India-A Spiritual Giant

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India - A Spiritual Giant

 

Lin Yutang, Chinese scholar, author of Wisdom of China and

India, has said: 

 

"India produced too much religion and China too little." A trickle

of Indian religious spirit overflowed to China and inundated the

whole of Eastern Asia. It would seem logical and appropriate

that any one suffering from a deficiency of the religious spirit

should turn to India rather than to any other country in the world." 

It is apparent that only in India is religion still a living emotion. "

 

(source: The Wisdom of China and India - By Lin Yutang p. 3-4)

 

India has "man gone to the farthest limit of his religious faculty.

Consequently, religious tales is one of India's richest traditions."

says J. P. Couchoud in his book Asiatic Mythology - J. Hackin p.

115).

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India's Fabulous legends:

 

It has long been recognized that India's tales of gods and

goddesses are closely related to those of ancient Greece, Rome

and the Nordic and Germanic peoples. So similar are they,

indeed that even the days of the week, both in India and in the

West, continue to be named after the same deities, who

represented the same planets: Sun for Sunday, Moon for

Monday, Mars for Tuesday, Mercury for Wednesday (Woden's day

in Norse legend), Jupiter for Thursday (Thor's day in

Scandinavia; Brihaspati, or Jupiter's day in India), Venus for

Friday, and Saturn for Saturday. 

 

While on a tour of the Parthenon, a guide will tell you that the

Greek legends came from India......

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Democracy on Ashoka's Rock Edict

 

Ashoka, (273 BC - 232 BC) the most trusted son of Bindusara

and the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, was a brave soldier.

He was the most famous of the Mauryan kings and was one of

the greatest rulers of India. During his father's reign, he was the

governor of Ujjain and Taxila. Having sidelined all claims to the

throne from his brothers,  Ashoka was coronated as an

emperor.  Ashoka extended the Maurya Empire to the whole of

India except the deep south and the south-east, reaching out

even into Central Asia. For propagation of Buddhism, he started

inscribing edicts on rocks and pillars at places where people

could easily read them. These pillars and rocks are still found in

India, spreading their message of love and peace for the last two

thousand years.

 

A ringing declaration of Mauryan Emperor, Ashoka at the

conclusion of his first rock edict:

 

esahi vidhi ya iyam: dhammena palana, dhammena vidhane,

dhammena sukhiyana, dhammena gotiti.

 

The word dhamma or dharma is usually translated ``law''

although it could also mean ``tradition'' or ``truth''. If we choose

the common meaning, Ashoka's declaration becomes: 

 

For this is my rule: government by the law, of the law; 

prosperity by the law, protection by the law.

 

This sounds like the invocation in Lincoln's Gettysburg address!

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Cultural Unity of India

 

According to Jawaharlal Nehru: "Right from the beginning,

culturally India has been one, because she had the same

background, the same traditions, the same religions, the same

heroes and heroines, the same old tales, the same learned

language (Sanskrit), the village panchayats, the same ideology,

and polity. To the average Indian the whole of India was a kind of

punya-bhumi - a holy land - while the rest of the world was

largely peopled by mlechchhas and barbarians. Sankaracharya

chose the four corners of India for his maths, or the

headquarters of his order of sanyasins, shows how he regarded

India as a cultural unit. And the great success which met his

campaign all over the country in a very short time also shows

how intellectual and cultural currents traveled rapidly from one

end of the country to another." 

 

(source: Glimpses of World History - By Jawaharlal Nehru p.

129). 

 

According to Ronald B. Inden: " The unity underlying the obvious

diversity of India may be summed up in the word "Hinduism."

(source: Imagining India - By Ronald B. Inden p. 86)

 

Dr. Radhakrishnan: "In spite of the divisions, there is an inner

cohesion among the Hindu society from the Himalayas to the

Cape Comorin." 

 

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By Sir. Sarvepalli

Radhakrishnan p. 73-77). 

 

Cultural unity seems far  more enduring than any artificial

geographic or political unity.

 

Girilal Jain, late editor of Times of India: " It is about time we

recognize that we are not a nation in the European sense of the

term, that is, we are not a fragment of a civilization claiming to be

a nation on the basis of accidents of history which is what every

major European nation is. We are a people primarily by virtue of

the continuity and coherence of our civilization which has

survived all shocks. And though inevitably weakened as a result

of foreign invasions, conquests and rule for almost a whole

millennium, it is once again ready to resume its march." (source:

Hindu Phenomenon - By Girilal Jain  p. 21).