Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 185)

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Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 185

 

c) The Modern Meeting of the Ancient Greek with the Ancient Hindu

1. The Great Good of the English Conquest of India Is the Universalizing of the Primary Concepts of Vedanta

From India have sprung all the analytical sciences, and from Greece all the sciences of generalization. The Hindu mind went on it its own direction and produced the most marvelous results. Even at the present day the logical capacity of the Hindus and the tremendous power which the Indian brain still possesses are beyond compare. We all know that Indian boys pitched against the boys of any other country always triumph. At the same time, when the national vigor went - perhaps one or two centuries before the Muslim conquest of India - this national faculty became so much exaggerated that it degraded itself; and we find some of this degradation in everything in India - in art, in music, in sciences, in everything. In art, no more was there a broad conception, no more the symmetry of form and sublimity of conception, but the tremendous attempt at the ornate and florid style had arisen. The originality of the race seems to have been lost…. So, if you analyze the Hindu idealistic conceptions, you will find the same attempt at ornate figures and loss of originality. And even in religion - India’s special field - there came the most horrible degradations. What can you expect of a race which, for hundreds of years, was busy discussing such momentous problems as whether we should drink a glass of water with the right hand or the left? What more degradation can there be than that the greatest minds of the country have been discussing the kitchen for several hundreds of years, discussing whether I may touch you, or you me, and what is the penance for this touching! The themes of Vedanta, the most sublime and glorious conceptions of God and soul ever preached on earth, were half-lost, buried in the forests, preserved by a few sannyasins, while the rest of the nation discussed the momentous questions of touching each other, dress and food. The Muslim conquest gave India many good things, no doubt… but, at the same time, it could not bring vigor into the race. Then, for good or evil, the English conquest of India took place. Of course, every conquest is bad, for conquest is an evil, foreign government is an evil, no doubt; but even through evil good sometimes comes; and the great good of the English conquest is this: England - nay, the whole of Europe - has to thank Greece for its civilization. It is Greece that speaks through everything in Europe. Every building, every piece of furniture, has the impress of Greece upon it; European science and art are nothing but Grecian. Today the ancient Greek is meeting the ancient Hindu on the soil of India. Thus, slowly and silently, the leaven has come; the broadening, the life-giving, and the revivalist movements that we see all around us in India has been worked out by these forces together. A broader and more generous conception of life is before us; and, although at first we have been deluded a little and wanted to narrow things down, we are finding today that these generous impulses which are at work, these broader conceptions of life, are the logical interpretation of what is in our ancient books. They are the carrying out, to rigorously logical effect, of the primary conceptions of our own ancestors. To become broad, to go out, amalgamate, to universalize, is the end of our aims. And all the time the Indian Aryans have been making themselves smaller and smaller and dissociating themselves, contrary to the plans laid down in their scriptures.(19)