Indian people

"No Indian ever went outside his own country on a warlike expedition, so righteous were they."

"When we read in the valuable production of those great Oriental scholars ... those of a Jones, a Wilkings, a Colebrooke, or a Halhed, - we uniformly discover in the Hindus a nation, whose polished manners are the result of a mild disposition and an extensive benevolence."

"[The Hindus are] a people, who from the earliest times have been an ornament to the creation – if so much can with propriety be said of any known people upon earth."

"They do not practice deceit, and they keep their sworn obligations. ... They will not take anything wrongfully, and they yield more than fairness requires.”"

"The ancient civilisation of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, in that its traditions have been preserved without a break down to the present day. Until the advent of the archaeologist, the peasant of Egypt or Iraq had no knowledge of the culture of his forefathers, and it is doubtful whether his Greek counterpart had any but the vaguest ideas about the glory of Periclean Athens. In each case there had been an almost complete break with the past. On the other hand…to this day legends known to the humblest Indian recall the names of shadowy chieftains who lived nearly a thousand years before Christ, and the orthodox Brahman in his daily worship repeats hymns composed even earlier. India and China have, in fact, the oldest continuous cultural traditions in the world."

"The Hindu, at any rate, from his tradition and his religion, regards India not only as a political unit naturally the subject of one sovereignty — but as the outward embodiment, as the temple-nay, even as the god- dess mother—of his spiritual culture. India and Hinduism are organically related as body and soul. Nationality is at best a difficult thing to define, to test and establish...But the Aryan settled it decisively so far as India and himself are concerned. He made India the symbol of his culture, he filled it with his soul. In his consciousness it was his greater self."