Reviews

Easter.–The Legends and the Fact.–By Eleanor C. Merry. (The Modern Mystic’s Library. Vol. No. I. King, Littlewooa and King, London. 3sh. 6d.)

Whoever takes the plunge into the esoteric aspect of a religion and culture other than his own, can expect a few surprises and he may have to plough through material that seems utterly incomprehensible and sometimes disjointed. Such may be the experience of an Indian who tackles Mrs. Merry’s book "Easter, the Legends and the Fact."

It will introduce him to an aspect of Western culture which is almost completely overlain by our modern theology and technology but which is now seeking to raise its head once more. I say once more because the writer starts by describing some of the knowledge, especially in relation to the Sun and the Moon that informed the Bards. Druids and Seers of the Hibernian Mysteries, the occult schools of ancient Ireland. This is correlated with the wisdom of India. Persia, Egypt, Babylonia, and Greece (touched on rather lightly), and leads over to a consideration of the legends of the Holy Grail. The stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Holy Grail are part of the heritage of every English child and Mrs. Merry shows how they are as pregnant with spiritual meaning for a European as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata for an Indian child.

She examines in some detail one of the greatest of the Grail Sagas, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s "Perceval." She shows that this is a great picture of a soul’s development and was given to the humanity of Europe as a safeguard for the initiation of an age of doubt, but an age which should also usher in one of the greatest gifts of the human spirit, modern science.

The next legend takes us to the Hibernian Mysteries. The knowledge which they had about death opened the eyes of the Bards, Druids and Seers so that on the day on which Christ was crucified they had, by their spiritual vision, knowledge of the events that were taking place. She goes on to say: "Dionysius the Areopagite, who later became the pupil of St. Paul, saw the same tremendous changes in the planetary worlds, in Nature, and in the eclipse of the Sun which darkened the first Good Friday. This eclipse was entirely mysterious; no calculations had given any expectation of it. Dionysius was told by the sage whom he asked that such cosmic events could have no other meaning than that a God had come down to the Earth. Only a God could change the face of the Heavens, and changing the Heavens unite Himself with the Earth. To Dionysius this God had been the ‘Unknown God’ whose altar was seen by St. who afterwards made Him known to the Athenians."

Coming to more modern times, Mrs. Merry shows how in his great play, "Faust", Goethe carried on the same inner wisdom, as Wolfram von Eschenbach had drawn on for his Grail Saga. She points out how both these writers embody in their poems spiritual truths which are of the utmost importance for the peoples of the West–most especially for them because it was their destiny to usher in the age of Natural Science. Althpugh this age has sprung from an age of doubt, it is the destiny of humanity to come through it, there can be no question of ever going , to a renewal of its life of soul and spirit. And it is this which is the essence of Easter. In Europe it is intimately bound up with the seasons of Nature. The South Indian seasons are quite different, but it may be of some interest to Indian readers to be able to correlate the great Christian festivals of Easter, St. John, Michaelmas and Christmas with our spring, midsummer, autumn and winter respectively.

The book closes with a beautiful Russian legend in which the connection between Christ and the Archangel Michael is vividly portrayed. Indeed the whole book breathes an atmosphere which is like a blast of clear fresh air, blowing over the musty pages of theology. It touches on some of the deepest and most intimate of human problems, but always in such a manner as to awaken hope and to show us that we have come from the Godhead and thither must we needs return. Only our return must embrace the renewal of all things earthly. Our experiences on Earth have taught us valuable lessons and we must repay our debt by raising a transformed Earth to the Heavens. That is the real message of Easter.

MARCIA A. B. DODWELL

The Ganges Calls Me.–A book of poems by Yone Noguchi. (Published by Kiyobunkwan, Ginza, Tokyo, Japan.)

Yone Noguchi, the Japanese poet, visited India in the winter of 1935. He traveled throughout the country, as a cultural ambassador from the Far East, delivering his message of beauty, love and art. The Indian Universities vied with one another in inviting him, in honouring him, but his historic welcome to this ancient land was at ‘Amara Kunja’ of Santiniketan, where the aged poet of India, Tagore, greeted him warmly with words of affection and admiration: "My friend, you have brought to us the mature days of your genius full of the ripe harvest of wisdom, and we have gathered for your welcome the inspired words of homage which are for all true poets and seers, from the glorious period of India’s history, when she was radiantly great, was victorious in the race of life, was truly young and therefore immortal."

In the brief three months he stayed in this country he visited almost all the great cities, the most ancient sites and the greatest men of India. He was thrilled with the sights and scenes, and his sensitive soul and rapturous heart have tried to capture, in the magic net of imagination, something of India’s "eternity peeping through time." He was struck with amazement and wonder at the sublime glory of Ajanta and Ellora, the delicate beauty of the Taj and the Indian woman, the majesty of the Himalayas and the Indian Pagodas, as well as the greatness and grandeur of character of Gandhi and Tagore.

Of these he has sung with an overflowing heart and a rare imaginative feeling, and the delightful volume under review is proof of his passion for India’s genius and culture. He has sung not only of the big things he has seen and heard in India but of the small and ‘insignificant’ things. He has written about Indian cows, mango trees, Indian farmers, boatmen, a funeral procession, and country life, and with equal zest he has sung about the Maharajas, bejewelled ladies and Mahatmas.

When he visited Gandhiji at Wardha, the saint was too ill to meet the poet, and, under instructions from the doctors, no visitors were allowed. But the Mahatma made an exception in his case, and Noguchi saw him, a patient lying ill on a simple Indian charpoy under a tent on a terrace and his head wrapped in a cotton cloth. Here is Yone Noguchi’s picture of the scene:

"A warrior in combat near Heaven with a prospect of unseen victory,
Blowing a bugle challenging the future for response.
Withered and thin,
But with a mammoth soul shaking the world in fear;
(Where is there a more burning patriot than this man?)
A lone seeker of truth denying the night and self-pleasure.
(Where is there a more prophetic soul than this man’s?)
A pilgrim along the endless road of hunger and sorrow.
In joy of seeing a man in the form nature first fashioned,
A man worshipping God through serving the poor,
A man feeling lighter because of his possessions all lost,
("Who but the poor can save the other poor"?)"

The old-world paintings at Ajanta moved him to an ecstasy of delight:

"What an uncovered world of nudity,
What mysteryless life of mystery!
Dance on; fair maiden, shrugging thy shoulders,
Bending thy arms, swinging thy waist!–
The flutes and the song ring in the air,
Ring for ever till Time runs dry.
Like myself, pilgrims after a thousand years from now
Will see the dancer still dancing, hear the music still ringing.
Oh, master-artist, thou raisest art above Time and Space.
Magician, thou biddest the old festival to run unfading forever!
By thy sweet desire the pensive lady paints her lips,
Forever holding a mirror in her dainty hand.
By thy benevolence it is that the young couple
Keep their harem fresh where love sheds no leaf of spring."

We have all heard of the American joke of how a millionaire visiting the Taj for the first time and seeing his wife dumbstruck at its beauty, cabled exultingly to his friends: "The Taj Won." Yone Noguchi’s reaction to this immortal monument of Indian creative genius was no less enthusiastic, only more aesthetically expressed:

I know that it comes from the beauty too ethereal, too perfect.
A faultless creation of art, the mausoleum leaves me no room
For my imagination to play on. What a difficulty to save me
From the sweet dizziness I feel in the symmetry that is absolute!"

Few sights in t he world are so overpowering, almost amounting to a spiritual experience, as the sunrise seen from the top of the Tiger Hill in Darjeeling or from the conical crest of the Adam’s Peak in Ceylon. Here is a pen-picture of the sunrise as seen from Darjeeling:

"Silence profound.
One minute passes, two minutes pass, three minutes pass.–
The sun, now a round disc of vermilion, floats up,
Making the sea of clouds a sea of seething blood.
Oh, how Kinchinjunga sparkles in gold,–
A triangled array of diamonds, nay a divine agency!
What a sight–only for a few to be permitted to see;
What grandeur–too holy for lengthened praise!"

"Indians Bare-footed Go," is a delightful poem, revealing a Japanese reaction to a common sight in India. It must be noted that no Japanese, however poor, walks bare-footed outside on the roads or in the fields:

"Bare-footed the Indians go.
Lying flat, they share the joy of earth, with ants, with spiders and beetles.
Lying flat in adoration, they see nature’s loins and feet.
(Standing erect, one only sees nature up from paunch to head!)
Bare-footed the Indians go.
Lying flat; they speak the grace of a flame cleaving to wick,–
No need to bend their bodies for thanking God."

"The present book is my poetical harvest in India which I recently visited," writes the poet in a small introductory note to the volume. It is well printed and neatly got-up, with a sketch of the author in ink by Nandalal Bose and a picturesque cover design by the Japanese painter, Kosetsu Nosu, who did the frescoes at the Mulagandhakuti Vihara at Sarnath. It is published by the well-known booksellers in Tokyo, the Kiyobunkwan of Ginza. We welcome this sympathetic interpretation of India by one of Japan’s foremost artists and recommend it to all students of Oriental culture.

G. VENKATACHALAM

Saiva Siddhanta.–By Dr. (Miss) Violet Paranjoti (pp. XII, 257, Luzac and Co., London, Price Rs. 4. or Sh. 6/.)

This book is a thesis submitted for the Ph. D. degree of the Madras University by the author. It can form a good introduction to the theories of the Dravidian branch of Saivism called the Saiva Siddhanta. This is purely dualistic and is the opposite extreme of the Kashmir school of Saivism as expounded by Vasugupta and Abhinavagupta, which is Advaita. Saiva Siddhanta is non-Vedic in origin, basing its tenets on the Saiva Agamas. Yet some followers of this school accept the Vedas also as an authority. The Agamas are said to have been at first written in the Dravidian language but lost in some flood, and now available only in some Sanskrit translations. There does not appear, however, much evidence for this view. The protagonist of this, school is Meykanda Deva, who is the author of the work Sivajnanabodham, one of the fourteen works known as the ‘Meykanda Sastram’, on which are based the doctrines of Saiva Siddhanta. According to this school, Siva is the highest God. Maya is the cause of the material world. It is asat or unreal, yet not unreal like the horns of a hare. (p. 104) It is not the main factor in throwing the individual soul into bondage. This factor is an entity called Anava, which makes the individual soul, which in essence is infinite, an atom. That is, Anava makes the individual ignorant of his true nature. And Maya helps the individual, in breaking down the limitations imposed by Anava and supplies him with mind and other organs of sense, body, objects, and worlds. Both Maya and Anava are not independent of Siva, but dependent on him. Jnanamarga or the path of knowledge is the highest and is indispensable for the realisation of Siva. In Mukti or the state of liberation, the soul does not become identical with Siva, but remains in a lower position. (P, 204).

There is a vast literature on Saiva Siddhanta not only in Sanskrit, but also in Tamil. To those who cannot have access to the originals, this book will be of great use.

P. T. RAJU

The Aryan Path. (Hind Swaraj Number) 51, Esplanade Road, Bombay.

The September issue of The Aryan Path is a special number devoted to a symposium on Gandhiji’s Hind Swaraj re-printed exactly thirty years after its original publication. The contributors are all Englishmen, and one Englishwoman; and the essays form an interesting study in the reactions of different people to a common set of ideas.

Gandhiji’s Hind Swaraj is not merely the doctrinaire exposition of a forbiddingly high ideal; it is a sort of ideological prelude to the fateful history of the Indian struggle for independence under the aegis of Gandhiji himself. Thus he has furnished his critics and followers with practical illustrations of his ideas in action. This is the highest kind of demonstration that can be demanded of any set of principles. I remember that many of the ideas elaborated in the book used to be made fun of by the languid leaders of the generation that died about 1920. The favourite pastime was to pick out the inconsistencies and contradictions in the details of the book, as a piece of writing, and to fling them with kindly pity at their unruffled and unabashed author. Ridicule failed to choke him off; opposition became more and more strident as he became more and more dogmatic. And then the time-spirit gave him the chance to demonstrate his philosophy in terms of an epic action which the gods themselves must have planned. It is now admitted that there is something in Satyagraha, both as a theory and as a technique. A distracted Europe which finds it as tedious to go forward as to retrace its steps, has made no serious attempt to understand this new portent; but its most adventurous spirits are having a wild surmise that this idea might also be applied there with more chances of leading the European nations to the path of reason and sanity. But even among the elect, there are many who have not yet emerged completely from the valley of the shadow of doubt or despair. A perusal of these nine articles gives us an impression less of showing up the defects of the Gandhian idea than of the limitations of the writers themselves.

The contributors have been chosen with an eye to variety. Thus Prof. Soddy leads off with a characteristically sceptical approach to Gandhiji’s book. He has not cared to collate the theory with its practical elucidations. He therefore gives us an ‘abstract account.’ He makes great play of the inconsistencies in the argument concerning civilisation, and the compromises to which Gandhiji himself has been forced. He lets it be implied that the success which has attended the Non-co-operation movement was more or less a fluke, that there is no guarantee of such success under all conditions, and that in spite of a recent tour of the country, he is unable to find any far-reaching revolution in the character of the people to justify the higher spiritual claims made on behalf of the movement.

Mr. G. D. H. Cole is the next contributor. He confesses that Hind Swaraj is a deeply disturbing book; that is, to the Westerner who has had a couple of centuries of unexampled ‘progress’ to confirm him in a quite provoking mood of complacency. He realises the almost topical appeal of the book to the thoughtful European of today faced as he is by the prospect of another war. He is candid enough to admit that non-violence as a creed does not appeal to him under all conditions. He is prepared to fight for his own ideals when they are threatened with extinction. There he is speaking for the majority of his race. One remark of his is revealing. "The Gandhi of this book could not be, in the West, a leader, but only a martyr at most." Is this not an unconscious surrender to standards of material success? Does he not forget that the world requires martyrs at least as often as leaders? His conclusion is that Gandhi’s discipline will ensure personal Swaraj to anyone capable of rising to his heights, but that it is clearly beyond the reach of the rest.

Mr. Delisle Burns shows up a different set of limitations under which the West labours. He starts with a poser which does not concern the Satyagrahi at all. For he says: "If force ought not to be used to destroy oppression, oppression equally ought not to be maintained by the use of force." Unhappily the counsel is intended for rulers, among whom the Satyagrahi is not yet one. With the recent enthronement of Congress in office, this obligation has been rightly understood, and has even been put into effect. Repression as a means of carrying on the government is unknown, wherever Congress is in power.

He next strikes a lusty blow for the much-maligned civilisation of the West, and gives one very rhetorical and indeed readable paragraph of the achievements of the West in poetry, philosophy,–the humanities in short. Gandhiji is not an ignoramus. He has read Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Shelley, must have heard of Bacon, Newton, Darwin and all other giants in more than one field. But Gandhiji’s point is that they are great in spite of the West. Let me put it differently. How much of the vision of life or conduct which they have pictured to us in memorable art-forms is an abiding possession of the people as a whole, or even of the rulers and controllers of the people’s destiny? It is not enough to make a pilgrimage to Stratford; and it is usually not worth while if you have to traverse a region which is ugly, or a people who are illiterate and sunk in poverty, unemployment and other kindred miseries. Shakespeare is in the theatre and their God in their churches on Sabbath days! He next seeks to argue that Gandhi’s hatred of the machine is at least overdone. Is not a plough a machine, or the Charka? he asks. They are, but since one plough or one Charka cannot be handled by more than one man, the worst defects of mass-production, namely, the relegation of the man to a status below the machine, can never come about.

We next have Mr. Middleton Murry, who is doing something on his own to live a life according to the commandments of Christ. He is the only distinguished English writer of today who has struggled to an appreciation of Christ’s central teaching, ‘Resist not Evil,’ and has embodied his faith in a modest institution of his own, called the Adelphi Centre. His book on ‘The Necessity of Pacifism’ published last year is a courageous application of non-violence even to international affairs. It is therefore only to be expected that he should show an enlightened enthusiasm for Gandhi’s gospel, far beyond the apprehension of most people in the West. He however joins issue on minor points. But they do not detract from the conviction with which he gives expression to his own abiding faith in the central doctrine. Slighter notes are furnished by four other writers, among whom may be noted Mr. Beresford and Hugh l’A. Fausset, the well-known writers. The last article–by Irene Rathbone–raises a very interesting side-issue. After admitting the necessity for self-immolation, if need be, for upholding righteousness or overcoming evil, she asks with ingenuous feeling, how the idea can apply in the case of children? We may gladly die for an ideal; can we witness the wanton destruction of our own beloved children by the enemy, and still be non-violent? Impossible, she concludes, and accuses Gandhiji of not having provided for her contingency. She has perhaps not read the story of Prahlada in our mythology. It provides a complete answer. If that is not enough, there is another which one hesitates to commend to a Westerner for fear of our outlook and philosophy being hopelessly misunderstood. On the battle-field of Kurukshetra, Arjuna raised the bogey of having to kill his kith and teachers. In the world of undying values, even the fall of a sparrow is duly provided for; and to the Hindu mind, children do not occupy any special position when considered in relation to the cosmic process. Children like their parents can only die once! And if that fear is exorcised, it would be impossible for any parent to think of the mere human pathos of their destruction or to give it undue importance.

The symposium is well-timed. May we suggest that a similar attempt be made to canvass the opportunities and dangers of Congress in office, from the point of view of the same book, viz., Hind Swaraj?

P. M.

Shakespeare Criticism: An Essay in Syrythesis.–By C. Narayana Menon. (Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. Rs. 3.)

It is recorded of Johnson that once he grumbled about the quality of a dinner to which he was invited as the chief guest, Boswell tried an expostulation, more, it is to be feared, with an eye to ‘copy’ than to champion the hapless host. The Doctor would not retract, except in a very equivocal manner; for he replied that it was not a good enough dinner to invite a man to!

It is possible to maintain, in a somewhat similar strain, that many of the books which are published, though praiseworthy enough in their own way, were perhaps worth writing, but are not worth publishing. Academic theses, with very rare exceptions, belong to this category; and one on Shakespeare criticism, most emphatically so. It is Shakespeare at nth hand. The present volume has been in pickle for ten years, and is presumably an expanded re-draft of the original attempt.

The student of Shakespeare finds here nothing new; but the undergraduate whom the author has obliquely in view, might not unnaturally be bored stiff by the array of notes and repetitions which take up the major part of the book. The same play or plot is repeated under different headings to illustrate different points. And there is a pedantic failing which might pass muster in the class-room; I mean a magisterial summoning of famous names either to enforce the obvious or to be ticked off for mote-like ‘faults.’ The whole range of Shakespearean criticism is like the curate’s egg; and the author makes a sensible disposal of them when he says: "wise men have said foolish things, and silly men wise things about Shakespeare." But he recurs to them again and again with an infantile fascination.

Mr. Menon however writes very well indeed; he is master of a crisp utterance, and an allusive style which gathers its images and illustrations from all the sciences and all the literatures of Europe and India (in translation). One outstanding virtue of the book, unhappily submerged in the array of superfluous erudition, is the attempt to interpret some of the deeper implications of Shakespeare’s art and thought in terms of Hindu ethic and aesthetic. They leap up to the eye in the most unexpected places, and suggest lines of speculation outside the grooves of conventional criticism.

Many of the plots of the later plays are summarised with a delicate gusto which shows a sensitive imagination at work; and portraits are filled in with a view to essentials such as are implicit in the Shakespearean conceptions. It is not necessary to agree with the results to enjoy the animation and sensibility that inform the author’s attempts at filling in the ground. But as the scope of this subject is vast, we are necessarily restricted to truncated effects. What the book requires is a further synthesis within itself.

P. M.