Auld Lang Syne (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899. Excerpt: ... MY INDIAN FRIENDS' n KtLAKAJTZgA GOREH If I knew the Rajah Radhakanta Deva by correspondence only, the next son of India whom I came to know, and for a time very intimately, as one knows and loves a friend, had travelled all the way from India, having come to England with Dhulip Singh. While I was sitting in my room at Oxford copying Sanskrit MSS., a gentleman was shown in, dressed in a long black coat, looking different from my usual visitors, and addressing me in a language of which I did not understand a single word. I spoke to him in English, and asked him what language he was speaking, and he replied with great surprise, "Do you not understand Sanskrit?" "No," I said, "I have never heard it spoken, but here are some MSS. of the Veda which will interest you." He was delighted to see them, and began to read, but he had soon to confess that he was not able to translate a single word. When I expressed my surprise--though perhaps I ought not to have done so--he told me that he did not believe in the Veda any longer, but had become a Christian. His countenance was most intelligent, and almost heavy with thought, his language and his manners most winning, and we were soon deep in conversation. His name had been Nilakana Goreh--Nilakanlfai' being a name of /Slva (the Blue-neck)--but had been changed into Nehemiah Goreh, when he became a Christian. I have tried to find out more about his birthplace and his parents, but in vain; and, after all, who cares for all these monotonous details with which biographers generally fill the first chapters of their books? Nor did I care much for them myself, except to know that he came from a highly respected Brahman family, and that his father had been an educated man and a Sanskrit scholar. What I really cared for was the...