THE KING’S EMPIRE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12304, 19 April 1937, Page 2

THE KING’S EMPIRE

INDIA—THE FHANGING EAST j Civilisations as old as that of India I have flourished and crumbled into dust, but India remains, its Hindu s orthodoxy having its roots in the dim | past, its systems of medicine nn- jj changed since Hippocrates w.ts alive | 400 years before Christ, its millions j born of millions whose ancestry goes jj hack to (hose ancient invasions and settlements of people who broke through the Himalayas and poured into this southern land unnumbered centuries ago. They are stud to have come 1500 years before Caiist;. and so slowly changes the Fast that habits of thought and faith which were current • then are current to-day after something like 160 generations have risen up and passed on. It is 1200 years since Alexander the Great led his armies to the borders of Inuia, and 25 cent’.*.ties since Buddah came to this land, yet Buddism holds sway after all fits time. Nevertheless British India is changing. Unchanged for countless years, we may watch it changing now. Village industries are giving place to mills, vast jute factories in which not only Britisn but also Indian capital is sunk, and here the people of different castes are compelled to work side by side. Christianity, carricl to India by missionaries, world-ideas ami western civilisation spread by contact with traders and percolating from the universities to the colleges and schools, the building of railways and roads, the opening up of backward regions, the slow, sure shifting of population centres, all of these and a hundred other causes arc breaking down the old and building up the new , India, of which King Geoige the chilli is Emperor.