NIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE, LIBRARY illl mi liii iilillii lii III li! 3 1210 01658 7220 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE -"»;. THE CRTMSONrrD:. 1760 N. GOWER ST. HOLLYWOOD. CALIF. LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, D.D. F.E.S. THE CRiMSONlTE 1760 N. GOWER ST. KOLLYWOOD, CALIF. THE LIFE JOHN WILSON, D.D. F.R.S. FOR FIFTY YEARS PHILANTHROPIST AND SCHOLAR IN THE EAST By GEOEGE smith, LL.D. COMPANION OF THE ORDER OF THE INDIAN EMPIRE ; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL SOCIETIES, ETC. AUTHOR OF 'the LIFE OF ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D. LL.D.' Ot Trjv oiKovfj.ivT]v duaaTariiiTavres ovroi. kclI ii^ddSe Trdpeiaiv. SECOND EDITION ABRIDGED WITH PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1879 yilu right ofTrandaiioii is reserved.] 15 /<^^i- Printed hy R. & R. Ci-AKK, Edinhnrgh. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The continued demand for the book, even after the rapid sale of the First Edition, has led to its re-publication in a cheaper form. The use of smaller type has made this possible without seriously abridging the text, and with the omission of only a few extracts. On the other hand, a fortunate discovery in the Eecords of the Foreign Office of the Free Church of Scotland has enabled the author to enrich this Edition with the characteristic letter at page 329 to Dr. Wilson from Dr. Livingstone, which Mv. H. Stanley posted from Aden to Bombay. In its present form tlie Life of Dr. Wilson is placed within the reach of the people, and more especially of both Asiatic and British youth in colleges and schools. Isle of Arran, 25th Aug mt 1879. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. When I was asked by his son to go over the vohiminous papers and write the life of Dr. Wilson of Bombay, I at once sacrificed other engagements to the duty. As Editor of the Calcutta Revieio for some time before the Mutiny of 1857, and as Editor of The Friend of India, and Correspondent of The Times for many years after it, I was called to observe and occasionally to discuss the career of the Philanthropist and Scholar of Western India. For forty-seven years as a public man and a missionary he worked, he wrote, he spoke, and in countless ways he joyfully toiled for the people of India, While viceroys and governors, officials and merchants, scholars and travellers, succeeded each other and passed away all too rapidly, he remained a permanent living force, a mediator between the natives and the governing class, an interpreter of the varied Asiatic races, creeds, and longings, to their alien but benevolent rulers. Nor was his work for his own countrymen less remarkable, in its degree, than his life of self-sacrifice for Hindoos and Muhammadans, Parsees and Jews, out-castes and aborigines, and his build- ing up of the indigenous Church of India. His influence maintained an English standard of morality and manners VIU rREFACE, in society, wliile lie was the centre of a select group of administrators, not confined to Bombay, like Sir Donald M'Leod, to mention only the dead. As an Orientalist and scholar, the power of his memory was only less remarkable than the ardour of his industry ; his linguistic instinct was regulated by the philosophy with which his native country is identified, and all were directed by the loftiest motive and the purest passion that can intiame the breast. Wealth and honours he put from him, save when he could make them also ministers in the work of humanity. From Central India to Central Africa, and from Cabul to Comorin, there are thousands who call John Wilson blessed. His hundreds of educated converts and catechumens are the seed of the Church of Western India. Every missionary and student of India Missions must sit at his feet. From 1864, when I first visited Bombay, to his death at the close of 1875, I learned to know the man as well as his work. But he cannot be so well reproduced on the cold page, for his own writings do not reflect the charm of his talk, which delighted generations of friends, from Sir John Malcolm to Lord Mayo and Lord Korth brook. Sir Bartle Frere and Mr. Grant Duff. My aim is that this volume may supply the materials, at least, from which his Country and the Church Catholic, oriental scholars, and the princes and educated natives of India, shall not only see what manner of man he was, but be stimulated by his rare example. I hope also that the sketches of the other good and great men who worked for a time by his side may not be without interest ; and that, still more, it may be seen how the British Government is risiuo- to the height of our national responsibility for the good of the millions rUEFACE. IX of Southern Asia, and of the neighbouring Malay, Chinese, Tatar, Persian, Arab, Abyssinian, and Negro peoples. This is an English book, and therefore, though it occa- sionally treats purely scholarly questions, the English vowels are used to transliterate oriental names and terms. Save in extracts which demand the preservation of the original spelling, and in the name which I would fain have printed " Boodhist," hardly an Asiatic word or phrase will be found which is not so rendered as to be capable of correct pronunciation, and of being easily understood. Scholars who write for scholars only, do well to follow the Indian and European vowel sounds. Scholars, officials, and all who desire the English reader to be attracted to, instead of being repelled from, the stvidy of India and tlie East, will use English as uniformly as ineradicable custom permits. Besides the acknowledgments made in the course of the narrative, I have to thank for their assistance his Excellency Sir Eichard Temple, Bart., who, as the present Governor of Bombay, instructed the dex^artments to supply copies of some of Dr. Wilson's official correspondence ; Sir xVlexander Grant, Bart., Principal of the University of Edinburgh, who, as Director of Public Instruction for some years, was closely associated with Dr. Wilson ; the third Sir Jamsetjee Jee- jeebhoy, Bart. ; The Ptevs. Dhunjeebhoy Nowrojee and Pi. Stothert, M.A. ; Dr. Birdwood, C.S.I., and Dr. R Post, of the India Office ; Hugh IMiller, M.D., Esq. of Broomfield, Helensburgh ; W. P. Jervis, Esq., Turin ; I'rofessors Charteris and Eggeling ; and Professor Weber of Berlin, who has communicated to me, through ]\Ir. John ]\Iuir, D.C.L,, C.I.E., his very high estimate of the scientific X PREFACE. pursuits of Dr. Wilson as an Orientalist who subordinated scholarly reputation to missionary ends. Only the long frontier war, and the other cares of his office as Governor of Cape Colony, have prevented his Excellency Sir Bartle Frere from contributing reminiscences of his lifeloniij friend. Serampoee House, Merchistox, Edinburgh, 19i7i October 1878. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PACK Home — School — University — Voyage to Bombay . . 1 CHAPTER II. Old Bombay and its Governors to 1829 . . .24 CHAPTER III. Organisation and First Fruit of the Mission . . 38 CHAPTER IV. Public Discussions with learned Hindoos and Muham- madans ........ 59 CHAPTER V. Tours to ISTasik ; to Jalna and Flora ; to Goa, Kolhapore, AND Mahableshwar ...... 82 CHAPTER VI. Tour to Surat, Baroda, Kathiawar, and Somnath . .104 CHAPTER VII. Zand Scholarship AND the Parsee Controversy . . 120 CHAPTER Vni. Development of the Mission . . . . .141 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. 5 — Ra.jpootana — SoMNATH Gates ...... 157 PAGE Tours — Gairsoppa Falls— Ra.jpootana — Kathiawar — The CHAPTER X. Oriental Scholarship and Scholars .... 178 CHAPTER XL Home by Cairo, Sinai, Jerusalem, Damascus, Constanti- nople, AND Pesth . . . . . ■ . 196 CHAPTER XII. The Missionary Side of 1843 ..... 210 CHAPTER XIII. Among Books — Second Marriage — Over Europe to Bombay . 230 CHAPTER XIV. A New Period — Tour in Sindh— The Bombay School of the Catechumens . . . . . . .240 CHAPTER XV. Literary Activity — The Rock-cut Temples . . . 259 CHAPTER XVI. The Mutiny and its Good Fruit ..... 274 CHAPTER XVII. The Krishna Orgies — Dr. Wilson among the Educated Natives ....... 302 CHAPTER XVIII. New Bombay — Dr. "Wilson among the Europeans — Dr. Livingstone — The Abyssinian Expedition . . . 317 CONTENTS. Xlii CHAPTER XIX. PAon Second and Last Visit Home ..... 335 CHAPTER XX. Eest ........ 346 APPENDIX. I. Dr. "Wilson on Native Rule in Baroda and Native ' Opinion on British Rule ..... 361 II. Dr. Wilson on the Somnath Gates .... 368 Index ....... 373 ILLUSTRATIONS. Dr. Wilson as Moderator of the General Assembly Frontispiece Map of THE City of Bombay . . . To face page 24 Map of the Lands around the Indian Ocean influenced BY Dr. Wilson . . . ,, ,, 144 The Girnar Rock . . . . . . .188 The Second Edict of Asoka . . . . .189 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, D.D. CHAl^TEE I. 1804-1828. HOME— SCHOOL— UNIVERSITY— VOYAGE TO BOMBAY. Lauder and Lauderdale — The Border and the Men it has sent to India — The Wilsons of Lauder — the Burgh Coramou aud the Big Farms — John Wilson, " The Priest " — Memories of Waterloo — Dr. James Fairbairn on Schoolboy days and the Dawn of Evangelicalism — John Wilson, Schoolmaster and Tutor — Early Indian and Bombay Influences — The Arts Course at Edin- ])urgh University — The Theological Professors — Rebellion of the Divinity Students — Founds the University Missionary Society — Earliest Publica- tions — Ordained — The Bayue Sisters — Marriage — First view of Cape Comorin and Western India — Arrives at Bombay. At a point some twenty-five miles to the south-east of the city of Edinburgh, the three counties of Edinburgh, Berwick, and Roxburgh meet. The spot is the summit of Lauder Hill, which rises between the railway station of Stow and the royal burgh of Lauder, chief of all the district of Lauderdale. As we stand on the ancient road, now grass-grown, we survey perhaps the widest and most quietly beautiful scene that the Scottish Border can present. From the Lammermoor to the Cheviot Hills, with the rounded Eildons sprouting at their base, the breadth of the two border counties, the Merse or march of Berwick and the fells of Roxburgh, are spread out ' before us. Distant Teviot and near Tweed roll down to the North Sea, watering a land of more historic renown than any other part of the too long disunited Kingdom. Behind we have left Gala Water, with its memories of legend and of song ; before us, half hidden by the hill on which we stand, is the Leader Avhich gives its name to Lauderdale. For more than twenty miles the stream flows on from the Lammermoors till it mingles its waters Avith the Tweed below Melrose B 2 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1804. Abbey. Even Scotland presents few valleys so broad, so fertile, as this Lauder dale throughout its long extent. Monk and warrior early chose it for their own, from Dryburgh Abbey where Sir Walter Scott lies, and Erceldoune or Earlston where Thomas the Rhymer sang his prophecies, to Thirlestane Castle where the Maitlands of Lauderdale perpetuate a house well known in Scottish history. Here it was, along the great highway, from the marshalling-grouud of the Boroughmuir of Edinburgh to the fords of the Tweed and the field of Flodden, that the Edwards led their invading armies, and the Stewarts their avenging forces ; while noble and yeoman on both sides the marches fought for their own hand. Old Thirlestane, near Avhose ruins the Leader now flows so gently, was long the tower from which " Maitland, Avith his auld grey beard," whom Gawan Douglas thought worthy of a place in his allegory of the " Palace of Honoui*," beat back the English. The ballad of "Auld Maitland," as taken down from the lips of Jane Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd's mother, Avho had learned it from a blind man of ninety, deserves all the enthusiasm Sir Walter Scott expresses for it. But dearer to the son of the Border is the more modern song of " Leader Haughs and Yarrow," with its quaint poetic catalogue of names and places more familiar to the natives of Lauderdale and Selkirk than those of Homer or of Milton. The old minstrel sighs at the close for the glory that is departed, for he wrote doubtless in the evil days just after the duke built the present castle in 1674 — " Sing Erliugtou and Cowdenknowes, Where Humes had auce commanding ; And Drygi'ange with the milk-white yowes 'Twixt Tweed and Leader standing : The bird that flees through Rediiatli trees And Gladswood banks ilk morrow, May chaunt and sing sweet Leader Haughs And bonnie howms of Yarrow. " But minstrel Burne cannot assuage His grief, while life endureth. To see the changes of his age Wliich fleeting time iirocureth ; For mony a jilace stands in hard case, Where blythe folk keud nae sorrow. With Humes that dwelt on Leader-side And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow." It was at Lauder, too, in the days of the Third James, 1804.] HIS BIRTH. 3 that Archibald Douglas " belled the cat," hanging before liis sovereign's eyes five of the low favourites who misled the royal youth. Nor should it be overlooked that the minister of Lauder, inducted in 1638, was James Guthrie, the Coven- anter whom Lauderdale martyred along with the Marquis of Argyll, the Earl of Tweeddalc alone pleading for the milder sentence of banishment. But modern times have brought more peaceful associations. Except, perhaps, the Highland Inverness-shire, no part of Scotland has been so fruitful a nursery of heroes for the civilisation, if not the conquest of our Indian Empire. Tweedside and its many dales have, in the last century, sent forth Kers and Elliots, Douglases and Riddells, Scotts and Walkers, Malcolms and Grays, Napiers and MuiTays to the noblest work any country has ever done for humanity. To a governor-general like Lord Minto, a states- man Hke Sir John Malcolm, a scholar and poet like Dr. Ley- den, and an economist like James Wilson, Ave have now to add the Christian missionary John Wilson. He was as great a scholar and as benevolent a philanthropist as the best of them, or as all of them together ; and he was a more potent force than they, because he gave himself to the people of India for a life of continuous service, covering nearly half a century, and because that service was inspired and fed every hour by the highest of all motives, the purest of all forms of self- sacrifice. John Wilson was born in the Berwickshire burgh of Lauder on the 11th day of December 1804. He was the eldest of seven children, four brothers and three sisters, most of whom still survive. He came of a long-lived stock of small proprietors and fanners, who for two hundred years inhabited the thatched, but now enlarged, house in the " Row " of the town in which he first saw the light. His great-grandfather reached the age of ninety-eight, his grandfather lived to be eighty-eight, his father and mother each died at eighty-two. Physically, he thus inherited a constitution of singular elas- ticity and power of endurance, under the frequent hardship of toilsome journeys and malarious disease in the jungles of Western India, before British railways, or even roads, had opened them up. His father, Andrew Wilson, was for more than forty years a councillor of the burgh, and was an elder in the parish kirk. His mother, Janet Hunter, the eldest of a 4 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1804. family of thirteen, most of whom lived to a good old age, was a woman of great force of character. This, added to the kindly unselfishness which marked her eldest son also, caused her to be in constant request by her neighbours in times of sickness and trouble. Father and mother combined in their rearing the economic conditions of the surrounding district. Lauderdale, to the east of the Leader, is a district of large farms, yielding an average rental of a thousand a year and upwards, even in those days, and worked in the very best style of the grancle culture. Of James Hunter, the leaseholder of one of the most extensive of these, John Wilson's mother Avas the eldest daughter. To the west of the stream lie the town and its unusually extensive commonage, covering at the present time 1700 acres, but doubtless larger a century ago. The land is owned by the burgesses, and a very considerable share of it had always been possessed by the Wilsons of the " Row." The old conditions are only now beginning to give place to the same influences which have made the high farm- ing of the Lothians and the Merse famous in the history of agriculture. At last some of the " portioners " have com- bined to work the common land by the steam plough on a large scale. Yet, till this present year, the greater part of the burgh lands has been little more than fine jjasture slopes, to which the cattle have been led daily, under a common herdsman. Of such a stock, and out of the very heart of farmer-life, sprang the thoughtful scholar, the unwearied missionary, the distinguished philanthropist of Bombay. No love had he, though the eldest of four sons, for the doubly ancestral and honourable calling. From the womb he had a higher vocation. Had he become the apostle of a superstitious mysticism, like Gooroo Nanuk, the founder of the Sikh dissent from Hindooism, the same stories might have been told of the great Christian Gooroo. For Nanuk, too, was the son of the chief " portioner " of the common of a village near Lahore, and he failed to keep his father's buff"a- loes from the cultivated fields. Nanuk never played like other childreii, so that the Hindoos said, " Some god is in him." On the second of Andrew Wilson's sons fell the duty of helping in the farm, and of driving the cattle to the nearest fair of St. Boswell's. From infancy John revealed himself as meant for" a very different lot. When a baby he almost 1807.] ins CHILDHOOD. 5 alarmed his mother by speaking before he could walk, and Math an intelligence unprecedented in the experience of th(^ neighbours. So the Mussulman villagers had said of Naiuik, " A holy man of God has l^een born ! " As he grew up John Wilson was to his schoolfellows " the priest," by which name he was always known among them. His early developed tendencies brought him into trouble. On one occasion the boy was found preaching from a hollow tree behind Thirle- stane Castle to the people who were sauntering home on the Sacrament Sunday evening, and was chastised for what seemed to his parents an offence. The secret of his life was not one which mere heredity may explain, though that too will find data in it. It is thus stated by himself in a " diary of reli- gious experience " which he began to write on his twentieth birthday, but did not continue beyond his departure for India: — " When about the age of three years, I was put to sleep in the same bed with my aged grandfather by my father's side. He was the first person, if I remember rightly, who commu- nicated to me any knowledge about God and my soul. I re- member well the effect his instructions, by the blessing of God, produced upon my mind : the imj^ressions which were then conveyed to me have never been wholly removed from me. I can never forget the fervour with which he engaged in his evening private devotions, and the feeling Avith Avhich at such times he repeated the 23d Psalm, especially the concluding verse — ' Goodness and mercy all my life Shall surely follow ;ne, And in God's house for evermore My dwelling-place shall be.' " I was very early under conviction of sin, and I trust that the Lord at an early period of my life took a saving dealing with my soul. When about the age of four years I was sent to a school in Lauder taught by Mr. George Murray, where I continued about the space of one year. I then went to the parish school taught b}^ Mr. Alexander Paterson, where, under Mr. Paterson's instructions, I made remarkable progress." It was an early and it became a fruitful consecration ; even as that of the prophet of Naioth and the statesman of Ramah. John Wilson proved to be as fortunate in his teacher and in his companions as in his early home life. A new spirit 6 LIFE OF JOHX WILSON. [1808. in truth was abroad over the land, which had long lain under the spell of what is called " moderatism " in Scotland. It was the beginning, too, of that fifty years' period of peace and reform, in State as well as Church, which the crowning victory of Waterloo seemed to introduce. Dr. AVilson used to tell how, when he was little more than ten years old, the Edinburgh coach came to Lauder adorned with boughs, and one who had gone to the place where it stopped, to hear the news, rushed down the Eow shouting "We've just annihilated them." In both Lauder and Stow there happened to be evangelical preachers in the parish churches, Mr. Cosens and Dr. Cormack, while the " Burgher " or seceding congregations were everywhere ministered to by earnest men, to whom many of the surrounding families were driven by the old ''moderates." The coming of Mr. Paterson to the parish school at this time aftected at once the spiritual condition of the whole district, and speedily brought Avithin the reach of evangelical teaching all the hopeful youth of the surround- ing country. Before his death on the 3d January 1879, the venerable Dr. Fairbaini of Newhaven thus recalled John Wilson in those days : — " He was a modest, devout, affectionate, and gentle boy, always ready to take part with tlie weakest, and never in a quarrel or a scrape. He was, I think, the most diligent and persevering student in the school, and I can readily under- stand how he attained to such acquirements and success. He was also eminently truthful and sincere. There was one of our number (James Runciman) whom our teacher always characterised as the ' boy who never told a lie,' and he used to associate John Wilson Avith him in this honourable dis- tinction. I remember in one of the intervals of our school day, a band of us started ' up the burn ' for fishing and other diversions. Seduced by the summer sunlight (oh how bright it was in those days !) we heeded not the lapse of time, till the school hour had passed. Then came a conference to determine what we would say for ourselves, and various pro- posals, savouring, I fear, of diplomacy, were made. But the discussion was cut short by John Wilson saying, in a tone unusually energetic for him, ' I tell you what — we will tell the truth,' and the truth he told — ay, and continued to tell it till his dying day. 1815.] MEMORIES OF HIS SCHOOLBOY DAYS. 7 " I well remember also a very bright and calm summer Sabbath day. As the people went along the road to churcli, there was a question in every mouth — ' Will they be ferJdin' on sic a day as this ? ' After sermon there was a fellowship- meeting in the session-room of the Burgher meeting-house, into which my friend John and I contrived to get admission. Again the question went round, ' Will they be fechtin ? ' and the inquiry tinged all the services with unusual solemnity. A venerable white-headed elder, Saunders Downie, the tailor — who has passed long since into the fellowship of the four-and- twenty Elders that sit around the Throne — delivered himself to this effect : ' Surely,' he said, in his godly simplicity, * surely they'll let the blessed Sabbath ower afore they fecht.' Whether they were ' fechtin,' or whether they let the blessed Sabbath over before doing so, you will judge when I say that that Sabbath day was the 18th of June 1815. Then came a week of anxiety ; groups of people stood all the day at the head of the town, in the expectation of hearing the booming of the guns of the distant castle of Edinburgh announcing a victory. At last came the full accounts of the gi^eat battle, which filled every mouth and heart for many a long day. I recollect we were both much impressed Avith all this, and had our minds opened for the first time to the fact that there was a wide world beyond the limits of our little valley, and that it was a world in which much evil abounded, and which stood in great need of improvement. " Then came a movement on behalf of the first of the evan- gelistic schemes which succeeded in penetrating to that part of the country. This was the Bible Society ; and I recollect a sermon being preached on its behalf in the Burgher meeting- house by the Eev. Dr. Waugh of London, at which my friend and I were present. The matter and manner of the preacher were both deeply impressive ; and I rather think that, if the seeds of the evangelistic spirit were not that night sown for the first time in John Wilson's mind, they were, to say the least of it, very copiously and effectually watered. After that we went to the University of Edinburgh, and we arrived there just at the time when evangelical religion began to reassert its power in this country. The old Gospel, Avhich had been ' by Cameron thundered and by Renwick poured,' now flowed forth in the sweet stream of Henry Grey's pathetic eloquence. 8 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1818. or was uttered from the pulpit of St. George's by the mighty voice of Andrew Thomson. Some of us were not very sure about it at first. Coming as we did from the country of Thomas Boston, there was something new to us in the methods of these great preachers. One of our number indeed, and he not the least earnest among us, never quite overcame his 'scruples. He held it all to be ' sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal,' and declared that he could only find ' the root of the matter ' in the Secession meeting-house in the Potterrow, then minis- tered to by the Rev. Mr. Simpson. I must say this incident has taught me a great lesson of caution in judging of new religious movements. We soon discovered, however, that a new-born day of light and truth had at last broken out in this country ; and this discovery was fully made to us by the coming of Dr. Eobert Gordon to Edinburgh. That was an era in our spiritual history never to be forgotten. We were all carried captive by the mighty spell of his eloquence. John Wilson attached himself to the ministry of Dr. Gordon, and you know the great power which it exercised over his mind and history. AH my recollections of my beloved school- fellow are such as to harmonise with his after-life. Truly in his case 'the child was father of the man.' " In his fourteenth year John Wilson went to Edinburgh University, to begin that eight years' course of linguistic, philosophical, and theological studies by which the Scottish Churches still wisely jDroduce a well-trained and often cultured ministry. Two Border youths, from the not very distant Annandale, had, after similar home and school training, matriculated at the University at the same age, and had not long passed out of it when the Lauder boy first entered his name in that fragment of the old building which occupied the quadrangle until the present library was completed. These were Edward Irving and Thomas Carlyle, Very fresh traditions of the former still circulated among his juniors, while the latter had just returned from his mathematical teachership in Kirkcaldy to write for Brewster's Encyclopsedia. Both had been heroes in Sir John Leslie's class, where Wilson succeeded them in reputation in due time. We cannot say that the picture, in the autobiography which Carlyle wrote in 1831 as "Sartor Eesartus," of "the University where I was educated," and the " eleven hundred Christian striplings " 1824.] TUTOR AND PUPILS. 9 turned loose into its " small ill-chosen library," is altogether a caricature of the facts. At any rate, Carlyle admits that there were ,some eleven of that number who were eager to learn, and Wilson was one of them in his time, as Irving and Carlyle had been in theirs. Like them, too, Wilson took to teaching. At the close of the first session, the lad conducted the school of Horndean on the Tweed, laying thus early the foundation of that educational experience by which, as Ver- nacular Missionary, Principal of an English College, and Vice -Chancellor of the University, he was afterwards to revolutionise society in Western India. One of his sisters still tells how the boy of fifteen prepared to resist a midnight attempt to rob him of the school fees on the first occasion on which he had gained the hard-earned money. At the close of the second college session, the Rev. Dr. Cormack, of the neighbouring village of Stow, made the successful student tutor to his son and nephews, a duty which he discharged in a manner to endear him to the parents of both almost up to the time of his departure for India. Dr. Cormack, Avhen himself tutor in the family of the Roses of Kilravoch, had married one of the daughters, and her brother. Colonel Rose, had sent home his sons to be educated in the manse at Stow. When Colonel, afterwards Sir John, Rose, himself returned to his family estate in the Highlands, he tiyed to induce John Wilson to settle in his family there for some time, and to accompany his boys to Holland, so highly did he appreciate the tutor's services. The youths were ha})py who had such a guide, himself still young. Even now it is almost pathetic to read the letters which they wrote to him during his absence at college and in India, and carefully treasured by him among his most precious papers. One of the lads is now Sir John Rose Cormack, a well-known physician in Paris. The other two went to India in their day, where their old friend met them sometimes, and where they won a name for ability in the civil and military services. A tour which, in the autumn of 1824, the tutor made to the North with his pupils, called forth a series of letters to his home in which we find such entries as these. At Kingussie he visited the periodical fair : " All the people were very merry. They were mostly all dressed in the Highland dress, and, speaking Gaelic, they appeared quite conncal. I have laugheil 10 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1824. tliis whole fortnight at them." The letters show the same detailed power of observation and genial humour which marked his Indian tours, and made him the most delightful companion on such occasions. In 1827 he reports, "I have been obliged to buy a pair of silver spectacles for myself:" thus early did study begin to tell on him. To this residence for four years, with college intervals, in Dr. Cormack's family, we must trace the determination, which he early formed, to give his life to the people of India. When afterwards bidding farewel) to Dr. Brown, the minister of Langton, he expressed regret that he had to sail before the annual meeting of the Berwickshire Bible Society, for, he said, "My wish was to have stated publicly that it was the reading of your annual reports that first awakened me to the import- ance of Missions, and led me to resolve to devote myself to the foreign field." But it was the Eose and Cormack influence which directed that resolve to the East, at a time when Scotland had not a missionary there. The first surprise of the young tutor of sixteen, when he began his duties in the manse of Stow, was caused by the Hindostanee which alone the Rose boys spoke, like so many Anglo-Indian children fresh from the influence of native servants. That was one of the first languages he was to master when he began work in Bombay, in order by voice and pen to influence the Muhamma- dans and all who used what is a mere lingua franca. He was more or less in an Indian atmosphere, as each irregular mail in those days brought news of Maratha wars and Pindaree raids, of the triumphs of Lord Hastings, of the political exploits of Malcolm, the yeoman's son of the not distant Burnfoot, and of Governor Munro, the Glasgow boy. But more living to the youth than all that was the personal friendship of General Walker, who often drove into Stow from Bowland, his seat on the Gala Water. As political officer in charge of the great Native State of Baroda, with Kathiawar and Kutch, he had won for himself a name as a philanthropist and administrator, by carrying on the work of the old Governor, Jonathan Duncan, for the prevention of female infanticide among the Jadeja Eajpoots. When re- vdsiting Kathiawar in 1809, before bidding it a final farewell. General Walker had enjoyed the sweet reward of seeing not a few of the children whom he had preserved, and of hearing 1824.] FIRST BOMBAY INFLUENCES. 11 one infant voice lisping to him in tlie Goojaratee tongue — " Walker Salieb saved me." The entrancing story of humanity became familiar to Wilson in his youth, for in 1819, at the very time of his intercourse with him, the retired officer was engaged in a correspondence with the Court of Directors, in which he urged them to keep up the preventive system that had effected so much, but was being neglected by a new generation of officials. The only result was the General's appointment as Governor of St. Helena, the small population of which he sought to benefit with the same kindly wisdom that he had shown in north Bombay. That work Avas not unknown in the country-side, for the minister of Stow had been its historian. But it was reserved for the young tutor himself to complete it, alike by stirring up the Bombay Govern- ment, and by writing the " History of the Suppression of Infanticide in Western India "in 1855, and again in 1875. Thus to the influences of home and of school, of companions and of minister, there was added, at the time when he was most susceptible of such impressions, the subtle power of the society of men like Cormack and Walker, who drew him unconsciously to the work prepared for him in the then far off and shadowy East. In the second of the four years of his theological studies, or in his twentieth year, Wilson became more closely identi- fied with Edinburgh in both its university life and its literary and ecclesiastical coteries. He had taken full advantage of the Arts course, for alnong the professors of that faculty were able teachers and accomplished savants. Pillans, unjustly satirised by Byron, had been transferred from the rector's chair in the High School at Edinburgh, which Dr. Adam had made illustrious, and which his successor had not dimmed at least, to the professorship of Humanity or Latin, taking with him his " dux," John Brown Patterson, the most promising student of his day, who became warmly attached to Wilson. Inscriptions on missionary churches and university founda- tion-stones in the East prove that Wilson retained to the last all the graceful Latinity which he acquired at Lauder and Edinburgh. AVe may pass over the Gi'eek professor, but the students found ample atonement in the Moral Philosophy class of Professor Wilson, whose whirlwind of rhetoric twenty- one Tory and eleven Whig patrons of the 12 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1824. chair had preferred to the massive erudition and the philoso- phical power of him who became our modern Aristotle — Sir William Hamilton. Had the Lauder student come under the spell of one who did not become professor of Metaphysics for some years afterwards, even he must have gained a more analytic and expository power in those investigations of the hoary philosophies of Vedist and Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Soofee, by which he did much to shake the grim idolatries and subtle pantheism of southern and western Asia. But he enjoyed what was of equal value for such a purpose at that time — the physical researches of Sir John Leslie, Playfair's successor in the chair of Natural Philosophy. There he stood in the front rank, a significant fact, for it is through the clay of the physical error worked up with the iron of s^^eculative falsehood in the systems of the East, that they are first to be shaken and shattered. What of mathematical principles, physical law, and the natural sciences John Wilson then mastered, he developed and applied all through his conflicts with the defenders of the Oriental faiths, and in his discourses and writings, as the first scholar of Western India. In geology, in botany, in the more recondite region of archaeology, he kept pace with the most recent researches, to which, in his own province, he largely contributed. Nature came second only to the divine Word, and worked harmoniously along with it in his whole missionary career. The same cannot be asserted of the Theological Faculty of the University of Edinburgh at that period. It was the dreary time, just before, in 1828 — too late for Wilson — Thomas Chalmers was transferred from St. Andrews, where he had brought to the birth of a more spiritual and intellectual life, men like Robert Nesbit, soon to precede Wilson to Bombay ; and Alexander Duff", William S. Mackay, and David Ewart ; destined to follow him, but to Calcutta. The divinity Pro- fessors were also parish ministers, who droned through their lectures as through their sermons, while their hearers slept, or attended to their own private aflfairs. The pamphlets of these days, on Sir John Leslie's case for instance, make strange revelations of academic ineptitude and ecclesiastical incompe- tence to those who care to rake among them. But for the dawn of the Evangelical party in the pulpits of Gordon in the New North Church, Andrew Thomson in St, George's, and 1824.] COVENANTING. 13 Henry Grey, and of Thomas IM'Crie outside of the kirk, the men of the next generation would have been worse than their fathers. John Wilson, unlike him who was afterwards Prin- cipal Cunningham, had taken with him to the Divinity Hall the living power which had first moved his childish heart, when, awestruck, he had seen it visibly in his grandfather's evening prayers. Now, on 11th December 1824, on entering his twenty-first year, he began that " review of tlie Lord's gracious dealings with my soul," already referred to. " This day I have completed my twentieth year, God teach me to improve the fleeting moments of my existence. As bought with a price, even with the precious blood of Christ, may I devote myself wholly — soul, body, and spirit — to declare and show forth thy glory to my sinful brethren of mankind." About this time he seems to have formally signed a " solemn profession, dedication, and engagement " of liinjself to God. The time-stained paper is without date, and is headed, in pencil of a much later year evidently, " Form, I think, taken from Willison." With it are two similar deeds of holiest con- secration, in which, on first January 1759, and again at Elgin on 11th May 1785, an ancestor of his first wife, James Hay, son of the Rev. Dr. James Hay, vowed himself to the Lord. In both cases each page, and in some instances paragraph, is signed by the covenanting person. All through his life of threescore and ten, openly, as in those most private ]iapers which mark his energising in soul, we see how John AVilson kept the covenant thus made in the fervour of a first love, and the comparative innocence of an early freedom from the power of the world. At college as at school, of full age as when a child among his companions, he is still " the priest " in the highest sense — the priest unto God. From his Journal at this time we take these further extracts. He is in the Stow Manse, in that first year of his theological studies, one of which years the loose regulations of these days allowed students to spend out of college if they wrote the necessary exercises. His heart is set on missionary work, it will be observed. He writes to a friend at this time, "The Memoirs of David Brainerd and Henry Martyn give me particular pleasure " : — 14/A December 1824. — " This day was cheered by the hope that I had more success in teaching than usual. liead part of the life of the Rev. David Brainerd. What an example of the 14 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, [1825. power of divine truth ! How many his trials ! how great his labours ! Lord, fill my soul with a lowly opinion of myself, and sanctify and prepare me for the same work in which he was engaged." 28//i. — " Rejoiced to hear of the great progress of divine truth from the Monthly Extracts of the Correspondence of the British and Foreign Bible Society. What astonishing effects have, by the blessing of the Spirit of God, been produced by the simple reading of the Word of God ! Moral miracles are daily attesting the truth of Christianity." 31st. — " This day brings another year to a close. Can I dare to appear before the Lord and ask him to deal with me according to my doings in the year which is past 1 No ; my conscience itself condemns me. It tells me that in myself I am poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked. It reminds me that much of the year which is ready to depart was spent in the service of Satan ; in the cherishing of my lusts ; in the gratification of my evil nature, and in seeking my own destruc- tion." Thursday, 6th January 1825. — "Read part of CeciVs Remains. Felt unhappy in the afternoon from not having had much communion with God during the course of the day. May I always feel unhappy when I do not set the Lord con- tinually before me. May I ever seek to enjoy the light of his countenance, for when he causes this to shine upon me I am rich and comfortable. If I had every earthly comfort at my command, they could do nothing to cheer my mind and sup- Ijort my soul. May I hunger and thirst after righteousness, and be filled with the good things of the kingdom of God." Island 2d February. — " Delighted with good news from near and far countries. Read with great pleasure the London Missionary Chronicle and Scottish Missionary Register. The Lord is doing great things at home and abroad." Saturday, 6th. — " This day visited my dear parents and friends at Lauder. Mentioned to them my intention of soon off'ering myself as a missionary candidate to the Scottish Mis- sionary Society, and oh ! what a burst of aS"ection did I wit- ness from my dear mother. Never will I forget what occurred this evening. She told me that at present she thought the trial of parting with me, if I should leave her, would be more hard to bear than my death. When I saw her in her tears I 1825.] DEDICATES HIMSELF TO MISSIOXAKY WoKK. 15 cried unto God that he wouki send comfort to her mind, and that he woidd make this att'air issue in his glory and our good. I entreated my mother to leave the matter to the Lord's dis- posal ; and I told her that I would not think of leaving her if the Lord should not make my way plain for me, but that at present I thought it my duty to offer my services to the Society. She then embraced me and seemed more calm. My father said little to us on the sul)ject, but seemed to be in deep thought. In the course of the evening the Avords ' he that saveth his life shall lose it,' and ' he that loveth father or mother more than me is not Avorthy of me,' came home to my mind, and kept me from making any promise of drawing back in my resolutions to preach the gospel, by the grace of God, to the heathen world. Lord, do Thou, Who hast the hearts of all men in Thy hands, and Who turnest them according to Thy pleasure, grant that my parents, with faith in Thy word and promises, may joyfully commit me in all things to Thy disposal, and may I willingly obey Thy will in all things, for Christ's sake. Amen." With this record of a scene often repeated since, when the best and bravest of our youth have gone forth to an Indian career, the Journal closes for that year. When Robert Nesbit had determined to do the same, he could not tell his mother, but asked Wilson to break the tidings for him. AVilson lost no time in offering himself to the directors of the Scottish Missionary Society in the twenty-first year of his age. At the beginning of his second divinity session in November he was formally received into the seminary, as it was called, at 18 St. John Street. He became an inmate of the family of the Rev. W. Brown, M.D., the Secretary, and there spent the three succeeding years till his departure for India. At College he went through the regular course of study and examination for the ministry of the Church of Scotland. His Journal records his reading, his intercourse with his fellows, his self-abasement in the sight of God and of his own conscience, and his breath- ings after a more perfect communion with the Father in the Son. The Professor who influenced him most was Principal Lee at a later date, and also Dr. Brunton, who taught Hebrew, and with whom, as Convener of the Foreign Mission Com- mittee for many years afterwards, he corresponded by every mail. Dr. Meiklejohn pretended to teach Church History 16 LIFE OF JOHN AVILSON. [1826. Avith an efficiency which has been measured by his habit of yawning when praying in pubHc. As to the Professor of Systematic Theology, let this transcript from a yellow scrap of torn paper, marked in red ink more than once by Dr. Wilson with the Avord " keep," tell what he was : — "Edinburgh College, Monday, 27 tJi JVovemher 1826. " At a general meeting of the theological students attending the Univer- sity, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted : — 1st, That a depu- tation should be appointed to wait on the Eev. Dr. William Ritchie, S.S.T.P., to inform him, with the greatest tenderness and respect, that, on account of the weakness of his voice, his lectures when read by him are quite inaudible by the stiidents, and to request of him to take into consideration the pro- priety of appointing a substitute. 2d, That Messrs. James Anderson and L. H. Irving should form the deputation, and report the result of their visit to a general meeting, to be held to-mon-ow at 2 o'clock p.m. "John Wilson, Chairman." " Minutes of a General Meeting of the Theological Students attending the University of Edinburgh, called in order to receive the report of the deputa- tion appointed to wait on the Rev. Dr. Wm. Ritchie : — "Lady Yester's Church, Edinbiirgh, 28th November 1826. " Mr. William Cunningham having been called to the chair, and the minutes of the former meeting having been read and apju'oved of, the deputa- tion appointed to wait on the Rev. Dr. Ritchie stated that, having transmitted to him the minutes of tlie former meeting, enclosed in a most respectful letter, the Rev. Dr. intimated to them his decided refusal to listen to any such appli- cation. The students having considered and approved of the conduct of the deputation, resolved [ditobus contradicentibics) that it was not competent for them to proceed to any ulterior measures at present, except simj^ly to lay before the Towu Council and the Presbji;ery of Edinburgh the minutes of both meetings, and directed the Secretary accordingly to transmit copies of both to the Right Hon. the Lord Provost and the Reverend the Moderator of the Presbytery. (Signed) Wm. Cunningham, C'hamnan." Thus strangely were associated the future grave, judi- cious, and academic Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, and the erudite Princii^al of the New College, both to be Moderators of the General Assembly in their time. And the work they did, or tried to do, is one which it had been well for more university faculties and colleges than that of theology in the University of Edinburgh, then and since, if there were students wise enough to repeat, in the interests of common honesty and sound scholarship. Scotland and its academic institutions, national and non-national, have always been too poor to pension the old, or quietly get rid of the incompetent teachers, with whom the abuses of patronage <^ 1826.] FOUNDS THE STUDENTS' MISSIONAEY ASSOCIATION. 17 or of popular election have saddled successive generations of students. With all his gentleness, and often all the more effectually because of his almost sensitively chivalrous bearing, John "Wilson was the enemy of incompetence and idleness, which injured his INIaster's Avork. In the previous session he hadi shown his terrible earnestness by founding " The Edinlnirgh Association of Theological Students in aid of the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge." In 1825, under the date Thursday, 2 2d December, this remark occurs in his journal — "This has been one of the hajipiest days of my life. About three weeks ago I proposed to Mr. John T. Brown that we should make some exertions for the purpose of instituting an association of the theological students for aiding the diffusion of the Gospel. This object, by the blessing of God, to whose name be the praise, we were enabled to accomplish this day." Divided into two by the Disruption of the Established Church in 1843, that Association has ever since been the fruitful nursery of missionaries, alike in the University and in the New Col- lege of Edinburgh. Of the 120 regular students in the Faculty of Theology at that time, more than sixty became members. Wilson was the secretary, as he had been the founder, and read the first essay. Mr. Thomas Pitcairn, after- Avards clerk of the General Assembly, Avas the first president. The committee Avere William Cunningham, David Thorburn, Thomas Brydon, James P. Bannerman, William Scott Mon- crieff, William Tait, -^Eneas M'Rate, and Alexander Patterson, with Lewis H. Irving as treasurer. The name of Robert Kesbit, St. AndreAvs, appears as a corresponding member. For the first three years Wilson Avas its life. When he left for India the members sent forth their founder Avith prayers and benedictions, and a gift of memorial A^olumes. For years after he continued to correspond Avith the Association as a means of stimulating young theologians to give themselves to India. When he paid his farcAvell visit to Scotland in 1870 his delight AA^as to address not only the XeAV College Society, but the old Association in the old room in the UniA^ersity. He organised a library ; he began a correspond- ence Avith the great missionarj^ societies then in existence, that the students might be fed Avith the latest intelligence from foreign lands ; and he kept up a series of circular C ^O 18 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1827. letters with the corresponding students' societies of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen ; Belfast ; and Princeton in the United States ; the careful drafts of which testify to the zeal with which the youth of twenty-one worked. A fine spirit of catholicity marks all the communications of the secretary, and in some instances he bursts out with a protest against the creation of new agencies to compete unnecessarily with those already at work. Even at this time he seems to have awoke to the absurdity and the waste involved in so many ecclesiastical divisions, as he afterwards did more painfully when in the front of heathenism. Privately, John Wilson by pen and voice was ever point- ing the abler of his student companions to the mission field, for his ideal was high. His communications from Eobert Nesbit both strengthened his own determination and enabled him to combat the fears of his fellows, whose mothers held them back. He published, chiefly for such, an essay on the motives and encouragements to active missionary exertions. He prepared, and issued in 1828 anonymously, a little work now rarely met with, but which did good service in its day, The Life of John Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians. In that he traced the work of the Puritan Fathers in New England, in their propagation of Christianity among the Red Indians. Very characteristic of his own future policy is his quotation of Eliot's words : " There is need of learning in ministers who preach to Indians much more than to Englishmen and gracious Christians, for these had sundry philosophical questions, which some knowledge of the arts must helj) to give answers to, and without which these would not have been satisfied. Worse than Indian ignorance hath blinded their eyes that renounce learning as an enemy to the gospel." All Eliot's scholarship and devotion to the mastering of the native dialects are care- fully noted, no less than the humility of the man who pro- tested against the application to himself of the pre-eminent title of " The Indian Evangelist." The missionary student could not have set before himself a better ideal of the kind than that of the acute Cambridge scholar, whose eighty-six years of self-sacrifice Cotton Mather has chronicled. When, towards the close of his university studies in March 1828, John Wilson received the farewell eulogies of the students, ' his reply was an address which rang with new appeals to the 182S.] FAREWELL APPEAL TO HIS FELLOW STUDENTS. 19 friends of liis youth, based on the words just quoted, and on this prediction of the same writer, in his "Essays To Do Good," a century before — " North Britain will be distinguished by irradiations from heaven upon it of such a tendency (to propagate Christianit}). There will be found a set of excellent men in that reformed and renowed Cliurch of Scotland, with whom the most refined and extensive essays to do good will become so natural that the whole world will fare the better for them." We who look back on history may see the antici- pation partially fulfilled in the movement which gave Wilson, Dutf, and their colleagues to India, Morrison to China, and Livingstone and Moffat to Africa. These are the words which the young Wilson left behind him as his legacy to the students of the University of Edinburgh — how have they met them ? " ' The Avork of preaching the gospel in foreign lands is attended with trials, dangers, and sacrifices ! ' Have we for- gotten where is now the promise of Christ, ' Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world ' ? How is that hundred-fold to be obtained and enjoyed Avhich is promised to those who ' forsake houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, for Christ's sake ' 1 Where is faith in the opera- tions of the Sj^irit of God, which can view the diflftculties of the Christian warfare as calculated to render the consolations of the gospel precious to the soul in every circumstance 1 Is it probable that dependence on the grace of God will not be exercised by the Christian when he must feel that vain is the help of man, that success must be the result of the divine application of the word, and that he is in a great measure deprived of those sources of earthly enjoyment which, from the corruption of human nature, are frequently made the occasions of sin 1 ' The work of missions is difficult.' But time is short. Soon shall we be freed from all our toils, and anxieties, and griefs, and disappointments ; and if we suffer with Christ, we shall also reign with Him. ' The work of missions is attended with difficulties, trials, and dangers ! ' Spirits of Eliot and Brainerd, Martyn, and Fisk, and Hall, do you regret that, for the promotion of its interests, you left the lands of your fathers and your youth, and laboured and died in a foreign clime 1 No ; you declared that when engaged in it you were happy ; — that, when you reviewed your labours in 20 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1828. connection with it you were ashamed that you had not devoted yourselves to its interests with more zeal and self- denial ; and that, Avhen entering the dark valley of the shadow of death you ' saw no trials, no sacrifices, nothing but sins and mercies.' Since you joined the glorious band of witnesses to the truth you have seen and felt more of its importance, and your testimony respecting it is, that eternity can only sufficiently reveal its character. You feel that is the glory of the song of Moses and the Lamb, that it is sung by people of every kindred and country and tongue and nation ; and if you were permitted again to visit this world you would fly, like the angel of the Apocalypse, to preach the gospel to all that dwell on the face of the earth. In sincerity and humility of soul let us say, ' Thy vows are upon us, God ; we will render praises unto Thee.' " The young evangelist had a right to use such language, for had he not given himself? These were days when India, little known still in the land that rules it, was less known than it had been in the previous generation which had seen Warren Hastings impeached, and burghs bought and sold by Anglo-Indian nawabs. The dawn of knowledge and zeal was not to rise for five years yet, with the Charter which really opened India in 1833. Then such an incident as the following was only too truly typical : Dr. Wilson had been meanwhile licensed to preach by his native Presbytery of Lauder ; and, after some difficulty caused by adherence to a routine which did not contemplate missions to non-Christian lands, he had been ordained on "a request in his own name, and in the name of the directors of the Scottish Missionary Society." During the first summer after receiving license he paid two visits to the Manse at Langton. On the first occa- sion he delivered an impressive discourse on Paul's address at Mars' Hill. During the evening of that Sabbath the medical attendant came to see some member of the family, and after the visit joined the others in the drawing-room. The sub- ject of missions to India was introduced, and as the doctor had been in the East he took pai't, expressing strongly the opinion that it was utterly hopeless to attempt to convert the natives of India to Christianity. " I remember," writes Mr. Brown, " the flush which came on Dr. Wilson's face when he eagerly took up the question, replying to the objections which 1828.] ORDAINED AND MARRIED. 21 had been advanced, and dwelling on the power of the Gospel to enlighten those that were in darkness. The doctor soon changed the subject." At a time when medical missions were unknown, and eight years before David Livingstone had turned from cotton- spinning to become a licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians in GlasgOAv, with the frustrated hope of becoming a mission- ary in China, John Wilson would not consider his preparation for India complete until he had studied medicine. He had taken a high place in the classes of Phj^sical and Natural Science. In 1827-8 he passed through classes for Anatomy, Surgery, and the Practice of Physic. Many a time after- Avards, in the jungles of Western India, and the ghauts or raAdnes of its hills, did he find his knowledge of the art of healing a blessing to the wild tribes and simple peasantrJ^ Much of his own endurance is to be ascribed to such know- ledge, although in Bombay itself physicians in and out of the Service were ever his most attached friends. But one Cjualification seemed still wanting to make the youth of twenty-three, whom, half a century ago, on Mid- summer's Day 1828, by the imposition of hands, the Pres- bytery did solemnly ordain and set apart to the office of the holy ministry, a fully-equipped missionary. So new was the whole subject of Christianising foreign lands at that time, that every instance of a Protestant evangelist going forth raised the question whether he ought to be married. On this ecclesiastical authorities were much divided. The Scottish Missionary Society had assigned India as the country of his labours, a fact thus recorded in his journal : — " Lord, Thou hast graciously heard my prayers in this respect. Do Thou prepare me for preaching Christ crucified with love and Avith power ; do Thou provide for me, if agreeable to Thy will, a suitable partner of my lot ; one who will Avell encourage me and labour Avith me in Thy Avork. Do Thou, in Thy good time, convey me in safety to the place of my destination ; do Thou open up for me a Avide and effectual door of utterance ; do Thou preserve my life for usefulness ; and do Thou make me successful in AAanning souls to Christ." " I rejoice Avhen I think," he Avrote to a friend, " that I shall live, and labour, and die in India." On the 18th December 1827, he had Avritten to his father and mother : " Dr. BroAvn intends to 22 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1828. prepare the articles which I am to take with me to India. He asked me to-night if I intended to marry ; but I was not able to give him an answer. If I could get a suitable partner now I would have no hesitation in marrying ; but it is a matter of extreme difficulty to find a young lady with the piety, zeal, talents, and education which the work I have in view requires." He Avas soon after introduced to the family of the Rev. Kenneth Bayne of Greenock, who, on their father's death, had settled in 22 Comely Bank, a northern suburb of Edinburgh. The last entry in his journal records the triumphant joy of one of the daughters in the prospect of death. Two more of the sisters met with a sad death by drowning, several years afterwards, and another survived him a short time. The other three formed a remarkable group of accomplished, cultivated, and zealous women, who gave their lives for India, as the pioneers of female education. Margaret, the eldest, had added to the ordinary teaching a course of study in the university city of Aberdeen. She proved equally facile in the exposition of the faiths of the East, in the mastery of the languages of AVestern India, in the organisation of native female schools, and in the writing of graceful verse, while she was ever the gentle wife and the fond mother, during the too brief six years of her life in Bombay. When she consented to share the then dreaded toils of an Indian evangelist's life with John Wilson, slie at once doubled his efficiency. In the simple Scottish fashion the newly ordained mis- sionary was married to Margaret Bayne, by her minister Dr. Andrew Thomson, of St. George's, on the 12th August 1828. These were busy months for both, with the prospect of a Cape voyage, and the probability of life-long farewells. Incessant preaching and missionary addresses kept him ever about his Father's business. To this day the few old folks who re- member it tell, with tears in their eyes, of his farewell sermon in the quaint pulpit of the cruciform kirk of Lauder. The bailies and council of the royal burgh conferred on the lad all the honours they had to bestow, by giving him, on formal parchment, " the haill immunities and privileges of a burgess royal and freeman." On the 30th August the missionary ; and his wife sailed from the ancient port of Newliaven, on / that heavenly quest on which no knight of poetic creation or^ 182S.] FIKST VIEW OF INDIA. 23 fabled purity ever entered -with more self-sacrificing ardour. A thick haze hid Edinburgh from their sight. The " Sesostris " East Indiaman sailed from Portsmouth, as Avas usual then. The long voyage of five months was not made shorter by the fact that the captain was uncongenial and arbitrary, and the majority of the passengers had no sympathy with the missionary and his Avife or their object. But even there the consistent and kindly devotion of both bore fruit. Opposition nearly disappeared among the i)assengers ; the sailors, Avhom he influenced for good, treated Mr. "Wilson A'ery tenderly amid the high frolic of these days in crossing the line. The attempt of a piratical A'essel to attack the ship, and a storm off Table Bay, further relieved the monotony of a Cape passage. Sufficient time Avas spent at Cape ToAvn — then, and till the Mutiny of 1857 led to a change in the furlough rules, a favourite sanitarium for Anglo-Indians — to enable Mr. and Mrs. Wilson to see a little of its society, and to visit not only Constantia, of Avine-groAving fame, but the Moravian settlement of Groenenkloof, forty miles in the interior. After coasting Ceylon, Wilson obtained his first view of India : — "On the 1st of February Cape Comorin, the most southern point of India, appeared in sight, and my feelings were consequently of a very solemn natui-e. When I retlected on the present situation of the country, and on my prospects connected with it, I was constrained to resort to the throne of grace. My dear Margaret and I united in the prayer that God might prepare us for all the trials of life, and support us under them ; that He might ever lift on us the light of His gracious and reconciled countenance ; that He might impart to us the views, feelings, dispositions, and purposes which are suitable to the sacred work which we have in view ; that He might enable us to pay the vows which we have made ; that He might grant us much success in the work of converting sinners ; and that He miglit imi)art to us those rewards of grace which are promised to those who turn many to righteousness. The character of the day (Sabbath) was suiteeYity, the education and progress of Benares, and the four millions around it, he did for Bombay at a most critical time. Not less than Lord William Bentinck does he deserve the marble monument which covers his dust in the Bombay Cathedral, where the figure of Justice is seen inscriliing on his urn these words, " He was a good man and a just," while two children support a scroll, on which is written, " Infanticide abolished in Benares and Kattywar." Between the thirty- / nine years of his uninterrupted service for the people of( India, which closed in 1811, and the forty-seven years of\ John Wilson's not dissimilar labours in the same cause, which began in 1829, there occurred the administrations, after Sir Evan Nepean, of the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone and Sir John Malcolm, both of the same great school. Since the negotiations of the Peshwa Raghoba, in 1775, with the Com- pany, who sought to add Bassein and Salsette to Bombay and so make it the cntreput of the India and China Seas, the pro- vince of Bombay had grown territorially as the power of the plundering Marathas waned from internal dissension and the British arms. The first part of India to become British, the Western Presidency had been the last to grow into dimensions worthy of a separate government in direct communication with the home authorities though, in imperial matters controlled by the Governor-General from Calcutta. Bombay had long been in a deficit of a million sterling a year or more. But the final extinction of the Maratha Powers by Lord Hastings in 1822 enabled Bombay to extend right into Central India and down into the southern Maratha country, while Poona became the second or inland capital of the Presidency. The two men who did most to bring this about, and to settle the condition of India south of the Vindhyas territorially as it now 1S29.] MOUXTSTUAKT ELPllIXSTONE. '2\) is, were Mountstuart Elpliinstone and Jolin Malcolm. What they thus made Bombay Wilson found it, and that it con- tinued to be all through his life, with the addition of Sindh, to the north, in IS-tS, and of an exchange of a county with Madras in the south. Mountstuart Elpliinstone had no warmer admirer than Wilson, who wrote a valuable sketch of his life for the local Asiatic Society. A younger son of the eleventh Lord Eli)hin- stone, and an Edinburgh High School boy, lie went out to India as a " writer " with his cousin John Adam, who was afterwards interhii governor-general. Having miraculously escaped the 1799 massacre at Benares, he was made assistant to the British Eesident at Poona, then the Peshwa's court. He rode by the Duke of Wellington's side at the victory of Assye, as his interpreter, and was told by the then Colonel Wellesley that he had mistaken his calling, for he was cer- tainly born a soldier. Subsequently, after a mission to Cabul, on his way from Calcutta to Poona to become Resident, he made the friendship of Henry Martyn. The battle of Kirkee in 1817 punished the Peshwa's latest attempt at treachery, and it became Elphinstone's work to make that brilliant settlement of the ceded territories which has been the source of all the happiness of the people since. His report of 1819 stands in the first rank of Indian state papers, and that is saying much. When, after that, he discovered the plot of certain Maratha Brahmans to murder all the English in Poona and Satara, the man who was beloved by the mass of the natives for his kindly geniality saved the public peace by executing the ringleaders. His prompt firmness astounded Sir Evan Nepean, whom he afterwards succeeded as governor, into advising him that he should ask for an act of indemnity. The reply was characteristic of his whole career — "Punish me if I have done wrong ; if I have done right I need no act of indemnity." The eight years' administration of this good man, and great scholar and statesman, were so marked by wisdom and success, following a previously brilliant career, that on his retiring to his native country he had the unique honour of being twice offered the position of Governor-General. What he did for oriental learning and education, and how his nephew afterwards governed Bombay, and became AVilson's friend in the more trying times of 1857, we shall see. 30 LIFE OF JOHN AVILSON. [1829. Sir John Malcolm, too, had his embassage to Persia, and his ^victory in battle — Mahidpore ; while it fell to him to complete that settlement of Central India in 1818 with Bajee Rao, which the adopted son. Nana Dhoondopunt, tried vainly to npset in 1857. Malcolm's generosity on that occasion has been much questioned, but it had Elphinstone's approval. His distinguished services of forty years were rewarded by his being made Elphinstone's successor as governor of Bombay in 1827. In the ship in which he returned to take up the appointment was a young cadet, now Sir H. C. Rawlinson, whose ability he directed to the study of oriental literature. He had been Governor for little more than a year Avhen he first received, at his daily public breakfast at Parell, the young Scottish missionary from his own loved Tweedside. Even better than his predecessor, Malcolm knew how to in- fluence the natives, by Avhom he was worshipped. He con- tinued the administrative system as he found it, writing to a friend — " The onty difterence between Mountstuart and me is that I have Mullagatawny at tiffin, which comes of my experience at Madras." The Governor was in the thick of that collision with the Supreme Court, forced on him by Sir John Peter Grant's attempt to exercise jurisdiction all over the Presidency — as in Sir Elijah Impey's days in Calcutta. He had just returned from one of those tours through the native States, which the Governor, like Elphinstone before him and the missionary after him, considered "of primal importance " for the well-being of the people. The decision of the President of the Board of Control at home, then Lord Ellenborough, was about to result in the resignation of the impetuous judge. Such was Bombay, politically and terri- torially, when, in the closing weeks of the cold season of 1828-9, John AVilson and his wife landed from the " Sesostris " East Indiaman.-^ * ^ Oui' readers will find it useful to refer to this list of the Governors of Bombay just before aud during Dr. Wilson's work there — Governor. Years. Jonathan Duncan ...... 1795 Sir Evan Nei^ean, Bart. ..... 1812 The Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone . . . 1819 Sir John Malcolm, K.C.B. .... 1827 Earl of Clare ...... 1831 Sir Robert Grant . . . . . .1835 1S29.] GOVERNORS OF BOMBAY. 31 Economically the year 1829 was marked by the first seri- ous attempt on the part of the Directors at home, and the Government on the spot, to extend the cultivation and improve the fibre of the cotton of "Western India, whicli was to prove so important a factor alike in the prosperity and the adversity of Bombay in the coming years. In that review of this three years' administration to 1st December 1830, which Sir John Malcolm wrote for his successors, and published to influence the discussions on the Charter of 1833, under the title of Tlie Government of India, this significant sentence occurs : — " A cotton mill has been established in Bengal with the object of undei'selling the printed goods and yarns sent from England ; but there are, in my opinion, causes which, for a long period, must operate against the success of such an establishment." The period has not proved to be so long as the conservative experience of the Govei-nor led him to believe. In this re- spect Bombay soon shot ahead of Bengal, which afterwards found a richer trade in jute and tea. But the withdrawal of the last restriction on trade was, Avhen Wilson landed, about to co-operate with a consolidated administration to make Bombay the seat of an enriching commerce, of Avhich its varied native communities obtained a larger share than else- where. A society composed of Hindoo, Parsee, Jewish, and even Muhammadan merchant princes, was being brought to the birth, side by side with the great Scottish houses, at the head of which was Sir Charles Forbes. And the man had come to lift them all to a higher level ; to purify them all, in difi"ering degrees, by the loftiest ideal. Governor. Years. Sir James Eivett-Carnac, Bart. .... 1839 Sir George Arthur, Bart. ..... 1842 Sii- George Russell Clerk ..... 1847 Viscount Falkland ..... 1848 Lord Elphinstone, G.C.B. . .... 18.55 Sir George Russell Clerk (2d time) . . . 1860 Sir Bartle Frere, Bart. . . . . .18(32 Sir Seymoiir Fitzgerald ..... 1867 Sir Philip Wodehouse ..... 1872 Sir Richard Temple, Bart. . . . . 1877 Sir W. H. Macnaghten was massacred in 1841 when about to leave Cabul to join his appointment as Governor of Bombay. The Honourable Messrs. George Brown in 1811 ; John Romer iu 1831 ; James Farisli in 1838 ; G. W. Anderson in 1841 ; and L. R. Reid iu 1846, were senior members of council, who acted for a short time as interim governors. 32 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1829. At this time our Indian Empire was just one third of its present magnitude, but its native army was 186,000 strong, a fourth more than since the Mutiny. Including St. Helena, the area was 514,238 square miles, the population 89i mil- lions, and the gross revenue £21,695,207. The whole was administered in 88 counties by 1083 British civil officers, and defended by 37,428 white troops. Of the three Presidencies the Western was by far the smallest, but its geographical position gave it an advantage as the centre of action from Cape Comorin to the head of the Persian Gulf, and from Central India to Central Africa. Its area was 65,000 square miles, not much more than that of England and AVales. Its population was 6j millions in ten counties, and its gross an- nual revenue 2| millions sterling. The whole province was garrisoned by 7728 Avhite troops and 32,508 sepoys, under its own Commander-in-Chief; and it had a marine or navy, famous in its day and too rashly abolished long after, which was manned by 542 Europeans and 618 natives. Notwithstanding the enlightened action and tolerant en- couragement of Mountstuart Elphinstone and Malcolm, public instruction and Christian education Avere still in the day of small things in Bombay, although it was in some respects more advanced than Bengal, Avhich soon distanced it for a time. In the Presidency, as in Madras and Calcutta, a charity school had been, in 1718, forced into existence by the very vices of the English residents and the conditions of a then unhealthy climate. Legitimate orphans and illegitimate chil- dren, white and coloured, had to be cared for, and were fairly well trained by public benevolence, for the Company gave no assistance till 1807. In the Charter of 1813, which Charles Grant and Wilberforce had partially succeeded in making half as liberal as that granted by William III. in 1698, Par- liament gave India not only its first Protestant bishop, arch- deacons, and Presbyterian chaplains, but a department of public instruction bound to spend at least a lakh of rupees a year, or £10,000, on the improvement of literature, and the promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the people. In 1815 the Bombay Native Education Society Avas formed, and opened schools in Bombay, Tanna, and Broach, with the aid of a Government grant. Immediately after ]\Iountstuart Elphin- stone's appointment as Governor it extended its operations to 1829.] FIRST EDUCATIOXAL EXrERIENCES IN BOiMHAV. 33 supplying a vernacular and school-book literature. It recom- mended the adoption of the Lancasterian method of teaching, then popular in P]ngland, and it continued its useful work till 1840, when it became in name, what it had always been in fact, the public Board of Education. Since it failed to pro- vide for the Southern Konkan, or coast districts. Colonel Jervis, R.E., who became an earnest coadjutor of Wilson, established a similar society for that purpose in 1823, but that was affili- ated with the original body. When Poona became British, Mr. Chaplin, the Commissioner in the Dekhan, established a Sanskrit college there, which failed from the vicious Oriental system on which it was conducted, in spite of its enjoyment of the Dukshina, or charity fund of Rs. 35,000 a year, which the Peshwas had established for the Brahmans' education. The Society's central school in Bombay was more successful, and is still the principal Government High School. When Mountstuart Elphinstone left Bombay in 1827, the native gentlemen subscribed, as a memorial of him, £21,600, from the interest of which professorships were to be established " to be held by gentlemen from Great Britain, until the happy period arrived when natives shall be fully competent to hold them." But no such professors landed till 1835, Avhen they held, in the Town Hall, classes which have since grown into the Elphinstone College. In that year, out of a jiopulation of more than a quarter of a million in the Island of Bombay only 1026 were at school ; in the rest of the province the scholars numbered 1864 in the Maratha, and 2128 in the Goojaratee speaking districts, or 5018 in all. In the four years ending 1830, just before and after Wilson's arrival, the Bombay Government remarked, "with alarm," that although it had fixed its annual grant to public instruction at £2000 it had spent £20,192 in that period. So apathetic were the natives that they had subscribed only £471, while the few Europeans had given £818 for the same purpose. Truly the system of a vicious Orientalism was breaking down, as opposed to that of which Wilson was to prove the apostle — the communica- tion of Western truth on Western methods through the Oriental tongues so as to elevate learned and native alike. The almost exclusively Orientalising policy of the Govern- ment previous to 1835, left Bombay a tabula rasa on which D 34 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1829. Wilson soon learned to engrave characters of light and life that were never to be obliterated. Nor had the few missionaries then in Western India anti- cipated him. Self-sacrificing to an extent for which, save from their great successor, they have rarely got credit, they were lost in the jungle of circumstances. The American mission- aries were the first Protestants to take up the work which, in the early Christian centuries, the Nestorians had begun at the ancient port of Kalliana, the neighbouring Callian, which was long the seat of a Persian bishop. In 1813, Dr. Coke sailed for Bombay with the same Colonel Jervis, RE., Avho did so much for the Konkan. His successors, for he died at sea, began that work of primary importance in every mission, an improved edition of the New Testament in the vernacular Marathee, for which Mr. Wilson expressed his gratitude soon after his arrival. But Avhen, at a later period, one of their annual reports ignorantly represented the Americans as having been the first to evangelise the Marathas, he felt constrained to publish this statement of the facts. " The American missionaries first came to Bombay in 1813 ; but the whole of the New Testament in Marathee had been published by the Serampore missionaries in 1811. Dr. Robert Drummond published his grammar and glossary of the Goojaratee and Marathee languages at the Bombay Courier press in 1808. Dr. Carey published his Marathee grammar and dictionary at Serampore in 1810. All these helps were enjoyed by the American missionaries; and though they are by no means so important as those which are now accessible to all students and missionaries, we would be guilty of ingratitude to those who furnished them were we to over- look them. Suum adque trihue should ever be our motto. The Romish Church we know to be very corrupted ; but I have seen works composed by its missionaries about two hun- dred years ago, which could ' give the Marathas the least idea of the true character of God as revealed in the Scripture.' It is too much when the labours of the Romish missionaries are considered, to affirm that ' not a tree in this forest had been felled ' till the American missionaries came to this country. There have been some pious Roman Catholics in Europe, and why may there not have been some amongst the eight gener- ations of the 300,000 in the Marathee country 1 The Seram- 1S29.] EARLIEST MISSIONARIES IN WESTERN INDIA. 35 pore missionaries admitted several Marat'ias to their commu- nion before 1813." The first American missionaries had their own romance, like all pioneers. They were driven from Calcutta by the Government in 1812, and told they might settle in Mauritius. Judson happily Avas sent to Burma by Dr. Carey. Messrs. Hall and Nott took ship to Bombay. Thence the good but weak Sir Evan Nepean, who had been shocked by Elphin- stone's firmness in the Poona plot, Avarned them off ; but an appeal to his Christian principle led him to temporise until Charles Grant and the charter of the next year restrained the Company. In 1815 the London Missionary Society repeated at Surat, and afterwards in Belgaum^ an effort to found a mission, which in 1807 had failed in the island of Bombay. In 1820, the Church Missionary Society began in Western India that work which in time bore good fruit for Africa also. In 1822 the increase of British territory, caused by the ex- tinction of the Maratha power, led the Scottish Missionary Society, which since 1796 had been working in West Africa, to send as its first missionary to Bombay the Rev. Donald Mitchell, a son of the manse, who, when a lieutenant of in- fantry at Surat, had been led to enter the Church of Scotland. He Avas followed by the Revs. John Cooper; James Mitchell; Alexander Crawford, Avhose health soon failed ; John Steven- son, Avho became a chaplain ; and, finally, Robert Nesbit, fellow student of Dr. Duff at St. Andrews University under Chalmers, and Wilson's early friend. " Desperately afraid of offending the Brahmans," as a high official expressed it, the authorities Avould not allow the early Scottish missionaries to settle in Poona, which had too recently become British, as they desired. Had not a native distributor of American tracts just before been seized, by order, and escorted to the low land at the foot of the Ghauts 1 So there, on the fertile strip of jungly coast, in the very heart of the Avidow-burning, self- righteous, intellectually able and proud Maratha Brahmans, the Scottish evangelists began their Avork, of sheer necessity, for they considered that Bombay AA-as ahvady cared for by the American and English missions. The Governors, Elphinstone and Malcolm, hoAvever, although they Avould not allow the good men to be martyred in Poona, as they supposed, Avith all the possible j^olitical complications, subscribed liberally to 36 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1829. tlieir funds, a thing which no Governor-General dared do till forty years after, when John Lawrence ruled from Calcutta. In Hurnee and Bankote, from sixty to eighty miles down the coast from Bombay, these missionaries had preached in Mara- thee and opened or inspected primary schools, with small re- sults. So terrible was the social sacrifice involved in the profession and communion of Christianity, that the first Hin- doo convert, in 1823, some weeks after his baptism, rushed from the Lord's Table when Mr. Hall was about to break the bread, exclaiming, "No, I will not break caste yet." Long before this the good James Forbes, father of the Countess de Montalembert, had given it as his experience of Anglo-Indians at all the settlements of Bombay, from Alamedabad to Anjengo, and dating from 1766, "that the character of the English in India is an honour to the country. In private life they are generous, kind, and hospitable ; in their public situations, when called forth to arduous enterprise, they conduct them- selves with skill and magnanimity ; and, whether presiding at the helm of the political and commercial department, or spreading the glory of the British arms, with courage, mode- ration, and clemency, the annals of Hindostan will transmit to future ages names dear to fame and deserving the applause of Europe. . . . With all the milder virtues belonging to their sex, my amiable countrywomen are entitled to their full share of applause. This is no fulsome panegyric ; it is a tribute of truth and affection to those worthy characters with whom I so long associated, and will be confirmed by all who resided in India." ^ Mr. Forbes finally left India in 1784, when only ■ thirty-five years of age, but after eighteen years' experience. The successive Governors had given an improved tone to Anglo-Indian society, and the few missionaries and chaplains had drawn around them some of the ofiicials both in the Council and in the ordinary ranks of the civil and military services. But the squabbles in the Supreme Court, and the reminiscences of a Journalist,^ who has published his memoirs recently, show that here also the new missionary had a field prepared for him, which it became his special privilege to develop and adorn with all the purity of a Christian ideal and all the grace of a cultured gentleman. What in this way ^ Oriental Mevioirs (1834), vol. i. page 98. '■' The Memoirs of a Journalist, by J. H. Stocqueler. Bombay, 1873. 1829.] ENGLISH SOCIETY IN OLD BOMBAY. 37 he did, unobtrusively and almost unconsciously, in Bombay for forty years, will hardly be understood without a glance at this picture of Bombay in 1830, as drawn by the editor of the Bombay Courier : — "The opportunity of leaving Bombay was not to be regretted. 'Society' on that pretty little island had a very good opinion of itself, but it was in reality a very tame aflair. It chiefly consisted of foolish hurra sahihs (great folks) who gave dinners, and chota sahibs (little folk) who ate them. The dinners were in execrable taste, considering the climate. . . . But the food for the palate was scarcely so flavourless as the conversation. Nothing could be more vapid than the talk of the guests, excepting when some piece of scandal aftecting a lady's reputation or a gentleman's otticial integrity gave momentary piquancy to the dialogue. Dancing coidd hardly be enjoyed with the thermometer perpetually ranging between 80° to 100° Fahrenheit, and only one .spinster to six married women available for the big-wigs who were yet to be caged. A quiet tiffin with a barrister or two, or an officer of the Royal Staff who could converse on English aff'airs, with a game of billiards at the old hotel or one of the regimental messes, were about the only resources, next to one's books, available to men at the Presidency endowed with a trifling share of scholarship and the thinking facility. " Such was Bombay, the city and the province, when John Wilson thus wrote to the household at Lauder his first impres- sions of the former: — "Everything in the appearance of Bombay and the character of the people differs from what is seen at home. Figure to yourselves a clear sky, a burning sun, a parched soil, gigantic shrubs, numerous palm trees, a populous city Avith inhabitants belonging to every country under heaven, crowded and dirty streets, thousands of Hindoos, Muhammadans, Parsees, Buddhists, Jews, and Portuguese ; perpetual marriage processions, barbarous music, etc. etc. ; and you will have some idea of what I observe at present. In Bombay there are many heathen temples, Muhammadan mosques, and Jewish synagogues, several Eomau Catholic chapels, one Presbyterian Church, one Episcopal Church, and one Mission Church belonging to the Americans. I preached in the Scotch Church on the first Sabbath after my arrival, and in the Mission Church on Sabbath last." 38 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1829. CHAPTER III. 1829-1836. ORGANISATION AND FIRST FRUIT OF THE MISSION. The Langiiages of the People — If necessary for Officials, much more for Missionaries — Foundation of Wilson's Oriental Scholarship — Masters Marathee so as to preach his first Sermon in six Mouths — Tentative efforts at Hurnee — First visit to a Hindoo House and Discussion with a Parsee — Prohibition of Suttee : Letter to Lord William Beutiuck — " Plan of Operations in the Island of Bombay " — His first European Fiiends — Establishes the Oriental Christian Sx>ectator — Census of Bombay — Wilson and Duff — Presbyterian Constitution of a Native Church — Transferred from the Scottish Missionary Society to the General Assembly — Progress of the Mission to 1836 — Letters to Mr. J. Jordan Wilson — The Freeuess of the Gospel. If a knowledge of the language of the people, vernacular and, where possible, classical also, is the indispensable qualifi- cation of every official, so that it is carefully provided for by the competitive examinations in England, and by the profes- sional tests in the four great groups of Provinces in India, how much more is it required by the foreign missionary. The assistant-magistrate, even the district officer who rules a million of people in one of the 200 counties of the Indian Empire ; the judge who, outside of the three English cities, hears cases and writes his decisions in the prevailing language of the province, may be content with a merely official use of the Marathee or Goojaratee, the Tamul or Telugoo, the Hindee or Hindostanee, the Bengalee or Oorya, to say nothing of the Persian and the Sanskrit which enrich all the thirty languages of our Indian subjects. There is no conscientious civil or military officer, however, who will not value his lin- guistic knowledge for the highest social as well as political ends, in kindly intercourse with all classes ; and there is no one of scholarly tastes who will be content without some 1829.] LANGUAGES OF THE EAST. 39 acquaintance with the learned languages of the East, whether Aryan or Semitic. But as the heart of a people is reached through its mother-tongue, and all that is best worth knowing about a country is to be found in its dialects and literature, the Christian missionary and scholar, above all officials, will master the vernacular as his most precious instrument, and the classical language that feeds it as his most useful store- house of information and illustration, argument and authority. The Scottish, like the American missionaries who first worked in Western India, Avere j^re-eminent in such studies, follow- ing an example fortunately set them and all subsequent preachers and teachers in the East, by the Baptist " cobbler " and most versatile Orientalist of his day, — William Carey. Mr Wilson's student friend especially, Kobert Nesbit, who had preceded him to India by sixteen months, was already a fluent speaker of that Marathee of which he became so remarkable a preacher and writer that the natives could not trace even a foreign accent in his pronunciation and use of its idioms. From the first to the last day of his India life Wilson was of opinion that a year or longer should be allowed to every young mis- sionary to acquire the vernacular of his province. He himself had brought to India a more than professional familiarity with Latin and Greek ; he knew French for literary purposes ; and he carried further than his old professor and now friend, Dr. Brunton, a grasp of Hebrew. He had not been a month in Bombay Avhen he and his most apt pupil, his wife, left it for the comparative seclusion of, first Bankote and then Hurnee, that they might, aided by their brethren, and in the midst of the country people, thoroughly learn Marathee, to begin Avith. In the eight months of the first hot and rainy seasons, from April to November, Mr. Wilson laid the foundation of his Orientalism with a rapidity, a thoroughness, and a breadth, due alike to his overmastering motive, his previous training, and his Mezzofanti-like memory. He himself shall tell, in the letters and journals of the time, how he set to work after a fashion that may well form the model of every worker in India in whatever position. We find Nesbit thus writing to him at the close of that six months' fruitful apprenticeship : — " I am accused of injuring your health by making you study Marathee and talk with me at niirht . . , \\i\\ the exhortation to take 40 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON; [1829. good care of your health now make any amends 1 Get up at six, by all means ; and, that you may be able to do so, go to bed at ten." Mr. Wilson thus addressed his directors in Edinburgh : — " As a year lias passed away since I commeuced my studies of the native languages, it is now my duty to give you a brief account of my progress. By referring to my journals I find that it was on the 18th of August, being five months after my arrival in India, that I began to hold consultations with the Hindoos, and on the 27th of September when I preached my first sermon. When I was in the Koukan I generally devoted about nine hours to the study of Marathee. Since I commenced my labours in Bombay I devote, according to my ability, all the intervals from active missionary duty which I enjoy. I may mention five hours daily as the average in which I am thus engaged. During the first two months of my studies I jiursiied, as far as is practicable, the Hamiltonian system. Mr. Nesbit during that time kindly furnished me with the English of my lessons. I afterwards principally dejiended on my pundit, who had only a knowledge of Maratliee, and on the literary helps which I could obtain. The books which I used were translations from the English made by the Native Education Society, native stories, the translation of the Scriptures, mission tracts, and an account of the Hindoo religion wi'itten by a Brahman in my employment, in reply to queries which I addressed to liim. I kept a writer for four months who furnished me with lists of words under the different principles of association which I could think of. I devoted about an hour daily to consideration on the religion, manners, and customs of the Hindoos, which I regulated according to Mr. Ward's account. " In Bombay I have some facilities for study which I did not enjoy in the Konkan. These principally consist in my being able to get all difficulties readily and satisfactorily solved, and in my being favoured with the sheets of Captain Molesworth's and Mr. Candy's Dictionary as they pass through the press. For the last three months I have devoted the hour between seven and eight in the morning to the reading of Hebrew with the points. I am very desirous, for the sake of usefulness among the Jews here, and other important reasons, to attain to greater proficiency in this ancient language. My teacher, who is a Rabbi, is an excellent scholar. He is well acquainted with Mr. Wolff", whom he has frequently seen in Jerusalem ; and he declares, even among his countrymen, that the Messiah has already appeared. I am not without holies of his being a converted man. I expect in a short time to be able to commence the study of Hindostanee, a language which will enable me to communicate the truths of the Gospel to many natives in Bombay to whom at present I cannot find access. " At Bankote, sixty-eight miles south of Bombay, Mr. Wilson took his seat in the missionary council. On the first Sabbath after his arrival he witnessed the baptism of the second Hindoo convert of the mission, and administered the sacra- ment to " the children of the East and West, seated together at the same table." At Hurnee he thus describes his tentative efforts, after his acquisition of Marathee. "November 1st, 1829. Sabbath. — I preached to the natives in the after- 1829.] EARLY WOEK IN THE SOUTIIEKN KONKAN. 41 noon on the distinguishing characteristics of the children of God. The man whom I met on Friday did not attend tlie Marathee services. "2d. — I preached to the beggars in the morning, and united with Mr. Cooper in addressing tlie natives in the afternoon. " 3d. — I addressed the natives in tlie morning. " ith, 5th. — I addressed the servants in the morning, ami united with Mr. Cooper in preaching to the natives in the afternoon. "6//(. — I addressed the natives in the morning. " 7th. — I addressed the natives, and made preparations for the approaching Sabbath. "8e e.xpended. "My darling wife has six female scliools, and she is useful in instructing female inquirers." In this letter we see the germ of every side of the j'oung missionary's work in and for Bombay, save only the English college. Experiences were soon to teach him that, for preaching and immediate results no less than in that wider work of pre- paration, the fruit of which comes plenteously after many days and has already begun so to come, the daily instruction of the most intellectual and influential youth by one to whom they become attached, is second to no other agency — is, indeed, for that class superior to all others. But even up to 1836 he had not learned, as he afterwards did, to perfect his own system of Christian aggression on the corrupting civilisations of the East, by the enthusiastic encouragement of the higher education through English. The following letter to Mr. J. Jordan Wilson closes with a statement of spiritual truth, happily familiar enough now, but very rare in Scotland forty years ago. It is the last of a long correspondence covering fifteen years, in Avhich the younger man led the older to a cheerful peace and a joyous self-sacrifice for the cause of Christ. It is the first where we meet with allusions to a friend- ship Avith Dr. Duff, and an admiration for him none the less true and hearty because it was discriminating, which con- tinued on both sides all through their Indian lives : — " Bombay, Ith Jul// 1836. "You mention Mr. Duffs elevation to a Doctorsliip. He is well worthy of his honours, although some of his views on the economics of C!liristian missions are, in my opinion, erroneous. I have just remarked in a letter to a friend to-day as follows : — 'Dr. Dutfs warm advocacy of tlie Calcutta Institu- tion has been by far too exclusive. I rejoice in the prosperity of the Seminary, find wish it every support ; but he ought not to have advocated its cause by disparaging the direct preaching of the gospel to the natives in their own languages by Europeans, and overlooked female education, and the general education of the natives tJirourjh the medium of their oicn toiujurs, which form the readiest key to their hearts. The higher Institutions are well cal- culated to attract the higher classes of society, and to educate teachers and preachers. We must have a body of Christians, however, from which to select these agents. For this body of Christians we must not mainly dei)end on our Academies. 'To the poor the gospel is preached.' 'Of the little Hock, and present inquirers at this place,' I also observe to Dr. Brunton, ' some were 58 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1836. first impressed by hearing tlie gospel in tlie crowded bazaar, some by hearing it at the margin of the sea ; some in tlie church ; some in the schoolroom ; some in the place in which the Lord of Glory was born when he came on his mission to this world ; some in the social circle ; some in the private cham- ber ; and some by the perusal of Christian publications. I have thus been encouraged to remember the words of inspiration : — ' Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.' ' In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening with- hold not thine hand : for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.' I could not refrain from giving you, who are so much interested in my operations, this brief expression of ray views. Were I to visit the Modern Athens, and seek to propagate these opinions, I should, instead of being dubbed a ' Doctor in Di\'inity, ' probably be dubbed a ' Babbler,' like Paul in the Ancient Athens. I have the fullest confidence that the Lord will soon vindicate His own cause : and I am perfectly willing, if I have the means of carrying on my laljours, to lie personally over- looked and despised. I bless God for what I have already seen as to the diminishment of prejudices against ' highway missionaries.' Six years ago my countrymen laughed at me when they saw me ' haranguing mobs.' These same gentlemen have conferred on me their highest literary honoiir, and not- ■withstandiug my street preaching propensities, have put me into the chair formerly occupied by these great men Sir James Mackintosh, Sir John Mal- colm, etc., and suffered nie to ' harangue ' them as their ijresident ! I had serious thoughts of sajing nolo e2]iscopa.ri ; but when I thought that I might contribute to shield the whole class of ' Eanters ' from contempt, and use my influence for the Lord's cause, I refrained. " Would that I could, in reply to your inquiry, speak a word in season to you, as you have done to me ! The foundation of faith is the Gospel offer of salvation to the chief of sinners who will accept it. We must be content to be saved gratuitously. We can neither jjurchase our justification before we receive it, nor adequately acknowledge it when we have received it. The Saviour is infinitely worthy of our reliance, and the moment we rely iipon him we are safe, and may rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. We must seek for comfort by looking to him and his finished work. The eye, as Dr. Chalmers I believe expresses it, must look to the Sun of Righteousness for his light-giving and life-giving beams, and not turn in to gaze upon its internal structure. The work of Christ within us is the evidence of our faith ; but the work of Christ without us is the object of our faith, and the offers of Christ, the warrant of our faith. When Satan says to us, ' You have not believed, else whence all your fears, and all your failings, and offences ? ' we should rejjly if we cannot give him the direct contradiction, ' I now believe what the Saviour says to me, and I will now give my fears to the winds in spite of all your efforts.' Our straggle with aud distress on account of indwelling siu, which is common to us and all the Lord's jjeople, ought to enhance the Saviour in our estimation, and not to detract from our grounds of confidence in him, which are the unchanging graciousness of his character and the un- failing efficacy of his mediation. My little children never imagined that I ceased to be their father when I chode them, or removed them from my pre- sence, or punished them, till I saw in them a proper contrition. Why, then, oh why, should we dishonour God by imaginins that he ceases to be our Father ?" 1830.] HIS OEIENTAL ACQUIKEMEXTS. 59 CHAPTEE lY. 1830—1836. PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS WITH LEARNED HINDOOS AND MUHAMMADANS. How Mr. Wilson became an Orientalist — " Turning the World upside-down " — Ziegenbalg's "Conferences" — First Discussion witli Bralimaus — Christian Brahman against Hindoo Pundits — " God's Sepoys " — The Ten Incarna- tions — The Pundits Retire — Morality versus Religion— The Second Dis- cussion — The New Champion with Garlands of Flowers — Mr. Wilson's " First Exposure of Hindooisni " — The Third Discussion — Mr. Wilson's " Second Exposure of Hiudooism " — Parseeism and Muhammadanism enter the Arena — Dr. Pfander's later Treatises — Mr. Wilson's Reply to Hadjee Muhammad Hashim — The Sexualism of the Koran and Slavery — The Sons of Israel in Western India — The Black and White Jews — Josejih Wolff, the Christian Dervish and Protestant Xavier — Visit of Mr. Anthony Groves, Dervish of a difl'erent stamp — Mr. Francis W. Newman as a Missionary — Mr. Robert C. Money — Sir John Malcolm — Lord William Bentinck — Sir Robert Grant — Mr. Wilson on the British Sovereignty in India in 1835 — Bombay Union of Missionaries — Progress in Kafl'raria — Mr. Wilson on Carey and Morrison. There is no recorded instance in tlie life of any Oriental scholar, Avhether official or missionary, of sucli rapid but thorough acc[uisition of multifarious information regarding the literature and the customs, as -well as the languages of the natives, as marked Mr. "Wilson's first year's residence in India. Sir "William Jones began his jnirely Indian studies at a later period of life, and carried them on amid comparative leisure and wealth. Colebrooke, the greatest of all Orientalists, laid the foundation of his splendid acquirements so sloAvly that Sanskrit at first repelled him, though afterwards he Avould rise from the gaming-table at midnight to study it. Ziegenbalg and Carey had the same overmastering motive as John Wilson, but the former hardly went beyond the one vernacular — Tamul, and the latter was distracted by the hardships of 60 K LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1830. poverty and a discontented wife ; so that he began by working as an indigo-planter Avhen learning Bengalee. Mr. Wilson not only mastered Marathee, but Goojaratee ; to these he soon added Hindostanee and Persian, Avhile almost his earliest work in Bombay was the preparation of a Hebrew and Marathee grammar for the Jews, there known as Beni-Israel. Thus its four great communities, Hindoo and Muhammadan, Parsee and Jewish, he was early prepared to influence, while he had from the first attained sufficient fluency in Portuguese to care for the large number of half-naste descendants of our prede- cessors in the island. A scholarly knowledge of Arabic he was later in finding leisure to acquire. But his advance in Sanskrit seems to have been parallel with his acc^uisition of Marathee, so that Ave find him from the very first confuting ■the Brahmans out of their own sacred books as Paul did in the case of the Athenians and the Cretans. This knowledge he steadily extended to the more obscure and esoteric dialects of the older Hindoo tongues, in Avhich the various sects of ciuasi-dissenters, like the Sikhs and the Vaishnavas, had their authoritative scriptures. He was early a collector of Oriental manuscripts. Nor was he content Avith this. He employed Brahmans to gather information for him on a definite principle, and Avherever he Avent he Avas constant in his cross-examina- tion of the people and their priests. The result of the first fifteen months' unAvearied toil was seen in the beginning of a series of discussions on Christianity, forced on Mr. Wilson, to his great satisfaction, b.y Hindoo, Muhammadan, and Parsee apologists in succession. The ardent and courageous scholar, having fairly organised his schools, and his translating and preaching Avork, was by no means content to go on in a daily routine, passively believing that Hindoo and Parsee, Jew and Muhammadan, Avould come over to him. " I have felt it my duty to proceed," he writes to more than one of his home correspondents in 1831, " some- Avhat out of the course of modern missionary procedure. The result of my eff"orts has more than realised my expectations. Matters I thought Avere going on too quietly ; I could see little of that Avhich is spoken of in the ' Acts of the Apostles ' as a ' turning of the Avorld upside-doAvn,' and nothing of that stir Avhich attended the labours of the Apostles in the diff'erent cities which they visited. There was praying and there was 1830.] TUI5XIXG THE WORLD UrslDE-DOWX. HI teaching in schools, and there was preaching to some extent, especially by our missionaries ; but there Avas no attempt to make a general impression on the whole population of a town or province. ' Drive gently ' was the maxim. I tliought on the days of Paul when he stood on Mars' Hill. I thought on the days of Luther, and Knox, and Calvin, and I began to see that they were right. They announced Avith boldness, publicly and privately, in the face of every danger, in tlie midst of every difficulty, to high and low, rich and poor, young and old, and I resolved by divine grace to imitate them. I have consequently challenged Hindoos, Parsees, and Mussul- mans to the combat. The former I fight by the mouth principally, and the two latter by the pen. The consternation of many of them I know to be great, and hundreds have heard the gospel in the place of tens. I have had in the idolatrous Bombay, and the still more idolatrous Nasik, 250 miles distant, many hundreds for auditors. At present I am waging war, through the native newspapers, with the Parsees and Mussulmans?. They are very indignant ; some of them had got up a petition praying Government to stop me, but this Avas in vain. They did not present it. They show talent in their communications, but Avith a bad cause Avhat can they do? Conscience, the Holy Spirit, the promises of God and the providence of God, are on our side. for a Pentecostal day ! This may not be granted during our sojourn. Perhaps God only Avishes us to be as the A'oice of one crying in the wilderness, ' Prepare ye the Avay of the Lord.' " A year before this, when announcing the first of these debates, he had pronounced it " the first general discussion on the Christian and Hindoo religions Avhich has perhaps taken place in India." This statement is correct, notwithstanding the "conferences" Avhich the Lutheran missionaries of Denmark had held Avith the Tamul Brahmans and Muhammadans in South India a century before. " Upon tlu? Gth of March 1707," begins the record, "I, BartholomeAv Ziegenbalgen, Avas visited by a grave and learned Brahman ; and, asking him what he proposed to himself by his friendly visit, he replied that he desired to confer Avith me amicalily about the great things and matters of religion." All through the narration there is no sign, at that early time, of the overturning process. 62 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1830. In truth, the good men of that mission, wliich had Tranquebar for its head-quarters, from Ziegenbalg to Schwartz, and to this day, tolerate caste even at the Lord's table, and in all their converts save ordained natives. Very different was the " turning upside-down " of Mr. Wilson's Bombay discussions, and yet in temper and in charity quite as " amicable " on his part, though terril^ly in earnest. Thus the first began. Eama Chundra, the Pooranic Brahman who had been baptized at Bankote, visited Bombay in May 1830, for the purpose of declaring to his caste-fellows and priestly colleagues his reasons for forsaking them. For a time his arguments failed to prick their apathy. But at last Pundit Lukshmun Shastree was tempted to defend at great length the teaching of Hindooism regarding the ten Avatars or incarnations of Vishnoo, and, in the heat of controversy, to refer the question to five or six Brahmans, Eama Chundra demanded a fair public debate. To this the Pundit reluctantly consented, but himself prepared an advertisement announcing that there would be a discussion upon the evidences of the Hindoo and the Christian religion in the house of Mr. Wilson, at four o'clock on Friday the 21st May; that Eama Chundra, for- merly a Pooranic, would defend the Christian religion ; and that Lukshmun, a Pooranic, would^ " as he felt disposed," take up the side of the Hindoo religion. A great crowd assembled accordingly, and among them upwards of a hundred Brahmans. Lukshmun being the secular Sanskrit teacher of one of the American missionaries, and Eama Chundra a convert of the Scottish missionaries, both missionaries were present. Mr. E. T. Webb, as a layman and a high official, was asked to keep order. The interest of the whole lay in the fact that Brah- man met Brahman ; the one new to the work of Christian apologetics and exposition, but assisted by Mr. Wilson occa- sionally ; the other also helped by abler reasoners. Mr. Wilson opened the proceedings, which were in Mara- thee, with constant quotations of Sanskrit verses, by stating the advantages of discussion in the attainment of truth, by exhorting the combatants to observe charity and the audience to put away prejudice, and by meeting only the initial assumption tliat God had established several religions, with the remark that, as God is the Father of all mankind, he will not appoint opposing laws for the regulation of his family. 1830.] BRAHMAN :SIEETINCt BRAHMAN. 63 After the first day tlie Pundit Lukshinnn "did not long koop his ground." Eama Chundra, " tliough he occasionally intro- duced irrelevant matter, and was too tolerant of the sophistry of his opponents, acquitted himself in a manner which greatlj' interested many of his auditors." During the next three days, accordingly, the discussion fell into abler hands, Mr. AYilson on the one side, and on the Hindoo side Nirbhaya Rama and Kisundas Joguldas, chief pundit and principal pleader respect- ively of the highest Government Appellate Court, the Sudder Adawlut. The Brahmans were the first to ask for quarter. The benefit of the discussion was not confined to the ci'owds Avho heard it. Two editions of the report in Marathee were speedily exhausted ; all Hindoo Bombay talked of it ; it stirred up inquiry as nothing else could have done, and the delu- sion was dispelled that Christianity feared the investigation of the learned. True to his wise, natural, and kindly policy, in this as all through his career, Mr. Wilson took care that what he himself had learned as Western truth, but yet was of Asiatic origin as to its mode, he urged on Orientals in an Eastern form, and so commended it to every man. These extracts from the report, giving the more purely native part of the discussion, will show how it j^layed, then as still, in the East as of late growingly in the AVest, around the three great cjuestions of the nature of God, the relation of morality to religion, the origin and the means of getting rid of sin, here and hereafter. Rama Chundra began by declaring that he had abandoned the Hindoo religion because the sta^tements of its scriptures were inconsistent with truth. Finding that the chief pundit, Nirbhaya, demanded proof that there is one God, he pointed to the works of God, and quoted, as binding on his opponent, the sloka of the Bhagavat Geet, to the eff"ect that there is one Supreme Being, the author of birth, life, and death : " R. C. lu the Hindoo Shastres it is written that God was at first desti- tute of qualities, and that afterwards lie became possessed of suttrn (activity), ruja (goodness), and tiima (darkness). In tins statement tliree diliiculties ))re- sent themselves to my mind. The declaration that God was destitute of qualities tends highly to his dishonour ; and I am unable to understand, if he was destitute of power, how he could become possessed of it. I cannot admit that such qualities as ruja and tuma are to be ajiplied to the Divinity. The Avatars (incarnations) of Vishnoo have taken human life and committed other bad actions ; on this account I put no faith in them ; liut not so %vith the Avatar of Christ ; he has obeyed God in all things, and given his life for 64 LIFE OF JOHN AVILSON. [1830. mau. As then the onion and the nuisk are known by their odour, and the tree is known by its fruits, so are tlie Avatars to be Icnown by their works. Their works are evil, and therefore I renounce them. " Lukshmim. I ask a question — If a subject commits a crime, is the king to be blamed for punishing him ? Is God to be blamed for taking an Avatar to jiunish the Rakshnsas (demons) ? " R. C. Amongst men a king must punish an offender according to his crime ; but God has established principles, from which men, by their own wickedness, come to evil, and go to hell, therefore there was no occasion for an Avatar to come into the world for that purpose. " JVirbhaya. God was not wholly included in the Avatar, and therefore the sins of the Avatars are not to be laid to God. " R. C. Suppose them to be so far disconnected with God as to be only his messengers — if they are true they will act rightly. " Kisundass. Yes ! the Avatars were God's Sepoys. " R. C. If God's Sepoys, why did they not act according to his will ? If they commit sin, how are they to be known as His Sej^oys ? " K. They are known by their liadge, and not by their conduct. " R. C. Where is the badge '] Nii-bhaya Rama says they are only parts of God ; but if parts, they will be like himself in substance : but God has no parts ; He is everywhere present. " Shas. If they are not from God, whence are they ? " 7?. C. They may have been men, and therefore they are not to be wor- shipped. " K. But if they are great and powerful, and are sent in the place of God, with power to punish the Rakshusas, they are as kings, who are not to be blamed for punishing offenders. " R. C. Are we then to bow down to all who do any wonderful acts ? Their works prove that they are not part of God. If I have a piece of gold, and break it into many pieces, the qualities in each will still remain the same. " K. In the God yon worship you admit three Persons : and why then do you reject ten Avatars ? " R. C. Not so : in the Deity there ai-e three Persons, but one God ; as in the sun, — there is the sun, the light, and the heat, but all included in one sun. I utterly reject the Avatars. Why did they take place ? The object of the Fish Avatar was the discovery of the stolen Vedas. The object of the Tortoise was the placing the newly created earth upon his back to keep it firm. The object of the Boar Avatar was to draw up the earth from the waters, after it was sunken by the Devtya. The object of the Man-lion Avatar was to destroy the rebellious giants, Hirunuyaksha and Hirunyukushipoo. The object of the Dwarf Avatar was the destruction of the religious Bulee. The object of the Purushoo Rama Avatar was the destruction of the Kshutriyas. The object of the Rama Avatar was the destruction of Ravana. The object of the Krishna Avatar was to destroy the giant Kungshu. These are the Avatars which you say have already taken place. Is there any appearance of God in such acts ? Could He not have accomplished these objects without assuming an Avatar ? Did His taking a form make the work easier ? I maintain, then, the reason for such Avatars is absurd. This is not the case with Christ : He came that the punishment of sin might be endured, and God's hatred of sin manifested. " Shuklmrama Shastree. Cannot a king do what he pleases ? Cannot he go into the bazaar and carry off what he pleases ? who can call in question his doings ? " Mr. W. This is one of your other modes of explaining the actions of Krishna. A king, by his power, may prevent inquiry into his conduct ; but 1830.J THE AVATARS AXD CIIIIIST's INCARNATION. 65 he assuredly can sin. If tlie greatness of Krishna is to be considered, it must be viewed as an aggravation of his faults. Utterlj' opposed to these Avatars is that of Christ, in Whom we wish you to trust. He came into the world to save sinners. By His miracles he proved His divine mission. His doctrines were holy ; and His works were holy. He voluntarily gave His life a ransom for us. He illustrated the divine mercy, and the divine holiness. He jirocured a righteousness for man. He prays for man in heaven. He is able to save man. The books which contain His history are true. They are not like the Hindoo Shastres. In them we find no foolish stories, no errors, and no utter want of evidence. Read them. Search and pray for wisdom. Embrace the truth. " 8huk. How can you show that God has forbidden the worship of idols ? for where there is one who does not, there are an hundred who do worship idols. " R. C. All men are sinners, and are inclined to depart from God. " Mr. W. Are the idols hke God ? " Shuk. Not so : but if obeisance is made to the shoe of a king in the pre- sence of his servants, and they bear the intelligence to the king that such-a-one has great respect for him, for he every day comes and makes obeisance before his shoe, would you not consider this as paying respect to the king ':'— so is it in worshipping the Deity by the idol. " Mr. IF. By this reasoning you make God at a distance ; and we say that He is everywhere i3resent, and that He is everywhere propitious. Is God then in the idol ? " Shick. Yes, in everything. " Mr. IF. You say that God is in a particular manner in the idol, and that he is brought in by the Muntras (invocations) ; but if a Mussulman touches it he goes out ! — Even your old Shastres say that you are not to worship idols. The Vedantee philosophers near Calcutta assert this ; and they have produced many passages in support of their opinion. There is one in the Bhagavat Geet. " Luk. It is said that man cannot approach God ; therefore he must first propitiate Krishna. By Krishna God may be ajjproached, and in no other way. " li. C. You say, then, that Krishna is propitiated by idols, and that through him the Deity. But sujipose I am hungry, and have a handful of rice ; if I throw that direct into the fire it will be burnt up, and I shall be deprived of my food ; but I must have a vessel to put it in, that it may be put on the fire and be cooked : but suppose the vessel I select is a dirty one, or a cracked one, then my rice will be spoiled in cooking, or the water will escape, and it will not be cooked ; and in either case I shall remain hungry. I must then be careful that I select a proper vessel. So must it be with your Avatar — (incarnation). Take care and get a proper one. " K. We siiould only follow him if las works are good, and not other- wise. " Jl. C. Therefore yon must see and get a proper mediator. " Shuk. I hold that by the performance of ablution the nund is washed ; for all evil proceeds from evil thoughts ; and by the performance of ablution morning and evening I am brought to think of this, and thereby a check is thrown upon evil thoughts, and so the mind is purified. "It. C. In your own Shastres the inefficiency of these remedies is declared. " K. I allow that unless the mind is firm these austerities are of no avail. " A Brahman. What is sin ? " Mr. W. The breaking of the law of God. 66 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1830. " Brahman. How did sin get into tlie world ? "Mr. W. How shall sin get ont of the world ? This should be the great inquiry. When a man is seized with cholera, he does not distress himself by inquiring about the manner in which it came to him ; but earnestly seeks a cure. The grand reason why we object to your remedies is, that they all pro- ceed on the principle that man is saved by his ovm works. Admit this principle and you destroy the kingdom of God." It is "the immemorial quest, the old complaint." In the Brahmans' conferences with Ziegenbalg the same fixed ideas of the pantheist, the polytheist, the ritualist, ever recur, pre- faced always by the assumption Avhich Mr. Wilson put out of the controversy at starting, that to save the European one way and the Hindoo another " is one of the pastimes and diversions of Almighty God," as the Tamul priest of Vishnoo expressed it. The argument of Kisundass, that the nine Avatars or incarnations of Vishnoo — the tenth, Kalki, is to appear as a comet in the sky, on a Avhite horse, with an apocalyptic sword, to restore the righteousness of the golden age — were God's Sepoys, known by their badge and not by their conduct ; and that of Shookaram, that as a king God can sin as he pleases, denote the universal belief of the Hindoos that morality and god-worship have different and frequently opposite spheres. Since, about 1864, Sir Henry Maine first brought his study of early institutions and his official task of constant legislation to bear on Hindoo society, this has been recognised, and students of the science of religion, who are at the same time familiar with the social phenomena of native society, have worked it out. Hence missionai-y and legislator alike, together as well as separately, each in his own sphere, have to act so that the crimes sanctioned by the theology of the Hindoos shall be prohibited by an application of the moral law of Christianity, and the jurisprudence of the civilised nations of the West ; while the legislator has to guard against the oppo- site exti-eme of seeming to sanction, and of really perpetuating with a new authority, the vast mass of Hindoo religious and therefore civil law, Avhich he must leave untouched. From Lord William Bentinck and Macaulay to Lord Lawrence and Sir Henry Maine, and from Claudius Buchanan and Carey to Duff and Wilson, this double process has gone on, till India enjoys a more humane criminal code and a more perfect toleration of creeds and opinions than Great Britain itself. The excitement caused by this discussion among the 1831.] HIS EXPOSURES OF HINDOOISM. 67 natives of Bombay liad not passed away when, in February 1831, another champion arrived to renew the controversy. This Avas Mora Bhatta Dandekara, who thought to succeed where the pundit Lukshmun and his friends had failed. Many Brahmans were present. " They brought their chief champion every day in a carriage, with garhmds of floAvers hanging about him. They coukl not, howcA^er, defend their religion," Avrites Mr. Wilson to his father. The debate con- tinued during six successive evenings. Mr. Webb again pre- sided at the request of both parties. The Brahman convert, Rama Chundra, again took part in it, but the chief combatant for Christianity was Mr. Wilson himself " The Brahmans Avere the first to solicit a cessation of hostilities," It Avas left on this occasion to the Hindoos to publish a report of the proceedings, and several Avealthy men subscribed for the pur- pose. But the Bhatta had not taken notes, and he preferred to publish as his defence a tract on the Verification of the Hin- doo Religion, to Avhich he challenged a reply. The debate had, as on the former occasion, referred principally to the character of the Divine Being, the means of salvation, the principles of morals, and the allotment of rewards and punishments. The Verification reiterates the arguments of the former apologists for Hindooism, but it is of interest from the attacks -it makes on some statements of the Christian Scriptures Avhich it first perverts. This, for instance, is the rendering of the opening verse of the fourth Gospel : — " In the beginning Avas Avord. That Avord was in the heart of God ; and the same word Avas manifested in the Avorld in the form of Christ." The real value of the tract, hoAvever, lies in the fact that it called forth Mr. Wilson's first Exposure of the Hindoo Religion, to Avhich a translation of it by Mr. Nesbit is prefixed : — " The Bhatta, though he has in some instances) disguised the truth, writes generally in support of what has' l^een called the exoteric system of Hindooism ; and a little reflection Avill show that the attempt to uphold any other can only be made Avith the sacrifice of the pretensions to inspira- tion on the part of the Hindoo scriptures, and Avith admis- sions which must prove destructive to the popular supersti- tion. The eff'orts Avhich have hitherto been made to refine on the Brahmanical faith have hitherto proved, and must ever prove, completely abortive. It is essentially distinguished by 68 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, [1834. exaggeration, confusion, contradiction, puerility, and immor- ality." Such was Mi\ Wilson's earlier impression of a sys- tem, with even the innermost recesses of which further study and experience Avere to make him so familiar, that the Govern- ment and the Judges frequently appealed to him as the highest trustworthy authority for political and legal ends. The Brahmans, thus twice met on the later Pooranic or Brahmanical side, determined to return to the charge, this time on the eai'lier Vedantic, or what was then called the eso- teric ground. One Narayan Rao, English teacher in the Raja of Satara's school, accordingly Avrote a reply to the first Ex- posure of Eindooism, iinder the signature of " An Espouser of his Country's Religion." Mora Bhatta edited the Avork, and took it to Mr. Wilson. Hence his publication, towards the close of 1834, of A Second. Exposure of the Hindoo Religion. The title-page bears these lines of Sir William Jones : — " Oh ! bid the j)atieut Hindoo rise and live. His erring mind that wizard lore beguiles, Clouded by priestly wiles, To senseless nature bows for Nature's God." Like its predecessor, this Exposiire is a model of kindly con- troversy and lofty courtesy to antagonists. " I beg of them," he writes to the Hindoos in his preface, " to continue to extend credit to me and to my fellow-labourers for the benevolence of our intentions, and to believe that anything which is incon- sistent with the deepest charity is not what we would for one moment seek to defend." Both works caused a greater demand for copies than was expected, and called forth many letters from natives assuring the writer that they had been thus led to lose all confidence in the religion of their fathers. The books were translated into Bengalee and other Indian vernaculars, and continued to be long useful in letting light into many a native's mind. Mr. Wilson made good use of the admissions of the Bengalee theist Rammohun Roy, who had at that time written his principal works and had been carefully answered by Carey and Marshman. The Second Exposure, dedicated to Mr. James Farish Avho acted as interim Governor, has a further literary interest, as showing Mr. Wilson's steady as well as rapid advance in his Sanskrit studies, and in the consequent use of the Vedic, Pooranic, and Epic literature, for the demolition of error. His preface thus 1831.] HIS KEFUTATIOX OF MUHAMMADANISM. G9 concludes : — " To several friends I am indebted for the loan of several Sanskrit MSS. which were not in my possession, and Avhich I have used for enabling me to judge of the fidelity of existing translations and opinions, and correctly to make some original extracts. It was my intention at one time to have quoted more liberally from the Upanishads than I have done. The inspection of a great number of them led me to perceive that while they abound in metaphysical errors there is a great accordance in the few j^rinciples which they re- spectively unfold, and to which attention should be particu- larly directed." At the time of the second of the three discussions with Brahmans on the Christian and Hindoo religions, Mr. Wilson found himself challenged to an encounter on the two very different fields of the Zoroastrianism of the Parsees and the ethics and theology of the Muhammadan Koran. His review of the Armenian History of the Religious Wars hetiveen the Persians and Armenians, in the Oriental Christian Spectator of July and August 1831, tempted the descendants of the persecuting Magi, now peaceable and loyal enough because themselves persecuted exiles, to defend the Avasta, their sacred Book. This controversy opens out so wide a field, alike in itself and in Mr. Wilson's career as a scholar and a missionary, that we shall reserve it and its consecjuences for another chapter. But an expression adverse to Muham- madanism in one of Mr. Wilson's letters to the Parsees, called forth a champion of Muhammad and the Koran, and led to the publication of a Refutation of Muhammadanism, in Hindo- stanee, Goojaratee, and Persian, which may be placed side by side with the two exposures of Hindooism. "Hadjee Muhammad Hashim of Ispahan," who, as his name shows, had performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and was tlie most learned Moulvie in Bombay, " challenged me," writes ]\Ir. Wilson, " to the proof of the licentiousness and imposture of the author of the Koran, and I readily attempted to ostalilish my position. After several letters had appeared in the native newspapers, the Hadjee came forward \nth a pamphlet of con- siderable size in Goojaratee and Persian, in which he evinces at once great sophistry and great ability." His Reply to Hadjee Muhammad Hashiiiis Defence of the Islamic Faith is, if we except the necessarily imperfect tract of Henry Martyn, continued by 70 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1831. Dr. Lee, the first controversial treatise of the kind in point of time, as the Ex])osures of Hindooism are. Dr. Pfander had not yet begun that series of Christian apologies in controversy with Muhammadans, which have done more than any other instrument to shake the apparently immovable confidence of the votaries of Islam in Agra and Delhi, in Allahabad and Lucknow, in Lahore and Peshawur, in Constantinople and Cairo, where moi'e than one learned Moulvie now preaches the faith which once he attacked, or even translates the Christian Scriptures. It was Pfander's representation of the need for a biography of the prophet, suitable for the perusal of his fol- lowers, that led Sir William Muir, when a busy settlement officer and revenue secretary at Agra, to prepare his Life of Mahomet, which is the greatest in the English language, as Sprenger's is in the German. Eut no one can jDcruse Mr. Wilson's Ee.ply to Muhammad Hashim without remarking how he has, in brief, anticipated Muir in shrewd insight, criticism, and keen exposure of the moral irregularities and shortcomings of Muhammad's Koran and his private life. In twenty-one necessarily condensed chapters Mr. Wilson covered the whole field of the controversy, save on its historical side — which was not raised. But it went very far down into practical life as well as ethical principles, although he does not allude to the almost unmentionable " Mostahil " or temporary husband, so essential a part of the Muhammadan system of divorce, as authoritatively laid down in the " Fatawa-i-Alamgiri." Nor did the attack of the Hadjee lead him to the consideration of a subject which recent treaties have made prominent, the rela- tion of the sexual side of the Koran to the slave-trade and slavery. To the practical efforts in that direction he was soon to be called. But he did not spare the Hadjee in his sixth chapter, " On the mode in which Muhammad procured and treated his wives," a subject on which even Gibbon is severe. The law of polygamous marriage and treble divorce has never been interferred with by the British Government among the forty millions of its Mussulman subjects in India, while not a few Hindoo criminal practices, like widow-burning, child- murder, hook-swinging, and human sacrifice, all in the name of religion, have been ruthlessly stopped. The result is such a horrible state of society among the Mussulmans of eastern Bengal, as was revealed in an official inquiry in 1873, and 1833.] FIPxST CONVEIITS FROM MUHAMMADAXISM. Vl which still goes on corrupting, under the segis of the Koran and its expounders. Mr. "Wilson was able to write of this controversy as of those which preceded it, that it had shaken the faith of some Muhammadans in different parts of the country. The Parsee editor of the newspaper in which it was at first conducted, summed it up in the brief declaration, " All the world know that Islamism has been either propagated by the sword, or embraced on account of its licentiousness." From far Cochin, and the south, a convert came convinced by the PiepJy, which was reprinted in other parts of India. In| October 1833, Mr. Wilson baptized the first Muhammadan ofl Bombay who had been received into the Christian Church^ He was a fakeer, or mendicant devotee, whose secession from Islam infuriated his intolerant brethren. He was followed by an inquirer, a very learned IMoolla, young and master of several tongues, Avho during the controversy was the stoutest opposer of Christ, but humbly solicited baptism as now convinced of the truth of Christianity. It was with a peculiar interest that Mr. Wilson directed his attention to the Jews of Western India from the very beginning of his studies in the Konkan. For it was on that low coast, and in the country stretching upwards to the high road to Poona that, according to their own tradition, their ancestors, seven men and seven women, found an asylum, after shipwreck, sixteen centuries before. The little colony increased under the protection of the Abyssinian Chief who had settled there, and they came to be recognised as another variety of the Muham- madans. Destitute of all historical evidence, even of their own Law, the Beni-Israel, or sons of Israel as they called themselves, clung all the more tenaciously, generation after generation, to their paternal customs. On the mainland they became industrious agriculturists and oil-sellers. In the new settlement of Bombay they found work to do as artizans, and even shopkeepers and Avriters. Not a few of them are Sepoys in the Bombay army, as many Christians are in the ]\Iadras army. They difter from the black Jews of Cochin, farther south, who have sprung of the earliest emigrants from Arabia and Indian proselytes. Nor have they any connection Avith the so-called white Jews of the same place, whose arrival in India dates no further back probably than the earliest of those expulsions from Spain, which, in the same way, afterwards sent 72 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1833. Lord Beaconsfield's ancestors to Venice. The Beni-Israel, re- pelling the name of Yehudi as a reproach, were probably older than both, for the Cochin-Jews say that they found them on their arrival at Rajapoora, in the Konkan. In two careful and learned papers, written for the Eombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Mr. Wilson traced them to Yemen or Arabia Felix, the Jews of which they resemble, and with whom they hold intercourse. One of the Rothschild family, Mr. Samuel, and Mr. Wilson himself afterwards, found the origin of the Aden Jcavs in the remnant of the captivity who fled into Egypt, where, as Jeremiah had warned them, many were sent captive to Arabia, and where they led the Himyarite King of Yemen, Toba, to embrace their faith. The Yemen colony was reinforced after the dispersion, on the fall of Jerusalem, and again on the defeat of Zenobia ; till Sana, the capital of Yemen, became a new bulwark of Judaism against the Chris- tians of Ethiopia on the west and the Zoroastrians of Persia on the east. The Beni-Israel were very near Mr. Wilson's heart. For them he prepared his first grammar of Hebrew and Mara thee. Long after he ceased to receive support for them from the home churches he made it his special care to raise funds on the spot. The transfer of the mission to the General Assembly he welcomed, among other reasons, because of the impetus it gave to this department. In 1826 a con- verted Cochin Jew, Mr. Sargon,had worked among them, and the American Missionaries also had from the first cared for them. Of the 1300 children who attended Mr. Wilson's various schools in 1836, some 250 were BeniTsrael, and of these one third were girls. At the end of 1833 Bombay was visited by Joseph Wolff, the erratic Jew of Prague, who delighted to proclaim himself the Protestant Xavier, and lamented that he had not altogether followed that missionary in the matter of celibacy, such was the sorrow that their separation Ijy his frequent wanderings had brought on Lady Georgiana and himself He had the year before sent Mr. Wilson this communication : — " Cabool, 10th May 1832.— The bearers of these lines are the Armenian Christians of Cabool, whose ancestors were brought to Cabool from Meshed by- Ahmed Shah ; as they had no longer any means of support at Cabool they were constrained to emigrate from here with their wives and cliildren, and in- tend now to settle themselves at .Jerusalem and round Mount Ararat. As they are very poor indeed, I cannot but recommend them to my English friends as 1833.] JOSEPH "WOLFF. 73 worthy objects of their pity anil compassion for the sake of onr Lord Jesus Christ, Who will come again in the clonds of heaven in the year 1847 to estab- lish His throne and citadel in the capital of my Jewish ancestors in the city of Jerusalem — and at that time there sliall be neither Armenian nor Englislinian, but all one in Christ Jesus crucified, the King of kings and Lord of lords. — Joseph Wolff, Apostle of our Lord Jesiis Christ for Palestine, Persia, Bok- hara, and Balkh." After emerging from Central Asia in a condition more nearly resembling that of a nude dervish than an Anglican clergyman, Wolff" had attempted to convert liunjeet Singh at Lahore, had himself been civilised for the time at Simla by Lord William Eentinck and his noble wife, and had made his way round and across India by Madras and Cloa to the western capital. Lady William Beutinck had a hard fight to assure the Governor General's court that Wolff" was not mad. " I have succeeded," she told him, " in convincing all avIio have seen and heard you that you are not cracked, but I have not convinced them that you are not an enthusiast." Wolff" replied, " My dear Lady William, I hope that I am an enthu- siast, or, as the Persian Soofees say, that I am drunk with the love of God. Columbus would never have discovered America without enthusiasm." And so Wolff" afterwards revealed the true fate of Conolly and Stoddart. In the amusing and by no means uninstructive Travels and Adventures, which, in 1861, was dedicated "by his friend and admirer" to the Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, we have these glimpses of Bombay society, and of Mr. Wilson, with whom he afterwards fre- quently corresponded on mission-work for the Jews and the eastern Christians. " Wolff' arrived in Bombay on the 29 th November, and was received by all classes of denominations of Christians there with true cordiality and love. He was the guest of JNIr. James Parish, who was several times Deputy- Governor of Bombay. Lord Clare, the Governor, called, and heard a lecture wliich was delivered before a large audience. Wolff" also lectured in Parish's house as well as in the Town Hall of Bombay, when English, Parsees, Armenians, Mussul- mans, Portuguese, and Hindoos were present. One of the Parsees announced a lectui'e on the principles of the Parsees, in which he tried to adopt the style and actions of Joseph Wolff, but he was dreadfully cut up in the papers. . . . Wolff" had a public discussion with the JMuhammadans at Bombay, when the most distinguished members of the British Govern- 74 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1833. ment were present, both of the military and civil departments, including Farish, Robert Money, and the missionaries Wilson and Nesbit, and also Parsees." Mr, Wilson and Mr. Stevenson introduced him to all departments of their mission-work, but he was especially interested in the Beni-Israel, some of whom he had first seen at Poona. He writes of " those learned, excellent, eloquent, devoted, and zealous missionaries of the Scotch Kirk," and continues, — " Wolff went also with Mr. Wilson to see one of the celebrated Yoghees, who was lying in the sun in the street, the nails of whose hands were grown into his cheek, and a bird's nest upon his head. Wolff asked him, ' How can one ditain the knowledge of God 1 ' He replied, ' Do not ask me questions ; you may look at me, for I am God ! ' Wolff indignantly said to him, ' You Avill go to hell if you speak in such a way.' " The subtle pantheism of the ascetic absorbed into Vishnoo was beyond the Judaeo- Christian dervish. He left soon after for Yemen and Abys- sinia, whence we shall hear from him again. A wandering missionary of like zeal but more intensity of spirit visited Bombay in the same year, Mr. Anthony Groves of Exeter, first and most catholic of those who call themselves " The Brethren." Having parted with all he possessed, according to his rendering of Christ's precept — " Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth," as expounded in a pamphlet on Christian Devotedness, he proceeded by St. Petersburg to Baghdad in 1831, and there commenced his mission. He had as his secretary, and the tutor of his children, the deaf lad who afterwards became remarkable as Dr. Kitto. Plague, inundation, and famine, broke up the schools in which he gave a Christian education to eighty children under five masters. His own wife and children fell victims, and in 1833 he visited India to learn lithographic printing, and acquaint himself with the experience of men like Duff and Wilson. But his specu- lative views were too far advanced for that. He was a dervish of a different type from the buoyant Wolff, but still a dervish. He held that, as the gospel Avas to be preached for a witness by missionaries supported by the free-will offerings of Christendom, before the end come, no mission should continue in the same place for more than five years. After a visit to England he returned with a considerable reinforcement of coadjutors in 1836, On both occasions Mr, Wilson showed 1833.] FltAXCIS WILLLUI NKWMAX. /5 him that hospitality and did him that social service, which Avere already beginning to be drawn npon by all visitors who could plead any interest of any kind in the East and its people. Another type of missionary policy was supplied by Mr. Francis William Newman, brother of the greater John Henry Kewman, and son of a well-known banker. After giving brilliant promise, since well redeemed, as Fellow of Balliol up to 1830, Mr. F. W. Newman drifted away from the Thirty- Nine Articles into the views of Mr. Groves, whose pamphlet attracted him also to Baghdad. There he hoped to draw the IMuhammadans to the Arian form at least of Christianity, by such purely moral evidence of its superiority as the lives of really disinterested Englishmen might supply. He dreamed of a colony " so animated by faith, primitive love, and dis- interestedness, that the collective moral influence of all might interpret and enforce the words of the few who preached." He looked for success "where the natives had gained experi- ence in the characters of the Christian family around them." This was precisely Avhat Wilson, of all missionaries who have ever worked in the East, did in Bombay ; but he succeeded where Mr. F. W. Newman soon failed, because he never ceased to show that a disinterested life and the Christian family sprang directly out of those "mystical doctrines of Christianity" which the author of that sadly suggestive book the Phases of Faith, '^ began by postponing. Wolff, Groves, and F. W. Newman were all on one right track, the superiority of what is called the internal evidences, of arguments addressed to the moral and spiritual faculties of heathen and Muhammadan. So had Wilson begun, and so did he continue all through his career, from the letter quoted at page 46, to his testimou}-, along Avith that of Bishop French of Lahore, regarding the importance of witness-ljearing, at the Allahabad Conference in 1873. But Wilson did not make the mistake of cutting the stream off below the fountain-head, and hence the pemnanent and developing fruitfulness of his work to all time and among all creeds and classes. Francis Newman returned to England in two years, himself partly affected by a ]\Iuliammadan car- ^ Compare tlie " second jieriod " of that book entitled Strivings after a inore Primitive Christianit)j with the greater Axjulurjia of his brother, Joiin Henry Newman, now Cardinal. 76 LIFE OF JOHX WILSON. [1835. penter of Aleppo, to find tlie Tractarian movement beginning, and his brother and his whole family alienated from him. He would not return to the East ; considei'ing the idea of a Chris- tian Church propagating Christianity while divided against itself to be ridiculous. So Ecclesiasticism drove him out, he thinks ; and we may admit this much, that Protestant Evan- gelicalism lost not a little in the brothers Newman, abroad and at home, whoever was to blame. The unity Avhich each has to this day sought they would have found, as John Wilson did, in catholic work for the Master, pursued in loving co- operation Avith missionaries of all eects in India. The mission in Baghdad and Persia, abandoned by Groves and Newman, he in due time did his best to revive with the only means at his disposal. In 1835 the society which Mr. Wilson had gradually gathered around him lost its greatest lay ornament in the death of Mr. Eobert C. Money, secretary to the Government. The son of Wilberforce's friend, he had ever shown in Bombay all the excellencies of " the Clapham sect," as a devoted mem- ber of the Church of England. Under the Charter of 1833 Archdeacon Carr had become the first Bishop of Bombay, and the Church Missionary Society had received a new impetus there. From the first Mr. Money became the attached friend of Mr. Wilson, and co-operated with him in every good work. Men of all classes, native as Avell as Englisli, united to^ raise as his memorial the Church of England Institution, or English College, in Bombay, which bears his name. Mr. Wilson was for some time engaged in the preparation for the press of a memoir, and of the papers, of one Avho, like Mr. Webb and Mr. Law at the same time, and Sir Bartle Frere at a later period, reflected lustre on the Bombay Civil Service. To the regret of all classes in the Presidency, Sir John Malcolm resigned the office of Governor at the close of 1830, and with that ceased those splendid services to India and Asia right up to the Caspian, Avhich justified Sir Walter Scott's eulogies and the great Duke's friendship. Not the least valued, certainly not the least sincere, of the addresses presented to his Excellency who had come out to India as an infantry cadet at thirteen, was that which Mr. Wilson Avrote and signed as Secretary to the Bombay Missionaiy Union. At a time when the Charter of 1833 had not removed the silly opposi- 1835.] SIR JOHN MAL(:OL:\r — SIR ROBF.RT (JIIANT. 77 tion of the East India Compan}^, these men, some of whom had been driven from Calcutta and for a time threatened with expulsion from Bombay, thanked "the Honourable ]\Iajor- General Malcolm, G.C.B., Governor of Bombay, for the faci- lities which he has granted for the preaching of the gospel in all parts of the Bombay territories, for his favourable exertions for the abolition of Suttee, and for the kind manner in which he has countenanced Christian education." His re^dy was that of the purely secular but truly tolerant statesman. He begged Mr. Wilson to assure the missionaries " that it is solely to their real and Christian humility, combined, as I have ever found it, with a spirit of toleration and good sense, that I owe any power I have possessed of aiding them in their good and pious objects, wdiich . . . must merit and receive the support of all who take an interest in the promotion of knowledge, the advancement of civilisation, and the cause of truth." So had Mountstuart Elphinstone spoken before him. So, and even still more warmly, did Lord William Bentinck afterwards reply to a favourable address from the Calcutta missionaries. Sir John Malcolm met in Egypt his successor. Lord Clare, whose Irish blood he found inflamed because of the delay in the arrival of the steamer at Cosseir. The Earl of Clare was folloAved in 1835 by Sir Eobert Grant, who keenly sympa- thised with Mr. Wilson and his work on its highest side. Lord Clare had, indeed, specially requested Mr. Stevenson to con- tinue to give religious instruction in the Poona School at first established by that missionary, after it had been transferred to the Government, and he had privately assisted missions. But Sir Robert Grant was a man to Avhom Wilson could, in the first year of his administration, jDublicly apply this language when appropriately dedicating to his Excellency a sermon on "The British Sovereignty in India." The dedication was based on " the confidence which I entertain, grounded both on your well-know^n sentiments and your actings since your arriviil in this Presidency, that the cause of Christian and general philanthropy in India, so dear to the heart of your distinguished father, will ever secure your warmest support in the high station in which God in his providence has placed you." Sir Kobert Grant, and his elder brother Lord Glenelg, were sons w^orthy of Charles Grant, who, from his earliest experience as a Bengal civilian in 177G, had devoted himself 78 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1835. to the moral and spiritual regeneration of the people of India. Afterwards, as author of the Observations on the Moral Con- dition of the Hindoos and the Means of Improving it, which were written in 1792, and have almost the character of prediction; as chairman of the Court of Directors and member for the county of Inverness, he proved to be the mainspring of all the reforms which were forced by successive charters on the East India Company, up to that of 1833. While his elder son assisted him in the House of Commons, and afterwards as a Cabinet Minister and a peer, it fell to Sir Robert to carry out in Western India the enlightened provisions of that char- ter. This he did with a wisdom and a success Avhich more than justified Mr. Wilson's eulogy ; while in his private char- acter he became, when at the head of the Bombay Government, the author of those hymns, four of which Lord Selborne has embalmed for ever in his Booh of Praise, among the four hun- dred best sacred lyrics of the language. The name of the author of the strains beginning " Saviour, when in dust I lie," and " When gathering clouds around I view," will be always dear to Christendom ; but these hymns were the least of his services to its cause. His last act as Governor of Bombay was to request Mr. Wilson to submit to Government a plan for the practical encouragement of a sound and useful educa- tion of the natives, by whomsoever conducted, whether by the State, by missionaries, or by natives themselves. The sermon on the British Sovereignty in India, which, on the 8th of November 1835, Mr. Wilson i>reached in St, Andrew's Kirk for the Scottish Mission, marks the broad imperial view which he had already learned to take of our position in Southern India as rulers, and of our relation to the feudatory Princes who have been incorporated with our poli- tical system by Lord Canning's patent only since the Mutiny of 1857. The preacher's subject was the not dissimilar mis- sion of Cyrus (Isaiah xlv. 1-4, 6-13). Mr. Wilson sj^oke at an "epoch-making" time, when the Charter of 1833 had in India just began to operate in the two directions of opening the trade of the East India Company to the world, and securing the education of the people in the English language, and all that that fact involved. He was too wise and equitable a missionary to exaggerate his success on the one hand, or to argue on the other that the progress of the Christian church 1835.] EARLY MISSIONARY QUESTIONS. 79 in India wonld have been greater if the State had devoted piihlic funds to it as well as to education. At a later period, in 1849, he thus wrote : " Thougli it be devoutly admitted that the exalted Saviour demands the homage of governments and communities as well as of individuals, it is obvious that the professed expression of that homage by the exaction of pecu- niary contribution in support even of Christian Institutions, from an unwilling people, may be questioned without any want of loyalty to Christianity itself." All through this period the Bombay Union of Missionaries showed great activity in the number and variety of the ques- tions which it discussed. Mr. Wilson was the secretary and the most energetic member. Now we find him in 1832 sub- mitting a petition, presented by Lord Bexley to the House of Lords, for the amelioration of the Hindoo and Muhamma- dan laws of property and inheritance as they affected converts to Christianity, which resulted in Lord William Bentinck's first concession on that point, to be completed long after by Lord Dalhousie and Lord Lawrence. Again he reports on the purchasing and i^eceiving donations of Oriental works for the use of the Union. Now he gives information regarding the similar Christian Union in China. Again he seeks light on the delicate questions raised by converts as to marriage and divorce, which he helped Sir Henry Maine and the Legislature to settle half a century after. Then he projioses such ques- tions as these — '" Are there any instances of a remarkable progress of Christianity among a people without the gospel being previously, generally, and simultaneously, proclaimed among them?" "How is the statement that Christ is an object of worship in his entire person consistent with the declaration that Christians worship the immaterial God alone V " What influences tend to modify and destroy Caste f The growing extension of intemperance and drunkenness under the excise and opium laws, among communities who are temperate by climate, custom, and creed, gave at that early period a peculiar interest to the question which was thus decided : " The Union are of the opinion that it is the duty of all Chris- tians in India to promote and encourage the cause of temper- ance societies ; that these societies should be formed upon the principles of the Bible, and that they should exhibit the pre- valence of Christian principles as the grand means of pro- 80 LIFE OF JOHN AVILSOX. [1835. ducing temperance ; also that they should be formed upon the principle of entire abstinence from all ardent spirits, opium, tobacco, and other intoxicating drugs, except when used as medicines, or in cases of extreme urgency and neces- sity ; and moderation in the use of fermented and other liquors." The spirit of union and co-operation which always marks the various missionaries abroad in the face of the common foe, was further illustrated by a communication from the Presby- tery of Kaflfraria, which expressed a desire for friendly corre- spondence. To the somewhat narrow remark that Caivinistic Presbyterian missionaries should be more united than they are, or than the Churches at home, Mr. Wilson appended the characteristic note, "We would add in the spirit of gospel Catholicism — and all Christian missionaries." This letter, dated 4th July 1832, and signed "John Bennie, Moderator," describes the work of four missionaries at Chumee and Love- dale, " the two oldest stations, Avhere there is a considerable population," and Pirie and Burnshill. In the half-century since we get this glimpse at South Africa, Lovedale has become the brightest light among its tribes, and the native question has again and again sought a settlement, in the East Indian sense, by seven wars. India itself and China were soon after to lose their two foremost scholar-missionaries, in the death of Dr. Carey at Serampore on the 9th June 1834, at the age of seventy-three; and of Dr. Morrison at Canton on the 1st August, at the comparatively early age of fifty-three. Mr. Wilson, who was still beginning in Western India and Asia the preparatory work that they had done so well for Eastern and Northern India, and for China and Eastern Asia, wrote thus of the two men whose special merits he, of all others, was best fitted to describe : — " Dr. Carey, tlie first of living missionaries, the most honoured and the most successful since the time of the apostles, has closed his long and in- fluential career. Indeed his spirit, his life, and his labours were truly- apostolic. Called from the lowest class of the people, he came to this country without money, without friends, without learning. He was exposed to severe persecution, and forced for some time to labour with his own hands for his support ; yet then even, in his brief intervals of leisure, he found time to master the Hebrew and Bengalee languages, to make considerable progress in the Sanskrita, and to write with his ovm hand a complete version of the Scriptures in the language of the country. The Spirit of God, which was in 1S35.] CAREY AND MORRISON. 81 him, led him forward from stren^li to streiigtli, supported him umk-r priva- tion, enaliled him to overcome in a fight that seemed witliout hope. Like the beloved disciple, whom he resembled in simplicity of mind, and in seeking to draw sinners to Christ altogether by the cords of love, he outlived his trials to enjoy a peaceful and honoured old age, to know that his Master's cause was prospering, and that his own name was named witli reverence and blessing in every country where a Christian dwelt. Perhaps no man ever exerted a gi-eater inlluence for good on a great cause. Who that saw him, poor, and in seats of learning ^inedncated, embark on such an enterprise, could ever dream that, in little more than forty years, Christendom should be animated with the same spirit, thousands forsake all to follow his example, and that the word of life should be translated into almost every language, and preached in almost every corner of the earth?" " Dr. Morrison, whose name will be held in everlasting remembrance, died at Canton on the 1st of August last, at the age of fifty-three. He had laboured as a missionary for nearly twenty-seven years in China, and (with the assistance of Dr. Milne in some of the books) translated the Scriptures into Chinese, compiled and published a cojnous Chinese dictionary, and several important philological works, prepared and circulated many Chinese tracts, founded the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, and proved the means of the conversion and scriptural education of Leang Afa, who is now labouring, with some success, as a native preacher. He was also for several years interpreter to the English Factory, and he supported himself, and contributed much to the cause of missions, from the salary which he received in consequence of the situation which he thus held." More than any other missionary in the East, Mr. Wilson proved to be the successor of these two men. It is a subject of regret that he could not become the biographer of Carey, whose life has yet to be worthily written. The Memoir by Eustace Carey, his nephew, was written avowedly at the request of the Baptist Missionary Society, which had mis- understood Dr. Carey from the first, and it is unworthy of the subject. The Lives of the Serampore Missionaries, by the late John Clark Marshman, C.S.I. , is the most valuable contribution yet made to the history of Christian and social progress in India, by one who is emphatically the Historian of British India before the Mutiny ; but its theme is too wide to represent William Carey in all the details of his unique career. 82 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1831. CHAPTEE V. 1830-18.35. TOURS TO NASIK ; TO JALNA AND ELORA ; TO GOA, IvOLHAPORE, AND MAHABLESHWAR. Man the Missionary's business — Tours of Officials and Missionaries — John Wilson a delightful companion — First 2'our with Mr. Farrar — The Glories of the Ghauts — The Ramoshee Brigands — Brahmanical Opjiosition at Nasik — The Sacred Godavery — Second Tour to Jalna — Battle of Korigaum — Ahmedabad — Worship of the Monkey God — Historical Characters — The Telescope and Hindooism — A Christian Government quoted against Christianity — Elora — Christ preached in the Cave Temple of Kailas — Opposition of the Military Authorities at Jalna — Mr. Wilson seriously injured by a Horse — Strange Iconoclasm — Christian Sectarianism out of place in India — Third Tour to Goa — Old Scenes in the Konkan — Dr. Claudius Buchanan — The Inquisition at Goa — New and Old Goa — Forged Romish Vedas — Latin Conversations with Portuguese Priests — A Blushing Prioress — His Excellency the Vice Rey — The Augiistinians and Franciscans — The Representatives of Sivajee — The Raja of Kolhapore — Satara — Mahableshwar — A Tiger springs vip near Mr. Wilson. " The business of the missionary is Avitli man," was a saying of Dr. Chalmers that Mr. Wilson frequently quoted. To know India, of all countries, is to be familiar with its people ; to be acquainted with its princes ; and to understand the relation of the British Government and its administrative systems to both. For a missionary to know India, he must add to all that the study, at first hand, of its religions and their learned men, Brahmanical, Muhammadan, and Non- Aryan. He must possess the ability to lay a pure and a historical Christianity alongside both the administrative systems and the religious philosophies or cultures, so as to saturate the former with the positive and direct moral spirit which they necessarily lack from political conditions, and to overthrow the latter by the more purely spiritual and potent force of Christ Himself. The ordinary missionary will do well 183].] now TO KNOW INDIA. 83 if he confines his energy to one of the three faiths. As a matter of fact, most Indian missionaries have worked among the Hindoo or the aboriginal communities, who are vast enough. But Mr. Wilson was a pioneer whose deliberate equipment, as well as his evangelic ambition allowed no human or traditional substitute for Christianity to remain unstudied or unattacked. The official, civilian or soldier, however zealous, has to be content Avith the indirect and frequently unconscious disintegration which has been going on in India ever since Clive obtained the civil government at Benares from the effete emperor, Shah Alum. But, freed from the lower responsilnlity of political considei-ations, Mr. Wilson could use all that makes the civilian efficient, and press it home at once with a moral disinterestedness and a spiritual force, Avhich the natives, high and low, were not slow to ap- preciate. Like the civilian, and to a far greater extent than the averaije of the eiirht or nine hundred members of the covenanted civil service who have always governed the millions of India so well, he held the key to the ears and hearts of the people in a knowledge of their languages and hoary civilisa- tions, Aryan and Semitic. Like the district officer and com- missioner, too, but with a freedom and over an extent of territory they rarely know, he made his almost annual tours, east, and south, and north, to the very centre of India, to Goa, and again to the far Indus and the courts of Rajpootana, till he knew peasant and prince, rude ascetic, sacerdotal Brahman, and scornful Moulvie, as no one hedged round by officialism could do. Next to mastering the languages it was his object to mix with the people who spoke them. His model was no lower than " Our Lord and His apostles," with whom he had more than once to silence ignorant critics in England. " Wherever," he wrote, " the objects of their ministry most advantageously presented themselves, they Avere prepared to fulfil it. The temple, the synagogue, and the private apartment ; the narrow street and the public highway ; the open plain and the lofty mount ; the garden and the wilderness ; the bank of the river and the margin of the sea ; were equally hallowed by these heavenly teachers." And he, like them, was in the East ! "But many say, 'Leave this preaching without doors to native agents, who Avill be best able to bear the exposure 84 LIFE OF JOHX AVILSOX. [1831. connected with it.' . . . Even after we have been blessed, through God's mercy, with native preachers, we must for some time show them in our own persons the lively example of an apostolic ministration. . . . Xenophon remarked that the Asiatics would not fight unless under Greek auxiliaries." The " exposure " Mr. Wilson ridiculed, although his most fruitful tours were made at an early period, when even roads were not, and a paternal government had not doubled its debt to develop the resources of the country by great public works. Rarely did he find a comfortable post-house or even tolerable resting-place when out of the beaten track of military stations and civilian hospitalities. Studying nature as well as man ; preaching, speaking, examining daily ; keeping up the correspondence rendered necessary by his supervision of the still infant Mission in Bombay ; answering references of all kinds from missionaries, officials, and scholars, he found — because he made — the tour a holiday. On such occasions he carried a few books in an old satchel, manuals, sometimes in manuscript, of the botany, geology, and political relations with the feudatory princes, being as indispensable as the bundles of vernacular and Sanskrit writings which he circulated. Thus he was never alone, and every tour added to his multi- farious collection of objects of natural history and archaeology, to say nothing of Oriental MSS., on which he lectured to his students and friends. When accompanied by a brother missionary, and frequently by survey and settlement officers, like Colonel Davidson, whom he met in his wanderings, he proved the most genial of companions. His stores of informa- tion, old and new, interspersed with humorous anecdote and a child-like fun, turned the frequent mishaps of jungle journeys into sources of amusement. And then, when the travelling or the preaching of the day was done, and the rough dinner was over at the tent door or in the native "dhurmsala," or enclosed quadrangle, there went up to heaven the family supplication for Gentile and Jew, and dear ones near and far away. To be on tour in the glorious cold season of India, from November to March, is to enjoy life in the purest and most intelligent fashion, whether it be in the Viceroy's camp or in the more modest tent of the district ci\41ian. To be on a missionary tour with one who thus understands the people and loves them, is to know the highest form of enjoyment that travel can give. 1831.] OX TOUR WITH JOHN WILSON. 85 Mr. Wilson's first tour commenced in the middle of Janu- ary 1831, after a year of organising work in Bombay. His companion Avas the Rev. Mr. Farrar,' of the Church Missionary Society, who was just beginning to be able to speak to the Marathas. They rode upwards of 400 miles. Their most distant point was the sacred Brahmanical city of Nasik, on the upper waters of the Godavery. They set out by the Bhore Ghaut, now on the Madras line of railway, by Poona, and Ahmednuggur, and returned by the Thull Ghaut, now ascended by the railway to Calcutta. They sailed from Bombay to Panwel, on the mainland, passing the cave-temple islands of Elephanta, Salsette, and Karanja, which Mr. Wilson had pre- viously visited with the civilian scholars Messrs. Law and Webb. At the next village he met Avith the first specimens of those aboriginal tribes of the jungle for whom he was to do so much, the Katkarees, who prepare catechu. His first view of the glories of the Ghauts of the Syhadree range he thus describes : — " As we rose from the valley a most majestic scene began to unfold itself. AVhen I beheld hill rising upon hill, and mountain upon mountain — the sun setting in glory behind the towering clouds — the distant ocean, forests, rivers, and villages — and when, looking around me, I observed, amid this scene of grandeur, a single stone usurping the place of Jehovah, the Creator of all, I felt and expressed the utmost horror at idolatry, and the baseness, guilt, and stupidity of man." Some experience of Poona convinced him of the superior importance of Bombay as a centre. On their way to Ahmed- nuggur one of the servants was attacked by the Ramoshee tribe of robbers, at that time scouring the country under their famous leader Oomajee Naik, compared Avith whom, writes Mr. AVilson, Rob Roy might be reckoned an honest man. But Nasik was the point of interest, a place of Avhich Mr. Wilson used to say that it first stoned him, and, forty years after, would not allow him to leave Western India for a time without presenting him with a eulogistic and grateful address on pai'chment from its principal inhabitants of every sect. ^ Dr Wilson used to tell afterwards how he dandk'd Mr. Farrar's boy, the present Canon Farrar, on his knee. But of his Anglo-Indian childhood Canon Farrar assures us he has only a dim remembrance. 86 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1832. Nasik was soon after occupied by the Church Missionary Society, who have established- there the Christian village of Sharanpoor, an industrial settlement with a congregation of five hundred, of whom some two hundred are communicants, and a training school for freed Africans, who helped Dr. Livingstone. The Godavery river, the scenery on the lower reaches of which Sir Charles Trevelyan, when Governor of Madras, compared to that of the Khine between Coblentz and Bingen, rises at the village of Trimbuk, only fifty miles from the Indian Ocean at Bombay, and sixteen miles south-west of Nasik. The Maratha Brahmans give out that its source is connected, by a divine underground channel, with that of the Ganges in the snows of the Himalayas. The traditional foun- tain is a stone platform, approached by a flight of 690 stone steps, on a hill behind Trimbuk village. On to that platform the stream falls from the rock, drop by drop, into the mouth of an idol, out of which the water trickles into a reservoir. Sir Eichard Temple, when Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, sketched the beauties of the river alike with brush and pen. It has been the scene of the greatest successes as well as the most serious and expensive failures of the Madras school of Irrigation. Of the second tour, eastward to Jalna and the caves of Elora, in the native State of Hyderabad, the country which the British Government had saved for the Nizam all through the chaos of Maratha, Hyder Ali, and Tippoo wars, we have an account from Mr. Wilson's own pen, in letters to his wife. At a time and in a country for the greater portion of which there were no maps, we find the tour duly marked out in a chart shoAving the road or track, on one side of it every village with the number of its houses, and on the other the day and date on which each was reached. The Eev. James Mitchell was his companion. After Poona they walked or rode short stages of from ten to fourteen miles a day at first. At Alandi, the first stage onward, they found a great assemblage for the festival of Inanoba, a god of whom Mr. Wilson gives a humorous, but, towards the people, kindly account, published in the Memoir of his wife. At the next village, Phulshuhur, he inspected a settlement which Avas the first of a curious experiment intended to train that most valuable but neglected class, the Eurasians, to agricultural pursuits. Sir John Mai- 1S32.] HIS SECOND TOUR TO JALXA. 87 colm, ill his farewell minute of 1830, had discussed the sub- ject to which the present Governor of Bombay, Sir R. Temple, has given attention. The record of this tour, like the encounter with the Ramoshee brigands in that which preceded it, throws light on the riots and robberies which have again broken out in the Bombay Dekhan to an alarming extent : — " The Colossal Pillar at Korigaum. — This moiniment was erected by the British Governnieut in commemoration of the brave resistance made by Captain Staunton. The piHar is tastefully constnxcted. It is in charge of a Sepoy, who was engaged in the action which it commemorates. He gave us a l^lain account of the battle. " The Headman of Shikrapoor. — After we had preached in the village, and distributed books and tracts, the Patel sent for us. The court of his house was large, but it bore marks of decay. He received us very kindly, and invited us into an inner apartment. As soon as we had sat down he brought out a box containing about twenty very handsome European engravings. He requested us to translate all their titles into Marathee, and to write them upon the covers. We complied with his request ; and he told us that never in his life, advanced now to seventy years, had he met such Saliebs as we. We preached the gospel to him ; and he furnished us with pan siqjdri (betel nut and a gi-een leaf), according to the native custom. Mr. Mitchell had a great aversion to chew his offering, and he almost spoilt our discourse by pleading in excuse the force of habit. " Ahmedabad is situated to the westward of Seroor. The village is much gone to decay, on account of the road to Poona having been changed by the English. It is remarkable for nothing but the residence of the oldest repre- sentative of the once famous house of Pawar, of wliich an interesting account is given by Sir John Malcolm. We visited the old man, according to his per- sonal invitation, and were received with much kindness. We were surprised to find that he was unable to read. He showed us the different buildings connected vnth his ivcula (palace), and we endeavoured to engage the interest of his mind by giving him and his few attendants a simple statement of the gospel, and by allowing him to view the neighbourhood through the medium of Mr. Mitchell's telescope. "Worship of Hanuman, the Monkey God. — In most of the villages of the Dekhan there is a small temple of Hanumau, under the name of Marwate, without the principal gate. The images are exceedingly rude. They are liberally besmeared with red lead : and, alas ! they are viewed as tlie guardians and benefactors of the neighbourhood, and frequently resorted to. One of them fronted the place in which we usually sat at Paruer. Tlie votaries gener- ally walked twelve or nineteen times round it, and prostrated themselves before it, and sometimes refrigerated it with cold water and adorned it with gar- lands. A great majority of tliem were females demanding the boon of child- ren. The exercise which they take in connection with their worsliip may not be without effect. " The Character of the Natives of these agi-icultural districts is almost daily sinking in my estimation. Falsehood and dishonesty, and, when jiracti- cable, incivility, are daily brought before my notice. During the night which we spent in Jumgaum, we required a guard of two Ramoshees, tliree Bheels, and two Mhars ! The latter individuals were always on tlie watcli to give the alarm. The others, who, as you know, are professed robbers, think it beneath their dignity to keep their eyes open even wlieu they are paid for their guard- 88 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1832. iansMp, and represent it as necessary, as I believe it is, to the safety of tra- vellers. Wlien we an-ived at Niniba Dera, on the forenoon of Tuesday the 28th November, we were met by a most impertinent Brahman, who first by falsehood, and afterwards by passion, endeavoured to drive us from the only place where we could get shelter from the sun. He was joined by a com- panion, who without hesitation uniteain from the blow, which was inflicted on the front bone of my right leg below the knee ; but I have reason to be thankfiU that no sei-ious clanger is apprehended. At first I had a few convulsive shocks ; but they soon went ott'. I am entirely free from sickness, and the injury appears inconsiderable. "22fZ December. — I am now so well that I write to you upon my chair. D. V. I preach to-morrow evening sitting. On Monday I propose to set out for my dearest love. I have engaged twelve porters to carry me down for Rs.112. " Nandoor Nimbha and Shingw'a, 2%th December. — We left Shivagaum early in the morning, and proceeded to Nandoor Nimbha. This village is small, and almost all the male inhabitants of it, and a few females, had an opportunity of hearing the Gosi^el. We oft'ered them Rs.8 for their village gods ; but they said that they were afraid to part with them. We proposal that the power of the idols should be i^ut to the test ; and to our astonishment they consented. The headman handed a large club to Mr. Mitchell, for the purpose of striking them ; and he dealt out three heavy blows upon Hanuman. His lordship received them with great meekness, and without showing the least symptom of displeasure. The villagers stood aghast ; but they immedi- ately destroyed their convictions by alleging that our virtue gave us a gi'eat power over the gods, which they coidd never exercise. Death, they said, would be the consequence of their inflicting a blow. Thus Satan preserves them in their strong delusions. " Kallian, Wi Januanj. — We passed through Raliata on our way to Kallian. The villagers assembled in considerable numbers to hear the Gospel ; but we remarked that the facilities for collecting them are not so great in the Konkan as in the Dekhan. In the latter jirovince the villages are all enclosed within walls, and their houses are not so scattered as those in the villages below the Ghat. In the Dekhan, moreover, there is generally an oj^eii space near one of the gates where all business is transacted, and where we can always find auditors without much trouble, and to which there is nothing cor- respondent in the Konkan. The villages on the sea coast, however, have one advantage. They are on the whole more thriving and populous." 92 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1833. Jalna, where for the hour the military authorities opposed Mr. Wilson's benevolent work even more effectually than the Brahmans had done in the previous year at Nasik, has, like that station, since become the scene of the very successful mission conducted by the Rev, Narayan Sheshadri, one of his converts. This tour deserves notice on its European side. Chaplains, still too few for the wants of the troops, or so employed that the troops are not cared for first, were fewer still before the Charter of 1833 enlarged the ecclesiastical establishment. A sacerdotal conflict between the Metropolitan of Calcutta and the Government of India first led Lord William Bentinck to decide, as had been done in 1813, that the chaplains are the officials of Government, just as the churches are its property. The English in India were too few, and heathenism was too strong for sectarian bigotry to have then shown itself In the time of Claudius Buchanan, the author of the ecclesiastical establishment, and till the arrival of Bishop Middleton and Dr. Bryce in Calcutta, such a spirit was unknown. Hence Mr. Wilson preached in the Jalna Church, and in the same service the chaplain from Secunderabad read prayers previous to the sermon. The Presbyterian's comment is — " This was very liberal." But when, soon aftei', the Bishop, Daniel Wilson, made his first metropolitan tour after his defeat by Lord William Bentinck, he forbade this " irregularity " in a general circular to the chaplains. Long after, his noble successor. Bishop Cotton, arranged with Government that the ecclesiastical buildings of the State should be used, when necessary, for Presbyterian as well as Episcopalian services. Having thus surveyed the Marathee-speaking country north-west to Nasik and south-west to Poona, and thence into the native State of the Muhammadan Nizam of Hydera- bad, Mr. Wilson gave up the cold season of 1833-34 to the southern Maratha country and the adjoining settlement of the Portuguese at Goa. His colleague, the Rev. James Mitchell, was again his companion. A sea passage of fifteen hours took them to the old scenes at Hurnee, and thence to the southern boundary of the former Konkan mission. At the shrine of the elephant-god Gunesh, endowed with £120 a year, paid at that time through the British Government, an incident occurred which is a parallel to Cicero's remark on 1833.] HIS FIRST VISIT TO GOA. 93 the two Augurs. An old Brahman, who had come from Satara to sec the god, was reproved because, at the close of a meal and before he had performed ablution, he had happened to touch one of the officiating priests. The old man imme- diately retorted, " Hullo, my religious friend, you have for- gotten to wipe the sandal-wood from your forehead " — in other words, you have either forgotten to-day to purify }'our- self or to remove the sign of your uncleanness. The jjriest confessed that he stood corrected, and he gave a hypocritical laugh. He had pretended holiness to gain the respect of the stranger Brahman. At a village farther south, when passing the tombs usually erected over widows who have burned with their dead husbands, Mr. Wilson expressed his feelings to a Brahman, who replied that he approved of Suttee, but did not find fault Avith the British Government for abolishins' it. To him, as to the mass of Hindoos, the order of an abso- lute Government was sufficient to alter or prohibit even a religious rite, when that was contrary to natural religion or morality ; just as the teaching of an absolute priesthood had, by a previous generation, been accepted as an authority for burning widows who, if childless, otherwise enjoyed the life- rent of their husbands' estates. The natural spring at this shrine was believed to come, undei'ground, from the Ganges, hundreds of miles to the north, wherefore Mr. Wilson read to the worshippers notes Avhich he had taken of the lectures on hydrography in the University of Edinburgh. His explana- tion was confirmed by a young English-speaking Hindoo, whom he had known in Bombay, and who had come from a distance of ten miles to pay his respects to the missionary. Thus already, in four years, the merely scientific truth radiating out from Bombay, through English, into the jungles of Maharashtra, and the notes of an Edinburgh lecture-room were used to overthrow Gunesh with the aid of an educated Hindoo. Farther on ]\Ir. Wilson saved from the infamy of their lives, in future, a widow and two daughters who asked alms for the temple to which they were attached, by aiTanging to send them to the destitute girls' school which he had opened in Bombay. They proved in after years to be devoted Christians. The connection between the Government and idolatry was found at almost every step. At Kampta the town-clerk, a 94 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1833. learned Brahnican, " told us that the whole village belonged to Bhagwati (an idol), and that the English Government was so kind as to collect and pay over the revenue to the idol. I ex- pressed my deep regret to him, that, in making the settlement of the country, the Company's servants had fallen into the error and sin of associating themselves Avith superstition ; and informed him that many of them were aware of the evil, and that it would probably soon be rectified. There is scarcely a temple in this part of the country which has not an allowance from the revenue. The Mahalkaree of Kharipatan showed me a list of the sums granted in his district. I was perfectly thunderstruck on reading it. Even temples that are almost forsaken by the natives are not overlooked. Ten or twelve of this description had an allowance of five or six rupees per annum. I asked how these sums were expended. ' In buying light for the god,' Avas his reply. ' The allowance,' he added, is ' charit- able ; many Brahmans, also, have grants.' I trust that the time is not far distant when all these sums will be profitably employed in promoting the education of the people." That is the sort of disestablishment Avhich the British Government, as such, can do little directly to bring about as the crowning result of its recent efforts to leave all manage- ment of the shrines to the worshippers, and all disputes about the property to the ordinary civil courts. But the time is not so hopelessly distant as may appear at first, when Mr. Wilson's foresight may be justified, by the educated natives themselves insisting on saving from the fraudulent greed of their priests the enormous endowments intended in many cases to act as a poor-law, and transferring them to the education of their chil- dren, for which they are now compelled to pay a cess on the land-tax. At Vingorla, a port to Avhich the frequent famines have led Government to direct their attention recently as likely to be the best on the Western coast, next to Bombay itself, for the import or export of grain, Mr. Wilson and his companion took boat again for Teracol, the first village belonging to the Por- tuguese. Just a quarter of a century had passed since, in 1808, Goa, the capital of all that was left of the once pro- mising empire of Vasco de Gama and Albuquerque, Avhich Camoens had sung in his Lus'iad, had been visited by a Chris- tian ecclesiastic whom, in many respects, John Wilson closely 1834.] GOA AXD CLArDIUS BUCHANAN. 95 resembled. Claudius Buchanan Avas the son of an elder of the Kirk, who was the })arish schoohuaster of Cambuslang during Whitefield's preaching. He was educated at Glasgow University, Avas for some time tutor in the old Scottish family of the Campbells of Dunstaffnage, and was about to become a preacher of the Church of Scotland, when, fired by the experi- ence of Goldsmith, he determined first to see the Avorld of Europe. His wanderings ended in the completion of his studies at Cambridge under Isaac Milner, Avhence the first of the Clapham men, Mr. Henry Thornton, sent him out to Cal- cutta as a Company's chaplain in 179G. There his studies, his travels, and his researches soon marked him out to Lord "Wellesley and Lord ]\rinto as an adviser on all educational, philanthrojiic, and scholarly questions. His writings so in- fluenced public opinion in England, that Parliament in 1813 created the ecclesiastical establishment which Charles Grant and "Wilberforce, though aided by Pitt and Dundas, had failed to force on the East India Company in the Charter of 1793 ; that steps were taken to prohibit self-immolation under the car of Jugganath and the pilgrim-tax ; and that the Inquisi- tion was for ever abolished in Portuguese India in 1812. The same evangelical charity, the same scholarly research, the same intellectual breadth of view, the same zeal for the projjagation of Christian truth in the East, marked the two Scotsmen — the one Episcopalian, the other Presbyterian. Mr. Wilson does not fail to note, in the Journal of his visit to Goa, that it Avas " the first since the days of Claudius Buchanan expressly made for the circulation of the Scriptures and other missionary oj^era- tions." Dr. Buchanan's visit to Goa was memorable from his intercourse Avith Josephus a Doloribus, one of the Grand In- quisitors, whose admissions are most important as to the fair- ness of the account of his two years' sufferings under the order of the tribunal by the French adventurer and physician Dellon in 1673-5. In 1808 there Avere upAvards of three thousand priests belonging to Goa, and those Avhom Dr. Buchanan saAV declared they Avould gladly receive copies of the Latin and Portuguese Vulgate from the hands of the English nation. Mr. Wilson had one advantage during his visit in 1834. The recent political changes in the mother country, and the absence of the Archbishop, made the authorities and priests more liberal in their intercourse Avith him. 96 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX, [1834. " Teracol, 2Sth Jan. 1834. — We took an early opportunity of visiting the fort. It is in charge of an old officer, Cajitaiu de Silva. He has been 44 years in India, and never expects to return to Portugal, which he left when he was 14 years old. We conversed with liim about the political affairs of Por- tugal and other subjects. He told us that Donna Maria had been j)roclaimed in all the Goanese territories about two weeks ago, and gave us some of the orders of the day to read. He represented the whole province as in a state of lierfect quietness. I offered a Portuguese Bible to him. He said that almost the only book which he read was a short treatise on the sufierings of Christ by D' Almeida ; but he intimated his readiness to accept a Bible, provided his padre would allow him. The padre was sent for. I held a long conversation with him in Latin. He granted permission to the Captain to receive the Bible, and on my offering one to himself he said, Habeo tibi gratias. He gave me an account of the state of the Romish Church in the territories of Goa, and in return I described to him the state and principles of the Churches of Scotland and England. He showed us his chapel, remarking parva est. Pointing to the different figures near the altar, he denominated them imago Salvatoris, imago mirificce Virginis, imago Sancti Antonii, etc. The following conversation then took j^lace. J. W. Usus imaginum in ecclesia est contra Dei secundum mandamentum. Padre. In Novo Testamento imaginum iisus permittititr. J. W. In quo loco permissio invenitur 1 P. Nescio, sed Iwc scio, Ecclesia Romcma pemiittit. J. W. Ecclesia Romana permittit, et Deus inter- dixit. P. Idolatria non est. J. W. Sic aiunt BrachmMnes. We parted on good terms, the Padre promising to call upon us in the evening. He kept his word. In the course of our walk I tried to ascertain his theological sentiments. He said that he believed in the doctrine of predestination ante merita cognita, agreeably to the principles of Augustine. I expressed my accordance with his views. During our conversation on the celibacy of the clergy, he said, In hac civitate PoAi-ci Presbyteri midiehribus furtive utuntur. I urged his admission as a proof of the inexpediency of the vow to observe celibacy made by all the Romish clergy. Few or none of the priests, he observed, knew either Greek or Hebrew. I referred to the Vulgate translation made by St. Jerome as a jjroof that the Romish Church in the days of old was not averse to the use of the Scriptures in the language best understood by the people. He had not formerly adverted to this circumstance ; and admitted that as the lingua, Latina nunc Rovice non in usu est, an Italian translation should be made for that place. We compared the proceedings of Romish and Protestant missionaries. I admitted the learning and piety of Francis Xavier. He con- demned the use of all violence in the propagation of Christianity, and lamented rash admissions into the visible Church. He expressed his surprise at the audiences with which we are favoured, and remarked, 'Gentiles in hoc regione non audiunt.' I advised him to study their langiiages, and to preach the pure doctrines of Christianity. " Late in the evening, when the padre had retired to the fort, about twenty of the inhabitants of the village came to our lodgings. We examined and addressed them in Marathee, which they speak in rather a corrupted form. We gave a few Portuguese tracts and two Testaments to three or four of them who could read them. One of them brought a large folio volume, which he called a Purana, to show to us. It was of Marathee Prakrita, but written in the Roman character. It contained paraphrases of several of the discourses of the apostles, extracts from the Bible, notes on church history, i-efutations of Hiudooism, etc. It is a work of immense labour, and it is creditable to the learning and patience, if not to the piety, of some olden missionary. The owner said that he was in the habit of reading it, in the Brahmanical style, to assemblies at his door." 1834.] ' MORALITY AND LIFE IX GOA. 97 "Was this the -work of the Jesuit Stephens, tlie first Enghsh- man whom "\ve know to have landed in India five years after Francis Xavier's death in October 1579, whose letter to his father, a merchant of London, is found in Hakluyt 1 He pub- lished a Konkanee Grammar, a History of Christ, and an Account 'of Christian Doctrine. The Madura Jesuit, Robert de Nobili's " Fifth Veda," which the French called L'Ezour Vedam, so far deceived Voltaire that he appealed to it as a proof of the superiority of Hindooism to Christianity ! Taking again to the boat, Mr. Wilson spent the time on the way south- ward to Goa in reading the Latin Bible " for the sake of facility in conversation," and Cotineau's Historind Sketch of Goa. " 29th Jamiary 1834. — We lay at the mouth of the Goa river, or rather firth, for about half-au-hour, till we obtained permission to go up to Pangim, or New Goa. The aspect of the country, from the appearance of the villages, churches, and forts, is unlike anything which I have seen in India. Our landing at Pangim rejuinded me much of Cape Town. The houses are, gener- ally speaking, very substantial, and painted white. Many have two stories, and united conical and lofty roofs for every apartment in the uj^per story. We had not been seated for many minutes, when a great number of persons came to us to offer their services. Some of the proposals which were made to us were calcxilated to impress us witli very unfavourable impressions of the morality of the place, and with the beha^•iour of our countrymen who came to visit it. We met them with suitable indignation and reproof. "Two parish priests of Pangim held a discussion with me. They, like the other priests, were anxious to procure books. We gave them, as to all the priests with whom we have had intercourse, a Portuguese Bible, a Latin Bible and New Testament. I offered them a copy of Calvini Institutiones. NoH licet nobis libros heretico legere, was the rejily. Joannes Calvinus vir dodus et "piiis fuit ; ejus opera legere vos decet, was my answer. The merits of the Reformation were shortly discussed. The work of the Genevese Reformer was ultimately carried away by those to whom it was jiroffered. I had a conversation on personal religion with a young lad of twenty, who is at jsresent studying canonical law. " Isi February. — The first sight of Goa is magnificent, although it is at once evident that nothing remains but the churches and some other puV)lic buildings. The walls of the city are now almost entirely destroyed ; but, like Dr. Claudius Buchanan, we entered the city by the palace gate, over which is the statue of Vasco de Gama, the discoverer of the jiassage by the Cape, and one of the first ' Vice-reys ' of India. The hero stands aloft, in vestibus quce decent tempora antiqua. The first building which we visited was the Church of the Palace. It is an exact model of St. Peter's at Rome. It is arched in the roof. Its ]jriiicipal altar is decorated in a style surpassing anything whicli I had formerly seen. Its convent and cloisters are small. It belongs to the Theatins or order of St. Cajetan, who were instituted in Italy by St. Cajetau of Thiena, and by John Caraffa (Pope Paul the Fourth), Bishop of Theato. They were established in Goa in the middle of the seventeenth century. The Italian founders were soon joined by many of the natives. There are at pre- sent no Europeans in the convent. No natives but those of Brahmanical descent are admitted. We saw two of the friars seated in confessionals m the H 98 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, [1834. church. They were lending ear respectively to a woman, and muttering for- giveness. Several other persons of the female sex were prostrating themselves in the church, and waiting the appointed time of disburdening their con- sciences. The Cajetans are the most renowned confessors in the colony. They live almost entirely on the offerings of the superstitious. They seldom exceed fifteen in number, and, owing to the unhealthiness of their situation, are short-lived. " In passing from St. Cajetan's to the Cathedral, we saw the ruins, or rather the site, of the Inquisition, which was founded in 1560, and the court of which was ordered to be suppressed in 1812. The representations of the British were the cause of its destruction. I cordially assent to the only remark which Dr. Buchanan makes on the metropolitan church — ' It is worthy of one of the principal cities of Europe.' We went from the Aljuva to the Monastery of St. Monica. It is the only nunnery in Goa, and was founded by the infamous Dom Fre Alexo de Menezes, archbisliop of Goa, about the year 1600, and by him dedicated to the mother of Augustine. The exterior of the building has nothing remarkable about it. To the cloister we could of course have no access. We were directed to the public hall. We found the abbess and prioress seated in a room adjoining us opposite an iron grating, where alone they could have communication with us. They were both Europeans, and very neatly dressed in white, and attended by two or three female serv^ants. They very readily entered into conversation with us. The abbess entered the convent when she was fifteen years old, and has resided within its walls for forty-four years. The prioress entered it in 1818. She blushed when Sr. CapeUa jokingly told her that, amidst the political changes which are taking place, she would be permitted to leave it and to marry. The abbess told us that, including novices, there are thirty nuns in the establishment at present. Europeans pay Rs.lOOO, and natives double that sum, on their entrance. The funds of the institution are much reduced from the loss of its estates. It receives Rs.lOOO per annum from the Government. The nuns engage in making rosaries, in knitting, and the preparation of sweetmeats and preserves. We bought several articles from them. When we offered them a Portuguese New Testament, the abbess said that she could not take upon herself the responsibility of accepting it. The prioress, however, seized it besides several tracts with joy, kissed it, and said that she would always pray for us. " Precisely at two we saw the doors of the Augustinian Convent thrown open. The prefect of the Augustinian College, and the prior Fre Jose, offered to show us all the buildings, which are nearly as extensive as those of the University of Edinburgh. ' Few cities in Europe,' says M. Cotineau, ' can boast of a finer edifice of the kind ; the cloisters, pillars, galleries, halls, and cells, are all most beautiful. ' What struck me most was the display of por- traits of the martyr missionaries of the order. Many of them are well executed, and represent the friars in the attitude of death. I could not but think with admiration of their devotedness, and wish that more of it were exhibited among Protestants. The view from the turrets is magnificent. We stood almost entranced on first coming into contact with it. We examined the library of the college. The books are fast going to decay. They do not amount, I should think, to more than 1500. Many of them are very old and valuable. I noticed most of the Roman Catholic Church historians referred to by Mosheim. I heard the youths of the noviciate of the college read a little [>atin, and put a few questions to them. A Eurojiean monk followed us witli a very anxious eye. He evidently wished to make some communication to us. We both felt great compassion for hun. The sujierior of the college was very free in his communications. He was much pleased to find our pronunciation of Latin so much like his o'wn. I gave him a Portuguese Bible, and left some 1834.] OLD GOA AND THE SHRINK OF XAVIER. 99 books for the provincial and prior, presented by Mr. J. Wolff and Mr. Parish. Among them was a copy of Keith on Prophecij. May the perusal of them be abundantly blessed ! It was in the cloisters of an Augustinian convent tliat the spark of piety was first kindled in Jlartin Luther. The Augustinians (twelve in number) came first to Goa in 1572. They have a yearly income of Rs.l 5,000, independently of an allowance of Rs.l500 made by the Goa Government. Tliey have several missions in the East under their care. Their vestments are white. These were originally black, but were changed on account of the defection of the German Reformer, of whom his friends were greatly ashamed. They are the most respectable monks in the Catholic Church. Leaving tlie Augustinians, we proceeded to the church of Dom Jesus. It is built in the form of a cross. Though it is a noble edifice we scarcely surveyed it at all. I hastened to the shrine of the celebrated Francis Xavier, of which I had heard much. It surpassed all my expectations, and certainly excels anj'tliing of the kind which I had before seen. It is of copper, richly gilt and ornamented, and placed within a silver incasement. It rests \ipon an altar of Italian marble higldy wrought. There is a vera effigies of the ' Apostle of India ' on the south of the tomb, and a statue of solid silver, which is not exposed to view. He died in the island of Sautian, in the Chinese Seas, in 1552. His body was brought to Goa in 1554. It was exposed to public view till 1780, when it was locked up in its present receptacle. Alas that it should now be viewed as the ' sacred dust ' of a heathen Buddha ! "We reached the Archbishop's palace at Pannelly about half -past five o'clock. The quaternarian kept his appointment and introduced us to the curator of the library, which I was very anxious to examine. It contained about two thousand volumes. Though they are in a better condition than those in the Augustiuian convent, they are rapidly going to decay. Few of them are modern. I observed only three Protestant volumes among the whole of them. I found a MS. translation of the Four Gosjiels in Arabic, of which it would be well to procure a copy. " Ath Fchruary. — The secretary introduced us to the Vice-rey, Dom Manuel de Portugal k Castro, at the palace, who received us very politely. He then showed us the portraits of all the Vice-reys of India. Most of them came originally from Portugal. There are not many of them which have not been" re-touched by native artists. The portraits with which I was most interested were those of Alfonso de Albuquerque, Vasco de Gama, John de Castro, and Constanline de Braganza. Constantine refused to accept from the king of Pegu the sum of 300,000 cruzados for a monkey's tootli which had been adored at Jaffuapatam as a relic of Buddha. He deserves to be had in remembrance for his firmness and decision, and aversion to countenance idolatry. How different was his conduct from that of the Bengal Governor who sent an ambassador to the Grand Lama to congratulate him on his incar- nation ! " Keturning through the jungle of the coast and the forest of the Ghats, where tliey slept vnih. only a slight covering from the deAV, but soundly after the fatigue of their intercourse in Goa, Mr. Wilson and his companion reached the pure Marathee-speaking district of Dharwar, and the London mission station of Belgaum. Here he came on the border line of the Tamul-speaking and the Cauarese districts of Madras. In preaching to the English residents he did not, 100 LIFE OF JOHX WILSON. [1834. amid all tlie claims of India, forget to urge those of the Gaelic School Society. He passed through Shunkeswar, the resi- dence of tlie great Sivami of Western India, where the annual fair of the deified reformer Shunkur Acharya was being held by ten thousand people, and the god was being dragged in a car forty-five feet high. After a day's incessant preaching there, and at other towns and villages, Mr. Wilson thus writes in his journal : — " I have often wondered how Whitefield could preach so frequently in England ; but it is now a considerable time since I discovered that practice in public speaking makes it comparatively easy. Some advocates speak four or five hours daily at the bar during the press of business ; and we, who are called to act as ambassadors of Christ to our perishing fellow men, may well continue our ministrations during a longer time. The interest with Avhich we are heard has a reflex influence in strengthening us for the discharge of our duties. The impressions Avhich Ave produce, though in general they may not lead to any very striking visible effect, have, I am persuaded, a powerful influence in weakening the hold of superstition, and in enlightening and directing the conscience. When the Gospel is generally preached, as I hope it soon will be, through the length and breadth of the country, individual conversions will become more frequent. It is the general apathy of the unenlightened, which destroys the ardour of individuals, on whose mind favourable impressions are pro- duced. I fervently wish that evangelical agitation were the order of the day in India. Into this agitation I would of course wish no unholy element to enter. I would wish it to be like that of the Apostles and the Keformers." The town is further remarkable for the first of those inter- views with one of the princes of India, to which Mr. Wilson was afterwards frequently invited. The house of Sivajee, the founder of the Maratha power, is now represented only by the Raja of Kolhapore, the representative of its younger, and the Raja of Satara, the head of its elder branch. Bawo Sahib, who received Mr. Wilson, was " an oppressive and profligate ruler," who had not many years before been compelled by a British force to abstain from attacking his brother chiefs. He died in 1838, four years after the visit, leaving a son, the misrule of whose minority again compelled our interference. 1834.] THE HOUSE OF SIVAJEE XOW. 101 But lie was faithful in the Mutiny of 1857. On his death, in 18G6, we at once recognised his nephew and adopted son, Eajaram. To him a melancholy interest attaches. Well educated he visited England in 1870, a gentle youth who wrote a journal of his experience, presenting a significant contrast to that of his grandfather, to whom Mr. Wilson " opened the Scriptures " in vain, and told the story of the conversion of Britain which these Scriptures had made great. Raja Eajaram died at Florence, and his body was burned with Hindoo rites on the banks of the Arno, the last of that branch of Sivajee's house. To perpetuate it. Lord Mayo's govern- ment waived all the usual provisions in a case of adoption, and another Bhonsla boy was searched out in 1871. He is now sixteen years of age, and is being educated to govern some 800,000 tenantry, who pay him annually a revenue of the third of a million sterling. On reaching the confines of Kolhapore the Scottish mis- sionaries were met by troopers, who attended them. On nearing the town the Captain-General and a few of the troopers and thirty sepoys formed an escort to the banks of the Pandi-Gunga, where their tents had been pitched. There they had presented to them, in the name of the descendant of the mighty Sivajee, "great loads of fruit, sweetmeats, eggs, and chickens," and they found a retinue of liveried servants at their call. After examining the black marble tomb-temples of Shunkur, the reformer, and his first disciple, and preaching for a day, the Sahebs were thus received at an audience : — "25th February 1834. — At foui- iu the afternoon, two of the Sii-dars, attended by forty sepoys, came to conduct us to the palace. The streets, as we passed along, wei-e as much lined with people as if the King of England had come to see them. We were vastly ashamed of the honours which they tried to heap upon us. On our arrival at the palace we were received by Haibat Rao Gwaikawar, one of the most respectable of the Sirdars. He con- ducted us to the great room. We entered it, according to custom, without our shoes. Several hundreds of people, including all the Sirdars, were seated in two rows fronting one another. We were squatted near the Gddi (royal cushion). On the entrance of the Raja all the people stood iqi. He saluted us very kindly and asked us to sit down. After a little commonplace conversa- tion, we directed his attention to the Christian Scriptures and gave him a brief summary of their contents. I then presented him with an elegantly bound copy of the New Testament, and of the E.tposwrc of Hinduism, and with copies of Matthew bound in silk, and Exjmsures and other tracts for his Sirdai's. He expressed his pleasure at receiving them. I told him about the conversion of Britain, and ascribed all its greatness to the book of which I had given him a copy. Mr. Mitchell recommended him to encourage educa- 102 LIFE OF JOHN M^LSON. [1834. tion in his territories. It is to he regretted that he practises polj'gaiuy. He has five wives, hut only two sons antl one daughter. " 10th March 1834. — We rose at gun-fire, and, along with Dr. Young, Ave ascended to the celebrated hill-fort of Satara. It is about 3000 feet above the level of the sea, and its height froni tlie base is aboiit 900 feet. It is strong by nature, as the rocks near the summit are perpendicular. We took about twenty minutes to walk round it. It commands a very fine view of tlie country. In descending from it, we found the agreeableuess of ' the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' In the afternoon we visited Satara. It is much better laid out than any native town which I have seen. The streets are broad and straight, and the houses are, on the whole, neat and substantial. The English have the credit of fornung the plan of some of them. The population may be stated at between fifteen and twenty thousand, and it is reported to be on the increase. The palace is a plain quadrangular building. We should have been introduced to the r.aja had he been at home. His high school is also a quadrangular building. " ISth 3Iarch. — We set out for Malcolm-Peth on the Mahableshwar Hills about two hours before sunset ; and we arrived at the Sanitarium, where we were kindly received by Captain Jameson, about nine o'clock. On the top of the ghat, about 4500 feet above the level of the sea, we saw the fern and the willow, and heard the voice of the lark, the thrush, and the lilackbird. They called vividly to remembrance our native hills and groves, and made onr very souls thrill. We madel several calls on European gentlemen throughout the day, and we preached to large congregations of natives. I recognised two of my Bomliay native friends among our audience. They were very happy to see me. " 15th March. — We proceeded early in the morning to Mahableshwar, which is about three and a half miles distant from the Sanitarium in Malcolm- Peth, or Nehar, as it is called by the natives. Our ride was remarkably pleasant. The tops of the hills and mountains below ns were rising above the thick white clouds like islands in the ocean. The appearance of the cottages, roads, and plants reminded us of the scenes in another land. The atmosphere was comparatively cool and bracing. The sun was rising with glory in the east. The birds were offering up their early oiisons to Him who formed them. Mahableshwar is a religious establishment, almost on the highest pinnacle of the hills, sacred to Shiva. It has no connection with Wai in the plains below, as has been alleged by some. It is imder the direction of Deshast Brahmans, while Wai is under the direction of Koukanasts. There is a considerable spring at the most sacred spot, which is said to be the source of the Krishnahai, Savitri, etc., and which is denominated the Pccnchaganga. There is a small tank at the place where it issues from the ground, and which forms the Tirtha, to which pilgrims repair. It is surrounded by a small court and shed, in which there are a few idols." This is our first introduction to the great hill sanitarium of Bombay, which was ceded in 1829 by the Raja of Satara in exchange for other lands. The State lapsed in 1848, but the British Government has continued a pension of £2.50 a month to the adopted child of the last widow of the Raja, who died in 1874. The concluding extract from Mr. Wilson's journal of this third tour tells of that encounter with a tiger, which some of his Hindoo controversialists declared that he magnified into a miracle ! 1834.] ATTACICED BY A TIGER. 103 " ISth March 1834. — We set out for Nagotana a little before sunset. On the road I experienced a reuiarlvable deliverance, which sliould excite my most fervent gratitude to the Father of all mercies. I had got the start of Mr. ;\Iitchell in passing through the jungle, and in order to allow him opjiortunity of coming to me, I was just about to pull up my horse, when I ol)served an enormously large tiger about six j'ards from me. Instead of running from me, he sprang up near my horse ; I then cried out as loud as I could, with the view of frighten- ing him. I had the happiness of seeing him retreat for a little ; and I galloped from him, as fast as my horse could carry me, to Mr. Mitchell, whom I found walking with four or five natives. We passed together the spot where I had the encounter, without seeing o\ir enemy. He was heard, however, among the trees by our horse-keepers. He has been seen by the natives for some days past a short time after sunset, exactly at the place (about six miles from Nagotana) where he appeared to me. The men whom I found with Mr. Mitchell told me that they regularly present offerings for protection from tigers to an image on Wardhan hill. I showed them the vanity of their confidence ; but in their misdirected devotion I saw the call to remember 'the Lord who is my refuge, even the Most High.' " Some time after this the able civilian, Sir J. P. Willoughby, presented Mr. Wilson with a cottage on Mahableshwar, and there, when more advanced in years, he and his missionary brethren used to recruit their wasted energies during the college vacation iu the great heat of May and June in the plains. He became closely identified with the place up to the year of his death, and evangelised among its tribes right down to Poona. When a part of the hill called Sydney Point, after Sir Sidney Beckwith, the Commander-in-Chief, had its name changed to Lodwick Point, he used humorously to resent such tampering with historical and landscape associations. His " bungalow " was another mission centre, like Ambrolie in the native quarter of Bombay. Not a day passed even there without vernacular pi'eaching and examination of schools, while the ever-increas- ing arrears of his extensive correspondence were cleared off. The climate and the scenery alike tempted to literary labours. To the comparatively small and select society of European officials, civil and military, and to the educated native gcntl(>- men who began to frequent the spot, Mi\ Wilson often delivered those lectures Avhich afterwards attracted crowds in the Town Hall of the capital. In close and constant inter- course with the Governor, the Commander-in-Chief, and the members of Council, he brought his Avide information and high principles to bear on political questions, especially when these concerned the native princes and people. Thus ]\Iahab- leshwar became to him the scene not merely of Avell-deserved rest but of more varied work and wider social influence. 104 LIFE OF JOHX WILSON. [1835. CHAPTEE VI. 1835. TOUR TO SURAT, BARODA, IvATHIAWAR, AND SOMNATH. First Exploratiou of the Goojaratee Country and its Native States — The Portuguese in Daman — A Catch of Zand MSS. — Surat fruitful in Facts — British Government and Idolatry — Hindoos and Muhamraadaus denouncing each other — An Eclectic Rationalist — Mr. Wilson's Journal a Love-Offering to his Wife — Baroda Church consecrated by Heber — Audience of the Gaikwar described — CorresiJondence between the Gaikwar and Mr. Wilson — The Mad Gaikwars — Cambay to Bhowuuggur — A Hill of Shrines — Satan's Celestial City — Mr. Wilson's Letter to the Jain Priests — Rajkote ■ — A King punished for murdering his Infant Daughter — Kutch — Work of the Rev. James Gray — A Good Raja — Schwartz and Raja Serfojee — The Land of Krishna — Mr. Wilson anticipates James Prinsep at Girnar — The Historical Temple of Somnath — Death and Separation in the Mission Family of Ambrolie — Mrs. Margaret Wilson's Memoir by her husband. Having now completed such a detailed survey of the central, eastern, and southern districts of the province, including Portuguese Goa, as was possible in three cold weather seasons, Mr. Wilson prepared for the longest and most fruitful of all his early tours, that through the northern half of Bombay. Familiar first of all with the varied elements of the popula- tion of a quarter of a million in the capital city itself, he had now carried his elevating message to Hindoo, Muhammadan, and jungle or robber tribe, over the whole Maratha country from sacred Nasik to only less holy Shunkeswar, and from the Jews and Parsees of the Konkan to the Muhammadans of Jalna. All he had studied with a keen interest and a never- failing memory. There remained the Goojaratee country, with its great native States of Baroda, Kathiawar, and Kutch, stretching up to the Indus-washed delta of Sindh and the deserts of Rajpootana. In the rich cotton-fields of Goojarat the Parsees found an asylum before the EngHsh attracted them to the island of Bombay, and Mr. Wilson had fairly 1835.] THE PORTUGUESE IX DAMAN. 105 given himself to that study of their literature and religion Avith which, more than with any other, his name is identifit'(l. Not only there, but in the native States, are the half-Buddhist, half-Hindoo communities of the Jains to be found, and it was his task to understand in order that he might influence them. So the closing weeks of the year 1834 saw him, his wife (as far as Surat), and his attached friend Dr. Smyttan of the Government service, set out in that modest " shigram," or one- horse vehicle, which for half a century was familiar to all natives and Europeans in Bombay as the great missionary's. Past Mahim and Bassein, and along the shore washed by the Arabian Sea to still Portuguese Daman, the travellers crept, taking a week to accomplish the distance now achieved by railway in a few hours. Of Daman, conquered in 1831, we read in the Journal — " A Parsee gave us no favourable idea of the Portuguese Government. The soldiers were repi^esented as helping themselves to whatever articles they need. Justice, it was said, is an article which requires to be purchased at a dear rate. The sun of Daman, which Juliao, the late Miguelite Governor, denominates on a triumphal arch ccle- berrima urhs in oriente, appears to have reached its meridian. There is something very instructive in the decline of the Portuguese power in India and the rise of that of the British. Camoens represents Vasco de Gama as describing the whole of Europe to the lord of Melinda. The hero makes no mention of England ! But observe the ways of Divine Providence. The country which was too contemptilile to be noticed three hundred years ago, is now the most powerful in the Avorld, and it is under its favour that the Portuguese exercise sovereignty over their remaining small territories in India." Here Mr. A\^ilson purchased, for Rs.300, a copy of the Vandidad Sade and of all the sacred books of the Parsees in the original Zand, Pahlavi and Pazand tongues, but in the Goojaratee character, and Avith a Goojaratee commentary and translation. Of this work, in five folio volumes, he remarks — " Of its use to a missionary there can be no doubt. I procured along Avith it copies of all the narratives calculated to throw any light upon the history of the Zoroastrians in India, and some other curious pamphlets connected Avith their religion." Continuing their journey northwartls, the party passed the most ancient fire temple in India, at Umarasaree, and inspected 106 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1835. the extensive fire temple of Nausaree, the streets of whicli Avere, at that early time, regularly lighted at night by lamps with oiled paper shades. Surat, 177 miles north of the capital/ first of English settlements in India, was found to be declining as Bombay supplanted it, and the decay has gone on till the present time, if we may judge from the visit of the Governor, Sir Richard Temple, to its deserted buildings, and half-obliterated tombs of Oxenden and others last year. Mr. Fyvie was the only (London) missionary there, and he after- wards joined Mr. Wilson on his tour. But Surat has ever been marked by the intelligence of its native inhabitants, whose spirit has shown itself more than once in rioting against taxes imposed in an unpopular form. Here Mr. ^AHson collected much information regarding the eighty-four castes of Goojaratee Brahmans, the early settlements of the Parsee refugees from Muhammadan intolerance, and the three Bohora sects of Muhammadans. He learned that half the great fire temples of India had been erected only within the previous twelve years. The relation of the British Government to those cults he thus describes : — " The English Government has still the responsibility, and a fearful one it is both for rulers and their agents, of directly and publicly countenancing idolatry and superstition. The new moon, except during two months of the year, is regularly saluted by five guns to please the Mussulmans ! Two thousand rupees, I was told, are annually contributed to the same people to assist them in the celebration of their eecls ! The chief of Surat, and the British administrator of justice in its province, commits the cocoa-nut to the river on the day of the great heathenish procession at the break of the monsoon ! How all this folly originated amidst the ungodliness of many of the olden servants of the Company I can easily understand ; but how it has been so long continued I am puzzled to know. The day was when, I suppose, one would have got a free passage to Europe, via China, for noticing it. I certainly thought, without making a reference to higher and more solemn considerations, that after the order came from the Court of Directors, ' that in all matters relating to their temples, their worship, their festivals, their religious practices, and their ceremonial observances, our native subjects be left ^ Pronounced Soon'it, the Sun city of the Ramayuu epic. 1835.] IX THE TRACK 01-' lilSlIOP IIKBEi;. 107 entirely to themselves,' our late excellent Governor -would have put an extinguisher u2)on it. Surely the son of Charles Grant avIU perform the right honoural)le act." After nine days in the old city, Mr. A\'ilson was received at the next stage northwards by Mr. Kirkland, the civilian in charge, to whom Dr. Chalmers had given him an intro- ductory note. The march from the Taptee, which almost encircles Surat, to the Nerbudda, Avas spent in discus.sing a census of the " Pergunna " or " Hundred " of the district, from which the fact of the murder of female children became evident. A visit to Broach, the ancient Barygaza, the com- mercial glory of which has given place to a great agricultural prosperity under British rule, resulted in further work among the Parsees and Jains, and on the 17th January 1835 Baroda Avas reached. The bruit of the discussions witli Hindoos and Muhammadans in Bombay seemed to have everyAvhere pre- ceded Mr. Wilson. At one village belonging to one of the Gaikwar's feudatories, Mussulmans and Hindoos " commenced denouncing the faith of each other in no very measured language," after the statement which they had invited from the missionary. Before he could rest on the Saturday of his arrival at Baroda he had to grapple long Avith a really earnest Brahman, who, having become the secretary of a neighbour- ing Muhammadan NaAvab, was an eclectic rationalist, seeking truth in accordance Avith reason only, and rejecting his oAvn scriptures as inspired. The folloAving very human extract from one of the letters Avhich generally covered the instal- ments of his journal, may serve as an introduction to its more formal narrative. He preached tAvice in the English Church to the European residents, Avho Avere rarely visited by chaplain or missionary. Bishop Heber had consecrated it ten years before, Avhen he Avas " both amused and interested," though a little fatigued, by his purely ceremonial visit to the GaikAvar. Avhose invitation to Avitness the cruel s])ort of elephant-baiting he declined. The good Bishop's narrative of his visit to Baroda, in 1826, presents a striking contrast to Mr. Wilson's Journal in 1835, but the difference is due chiefly to the knoAvledge which the Presbyterian " Bishop " had accpured of the language and religion of the GaikAvar. " Bakoda, I9th, Jiinvary 1835. "My DKAREST Love — Surely yoTi do not wisli me to tletain my Journal 108 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1835. for the mere purpose of having it accompanied with a letter which I may not always find time to write. You must view the Journal as a communication. I should get on very poorly with it if I had not you in my eye. It is inter (dia a love-oftering. I question if Mrs. Webb had it that she would think of rejecting it. She was very proud about the Journal which her excellent brother Richard Townshend sent to her, and very justly so. Tell you her this. " I write to you from Radical Hall. Captain S is over head and ears in an Irish bog ; and how he will get out I know not. He has drawn in several young men to him. Irish bogs move, it is said. Do you think that they will ever move to the land of liberty ? / trow not. I am quite tired of their bawlings. Perhaps I may have done something to stop the spread of the mania. " Tell Mr. Webb that Bishop Heber consecrated the Baroda Church ; and that Bishops Fyvie and Wilson have reconsecrated it. Mr. Fyvie read the prayers of the Church of England in it. Colonel Burford gave the church to us. We had the sacrament privately in the evening yesterday, tiuelve com- municants including two natives. I thought much of you and the dear children. Surely I may commit you all to the care of Him Who died on the cross for my sins. " 23f? January. — I spent the morning with Mr. Williams, the Political Commissioner. About eleven o'clock I proceeded with him and Colonel Bur- ford, Dr. Smyttan, Mr. Malet, and Major Morris, to the palace of the Gaik- war. We were all mounted on an elephant, and attended by the guard of honour which accompanies the Political Commissioner on his visit to the king. We were introduced to the Gaikwar at the door of the Durbar ; and we walked up with him through the ranks of his courtiers, to the Gadi. Mr. Williams sat next to the great man, and I next to Mr. Williams. After conversing with his Highness for a little on the late frosts, I asked whether or not I should be permitted, as a minister of the Gospel, to give a statement of the principles and evidences of Christianity, the religion professed by the inhabit- ants of Britain and many other countries, and which demands the acceptance of mankind throughout the world. His Highness informed me that he would be very happy imleed ; and I proceeded. I gave a view of the Scripture accoimt of the character of God, of tlie natural state of man, and of the means of salvation ; and contrasted this account with those given in the Hindoo Shastres. When I had concluded, his Highness called upon Venirama, his minister, to come forward, and assist him to form a judgment of what had been said, which was entirely new to him. Venirama obeyed, and declared that Jesus was an incarnation similar to Rama and Krishna, who has received from God as a war (boon) the power of saving all those who believe in him. ' Rama and Krishna,' I observed, 'were no incarnations of God at all. They might have been great warriors, like the forefathers of the Gaikwar, who were deified by the poets ; but most assuredly their characters forbid the entertainment of the idea that they were incarnations of the divinity. It is evident that they were sinners. Krishna is spoken of in the tenth section of the Bhagavat as having been guilty of murder, adultery, theft, and falsehood ; and Rama is described by Valmiki as a person who perjured himself to Mandedari, the wife of Ravana, — who banished his wife, though innocent of the charges brought against her, at a time when she was pregnant, and thus proved himself a bad husband and a bad father ; and troubled his poor brother Lukshmun so much that he destroyed himself, and thus proved a bad brother. Christ Jesus, however, committed no sin, and acted in every way suitable to his claims as God mani- fested in the flesh. ' "Our conversation then proceeded as follows: — Venirama. Don't allege that the seeming evil acts of our gods were sinful. God can do what he pleases, 1835.] DISCUSSION BEFORE THE GAIKWAK OF BARODA. 109 and who is to call liiiu to account? J. IT. Goil is not responsilile to any, Init He will act always according to His nature, wliich is jierfcctly lioly. Even Krishna is represented in the Geeta as admitting the jiropriety of his regarding moral observances : ' If I were not vigorously to attend to these (the moral duties), all men would presently follow my example, etc' Judging Krishna hy what is here said, I am hound to condemn him. The legend, moreover, says that he felt the effects of his sin. When Jugannath was asked why he had no hands and no feet, he declared that he lost them through his mischief at Gokula. Yeniramo. God can .sin. He is the author of all sin. /. IT. Do not blaspheme the Self-existent. Venirama. This is no blasphemy. If God is not the author of sin, pray who is the author of it? J. W. The creatures of God are the authors of it. You must admit that God has given a law to men. Venirama. I do admit this, anil say that this law is good. J. 11'. Now, I make an appeal to his Highness. Will the great king first make laws for his subjects, then give them a disposition to break these laws, and last of all punish them for breaking them ? Oaikimr (laughing heartily). Verily 1 will do nothing of the kind. I am always angry when my subjects break my laws. J. W. And is not the King of kings and Lord of lords angry when His laws are broken ? Wliy does He send disease and death into the world, and why has He prepared liell imless for the punishment of the wicked? Veni- rama. I know not ; but who is there to sin but God ? He is the only entity. J. ir. So, I suppose, you have no objections to say Aham Brahmasmi^ (I am Brahma). T^ It is not la^vful for me to repeat these sacred words. /. IT. Not lawful for God to declare His own existence ! You were sajung a little while ago that it was lawful for God to do anj-thing, even to sin. / think it presumption for any man to declare that he is God in any form of words. Never let the weakness, ignorance, sin, suffering, and change of men, be at- tributed to God. V. God iu the form of men is apparently weak, and so forth. Suppose the Divine nature to be a tree. Men are the leaves of that tree. Now, the leaves differ from the branches and the stalk and the root ; and men, growing out from the Godhead, differ in some respects from the God- head from which they grow. J. W. But my position is that men are in no sense part of the Godhead. Their weakness, ignorance, sin, suffering, and so forth, to which I have alluded, jDrove this. They are the workmanship of God. V. But what is the creation but the expansion of God ? ./. (('. It is the product of the Divine word and power. I cannot admit for a moment the theory of God's swelling and contracting, and contracting and swelling. V. There are differences in religion you observe. Your religion, I admit, is good for yoii. ./. ir. My religion professes to be the only one which is given by God, and to be good for all men. God never would give such contradictory accounts of Himself and His will as are to be found in the Christian and Hindoo religions. Both of them cannot be true ; for, in a thousand jjoints which I can enumerate, they are directly opposed to one another. Pray, on what grounds do you believe in Hindooism ? You say that evidence is of four kinds, iri-atfjash (sensation), shahda (testimony), anumdnn (inference), and vixim/ma (analogy). What kind and degree of these species of evidence have you for Hindooism ? V. We have our religion as we got it from our fore- fathers. It was their business to inquire into its evidence. J. W. \Miat a strange evasion ! If you be iu the wrong, will the eiTors of your forefathers excuse you for neglecting to seek the truth? Don't the Bheels jilead the custom of their fathers as an excuse for their thefts and robberies? Gaikwar (laughing). Most certainly they do. /. W. Surely your minister will not listen to their plea ! Venirama. But what have yon got to say for ^ One of the four great sentences of the Veda. 110 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1835. Christianity ? /. W. Youi- question is very proper. I have got much to say for it. Suppose the Christian Sliastra to be a letter. I peruse it. I find nothing inconsistent with its chaiins to Divine inspiration. It is in every respect worthy of the holiness and wisdom of God. It bears the im- jiress of the Divinity. I can no more believe it be the unassisted work of man, than I can believe the sun to be the fabrication of a blacksmith. I behold it producing the most marvellous results, particularly in communicating sanctification and happiness to those who believe in it. I find from authentic history that it was published to the world at the time which it alleges ; and that it testifies as to miraculous transactions, which, if unreal, could not have been believed at the time when it was i^ublished, etc. I shall be delighted to give you a copy of it, that you may judge for yourselves. The more you peruse it, the more will you discover its excellence. The more that you inquire into its history, the more will you discover its credibility. " Wlien we had proceeded thus far, his Highness began to compliment me on ray Daklmni boli (accent), and to declare that he and liis ministers, though possessed of a spice of the rerum terrestrialium 2}i'u<:lentia, knew little about the afi'airs of the other world. He then turned to Mr. Williams, and told him that he ought to have given him warning, that he might have the Brahmans in readiness. ' There is no lack of Brahmans here,' said Mr. Williams. ' I never dreamt, when you requested leave for the Padre to visit me,' he said, ' that he would act otherwse than the Lord Padre Saheb, who, after looking at every object in the Dm-bar, went out to see the artillery-yard. This is a (jimi vishesha.' " After declaring myself unworthy of the compliments which his Highness ]iaid me, I offered him a finely-bound copy of tlie New Testament in Marathee. This, however, he declined to receive, as he had not yet seen reason to wish to abandon Hindooism. I recommended him to take the earliest ojiportunity of rertecting on what had been advanced, and stated to him that his acceptance of the Testament was not tantamount to abjuring Hindooism. Mr. Williams sported a joke or two as to his fears, but I thought it proper not to be too importunate, particularly as he would probably not refuse the gift if off'ered to him privately. The Gaikwar cautioned me against misunderstanding him, and, after again complimenting me, he insisted on my accepting from him, as a token of his good- will, a couple of shawls and a gold ornament. I decidedly refused the offering for some time ; but, on being informed by Mr. Williams that my refusal would probably give offence, I yielded. I then received a letter from the Gaikwar to the authorities at Dwarka ; and, after a little mis- cellaneous conversation, we took our leave. The Raja, as on our entrance, walked with us through tlie Durbar. He is rather a good-looking Maratha, and superior in point of talent to most of the great men with whom I have come into contact. His dress was i^lain, but his ornaments were splendid. His son, a young lad of about si.vteen years, who was present during the interview, seemed modest and placid. The Muhammadan Sirdars made rather a good appearance. The Marathas were scarcely to be distinguished from the plebs of their tribe. " Leaving the Durbar, we examined the artillery-yard and other curiosities, and then proceeded homewards. After dining with Mr. Williams, Dr. Smyttan and I proceeded on our journey in the direction of the Gulf of Cambay. " 2ith January. — We rode from Padrea to Gwasad early in the morning. I distributed, as usual, some tracts, to the natives whom we met on the roads, and preached in the village. We rode to Jambusar in the evening. After our aiTival I received the following letter from Mr. Williams relative to the visit to the' Gaikwar : — 1835.] SAYAJEE KAO, CtAIKWAR OF r.ARODA. HI ' Camp Baroda, Janimry 24, 183;"). ' Jly dear Sir — His Highness sent for my head clerk this day, and desired him to expLain to me that his reason for not accepting the Testament from yon yesterday was, that his ministers, relations, and the whole Durbar, would have considered it as a kind of avowal of his inclination to desert his own creed ; that he was very much jdeased with what he heard yesterday, and requested that I would send the Testament, and other books, to him by my men. I shall do so, either through the Nawab, or , whichever channel his Highness prefersi His Highness further wishes to receive a letter from yourself to his address, stating that you are not oftended at his apparent incivility in not receiving the book from your hands when offered to him in the Durbar yesterday ; and desires me to ofler you his best wishes, and to sa}' that he has directed all the authorities under him to afford you every aid.' "'IWi January. — To-day I despatched a Marathee letter, of which the following is a translation, to the Gaikwar : — ' Shri Eaja Chhatrapati Akela Praudha Pratap Sayaji Rao Gaiakwad Sena Khas Khel Shamsher Bahadur. To his Highness Sayaji Rao Gaikawad, etc., John Wilson, the Servant of Jesus Christ, with all respect writeth as follows : — ' The illustrious Mr. Williams having communicated to me your Highness's wish to receive a few lines from me, I have the greatest pleasure in address- ing you. ' I was much gratified with the interview which I had with your Highness in the Durbar on Friday last, and I am duly sensible of the kindness and con- descension which you evinced in granting it to me. I shall always remember it with much satisfaction. ' As the Christian religion appears to me to be possessed of supreme importance, I embraced the opportunity afforded me while in the in-esence of your Highness, and by your Highness's inquiries, of giving a summary of its principles, and of the evidence on which it rests its claims to universal reception ; and it was with a view to afford your Highness an opportunity of judging of the merits of that religion that I proffered to your Highness a copy of the Christian Shastra. For the patience and interest with which your Highness and your ministers listened, I am truly grateful. Your declining to receive the Christian Shastra in the Durbar, proceeding, as it did, from an apprehension that the jiublic reception of it might be viewed as giving a public testimony in its favour without examination, has given me, I assure you, not the least offence. Nothing is farther from my wish, and that of other Christians, than that Christianity should receive any countenance which does not proceed from the percei^tion of its own merits. We wish it, in every case, to receive the fullest inquiry. ' I return my best thanks to your Highness for the favours given to me in the Durbar, and I shall preserve them as memorials of your kindness. ' Wliy should 1 enlarge ? That your Highness may long hold, the chludra (umbrella) of protection and shelter over a hajipiy people, and enjoy every blessing in this world and that which is to come, shall ever be my most fervent prayer to Almighty God. John Wilson.' " Baroda is one of the three great principalities — SinJia's, Holkar's, and the Gaikwar's — which Maratha soldiers carved out of the debris of the IMoghul empire under the flag, first of Sivajee's house, and then of his Mayor of the Palace, the Peshwa. The first Gaikwar, or " cowherd," held the position 112 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1835. of the Peshwa's commander-in-chief till 1721. In the sub- sequent century the Gaikwars achieved such independence as was possible under the gradually growing suzerainty of the East India Company. In 1819 Sayajee Rao, whom Mr. Wilson describes, had succeeded his brother, and was from the first, unhappily, left to his own devices under certain vague guarantees. Misrule, financial insolvency, and dis- loyalty were the inevitable consequences, till in 1839 he was threatened with deposition by the paramount power, which could no longer share the guilt of maintaining his oppression over a population of two millions, who paid him above a million sterling a year. Sayajee managed to keep his seat till his death in 1847, after which the boy whom Mr. Wilson saw, Gunput Rao, reigned till his death in 1856. He was succeeded by his brother, Khundee Rao, in 1856, and he by the youngest brother, Mulhar Rao, in 1870. The maladminis- tration, which had steadily increased, then became so in- tolerable and even criminal, that his deportation to Madras in 1875 was the result, and the succession of a boy adopted by Khundee Rao's widow. In his Journal, published in the Oriental Christian Spectator, "specially for the benefit of the natives," Mr. Wilson gives no indication of the facts that he learned on the spot regarding the Gaikwar's family and misrule. But his intimate acquaintance with the whole history and with the successive Gaikwars, led Lord North- brook's Government to consult him during the events of 1874-5.^ From Daman to Cambay the Gulf of Cambay runs up into the heart of Goojarat, dividing from Surat and Baroda the cluster of native States in wild Kathiawar and marshy Kutch. Mr. Wilson crossed the Gulf to Gogo, the port of the principality of Bhownuggur, in which State is the famous Jain hill of temples at Palitana. The great orientalist Cole- brooke knew so little of Shatrunjaya as to write of it as " said to be situated in the west of India." Colonel Tod, of Rajasthan fame, was the only visitor of note previous to Mr. Wilson, and that in 1822. The Chinese pilgrim of the seventh century, Hiuen Thsang, seems to have passed it by, although he was so near it as Girnar. " The sovereign of places of pilgrimage," as the old annals call it, was transferred 1 See Appendix I. 1835.] EPISTLE TO THF. JAIX PRIESTS. 113 from the Buddhists to their Hindoo friends, the Jains, in 421 A.D. After Mr. Wilson's visit the weidth of tlie Jain merchants of the cotton capital covered the hill with fanes, Avhicli even Mr. Fergusson allows to rival the old temples not only in splendour, but in the beauty and delicacy of their details ; so that a local writer remarks — " one almost feels the place a satanic mockery of that fair celestial city into Avliich naught may enter that defileth ! " Mr. Wilson prepared the following letter to the Jain priests of Palitana, and it has ever since been extensively read by that community : — "To ALL THE YaTIS OF PaLITANA, TWO SERVANTS OF JESCS CHRIST, THE ONLY Saviour of men, write as follows : — "Though M'e have no acquaintance with you we wish j'our welfare. It is the desire of our hearts, in the presence of God, that you may be happy in this world and that which is to come. We have surveyed the splendid temples which are on the Shatrunji hill ; and however much we admire them as buildiugs, we do regi'et the object for which they have been erected. They are not, as they ought to have been, jilaces in which God is worshipped. They are filled with images of men whom you suppose to have obtained Nirwana. These images, or those whom they represent, are the objects of yoiu- supplications ! We do mourn over the errors into which your fathers fell respecting the divine nature, and from which you have not yet been delivered. It is lamentable to think that you do not admit a creating and superintending Providence. You cannot but see in the world on which you move, and in the worlds above you, decided marks of design and wisdom ; and, if you reason correctly, you cannot but attribute this design and wisdom to a being who exercises it. When you look to your own temples, you say that they have been built. Why do you not admit, when you look to the temple of the Universe, that it must have an Architect, whose wisdom and power and goodness are infinite ? It is the height of folly to attribute what j'ou see to a necessitous fate. " You are wiser than the Brahmans when you say that there is an essential distinction between matter and spirit. Of neither matter nor spirit, however, have you correct ideas. All spirit is not, as you imagine, uncreated. God, whose existence and attributes are proved by his works, is uncreated, but all other spirit has been created by him, not from his own spirit as the Brahmans imagine, but from nothing, by his powerful word. In that spirit which has been created there are essential differences. The spirit of man difiers from that of all the spirits with which we are acquainted on earth. It alone is capable of knowing, loving, and serving God, and it alone has a moral respon- sibility in the sight of God. It will continue either in a state of sufiering or of happiness after death, while the spirit of the beasts, etc., shall have perished. Matter is not, as you imagine, uncreated. God made the whole of it, not from his own substance, by the word of his power ; and, whenever he pleases, he can destroy it. To suppose it to exist independently of the creation of God is to make of it a God." The letter proceeds to show that the Avorship of the twenty-four Tirthankars, and the performance of good works, I 114 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, [1835 cannot remove that sin the existence of which the Jains admit, and it then expounds the salvation offered by Christ. It was largely circulated in the Goojaratee form. Mr. Wilson reasoned with the Raja of the place, and with the Jains of the puritan Dhoondra sect, one of whose religious duties is to keep out of the way of the wind lest it should blow insects into the mouth. Their confidence in their tenderness towards life makes them very conceited. " How many lives are there in a pound of water 1 " asked Mr. Wilson of a Dhoondra. D. " An infinite number." W. " How many are there in a bullock % " D. " One." W. " You kill thousands of lives, then, while the INIussulraan butcher kills one." The Hindoos laughed, and the Dhoondras joined them. At Rajkote, in the heart of the Kathiawar peninsula, Mr. Wilson came fairly face to face with female infanticide. The young Rajpoot chief of the Jhadeja tribe he found under sequestration, because of having been accessory to the murder of his infant daughter. The long-neglected regulations of General Walker had been revived by Sir J. P. Willoughby, who afterwards adorned the Council of the Secretary of State for India. Mr. Wilson expounded to the Raja and his court the Ten Commandments, " not overlooking the sixth, which he has so daringly violated," while regarding hixa. " with deep compassion." This agreement,^ signed by every Jhadeja chief in General Walker's time, presents a curious contrast to recent legislation on the same subject. " Whereas the Honourable Englisli Company, and Anund Eow Guikwar, Sena Khas Kheyl Shamsher Bahadoor, having set forth to us the dictates of the Shastres and the true faith of the Hindoos, as well as that the ' Bnimhu Vy wiu'tuk Pooran ' declares the killing of children to be a heinous sin, it being wi-itten that it is as great an ofience to kill au embryo as a Brahman ; that to kill one woman is as great a sin as killing a hundred Brahmans ; that to put one child to death is as great a transgression againt the divine laws as to kill a hundred women ; and that the perpetrators of this sin shall be damned to the hell Kule Sootheeta, where he shall be infested with as many maggots as he may have hairs on his body, be born again a leper, and debili- tated in all his members ; we, Jahdeja Dewajee and Kooer Nuthoo, Zemindars of Gondul (the custom of female infanticide having long jirevailed in our caste), do hereby agree for ourselves, and for our offspring for ever, for the sake of our own prosperity, and for the credit of the Hindoo faith, that we shall from this day renounce this practice ; and, in default of this, that we acknowledge ourselves offenders against the Sircars. Moreover, should any ^ Aitchison's Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sunmids, vol. iv. p. 129, and also p. 109, second edition, 1876. 1S35.] JA:\rES Git AY OF p.iionj. 115 one in future commit tliis oli'ence, we shall expel liim from our caste, ami he shall be pimished according to the pleasure of the two Governments, and tlie rule of the Shastres." " 'I'ld February — Sabbath. — I have never travelled on this day since I came to India, but in order that we might liave an ojjportunity of preaching to our countrymen in a camj) where the face of a minister lias not been seen since the death of Mr. Gray, we rode into Bhooj early in the morning. We found that arrangements for public worsliip had been made by Colonel Pottinger, the Resident, with whom we took up our abode." The Eev. James Gray — a chaplain worthy as man and orientalist of Henry Lord, the first of the Company's ecclesias- tical establishment at Surat — had died five years before, and there were 140 Europeans at this remote station. His story is another added to those romances of an Indian career with which our history in the East is so plentifully and heroically strewed. A shoemaker of Dunse, not far from Mr. Wilson's birthplace, he educated himself to be the second l)est teacher of Greek in Scotland, as the senior master of the High School of Edinburgh. He was the friend of Burns, the tutor of his boys, the correspondent of Wordsv/orth, and himself a poet and classical critic in Blackwood's Magazine. His elegy appears in Hogg's Queen's Wake as that of one — " Bred on southern shore. Beneath the mists of Lammermore." Intenser views of Christian truth led him to accept an East Indian chaplaincj^, and in the solitude of Bhooj he gave the close of his life to service to the natives, from the j'oung Raja whom he taught, to the simple folk whose dialect of Kutchee, a transition from Goojaratee, he reduced to writing. These Avere days when our native feudatories were left to themselves, and the millions whom they ruled had no such guarantees against oppression as Lord Dalhousie and Lord Canning established when the empire became consolidated. Mr. Gray's good Avork has often been repeated since, but after Schwartz he was the first, from 182G to 1830, to aim at such an object as this — "I shall be able to make him one of the most learned kings that ever were in India, as he promises to be one of the most humane. Oh ! that I may be enabled to impart to his mind a portion oF that wisdom that cometh down from above." A few months after that ]\Ir. (xray passed away, his death officially declared by Sir John Malcolm to be " a public loss," and his name associated in the journals with 116 LIFE OF JOHN AVILSOX. [1835. those of Carey, Leyden, and Morrison. Like Schwartz's royal pupil, Maharaja Serfojee of Tanjore, the grateful Rao Daisul of Kutch erected a monument to Mr. Gray. From 1833 to 1860 Rao Daisul ruled his half-million of people with loyalty to the British Crown, fidelity to the teaching of his Christian tutor, and the best results to the people. Slavery he abolished the year after Mr. Wilson's visit. Infanticide he suppressed by new regulations, so that the proportion of females to males in the Jhadeja tribe in Kutch rose from 1 to 8 in 1842 to 1 to r04 in 1868. His son more recently helped Sir Bartle Frere to stop the slave trade from Zanzibar to Muscat, which Kutch capitalists had encouraged ; and his grandson is now a boy of twelve under training for power at the usual age of Indian majority, eighteen. Turning back from Bhooj, the most northerly part of the tour, Mr. Wilson took boat at its large i^ort of Mandvee for the famous shrines of Krishna on the south coast of the Gulf of Kutch. Here, at the island of Beyt and the fortress- temple of Dwarka, a mixed race of Muhammadans and Hindoos have long added to the plunder of deluded pilgrims the profits of organised piracy. Sanguinary wars and sieges, before 1835 and since, have given a horrible notoriety to the AVaghurs, whom their lord and employer, the Gaikwar, failed to control. The more direct administration of political ofiicers so vigorous as Colonel Keatinge, has in recent daj'S given peace to the land of jungle and of idol shrines which forms the most westerly point of Goojarat. Such merit as temporary absorp- tion into " the prince, the intoxicator " — as Krishna, the lasci- vious, is called — can give, is now to be obtained without the risks of 1835 and previously. But the island and the castle of Krishna, the Lord of Dwarka, are not so attractive as they were, save for the conch shells wdiich Beyt, " the door of the shell," exports to supply the uses of every Krishna temple, and also for purposes of art, Dwarka is to the west what Pooree, the shrine of Jugganath, the lord of the world, is to the east of India. " 1th March, Porebdnder. — We preached, apart from oue auotlier, both morning and evening in the hazaars ; and we had many visitors throughout the day, whom we addressed and supplied witli books. The report of our pro- ceedings in other parts of the province had reached the town, and contributed not a little to the interest with which our ministrations were viewed. I am more and more persuaded that long missionary tours are by far the most 1S35.] TAKTIALLY DECIPHEi;^ THE ASOKA EDICTS. Il7 beneficial. Had we confined ourselves on this occasion to a small district, there would have been little or none of this aixlonr, which procures us numer- ous and interested auditors. 'I must hear,' .say many, 'what every person in every place hears.' There has been too much overlooking of Imnian .sympathy in the conduct of many Missions. If the Hindoos are to be wrought ujion, they must be roused. The ministry of excitement, both of John the Baptist and oiir blessed Lord, preceded the ministry of conversion through the Apostles in the land of Judiea. Something similar may be the case in India." Sailing down the coast, Mr. Wilson readied Joonagurli, a Muliammadan principality, in the court of which he had long discussions till past midnight, first with Hindoo and then with Mus.sulman scholars. He found the Hindoo prime minister well acquainted with Arabic. But his visit has a peculiar interest because of his — the first — attempt, in 1835, to decipher the famous Asoka inscriptions on the granite boulder of Girnar, discussed in a subsequent chapter. The classical hill, ten miles from the town, Mr. Wilson reached through the surrounding jungle at daybreak. "IWi March. — Tlie ascent is very difficult, and in some places, from the precipitousness of the mountain, rather trying to the nerves. The rock is of granite, containing, jiarticularly near the summit, a large quantity of mica. There is scarcely any vegetation upon it, and indeeil, from its steepness, no possibility of the formation of a soil. The gi'eatest temples are at an elevation, I should think, of about 3000 feet, estimating the greatest height at 3500. They are built of the granite, though some of the steps and staircases are formed of sandstone from the plain below. They are works of prodigious labour, and are executed in excellent taste. They are at present appropriated by the .Jains, but the most ancient and remarkable of them appear to me from the Dhagob, and other arrangements, to be undoubtedly Buddhist. The most remarkable Jain images in them are those of Neminatha, not much ex- ceeding the size of a man, black and ornamented with gold, and at present worshipped ; and Rishabhdeva, of a colossal size, of granite covered with white chimam ; and Parasnatha. In the inferior parts there are the images of all the twenty-four Tirthankars. There are numerous cells in the courts of the temples, and jilaces adjoining, which were probably formerly used by the priests. At present the only persons who live on the hill are the sepoys who guard the temples, a few pujaris (beadles), and pilgrims who come to worship, and who may sojourn for a night or two. I was allowed to go through all the temjiles, and even to enter the shrines and mea.sure the idols. "There are two other peaks on the hill, from one of which the Hindoos who get tired of life throw themselves down in the ho]ie of making a speedy journey of it to heaven. I did not think of visiting them on account of the difficiilty of reaching them. There was, however, a staircase leading to them, as to the peak on which I stood. Tlie view from the top of Giniar is one which is not dearly purchased at the expense of ascending it. It embraces the adjoining hills, one of wliich — the Dliatar — vies with it in height, and an immense range of low country extending in all directions, and, toward the west, reaching the sea. There is much jungle on the lower hills : and culti- 118 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1835. vatioii, from the want of water, is not very extensive in the low country. Villages appear scattered only here and there. "I made as quick a descent of the monntaiu as possible, that I might reach, before the darkness of night settled uj^on me, the block of granite near Joonagurh, which contains the ancient inscriptions Avhich, though never deciphered, have attracted much attention. I was able to accomplish the object which I had in view. After examining the block for a little, and com- paring the letters with several ancient Sanskrita alphabets in my possession, 1 found myself able, to my great joy, and that of the Brahmans who were with me, to make out several words, and to decide as to the probable possibility of making out the whole. The taking a cojjy of the inscrijjtions, I found, from their extent, to be a hopeless task ; but, as Captain Lang had kindly promised to procure a transcript of the whole for me, I did not regret the circumstance." But one spot of historical and idolatrous interest remained to be visited — that Somnath which the iconoclast Muhammad of Ghuznee stripped of its treasures, and the so-called gates which Lord Ellenborough dreamed that he would restore as an act of political and religious justice which the Hindoos must appreciate. Having sailed from the port of Joonagurh, Verawul, Mr. AVilson rode two miles to the Phallic shrine of the old temple. "ISth March. — I jjroceeded to both the new and old temples of Somnath. The former was built by the famous Alya Bai about fifty years ago, and it is now under the care of the Somj)ada Brahmans, with one of whom I conversed. The latter is that of which the image (a linga) was destroyed by Muhammad of Ghuzui, and of which the most extravagant accounts have been published. The greater part of the building (of sandstone) is still standing, and the remains of its external ornaments, though much defaced by the violence of the Mussulmans, show that, as pieces of art, they had been well executed. Some are not very decent, and it is not to be wondered at that the attempt was made to destroy them. The Mussulman conqueror might find treasure about the premises, but most certainly it was not within the god, who had neither head nor belly." Bombay was safely reached, by sea, on the 20tli March, after an absence of above three months. The missionary survey of the whole Province of Bombay proper was now complete. The one, the only one, intolerable trial of European life in India had already begun to cast its shadow over the other- wise unbroken happiness of the mission family at Ambrolie. Four children had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, and of these one had died in infancy, while another was soon to follow him. During Mr. "Wilson's absence on his tour to Goa in 1834, it had been necessary to send home their eldest boy, Andrew, who has since distinguished himself as a traveller 1835.] DEATH OF MARGARET WILSON. 119 and author in India, China, and Great Britain. Very pathetic are the references, in the correspondence of husljand and wife, to these deaths and that separation. But now the close of the tour of 1835 was to be marked by the greatest blow of all. Dr. Smyttan had urged Mrs. Wilson to return to Scotland, after her visit to Surat, as the only means of saving her life. " It seems worse than death to part from my husband ; but if I must indeed go, the Lord Avill give me strength for the hour of trial. Dr. Smyttan has not yet mentioned it to Mr. Wilson ; he is afraid of distressing him, and he wished me first to give my consent. This I can never do." On the 8th April she wrote to her boy at home " the last letter that your dearest mamma Avill ever write to you ; " and as she laid down the pen exclaimed, " Now I am ready to die," But not till the struggling spirit had cared for the Marathee girls also, for she ever spoke in the agony of dissolution to them, Anandie, YesJm Christiavar phar prlil them, " Anandie, I beseech you, greatly love Jesus Christ ! " " The prospect of death is sweet," she could say in lier last words. After that, and on the 19th April, the Sabbath morning saw her freed from the body. It is all such a tragedy, and on its human side so common a tragedy, in the land of which Great Britain has taken pos- session by the dust of its noblest women as well as bravest men. But to her it was a triumph. Margaret Wilson was the first, as she was with Ann Judson the greatest, of that band of women-missionaries whom Great Britain and America have ever since given to India, till now they number some two hundred who are living and dying for its people. Her sisters soon after took up her work, and her husband published a very popular Memoir of her life,' which the perusal of her papers enables us to pronounce within the truth in the repre- sentations it gives of her intellectual ability and her gracious force of character. To her, more than to any other, is due the rapid progress of female education in Bombay, not only in Christian schools but in Parsee, Hindoo, and even Muham- madan families. ^ A Memoir of Mrs. Margaret Wilson, of the Scottish Mission, Bombay. Third edition, enlarged. Edinburgh, 1840. 120 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1836. CHAPTEE VII. 1836-1842. ZAND SCHOLAKSHIP AND THE PARSEE CONTROVERSY. Degree ot D.D. from University of Edinburgh — First Marriage in Native Church of Bombay — Dr. Wilson first English Scholar to master Zand Texts — Fall of the Persian Empire — Migrations of the Parsee Fugitives — Sanjan and Nausaree, " a City of Priests " — First Parsee Settlers in Bombay — Frater Paulinus on the Lingua Zendica — Anquetil du Perron's Adventures — Professor Rash's visit to India — Dr. Wilson's first Zand Studies in 1831 — Origin of the Parsee Conti-oversy — An Unhappy Editor — " Goosequill " and " Swanqiiill " — The Parsee Sects — Dr. Wilson's Lectures on the " Vandidad"- — The Parsee Sanhedrim enter the Lists — Dr. Wilson's Work on "The Parsi Religion" — First Zand and Pahlavi types — Conversion of Dhuujeebhoy No^vl•ojee — Hormasdjee Pestonjee follows — Persecution of Framjee — Writ of Habeas Corpus — First Vindication in India of Civil and Religious Rights of the Natives — League of the Parsee Priests against the Missionaries — Hormasdjee receives his Wife and Daughter at last. When, on the 7th July 1836, Mr. Wilson wrote that pleasant letter to his old friend and benefactor, Mr. J. Jordan Wilson, in which he expressed satisfaction at "Mr. Duff's elevation to a Doctorship " by the vigorous University of Aberdeen, and hinted that his own policy of vernacular preaching Avould 2Jrobably lead the Modern Athens to pronounce him a " babbler," like Paul, he was about to be surprised by the receipt of the parchment diploma from his own University of Edinburgh, of D.D., or " Sacrosanct^e Theologise Doctor." The learning and the piety of his native country were as ready to mark Avith academic approval the six years' career of the young scholar who preached and wrote, in season and out of season, to wise and simple, in the vernacular and classical tongues of Western India, as to honour the briefer and more brilliant work of his fellow-missionary who, in Eastern India, had begun an intellectual as well as spiritual revolution which was already affecting even Bombay itself. 1836.] HOXORAPvY DEGREE FROM EDINBURGH UNlVKIiSITV. 121 Dr. Duff, driven home by an almost fatal disease, was restored to feed the flame of apostolic Evangelism in the churches of great Britain and America, so that soon Bombay and Goojarat, as Avell as Madras, Nagpore, and Calcutta, were to see the result in new missions and fresh missionaries Avorthy of such pioneers. Dr. Wilson, in spite of the com- parative solitude of bereavement, and not unfrequent sick- ness from overwork and exposure, was to be enabled to carry on his loved Avork among the people of India without inter- ruption till the close of 1842. Thus, at every successive period the gifts and the labours of each supplemented those of the other, while specially adapted to the local peculiarities of the provinces and the communities to whom they gave their lives ; and both combined to form an almost perfect ideal of Christian evangelisation among the races of the East. Certainly the diploma of the University of Edinburgh, as it was given to Wilson after the old fashion, long before the modern and most desirable custom of bestowing such academic degrees personally and in public had originated, well described his previous function as a teacher of divine Theology, and could hardly confer on him any new power or virtue in that capacity. The interest of the already yellow pai"chment lies rather in the names of some of the men who signed it, among whom we find, besides Principal Baird, such medical professors as Alison and Traill, Ballingall and Syme, and Sir Robert Christison still spared to the city ; Tliomas Clialmei's and David Welsh ; Sir William Hamilton and James D. Forbes ; Macvey Napier, and that other John Wilson, who taught poetry, criticism, and all the humanities, under the name of Moral Philosophy. Never before, and probably never since, has the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, even Avhen conferred by the University of Edinburgh, had so honest a significance as this, Avhich was signed on the 4th of May 1836. He thus acknowledged it, in a letter to Professor Brunton, which also gives us some glimpses of the progress of female education and society : — "Bombay, 16th Sejytonher 1836. — I received your letter of the 28th May, on the Ji/tieth day after its date ! I am quite overwhelmed with your kind- ness ; and I shall not attempt to express my sense of the obligations under which it has jdaced me. The diploma was unexjiected by me ; and I fear that it will prove only a generous jjaynient in advance for work which may never be performed. I desire to view it, however, as a new call to cultivate personal 122 LIFE OF JOHX WILSOX. [1836. humility, to abound in the proclamation of the C4ospel, hoth by -vNTiting and speech, to the perishing multitudes around me, and to imfold for the compas- sion of the benevolent, as opportunities offer, the systems of transcendental speculation and gross superstition, -which exercise siich a destructive sway in the regions of Asia. I have already used my new title in a Persian pamphlet which I have just published, entitled Puiddl-i-Lin Musabndn'i, or Refutation of Muhammadanism. My grateful acknowledgments are due to the Univer- sity of Edinburgh. " The School for Destitute Poor Native Girls now contains fifty-five scholars, who are all making satisfactoiy jirogress. The eldest of the two girls connected with it, whom I lately baptized, has been married by me to one of the Brahman converts, and this, the first virtuous luiiou of natives formed in the bosom of the Protestant Church in Bombay, promises to promote the happiness of both the parties. The marriage was honoured by the attend- ance of several friends of the mission, and by many natives. I embraced the opportunity which it afforded me of entering into a contrast between the injunctions of the Christian Scriptures and the Hindoo Shastres relative to the treatment of females. The Parsee inhabitants of a street in the neigh- bourhood of the mission-house have placed under me the whole disposal of the juvenile population, includmg sixteen girls, for instruction through the medium of Goojaratee, a circumstance which has afforded me the highest delight. Altogether, there are upwards of 180 girls educating in connection with the mission." To liis discussions Avith Brahmans and Moulvies, Jains and Jews, in the central seat of Bombay, and in many of its districts and feudatory principalities, Dr. Wilson had added that which proved to be the most important of all. Alike as a scliolar and a missionary, his Avritings on the Zand language and literature, and his spiritual and social influence among the Parsees, take the highest place. He was the first English scholar to master the original Zand texts, according to the admission of the " irritabile genus " of pure Orientalists, as represented by the late Dr. Haug, who would in no wise give due credit to his German rival, Spiegel, the present able representative of Zand scholarship in Europe. And Dr. Wilson was the first missionary to educate and admit to the Christian Church two converts from the faith of Zoroastei^ who still adorn the Free Church of Scotland and the Baptist Church respectively, as ordained ministers. The Parsees, the people of Pars or Ears which the Greeks called Persis, after having ruled Western Asia from the Black Sea to the Indus from before Kai Khoshru, or Cyrus the Great, fell victims to the same intolerance which thej^ had shown against every other faith, whether idolatrous or Christian as in the case of the long-suffering Armenians. In A.D, 658, Yezdijird HI, the last of the Sassanian kings, saw 1836.] ARRIVAL OF THE PARSEES IX INDIA. 12.'3 his army spoiled of its sacred banner, the jewelled apron of Kawa, on the fatal field of Kadseah. That palladium gone, a few years more left the empire of Cyrus extinguished at Naha- vand, not far from that capital of Ilamadan, to which the Jewess Esther has given an immortality greater than that of Cyrus or of Artaxerxes her husband. The mound is still seen at Toorkman Merv where Yezdijird found a grave after miserable wanderings, while all of his surviving host who did not apostatise bore with them the sacred fire to the hills of Khorassan. Thence the Kaliph Omar and his successors drove them south to the sea, to the caves of Ormuz of which ]\Iilton sings, though its wealth and sjilendour Avere of later date and Portuguese origin, on to Diu off Kathiawar, and so to Sanjan in Goojarat. There, in 717, they found an aslyum for three centuries, and became partially Hindooised. For, explain it away as their Anglicised descendants may, " the fair, the fearless, the valiant, and the athletic Parsees," obtained pro- tection from the Eana Jadao by a denial of that very mono- theism from which, in its jMuhammadan form, they had fled, and which in controversy they now claim to hold. In six- teen distichs of corrupt Sanskrit, drawn up after some days of deliberation, they professed to worship the sun, the five elements, Hormuzd, chief of the Suras or angels, and the cow ; and described their ritual and customs. Regarding them, evidently, as only another sect of Hindoos, the liana assisted them to build their fire-temple, and there they con- tinued to flourish, sending forth settlements to the neighbour- ing districts. As the Muhammadan power grew in "Western India their old enemy found them out, and they fled with their sacred fire to the jungle of Wasanda from the assault of Sultan Mahmood Begoda of Ahmedabad, in lo07, though not without showing a courage in defence of their Hindoo protectors worthy of their fathers. When the danger passed by they sought a resting-place in that Goojaratee toAvn of Nausaree, Avhere Dr. Wilson found their earliest temples and MSS. during his northern tour. Surat was not far off, and thither not a few Parsees carried their intelligence and enter- prise to the service of the Euroi)oan traders. Sir Nicholas Waite's Parses broker, for instance, still lives in the early annals as a clever but by no means honest fellow. The family of Ardeshir Dhunjeesha of Surat was founded by a Parsee 124 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1836. whose ability made him the favourite of the Great Moghul at Agra, and enabled him to obtain commercial privileges for his English friends. Muncherjee Seth did similar service to the Dutch. As Surat rose into importance Nausaree became, what it still is, the city of the Parsee priests. At an early period the community attracted the attention of Kerridge, the English Governor of Surat ; and in 1616 he urged Henry Lord, the first English chaplain there, to study thoroughly the religions of both Hindoos and Parsees. Lord's rare little quarto was used by Sir Thomas Herbert in his valuable work ; and by the French traveller Bernier, in his letter to M. Chaplain, on " Lord's Discovery of Two Foreign Sects." When Bombay became English, and was opened as a free city to all the native communities of Western India, Asia, and Eastern Africa, as we have seen, the Parsees were the first to take advantage of English rule there. Three years after its settlement, Dr. Fryer found, on the top of Malabar Hill, "a Parsee tomb (or tower of silence) lately raised." Indeed, one Dorabjee Nanabhoy had held office there during the Portuguese occupation, and his services were found in- valuable when the English took possession. His son drove off' the Seedee pirates, and received the hereditary distinction of Patel or lord of the fishermen whom he led on that occasion, an honour still valued by the family, who have become great merchants from China to London. The English shipwright who built the East India Company's vessels at Bombay tempted one Lowjee to leave Surat, and his descendants have, ever since the foundation of the dockyard in 1735, held the position of master builder. The great and wealthy clans of Shet Khandans, Dadyshets, and Banajees, still trace their prosperity to the happy day when their ancestors settled under the Company's flag in the Fort of Bombay. It was in 1780 that a Dadyshet built the first of the three fire-temples in the island. The latest census shows that the whole Parsee community under British rule number 70,000, of whom a third are in the city of Bombay. There are some in Persia. For a community with such a history, language, and sacred literature, whose influence, in spite of their compara- tively small number, was half a century ago far beyond that of the leading men of all the other races and sects in India, nothing had been done in a hia;h educational sense before Dr 1836.] ZAND SCIIOLAIIS PltEVIOUS TO DI!. WILSON. 125 Wilson's arrival in Bombay. Save a few of their priests, tliey themselves were ignorant of their sacred books. The little that Lord had been able to communicate to Europe regarding them in the beginning of the seventeenth century had been independently followed up by a Jesuit missionary, whose undoubtedly rich contributions to early Zand and Sanskrit scholarship Dr. Haug overlooks in his history of the researches into the sacred Avritings and religion of the Parsees. John Philip AVerdin, born of peasant parents in 174:8 in South Austria, went out in 17 7-1 to the Malabar coast as Frater Paulinus, devoted himself for fourteen years to the study of Sanskrit and Zand, as well as the languages of South India, and returned to Rome, from which, Avhen secretary to the congregation of the Propaganda, he issued at least twenty great works, mostly quarto volumes, on the classical languages, literatures and customs of the peoples of India. Not less a polemic than Paulinus was Anquetil du Perron, the young theological student of Paris, who first brought the Zand texts to Europe, and translated them, after a fashion, into French. Stumbling on a manuscript of the Yandidad in the king's library, one of the few probably brought to Europe by Bourchier or Dr. Eraser, he abandoned the church for the life of a private soldier, that he might find his way out to India. He sailed in the French expedition of 1745. Know- ing Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian, he set himself to Sanskrit, and such a study of the people as could best be made daring long journeys on foot from Chandernagore to Pondicheri on the east coast, and from ]\Iahe to Surat on the Avest coast. At Surat the support of the French government enabled him to fee Dustoor Darab, one of the most learned high priests of the Parsees, to instruct him in both Zand and Pahlavi, and to sell him manuscripts. Suspecting that he was being deceived, as later scholars like Wilford were, by the Brah- mans, he bribed other priests also, till he Avas satisfied as to the honesty of Darab. For six years, during which he collected a hundred and eighty MSS. in all the sacred languages of the country, he pursued his researches, and then he determined to settle at Benares for the composition of a work on the Avhole historj^, literature, and antiquities of India. The fall of Pondicheri to the English arms forced him to return to France. He visited Oxford on the way, where he 126 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1836. laid the foundation of a quarrel with Sir William Jones, and so led the learned of Europe into the error, which Dr. Wilson Avas the first completely to dissipate, that Zand, instead of being the elder sister of the Sanskrit, was that monstrous impossibility — an invented or forged language. France honoured the scholar, as, since Colbert, she had always perse- cuted the soldiers and statesmen who Avould have given her an eastern empire, and in 1771 he published his Zend-Avesta. The Eevolution drove him into that obscurity which alone was safety, and when he died in 1805 he was occupied on a new French edition of the Viar/r/io of his old rival Paulinas. A century before, Hyde had published his learned apology for Zoroastrianism, in his Hlstoria lleHglonk Veterum Persarum eoriimque Magorum, but he could not read the MSS. of which he professed to give a criticism. Du Perron's manuscripts, the dictations of Darab and the other priests, as still to be found in the National Library of Paris, and, above all, the two quartos of his Zend-Avesta, became the stream from which all subsequent scholars drank, till the Danish Rask and the Scottish Wilson went to the fountain-head. In the course of a philological tour of Europe, Africa, and Asia, the Scandinavian scholar Rask visited Bombay to study Zand. In 1826 he used the collection which he had purchased for the Copenhagen Library in the production of his small Avork on the age and genuineness of the Zand language. In that he justified by new proofs the conclusions of Paulinus and Du Perron as to its relation to the Sanskrit, but refused to follow the latter in his conclusions as to the antiquity of Zoroaster, For Rask was the first to make out the law of the transposition of sounds with which Bopp's name is connected. Five years afterwards Dr. Wilson, prompted by the scholar's enthusiasm, but, along Avith that, by the more consuming fire Avhich inflamed all his life, thus Avrote to the secretary of the Scottish Missionary Society, the first of his draft letters Avhich Ave can find specially referring to the Parsees : — " Bombay, 24:th July 1831. ... I have now regularly delivered a lecture on Systematic Theology on Wednesday evenings during the last sixteen weeks. My audience, which consists partly of Em-opeaus and partly of Natives, has been respectable. Ten of my lectures were devoted to the consideration of the testimony which is aftbrded by the light of Nature to the existence, attributes, and moral government of God ; and to the duty and destiny of man. Two of them were occupied in forming an estimate of the discoveries of the light of 1S36.] OCCASION OF THE TAKSEE COXTROVEliSV. 127 Nature, and in eviucinc; tlie possibility and desirableness of a direct Revelation. I am at present engaged in tlie consideration of the incpiirj', Wliere is a direct Revelation to be found ? and I have spent four evenings in the discussion iof the claims of the Parsee leligion. I have been reciuested to publish my observations upon it ; but I have agreed only to the i>resent printing of sucli of them as refer to the " V^endidad Sade," which is the most autlioritative work acknowledged by the followers of Zoroaster. I intend, God willing, to comply with the wishes of my friends by preparing a work embracing an analysis of all the sacred books of the Parsees, a particular view of their religious history so far as it can be ascertained, and a description of tlieir manners and customs. I have for a long time been prosecuting inquiries connected with these subjects ; and I have lately procured some documents which throw great light upon them. When I last wrote to you I had not the intention which I now avow ; but many circumstances have conspired, and especially the encouragement which I have received from some of my friends to whose judgment I bow with deference, the readiness of the natives to make communications to me — the prol)able usefulness of the work in leading them to inquiry and in assisting future missionaries — which they have hitherto withheld from other Europeans, have led me to come to a determination on the subject. I have access to most of the books published in Eurojie which treat of the Parsees. There is one little work which I cannot find here which I should like to see. It is The Sacred Oracles of Zoroaster, published in Greek, at Amsterdam, in 1689. It is not considered genuine ; but some of the passages which I have seen objected to as inconsistent with the opinions of Zoroaster appear to me to be consonant with them. If you should see a copy advertised in any of the catalogues, I shall feel much obliged to you if you will purchase it for me." It was not till 1833 that there appeared the Commenfari/ on the Yasna, or Parsee prayer-book, based on Nerio.singli 's Sanskrit translation, by Eugene Burnouf. Nor was it till 1841 that the other Danish scholar, Westergaard, arrived in Bombay, where he was long Dr. Wilson's guest, and received that self- sacrificing assistance which enabled him to give to the world the first complete edition of the still extant text of the Avasta, "translated with a dictionary grammar, etc.," in 1852-51-. There Avere two men in Bombay on Dr. Wilson's arrival who further stimulated him to vindicate the reputation of the cajjital in which most of the Parsees Avere to be found. Sir John Malcolm, in one of his earliest addresses to the Asiatic Society there, had declared that, in the first instance, Bombay must be specially looked to for an elucidation of the ancient Zoroastrian faith. Mr. AVilliam Erskine, son-in-law of Sir James Mackintosh, and historian of Babar and Hoomayoon, had frequently contributed to its " Transactions " papers on the ancient religion of Persia, which, indeed, had led the king of Denmark to send Professor Rask to India. The occasion of Dr. Wilson's first encounter Avith the Parsees was his publication in 1831 of a review of the Avork 128 LIFE OF JOIIX WILSON. [1836. of Elis£eus on the History of Vartan and the Battle of the Armenians, containing an Account of the Religious JFcir betiveen the Persians and Armenians, translated by that accomplished Christian Jew, Karl Friedrich Neumann, who had just visited China, and who died at Berlin a few years ago. It was necessary for the critic to give a very brief and general account of the religious works of the Parsees, and not without the hope that the statement would rouse some apologist on the other side. Two weeks after a Parsee appealed to the editor of the Samachar, a respectable Goojaratee newspaper, to say whether, as the writer believed, the account of the Parsee religion was incorrect. " Do the Shets," he asked, the respectable native gentlemen, " and those skilled in the knowledge of our belief, intend to say nothing in refutation 1" The cautious editor declined the challenge for himself, but added, " if it be thought advisable by the intelligent of our tribe, we shall give it a reconsideration." This led Dr. Wilson to acknowledge that he was the author of the review, and to declare his willingness to publish whatever might be written in reply to it. " Tell me your whole mind. . . . You say that Ave reproach the Hindoo and Parsee religions, but we declare only what is true respecting them. We reason, but we use no violence. We enter into discussion that truth may appear, and we say to all, ' Inc|uire.' " The unhappy editor did not like the trouble of such rationalism. " Permit us, permit us to follow the road on which we have been travelling, for at last all roads meet in one point ; there is no Eedeemer of any," he said. " If our friend the wi'iter, John Wilson (may the grace of God be upon him !), is desirous of drawing us into a discussion of this character, we plainly say to him that it is not suitable to us." But " if any pundit, religious officer, or intelligent person of one of the castes to which he has referred should fulfil his wish, we are perfectly indifferent in the matter, and feel neither joy nor sorrow." In the next number Dr. Wilson slew the slain delusion with the same kindly but uncompromising sympathy that marked all his relations with the natives. All native Bombay was talking of this new challenge, when a bold printer, who had issued the prospectus of another journal, promised to publish and circulate gratuitously all that should be sent to him on either side till he could estab- 1836.] THE PARSEE CONTROVERSY. 129 lisli his paper. So Nowrozjee Mobed Daral)jee — a mohcd being the middle priest, as a dustoor is above him and a hcrbad below him — printed on excellent paper a series of pamphlets in royal quarto form. The champion of Zoroaster signed him- self, " Nauroz Goosequill," which he changed to " Swanquill," when he realised that he exposed himself to tlie jocular charge of being a goose. It was sometimes to Dr. Wilson a matter of doubt whether his opponent was in real earnest as regards much which fell from his pen. Goosequill's denial that the Cosmogony, which Dr. Wilson had exposed, was one of the Parsee scriptures, brought down upon him his co-reli- gionists, and the most sacred of all, the Dustoor Eduljee Darabjee, who had translated it into the A^ernacular Gooja- ratee. Believing the would-be defender of Parseeism to be a Sadducee of the opposite sect of the Kadmees, the high priest became a challenger in his turn. Goosequill was equal to the work of destruction, and exposed the puerile book in a style which astonished the community, who had accepted it as a popular digest of their faith. It was not difficult for Dr. Wilson to intervene at this stage, and show that all his objections to the Cosmogony applied to the Van- didad. His reply covered sixteen chapters, which appeared . in as many numbers of the Goojaratee paper, and these he afterwards condensed into a lecture on the Vandidad, which he delivered to both natives and Europeans, and published at their request. Had not Gibbon, with all his desire to exalt Zoroastrianism at a time when his knowledge was necessarily imperfect and not derived from the texts themselves, confessed that " in that motley composition, dictated by reason and passion, by enthusiasm and by selfish motives, some useful and sublime truths were disgraced by a mixture of the most abject and dangerous superstition'"? The discussion was now anxiously taken up by the Parsee Sanhedrim, known as the Punchayat — etymologically, council of five — a body of from fifteen to twenty members, em- powered by Governor Hornby in 1778 to deal with purely tribal offenders to the extent of beating them with shoes. The Dustoors attacked Dr. Wilson's lecture in the Jam-i- Jamshid, the reformers and Dr. Wilson replied in the Ilar- kdrah and Vartaman. The former adopted the position that K 130 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1836. the names of the dual principles of good and evil in the Zoroastrian system, Hormuzd and Ahriman, are purely para- bolical : that they have an esoteric meaning not intended for the ignorant, and that the childish and worse than Talmudic- miracles ascribed to Zoroaster are as well authenticated as those of Christ. One of Dr. Wilson's brief rejoinders con- tains this passage, of striking significance in the light of the conversion of the two Parsee young men soon after : — " It aj^pears iconderful to the Zoroastrian that God should have so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. If he will inquire into the evidences of Christianity, which are neither few nor small, he Avill find that what is Avonderful in this instance is also true. If the Zoroastrian will reflect on the nature of sin, he will perceive that it is an infinite evil ; that no efforts of his OAvn can of themselves remove that sin which has been already committed ; and that, if salvation be obtained at all, it must be through the merit of a divine substitute. Christ, he will find on in- quiry, delivers from the punishment of sin, and saves from the power of sin, all those who put their trust in His name. Men's works are imperfect in every case, and in many in- stances positively sinful ; and if the Zoroastrian looks to his works for his acquittance, he will find himself miserably dis- appointed. The danger of trusting in our self-righteousness I have exposed at length in my lecture." The Zoroastrian boastingly said, " With regard to the conversion of a Parsee you cannot even dream of the event, because even a Parsee babe, crying in the cradle, is firmly confident in the venerable Zartusht." " The conversion of a Parsee," I allow, " is a work too difficult for ms to accomplish. The conversion of any man is a work too difficult for me to accomplish. It is not " too difficult, however, for the Spirit of God. It is my part to state the truth of God ; and it is God's part to give it his blessing." For some five years after these early attacks on Dr. Wil- son's Vandidad Lecture the controversy almost ceased. But in 1840 a quarto of 268 pages appeared, bearing this title, " Talim-i-Zurtoosht, or The Doctrine of Zoroaster, in the Gooja- ratee Language, for the Instruction of Parsee Youths, together with an Answer to Dr. Wilson's Lecture on (the) Vandidad, 1841.] THE PAKSEE CONTROVERSY. 131 compiled by a Parsee Priest." The avowed author was Dosabhoy Sohrabjee, a respectable Moonshee, well known to the native and European communities of Bombay. He con- fessed himself the hireling of the Parsee sanhedrim. He adopted the old line of representing Ahriman, the evil prin- ciple, as a mere personification of the evil qualities inherent in man, and the sacred fire adored in the Yasna ritual as only a centre of worship. His advocacy was soon disowned by the high priest of the large Rasamee sect, Dustoor Edal Daroo. Agreeably to the " orders," and at the expense of Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, he published the Maiijazaf-i-Zartoshti, or, I'he Un- doubted Miracles of Zoroaster, in 127 quarto pages. The author, who had lived for many years in a state of seclusion at the principal fire-temple, expounded the Zoroastrian faith to aid its followers in their discussions with the Jud-din or Gentiles. Dr. Wilson describes him as having to a consider- able extent escaped the untoward march of intellect in his seclusion, but as most creditably preserving his temper. A third assailant of the Vandidad Lecture, in the same year, 1840, was one who signed himself Kalam Kas, and pro- posed a series of questions under the title of Nirang-ha. So stupid was he that some of the respectable Parsees begged Dr. Wilson not to hold them responsible for the writer's ignorance. The fourth attack, in English as well as Goojaratee, was the Hadie-Gum-Rahan, a guide to those who have lost their way, written by Aspandiarjee Framjee in 1811, at the special request of a rich Shet, Jeejeebhoy Dadabhoy, Esq. Of this last Dr. Wilson remarks — " Its appeals to the Zand writings are pretty numerous, but the translations and interpretations made of them are much more inaccurate than those of Anquetil du Perron, on Avhich, nine years ago, when I published the pamphlet on Avhich its animadversions are made and before I devoted my- self seriously to the study of the Zand, I was almost wholly dependent for my knowledge of the sacred books of the Parsees. The author, when he finds my arguments insuper- able, generally retreats, like Dosabhoy, into a parabolical sanctuary, Avhich his imagination has called into being as a dernier place of resort for Zoroaster and his foiled followers. In the ruins of this sanctuary, if I mistake not, he has found a place of sepulture." k 132 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1841. This is a. fair illustration at once of the stage in Zand scholarship reached in 1841 by Dr. Wilson, of the keen yet well-tempered strokes which he dealt at error which debased man and sought to dishonour God, and of the tactics of his priestly assailants. It was not as a scholar, however, but as a Christian apostle, that, as we have before seen, he rejoiced to raise and to engage in the controversies which should let in the true light. Hence, believing it " manifestly desirable that the Parsee system should be exhibited in the light of Christianity, and," as he modestly expresses it, " with a view to aid in this attempt," he left as a legacy to India when illness drove him home at the close of 1842, and he presented to his native country and to Europe, his greatest work, " The Parsi Religion : as contained in the Zand-Avasta, and propounded and defended by the Zoroastrians of India and Persia, Un- folded, Refuted, and Contrasted with Christianity." The volume, long since out of print, was published by the American Mission Press of Bombay from the first Zand and Pahlavi metallic types cast in the East. The Rev. Dr. Allen sent forth from the foundry of that Press for Western India, as Carey, Marshman, and Ward had produced at the Seram- pore Press long before for all India and China, the first metal types for the regeneration of the East. But it was in 1778 that the earliest critical student of Sanskrit, the Bengal civilian Charles Wilkins, cut with his own hand the types from which the elder Halhed's Grammar was printed, and then a set of Persian types. " He gave to Asia tyi)ographic art," may well be written on the tomb of Wilkins, the friend of Sir William Jones. The Parsi Religion soon brought down on its author, as we shall see, the highest honours of most of the learned societies of Europe, while the lofty honesty, unalterable kind- liness and even warm aff'ection of its author for the Parsees as individuals, established his position more firmly than ever in Bombay. Dr. Hyde's Latin work, on the other hand, pub- lished more than a century before, though very much an apology for Zoroastrianism, was so ill received that he is said to have boiled his tea-kettle with nearly the whole impression. In 1833 the " Zoroastrian " controversialist had flung the taunt, that the conversion of a Parsee was not to be even dreamed of In 1835 the central college of the 1S39.] FIRST VINDICATION OF IIIGIITS OF NATIVES. 133 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was opened by Dr. Wilson, then the only Scottish ]\Iissionary in Bombay, and in 1839 three Parsee students made their spontaneous and very solemn statements previous to receiving Christian baptism. This was the result of Dr. Wilson's work, and especially of the Vandidad Lecture ; and this accounts for the sudden outburst of controversy against it. Dhunjeebhoy Nowrojee Avas sixteen years and a half old, or six months beyond Avhat was supposed to be the legal age of discretion. His mother was living, and his nearest male relative was an uncle. Hormasdjee Pestonjee and Framjee Bahmanjee were above nineteen ; the former was married and the father of one child. The case occurred in the island of Bombay, Avithin the jurisdiction of the purely English law as administered by the Supreme Court and English barrister judges. The most suspicious or hostile could allege no such motives as worldly gain or advancement, for theyouths belonged to the best families and were the most intelligent in the college. Altogether, whether we look at the position of the converts, at the character of their teachers, or at the conceited intoler- ance of the community who believed that a change of religious belief from the doctrines of Zoroaster Avas as im- possible as it Avould be impious, it Avas Avell that the question of religious toleration and civil liberty should thus be tried for the first time in the history of British India and of Asia. Very sloAvly had the Court of Directors been compelled by the public voice of England through Parliament to con- cede, first in 1783, English tribunals Avith jurisdiction over all within the Presidency cities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, and then in 1813 completed by the charter of 1833, to AvithdraAv the restrictions which prevented the ministers of the Christian faith alone from peaceably preaching and teach- ing. NoAA% six years after that charter, and four years after Lord William Bentinck had taken the first step to protect Christian converts from the loss of all their property as Avell as their families, and the Court of Directors had issued orders that its Government should no longer support Hindoo temples and Muhammadan mosques — Avhich orders were not obeyed — it fell to Dr. Wilson to vindicate the civil and religious rights of the natives of India above sixteen yeai's of age. The similar cases that have occurred since, in the Supreme or High 134 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1839. Courts, as well as in tlie ordinary territory suliject to Indian law, have raised issues of greater moment, and have been on the whole attended with less scandal than are involved in the occasional suits between Roman Catholics and Protestants in this country, as to the rights of conscience of minors. In spite of urgent appeals from both Christians and non-Chris- tians to the Government of India for a declaratory law on the subject, jurists like Sir Henry S. Maine have not found it possible to go beyond the English precedents, which leave it to the judges in each case, after examination of the minor, to decide what is the age or stage of discretion short of sixteen. Unhappily, in states like Mysore, where English precedents are not recognised, oppression of the most atrocious kind may take place without a remedy, as in the case of the well- educated woman, Huchi. Even before the Queen's tribu- nals there may be a failure of justice from an ignorance of procedure in the lower courts, as in a more recent LucknoAV instance, that of the widow Keroda. But in the Dhunjeebhoy trial the age of sixteen was passed, and it only remained for the judge to satisfy himself of the fact. Then too, as in so many other instances, the defeated bigots — for so they must be called while all allowance is made for parental, caste and superstitious feelings — carried off and vilely treated Framjee, so as effectually to prevent his baptism, though not to alter his convictions. . Dhunjeebhoy was not the first Parsee Avho had sought baptism. Like all the Scottish missionaries. Dr. Wilson kept inquirers longer under observation and instruction than those of a more ritualistic custom think it right to do, thus present- ing an extreme contrast to the wholesale baptism of crowds by Xavier as described by that ' apostle ' in his letters. Dr. Wilson's official communications to Dr. Brunton thus tell the story : — "Bombay, 6th October 1838. — On the 9th of last month, after I had administered the ordinance of baptism to two chihlren of the converts, I had the satisfaction of enrolling in the list of catechumens the names of five new candidates for admission into the Church — two Mussulmans, one of whom is a Sciijad, or reputed descendant of Muhammad ; two young Catholic Armenians, and one yoimg Hindoo. A Parsee, the first who has intimated his wish to be baptized in Bombay, appeared along with them, but I declined to allow him to come forward at present on account of his very partial knowledge of Chris- tianity, and my ignorance of his character. I have been obliged, for reasons which will immediately occur to you, to give him shelter in my own house ; 1S39.] FIRST PARSKE CATECHUMENS. 135 but respectiug his case in a siuritual jioiiit of view, I am not yet able to ex- liress a favourable opinion. A short time will probalily cast some light on his feelings and motives. I have reason to believe that he is a fair specimen of a considerable class, whose connection for some time jiast with the Zoroas- trians has been maintained more by the strength of their social arrangements than by regard to their religious tenets and practices. "1st Xovanber 18'i8. — You will be deeply interested to learn, what I rejoice with trembling to state to you, that there are several hopeful symptoms of the true conversion to God of one of the most advanced and prondsing Parsee jiupils of our institution. He morning and evening reads the Scriptures and prays with Johannes Essai, our Armenian monitor ; and he has expressed to me his wish to be baptized. He gives a very simple and satisfactory account of the origin and progress of his impressions and convictions. Were we now to receive him into the Church he woidd immediately be removed from our care and protection. By remaining in his present position he is exj)Osed to many temjitations, and he will be in danger when his views and feelings become known to his relatives. A gracious Providence may soon enable us to come to a decision respectiug his case. When an open step is taken thei-e will be a great commotion among the Zoroastrians, of whose pride and power you can scai'cely form an idea. They are mightily incensed at present on account of the man whose case I mentioned to you last mouth ; aud they have, alas ! succeeded in frightening him into heathen compliances. "You will see, I doubt not, in the English j^apers, the declaration of war against Afghanistan and Persia. It is not my province to make on it any comment. I only express the hope that the covenant of offence and defence entered into with Runjeet Singh will ere long prove favourable to the introduc- tion of the Gospel among the independent Sikhs. " 7th May 1839. — Intelligence of these defections from the faith of Zarthust having spread among the native community, the clouds began to gather. Our first concern, of course, was the personal safety of our dear children in the faith ; and we lifted up our hearts in prayer that they might be preserved from all danger. On the evening of the 28th of April they were all with me in the mission-house, Ambrolie, engaged in devotional exercises ; and Hormasdjee and Framjee on parting with me said that they had great apprehensions as to their treatment by their connexions. I ottered them an asylum should they see reason at any time to place themselves under my protection. Dhuujeebhoy remained with me to assist me in examining some Goojaratee manuscripts, and as it was too late for us when we had concluded our business to proceed to my bungalow on Malabar Hill, where we have generally slept since the commence- ment of the warm season, and where Dhunjeebhoy had been staying for some days with the view of assisting one of our friends in her studies, we mercifully resolved to rest in the mission-house. All was quiet during the night, but the morning showed too plainly that the elements had been put in motion by the fears and alarms of the families more immediately connected with the youth. One messenger came after another calling on Dhunjeebhoy to return to his friends ; and one attempt after another was made to decoy liim from my roof. Dift'erent bands began to collect near my prendses, and diftereut persons were seen to be on the watch. We were informed that there was great consterna- tion among the Parsees in the F'ort ; and we had the most serious appre- hensions about Hormasdjee and Frain.jee, who lived in that locality. When they were at their height the former made his appearance with a man carrying his clothes, and declared that he had heard that Framjeee had been put under restraint by his friends, and that he himself had made a narrow escape. I had scarcely given him the in-omise of protection when two Parsees rushed into the room in which he was sitting, laid violent hands upou him and me, and 136 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1839. attempted to carry liim off by force. My domestics had some difficulty in overpowering them, but we ultimately succeeded in freeing my house from their unlawful intrusion. "The baptism of Dhunjeebhoy took place under the protectiou of the European and native police, on the evening of the 1st of May. . . . Hormasdjee was baptized by me in the mission-house on Sabbath last. . . . On the pre- ceding Saturday I was served with a writ of habeas corpus with reference to Dhunjeebhoy, and a rule nisi with reference to Hormasdjee. The affidavits which I lodged apparently completely ujjset the design of our adversaries, but as they solicited time to answer them my counsel consented. The case will again be heard iu about eight days. Thousands of pounds have been sub- scribed to distress us, and if possilDle to destroy our glorious cause ; but our righteousness will speedily shine forth clear as the noon-day. " 20^/i il/ff.?/ 1839. — Notwithstanding all the wrath, persecution, bribery, and perjury practised by our opponents — of which the enclosed affidavits will give you too sure evidence — a decision has been pronounced in our favour on the writ of habeas corjDus commanding me to bring n-p the body of Dhunjeebhoy Nowrojee ; the rule nisi, in the case of Hormasdjee Pestoujee, has been abandoned by the parties in whose behalf it was granted, without a hearing ; and both the interesting converts are now living under my protection, in the undisturbed enjoyment of all the means of grace which are fitted to enlighten, comfort, strengthen, and purify their souls. "The judgment of Sir .John Awdry, you will perceive, decidedly acquits me of ' the imputation of clandestine proceedings ; ' and less than this it could not possibly have done. In common with the whole Christian community of Bombay, you will be grieved to observe that in the conclusion of his verdict he has expressed himself so indefinitely regarding the effects of intrusting the education of youth to our charge. What, I doubt not, he intended as a mere statement of his opinion, supjiosing himself, for the moment, to hold the principles of a Parsce, has been construed and held up by many of them as an exjiression of his own view of the right and wrong of the change of religious principle ; and the most injurious effects, which I am sure no man will more regret than Sir John himself, will, I fear, be the consequence. " We now clearly understand that all questions connected with the personal liberty of the Parsees will be determined, within the bounds of the island of Bombay, by English law and not by Hindoo law or their own variable customs ; and we are far from beiug sorry to find that this will be the case. The wi-it of habeas corpus, as in the prosecution now closed, will secure the liberty even of minors when in danger ; the only circumstance which would lead ns to interfere with the parental control, is actually proved. Another form of prosecution, at the instance of the minors themselves, will secure for them the right of choosing guardians after the age of fourteen years. No very great difficulties will, we trust, be experienced connected with other 'transactions in which we may be afterwards engaged. Our dispensation of the ordinance of baptism, in any case, must of course stand on moral, and not on legal, grounds, which we see vary in the case of Hindoos, Mussulmans, and Parsees. When we see that the Holy Si^irit has performed His work in any soul, we must not refuse to acknowledge it by declining to bajitize in His name, and that of the Father and the Son. " We have had some tidings, on which we think we may depend, of Framjee Bomanjee, tlie other dear convert whom the Parsees succeeded in apprehending. On the morning of the 29th of April he was carried before some of the members of the Parsee Punchayat, who used all their influence to induce him to renounce Christianity. That he yielded neither to the threats nor promises which were addressed to him, is proved by the fact that when he 1S39.] rARLI.V.MENT AND COURT OF DIRECTORS. 137 returned to liis father's residence all the female members of the household were heard beating their breasts and making lamentations as if he had died. It is said that a few days ago he was removed from Bombay, and sent under a convoy along the road to Nausaree, in the south of Goqjarat ; and that at Banganga he was tied to a date tree and cruelly lieaten. I am just about to dismiss a trusty messenger in search of him ; and it is not improbable that, if necessary, I myself may go iu disguise to the place where he is said to be. He has completed his nineteenth year, and appeared to be much under the influence of divine truth." The Hon. Mr. Farisli Avas interim Governor, and because of his Christian character and work as a private citizen, he also became an object of suspicion and attack. In a letter to Mr. Poynder, Dr. Wilson thus defended him from misrepre- sentation : — " Although the Hon. Mr. Farish would not shrink from the responsibility of any of his acts as a private Christian, it so happens that he took no share whatever in the instruc- tion of the Parsee converts ; that his class in the Sunday School, which met in the Town Hall before he was Governor, has consisted entirely of professing Christians ; and that the troops were called out by the Government on the requisition of the superintendent of the police, who very properly con- sidered his civil establishment inadequate to the preservation of the peace." Sir Charles Forbes laid all the papers in the case before the Court of Directors, which transmitted them to Sir James Eivett Carnac, the new Governor. He was rash enough to declare, on landing at Bombay, that he would give neither official nor private countenance to educational or ministerial labours calculated to interfere with the native religions. Dr. Wilson personally experienced from him, as from all the Governors, " much politeness and attention," and hoped that a knowledge of the country and its needs would make him a successor Avortliy of Sir Roliert Grant, whose sudden death had added private as well as public sorrow to Dr. Wilson's many cares in the year 1839. Anticipating an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council against Sir John Awdry's judgment, and desirous that the question should be debated on its merits in both Houses of Parliament,- Dr. Wilson submitted the papers to Lord Glenelg, the worthy son of Charles Grant, to Lord Bexley, and to Sir George Sinclair and Mr. J. C. Colquhoun, members of the House of Commons, Meanwhile poor Framjee, after being kept for weeks under restraint by the Mobeds of Nausaree, Avas allowed to return to Bombay, with the confession that they could not 138 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1839. break his attachment to Christianity. There he was strictly watched, so that he couki not even write. At last, seven months afterwards, Dr. Wilson informed Dr, Brunton — "I had an interview witli Framjee Bomanjee. He had secreted himself in a cellar below our Institution, and took means to call my attention to him. Our conversation lasted about an hour ; and I received from him a particular account of all the treatment which he has received, and of his present feelings and purposes connected with Christianity. His perils are imminent ; but he says that, through God's grace, he will yet enter the Church. He conveyed to me some special wammgs, and I fear that there is too good gi-ound for them. One of the sons-iu-law and a nephew of Framjee Cowasjee, one of our princif)al persecutors, occasionally visits me as a jirofessed inquirer. His case I do not yet imderstand. There are several very influential Parsees here, in whose friendship I have every confidence ; and they wiU give our Institution their aid as soon as they can do so with safety." The Parsee panic spread to Poona, whither Dr. Wilson went for rest, and Mr. J. Mitchell's mission-school there was also emptied for a time. The course which the Punchayat finally resolved on was the most foolish they could have selected. An appeal to the Privy Council would have raised and settled many still undecided questions of importance as to minors, discretion, and the age of majority under English law and for non-European British subjects, which must have led to wise legislation, and have prevented subsequent and still existing cases of persecution and hardship. But, as is usual in such cases, they sought and found an English oflBcer to take payment as their agent in London, and they caused to be drawn up a document which soon proved so notorious as the Anti-Conversion Memorial, that it was scouted by every newspaper in India save their own. To the document, after several months canvassing and misrepresentation, the Parsee priests obtained the signatures of only 2115 persons, who professed to ask Government to prohibit the establishment of missionary schools, to fix the age of discretion for all natives at twenty-one, and to deny to such natives above twenty-one as might become Christians, wife, children, and heritable property, while fining them for the support of the families thus to be denied them. Sir James Eivett Carnac's Bombay Clovernment, and Lord Auckland's Government of India, neither favourable to Christian missionaries, fell back on the position of neutrality, which would have been impregnable if the Bishop of London had not in the previous session of 1839.] FAINT YET PURSUING. 130 Parliament shown, amid the ai)phinse of tlie Peers, that the East India Company was neutral only to Christianity, Avhile still saluting idols and administering temple and mostjue revenues. The Bombay Government pointed out the incon- sistency of the Parsees' request with their professed desire for education. The Government of India declined to pass enact- ments at variance with Lord William Bentinck's Kegulation 7 of 1832, with the rights of civil and personal liberty, and the principles of the British Parliament. Dr. Wilson's duty was difficult ; he had to enlighten British opinion, but above all to reason in the spirit of the very toleration for which he pled with the misguided leaders of the Parsees. He did both in an able resume and exposition of the principles and the custom of toleration in British India, which may still be read Avith advantage side by side with the noble state-paper on the same subject wdiich Lord Lawrence Avrote after the close of the Mutiny of 1857, when he was Chief Commissioner of the Punjab. In a brief Journal, kept for a few weeks at the end of this conflict, we obtain these glimpses into the daily life of Dr. Wilson, Avhose indomitable courage and vigorous constitution enabled him to pass through depression and sickness, still abounding in the work of his Master. " 2(Z June 1839. — Considerably indisposed. Letter to Mr. Little on the improvement of the death of Mr. Graham. Preached at tlie Poors' Asylum. Examined the male boarders of the mission. Read account of the persecu- tions in Persia, given by Socrates and Theodoret, etc. Visited twice the house of Bai, the convert, to administer medicine and pray. Confined a good deal to my couch. " 4lation on the glory and stability of the covenant of grace, and the freeness with which its blessings are bestoweil on the humblest and most vinworthy believer, a jieace and joy the remembrance of which is calculated to excite most fervent and devout gratitude. After I had become in some degree convalescent I was called to experience a most unfavourable relapse. A change of climate affording the only hope of my recovery, I was conveyed, by bearers, from Rajkote to Gogo. I remained about a week at the latter place before the daily paroxysms of fever began to be mitigated ; but as soon as I felt them subsiding I sailed for Bombay, which I reached in safety on the •21st of September. " Here it pleased the Lord, in his unerring wisdom and unswerving faith- fulness, to visit me with other great and sore afflictions. During my voyage I had fondly indulged the hope that my beloved sister and endeared com- panion Miss Anna Baj-ne would receive me with her usual aff"ection, and attend to me in my weakness with her wonted care and tenderness. On my arrival at the mission-house, however, I learnt that she was with her sister, Mrs. Nesbit, in the most precarious, nay dangerous state of health. Her appointed days of suffering soon drew to a close ; and on the morning of the 4th of October her ransomed, and justified, and purified soul was called to enter into the joy of its Lord. The triumph of her faith during the whole of her last iUness was most remarkable, instructive, animating, and encoiiraging. She proved a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, through Him that loved her. " Miss Bayne, though not officially connected with the General Assembly's Mission, was actually much engaged in its service. To comfort and assist me in the work of the Lord, she and her sister Hay, now Mrs. Nesbit, left the land of their fathers. She was the life and charm of mj- household. To the Parsee converts, and Abyssinian and Native youth, whom I have received into my family, she was a tender and afl'ectionate mother, as they themselves declare antl feel, and will long remember. Her visits to the female schools proved very encouraging to the scholars ; and her instruction of the classes in her own room was highly promising of spiritual good. She zealously sought the improvement and conversion of the students of English who visit the mission-house ; and with some of them she regularly read and ex^jlained the Scriptures, wlnle with others she regularly corresi:)onded when they were removed from Bombay. In the Christian society in which she moved she was most exemjilary and influential ; and both noticed and respected for her gifts and graces. All who enjoyed her friendship admired her kindness, faithful- ness, and judiciousness. It was her request, when she came to India, that no mention sliould be made of her endeavours and exertions in any public report or letter." The indomitable spirit of Dr. Wilson is apparent in every line of this letter. At Mahableshwar he devoted his return- ing health to the comjDosition of The Farsi Religion and 1S41.] MAHABLESHWAU AND SATARA. 171 the renewed study of the aboriginal triljes of the Western Ghauts. " I am at present sojourning on the most lovely spot which you can imagine. Tlie scenery around is the grandest, the most beautiful, and the most sublime, whicli I have yet witnessed during my earthly wanderings, extensive though they have been. The Mahableslnvar is part of tlie great Western Ghats, and 4700 feet above the level of the sea, — a loftiness con- siderably surpassing the highest of Caledonia's mountains. The vegetation partakes of the nuignilicence of the tropics, but is enclianting to the dwellers in the climes of the sun, as in some respects resembling that of our l)eloved native land. The materiel of the heights is of the trap formation, which by its basaltic masses and columns, and precipitous scarps, attords the most wonderful and diversified specimens of nature's architecture, and by its valleys and ravines, of her gigantic excavation. The province of the Konkan, with its hills and dales, and exhaustless forests and fruitful fields, stretches below. At a distance the ocean is sgen as a vast mirror of brilliancy, reflecting the glory of the sky. The clouds baffle all description. Their various and changing hues, and multifarious forms and motions, as they descend to kiss the mountain brow, or remain above as our fleecy mantle, or interpose between us and the luminary of heaven to catch its rays, and to reveal their coloured splendour, fill the mind with the most intense delight. The whole display forces us to praise God, and to exclaim, ' Bless the Lord, my soul. O Lord my God, Thou art very great. Thou art clothed with honour and majesty.' " ' If thus Thy glories gikl the span t)f ruined earth and fallen man, How glorious must the mansion be Where Thy redeemed shall dwell with thee ! ' " MaHx^bleshwar, '27th November 1S41. — You have, I suppose, often seen Satara. In my opinion it is the most lovely station in our Presidency. The valley of the Yena, with its abundant cultivation, and that of the Krishna, which partly appears, and the mountains to the west, and the hills to the north and south, presenting, with their basaltic nuisses and layers, and columns, and scarps, and towers, the most interesting specimens of nature's architecture, have a very striking eft'cct on the eye of a spectator. The fort is curiously formed on the summit of one of the highest elev.itions, and it is associated with all the interest and romance of Marathee history. The native town is spacious, busy, and regular, to a degree seldom seen in this country. The camp is very agreeably situated ; and the Residency has a beautiful neighbourhood. " We were introduced by Colonel Ovans to the Raja. His Highness was encamped, with an enormous suite, outside the town, having just arrived from a. pedestrian journey to the shrine of Khandoba at .Jejuri. When I intimated to him the fruitlessness of his pilgi'image by saying Khandoba laMchya, bokdnd'in basto, 'Khandoba seizes folks by the throat,' he laugheil most heartily ; but I have reason to believe that he is really very superstitious. He has no appearance of the dissipation with which his enemies have charged him ; and he is noted by the Europeans at present at Satara ior his benevo- lence and good nature. Of his own accord he has abolished Suttee and the sale of children. He has lightened the burdens of his cultivators, and estab- lishets of the Pentateuch, which he is accustomed to exhibit to travellers, but that which is reckoned to be of the highest antiqxiity, and which he declared had only once been previously unfolded before the eyes of the Goim. His eldest son walked with us to the summit of Mount GerLzim, and pointed out to us all its loca sancta agreeably to the traditions of his sect. An assembly of all the male adults and of most of the youth convened to meet us. We examined them respecting the views entertained of the Messiah. It was urged by them that the Shiloh of Genesis xlix. 10, was Solomon, to whom all nations either yielded obedience or reverence, and after whose reign the sceptre immediately departed from .Judah ; and that it is of Joseph that there is to spring the Messiah, 'the shepherd, the stone of Israel.' The son of the priest was much more candid than the father in admitting the force of objec- tions to their method of interpreting the books of Moses ; and I am far mistaken if he is not convinced that his people are involved in gross error. 206 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1843. As the Samaritans have preserved the ancient Hebrew character, and have never iised the Masoretic iwints, I was particularly anxious to learn from them their method of reading Hebrew, which, as far as I am aware, lias never been inquired into in modern times ; and I carefully noted the peculiarities of their pronunciation, which does not essentially differ from that of the Hebrew Chair of the University of Edinburgh. They are preparing a letter to the Beni- Israel of Bombay, respecting whom they were most minute in their inquiries ; and one of themselves has most strenuously urged me to take him to England, along with his copy of the Pentateuch. I doubt whether he will be permitted to leave his native place. He is an individual of great enterprise ; and, attached to a rope and with a caudle in his hand, he descended, under our direction and with our assistance, into Jacob's Well, and recovered from it all that remains of Mr. Bouar's Bible which was dropped into it nearly four years ago. We had a lire kindled in the well, the particular examination of which was the object of our visit to it, and we had it thus lighted throughout. It is exactly seventy-five feet deep, and about three yards in diameter. It is cut out of the solid rock, and has marks about it of the highest antiquity. I liave no doubt that it is the well of which the Patriarch drank, and his children, and his cattle ; and at which our Lord held his remarkable interview with the woman of Samaria." Dr. Wilson paid two visits to Jerusalem, of sixteen days together. Here, as wherever he went, his letters to the British Consuls from the Governor of Bombay opened to him every circle. With Mr. Finn, then our Consul at Jerusalem, he began an intercourse which was long fruitful in good to the Jews of the Holy Land. He was made an honorary member of the Jerusalem Literary Society on its institution a few years after. Very close and beneficial to both was his intimacy with the American missionaries, who have done and are doing so noble a work all over the Turkish dominion. On the 30th June he and Dhunjeebhoy left Beyrut for Constanti- nople by Smyrna, where, in quarantine, he preached of the church and of Polycarp, and beguiled the week in studying modern Greek. During a fortnight's residence at Constanti- nople he continued his researches regarding the Eastern Christians, and the Jewish community among whom Mr. Schwartz was the Free Church missionary. To its first fruits, two converts from Judaism, he " simply administered the ordinance of baptism, and pronounced the benediction through the medium of Hebrew." On a visit to St. Sophia he was allowed to walk through the mosque with his boots on and without a covering, though challenged by one of the Moolahs, four words in Persian — " but they are clean " — sufficing to stop opposition. In truth he was under the auspices of the British embassy, being for a time the guest of Sir Stratford 1843.] HIS RETURN TO CHRISTENDOM. 207 Canning at Buyukdereh. Among the foreign diplomatists, he wrote, even at that time, the now venerable Lord Stratford de Eedcliffe "was allowed to be the foremost for ability, influence, and philanthrop}^ His attaches, among whom was a young nobleman, the name of whose house, that of Na})ier, is indissolubly associated with the science and literature of Scotland, commanded much respect." There Dr. Wilson received letters from Professor Westergaard, detailing his visit to the Gabars of Persia, the tombs of Darius and Xerxes, and other antiquities. At Buyukdereh he joined the Austrian steamer for Varna and Constandjeh, whence, in transit-vans to Czernavoda for the river steamer, the course lay up the Danube to Pesth in those pre-railway days. At liustchuk " we observed horses drawing carts, a sight to Dhunjeebhoy entirely novel, and which I myself had last seen at the Cape of Good Hope fifteen years ago." Turks and Bulgarians alike repelled the observer by their ignorance and filth ; Servia was pronounced " the smallest State of Turkey in Europe, but the most advanced in enlightenment and civilisation." "14Sessio)i of Bombai/ 1 uniformly supported non-intrusion principles. I constantly opposed pre- mature division in India, and I have a letter from Mr. Cook cordially thanking me for my co-operation and friendship. It was only when the Government proved relentless, and multitudes conspired to overthrow the spiritual liberties and discipline of the Churcli, that I was compelled as a missionary to give in my adherence to the body of whose principles and contendings I ajijirovi'd. Had your own charitable and peaceful remonstrances and pleadings for up- holding the authority of the Church prevailed with the body with which you are now associated, the schism I am persuaded would not have occurred. " Had it appeared that our practical operations in India would likely suffer by our leaving the Establishment, and that it was possible for the Establish- ment immediately to sujjply our lack of service, I should have considered it a duty for us to give adequate warning of our intention to forsake that Estab- lishment. I have not yet seen, however, that any of our operations require to be abandoned ; and should the Establishment send any faithful missionaries to India, I for one shall most cordially bid them God speed, rejoicing that they preach Christ to the heathen Hindus. " Perhaps I have erred in thinking tliese few remarks of explanation called for by your kind letter ; if so, I am sure that you will excuse me. I hope very 218 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1843. soon to see you in Edinburgh ; and I confidently trust that I shall ever vindicate the sincerity with which I subscribe myself, as of old, yours most gratefully and afiectionately, John Wilson." "Rev. Dr. Brunton." The General Assembly of tlie Free Church of Scotland, which met at the end of May under Dr. Chalmers, had necessarily to leave the details of organisation to he worked out after it rose. Hence the meeting of a second General Assembly in the same year, instead of such a " Commission " of Assembly as holds quarterly meetings every year but with restricted powers. At Glasgow, on the 17th October, and with Dr. Thomas Brown of St. John's, Moderator, this special Assembly met. The five months that had passed showed 754 congregations and 730 ministers and preachers. Of these 465 had given up their livings in the Established Church, and 110 licentiates and others since licensed to preach, their cer- tain appointment to livings. There remained the twenty-one missionaries, fourteen in India and seven to the Jews, and in due time the adherence of all of these was announced. When men like the last Marquis of Breadalbane ; Mr. Fox Maule, afterwards Earl of Dalhousie, who had in vain brought before the House of Commons "the question of the spiritual inde- pendence of the Church and the rights of the Christian people of Scotland ;" Mr. Murray Dunlop, M.P. ; Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Candlish had reported arrangements resulting in a re- sponse from the country to the amount of £.300,000 in that brief period, Dr. Gordon submitted the statement of the India Mission. In answer to those friends of the missionary cause who had deprecated the long defence of their spiritual rights by the people of Scotland, on the ground that it was "not a religious question," he pointed to " the striking fact that the missionaries of the Church of Scotland, possessing in an eminent degree the esteem and confidence of the Christian public both at home and abroad, as holy and devoted men of God quietly pursuing their pious labours far from the scene of controversy, and as calm observers watching from a dis- tance the progress of the conflict, should, the moment that conflict ended, have unanimously and without hesitation united themselves to their protesting brethren." But while Dr. Chalmers could announce his third of a million, chiefly due to that unique contribution to ecclesiastical economics, 1843.] HIS FIRST SPEECH IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 219 the Sustentation Fund for the ministers, Dr. Gordon could, at that early stage, when no appeal had been made, report only £327 as the fund with Avhieh the Church nevertheless resolved, as Dr. Forbes put it, to continue the " gigantic scheme of Church Extension " among a population whicli Avas then estimated at 160 millions, but will be shown, by the second imperial census in 1881, to be nearer 260 millions as British India now is. The fourteen foreign missionaries of 1843^44 have grown in number to forty ordained men. Native and Scottish ; the £327 of October 1843 and £6402 of the whole year, to £30,657 a year in Scotland alone, and nearly double that if the whole annual revenue of the Indian, African, and South Pacific Missions be considered. In the thirty-six years since that time the Church of these fourteen missionaries has given in Scotland alone, £550,000 for foreign missions, and there is not a contributor who does not admit that the amount might have been and will yet be doubled. The conflict of the ten years before 1843, and the struggles of Cameron, the Erskines, and Gillespie before that, Avill not be exhausted until the three great branches of the Eeformation Kirk of John Knox are gathered once again into one recon- structed Church, as free in its own legitimate sphere as the statutes of the Eeformation, the treaty of Union and the Kevolution Settlement acknowledged it to be. This is, thus far, Scotland's contribution to the question which Pope and Emperor in Italy and Germany are trying to Avork out on the hopelessly irreconcilable, because intolerant, lines of Ultramon- tane tyranny and Csesarist encroachment ; and Dr. Wilson often declared it to be so. The freewill oflerings of the members of the Free Church of Scotland every year, for all spiritual purposes at home and abroad, nearly ec^ual £600,000. In all it has raised the sum of thirteen millions sterling^ side by side with higher moral aims, and as the fruit of a deeper spiritual life. ^ According to Mr. W. Holms, M.P., himself a member of the Established Church, who stated iu the House of Commons debate ou the 18th June 1878 : "There are 1517 churches attached to the Free and United Presbyterian Churches against 1390 attached to the Established Church. And these last comprise about 300 Highland charges, most of them very meagi-ely attended. In regard to the money raised for religious purposes during the year 1877-78, which was not an unfair test of vitality and power, £965,000 had been con- tributed by Free and United Presbyterians, against £385,000 by the Established Church." 220 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1843. Dr. Wilson's first speech in the General Assembly is re- membered to this day for the length as well as the eloquence of its statements of fact and pictures of Oriental superstitions and missionary life. To the attitude of the religions of the East towards the Christian demand for their surrender he happily applied the remark of Tippoo, when the British forces surrounded the last stronghold of Seringapatam — " I am afraid, but afraid not so much of what is seen as of what is unseen." First in the list of the principal means of propa- gating the Gospel in India he placed those used by the Lord and His apostles, as he had done from the day he took posses- sion of Bombay — " conversation, discussion, public preaching, among all classes of men to whom they could find access, and in all situations in which they could be advantageously practised." After an account of the work of his colleagues, and of the agents of other Churches in every case, he briefly describes his own : — " I have declared the doctrine of the Cross in three languages, the Marathee, Hindostanee, and Goojaratee, from the Shirawutee in Canara to Sirohee in Rajpootana, and from Bombay to Berar." Second in his enumeration of agencies came the translation of the Scriptures into the languages of India, and the publication of works showing the evidence of their truth ; of " plain but affec- tionate " expositions of their contents ; and of demonstrations of the vanity, falsity, and immorality of the systems of error to which they are opposed. Again, after a generous tribute to the work of others, he briefly stated his own, adding, " It was my privilege to act for twelve years as secretary to the different translation committees of the Bombay Bible Society." Besides the English, Marathee, Goojaratee, Hindostanee, Per- sian, and Hebrew, in which his own writings had appeared, the missionaries of other societies had translated them into Bengalee, Hindee, Tamul, and Canarese. On the third agency of schools Dr. Wilson gave a fair and full summing-up of a question much disputed in this country, though long set at rest in favour of education, higher and lower, by experienced men of all churches in India, so far as Hindoos, Parsees, Buddhists, and Muhammadans, or the non-aboriginal races, are concerned. This was followed by equally weighty utterances on the two questions which lie at the foundation of the indigenous Church of India, native congregations and native 1843.] FIRST EDUCxVTED BRAinrAX BAPTIZED AT BOMBAY. 221 ministers. The JModerator, according to tlie newspapers of the clay, in an eloquent address conveyed the thanks of the General Assembly to Dr. Wilson. While he was yet speaking there was intelligence on its way from Bombay which gave a new point to the opinions he so emphatically expressed. An educated Brahman youth, now the Kev. Narayan Sheshadri, and long one of the most successful ordained ministers in India, asked to be baptized. He was one of the few Hindoos who liad clung to the mission college when the Parsee baptisms in 1839 produced a panic throughout native Bombay. The first ediKcded Brahman baptized in the island, he was the direct fruit of the higher Christian education, and a worthy associate of the two Par- sees who had anticipated him. Mr. Nesbit's loving gentle- ness, and Dr. Murray Mitchell's efficient instructions, had con- tinued the good Avork begun by Dr. Wilson. It seemed likely that both Narayan and his younger brother Shripat would have been allowed to live and study together, holding kindly intercourse with their parents. But the prospect was too much for those who had recently seen toleration tri- umphant in the case of the two Parsees, and were the more determined " to contest every inch of ground Avith advancing Christianity." So the appeal Avas again made not to reason or truth, but to the civil courts, for Shripat was not sixteen years of age. The " age of discretion " rule, the intelligence and sincerity of the youth rather than the age by the horo- scope ever difficult to be proved, Avere pronounced by Sir Erskine Perry to be " not worth a farthing," and Shripat exclaimed, when declared too young to exercise the rights of conscience — " Am I to be compelled to Avorship idols 1 " The scene has often since been repeated in the courts of India, purely English as Avell as those administering Hindoo and Muhammadan law ; and legislation has yet, in this matter alone happily, to complete the little code securing bare toleration, Avhich Bentinck and Dalhousie began, and Sir Henry Maine and Sir James F. Stephen have amplified. " To this sorroAvful question of Shripat's," writes an eye- Avitness, " no ansAver Avas returned. Mr. Nesbit Avas greatly attached to Shripat, and Avhen the Aveeping boy bade him fareAvell as they quitted the court-house, he kissed him Avith much affection, and Avept Avith him." Shripat Avas never 222 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1843. allowed to become a Christian, but it took a long time to shake him by arts such as Faust has made the colder AVest believe to be but the legendary fictions of a dark age. And since Shripat had eaten with his baptized brother, his case became the first, also, of a long series of gradually weakening concessions by caste, as Christianity practically teaches that God has made of one blood all nations of men. Not only in Maharashtra, but in the holiest conclave at Benares, and among the most exclusive of the five Koolin clans of Bengal, the very practical Cjuestion was hotly debated — " Can Shripat be purified and restored to caste % " Hindooism was on its trial, for if it yielded now what horror might not come next, till the one last bond was cut in every link ? A rich minority spent vast sums to develop dogmatically Hindooism into something that would tolerate the Zeit-Geist, ease their own consciences, and perhaps connive at their forbidden pleasures. Thus, travelling by railway was afterwards sacerdotally sanc- tioned, for would not the pilgrim arrive at his journey's end with more in his purse"? But the year 1843 was too early for the minority, who had got Shripat to swallow the five products of the cow (its urine, etc.), and enriched a priest to conduct the purification. All who had thus combined were themselves threatened with excommunication, and the priest was as severely handled as if he had been a Christian. The " liberal " Brahmans publicly confessed their fault, and drank water in which an idol had been washed and ten Brahmans had dipped each his right foot. For the rest the scandal was hushed vip, many feeling it would have been better if Shripat had never been dragged before the English judges. While Narayan and Pestonjee continued their studies for licence and ordination in Bombay, Dhunjeebhoy Nourojee completed his college examinations in Edinburgh, and as a l^reacher and speaker gave a vivid interest to the missionary cause in Scotland. The day before the General Assembly sat at Glasgow the Presbytery of Bombay had received a formal letter of sym- pathy from Allahabad, one of the four presbyteries in north India of the church of the United States. The brotherly document was signed by the Rev. J. Warren and the Rev. J. Owen, the latter a learned scholar who was long spared to build up the native church. It has more than a curious 1S43.] THE NAGPOKE MISSION AND STEPHEN IIISLOP. 223 interest, as contriljuting the experience of a Republic which, itself born of the intolerance of the Tudors and the Stewarts, has never found a difficulty in recognising and protecting the legitimate spiritual independence of all churches, even that of Eome. The letter anticipated the time, since realised as to co-operation, when all Presbyterians in India may meet in fellowship, and ultimately in General Assembly. In his address to the General Assembly Dr. "Wilson de- clared the most clamant need of India to be the establishment of a Christian mission in its Central Provinces. At Nagpore, nearly equidistant from Bombay, Calcutta, and IMadras about seven hundred miles, a Raja of the Bhonsla family of Marathas reigned, like the Gaekwar at Baroda, Holkar at Indore, and Sindia at Gwalior. He had been guided by a political Resident so able as Sir Richard Jenkins, and was protected by a combined force of British troops and Madras sepoj^s at the adjoining cantonment of Kamptee. Stationed there as Deputy Judge-Advocate General, was a Madras officer. Cap- tain, now Sir William Hill, K. C.S.I. He and his wife had long lamented the want of a missionary to evangelise the people. Nor had their desire been fulfilled by the establish- ment, two hundred miles away, of the industrial or artisan mission of Pastor Gossner of Berlin among the aborijxinal Gonds, whose cause Sir Donald M'Leod, when a district officer among them, had long advocated. On the death of his wife Captain Hill resolved to devote her small fortune of £2000, adding to it £500, the whole in three per cents, to the endowment of a mission to the people of Kampthee, Nag- pore, and the neighbourhood. He applied to Dr. Wilson, in February 1842, as the missionary best known to him by reputation, offering the amount for a Presbyterian or Church of England Mission. The fruitless result of Dr. Wilson's application to Dr. Brunton has been stated. But his repre- sentations to the committee of the Free Church met with such a response that the only difficulty left was to secure a missionary, at a time when every licensed preacher, young and old, was required at home. Happily Stephen Hislop offered himself; a man,as it proved, after Wilson's own heart. Fresh from a distinguished career at the Universities of Glasgow and Pxlinburgh and the New College, he was an accurate scholar and a keen naturalist. 224 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1843. He proved to be a patient linguist, a worker of rare political insight and administrative power, and, above all, an en- thusiast in the spiritual Avork he had undertaken. All the arrangements at the home end, for fitting out and securing the success of the new mission, fell upon Dr. Wilson, as those in India had devolved upon him in the case of the Irish settle- ment in Goojarat. But in spite of the need for rest, and the general work of the Church, he and Mr. Hislop so co-operated that, by the end of 1844, the new apostle — in time to prove a martyr by his death in the midst of duty — left for the scene of his labours. We shall hear more of Stephen Hislop. This Nagpore Mission is consecrated by the memory of another Christian official of the civil service, as Sir William Hill was of the military — Sir Donald M'Leod — who, after a brilliant career ending as Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, and giving his last days to philanthropic work in London, was killed when attempting to enter a train in motion, on his way to a meeting of the Christian Vernacular Education Society. Donald M'Leod was the man to whom this double testi- mony was borne by a Rajpoot and a Sikh. Behari Lai Singh, a Rajpoot official subordinate to him, was led to believe that " Christianity was something living," and ultimately died an ordained missionary of the Presbyterian Church of England, by what he described as " the pious example of this gentle- man, his integrity, his disinterestedness, his active benevo- lence. Here is a man in the receipt of 2000 or 3000 rupees annually ; he spends little on himself, and gives away the surplus for education — the temporal and spiritual welfare of my countrymen. This was the turning-point of my reli- gious history, and led to my conversion." More recently a Sikh declared, " If all Christians were like Sir Donald M'Leod there would be no Hindoos or Muhammadans." Of the M'Leods of Assynt and proprietors of Geanies, one of the three great branches of the old Norwegian clan, young Donald passed from the Edinburgh High School to Putney, where he had Lord Canning and Henry Carre Tucker for schoolfellows ; and to Haileybury, where he first won the admiration of Lord Lawrence. When at his first station of Monghyr in 1831, he learned from his countryman, the Rev. A. Leslie — the Baptist missionary who helped Sir H. Havelock — to adopt the words of Pascal as his own : Religion has " abased me infinitely more ISiL] MISSIONS IN AFRICA — FEMALE EDUCATION. 225 than unassisted reason, yet without producing despair ; and exalted me infinitely more than })ride, yet without putting up." When he passed to the Thuggee department, created by Lord William Bentinck to put down organised robbery and murder by strangling, and on to the administration of the Saugur and Nerbudda highlands, ceded by the Marathas in 1818, where Seonee was his headquarters, he was soon attracted to Dr. AVilson. From 183G, to his death in 1872, they assisted each other in philanthropic enterprise and scholarly research. To the India Mission, thus increased, the Free Church added, in 18 -1:4, the African stations in Kaffraria, offered to it by the Glasgow Missionary iSociety ; and it soon after sent out two other ministers familiar with Dutch, Avho for a time conducted missionary operations in Cape Town itself Thus a new impetus and extension were given to a mission which has made the Lovedale Institution not only the centre and head of all civilising work among the natives of South Africa, in the opinion of observers like Mr. Anthony Trollope and Sir Bartle Frere, but the base of that advance into the Lake Region which has resulted in the establishment of the Living- stonia settlement on Nyassa. The cause of native female education also, in India, made a fresh start. The Ladies' Association was strengthened by the co-operation of the Glasgow Association on behalf of female education in South A&ica up to 1865, when both combined to form the present invaluable agency which is carrying light into the Zananas of the most caste-bound families. Hardly had the Glasgow Assembly risen when Dr. Wilson found himself absorbed for a time in preaching and addressing large audiences of all the evangelical Churches, now on the Free Church of Scotland's assertion of its princi])les, but more frequently on the missionary claims of India. In November 1843 he opened the new Free Church in his native town of Lauder, to which nearly the whole community flocked to hear the youth who had done such great things in India. His old master, Mr. Paterson, took care that he should preside at the examination of the school, in circumstances very different from those under Avhich he used, on his tours, to stoop under the leafy sheds of the jungle schools of the Konkan, or the low roofs of the bungalows of Bombay and Surat. Invitations to preach flowed in upon him from all parts, from Dr. James Q 226 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1844. Hamilton of London to Dr. James Lewis and Mr. Tliorburn of Leith. It was wlien Dr. Wilson addressed the children in St. John's, Leith, that his present biographer first saw the even then youthful apostle, and heard the rhythmic roll of his sentences as hundreds learned from him for the first time of the Hindoo idols and the Parsee fire, of the scattered Beni- Israel, and the devil-worshippers and man-sacrificers of the Indian hills. Dr. Wilson was selected by his Church to accompany Dr. Candlish to England. At Oxford, on the 17th March 1844, he preached to the elite of the University and the Church of England there a sermon on " The Church Glorious before its Lord," from Ephesians v. 25-27. The academic tone of the discourse, and the learning and long self-sacrificing labours of the preacher, combined to call forth a degree of ecclesiastical appreciation as well as missionary sympathy which a local journalist thus expressed when it was published : — " The great movement in Scotland is a new thing under the sun. It is little less than a breaking up and recasting of a nation. It is developing events which mere politicians cannot under- stand, and which they will be unable to guide. The freedom of the Christian Church in its corporate character has been asserted. And, as we believe, the further assertion of the freedom and equality of Christian men, and of every distinct Christian assembly will follow." At the annual meeting of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, Sir George Rose in the chair, he was introduced by Dr. Bunting ; when, answering the attacks of the late Cardinal AViseman on Protestant Missions, he made a valualile contribution to that little-known subject — Roman Catholic Missions in India; referring to such Portuguese authorities as the Life of Juan de Castro, one of the earliest Viceroys, and a letter from John I. of Portugal, to be found in that classic. " Dr. Wiseman thinks very little of Protestant efforts," he concluded, "but the Brahmans make a great deal of them. I this morning read a tract written against Christianity and addressed to myself by a Brahman. He tells his countrymen that, unless they act together, all their power and religion are doomed. And, for the sake of the inhabitants of India who have been most marvellously placed under the sway of this Christian country, we wish the doom of Brahmanism. Wishing them good, we must en- 1844.] ROMAN CATHOLIC AND TROTESTANT MISSIONS. 227 deavour to save them from the contaminating and ruining power of sin, and prepare them for the glories of heaven. . . . Increase your labourers in India, and look for the divine blessing." Addressing the Baptist Society, over which Mr. W. B. Gurney presided, and the British Society for tlie Jews, he excited enthusiasm by his fresh and generous descriptions of the labours of their agents, and his appeals for a wide exten- sion of their agencies. " The names of Carey, of Marshman, and of ^yard, had been long familiar to me," he said to the former, " before I finished my studies at the University. Dr. Marshman gave me the right hand of fellowship before I pro- ceeded to India ; and he was among the first, with a generous heart, to welcome me to its shores." From his English raid he hurried back to be present as a representative of Bombay at the General Assembly of 1844. There, at its successor, and at the remarkable Assembly of Inverness in August 1845, when Dr. Macdonald of Ferintosh, the Moderator, preached in Gaelic, from Dr. Wilson's familiar text — " Those that have turned the world upside down have come hither also " — the Bombay missionary was true to his calling. At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, held in 1844 in Londonderry, he was received with " loud acclamations " as the co-founder of the mission to the two millions of Kathiawar ; and he afterwards gave much of his time to providing means for the extension of that mission. At the Birmingham meeting of the Synod of the English Presbyterian Church in 1845, he stood, side by side with Mr. Milne from China, as a deputy with Dr. Beith from the Free Church of Scotland. When, in the same year, addressing the Edinburgh ]\Iedical Missionary Society, which has since done much for the people of India, he said — "I recollect being asked by Sir Robert Grant, the late Governor of Bombay, what would be the eff"ect of dissecting a dead body in the Poona Sanskrit College. Why, said I, the first effect certainly would be that the Brahmans would jump out at the windows ; and the second effect would be, on their re-entering, that the gods would jump out also ; or, in other words, their religious pre- judices would take to flight." The Grant Medical College in Western, and the Bengal Medical College in Eastern India, where a Brahman student of Dr. Duff's was one of the first Hindoos to dissect the human subject, have produced great 228 LIFE OF JOHN" WILSON. [1844. results. It was in emphatic language that he induced the Assembly of 1844 to memorialise Her Majesty's Government on the impotence and misrule of the Ottoman Porte alike in Asia and in Europe. Nor did he spare Russia's intolerance. In all Dr. Wilson's correspondence, confidential as well as public, we have met with no expression of his opinions more worthy of his whole work for and relation to the Native Church of India, than a letter on the ordination of Dhunjeebhoy to Dr. James Buchanan, who had succeeded Dr. Gordon at the head of the Foreign Missions Committee. He pleaded, and with success finally, for what at the present time it is difficult to believe even those most ignorant of India could have doubted, — the spiritual and ecclesiastical rights of the educated native converts, in the light of justice and ex- pediency, of the equality of Presbyterianism and the future of the Indian Church. The Parsee " probationer " himself, who had already become popular as a preacher all over the country, intimated that, unless full evangelistic powerand liberty were con- ceded to him, he would not enter the service of the Free Church, and Dr. Wilson reported to Mr. Nesbit, "his firmness in this re- spect has been admired. We are for natives being ordained, after due probation, as missionaries or evangelists like ourselves.'^ It was well that he and Dr. W. S. Mackay of Calcutta happened to be in Scotland when their Church, naturally absorbed in its domestic and internal organisation, was also called to lay anew the foundations of its Foreign Mission broad and deep. The missionary buildings at Poona were not affected by the ecclesiastical changes, and those at Madras had been rented only. But the property made over to the Established Church had cost £10,000 at Calcutta and £8000 at Bombay, exclusive of libraries and apparatus. The duty of raising £20,000 for a new start fell upon Dr. Wilson and Dr. W. S. Mackay, then on sick leave from Calcutta. How generously the whole India Mission was aided, not so much by the public effort as by private and anonymous gifts, the missionary correspondence of the period reveals. Even more remarkable was the liberality of Christian men of all sects in India itself. To that the Free Churches in Bombay and Calcutta owe their existence. As the Sustentation Fund, devised by the greatest writer and most practical worker in the field of Christian and Philan- 1S44.] CHRISTIAX ECONOMICS. 229 thropic Economics, Dr. Chalmers, became consolidated for tlie support of the home ministers, it would have heen well if a somewhat similar self-acting and self-developing arrangement had been then made proportionately for the growing foreign missions. But Dr. Wilson seems to have attempted the insti- tution of a system which, it is to be hoped, all the churches will yet adopt in the place of, or in addition to, desultory offerings. He induced Dr. Candlish and Dr. Gordon to arrange that St. George's and the New North congregations should provide the support of the two Parsee missionaries. The for- mer, which gave £63 for the object in 1840, now subscribes to the Foreign Mission Fund about £700 of its whole annual contributions of £10,000. If it undertook directly to pro- vide for two missionaries, who would report to it as well as to the central committee, the congregational life would be com- pleted on its missionary as well as home side ; while the missionaries would be brought into closer contact with the churches and with their youth, who are to be their successors. Only where each congregation, able to raise at least £200 a year in addition to the income of its own minister, thus does its duty to the Master by sending forth an ordained Native or European missionary, will the wide fields of Heathenism and Muhammadanism be adequately overtaken, and the churches of Christendom prove their spiritual loyalty. When that union of sects, for which Dr. Wilson longed, comes about, so that ecclesiastical waste and suicidal divisions shall be reduced to a minimum, this ideal may be reached. It was in the year 1844, when he was forty years of age, that Dr. Wilson sat to Mr. James Caw for that portrait Avhich has since adorned the walls of the Free Church College in Bombay. It was painted at the request of the students, and was pronounced a good likeness of the founder of the mission there. A fine mezzotint engraving by Mr. Henry Haig was made for the public at home. The General Assembly of 1846 formally declared that they " rejoiced in the prospect of Dr. Wilson's return to Bombay in renovated health." They recommended all ministers of the Church, " at least once a year, about the opening of the college session," to bring the claims of foreign missions specially before their congregations, and "to enforce upon them the duties of prayer and self-denial." 230 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [184: CHAPTEE XIII. 1845-1847. AMONG BOOKS— SECOND MARRIAGE— OVER EUROPE TO BOMBAY. Colonel Jervis, F.R.S., and intercourse witli Civil and Military Officers — Establishment of the North British Review — Reception of Dr. Wilson's Works by the learned of Europe — Elected Fellow of the Royal Society — Death of Dr. Welsh — Writers in the North British Review — Letter to Hugh Miller, and from Dr. Falconer — Second Marriage — Isabella Deunis- toun of Dennistoun — Dr. and Mrs. Wilson leave for India — Lassen and William Erskine at Bonn — Researches in Egypt — -Welcomes at Bombay — Lord Hardinge announces Suppression of Suttee, Infanticide, and Slavery, in many Native States^George Clerk and Memorial Church of Colaba — • Gaikvvar of Baroda dies. We liave seen how, throughout the first period of Dr. Wilson's Indian career, he Avas encouraged and supi:)orted in his purely missionary as well as philanthropic and scientific labours by laymen, chiefly civil and military officers, who united with him in dedicating to the very highest ends their intellectual powers, their social influence, and their Christian culture. Even at that early time he became the centre and the stimulus of the best society in Western India. One of the most remarkable of the officers with whom he formed a very close friendship was Colonel T. B. Jervis, F.R.S. To his educational work in the Konkan, and erection of the Bombay College, transferred on its completion to the Established Kirk, we have already referred. Born in India, and with a heredi- tary interest in its people like the majority of the Anglo- Indian officials under the East India Company, young Jervis gained extraordinary honours at Addiscombe and entered the Engineer Corps, became superintending engineer of the Southern Konkan which had just been made British territory, and surveyed that large tract of Western India. His maps 1845.] ESTABLISHMENT OF " NOETH BRITISH IJEVIEW." 231 still form part of the uncompleted Atlas of India. He made such a reputation that, Avhen in England in 1837, he was nominated successor to Sir George Everest as Surveyor-General of India, an appointment he did not take up. On finally retiring from the service, shortly before Dr. Wilson's departure from Bombay, he received a letter of touching farewell, and a copy of the best edition of the Bible which could then be procured, " as a small token of Christian affection and grati- tude for his admirable design for the General Assembly's Institution in Bombay." With no one was Dr. Wilson in such close correspondence all through his visit to Great Britain, especially on literary and scientific undertakings for the good of India, as with Colonel Jervis. While the missionary was striving to devote every hour he could snatch from ecclesiastical engagements to the preparation of his elaborate work. The Lands of the Bible, the engineer was projecting a series of Memoirs, Voyages, and Travels, original and translated, illustrative of the geography and statistics of Asia. The collection would have formed a modern Hakluyt, and is still a desideratum in European litera- ture, in spite of similarly fragmentary attempts to supply it by both German and English editors, for the health and the resources of Colonel Jervis did not allow him to do more than issue in 1845 a first volume — Baron Charles Hiigel's Kaschmlr und das Reich der Siek, in an English dress. The two friends were farther interested in the success of the North British Uevieic. Evangelical men of all parties in Scotland had, even before the events of 1843, desired to see established a Quarterly which, to the literary ability of the Edinburgh Revievi and its great rival, would add the discussion of theological questions which were then beginning to occupy thoughtful minds — no less in England, where the Tractarian movement was at its height, than in Scotland. Men like Drs. Chalmers and Welsh, Cunningham and Fleming, in the Scottish Universities and Church, and Avriters like Sir David Brewster, Isaac Taylor, and Merle D'AubigncS, formed a nucleus to Avhom only the leisure of letters was wanting in those stirring times to make success as lasting as it proved to be brilliant for a time. For the North British Revieio anticipated that discus- sion of the deepest theological problems, and of all questions on the platform of the highest principles, which has of late 232 LIFE OF JOHN AVILSON. [1845. marked the higher periodical literature. In the thirty years of its existence it more than justified the other boast with Avhich its prospectus was concluded : " The latest discoveries in mental and physical science will be regularly unfolded by men themselves of the highest inventive genius. In all departments individuals of the greatest celebrity in this and other countries have promised to adorn our pages with their contributions." Dr. Welsh at once laid hold of Dr. Wilson for his staff. It should be noted that the same month of May 1844 which saw the first number of the Scottish Review, witnessed the birth of another Quarterly which has a history in the East quite as remarkable as that of the Edinhurgh in the West— the Calcutta Review, edited, after its fourth number, by Dr. Duff". At a much later period, and for some time. Dr. Wilson contributed articles to the Bombay Quarterly Review and to the British and Foreign Evangelical Revieu: The reputation which Dr. Wilson had gained in the circles of the learned of Europe by his work on the Parsee Religion was increased when his Lands of the Bible appeared, and, during his occasional visits to London, caused his society to be sought by men like Lord Castlereagh, afterwards fourth Marquis of Londonderry, who had himself been travelling in the East. In the addresses of 1869 and 1870 to Dr. Wilson, the public and the Asiatic Society of Bombay thus sum up contemporary opinions on these two books : — " Your learned and comprehensive work on the religion of the Parsees, pub- lished on the eve of your journey to Europe in 1843, was recognised by the few scholars then competent to form an opinion as the most complete investigation into the sacred Avritings of the Parsees that had up to that time appeared. A distinguished Oriental scholar, whose learned labours have reflected honour on Bombay, Mr. William Erskine, urged you, in reference to this and other works, ' to go on and enrich the world of letters, while you think chiefly of the religious world and religious benefit of the human race ; ' and Pro- fessor Westergaard of Copenhagen, whose own valuable labours in this branch of Oriental research are so well known, thank- fully recognised the value of the services you had rendered himself, which he said he valued the more from the pro- minent place you hold amongst Oriental philologists, and for your having signally contributed to the furtherance of ac- 1845.] ELECTED FELLOW QF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 233 quaiiitance with the Zoroastrian lore. Your great work, The Lands of the Bible, was hailed on its appearance as being in itself a complete storehouse of bililical research, and as abounding in materials illustrating the state of the Christian sects and churches of the East, of the Eastern Jews and Samaritans, of Mahomedanism, and the numerous questions connected with the ancient people and languages of Palestine, Syria, and other parts of the East. The President of the Royal Geographical Society, in directing the attention of the learned to what was new and important in the work specially pertaining to questions of geographical, topographical, and antiquarian research, remarked how much could be done in gleaning what Avas new in such countries as those you had travelled in, by travellers who enjoyed, as you did, the ad- vantage of understanding the language of the people, and of entering into the spirit of the manners of the East." Of The Parsi ReUgion the Asiatic Society of Paris thus Avrote in their Report of 1843: — "Tons ces ouvrages sont destines a servir Feclaircissement d'une grande controverse qui s'est 6lev6e, a Bombay, entre les missionaires j^rotestants et les Parsis, et qui, dirig6e, du c6t6 Chretien, par un homme savant et intelligent comme M. Wilson, a donn6 naissance a plusieurs ecrits remarquables dont la science doit tirer profit." But the practical criticism which Dr. Wilson valued most was the blue ribband of science in Great Britain. On the 7th February 1845 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. COLONEL JERVIS TO DR. WILSOX. "12fA February 1845. — My vert dear Friend — I cannot express to you the great delight I experienced, and those also to whom I read it aloud, from the review of my work in the North British. You have grasped and epitomised all that was worth knowing on the subject in so masterly and de- lightful a manner that I have got a far clearer view from it of the Baron's real merit and the happy selection I had made of my preliminary volume than I could ever have hoped for elsewhere. It has given courage to a sinking spirit, and will do more for the recommendation and sale of the work than all the advertisements or exertions I could make. "I sent you the testimonial (a copy) of your election as Fellow of the Royal Society — and a noble testimonial, and well supported it was, by Dr. Buckland, and Murchison, President of the Geographical Society, and Greenougli, President of the Geological Society. I am sorry to say our kind friend Mr. Greenougli is laid up with influenza, very severe. On Thursday the Royal Society meeting was put off for the death of the Princess So]ihia. To another meeting I went down, and the old dame, the porteress at the door, said, ' Oh dear. Major Jervis, his good maje.sty Charles the First was martyrised to-day, 234 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1845. and you are not the only gentleman who has been disappointed and had along walk for nothing to Somerset House.' The set day canje at length, and I was at my post, Sir Joliu Lubbock in the chair, and rejoiced to communicate to you the tidings of your admission into the long list of 750 Fellows, some eminent for taste and talent, and on the whole the most remarkable men in Europe of the present generation, or perhaps, any in modei'n times. The hon- our of your election is mutually yours and that of the great public body, and I always think that a grain of good salt thrown into the leaven will correct many acidities, and tend to give a wholesome zest to the discoveries of intel- lectual knowledge. " I have got the view of Bombay, between the hills of Caranja, as seen from the top of Malabar Hill, close to the Kev. Dr. Wilson's bungalow, sketched from nature and i^ainted in oils by Mrs. Jervis. It is a glorious, magnificent scene." DR. WILSON TO REV. ROBERT NESBIT. " Edinburgh, 1st Feln-uari/ 1845. — My dear Robert — As I am sitting lip again a whole night writing letters, you will not e.xpect me to enlarge. The North British Jievlew, No. IV., is sent to you by this mail. The writers of the articles whom I am at liberty to mention to you, are : — 1. Dana — Dr. Fleming (Aberdeen). 2. Thornton— Robertson (B.C.S.) 4. Fitchett— J. M. Bell. 5. Arnold — Maitland (Edward). 6. Hiigel— John Wilson. 7. Poor Laws- — Chalmers. 8. Palestine — Isaac Taylor. 9. Christian Union — Pro- fessor Eddye. 1 0. Jesuits — an Italian. The Review is now established as first-rate. Our Scotch circulation is ahead of the Edinburgh' s ; and we are making way in England and on the continent. Westergaard is delighted with it. The Edinhuryh prints 5000 cojiies, and we 3000 for the present. " I have been strongly urged by friends here to write an essay on the Mil- lennium ; but I can't find time. I grudge every day I am away from my books. I hope that the Encydopcedia Britannica, sent by the Brahman, will reach you safely. Two gigantic globes, with a few volumes, I send off next week. Put one of the globes in the Institution, and keep the other at Ambrolie for native visitors and the female schools. " Dr. Welsh, our great leader, I grieve to tell you, is threatened with a fatal disease of the liver. Save, Lord ! " Qth March 1845. — I came up to London last week to sign the statutes of the Royal Society, of which, a short time ago, I was elected a member on the recommendation of nine of the great masters of science and literature, of whose unsought patronage I am very unworthy. At the Royal Asiatic Society on Saturday, I reported progress in the decipherment of the Himyaritic inscrip- tions of the south of Arabia, some of which, the most eminent orientalists here and elsewhere being witnesses, I have now clearly made out. Mr. Foster and Dr. Bird are both wrong. Gesenius was partly right and partly wrong. Rodiger is nearly right. I have not time to tell you how I forged the key. " I am with Jervis, who is doing great and good things for the East. Yesterday morning he forwarded to Prince Albert, witliout my knowledge, my jjroof of the raised map of Palestine. The Prince himself laid it before the Queen, who was much jjleased with it, and ordered her private secretary to inform us that Her Majesty will graciously accejjt the dedication of the map from him and Dr. Wilson." " hth June 1845. — Our Assembly has passed off" well ; but we missed the hallowed form of Welsh. The loss which we have sustained by his death is unspeakably great. Mr. Edward Maitland, advocate, receives charge of the North British Review in the meantime." 1846.] MARRIED TO MISS ISABELLA DENNISTOUX. 235 DR. WILSON TO HUGH JHLLER, Esq. " 24th Jul;/ 1845. — My dkar Sir — I have tlie pleasure of sending for your examination most of the fossils which I brought from Lebanon. The ichthyolites are certainly neither placoids nor ganoids. I have so little prac- tical acquaintance witli such remains that I cannot positively say whether they are ctenoids or cycloids, though I am inclined to tliiuk that they are the latter. One of the species seems to belong to the salmonidiv. Most of the sliells and impressions of shells I picked uj) in the Jurassic Hills between Jaziu and Deir-el-Kamr, .south-east of Beyrut. One or two of them are from the under indurated chalk between Deir-el-Kamr and Beyrut. The small packet in white paper is from Ehdur, near the cedars. The recent species of buccinuni is for comparison with the largest impression. I send also the sjiecimens of fossil wood which I brought from the Egyptian desert, south-east of Basatin, and from Jebel-el-Tih, in the Mount Sinai peninsula, north of the granitic range. You will oblige me by asking Mr. Sanderson when he may call upon you, to cut them so as to exhibit a section of tliem, and to prepare a slip of each for the miscroscope, like those which you yesterday showed to me. You are most welcome to take pieces of them as haml specimens, etc., for yourself. I have a good many other articles here on which I must ask Mr. Sanderson to operate at a future time." DR. FALCONER TO DR. WILSON. "British Museum, 1st May 1846. — My dear Sir — I commissioned a friend who went out lately to Bombay to send all the information he could gather for me about the Perim island fossils, more especially the Dinotherium and Mastodons. I have received a number of sketches of the specimens in the Bombay Society's Museum, but none of the Dinotherium, and my friend Mr. Winterbottom was informed by Professor Orlebar or Dr. Buist that you had got a cranium of the Dinotherium, and taken it with you to this country. Might I ask the favour of your informing me if such is the case, or if you have any good specimens of Mastodons or Dinotherium teeth from Perim island, and whether I could get access to them for illustrations and descrijitiou in our ' Fauna Autiqua Sivaleusis.' My dear Sir, yours very faithfully, " H. Falconer." Dr. Wilson's second marriage took place in September 1846, to Isabella, second daughter of James Dennistoun of Dennistoun, and of Mary Ramsay, fifth daughter of George Oswald of Scotstoun. For more than twenty years she proved to be a devoted wife, and no less a self-sacrificing missionary than her husband w^as. Admirably did she fill the place left vacant by the Bayne sisters, alike at the head of the female schools, among the families of the native converts, and in general society. Sprung of a house which, through the alliance of one of its members Avith Robert the Steward of Scotland, could declare, " kings have come of us, not w^e of king.s," Lsabella Wilson ever showed the truest marks of gentle birth and training in the unobtrusive piety and unselfish sim- plicity of her character. 236 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1847. DR. WILSON TO PROFESSOR WESTERGAARD. "London, MJuhj 1847. " My dear Friend — In a box which I forwai'ded to you to-day, I enclose a copy of ray work on 2'he Lands of the Bible for the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, to the Secretary of whom I have addressed this note : — ' London, 3d July 1847. — My dear Sir — It is only a few weeks since I received at Edinburgh your letter acquainting me with my elec- tion as a founder and member of tlie Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, even though that letter, and the accompanying diploma, are dated in the early part of 1843. Your parcel must have lain at some of our public Institutions without being forwarded to me. Allow me, however late, to thank your Society for the honour it has done me in electing nie a founder, and also for adding my name to the list of the Collaborateurs des Memoires in the Asiatic Section. With this editorial committee I shall have pleasure in co-ojjeratiug on my return to India, for which I am about to set out.' " And now, my dear friend Westergaard, I send you all my Zand and Pahlavi MSS. for collation, except a few Zasts which one of my boys has by mistake put into one of my Indian boxes. They are in eight volumes, viz. — 1. Parsi Rmcayats, Zand, Pahlavi MSS., etc. 2. Collection of Zasts, Zand MSS. 3. Great Sirozah and Bazes, Zand MS. 4. Sirozahs, Zand MSS. 5. Khurda Avasta, MS. 6. Zand and Pahlavi Minor MSS. 7. Nyaishes Zand MSS. 8. Star- Stir, Zand and Pahlavi MS. You will find my name on them all. When you have collated them I will thank you to return them to me at Bombay, where the Parsee may perhaps again fight with me as the wild beasts with St. Paul at Ephesus." By lending bis MSS. in Scotland as by his personal inter- course and influence in Bombay, he co-operated with the learned Westei-gaard in producing what is still, and must long be, the only complete text of the extant Parsee scriptures. At the same time we find the then venerable Colonel Briggs invoking his aid in researches into the development of the great vernacular languages of Northern and Central India from the Sanskrit, and their relation to the Dravidian and aboriginal tongues of the South. About this time Lassen announced to him his election as a Corresponding Member of the German Oriental Society. The month of September 1847 found Dr. and Mrs. Wilson on their way to India. Their route lay through the north of France, Belgium, and the Rhine country, Switzerland, Italy, and Malta, that he might report on the state of religion on the Continent, and the duty of the Free Church, which supports many preaching stations there, and aids the indigenous Re- formed Churches of France, Italy, and Bohemia. In his letter to the Rev. J. G. Lorimer, Convener of the committee on the subject, he describes his meeting with Lassen : — " In Rhenish Prassia my intercourse with different parties was entirely of 1847.] VISITS LASSEN, THE ORIENTALIST. 237 a literary character. At Bonn I had tlie pleasure of seeing Professor Lassen, one of the greatest Orientalists of the Continent. At present lie is engaged in the preparation of a truly great work on tlie History of India, wliicli, I trust, will ere long become well known in our native country as well as in the dis- tant East. It is entitled, Indisc/ic Alkrlluiimkumh; von Chk. La.sskn. I was favoured witli the sheets of the work, so far as it lias been i>riuted. After a topographical and ethnographical description of India, the author proceeds to investigate its ancient history. His acquaintance with its sacred language and antiquities gives him advantages, which lie turns to a wonderful account. At the same place I met Mr. Erskine, the son-in-law of Sir James Mackintosh. He was one of the founders of our Bombay Asiatic Society, to which he con- tributed several most able papers on the Farsees and the Cave-temples of India. He has been devoting his attention of late to the Muhainmadan His- tory of India, as set forth in its original autliorities. He introduced me to Mr. Konig, who has patronised oriental literature, perhaps more than any other individual of our day, by the publication of many works in the Sanskrit and other languages." To Dr. J. Buchanan he wrote : — "At Cairo I purchased from the Karaim Jews a complete copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, neatly written on 1386 leaves of jDarchment. Though it is only three hundred and fifty-seven years old, it has peculiar interest as belonging to a recension of which few or no copies are in the hands of Euro- peans, and as having the te.xt in many places arranged according to the Hebrew poetry. By the help of Mr. Lieder, the esteemed missionary, we were able sjjeedily to equip ourselves for a journey tlirough the land of Goshen, which we were able to accomplish in a very satisfactory manner. At the Tern el-Yehiid, near Thibin, we found undoubted and numerous tokens of an ancient site, and, if we mistake not, traces of the Onion built by Onias in imitation of tlie Temple of Jerusalem. We successfully explored the Tell el-Yehi'ul near Belbies, probably the site of the Vicus Judaeorum of the Antoninian Itinerary. At the Ten el-Basta, the Bubastis of the Greeks, and the Pi-Beseth (the first of these syllables being the Egyptian article), as well as other jilaces, we pro- cured some valuable antiques which liave an historical import. We visited a site corresponding with the Thou of the Antoninian Itinerary, and perhaps the Pi-Thom of the Israelites. We examined the site of HeroopoHs, the Rameses of the Septuagint ; and we there disinhumed the large image of Rameses II., the Sesostris of the Egyjitiaus. We found what is now generally admitted to be the land of Goshen most minutely accord with tlie intimations and exigencies of Holy Writ. We went to the Red Sea by a route seldom traversed ; and on its interesting shores we observed fresh proofs of tlie accuracy of the views which I have ventured to express in The Lands of the Bible, on the great question of the passage of the Israelites. We felt very thankful to the Father of mercies when we arrived at our desired haven. " Our friend Dr. Miller took us on shore early on the morning after we cast anchor in tlie harbour. We met Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Henderson, and Dhunjeebhoy and Horniasdjee, and then the Abyssinian youth most kindly hastening to bid us welcome, Mr. Nesbit, who has since joined us, being tlien absent from Bombay. Since our establishment in the mission-house we have had crowds of visitors, i)articularly of all tribes and classes of natives, by many of whom, former acquaintances, we have been received in the most affecting manner. Several of my controversial opponents have proffered their renewed friendship, which is very acceptable, alleging that they never could take offence at what I have written, as I ' uniformly avoided disagreeable per- 238 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1847. sonalities.' I have recommenced my usual Sabbath services, both predicatory and catechetical ; and two week-day lectures in English and Marathee, which have liitherto been remarkably well attended. I am inspecting the educational operations of the mission with a view to the immediate resumption of my duties in that department. You will ever pray that grace may be given to us all to make full proof of our ministry, incalculably solemn in all circumstances, but especially so in this great land of heathen darkness and death. "Dhunjeebhoy has set out on an important tour with all juvenile ardour and Christian zeal and humility. Gabru, one of the two devoted Abyssinian youths, accompanied him as an attendant and assistant. Hormasdjee is pre- paring discourses with a view to his ordination, which we hope will soon take place, particularly as, of all the converts in the East, he has endured the greatest trials and suffered the greatest earthly losses in consequence of his embracement of the cause of Christ. I feel it an unspeakable privilege to be restored to the fellowship of the dear converts." " Welcome ! welcome again on the Indian shores ! " wrote one whom we may take as representative of all — the Kev. B. Schmidt, of the Church Missionary Society, who had long evangelised the Taraul country, and had returned to India to work among the tribes of the Neilgherry hills. " I almost apprehended that you would find so much to do at home for the mission cause that you would not come out again into the encampment. But a true Crusader cannot stay at home as long as one Turk is in the field ! Although born in diff"erent countries, wearing diff'erent uniforms, preaching Christ in different languages, in different provinces, yet we reach each other the right hand of fellowship — we are one in Christ ! " And as, when beginning his mission in Bombay, Dr. Wilson's first privilege was to announce, in the Oriental Christian Spec- tator for January 1830, the suppression of Suttee in what was then British India, so now, on resuming his editorial labours in January 1848, he published the notification, by the Gover- nor-General and Commander-in-Chief Lord Hardinge, that proclamations had been issued by the Maharaja of Kashmere, the notorious Goolab Singh, and a majority of the principal feudatories, prohibiting widow-burning, infanticide, and slavery throughout their States. " The Governor-General abstains on this occasion from prominently noticing those States in Avhich these barbarous usages are still observed, as he confidently expects at no distant day to hear of the complete renunciation of them in every State in alliance with, or under the protec- tion of, the Paramount Power of India." That good work was completed a few years afterwards by his successor, the last of the East India Company's Governor-Generals, the Marquis of Dalhousie. 184r.] RETURNS TO BOMHAY. 239 The famous " Political," George Clerk, whose veiy name had been a tower of strength on our north-west frontier all through the Cahul disasters and the first Sikh War, and at Avhose feet Sir Henr}^ Lawrence had sat, was now at the close of his first term of office as Governor of Bombay. He laid the foundation-stone of the Colaba Church at its extreme south point, to commemorate our countrymen who had fallen victims to a policy against which many of them had protested, and, as the evangelical bishop of those days expressed it, " to acknowledge the hand of Almighty God, which was equally seen and felt in the victories bestowed. This monumental church will be conspicuously seen by every vessel entering our beautiful and commodious harbour, and our countrymen newly arrived, whether in a civil or a military capacity, will be reminded that although far removed from the land of their fathers, they are still in the land of the God of their fathers." And Dr. Wilson found his old colleagues and some new scholars in the Asiatic Society eagerly discussing those slabs sent to Bombay by Sir Henry Rawlinson, wdiich had been dug up from the ruins of Nineveh. The Governor directed plaster castings to be made from them for his own collection ; and the work, the first of the kind in Bombay, was executed by Abyssinian boys rescued by the Indian Navy from the Arab slavers. The death, at forty-eight, of his old acquaintance, Syajee Eao, the Gaikwar of Baroda, on the 28tli December, drew from Dr. Wilson this public notice of him : — " Sagacity and suspicion were prominent traits in his character ; and it was in consequence of the latter that he sometimes became the dupe of designing men. In 1835, the principles of Christi- anity were pretty fully unfolded to him at his own request. He heard the communications which were made to him w4th respect, and stated his objections to some of the arguments advanced by the Brahmans of his Durbar against the Christian missionary." 240 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, [1848. CHAPTEE XIV. 1848-1856, A NEW PEEIOD— TOUR IN SINDH— THE BOMBAY SCHOOL OF THE CATECHUMENS. Emi^ire of British India territorially completed — Lord Falkland — Satara and Nagpore become British Districts — The Conquest of Sindh — Stung nearly to death by Bees — The Sorrows of Missionaries — Non-Christian Teachers in Mission Schools — Anglo-Indian Society about 1848 — Sore sickness — Missionary survey of Sindh — The Pool of the Crocodiles — Meeting Avith Dr. Duff — Through Kutch and Kathiawar to Surat — Bombay Presbytery to General Assembly on extending Foreign Missions — To Captain Eastwick on Political and Educational Reform — Almost a Christian — A Gift of Lionesses — On the Relation of the different Races of India to Christianity — Bishop Dealtry — Another learned Parsee Inquirer — The Samaritans at Nablus — Another Habeas Corpus Case — First Fruits from Sindh — Parsee and Muhanmiadan Converts from the Government College — Renewed Excitement and Government Inquiry — Lord Elphinstone — Government learning the Principles of Toleration — The Goojaratee New Testament and Native Scholarship — Dr. Wilson on Judson and the Karen Christians. The history of British India begins Avith the Marquis of Dalhousie. Alike in conquest and in administration, the work of Clive, Wellesley, and Bentinck, was a foundation — was a prelude. That of Dalhousie was consolidation — was completion. The second Sikh War gave the north-west its natural frontier ; the most foolishly ambitious can never make Cabul and Quetta, Balkh and Herat, Merv and Meshed, more than outposts held by subsidised allies. The strategic and commercial railways, the canals, the roads, the cheap postage, the telegraph, the schools and universities of Dalhousie, gave the empire a more secure defence than all the troops, by withdrawing which prematurely against his protests, the governments Avho fought the Crimean War occasioned the Sepoy mutiny. The lapse from failure of natural heirs of chaotic States, which we ourselves had created, like Satara and Nagpore, not only removed centres of disaffection, but 1S48.] OUR INDIAN EMPIRE TERRITORIALLY COMPLETED. 241 proclaimed tlie good of the people to be the reason of our existence in India. It also left Lord Canning and Sir Henry Durand a clear space on which to write the new body of international law guaranteeing, by patent, permanence to every feudatory sovereign's house, on the sole conditions of loyalty to the empire and fair administration of their estates. With the last echo of the artillery cannonade of Guzerat on the 22d February 1849, and when Sher Singh and Chutter Singh gave up their swords to General Gilbert on the spot Avhere Alexander the Great had once conquered, British India became Avhat it now is, save only Pegu afterw^ards forced upon us. Wellesley and Bentinck were united in the victories of war and of peace which Dalhousie won before he was forty. Henceforth, Avhether we look at the events of history or the lives of individuals who worked them out each in his own way, like John Wilson, we are in a new atmosphere. Winter is past ; the time of sowing, too, is here and there passing into the blossoming that betokens harvest. Let but the great baptism of blood in 1857 be over, and we shall see the bad as well as some of the good of the Company destroyed — obstruc- tion giving way to rashness sometimes, but always to light ; tradition yielding to fickleness often, so that continuity is sacrificed, but never again choking progress. The Mutiny secured a new start at least, and that in the direction which the missionary- from Carey to Duff" and Wilson, had never ceased to demand. In Bombay Sir George Clerk was too soon succeeded by Viscount Falkland, of whom the best that can be said is that he had a clever wife who made society bright, and that he kept the place warm for Lord Elphinstone in 1853. But Lord Falkland had as his principal adviser in council Sir J. P. Willoughby, whose minute on the Satara case, which Lord Dalhousie pronounced the text-book on the law of adoption, gives a mark to the administration. On the defeat of the last of the Peshwas in 1817 we rescued the representative of their master Sivajee from cap- tivity, and created the principality of Satara for the old man. On investing him Sir James Carnac warned him of the possi- bility of lapse. When, in spite of his treason, we acknow- ledged his successor, and that successor died childless, the very considerations which had recommended the creation of R 242 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1848. the State justified its extinction as a failure. Apart from his knowledge of the two Rajas and the people, Dr. Wilson had an interest in Satara, for it was during several years the seat of a branch mission under Mr. Aitken. Satara, however, had less interest for him than the fate of Nagpore. About the same time Lord Hastings had restored it, and with the same melancholy results in the misgovernment of the people, in spite of the control of a Political Resident like Sir R. Jenkins. Aided by Sir W. Hill's endowment, Dr. Wilson had sent out Mr. Hislop to the military station of Nagpore, Kampthee, and he was afterwards joined by Mr. R. Hunter. But the new missionaries soon found that toleration was not recognised in the native State of Nagpore outside of the British cantonment. Dr. Wilson had successfully established, or helped to set up, missions in other States, such as those of Goojarat, Kathiawar, and Kutch, and Avas soon to do so in Rajpootana. But the imprisonment of a Brahman convert, afterwards the Rev. Baba Pandurang, in 1848, showed that in Nagpore the rights of conscience and civil liberty could be disregarded, till the very existence of a mission became as impossible as it still is in Russia. When in 1853, the death of the Raja after his persistent refusal to adopt an heir left the fate of Nagpore to the decision of the Government of India, the substitution of British for native rule, and ulti- mately of a vigorous Chief Commissioner for an incompetent subordinate ofiicer, gave the mission the same fair play which the rest of British India had enjoyed since the Charter of 183.3. During Dr. Wilson's absence from India the province of Sindh had been added to the empire as a result of the Afghan campaigns. As if the policy of childish interference, directed by military incapacity, had not at Cabul given a .sufficient blow to the moral prestige of our Government and the fidelity of its sepoys. Sir Charles Napier was allowed by Lord EUenborough to repeat the criminal blunder in the desert and the delta of the Indus. Outram's protests were as vain as the indignation of all whose opinion was worth con- sideration. Nor was the conquest all. No longer a foreign country, Sindh ceased to be attractive to the sepoys who had looked there for the batta or extra allowances allowed on active service beyond the frontier. First some Bengal and 1848.] STUNG TERRIBLY BY BEES. 243 then some IVIaJras sepoy regiments mutinied because the allowances were refused, and then their immediate com- mander condoned the heinous offence. The experience of 1857 was anticipated on a scale sufficiently large to warn observers like Sir Henry Lawrence, and to lead Lord Dal- liousie afterwards to suggest reforms. But the only effect at the time was, in 1844, to hand Sindh over to Bombay to be garrisoned by its army. It fell to Lord Dalhousie, so soon as he had personally received the submission of the Punjab, a few years after, to visit Sindh that he might provide for those administrative and engineering improvements which promise to make young Egypt one day more than rival old, although the Lidus can never equal the Nile. It was natural that John Wilson should not have been long at his old post in Bombay, without turning his eyes north- wards to the new province, in the hope of taking possession of it for his Master. The policies of rulers might be evil or good — and on that question too no man could express a more weighty opinion, or one that these rulers themselves more desired to avail themselves of beforehand. But by whatever means a door was opened, he, or some one stirred up by him, must enter in. He was soon to be the first missionary Avho had delivered the divine message in Sindh. His companion was Dr. Duff, who, having been consulted whether he would succeed Dr. Chalmers in the New College, had agreed merely to go to Scotland in 1850 to advise regarding the needs of the India Mission. The two apostolic men met at Sehwan, on the Indus. Dr. Tweedie had meanwhile become convener of the Foreign Mission committee in Edinburgh. STUNG NEARLY TO DEATH UY BEKS. " Bombay, 1st Aiiril 1848. " My dear Mk. Tvvekdie — Mr. Henderson (he had resigned a Govern- ment professorship to join the Mission) and I have experienced a painful affliction — associated, however, \vith many striking mercies — which untits us for the use of the pen. When we were engaged witli a few fi-icnds, and some of the pupils, in making researches into the natural history and antiquities of the adjoining island of Salsette, we were attacked by an immense cloud of wild bees, which had received no sensible provocation from any of our party, and nearly stung to death. Mr. Henderson was the first who was attacked. He soon sank, on one of the jungle roads, in the hopeless attempt to guard himself from injury ; and he had lain for about forty minutes in a state of almost total insensibility before he was found by our friends and any relief could be extended to him. It was on my joining him, from behind, when he 244 LIFE OF JOHX WILSON. [1848, first gave the alarm, that I came in contact with the thousands of infuriated insects. I sprang into a bush for shelter ; but there I got no adequate covering from their onset. In my attempt to free myself from agony and entanglement I immediately slid over a precipice, tearing both my clothes and body among the thorns in the rajsid descent of about forty feet. From the number of bees which still encompassed me and multiplied upon me, and my inability to move from them, I had a pretty strong impression upon my mind that, unless God himself specially interposed in my behalf, all my wanderings and jourueyings must then have been terminated, though by the humblest agency — the insects of the air. That interposition I experienced ! I had kept my hold of a pillow, with which I had gone to Mr. Henderson ; and tearing it ojien on the bushes, when I was unable to rise, I found within it, most unexpectedly, about a couple of square yards of blanket. It was to me, in the circumstances, like a sheet sent down from heaven to cover my head ; and, partially protected by it, I lay till the bees left me. When, from the poison of the numerous stings which I had received, violent vomiting and other agitation came on, and my pulse failed and my heart fainted, a native, a Thakoor, one of the aboriginal sons of the forest, who had come up, pulled me into the shade, and made a noise which was heard by our friends, includ- ing Mrs. Wilson, who had set out in search of me after they had learned from Mr. Henderson that I had shared in the calamity, and who otherwise would probably never have sought for me in the locality in which I was lying. Among these friends was Dr. Burn, to whose treatment, under God, our resuscitation is in a great measure owing. We were conveyed to our tents, principally in native carts, and on Saturday we were brought to Bombay. Through the kindness of that heavenly Father to whose grace we owe our signal deliverance,, we are both doing well, so much so, indeed, that we hope in a few days to be free from all pain, if not inconvenience, arising from this affliction. I have known instances of natives losing their lives by such an attack as we encountered ; and our friends from India will explain to you the danger from which we have escaped, nay from which we have been delivered. ' They compassed me about like bees,' is one of the appropriate figures of the Psalmist. The wild bee of India, of a dark chocolate colour, and about an inch and an eighth in length, is of the same variety which I have seen in the Holy Land ; and that illustration of the Psalmist has to us an intensity of meaning which we had never before realised. When I was a boy I used to think that John the Baptist's fare of locusts and wild honey was not of a very iudiff"erent character ; but I now see that at least it must have been somewhat difficult of acquisition. " The afUiction which I have now mentioned is that of the body ; but those of the soul, often experienced by Christian missionaries in a heathen land, are still more grievous. One of this latter character I have likewise to bring to your notice. The fond and ardent hopes which we had been led to cherish in connection with the young Parsee whose baptism, in most interest- ing circumstances at Surat, I brought to your notice in my last letter, have been disappointed. That promising neophyte has, I am most sorry to men- tion, made shipwreck, for the present at least, of his Christian profession, and returned to the bosom of his caste. This he has done under powerful influ- ences and temptations, arising from Parsees, Hindoos, and Muhammadaus confederated together." NON-CHRISTIAN TEACHERS IN MISSION-SCHOOLS. "12th September 1848. " My deae De. Leith — It is certainly to be expected that there should 1848.] THE STATE OF AXGLO-INDIAN SOCIETY. 245 be a difference of opinion among Christians about many subjects connected with the economy of Cliristian missions. That to which you refer is one con- nected with which I myself at one time felt great difficulties, as is suflicicntly obvious from the first report whicli I presented to tlie public ; and I can well sympathise with any mind still entertaining these difficulties. I do not think them insurmountable, however, when the real order and procedure of our schools is attended to. Our heathen teachers bind themselves to abstain from teach- ing heathenism in our schools ; and, from the closest inspection of them, I believe that they do so abstain. We use their services only in the mechanical processes of teaching. The Bible, and Bible truth found in our books, are self-defensory, and to a certain extent self-explanatory. Our whole hortative and explicative teaching of Christianity is by ourselves and native Christian assistants ; and it is so full and regular, both at the schools and mission-house, that, in regard to Christian knowledge, our pupils are on a par with the best instructed in our native land. Four of our Bombay teachers have been baptized since the commencement of the Mission, and an encouraging inunber of the pupils. The young Brahman last baptized by Mr. Mitchell of Poona told me the other day that he owes his first acquaintance witli Christianity and good impressions to our vernacular schools in Bombay, and their collateral services." TO MR. WEBB, C.S., ON THE STATE OF ANGLO-INDIAN SOCIETY. " December 22, 1848. " My dear Friend — I am glad indeed to find that you reserve to your- self the liberty of again returning to India. Relative ties and wants at home will be modified in a few years. India appears to me more than ever to need the presence of faithful witnesses and labourers for Christ. There is a spirit of hostility to true holiness among the majority of our countrymen here, which threatens to have an outbreak. Of this I see many symptoms. The warlike spirit, generated and inflamed by our movements on the frontier since the in- vasion of Afghanistan, has much deteriorated jiiiblic sentiment and feeling. Puseyism, by its doctrines of sacramental, ceremonial, and priestly grace, has, in the view of multitudes, obscured the sovereignty of the Father, and the saving work of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, and involved them in mere formalism, imparted to them a delusive peace, and destroyed their charity to those who confide in the Saviour. Plymouthism — the recoil from Puseyism — while gloriously setting forth the sacred duty of every Church availing itself of the gifts and graces of all its members for the edification of the l)ody of Christ, runs counter to Christ's ordinance of a stated ministrj', withdraws many from its benefits and blessings who are in great need of them, and sadly neglects the ignorant and perishing multitudes who are ' without.' The dis- turbances whicli have occurre Dr. Wilson had some conversation with him, Imt of course that was not the time nor the place for any religious discussion. When we were preparing to leave next day Holkar sent a very urgent request tliat my liusband shouhl meet him in tlie afternoon at liis country jialace, as he was most anxious to see him again, and lie ofi'ered to send us on to Mliow in the evening in his carriage with changes of horses. Dr. Wilson was delighted to have an ojiportu- nity of presenting liim with a copy of the Bible and other books, and of conversing with him on the Christian religion. I had intended to sit in the carriage in the garden of the juilace during the interview, but Holkar very politely sent for nie, and begged of me to sit down beside himself and all the learned Brahmans, whom he had assembled to have a discussion with the learned Doctor from Bombay. " Holkar is a pleasant-looking man about thirty ; he was quite plainly dressed, but wore some handsome jewels. He sat in a chair at the end of a long table. At one side sat his prime minister, then Dr. Wilson and myself, and some of his courtiers. On his other side sat a row of learned Pundits and Brahmans, who had been called together for the occasion. At Holkar's request Dr. Wilson and they entered into a discussion on the sacred books of the Hindus and other kindred subjects. They got quite frightened when my husband repeated some Sanskrit quotations, and when they saw how well prepared he was to argue with them, and to point out the absurdities of their system. Holkar and some others who were present seemed to enjoy their discomfiture. We jiroceeded to Mhow in his carriage (fourteen miles), where we arrived late at night, and were kindly received by Mr. and Mrs. Baton. They were quite strangers to us ; he is the chaplain to the 7"2d Highlanders, he is of the Established Church, and had lately married a lady from Edin- burgh. We spent two days with them very pleasantly. He seems to be a good man, and well suited for the work to whicli he has been called. At six o'clock on Sabbath morning Dr. Wilson preached ^ to about 800 soldiers and officers. " Our next Sabbath was sj^ent at Malligaum, where my dear husband was very poorly, but he was able to take the Marathee service in a school- room at the request of the missionaries of the Church Mission, two of whom are stationed there. We reached home on the following Thursday evening, when we received such a warm welcome from the dear converts and others as quite affected us. Their faces beamed with delight on seeing us restored to them after so many trials ; and we felt truly thankful to be reunited to them. We feel the soft sea breeze very pleasant, and my dear husband is gradually recovering. He is very busy preparing his reports to go by this mail for the General Assembly. " Our good friends Dr. and Mrs. Miller leave this evening by the home mail. We shall miss them very much. He has been appointed as elder to the Assembly, and I hope whilst he is at home he may be of use to our mission. There was a large meeting here last evening, a farewell party to the MUlers — there were at it about thirty Europeans and a number of con- verts. After tea an address from the native church to them was read by Mr. Dhunjeebhoy, expressing their gratitude for Dr. Miller's medical aid extended to them, and for many other acts of kindness and sympathy, and they presented him with a very handsome Bible, and Mrs. Miller with Cowper's works." DR. WILSON TO DR. EDDOVVES. " . . . . We were often as much covered with dust on the road as the sweeps with .soot in chimneys in my young days. Yet we had some pleasant ^ Dr. Wilson had preached to the same 72d Highlanders at Cape Town in 1828. 294 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1860. interludes by the way, as at Chittor, Neemuch, Jawara, Indore, etc. The Nawab of Jawara, and Holkar, and their people, I found very inquisitive on the subject of religion, as I liad found some other Rajas. Nothing would satisfy Holkar but a long and formal discussion }jetween his Brahmans and myself. He acted as chairman, and tliat in an imiwrtial spirit. At the close he said to Mrs. Wilson, wlio was accommodated near the arena, ' I shall never forget this day ; I have got much new light to-day.' He was evidently much disappointed by the apiiearance made Ijy the Brahmans. They put several questions to me, wliicli tlie Maharaja declared to be inept ; and he himself took their place, boldly asking, ' Why do you kill animals ? ' My answer was in substance as follows : — ' Maharaja, that is a question for yourself as well as for me. You kill all sorts of clean animals for food, except cows. For the same reason that you kill fowls, goats, slieep, etc., I kill cows, getting suitable food from them not forbidden by God. I admire the Sanskrit langiiage. The best word for man in it is manushya, which means, ' he that has a mind.' The word for cattle is pashu (Latin, pecii), 'that whicli may be tied.' Man is an intellectual and moral being, created for the service of God ; cattle are created for tlie service of man. The Vedas show that the ancient Hindus ate them, and you may eat them too. Death is not to them what it is to us. Even the pain which they suffer at death by violence may be very slight. Dr. Livingstone, when he was overf)Owered by a lion, from a sort of electrical excitement which he experienced suffered no pain.' 'Yes,' said the Maharaja, ' the question is my own, and you have given a good answer to it. I am always troubled by my friends opposite.' I attribute all the scrujnilosity about the use of animal food to the doctrine of the Hindus a])out birth after birth. I think it would have done the heart of some of our more timid Politicals good to have seen all these go off in good temper on both sides." But the new or extended agencies of the Churches of Great Britain, the United States, and Germany, fell short in far-reaching consequences of the catholic system of public in- struction which was legislatively established in 1857. That system was directly the work of the missionary party. It was, and is still, the result not of a compromise but of co- operation between the Government or secular State and all non-government or proselytising bodies. Heathen and Christian, who choose to give a sound education to the people in addition to any religious instruction of which the State, as the ruler of millions of men of differing creeds, cults, and customs, can officially take no cognisance at this stage. The State, however, does not ignore natural or even revealed religion. But, calling Universities into existence, and placing them under an executive largely separate from itself, the Govern- ment at once puts the higher education in its proper place of self-developing independence, and it provides bodies com- petent to examine students of all the great religions, as they a^Dpear in the literature, the philosophy, the history, the laws, 1857.] EDUCATIOX MADE CATHOLIC BY MISSIOXAPJES. 295 and in fact tlie sacred books of each. Questions long discussed in the Christian Parliament of the niotlier country, and not conchided even yet for Ireland, were in 1857, under far more conflicting circumstances, settled for ever on the true basis of complete toleration and fearless confidence in the ultimate triumph of truth. And the men who brought that about were John Marshraan, heir of the Serampore men ; Alexander Duff; and John Wilson. Everywhere in India the East India Company first refused to teach or to tolerate teachers, and when com]ielled b}' Parliament under the influence of Charles Grant, Wilberforce, and Zachary Macaulay, taught Hindooism and Muhamma- danisrn only, Avhile intolerant to all dissent from either. By 1835 Dr. Duff, Macaulay, and the Anglicists under Lord William Bentinck, gradually changed that in Eastern and Dr. Wilson in Western India. But till 1854 these and other educational reformers Avere discouraged by Government, as such, because they were also Christian proselytisers. The Government and the independent systems of public instruc- tion went on side by side. All the public money was given to the former, which was neutral only in profession and Hindoo-Muhammadan in practice, the latter being maintained by the Churches of the West so far as it was Christian, and by a few educated native gentlemen so far as it was aggres- sively Hindoo. When in 1853 the Company applied to Parliament for what proved to be its last charter, the evidence given by most of the experts, and especially by Dr. Duff and Mr. Marshman, showed the folly of the rivalry on every side — of principle, of even secular efficiency, of economy. Lord Northbrook, accordingly, when private secretary to the present Lord Halifax who was then President of the old Board of Control, drafted a despatch from all the evidence, and also from the notes of Dr. Duff ; and the Court of Directors sent that out to Lord Dalhousie, with instructions to carry it into ef!ect. That Governor-General, Avho had been helping Mr. Thom.ason with his thousands of primary circle schools in Upper India, and was maintaining the Bethune girls' school out of his own pocket, Avas delighted with this despatch of July 1854. At the foundation it placed vernacular schools for the millions, and then a secondary and partly English school in every district or county. Then it recognised exist- 296 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1857. ing colleges, State and independent, Hindoo, Muhammadan, and Christian, Parsee and East Indian ; offering grants in aid to all on the test of secular efficiency, while maintaining its own until endowed, or independent but aided effort as in England, could relieve it of the burden of direct teaching. The whole arch was bound together by the three Universities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, chiefly examining bodies like that of London, but fitted to have Chairs of their own in time, as some now have. The Senate of each consisted of worthy representatives of all educational agencies, of whatever creed. The Syndicate or executive body appointed by the Arts, Law, Medical, and Engineering Faculties of the Senate, regulated the whole education of the country by fixing standards and text-books, and selecting the examiners for degrees. Theoretically the scheme was perfect. Practically the new policy, worked well for a time, because men of the wisdom, experience, and tact as well as princij)le of Wilson and Duff, Avere able to jireside at the launching of what they had designed. In a letter to their committee in Edinburgh, written by Dr. Wilson and signed also by Mr. Nesbit not long before his death, they reviewed the provisions of the despatch. Unhappily the succession, as Governor, of Sir George Clerk, who with all his merits retained the Com- pany's political prejudices against Christian missions, and the action of Directors and Inspectors of Public Instruction, ob- structed the fair working of the new system of grants in aid until the appointment of Sir Alexander Grant as head of the department. But that opposition was temporary, and it did not affect the more independent University and colleges. "Bombay, 16th Afay 1855. — Your important letter on the Despatch to the Government of India on the subject of Education was duly received, and copies of it have been forwarded by Dr. Wilson to the Dekhan and Nagpore. We rejoice to learn from it that our Committee at home are disjiosed to con- cur in our co-operation with Government in carrying its provisions into effect in so far as they may be found to apply to our missionary establishments. The issue of that Despatch, we conceive, constitutes a new and j)romising epoch in connection with the intellectual and moral enlightenment of this great country. It fully recognises important principles for which we have long and strenuously contended in this Presidency. It forms a discriminative and judicious estimate of the comparative claims of the vernacular and learned languages of India and of English as media of instruction. It makes a very cordial acknowledgment of the benefits derived by India from the mission- ary enterprise. It makes the Bible accessible for purjioses of consultation to inquisitive youth within the walls of the Government seminaries. It permits 1S57.] THE EDUCATION DESPATCH OF 1854. 297 the communication to them at extra liours of Christian instruction, voluntarily imparted and vohintarily received. It promises certain grants in aid of secular instruction, for certain definite objects, to all private scholastic institutions permitting government inspection and exacting a fee, however small, from the pupils. It proposes the foundation of Universities at the Presidencies, for granting honours and degrees to India youth of requisite attainments. It sanctions the affiliation with these Universities] of all senu- naries rightly conducted and furnishing the retpiisite amount of education. It has our full approbation as far as it goes, and we shall rejoice to find its provisions speedily carried into effect in the spirit in wliich it has been framed. " In referring to the moral relations of that Despatcli, we must mention, what the members of our Committee cannot have failed to notice, that it offers the same assistance in the communication of sound secular instruction to seminaries founded and conducted on heathen princii)les that it does to those which are founded and conducted on Christian principles. In doing so, it does not seem to us to recognise any principle of religious latitudinarianism. It simply offers to all a common blessing, without adoi)ting any action with reference to higher blessings on tlie one hand, or to what may j)rove an injury and a curse on the other. It leaves its own expression of respect to Christian institutions to remain unmodified by what it proposes to do with reference to tliose of another character. Sound secidar instruction, imparted without anj' ignoring or dejireciating of Christianity, can in no degree favour heatlieu- ism or error of any kind. To a certain extent it will be a counteraction of that error. The grants-in-aid will, we hope, be so administered, according to the Despatch, as to go to the encouragement and support only of sound secular knowledge. We do not see that such an appropriation of them will increase the resources of heathenism. To a certain extent it will direct the native resources to what is good, as they will be needed for that effort which is required to secure the progress in secular knowledge which the Government inspection demands. While we make these remarks, we do not in any degree compromise our own views of the supreme importance of the combination of right religious education and training with secular instruction. " But it is with the probable eflects of the Despatcli on our missionary undertakings that we have most to do, though we have considered this refer- ence to its general moral bearings essential to our judgment of its acceptability to the Christian community. It will open a wide field to the ojieration of our Bible and Tract Societies and nussionary presses. It will call for an increase of missionary agency, with a view to tlie hallowing of the secular instruction which it directly encourages. It will do more than this. It will aid the missionary institutions in that lace, in some instances, of the fees which are elsewhere exacted. It is perhaps not a matter of much consequence that all our vernacular schools, which are almost wholly devoted to the communication of scriptural knowledp-e, should in present circumstances be connected with the Government scheme." It Avas on the 18tli July 1857, in the darkest hour of the ]\Iutiny, that the University of Bombay received its charter. We applaud the inhabitants of Leyden, said Dr. Wilson afterwards when speaking as its Vice-Chancellor, who con- certed measures for founding a University even during the terrible siege of their town by the Spaniards in 1573, when 6000 of their number perished by famine and pestilence, and who devoted to that University the remission of taxes offered them as a reward for their patriotism. Shall Ave, he asked, Avithhold the meed of praise from the Government of India 1 Long and detailed Avere the discussions of the new Senate in Avorking out regulations for the University. The share Avhich Dr. Wilson had in these, and the success with Avhich he secured due recognition of the Christian Philosophy and Literature, side by side with the non-Christian, and solely on the ground of confidence in truth and academic fitness, is seen in the folloAving extracts from letters to Dr. Duff. Dr. Wilson Avrote Avith the experience not only of one of the founders of the University, but as a member of the Sjaidicate, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and an examiner in Sanskrit, Persian, Hebrew, Marathee, Goojaratee, and Hindostanee : — " Had it not been for most strenuoiis and almost self-destroying efforts and exertions which I made from day to day during the first discussion of the bye-laws, there would have been no recognition in them, as subjects of study, of Moral Philosophy, of Jewish History, and of the Evidences of Christianity in the case of undergraduates electing them ; and had we not had a good backing 1857.] THE BOMBAY UNIVERSITY. 299 in the addition to the Senate in 1864 of Messrs. Aitken, Dhunjeebhoy, and Stothert, I verily believe that good which has been since ertected in otla-r matters might not have been realised. Our combined yet independent action in the freqnent meetings of the Senate and in the Faculty to which we belong, is of a most salutary character, while, as calls are made upon us, we can engage in the University examinations without any interruption of our nussion work." " I send you the list of books (independent of those mentioned in our bye- laws) which we have lately chosen in our University, for a cycle of five years in advance of 1870. You will see from it that even iu our University studies there is a good foundation for Christian tuition in the case of ardent, judicious, and otherwise competent missionaries. This remark has special reference to tlie English books prescrilunl, in connection with whicli the truths of Christi- anity may be easily and systematically taught. [A lecture which I delivered some three years ago on the Foundational Facts of Milton's Paradise Lost, was attended by about 700 students.] In our Sanskrit course, till the B.A. is passed, we have prescribed the Tarkasangraha, the fundamental treatise of the Nyaya (the Theistic Philosoiihy holding, however, the eternity of atoms formed, fashioned, and directed by a Creator). The same Philosophy re- appears iu three of the five years in the M.A. course. From the Vedanta, which we have admitted for two years, we have eliminated the Brahma Sutras, with the Commentary of tliat formidable sophist Shankaracharya. The whole Sanskrit course I have all along most profitably contrasted with Christianity. Our Hebrew studies, not yet announced for the cycle, are from the Bible, which can maintain its place spite the Arabic Koran. For our systematic Biblical reading and lecturing we can maintain a due place, by insisting on the conditions of our missionary Institutions. It is a fact that the eagerness for graduation is a temptation to many young men to confiue their attention to the studies prescribed by the Universities ; but what would be the con- sequence if, instead of opposing that temptation, we were to withdraw from the arena ? What would soon be tlie character of the Universities themselves? What would soon be the state of the educated mind of India, which rules the native world ? What ? I may go on for hours suggesting most lament- able consequences." From the first meeting of the Senate to the hist which he was able to attend, Dr. Wilson guided the course of the University of Bombay with affectionate solicitude and cul- tured catholicity of spirit. When the Government appointed the zealous Christian missionary and uncompromising pro- selytiser, Vice-Chancellor, it at once proclaimed practical!}' the final abandonment of the last relics of the distrust of truth, and won the applause of educated men of all creeds and races in India. The Governor-General had offered the similar honorary but very influential office, of virtual director of the whole education of millions, to the good and the scholarly Bishop Cotton, who too modestly declined it. Had Dr. Duff remained longer in India he would have been nominated by Lord Lawrence. As Vice-Chancellor of Bom- bay, when, in the resplendent robes of his office, he took the 300 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1868. chief part in the ceremonial of laying the foundation-stone of the University building designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, he thus chronicled the endowments presented by his native and non- Christian friends — endowments to be increased by himself in the foundation of the John Wilson Chair of Comparative Philology : " The personal benevolence which we are required to acknowledge preceded that of the Government. Mr. Cowasjee Jehanghier Readymoney furnished the University in 1863 with one lakli of rupees (£10,000), now very consider- ably increased by accumulated interest, towards the erection of a University Hall. In 1864 Mr. Premchund Roychund presented us with two lakhs of rajDees for the erection of a Library, and in the same year with another two lakhs of ruj)ees for the erection of a Tower, to contain a large clock and a set of joy bells. Independently of the buildings, several most valuable endow- ments have been conferred on the University, as Rs. 20,000 in four per cent Government securities, by tlie Hon. Munguldass Nathoobhoy, for establishing a travelling fellowship ; Rs. 5000 (£500), by the family of the late Mr. Manockjee Limjee, for a gold medal to be given for the best English Essay on a prescribed subject ; Rs. 10,000 by Mr. Bugwandass Purshotumdass, for a Sanskrit scholarship ; Rs. 5000 by Mr. Homejee Cursetjee Dady Shet, for an annual gold medal for the best English Poem on a given subject offered in competition ; an endowment of six Sanskrit scholarships (three of Rs. 25 each, and three of Rs. 20 each per mensem), amounting altogether to Rs. 30,000, by Mr. Vinayekrao Jugonnathjee Sunkersett, in memory of his late father, the Hon. Jugonnath Sunkersett, one of the greatest supporters of education in the Bombay Presidency ; Rs. 45,000 by His Highness the Jam of Nowa- nuggur, for an English scholarship to be held by a native of Kathiawar ; Rs. 5000 in four per cent notes, by Mr. Cowasjee Jehanghier Readymoney, for founding a Latin Scholarship ; and Rs. 5000 from the members of the Civil Service and other gentlemen, for an annual gold medal, as a prize in law, for the commemoration of the accomplishments and worth of the Hon. Alexander Kinloch Forbes, Judge of the High Court, and Vice-Chancellor of this University. In all these great and generous gifts, the liberality of Bombay, according to its wont, has been most distinguished and exemplary. " Our University, tlms auspiciously begun, will, it is confidently believed, continue to[flourish. Under its direction and superintendence the inquisitive and ingenious Indian youth may effectively study the rich and varied languages, literature, history, and laws of England, of Italy, of Greece, of Judea, of Arabia, and of India ; have his mind disciplined and exercised by the sciences of mathematical demonstration and investigation, and of the dialectic art ; expatiate in the near and remote, minute and grand regions of physical science ; con- template what are still more wonderful, the faculties, functions, intuitions, and phenomena of the human mind ; dwell on the moral relationship of man to his Maker and to his fellow-creatures ; consider the economy of social and national government in all its connections ; prepare himself for the practice of the healing art, for the administration of justice, or for the application of engineering in all its departments, to the necessities, convenience, and gratification of the human family ; and train himself for the discharge of the general duties of life in the most varied circumstances. Its influence on the intellectual and moral state of its alumni on their ultimate position in this world, and on their prospects with regard to that which is to come, may surely be expected to be beneficial in no common degree. It is not merely with its ISGO.] LOUD ELnilXSTONK. 301 alumni, however, that it will have to do. It will affect through them the whole coiiuuimity of Western India, if not of distant provinces and countries. It will, with the blessing of God, which we implore on its behalf, be for ages an eminent instrumentality in the enlightenment, civilisation, and regenera- tion of The East." It was in May 18 GO that Bombay lost the services of its Governor, Lord Elphinstone, who had guided the province through perilous times with rare firmness, wisdom, and self- sacrifice. He died soon after, leaving a name worthy to be placed beside that of his greater uncle's, and perpetuated by more than one institution and building in the capital where he ruled so well. Very beautiful were the relations, of which these glimpses have been given, between the Governor and the Missionary. Good reason had Lord Elphinstone to remark to Dr. H. Miller that to no man was he so indebted personally, for public and private services, as to Dr. Wilson, on whom he could not pre- vail to accept so much as the value of a shoe-latchet. When, in public meeting, moving the adoption of the farewell address which the province selected him to present to the retiring Governor, Dr. Wilson especially referred to his Excellency's " constant recognition of the great principles of religious toler- ation and humanity," especially in the suppression of hook- swinging, and in securing to all, out-caste as well as Brahman, access to the public wells and cisterns. 302 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1862. CHAPTEE XVIl. 1862-1865. THE KRISHNA ORGIES — DR. WILSON AMONG THE EDUCATED NATIVES. Brabmanism opposed to Rational Humanity — Tlie stages of its Corruption — • Krishna Worship — The Four Krishna Reformers — Young Bombay — Vallabh the Royal Teacher of Deified Adultery — Trade of Bombay taxed for the Maharajas — A Courageous Editor — The Trial — Mr. Chisholm Anstey^Dr. Wilson's Evidence — Sir Joseph Arnould's Judgment — Public Opinion — Ad\dce to Hindoos to travel — Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy's Benevolent Institution — Influence of Dr. Wilson in Hindoo and Farsee Families — Rai Bahadoor Tirmal Rao — " Uncle " Wilson — A Hindoo Lady learning to read at sixty — Intercourse with Native Princes — Raja Dinkur Rao — The Converts' Address to Dr. Wilson on the Thirtieth Anniversary of his Landing — Reviews his Missionary Policy — Building of the Native Church and Manse — The Drowning of Stephen Hislop. The late Canon Mozley, a Christian philosopher who has been pronounced, with some justice, the Bishop Butler of this genera- tion, published an Essay on " Indian Conversion," twenty years ago. "Writing before the comparatively rapid development of the Church of India, the Protestant sections of which already form a varied community of more than three hundred thousand souls, he ai'gued, on the ground of reason alone, that Brahmanism will be gradually but completely demolished by the fair and solid contact of Christianity with it. For Brahmanism is at disagreement with the original type of rational humanity ; with the religious type and the moral standard in human nature ; with physical truth, and with the ends of society. Not less convincing is the historical argument ; and when both are looked at together in the light of time, as the factor in the world's changes, the conclusion is overpowering, apart from Scripture. From the monotheism and nature-worship of the early Vedic hymns and Zoroastrian gatlias, to the polytheism 186-2.] KEISHNA WOKSlIir. 303 and sacerdotal caste which provoked the Bu(hlliist reform, what a change ! And yet it is spread over, at least, twelve cen- turies. Arrested for a time by men like Asoka, the Brahman- ical corruption leavened the whole lump of Asiatic life, whether Hindoo or Buddhist, till, at the close of the next twelve centuries, the faith of Gautama was wiped out in blood all over the peninsula, and only the conforming Jains remained to tell of the impotence of the creed that had cut its temples and monasteries out of the living rock, that had sub- dued Tibet and China, Burma and Ceylon. Triumphant Brahmanism entered on the third stage of its descending progress ten centuries ago, with all its evils intensified, and afterwards but little checked by the iconoclastic fanaticism of the Muhammadan invasion. Ceasing to spread, save among the aborigines it had long scorned when it did not reduce them to the worst slavery, Brahmanism was driven in on itself. For nearly a century it found a protection alike against Mussulman intolerance and Christian light in the encouragement of the East India Company, which Charles Grant and Wilberforce first stopped by the Charter of 1833. After the persecution of Buddhism there arose the latest development of the Hindoo system in the worship of Krishna. Thenceforth Brahmanism was to act on the elastic policy of finding a place for every sect, every sentiment, every god, every deified hero or saint, that would consent, even indirectly, to aflftliate itself. Like the Paganism of the Roman empire, the Brahmanism which emerged from the struggle with Buddhism, wounded and wise, Avould have included Chris- tianity itself, if that had consented to be dragged at its chariot wheels. Krishna, on his best side, it was not diflicult to iden- tify with Christ, sufficiently to satisfy the uneducated. The Jesuits of the Madura Mission themselves favoured the iden- tification, and forged Vedas to prove it. So saturated is the Bhagavat Puran of this period with Christian-like sentiment, that it is still a subject of discussion whether the similarity was not designed. Krishna, the god of love in the Oriental sense of lust, has ever since marked the accelerating corruption of popular Hiii- dooism. At first, like Buddhism, a concession to the discon- tent with caste, sacerdotalism, exclusiveness, and rigidity, the Krishna Avorship seems to rest on the idea of brotherhood 304 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1862. including even Muhammadans. From the teaching of Eamanuj and Ramanand there arose four reformers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in each of the great provinces of Hindooism. Kabeer, the weaver, was the Hindee ; Nanuk, the herd-boy, was the Punjabee or Sikh ; Cliaitunya, the Brah- man, was the Bengalee ; and Tukaram, the shopkeeper, was the Marathee teacher, singer, and priest. Each was the Vates of his countrymen. Dr. Wilson early became familiar with their teaching, especially with that of Tukaram, a poet who has of late been frequently translated into English, while the whole Adi Granth, or scriptures of Nanuk, has been recently turned into English by Dr. Trumpp. All wrote in the ver- nacular ; all proclaimed the brotherhood of Vishnoo in his Krishna form ; and all, as developed by their followers, ended in the deification and practice of lust and intolerant cruelty. The Jugganath car-worship, on which a lurid light has been thrown by the trial and banishment to the Andamans of its deified representative, the Raja of Pooree, for murder by torture, is of the same reformed school. Gradually Brahmanism found that its subtle policy of widening the bonds of Hindooism so as to include all appa- rently conforming sects, though on the whole successful, encouraged low-caste fanatics to claim, as pontiffs, the adoration and very substantial revenues of the people. The Vaishnava brotherhoods have thus honeycombed the old sacerdotalism with secret, and generally filthy and execrable, cults all over India south and west of the Ganges. Their leaders have established the most frequented shrines, for which whole armies of debased recruiters tout for pilgrims; and they have become wandering popes, who travel with all the pomp and pride of the gods they represent. The regular Brahmans resent this, not on moral but on pecuniary grounds, and strive to compete with their rivals. Thus the deterioration goes on, till India presents the same state of things which is so accurately pictured in the second or third century romance of The Clementines, the same crowd of Antinomian sects, like the Nicolaitans, through which the paganism of the empire vainly tried to compete with the only Faith that has ever enforced continence and purity. He who would learn what Hindooism now is, whether Brahmanical or Vaishnava, will find the materials in the great treatise of Dr. Norman Chevers on Medical Jurisprudence in India, and in the collec- 1S6-2.] "YOUNG BOM]iAY." 305 tion of libri execrandl in the Bodleian, made by the late Horace Hayman Wilson fox' his work on I'/u' lldlgious Sects of the Hindoos. Against such teaching and practices there has always heen that outraged native opinion which Avill yet cast forth the whole system responsible for them. So far as the class of educated reformers, in the true sense of the word, has not yet found its way into the Christian Church, but has become known as "Young Bombay" or "Young Bengal," they are indirectly the offspring of the education and inHuences of the cultured missionaries. In Bombay Dr. Wilson was the teaclu^r, the adviser, the friend, of all such non-Christian or almost Christian natives. To them, in a hundred ways, the most pi'ecious portion not only of such morning leisure as he could claim, but of his working hours, was gladly given up. By the press, the college, lectures, the Asiatic Society, public meetings, discussions, social intercourse, and often sul:)stantial patronage, he made himself their example and their guide. Poor and rich, low and high caste, pundit and English-speak- ing, they all knew him ; for they, and their fathers, and their children, sat at his feet during nigh half a century. In the light of the future, we believe his w^ork among and for the non-Christian natives who resided in or passed through Bombay, to have exceeded in influence that which created the native church. It extended even where he was not personally known ; it returned to him in the most unexpected ways. How he was to the natives as to the Europeans of Bombay a great and recognised moral force, all the more because of his Hindoo and Muharamadan discussions and Parsee contro- versies, was seen in Avhat is popularly known as the Maharaj libel case. When, at the end of the fifteenth century, Nanuk was gathering his Sikhs or disciples in the Punjab, Vallabh, son of a Brahman of Bijanuggur, went to the north of India as acharya or religious teacher. "To Krishna," he taught his followers, " dedicate body, soul, and possesions " — tan, man, dhan. Krishna is to be worshipped in the person of the gooroo or teacher, who himself becomes the god. The teacher is therefore to be addressed as a King or Maharaj ; his followers are to Avorship him by sexual intercourse, or by witnessing such intercourse. While gods, the Vallabacharyas arc also X . 306 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1862. gopees, or herd-women devoted to Krishna, according to the scandalous legend ; and hence they dress as women, with long hair, female ornaments, and toe-rings. The union with the Maharajas of the wives and daughters of the devotees accord- ing to the vow of dedication, is union with Krishna, as in the Ras Lila. Hence, like the parallel sect of the Shaktees, or worshippers of the female principle in Bengal, the carnal love- meetings of the married followers, known as E,as Mandalis. Hence every Vallabacharya temple becomes the scene of adultery under so-called divine sanction. This faith is pro- fessed, these practices were followed, by the largest and wealthiest of the Hindoo communities of Western India, whose scripture is the tenth book of the Bhagavat Puran, translated from Sanskrit into the Brijabasha dialect as Prem Sagur, or the Ocean of Love. The Bhattias, Marwarees, and Lowanas — the men who, as clerks and partners in mercantile houses, as capitalists and shopkeepers, come most closely into contact with Europeans — were the men who adored the Maharajas, and whose wives and daughters were thus jjublicly debauched. Numbering probably not fewer than half a million in Western India, they paid the Maharajas' dues, according to a fixed tariif, on every article they sold, the real payer being the consumer of course. Thus these pontiffs of Krishna waxed fat with organised adultery and an ever-increasing tax on half the trade of Bombay. The impost of a farthing on every ten pounds' worth of Lancashire goods sold, yielded two temples alone £5300 in one year. Not one important article of trade escaped a similar impost. The Brahmans of the Island, being beggars chiefly, receive alms from the Vaishnava as well as Shiva sects ; and this the Maharaj pontiffs in 1855 determined to stop, as an interference with their rights. Their followers consented, on the condition of reforms in the temple abuses, such as the cessation by the Maharajas of adulterous intercourse with their females at the winter service at four in the morning, and the pollution of young girls, the ever-increasing extortion, the taking of bribes in cases of arbitration, the summoning of worshippers to the shrines at all hours to attend the idol, and the beating of the crowds to hasten their passage through the temple. The l^romises were given but never carried out. The ignorant Maharajas were defeated in a public discussion with the 1862.] A EEFORMER EXPOSES THE PONTIFFS OF KltlSIINA. 307 Bralimans "who knew Sanskrit ; and their dignity was lowered by the order of the Supreme Court that they must attend when parties in a case, although they objected to sit lower than a European. Editing the Safi/a FroJcash, or " Light of Truth," one of the sixteen Goojaratee newspapers, was a youth Kursundass Mooljee, who was one of their followers and familiar with their practices. He became the centre of the reformers ; and against him the Maharajas hired a Parsee, the editor of our old friend the Chabook, or " Whip." Kursundass welcomed the arrival of Judoonath Brizruthunjee from Surat, as a Maharaj who was said to have himself espoused the cause of reform so far as to establish a female school. But one of the reforming party having caught the new-comer in the very act of adultery in the temple, it became necessary to expose that Maharaj also. Formerly the principal men of the community had signed a " slavery bond," vowing to excommunicate Kursundass, and to procure the passing of an Act to exempt the Maharajas from attendance in courts of justice. Only when that had been signed were the temples opened and the enforced fasting ceased. Kursundass then published an article headed "The Primitive Eeligion of the Hindoos and the present Heterodox Opinions," in which not only the whole sect but Judoonath Maharaj by name was charged with doctrines and practices involving '• shamelessness, subtlety, immodesty, rascality, and deceit." This appeared on the 21st October 1860. Seven months after the Maharaj brought an action for libel in the Supreme Court against the editor and printer, laying the damages at Es. 5000. At the same time he induced his leading followers to refuse to give evidence under pain of excommunication. Two of these were sentenced to heavy fines for conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice, and then the main case proceeded. From the 26th January 18G2 it lasted forty days, for twenty-four of which it was before Sir M. Sausse, the Chief Justice, and Sir Joseph Arnould, Puisne Judge. The success of the defendant, who pleaded justification, was due to two men. Mr. Chisholm Anstey, his senior coun- sel, supplied the forensic skill with all that persistence which, when not erratic as too often in his case, made him an an- tagonist to be feared whether in Parliament, at the bar, or 308 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1862. on the bench. Dr. Wilson contributed the learning and the uprightness required to convict the Maharaj out of his own books. Some thirty other witnesses on either side were heard, including Judoonath himself, and the expenses amounted to £6000, of which he had to pay the greater part. Of Dr. Wilson's evidence the accomplished Judge remarked — " Dr. Wilson, who has studied this subject with that com- prehensive range of thought (the result of varied erudition) which has made his name a foremost one among the living- Orientalists of Europe — Dr. Wilson says : ' The sect of Val- labacharya is a new sect, inasmuch as it has selected the god Krishna in one of his aspects, that of his adolescence, and raised him to sujDremacy in that aspect. It is a new sect in as far as it has established the pusthti-marg, or way of enjoyment, in a natural and carnal sense.' I agree with Dr. Wilson in thinking that, ' all things considered, the alleged libel is a very mild expostulation,' involving an ' appeal to the principle that preceptors of religion, unless they purify themselves, cannot expect success to attend their labours.' " And the author of the volume which contains a history of the whole sect and trial ^ expresses native opinion when he writes : " Dr. Wilson's labours in this trial deserve special notice. He placed at the disposal of the defendant his rich and multifarious stores of learning, which proved of sur- passing value. Throughout the Avhole trial this learned missionary ably sustained the character which he fills in the estimation of the natives of India — that of a philanthropist." All the journals of India, native and European,' rejoiced at the vindication of morality and jDurity. Dr. Wilson himself suggested and drew up the appeal for a public recognition of " the disinterested efforts of Kur- sundass Mooljee to improve the state of Goojaratee societj', and especially of his courageous conduct, truthfulness, and singleness of purpose in the management of the Maharaj libel case." His name is followed by that of the Parsee reformer, Ardaseer Framjee. Christianity, Hindooism, and Zoroastrianism were thus seen happily allied in the cause of morality and humanity. The result, with all that it involved, was worth Dr. Wilson's thirty years' strivings. On the same ^ Ilistwy of the Sect of the Maharajas or Vallabucharyas in Western India. London, 1865. 1S64.] INFLUENCE ON rOUR GENEKATIONS. 309 day he assisted Sii- Bartle Frere, the Governor, in examining the hundreds of Parsee youth, boys and girls, who crowded the cLasses of the Benevolent Institution endowed by Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. The learned controversialist, whose uncompromising but tolerant zeal for his Master had years before excited a panic among the community when several of their ablest youths were baptized into Christ, hailing the pursuit of truth in every form, "referred to the intelli- gence and enterprise of the Parsee community, Avho Avould not only be patrons of learning in India, like the noble Jee- jeebhoy fiimily, but participants of its great advantages." The Governor followed, congratulating the dowager Lad}'' Jamsetjee on the results of her encouragement of female education. The subtle influence of Dr. Wilson and his teaching, per- meating generations of non-Christian native society, not only in the capital but in distant cities and stations, may be best seen if we select one of the many Hindoo families to whom he always was, in the childlike language of the grateful people of India, " Kaka " or Uncle Wilson ; just as soldiers and administrators like Nicholson, Edwardes, and Abbott, Avere among the wild Afghan tribes of our north-west frontier. For forty years, and Avith four of its generations Avliom he educated, Dr. Wilson and his Avife maintained a closer per- sonal intercourse and more aff"ectionate correspondence Avith the family of the Hindoo Tirmal Rao, than we have any example of. The judge, whom in 1836 his father took from Dharwar in the far south, to be educated in Bomba}", tells the story. This communication is introduced by his son, the Bombay High Court Interpreter and Senior Canarese and Marathee Translator, Avho Avrites to us — " He kncAV four generations of our family. He loved me and my brother Venkut Rao most tenderly. He very often remarked, in the meetings of his friends, that our father completed his edu- cation under him, that Ave had been his pupils, and that he looked upon us as his grandchildren. You heard the same observation from his lips Avhen he formally introduced us to you in one of those meetings convened by him for your sake." 310 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1864. Fi-om Rao Bah^uSoor Tirmal Rao Venkdtesh, Pensioned Judge and First Class Honorary Magistrate. " 10th February 1878. — As my country is situated at tlie distance of about 350 miles from Bombay, no one in those days sent tlieir children to Bombay to be educated. In 1836 my late father had occasion to go to Bom- bay on some business, and was struck with the English education that was imparted to the young men in the Government school there, and his Euroiiean friends advised him to send me to Bombay. It was determined that I should be placed under the care of the then Rev. Dr. J. Wilson, in preference to being put into the Government school. I went to his house to pay my resjoects to him for the first time. I remember perfectly well how kindly he received me and what encoiiragement he gave me. He directed me to see him in his house both in the mornings and evenings every day, besides meeting him in the school. For some time Mathematics seemed to me to be a dry and useless study. He therefore, on one occasion, passed his hands over the figure of the 5th proposition of the first book of Euclid in such a peculiar manner, and explained matters to me so clearly, that from that moment I began to take great great liking for Mathematics. He taught me more of Geo- graphy, Astronomy, Zoology, general History, and Scripture, in course of his conversations in his house than in the regular classes in the schools. He appointed the late Rev. R. Nesbit to teach me literature specially, in addition to what I learnt in the classes, and permitted me also attend the lectures given in Logic, Geology, Botany, and Chemistry in the Elphinstone College by Professors Orlebar, Harkness, and Bell. Dr. Wilson's mode of teaching was so entertaining that we never felt that we were studying, but we used to think that we were playing with him. He treated us more like our father than any one else. He attended upon us during our sickness jjersonally. In those days my wife was quite illiterate. He impressed upon my mind the advan- tages of female education, and made me teach her to read and write. At the same time he got his si,sters-in-law, the Misses Anna and Hay Bayne, to undertake the education of my wife. " During nights Dr. Wilson took me out in open air, and made me acquainted with the different planets and constellations. He used daily to pray to God in my behalf, and direct my mind towards God. On Simdays he regularly took me to his church to hear him iireach. In fact the trouljle that he took to educate me and the students of his classes was really incon- ceivable. After leaving his .school he brought me iirominently to the notice of the then Governor, Sir R. Grant, and other officers of the State, and it was in a measure owing to his recommendations that I obtained the offices that I held afterwards. Dr. Wilson always looked upon me as one of his earliest scholars, and loved me to excess. Twenty years afterwards it pleased God to enable me to place several of my children under the personal care of the Rev. Dr. Wilson and his late partner, Mrs. Isabella Wilson, for educational pur- poses. It would be impossible for me to express adequately the peculiar pleasure with which they undertook the task, and how well they executed it. Dr. Wilson had the charge of the education of the boj's, and Mrs. Wilson that of tlie girls. It was owing wholly to Dr. Wilson's prayers, training, trouble, and exertions that my two boys, Jayasattia Boohrao Tirmal, and Venkutrao Rookmangad (now my legal nephew), have been so well educated. The former now holds a very responsible office in the Honourable the High Court of Judicature at Bombay. The latter olitained the degree of B.A. during Dr. Wilson's lifetime ; and it is a pity that the latter did not live long enough to see Venkut Rao become an LL.B. also, which degree the Uni- versity of Bombay has just conferred upon him. " The above is a partial account of Dr. Wdson's dealings with my family 1864.] SOCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH HINDOOS. 311 alone. He treated several liundreils of other families in a sinular manner. After leaving Ills college and returning to my country I continued to visit liini ouce iu two years or so, and spent several days witli him. The whole of his time used to be occupied in doing some jiublic good or other. He wrote and published hundreds of tracts, and several books on religious, educational, his- torical, and other subjects in English, Marathee, Goojaratee, and other lan- guages. He assisted people of all classes in various ways. His dealings witli all were kind, considerate, and honourable throughout ; so much so that natives of all classes and creeds feared and honoured him more tlian they did any other person. In course of time he had won the hearts of the people so much that they were convinced that niithing could go wrong with him. His very name, or, as the natives called him, ' ]\'ilso>i Kaka' (i.e. Uncle Wil- son), was sufficient to inspire any one with the fullest confidence. "He first arrived iu India in 1829-30. Since that time, up to his death in 1875, no less than eighteen Governors ruled over the Western Presidency. Each, in his turn, did what good lay in his power to the country. There is no wonder in that, as all of them were invested with official jjower, and had at their command money and men. Dr. Wilson was a poor man, witliout power or money. Nevertheless, he did more good to India, and still more so to the Presidency of Bombay, in the way of educating people, composing books suited to their wants, in various languages and on ditt'erent subjects, inducing them to be loyal subjects of the British Crown, collecting ancient manuscripts and histories of the country, etc. etc., than all the eighteen Governors put together. He was the father of several religious and educa- tional Institutions. Dr. Wilson was held in the greatest esteem by the suc- cessive Governors, Commanders-in-Chief, members of Council, Judges of tlie High Court, and almost all the other officers of the State, and the native nobility. I know of no one to whom greater respect was paid tlian to Dr. Wilson. It may be considered that I am exaggerating his virtues and useful- ness, but there are thousands and thousands of Europeans and Natives who would be glad to corroliorate my assertions, and I challenge every one and all to contradict me if they possibly can. Dr. Wilson was an extraordinary man. Of his learning, travels, and other good deeds in England and else- where, I leave it to better hands than myself to describe. I only say what I have seen and known. It is difficult to find another man like him. I am really sorry that my knowledge of the English language is so limited that I am not able to express more vividly the varied learning and usefulness of Dr. Wilson." In all the offices of friendship and affection common to men and women of all countries, save that intercourse from which Hindoo caste alone shuts out its votaries, Dr. and Mrs. Wilson, and the Misses Bayne for a time, were one with this Hindoo family. Cliildren, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, came successively to the Ambrolie Institution, and to the Girls' School, while they spent their holiday and leisure hours in the missionary's home, as English youths would have done. Of all he wrote in 1857, " I know of no instance of any family residing at such a distance from the seat of the Western Pre- sidency making such judicious arrangements for the culture and training of its young members." At the frequent social 312 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1864. gatherings of old students in the mission-house, as in the grateful support of the college and schools, they were foremost. When the aged mother of Tirmal Rao passed away, Dr. Wilson wrote, amid the hurry of his duties in England, to her son, his student of 1836, "I deeply sympathise with every one of you. Your mother was no common Avoman. It tells much in her favour that she was assiduous in her endeavours to promote your well-being, and that of all the members and connections of your family ; that she en- couraged you all in the acquisition of knowledge ; and that she encouraged the work of female education in India by learnina; to read herself, when she had in her life numbered threescore years. The day must come when we ourselves must make the great transition and appear before the omnis- cient and righteous Judge. May God in His mercy impart to every one of us that salvation from the curse and pollution of sin of Avhicli we stand in need, and which is freely offered to all who confide in the great atonement of the Son of God. Of this atonement your dear mother had heard, though not so fully as you yourself have done." Such cases as this are by no means rare in the varied transition states of thought and progress through Avhich India is passing under British rule and missionary agencies of all kinds. In Bengal whole families or clans, like the Dutts, have together taken the step which seals all, and have publicly professed Christ. Very similar to this among the Parsees were Dr. Wilson's relations with another Judge, Mr. Manockjee Cursetjee, last- ing over forty years. So with Dadoba Pandurang since 1834, one of the University Examiners and an early reformer. The Native Princes, Muhanimadan and Hindoo, rarely visited the capital without seeking an interview with one who had been a welcome preacher in their durbars ; and on such occasions of rejoicing as marriages, they sent him kJmreefas, or letters of honour, illuminated with the perfect taste of the Oriental, and delicately besprinkled with gold dust. When a distin- guished Native statesman like the Raja Dinkur Rao, who did so much for Gwalior and for Lord Canning's Administration in 1858-62, visited Bombay, he carried an introduction to Dr. Wilson from Sir Richmond Shakespeare. Lord Canning testified of that astute Marathee : — " Seldom has a ruler been served in troublous times by a more faithful, fearless, or able 1859.] THE NATIVE CHURCH. 313 minister," for his counsel saved the ]\Iaharaja of Gwalior in 1857. When still more distant potentates, like Sultan Abdou of Joanna, repeated his visit to India, the Government, changed every five years, turned to Dr. Wilson fur informa- tion regarding him. But dearest of all to John Wilson were his children in the faith, gathered out of every kindred, and tribe, and tongue ; barl^arian, Scythian, bond and free, from all the lands around the Indian Ocean. On the thirtieth anniversary of his landing at Bombay the whole adult community, of more than two hundred souls, presented him with a loving address, and a copy of the Hcxapla, as best typifying his work and the tie which bound them to him and to each other. The address Avas signed in their name by the representative Parsee and Brahman now ordained Christian ministers, the Revs. Dhun- jeebhoy Nowrojee and Narayan Sheshadri. Its tenor is seen in his reply, which is full of suggestiveness alike to the Church of India and to those Western Churches which have been privileged, all too slowly and coldly, to lay its founda- tions : " The love and affection which you have ever borne to me since before my deliglited eyes you one by one, and two by two in some instances, passed from the darlvuess of heathenism and error into the light and grace of the Lord, has, next to your steady and consistent adherence to the cause of Christ and your advancement in usefulness, proved the greatest ministerial solace and comfort wdiich I have enjoyed in the hallowed evangelistic enterprise in which it is my privilege, under a deep sense of personal unworthiness, to engage in this great and promising though still benighted land. I feel that the bond which unites us together in mutual respect and confidence is of a permanent character, and I eai'nestly pray that it may be more and more sanctified to us all by the spirit of the glorious Saviour by Whom we have lieen redeemed and Whom we seek to serve. " You exjiress your belief that good has followed my labours in India. This, as you see and acknowledge, is, to any extent that it may have been realised, the consequence entirely of the divine blessing, which I ever desire to acknowledge with humilitj^ and praise. I thank God on all occasions for bringing me to the shores of India, on which my aflections were strongly set from my youthful days, though I was ready to be sent as a Missionary of tlie Cross to any part of tlie world which might be selected for me by the wisdom of the Church seeking for divine direction. I bless God for my ajipointment to found the Scottish Missions at the seat of the Western Presidency of India, the peculiar importance of which I had begun to discern before I left my native land, and for the great and effectual door of usefulness which His gracious providence here opened for myself, and for the esteemed bretliren in the ministry — i^articularly my dear brother Mr. Nesbit — who came to my assistance after a considerable number of years had been passed by me in solitary but not unfruitful labours in this mission. I have constantly sought 314 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1859. to use all available instrumentalities and opportunities for the prosecution of the work in which I have been engaged. ; and while I more and more earnestly pray the Lord to pardon my numerous shortcomings and ofl'ences in His work, I more and more seek to give Him the undivided praise for what has been accomplished. It is in His name that I have sought to advance His cause by speech and writing, and by teaching and preaching, both among young and old, in schools and seminaries of learning both for males and females, in the lecture-room of this house, and in places of jiublic concourse both in this city and neighbourhood, and in distant districts of this land. A similar assurance I can give you in behalf of the Lord's devoted ministerial servants in Bombay and in the contiguous Presidencies, many of whom we have been privileged to welcome to this land, and some of whom, as our dear brethren of the Irish Presbyterian, to introduce in the first instance to the field of their labours. " While I thank God for the multitiules near us and afar ofl" in India, who by the labours of all His servants in this land have become ashamed of the gods and idols, and doctrines and rites of their varied superstitions ; and while I see many, particularly of the yoimg in this place and neighbourhood, appa- rently not far from the kingdom of God, I especially rejoice, with thankfulness to God, in those who, like yourselves, have altogether entered the Christian fold, and who by their spirit and temper, as well as their walk and conversa- tion, give good evidence that they belong not only to the visible but invisible Church of Christ. I view you emphatically as, under God, the hope of this mission. You are the first fruits into Christ in this locality, and have the Christian character to exhibit to those who are bone of your bone and flesh of your fiesh. You have the truth of Christ to declare to multitudes from whom, iDoth privately and publicly, you may obtain a hearing. In this work some of you, who have been called to the ministrj-, have been honoured yourselves to win souls to Christ ; while others of you have brought some of your rela- tions and connections under the sound of the Gospel, and in a good degree aided in their Christian instruction. In the work of personally endeavouring to promote the enlightenment and conversion of your countrymen I trust you will all more and more abound. This work must not be suffered to devolve wholly, or even princiijally, on the officials of the Christian Church, necessary though they be for its advancement. What would you think of a I'egiment of soldiers who would be content to trust to its officers for the whole fighting against the common enemy ? I should be glad to see in you all the activity and zeal of the Cliristians of apostolical times, not only in your own mutual edification and comfort, but in your efforts to convey to those around you the knowledge of the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. "My dear brethren Messrs. Dhunjeebhoy and Narayan, in handing me your address and request, have expressed to me their special gi'atitude for what I have from time to time sought to do for the native missionary in the matters, as I take it, of his being called to labour as an evangelist, set apart for his great work by the solemnities and vows of ordination — God's own ordinance, and in his being permitted to share in the common councils and deliberations of the Christian ministry and mission with which he is connected. For one to have done less than I liave done in this matter would have been to sacrifice the deepest convictions of my judgment and conscience, both as far as Christian right and Christian expediency are concerned. You know that our mission in general fully concurred in the views which I have been led to take of the questions raised, and that no serious opposition was ever offered to the principles which they recognised in the headquarters of presbytery in Scotland. While we seek for the due probation of entrants into the holy ministry, abroad as well as at home, we must remember that when the proba- 1863.] STEPHEN HISLOr OF NACil'OKE. 315 tiou has been satisfactorily rendereil, all duo jirivilcgcs should not only be gi'eatly but joyfully and thankfully accorded. Probation in .such a land as India, tilled with people of a strange countenance and a strange tongue, and what is more, a strange heart, is neetled certainly as much by tiie missionaries from the West as those raised up in the field of labour in the East. Tiiey cannot, without the greatest injury to themselves and the enterprise in which they are engaged, be free of the judgment and experience of those who may be supposed best to know the people and languages, and creeds and customs of India. A common council is the essential characteristic of presbytery. While it gives fnll scope to the judgment and conscience of all, it gives the fullest scope to the gifts of all for the information of that judgment and con- science. There is even peculiar potency in its administration, because from time to time it can select its own agencies for work to be done by individuals and committees." The practical outcome of this address was the erection of that ecclesiastically becoming church, in which the native congregation under a native minister have Avorshipped since 1869. Aided by friends like Dr. Hugh Miller and Mr. James Burns in the west of Scotland, and themselves con- tributing ten thousand rupees out of their scanty income, the native church raised the structure at Ambrolie, of which Mr. Emerson was architect, with a manse, at the cost of £6000. In this, as in every Christian and philanthropic movement which he advocated, Dr. Wilson's personal sub- scriptions were almost lavishly generous, for he knew the force of example. The converts who, as elders and members, bestirred themselves to erect this memorial of their gratitude, were — Manuel Gomes, Mikhail Joseph, Yohan Preni, Ba])a Pudmanjee, Bapu Mazda, Behramjee Kersajee, Khan Singh, Mattathias Cohen, Kashinath Vishvanath, "W'asudeva Pandu- rang, Shapoorjee Eduljee, and Rewa Ranijee. More significant than any statue of John Wilson is this Christian temple of his converts from many races, on the spot where he lived and laboured for nigh half a century. In 1863 the Christian civilisation of India suflored a loss second only to that of those other pioneers Wilson and Dull'. The Rev. Stephen Hislop of JXagpore had proved himself worthy to stand beside them, alike in the intensity of his devotion and the breadth of his culture. Aided by Mr. Hunter, he had built up the mission to the Hindoos and Gonds of Central India, through all the difficulties of bad feudatory rule, annexation, caste disputes, and the misgovern- ment even of British officers for a short time. The liev. J. G. and Mrs. Cooper, who still carry on his work in his spirit. 316 LIFE OF JOHN WILSOX. [1863. helped liim. How when he was mistaken for another in 1853 he was nearly put to death hy a riotous mob in Nagpore, and how he was the means of preparing the Government against the mutiny and projected massacre by the sepoys and Mussulman rabble of Nagpore, Mr. Hunter has told.' Were it becoming so long as some of the actors are alive, Ave could add the details of his service which, through the Frie7id of India and privately, opened the eyes of Lord Canning to the misrule that followed the Mutiny, and resulted in the creation of the Central Provinces under Sir R. Temple as first Chief Commissioner. In all that related to the neglected territory, its varied people of five tongues, its simple but savage hill Gonds, its geology and unparalleled mineral resources, its schools, native officials, and administrative needs, Sir R. Temple found Hislop his counsellor. The missionary was more to the country than ten regiments or a whole establish- ment of civil officers were to it. Dr. "Wilson rejoiced in his work, so like his own — spiritual, scientific, philanthropic. But all too soon Hislop was removed suddenly, while the Chief Commissioner and the Bombay philanthropist, each in his own way, published unavailing lamentations and eulogies. It was on the 4th September, after a long break in the latter rain, when Hislop and Sir R. Temple had gone out to study the Scythian stones at Takulghat, and Hislop remained behind to examine a Government school, that the missionary disap- peared. In the interval between Sir R. Temple crossing a stream and the missionary reaching it on his Avay to the camp, the water had been swollen by sudden rain, and Stephen Hislop was drowned. His riderless horse told the tale too late to do more than rescue the dear remains. Another martyr to duty had his name written in the great roll of Christian men who have died as well as lived for the people of India. Foremost among his supporters was the friend of Judson, Sir Henry Durand, when, for a time, that officer was the Political Resident at Nagpore. ^ See the well-Avritten Historij of the Missions of the Free CMircJi of Scot- land in India and Africa, by the Rev. Robert Hunter, M.A. 1873. 1862.] CHANGES IX AXGLO-IXDIAX SOCIETY. 317 CHAPTEE XVIII. 1865-1868. NEW BOMBAY— DR. WILSON AMONG THE EUROPEANS — DR. LIVINGSTONE— THE ABYSSINIAN EXPEDITION. The Changes in Anglo-Indian Society — Dr. Wilson leaves Amljrolie for "The Cliff" — The Memories of Tliirty Years — American Slavery and Bombay Cotton — Rise of prices in India — The Bombay Mania of 1863-66 — The Crash in 1867 — Dr. Wilson's Letters on the Crisis — His Hospitalities — Distinguished Visitors from 1863 to 1870 — Mission in South AraV)ia — Discoveries in East Africa — Origin of Nyassa Settlement — Lord Elphin- stone's Letter — Dr. Livingstone's First Visit — His Organisation of last Ex]3edition — Address in tlie To\vn Hall — Chuma and Wykatane — Letter from Dr. Livingstone — The Abyssinian Converts Gabru and Maricha Warka — A Father in Clirist — Four Years' Imprisonment of Captives by Theodorus — Sir George Yule's Offer of Rs. 20,000 — Military Authorities apply to Dr. Wilson — His Abyssinian Converts become Counsellors of Prince Kassai — The Prince, now King John of Ethiopia — Dr. Wilson entrusted by Government with more Abj'ssinian Youths — The Light radiating from Bombay. Not the least of the results of the IMiitiiiy was a change in Anglo-Indian society. On the one hand tlie intiux of artisans for the railways, and of adventurers from Australia with consignments of horses or in search of employment, was accompanied by the military mistake which disbanded the East India Company's European army, flooded the cities and stations with discontented and injured soldiers, and in too many cases doomed the widows and wives of the men who had regained the empire to a life of shame. The " loafer " class was called into existence, and for the first time in our history white prostitution Avas seen in India. Now the ablest even of the English authorities who were responsible for the blunder, in spite of the protests of Lord Canning, Sir Henry Durand, and all the experienced officers on the spot, begin to see that the only solution of the difficulty of recruiting 318 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1862. 60,000 soldiers for India, is to fall back on a local army attached to the new organisation of Lord Cardwell, On the other hand, the ruling class, the civil, military, and mercantile communities, who emerged from the two years' conflict with barbarism in its worst form, had lost all confidence in the permanence not of our rule but of our institutions. They ceased to trust the natives, to like the country. The "old Indian" was no more. The change had really begun in 1856, when the first set of Competition-Wallas arrived, and the Haileybury monopoly passed away. But when complete peace once more settled down on the empire with the first day of 1859, there was a rush home. New furlough rules, the substitution of England for the Cape of Good Hope as the furlough sanitarium, more rapid and frequent means of com- munication, cheaper postage, and finally new men, changed the whole character of Anglo-Indian society. Whether for good or evil we shall not here determine, so far as England is concerned. But the change has not been, either politically or socially, for the good of the people of India thus far. India is undoubtedly better ruled so far as systems of administration are concerned. Is it more wisely governed as to the mode in which these systems are applied 1 Very much against his will Dr. Wilson had to submit to the social revolution, which, however, he continued to influ- ence to the last in Bombay. The attendant rise of prices led the native owner of the Ambrolie mission-house to demand a rent of Rs. 300 a month. This, wrote Dr. Wilson to Dr. Tweedie, " is much beyond the ability of both the mission and myself to give ; " and, accordingly, the home of thirty years was vacated. To the adjoining Institution were added sheds, tents, and other temporary accommodation, and there Dr. and Mrs. Wilson, his colleague Mr. Stothert, who had brought new strength to the Avork some time before, the female schools, the book depository, and even some of the native catechists, were accommodated. Twelve years before, when her husband was subject to frequent attacks of fever, Mrs. Wilson had urged him to take up his abode permanently in the cottage given him by Dr. Smyttan on Malabar Hill. She did so, seconding the orders of the physicians, and pointing out that the 2;ood air of the hisrher region had made Dr. Stevenson 1862]. LEAVES AMBROLIE FOR MALAHAK HILL. 319 a new man. But Dr. Wilson had persisted in living among the natives whom he sought to benefit, all these thirty j'ears, trusting to his almost annual tour, and an occasional holiday at Poona or Mahableshwar, for the restoration of such robust- ness as may be possible in the tropics. Now, when the hot season of 18G2 came on, he was fairly forced to reside in " The Cliff," which thenceforth became indentified with him. There, and in a guest chamber which he added, he kept open house for English and Natives. Thence it was his deliglit, on coming up from the day's toil at Ambrolie, or before returning to it in the morning, to watch the glories of the scene from the busy harbour away to the Western Ghauts, as he sat at work in his library, or pointed out to his friends the spots of historical and scientific interest. The house soon became more than classical in its associations;^ his death made it sacred. Hardly had he taken permanent possession of " The Cliff," Avhen, on the 9th June 1862, the United States Senate decreed the abolition of slavery in all territories of the Union. The secession of South Carolina, eighteen months before, had another meaning also, which Bombay, of all cities, was the first to feel, if not intelligently to recognise. For five years the cotton trade of the world was transferred from the Southern States of the Union to Western India — from New Orleans to Bombay. The raw cotton of India rose in price from threepence to nineteenpence the pound, and the export gradually doubled in quantity. The normal value of the export and import trade of the one port of Bombay, in mer- chandise and treasure, had gradually risen during Dr. Wilson's residence to forty millions sterling in value, or nearly half that of all India. In the year 1865-66, when the effect of the American civil war told most fully, that value was almost doubled, having risen to £75,693,150, exclusive of Sindh, which increased it to above eighty millions sterling, equal to the ordinary sea-board trade of Bengal, Madras, and Burma. Whereas in 1860-Gl, the year before that war began to tell, Bombay received only seven millions sterling for 355} mil- lions of lbs. of cotton, in the last year of the war she got up- wards of thirty millions sterling for little more than the same quantity, or 380i million lbs. 1 See jiage 214 of ;\Iaclean's Guide to Btmihay. 1875. 320 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1863. This was only one, though the chief, of a series of causes which had raised prices in India at a rate disproportionate to that throughout the civilised world. The gold discoveries had been working contemporaneously Avith the Russian War, which transferred the fibre and seed trade of Europe to Cal- cutta ; Avith the Mutiny campaigns which poured into India an army and the materiel of Avar on a scale not Avitnessed since Napoleon Buonaparte exhausted France ; Avith the pro- gress of public Avorks made from borroAved capital to the amount of a hundred millions sterling ; and finally with the Hindostan famine in 1860-61. The consequent rise of prices in a poor country, Avith only a silver currency, Avas alarm- ing. First in Eastern India Government had been driven to appoint Mr. H. Kicketts commissioner for the revisal of civil salaries and establishments. Then, Avhen the wave threatened to engulf Bombay in 1863, Sir Bartle Frere nominated a commission to report on " the changes which had taken place during the preceding forty years in the money prices of the principal articles of consumption, in the Awages of skilled and unskilled labour, and in house rents at the principal military stations." Their conclusion Avas this — since 1829 the prices of grain had trebled, and were in 1864 double the average of 1860-63; meat and other necessaries liad doubled in price; wages had increased fifty per cent ; the hire of carriage had gone up from 200 to 400 per cent. Contrasted Avith Bengal, Bombay ])rices Avere pronounced double or treble, and in some cases at famine rates. Visiting Bombay, as an outsider, at the height of the mania in 1864-65, and one of the earliest to make the jour- ney by mail-cart across the province and Central India to the raihvay at Agra, Ave Avitnessed a state of things, economic and social, Avhich no report could gauge. In the five years during Avhich the cotton market of the Avorld Avas transferred from New Orleans to Bombay,^ Western India received eighty millions sterling over and above the normal price of her pro- duce before and since. So far as this reached the cultivators it Avas Avell. That it largely reached them, in spite of their ancestral usurers backed by the civil court procedure, has been unhappily proved by the quantities of silver orna- 1 See the description, from tlie spot, in the Times of 24th January 1865, and subsequently. \ 1864.] THE SPECULATIVE MANIA IN BOMBAY. 321 ments sent down to tlic local Mint, in years of enhanced land- tax and repeated scarcity and famine. So far as the sudden profit could be utilised for the public good it was also well. Against the fatal mismanagement of the semi-Government Bank of Bombay must be set Sir Bartle Frere's sale of the land on which the Avails of the old fort stood, to form a fund for the creation of New Bombay. But the bulk of the profit "was literally thrown into the sea, and with it the reputation and the happiness of not a few of the leading European, Par- see, and Hindoo merchants and bankers of the province. The catastrophe culminated in 18G7, in the fall of the old Bank of Bombay, which led even members of the Government of India to recommend the prosecution of the guilty parties in the criminal courts ; in the collapse of the fund for building New Bombay, Avhich necessitated an addition to the ever- increasing Debt of India ; in the Hight of speculators like him who, after buying the Government-House at Dapoorie with paper, left an umbrella as his assets ; and in the exposure of countless scandals under the insolvent jurisdiction of the High Court by Mr. Chisholm Anstey, who as an acting Judge was no less pitiless to the gambling traders than he had proved to be to the obscene high priests of Krishna. But England cannot throw a stone at Bombay, for it was in the year before 1867 that Overend, Gurney, and Company had led the panic race. The millions -which might have enriched and beautified Bombay and its varied communities, were early and almost altogether directed to the mania of reclaiming the foreshore of an Island which already covered eighteen square miles. The harbour, beautiful and spacious by nature, was destitute of wharf and jetty accommodation for the necessary com- merce. Before the mania there had been undertaken the legitimate and praiseworthy enterprise of removing the re- proach by establishing the Elphinstone Company. The pro- spects and success of this really sound project fired the pos- sessors of the surplus capital of the cotton trade with a dream of the profits to be obtained from reclaiming land. The foreshore of the shallow and useless Back Bay, fit only for fi.sher craft, became the object of the maddest of the Com- panies. Just above that, forming the 'eastern side which shelters it from the great Indian Ocean, rises Malabar Hill, 322 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1865. and looking down on the generally peaceful water is " The Cliff." One morning when we happened to be breakfasting with Dr. Wilson, he handed to us a letter received by urgent messenger. " That," he said, " will show you to what we have come in Bombay ; but I do not give the mania more than a year to collapse." It was an offer from a substantially rich native speculator, to purchase the cottage and garden for a sum twenty times their original value. He of course put it from him at once ; for, all other reasons apart, he was one of the few sane men of Bombay at that time. Officials, chap- lains, bankers— -none escaped the infection, it was said, save three, of whom he was the chief. His entreaties, his counsels, his warnings, especially to his native friends, were in vain. A half share of the Port Canning Company, which threatened to lead away Calcutta also at one time, was assigned to him, but the friend who did so took care not to tell him. When some time after it was sold out and he became aware of the fact for the first time, he devoted the money (Rs. 4194) to those benevolent purposes which had seriously suffered from want of support at such a time. These are extracts from a journal sent to his wife who had gone to Scotland for six months : — " 22d May 1865. — Many of the native firms are in great jeopardy from the time bargains. The Kamas (a Parsee firm) have failed with upwards of three millions sterling of responsibilities, and involve many. This is but the beginning of the evil day, now instant. " 13^/i. June. — I breakfasted this morning with the Heycocks. — — was present. Poor fellow ! his failure, I hear, is for £100,000. When my work at the Institution was done I went to the Union Press, where our report is printing. I there met Dr. Bhau Daji. He and his brother, and most of our reforming friends, are ruined in their pecuniary positions by their rash specu- lations. Even Mr. , who had lately a fortune of £300,000, is in great jeopardy. If does not get through (and his liabilities amount to two or three millions) our friend will almost certainly fail. He was lately seized with the share-mania, and acted quite contrary to the advice of all his friends. The close of this month is by the whole city looked forward to with great apprehensions. Mr. , your fellow-voyager, has been telegraphed for by his Financial Association. Most of the bankers are in a most perilous position as far as the shareholders (not I believe the deposits) are concerned. The Bombay Bank Shares have been selling at a discount ! It is hoped, how- ever, that Government will come to its aid. Back Bay shares have been down to a Rs. 1000 premium, though bought for Rs. 50,000 in some instances. "22(1 Jttne. — In the Government Gazette of this morning the announce- ment of Sir Alexander Grant as Director of Public Instruction, in succession to Mr. Howard, appears. Mr. Howard remains to practise as a barrister ; he has lost much by late speculations. I had the usual Mara thee meeting after the Institution work in the evening. David Manaji is now out of employment 1865.] THE CllASH OF 1865-6U. 323 in consequence of the curtailment of the Back Bay works. I wish our friends would allow lis to take hiui into the eniidoyment of the mission, according to his request ; but our prospects for the i)resent year are very low, owing to the great losses following the bursting of the share bubble. "ZQtii June. — I went tlirough my ordinary duties. Much anxiety felt throughout the city on account of the morrow being settlement day. "\st July. — My lecture to-day, after my Sanskrit class, was on the His- tory of David. The payments on account of time bargains, etc., have to a good e.xtent been modified or postponed. Our friend had (it is said, but I doubt it) £120,000 paid liim by one of his creditors, which carries him through his immediate ditticulties ; owes him £350,000 for shares, etc. 's liabilities are for £2,400,000. His assets are valued at £1,600,000." TO DR. MURRAY MITCHELL. "Bombay, 2ith July 1867. — Since you left India great changes, botli for the better and the worse, have occurred. Bombay lias had her day of un- equalled madness, and now it has her day of great sadness. The mercantile failures (especially among the natives), and the losses to our banks, have been astounding and far-reaching in their consequences ; and there has been mucli fraud connected with them, by which the innocent in many cases have suf- fered. It is scarcely to be wondered at that our religious and philanthropic Institutions have their local resources much curtailed, though it is sad to see retrenchment appearing so prominent in that direction. It is our prayer that the affliction which has fallen upon tlie city, in the retributive justice of God, not unmingled with mercy, may be sanctified to many. The native mind is certainly more sober at present than it has been for several years. The re- forming party (including about one hundred of our mission friends) have founded a meeting for the social worship of God, but they have not yet come to a conclusion about tlie treatment and practice of idolatry in their own houses. We have some encouragement with the lads in our Institution. The attendance at it is large, but I do not know that our Christian influence over it expands with its extension. In other respects the mission is getting on well. Colonel Tripe of Kamptliee, who was much with the converts and inquirers lately, formed a very favourable opinion of them. He presented each of them with a book on practical religion, which he gave them at an entertainment wliich they provided for him in the Institution. The ordina- tion of Baba Pudmanjee at Poona is apj)ointed for the 8th of August." Gradually, after the Mutiny, Bombay became the port of arrival and departure for Anglo-Indians, as the railways ex- tended eastward and westward between it, Madras, and the metropolis of Calcutta. Thus the flow of guests through "The Cliff" steadily increased, till it might be said that its hospitable owner became the best known man in India as well as Bombay. From the first Viceroy Lord Canning, and his truly noble wife, to the visit of the Prince of Wales, he was always in request as guide, j^hilosopher, and friend, amid the antiquities not only of Bombay but of Salsette, Karla, and elsewhere. No distinguished person visited the Governor without seeking an introduction to " the king of Bombay." Of these continuous hospitalities and intercourse we find few 324 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON. [1865. traces in his correspondence, for, much as he delighted in them, they were too much a part of liis everyday life to de- mand chronicling, save when, as in Lord Lawrence's case, they crossed his one great work. The thirtieth anniversary of his landing, and the passing of that statesman through Bombay, led him to write thus to Dr. Tweedie : — " I should require every missionary now coming to India to pass an ex- amination in the vernacixlar before his induction as a full missionary. The Church Missionary Society is here acting on this principle. It is one the pro- priety of which cannot for a moment be disputed. I intend to show cause in it to yourself in a distinct letter. I have lately received two letters on the subject from Bengal, but I intend to discuss it entirely free of personal and local considerations. I do not think that the missionaries are always to blame in the matter. We have thrust work prematurely upon them ; and we cannot blame them for neglecting, in the first instance, those studies for which we have left them no leisure. " To India I feel a growing attachment from year to year, its very woes and miseries, in which I am constantly making new discoveries, mcreasing the tender regard which I cherish in its behalf. I feel no despair in connection with any of its interests. I see that it is a part, an important part, of the Saviour's purchased iuliei'itance, and I believe that ere long it must become His possession. My only regret is that I can do so little to advance its interests. They will not fail in the hands of Him who has on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, King of kmgs and Lord of lords. I feel much encouraged, in connection with its present destiny, by a conversation I had last night with Sir John Lawrence, who i>roceeds to Europe by this mail. He s certainly one of the most courageous of men, both physically and spiritually, nis Christian princifile regulating and controlling all his movements. His judgment and tact are equal to his courage. The very appearance of such characters on the Indian scene on the day they have been specially wanted, is a pledge from God of His purjioses of mercy towards this great and interesting land." Again, we find him mourning the death of Bishop Carr, in a letter to Mr. Farish ; seeking to comfort the widow when announcing the movement from Serampore to raise a fund in commemoration of the services of the accomplished Dr. Buist ; and bidding farewell to old friends on their final departure home, like Mr. Eraser Tytler, Dr. Harkness, and Sir Bartle Frere. To one who has proved himself the most learned and generous of true pundits in his own Edinburgh, as he long was the friend of the Christian education of the Hindoos at Benares and elsewhei^e. Dr. John Muir, CLE., he writes of Sanskrit MSS. Dr. Hanna he welcomes as the new superintendent of the Foreign Missions of his Church at home, and delights him with a report of the success of Mikhail Joseph's mission in South Arabia. All this time, and every year, a stream of visitors passing east and west through Bom- 1864.] VISITORS TO BOMBAY AND DIl WILSON. 325 bay, rested for a time at " The Cliff," from Dr. Livingstone and the Maharaja Dhuleep Singli, to the young missionary and inexperienced traveller who sought counsel. Take tiiis specimen from the Notes of Miss Taylor, Dr. Wilson's niece : — 1864. March 8th. — Maharanee's body burned at Nasik. Dr. and Mrs. Wilson, Miss Taylor, Madame Surtoo, a Native lady, who had been in England ■with the Maharanee and liecanie a Christian there, her little boy, and the Maharaja, spent the daj' quietly at the Vehar Lake, Salsette. 12th. — Party in the Institution given by the Maharaja to all the mission- aries and Native Christians in Bombay ; 300 Natives were present ; the Maharaja wore the Star of India. IBth. — Maharaja called to say good-bye. He took a very decided stand in Bombay as a Christian. '22d. — Dr. Wilson lectured on board the "Ajdaha," to sailors, on "The Shores of the Red Sea." Ju?ie 23c?. — Dr. Livingstone called. Dr. Wilson took him over the Insti- tution. Dr. Livingstone came to Bombay for a few days on his way home from Africa. He crossed from Africa in the " Lady Nj'assa, " a small steamer, 115 feet long and 14 feet broad, built for lake navigation, with a crew of seven Natives who had never seen the sea before. They came down with him to the coast at Zanzibar. He did this in the monsoon, too. Somehow they entered the harbour of Bombay unobserved, and Dr. Livingstone landed with no one to meet him — no one knew he was coming — and found his way in a deluge of rain in an old shigram to Dr. Wilson's. The Governor was in Poona. Dr. Livingstone left with Dr. Wilson, to be educated, two African boys, Chunia and Wykatane. They attended the Institution for a year and a half, and learned a little English. They boarded in a Native Christian family. They were baptized by Dr. Wilson at Dr. Livingstone's request, just before he took them back to Africa, in the end of 1865. Dr. Livingstone thought it would make a good impression on their minds, and be a safeguard to them in their future life. Every one knows how faithfully Chuma kept by Dr. Livingstone to the last, and brought his body to England. Wykatane had been rescued by Bishop Mackenzie and his party from a slave-catching gang, and was a great favourite of Bishop Mackenzie's. On Dr. Livingstone's last journey he became lame, and had to be left behind. Dec. 2M. — Dr. Wilson went with Sir Bartle Frere to visit the Rajah of Dongurpore. He was staying in Dr. Wilson's old house at Ambrolie, and Sir Bartle recalled how he himself had gone there as a young man with a letter of introduction to Dr. Wilson. 1865. Jan. I6th. — Dr. Wilson lectured in the Town-Hall on " The Wan- dering Tribes of India." Feb. 1st. — Sir Dinkur Rao, ex-minister of Sindhia, called. Sept. 11th. — Dr. Livingstone arrived from England on his way to make liis last journey of discovery in Africa. He called on Dr. Wilson the day after his arrival, but Dr. Wilson was out. He went immediately to Poona to see the Governor, and to Nasik to arrange about some of the African Christiana there going with him to Africa. October 6th. — Dr. Livingstone came from Poona and stayed with Dr. Wilson till the 20th— a fortnight. 7th. — Dr. Wilson and Dr. Livingstone walked to see the temples at Walkeshwar (Malabar Point). 326 LIFE OF JOHN WILSON, [1866. Wi. — Dr. Livingstone at the Free Church, and at the Marathee Service in the Native Church. Wi. — Dr. Livingstone called with Sir Bartle Frere on the Sultan of Zan- zibar. IQth. — Dr. Livingstone went with Captain Leitli to select men from the Marine Battalion to go with him to Africa. Wth. — Durbar in Town-Hall in honour of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Dr. Livingstone there. \Wi. — Dr. Livingstone lectured on Africa in the Town-Hall. Dr. Wilson said it was the most enthusiastic meeting he had ever seen in Bombay. The lecture was very simple. Dr. Livingstone said much the same things and in much the same way as he did in conversation. A subscription was begun then which soon realised more than Rs. 7000, to helj) the expedition. Dr. Living- stone refused to accejit it as a personal gift. The Bombay branch of the Geographical Society wished to present him with an address, and Captain Sherard Osborn was to read it, but Dr. Livingstone declined to come forward, and said he would rather have it if he should be spared to come back from Africa. \9th. — Drove through the native town to see the Diwallee illuminations. Nov. 13th. — Dr. Wilson called on Lord Edward Seymour (eldest son of the Duke of Somerset) at the Governor's bungalow, Malabar Point. Lord E. Seymour went out to travel in India. He visited the Institution, and examined some of the classes himself, and took a great interest in all that he saw. He died soon after, at Belgaum, from the effect of injuries he got when hunting a bear. nth. — Dr. Wilson, Dr. Livingstone, Lord Edward Seymour, and some others went to Elephanta. Dec. 6th. — Dr. Wilson, Dr. Livingstone, and a party of gentlemen went to the Kanheri Caves, Salsette. Party was arranged by Mr. Alexander Brown, son of Dr. Charles Brown, Edinburgh. 10th. — Chuma and Wykatane baptized by Dr. Wilson in presence of Dr. Livingstone. 12th. — Large party at Dr. Wilson's to meet Dr. Livingstone. 21st. — Dr. Wilson went to Nagpore to the Exhibition. 1866. 1st Jan. — Dr. Livingstone and the two boys came to say good-bye. 2d, Wednesday. — Dr. Livingstone sailed for Africa in the "Thule." Dr. Livingstone was engaged most of the time he was in Bombay in prejiarations for his expedition. He also visited Goojarat. The Rev. Joseph Taylor (son of the Rev. Mr. Taylor, of Belgaum), of the Irish Presbyterian Mission in Goojarat, was at college with Dr. Livingstone, and they lodged together in Glasgow. Dr. Livingstone left for Africa, accompanied by eight or nine Christian Africans from Nasik, the same number, I think, of Sepoys of the Marine Battalion Bombay (they deserted him in Africa, and found their way back to Bombay with a story of his having been murdered), Chuma and Wykatane, and the Africans who had come across with him in 1864. They stayed in Bombay while he was in England, and used to come to Dr. Wilson's to get news of him. Dr. Livingstone wished to have no European comi^anion. In January 1866 Lady Franklin visited Bombay, and Dr. Wilson saw her a few times. She spent one evening with Dr. and Mrs. Wilson. JVov. — In this month Dr. Norman Macleod and Dr. Watson arrived in Bombay. They stayed with two young merchants. They spent most of a day with Dr. Wilson, going over the Institution, and another day in the Boarding School and Female Schools, and calling on several native gentlemen. They attended the Marathee service, and sat down with the native congrega- tion at the Communion. Dr. Macleod read Wee Davie in the Town-Hall, for the benefit of the Scottish Orphanage. 1870.] FIRST STEPS TO LIVINGSTONIA. 327 1868. 3farch 20th.— Mr. Clarke of Gya and Dr. Watsou called. 23d. — Keshub Cluinder Sen came to breakfast. Oct. 2'M. — Dr. Wilson visited the Rajah of Kolhapore. Dec. 2lst. — Dr. Wilson attended a reception at Parell for Lord and Lady Mayo and Lord Napier. 29th. — Foundation-stone of University laid by Lord Mayo, Dr. Wilson, Vice-Chancellor. Dr. Wilson, after the ceremony, went to Elephanta with the Government-House party. 1869. Jan. 2Sth. — Native Church opened. First service in the morning at eight. March 17th. — Dr. Wilson and I started for Calcutta. Lord Napier was a fellow-passenger to Nagpore, on his way to the Durbar at Umballa. We stayeles, 260 ; " only a Missionary," 267 ; history of infanticide, 269 ; on Marathee, 271 ; in the Mutiny, 276 ; with U.P. Missionaries, 285 ; before Native kings, 291 ; helps to found University, 294 ; Maharaj libel case, 307 ; intercourse with Natives, 309 ; with Native Church, 313 ; leaves Ambrolie, 318 ; on the Bombay mania, 322 ; social life, 325 ; Abys- sinian expedition, 331 ; again visits Scotland, 335 ; Moderator, 341 ; returns to Bombay, 345 ; on the Muhammadans, 346 ; philanthropic triumphs, 352 ; death, 355. Wilson, Andrew, 118. Bishop, 92. Mr. J. Jordan, 57. Mrs. Isabella, 235, 253, 259, 336 354. ■ Mrs. Margaret, 22, 50, 119. Wiseman, Cardinal, 226. Wolff, Dr., 72. Wykataue, 328. Xavier, 99, 134. Yezdijird III., 122. Young Bengal, 305. Bombay, 305. Mr. R. N., 328. Yule, Dr. 345. Sir George, 332. Zambesi, 327. Zand, 122. Zanzibar children, 146. Sultan of, 326. Treaty, 145. Ziegeubalg, 59, 61. Zoroaster, 130. Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE FIRST EDITION. The Life of John Wilson, D.D., F.R.S., for Fifty Years Pliilantluopist ami Scholar in the East. Witli Portrait and Illustrations. London : John Murray, 1878. Dr. Smith's life of the Late Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, is, withont e.xcep- tion, one of tlie most valuable records of missionary work in India ever submitted to the English public, and ecjually worthy of its subject and its author. . . . Dr. George Smith's mature knowledge of Indian affairs has enabled him to give an admirable presentation of Dr. Wilson's life and labours in connection with the great public improvements and progress of the years, extending over two genera- tions of official service, during which he resided in Bombay. Dr. Smith has given us not simply a biogi'apliy of Dr. Wilson, but a comjdete history of missionary, l^hilanthropic, and educational enterprise in Western India, from the Governor.ship of Mouutstuart Elphiustoue, 1819-27, to that of Sir Bartle Frere, 1802-67. He has arranged tlie many subjects with which he has had to deal and the materials l^laced at his disposal with great simplicity, clearness, and elfect. — The Times. Dr. George Smith has executed with skill and tine enthusiasm a work of rare difficulty. Wliile he has not failed to bring out faithfully the gi-and character of Dr. John Wilson, and the lofty spirit that from first to last sustained him, he has done much to make the general condition of Bombay and procedure of successive Governors clear ; and has thus, in a high and important sense, ^vritten a chaj)ter of Indian history. — British Quarterly Revieiv. It is impossible to praise too highly the clear, dramatic, and instructive form in which Dr. Smith has arranged multitudinous and diversified incidents. He has maintained throughout the vital unity of the volume, which reads as if it liad been written at one sitting without wearying or abatement of the writer's interest in it. Yet Dr. Smith has presented us not only with the life of Dr. John Wilson, but with the social and civic history of Bombay ; while he has a word to say of every one of Dr. Wilson's contemporaries, European and Native, who has in any way made a name for himself. It is a biography which will be widely read. — T/ie Athenccum. Dr. Smith has i^erformed the task in compiling the memoirs with gi-eat industry and patience, and a cordial appreciation whicli makes liim almost too imiformly laudatory. This, however, is the way of biographers, and Dr. Smith has shown in one respect unusual skill. He has brought out fully the specialty of his subject — his many-sidedness — and has allowed him to display himself in his own letters and papers, with an iinusually modest self-eflacement. — The Spectator. The volume displays a masterly knowledge of Indian affairs. — The Pall Mall Gazette. The biography cannot be praised too highly. It is long, but it is too readable to be called too long ; and the entire sympatliy between author and subject on all religious and political questions is not a fault, but the reverse. It can only be doing justice in its eloquent description of Dr. Wilson's gi-eat qualities as a man, a philanthropist, and a missionary ; and it will, we hope, attract attention as a worthy tribute to a noble life. — T. W. Rliys Davids in The Academy. In the hands of such a biographer the story of Dr. Wilson's life could not fail to be instructive. . . . This record of a truly apostolic life has been carefully, appreciatively, and conscientiously written. — T'hc Scotsman. Every chapter teems with incidents of the most instructive and suggestive kind. . . . Dr. Smitli deserves the gratitude of Christians of all denominations alike for his admirable and lovingly-executed biography of a great missionary and a noble man. — Edinburgh Daily Revieiv, OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. A work which must call forth the earnest gratitude of all the Churches and of all those who take an interest in India. We express our admiration of the literary grace and tact which Dr. Smith has shown in setting before us the life of Dr. Wilson. He tells fitly and well the story of a beautiful and heroic life. — Aberdeen Free Press. An admirable presentation of the public life of the man, put together with great literary tact and sound judgment. In regard to Indian questions, which are naturally discussed at greater or less length in these pages, Dr. Smith may be said to be almost equal in authority to Wilson himself. His remarks indicate the sagacity of observant statesmanship. . . . This most interesting of missionary biographies, — The Nonconformist. We are thankful for so admirable a record of a most useful life, which is fairly entitled to take rank with the best biographical memoirs of distinguished men. — The English Independent. The author has taken the highest platform as a biographer, and has felt all the fervent enthusiasm of a kindred spirit for the elevating and benevolent pursuits in which Dr. Wilson's life was spent. Every library in India, and every Anglo-Indian's home library, must include Dr. Smith's Life of the eminent Scholar and Philanthropist. — The Homeward Mail. The task of -writing Dr. Wilson's Life could hardly have fallen into abler or more sj'mpathetic hands than those of the well-known editor of the Friend 0/ India. . . . The result is a book which it is difficult for any one interested in Bombay to lay down half-read, while to all it presents conspicuous literary merits. — Bombay Times of India. We rise considerably edified from the perusal of this work. Dr. George Smith has accomjilished his task admirably well. — Indian Mirror. Dr. George Smith has done a service to the cause of Indian literature, progress, and humanity, by recording the life and career of such a truly good and great man. . . . Dr. Smith's splendid book is a fitting tribute to his glorious memory. It has other value than what it possesses as a biography. — Hindoo Patriot. The Church of Scotland has furnished two eminent apostles for the Eastern world, who stand out pre-eminent for their talents, acqiiirements, and labours. These men were Dr. Duff in Eastern and Dr. Wilson in Western India. . . . Both are equally favoured in having one biographer. — Dr. E. D. G. Prime in The New York Observer. All this and more has been accomplished by the learned and painstaking biographer. — -The Glasgoio Herald. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. By the same Author. The Life of Alexander Dufif, D,D„ LL.D, In Two Volumes. With Portraits by Jeens. London : Hodder & Stonghton, 1879, Memorials of the Rev. John Pourie, Minister of the Free Church of Scotland in Calcutta. W, Newman & Co., 1869, India since the Mutiny, Serampore, 1874. Annals of Indian Administration. Seventeen Volumes. Serampore, 1858-1874, ^1 t / /a /f- /^ DATE DUE GAVLORD PRINTED IN USA. \\VVV<»»\^kVSkkVkV^k(.kW.V^&^^^^