Pride of Hinduism - Views of foreigners

[talwan]

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Al-Jahiz 9th century Muslim historian writes: "The Hindus excel in astrology, mathematics, medicine and in various other sciences. They have developed to a perfection arts like sculpture, painting, and architecture. They have collections of poetry, philosophy, literature and science of morals. From India we received the book called Kalilah wa Dimnah. These people have judgment and are brave. They posses the virtues of cleanliness and purity. Contemplation has originated with them."
(source: The Vision of India - By Sisirkumar Mitra p. 226)

 

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Abdullah Wassaf, writing in the 14th century A.D. says of India in his history book, Tazjiyatul Amsar: " India, according to the concurrent opinion of all writers, is the most agreeable abode on earth and the most pleasant quarter of the world. Its dust is purer than air and its air is purer than purity itself: Its delightful plains resemble the garden of paradise.
248. Alexander Dow author of History of Hindustan and had published an essay on Hinduism, entitled A Dissertation Concerning the Customs, Manners, Language, Religion, and Philosophy of the Hindus (1768). The first European scholar to produce a real dissertation on Sanskrit learning, he pointed out the vast quantities of Sanskrit literature in existence, plus the fact that the history of the Hindus was older than that of any other people.
(source: India and World Civilization - By D. P. Singhal Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993. Pg 242).

 

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Theordore Goldstucker (1821-1872) born in Germany, professor of Sanskrit at London’s University College wrote the Dictionary of Indian Biography. He finds in the Upanishads: "the germs of all the philosophies." (source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 277).

 

[talwan]

James Ramsey MacDonald (1866-1937) first Labor Party prime minister of Great Britain could grasp the truth when he said in his Introduction to the "The Fundamental Unity of India: "The Hindu from his traditions and religion regards India not only as a political unit naturally the subject of one sovereignty, but as the outward embodiment, as the temple - nay even as the Goddess Mother of his spiritual culture. "India and Hinduism are organically related as body and soul."
(source: The Soul of India - By Satyavrata R Patel p.208).

 

[talwan]

Michael Pym (1889 - ) author of The Power of India writes: "Hindu philosophy has had more effect upon the world than is perhaps generally realized, though it has often come through at second and third hand. Hinduism as a practical working institution is intended for and has grown out of Indian condition."
"India challenged, one realized, the whole of the West. Not Western inventions, Western science, Western conveniences, which India was perfectly ready to adopt insofar as they suited India's convenience. ...Not that. The challenge was a much deeper thing. A challenge of values, of ethics, of attitude to life.
India, like the rest of the East, had bowed to the illusion of Western superiority, taken it all quite literally - Christianity as the religion of peace and love, of the brotherhood of man. Western education and Western progress as the panacea for the evils of existence.

 

[talwan]

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932 - ) Nobel Laureate, was born in Trinidad into a family of Indian origin is known for his penetrating analyses of alienation and exile. Writing with increasing irony and pessimism, he has often bleakly detailed the dual problems of the Third World: the oppressions of colonialism and the chaos of post-colonialism. His grandfather had emigrated there from India as an indentured servant. He is the author of several books including Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, India: A Wounded Civilization, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey,India: A Million Mutinies Now. He has observed: "The key Hindu concept of dharma - the right way, the sanctioned way, which all men must follow, according to their natures - is an elastic concept. At its noblest it combines self-fulfillment and truth to the self with the ideas of action as duty, action as its own spiritual reward, man as a holy vessel."
(source: The Treasury of Hinduism - By Harischandra Lal Singh p. 199).

 

[talwan]

Glen Peter Kezwer a physicist from Canada. He lives in Himachal Pradesh and is author of the book Meditation, Oneness and Physics writes:" Spirituality is an intrinsic part of Indian culture and life. For the worshipper, this aspect of Indian culture serves as a constant reminder that behind the material forms which constitute our daily world, there is an unchanging consciousness which permeates everything.
From times immemorial India's message has been promulgated by her saints, sages, gurus and rishis and transmitted by them to those who were desirous of knowing the truth. The essence of this message is simple: Behind the eyes of every living being on earth there shines a light. This light is one and the same in all beings. This light is immortal, blissful, eternal and indestructible. This is the light of consciousness which makes each and every one of us alive and alert and gives us the power to breathe.

 

[talwan]

Robert R. C. Zaehner (1913-1974) British historian of religion who investigated the evolution of ethical systems and forms of mysticism, particularly in Eastern religions. The son of Swiss parents who had immigrated to England, Zaehner studied Oriental languages at the University of Oxford. Author of several books including Hindu Scriptures, and Hinduism. Zaehner said “Hindus do not think of religious truths in dogmatic terms.” and Hindus say, “dogmas can’t be eternal, only the transitory distorting images of truth that transcends not only them but all verbal definitions.”
And then Zaehner goes on to say, “for the passion for dogmatic certainty that has racked the religions of Semitic origins, from Judaism itself through Christianity and Islam to Marxism they feel nothing but shocked incomprehension.”
(source: How certain should we be, the problem of religious pluralism – By Mark Tully).

 

[talwan]

Vecente Avelino ( ? ) who was the Consul General for Brazil in India in 1930 belonged to the inner circle called Tattva Shri Chaitanya. He was a devout Vaishanava and an ardent admirer of Shri Ramakrishna. In an address at Panihati, near Calcutta, on the occasion of a religious festival organized by the Shri Gauranga Grantha Mandir to commemorate Shri Chaitanya's visit to that place, he said:"India is the only country which has known God and if anyone wants to know God he must know India."
(source: The Vision of India - By Sisirkumar Mitra p.207-208).

 

[talwan]

Claude Arpi ( ? ) French dentist-turned- Tibetologist, author of Fate of Tibet: When Big Insects Eat Small Insects has written:

"Though I am still a French man, I adopted this country as my own long ago However, today, I am sad. When I left France for India, I came with a dream: I was going to the land of the Vedas, of the Buddha, a continent with an eternal religion. I thought everyone in this country was turned "inwards", seeking a higher light; I believed India would soon be able to guide the world towards a more meaningful tomorrow. Why I am sad now? I can't help feeling a terrible divide between this dream and today's reality (at least the one depicted in the English media). I still believe in "India of the ages", but I cannot grasp why Indians themselves still refuse to acknowledge the greatness of their culture.
Is it not disheartening that historians base their judgment on press reports and not on their own scholarship? Then why do they spend three days discussing text-books when there are so many more important subjects related to history to be discussed?
What about the neglected discoveries of Poompuhar or the new sites in the Gulf of Cambay?

 

[talwan]

Jean Michel Varenne ( ? ) the distinguished French Orientalist wrote in 1976: “The only remaining testimony to the prestigious civilization of ancient Egypt lies buried in archaeological remains; which meant that the inhabitants of the Nile valley, converted to Islam thirteen centuries ago, had to wait for Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphics before they could know anything of the beliefs of their distant ancestors. Yet during all this time Hindu families continued, and still continue today, to venerate the selfsame Vishnu who is celebrated in the archaic hymns of the Rig Veda…”
“It would be impossible to overemphasize this exceptional durability of a civilization that is extremely difficult to conceive of as mortal. And certainly the Hindus themselves would be the last to subscribe to the notion that all cultures have a limited life-span. That is the product of Western minds trained at an early age to write essays on “The Causes of the fall of the Roman Empire,” of a Christian or a Moslem faith proud of the fact that its first believers once repudiated pagan polytheism, and therefore prone to assume that all civilizations are perishable the same way as human beings themselves. To the traditional minded Hindu, on the other hand, such revolutions are inconceivable, for him, the religion he professes has no beginning and no end; it had no founder, and it lies in no one’s power to attack or breach it. It is the eternal norm (in Sanskrit, sanatana dharma), the universal law, the supreme religion. Being absolute, it cannot be modified in any way and remains identical to itself down through the ages.”
Traditional India knows that nothing in the universe is chance, that everything is necessity. In the infinite multiplicity of the real it reads a reference to unity, and perceives the rule of a sovereign order even where complexity seems in danger of lapsing chaos and incoherence. The All, in itself and in each of its parts, is governed by an immutable, unbreakable law that supports the world while at the same time transcending it absolutely."
(source: Yoga And the Hindu Tradition - By Jean Varenne p. 1-15).

 

[talwan]

Count Louis Hamon aka Cheiro (1866-1936) author of several book, Language of the Hand and World Predictions published in 1926. Born in Ireland as William John Warner, Cheiro also went by the name Count Louis Hamon. He had a wide following of famous European and American clients like Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, Mata Hari, Oscar Wilde, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Edison, the Prince of Wales, General Kitchener, William Gladstone, Bernard Shaw and Joseph Chamberlain.
He spoke of the Hindu race and the remarkable sciences for foretelling future, (The Bhavishya Purana) which the Hindus, have, as prophetic sciences:
“To consider the origin of this science, we must take our thoughts back to the earliest days of the world’s history, and further more to the consideration of a people the oldest of all, yet one that has survived, and who are today as characteristic and as full of individuality as they were when thousands of years ago the first records of history were written.
I allude to those children of the East, the Hindus, a people whose philosophy and wisdom are every day being more and more revived.”

 

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Richard Lannoy (1928 - ) author of The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society has written: “The Kailash temple at Ellora, a complete sunken Brahmanical temple carved out in the late seventh and eighth centuries A. D is over 100 feet high, the largest structure in India to survive from ancient times, larger than the Parthenon. This representation of Shiva’s mountain home, Mount Kailash in the Himalaya, took more than a century to carve, and three million cubic feet of stone were removed before it was completed. An inscription records the exclamation of the last architect on looking at his work: “Wonderful! O How could I ever have done it?”.
In Europe’s middle ages, the great cathedrals, including the one of Chartres, rose from the ground upwards to the sky, supported not so much by stone as by the powerful religious symbolism that drove the Christian church. In India, the craftsmen did not build, but removed the earth and stone to discover space in the service of a different religious symbolism, not one identified with any religious monolith, but instead, one to which different religious groups owed allegiance. Here Lannoy is more precise:
“A hollowed-out space in living rock is a totally different environment from a building constructed of quarried stone. The human organism responds in each case with a different kind of empathy. Buildings are fashioned in sequence by a series of uniformly repeatable elements, segment by segment, from a foundation upwards to the conjuction of walls and roof; the occupant empathizes with a visible tension between gravity and soaring tensile strength. Entering a great building is to experience an almost imperceptible tensing in the skeletal muscles in response to constructional tension. Caves, on the other hand, are scooped out by a downward plunge of the chisel from ceiling to floor in the direction of gravity; the occupant empathizes with an invisible but sensed resistance, an unrelenting presence in the rock enveloping him; sculpted images and glowing pigments on the skin of the rock well forth from the deeps. To enter an Indian cave sanctuary is to experience a relaxation of physical tension in response to the implacable weight and density of solid rock.”
(source: Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1492 to the Present Day - By Claude Alvares p.72-73).

 

[talwan]

Michel Danino (1956 - ) Born in 1956 at Honfleur (France) into a Jewish family recently emigrated from Morocco, from the age of fifteen Michel Danino was drawn to India, some of her great yogis, and soon to Sri Aurobindo and Mother and their view of evolution which gives a new meaning to our existence on this earth. He has been settled in Tamil Nadu for 25 years and has given many lectures in India and is author of The Invasion That Never Was, The Indian Mind Then and Now, L’Inde et L’invasion de nulle part and Kali Yuga or The Age of Confusion. He is also the convener of the International Forum for India's Heritage. He talks about Indian culture:
"The so-called “New Age” trend of the 1960s owed as much to India as to America; a number of Western universities offer excellent courses on various aspects of Indian civilization, and if you want to attend some major symposium on Indian culture or India’s ancient history, you may have to go to the U.S.A; some physicists are not shy of showing parallels between quantum mechanics and yogic science; ecologists call for a recognition of our deeper connection with Nature such as we find in the Indian view of the world; a few psychologists want to learn from Indian insights into human nature; hatha yoga has become quite popular."

 

[talwan]

Jack Sarfatti ( ? ) Physicist of the Physics/Consciousness Research Groupwrites: "I suspect that general relativity and quantum theory are two complimentary aspects of a deeper theory that will involve a kind of cosmic consciousness. The cosmic consciousness or the Mahat of India's Samkhya Philosophy is the basis of entire creation".
(source: Science and Vedanta - By H M Ganesh Rao).

 

[talwan]

Sir John Woodroffe aka Arthur Avalon (1865 -1936) the well known scholar, Advocate-General of Bengal and sometime Legal Member of the Government of India. He served with competence for eighteen years and in 1915 officiated as Chief Justice. Alongside his judicial duties he studied Sanskrit and Hindu philosophy and was especially interested in the esoteric Hindu Tantric Shakti system. He translated some twenty original Sanskrit texts, and under his pseudonym Arthur Avalon he published and lectured prolifically and authoritatively on Indian philosophy and a wide range of Yoga and Tantra topics. His work helped to unleash in the West a deep and wide interest in Hindu philosophy and Yogic practices.
He was instrumental in removing many of the cobwebs of ignorance that had come to cluster round the Sakta philosophy and practice. His most popular and influential book, a major contribution to the appreciation of Indian philosophy and spirituality, is The Serpent Power – The secrets of tantric and shaktic yoga, Sakti and Sakta, Introduction to Tantra Sastra and The World as Power

 

[talwan]

Prof Klaus Klostermaier (1933 - ) Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He is author of several books including Hinduism: A Short Introduction. He has written:
"Hinduism has proven much more open than any other religion to new ideas, scientific thought, and social experimentation. Many concepts like reincarnation, meditation, yoga and others have found worldwide acceptance. It would not be surprising to find Hinduism the dominant religion of the twenty-first century. It would be a religion that doctrinally is less clear-cut than mainstream Christianity, politically less determined than Islam, ethically less heroic than Buddhism, but it would offer something to everybody.
It will appear idealistic to those who look for idealism, pragmatic to the pragmatists, spiritual to the seekers, sensual to the here-and-now generation. Hinduism, by virtue of its lack of an ideology and its reliance on intuition, will appear to be more plausible than those religions whose doctrinal positions petrified a thousand years ago..."
"Hinduism will spread not so much through the gurus and swamis, who attract a certain number of people looking for a new commitment and a quasi-monastic life-style, but it will spread mainly through the work of intellectuals and writers, who have found certain Hindu ideas convincing and who identify them with their personal beliefs. A fair number of leading physicists and biologists have found parallels between modern science and Hindu ideas. An increasing number of creative scientists will come from a Hindu background, will consciously, and unconsciously blend their scientific and their religious ideas. All of us may be already much more Hindu than we think."
(source: A Survey of Hinduism - by Klaus Klostermaier p 475-476).

 

[talwan]

Madeleine Biardeau ( ? ) was professor of Indian Religion at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, author of several books, including Studies in Hinduism: Vedism and Hinduism and India. She wrote about the interchange that is continually occurs in Indian philosophy and which can even be experienced by the more prosaic foreigner if he is willing to attune himself to the Indian atmosphere. She writes that, as well as being 'a personal loving God in the form of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, divinity is at the same time referred to in the Bhagavad Purana divinity and in many other texts as supremely impassive - none other than the cosmos itself.
"The God of Indian devotion - bhakti who responds to the same eternal needs of the human heart as exists anywhere else, never detaches himself wholly from the immanence of the world. He is personal and endowed with feelings only in the eyes of popular piety; to thought he reveals himself both far beyond and within at the same time; he reveals it as much as he hides it; and each man is in himself in some sort a manifestation of God."
(source: The Music of India - By Peggy Holroyde p. 36).

 

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Peggy Holroyde British author of several books on India including Indian Music: a vast ocean of promise and East comes West: a background to some Asian Faiths, writes:"The sparkling energy of India lies in Hinduism. Without the framework of Hindu belief India would fall apart. Without Hinduism India is not herself.
"Because Indian society has, like the Chinese, been a unitary one where science and religion have never been in conflict, there has been no basic split as has happened with our own Christian background. Our own antagonism between the two disciplines of theology and science has created chaos in our thinking and a curious dichotomy during the past two centuries. In India I found a thankful release from our restricted vision of the creation of God."
"Hinduism has remained in constant, replenished usage throughout this tremendous stretch of time, impervious to outside influence, as onward flowing as the imperturbable Ganga itself. Not even Moghul invasion and Muslim supremacy for 700 years, nor the arrival of the British, Dutch, French and Portuguese with their own civilization and standards, penetrated into the imperious core of this steadfast faith. Hindu thought took and absorbed according to its own will, folding itself inwards at the sense of approaching danger like some gigantic sea-anemone drawing up all its tentacles, only to stretch outwards and flourish when the danger was past. One continues to hope that this will remain so, that modern Indians will realize that this is their enviable strength despite all their understandable yearnings for the material advantages of technology which they have seen give power and monopoly of advantage to the Western world. But their quality of synthesis, of intelligent absorption, may still save them from the sterility of urban life and the monotonous obsession with quantity and things, rather than with quality and life-perspective."
(source: The Music of India - By Peggy Holroyde p. 44-52).

 

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Fritjof Capra (1939 - ) Austrian-born famous theoretical high-energy physicist and ecologist and the author of The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, He is co-director of the Center for Eco-Literacy in Berkeley. Capra who studied with Werner Heisenberg says:"Hinduism cannot be called a philosophy, nor is it a well defined religion. It is, rather, a large and complex socio-religious organism consisting of innumerable sects, cults, and philosophical systems and involving various rituals, ceremonies and spiritual disciplines, as well as the worship of countless gods, and goddesses. The many facets of this complex, and yet persistent and powerful spiritual tradition mirror the geographical, racial, linguistic and cultural complexities of India’s vast subcontinent. The manifestations of Hinduism range from highly intellectual depth to the naïve ritual practices of the masses. If the majority of the Hindus are simple villagers who keep the popular religion alive in their daily worship, Hinduism has, on the other hand, brought forth a large number of outstanding spiritual teachers to transmit its profound insights. "

 

[nannilam_balasubramanian]

These days in Metropolitan Cities, we see Satsangs being formed to carry
out religious programmes besides enabling conduct of Devotional or Spiritual Programmes.
In fact, it is rather a Congregation of all religious minded people assembling together
along with their Guru either to chalk out a programme or to participate in religious
discourses, events, etc. This enables people to have an opportunity to keep them
engaged in bakthi or devotional oriented thoughts and deeds. Besides, it helps them
to grow as one unique Forum for conducting various programmes without any difficulty
from the point of view of infrastructural facilities or economically. All the Forum members
do take active part and contribute their mite in the growth of the Forum with least
efforts as one family.

Balasubramanian
Ambattur

 

[talwan]

Paul Brunton (1898 -1981) was a British philosopher, mystic, traveler and author of A Hermit in the Himalayas, A Message from Arunachala and The Orient: Legacy to the West. A Search in Secret India is one of the great classics of spiritual travel writing. With a keen eye for detail, Paul Brunton describes taking a circular journey round India: living amongst yogis, mystics and gurus, seeking the one who would give him the peace and tranquility that come with self-knowledge. His vividly told search ends at Arunachala, with Sri Ramana Maharshi. He has observed: "We are witnessing in the West the appearance of an at present thin but slowly deepening current of interest in those very thoughts and ideas which the young men of India are today doing their best to reject as inadequate to their needs and which constitute the faith and religious traditions of their forefathers."
"For Indian culture is fruitful in the domain of psychology, philosophy, and religion, so fruitful that there are few doctrines which appeared out of original Western sources that have not already been anticipated and developed...in India. "
The Bhagavad Gita contains the mental quintessence and successful synthesis of the various systems of religion and philosophy, it offers a unique epitome of the high culture of prehistoric India. The following sentences from the Bhagavad Gita unite in making the same declaration of an unseen Reality and Unity which dwells behind nature.
“My self is the bearer of all existence.”
“All this world is pervaded by Me in My unmanifested form.”
This doctrine is the keystone in the entire arch of the earliest Indian philosophy.

 

[talwan]

William Cooke Taylor (1800-1849) author of several books including A popular history of British India, commercial intercourse with China, and the insular possessions of England in the eastern seas. He spoke glowingly of Sanskrit literature:"It was an astounding discovery that Hindustan possessed, in spite of the changes of realms and chances of time, a language of unrivalled richness and variety; a language, the parent of all those dialects that Europe has fondly called classical - the source alike of Greek flexibility and Roman strength. A philosophy, compared with which, in point of age, the lessons of Pythagoras are but of yesterday, and in point of daring speculation Plato's boldest efforts are tame and commonplace. A poetry more purely intellectual than any of those which we had before any conception; and systems of science whose antiquity baffled all power of astronomical calculation. This literature, with all its colossal proportions, which can scarcely be described without the semblance of bombast and exaggeration claimed of course a place for itself - it stood alone, and it was able to stand alone."
"To acquire the mastery of this language is almost the labor of life; its literature seems exhaustless. The utmost stretch of imagination can scarcely comprehend its boundless mythology. Its philosophy has touched upon every metaphysical difficulty; its legislation is as varied as the castes for which it was designed."
(source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. II (1834) - W. C. Taylor's paper on Sanskrit Literature).

 

[talwan]

Gertrude Emerson Sen ( - 1982) historian and journalist and Asia specialist. Author of several books including The Story of Early Indian Civilization. She married a Bengali - Basiswar Sen and in her Voiceless India, she learned to love the deep-rooted Indian view of life, Indian ways of thought and Indian ideals.

She considered Hinduism a priceless heritage of India. The vast archaic literature been handed down, and which faithfully preserves the ideas and ideals of those far-off times. It establishes the wonderful continuity and depth of Indian civilization.
"As the Indian sages pondered on the problem of good and evil, they were confronted with the apparent injustices and cruelties of the world around them, and this state of affairs was finally reconciled with their idea of Brahman by the conception of a universal ethical law applying to all life. This law as proclaimed as the law of karma. In the words of the Upanishads, "As is a man's desire so is his will, and as is his will so is his deed, and whatever deed he does that he will reap."
"India held a strange and irresistible attraction for the whole of Asia in the first millennium. People in the most primitive stage of development as well as the Chinese with a civilization as ancient and illustrious as India's own, acknowledged India as first in the supreme realm of spiritual perception. Yet the civilization of India, transplanted abroad, did not have a deadening effect of suppressing or stifling native genius, as the imposition of a foreign culture often does. On the contrary, it called out the best that others had to give. As a result of India's fertilizing influence, new and distinctive types of culture everywhere arose, and each new colony was able to create and contribute fresh treasure, to be added to the great Asiatic heritage. How Indian religions and Indian culture blossomed anew in foreign environments and endured for many centuries is a fascinating and little appreciated chapter of Indian history."

 

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J. Seymour Keay ( ? ) British M. P. Banker in India and Indian Agent writing in 1883:" It cannot be too well understood that our position in India has never been in any degree that of civilians bringing civilization to savage races. When we landed in India we found there a hoary civilization, which, during the progress of thousands of years, had fitted itself into the character and adjusted itself to the wants of highly intellectual races. The civilization was not perfunctory, but universal and all pervading - furnishing the country not only with political systems, but with social and domestic institutions of the most ramified description. The beneficent nature of these institutions as a whole may be judged from their effects on the character of the Hindu race. Perhaps there are no other people in the world who show so much in their character the advantageous effect of their own civilization. They are shrewd in business, acute in reasoning, thrifty, religious, sober, charitable, obedient to parents, reverential to old age, amiable, law-abiding, compassionate towards the helpless and patient under suffering."
(source: Hindu Swaraj or Indian Home Rule - By M. K. Gandhi p. 106).