“an India mired in illiteracy and credulity”
Will Durant, American historian:
“India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.”
Both statements are true. My statement and Will Durant’s. I agree with both and both can be simultaneously true. A great and ancient civilization (which the British immediately recognized, hence their initial reluctance to ban Suttee), but also full of superstition, illiteracy, and widespread ignorance of their own great achievements, which were uncovered by the British recognition of the extraordinary nature of the Sanskrit language as The Indo-European language and other aspects of India’s past.