Letters by Indira Gandhi
The Book of Nature
When you and I are together, you often ask me questions about many things and I try to answer them. Now that you are at Mussoorie and I am in Allahabad we cannot have these talks. I am therefore going to write to you from time to time short accounts of the story of our earth and the many countries, great and small, into which it is divided. You have read a little about English history and Indian history. But England is only a little island and India, though a big country, is only a small part of the earth’s surface. If we want to know something about the story of this world of ours we must think of all the countries and all the peoples that have inhabited it, and not merely of one little country where we may have been born.
How Early History was Written
In my letter to you yesterday, I pointed out that we have to study the early story of the earth from the book of nature. The book consists of everything that you see around you—the rocks and mountains and valleys and rivers and seas and volcanoes. This book is always open before us but few of us pay any attention to it or try to read it! If we learnt how to read it and understand it, how many interesting stories it could tell us! The stories we would read about in its pages of stone would be more interesting than a fairy tale.
And so from this book of nature we would learn something of those far-off days when no man or animal lived on this earth of ours. As we read on, we shall see the first animals appear, and later more animals. And then will come man and woman, but they will be very different from the men and women we see today. They will be savages, not very different from animals. Gradually they will gather experience and begin to think. The power of thought will make them really different from the animals. It will be a real power which will make them stronger than the biggest and fiercest animal. You see today a little man sit on top of a great big elephant and make him do what he wills. The elephant is big and strong, far stronger than the little mahaut sitting on his neck. But the mahaut can think, and because he can think he becomes the master and the elephant is his servant. So, as though grew in man he became cleverer and wiser. He found out many things – how to make a fire, how to cultivate the land and grow his food, how to make cloth to wear and houses to live in. Many men and women used to live together and so we had the first cities. Before the cities were made, men used to wander about from place to place, probably living in some kind of tents. They did not know then how to grow their food from the land. They had no rice therefore, nor did they have any wheat, from which bread is made. There were no vegetables and most of the things you eat today were not known then. Perhaps there were some wild nuts and fruits which men ate but mostly they must have lived on animals which they killed. As cities grew people learnt many beautiful arts. They also learnt how to write. But for a long time there was no paper to write on and people used to write on the bark of the Bhojpatra tree – I think this is called the birch in English – or they wrote on palm leaves. Even now you will find in some libraries whole books written in those far-off days on the leaves of the palm tree. Then came paper and it was easier to write. But there were no printing presses and books could not be printed off in their thousands as is done today. A book could only be written once and then copied out by hand laboriously. Of course, there could not be many books. You could not just go to a bookseller or a bookstall to buy a book. You had to get someone to copy it and this took a long time. But people in those days wrote beautifully and we have today many books in our libraries which were beautifully written by hand. In India especially we have books in Sanskrit and Persian and Urdu. Often the man who copied the book made flowers and drawings on the sides of the page.
With the growth of cities, gradually countries and nations were formed. People who lived near each other in one country naturally got to know each other better. They thought they were better than others who lived in other countries and, very foolishly, they fought with these others. They did not realize, and people do not realize even now, that fighting and killing each other are about the most stupid things that people can do. It does good to nobody.
To learn the story of these early days of cities and countries we sometimes get old books. But there are not many of these. Other things help us. The kings and emperors of old times used to have accounts of their reigns written on stone tablets and pillars.
Books cannot last long. Their paper rots away and gets moth-eaten. But stones last much longer. Perhaps you remember seeing the great stone pillar of Ashoka in the Allahabad Fort. On this is cut out in stone a proclamation of Ashoka, who was a great king of India many hundreds of years ago. If you go to the museum in Lucknow you will find many stone tablets with words engraved on them.
In studying the old history of various countries, we shall learn of the great things that were done in China and Egypt long ago when the countries of Europe were full of savage tribe. We shall learn also of the great days of India when the Ramayana and Mahabharata were written and India was a rich and powerful country. Today, our country is very poor and a foreign people govern us. We are not free even in our own country and cannot do what we want. But this was not so always and perhaps if we try hard we may make our country free again, so that we may improve the lot of the poor, and make India as pleasant to live in as are some of the countries of Europe today.
In my next letter I shall begin this fascinating story of the earth from the very beginning.
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