COMMUNICATIONS.

Rev. F. STORRS TURNER, B.A., writes:

Mr. Elwin has crowded within his brief sketch of Confucius as much accurate and valuable information as could be got within the limit; but I would point out that if he had been able to prepare for it by a description of the historical background the biography would have been more vivid, and our impression of the man much increased. It is difficult for an Englishman rightly to appreciate Confucius. His reverence for antiquity is offensive to our belief in progress; his rigid scrupulosity in matters of court etiquette, social usage, and religious ritual, seems to us pharisaical; and his remarkable reticence in respect to the great realities of religion has caused him to be suspected of agnosticism. But to understand Confucius one must study the history of his world. The first thing we shall learn is that his world was not our world. For him and for his people during two thousand years before, our world did not exist. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, were utterly unknown. Three or four thousand miles of mountainous countries like Tibet, of waterless deserts like Gobi, and of vast uncultivated steppes, over which roamed nomad tribes of savage warriors, Huns, Scythians, Tartars, Mongols, divided Eastern Asia from Western Asia, as effectually as the Atlantic hid America from Europe. Confucius did not know the name "China," the place he knew was "all under heaven," i.e., the world. This being so, those ancient books which he possessed were the only Bible he had; and it was impossible for him to conceive of any other literature, any other civilisation, any other religion, than those of the "black-haired race." Moreover, the history he knew began with the tradition of an age of righteousness and peace, when saintly kings ruled; whereas he lived in an age of general misrule, war, oppression and misery. The annals which we can read are full of battles and sieges. In the courts, assassinations, conspiracies, revolutions, were the rule rather than the exception. Fathers killed their sons and sons their fathers. Lust and incest polluted the palaces. It seemed as if morals and religion were dying. In such a time was Confucius sent into the world, as

he believed, to stem the flood of wickedness, and to restore the good old days of peace.

Seen against the darkness of this background, the life of Confucius is bright with noble heroism, stedfast purpose, clearsighted wisdom, and, it seems to me, a profound religious faith. He did not teach theology, for he had none to teach; but he openly professed that his message was from heaven; and his loyal fulfilment of his mission, in self-sacrifice, poverty and reproach, is the evidence of the sincerity of his belief. And what was his message? In essence it was just this: "Be good. Heaven has made you capable of being good. Be good sons and good fathers, good husbands and good wives, good kings and good servants of your kings; brothers be good, friends be good." It was the simplest message, but mighty in its appeal to conscience as the divinelygiven nature. For the sake of this we may well tolerate what seems to us an excessive devotion to forms and ceremonies. Confucius did not think it excessive. In the Book of Rites, it is said

(1) Of all the methods for the good ordering of men, there is none more urgent than the use of ceremonies. Ceremonies are of five kinds, and there is none of them more important than sacrifice. Sacrifice is not a thing coming to a man from without, it issues from within him, and has its birth in his heart. When the heart is deeply moved expression is given to it by ceremonies.

(2) The sacrifices of such men have their own blessing; not indeed what the world calls blessing. Blessing here means perfection; it is the name given to the complete and natural discharge of all duties.

The quotation from the "Filial Piety Classic" is apparently decisive against me; but this document is not one of the Four Books, and its authority therefore is not quite the highest. Again, the translation is open to question. In his version, Dr. Legge does not use the word “equal,” but instead says "correlate."* Kang-hi's great dictionary supports Legge; it does not explain the character' as meaning equal, but as "pair," "couple," "opposite." The members of a pair or couplet may be equal or unequal. For instance, the dictionary gives "husband and wife" as an illustration,

*Religions, p. 79.

and to the Chinese mind husband and wife are by no means equal. I should have thought Legge's translation beyond question the correct one, had I not happened upon a Chinese commentator who clearly approves the other explanation. It is possible that the original meaning was that Duke Chan "associated" the worship of his father and King Wan with God, by worshipping them at the same time and with the same or similar sacrifices, and that afterwards this practice introduced the notion of equality of the beings worshipped. At any rate it seems to me that too much stress must not be laid upon one text. In one of the Psalms it is said, "I said ye are gods," and the meaning is not easily explained; but I think no one would assert that all the Israelites, or all their nobles and judges, were said to be "gods" in the sense of equality with Jehovah. For the interpretation of Confucius I rely upon the general tenour of his teaching. But during more than two thousand years, and among many millions of scholars, no doubt there have been many different interpretations of that teaching among the Chinese; and it is not surprising that foreign students differ in opinion.

ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.

WAS HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON MONDAY, JANUARY 16TH, 1905.

GENERAL HALLIDAY IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the following candidates were elected :

LIFE ASSOCIATE:-Rev. Oswald J. Hogarth, M.A., Rondeboschi, S. Africa.

ASSOCIATES:-Rev. Joseph Lampe, D.D., Professor, Presbyterian Theological College, Omaha, U.S.A.; H. Neville Harris, Esq., India Civil Service (retired); Rev. D. Ärnström, Aneby, Sweden.

The following paper was then read by the author :

THE RAJPUTS AND THE HISTORY OF RAJPUTANA. By Colonel T. HOLBEIN HENDLEY, C.I.E., Indian Medical Service (retired).

THE

HE Rajputs have attracted so much interest in India, that no fewer than 177 separate works upon them and their country are included in the Bibliography which is attached to the Medical Gazetteer of Rajputana alone, yet even in some of our principal encyclopædias only portions of a column of print are directly devoted to the subject. The Rajputs, or sons of kings, and the land of Rajputana, or Rajasthan, as it is more classically termed, the chief seat of their power, cannot, therefore, be adequately studied in a single address, so that I propose, after giving some account of the people and of their country, to consider, as being more properly fitted for discussion by this Society, the causes which led to the establishment of a most interesting race, for more than a thousand years in the same region, during which period they flourished with little real disturbance by the paramount powers of India, which changed no fewer than at least seven times in the same millennium. Valuable lessons may be learned from the study of the history, customs, and peculiarities of such a noble, manly, and interesting

race, lessons which may serve to guide us into the true way of preserving empire, a way that can only be based on upright, just, and honourable, and hence, truly scientific, principles. It was the failure to recognize these principles which in time led to the downfall of the great Moghul empire, and also prevented the Mahrattas from establishing themselves upon its ruins.

It is unnecessary to dwell long on the remote origin of the Rajputs, who have been said either to be the direct descendants of the Kshatriya, or warrior caste of the earliest Indian writers, or to represent them as a mixed race, which took a name to which they had little title, or to refer to their alleged invasion of India at a much later period from Central Asia. It is sufficient to note that powerful rulers of this great tribe were established for a long period in early times in North India, who were gradually driven out from the plain country into the more inaccessible and less fruitful districts which are now known under the names of Rajputana, Malwa, and even Gujarat, in the first of which they have made their special home, and in which they have maintained themselves to this day.

Rajputana is in the north-west of India, and lies between the Punjab on the north, Sindh on the west, the united provinces of Agra and Oudh on the east, and Malwa and Gujarat on the south. Its area is nearly 133,000 square miles, or about 11,500 more than that of the British Isles.

The Aravalli mountains stretch diagonally across it from near Delhi down to the south-west border towards Gujarat, dividing it into two regions, of which that to the north-west, containing about three-fifths of the area, is generally sandy, ill-watered and unproductive, approaching even to desert as the west is reached, while that to the south-east, or two-fifths of the whole, has a fertile soil with forest tracts, and in the south is more or less covered with hills which are well-clothed with woods, both the latter tracts being well watered. Such is in brief the description of the country which is given by Colonel Abbott in his census report for 1891. The states of Marwar, Bikanir, and Jaisalmer, all Rajput, lie in the larger region; those of Meywar, with its offshoots, Dungarpur, Partabgarh, Banswara, and Sirohi are in the south, leaving the rest of the province for Jaipur, Alwar, Karauli, Kishengarh, and the Haraoti states of Bundi, Kotah, and Jhalawar, if we regard only the Rajputs to whom the country belonged for so many centuries; but we must add to complete the whole the two Jhat principalities of Bharatpur and Dholpur, part of the Mohammedan state of Tonk, and last, but not least, the British district of Ajmere, which lies

F