INTRODUCTION

This book does not pretend to deal with history. This book deals with our past and with our present by connecting facts that have been disconnected by so-called philosophers, historians, and social scientists in general and by “scholars extraordinary” in particular. It looks back to ancient heritage based on primary documents and evidences.

This book does not intend to describe our past, does not intend to add just another story to the lot, as modern historians do. It simply puts facts coherently together that are based on primary documentary sources. It is a report of a rigorous scrutiny of secondary sources. It puts scholars and their scholarly deliberations to the test of validity collating their biographies and their deliberations with the primary documents.

The authors of this book do not claim to be scholars in the prevailing international academic culture. They have become simple-minded in course of time. They just want to know things and matters as these actually are and how these things and matters came into being. They constantly try to shed off virtual worlds created by superstitions, beliefs, ideologies, systems of artificial terminology and all that goes with these creations. They do exercise in careful reading. And while they read, they raise questions and questions, digging back to the beginning, to the origin.

This methodology is learnt from the wisdom that is practiced in daily life through ages in all human societies. This wisdom is simple. Whenever someone tells a tale, two simple questions are to be put to begin with: who is the narrator and how does the narrator come to know what he is telling about.

The authors begin the presentation of their documentary journey to our past and present putting these two simple questions to a Max Müller, M.A. Why Max Müller, M.A.? All queries to human cultural heritage automatically lead to the “East”, to “Orient” and thus to the cultural heritage of Bharatavarsa, a vast land which has later been named India by foreign people. None else has left behind more printed pages on the “East” and on “India” than Max Müller. He has also claimed to be the first human being performing the remarkable Hercules-job, collecting and editing the oldest book that the humankind has ever known: the complete Rig Veda in the Sanskrit script. Sanskrit is an ancient language.

Another reason to begin this search and re-searches exemplarily with the detailed biography of Max Müller is that he is kept as a demigod in the Gallery of all-time Scholars very high who seemingly excelled in the Science of Ancient Cultures, as one of those European Christian intellectual giants. In any standard books on History and culture we find quotes like:

“The German Indologist H. Jacobi came independently to similar conclusions and dated the beginning of the Vedic period in the middle of the 5th millennium. Mostly one followed, however, the dating set by the famous German Indologist Max Mueller who taught in Cambridge in the late 19th century. Setting out from the lifetime of the Buddha around 500 BC he dated the origin of the Upanishads in the centuries from 800 to 600 BC as the philosophy in them had originated before Buddha’s deeds. The Brahmana– and Mantra texts preceded these in the centuries from 1000 to 800 respectively from 1200 to 1000 BC. Today one dates the oldest Vedic text, that of Rigveda, into the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Since the Vedas soon after this genesis as a divine manifestation were not allowed to be changed anymore and handed down to our contemporary time by priest families verbally in an unbelievably precise manner, they can now be considered, after their dating can be regarded as being fixed at least in specific centuries, as historical sources of first rank for the history of the Vedic society in northern India.”

Nothing in this quote is based on primary sources. Absolutely nothing. These types of loose writings are based actually on “modern-science-rituals” of “copy and paste” from available printed pages. Take palatable parts from printed secondary sources, add some new bits of “information” or “imagination”, make it plausible, and make it sellable. In this way these secondary-source-writings create virtual worlds of fantasy with sellable qualities only.

Unless the claims are collated with career-data of the celebrated authors, the truth will never be unveiled. None of the claims of any European Christian intellectual giants have been challenged or put to the test of validity. This is unsurprisingly done in this book. In course of the journey along with the real biography of Max Müller, M.A., for example, it is revealed, we apologise looking a little ahead, that his claims are swindles. It is also revealed that his biography is exemplary to this culture. We are surprised to note that Max Müller was kept on the payroll of the British East India Company to accomplish his scholarly jobs; from the very beginning of his occupational career. Yes, the British East India Company. And what did the British East India Company do in Bharatavarsa?

It is remarkable that in the cultural heritage of Rig Veda there is no mention of a land or of a geographical area which is called “India”. This is all the more remarkable because this cultural heritage includes vast number of profound books on knowledge, science, philosophy and literature. Rig Veda is the first of the four Vedas composed in the Vedic language. The other profound books are handed-down in the Sanskrit language that emerged later. There are two more ancient languages, Prakrit and Pali following Sanskrit. Also in the post Vedic books in the Sanskrit language there is indeed mention of a vast geographical area of culture called Bharatavarsa. The name “India” is obviously accorded by foreign people, most probably by the Hellenes in the Greek language. For convenience the authors of this book use “India” keeping Bharatavarsa in mind.

After the unsuccessful foray of Alexander the Macedonian, about 2400 years back, the Hellenistic diplomat Megasthenes stays in Bharatavarsa as Ambassador of Seleucus I for eleven years. He writes four bulky volumes on his observations and experiences there, but he does not write on the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras, Brahmanas and the likes, nor makes any special references to languages. This may indicate that the Hellenes were quite familiar with these books and with the languages. However, this is not known. It is known that the cultural heritage of India was not brought to Christian Europe in the Greek language. Whatever the Hellenes have reported on India comes to the rest of Europe much later, after the Europeans have lived around a thousand years in Christianity.

The first recorded real encounter of European Christians with India goes back to the beginning of the 16th century. The “Thomas Christians” a few hundred years earlier, were immigrants in the south of Bharatavarsa. They never went back to Europe. Vasco da Gama was the next. Vasco da Gama and the “Vasco da Gamas” do not arrive in India on foray like Alexander the Macedonian or quite a few Islamic ruffians; they are on war and lay the foundation of foreign occupation of “India”, along with the Christian Orders of the Vatican in Goa.

Yet, whatever is known about this ancient cultural heritage of Bharatavarsa in our time is not conveyed in Latin or in Portuguese languages. These are conveyed mainly in the English language. This is so in today’s India as well. Most of the authors of those books are Europeans Christians from British “United Kingdom”. The questions arise inevitably, why in English and how these authors writing in English or in some other contemporary European languages could know about the ancient cultural heredity of Bharatavarsa? Did they learn the Vedic, Sanskrit, Prakrit or Pali languages? Where, when, from whom, for how long?

The knowledge accumulated in Bharatavarsa in course of time immemorial is stored in the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras, Brahmanas and the likes, either in the Vedic language or in the Sanskrit language. Before the creation of scripts these treasures were preserved in oral-tradition. The oral-tradition exists also in today’s India, parallel to the written-tradition that emerged logically much later than the oral-tradition. The parallel existence of oral and written tradition has preserved the ancient books undistorted.

At least three gulfs have to be bridged before one reaches the treasures stored in the Vedic language and the Sanskrit language. The modern European languages have emerged recently. There is an immense gap in terms of time. Another gap is in terms of the difference in culture. Third gap is in terms of the differences in depth and richness of these two sets of languages, the Vedic language and the Sanskrit language in one side, and the European languages on the other. Were these divides bridged? How could these divides be bridged?

All major European Christian authors have, however, claimed that they translated the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras, Brahmanas and the likes from the original “Sanskrit” language. The Vedas are composed in the Vedic language. The Sanskrit language is post-Vedic. Well, we may let this ignorance regarding the Vedic language be.

But how do they overcome those three Gulfs? Apart from the issues of their ignorance regarding the Vedic language, their efforts bridging the Gulfs, it has then to be explicated at least where, when, from whom and for how long these European Christian authors had chances to learn this obscure foreign language called Sanskrit.

The next issue is to scrutinise the life-career of those European Christian authors individually, beside Max Müller, who handed-down the accumulated knowledge in Bharatavarsa to their fellow European Christians in European languages. This may appear to be an easy undertaking whenever one gets into a “modern” library. There are so many books and plenty of reference books in the libraries introducing and specifying those individual European Christians who are credited accomplishing this difficult performance. But is it so? How reliable are these printed papers?

It is, de facto, not an easy undertaking to scrutinise all those printed papers. One has to demand proofs for almost each sentence. These readily available references books in the libraries do not disclose their sources. Therefore it is needed to search for primary sources in the archives. Whenever primary source is absent, the only conclusion would be that the version that has been scrutinised is a fake.

The readily available reference books do not stand this test. These books are deceptive packages. These books are not authentic. These books do not carry truths. Arriving at this point one has to search for sources, for primary sources, look into the bio-data of those individual European Christians in details to collate their writings to their bio-data. One has to collate each and every “fact” in the reference books with original documents. This has to be learnt by own experiences. We, the authors of this book, have undergone this toilsome process.

Scholars belonging to this culture have never learnt to question their celebrated “intellectual giants” whether, where, for how long and in which educational institutions they acquired their claimed qualifications and abilities to read and understand the books written in the Vedic or in the Sanskrit languages. We, the authors of this book, have questioned these celebrated “intellectual giants” decorating the reference books. What were their sources? Did they critically check their sources? Or were they just “imaginative”?

These are the issues dealt in this book. The results of scrutinises presented in this book are based on documented primary sources only. The logic is simple and straightforward. Any deliberation which cannot be traced back to a primary source, and the referred primary source cannot stand the test of its validity, is faked. It is a tiresome searching job no doubt. But this hardship is necessary. This book is a proof that most of the secondary sources do not carry historical truths even in parts. The consequent application of this simple and straightforward method of search and re-search has banged on the box of Pandora.

This book opens up the whole panorama of swindles of the prevailing Era of Vasco da Gama. This Era is rooted in the declaration of War on the rest of the world by the European Christians in the 15th century. This declaration of War on the rest of the world is documented by two Papal Bulls.

A War is never an end in itself, never a self-purpose. A War does never fall from the blue. A War is always planned and triggered by the better equipped power to gain economic power at the cost of others. A War does never come to an end before the better equipped power wins. Or the better equipped power loses. There are always losers and winners. No exceptions.

This book looks back to the beginning and looks into the continuous Warfare still going strong. The authors call this war to be the World War I, which is marked by relentless robbery, rape, murder, genocide, occupation, extensive exploitation and sustained exploitation!

The authors apologise for using their simple, straight, undiplomatic, academically unusual language; and also for continuous references and reminders to hard facts. It might appear that certain hard facts are being repeated. It is not exactly so. The repetitions of identical facts are not just repetitions; these repeated identical facts open up other panoramas, many other perspectives, in different contexts. They become more comprehensive vis-a-vis new contexts.

The contents of documented primary sources are exactly cited and are not just reproduced in parts or narrated. Our book does not intend to be entertaining, does not intend to make anybody believe anything, but to unveil truths, removing rubbish and dirty covers, layers after layers, which have been deliberately thrown.

Along with the rigorous scrutiny of Max Müller’s biography, all other demigods and the major actors in this celebrated gallery are also taken under rigorous scrutiny with their economical, political and cultural background as well as their social settings. The box of Pandora is thus wide open.

CHAPTER 1



PROLOGUE

Modern scholars and their sciences

“No one who is at all acquainted with the position which India occupies in the history of the world, would expect to find many synchronisms between the history of the Brahmins and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India. Although the Brahmins of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family, which civilised the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation. The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the North West. No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on, through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of these world-wide migrations belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soils of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness, to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather ethnical movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to let one’s friends depart, and then to set out ourselves – to take a road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again who speak our language and worship our gods – is a course which only men of strong individuality and great self- dependence are capable of pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryans of India and the Zoroastrians of Iran.

At the first dawn of traditional history we see these Aryan tribes migrating across the snow of the Himâlaya southward to the ‘Seven rivers’ (the Indus, the five rivers of the Panjâb and the Sarasvati), and ever since India has been called their home. That before that time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, the Slavonians, Germans and Celts, is a fact as firmly established as that the Normans of William the conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia. The evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods. It would have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors, whether Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language. What other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus? Yet these are the times of which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army, that their God and their hero ancestors were the same as those of King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins and in the veins of the dark Bengalese? ... There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and Italians, the Persians, and the Hindus were living together within the same fences, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.

It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he started alone in search for a new world. But as in his language and in his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern dialects singly, alone, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to differ from all the rest, and as no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom – whether roots, grammar, words, myths or legends – it is natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.

The Aryan nations, who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal Nations of North-western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of the history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of acting life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In the continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character.

But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the mountains which gird in the north of India. After crossing the narrow pass of the Hindukush or the Himâlaya, they conquered or drove before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their guides the principal rivers of northern India, and were led by them to new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys.”

These few lines tell precisely the prevailing Modern History of Human Culture in a nutshell. Every sentence of this quotation seems to carry findings of meticulous research by scholars that have been summed up in these lines. Is it so? It is not so. Not a single source has been mentioned. So, for readers, for us, for our understanding there is only one alternative left. Either believe in this told history or reject. Nothing can be checked. Nothing can be known. As it is just mentioned, Modern History of Human Culture is founded on these lines whatsoever. Never before lines like these were published. Not a single line in this quote has been revised. Modern Scholars have believed in these findings and have accepted these findings. Willingly, as it appears. One needs only to consult published literature.

These lines are quoted from a celebrated scholarly book published in 1859 by a renowned scholar of that time who is well-celebrated till today. The inner title-page of this book is noteworthy. Here it is.

As simple - minded searchers, we have learnt to adopt the wisdom of our ancestors that is universally practiced in daily life through ages. Whenever we hear a tale or see something, we are alert and we are careful. From the inner title-page we come to know that the author is one Max Müller. He has acquired the academic degree of a Master of Arts. We all know that “Master of Arts” is an academic degree. It is, in simpler words, academy-leaving-certificate indicating that the holder of the certificate did consume his years in the academy successfully. It is not a research degree. Research Degrees can only be acquired by doing and publishing independent research. These are post M.A. degrees. Research Qualifications can also be acquired by doing and publishing research works.

Therefore, we conclude that Max Müller, M.A., did not acquire a research a research degree up to the year 1859. This does not mean that Max Müller, M.A. has not acquired research qualifications. It would have been a better decoration of the inner-title page referring to eventual published research reports. We must look out whether, when, where and on what subjects he has done independent research. We have taken a note of our query and we shall follow it up. We must also know where and from which College or University Max Müller has acquired his academic degree of a Master of Arts.

*****

The title of the book “A HISTORY OF ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE” assumes that Max Müller, M.A. has thoroughly studied ancient Indian history, ancient Indian literature and ancient Indian culture handed-down in an ancient Indian language called Sanskrit. We shall search for primary sources to check up these claims.

We have read the sub-title of the book: “SO FAR AS IT ILLUSTRATES THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE BRAHMINS” several times. The sub-title tells that Max Müller, M.A. has also acquired thorough knowledge of religions in general and specific knowledge of the religion of the Brahmins. And that the religion of the Brahmins has been qualified by Max Müller, M.A. as primitive. We shall search for primary sources to check up where and how he acquired these claimed competences. And we shall also have to know how Max Müller, M.A. defined the term “primitive”.

*****

Further we are informed by the inner title page of the book that Max Müller, M.A. has also been attached to many learned institutions. We come to know as well that, at least in 1859, Max Müller was “Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; Correspondent de l'Institut lmpérial de France; Foreign Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy; Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Literature; Corresponding Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal; and of the American Oriental Society; Member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and of the Oriental Society of Germany; and Taylorian Professor in the University of Oxford.”

We admit we are unable to take this inner-title-page of the book. We do not find any systematic relationship between these 8 (eight) different institutions and Max Müller, M.A. as the author of a book titled: A HISTORY OF ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE. As simple-minded readers and searchers for truths we wished to comprehend the purpose of all these information on the inner-title-page of this book. Yes, what could be the purpose? What is the purpose?

Then we stumbled on “Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford” on the top of the list and “Taylorian Professor in the University of Oxford” at the end. A college, we all know, is not a university. Colleges are for teaching and not for research. British Colleges at Oxford are no exceptions. For all practical purposes, “All Souls College” at Oxford is biased by Christian belief and not laden with knowledge. Colleges like All Souls College do socialize its pupils to become Christian missionaries at a more effective level than those trained solely in Christian Churches and all that goes with it. Does this mention indicate his confession of being a Christian missionary? Or should it create some other associations? We are on alert. “Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford” should not create associations that All Souls College at Oxford is a part of Oxford University.

“Taylorian Professor in the University of Oxford” does not indicate the subject. We became curious and did search and digging. The results take us in surprise. Here are the results:

A “Taylorian Professor in the University of Oxford” did never exist. There was indeed a Taylor Institution at Oxford, which was not a part of Oxford University. This institution organized lessons in “modern” European languages. Here is the story of the Taylor Institution in a nutshell. None of the colleges at Oxford, or Oxford University used to teach “modern languages”. In 1724, George I tried to initiate teaching of French and of German to train future diplomats at Oxford University. He failed. The Authorities of the University rejected the initiative. Oxford University continued teaching Greek and Latin only.

Years later, the notable architect Sir Robert Taylor (1714-1788) fixed in his will in favour of his only son, Michael Angelo Taylor, that a part of his huge fortune was to be spent to set up a foundation “for the teaching and improving those European languages … essential to Diplomatic and commercial pursuits” at Oxford. “After various legal complications and the death of Sir Robert's son, Michael Angelo, in 1834, the University inherited the sum of £65,000.” After many controversies “the Taylorian statute finally passed on 4 March 1847” for teaching European languages and started with French and German. Even the newly constructed building of the foundation differs distinctly from that of Oxford University.

It is known that Oxford University added the Boden Chair for Sanskrit to Greek and Latin in 1832. We are however unable to comprehend how a Taylorian Professor for Modern Languages, in the University of Oxford or just at Oxford, should be qualified to write a scholarly book on “A HISTORY OF ANCIENT SANSKRIT LITERATURE, SO FAR AS IT ILLUSTRATES THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE BRAHMINS.” Was it not a subject for the holder of the Boden Chair for Sanskrit? We have taken this issue as a marker.

*****

We also take note of several different status-descriptions in this remarkable list as well: Max Müller, M.A. is “Correspondent” Member, “Foreign” Member, “Honorary” Member, “Corresponding” Member and “Member” of an “Institute”, of an “Academy” in “Societies” in different Countries. What do these different types of membership indicate? It is even more puzzling when we look into the types and details of institutions mentioned. Because we stumbled, we wanted to get more details about these institutions. Here are the results:

Ø Correspondent de l'Institut lmpérial de France. This Institute is in France happened to be not royal, not national, but it is imperial. Imperial has something to do with empire and empire has something to do with a geographically extensive group of lands and peoples, is something like making a conquest, an occupation, isn’t it? When was the institution founded, by whom, for what purpose? For how long did it exist? Did it really exist? We have reasons to maintain our scepticism as we don’t find answers to our questions.

Ø Foreign Member of the Royal Bavarian Academy. We assumed Max Müller is a German name. And Royal Bavarian Academy must have been a German institution. Our assumptions are correct. Why then “foreign member”? While trying to collect a little more information on this institution we stumbled again. “Royal Bavarian Academy” of what? Elector of Bavaria Max III Joseph founded in 1769 the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Then a school of Arts for drawing and graphic in 1770. King of Bavaria Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria elevated this school to an Academy of Fine Arts in 1808 which was also called the "Royal Academy of Fine Arts" and never Royal Bavarian Academy. We wonder about this type of slip in the inner title-page of a scholarly book.

Ø Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Literature. It must had been: The Royal Society of Literature in Britain, founded in 1820 by King George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent"

Ø Corresponding Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. To be accurate Max Müller’s “Asiatic Society” could at best be the “Asiatick Society of Bengal”, founded in 1784 in Calcutta by Sir William Jones. He is considered to be a scholarly demigod. A detailed hi(story) will follow after a while in a separate chapter. At present this much: The “Asiatick Society of Bengal” was the first factory for forging history and for brainwashing. And Sir William Jones was a high-graded swindler.

Ø American Oriental Society was founded in 1842. This so-called oldest US learned society claimed to deal with basic research in languages and literatures of Asia. It also claimed to deal with subjects like philology, literary criticism, textual criticism, palaeography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and the history of the intellectual and imaginative aspects of Oriental civilizations, especially of philosophy, religion, folklore and art. Is there any area of so-called Humanities left? Quite naturally all European waves, also the orient enthusiasms, reached the European “colonisers” in “America” too. But learned societies for basic research as well? Who were the “scholars”?

Ø Asiatic Society of Paris. If one puts Asiatic Society of Paris in the search machines of the web, one gets something else. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Asiatic Society of Japan - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopaedia, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and so on. If one goes deep, one finds in the “Bibliot. Nat. France cat.” a Société Asiatique, founded in1822.

Ø Oriental Society of Germany. In the search machines of the web there is no reference to a society called Oriental Society of Germany. The nearest approach would be: The Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG), which is an “Eingetragener Verein” - a registered voluntary association -, based at Berlin in Germany. The DOG was officially founded in January 1898 to foster public interest in oriental antiquities. Then there was The Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG), a scholarly organization dedicated to studies on Asia and on a broader Orient. The DMG was established on 2 October 1845 in Leipzig by leading Oriental scholars from Germany, as well as members of other “Oriental Societies” such as the Asiatick Societies in Paris, London and Kolkata.

We do not know whether others also stumbled so often while studying the inner title-page of this book as we did and/or how they reacted if they did actually stumble. Nothing is handed down on this issue. We are surprised. We have become apprehensive by this simple check-up, which leads us to ask questions like: Are these simple inaccuracies? Don’t they show too many facets to be accounted for as just careless inaccuracies? We remain apprehensive. That is why we raise other questions like: Could there be a system behind these inaccuracies? Who is this Max Müller, M.A.? What is known about his life, work and career? What did he do? How did he earn his living? Which institutions recruited him? We have taken note of all these dissonances arisen in our mind about the author Max Müller, M.A.

*****

It has not escaped our attention that there are no references to the sources in the entire text we have cited in the beginning of this chapter. Before we get into the issue of sources, we would like to turn back our attention to the quoted text in the beginning and start reading it more carefully. As mentioned, we are simple-minded persons. We are slow in grasping because we read every sentence and try to comprehend the whole meaning. This is the way how we read. We apologise in advance if our mode of reading should irritate. But we are as we are.

“No one who is at all acquainted(Max Müller obviously claims to be well “acquainted”) with the position which India occupies in the history of the world (Max Müller claims to be a “global” historian), would expect to find many synchronisms (! ?) between the history of the Brahmins (We shall have to verify his claim to know all about the Brahmins correlating the claims to his biography.) and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India (Had there been ‘nations’ prior to Buddhism?). Although the Brahmins of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family (How has it been established that there was “the Aryan or Indo-European family”, when, by whom and how?), which civilised the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation (“first separation”? Does Max Müller subtly intend to make us believe that there are Aryans and Aryans who are in fact Indo-Europeans? And that these “two branches of this primitive race” separated at some “pre-historic” period? That one of the branches civilised the whole of Europe? That the branch of the Brahmins was inferior to those who had civilised the whole of Europe?). The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the North West (How does Max Müller arrive to this assertion?). No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on, through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe (Has there been any systematic ‘historical research’ on this issue?). The first start of these world-wide migrations belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soils of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans or Greeks (How can we know anything if it is beyond historical sources? How should Max Müller come to know about ‘the first start’?). But whatever it was (Obviously Max Müller is not keen to establish how it has been!), the impulse was as irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the Atlantik. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness, to be able to withstand the impetus of such national (?), or rather ethnical (?) movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to let one’s friends depart, and then to set out ourselves – to take a road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again who speak our language and worship our gods (gods?) – is a course which only men of strong individuality and great self- dependence are capable of pursuing (We are left speechless by these limitless fantasies!). It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryans of India and the Zoroastrians of Iran.

At the first dawn of traditional history (What is traditional history? Who handed it down? When? Where is it available?) we see these Aryan tribes (!) migrating across the snow of the Himâlaya (Is it by any means possible to migrate ‘across the snow of the Himâlaya’ on foot?) southward to the ‘Seven rivers’ (the Indus, the five rivers of the Panjâb and the Sarasvati), and ever since India has been called their home. That before that time they had been living in more northern regions, within the same precincts with the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, the Slavonians, Germans and Celts, is a fact as firmly established (‘firmly established’ by whom, how and when?) as that the Normans of William the conqueror were the Northmen of Scandinavia (What is the message behind this rather poetic narration: Only Aryan “tribes” have brought ‘civilisation’ to mankind? What about the Semites? Had there been other “tribes” also?). The evidence of language is irrefragable, and it is the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods (Max Müller claims to be an expert in ‘Linguistics’ also!). It would have been next to impossible to discover any traces of relationship between the swarthy natives of India and their conquerors, whether Alexander or Clive, but for the testimony borne by language (Is this a subtle message that the Christian occupants of in Bharatavarsa were not ‘colonizers` in fact? Did they just visit their relatives and they claimed their legal ‘heir’, while they were plundering indiscriminately?).

What other evidence could have reached back to times when Greece was not peopled by Greeks, nor India by Hindus (Which people “peopled” Greece and India and how did Max Müller come to know this?)? Yet these are the times of which we are speaking. What authority would have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army, that their God and their hero ancestors were the same as those of King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins and in the veins of the dark Bengalese? ... There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and Italians, the Persians, and the Hindus were living together within the same fences, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races (That is it!).

It is more difficult to prove that the Hindu was the last to leave this common home, that he saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun and that then, turning towards the south and the east, he started alone in search for a new world. But as in his language and in his grammar he has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern dialects singly, alone, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to differ from all the rest, and as no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom – whether roots, grammar, words, myths or legends – it is natural to suppose that, though perhaps the eldest brother, the Hindu was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family (We shall have to scrutinise meticulously where, when, from whom Max Müller could have learnt which languages!).

The Aryan nations who pursued a north-westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal Nations of North-western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of the history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of acting life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In the continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation, commerce, and religion. In a word, they represent the Aryan man in his historical character (Is this the message that the Aryan tribes, the Aryan people, the Aryan nations have been the most decisive actors in the great drama of history? Have they perfected human society and morals? Do we learn from their literature and works the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy? Is this the message that in the continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history?).

But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path, the southern tribes were slowly migrating towards the mountains which gird in the north of India. After crossing the narrow pass of the Hindukush or the Himâlaya, they conquered or drove before them, as it seems without much effort, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Trans-Himalayan countries. They took for their guides the principal rivers of northern India, and were led by them to new homes in their beautiful and fertile valleys.”

*****

We get back to the issue of sources of information. In all standard books on history, on history of culture, on Indology published after 1859 we find all those facts presented here by Max Müller as referred to in the beginning of this chapter. On this fundament, Max Müller has integrated other perceptions on society and culture without any critical check-up of the validity of the assertions. In none of the standard books on these subjects published before 1859, we find these facts presented by Max Müller. Therefore, we conclude that Max Müller has handed-down these facts for the first time in the literature on the Modern History, on Human Culture and on Indology. Thus, he is accountable for his sources.

There was no mention of the Aryan-race prior to Max Müller. He was thus the discoverer or inventor of the Aryan-race as well. He did describe the physical features of the Aryans in comparison to the rest of humankind. The Aryans were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. In 1859 photography was yet to be invented. When did he go to the land of Aryan-origin? When did he see “Aryans”? The land of Aryan-origin, so it is told by Max Müller, was to be Central-East Asia. It is handed-down that the Venetian Marco Polo spent long years in that area in the 13th century. He has written a lot on what he had seen and experienced. Why did he not see the Aryans, why did he not write on the Aryan-Race?

We must find out how and when Max Müller discovered these facts. It is undeniable that he is accepted as an authority on all these facets of ancient “History”, on “Religions”, on “Indology”, on “Philosophy” and on “Linguistics”. Even his claim to have acquired perfect command over the ancient Language called Sanskrit is also universally accepted. He is also accountable on this issue.

A language does not travel. A language has to be transported by human beings. There are two ways. One travels to the land of that language, learns it and carries it to his land. Or one comes from that land and brings the language with him and also teaches it. We shall have to investigate how Sanskrit arrived in Europe and how European scholars of Sanskrit came to their knowledge of Sanskrit.

*****

As indicated before, we are simple-minded persons. Though we are products of the universally prevailing “educational” system created and spread by European Christians, somehow we have retained our simplicity. We practice calling a spade a spade. And we are in search of knowledge. We are too simple-minded to be able to believe. We always want to know. If we do not understand, we ask questions.

Our basic premise is:

“A good scientific theory should be explicable to a barmaid.”

We do not claim copy right for this wonderful and precise expression. This sentence is not ours. Had it been ours, we would not have claimed copy right any way. This sentence was formulated by a New Zealand-born physicist and chemist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He is widely credited being the first "splitting the atom" in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton. If he could explicate his theories to a barmaid, we demand the same from all scholars in the humanities as well. We must demand from the scholars of all subjects to explicate their findings in a simple language. He was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908. However, we feel our New Zealand-born physicist and chemist should not have singled out the “barmaids” as less intelligent persons. “Barmaids” are not fools. We owe this sentence to Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937).

We were unable to accept that Max Müller and his scholarly followers wanted us to believe that the “Aryans” were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. Our obvious query was: How do they know? When did they discover them? Did the “Aryans” ever exist?

*****

We put two and two of the “world (hi)story” in written form together. We are struck by the fact that Moses is the first landmark. He introduced “The God”. “God” revealed the truths to him only. He and his followers, the later Jews, were content considering Moses exceptionally chosen by “God”. The followers of Moses considered themselves to be exceptionally fortunate being associated with him. Jesus Christ, a Jew, is the next landmark founding “Christianity”. Mohammed (was he a Jew, or a Christian or what?) founded the “Islam”. All three of them are categorised to be of “Semitic origin”. The cultural heredity of these three landmarks determined the approach to life of the Europeans. European Christians felt inferior to the “Jews”. It is not handed-down that the Jews were keen to spread their religion. But we remember the terms “mission” and “jihad”. We won’t discuss just now, whether these campaigns were forays in disguise.

A category called “race” to differentiate human beings was not yet coined. Nor the concepts of occupation and exploitation of foreign lands and people. These concepts were coined during the “Era of Vasco da Gama” only. We shall have to search in these directions as well.

It is undeniable that since around the last two centuries the world in all walks of life is being dominated by European Christians. They have given many names for this culture to cover the roots of this culture. We are puzzled by the names of this culture as Christian, occidental, European, industrial, western, post-war–, democratic, modern, humanistic, formed, solidarity–, leisure-time–, information–, risk–, media–, open, global, television–, Internet–, information–, interactive, fun-, media-, knowledge culture, etc. etc..

We have to raise many questions like: why so many names are coined to characterize a single culture? Is it an expression of a special fantasy, special accuracy or does it only express embarrassment and helplessness; a search for identity; or a desperate attempt to veil the essential characteristics of this culture and to try to divert the focus to superficial changes caused by technological developments? What are the fundamentals of this society? We shall have to search for answers.

Putting two and two together of the “Era of Vasco da Gama” we ascertain few other concepts beside “race” and “occupation and exploitation of foreign lands and people” as well: “Indo-German” Indo-Europeans, “Aryans”, “Indo-Aryans”, “affinities, similarities, kinships and families in languages”, “defining human beings in terms of outer physical features and relating these features to determine the human, cultural and social quality of them”, just to mention a few. All these extend the area of our search and re-searches, though it begins with the “curriculum Vitae” of Max Müller.

*****

We are confronted with the remarkable fact that most of today’s “science-subjects” adding up to the “modern humanities” have emerged during the “Era of Vasco da Gama”. Fact is also that never before we were exposed to the industrial complex of mind-management. “To make others believe” is the purpose. Today it is almost all-comprehensive and almost perfect. It is not that the “scientists” of our time have become cleverer and have packed their messages more slyly. No, that’s not the case. By the heavy load of comprehensive exposures, we are losing our ability to recognise manipulation more and more.

This begins in the family. In the family, the “elders” possess the monopoly of power. First thing is to assert oneself first. It does not matter how and by which means. This principle of exercising power is also practiced at schools, on jobs, in sub-cultures and becomes part and parcel of the entire culture. Technological innovations of mass-media play a major role. Nothing depends on truth. It is the plausibility and the created images count. All sellable fakes become thus truth. The logic is primitive but effective. People wouldn’t buy it if it were not true, would they? Have we not already forgotten the media reports on the “Gulf war” of the last century, “Kosovo- air strikes”, “Gulf war again, “Afghanistan – crusade”, “Libya” and “Syria”? And the intelligent bombshells enriched with uranium that identify the villains only? We wonder whether the prevailing hypocrisy could be topped. The “drone-warfare” and its international legality earn close observations.

We must not have to apologise because of these “provocative” sentences. They may appear to be provocative. The might-media-manipulation-industry deliberately overwhelms us with disjoined information. We may appear to be provocative due to our endeavour to put issues in coherence that is, as a matter of fact, all issues are coherent. By this method, we offer resistance against the might-media-manipulation-industry that constantly tries to reduce our memory. Gradually it is becoming less than that of the hard disc of our own computer. These manipulators of opinions know very well how deeply the racial consciousness is rooted in this prevailing culture, and how to exploit this prejudice to camouflage conflicting issues.

We apologise taking a little aside and look back into the vast literature in Vedic language and in the Sanskrit language. We have studied these issues meticulously. The results will be presented in due course. At present only this much. There are quite a few features and concepts, which do not occur, in the ancient literature in Bharatavarsa. For example: belief, religion, god, temple, race, caste, only to mention a few terms which have been imported in “Indian” languages by means of projection operated by “Christian-European-Scholars”. Race and caste are contributed by the Iberian occupants of foreign lands only.

These are reasons to be sceptical when we read the lines written by Max Müller and all that goes with this writing. Therefore, to begin with, we are undertaking a thorough investigation not of his deliberations in writing. Before we get involved with his writings, we would like to get into his “Curriculum Vitae” in details to assess whether it is worth reading his writings. A detailed review of “Curriculum Vitae” of any person will show, whether, when, where, for how long, how a person could have eventually acquired knowledge in a subject that he claims to know. A detailed review of “CurriculumVitae” of Max Müller will also reveal exemplarily the epub of his teachers, his compatriots, his cultural descendants, in short, the whole culture.

We all know from experiences through the ages that social behaviour is socially inherited. Behaviour has to be learnt and internalized. We come back to our questions following our simple check-up of the text in the beginning of this chapter that was caused by the unusual layout of a “scholarly” Book: Why all these inaccuracies on the inner title page of his book which almost amount to swindle? We take liberty to reproduce the inner page at the end of this chapter of a prologue and begin a long and toilsome journey in search of truths. We reject secondary sources on principle. We depend upon primary sources. We shall keep our eyes wide open to be able to judge not only:

CHAPTER 2



WHO IS MAX MÜLLER M.A.?

His family heredity, childhood and early school days

Max Müller is born in Dessau, in a small Duchy called Anhalt-Dessau, on December 6, 1823. He was not born as Max Müller. He is Friedrich Maximilian Müller. He changes his name rather late, at sometime in 1847 while staying in England. He marries in England much later. On the marriage testimony, he is registered as Frederick Maximilian Müller. Why does he do this exercise with his name? Why did he try to conceal his identity as Friedrich Maximilian Müller? We do not know yet. We shall try to find out in due course.

Anhalt-Dessau is a small, prosperous and progressive Duchy. So it is said. Until 1603 Anhalt-Dessau was ruled by the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, and thereafter Anhalt-Dessau was recreated, being raised to a duchy in 1807. It was located in the north-central Europe, south of Prussia, having Zerbst in between, and between the two “provinces” of Saxony. Territory wise the Duchy was about 630 square-kilometres having a maximum 60,000 in population. Dessau was the administrative town having a population of about 3,000. Frederick Leopold IV succeeded Duke Leopold III in 1817. This is the phase not only in the “German” history when the “nobles” are systematically losing their might and economic hegemony leading to the rise of Capitalism in Europe and all that went and goes with it. Occupation of foreign lands, so-called Colonialism included. A land called Germany was not created yet.

“Müller” is a traditional surname widely spread in Germany. The “Müllers” in Germany belonged to the lower strata of the “commons” in the society. Traditionally the “Müllers” were grinders of corns and seeds of all sorts.

Friedrich Maximilian’s parents Wilhelm and Adelheide Müller also gave birth to a daughter, Auguste, on 20. April 1822. Wilhelm Müller was the sixth of seven children of Christian Leopold and of Marie Leopoldine Müller. They were poor. Christian Leopold Müller was a tailor. He was often ill at stretches. Before Wilhelm Müller was three years old, all other children had expired.

Christian Leopold Müller did not try to train Wilhelm as a tailor. In spite of his poverty, he sent his son to schools. He wanted his only surviving son Wilhelm to prosper more in life by getting education. He lost his wife while Wilhelm was fourteen years old, in 1808. A year later, Christian Leopold Müller married the widow of a well-to-do master-butcher, Marie Seelmann, so that he would be able to ensure his son Wilhelm a good education. So it is told. He succeeded.

Wilhelm Müller could begin studying literature, history, and philology at the University in Berlin when he was eighteen, in 1812. We take note that Berlin is far off from Anhalt- Dessau and more expensive than the nearer off university at Leipzig. Six months later, however, Wilhelm joined the Prussian army in the “War of Liberation” against Napoleon, who was retreating from his disastrous invasion of Russia. Within a year, Wilhelm Müller became a lieutenant at the age just over nineteen. On his tour of duty, he stayed in Brussels where he got involved in a love affair that ended badly.

Wilhelm Müller resumed his studies at the University in Berlin in 1814. He completed his studies in 1817 there. While studying he discovered his affinity to cultural activities. He visited literary circles. He wrote also his own verses. He fell in love with the poetess Louise Hensel, who encouraged him in his writer-career but did not return his affections and love. He had also joined the Berliner Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Berlin Society for the German language). Thus he got the chance to travel to Greece, Egypt and the Middle East with the Prussian chamberlain Baron Sack. Unfortunately, because of the plague in Constantinople they stopped off in Italy. Around Easter, he parted from Baron Sack because he wanted to stay on in Italy, went to Naples and spent the summer in Rome.

On his return from Italy, he was appointed as a teacher of classic languages at Dessau in 1818. Then he took up the job of an assistant librarian in the ducal library in Dessau. A year later, he became a librarian of the small Duchy having a population of maximum 60,000 as we remember. As a librarian, however, he became a part of the administration of the Duchy though on the bottom line to begin with. He was then twenty-five.

Wilhelm Müller, being the son of a poor tailor, thus arrived at the threshold of the entry to the “high society” of Anhalt-Dessau. He made friends in circles engaged in cultural activities also outside Anhalt-Dessau. Franz Schubert will set two of his verses to music: Die Winterreise (The winter trip) and Die schöne Müllerin (The miller's beautiful wife). These two songs are played even today. Max Müller will proudly mention this in his Auld Lang Syne, published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London and Bombay in 1898 (p.42), i.e. two years before his death. Auld Lang Syne is one of our primary sources to reconstruct the real life of Friedrich Maximilian Müller.

In 1821 Wilhelm Müller, when he was 27 years old, entered into a love-match marriage with Adelheid Basedow. She was then 21 years old. Adelheid belonged to a more prominent family, a few ladder higher in the ranking of social-prestige-scale than Wilhelm, in Anhalt-Dessau. The family Basedow did not approve this love-marriage. The newly married couple got thus socially isolated.

Adelheid was granddaughter of Johann Bernard Basedow (1723-1790). He was born at Hamburg in 1723, as the son of a barber and wigmaker. However, we do not know how, he managed to come to Leipzig as a student of theology, but gave himself up entirely to the study of philology, i.e. classic-languages. In 1752 he wrote a thesis: "On the best and hitherto unknown method of teaching children of noblemen", and obtained the degree of Master of Arts from the University at Kiel in the northern part of present Germany. Why at Kiel and not at Leipzig, we do not know. The documents kept in the archives are comparatively rather meagre. He was not that important personality as Max Müller will proudly refer to Johann Bernard Basedow after hundred and eighty years in his Auld Lang Syne and in his My Autobiography published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London and Bombay.

Johann Bernard Basedow evolved to a “pedagogic reformer”. The Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, Wilhelm Leopold III welcomed him to implement his pedagogic ideas in his small Duchy. In 1774 Johann Bernard Basedow was permitted to set up a school, called Philanthropinum, in Anhalt-Dessau. “Philanthropinum” is derived from Greek and means “friend of mankind”. As simple-minded persons, we do not quite comprehend this “pedagogic reform”. We consider only facts and facts behind the facts. And, these are these.

The school opened in December 1774. The motto was, so it is said, "everything according to nature". Rich and poor were to be educated together. The curriculum was practically-based and conducted in German (rather than Latin or Greek), handicrafts were taught, there was an emphasis on games and physical exercise, and school uniform was made simple and more comfortable, so it is handed-down. The facts behind these facts are: The school was open to the children of nobles only. Yet the performances of his first pupils profoundly impressed observers. However, Johann Bernard Basedow’s heavy drinking and emotional outbursts drove away the best teachers from Philanthropinum. In 1784 Johann Bernard Basedow disconnected himself from the school, the Philanthropinum, in Anhalt-Dessau.

Adelheid’s father Ludwig Basedow (1774 – 1835) studied law at Frankfurt University. He returned to Anhalt-Dessau and joined 1807 the Anhalt-Dessau-Administration. In 1814, he then joined the Law Administration of Prussia. Anhalt-Dessau and Prussia were then having Tax disputes. Ludwig Basedow found a mutually accepted solution. Thereafter he got the job of the Head of the Administration of the small Duchy Anhalt-Dessau, still having a population of about maximum 60,000. He was later raised to the title of the lowest ranking heritable noble as Ludwig von Basedow in 1833, only two years before he expired in 1835.

Adelheid could not enjoy the social privileges of eventually being Adelheid von Basedow unlike her two elder brothers. As we recall, she had married Wilhelm Müller in 1821, long before her father was raised to the nobles in 1833. None the less, she belonged to a well to do bourgeois family in Anhalt-Dessau, already a bourgeois in the third generation. She was socially marginalized when she married Wilhelm Müller, who was just on the threshold of climbing the ladder to the class of the bourgeois, and that against the approval of her family.

Being a librarian of the Duchy Wilhelm Müller became a “Hofrat”, a title at the bottom line of a higher carrier-scale of Anhalt-Dessau administration. But he was challenged to excel. Adelheid was proud and ambitious. She pushed him. We know nothing about the education of Adelheid. She encouraged Wilhelm Müller to establish himself as a poet and as a writer and did everything she could to help her husband. Wilhelm Müller started impressively. He undertook many cultural trips together with Adelheid whenever he found a chance in his leisure times being a librarian. This was absolutely necessary to getting known in cultural circles outside Anhalt-Dessau.

Wilhelm Müller prospered. But this exercise was strenuous and exhausting as well. He would have probably become a part of the “society” in Anhalt-Dessau as a poet and as a writer. As ill luck would have it, Wilhelm Müller expired while he was just on the verge of becoming a celebrated personality as a poet and as a writer.

In July, 1827 Wilhelm Müller fell ill. Five days later, after he fell ill, he died of an attack in his sleep, just before his thirty-third birthday. Adelheid Müller was then 27 years old, Auguste 5 and Friedrich Maximilian 3 and a half. His untimely death was surrounded by rumours of suicide or murder that persisted over the years which were not favourable for the mental balance and growth of the half-orphan Auguste and Friedrich Maximilian. More over the family was being left behind in poverty without any material resources.

These are the hard facts in regard to the family and social background of Friedrich Maximilian when he is three and half years old. A lot of myths have been written and printed on and about Friedrich Maximilian Müller by Max Müller, by his British wife Georgina Max Müller, and by his son W. G. Max Müller. We take liberty of a break to look a little ahead. We reproduce here an exemplary paragraph on the family background of Friedrich Maximilian Müller which has remained undisputed as yet:

“Max Müller's mother was Adelheid, elder daughter of President von Basedow, Prime Minister of the Duchy of Dessau. She was very small, but very beautiful, clever and lively, and had a fine contralto voice; and it was from her that Max Müller inherited his intense love of music. Frau Hofrathin Müller was a highly cultivated woman, understanding English, French, and Italian perfectly. She was a woman of an eager, even passionate temperament, and her children evidently suffered early from this, as Wilhelm Müller's letters are full of warnings to her not to punish too severely, and not to expect too much from her children (babies of four and five when their father died). Her father, President von Basedow, was himself the son of a man famous in Germany in his day, the pedagogue Basedow, the forerunner of Pestalozzi and Frobel.“

This we read in: THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER, EDITED BY HIS WIFE, in two volumes, here in volume I, Longmans, Green, and Co., 39 Parternoster Row, London, New York and Bombay 1902 by Georgina Max Müller. She is Georgina Adelaide Grenfell, born 1835, marries Friedrich Maximilian Müller in 1859 and becomes Georgina Max Müller.

We have quoted the second paragraph of the very first chapter written by Georgina Max Müller. We have taken a note that the same publisher that brought out the volumes “Auld Lang Syne” as well as “My Autobiography” by Max Müller has printed these volumes by Georgina Max Müller.

“My Autobiography” by Max Müller is another primary source and those two volumes by Georgina Max Müller are our second graded primary source. In our judgement, whatever Georgina Max Müller could write about the life of Friedrich Maximilian Müller came from Max Müller or from her own wishful phantasm. In her volumes, she has included complementary documents to Auld Lang Syne and to My Autobiography by Max Müller. We shall have to judge the quality of these documents in due course.

*****

We get back to the childhood and early school days of Friedrich Maximilian at Dessau. Adelheid has to vacate their common home after the sudden death of Wilhelm Müller. She is unable to pay the rent. She first takes refuge in the house of her parents. But very soon she shifts to a ground floor flat in a tiny house as Wilhelm Müller did not leave behind any cash amount or property for his widow and for the two little kids. She has to manage with a meagre pension granted by the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau. It is the yearly sum of 100 thalers, as long as she remains a widow and until her son has completed his twenty-first year. And thereafter she was to be entitled to draw the sum of fifty thalers for the rest of her life. Here we get an indication of the minimum sum needed for a single person to survive at that period, 50 thalers per annum.

In the archives we are unable find any hints why Adelheid Müller and her two helpless kids do not continue to stay with her affluent parents. We are unable to judge what happens in those days and months. We assume that Adelheid was sidelined or even ostracized by her parental family due to her love-marriage with Wilhelm Müller. She might have been too proud to ask for material support either from her parents, or from the affluent stepmother of Wilhelm Müller. There are no indications that these two affluent families ever communicated with each other.

It is handed-down that Adelheid had earned a reputation of being a good singer with a sweet voice. But she can neither earn additional funds for the family by singing, nor can she spare time to seek an occupation. She is solely dedicated to her two children. She is proud and brave. She does not move in the so-called society.

But she sends her children regularly visiting both the families. She does not accompany them. The children cling to the mother. And the mother clings to the children. In spite of her social isolation and of her extreme poverty Adelheid has been able to educate the kids sending both Auguste and Friedrich Maximilian to schools. There are however indications that a few friends of late Wilhelm Müller came forward to assist her in financial or other crisis now and then, and not her parents, not her brothers, not her well-to-do stepmother-in-law.

*****

The childhood of Friedrich Maximilian is hard, sad and uneventful. He suffers from chronic headaches from the very childhood till he will be 37 years old. We are unable to judge finally whether Friedrich Maximilian picks up this precarious state of his health before or after the early death of his father. It is doubtless that the life of Friedrich Maximilian changes radically caused by the sudden death of his father.

Max Müller will write two years before his death in his “My Autobiography. A Fragment”, published after his death in 1900 with a preface of his son W. G. Max Müller in the same publishing house as mentioned above, on the childhood of Friedrich Maximilian. There we read (p. 53):

“My childhood at home was often very sad. My mother, who was left a widow at twenty-eight with two children, my sister and myself, was heart-broken. The few years of her married life had been most bright and brilliant. My father was a rising poet, ... Contemporaries and friends of father, particularly Baron Simolin, a very intimate friend, who spent the Christmas of 1825 in our house, ... Anyhow, my father, whose salary was minute, seems to have been able to enjoy the few years of his married life in great comfort. The thought of saving money, however, seems never to have entered his poetical mind, and after the sudden death, due to paralysis of the heart, it was found that hardly any provision had been made for his family. Even the life insurance, which is obligatory on every civil servant, and the pension granted by the duke, gave my mother but a very small income, fabulously small, when one considers that she had to bring up two children on it. It has been a riddle to me ever since how she was able to do it.”

Friedrich Maximilian is marked by poverty from his early childhood. He is also socially isolated between two more or less affluent families. His mother is disinherited from her parental family for all practical purposes. We do not find any indication whether Adelheid Müller ever inherited her legitimate portion of her parental holdings and wealth. All these must have been depressing also for Friedrich Maximilian. None the less, “Max Müller” will write later in his autobiography (p. 53 ff):

“On my mother’s side my relatives were more civilized, and they had but little social intercourse with my grandmother and her relatives. My mother’s father was von Basedow, the president, that is Prime Minister of the duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, a position in which he was succeeded by his oldest son, my uncle. He was the first man in the town; the Duke and he really ruled the Duchy exactly as they pleased. ... My grandfather’s father again was the famous reformer of public education in Germany. He (1723–1790) ... migrated to Dessau, to become the founder of the ‘Philanthropinum’, and at the same time the path-breaker for men such as Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and Froebel (1782-1852). ...I was often told that I took after my mother’s family, whatever that may mean, and this was certainly the case in outward appearance, though I hope not in temper. My great-grandfather, the Pedagogue as he was called, was a friend of Goethe’s, and is mentioned in his poems.”

*****

The life of Friedrich Maximilian would have taken a different course if Adelheid could have left Dessau after the sudden death of her husband, Wilhelm Müller. But there is no way out. He has to live with his mother and sister in a tiny ground floor flat in a tiny house at Dessau, which is then a small town having a population of about 3,000. Adelheid is now 27 years old. She never thought of marriage again. She decides to live for her children only. She does her best looking after that both the kids do well at schools. She knows that education was the only way out, at least for Friedrich Maximilian, to do well, to prosper in life.

It is not easy for Friedrich Maximilian in the school. Dessau is a small town. His schoolmates and the teachers know all about his deprivations. He is half orphan, isolated from both of the family lines, poor, a “mummy’s darling” and partly disable being regularly attacked by severe headaches. There are very little positive aspects in his life to talk about with his schoolmates. There are only limited options left for him not to fall into depression: excel in learning, excel in sports, and learn talking on imaginative remote themes, conceived or exaggerated.

We have not found any indication that Friedrich Maximilian ever participated in any sport activities. Due to his chronic headaches, he cannot excel in learning either. He practices talking entertainingly. To begin with glorifying the fame of his father that is always a theme at home also and conceiving fantastic stories.

Max Müller will describe this period of Friedrich Maximilian’s life at Dessau and his situation there in “My Autobiography” (p. 90), written, as mentioned, at the age of around 75, far better than we ever could have done going through historical records in the archives:

“The more I think about that distant, now very distant past, the more I feel how, without being aware of it, my whole character was formed by it. The unspoiled primitiveness of life at Dessau as it was when I was at school there till the age of twelve would be extremely difficult to describe it in all its details. Everybody seemed to know everybody, and everything about everybody. Everybody knew that he was watched, and gossip, in the best sense of the word, ruled supreme in the little town. Gossip was in fact, public opinion with all its good and bad features. Still the result was that no one could afford to lose caste, and that everybody behaved as well as he could.”

As already indicated, several adverse factors could have lead Friedrich Maximilian to a traumatic life which he has to tackle from the very early childhood: we recall, the sudden death of his father, negligence by families of both sides, depressions of Adelheid, their social isolation, Adelheid’s ambitions, poverty and his severe migraines. Friedrich Maximilian has to cope with the adverse situation and to develop strategies. He makes the best of it. His basic personality is being set accordingly. He does it in his own way. We shall come along to “his way” in due courses. Presently we read in “My Autobiography” by Max Müller on the early childhood of Friedrich Maximilian (p. 52 - 57):

“My sister and I were always terrified when we were sent to visit her, for with her dishevelled grey hair, her thin white face, and her piercing eyes, she was to us the old grandmother or the witch of Grimm’s stories; and the language she used was such that, if we repeated at home, we were severely reprimanded. She knew very little about my father, but her memory about her first husband and about her own youth and childhood was very clear, though not always edifying. Her stories about ghosts, witches, ogres, knickers, and the whole of that race were certainly enough to frighten a child and some of them clung to me for a very long time, ... On my mother’s side my relations, who were all high in the public service, my grandfather, as I said, being the Duke’s chief minister, made life more easy and pleasant b for us; but for many years my mother never went into society, and our society consisted of members of our own family only. All I remember of my mother at that time was that she took her two children day after day to the beautiful Gottesacker (God’s Acre), where she stood for hours at our father’s grave, and sobbed and cried. ... At home the atmosphere was certainly depressing to a boy. I heard and thought more about death than about life, though I knew little of course of what life or death meant. I had but few pleasures, and my chief happiness was to be with my mother, I shared her grief without understanding much about it. She was passionately devoted to her children and I was passionately fond of her. What there was left of life to her, she gave it to us, she lived for us only, and tried very hard not to deprive our childhood of all brightness. She was certainly most beautiful, and quite different from all other ladies at Dessau, not only in the eyes of her son, but it seemed to me, of everybody. ... As far as I can recollect, I was never so happy as when I could be with her. She read so much to us that I was quite satisfied, and saw perhaps less of my young friends than I ought. When my mother said she wished to die, and to be with our father, I feel sure that my sister and I were only anxious that she should take us with her, for there were few golden chains that bound us as yet to this life.”

Is it not a morbid atmosphere for children? This atmosphere will continue until Friedrich Maximilian becomes 12 years old. Thereafter he will be sent to a school at Leipzig. How he fares in the school in Dessau? There are no significant indications. Friedrich Maximilian enters the “Gymnasium” (High School) at Dessau when he is six years old. “Gymnasiums” then had 13 classes.

Georgina Max Müller reports (p. 6) in her book: “His school reports were not remarkable, and certainly at that time he gave little evidence of the power that was in him. ‘Writing bad’ was the almost invariable report, and in later years he often lamented the small pains taken by the writing master to improve it.”

We do not know more about the real child-life of Friedrich Maximilian at Dessau that constituted his basic personality. We assume, poverty and his migraine have played an important role in his basic personality, in his childhood and in his early school days.

A lot has been published on “Max Müller” later. His biographers, including his wife, Georgina Max Müller, and his son, W. G. Max Müller, have totally left out the background that constituted his basic personality. It has even been totally ignored that there is the chapter two in the “My Autobiography” which is titled “Childhood at Dessau”, p. 45 – 94. There we read in the pages 65 ff memorizing the school life of Friedrich Maximilian at Dessau:

“I remember a number of small events in my school-life at Dessau ... The influence which music exercised on my mind ... My work at school and at home was not too heavy; I was fond of it and very fond of books. ... Paper was so dear that one had to be very sparing in its use. Every margin and cover was scribbled over before it was thrown away, and I fest often so happened by the scarcity of paper that I gladly accepted a set of copybooks instead of any other present that I might have asked for on my birthday or at Christmas. I am sorry to say I have had to suffer all my life from the inefficiency of our writing master or may be from the fact that my thoughts were too quick for my pen. In other subjects I did well, but though I was among the first in each class, I was by no means cleverer than other boys. ... I feel sure I could have done a great deal more at school than I did, but it was partly my music and partly my incessant headaches that interfered with my school work. ... I was fortunate at school. I could hold my own with the boys, and as to the masters, several of them had known my father or had been his pupils, and they took a personal interest in me. I remember more particularly one young master who was very kind to me, and took me home for private lessons and for giving me some good advice.”

There is not much more about Friedrich Maximilian’s real childhood in the chapter “Childhood at Dessau”. Information on his childhood and on his school life at Dessau is unsystematically touched in this chapter now and then. This scattered information is packed between Max Müller’s uncalled for reflections on “God and the world”; on the Jews in Anhalt-Dessau and on persons, he met during the years of his life that have nothing to do with Friedrich Maximilian’s “Childhood at Dessau”. It is an unsystematic narration full of phantasm than an autobiography describing his childhood. We have taken a note of this aspect in his writings in “My Autobiography” and the volumes of “Auld Lang Syne” and we shall keep our eyes wide open.

We put together the scattered information in pages chronologically. Max Müller remembers Friedrich Maximilian’s school days in his autobiography (p. 62–63):

“At school our religious teaching was chiefly historical and moral. ... Some, by no means all, children of Roman Catholic and Jewish parents were allowed to be absent from religious lessons. ... If Jews or Roman Catholics wished for any special religious instructions it was given by their own priests or Rabbis, and was given without any interference on the part of the Government. ... Thus we grew up from our earliest youth, being taught to look upon Christianity as an historical fact, on Christ and on His disciples as historical characters, on the Old and New Testaments as real historical books. Though we did not understand as yet the deeper meaning of Christ and of His words, we had at least nothing to unlearn in later times ...“

His memories of the childhood of Friedrich Maximilian written a little before he will die are yet remarkable. We find on pages 67-69 of his autobiography:

“A large number of Jews had been received at Dessau by a former duke; ...he stipulated that they should only settle in certain streets. These streets were by no means the worst streets of the town; on the contrary, they showed greater comfort and hardly any of the squalor which disgraced the Jewish quarters in other towns in Germany. As children we were brought up without any prejudice against the Jews, though we had, no doubt, a certain feeling that they were tolerated only, and were not quite on the same level with ourselves. We also felt the religious difficulty sometimes very strongly. Were the Jews not the murderers of Christ? And had they not said: ‘the blood be on us and on our children’? ...I knew several Jewish families, and received much kindness from them as a boy. Many of these families were wealthy, but they never displayed their wealth, and in consequence excited no envy. All that is changed now. The children of the Jews who formerly lived in a very quiet style at Dessau, now occupy the best houses, indulge in most expensive tastes, and try in every way to outshine their non-Jewish neighbours. They buy themselves, and, when they can, stipulate for stars and orders as rewards for successful financial operations, carried out with the money of princely personages. Hence the revulsion of feeling all over Germany, or what is called Anti-Semitism, which has assumed not only a social, but also a political significance. I doubt whether there is anything religious in it, as there was when we were boys. ...One cannot blame the Jews or any other speculator for using their opportunities, but they must not complain either if they excite envy, and if that envy assumes in the end a dangerous character.”

On page 77 ff we read:

“The very idea of death never came near me till my grandfather died (1835), but even then I was only about twelve years old, and though I had seen much of him, particularly during the years that my mother lived again in his house, yet he was too old to take much share in his grandchildren’s amusements. ...He made no secret that he cared more for the son of his son who was the heir, and was to perpetuate the name of Basedow, than for the son of his daughter.”

As indicated earlier Adelheid is keen maintaining her social duties. She sends her children to visit both families. She does not visit them. What Max Müller lets us know in the following sub-sentence is puzzling: “particularly during the years that my mother lived again in his house”. We keep this small puzzle in mind.

When Friedrich Maximilan has just passed twelve, Adelheid sends him to one Professor Carus at Leipzig, a friend of late Wilhelm Müller. It seems, Adelheid loses control over him and feels that he needed the guidance of a male authority. So it is handed-down. Professor Carus admits him to the best school at Leipzig. His son Victor is of the same age and visits the same school. We turn again to Max Müller‘s autobiography, to the chapter “Childhood at Dessau”, p. 79:

“As far back as I can remember I was a martyr to headaches. No doctor could help me, no one seemed to know the cause. It was a migraine, and though I watched carefully I could not trace it to any fault of mine. The idea that it came from overwork was certainly untrue. It came and went, and if it was one day on the right side it was always the next time on the left, even though I was free from it sometimes for a week or a fortnight, or even longer. It was strange also that it seldom lasted beyond one day, and that I always felt particularly strong and well the day after I had been prostrate. For prostrate I was, and generally quite unable to do anything. I had to lie down and try to sleep. After a good sleep I was well, but when the pain had been very bad I found that sometimes the very skin of my forehead had peeled off. In this way I often lost two or three days in a week and as my work had to be done somehow, it was often done anyhow, and I was scolded and punished, really without any fault of mine own.”

All in all, the child-life of Friedrich Maximilian at Dessau has been depressive which demanded strategies to stand the adversities he faces. Max Müller closes this chapter in his Autobiography with the words, p. 92/93:

“My narrow Dessau views became a little widened when I went to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards at Berlin. Still, during all this time I saw but little of what is called society, I only knew of people whom I loved and of people whom I disliked. There was no room as yet for indifferent people, whom one tolerates and is civil to without caring whether one sees them again or not. Of the simplest duties of society also I was completely ignorant. No one ever told me what to say and what to do or what not to say and what not to do. What I felt I said, what I thought right I did. There was, in fact, in my small native town very little that could be called society.

*****

We have put together the factors that engraved the basic personality of Friedrich Maximilian at Anhalt-Dessau mostly in the words written by Max Müller. We have not commented or analysed contradictions in them or on Friedrich Maximilian’s internalized strategies to compensate his agonies experienced in child-life, nor on repressions exercised by social facts. We feel we should not conceal our conclusions before we close this chapter, i.e. “Childhood at Dessau” as it has been chaptered by Max Müller.

As mentioned earlier, the surname Müller is extremely frequent all over Germany. Friedrich Maximilian does not feel comfortable to be a “Müller”. His paternal grandfather was a poor tailor. His grandfather marries a relatively rich widow of a master butcher to provide education for his son Wilhelm, the only child alive out of seven children. Well, a butcher become quite well to do in terms of money, but is not considered to be a respected occupation in Dessau or elsewhere either.

As a child, he identifies more with the family of his mother and glorifies “achievements” of his father. Thus, he represses the background of being a “Müller” and all that goes with it. We recall that Wilhelm Müller dies early at the age of 33. He becomes a schoolteacher when he passed his 25. Shortly later, he becomes the librarian of the small Duchy Anhalt-Dessau. He does not have much time to excel as a writer and a poet. Yet we find the following lines (Autobiography, p. 47-48) in the beginning pages of the same chapter “Childhood at Dessau”.

“There is curious race of people, who, as soon as a man of any note dies, are ready to found anything for him – a monument, a picture, a school, a prize, a society – to keep alive his memory. Of course societies want presidents, members of council, committees, secretaries &c., and at last, subscriptions also. Thus it has happened that the name of founder (Gründer) has assumed particularly in Germany, a perfume by no means sweet. Those who are asked to subscribe to such testimonials know how disagreeable it is to decline to give at least their name, deeply as they feel that in giving it they are offending against the rules of historical perspective. I should not say that my father was one of the great poets of Germany, though Heine, no mean critic, declared that he placed his lyric poetry next to that of Goethe. ... His poems became popular in the true sense of the word, and there are some which the people in the street sing even now without being aware of the name of their author. Schubert’s compositions also have contributed much to the wide popularity of his Schöne Müllerin and his Winterreise, ... In the company of Mendelsohn, the philosopher and of F. Schneider, the composer, a monument of my father in the principal street of his native town, and before the school in which he had been a pupil and a teacher, could hardly seen out of place.”

Well, it is more than a “Freudian slip”, it is more than “going the extra mile”; it is more than “bigger, nicer, better”. We keep in mind; whatever we know about the childhood of Friedrich Maximilian, we know a little from the archives, from “My Autobiography” written by Max Müller in 1898–99, a little before he dies and those two volumes written by Georgina Max Müller. Usually narrated facts as memories are not checked, if it is palatably presented. We do read carefully and check published memories. Max Müller obviously commanded over this art of telling tales. In Germany, there is an old proverb: “Kein Meister ist vom Himmel gefallen” (No master falls from Heaven). He seems to have learnt this art right from his very childhood.

Exchange of surname is possible today. At that time at Dessau Friedrich Maximilian does not know that he will later become Max Müller. If we are ready to follow Max Müller, then Friedrich Maximilian has compensated his being a “Müller” in his own way. He identifies with the family of his mother in spite of severe neglects. Max Müller refers back to the grandfather of his mother, though she is born ten years after her grandfather had expired. The reason is simple. Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724 –1790) was a known as an educationist. Johann Bernhard Basedow‘s descendants, the grandfather and granduncle of Friedrich Maximilian are not such known personalities.

Max Müller tells little about his own grandfather Ludwig Basedow (1774 – 1835). Naturally, he is proud that his grandfather earned a heritable title of a noble “Von” as late as in 1833, when Friedrich Maximilian was just ten years old. Max Müller does not tell us anything about Friedrich Maximilian‘s relationship with his uncle either. He tells us only that (p. 53):

“On my mother’s side my relatives were more civilized, and they had but little social intercourse with my grandmother and her relatives. My mother’s father was von Basedow, the president, that is Prime Minister of the duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, a position in which he was succeeded by his oldest son, my uncle.”

Well. Anhalt-Dessau was one of the smallest Duchies neighbouring Prussia having a population of at most 60,000 only. His mother’s father, “von Basedow”, was not “the president, that is Prime Minister of the duchy of Anhalt-Dessau” but simply the head administrator. In the memory of Max Müller the head administrator of one of the smallest Duchies in Germany becomes the “Prime Minister of the duchy of Anhalt-Dessau.”

On page 56 he wants us to note: “My mother’s relations, who were all high in the public service, my grandfather, as I said, being the Duke’s chief Minister, made life more easy and pleasant for us; but for many years my mother never went into society, and our society consisted of members of our own family only.” Is it not amazing that Max Müller does not even indicate that his mother, his sister and he himself has just been neglected by his “mother’s relations”?

Remembering his childhood at Dessau Max Müller fails to develop a sense of looking at realities. As Friedrich Maximilian he obviously suffered from poverty, but is unable to comprehend the cause of the poverty. Though, as Friedrich Maximilian, he was not considered to be a part of his “mother’s relations, who were all high in the public service”, he wishes to have belonged to “Basedows” while writing his “Autobiography”. In his fantasy, he is actually a “von Basedow”, almost a “noble”. In his wishful thinking he is nearer to the nobles rather than being a “Müller”. To what extent he identified himself with the Basedows is reflected in his remark (p. 53): “I was often told that I took after my mother’s family, whatever that may mean, and this was certainly the case in outward appearance, though I hope not in temper.”

Almost at the end of this chapter of ours, we repeat a quote from “My Autobiography”:

“My childhood at home was often very sad. My mother, who was left a widow at twenty-eight with two children, my sister and myself, was heart-broken. The few years of her married life had been most bright and brilliant. My father was a rising poet, ... Contemporaries and friends of father, particularly Baron Simolin, a very intimate friend, who spent the Christmas of 1825 in our house.”

In 1825, Friedrich Maximilian is two years old. How can Max Müller remember in 1898 that “Baron Simolin, a very intimate friend”, had “spent the Christmas of 1825 in our house”?

We apologise taking a little aside and looking a little ahead. Neither Max Müller nor Friedrich Maximilian in his letters to his mother has ever mentioned this Baron Simolin with his first name. Simolins are known as “Freiherren” since the 17th Century. There are many “Simolins”, having at least three lineages. Max Müller uses the technique to relate himself to many celebrated surnames and conceals the first names, as we shall see also later. It is a hollow technique to suggest that he came along with almost all celebrated persons of his time.

We are unable to ascertain whether Max Müller has been unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality or Friedrich Maximilian had evolved systematically to a Max Müller as we are experiencing by his memories on the life of Friedrich Maximilian which are far from truths. We shall have to look into evidences.

We close this chapter here ascertaining that all along his schools life in Dessau Friedrich Maximilian could not excel due to his poverty, due to his chronic headaches, due to his humble social background and due to his social deprivations. He tried to compensate his sufferings and deprivations by creating daydreams, inventing fantastic episodes, developing aspirations that could not be related to the reality. These ways of compensations are not unusual.