Irrigated India, an Australian View of India and Ceylon: Their Irrigation and Agriculture

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W. Thacker and Company, 1893 - 322 pages
 

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Page 15 - I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant — 1 should point to India.
Page 81 - What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges.
Page 15 - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life — again I should point to India.
Page 13 - ... had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakespeare ? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language ; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakespeare ! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day ; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts for ever with us; we cannot give up our Shakespeare ! Nay, apart from spiritualities ; and considering him merely as a real,...
Page 105 - HE who gives life. He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death.
Page 123 - India resta upon the principle that by the ancient law of the country, the ruling power is entitled to a certain proportion of the annual produce of every beegah of land, excepting in cases in which that power shall have made a temporary or permanent alienation of its right to such proportion of the produce, or shall have agreed to receive instead of that proportion a specific sum annually, or for a term of years, or in perpetuity.
Page 42 - His speech is of mortgaged bedding, On his kine he borrows yet, At his heart is his daughter's wedding, In his eye foreknowledge of debt. He eats and hath indigestion, He toils and he may not stop; His life is a long-drawn question Between a crop and a crop.
Page 292 - ... moisture. Others conveyed it in smaller quantities to those whose fruits were already formed: some carried still less to those whose fruits were swelling, and others carried only so much as was just requisite to water those which had their fruits come to perfection, and only wanted to be ripened. They far exceeded in size the ordinary fruits of our gardens.
Page 52 - Behold the original and primitive nobility of all those great persons who are too proud now not only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon it. We may talk what we please of lilies and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or or d'argent; but if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms.
Page 252 - A portion of the credit for these achievements belongs to the native engineers of the days preceding the British advent. They had conceived the idea of controlling a river at the head of its delta, and of thus securing the regular watering of their lands.'— Irrigated India by Hon.

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