Page:Advice to the Indian Aristocracy.djvu/18

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Raja of Cochin, and the Maharaja of Bobbili, but I have numbered among my friends in India others born to high station, and possessed of very great merits, who have nevertheless had short or unsuccessful lives, owing to their neglect of some of the lessons the Maharaja essays to teach. It is very painful to such as love India, and her sons of every rank and station, to look back upon many careers of great promise, which have come to a sad and premature end, and though the like happens in other countries as well as in India, there are certain temptations to which the great in our Eastern Empire are especially subject, and it is with these for the most part that the Maharaja is concerned. As he truly says, a foreigner and a person of a different religion cannot advise with such good effect. Indeed, such an one would not venture to come before an Indian audience saying that the Puranas were intended for the unedu-