NA TURE 



97 



AL-BlR&Nt. 



Al-Biruni's India : an Account of the Religion, Philosophy, 

 Literature, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Law, and 

 Astrology of India about A.D. 1030. Edited in the 

 Arabian original by Dr. Edward Sachau. (London : 

 Triibner and Co., 1887.) 



IT has often been said that India has no history and 

 no historians. We look in vain through the ancient 

 Sanskrit literature for any Herodotus or Thucydides. 

 The very idea of chronicling the events of the day or 

 gathering the recollections of the past seems never to have 

 entered the Hindu mind, and their ancient chronology 

 is hardly more than astronomical mythology. The histo- 

 rical growth of Indian literature, religion, and philosophy 

 would indeed have remained a perfect riddle but for the 

 few glimpses which we are able to catch of the real 

 history of the country through other nations which were 

 brought in contact with it. These are the Greeks, the 

 Chinese, and the Arabs, whose successive accounts run 

 like three broad bands of longitude across the ill-defined 

 map of ancient India. 



The Greeks do not tell us very much of what they saw 

 of India, either before or after Alexander's invasion. We 

 may indeed gather from Hecataeus (b.c. 549-486) that 

 India existed, and that its chief river, the Indus, had a 

 name of Sanskrit origin. We know, therefore, that 

 Sanskrit was the spoken language of India in the sixth 

 century B.C. But even that name had clearly passed 

 through Persian channels before it reached Hecataeus, for 

 it is only in Persian that the initial s of Sindhu, the river, 

 could have been changed into h, and afterwards been 

 dropped. Herodotus also mentions some Indian names — 

 such as the Gandarii, the Gandhdras of the Veda — which 

 clearly show that at his time the peoples and rivers and 

 mountains of India had names which find their explanation 

 in Sanskrit only. With Alexander's expedition we might 

 have hoped that the full light of history would have burst 

 upon India. But most of the works written by Alexander's 

 companions have been lost, and even the work of 

 Megasthenes, who stayed as ambassador at Palimbothra, 

 the modern Patna, at the court of King Sandracottus, has 

 been preserved to us in fragments only. Still the date of 

 Sandracottus, in Sanskrit Chandragupta, has proved the 

 sheet-anchor of ancient Indian chronology, and has once 

 for all fixed the date of Chandragupta and of his grandson, 

 the great Buddhist monarch Asoka, in the fourth and 

 third centuries B.C. 



The next witnesses to the actual state of political, 

 social, and religious life in India are the Chinese. 

 Buddhism had been adopted as a third State religion 

 in China in the first century a.d. From that time the 

 religious intercourse between China and India was never 

 entirely interrupted. Buddhist priests travelled from 

 India to China, and pious pilgrims went from China to 

 India as the holy land of their religion. Some of these 

 pilgrims have left very full descriptions of what they saw 

 and did in India, the most important being those by 

 Fa-hian (399-414 A.D.), Hiouen-thsang (629-645), I-tsing 

 (673-695), and Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the 

 Vol.. xxxviii. — No. 970. 



head of 300 pilgrims. Most of these travels and diaries 

 have been translated into French and English by 

 Remusat, Stanislas Julien, Beal, and Legge ; and they 

 give us a picture of Indian life during the Middle Ages 

 of which we should have had no idea if we had been 

 restricted to Indian sources alone. 



More important, however, than the descriptions of 

 these Greek and Chinese authors, is the work to which 

 we wish to call attention— namely, the account of India 

 written by Al-Biruni in the year 1030 a.d., and now 

 published for the first time by Prof. Sachau, of 

 Berlin. Al-Biruni was a native of Khwarizm, the modern 

 Khiva, born in 973. He had devoted himself to the 

 study of astronomy and philosophy, and when Khiva was 

 taken by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna in 1017, Al-Biruni 

 was induced to accompany him to India. The famous 

 Avicenna, i.e. Abu Ali Ibn Sina, declined the same 

 honour, and remained at home. During the thirteen 

 years that Al-Biruni spent in India, he devoted him- 

 self sedulously to the study of Sanskrit, and Sanskrit 

 literature. He does not use the name of Sanskrit, but 

 calls the language of India, both literary and vernacular, 

 Hindi, i.e. Indian ; the fact being that Sanskrit was not 

 yet used as a proper name of the ancient literary idiom, 

 but only as an epitheton ornans. What progress Al-Biruni 

 made in his studies seems somewhat doubtful. It was 

 formerly supposed that he translated not only from Sanskrit 

 into Arabic and Persian, but likewise from Arabic and 

 Persian into Sanskrit. But Dr. Sachau has clearly proved 

 that his knowledge of Sanskrit was far too elementary to 

 enable him to perform such tasks by himself. He shows 

 that he depended chiefly on the assistance of his pandits, 

 like many Sanskrit scholars of more recent times, and 

 that all we can assert with safety is that he was able to 

 direct and to check their labours. With all that, Al-Biruni 

 was a most exceptional man for his time, a man of wide 

 sympathies, a true philosopher, and acute observer. The 

 very idea of learning a foreign language, except perhaps 

 Persian and Turkish, never entered the head of a 

 Muhammedan. His weapon was the sword, not the 

 pen. Al-Biruni, however, to quote Prof. Sachau's 

 words, " convinced that those who want to meet the 

 Hindus on the battle-ground of intellectual warfare, and 

 to deal with them in the spirit of justice and equity, must 

 I first learn all that is peculiar to them in manners and 

 customs as well as in their general modes of thought, pro- 

 duced a comprehensive description of Indian civilization, 

 always struggling to grasp its very essence, and depicting 

 it with due lights and shades, as an impartial spectator." 

 The title, of the book tells its own story: "An accurate 

 description of all the categories of Indian thought, as well 

 those w^tich are admissible, as those which must be 

 rejected." 



The existence of this work of Al-Biruni's has been 

 known for many years, and Sanskrit scholars have long 

 clamoured for its publication and translation. Their 

 appetite was first whetted by the specimens which 

 Reinaud published in 1845 in his " Fragments Arabes et 

 Persans relatifs a PInde," and some years later in his 

 invaluable " Memoire sur l'lnde " (1849). When Reinaud 

 declined to undertake the editing of the whole text of 

 Al-Biruni's " Indica," Woepcke and MacGuckin de Slane 

 undertook the difficult task. The former, however, died • 



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