words, but to grammatical elements also, can be studied to greater
advantage than among the Aryan, the Dravidian, and the Mu_n_da
inhabitants of India, when brought in contact with their various
invaders and conquerors, the Greeks, the Yue-tchi, the Arabs, the
Persians, the Moguls, and lastly the English?

Again, if you are a student of Jurisprudence, there is a history of
law to be explored in India, very different from what is known of the
history of law in Greece, in Rome, and in Germany, yet both by its
contrasts and by its similarities full of suggestions to the student
of Comparative Jurisprudence. New materials are being discovered every
year, as, for instance, the so-called Dharma or Samaya_k_arika Sutras,
which have supplied the materials for the later metrical law-books,
such as the famous Laws of Manu. What was once called "The Code of
Laws of Manu," and confidently referred to 1200, or at least 500 B.C.,
is now hesitatingly referred to perhaps the fourth century A.D., and
called neither a Code, nor a Code of Laws, least of all, the Code of
Laws of Manu.

If you have learned to appreciate the value of recent researches into
the antecedents of all law, namely the foundation and growth of the
simplest political communities--and nowhere could you have had better
opportunities for it than here at Cambridge--you will find a field of
observation opened before you in the still-existing village estates in
India that will amply repay careful research.

And take that which, after all, whether we confess or deny it, we care
for more in this life than for anything else--nay, which is often far
more cared for by those who deny than by those who confess--take that
which supports, pervades, and directs all our acts and thoughts and
hopes--without which there can be neither village-community nor empire,
neither custom nor law, neither right nor wrong--take that which, next
to language, has most firmly fixed the specific and permanent barrier
between man and beast--which alone has made life possible and bearable,
and which, as it is the deepest, though often-hidden spring of
individual life, is also the foundation of all national life--the
history of all histories, and yet the mystery of all mysteries--take
religion, and where can you study its true origin,[11] its natural
growth, and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of
Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the refuge of
Zoroastrianism, even now th