ther
progress has yet to be made, and difficult problems yet await solution,
and to know the history of the perplexing situation will surely be most
helpful as a guide. What future is in store for India lies hidden. It
would be interesting to speculate, and with a few _ifs_ interposed, it
might be easy to dogmatise. What will she become? is indeed a question
of fascinating interest, when we ask it of a child of the household, or
when we ask it of a great people rejuvenated, to whom the British nation
stands in place of parent. In the history of the soul of a people, the
century just ended may be but a brief space on which to stand to take
stock of what is past and seek inspiration for the future, to talk of
progress made and progress possible.

"Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from away?
Far, far behind, is all that they can say."[132]

But the past century is all the experience of India we Britons have, and
we are bound to reflect well upon it in our outlook ahead.

[Footnote 1: The Senate and People of Rome--Senatus Populus-que
Romanus.]

[Footnote 2: In the Hindu College at Benares, affiliated to Allahabad
University, certain orthodox Hindus also objected to sacred texts being
read in the presence of European professors and teachers. Think of it,
in that college preparing students for ordinary modern degrees!--Bose,
_Hindu Civilisation, I_. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 3: One of the Zoroastrian Persians who fled to Western India
at the beginning of the eighth century A.D. At the census of 1901 they
numbered 94,190. They are most numerous in the city of Bombay.]

[Footnote 4: _Asiatic Studies_, I.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., I. iii.]

[Footnote 6: _Quinquen, Report on Education in India_, 1897-1902.]

[Footnote 7: For an apparently contrary view, see _Census of India,
1901, Report,_ p. 430: "Railways, which are sometimes represented as a
solvent of caste prejudices, have in fact enormously extended the area
within which those prejudices reign supreme." The sentence refers to the
influence of the fashion of the higher castes in regard to child
marriage and prohibition of the marriage of widows.]

[Footnote 8: Sir W.W. Hunter, _England's Work in India_.]

[Footnote 9: The manifold origins of castes are fully discussed in the
newest lights in the _Census of India Report_, 1901.]

[Footnote 10: Miss Noble [Sister Nivedit