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Build your dream career, showcase your strengths
and unlock a money-making mindset …
it’s the most practical career book you’ll ever read!
First published in 2023 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

Level 1, 155 Cremorne St, Richmond Vic 3121

Typeset in FreightText Pro 11pt/15pt

© Michelle Johnson and UrbanGhetto Pty Ltd 2023

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

ISBN: 978-­1-­119-­89955-­6

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example,
a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any
means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the
address above.

Cover design by Jess Pearson

Cover design concept by www.askjasonknight.com
Back cover and candidate portrait photos: Caitlin Schokker
Front cover and internal image (money in the air): © Cammeraydave/Dreamstime.com

Car boot image: © DreamStockIcons/Shutterstock

P227: Live Laugh Love image: © Christal Steele/Shutterstock

Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent
professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances
and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action
on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate,
before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the authors and
publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly
from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
We acknowledge the Awabakal people, Traditional Custodians of the land on which we build
our careers, and pay respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
who may read this book.
contents
how to read this book xi

planning your career road trip 1

1 values: where it all begins 2

2 what’s all this talk about mindset? 30

3 more on mindset . . . this is not a tacky

motivational seminar 48

4 strength and skills: harder, better, faster, stronger 94

5 career risks: let’s go offroad! 128

hitting the road 177

6 i’ll make my own opportunities, thanks 178

7 success and goals on your terms 220

8 how to nail your resume, interview and

networking drinks 248
 9 make more money (your new favourite hobby) 280

10 could anything else go wrong in my career

right now? 330

reaching the end of the road 361

11 at the roundabout, leave your job (because it sucks) 362

where to from here? 381

index387

viii sort your career out

JOB ADVERTISEMENT
Career Book Authors —­
2 positions vacant
Location: flexible

Pay: blood, sweat, tears and a packet of Tim Tams

Must be able to:

ɋɋ write lots of words

ɋɋ not bore people to death with human

resources (HR) jargon

ɋɋ help people maximise their career

opportunities

ɋɋ use their (extensive) experience to deal

with messy career problems, like how to
work out if it’s just a bad day or if it’s
a bad boss, or if it's a complete career
crisis and it's time to make a big change,
to go and study something new, to change
industries, or maybe it’s time to go on a
holiday to Tahiti *breathe*

ɋɋ help readers build a career they love

ɋɋ focus on practical over theory.

 Final shortlist —­internal HR use only

Candidate 1: Candidate 2:
Shell Johnson Glen James

Qualifications and criteria suited to role: Qualifications and criteria suited to role:

R HR consultant & business owner R business owner

R hates HR jargon
R has had multiple career crises
R has read way too many books on work, careers
and employment
R Masters of Human Resource Management
R explains things clearly (co-­host of the my
millennial career podcast)
R keen interest in helping people build careers
they love
R employer of people
R has been a tradie, financial adviser and now runs a
media business
R has career crisis experience
R explains things clearly (host of the my millennial
money podcast)
R keen interest in maximising careers for maximum
financial benefit
R author of Sort Your Money Out & Get Invested

Also enjoys: Also enjoys:

R her super cute family R his cars and boats
R sci-­fi and fantasy fiction R starting his day nice and early at 11 am
R fine dining and eating out as much as her bank R filter coffee
balance allows

x sort your career out

how to
read this book
Well, we got the job! Guess we’d better write all those words now (hehe).

If you read the HR memo on the previous page, you know we’re here to help
you build a career you love.

So, let’s do just that.

Glen in the driver’s seat

Think of this book as your career handbook. It’s just as much for career
newbies as it is for those looking to optimise their current career situation.
The system we’ve created is applicable to all career situations because it’s
driven by strategy first, and practical activities second. At the beginning of
each chapter we’ve included a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) to provide a
summary of what to expect in the chapter so you’ll know before you dive in.

I write this as a business owner, an employer of people, someone who has

had to change their own mindset and break away from societal norms. As
Shell lives and breathes all things careers, has managed plenty of people
of all ages and has almost seen it all, she will offer her own strategic and
practical insights that will enable you to apply what you learn right away.

xi
 In my book, Sort Your Money Out & Get Invested (I will refer to it as SYMO
moving forward), I shared an illustration of building your financial life like a
house: starting with solid foundations before you worry about the walls like
your lifestyle goals or investing. While SYMO could be read in any order, it is
highly recommended that you read this book in chapter order.

I honestly believe this book is the prequel to SYMO as the best investment
you can ever make is in yourself. That’s investing into your mindset, your
confidence, your health, your relationships and of course your career (the
list does go on .… can you think of anything else?). The best investment
return you’ll likely make will be in your own career and ability to earn
an income.

It is also so important that you’re moving in the direction of a career you

love. We all have bad days, so ask yourself: on balance, do you like your work
or career? Whatever the answer is, this book will help you. If you love your
career or job, you will be able to learn strategies and one percenters that will
take you further, faster. If you love your career but hate your job, you will
get the tools to make that move. If you have just left school or commenced
university, this book will equip you with setting things up in the right order.

To get the most out of this, lean into the exercises, challenge your own
thinking and write all over it. It’s a workbook and a space for you to brain
dump. Only feel guilty about writing all over this book if you have borrowed
it from the library!

And, just as we have here, we will make it clear at the start of each chapter
or section who is writing.

Shell in the driver’s seat

This book was born out of a career crisis .… mine.

xii sort your career out

I’d worked in human resources (HR) for over a decade, mainly in large, not-­
for-­profit organisations. After having my second baby, Bowie, I decided to
quit my full-­time role leading an HR team, and start a new job as an HR
specialist in a small business. Despite being in the same industry, it was a
very different role from anything I’d done previously.

It was about 4 months in when I realised the job wasn’t right for me. I’d
always been such a confident and decisive person when it came to work.
I was hosting a successful careers podcast. I was the person who solved
everyone else’s weird work problems. And yet here I was completely lost,
stuck and confused.

I had no idea what the heck I was doing with my career. But I knew I couldn’t
stay where I was. So I quit my job.

No job lined up. No plan of where-­to next. No cards up my sleeve.

Well, except for one. I called my friend Glen James.

Shell: Hey, I quit my job.

Glen: Yeah right. What are you going to do now?

Shell: I’m winging it. I have no idea. I’ll probably take a few months off to
figure it out. Maybe do my own thing, freelance. Who knows?

Glen: *long pause* .… I’ve got an idea .… Let’s write a book.

Shell: On what?

how to read this book xiii

 Glen: On careers. We’ll call it Sort Your Career Out. The prequel to SYMO.

Shell: Hahaha. But, I’m unemployed and having a complete career meltdown
right now.

Glen: Perfect time to write it.

Glen was right. It was the perfect time to write this book.

It was born out of a real-­life career crisis. I was the first beneficiary of the
book. Through the process, I sorted my own career out. I can’t wait for you
to do the same.

Maybe you’ve picked up this book because you’ve got a career problem you’re
trying to solve right now. You want to land a promotion, need to earn more
money or you’re looking for a totally new career. Wherever you’re at, we’ll
help you sort it out.

Over the years working in HR, and through the my millennial career podcast,
I’ve helped thousands of people win at work and build a career they love.

This book is your career guide. Each chapter is jam-­packed with practical
advice to help you clarify your strengths, brainstorm your goals and map out
your next move. It isn’t about finding a job that doesn’t suck — we’ve got big
goals — it’s about building a career you love.

I’m excited to be a part of your journey as you Sort Your Career Out. Forget
what everyone else is doing: this is about you, your life, your goals, your
version of success.

xiv sort your career out

The career car
Glen in the driver’s seat

Many of us are visual learners and the educators out there understand this
all too well. That is why I developed the ‘sound financial house’ to illustrate
the importance of doing things in the right order. There is no point investing
if you have not paid off your personal loan, nor if you have some goals in the
short term that you need money for, as investments should be for the long
term. Therefore, foundations are things like being consumer debt free.

Shell and I wanted to do a similar type of illustration for our careers and the
best way to think about it is the concept of the ‘career car’. You park your
career car next to your sound financial house. And just like you journey your
way through your career, you head out on a career road trip. Driving off into
your career is also what provides you with the money to bring back home to
your sound financial house.

how to read this book xv

 Your Career
Journey
planning your road trip

discover develop your

your values mindset
Chapter 1 Chapters 2 and 3 build your
strengths and
get ready for
skills
Chapter 4 some risk
Chapter 5

hitting the road

make job
define opportunities
your Chapter 6
success
Chapter 7

make more
money
your resumé, Chapter 9

interviews and
networking
Chapter 8 burning out
and losing
interest
end of the road Chapter 10
leave your job
for the next
big thing
Chapter 11

the next big thin

g

xvi sort your career out

The best road trips require some planning. There are foundational parts
to your career road trip you need to prepare for before you hit the road.
You need to pack your bags, find your route, service your car and make sure
you’ve got fuel ready to go.

This is part I of our approach: the strategic decisions you need to work
through. What do you value? What’s your mindset? What are your strengths
and skills? What risks are you prepared for?

Once this stage is complete, we hit the road. This is part II of our approach:
the tactical aspects of building your careers. We can drive forward, left,
right, around the roundabout, backtrack, re-­ route, u-­turn — ­there are
so many directions we can go. These practical things are centred around
building career opportunities, goal setting, mastery in resumes, interviews
and networking. And getting that pay rise! But we also talk about tackling
the more difficult aspects of your career journey, like career changes, career
crises, burnout and redundancy. Learning how to process what’s happened,
get the car towed to a mechanic for repairs and get back on the road.

Then, in part III, Shell will walk you through how to know if it’s time to leave
where you are, and do it well.

The book is sectioned into these three parts, and it’s best to read them in
that order.

The importance of the sound financial house and the career car is that the
logic can work at any age or in any situation. This isn’t just for Millennials:
this is for everyone who wants a career they love.

Here’s a run-­down on the three parts.

how to read this book xvii

 Part I: Planning your
career road trip
Preparing for your road trip is where any great journey begins — we have to
start with your career strategy. By skipping this step we risk just changing
the font on your resume and ending up in yet another job or career you hate.
If your strategy isn’t set to the right route, you’ll end up in the middle of the
desert. Again. These areas are the preparation you need to know yourself.
Know what you’re looking for in a career and have your career car refuelled
and ready to go.

Values
Your values influence the way you like to work. They are a crucial aspect of
building a career you love (and are hugely beneficial to understanding life
outside of work too!). When we are not aligned with our values, our life and
career can quickly get out of sync.

In chapter 1, you’ll figure out your own values and reflect on your job,
workplace and career to see how they align (and potentially change course,
if needed). This may be the first time you have heard or considered values
as part of your employment. Your values guide how you work, whether you
are aware of them or not. They can help you make great career moves, and
avoid the bad ones. We’ll walk you through a step-­by-­step process to define
your values.

Mindset
Nailing the mindset piece to your life and specifically your career and career
goals will honestly change your life. In chapters 2 and 3, I will share some
of my experiences and challenge you to assess your own mindset, and
how it could be affecting your career. Mindset is the origin of a lot of our
career problems.

xviii sort your career out

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Great Indian
Epics
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: The Great Indian Epics

The Stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata

Adapter: John Campbell Oman

Contributor: Valmiki

Release date: April 17, 2024 [eBook #73417]

Language: English

Original publication: London: George Routledge and Sons, 1900

Credits: Jwala Kumar Sista, Tim Lindell and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT

INDIAN EPICS ***
 Transcriber's Notes
1. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.
2. Certain hyphenation and spelling variations are retained as in original which is
sourced by bibliographic references.
3. Footnotes were moved to the end of the book.
4. Illustrations were moved from middle to end of the paragraph.
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK’S
HUNDRED BOOKS

THE
RAMAYANA
AND THE
MAHABHARATA
Reprinted
by permission of George Bell and Sons
from “Bohn’s Standard Library”
for “Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books.”
 Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books

THE GREAT INDIAN EPICS

THE STORIES OF THE

RAMAYANA
AND THE

MAHABHARATA
BY

JOHN CAMPBELL OMAN

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE GOVERNMENT COLLEGE LAHORE
AUTHOR OF “INDIAN LIFE RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL” ETC.

WITH NOTES APPENDICES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW EDITION REVISED

London and New York

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
LIMITED

CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
 PREFACE
The Indian Epics are precious relics of the spring-time of Eastern
thought, revealing a new and singularly fascinating world, which
differs very remarkably from that depicted in the epic poetry of
Western lands. But although these epics are extremely interesting,
and although they are accessible in English translations, more or
less complete, they are such voluminous works that their mere bulk
is enough to repel the ordinary English reader, and even the student,
in these days of feverish occupation.
I may, no doubt, be justly reminded that every Indian History, written
within recent years, contains abstracts of the two epics; but these
abstracts, I would observe, are skeletons rather than miniatures of
the poems; they are the dry bones, on which the historians try to
support a fabric of historical inferences or conjectures, and they are
necessarily deficient in the mythological, romantic and social
elements so important to a proper comprehension of the
“Ramayana” and “Mahabharata.” Besides, when the structures are
so colossal, so composite and in many respects so beautiful, there
can be no harm in having yet another view of them, taken probably
from a new standpoint.
In Europe the Homeric poems are very extensively studied in the
original Greek; they are productions of very moderate size in
comparison with the Indian Epics; many and excellent translations of
them, in both prose and verse, are always issuing from the press;
and yet condensed epitomes of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are
welcomed by the reading public, by whom also prose versions of the
poetical narratives of even English poets—as Chaucer, Spenser,
Shakespeare and Browning—are favourably received.
Such being the case, I make no apology for the appearance of this
little volume, in which I have not only tried to reproduce faithfully, in a
strictly limited space, the main incidents and more striking features of
those gigantic and wonderful creations of the ancient bards of India
—the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata”—but also to direct attention to
the abiding influence of those works upon the habits and
conceptions of the modern Hindu.
As they are often very incorrectly cited in support of views for which
there is no authority whatever in their multitudinous verses, it has
been my especial aim to give as accurate a presentment as possible
of the Indian Epics, taken as a whole; so that a fair and just idea—
neither too high nor too low—of their varied contents and their
intellectual level might be formed by the readers of this volume, be
they Europeans or Indians. And from what I have recently learned, I
have good ground for believing that both classes of readers will, after
perusal of this little book, be in a position to see the erroneous
character of many ideas in regard to life in ancient India which are
current in their respective circles.
Where, for any reason, I have especially desired that an event
recorded, or an opinion expressed, in the epics should be
reproduced without the possibility of misrepresentation on my part, I
have thought it best to quote verbatim the translations of them made
by Hindu scholars; although, unfortunately, their versions are by no
means elegant, and, indeed, often quite the reverse. But as they, no
doubt, reflect the structure and texture of the poems in a way that no
more free or polished English rendering could possibly do, I fancy
the citations I have made will not be unwelcome to most readers.
My book is divided into two distinct parts dealing separately with the
“Ramayana” and the “Mahabharata,” and at the end of each part I
have given, in the form of an Appendix, one or two of the more
striking legendary episodes lavishly scattered through these famous
epics, and which, though not essential for the comprehension of the
main story, are too beautiful or important to be omitted. Of these
episodes I should say that they are the best-known portions of the
“Ramayana” and “Mahabharata,” having been told and retold in all
the leading Indian vernaculars, and having, most of them, been
brought before the European world in both prose and verse.
A General Introduction to the two poems, and a concluding chapter,
containing remarks and inferences based on the materials supplied
to the reader in Parts I. and II., complete the scheme of this little
volume, which, I trust, will be found to be something more than a
mere epitome of the great Sanskrit epics; for, in its preparation, I
have had the advantage of considerable local knowledge and an
intimate acquaintance with the people of Aryavarta.
J. C. O.
 CONTENTS
Section Part / Chapter Page

General Introduction 1
PART I.—THE RAMAYANA
CHAPTER I
Introductory Remarks 15
CHAPTER II
The Story of Rama’s Adventures 19
CHAPTER III
The Ram Lila or Play of Rama 75
APPENDIX
The Story of the Descent of Ganga 87
Notes 91
PART II.—THE MAHABHARATA
CHAPTER I Introductory Remarks 95
CHAPTER II The Story of the Great War 101
CHAPTER III The Sacred Land 197
APPENDIX
(1) The Bhagavatgita or Divine Song 207
(2) The Churning of the Ocean 219
(3) Nala and Damayanti 225
Notes 237
Concluding Remarks 241
FOOTNOTES
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustration Page

The Abduction of Sita.

(From an illustrated Urdu Version) face 50
Hanuman and the Vanars Rejoicing at the
Restoration of Sita. (Reduced from Moor’s “Hindu
Pantheon”) face 70
Men with Knives and Skewers passed through their
Flesh.(From a Photograph) face 76
“The Terrible Demon King of Lanka and his no less
Formidable Brother.” (From a Photograph) face 80
The Temple and Bathing Ghâts on the Sacred Lake
at Kurukshetra.(From a Photograph) face 200
The Churning of the Ocean. (Reduced from Moor’s
“Hindu Pantheon”) face 220
GREAT INDIAN EPICS
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Foremost amongst the many valuable relics of the old-world
literature of India stand the two famous epics, the “Ramayana” and
the “Mahabharata,” which are loved with an untiring love by the
Hindus, for they have kept alive, through many a dreary century, the
memory of the ancient heroes of the land, whose names are still
borne by the patient husbandman and the proud chief.[1] These
great poems have a special claim to the attention even of foreigners,
if considered simply as representative illustrations of the genius of a
most interesting people, their importance being enhanced by the fact
that they are, to this day, accepted as entirely and literally true by
some two hundred millions of the inhabitants of India. And they have
the further recommendation of being rich in varied attractions, even
when regarded merely as the ideal and unsubstantial creations of
Oriental imagination.
Both the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are very lengthy works
which, taken together, would make up not less than about five and
twenty printed volumes of ordinary size. They embrace detailed
histories of wars and adventures and many a story that the Western
World would now call a mere fairy tale, to be listened to by children
with wide-eyed attention. But interwoven with the narrative of events
and legendary romances is a great bulk of philosophical, theological,
and ethical materials, covering probably the whole field of later
Indian speculation. Indeed, the epics are a storehouse of
Brahmanical instruction in the arts of politics and government; in
cosmogony and religion; in mythology and mysticism; in ritualism
and the conduct of daily life. They abound in dialogues wherein the
subtle wisdom of the East is well displayed, and brim-over with
stories and anecdotes intended to point some moral, to afford
consolation in trouble, or to inculcate a useful lesson. To epitomize
all this satisfactorily would be quite impossible; but what I have given
in this little volume will, I hope, be sufficient to show the nature and
structure of the epics, the characteristics that distinguish them as
essentially Indian productions, and the light they throw upon the
condition of India and the state of Hindu society at the time the
several portions were written, or, at any rate, collected together. The
narrative, brief though it be, will reflect the more abiding features of
Indian national life, revealing some unfamiliar ideas and strange
customs. Even within the narrow limits of the reduced picture here
presented, the reader will get something more than a glimpse of
those famous Eastern sages, whose half-comprehended story has
furnished the Theosophists of our own day with the queer notion of
their extraordinary Mahatmas; he will learn somewhat of the wisdom
and pretensions of those sages, and will not fail to note that the
belief in divine incarnations was firmly rooted in India in very early
times. He will incidentally acquire a knowledge of all the fundamental
religious ideas of the Hindus and of the highest developments of
their philosophy; he will also become familiar with some primitive
customs which have left unmistakable traces in the institutions of
modern social life in the East as well as in the West; and will,
perhaps, be able to track to their origin some strange conceptions
which are floating about the intellectual atmosphere of our time.
Woven out of the old-time sagas of a remarkable people, “the
ancient Aryans of India, in many respects the most wonderful race
that ever lived on Earth,”[2] the Sanskrit epics must have a
permanent interest for educated people in every land; while all Indian
studies must have an attraction for those who desire to watch, with
intelligent appreciation, the wonderfully interesting transformations in
religion and manners, which contact with Western civilization is
producing in the ancient and populous land of the Hindus. Not less
interesting will such studies be to those who are able to note the
curious, though as yet slight, reaction of Hindu thought upon modern
European ideas in certain directions; as, for example, in the rise of
Theosophy, in the sentimental tendency manifested in some quarters
towards asceticism, Buddhism and Pantheism; in the approval by a
small class in Europe of the cremation of the dead, and in the
growing fascination of such doctrines as those of metempsychosis
and Karma.
Although it is difficult for the Englishman of the nineteenth century to
understand the intellectual attitude of modern India in respect to the
wild legends of its youth, it may help towards a comprehension of
this point if one reflects that had not Christianity superseded the
original religions of Northern Europe, had the Eddas and Sagas, with
their weird tales of wonder and mystery, continued to be authoritative
scripture in Britain, the religious faith of England might now have
been somewhat on a par with that of India to-day—an extraordinary
medley of the wildest legends and deepest philosophy. It is a subject
for wonder how the gods of the ancestors of the English people have
entirely faded from popular recollection in Britain, how Sagas and
Eddas have been completely forgotten, leaving only a substratum of
old superstitions about witchcraft, omens, etc. (once religious
beliefs), amongst the more backward of the populace. How many
Englishmen ever think, how many of them even know, anything
about Thor or Odin and the bloody sacrifices (often human
sacrifices)[3] with which those deities were honoured? How many
realize that the worship of these gods and the rites referred to had a
footing in some parts of Europe as recently as eight hundred years
ago?[4]
The almost complete extinction of the ancestral beliefs of the
European nations is a striking fact to which the religious history of
India presents no parallel. In Europe the great wall of Judaic
Christianity—too often cemented with blood—has been reared, in
colossal dimensions, between the past and the present, cutting off all
communication between the indigenous faiths and modern
speculative philosophy of the Western nations; while diverting the
affectionate interest of the devout from local to foreign shrines.
No barrier of nearly similar proportions has ever been raised in India.
Islam, it is true, has planted its towers in many parts of the country
and has, to some restricted extent, blocked the old highways of
thought, causing a certain estrangement between the old and new
world of ideas; but the severance between the past and the present
has nowhere been as complete as in Europe, for many an Indian
Muslim, though professing monotheism, still lingers upon the
threshold of the old Hindu temples, and still, in times of trouble, will
stealthily invoke the aid of the national deities, who are not yet dead
and buried like those of the Vikings. Hence it may be asserted of the
vast majority of the Indian people that their vision extends
reverentially backward, through an uninterrupted vista, to the gods
and heroes of their remote ancestors.
And who were those remote ancestors, those Aryan invaders of
India in the gray dawn of human history? We have had two answers
to that question. A few years ago the philologists assured us, very
positively, that the Aryans were a vigorous primitive race whose
home was in central Asia and who had sent successive waves of
emigration and conquest westwards, right across the continent of
Europe, to be arrested in their onward march only by the wide waters
of the Atlantic. We were also assured, by these learned investigators
into the mysteries of words and languages, that one horde of Asiatic
Aryans, instead of following the usual westward course adopted by
their brethren, had turned their thoughts towards the sunnier climes
of the South, and, scaling the northwestern barrier of India, had
conquered the aborigines and settled in the great Indo-Gangetic
plain at the foot of the Himalayas. These conclusions find a place in
all our text-books of Indian or European history. The schoolboy, who
has read his Hunter’s brief history[5] of India, knows well that “the
forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the English and the
Hindu, dwelt together in Central Asia, spoke the same tongue,
worshipped the same gods,” and that “the history of ancient Europe
is the story of the Aryan settlements around the shores of the
Mediterranean.” However, these conclusions have recently
undergone revision and radical modification. Within the last decade a
theory, which originated in England with Dr. Latham and which met
with contemptuous disregard when first propounded, has been
revived by certain German savants and scientists.[6] Supported by
the latest results of craniological and anthropological investigation,
Latham’s theory, in a modified form, has, under the erudite advocacy
of Dr. Schrader and Karl Penka, gained all but universal acceptance.
The theory now in favour, which is founded more on inferences from
racial than linguistic peculiarities, differs from the one referred to
above in a very important respect. The home of the Aryans, instead
of being found in Central Asia, is traced to Europe, so that the Aryan
invaders of India, many centuries before Christ, were men of
European descent who pushed their way eastward and gradually
extended their dominion first over Iran and subsequently over
Northern India, having scaled the snowclad Himalayas, literally in
search of “fresh fields and pastures new.” When they reached India,
after a long sojourn in Eastern countries, they were a mixed
European and Asiatic race, with probably a large share of Turanian
blood,[7] speaking a language of Aryan origin.[8] A strong, warlike,
aggressive race, these Aryans won for themselves a dominant
position in ancient India, and have left to this day the unmistakable
traces of their language in many of the vernaculars of the land.
The decision of the question of the origin of the Aryans and the
locality of their primitive home is not one of purely antiquarian
interest, it is one of national importance, as anyone will be prepared
to admit who knows, and can recall to mind, the effect upon the
educated Hindus of the announcement that their own ancestors had
been the irresistible subjugators of Europe. Whether the Norman
conquerors of England were of Celtic or, as the late Professor
Freeman insisted, of Teutonic stock, is not unimportant to the
Englishman for the true comprehension of his national history and
not without some influence even in practical politics; but of far
greater moment will it be for the Hindu whether he learn to regard
the Aryans of old as an Asiatic or a European race, cradled on the
“Roof of the World” or in the flats of the Don.
Although all Hindus look upon the Aryan heroes of the Indian epics
as the ancestors of their race, and fondly pride themselves in their
mighty deeds, the claim, in the case of the vast majority, is, of
course, untenable; since the great bulk of the Indian population has
no real title to Aryan descent. Yet Rama and Arjuna are truly Indian
creations, enshrined in the sacred literature of the land. And the
pride and faith of the Hindus in these demigods has, perhaps,
sustained their spirits and elevated their characters, through the
vicissitudes of many a century since the heroic age of India.
What genuine facts, or real events, may underlie the poetical
narratives of the authors of the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” will
never be known. The details naïvely introduced are often such as to
leave an irresistible impression that there is a substratum of
substantial truth serving as a foundation for the fantastic and airy
structure reared by the poets, and we now and then recognize, for
instance in their despairing fatefulness, a distant echo of ideas which
have travelled with the Aryan race to the Northern Seas. But the too
fertile imagination of the Indian poets, their supreme contempt for
details and utter disregard of topographical accuracy, leave little
hope of our ever getting any satisfactory history out of the Sanskrit
epics, or even of our establishing an identity in regard to localities
and details of construction such as has been traced, in our own day,
by Schliemann, between the buried citadel of Hissarlik on the
Hellespont and vanished Ilion. For those who do not share these
opinions there is a wide and deep field for industrious research; but I
confess that I am somewhat indifferent regarding the extremely
doubtful history or the very fanciful allegory that may be laboriously
extracted from the Indian epics by ingenious historians and
mythologists. Indeed I would protest against these grand epics being
treated as history, for then they must be judged by the canons of
historical composition and would be shorn of their highest merits.
They are poems not history, they are the romantic legends and living
aspirations of a people, not the sober annals of their social and
political life.
Like the other great poems created by the genius of the past, the
Indian epics have a value quite independent of either the history or
the allegory which they enshrine. They appeal to our predilection for
the marvellous and our love of the beautiful, while affording us
striking pictures of the manners of a bygone age, which, for many
reasons, we would not willingly lose.
Being religious books, the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” are,
more or less, known to the Hindus; but it is a noteworthy fact that
even educated Indians are but little acquainted with the details of
these poems, although both epics have been translated into the
leading vernaculars of the country and also into English. I have
known educated young men, with more faith in their ancient books
than knowledge of their contents, warmly deny the possibility of