Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/101

 LO^TE Ite HINDU LITERATURE. 87

maraswamy and Tagore has; a special significance for. Hindu culture also. Hindu classicism and Indian medi- aevalism are feeding the omnivorous. Romanticism of Young India, This romanticism does not exhaust itself, however, in antiquarian and archaeological revivals,, and in brooding over the dead past, but is a vitalizing force and constructs from far and near new ideals of life and art to inspire the present. And these ideals forged in the laboratory of Young India's brain are keeping pace with the world-forces of the modern agt. Young India is. thus not an isolated or exceptional .phenomenon but an integral part, of the world-system — an eddy among the eddies, of a vast whirlpool.

The deeper meaning .of TAe Hero and the Nymph,, "The Idylls of Radha," and Chitra to Young India is that Hindu culture has. been brought in line with the present-day tendencies in literature and ' art. Hindu culture has. ever been a living, moving, growing and expanding culture.. Young India,, therefore, does not look back to the Indo-Moslem Renaissance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the Great Moghuls, or to the Vikram-adityan greatness of Hindu culture from the fourth to the twelfth century, or the still earlier epoch of Maurya glory (third century B.C.), as an ade- quately inspiring ideal. The heart of Young India is* burning with the aspirations and emotions of modern mankind, its brain is teeming with suggestions and ideas for supplying the world's pressing needs.

Young India does not think of culture in terms of geographical or .political boundaries, but, solely as a body of universal truths and achievements for the fur- therance of humanity's progress. Young India believes