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PROLEGOMENA TO PRAKRITICA et JAINICA
and they are so famous for their qualities that people flock to their country from every side.”
Incidentally, it can be mentioned that this truthful character of the then Indians was also recorded by later foreign writers. Marco Polo, for instance, in the thirteenth century noted as follows : "You must know that these Brahmins (the term used by him was Abraiaman) are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth.5" Similarly, in the fourteenth century Friar Jordanus told us that the people of lesser India (South and Western India) “were true in speech and eminent in justice”. Max Müller cites another example. “In the fifteenth century.”, says Max Müller, “Kamaleddin Abd-errazak Samarkandi (14131482), who went as ambassador of the Khakan to the prince of Kalikut and to the king of Vidyānagara (about 1440-1445), bears testimony to the perfect security which merchants enjoy in that country". Max Müller futher says that from the records of the Ain i Akbari written by Abul Fazal, the minister of the emperor Akbar, in the sixteenth century this truthfulness of the then Indians was remarkable. “The Hindus”, says Abul Fazal, “are religious, affable, cheerful lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity; and their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battles”.?
We can go on quoting from book after book on this truthful character of the then Indians as recorded by the foreign travellers, till the advent of the Englishmen in Indian history. But the fact that Hemacandra recorded this incident in his Kumārapalacarita is the most important one.
4. Max Müller, Indian, what can it teach us ? p. 56. 5. Ibid., p. 56. 6. Ibid., p. 56. 7. Ibid., p. 57.
