Page:Hindu Art - its Humanism and Modernism.djvu/28

 the terror of the cruel, the protector of the disinherited, the defender of the oppressed, the husband of the widow, the refuge of the orphan." There is no gap in fundamental humanity between the men and women of to-day and the race that could write such an epitaph, in spite of the fact that many of its conventions and usages seem entirely meaningless.

The student of foreign literature has specially to qualify himself in order that he may understand the unfamiliar idioms of its language and the peculiar turns of expression. No other qualification is demanded in modern men and women for an appreciation of the old and distant carvings, statuettes and drawings. The chief desideratum is really an honest patience with the ra-