Chapter 6 - The Influence of India on Western-Civilization

[Full title: The Influence of India on Western-Civilization, and the Influence of Western Civilization on India]

The dawn of Aryan civilization broke for the first time on the horizon, not of Greece or Rome, not of Arabia or Persia, but of India, which may be called the motherland of metaphysics, philosophy, logic, astronomy, science, art, music, and medicine, as well as of truly ethical religion. Although students in the schools and colleges of modern Europe and America are generally taught that the Greeks and Romans were the fathers of European civilization and that philosophy and science first arose in ancient Greece, still it has been proved by the Oriental scholars of Europe and by all impartial students of history that ancient Greece was greatly indebted to India for many of her best ideas in philosophy, science and intellectual culture, as also for many of her ethical and spiritual ideals.

If we read the writings and historical accounts left by Pliny, Strabo, Megasthenes, Herodotus, Porphyry and a host of other ancient authors of different countries, we shall see how highly the civilization of India was regarded by them. In fact, between the years 1500 and 500 b.c., the Hindus were so far advanced in religion, metaphysics, philosophy, science, art, music, and medicine that no other nation could stand as their rival, or compete with them in any of these branches of knowledge. On the contrary, many of the nations which came in contact with the Hindus through trade or otherwise, accepted the Hindu ideas and moulded their own after the Hindu pattern. For instance, the science of geometry, as I have already said, was first invented in India by the Hindus from the vedic rules for the construction of sacrificial altars; from these rules they gradually developed geometry, and it has been admitted by the great scholars that the world owes its first lesson in this science, not to Greece, but to India. The geometrical theorem that the square of the hypotenuse of a rectangular triangle is equal to the squares of its sides was ascribed by the Greeks to Pythagoras, but it was known in India at least two centuries before Pythagoras was born. It was contained in the two rules: “(1) The square of the diagonal of a square is twice as large as that square; and (2) The square of the diagonal of an oblong is equal to the square of both its sides.” These rules formed a part of the Sulva [Sulba] Sutras, which date from the eighth century before Christ. There is a Greek tradition that Pythagoras visited India, and most probably he did, because in bis writings we find such ideas as were very common among the Hindus, but which were unknown to other nations. Probably he learned from the Hindus his first lessons in geometry, mathematics, the doctrine of pre-existence and transmigration of souls, and of final beautitude, ascetic observances, prohibition of eating flesh, vegetarianism, the conception of the virtue of numbers, and lastly, the idea of a fifth element, which was unknown in Greece and Egypt at that ancient time. The Egyptians and Greeks admitted four elements, but ether as an element was known only among the Hindus of those days. All these things were taught by the Hindus centuries before the time of Pythagoras. Prof. E. W. Hopkins admits this in his Religions of India, as you will recall from the first lecture, when he says: “Before the 6th century b.c. all the religious-philosophical ideas of Pythagoras are current in India”.

Geometry gradually fell out of use among the Hindus, and geometrical truths were represented by algebra and arithmetic. The Greeks could not rival the Hindus in the science of numbers. The world indeed owes decimal notation to India. The Arabs first learned it from the Hindus and then introduced it into Europe. It was unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and arithmetic as a practical science would have been impossible with decimal notation. The Hindus have also given algebra (Vijaganita) to the Western world through the Arabs, who translated it in the eighth century a.d.; and Leonardo da Pisa first introduced it into Europe in the thirteenth century. So the world received its first lesson in algebra from India. The Hindus were also the first teachers of plane and spherical trigonometry. The great Indian mathematician, Bhaskara-charya, who lived from 1114 to 1150 a.d., wrote exhaustive treaties^[1] on all these subjects, and his works contain solutions of remarkable problems which were not achieved in Europe until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.^[2] In astronomical observations, the Hindus were the first to fix the lunar mansions, lunar Zodiac, and the divisions of the constellations. The Chinese and Arabs borrowed these from India. The Hindus first developed the science of music from the chanting of the vedic hymns. The Sama Veda was especially meant for music. And the scale with seven notes and three octaves was known in India centuries before the Greeks had it. Probably the Greeks learned it from the Hindus. It will be interesting to you to know that Wagner was indebted to the Hindu science of music, especially for his principal idea of the ‘leading motive’; and this is perhaps the reason why it is so difficult for many Western people to understand Wagner’s music. He became familiar with Eastern music through Latin translations, and his conversation on this subject with Schopenhauer is probably already familiar to you.

The Western world, again, owes its first lesson in medicine to India. In the preceding lecture I gave proofs that Alexander not only had in his camp Hindu physicians, but that he preferred them to Greek physicians. Megasthenes, Nearchus, and Arrian spoke highly of the wonderful healing powers of the Hindu physicians. In 1837 Dr. Royle of King’s College, London, wrote his celebrated essay on Hindu Medicine, in which he showed that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who lived in Greece in the fourth century b.c., borrowed his Materia Medica from India. Dr. Royle says, “We owe our first system of medicine to the Hindus?’

Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century b.c., states that the Hindus were the greatest nation of that age. He also writes that the Hindus had trade with Egypt, while from other sources, we gather that they had trade with Babylon and Syria. From another authentic source we learn that there was a Hindu philosopher who visited Socrates at Athens, a fact which Prof. Max Müller confirms in his book on Psychological Religion. This Hindu philosopher, we are told, had a conversation with the great Greek philosopher. He asked in what the philosophy of Socrates consisted, and Socrates replied that his philosophy consisted in inquiries about the life of man, upon which the Hindu philosopher smiled and answered: “How can you know things human without first knowing things divine?” And that is an answer which could not have been given by any other than a Hindu, because the Hindus ascribed all true knowledge to Divine origin, and did not care much for the knowledge of anything human before knowing God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson says: “Plato was a synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise colour”. In fact, in teaching asceticism, Plato was more of a Hindu than a Greek, because, of all nations, the Greeks were least ascetic. My friend, Professor Edward Howard Griggs, in his lecture on the Philosophy of Plato, before the Vedanta Society of New York, also admitted this in saying: “Plato’s belief in the conquest of the senses, as the only means of attaining true knowledge, was preeminently Oriental and non-Greek”. Moreover, if we study Plato carefully, comparing his ideas with those of the Upanishads and other vedic writings, we find that his well-known figure of the man chained in the cave is merely an allegorical presentation of the Vedanta doctrine of maya, that the phenomenal world is like a dream; while his other figure of the chariot was a favourite theme of the vedic writers who lived centuries before Plato. In the Katha Upanishad, for instance, we read: “This body may be compared to a chariot, intellect to the charioteer, mind to the reins, the five senses to the horses, whose path is the object of senses.” Sir William Jones, the first eminent Sanskrit scholar among the English, confirming this fact, writes that “it is impossible to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it. without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the Indian sages”.^[3]

Professor Max Müller and other Oriental scholars maintain, as you know, that the logic of Aristotle was perhaps a Greek presentation of the Hindu logic. You will also remember that Professor Hopkins writes, in his Religions of India, that Thales and Parmenides were both anticipated by the sages of India, while the Eleatic School appears merely a reflection of the Upanishads. He even suggests that the doctrines propounded by Anaximander and Heraclitus might not have been known first in Greece. We should, indeed, bear in mind that after the invasion of India by Alexander the Great, the connection between India and Greece became closer than ever before, and many Hindu philosophers lived at Athens and in other parts of Greece. They were known as Gymnosophists, or Hindu philosophers from India. At that time Alexandria became the centre of trade and commerce between India and Greece, and there was great opportunity for interchange of ideas between the Hindus and Western nations. Porphyry speaks of the wise men from India in high terms of praise for their wisdom, morality, and knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. In regard to Neo-Platonism, Professor Garbe has said that Plotinus was in perfect agreement with the Hindu philosophers, and that his disciple Porphyry knew of the Yoga doctrine of union with the Deity. It was unknown to any of the Western nations, like the Hebrews, Parsees, or Egyptians. Through Plato and his followers, the Neo-Platonists, Stoics, and Philo of Alexandria were also influenced by the Hindu philosophy. The idea of the Logos which formed the corner-stone of the philosophy of Plato, of the Neo-Platonists, of Philo, and later of the Fourth Gospel, first arose in India. In the Vedas we find reference to it; and it has moulded Hindu thought, as well as the religious ideals of other nations.

Christianity as a religion owes a great deal to India. This may startle some of our friends, but from the historical standpoint it is true. If we read the religious history of the East, we find many evidences which are undeniable. For instance, Asoka, who lived in 260 b.c., had his edicts inscribed on pillars of stone during his lifetime, and in one of those edicts we read that he sent Buddhist missionaries to different parts of the world, from Siberia to Ceylon, from China to Egypt, and that, for two centuries before the advent of Jesus, the Buddhist missionaries preached the sublime ethics of Buddha in Syria, Palestine and Alexandria. The same ethical ideas were afterwards repeated and emphasized by Christ. The Christian historian Mahaffi, speaking about those Buddhist missionaries, declared it to be a fact that they were the fore-runners of Christ. These preachers influenced the Jewish sect known as the Essenes; and the Roman historian Pliny, who lived between 23 and 79 a.d., described the mode of living of the Essenes,—that they lived like hermits, without having any possession or any sex relation, being celibates and associates of palm-trees. It can be shown that they belonged to the sect founded by the Buddhist monks from India, who lived in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Philosophers like Schelling and Schopenhauer, and Christian thinkers like Dean Mansel and D. Millman, admit that the sect of the Essenes arose through the influence of the Buddhist missionaries who came from India. Moreover, it is a well-known fact that John the Baptist was an Essene. Ernest Renan, speaking of John the Baptist, says: “He led there a life like that of a Yogi of India, clothed with skins or cloth of camel’s hair, having for food only locusts and wild honey.* * We might imagine ourselves transported to the banks of the Ganges, if special features had not revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the grand prophets of Israel.”^[4] Again he says: “The teachers of the young were also at times a species of anchorites, resembling to some extent the Gurus (spiritual preceptors) of Brahminism. In fact, might there not in this be a remote influence of the Mounts (sages) of India? Perhaps some of those wandering Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and converting people who knew not their language, might have turned their steps towards Judea, as they certainly did towards Syria and Babylon* *. Babylon had become for some time a true focus of Buddhism. Boudasp (Bodhisattva) was a reputed wise Chaldean, and the founder of Sabeism. Sabeism was, as its etymology indicates, baptism.”^[5] And he continues: “We may believe, at all events, that many of the external practices of John, of the Essenes, and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this time, were derived from influences then but recently received from the Far East. The fundamental practice which gave to the sect of John its character, and which has given him his name, has always had its centre in lower Chaldea, and constitutes a religion which is practised there to this day. This practice was baptism or total immersion. Ablutions were already familiar to the Jews, as they were to all the religions of the East. The Essenes had given them a peculiar extension”.^[6]

Thus we see that baptism by water was introduced among the Essenes by the Buddhist missionaries, having originated in India. Baptism afterwards became the principal ceremony at the time of the initiation of the disciple in the religion of John. The life of Jesus the Christ as described in the Synoptic Gospels,—the immaculate conception of a virgin mother, the miraculous birth, the story of the slaughter of infants by Herod, and the chief events of his life, all these seem like repetitions of what happened in the lives of Krishna (1400 b.c.) and of Buddha (547 b.c.). In fact, the idea of the incarnation of God is purely a Hindu idea. It was not known among the Jews. The Jews never accepted Christ as the incarnation of Divinity, but from the vedic period the Hindus accepted many Avataras or incarnations of the Lord in human form, and this is at the foundation of the religion of the Hindus. Many of the famous parables of Jesus the Christ existed among the Hindus and Buddhists of the pre-Christian era. In the Gospel of Buddha, for instance, we find the parables of the prodigal son and of the marriage feast, which were taught by Buddha to his disciples about five centuries b.c., and they resemble in every way the similar parables of Jesus the Christ. The Roman Catholics have taken a great many of their ideas—their form of worship, the monastic life, the nunnery and the idea of purgatory—from the Buddhists of India. In the religious history of the world, Buddha was the first to organize communities of monks and nuns and to establish monasteries and nunneries. Under cover of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, the story of Buddha has found a niche in the row of canonized Catholic saints and has his Saint-day in the calendar of the Greek and Roman churches.

The Buddhist missionaries and preachers also influenced the faith of the Gnostics and Manicheans^[7] and introduced the idea of reincarnation among them. Many of the early Church Fathers, like Origen, admitted that the soul existed before birth and would be born again, that this was not the first or the last time that we had come or would come to this world. The doctrine of pre-existence and reincarnation of souls was accepted by the majority of the Christians until it was suppressed in 538 a.d. by Justinian, who passed this law: “Whoever shall support the mythical presentation of the pre-existence of the soul and the consequently wonderful opinion of its return, let him be Anathema”. It was foreign to Judaism until about the eighth century a.d., when under the influence of the Hindu mystics it was adopted by the Karaites and other Jewish sects. The Jewish Encyclopedia says: “Only with the spread of the Cabala did it begin to take root in Judaism, and then it gained believers even among men who were little inclined toward mysticism”. And again: “Like Origen and other Church Fathers the Cabalists used as their main argument in favour of the doctrine of metempsychosis the justice of God”^[8]

The Sanskrit grammar of Panini, who, according to Max Müller, was the greatest grammarian that the world has ever seen, has given a key to the science of comparative philology. Many of the English words which we commonly use can be traced back to a Sanskrit origin. For instance: Mother, in Latin mater, is in Sanskrit Matar; father, in Latin pater, is in Sanskrit Pitar; brother, in Sanskrit Bhratar; sister, Swasar [Svasa]; daughter, Duhitar; path, in Sanskrit Patha; serpent, Sarpa; bond, Bandha; etc. The word “punch” has an interesting history. It originally meant “five” in Sanskrit; so the expression, "Give him a punch,” means literally “Give him five fingers.” We also use the name “punch” for the drink, which implies that it is made up of five ingredients.

In the last lecture, I showed how the fables of Aesop and Pilpay originated in India. Indeed, these stories of animals, with their wonderful Hindu morals, have influenced young minds of Europe and America for many centuries. I think no child is brought up without studying some of them and learning the morals attached to them. Roman law and Roman jurisprudence also were perhaps not left uninfluenced by the more perfect system of ancient Hindu law.

Now, I will show you the more recent influence of India upon Western civilization. Those who have studied Schopenhauer’s philosophy have undoubtedly noticed that he was full of Buddhistic ideas, as well as of the principles of the Vedanta philosophy. He paid a great tribute to the latter by his celebrated saying, “There is no study more beneficial and elevating to mankind than the study of the Upanishads^[9] (Vedanta). It has been the solace of my life, and it will be the solace of my death”. And Max Müller declares, “If philosophy is meant to be a preparation for a happy death, or Euthanasia, I know of no better preparation for it than the Vedanta philosophy”; while Schopenhauer’s direct disciple, Paul Dcussen, writes in his Philosophy of the Upanishads: “God, the sole author of all good in us, is not, as in the Old Testament, a Being contrasted with and distinct from us, but rather * * our divine self. This and much more we may learn from the Upanishads; we shall learn the lesson if we are willing to put the finishing touch to the Christian consciousness, and to make it on all sides consistent and complete.” In fact, the philosophy of modern Europe has obtained a new life since the introduction of the doctrines of Vedanta into it. Carlyle was influenced by the teachings of Krishna through the English version of the Bhagavad Gita,^[10] first translated by Charles Wilkins during the administration of Warren Hastings, and now well-known to you as the Song Celestial. Many other translations have also been published in Europe and America. Frederick Schlegel, Victor Cousin, Amiel, Paul Deussen, Max Müller, and Emerson were great advocates of the Vedanta philosophy. Emerson was, indeed, the pioneer of Hindu thought in America. He says in his Journal that the study of the Upanishads was a favourite recreation with him.

Perhaps you have read his poem on Brahman, which he calls Brahm; it begins with this celebrated verse:

If the red slayer thinks he slays,
  Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
  I keep, and pass, and turn again.

This is almost a literal translation of a passage in the Bhagavad Gita, which runs thus:

“He who thinketh It to be a slayer and he who thinketh It to be slain,—both of these know not, for It neither killeth nor is killed” (chap, ii, verse 19).

Like Emerson, the Concord sage, Thoreau, was also deeply imbued with the sublime teachings of Vedanta. “The Hindus," he writes, “are more serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have, perhaps, a purer, more independent, and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew Bible, a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtfully, not penitent, though you are the chief of sinners.

It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to Him.

“The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindu philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable.

“What extracts from the Vedas I have read, fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through a purer stratum,—free from particulars, simple, universal. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far summer stratum of sky.

“The Vedanta teaches how, ‘by forsaking religious rites,’ the votary may ‘obtain purification of mind.’

"One wise sentence is worth the State of Massachusetts many times over.

“The Vedas contain a sensible account of God.

“The religion and philosophy of the Hebrew are those of a wilder and ruder tribe, wanting the civility and intellectual refinement and subtlety of the Hindus.

“I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. I have no sympathy with the bigtory and ignorance which make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one man’s faith and another’s, as Christian and heathen. I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry. To the philosopher, all sects, all nations, are alike. I like Brahma, Hari, or Buddha, the Great Spirit, as well as God”.

Today the whole Western world is permeated with Hindu thoughts and ideals. The educated men and women of Europe and America, who have outgrown the superstitions, doctrines, and dogmas of orthodox Christianity, are finding the (right solutions of the problems of life and death, and of the riddles of the universe, as also the greatest comfort and happiness in the universal religion of Vedanta, which is in perfect harmony with the science, logic, and philosophy of modern Europe. Today the moral influence of Buddhism and the ethics of Vedanta are strongly felt in all European and American communities. You see how many vegetarians are springing up, how many people now prefer a vegetarian diet to animal flesh. I saw the other day in New York a hospital for dogs and cats, but, as I have already told you, such a hospital was built in 260 B.C. by the Buddhist emperor, Asoka. Then, again, the interest in concentration, meditation, breathing exercises, New Thought, etc., which is to be found at present all through Europe and America, is the result of Eastern influence. Mrs. Eddy’s early editions of “Science and Health” had quotations from the Bhagavad Gita; and Celia Thaxter, we know, was deeply influenced by the teachings of Krishna, gathered from the same source. The Theosophists have, indeed, disseminated the Hindu teachings most widely all over the world. Even in Mexico I discovered that the teachings of Vedanta were spreading rapidly.

From very ancient times the Hindus as a nation have practised the sublime ethical precept of non-resistance of evil, and the grand moral doctrine of returning good for evil and ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ was taught by Christ, but why? The reason was not given by Him. In the Vedas we find the reason: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour because thou art thy neighbour in spirit. Thou art one with him”. ‘Tat twam asi’, ‘That are Thou’. Love means expression of oneness. The Hindus have always practised these higher ethical virtues, but as a result India has been invaded again and again by the greedy nations of Europe and Asia. Today they have been enslaved by the swords of a Christian nation, whose Master proclaimed before the world the doctrine of non-resistance of evil, of returning good for evil, and of loving one’s enemies. As nations, the so-called Christian nations of Europe do not follow the path of their Master, do not practise non-resistance of evil, do not love their enemies; on the contrary, they worship Mammon, and seek worldly success and material prosperity instead of the Kingdom of Heaven. They send missionaries as forerunners of conquest and pioneers for territorial possession. They do not spread peace and goodwill among the people, but fire and guns, as we have seen lately in the British expedition to Tibet. We cannot forget how the poor, innocent Tibetans were mowed down by Maxim guns. We cannot forget how the Portuguese and Dutch Christians held in one hand the Bible and in the other a gun, and demolished the Hindu temples in India. We cannot forget how the Christian missionaries, under the name of religion, destroyed the monuments of Buddhism in Japan until they were driven out by the Japanese Government in 1614 a.d. The Hindu and Buddhist missionaries, on the contrary, have always carried, instead of fire and sword, the gospel of peace and goodwill, and have civilized the nations.

Think what Buddhism has done for China and Japan, for Tibet and Burmah. The whole civilization of Japan is indebted to Buddhism for its art, as for most other things. Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the sixth century after Christ, and since that time has lived there in absolute peace and harmony with Shintoism and Confucianism. Buddhism was introduced into China in 65 a.d., and it has existed among the Chinese for nearly two thousand years without destroying anything of Taoism and Confucianism, at the same time broadening the religious ideals of the nation, humanizing and civilizing them. Lafcadio Hearn, in his book on Japan, shows how much Buddhism has done for Japan; and those who have read “The Soul of a People,” by H. Fielding Hall, cannot help admiring the humane, loving, and spiritual qualities of the Buddhist people. Religious toleration has always been practised by the Hindus and Buddhists. When the Parsees were driven out of Persia by the Mohammedans, they took refuge in India, where they are now flourishing and living unmolested. Under the influence of this religious toleration of the Hindus, Western nations, especially the English, are beginning to learn and practise it. The Hindus and Buddhists have never robbed their neighbours to enrich themselves, but they have given to the world the highest moral and spiritual truths, not in mere theories, but by setting their noble examples. The Hindus and Buddhists have always been the true spiritual teachers of the world; they know how to preach and how to live religion. By a strange irony of fate, today they are called barbarous and uncivilized heathens by the aggressive pioneers of European conquest.^[11]

Practical morality and spirituality have always been considered by the Hindus as greater than mere intellectual culture. In India, religion has been the source of philosophy, science, art, music, and everything. From religion the Hindus have gained their education and culture, therefore religion is a vital thing with them. It is the primary thing, while intellectual culture is secondary. The Hindus cultivate the feelings of the heart and do not care much for external reforms. It is for this reason that their civilization is based upon the highest moral and spiritual standards. Hindu civilization is founded, not upon the commercial and industrial interests of the people, but upon the eternal moral and spiritual laws which govern our lives. It is not like the European civilization of today, which inspires a nation mainly to protect its self-interest at the expense of other nations, and to gain material and commercial prosperity by depriving others of their rights, by robbing the weaker nations who are kind, innocent, and humane.

According to the Hindu idea, that man is civilized who is versed in the Scriptures; who is learned and wise in the various branches of knowledge; who is truthful, unselfish, and who obeys the moral laws; who helps the poor and distressed; who returns good for evil; and who conquers hatred by love, avarice by generosity. These are the high moral virtues which should adorn the character of a thoroughly civilized man. A civilized man must always cultivate these virtues, and control the brute impulses and animal propensities with which he is born. By these virtues the civilized man is distinguished from a barbarous savage, as also from lower animals. A civilized man or woman must have polished manners, not simply as an external form, as we see in Europe today, but they must proceed from the feelings of the heart. European civilization,^[12] on the contrary, has left moral and spiritual standards in the background, and made material prosperity and intellectual culture the chief factors of civilization. The old brutal law of ‘might is right’ is still in its ascendancy in the civilization of the West. The West looks mainly to externals, but India looks chiefly to the internal. With the former, worldly prosperity is the goal, and intellectual pre-eminance is its watchword. With the latter, the attainment of spiritual perfection is the highest aim of civilization, and the cultivation of moral virtues is a necessary step or auxiliary. In Europe, religion has always retarded the progress of true civilization and freedom of thought by the Inquisition, and by continuous persecution on the part of priests and clergy. Think of the fate of Galileo, Giardino Bruno, and a host of other eminent thinkers of the Middle Ages. Consequently religion has been put aside from practical daily life. But freedom of thought must be the constant companion of true civilization. Social and political freedom are also the outcome of the most advanced kind of civilization. Freedom is the goal for every man, but that freedom must be based upon moral and spiritual laws.

Through the influence of the dominant or rather militant civilization of Europe, India has lost her social and political freedom. She has become a slave. She cannot talk freely; she cannot discuss the unjust policy and oppressive methods of the so-called civilized government which rules over her. European civilization has given to India the standard of commercialism, and has set an example of extreme selfishness, and this has been undermining the moral and spiritual standards of the Hindus. The ideal of simplicity and of humanitarianism is everyday sacrificed upon the altar of commercialism and greed for material possession. Those who try to live in India a Christ-like life of purity and righteousness are robbed and dispossessed of their property by the selfish pioneers of the aggressive civilization of England. Under the influence of British rule, the culture of the feelings of the heart among the younger generation has become almost an impossibility. The moral and spiritual standards of the Hindus are giving place to hypocrisy and intellectual culture for material gain. The vices of Christian civilization, with slaughter-houses and saloons, with the liquor trade and the opium trade as Government monopolies for revenue, have been spreading all over India under the civilizing power of English rule.

The influence of Western civilization is destroying the social structure of the Hindus, and is breaking the harmony of the household life which has existed from time immemorial. But it has done some good. It has loosened the rigidity of caste rules and caste distinctions, and has removed the degenerating evil effects of priestcraft. India was groaning under priestcraft, but today its evil effects have been removed by English education. English education, on the other hand, has disturbed the minds of the people; has shaken their faith in their religion; has made its students advocates of atheism, agnosticism, and utilitarianism, which are the banes of scientific education. The great mass of Hindu students who come out of the universities every year do not believe in God or the human soul, do not care for anything but worldly success, social position, fame, and glory. Their first object in life is to earn their bread and butter by some honest profession. The heartless and demoralizing influence of business competition, which never existed under caste rules in India, is suppressing the moral and spiritual development of the people. The gladiatorial policy of European civilization is now in full force. The educated Hindus of today do not know which step to take in the path of their worldly career. They run for help toward the governing power, as a child would run to its father for protection in time of distress, but their hearts are filled with despair when they meet the frowning eyes of task-masters under the garb of Western culture and civilization. A civilized Englishman in India kicks his native servant to death, and is fined perhaps five dollars by the Government. A civilized Englishman on a tea plantation in Assam will carry on a coolie trade, which is almost as bad as the old slave-trade, and is seldom punished by the Government. Such are the examples which the Hindus are witnessing everyday in India.

Western civilization under British rule has opened the eyes of the masses, has made them realize that a foreign government is no better than a curse of God upon a nation; and a nation which tyrannizes over another nation for its own gain is not entitled to be called civilized, according to the Hindu standard of civilization. But I must say that India has derived certain benefits from English rule. After one hundred and fifty years of oppression and tyranny, it has made the Hindus on their own feet, and has brought out their national and patriotic feelings, in which they were lacking for nearly a century. It has brought India in close touch with European and American culture, and has driven away many superstitious ideas from the minds of the Hindus. The Hindus are now taking lessons in commercialism from the civilized masters of Europe, and are studying their ways and manners, so that in future they will be able to become their worthy disciples. Japan has shown to the world what ready disciples of Western civilization her people have become in less than half a century. Now it will be the turn for poor and downtrodden India. We may not see it, but future generations will enjoy that freedom which is the goal of all nations.

Another good thing has come from the influence of Western civilization, and that is the blessing of scientific education for the masses. It has opened a new field, and has brought a tremendous power of knowledge with it. India is beginning to wake up from her sleep in the darkness which prevailed during the night of the Mohammedan rule of six hundred years, and her children are now receiving the light of science and the blessings of knowledge which have come from her contact with England. India will always remain gratefully indebted to the West, especially to England, for this blessing, and will always thank the Lord that He has given to her people so glorious an opportunity to accomplish her future greatness and political regeneration. India needs the spirit of Western civilization, while the West needs yet to learn from the Hindus the lesson of religious toleration, as also that practical method by which it will establish its civilization upon the principles of higher ethics and true spirituality taught by the universal religion of Vedanta, which is the crest jewel of the civilization of India.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Those treating of algebra and arithmetic have been translated by Colebrooke, and the portion on spherical trigonometry has been translated by Wilkinson.

[2]:

“A striking history has been told of the problem to find.x so that shall be a square number. Fremat made some progress towards solving this ancient problem, and sent it as a defiance to the English algebraists in the seventeenth century. Euler finally solved it, and arrived exactly at the point attained by Bhaskara in 1150. A particular solution of another problem given by Bhaskara is exactly the same as was discovered in Europe by Lord Brounker in 1657; and the general solution of the same problem given by Brahmagupta, in the seventh century a.d., was unsuccessfully attempted by Euler, and was only accomplished by De la Grange in 1767 a.d. The favourite process of the Hindus known as the Kuttaka was not known in Europe till published by Bachet de Mezeriac in 1624 a.d.”—Civilization in Ancient India, Vol. II, p. 246.

[3]:

Cf. Works, (Calcutta Ed.) pp. 20, 125, 127.

[4]:

Cf. Life of Jesus, p. 126.

[5]:

Ibid., p. 127.

 

[6]:

Vide Renan: Life of Jesus, p. 128.

[7]:

Professor E. W. Hopkins declares that “Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India” in their philosophical beliefs. See p. 25.

[8]:

Cf. Vol. XII, p. 252.

[9]:

“Fifty Upanishads, under the name of Oupenek’hat [Oupnekhat?], were translated from the Sanskrit into Persian in 1656 at the instance of the Sultan Mohammed Dara Shakoh, and from the Persian into Latin in 1801-2 by Anquetil Duperron.” Paul Deussen: Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 86.

[10]:

Published in London in 1785 and in New York in 1867.

[11]:

“Unhappy Asia! Do you call it unhappy Asia? this land of divine needs and divine thought! Its slumber is more vital than the waking life of the rest of the globe, as the dream of genius is more precious than the vigils of ordinary men. Unhappy Asia, do you call it? It is the unhappiness of Europe over which I mourn”—Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield).

[12]:

“Asia revivified would act upon Europe. The European comfort, which they call civilization, is, after all, confined to a very small space,—the Island of Great Britain, France, and the course of a single river, the Rhine. ‘The greater part of Europe is as dead as Asia, without the consolation of climate and the influence of immortal traditions.”—Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield).