152

SPRENGER ON TRADITION

" abbreviating, systematising, and commentating. The material was
" altogether divine; and any unprejudiced historical inquiry, any
" simple and natural interpretation of the Coran, any free judgment
" on tradition or its origin, was condemned as apostasy. The only
" task that remained was to work up, in scholastic form, the
" existing material: and in this way was developed a literature
" of boundless dimensions, which yet at bottom possessed nothing
" real. The whole spiritual activity of the Mahometans, from the
" time of the Prophet to the present day, is a dream : but it is a
" dream in which a large portion of the human race have lived;
" and it has all the interest which things relating to mankind
" always possess for man" (vol. iii. p. clxxx.). 

It is strange that a subject surrounded, as we might imagine, with so many attractions for the Oriental student, as that of the early records of Islam, should be almost unknown in India. For the English, it may be said that they have in this country small leisure from the busy work of life, to turn aside to the task; and for the Hindoo it would prove hardly a congenial subject. But to educated and thoughtful Moslems, as involving the first beginnings and the development of what they hold to be most sacred and precious, one might have expected the study to be fraught with the deepest interest. The sword of Omar no longer checks freedom of inquiry; the right of private judgment and of discussion is here in India as free as the air we breathe; and yet their mind would seem still dwarfed and scared by the apparition of that sword. The honest and enlightened Moslem ought not to shrink from a domain of inquiry, opening up a long vista of history and literature, which he naturally looks up to with veneration, and portions of which he may justly regard with pride. The Christian missionary, too, might draw many a polished shaft from the same armoury. In our seats of learning, a branch of study so closely affecting an important section of the human race, and India in particular, might find a fitting place. And upon the learned men who preside at those Institutions devolves the responsibility of rendering that study popular in our Indian empire.