VML-2/13/01

[Guest guest]

In the beginning of the present century, when Western influence began

to pour into India, when Western conquerors, sword in hand, came to

demonstrate to the children of the sages that they were mere

barbarians, a race of dreamers, that their religion was but

mythology, and god and soul and everything they had been struggling

for were mere words without meaning, that the thousands of years of

struggle, the thousands of years of endless renunciation, had all

been in vain, the question began to be agitated among young men at

the universities whether the whole national existence up to then had

been a failure, whether they must begin anew on the occidental plan,

tear up their old books, burn their philosophies, drive away their

preachers, and break down their temples.