{"id":15364,"date":"2017-01-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2017\/01\/31\/hindus-seen-through-foreign-eyes-over-the-centuries\/"},"modified":"2017-01-31T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T12:00:00","slug":"hindus-seen-through-foreign-eyes-over-the-centuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2017\/01\/31\/hindus-seen-through-foreign-eyes-over-the-centuries\/","title":{"rendered":"Hindus Seen Through Foreign Eyes Over the Centuries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newindianexpress.com\/opinions\/2017\/jan\/30\/hindus-seen-through-foreign-eyes-1564982.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>INDIA, January 30, 2017 (New Indian Express by Guatam Pingle): Describing the character of an entire group of people is difficult. And, it is almost impossible to describe the character of Hindus&#8211;divided by region, language, caste and sect. Nonetheless, foreign observers have attempted the task based on their personal experience. The following is an account of some of these over time.<\/p>\n<p>Ktesias, the Greek Physician of Persian King Artaxerxes [404-358 BC] has a special chapter &#8220;on the justice of the Hindus&#8221; in his Indica. Megasthenes [c.350-c.290 BC] states thefts were extremely rare, and the people honored truth and virtue. Arrian [c.86-160 AD] said on officials: &#8220;They oversee what goes on in the country or towns, and report everything to the king, where the people have a king, and to the magistrates, where the people are self-governed, and it is against the use and wont of these to give a false report; but indeed no Hindu is accused of lying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>British comments of their Hindu subjects are interesting. Warren Hastings [1732-1818]: &#8220;They are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted than any people on the face of the earth; faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority.&#8221; Bishop Heber [1783-1826]: &#8220;The Hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement; sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people I ever met with.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Many more such historical quotes at &#8220;source&#8221; above.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source INDIA, January 30, 2017 (New Indian Express by Guatam Pingle): Describing the character of an entire group of people,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}