A TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR:

THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA(Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, vol. 20)

THE RENAISSANCE IN INDIA....................................................................................................................iPublisher's Note...............................................................................................................................................iCONTENTS...................................................................................................................................................iiiThe Renaissance in India...............................................................................................................................1

The Renaissance in India...........................................................................................................................3A. What India means to make of her own life – Importance to herself and the word.......................3B. A first question – Whether at all there is really a Renaissance in India...........................................3

1. That depends a good deal on what we mean by the word Renaissance.......................................3a) The Renaissance in Europe and the analogy with the Celtic movement in Ireland.................3

• European culture – It was not so much a reawakening as an overturn and reversal............3• The recent Celtic movement in Ireland – The analogy does not give the whole truth.........3

b) The whole is at present a great formless chaos of conflicting influences................................42. What made the reawakening of India necessary...........................................................................4

• A brief but disastrous period of the dwindling and a superimposed European culture........43. Three facts to take into consideration – A new body for the spirit...............................................5

• The great past of Indian culture and life with the moment of inadaptive torpor..................5• The first period of the Western contact in which it seemed likely to perish........................5• The ascending movement which first broke into some clarity a decade or two ago............5• India will certainly keep her essential spirit, her soul – But a great change of the body.....5• A new body, of new philosophical, artistic, literary, cultural, political, social forms..........5

C. What was this ancient spirit and characteristic soul of India?..........................................................51. A supreme spirituality..................................................................................................................5

a) European writers were struck by the metaphysical bent of the Indian mind............................5• The are inclined to write as if this were all the Indian spirit................................................5• One-sided appreciations – Not the real nature and capacity of the Indian spirit..................5

b) Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind..........................................................62. But this was not and could not be her whole mentality, her entire spirit.....................................7

a) The Indian mind – A prolific abundance of the energy and joy of life and creation................7b) A strong intellectuality – The land of the Dharma and the Shastra..........................................8

• The third power of the ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality.............................8• Her first period was luminous with the discovery of the Spirit............................................8• Her second period completed the discovery of the Dharma.................................................8• Her third period elaborated into detail the first simpler formulation of the Shastra.............8

3. Thus was created the harmony of the ancient Indian culture.......................................................9a) Dominant spirituality, creativeness and gust of life, powerful intelligence.............................9b) When does spirituality flourish best – The Indian spiritual thought......................................10

(1) Buddhistic and illusionist denial of life is only one side of its philosophic tendency....10• One result of a tendency of the Indian mind to follow each motive to its extreme point...10(2) The sounding of extremes – Harmony by a sense of order and a synthetic impulse......11• It is notable that this pursuit of the most opposite extremes never resulted in disorder.....11• For the Indian mind is not only spiritual and ethical, but intellectual and artistic.............11

4. The three epochs of Indian culture.............................................................................................12• To judge the possibilities of the renascence and the scope that it may take.......................12• Its real key-note is the tendency of spiritual realisation, many-faceted, many-coloured.. .12

a) The first age of India's greatness was a spiritual age..............................................................12• . The stamp put on her by that beginning she has never lost..............................................12

b) The age of the Dharma – The second long epoch of India's greatness...................................13• The great classical age of Sanskrit culture was the flowering of this intellectuality..........13

c) The evening of decline which followed the completion of the curve.....................................14

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• This was prepared by three movements of retrogression...................................................14• A sinking of that superabundant vital energy and a fading of the joy of life.....................14• A rapid cessation of the old free intellectual activity.........................................................14• Certain spiritual truths are emphasised to the neglect of others.........................................14

D. The impact of European life and culture and the work of the renaissance in India.......................14• It was at this moment that the European wave swept over India........................................14• The crude impact of European life and culture gave three needed impulses.....................14• It revived the dormant intellectual and critical impulse.....................................................14• It rehabilitated life and awakened the desire of new creation............................................14• It put the reviving Indian spirit face to face with novel conditions and ideals...................14• Out of this awakening vision and impulse the Indian renaissance is arising......................14

1. Indian renaissance – Three lines to measure its help to the future of humanity.........................14• The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour..............14• The flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science......14• An original dealing with modern problems in the light of the Indian spirit.......................14

2. The work to make the higher view of life a creative power in the world...................................15The Renaissance in India – 2...................................................................................................................17

A. Three steps in the process which has led up to the renaissance..................................................171. The process by which a transition is being managed.................................................................17

• The first step was the reception of the European contact...................................................17• The second was a reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence....................17• The third, only now beginning or recently begun, is rather a process of new creation......17

2. In India, the complexity of the transition was unavoidable........................................................17• A swift transformation scene like in Japan – Out of the question for India.......................17• From the complexity of the movement arises all the difficulty of the problems................17

B. The three steps................................................................................................................................181. The crude reception of the European contact.............................................................................18

a) The earliest generation of intellectuals with a Western education.........................................18• They saw in welcome prospect a new India modernised wholesale and radically.............18• An anglicised India is a thing we can no longer view as either possible or desirable........18

b) Three results of value and indeed indispensable to a powerful renaissance...........................19• It reawakened a free activity of the intellect – The critical faculty of the human mind.....19• It threw definitely the ferment of modern ideas into the old culture..................................19• It made us turn our look upon all that our past contains with new eyes.............................19

2. A reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence......................................................20a) The anglicising impulse was met by the old national spirit....................................................20

• The works of Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Tagore illustrate this transition...................20b) An opposite current of integral reaction – A preservation by reconstruction.........................21

• Vivekananda was the leading exemplar and the most powerful exponent.........................213. A process of original creation in every sphere of national activity............................................22

• India has to get back entirely to the native power of her spirit at its very deepest.............22• Of such original creation we may cite the new Indian art as a striking example...............22

The Renaissance in India – 3...................................................................................................................23A. Everywhere there is, at most, only a beginning of beginnings...................................................23B. Only certain decisive indications in one direction or another........................................................23

1. The spiritual motive will be the real originative and dominating strain.....................................23a) Metaphysical thinking has been an intellectual approach to spiritual realisation..................23b) To realise intimately truth of spirit and to quicken and to remould life by it.........................24

(1) A reconstruction from a spiritual basis with a religious motive and form.....................24• All great movements of life in India have begun with a new spiritual thought..................24• The Brahmo Samaj started from an endeavour to restate the Vedanta...............................24• The Arya Samaj in the Punjab founded itself on a fresh interpretation of the Veda..........24• Ramakrishna and Vivekananda – A very wide synthesis of past spiritual experience.......24(2) Spiritual and religious ferment and activity – The growing insistence on life...............25• What will finally come out of all this stir and ferment, lies yet in the future.....................25• Spiritual and religious ferment and activity – A prominent feature of the new India........25

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• The growing insistence on life – The most significant immediate sign of the future........252. The ideas and the instruments which this spirituality will take to deal with..............................26

a) The philosophical intellect – A restatement of past gains not as yet a new creation.............26• The contact of European philosophy has not been fruitful of any creative reaction..........26

b) In poetry, literature, art, science there have been definite beginnings...................................27(1) Bengal has been recently the first workshop of the Shakti of India...............................27• Especially the art of the Bengal painters is very significant...............................................27(2) This art in Bengal is a true new creation........................................................................28• The artistic mind of the rest of India will follow through the gate thus opened.................28(3) Poetry and literature in Bengal – Two distinct stages and a third that is coming...........28

(a) It began with a European and mostly an English influence...........................................28(b) That period is long over – At present we see a fresh preparation..................................29

• The work of Bankim Chandra is now of the past...............................................................29• The work of Rabindranath still largely holds the present – Ways for the future................29• The movement is turning in the same direction as that of the new art...............................29

c) In the outward life of the nation – A state of much uncertainty and confusion.....................30(1) Political conditions, not those of the past, but not yet in fact those of the future...........30• Another political spirit has awakened in the people vehemently national in its motive....30(2) Indian society is in a still more chaotic stage – The necessity of a renovation..............30• The old forms are crumbling away under the pressure of the environment.......................30

The Renaissance in India – 4...................................................................................................................32A. The renaissance must insist much more on its spiritual turn......................................................32

1. But there is a misunderstanding or a refusal to understand and a distrust..................................32• On spirituality in art and poetry or in political and social life............................................32

2. What it is we mean by a renaissance governed by the principle of spirituality..........................33a) But first let us say what we do not mean by this ideal...........................................................33

(1) Earthly life as a temporal vanity – The moulding of a particular religion.....................33(2) The exclusion of anything whatsoever from our scope..................................................33• Spirituality must not belittle the mind, life or body or hold them of small account...........33• Spirituality can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive................................................33

b) What we mean by a spiritual culture and the application of spirituality to life......................34(1) Mind, life, body are man's means and not his aims........................................................34(2) A different sense and direction to all the aims of human life – Spiritual culture...........35

(a) The physical, mental, emotional, aesthetic and ethical parts of us – To be developed. .35• These things too are the expressions of the spirit...............................................................35• Morality is in the ordinary view a well-regulated individual and social conduct..............35• Ethics in the spiritual point of view is a means of developing the diviner self in us.........35

(b) A greater, diviner, more intimate sense to all our aims and activities...........................35• Philosophy – Its real value is to prepare a basis for spiritual realisation............................35• Science – A knowledge of the world which throws an added light on the spirit...............35• Physical knowledge and new and old psychical sciences and results................................35• Art and poetry – A revelation of the deepest spiritual and universal beauty......................35• Politics, society, economy – The spiritual aim...................................................................35

B. How India can best develop herself and serve humanity...............................................................37• By being herself and following the law of her own nature.................................................37

1. The sway of the European conception of life.............................................................................37a) Europe itself is labouring to outgrow the limitations of its own conceptions........................37b) Our dealings with the Indian spirit and modern influences....................................................37

(1) There is no real quarrel between them – These two things need each other..................37(2) What true spirituality means – Why we have failed in life and gone under...................38• On one side an excessive religiosity – On the other a too world-shunning asceticism......38• But the root of the matter was the dwindling of the spiritual impulse in its broadness......38

2. The remedy is to make the life of the nation a religion in a high spiritual sense.......................39Indian Culture...............................................................................................................................................42and..................................................................................................................................................................42External Influence........................................................................................................................................42

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Indian Culture and...................................................................................................................................43External Influence....................................................................................................................................43

A. The question of external influence and new creation from within.............................................43• India can only survive with fresh diviner creations of her own spirit................................43• In that connection I spoke of the acceptance and assimilation from the West...................43

B. What we mean by acceptance and the actual effect of assimilation...............................................431. It is possible to hold that no acceptance of anything Western is called for................................43

a) A new creation from within entirely on national lines and in the national spirit...................43• The idea of taking over what is best in occidental civilisation, is a false notion................43• The good and bad intertwined in the living growth come in upon us together..................43

b) There is much to be said here both in the way of confirmation and of modification.............45(1) A certain amount of acceptance, of forms too, some imitation, is inevitable.................45• But the question is what we do with them – An acceptance and an assimilation...............45(2) The taking over of certain influences, ideas, energies brought forward.........................46• That was in fact what our own ancestors did, never losing their originality......................46

(a) If we «take over» anything, the good and the bad in it will come in.............................46• If we take over for instance European industrialism – The economic aim in life..............46

(b) The terms good and bad – What I mean by acceptance, assimilation of democracy.....47• Whatever helps me to find myself is good.........................................................................47• Whatever carries me out of my orientation is bad for me..................................................47• The real point is not the taking over of this or that formal detail – Widow remarriage.....47• Great effective ideas, such as social and political liberty, equality, democracy................47• What I mean by acceptance of the effective idea of democracy – A necessity..................47• What I mean by assimilation – We must not take it crudely in the European forms.........47• To everything I would apply the same principle, to each in its own kind..........................47

2. Neither desirable nor possible to exclude everything that comes in to us from outside............47• A self-evident law of individual being applicable to group-individuality..........................47

a) In every individualised existence............................................................................................47(1) The impossibility and the undesirability of entire rejection...........................................47(2) Mentally, vitally and physically I do not grow in a virgin isolation...............................48

(a) A double action, from within, from outside, in every individualised existence.............48• The two operations are not mutually exclusive, nor is the second harmful to the first......48• The Swarat, independent, self-possessed and self-ruler, can most be the Samrat..............48

(b) To live in one's self, but also to use the material that the life around offers us.............49b) The group-soul – A more difficult problem, aloofness being no longer possible..................50

C. In considering Indian civilisation and its renascence.....................................................................511. We cannot get rid of a certain element of inevitable change......................................................51

• We cannot go backward to a past form of our being, but we can go forward....................51• We must take account of the modern world around us and get full knowledge of it.........51• We cannot avoid dealing with the governing ideas and problems of the modern world....51

2. There must be an element of successful assimilation in each province of culture.....................52«Is India Civilised?».....................................................................................................................................53

«Is India Civilised?».................................................................................................................................55A. A book by Sir John Woodroffe in answer to Mr. William Archer.............................................55

1. The survival of Indian civilisation and the inevitability of a war of cultures.............................552. The conflict of European and Asiatic culture – A peril for India and the world........................55

• The book was an urgent invitation to stand firm and faithful.............................................55B. It will be useful to state briefly its gist as an introduction to this issue..........................................56

1. The value of a culture, of a civilisation – What made India a nation apart................................56• Happiness lies in a natural harmony of spirit, mind and body...........................................56• A culture is to be valued to the extent to which it has discovered this harmony................56• A civilisation must be judged by the work to bring that harmony out...............................56• A civilisation may be predominantly material, mental and intellectual, or spiritual..........56• India's central conception is that of the Spirit here incased in matter and evolving...........56• The distinct value of India’s civilisation – Her founding of life upon this conception......56

2. Other cultures are led by a different conception – The principle of struggle.............................57

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a) The law of struggle is the first law of existence in the material universe..............................57• The culture which gives up its living separateness will be swallowed up..........................57• The nation which lived by this culture will lose its soul and perish...................................57• Each nation is a Shakti and lives by the principle which it embodies................................57• India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception....................57

b) The conflict between Asia and Europe – Its cultural and spiritual aspect..............................57• All Asia has always had the spiritual tendency – India is the quintessence.......................57• Since some centuries Europe has become material, predatory, aggressive........................57• India has never shared in the physical attacks of Asia upon Europe..................................57• It is for her now to recover herself, defend her cultural existence.....................................57

3. Many questions may arise..........................................................................................................58a) Whether such a spirit of defence and attack is the right spirit................................................58

• Is not a unified world-culture the large way of the future?................................................58• Whether the forms of Indian culture must be preserved intact as well as the spirit...........58

b) The reply of the author – A law of graduality through three successive stages.....................59• The first stage is the period of conflict and competition....................................................59• The second step brings the stage of concert – Hardly at all commenced...........................59• The third and last is marked by the spirit of sacrifice – The indeterminate future.............59• Concert or unity must be an underlying unity with a free differentiation..........................59• To lay down one's arms in a state of war is to invite destruction.......................................59

c) India contains a supreme reconciliation of the eternal and the temporal...............................60• Spiritual and temporal have indeed to be perfectly harmonised.........................................60• But the novel formation must be a new self-expression developed from within...............60

C. Where does India actually stand in this critical hour of her necessity............................................601. Mr. Archer's attack – India is indeed awaking and defending herself........................................602. The viewpoints expressed in the book – A different aspect.......................................................61

• The increasing infiltration of India's spiritual thought into Europe and America..............613. By an aggressive force alone can the defence itself be effective...............................................62

• Aggression must be successful and creative if the defence is to be effective....................624. This great question must be given its larger world-wide import................................................63

• The principle of struggle, conflict and competition still governs – No real concert..........63a) A growing mutual closeness – The forecast of a Westernised world.....................................63

• Physical oneness at first will probably accentuate rather than diminish conflict...............63• It may bring about in the end a swallowing unification and a destruction.........................63• On the other hand it may lead to a free concert with some underlying oneness................63

b) Either India will be rationalised and industrialised or she will be the leader.........................64• India alone has remained faithful to the heart of the spiritual motive................................64• India alone has till now refused rationalism, commercialism and economism..................64

D. Not whether India is civilised, but whether the spirit is to take the lead........................................66«Is India Civilised?» – 2...........................................................................................................................67

A. The important issue for the future hope of the race....................................................................671. Does it lie in a culture founded solely upon reason and science?..............................................67

a) The formula of European civilisation – A rational and utilitarian culture.............................67b) The formula of a spiritualised civilisation – A high soul-culture...........................................67

• Is not the truth of our being rather that of a Soul embodied in Nature...............................672. The dispute narrowed to its central issue – The gulf between East and West............................68

a) The extremist rationalist critic – The standard of the materialistic reason.............................68• The rationalist critic denies that India is or ever has been civilised...................................68• Indian civilisation must be recognised as the fruit of a great culture.................................68

b) A more moderate rationalistic critic would admit India's achievements................................69• An Indian mind faithful to its ideals – The real truth goes beyond reason and science.....69

B. The gulf between East and West, India and Europe is less profound.............................................69• There has been a certain infiltration of Indian and Eastern thought and influence............69

1. At first it was a slight and superficial touch...............................................................................692. Now other movements have arisen and laid hold on thought and life........................................70

a) Philosophy and thought – A sharp curve away from rationalistic materialism......................70

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(1) The old limits of scientific interest have begun to break down......................................70• Even Science – Conclusions which only repeat truths of the Veda and Vedanta..............70(2) In some directions the change of attitude has gone remarkably far...............................71

b) This turn is visible in European art, poetry and general literature..........................................71C. The need for the continuance of a distinctive Indian civilisation in the future..............................72

1. The whole human world, India included, in the travail of a swift transformation.....................72• The danger is that a rationalised and Westernised India might emerge.............................72

2. If ancient India would perish – A diminution of the world's riches...........................................733. The consequence of the difference of standpoint between India and Europe............................74

• The normal Western mind – To live from below upward and from out inward................74• India – Living in the higher spiritual truth and from the inner spirit outwards..................74

4. The importance of the spiritual ideal for India and for humanity...............................................74D. The necessity of a defence and a strong, even an aggressive defence............................................75

1. From the standpoint of Indian culture........................................................................................75a) There are plenty of Indians who are for a static defence – No effective value......................75

• Thus to shrink from enlargement and change is too a false confession of impotence.......75b) A large and bold change is needed – Self-expression in form is ever mutable......................76

2. From the standpoint of the pressure of the Time Spirit upon us................................................76• Here too the policy of new creation imposes itself as the true and only effective way......76

E. What we have to do – More powerful formations and a creative assimilation..............................77«Is India Civilised?» – 3...........................................................................................................................79

A. The cultural issue – Contributions to the growth of the human race..........................................791. A suggestion that affects not only ours but all civilisations still in existence............................792. Indian civilisation has been as great as any other of the historic civilisations...........................79

a) From the view-point of the past – Our civilisation can survive the comparison....................79b) From the view-point of the present – From a view-point of the ideal future.........................79

• The spirit of Indian culture – A message for humanity and not for India alone.................79• There are the farther goals towards which humanity is moving.........................................79• How stands Indian civilisation with regard to this yet unrealised future of the race?........79

B. Indian civilisation and the evolutionary potentialities of the earth's coming ages.........................801. The very idea of progress is an illusion to some minds – An uneven progress..........................80

• Progress admittedly does not march on securely in a straight line.....................................802. Progress admittedly does not march on securely in a straight line.............................................81

a) The Western civilisation is proud of its successful modernism.............................................81(1) Much has been lost by Western modernism in the eagerness of its gains......................81• There is much too that it has wilfully flung aside in impatience or scorn..........................81(2) Great gains have been made, of the utmost value to an ultimate perfection..................82• The advance of Science and its application........................................................................82• A certain development of powerful if not high-pitched ideals...........................................82• A salutary habit of many-sided thoroughness....................................................................82

b) The Indian civilisation............................................................................................................83(1) A fall from the highest summits of the past to discouragingly low levels.....................83• There had been even a loss of faith and self-confidence....................................................83(2) There were spiritual and other gains of the greatest importance for the future..............84• The high spiritualised mind and stupendous force of spiritual will – Less in evidence.....84• New gains of spiritual emotion and sensitiveness to spiritual impulse on lower planes....84• There was a descent from the heights to the lower levels..................................................84

3. It is the will in the being that gives to circumstances their value...............................................85• A race or civilisation can draw from adversity and defeat a force of invincible victory. . .85

4. The greatness of the ideals of the past is a promise of greater ideals for the future...................85a) Civilisation and barbarism are words of a quite relative significance....................................85

• European and Indian civilisation at their best have only been half achievements.............85• Where has harmony of spirit, mind and body been entire or altogether real?....................85• There is little that will not have to undergo expansion and mutation.................................85

b) The past and present are creating the greater steps of the future............................................86(1) The race must obey the double principle of persistence and mutation...........................86

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(2) A view of our own past achievement, present position and future possibilities.............87• In our past we must distinguish all that was great, close to our cultural being..................87• Afterwards we have to make a comparison of this past with our present..........................87• We have to fix too our eyes on our dynamic impulses of self-renewal..............................87(3) A second comparison has to be made between the West and India...............................88• In the past of Europe and the past of India.........................................................................88• Next the present of the West and the present of India........................................................88• All that we must inevitably receive from the West – How we can assimilate it................88• What founts of native power there are in ourselves from which we can draw...................88(4) The forward look from our past and present towards our own ideal of the future.........88

(a) A reshaping of the forms of our spirit will have to take place.......................................88• We must recognise the great gulf between what we are and what we may be...................88

(b) The courage to admit the errors of our culture – The treatment of our outcastes..........89(c) We have to look on our cultural ideas and our social forms – Greater possibilities......90

• On our past and present ideals we have to turn the searchlight of the spirit......................905. The defect, the gulf between ideal and collective practice.........................................................91

• The spirit and ideals of our civilisation need no defence...................................................91a) The power of expansion and assimilation has diminished.....................................................91

• Duration, survival was achieved, but not in the end a really secure and vital duration.....91b) And now survival itself has become impossible without expansion......................................91

• If we are to live at all, we must resume India's great interrupted endeavour.....................91• We need to work out thoroughly in life what we have always known in the spirit............91

C. The larger statement of our culture and civilisation that we have now to achieve.........................92• The European mind gives the first place to the principle of growth by struggle................92• Indian culture proceeded on the principle of a concert.......................................................92• What now appears as a struggle may well be the first necessary step................................92• India must affirm her own deeper truths – The only hope for mankind.............................92

A Defence of Indian Culture........................................................................................................................95I –................................................................................................................................................................97A Rationalistic Critic on...........................................................................................................................97Indian Culture...........................................................................................................................................97

A. There are different ways of seeing a foreign civilisation and culture.........................................97• There is the eye of sympathy and intuition and a close appreciative self-identification....97• Then there is the eye of the discerning and dispassionate critic.........................................97• Finally there is the eye of the hostile critic – That too has its use for us............................97

B. The type of the characteristic Western or anti-Indian regard.........................................................981. Mr. William Archer's book on India is taken on account of its very demerits...........................98

a) There are three vitiating elements in his statement................................................................98(1) First, it had an ulterior, a political object – To damage her case for self-government...98(2) A deliberate unfairness and a total incompetence..........................................................99

b) It is not a well-informed outside view or even an instructive adverse criticism....................992. If for any reason we had to depend on a foreign judgment......................................................100

• To the foreign critic we can only go for help in forming a comparative judgment..........100a) In each field it is to men who can speak with some authority that we must turn.................100b) For that purpose all that Mr. Archer writes is not of utility..................................................101

3. The utility I wish to seize on, for it is an utility and even more...............................................102a) The feeling of recoil of the average occidental mind towards Indian culture......................102b) The bedrock of the psychological differences – An approach to reconciliation..................103

II –............................................................................................................................................................105A Rationalistic Critic on.........................................................................................................................105Indian Culture – 2...................................................................................................................................105

A. The misunderstanding of continents.........................................................................................1051. The ideas of an average and typical occidental mind on Indian culture...................................105

• Let us see what strikes such a mentality as unique and abhorrent in the Indian mind.....1052. It was the rationalising of the occidental mind which made the gulf so wide..........................105

• An ancient Greek was much nearer to the Indian mind....................................................105

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• The mediaeval European resembled in many characteristic ways...................................105B. The attack against Indian philosophy and religion.......................................................................106

1. The culture of a people as the expression of a consciousness of life – Three aspects..............106• A side of thought, of ideal, of upward will and the soul's aspiration...............................106• A side of creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence......................106• A side of practical and outward formulation....................................................................106

a) In Indian civilisation philosophy and religion have led – Not sacerdotalism.......................106• A people's philosophy – Mind's purest, largest and most general formulation................106• A people's religion – Its upward will and the soul's aspirations.......................................106• A people's art, poetry, literature – Its intuition, imagination, vital turn, intelligence.......106• A people's society and politics provide in their forms an outward frame........................106• Brahminical civilisation cannot truly imply any domination of sacerdotalism................106

b) The claim and the challenge of a high spirituality – The real questions at issue.................108• That which is claimed for the Indian mind and its civilisation is a high spirituality........108• The Indian view of life – A challenge to develop a spiritual modernism.........................108• Whether the spiritual view of life – The best lead to mankind.........................................108• Whether the expression by Indian culture is the best possible.........................................108

c) The typical occidental mind has grown into the mould of the vitalistic rational idea..........109• This mind confronted by Indian culture is at once repelled.............................................109

d) The natural antagonism of the rationalised vital and practical man.....................................1102. What are Mr. Archer's objections, first to Indian philosophy?.................................................111

• His first objection simply comes to this that it is too philosophical.................................111• His second accusation is that metaphysical philosophy is too metaphysical...................111• His third charge is that it enervates and kills the personality and the will-power............111

a) His first objection simply comes to this that it is too philosophical.....................................111(1) He denies that there is any proof of great mental capacity...........................................111(2) The positive and practical reason as the best guide for the practical life.....................112

b) His second accusation is that metaphysical philosophy is too metaphysical.......................113(1) Mr. Archer believes that all philosophy is speculation and guessing...........................113(2) In fact, Indian philosophy abhors mere guessing and speculation...............................114• An experience verifiable by any man who will take the necessary means.......................114• Yoga is itself nothing but a well-tested means of opening up these greater realms.........114

3. Indian culture reconciling spirit and reason and the whole psychological nature....................115a) In the mind of the West, a war between religion, philosophy and science...........................115b) The West has got itself pushed into nearing paths of thinking and discovery.....................116

• Scientific thought repeating very ancient Indian generalisations.....................................116• Indian psychology – Justified by all the latest psychological discoveries........................116• The fundamental ideas of Indian religion – A new and universal religious mentality.....116

III –...........................................................................................................................................................118A Rationalistic Critic on.........................................................................................................................118Indian Culture–3.....................................................................................................................................118

A. The spirit and aim of Indian culture – Spirituality as an element of superiority......................118B. Our critic denies the lofty aim and greatness of spirit of Indian civilisation................................118

1. Two extraneous circumstances – Material downfall and a period of eclipse...........................118• Failure and temporary eclipse raised as an objection to the value of Indian culture........119

2. How a culture must be judged..................................................................................................119a) Not by material success – Economic capacity and prosperity as a part...............................119b) First by its spirit, then its best accomplishment, lastly its power of survival.......................120

• Not survival alone, but victory and conquest are the promise of its future......................120C. Our critic denies the practical life-value of Indian civilisation....................................................121

1. An occidental idea of spirituality – The opposition of the standpoints....................................121• A condemnation passed by the positivist mind attached to the normal values of life......121• Spirituality as a high effort of the emotions, will and reason, towards the finite.............121• The inwardness of the difference between the West and India........................................121

2. The occidental notions about the character of Indian thought and culture...............................122• The charge made against the effective value of Indian philosophy..................................122

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• That it turns away from life, nature, vital will and the effort of man upon earth.............122• This is a grotesquely exaggerated and false notion of Indian culture and philosophy.....122

3. It is best to begin by setting right the tones of the picture........................................................123a) Saying that Indian philosophy has led away from the study of nature.................................123

(1) A scientific research with signal success in India of ancient times..............................123• In many directions India had the priority of discovery.....................................................123(2) The decline of Indian science, its character and its generalisations.............................124• Indian science came abruptly to a halt somewhere about the thirteenth century.............124• But this was not due to any increase or intolerance of the metaphysical tendency..........124• Indian metaphysics founded itself upon an inner experimental psychology....................124• But study of mind and of our inner forces is surely study of nature................................124• The harmony between philosophy, psychology and religion – Not so physical Nature. .124• Physical Science had not then arrived at the great universal generalisations...................124

b) Saying that Indian culture denies all value to life.................................................................125(1) The ancient civilisation of India founded itself upon four human interests.................125• First, desire and enjoyment...............................................................................................125• Next, material, economic and other aims and needs of the mind and body.....................125• Thirdly, ethical conduct and the right law of individual and social life...........................125• Lastly spiritual liberation..................................................................................................125(2) The Indian mind looked equally at everything that appertains to human life..............126• Indian education of women as well as of men was rich and comprehensive...................126

4. The opposition of mentality which is at the bottom of the criticism........................................126a) The ancient Aryan culture graded life according to a transitional scale...............................126

• A supreme and arduous self-exceeding as the summit of human endeavour...................126• The difference between the typical Western and the typical Indian mentality.................126• Buddhism first gave an exaggerated and enormous extension to the ascetic ideal..........126• Buddhism too had another side, a side turned towards action and creation.....................126• Afterwards there came the lofty illusionism of Shankara................................................126• The religions of devotion humanised the austere ascetic ideal.........................................126• Now, a powerful reaction towards a spiritual possession of mind, life and matter..........126

b) The doctrine of reincarnation enormously enhances the value of effort and action.............128• The nature of the present act is of an incalculable importance.........................................128

c) Elements stigmatised as an ascetic pessimism by the vitalistic thought of Europe..............129(1) Pessimism is not peculiar to the Indian mind – It is not its sole note...........................129• The ascetic pessimism often found in Christianity is absent in Christ's teachings...........129• Buddha's teaching laid heavy stress on the sorrow and impermanence of things............129• But the Buddhist Nirvana is a state of ineffable calm and joy, open not only to a few. . .129• Even illusionism preached, not a gospel of sorrow, but the final unreality......................129• A luminous ascent into godhead was always held to be a consummation.......................129(2) Some element of asceticism is needed – The exaggerations and deflections...............131• Asceticism means the self-denial and self-conquest by which man rises........................131• The nobility or idealistic loftiness of the ascetic endeavour.............................................131• But there are the exaggerations and deflections that all ideals undergo...........................131• The vitalistic exaggerations are the opposite defect of Western culture..........................131

D. Asceticism and illusionism are minor issues – The question.......................................................132• Indian spirituality has been a high effort of the human spirit...........................................132• Whether such an endeavour is or is not essential to man's highest perfection.................132• Whether it is to be the motive-power of a great and complete human civilisation..........132

IV –...........................................................................................................................................................133A Rationalistic Critic on.........................................................................................................................133Indian Culture – 4...................................................................................................................................133

A. Indian religion is Indian spiritual philosophy put into action and experience..........................133• The life-value of Indian philosophy – Bound up with the life-value of Indian religion. .133• The inner principle of Hinduism has been synthetic, acquisitive, inclusive....................133

B. What our hostile critic has to say about this all-assimilating Hinduism.......................................1341. A condemnation useful to disengage the salient and typical antipathies..................................134

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2. The themes of the attack...........................................................................................................134a) The total irrationality of Hinduism is the main theme of the attack.....................................134

• The allegation – The form rather than the substance and the letter rather than the spirit 134• This kind of gravitation is a fairly universal feature of the human mind.........................134

b) The charge of Paganism – A superstition full of performances of piety..............................135• Impure Hindus are advised to take up for a time with Christianity..................................135

c) An alleged want of all moral worth and ethical substance...................................................136• The most prejudicial charge that can be brought against any religion.............................136• The Hindu is comparatively free from the grosser Western vices....................................136

C. The temperamental sources of the dislike and anger....................................................................1371. Religion in relation with reason and life – Divergence between the East and the West..........137

a) The divergence – The predominance of reason and the life-cult in Europe.........................137• The normal European mind – The cult of practical reason and the cult of life................137• Christianity failed to spiritualise Europe..........................................................................137• It denied the supremacy of the reason and put its anathema on a fullness of life............137• In Asia there has not been this predominance of reason and the life-cult........................137

b) Different ways of approach to the spirit – The two continents are two sides.......................138• Europe, it would seem, must go through the life and the reason......................................138• Asia or at any rate India lives naturally by a spiritual influx from above........................138

c) The emphasis of the Western mind is on life, the outer life above all.................................139(1) In the West, the religious spirit was rationalised, secularised and almost annihilated.139(2) The tendency to secularism is a necessary consequence of the cult of life and reason140• Ancient Europe – Its religion was a secular institution....................................................140• Modern Europe separated religion from life....................................................................140• And modern Europe secularised and rationalised too the ethical demand.......................140• Antinomianism seeks to annul ethics also, for an exultant freedom of the vital play......140• Religion was left aside, an impoverished system of belief and ceremony.......................140(3) By an inevitable process we reach the atheistic or agnostic cult of secularism...........141• Only this material world to which our reason and senses bear witness............................141• A vague abstraction of spiritual existence – Theism or a rationalised Christianity.........141• Or a Reason or Power represented by the moral and physical Law – Deism...................141• Or why should there be any God at all?...........................................................................141

d) The Western outlook of asceticism and other-worldliness, spirituality and religion...........142• To the West – At most a moderate intellectual and ethical asceticism is permissible.....142• Spirituality – As of a lofty intelligence, rational will, limited beauty and moral good....142• Religion – Kept within the bounds of the practical reason and an earthly intelligence. . .142

e) The Western mind confronted with Indian religion, thought and culture............................143(1) The suprarational and to it antirational urge is still held in honour – An apparent gulf. .143• The apparent gulf between the two mentalities looks unbridgeable.................................143(2) Life is questioned in the Indian standpoint on life – Asceticism ranges rampant........144• The direct contrasts and opposites....................................................................................144• The Western mind lays an enormous stress upon force of personality............................144• The flowering of the mental and vital ego is the West's cultural ideal.............................144• The Western temperament is rajasic, kinetic, pragmatic, active......................................144

2. The forms of the religion as the fruits of a barbaric culture.....................................................145a) A cult and belief antiquated and mediaeval – Filling with religion the whole of life..........145b) There is a profound truth or meaning in these Indian religious forms.................................146

(1) The gods are living aspects of the one Infinite – The image is a physical symbol......146• To the logical European mind monotheism, polytheism, pantheism are irreconcilable...146(2) The fundamental character of the rites, ceremonies, system of cult and worship........147• Hinduism is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive religion.....................................147• Religion must address its appeal to the whole of our being.............................................147• Religion must take too each man where he stands and spiritualise him...........................147

3. The accusation of a want of ethical content is almost monstrously false.................................148• The idea of the Dharma is, next to the idea of the Infinite, the major chord....................148• Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism have had the strongest effective force in ethics...............148

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• Morality is for the Western mind mostly a thing of outward conduct..............................148• Conduct for the Indian mind is only one means of expression and sign of a soul-state...148• Hinduism admits relative standards, a wisdom too hard for the European intelligence...148

D. All these criticisms of Hinduism are therefore either false or invalid..........................................149• There remains the damaging accusation that Indian culture depresses the vital force.....149

V –............................................................................................................................................................151A Rationalistic Critic on.........................................................................................................................151Indian Culture – 5...................................................................................................................................151

A. India has lived greatly, but with a different will in life from Europe.......................................1511. Whether Indian culture satisfies the tests of a progressive Life-power....................................151

• No anti-vital culture can survive – A too intellectual or too ethereal civilisation............151• The greatness and growth of the race on earth must be our equal care............................151

2. The Western impression of an entirely metaphysical and other-worldly system.....................152• This is a bitter misrepresentation......................................................................................152• We must see why different eyes see the same object in such different colours...............152• The idea and plan of the life of India have been peculiar to her temperament.................152

3. There are three powers in order to judge the life-value of a culture – The first one................153• There is, first, the power of its original conception of life...............................................153• There is, next, the power of the forms, types and rhythms it has given to life.................153• There is, last, the inspiration, the vigour, the force of vital execution of its motives.......153

a) The European conception of life – A Life in the material universe.....................................153• The development of individual personality and an organised efficient national life.......153

b) The Indian conception of life – The innermost sense of Indian culture...............................154(1) The Indian idea of existence is not physical, but psychological and spiritual..............154• Man himself is a spirit that uses life and body.................................................................154• A powerful and inspiring motive to the human effort of man..........................................154(2) The dignity given to human existence – Spiritual liberation and perfection................156• Man in the Indian idea is a spirit moving to self-discovery, capable of Godhead...........156• He can arrive at it through any or all of his natural powers if they will accept release....156

c) To the positivist Western mind – Not a living and intelligible idea.....................................157• It is the distinction of Indian culture to have seized on this great dynamic hope.............157

B. The value of the Indian conception for life – The relations with our normal living....................1581. A gradual spiritual progress and evolution – The truth of reincarnation..................................158

• The normal life of man has to be passed through with a conscientious endeavour..........158• Only afterwards can we go on to self-existence or a supra-existence..............................158• A gradual soul evolution with a final perfection or divine transcendence.......................158• Human life as its first direct means and often repeated opportunity................................158

2. The life side of the Indian idea – The total mass of our necessary experience........................159• Indian culture never depressed or mutilated the activities of our nature..........................159• It is the generous office of culture to enrich, enlarge and encourage human life.............159

3. The Indian mind in the government of life and in the discipline of spirituality.......................160a) A guiding law to the vital forces – A discipline for spiritual perfection..............................160b) The powers of the natural ego have to be accepted and put in order....................................161

(1) Two main truths, stages for growth and complexity of life – The Dharma..................161• First, our being in its growth has stages through which it must pass...............................161• Then again, life is complex and the nature of man is complex........................................161• Self-interest and hedonistic desire are the original human motives.................................161• Another power claims man – The power of the Dharma..................................................161(2) The Dharma is the right law of functioning of our life in all its parts..........................162

(a) There are gradations and many kinds – But universal too in the broad lines...............162• Dharma is fixed in its essence, but still it develops in our consciousness and evolves....162• Each has his type of nature and there must be a rule for the perfection of that type........162• The Dharma – Universal too in the broad lines which all ought to pursue......................162

(b) The universal dharma – A perfection for the developing mind and soul of man.........163• Certain high or large universal qualities which build a highest type of manhood...........163• Not a purely moral or ethical conception – The perfection of the total human nature.....163

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• This was the total ideal of the Arya, the man of high upbringing and noble nature.........163c) The profounder aim – Raising to a mightiest self-exceeding and freedom..........................164

(1) It laboured to infuse the great aim of spiritual liberation and perfection.....................164(2) Spiritual freedom, spiritual perfection presented as the highest human aim................165• Man was not allowed to forget that he had in him a highest self.....................................165• There were ways and disciplines provided in number by which he could realise this.....165• Around him he saw and revered the powerful practicants and the mighty masters.........165• The spiritual idea governed, enlightened all the other life-motives.................................165

VI –...........................................................................................................................................................167A Rationalistic Critic on.........................................................................................................................167Indian Culture – 6...................................................................................................................................167

A. A civilisation judged by the power of the forms, types and rhythms.......................................1671. Judged by the power of its ideas, Indian civilisation was inferior to none...............................167

• The power of its conception of life – There is nothing here to discourage life................1672. But there must be also a harmony of forms and rhythms.........................................................168

a) A passage through three periods – Formation, fixing of forms and decline.........................168• In the history of all great cultures – A passage through three periods.............................168• There is a first period of large and loose formation..........................................................168• There is a second period in which we see a fixing of forms, moulds and rhythms..........168• There is a closing or a critical period of superannuation, decay and disintegration.........168• This last stage is the supreme crisis in the life of a civilisation........................................168• There may be a rebirth, a fresh lease of life and expansion, a true renascence................168

b) Indian civilisation passed through all these stages...............................................................169B. The developed forms and the principal rhythms of Indian civilisation........................................170

1. The problem to solve was that of a firm outward basis on which to found..............................170• How are we to take the natural life of man and subject it to a dharma............................170• And how again are we to point that dharma towards its own exceeding.........................170• Indian culture – The double system of the four Varnas and the four Asramas................170

2. The four graded classes of society – The four Varnas..............................................................170a) Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra – In practice, birth became the basis........................170

• The ancient Chaturvarnya must not be judged by the caste system.................................170• The ancient Indian idea was that man falls by his nature into four types.........................170• The economic order of society was cast in the form and gradation of these four types...170• In practice we find that birth became the basis of the Varna............................................170

b) At no time indeed was the adherence to the economic rule quite absolute..........................171• There was always a difference between the ideal theory of the system and its practice. .171• Indian society degenerated into a chaos of castes, developing evils to eliminate............171

c) It was a well-devised and necessary scheme in its time.......................................................172(1) The ethical and spiritual content – The intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth........172• Birth was accepted in practice as the first gross and natural indicator.............................172• But birth is not and cannot be the sole test of Varna........................................................172• The individual man was carefully trained in the capacities, habits and attainments........172(2) First to the perfection of the Dharma, and at the end to a highest spiritual freedom. . .173• The system of society – For the elevation and progress of the soul, mind and life..........173

3. The four successive stages of a developing human life – The four Asramas...........................174• Four periods – The student, the householder, the recluse, the free supersocial man........174• This circle was not obligatory on all.................................................................................174• Only the rare few took the life of the wandering recluse.................................................174

C. The old spiritual aim and tradition – The impulse of a great renascence.....................................176• Thus the ancient Indian race grew to astonishing heights of culture and civilisation......176• Society became more artificial and complex, less free and noble....................................176• Spiritual liberation was pursued in hostility to life and not as its full-orbed result..........176• Still some strong basis of the old knowledge remained to keep alive the soul of India...176

VII –.........................................................................................................................................................178Indian Spirituality and Life...................................................................................................................178

A. Not only a great cultural system – An immense religious effort of the human spirit...............178

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B. The spiritual aim demanded a pervadingly religio-philosophic culture.......................................1781. A spiritual turn on a rich and luxuriant variety of forms and rhythms.....................................178

a) Hinduism fulfilled this purpose – A tradition of the Godward endeavour...........................178• The Indian culture even tried to turn the whole of life towards spirituality.....................178• Religion is the first native, if imperfect form of the spiritual impulse.............................178

b) The first baffling difficulty over which the European mind stumbles..................................179(1) European mind finds itself unable to make out what Hindu religion is.......................179• It has been asserted that there is no such thing as a Hindu religion.................................179(2) A total difference of outlook on religion – The fixed intellectual belief......................180• To the Indian mind the least important part of religion is its dogma...............................180• All religions are true in their own way and degree – The paths to the One Eternal.........180

2. Four elements constitute Hinduism – Not merely a religio-social system...............................181• First, a belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence.........................................181• Next, the need of self-preparation by development and experience.................................181• Thirdly, a way of knowledge and of spiritual or religious discipline...............................181• Lastly, an organisation of the individual and collective life.............................................181

C. The fundamental idea of all Indian religion – A living spiritual Truth........................................1821. A Spirit and Self containing all that is finite and infinite – The governing idea......................182

• This Truth was to be lived and even to be made the governing idea................................182• Life and thought – A means of progress towards self-realisation and God-realisation....182

2. To pursue that Truth, to attain to it, to live in it – The sole thing needful................................183a) The Spirit, universal Nature and the soul are the three truths..............................................183

• The discovery of the inner spiritual self in man is the condition of spiritual perfection..183• Differences of credal belief are various ways of seeing the one Self in all......................183

b) Indian culture – Stamping religion with the essential ideal of a real spirituality.................184• The main metaphysical truths have been stamped on the general mind of the people.....184

c) A readiness of the mind of a whole nation to turn to the highest realities...........................185• The sign of an age-long, a real and a still living and supremely spiritual culture............185

3. The synthetic character and embracing unity of the Indian religious mind.............................186a) The endless variety of Indian philosophy and religion.........................................................186

(1) A sign of a superior religious culture – A perfect liberty of thought and of worship. .186(2) A constant tradition of liberty of religious practice and complete freedom of thought...187• India recognised the need of variety of spiritual experience and knowledge...................187

b) The necessity of a firm spiritual order was provided for in various ways............................188• First, the recognition of an ever enlarging number of authorised scriptures....................188• The very largest freedom of interpretation was allowed..................................................188• Another was the power of family and communal tradition..............................................188• A third was the religious authority of the Brahmins.........................................................188• Finally, order was secured by the succession of Gurus or spiritual teachers...................188• A living and moving, not a rigid continuity – The inner religious mind of India............188

c) A great, ancient and still living spiritual culture – A great new life is preparing.................190d) This many-sided plasticity is a constant stumbling block to the European mind.................191

• The religious thinking of Europe is accustomed to rigid impoverishing definitions.......191• Western religion – Creed, moral code, observances and ceremonies, organisation.........191• The Indian mind on the contrary is averse to intolerant mental exclusions.....................191

e) A free and tolerant synthesis of all spiritual worship and experience..................................192• The one Godhead is worshipped as the All – But Indian religion is not pantheism.........192• Indian polytheism is not the popular polytheism of ancient Europe................................192• Indian image-worship is not the idolatry of a barbaric or undeveloped mind..................192

4. Indian religion is founded upon three basic ideas or rather three fundamentals......................193a) The idea of the One Existence, the Eternal, the Infinite.......................................................193b) The manifold way of man's approach to the Eternal and Infinite.........................................194

(1) The gods as powers, names and personalities of the one Godhead..............................194• One may approach the Supreme through any of these names and forms.........................194(2) The variety of religious cult – Truths of an intermediate supraphysical existence......195• Not only as symbols but world-realities – Other psychological planes............................195

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• Man approaches God – The level of Truth is determined by his evolutionary stage.......195c) The Divine can be met by each individual soul – The Divinity within us...........................195

VIII –........................................................................................................................................................196Indian Spirituality and Life–2...............................................................................................................196

A. The task of religion and spirituality is to mediate between God and man...............................1961. The difficulty to bring home the spiritual consciousness to the natural man...........................196

• The West mistakes for spirituality a preference for living in the mind and emotions......196• Our inmost self is not the intellect, not the aesthetic, ethical or thinking mind...............196• The characteristic sign of a spiritual culture – The living of an inmost spiritual life.......196

2. This endeavour takes in certain religions the form of a spiritual exclusiveness......................197• The main tendency of the Christian discipline – To despise the physical and vital.........197• Indian spirituality tended to a spiritual exclusiveness loftier in vision............................197• A spiritual culture must recognise that all is manifestation and creation of the Spirit.....197• Its aim must be to draw all men and all life and the whole human being upward...........197• The total movement of Indian spirituality is towards this aim.........................................197

B. The form of Indian religion has undergone remarkable changes.................................................198• These changes are the results of a logical and inevitable evolution.................................198

1. The Vedic and Vedantic ages of Indian civilisation.................................................................198a) The Vedic religion in its external or exoteric side................................................................198

(1) An outward foundation on the mind of the physical man – A physical sacrifice.........198• The Vedic religion took the natural sense and feeling of the physical man.....................198• The Vedic religion accepted also the form in which early man expressed his sense.......198(2) The Vedic Rishis gave a psychic function to the godheads worshipped by the people...199• This religious and moral force was the highest reach of the external cult.......................199

b) The inner sense, the esoteric meaning hidden in the Vedic scripture...................................200(1) A feature essential to the right understanding of almost all the ancient religions........200• In all or most there was a surface cult and an inner secret of the Mysteries....................200• Only by penetrating into the esoteric sense of this worship can we understand..............200(2) An extension of the psychic significance of the godheads in the Cosmos...................201• Its primary notion was that of a hierarchy of worlds........................................................201• A Truth, Right and Law sustains and governs all these levels of Nature.........................201• One in essence, it takes in them different but cognate forms...........................................201

(a) An inner meaning – The godheads are names of the one nameless Ineffable..............201• All the Vedic godheads are in their external character powers of physical Nature..........201• All have in their inner meaning a psychic function and psychological ascriptions..........201

(b) The application to the inner life of man – A psychological and psychic discipline....202• Man has to turn from the falsehood to the Truth – The divine Powers and their aid.......202• The way to call down this aid was the secret of the Vedic mystics – The Mysteries.......202• Already we find in their seed the most characteristic ideas of Indian spirituality............202• The ancient human fathers founded a great and profound civilisation in India...............202

c) The Upanishads, a large crowning outcome of the Vedic discipline and experience..........203(1) An epoch of immense and strenuous seeking – The higher mind of the nation...........203• The work that was done in this period became the firm bedrock of Indian spirituality...203(2) A more and more generalised intellectual, ethical and aesthetic evolution..................204• The human race in its cycle of civilisation needed a large-lined advance........................204• The danger was that the greater spiritual truth already gained might be lost...................204• Western civilisation has been intellectual, rational, secular and even materialistic.........204• The ancient spiritual knowledge and the spiritual tendency were saved in India............204• The Vedantic seers renewed the Vedic truth – The saving power of spirituality.............204

2. The second or post-Vedic age of Indian civilisation................................................................205a) A high outburst of the intelligence – It never lost sight of the spiritual motive...................205

(1) Profound and subtle philosophies – An analysis by the reason and logical faculty.....205• There was a constant admission that spiritual experience is a greater thing....................205(2) The same governing force – All the other activities of the Indian mind and Indian life. 206• The epic literature – An intellectual and ethical thinking, a constant religious sense......206• Art in India – A suggestion of the spiritual and the infinite.............................................206

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• Indian society – A deepening of the intensities of psycho-religious experience..............206• Richness of life experience and intensity of the spiritual life accompanied each other...206

b) In Indian religion – A continuous development of its organic life.......................................207(1) An inner continuity with its Vedic and Vedantic origins.............................................207• Buddhism could easily have claimed for itself a Vedic origin.........................................207• The rejection of Buddhism – The exclusive trenchancy of its positions..........................207(2) A gradual fading out of the prominent Vedic forms and the substitution of others.....208• A farther widening and fathoming of psychic and spiritual experience...........................208(3) The psycho-spiritual inner life of Puranic and Tantric religion and Yoga...................209

(a) An effort to open the general mind – A psycho-emotional sense and direction..........209• As Catholic Christianity – To lay hold on his inner vital and emotional nature..............209

(b) The central spiritual truth remained – A wide, assured and many-sided endeavour. . .210• To provide the race with a basis of generalised psycho-religious experience..................210

C. A farther possibility of religious evolution – A generalised spiritual life....................................2111. This endeavour has manifested itself in the evolution of Indian spirituality............................211

• First – The preparation of the natural external man for spirituality.................................211• Second – Taking up his outward life into a deeper mental and psychical living.............211• Third – Taking up his whole mental, psychical, physical living into a first beginning....211• It synchronised with a decline of Indian culture – But a possibility in the future............211

2. There is, behind, the inmost soul of man and above, a luminous highest mind.......................212• The psychic-emotional part of man's nature is not the inmost door.................................212• The inner mind of man is not the highest witness to spiritual experience........................212• The later movements of India's vast religious cycle – To open these hidden powers......212• The labour of ascent needed to be followed by a descent to transform human nature.....212

3. A widest and highest spiritualising of life on earth – The future of India................................212IX –...........................................................................................................................................................214Indian Spirituality and Life–3...............................................................................................................214

A. The dynamic formulation of Indian religious culture and the effect on life.............................2141. It is essential to keep to the central, living, governing things...................................................2142. The significance of life and the aim of human existence for Indian thinking..........................214

• Indian culture recognises the spirit as the truth of our being............................................2143. The formal turn, the rhythmic lines of effort of the Indian culture..........................................215

a) Two complete external stages – A third stage in preparation belongs to the future.............215• The early Vedic was the first stage...................................................................................215• The Purano-Tantric was the second stage........................................................................215• The third movement of the Indian spiritual mind has a double impulse..........................215• Its will is to call the community of men and all men each according to his power..........215• The possibility not only of an ascent but of a descent and a change of human nature.....215

b) Indian religion throughout the stages – Two perceptions.....................................................216• First, the approach to the spirit – Through a gradual culture, training, progress..............216• Also, throughout, an insistence on the spiritual motive – Some religious influence........216• Indian culture has worked by two coordinated operations...............................................216• First, it has laboured to lead upward through a natural series of life-stages....................216• Also, it has striven to keep the highest aim before the mind at every stage.....................216

c) The two spiritual operations of this culture..........................................................................217(1) A natural series of life-stages – The frame was constituted by a triple quartette.........217• Its first circle was the synthesis and gradation of the fourfold object of life....................217• Its second circle was the fourfold order of society...........................................................217• Its third was the fourfold scale of the successive stages of life........................................217(2) Life cast in a religious mould – The influence of a religious conception of life..........218

(a) Both the individual and the community drank in at every moment its influence.........218(b) Every part of human nature, every characteristic turn of action was given a place.....218

• That each man might feel in the way suitable the call, the pressure, the influence..........218• That insistence produced a sensitiveness to the spiritual appeal, a readiness to answer. .218

B. A complex system of religious development and spiritual evolution...........................................2201. A gradation of three stages in the growing human consciousness...........................................220

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a) Actually in life there are infinite differences between man and man...................................220• In most other religious systems, a standard imperative on all – Only a few can comply.220• This is the foundation of the Christian system of an eternal heaven and hell..................220• Indian religion – A higher standard, but all beings are sure of an eventual salvation......220• One crude, ill-formed, still outward, another, more developed, a third, the ripest...........220

b) A general distinction can be drawn between three principal types......................................221(1) The first stage – A soul shrouded in the ignorance of material Nature........................221• Indian religion created ceremony and ritual and strict outward rule and injunction........221• All that calls on man to turn for the just satisfaction of his desires and his interests.......221(2) The middle stage – Already something awake that can go inward..............................222• Philosophic, psycho-spiritual, ethical, aesthetic and emotional religious seeking...........222(3) The third stage of the spiritual evolution – The human being ready for divinity.........222

c) There was no sharp and unbridgeable division, only a gradation of the three powers.........223• The approaches to the highest status were not absolutely denied to any man..................223• Even in the direct approach – The principle of differing capacity and varying nature....223

2. The connection to the life of the human being and his powers................................................224a) The Shastra – Any systematised teaching and science for each department of life.............224

• This high scientific and philosophical spirit was carried into all the activities................224• This complete understanding has given religion in India its durable security.................224• All knowledge was woven into one and led up by degrees to the highest knowledge.....224

b) The Dharma – The whole right practice of life founded on this knowledge........................225• Each activity of soul, mind, life, body has its dharma......................................................225(1) The ethical nature of man – The social law, the ideal rule, the spiritual freedom........225• The Dharma fixed in the Shastra is the right thing to observe, the true rule of action.....225• First in the web of Dharma comes the social law.............................................................225(2) The aesthetic or even the hedonistic being of man – Art, literature and poetry...........227• Not only an aid to religion and spirituality but even one of the main gates to the Spirit. 227(3) The most outwardly vital life of man – Three steps of the expanding human spirit....228• His ordinary dynamic, political, economical and social being – The Dharma.................228• The higher a man's position and power, the greater the call on him of the Dharma........228• Here the tendency was to impose a rigorous law and authority.......................................228• The three powers of the system........................................................................................228• A rigid observation and discipline of the social law.........................................................228• A larger nobler discipline and freer self-culture of the ideal side of the Dharma............228• A wide freedom of the religious and spiritual life............................................................228

C. The preparation of the soul of man for its spiritual being – The three steps................................229• First, the regulated satisfaction of the primary natural being of man...............................229• Then, the steps of the developed reason and psychical, ethical and aesthetic powers.....229• Finally, each of these growing powers was made a gateway into his spiritual being......229• A Yoga of knowledge for the self-exceeding of the thinking intellectual man................229• A Yoga of works for the self-exceeding of the active, dynamic and ethical man............229• A Yoga of bhakti for the self-exceeding of the emotional, aesthetic, hedonistic man.....229• A Yoga of self-exceeding through the power of the psychical being and even the life...229

X –............................................................................................................................................................231Indian Spirituality and Life – 4.............................................................................................................231

A. The working out of the culture in life.......................................................................................2311. A culture in order to be rightly valued – The intention which was behind..............................231

a) The essential intention of Indian culture was extraordinarily high......................................231b) The aim of a great culture – The aim conceived by ancient India is the highest..................231

• The whole aim of a great culture is to lift man up to something which at first he is not. 231• To lead him by some high law of his spirit is the highest................................................231

2. The system of Indian culture – A science and art of life, a system of living...........................232a) A decline came upon it – Misfortune is not a proof of absence of culture...........................232

• There must be some heart of soundness which has kept this people alive.......................232b) The effect in the values of life – Great limitations, great imperfections..............................233

• We have to see not only the spirit and principle of the culture........................................233

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• We have to see not only the ideal idea and scope of intention in its system....................233(1) There is no culture, no civilisation which in its system has been entirely satisfactory 233• There is always a great gulf between the ideal and the actual practice of life.................233• Mankind is still no more than semi-civilised....................................................................233(2) Each civilisation has achieved something of special value..........................................234• Every civilisation presents a mixed and anomalous appearance......................................234• The future has to go on to a greater and more perfect comprehensive development.......234

c) A criticism on the type of European culture.........................................................................235• What does the practical reason and efficiency come to in the end?.................................235• Whether Europe is taking the only, the complete or the best way...................................235• Whether it is not the right thing for India, not to imitate Europe.....................................235

B. The attack against Indian culture – The culture in its practical effects........................................2371. Three lines of attack – The third is that of a failure in life.......................................................237

• To deny the truth or the value of spirituality....................................................................237• To prove that we find in India no spirituality, no real philosophy...................................237• A third line of attack – Two inconsistent and opposite assertions...................................237• First, that the higher Hinduism has had no effect on India...............................................237• Secondly, that it has had on the contrary a soul-killing, life-killing effect......................237• The last position taken is the only one which we need now consider..............................238

2. Whether there has been an actual complete failure in life – If so, one of two causes..............238• Some essential bungling in the application of the ideal to the facts of life as it is...........238• A refusal to recognise the facts of life at all.....................................................................238

a) No such error in the governing idea of Indian culture..........................................................238• The value of life and its training were amply recognised in its system............................238• Even Buddhism and Illusionism – That man must develop himself................................238

b) An exaggeration in the direction of negating life – Not the whole of Indian thought..........239(1) The early Vedic religion and the Upanishads did not deny life...................................239(2) Indian thought and religion at present towards the synthesis of spirituality and life.. .240• Buddhism made a gospel of the ascetic exaggeration......................................................240• The philosophy of Shankara, his theory of Maya – A powerful imprint..........................240• His theory was always combated by other Vedantic philosophies and religions.............240• To develop to the full the being of man was an important element.................................240

C. Whether the exaggeration in practice discouraged life and action...............................................241• We must see how far there is any foundation for the substance of this criticism.............241

XI –...........................................................................................................................................................242Indian Spirituality and Life – 5.............................................................................................................242

A. What is meant after all by life and when is it that we most fully and greatly live?..................242• Life is surely nothing but the creation and active self-expression of man's spirit............242• In a narrower sense life is sometimes spoken of as the more external vital action..........242• Life may be very active for a small and privileged part of the community......................242• Mere living – But if life is not uplifted, the community does not really live...................242

B. The charge against Indian culture in its practical effects can be dismissed.................................2431. India has lived and lived greatly...............................................................................................243

a) The ancient and mediaeval life of India – Life in all its fullness.........................................243b) In what field indeed has not India attempted, achieved, created?........................................244

(1) Her spiritual and philosophic achievement, science, surgery and medecine................244(2) In literature, architecture, sculpture and painting.........................................................245(3) In the outward life – The modern Indian revival is only a repetition...........................245

c) The whole nation shared in the common life – The features of the Indian character...........247• In ancient Hindu times the people had their share of political life and power.................247• The people had their share too in art and poetry, education.............................................247• Nor was the life of India ascetic, gloomy or sad..............................................................247

d) India has lived much, but has not sat down to record the history of her life........................249• In spite of the defect the greatness and activity of the past life of India reveals itself.....249

2. The criticism about individual will and individual personality................................................250a) The number of great names – The significant figures born of the creative Indian mind.....250

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b) The difference of mentality between the average European and the Indian mind...............252(1) Will-power and personality – The direction preferably given is of a different kind....252• The average European mind is more interested in the egoistic or self-asserting will......252• The Indian mind – The calm, self-controlling or even the self-effacing personality.......252(2) In literature – The one centres more in the rajasic, the other in the sattwic.................253(3) The Indian is the more evolved and spiritual conception.............................................253• Asceticism rightly understood and practised – A greater concentration of will...............253• The Indian mind still believes that soul power is a greater thing than will-force............253• The impersonal – That carries the person to his largest greatness and power..................253

XII –.........................................................................................................................................................255Indian Art................................................................................................................................................255

A. A Western criticism of Indian fine arts – Architecture, sculpture and painting.......................2551. The appreciation of the aesthetic side of a people's culture – The importance........................255

• First – A consideration of the sources of misunderstanding.............................................255• Then – The true cultural significance of Indian aesthetic creation...................................255

2. Mr. Archer devotes to Indian art a whole chapter of sweeping denunciation..........................255a) The actual points of the criticism throw light on the psychology of the objectors...............255b) The objections – A few instances of the criticism by Mr. Archer........................................256

(1) An ignorance of the deeper motives of art and a fastening on details..........................256(2) The ignorance of elementary notions on intuition in art...............................................257

(a) Intuitions without basis in any intellectual process or contradicting one another........257(b) Intuition in art cannot proceed as in science – Different kinds of intuition in art........258

• The poet and artist cannot proceed precisely as the scientist or philosopher...................258• In art itself there are different kinds of intuition...............................................................258

3. The Western outlook and dislike – An inability to understand Indian art................................259a) There has been now some change – Recognition of Chinese and Japanese art...................259b) But the change has not yet gone far enough.........................................................................260

• But there is little sign of the understanding of Indian artistic creation.............................260• A utility in fathoming the depths and causes of the divergence.......................................260

B. The mutual misunderstanding between the European and Indian minds.....................................2611. The essential understanding must precede a comparative criticism.........................................261

• The criticism of art is vain when it ignores the spirit, aim, essential motive...................2612. A demand for something other than what is intended..............................................................262

a) The difficulty of the Indian mind spiritually to understand the arts of Europe....................262(1) A comparison between a feminine Indian figure and a Greek Aphrodite....................262• The Greek figure aims at expressing a certain divine power of beauty............................262• The Indian sculptor stresses something behind, something more remote........................262(2) Some of the most famed pieces of Tintoretto – A failure of spiritual sympathy..........263• I come to this art with a previous demand which it cannot give me................................263• I find myself turning away from the work of one of the greatest Italian masters.............263

b) The attitude of the natural European mind to the great works of Indian art.........................264(1) It catches only what is kin to European effort and regards that too as inferior............264(2) But ordinarily it looks at it with a blank or an angry incomprehension.......................265

3. The difference in the spirit and method of artistic creation......................................................266a) The intuition of the European artist – The appeal is to the outward soul.............................266

• All great artistic work proceeds from an act of intuition..................................................266• Where begins the difference between great European and great Indian work.................266

b) Ancient Indian art – An intuitive and spiritual art................................................................267(1) Disclosing something of the Self to the regard of the soul...........................................267• Indian art is identical in its spiritual aim and principle with the rest of Indian culture....267(2) A seeing in the self as the characteristic method – An appeal to the inner self............268

C. The spiritual character of Indian art – A hieratic aesthetic script.................................................269XIII –........................................................................................................................................................270Indian Art – 2..........................................................................................................................................270

A. Architecture, sculpture, and painting – An appeal to the spirit through the eye......................2701. The Western and the Indian mind – An opposite view on form and spirit...............................270

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• The Western mind is arrested and attracted by the form, confines the soul in the body..270• For the Indian mind form does not exist except as a creation of the spirit.......................270

2. The right way to look at an Indian work of art – The spirit carries the form...........................271• The opening of the inner spiritual eye and a moved communion in the soul...................271• The Japanese – These things apart where they can look at them in a treasured secrecy..271

B. Indian architecture – The temples and other sacred buildings.....................................................2721. The first truth of Indian architecture and its significance.........................................................272

a) The signs of an ancient spiritual and religious culture – Something different.....................272b) How an Indian temple must be understood..........................................................................273

• An Indian temple – The divine Self, the Cosmic Spirit, the Infinite as a conception......2732. An answer to certain very common misapprehensions and objections....................................274

a) What our Western critic tells us about the temples of the South and of the North..............274b) The alleged absence of unity................................................................................................275

(1) The failure of an European eye to see at once the unity of this architecture................275• An original oneness, not a combined or synthetic or an effected unity, is there..............275(2) The unity of all the creations of this hieratic art...........................................................276

(a) The way to appreciate Dravidian architecture – A tremendous unity..........................276• Some place where there is room for a free background of Nature...................................276• The infinite multiplicity which fills this oneness and the return to the original unity......276

(b) The same method for temples of the north – The thronging detail and ornament.......278[1] Different styles and motives – The infinite multiplicity in the infinite oneness......278[2] As the Latin mind once objected to Shakespeare – The European mind.................279

• To condemn this abundance as barbarous is to apply a foreign standard.........................279• The Indian vision of the world and existence was vaster and fuller than Shakespeare's. 279

c) The objection of the crowding detail – The objection of massiveness.................................280• The objection that the crowding detail allows no calm, gives no relief or space.............280• The unity on which all is upborne, carries in itself the infinite space and calm...............280• As for the objection in regard to Dravidian architecture to its massiveness....................280• The precise spiritual effect intended could not be given otherwise..................................280

d) The dislike of unaccustomed forms – The impression of terror and gloom.........................281• Its own way of arriving at beauty, greatness, self-expression..........................................281• To an Indian mind, terror and gloom are conspicuously absent from the feelings..........281

3. A word too may be said about Indo-Moslem architecture.......................................................282a) On the whole a typically Indian creation – Some suprarational aesthetic soul in us............282b) A West Asian influence – The sensuous uplifted to a certain immaterial charm.................283

• The Taj is the eternal dream of a love that survives death...............................................283• The great mosques embody often a religious aspiration lifted to a noble austerity.........283

XIV –........................................................................................................................................................285Indian Art – 3..........................................................................................................................................285

A. The sculpture and painting of ancient India.............................................................................2851. A rehabilitation in the eyes of a more cultivated European criticism.......................................2852. The evil effect of the earlier depreciation on the Indian mind.................................................285

• The work of recovering a true and inward understanding of ourselves...........................285• Our sculpture and painting in the light of its own intention and greatness of spirit.........286

B. Indian sculpture............................................................................................................................2861. The sculpture of ancient and mediaeval India – The very highest levels.................................286

• Egypt, Greece, India take the premier rank in this kind of creation.................................286• Sculpture and painting – The different kind of mentality required by the two arts..........286• The sculptural art is static, self-contained, necessarily firm, noble or severe..................286• An assured history of two millenniums of accomplished sculptural creation..................286

2. The connection between the religious and philosophical and the aesthetic mind....................288• This greatness and continuity of Indian sculpture is due to that.......................................288

a) The spirit of this greatness – At opposite pole of Hellenic creation in stone.......................288• The Hellenic ideal – An idealising imitation of external Nature......................................288

b) The spiritual beauty or significance of form.........................................................................289• This sculpture like the architecture springs from spiritual realisation..............................289

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• What it creates and expresses at its greatest is the spirit in form.....................................289• The gods of Indian sculpture are cosmic beings, embodiments.......................................289• The human form is a vehicle of this soul meaning...........................................................289• The divine self in us is its theme, the body made a form of the soul...............................289• Even with the figures of human beings or groups – Still a like inner aim and vision......289

c) A greatness increased by obeying a spiritualised aesthetic vision – Three periods.............291• A more ancient art – The same spirit as reigned in the Vedic and Vedantic seers...........291• A later Puranic turn towards grace and beauty and rapture..............................................291• Last a rapid and vacant decadence....................................................................................291

3. The objections made to the spirit and style of Indian sculpture...............................................292a) The want of naturalism – The Indian mind and the European temperament........................292

• The Indian mind moves on the spur of a spiritual sensitiveness and psychic curiosity. . .292• The European temperament is intellectual, vital, emotional and imaginative..................292• The two minds live almost in different worlds.................................................................292(1) The Indian sculptor sees the psychic line and turn of things........................................292• The Indian sculptor – Embodying spiritual experiences and impressions.......................292(2) The application of this psychic vision to the human form – The necessary conditions...294• First, whether it is an appropriate means of conveying a significance.............................294• Secondly, whether it is capable of artistic representation – Not that of physical nature. .294• Art justifies its own means and here it does it with a supreme perfection.......................294

b) The artistic treatment of the human figure – A divine and subtle body as the ideal............295• The one important point is a perfect idea of proportion and rhythm................................295• The dignity and beauty of the human figure, but a spiritual and a psychic beauty..........295

C. The question lies in the rendering of the truth and beauty seized by the spirit............................296• Indian sculpture, Indian art in general follows its own ideal and traditions.....................296• In the renascence that is coming it may be that this great art too will revive...................296

XV –.........................................................................................................................................................298Indian Art – 4..........................................................................................................................................298

A. Indian painting – A persistent tradition, a fundamental spirit and turn....................................2981. From the earliest surviving work of Ajanta to the latest Rajput art..........................................2982. The history of Indian painting – On a par with the architecture and sculpture........................2983. A pre-Buddhistic origin – The oneness and continuity of all Indian art..................................299

• The art itself in India was of pre-Buddhistic origin..........................................................299• An interpretation of the whole religion, culture and life of the Indian people.................299• The constant oneness and continuity of all Indian art in its essential spirit.....................299• What is the essential aim, inner turn and motive, spiritual method..................................299

B. Indian painting – An appeal through the physical and psychical to a spiritual vision.................3011. A comparison with sculpture – A same spirit and motive, a different medium.......................301

• All Indian art is a throwing out of a certain profound self-vision....................................301• The sculptor must express always in static form – Eternity seizes hold of time..............301• The painter lavishes his soul in colour and there is a liquidity in the form......................301• Painting is naturally the most sensuous of the arts – A subtle spiritual emotion.............301

2. The power of a certain spiritually aesthetic Ananda................................................................303a) The six constituents of all work of art – The turn given makes all the difference...............303

• The distinction of forms...................................................................................................303• Proportion, arrangement of line and mass, design, harmony, perspective.......................303• The emotion or aesthetic feeling expressed by the form..................................................303• The seeking for beauty and charm for the satisfaction of the aesthetic spirit...................303• Truth of the form and its suggestion.................................................................................303• The turn, combination, harmony of colours.....................................................................303• The art of Ajanta – The remarkably inward, spiritual and psychic turn...........................303

b) The governing principle and the artist's use of the six limbs of the canon...........................304(1) The orthodox Western artist – The emphasis of the physical.......................................304• An idealised imaginative realism is as far as he can ordinarily go...................................304• The farthest he has got in the direction of a more subjective spirit is an impressionism. 304(2) The Indian artist – The psychic lines and the psychic hues proper to the vision.........306

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(a) A spiritual and psychic vision – The life depicted is the life of the soul.....................306• The first primitive object of the art of painting is to illustrate life and Nature.................306• In Europe – A revelation of the glory and beauty of the sensuous appeal of life.............306• In Indian art it is never the governing motive...................................................................306• The interpretation or revelation of existence through the forms of life and Nature.........306

(b) The spiritual and psychic intention – The means by which the effect is produced.....307[1] An inspired harmony of conception, method and expression..................................307

• The distinction of forms is faithfully observed – But it is a more than physical reality. .307• The truth, the exact likeness is there – The reproduction of the subtle embodiment.......307• It is the ideal psychical figure and body of man and woman in its charm and beauty.....307

[2] An illustration of the perfect method – The mother and child before the Buddha...309• A revealing interpretation of the spiritual sense of Buddhism to the soul of India..........309(3) The reason of the differences – The highest type of the Indian portrait.......................311• A moment of the spirit expressing with purity the permanence of a soul quality............311• There is illustrated the whole difference between two kinds of imagination...................311• The mental, vital and physical stress of the art of Europe................................................311• The subtle, less forcefully tangible spiritual stress of the art of India..............................311

C. The Indo-Persian style – Still the transforming touch of the Indian mind...................................312• The Persian psychicality is redolent of the magic of the middle worlds..........................312• The Indian psychicality is only a means of transmission of the spiritual vision..............312• The Mogul school is not an exotic – There is rather a blending of two mentalities.........312• Painting, the last of the arts in the decline has also been the first to rise again................312

D. Indian civilisation in the first rank in the three great arts.............................................................313• The spiritual urge – A most powerful force for the development of the human whole. . .313

XVI –........................................................................................................................................................314Indian Literature....................................................................................................................................314

A. The greatness of Indian literature.............................................................................................3141. Where lies the greatness of a literature.....................................................................................314

• In the greatness of its substance, the value of its thought and the beauty of its forms.....314• In the degree to which it avails to bring out and raise the soul and life or mind..............314• The ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit tongue – In the front ramk...............314• Sanskrit – One of the most perfect and wonderfully sufficient literary instruments........314• The great and noble use made of it did not fall below the splendour of its capacities.....314• Nor is it in the Sanskrit tongue alone – A dozen Sanskritic and Dravidian tongues........314

2. The difficulty to appreciate Indian writing – A quite different spirit behind...........................315• Its perfection and power as an expression of the cultural mind of the people..................315• An inability to enter into the living spirit and feel the vital touch of the language..........315• A spiritual difference in similarity – Cognate forms, yet different in its spirit................315

3. A consideration of some of the most representative Indian master works...............................317• The early mind of India – Four of the supreme productions of her genius......................317• The Veda, the Upanishads and the two vast epics............................................................317• The two first are the visible foundation of her spiritual and religious being....................317• The others a large creative interpretation of her greatest period of life............................317• After that, there is a persistence, a continuity of the Indian mind in its literary creation.317

B. The Veda is the creation of an early intuitive and symbolical mentality.....................................3191. A creation to which the later mind of man has grown a total stranger.....................................319

• The Veda – To the ritualistic idea, a book of mythology and sacrificial ceremonies......319• European scholars – Insisting on a wholly external rendering.........................................319

2. The character of Vedic poetry – The Word discovering the Truth...........................................319a) The mantra and the sacred poet – The interpretation by those who came after...................319

• To the Vedic Rishis themselves or to the great seers and thinkers who came after.........319• It was a divine discovery and unveiling of the potencies of the word..............................319• Image and myth were freely used as living parables and symbols...................................319• These singers believed that they were in possession of a high, mystic and hidden truth.319• To those who came after them the Veda was a book of the supreme knowledge............319

b) How its real character of the Veda can best be understood..................................................321

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• Rendering it straightforwardly according to its own phrases and images........................321• We shall find a sacred poetry sublime and powerful – A mystic and symbolic poetry. . .321

c) The beginning of a form of symbolic or figurative imagery of spiritual experience...........323(1) The poet has to express a spiritual and psychical knowledge and experience.............323• He uses or starts with the images taken from his own normal and outward life..............323• Or an outward figure nearest to the inward experience is taken throughout....................323• The two methods may meet together – Outward images as initial suggestions...............323• The last is the method of the Veda...................................................................................323(2) Another mentality than ours – The way that we must interpret the Vedic poetry........324• According to its own spirit and vision and the psychically natural truth of its ideas.......324

3. The Veda thus understood stands out as a sublime and powerful poetic creation...................326• Ancient India did not err when it traced back all its culture to these seer-poets..............326• The future spirituality of her people is contained there in seed or in first expression......326

C. The same turn in literature that we see in architecture, painting and sculpture............................327• Its first character is a constant sense of the infinite, the cosmic.......................................327• Second – Images taken from the inner psychic plane or physical images transmuted.....327• Third – To image the terrestrial life often magnified or else subtilised...........................327

XVII –......................................................................................................................................................329Indian Literature – 2..............................................................................................................................329

A. The Upanishads are the supreme work of the Indian mind......................................................3291. Philosophy, religion and poetry made one – The self-expression of the Spirit........................329

• This religion does not end with a cult nor is limited to a religio-ethical aspiration.........329• This philosophy is not an abstract intellectual speculation..............................................329• This poetry is the work of the aesthetic mind lifted up beyond its ordinary field............329

2. The Upanishads, source of profound philosophies and religions – Science.............................330• Buddhism was only a restatement of one side of the experience of the Upanishads.......330• The ideas of the Upanishads – In Pythagoras, Plato, Neo-platonism and Gnosticism.....330• Sufism only repeats the Upanishads in another religious language.................................330• The larger part of German metaphysics is an intellectual development...........................330• The larger generalisations of Science – Formulas already discovered.............................330

B. The Upanishads – The creation of a revelatory and intuitive mind..............................................3311. These seers saw Truth rather than thought it – An integral knowing of the self......................331

• These works are not philosophical speculations of the intellectual kind..........................331• The Upanishads are Vedanta – In a higher degree even than the Vedas..........................331• The self in us, one with the universal self, the same as God and Brahman......................331• The ideal of a spiritual action founded on oneness with God and all living beings.........331

2. Their substance, structure, phrase, imagery, movement...........................................................333a) A kind of poetry not written before or after.........................................................................333

• Metaphysical truths and psychological experience, with unending suggestion...............333• A perfectly lucid and luminous brevity and an immeasurable completeness...................333• A comprehensive connection of harmonious parts in the structure..................................333• The rhythm corresponds to the sculpture of the thought and the phrase..........................333• The metrical forms of the Upanishads are made up of four half lines each clearly cut. . .333

b) The imagery – Starting from the Vedic concrete imagery and going beyond......................334(1) The Upanishads are not a revolutionary departure from the Vedic mind.....................334

(a) The imagery of the Veda and the Brahmanas as a psychical starting-point.................334(b) Two passages cited as examples of the kinship in difference with the Veda..............335

• This Vedic and Vedantic imagery is foreign to our present mentality.............................335(2) The passage to another magnificently open and sublime imagery and diction............336

(a) The prose Upanishads show us this process – The overt expression...........................336• It at once reveals the spiritual truth in all its splendour....................................................336• The symbols here are representations of a psychical experience leading to realisation...336• There emerges a knowledge to which modern thought is returning through...................336

(b) The metrical Upanishads – Beyond the symbolism to the overt expression................338• The Self, the Spirit, the Godhead is hymned without veils..............................................338

C. The Vedas and the Upanishads as the fountain-head of all Indian culture...................................340

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• The Upanishads – Passages which are at once poetry and spiritual philosophy..............340• Others in which the subtlest psychological and philosophical truths are expressed........340• In some of the prose Upanishads another element of vivid narrative and tradition.........340

XVIII –.....................................................................................................................................................342Indian Literature – 3..............................................................................................................................342

• The Veda is thus the spiritual and psychological seed of Indian culture..........................342• The Upanishads is the expression of the truth of highest spiritual knowledge................342• These two – Couched in the language of a purely psychic and spiritual mentality..........342

A. The immediately succeeding period of Indian literary creation...............................................3421. The passage first to an intellectual endeavour – The earlier movement...................................3422. This movement of the Indian mind in its more critical effort...................................................342

a) A strenuous philosophical thinking crystallised into the great philosophic systems............342• To systematise and justify to the reasoning intelligence the truths discovered................342• To indicate and systematise methods of discipline founded upon this knowledge..........342• The Sutras or aphorisms became the basis of ratiocinative commentaries......................342

b) An endeavour to formulate an ethical, social and political ideal and practice.....................343• The work of the social thinkers and legislators – Normal action and practice.................343• The leading idea was the government of human interest and desire by the Dharma.......343• Here too as an initial form, the aphoristic method – Afterwards, the Dharma Shastras. .343

3. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana – Two epics not like any other......................................344a) A temperamental distinction – The youth of a people yet wise and noble...........................344b) A difference in the whole conception, function and structure..............................................345

• The Itihasa was an ancient historical or legendary tradition turned to creative use.........345• The Mahabharata and Ramayana are Itihasas of this kind on a large scale.....................345• Significant forms of the national thought and religion and ethics and culture.................345• To popularise high philosophic and ethical idea and cultural practice.............................345• The Mahabharata and Ramayana – Instruments of popular education and culture..........345

B. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana............................................................................................3471. The greatness of their substance...............................................................................................347

a) The Mahabharata – The epic of the soul and mind and culture and life of India.................347(1) An epic narrative, at the same time a significant tale, Itihasa......................................347• The leading motive is the Indian idea of the Dharma.......................................................347• Here the Vedic notion of the struggle – A personal and a political struggle....................347• The old struggle of Deva and Asura, represented in the terms of human life..................347(2) A poetic expression unique in its power and fullness...................................................348• A philosophical, religious, ethical, social and political thinking......................................348• A work to which many poets of an unequal power have contributed..............................348

b) The Ramayana – The ethical and the aesthetic mind of India have fused............................349• The main bulk of the poem in spite of much accretion is evidently by a single hand......349• The subject is the same – The strife of the divine with the titanic forces.........................349• The poet makes us conscious of the immense forces that are behind our life..................349• The work of Valmiki – An agent in the moulding of the cultural mind of India.............349

2. The poetical manner of these epics – The characteristic diction..............................................351• The characteristic diction of the Mahabharata is almost austerely masculine..................351• The diction of the Ramayana is shaped in a more attractive mould.................................351• In both poems it is a high poetic soul and inspired intelligence that is at work...............351

3. The objections made by Western criticism...............................................................................352• Expressions of a difference of mentality and aesthetic taste............................................352• The vastness of the plan and the leisurely minuteness of detail.......................................352• The terrestrial life is seen in relation to the much that is behind it...................................352• The personages – An impersonality that raises the play of their personality...................352• The main insistence, here as in Indian art – The soul life and the inner soul quality.......352

C. The greatness and fineness of this ancient Indian culture............................................................353XIX –........................................................................................................................................................354Indian Literature – 4..............................................................................................................................354

A. The classical age – A difference of its thought, temperament and language...........................354

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1. An opulent maturity and decline followed by a rejuvenescence..............................................354• The speech of Kalidasa is an accomplished art, an intellectual and aesthetic creation....354• The elements of artifice and device increase and predominate in the later writers..........354• The religious writings, Purana and Tantra – Simplicity and directness...........................354

2. Characters.................................................................................................................................355a) A great change in the centre of mentality – The exterior powers in front............................355

• Logical philosophy, science, art and the developed crafts, law, politics, trade................355• The most splendid, sumptuous and imposing millennium of Indian culture....................355

b) Intellectuality predominates – A division between religious and secular writing................355• There is a highly intellectualised vital stress and a many-sided interest in living............355• The stream of religious poetry flows separately in Purana and Tantra............................355

B. Secular classical literature............................................................................................................3561. Poetry - The great representative poet of this age is Kalidasa..................................................356

a) The art of poetic speech in Kalidasa's period – An extraordinary perfection.......................356(1) There was established here a Shastra – In the end too much of a rigid tradition.........356(2) The classical Sanskrit – An artistic and highly cultured type of poetic creation..........357

b) Its acme of perfection in the poetry of Kalidasa – Among the supreme poetic artists.........358(1) Combination of execution and substance – A splendidly sensuous poet.....................358• The full aesthetic value of the word and sound clothing his thought and substance........358• The thought and the substance – Intellectual, descriptive or emotional value.................358(2) At once also a scholar and observer – An interpret of the culture of India in his age..360• The scholar and observer no more than a gatherer of materials for the poet....................360(3) An impression of the intellectual, vital and artistic turn of that period........................361

c) The later classical poets – A mixture of genius with defect of taste and manner.................362(1) The literary epics of Bharavi and Magha – The qualities and limitation of the age.....362• The literary epics of Bharavi and Magha reveal the beginning of the decline.................362(2) No real movement of life, but a description of life – Kalidasa alone is immune.........362• The intellect has become too detached and too critically observant................................362• An overdeveloped intellectualism has always been the forerunner of a decadence.........362

2. The gnomic verse – Another kind of writing............................................................................364• Bhartrihari writes not only with the thought but with emotion........................................364• The three leading motives of the mind of the age............................................................364• Its reflective interest in life and turn for high and strong and minute thinking................364• Its preoccupation with the enjoyment of the senses.........................................................364• Its ascetic spiritual turn – A turning away of the intellect and the senses........................364

3. The Sanskrit drama type – Kalidasa, Bhasa, Bhavabhuti.........................................................365• It does not rise to the greatnesses of the Greek or the Shakespearian drama...................365• The absence of any bold dramatic treatment of the great issues and problems of life.....365• These dramas are mostly romantic plays but a few are more realistic.............................365• It is an art that was produced by and appealed to a highly cultured class........................365

C. The remnants of an immense literary activity – A plentiful life-movement................................366XX –.........................................................................................................................................................368Indian Literature – 5..............................................................................................................................368

A. The secular poetry of the time – An intellectual, practical and vital activity...........................368• The type of the mind is of the familiar Indian character constant through every change 368• The difference is that it is the intelligence that is prominent............................................368• In the religious field a support for an extension of spiritual experience..........................368

B. The philosophical writings and the religious poetry of the Puranas and Tantras.........................369• These two strains – The most living and enduring movement of the classical age..........369

1. The philosophical writings.......................................................................................................369a) No decline but a continued vigour – Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhwa.............................369

• No Hindu religion without as its support a clear philosophic content and suggestion.....369b) The writings – Prose, poetry, philosophic song, literature of hymns...................................370

• The philosophical writings in prose make no pretension to rank as literature.................370• The philosophical poem – The tradition of the Upanishads and the Gita........................370• Philosophic song – Philosophic thought and poetic beauty..............................................370

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• A literature of hymns – The similar but larger work in the later regional literature........370c) The constant unity between philosophy, religion and Yoga.................................................371

• A profound intelligence working on the stuff of sight and spiritual experience..............371• The work of these philosophers at the same time Yogins saved the soul of India...........371

2. The religious poetry – The Puranas and the Tantras................................................................372a) A transition between the normal religious and the spiritual mentality.................................372

• The Puranas are the religious poetry peculiar to this period............................................372b) The sense of the religio-philosophic evolution of Indian culture.........................................372

• The Puranic religions – A new form and extension of the truth of the ancient culture....372• The early religion – A mass still impressed mostly by the life of the physical universe. 372• The Upanishads – A free transcendent and cosmic vision and experience......................372• The Puranas carried forward the appeal to the intellect and imagination.........................372• A constant attempt to make the spiritual truths effective to the whole nature of man.....372

c) The Puranas and Tantras contain the highest spiritual and philosophical truths..................374• In the Tantras – An immense and complex body of psycho-spiritual experience............374• This element is also found in the Puranas, but more loosely............................................374

d) The turn of the classical age outward brought in a new inward turn....................................375• The Puranas are essentially a true religious poetry..........................................................375• The emotional, the sensuous, even the sensual motions were taken and transmuted.......375• The elements of a mystic capture of the Divine through the heart and the senses...........375• In the Tantra – A complete psycho-spiritual and psycho-physical science of Yoga........375• The perfect outcome of this evolution – The divine love promulgated by Chaitanya.....375

C. The regional literatures.................................................................................................................3761. The local tongues arise to the dignity of literature – A popular literature................................376

• Sanskrit, although not devoid of popular elements, is essentially an aristocratic speech 3762. The character and value – A vital and persistently creative Indian culture..............................377

a) Many variations of form in all this work – A rich variety in the unity.................................377• These later literatures begin with the inspired poetry of saints and devotees..................377• Another part – Something of the essence of the old culture into the popular tongues.....377• A third type presents the religious beliefs, the life of court and city and village.............377

b) The poetry of the Vaishnavas – The turning of all the human emotions Godward..............378(1) Different artistic forms in different provinces – The Krishna symbol.........................378• The desire of the soul for God – The lyrical love cycle of Radha and Krishna...............378• This lyrical form – Two poets who used the Bengali tongue, Vidyapati and Chandidas.378(2) Other devotional poetry does not use the Krishna symbol...........................................380

3. The narrative poetry of this age and other kinds of writing.....................................................381a) Transferring the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in the popular speech.............................381b) Other narrative writings, romance, didactic poem, lyrics – A popular culture....................381

D. The continued vitality of religious, literary and artistic creation..................................................382XXI –........................................................................................................................................................384Indian Polity............................................................................................................................................381

A. The charge brought against Indian culture as an agent of the life power.................................3841. The assertion that India has failed in life – A turning away from life to asceticism................3842. The complete and integral value of a culture – The true sense of progress..............................384

• First – Its power to raise and enlarge the internal man, the mind, the soul, the spirit......384• Also – His external existence as a rhythm of advance towards high and great ideals.....384

3. The political, the economic and the social aspects of Indian culture – The charge.................385• That India has always shown an incompetence for political organisation.......................385• That her economic system remained an inelastic and static order....................................385• Her society – An unprogressive hierarchy, caste-ridden, full of semi-barbaric abuses. . .385

B. The political aspect.......................................................................................................................3861. The legend of Indian political incompetence – A strong democratic element.........................386

• Indian polity and even institutions were of India's own kind...........................................3862. The early system – The original character of the Indian mind.................................................387

a) A clan or tribal system – A free and simple natural constitution of the society...................387b) The hereditary principle – The Brahmin order, the Kshatriyas, the commons.....................387

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c) A peculiar figure was the Rishi – The Dharma with a spiritual significance.......................388• The Rishi – Born in any of the classes, but an authority by his spiritual personality.......388

3. The political evolution – An increasing emphasis on the control of the king..........................389a) The contrary tendency of the republican form in certain parts of India...............................389b) A long lasting form – But the need of unification and of a centralised government............390

• In India as elsewhere it was the monarchical state that grew and finally held the field...3904. Indian monarchy previous to the Mahomedan invasion...........................................................391

a) A limited or constitutional monarch – An altogether different type....................................391b) A greater sovereign was the Dharma – The role of the Brahmins and the king...................391

• The Brahmins themselves were recorders and exponents of the Dharma........................391• The king was only the guardian, executor and servant of the Dharma.............................391

c) This subjection of the sovereign power to the Dharma – Political consequences................392(1) The king had not the power of direct legislation – The will of the people...................392(2) Religious liberties – Normally no place for religious oppression and intolerance.......392• There was no exclusive State religion and the monarch was not the religious head........392(3) The social life free from autocratic interference – The change from within................393• The freedom to families or particular communities – Their own rule of life...................393(4) The administrative and judicial power of the king – The control on foreign policy....394• In administration – The power of the king was hedged in by the Dharma.......................394• The king in the civil and criminal law – His role was that of the executor......................394• He had a control in his Council of foreign policy, military administration and war........394

C. The removal of the king – A kingship moderate, efficient and beneficent..................................394• Obedience ceased – If the king ceased to be faithful executor of the Dharma.................394• Manu even lays it down that an unjust and oppressive king should be killed..................394

XXII –......................................................................................................................................................396Indian Polity – 2......................................................................................................................................396

A. The true nature of the Indian polity..........................................................................................3961. As a part and in its relation to the organic totality of the social existence...............................3962. A human collectivity as an organic living being with a soul, mind and body..........................396

• The life of the society – A cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline...............396• The collective being – The capacity of renewing itself, of a recovery and a new cycle. .396• A people which learns to live in the soul and spirit may not at all exhaust itself.............396• The history of India has been that of the life of such a people.........................................396

3. The dominant idea in India – The social life as an expression of man's true self....................397• A difficulty greater than a spiritual self-expression through the things of the mind........397• Politics, society, economics are the natural field of interest and hedonistic desire..........397• The effort at governing political action by ethics is usually little more than a pretence..397• It is perhaps for a future India – To reconcile life and the spirit......................................397

B. A difference between the ancient polity of India and that of European peoples..........................3981. Human society has in its growth to pass through three stages of evolution.............................398

a) The spontaneous play of the powers and principles of life..................................................398b) A communal mind more and more intellectually self-conscious.........................................399

(1) The advantages – Efficiency and the emergence of high and luminous ideals............399• The distinguishing advantages of the political and social effort of Europe.....................399(2) The deadly tendency to develop, in place of a living people, a mechanical State........400• It is this error of its mechanical method which is the weakness of Europe......................400• This prevented her from arriving at the true realisation of her own higher ideals...........400

c) The collective life governed by the power of the discovered greater self and spirit............400• That is a rule that has not yet anywhere found its right conditions..................................400

2. The stages in India....................................................................................................................401a) The first stage of a vigorous and spontaneous vitality.........................................................401

• The small early Indian communities – The common spirit and life impulse...................401b) An age of growing intellectual culture.................................................................................401

(1) A slow evolution of custom and institution, but a natural order of the life..................401• The institutions and ways of communal living already developed...................................401• In India – No intellectually idealistic political progress or revolutionary experiment.....401

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(2) The reason used as a critical power, but not replacing the life and the spirit...............402• The spiritual mind of India regarded life as a manifestation of the self...........................402

c) A development through the natural to the spiritual existence..............................................403(1) The ancient theory of the Dharma – The stages of corruption of the Dharma.............403• The individual and community – Living freely according to the inner divine Dharma...403• A State, a sovereign power has to be superimposed to see that the Dharma is observed.403• The appearance of the legislator and the formal government of the whole of life...........403• Last, Kali Yuga – A period of anarchy and conflict and dissolution of the dharma........403(2) The function of the political sovereign and of society – The social Dharma...............404• The sovereign was the guardian and administrator of the Dharma..................................404• The function of society – The right satisfaction of the vital, economic and other needs. 404• All the members and groups of the socio-political body had their Dharma.....................404(3) The Indian polity – A very complex communal freedom and self-determination.......405• The State was an instrument of coordination and of a general control............................405(4) The life of the society as a great framework and training ground................................406• All alike bound to the maintenance and restrained by the yoke of the Dharma...............406• The ethical law coloured the political and economic.......................................................406• The religious spirit and the reminders of religion were the head and the background.....406

XXIII –.....................................................................................................................................................407Indian Polity – 3......................................................................................................................................407

A. A remarkable political instinct and capacity in the cultural mind of India..............................407• The socio-political evolution of Indian civilisation – Four historical stages....................407• First the simple Aryan community, then a long period of transition................................407• Thirdly, the definite formation of the monarchical state, and last the era of decline.......407• Now the peculiar social mind and temperament may proceed to a new creation.............407

B. The principle of an organically self-determining communal life.................................................4081. In the beginning the problem was simple – Only two kinds of communal unit.......................408

• The village and the clan, tribe or small regional people...................................................4082. The successful application of the principle in a new order of circumstances..........................408

a) A more complex communal system – The village community as the stable unit................408• Tens and hundreds of villages became constituents – Finally of great empires...............408

b) The stable socio-religious system of the four orders............................................................409• The spirit of the system of Chaturvarna was different in India........................................409(1) Within that framework each order had its natural portion............................................409• None of the fundamental activities was the share of any of them exclusive....................409(2) The four orders grew into a fixed social hierarchy.......................................................410• Each had attached to it a spiritual life and utility, a place in the communal body...........410• Women in ancient India were not denied civic rights......................................................410(3) Not exclusive forms of class rule – A synthesis of all the natural powers and orders. 411• An organic and vital coordination respectful of the free functioning of all.....................411

c) The summit of the political structure – Three governing bodies..........................................412(1) The King in his ministerial council representing the whole community......................412• The members of the Council and the ministers were drawn from all orders....................412• The Council was the supreme executive and administrative body...................................412• The ministers in council could and did often proceed to the deposition of a monarch....412• The obedience owed by the people was due to the Law, the Dharma..............................412(2) The metropolitan assembly and the general assembly of the kingdom........................414• Two other powerful bodies in the State represented the social organism........................414• The two assemblies – Sitting together for matters concerning the whole people............414

(a) The metropolitan civic assembly sat constantly in the capital town............................414• The representatives of the city guilds and the various caste bodies.................................414

(b) The general assembly – The whole country outside the metropolis............................415• The deputies, elective heads or chief men of the townships and villages........................415• Its business was the coordination of the various activities of the life of the nation.........415• The joint session of the metropolitan and general assemblies – Of vital interest.............415• The two bodies – Executors of the kingdom's activities and instruments of opposition..415

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(c) When these great institutions went out of existence – A great cause of weakness......417• The Indian political system was still maintained for many centuries in the south...........417• The clan family persisted, even after it had lost its political character.............................417

d) A complex system of self-determined and self-governing communal bodies......................418(1) The institution of caste in town and village – Subdivisions of the four orders............418• The institution of caste became the one basis of economic function everywhere............418• The caste also counted in the political and administrative functioning of the kingdom. .418(2) The village community and the township – An organic life of their own....................419• Each village was within its own limits autonomous and self-sufficient...........................419• The townships were also autonomous and self-governing bodies....................................419(3) The joint family – Another kind of self-governing body.............................................420(4) The religious community – The struggle between Church and State is absent............420

C. An organised State authority – A basis of communal self-government.......................................422• A complex system of self-determined and self-governing communal bodies..................422

1. A collapse by foreign invasion and conquest, decline and final decadence.............................4222. In the great days of Indian civilisation we find an admirable political system........................423

XXIV –.....................................................................................................................................................425Indian Polity–4........................................................................................................................................425

A. The first necessity – Stating the real question..........................................................................4251. The political system of a society has to be judged by two criteria...........................................425

a) The stability, prosperity, internal freedom and order...........................................................425• An admirable political system for stability and effective administration.........................425• It escaped the excess of the mechanising turn – Communal order and liberties..............425

b) The security against other States, its unity and power of defence and aggression...............425• That organisation failed to serve for the national and political unification of India........425• In the end, foreign invasion, the disruption of its institutions and an agelong servitude. 425

2. The greatness of a people – Not aggressive military and political expansion..........................426• The sole great endeavour of expansion by India – The expansion of her culture............426• The idea of empire and even of world-empire was not absent – The Indian world.........426

3. Whether the collapse was due to a fundamental incapacity or to other forces.........................427B. The cause of the failure – The magnitude and the peculiarity of the task....................................428

1. India being a continent almost as large as Europe – But not the same conditions...................428• The idea of European unity – Still an ineffective phantasm.............................................428• The peoples of Europe are nations very sharply divided from each other.......................428• In India at a very early time the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete............428

2. A dissidence between the ideal and the actual turn given to the endeavour.............................429a) The tendency to create from within outwards – A spiritual and cultural oneness................429

(1) An underlying oneness amidst all diversities – An indelible spiritual stamp...............429• It could not be a political unification effected by an external rule...................................429• A conscious spiritual and cultural unity – The indispensable condition for unity...........429• The Roman unity did not endure – India still survives and is still India..........................429(2) The spiritual and cultural is the only enduring unity....................................................430• India still lives and keeps the continuity of her inner mind and soul and spirit...............430

b) The secret of the difficulty in the problem of unifying ancient India...................................431(1) The easy method of a centralised empire could not truly succeed in India..................431• It could not be done by the ordinary means of a centralised uniform imperial State.......431• The Indian politico-social system – A synthesis of communal autonomies.....................431• A system had to be found – The functioning on a grand and total scale of the Dharma..431(2) An actual trend that was not compatible with the true turn of the Indian spirit...........432• The trend was to wear down and weaken the vigour of the subordinated autonomies....432

(a) The consequence – The communal units became isolated and dividing factors..........432• The persistent principle of regional autonomy reasserted itself.......................................432

(b) The evils that attended the system – Against that, the ancient tendencies reviving....433• The Pathan and the Mogul empires – Still more the evils of centralisation.....................433• In the end there has come a mechanical Western rule – The unity of a machine.............433• But again in the reaction against it we see the same ancient tendencies reviving............433

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• The tendency towards a reconstitution of the regional life of the Indian peoples............433• A provincial autonomy founded on true subdivisions of race and language....................433• The lost village community as a living unit necessary to the natural life.........................433• Dimly beginning, a truer idea of the communal basis proper to Indian life.....................433• The reconstruction of Indian society and politics on a spiritual foundation.....................433

C. The historical circumstances.........................................................................................................4341. The early mind of India understood the essential character of the problem.............................434

a) The Vedic Rishis and their successors – The ideal of a political unification.......................434• They evolved the ideal of the Chakravarti, a uniting imperial rule..................................434

b) The full flowering of the ideal is seen in the great epics – The Dharmarajya......................435• The Mahabharata is the record of an attempt to establish such an empire.......................435• In the Ramayana we have an idealised picture of such a settled universal empire..........435• A hegemony or confederacy under an imperial head would be the nearest analogy.......435

2. The historic weakness of the Indian peninsula – The north-western passes............................435a) The inroad of Alexander brought home the magnitude of the danger..................................435

• The immediate practical result was the rise of the empire founded by Chanakya...........435b) The results of the adoption of a mechanical method of unification.....................................437

(1) Advantages – But in the end the impairment of the free organic diversified life.........437• A coherent military action and a more regularised and uniform administration..............437• But no longer that living head of a free and living people...............................................437(2) A worse result was a certain fall from the high ideal of the Dharma...........................438• A habit of Machiavellian statecraft replaced the nobler ethical ideals of the past...........438• The traditional indifference of the common people to a change of rulers........................438

c) The earlier foreign invasions and their effects – The efficacy of the Indian empire............439(1) The empire saving India from the immense flood of barbarian unrest.........................439• The empire was weakened by the suspension of the need which created it.....................439• No empire then in the northwest, the weak point at which the Mussulmans broke in.....439(2) Alexander, the Graeco-Bactrians, the Parthian, Hun and Scythian invasions..............439• In one or two or three generations the invaders were entirely Indianised........................439• The Indian empire – After all more efficacious than was the Roman..............................439(3) The Mussulman conquest – The doubt thrown on the capacity of the Indian people. .441

(a) A remarkable record in the political field.....................................................................441• The vast mass of the Mussulmans in the country were and are Indians by race..............441• The ancient civilisation underwent indeed an eclipse and decline, but it survived..........441

(b) The problem by the Mussulman conquest – The struggle between two civilisations..442• The problem rendered insoluble by the attachment of each to a powerful religion.........442• There were two conceivable solutions..............................................................................442• The rise of a greater spiritual principle and formation which could reconcile the two....442• A political patriotism surmounting the religious struggle and uniting the two................442• The first was impossible in that age.................................................................................442• A military and administrative centralised empire could not effect India's living unity. . .442

D. India lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples...............................444• India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word...........................444

Note on the Texts.........................................................................................................................................445

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