Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/12

ii Preface of Hindu culture with the exclusive hall-mark of one or other of the metaphysico-religious systems, e.g., Vedic, Upanishadic, Shaiva, Buddhist, Tantric, Vaishnava, Jaina, Shakta, etc. India is generally presented to the world in terms of creeds, dogmas and rituals. The absurdity would be evident if one were to treat the whole course of Western civilization as nothing but Graeco^Roman paganism, Oriental Chris- tianity, Lutheranism, Pilgrim Fathers, Oxford Movement, Unitarianism Christian Science, and so forth, in succession. Students of world- culture who are obsessed by the influence of religious ideas on human achievements would read in the Aeneid only a purana of Latin my- thology, in the Divine Comedy only an encyclopaedia of mediaeval Christianity, and in the Paradise Lost only a bible of the Puritans ; or, where in modem literature and art, they find treatment of sub- jects firom Hellenic mythology, they would be inclined to interpret it as " Back to paganism " ! And they would, surely evaluate the writings of Descartes, Hume, Kant, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Emerson and Bergson, according to the conventional theological jargon, " christian," " non-christian," " anti-christian " !

This is exactly what has been done with regard to Hindu culture- history. The. archaeologist, Vincent Smith, whose researches have unearthed a host of forgotten Frederick the Greats, Napoleons, Machi- aveUis, statesmen, generals, and other men of action from .the Indian past, makes the following remark in concluding his Early History of India: "The most important branch of Indian history is the history of her thought." But is not the history of every other country also in the same sense the history of thought ? An unbiassed application of the " icomparative method" would yield the result (i) that Indian history is as great a history of enterprises, adventures, exploits and undertakings, of a practical worldly character as the history of other peoples, and (2) that the history of other peoples is as great a record of speculation, thought, metaphysics, mysticism Qtc, as that of the Hindus.

The standard History of Bengali Language and Literature by Dines Chandra Sen is likewise vitiated by the same fallacy, which, originating in the nineteenth century, continues even now to be the first postulate and stock-in-trade of every indologist. In the story of a thousand years' literary development Sen has managed to watch only the struggle for supremacy among the various orders of gods and socio- religious systems. The great national epic of the Romans would have