Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/80

66 VI. THE DIGNITY OF SEX, the problem has been born the science. Sex is a growing science. And with the science have come ex- periments. There are the Mendelists, the Eugenists, the plant-breeders, the " sterilizers " and so forth. The magic of sex is retiring into the limbo of oblivion never to make its appearance again. Sex is no more to be an "Everlasting Nay," the despair of philosophers, poets and statesmen.

It is at this stage of world's evolution that Kali- dasa has been reborn in Aurobinda Ghosh's" Hero and the Nymph, Vidyapati in Coomaraswamy's Banglya PadabaR, and an episode of the Mahabhcbrata in Tagore's Chitra. This is, as it were, the rebirth of Aristotle in Bacon, the ^^-presentation of Plutarch in Shakespeare — the awakening of Greece after a slumber of. one millen- nium. Hindu " humanisiH " revived, is a vital force not only of the Renaissance in Young India, but has also a message for the neo-romanticists and neo-positivists of the whole world.

Humanism in India as in Classical Hellas and in the modern West has ever been an expression of all- round secularism or positivism ; and of this humanism sex-interest has been a great part. The sex-element is as important a factor in Hindu Culture as the folk- element ; and both have yet to be given their dues by students of Indology.

Sex has been a principal motif of Hindu literature and art. Sex has ever occupied a powerful position in- the formation of religious precepts and practices. And the sex-idea has been prominent also in domestic life and