Page:Classical Poets Of Gujarat.pdf/86

 Digitized by 74 much of vicious literature. When it is sought to infer from this an actual vicious state of the nation, the defence has sometimes been put forward that the people of France do not relish being told stale stories of their own modes of living, but love to read what is novel-what is diffe- rent from what they daily see and do in life. This defence may or may not be true of France; but Gujarat the bulk of classical literature professes to be religious, and people look to it neither for a reflection of what they are, nor for an index of what they ought to be. They love the literature because it presents a strange fairy-land tale, and they rightly or wrongly adore it because it is religious. This mood of mind may seem strange, but it exists none the less as a national trait, and our people would call it an idiosyncrasy and a blasphemy to suppose that the life of Krishna or Siva presented in any degree an ideal for human conduct. The divinity of these deities is held to consist in their very departures from human standards of life, and it is the poet who paints these departures as so many divine dreams, and keeps off from the brain of credulously believing society the idea of imitating in practice the wanderings of dreams. It is because poetry has been associated in this way with religion that the songs of Vishnu are not looked upon as a moral code for humanity. Even the Maharájás in Gujarát have not, except in exceptional cases, had the courage to do the one thousand nasty things they are charged with Google Original from UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN