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In: History - Modern (1750+)·Religion/Spirituality·Sociology
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #28117.
John P. Jones’s India, Its Life and Thought is a scholarly survey of Indian society as seen through the eyes of a long‑time missionary and scholar. The work opens with a candid preface in which Jones declares the West’s chronic misunderstanding of India, then offers his own thirty‑year experience as a modest basis for a broader examination. From that point the book proceeds through a detailed contents list that promises coverage of everything from the political unrest of early‑20th‑century Bengal to the intricacies of Hindu caste, the doctrines of the Bhagavad‑Gita, and the status of minority faiths such as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. The introductory chapter already sets the tone, describing India’s “spirit of unrest” and linking it to contemporary movements in Japan, China, and the West, thereby framing the nation’s cultural and religious landscape as both historic and dynamically evolving.
The text reflects the earnest, didactic voice of an early‑1900s missionary‑scholar, combining exhaustive description with a clear moral purpose. Its prose is formal and occasionally polemical, characteristic of Victorian‑era travel and ethnographic writing, yet it is organized with a systematic chapter structure that aids the reader. Those who appreciate historic perspectives on colonial India, students of religious studies, historians of the British Empire, or readers interested in the interplay of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian traditions, will find Jones’s detailed observations and extensive footnotes a rewarding, if unmistakably period‑specific, resource.
The opening · free to read
It is partly because they are antipodal to the West--the farthest removed in thought and life. They are also the most secretive, and find perennial delight in concealment and evasion.
According to Hindu teaching, the Supreme Spirit forever sports in illusion. It continuously manifests itself through unreal and false forms, which delude and lead astray ignorant man. In harmony with this philosophy of the Divine--and may it not be as a result of it?--the people of India too often delight in unreal and deceptive exhibitions of themselves. At any rate, it is exceedingly difficult for a man of the West, especially he of the Anglo-Saxon type, to apprehend the full significance and the correct drift of life and thought of this land.
It is amusing, when not discouraging, to witness travellers, who have rushed through India in a winter tour, publish volumes of their misconceptions and ill-digested theories about the people with an oracular emphasis which is equalled only by their ignorance.
The author of this book makes no claim to a right to speak ex cathedra upon this subject. Nevertheless, thirty years of matured experience in this land, living in constant touch with the people and studying with eagerness their life and thought, gives him an humble claim to speak once more upon the subject.
Even now, however, his pride of knowledge is chastened by the oft-recurring surprises which the Oriental nature and life still bring to him. And he does not cease to pray, with a western saint, who, at the end of a half century of work for the people of India, daily cried out,--
"O Lord, help me to know these people and to come into intimate relations of life with them!"
If, in these pages, he can help others of the West to come face to face with the immense and intricate problems which confront all who desire to know, to help, and to bless India, and shall enable them to understand better the conditions and characteristics of life in the Land of the Vedas, he will feel amply repaid for his labours.
I express my deep gratitude to the Rev. J. L. Barton, D.D., for his kind encouragement in the publishing of this book; and also to the Rev. W. W. Wallace, M.A., for his generous aid in the proof-reading.
J. P. JONES.
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