it. This whole system of sacred and profane learning is knitted and bound together by the sanction of religion; every part of it is an article of faith, and its science is as unchangeable as its divinity. Learning is confined by it to the Brahmins, the high priests of the system, by whom and for whom it was devised. All the other classes are condemned to perpetual ignorance and dependence; their appropriate occupations are assigned by the laws of caste, and limits are fixed, beyond which no personal merit or personal good fortune can raise them. The peculiar wonder of the Hindu system is, not that it contains so much or so little true knowledge, but that it has been so skilfully contrived for arresting the progress of the human mind, as to exhibit it at the end of two thousand years fixed at nearly the precise point at which it was first moulded. The Mohammedan system of learning is many degrees better, and “resembles that which existed among the nations of Europe before the invention of printing;”[1] so far does even this fall short of the
- ↑ These are the words in which Mr. Adam sums up his description of Mohammedan learning in India; and the real state of the case could not be more accurately described. Gibbon’s sketch of Moslem learning will be found in the 52d chapter of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, under the heads, “Their real progress in the sciences,” and “Want of erudition, taste, and freedom.” But
