A pilgrimage to the World or Immortal Images

A PILGRIMAGE TO THE WORLD OF
IMMORTAL IMAGES

On the threshold of the 21st century the world would seem to be taking a fresh look at India. Her contemplative philosophy, piety of life, work ethics, religious tolerance and profound con­viction that evil will not go unpunished–these are what embody India’s spiritual power.

But an outsider’s view is a different one from that seen from the inside, and I never really had a chance to observe India’s spirituality from the inside. But when I did, I realised that the books of wisdom, left to us by the Hindu religion, do not lie.

in Moscow, as I was getting ready for the Delhi International Ramayana Symposium, I could hardly have imagined that after the discussions ended, the symposium over, I would find myself several hundred kilometres away from the palatial, air-conditioned conference hall with its European-style decor, and be on the bare marble floor of a Hindu temple, in front of an altar with figurines of the great Valmiki, and Kusha and Lava, the two sons of Rama and Sita. I could never have imagined that my audience would be made up of Vishnu worshippers who regard both Ramayana and Bhagavadgita as their most important and revered books.

The man who acted as our mentor, or swami-ji, on the pilgri­mage was Dr. Lallan Prasad Vyas. He has earned true interna­tional recognition for his work in promoting the study of Ramayana, and it is he who should take much of the credit for organising the symposium.

Among the participants were Western Sanskritologists, Gilbert Pollet from Belgium, a Mexican couple, Juan Miguel Demora and Maria Ludwiga Jaroska (who has a Polish father) and two Soviet Indologists, Lyubov Bychikhina and myself. Apart from our Indian hosts we were joined by a Nepalese, a Thai, and a Chinese lady who has translated into Chinese Tulsidas epic poem Ramacharitamanasa (The Sea of Rama’s Exploits). Two Indians in our party represented the now familiar type of international scholar belonging to both Oriental and Western cultures at one and the same time. One of them, Pundit Ram Lal, is a permanent resident of the USA, and the other, Dr. Kaushal, lives in Britain.

Our talks, discussions and heated debates on the signi­ficance of India in world culture and in the culture of the Soviet Union were endless. They continued throughout our journey to holy places associated with Rama’s legendary life. They even continued on the night train which took us from Delhi to Ayodhya where, according to Hindu legend, the trials of Rama and Sita began.

The West can be proud of its technological breakthroughs and the impressive results of its scientific and technological revolutions, but these have not halted the erosion of its morals. If anything, this erosion has become even more pronounced. At the same time, scientific and technological progress relieved man both from monotonous manual labour and tedious intellectual work. Leisure has ceased to be the privilege of the elite. More and more people now have the time to take closer looks at both themselves and life around them. The 20th century crowns the era of industrialisation, and foreshadows the transition to a new type of civilisation. In this shrinking world of ours it has become dangerous to resort to violence. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the great ascetic who came from the Middle Ages into the 20th century to preach, non-violence (ahimsa), had far greater vision, wisdom and humanity than the 20th-century professional politician Winston Churchill, who described him as a “semi-naked fakir”.

Whether we like it or not, the name of M. K. Gandhi remains forever associated with the emergence of a new political thinking which reflects the realities of the 20th century.

In late November 1986 Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Delhi Declaration.

The ten principles of the Delhi Declaration were inspired by the philosophy of ahimsa which was formulated almost half a century before that. It is not a declaration: that reflects the narrow interests of a group of countries or a political alliance. It serves all mankind and its future.

For us M. K. Gandhi has emerged as a prophet, as a man of great courage who preached peace while walking roads, which he knew were mined with bombs. Today, the conservative M. K. Gandhi looks like a much more radical philosopher than many of his contemporary revolutionaries. By upholding the ideal of a non-violent struggle, he made man far more responsible for everything bearing relation to society and its destiny. He was never a preacher of abstract truth withdrawn from life, like some of his disciples try to portray him today. On many occasions he was in the midst of a bitter struggle, realising as he did, that all values are interrelated, because it is man that embodies this interrelationship. But what is more important, perhaps, is that the ethical foundations of his philosophy were never shaken. He was profoundly convinced that in the course of time his truth would triumph and his philosophy of non-violence would prevail. He would never abandon what constituted the essen­tial meaning of his philosophy and the underlying principles of all his actions in life – never go against your conscience. His per­sonality best revealed itself in his benevolence and dialogue, and it is very important that this is understood. In other words, Gandhi was a highly cultured man and it is true that in his time culture had ceased to be a purely intellectual phenomenon but had gained an important social dimension. Gandhi under­stood culture as a means of social intercourse. His satyagraha movement or persistence in the truth, was all about the political emancipation of society and its liberation from oppression by the state, which in his case was the British Empire.

M. K. Gandhi was not tormented by a suicidal division bet­ween spirit and power. He used his spirit for creation and not destruction, albeit in the name of a happy future, and that was what gave him his power. He realised that if people were orien­ted only towards a distant future, it would be tantamount to the justification of the ills of the contemporary world. It is true that his social ideal, ramaraja, or the just rule of Rama, that is God’s power, was utterly Utopian and even during his lifetime had been the subject of gibes by his critics. But Gandhi never bothered to reply to his denigrators, because his ideals were important in themselves as sort of a beacon for humanity on its road to the future.

The train carriage swayed from side to side, and the cool night air blew in through every hole. No one really wanted to sleep. We wrapped ourselves in our woolen blankets and talked about freedom, something that is sacred to every person living in the West. What was M. K. Gandhi’s idea of freedom? Did it just mean moksha, or liberation from the bondage of the material world? And if so, why did he not chose to become a sanyasi, or a Hindu monk? What was the source of his untamed and rebellious passion which came through in all his actions aimed at liberating India from foreign domination and in his struggle for human rights?

I was thinking that we were only just beginning to under­stand the cultures of other nations, including Bhagavadgita, Ramayana and Dhammapada. Take the Russian culture of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. It was involved in active and productive dialogue with the whole world. Russians were reading what others had to say in their books, and Russian writers were popular abroad. Could that be the reason why Russians have a very special interest in India’s wisdom? “To buy a ticket to where the spirit of India reigns,” wrote the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, but that meant to revert to the spiritual source that never runs dry. It should come as no surprise then that the Bhagavadgita, or God’s Song, has been known in Russia since the late 18th century, and the renowned Russian humani­tarian Nikolai Novikov assisted in its publication.

As nowhere else, in India the influence of the literary classics comes through in so many ways. In fact, the traditional Indian culture embraces all spheres of life, and even today, many people see the history of their country in terms of mythological images. We were particularly impressed by the way Indians adhere strictly to their traditional lifestyle. For example, in the country­side the following principles are inviolate-the parents believe in God, and the children believe in their parents. People are convinced that if this belief is destroyed, it would bring about great social misfortune. And again I observed that both the Indian and Russian classics share the same ideals. Both of them thought that the values of the peasant commune were supreme, and the patriarchal family links exemplified social relations for them. Nikolai Leskov, Alexander Ostrovsky and Lev Tolstoy are just a few great names that can serve as excellent examples.

My leisurely observations alerted me to several things which previously I had not been aware of. The West looks down on the sociable and warm-hearted character of Russians, believing as it does that the other side of it is sloth, good-for-nothingness and a persistent desire to be hail-fellow-well with people who do not really want it. But the Indians have the same character. Among the other things which make us so similar are the inclinations to indulge in emotions that are virtually incompatible, the belief that things will work out for the best in the end and the improbable mixture of sin and virtue in the national character of the two peoples.

And there is one other similarity. Both Indians and Russians set great store by poetry–a source of aesthetic delight and a repository of popular wisdom.

The great Indian poets of the past had a rare gift of vision, and they realised the profound significance of ethics in the life of society. This explains why the poetry of Valmiki, Tulsidas, Kabir and Surdas is still very much alive. It is a paean to kind­ness and a message to us, the people of the 20th century, warning us not to destroy life an earth.

But classical Russian literature also represented the lectern from which the lesson of life was taught. It called far self-sacri­fice and patriatism, It was heroic in its character, and it was embued with sympathy and compassion far the lowly of birth and the downtrodden. Russian classical literature set very high ideals, and fought tirelessly for the restitution of justice and truth.

However, this similarity between moral and ethical values does not mean that Hinduism and Christianity are identical in the totality of their concepts and ideas. In fact, the semantic content of the imagery and the metaphors that are used to convey these concepts are different.

The most outstanding feature of Christianity is that it is centered on the human being. Unlike Hinduism, Christianity re­presents synthetic anthropology. It proclaims the unity of the body and soul, and it is in his bodily appearance that man attains the fulfilment of his existence. This is an alien view in Hinduism, which, in contrast, centres around the idea of the eternal re­birth of the soul, or re-incarnation. For a Hindu the soul’s existence in the world is like sand in the water. This image manifests the idea of the mechanistic unity of matter and spirit. What is parti­cularly important is that unlike Hinduism, Christianity holds that man and other earthly creatures are irreplaceable and have no adequate substitutes. That is why in Christianity, man is singled out from the Universe as being special in the eyes of God, while Hinduism regards man as part of the absolute. The for­mula of Christianity is “many are one” and that of Hinduism–­“all is the absolute”. The Christian set of values represents a perspective series which are related, one way or another, to the central idea of the Gospel-the death and the resurrection of Christ. This is a paradox with numerous imaginative associations. It is also important to recall the Eucharist–the symbol of the Christian brotherhood of man. But it must be borne in mind that in this unity of people Christianity preserves and safe­guards the individual identity of different people. The story of the Trinity formulates this mystical paradox by uniting three different aspects into a single entity. In Christianity love represents a godly principle and a correlative of God. The destruction of the egoistical element in man is a prerequisite to expanding the links between people.

Finally, it is necessary to note that Christ and his resur­rection is unique and that Christianity shows the only way to salvation for everyone. Hinduism provides for many alternatives which explains its tolerance. In Hinduism the freedom of will is constrained by karma, a religious concept, whose meaning and content are determined by the sum total of the good and evil actions of a being in its previous birth. The concept of dharma or the eternal law of morality, is also unknown in Christianity.

Why was it then that Russian authors, born and raised in a Christian culture, turned to India and the spiritual values of Hinduism and Buddhism?

I would suggest the following explanation. At the dawn of this century several prominent Russian poets were attracted by the central idea of Hindu philosophy, namely that all the pheno­mena in the world born of the Brahman represent nothing more than a play of his divine mind. They represent maya, that is an illusion. I could cite many poems by Valeri Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont and Zinaida Guippius that support my hypothesis. There is no doubt in my mind that Oriental philosophy offered them new insights into the human psyche, something that was sorely needed in order to restore the wholeness and the psychological balance of the personality. Meditation and moral reflection, deve­loped in Hinduism and Buddhism over the centuries, represent an invisible source of new concepts and doctrines for human survival. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that the Russian writers, with Elena Blavatskaya, the founder of the Theosophic society, being the most prominent and consistent adherent of Hinduism, perceived the Orient not only as the cradle of spirituality but also as the spiritual saviour of humanity. And it is India that brought about primarily such understanding of the Oriental spiritual world.

This reliance on Indian wisdom was not so much an attempt to create a different perspective of the future. Rather, Russian poets looked to India for new imagery in order to create a new lifestyle and map out new approaches to the most complex problems of human existence.

For these writers the Christian axialogical, structures were not sufficient to explain contemporary man and his world, especially since in the early 20th century Christianity and pri­marily the Russian orthodox church, like other old ideological systems, was facing a profound internal crisis.

But I have deviated from my story of the pilgrimage which began on a train speeding through the cold and dark of the night on its way to the promised land of Ayodhya. It was early morning when our party stepped down from the train, at the station where a welcoming ceremony was taking place. We were greeted by local officials and public figures and, in cars bedecked with flowers and garlands, were driven to a pilgrims’ hotel.

At noon we went to a wonderful temple built in honour of Valmiki, the author of Ramayana.

The temple interior is like the book itself, with all its pages open at the same time–the walls of the temple are adorned with thousands of marble plaques each with part of the text from the Ramayana inscribed on it. In the gallery of the temple there is a library containing 18,000 books. These are different editions of Ramayana and treatises devoted to it.

We could see with our own eyes the rare mediaeval Ramayanas carefully preserved in the temple library. Written on palm leaves, their pages had been eaten by termites. The ancient calligrapher made an outline of a letter with dots, like a tattoo, and then drew them in black vegetable paint. Those books could survive for many long centuries, if kept out of reach of the termites.

The Maharaja, the chief priest of the temple, told us that he had decided to devote himself to Rama aftar he had a vision of Hanuman in his dream.

The service began. We sat on a platform near the altar where the priests performed the puja. Seated opposite the Maha­raja was the guardian of the temple, a very old man with shrewd eyes which, from time to time, lit up brightly behind his glasses. There were many worshippers in the temple. The Maharaja called on each foreigner in turn, and everyone of us addressed the worshippers with a short talk on the significance of Ramayana, the great Hindu classic, for the world today. What a stunning display of Hindu religious tolerance!

In Ayodhya everything reminded me of one other epic work–Tulsidas’s Ramacharitamanasa. I do not think I would be mistaken if I said that among the ordinary people of India this book is even more popular, that it is more accessible to everybody. The reason for this is that it is written in a Hindu dialect, av-adhi, which, unlike Sanskrit, is not a dead language.

The Indians regard Tulsidas as the man who laid the founda­tions for their new ethics. He was one of the prominent bhakti poets, and bhaktl ideas are still very much alive in India today.

During my pilgrimage I became convinced that Tulsidas’s epic poem was still very popular. The bhakti poetry proclaims the equality of men before God, and considers love as a means of understanding God. Even today in the 20th century, the Indians regard Ramacharitamanasa as a code of ethics and honour. It should also be observed that in this poem man’s destiny is determined by his love for Rama who has both a human and a divine hypostases–an obvious parallel with the Christian tradition.

Generally speaking, in Tulsidas’s poem one can clearly identify several themes and ideas which are close to Biblical ones, such as the opposition between the present and the future associated with the ideas of development, maturation and ful­filment of existence; and the idea that man’s life is a continual participation in a drama which he is fully aware of. In fact, it is this which sets the artistic timeframe of the poem in which the action takes place. What looks like the defeat of the forces of good in the present time inexorably leads to their consolidation and triumph over evil in the future. There is always the hope that the drama will be resolved and that in due course justice will prevail, leading to the attainment of ramaraja.

It should be noted that in Ramacharitamanasa, the idea that the world is not properly organised coincides with the Biblical one. In the poem the idea of sin in the world, which does not live in accordance with the will of Rama, is embodied in Ravana, the king of the demons rakshas and his sycophants. Let us recall that Ravana established his domination over the universe in order to increase the burden of people’s sins and cause the ultimate destruction of the Earth. Unable to carry this burden, the Earth cries out to the gods for help.

Therefore, Ramacharitamanasa looks at nature from an ethical point of view, a fact which is particularly relevant today, when the invasion of nature is taking place a massive scale andmust be constantly and strictly controlled. Tulsidas warns that if people persist in their immoral behaviour, there is no future for them. In contrast, Rama takes a totally different ethical stand, proclaiming the altruistic principle of active kindness–“there is no higher law than to do good unto others.” This stand gives strength to people in their struggle with evil and foreshadows concept of ramaraja is associated with Tulsidas’s dream of a future society of happiness, where equality joy and beauty reign supreme. As I have already said, it is this ideal of God’s power that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi relied on, which only goes to show how firmly the idea of Rama’s justice is lodged in the popular mind. This is particularly revealing in that it helped to emphasise the contrast between the political power of the British, which was unjust and nurtured by an aversion to the Indians, and the spiritual power of Rama, which was pre­dicated upon the desire to serve one’s neighbour. It is appropriate to recall at this point that Tulsidas’s epic poem was aimed against Muslim invaders. Therefore, the Indian poet of the Middle Ages suffered a drama born of a collision between two different cultures, although it took place in somewhat dif­ferent historical conditions.

Speaking in the Valmiki temple I told my audience that the Soviet Indologist Alexei Bamnnikov translated Tulsidas’s epic poem into Russian at the time when the Soviet people were engaged in the long drawn-out struggle against the Nazi invaders. The Russian translation of Ramacharitamanasa was, therefore, inspired by the struggle against the “black injustice.” Its author believed in the triumph of good over evil as firmly as Tulsidas did.

Since time immemorial India has considerably influenced the outlook of every Russian. This is something I became aware of as I recalled the poems of Nikolai Gumilyov during my pilgrimage. The fate of this great Russian poet of the early 20th century was tragic. Arrested on trumped-up charges, he was executed in 1921. For Gumilyov India represented a sacred miracle which envigorated the soul and filled the mind with wisdom. In his previous birth the poet perceived himself as anIndian (see, for example, his poem “Proto-memory”), because he loved India so much. For him the transformation of personality was of necessity associated with India and its wizards’ light of revelation. He could not find his peace of mind, because “the ornaments on Indian silks remained a mystery still.”

Gumilyov regarded India as a “miracle of miracles”, and its wisdom was for him a magical gift which made it possible to see things unseen and perceive things unperceived. I am saying this despite the fact that there are only a few traces of the Indian themes actually found in his creative work. Gumilyov had a much more profound and conscious perception of India. This explains why in his poems India is transformed not into imagery but into sensations echoing the pagan beliefs of his Slavic ancestors. Turning to the proto-memory of the Indo-European culture, Gumilyov restored the missing link bet­ween nature and man and reconstituted the lost poetical mean­ing of many metaphors. However, this “reversion to the source” does not imply that the Russian poet turned his on Christian culture, and fled from its ideas and imagery into a mythological and fairy-tale past of his ethnos. His interest in Oriental culture and in particular India was motivated by a totally different desire–he wanted to establish an equitable relationship between Western and Oriental cultures and partake of the riches from both. A kind of restitution in rights of the Oriental culture could be achieved by emphasising a spiritual affinity with it. It is this that explains the following lines by Gumilyov: “The one who sees the dreams of Christ and Buddha has taken the paths of fairy-tales.”

Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), another Russian poet whose creative work began in the 20th century, felt even stronger about the reconstruction of poetic language using ancient models. From the vocabulary of the Russian language, which is as wide as the limitless expanse of the ocean, he drew the words that crystallised the inner world of man in its primaeval manifestation. He laid bare the generic Indo-European roots and the fertile historical subsoil which feeds the human imagination and bears the seeds of archaic imagery. The Russian poet uncovered the wellsprings of metaphoric expressions, which had long been swept over by the sand of time. In one of his poems the guest makes his descent from “those harvested fields, where a broken reed of the past flowers again near the rivers of life-giving water” (“The Return”).

In 20th-century Russian poetry there is one more tradition originating from the social Utopias of the Russian peasantry and the many myths and legends representing India as earthly paradise and the Kingdom of John the Baptist–the re-incarnation of justice and Christian virtue. This tradition was maintained in the retreats of schismatic Russian orthodox monks and enlivened by the tales and lore of the past. The myth of the blessed country called Byelovodie, which is the Russian for “the land of white water”, is deeply rooted in Russian folklore. It originates from the popular belief in the spiritual kinship of Russia and India. Pilgrims, God’s fools, travelling schismatic monks and sages for ever added new ornaments to this tale of the blessed land of India.

The Russian poet Nikolai Kluyev (1884-1937) wrote a poem entitled “Belaya India”, or “White India”, which is his own name for Byelovodie. The poem is based on a popular idea of India, held by many Russians. In another poem he writes, that only those who believe in “the primaeval darkness” will live in it. India was like an icon hung in the best place of the Russian peasant home. Strange as it may seem, but it is the schismatic tradition of the Russian orthodox church that proved to have the greatest vitality. In our time it is the Russian poets Valentin Sidorov and Eduard Balashov, that stand out as the two supreme examples of this tradition.

It is even more paradoxical that Nikolai Roerich (1874-1947), an outstanding figure in Russian culture, relied on this tradition to build the philosophical foundations of his artistic and ethical doctrine–the philosophy of live ethics. I think this is explained by the fact that the old church had retained live religious feeling; the schismatic spirit had defended its independence and had not given in to the diktat of the state. The rebellious artists-and Nikolai Roerich was one of them–regarded this as a new artistic and philosophical theme.

Today in the 20th century, the famous thesis of Fyodor Dostoevsky–“Beauty will save the world”–is taken literally because the threat to the environment has become very real.

Reliance on Indian wisdom was prompted by the view that the current environmental crisis represented the inevitable result of the division between the Judaic-Christian tradition andancient paganism. As a result of this division man has been set apart from nature and singled out as a being which stands above nature.

I believe that for every thinking person living in the 20th century it is impossible to ignore the religious and philosophical ideas of Indians. Let me give you onemore example, which I think is even more revealing. This is an excerpt from a diary of the great Russian scientist Vladimir Vemadsky (1863-1945). In 1920 he wrote the following lines: “In the work by Vashro I feel very clearly (again, just as I felt it reading Gilyarovsky in Kiev) that Indian philosophical thinking is not taken into account. It seems to me, as regards the problems of the soul and deity, the religious and philosophical thoughts of the Hindus give us much more than our own ideas which are so closely associated with Christianity and Jewry.”

Vernadsky made one more interesting observation about the international significance of the Hindu religious and philoso­phical treatise “Rig-veda”. This is what he wrote: “I send you the stunning hymn of ‘Rig-veda’ in the metric translation by Deissen. It seems that the latter is rather faithful to the con­tent of the original. This is a work by an unknown poet (and a major thinker?), who lived at least 100 years before Christ andlong before Buddha, Socrates and all Greek philosophy and science. But how contemporary it is, and what profound thoughts it generates! I see it as a leap into eternity, because it raises great doubts as to any creator, and the root of existence is transposed into what is outside this world (Nichtsein), what is born and disappears, what cannot be seized or explained, that is the longing of the heart and the feeling of love”.

It is difficult to add anything to that. Let me make just two corrections relating to the authorship of “Rig-veda”, or “The Knowledge of Hymns”, and the time of its writing. The students of this ancient book believe that it was written by many generations of people who lived in India. It represents a collection of hymns dedicated to gods, and it dates to the late 2nd century and early 1st century B.C.

At the dawn of human history the Hindus managed to perceive (was it by intuition?) the genuine reality of existence and express it in artistic symbols which have lost none of their fascination for us today. This is something for all people to ponder now, as they are living on the threshold of 21st century and tend to overestimate their powers and possibilities, looking down on those who have lived long before us. But what is particularly surprising is that the people of ancient times were thinking about cosmology and not theology!

Vernadsky asserted that the people living at the end of the 20th century would turn to ancient Indian philosophy and that it would help them to defend the humanistic values of their own culture. And again his prediction has been vindicated.

Also, it should be observed that religious nihilism and nega­tivism, which bordered on religious thought and do not quite break away from it, something which Vernadsky referred to, were characteristic of ancient India. I think that the highly intellectual and aesthetic nihilism, displayed by protagonists in the novels of the very popular Soviet writer Andrei Bitov, originates from the Hindu religious and philosophical tradition. In particular, it originates from the nihilism of the great religious thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti.

In order to reveal the depths of human psychology many Russian authors, beginning with Fyodor Dostoevsky, put their heroes on the edge of an abyss and forced them to make a fully thought-out choice. The Hindus have no notion of any choice that can be consciously perceived by man, because in Hinduism the forms and conditons of all existence are determined by the good or bad actions in the previous birth. But it is very clear that Hinduism is concerned about the danger of a “spiritual vacuum” and lack of spirituality for both man and society. It is revealing that the main ideal of a Hindu is the rejection of all material wealth for the sake of higher aspirations and values of the human spirit.

Immoral actions of people in the contemporary world pose a threat to their own lives. This has now become a platitude. The evil committed against anybody will inexorably come to its source. This self-evident truth underlies such major works of Soviet fiction, published over the past two decades, as Victor Astafyev’s The Queen Fish, A Sad Detecfve; Yuri Trifonov’s The Old Man, The House on the Embankment; Chinghiz Aitmatov’s And the Day lasted Longer than a 100 Years and The Place of the Skull; Yuri Bondarev’s The Choice and Valentin Rasputin’s The Fire.

Yuri Bondarev has formulated a thesis which I believe con­tains the secularised idea of the karma: “A life associated with evil is weak and unreliable, because it is based on the principle of the boomerang (at any moment the evil can come , deal a mortal blow and retribution will be administered)”.

There is no question that it would be all too easy to trace everything to one source–India’s religious and philosophical thought–the dream of Soviet writers about a future time when man and nature will be reconciled and morality will be legitimised as the fundamental principle of all existence. Does that mean that writers are nothing more than able imitators? Not at all!

I think the real answer is, that when pondering the “eternal questions”, they arrive at answers that are similar to those contained in the ancient literary works of the Hindus.

...The Maharaja from the Valmiki temple in Ayodhya told me in all earnestness that the source of the Ganges was in Siberia. And he was convinced that it depended on us, Russians, to keep its waters forever clear, giving life and spiritual light to all people, because we have common spiritual sources and a common destiny.

The sage from Ayodhya was inaccurate in only one thing –­ today, all humanity has one common destiny.

Translated by Alexander Mikheyev