I know you will be surprised to hear me say this. I know that more
particularly those who have spent many years of active life in
Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras, will be horror-struck at the idea that
the humanity they meet with there, whether in the bazaars or in the
courts of justice, or in so-called native society, should be able to
teach _us_ any lessons.

Let me therefore explain at once to my friends who may have lived in
India for years, as civil servants, or officers, or missionaries, or
merchants, and who ought to know a great deal more of that country
than one who has never set foot on the soil of Aryavarta, that we are
speaking of two very different Indias. I am thinking chiefly of India
such as it was a thousand, two thousand, it may be three thousand
years ago; they think of the India of to-day. And again, when thinking
of the India of to-day, they remember chiefly the India of Calcutta,
Bombay, or Madras, the India of the towns. I look to the India of the
village communities, the true India of the Indians.

What I wish to show to you, I mean more especially the candidates for
the Indian Civil Service, is that this India of a thousand, or two
thousand, or three thousand years ago, ay the India of to-day also, if
only you know where to look for it, is full of problems, the solution
of which concerns all of us, even us in this Europe of the nineteenth
century.

If you have acquired any special tastes here in England, you will find
plenty to satisfy them in India; and whoever has learned to take an
interest in any of the great problems that occupy the best thinkers
and workers at home, need certainly not be afraid of India proving to
him an intellectual exile.

If you care for geology, there is work for you from the Himalayas to
Ceylon.

If you are fond of botany, there is a flora rich enough for many
Hookers.

If you are a zoologist, think of Haeckel, who is just now rushing
through Indian forests and dredging in Indian seas, and to whom his
stay in India is like the realization of the brightest dream of his
life.

If you are interested in ethnology, why India is like a living
ethnological museum.

If you are fond of archaeology, if you have ever assisted at the
opening of a barrow in England, and know the delight of finding a
fibula, or a knife, or a flint in a heap of rubbish, read only General
Cunningham's "Annual Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India,"
and you will be impatient for t