n memory; as
we have not done with ours. As if that which is to be preserved
forever, must be preserved in secret; and silence were the only
durable casket for truth.

The Greeks, they say, were very gifted liars; but I do not
see why we should suppose them lying, when they sang the
superiorities of Indian things and people;--_as they did._ The
Indians, says Megasthenes, were taller than other men, and of
greater distinction and prouder bearing. The air and water of
their land were the purest in the world; so you would expect in
the people, the finest culture and skill in the arts. Almost
always they gathered two harvests in the years; and _famine had
never visited India._--You see, railways, quick communications,
and all the appliances of modern science and invention cannot do
as much for India in pralaya, as her own native civilization
could do for her in manvantara.--Then he goes on to show how that
civilization guarded against famine and many other things; and
incidentally to prove it not only much higher than the Greek, but
much higher than our own. I said Manu provided in advance
against the main destructiveness of war: here was the custom,
which may have been dishonored in the breach sometimes, but still
_was the custom._--The whole continent was divided into any
number of kingdoms; mutually antagonistic often, but with
certain features of homogeneity that made the name Aryavarta more
than a geographical expression. I am speaking of the India
Megasthenes saw, and as it had been then for dear knows how long.
It had made concessions to human weakness, yes; had fallen, as I
think, from an ancient unity; it had not succeeded in abolishing
war. It was open to any king to make himself a Chakravartin, or
world-sovereign, if he disposed of the means for doing so:
which means were military. As this was a well-recognised
principle, wars were by no means rare. But with them all, what a
Utopia it was, compared to Christendom! There was never a draft
or conscription. Of the four castes, the Kshatriya or warrior
alone did the fighting. While the conches brayed, and the war-
cars thundered over Kurukshetra; while the pantheons held their
breath, watching Arjun and mightiest Karna at battle--the
peasants in the next field went on hoeing their rice; they knew
no one was making war on them. They trusted Gandiva, the goodly
bow, to send no arrows their way; their caste was inviolable, and
sacred to the tilling of t