English education, like Aaron's rod, appears to have devoured up every other education and it has spread now throughout the land. Similar injuries to Aryan literature are more or less going on all over India. The books appear to have, by a peculiar process, melted together and formed into one brittle mass. My attempts to rescue them from further ruin proved a complete failure. This meritorious act is no doubt due to the circumstance that the present owners of the books have begun to taste the sweets of English education, while their ancestors appear to have been men of learning. I know that at this moment over 50 books are being exposed to sun and rain in a well known family here and I hear they have remained in that state for over 4 years. Now it has come to my knowledge that in many Hindu families whole libraries, for want of inspection, are now being feasted on by moths and white ants and large quantities have already been emptied onto the dustbins, the decay having gone too far. I have many a time astonished young collegians and graduates by quoting from Hindu astronomers and mathematicians, and they were surprised to find that Aryans knew what Europeans know, forgetting that these sciences were taken to the West from here2. Most of English knowing natives hardly know what these books treat of. "Like stranded wrecks the tide returning hoarse to sweep them from our sight." The public can therefore do much if their eyes could only be opened to importance of the subject. But most of Hindus, of the present day, can neither use the books themselves nor will they allow foreigners to interfere with their sacred literature1. Our excellent Government is now laudably working in this direction. Not a few remain, unless rescued from their fate. As the art of printing was unknown, a large proportion of Aryan literature has been washed into oblivion by the mighty wave of time. Aryans have cultivated almost every department of knowledge. Now it is well known that Aryan learning dates from the remotest antiquity.
Though at loggerheads, most of Christian antiquarians take care not to assign to any Indian event dates earlier than what is permissible under their Biblical chronology. Antiquarians are at loggerheads in their conclusions touching the age of Aryan learning. History is puzzled in its attempt to reach the date of Aryan civilization. Time was when Aryan wisdom shone resplendent, and, from its eminence, dazzled the eyes of distant nations - distant geographically and distant chronologically - illumined every corner of the intellectual horizon and served as a beacon, lighting the paths of erring travelers. It was the one fountain of knowledge from which issued streams to water distant lands of ignorance at every point of the compass, now yielding abundance of intellectual harvest. To it converged, as to a common focus, the eyes of foreigners from earliest period of the world's history. Bharata Varsha has long continued to be centre of attraction not only in respect of its wealth and civilization but in that of its intellectual advancement.