The substance of the following volume was delivered in the form oflectures in the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh during Session1904-5. As "Alexander Robertson" lecturer in the University of Glasgow,the writer dealt with the new religious ideas that have been impressingthemselves upon India during the British period of her history. As"Gunning" lecturer in the University of Edinburgh, the writer dwelt moreupon the new social and political ideas. The popular belief of Hindu Indiais, that there are no new ideas in India, that nought in India sufferschange, and that as things are, so they have always been. Even educatedIndians are reluctant to admit that things have changed and that theircommunity has had to submit to education and improvement—thatsuttee, for example, was ever an honoured institution in the province nowmost advanced. But to the observant student of the Indian people, the evolution of India is almost as noteworthy as the more apparentrigidity. There is a flowering plant common in Northern India, and chieflynotable for the marvel of bearing flowers of different colours upon thesame root. The Hindus call it "the sport of Krishna"; Mahomedans, "theflower of Abbas"; for the plant is now incorporate with both the greatreligions of India, and even with their far-back beginnings. Yet it is acomparatively recent importation into India; it is only the flower knownin Britain as "the marvel of Peru," and cannot have been introduced intoIndia more than three hundred years ago. It was then that the Portugueseof India and the Spaniards of Peru were first in touch within the homelands in Europe. In our own day may be seen the potato and the cauliflowerfrom Europe establishing themselves upon the dietary of Hindus in defianceof the punctiliously orthodox. À fortiori—strange thatwe should reason thus from the trifling to the fundamental, yet notstrange to the Anglo-Indian and the Indian,—àfortiori, we shall not be surprised to find novel and alien ideastaking root in Indian soil.
Seeds, we are told, may be transported to a new soil, either wind-borneor water-borne, carried in the stomachs of birds, or clinging by theirburs to the fur of animals. In the cocoa-nut, botanists point out, thecocoa-nut palms possess a most serviceable ark wherein the seed may befloated in safety over the sea to other shores. It is thus that thecocoa-nut palm is one of the first of the larger plants to show themselvesupon a new coral reef or a bare volcano-born island. Into India itself, itis declared, the cocoa-nut tree has thus come over-sea, nor is yet foundgrowing freely much farther than seventy miles from the shore. One of thechief interests of the subject before us is that the seeds of the newideas in India during the past century are so clearly water-borne. Theyare the outcome of British influence, direct or indirect.
Here are true test and evidence of the character of British influenceand effort, if we can distil from modern India some of the new ideasprevailing, particularly in the new middle class. Where shall we findevidence reliable of what British influence has been? Government Reports,largely statistical, of "The Moral and Material Progress of India," are sofar serviceable, but on