and, taking the Hindoo nations in detail, they conquered. Then, filling the positions of trust and the offices of Government with their own creatures, and as far as they could making a monopoly of education, they continued to compensate for deficiency of numbers by a politic use of their opportunities, and left the Hindoo to till the soil and pay the yearly tribute which they had laid upon him. The usual alternative of the Mohammedan conquerors—conformity to their creed or grinding taxation, or even death—had to be foregone in this instance, as its attempted enforcement over a people so much more numerous would have been too much for even Hindoo patience, and have ended probably in the extermination of their iconoclastic conquerors. The distinctive characteristics of each are religiously
