Max Muller destroyed the roots of India beyond imagination and harming us even today.
16APR2015
Max Müller was a British agent, especially employed (in 1847) to write the translations of the Vedas in such a demeaning way so that the Hindus should lose faith in them. His personal letters reveals this fact.
He was highly paid for this job. According to the statistical information given on page 214 of the “English Education, 1798-1902” by John William Adamson, printed by Cambridge University Press in 1930, the revised scale of a male teacher was £90 per year and for a woman, £60 in 1853. The present salary of a teacher in London is £14,000 to £36,000 per year, which averages a minimum of at least 200 times increase in the last 146 years. Max Müller was paid £4 per sheet of his writing which comes to £800 of today (1999). This is an incredibly high price for only one sheet of writing. But it’s the general law of business, that the price of a commodity increases with its demand. The British were in such an imperative need to get someone to do this job and Max Müller was the right person, so they paid whatever Max Müller asked for. His enthusiastic letter to his mother dated April 15, 1847 reveals this fact.
Max Müller’s letters dated August 25, 1856 and December 16, 1868 reveal the fact that he was desperate to bring Christianity into India so that the religion of the Hindus should be doomed.
His letters also reveal that he lived in poverty before he was employed by the British and his duplicity in translation was praised by his superiors. In London, where he lived, there were a lot of orientalists working for the British.
To Chevalier Bunsen, 55 St. John Street, Oxford, August 25, 1856, he wrote:
“I should like to live for 10 years quite quietly and learn the language, try to make friends, and then see whether I was fit to take part in a work, by means of which the old mischief of Indian priest craft could be overthrown and the way opened for the entrance of simple Christian teaching. Whatever finds root in India soon overshadows the whole of Asia.”
To the Dean of St. Paul’s (Dr. Milman), Stauton House Bournemouth, February 26, 1867, he wrote:
“I have myself the strongest belief in the growth of Christianity in India. There is no country so ripe for Christianity as India, and yet the difficulties seem enormous.”
(source: The True History and the Religion of India: A Concise Encycloedia of Authentic Hinduism – By Swami Prakashanand Saraswati p. 268 – 270). For more on Max Muller refer to chapter FirstIndologists and Aryan Invasion Theory)
As Max Mueller, the propagator of the Aryan invasion theory, wrote to his wife,
“It took only 200 years for us to Christianise the whole of Africa, but even after 400 years India eludes us, I have come to realize that it is Sanskrit which has enabled India to do so. And to break it I have decided to learn Sanskrit.”
The soul of India lies in Sanskrit. And Lord Macaulay saw to it that the later generations are successfully cut off from their roots. (source: Assaulting India’s pluralist ethos – by D. Harikumar The Hindu).
TO HIS WIFE, OXFORD, December 9, 1867.
“…I feel convinced, though I shall not live to see it, that this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India, and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years.”
TO HIS MOTHER, 5 NEWMAN’S ROW, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, April 15, 1847.
“I can yet hardly believe that I have at last got what I have struggled for so long… I am to hand over to the Company, ready for press, fifty sheets each year; for this I have asked £200 a year, £4 a sheet. They have been considering the matter since December, and it was only yesterday that it was officially settled.”
“…In fact, I spent a delightful time, and when I reached London yesterday I found all settled, and I could say and feel, Thank God! Now I must at once send my thanks, andset to work to earn the first £100.”
TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN. 55 ST. JOHN STREET, OXFORD, August 25, 1856.
“India is much riper for Christianity than Rome or Greece were at the time of St. Paul. The rotten tree has for some time had artificial supports… For the good of this struggle I should like to lay down my life, or at least to lend my hand to bring about this struggle. Dhulip Singh is much at Court, and is evidently destined to play a political part in India.”
TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. OXFORD,December 16, 1868.
“India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education. Much has been done for education of late, but if the funds were tripled and quadrupled, that would hardly be enough… A new national literature may spring up, impregnated with western ideas,yet retaining its native spirit and character… A new national literature will bring with it a new national life, and new moral vigour. As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of.” “The ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”
On April 17, 1855, Bunsen wrote to thank Max Müller for an article on his Outlines.
“You have so thoroughly adopted the English disguise that it will not be easy for anyone to suspect you of having written this ‘curious article.’ It especially delights me to see how ingeniously you contrive to say what you announce you do not wish to discuss, i.e. the purport of the theology. In short, we are all of opinion that your cousin was right when she said of you in Paris to Neukomm, that you ought to be in the diplomatic service!”
MaxMuller declared that Hinduism is dead and dying religion, while Christianity is living and vibrant. He said,
”The worship of Shiva or Vishnu and the other popular deities, is of the same, nay, in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship, of Jupiter, Apollo, and Minerva; it belongs to a stratum of thought which is long buried beneath our feet, it may live on like the lion and the tiger but the mere air of free thought and civilized life will extinguish it.’ (Westminster lectures on Missions December 1873)
There is much more to tell. It was on December 1854, the Prussian ambassador Barron Von Bunsen became instrumental in arranging a meeting of the German MaxMuller with the English Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay. Germany and England were not on good terms. The East India Company agreed to pay Pound 200 per annum to Max Muller, the German national, for translation of Vedas and other Hindu scriptures. Then the annual salary of a British teacher was only pound 60. The German Max Muller accepted the offer in the interest of spreading Christianity in India. The company agreed to pay a sum of one lakh only in the way as he writes to his wife in his letter in July 1862. As a truly declared Christian, he writes,
“All I can say is that I have read and heard the worst that can be said against our religion. I mean the true original teachings of the Christ. I feel that I am ready in mind, if not in body, to lay down my life for the truth of his teachings. All our difficulties arise from the doctrine of men and not from his doctrine.”
His friend P.B. Pusey in 1860 wrote to him,
“Your work will form a new era in the efforts of the conversion of India and Oxford will have reason to be thankful that, by giving you a home, it will have facilitated a work of such primary and lasting importance for the conversion of India and which, by enabling us to compare that false religion with the true, illustrates the more than blessedness of what we enjoy.”’(Cradle of Civilization Page 12)
Max Muller in his letter to Bairamji Malwari on 28 Jan. 1882, writes,
“People like Dayanand give undue importance to Vedas. They deduce the meaning which is not in the root. Observe Veda as a historical document only then even the simple thought of the primitives would look pleasant. But to search the source of electricity, magnetism, ethics and philosophy, we have to cut a sorry figure.”
Max Muller set the date of Rig Veda at only 1200 B.C. under Christen faith. The Christian belief current in those days was that the world was created at 9 A.M. on 23rd. October 4004 B.C. Bishop Ussher had declared it as the date of creation. The Holy Bible says that the human race began with Adam and Eve. Since their most direct descendents were among the Semitic tribe, Hebrew had to be the oldest language, then how can the Aryans be the possessors of the oldest culture? As no position is acceptable, lowering their culture, so the Vedic culture has to be of a later date and time. The cause of such facile conclusion and tailored theories, ignoring the facts of available history, was their commitment to Christianity.
There was great opposition among scholars. MaxMuller had to eventually disown the date he had ascribed and had to accept that “he put 1200 B.C. without any evidence whatsoever,” but the date continues still as a benchmark.
Dales, a U.S.A. historian challenged the proposed date and the findings to it. Wheeler, the political appointee of Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, was quick to retrace but not without a cunning. He amended and said that, “It cannot be proved that the invaders were Aryans. It is also possible that it might be completely wrong to conclude like it but however it is not entirely impossible” (Refer; In Search of Cradle of Civilization page 7-8) Max Muller was changing position regarding the dates of said Invasion. He said,” Whether Vedic hymns were written in 1000, 1500, or 2000 B.C or 3000B.C. no power on earth will ever be able to determine.”
Kenoyer says, ’we have no evidence for new population entering into sub-continent and replacing the indigenous people of the Indus valley” ‘From scholars like Langdon to Ranfrieve, the archaeological investigation accepted India as original homeland of Aryans and disapproved the A.I.T. of Max Muller. Thereafter Gordon Childe and Wheeler indicated that the Aryans may possibly be the invaders. Macoi was doubtful. Wheeler and Norman Brown sided with Max Muller and deliberately distorted the historical basis. Wheeler had to retrace and Childe was hesitant in naming Aryans. From Sir Wheeler to Stuart Piggott, there has been planned attempt to prove the Aryan Invasion theory(AIT).
Max Muller was the master mind behind the Aryan Invasion Theory. He was the highly paid German employee of the East India Company. He intended to safeguard the rights of the foreigners on Indian soil to rule the country. So he planned to deny the Hindus of any political and moral ground to claim independence from the British proving that they too like them were outsiders and invaders .All of them were foreigners and invaders and being immigrants had claim on India. The then Viceroy Lord Curzon said that India had ever been the booty of foreign invaders and the British P.M. said,”We have as much right to be in India as anyone else except perhaps for the depressed class who are the native stock.’ (Koreroed Elst: Political aspects of the A. I. T, Debate page 49)The European political weapon; the A.I.T. questioned the very Aryan identity on their own land of birth. The loyalists and the Macaulay brand Indians began to justify the British presence and called it a reunion with the Aryan cousins
Macaulay was determined to prove his Aryan Invasion Theory. He ignored the significance of Vedas as historical document and declared Vedas as mythology and theology but not as history. It is really strange that Europeans see relevance of history in their Christian scriptures, the Bible and treat Bible as history, the historical situation out of which the Old Testament and the Gospels grew.
Even they set aside the linguistic evidence to prove that the epics bear no historical evidence. These missionary scholars planned further to call these epics as myth and create doubt and confusion even on the existence of Rama and Krishna. We all know that the treatment of myth in the western experience has been negative. !8th. Century Greek and Roman heritage of pre-Christian religious stories; badly distorted and misshaped, were treated as myths. This word was used for all non-Jews and non-Christian cultural stories. On the other hand, the missionary scholars chose to place biblical and Christian stories in the category of history so the stories of Moses and Parting the Red Sea came as history unmindful of any chronological and textual evidences. It is strange that these very assaulters considered Ramayana and Mahabharata as myth despite enough archaeological and textual evidences. What else can we expect of these people who are out to DeHinduize Hindus in their own land? They used the term myth as a powerful weapon to minimize the effect of Hindu way of life; religious literature and sacred stories and to delegitimize the stories told to common folk of illiterate and ignorant people. All ancient seers, Manu, Parashar, Vyasa, Narada, Vashishtha etc. and even Rama and Krishna became mythic and therefore unreal to them. Vedas, Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Mahabharata, Ramayana all ancient literature of value became mythology, traditional narratives involving supernatural or imaginary persons and often embodying popular ideas on natural or social phenomena.
They founded anti-Vedic and pro-Christian societies in order to de-Hinduism and Christianize the De-Hinduized ones. One such was Brahmo Samaj. Max Mullar, in September 1879, said, “There is a religious movement going on in India, the Brahma Samaj, which both in its origin and in its later development is mainly the result of European influences. It began with an attempt to bring the modern corrupt form of worship back to the purity and simplicity of the Vedas; and by ascribing to the Vedas the authority of a Divine revelation, it was hoped to secure that infallible authority without which no religion was supposed to be possible .How was that movement stopped and turned into a new channel? Simply by the publication of the Veda and by work of European scholars, such as Stevenson, Mill, Rosin, Wilson and others, who showed the natives what the Vedas really were and made them see the folly of their way?” Brainwashed isn’t it ?
At the beginning the Samaj followed the chanting of Vedic ruchas in its meetings and accept the infallibility of the Vedas. Raja Ram Mohan Rai was the leading light who cherished Vedic ideals but also wanted some reforms. By 1848, the Vedic utilitarianism was superseded and western influence came in. Feeling of Hinduism faded away and forefathers were not remembered with pride. These people hesitated in mentioning the word “Brahma “even. The names of Hindu sages and seers were neglected. It was believed that since creation, there have never been men so learned as the Europeans. Fortunately there existed a line of thinkers like Dayanand , AryaSamaj, RKMission and Yogi Aurobindo who saved the fall and decline of Hinduism.
Macaulay said, “We must form a class of persons who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons, Indian in blood and color but English in taste, in opinion, in mind and in intellect.”
Fortunately for British and unfortunately for Indians ,the British continued to get such Indian people Indian in blood and color but English in taste, in opinion, in mind and in intellect. Unfortunately for India even after independence Nehru led congress government followed by later congress governments have followed the same mantra as desired by Macaulay a century ago.
The country desperately needs a spiritual revival among the administration and media. Until and unless this is achieved our cultural glory will not be reinstated .
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References:
“The Life and Letters of Friedrich Max Müller.” First published in 1902 (London and N.Y.). Reprint in 1976 (USA).
