Thursday, August 25, 2005

The proper study

"Such studies, independent of utility, will defuse a generosity of sentiment...[after all, the Indian classics] will survive when British dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance".

Governor General Warren Hastings, on the founding in 1784 of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (a "Society for enquiring into the History, Civil and Natural, the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia") - quoted by William Dalrymple in White Mughals.

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