Pride of Hinduism - Views of foreigners

[talwan]

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Guy Sorman (1944 - ) French intellectual, writer, economist and a professor of political science at Paris University, visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France. He has observed India with a keen eye, a great deal of intelligence and genuine affection. He has written:"Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity. The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time, but the infinitely vast time cycles of India suggested that the world was much older than anything the Bible spoke of. It seem as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the chronological mutations of Darwinian evolution and astrophysics."
He has commented on the wise division of life in India: "Here is a philosophy far removed from the grotesque refusal to grow old in the West, where wisdom has been replaced by cosmetic surgery and psychiatric help." Guy Sorman (1944 - ) French intellectual, writer, economist and a professor of political science at Paris University, visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France. He has observed India with a keen eye, a great deal of intelligence and genuine affection. He has written:"Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity. The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time, but the infinitely vast time cycles of India suggested that the world was much older than anything the Bible spoke of. It seem as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the chronological mutations of Darwinian evolution and astrophysics."
He has commented on the wise division of life in India: "Here is a philosophy far removed from the grotesque refusal to grow old in the West, where wisdom has been replaced by cosmetic surgery and psychiatric help."

 

[talwan]

Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland (1842-1936) American born, former President of the India Information Bureau of America and Editor of Young India (New York). Author of India, America and World Brotherhood, and Causes of Famine in India. He has written glowingly about India's culture: "India is a highly civilized nation - a nation which developed a rich culture much earlier than any nation of Europe, and has never lost it."
India was the first and only nation that proved too powerful for Alexander the Great. It was India that stopped his advance and compelled him to turn back in his career of world conquest. India was the richest nation in the world until conquered and robbed of her wealth by Great Britain.

India gave to the world two out of six of its greatest Historic religions. Of the six greatest Epic Poems of the world India produced two. India gave to mankind - Kalidasa. India contributed enormously to the origin and advancement of Civilization by giving to the world its immensely important decimal system, or so-called "Arabic Notation" which is the foundation of modern mathematics and much modern science.
India early created the beginning of nearly all of the sciences, some of which she carried forward to remarkable degrees of development, thus leading the world. India has produced great literature, great arts, great philosophical systems, great religions, and great men in every department of life - rulers, statesmen, financiers, scholars, poets, generals, colonizers, ship-builders, skilled artisans and craftsmen of every kind, agriculturists, industrial organizers and leaders in far-reaching trade and commerce by land and sea.
For 2,500 years India was pre-eminently the intellectual and spiritual teacher of Asia, which means of half the human race.
"When the British first appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of the world; indeed, it was her great riches that attracted the British to her shores. For 2,500 years before the British came on the scene and robbed her of her freedom, India was self-ruling and one of the most influential and illustrious nations of the world."

 

[talwan]

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) Marquis of Kedleston, a British statesman, was a Conservative Party politician. He was viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, and later became chancellor of Oxford University. Curzon re-entered politics during World War I (1914-1918). He became a member of Lloyd George's war cabinet in 1916.In an address delivered at the great Delhi Durbar in 1901:
"Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India] while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle."
" India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the universe."
It is such a land that England has conquered and is holding as a dependency. It is such a people that she is ruling without giving them any voice whatever in the shaping of their own destiny.
(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Jabez T. Sunderland p. 7 and

 

[talwan]

Yaqubi the 9th century Muslim historian has written: "The Hindus are superior to all other nations in intelligence and thoughtfulness. They are more exact in astronomy and astrology than any other people.

The Siddhanta is a good proof of their intellectual powers; by this book the Greeks and Persians have also profited. In medicine their opinion ranks first."
(source: The Vision of India - By Sisirkumar Mitra p. 226).

 

[Koodali]

Yes it is a fact that India has its own charm as far as spiritual practices are concerned.When Britishers were ruling there was a judge in Calcutta High Court and his name was Sir John Woodroff.When a Yogi was arrested and produced before him as a fake man something in him said to test the powers of the yogi to find out whether he was real or bogus as he was much interested to find what the powers of yogi are.So he told the Yogi that he had not received any letter from his family
who were in London for a week as he did not get any communication from them.Yogi wanted to give one day's time to find out the reasons and the same was granted.
Next day when the Yogi was presented before him he told that his wife and children had a miraculous escape from a fire from the kitchen and they had been saved by him in the nick of time.Not convinced the Judge adjourned his verdict for two days.In the meantime next day he got a communication from his wife that there was a fire in the apartment and a sadhu in saffron robe suddenly appeared as they could not contact the police in time for help and saved them from the imminent
disaster to their lives and described the features of the sadhu.The same resembled that of the yogi who was facing charges before him.Immediately he asked for the release of the Yogi as he was now convinced of the powers of the yogi.Not only that he resigned his job and started searching for a Guru and found somebody and got initiated in the yoga marga.He also tonsured his head and changed his dress to
something like panchavastram which normally people in North India esp. use.He made Gayatri as his Ishta Devata and was doing pooja etc to a Gayatri Chakra.He also wrote fine books on the Serpent Fire-Kundalini which lies dormant in all beings at the base of the spine and that is a wonderful book.He also wrote many books on yoga effects and for that he studied Sanskrit thoroughly under a tutor and made much contribution to the hindu way of life.
So it is amazing that foreigners took much interest in Yoga and the scriptures of our cult and in learning Sanskrit which unfortunately the modern generation are not interested to learn becos of the interest they evince in matters other than spiritual
There are several Yogis in India who made great contributions and we will discuss the same if more enthusiasm is shown by the members.

Cheers.

 

[Koodali]

Great thoughts nicely presented.Good work.


Cheers.

 

[Koodali]

Excellent presentation.Fabulous work.


Cheers.

 

[talwan]

Harvey Cox (1929 - ) of the Harvard Divinity School remarks,

”I agree that the quest for Truth is the quest for God. This is the core teaching of all religions. The Scientist’s motivation is to seek the very kind of truth that Krishna speaks about in the Bhagavad Gita. I also agree that the word Religion is an invention of modern western thought.”
(source: The Lost City of Dvaraka - S. R. Rao p. 2).

 

[talwan]

L. Adams Beck (? - 1931) author of The splendour of Asia : the story and teaching of the Buddha and The Story of Oriental Philosophy writes:India has had a spiritual freedom never known until lately to the West. Christianity when it came offering its spiritual philosophy of life imposed an iron dogma upon the European peoples. Those who could not accept this dogma, whatever it happened to be at the moment, paid so heavy a penalty that the legend of the Car of Juggernaut (Jagarnath) is far truer of Europe than Asia.
Whereas in India the soul was free from the beginning to choose what it would, ranging from the dry bread of atheism to the banquets offered by many-colored passionate gods and goddesses, each shadowing forth some different aspect of the One whom in the inmost chambers of her heart India has always adored. Therefore the spiritual outlook was universal. Each took un rebuked what he needed. The children were at home in the house of their father, while Europe crouched under the lash of a capricious Deity whose ways were beyond all understanding.

 

[talwan]

Father Heras (1885-1955) was a Spanish Jesuit priest who worked in India and was a celebrated Professor of History in Bombay. He wrote in Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture: "India has not changed much in the course of ages. Invasions have taken place, wars have been waged in her vast plains, new nations and races have conquered the land and ruled over it, foreign civilizations have brought new notions and new ideals; but everybody and everything has been remodeled and reshaped and recast by the influence of the Indian nation and its ancient civilization. The ancient civilization of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria have been blotted out from the map of the world. But that of India, the first lights of which have been discovered in modern times along the banks of the Indus, is still alive...."
(source: East and West - By S. Radhakrishnan p. 19).

 

[Koodali]

Very good posting.Great.



Cheers.

 

[talwan]

Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1858) German philologist and archaeologist, was born at Marburg, the son of a bookbinder. In 1802 he was appointed professor at Marburg, and two years later professor of philology and ancient history at Heidelberg. Creuzer’s first and most famous work was his Symbolik und Mythologie der allen VOlker. He says: "If there is a country on earth which can justly claim the honor of having been the cradle of the human race or at least the scene of primitive claim the honor of having been the cradle of the human race or at least the scene of primitive civilization, the successive developments of which carried into all parts of the ancient world and even beyond, the blessings of knowledge which is the second life of man, that country assuredly is India."
(source: India: Mother Of Us All - By Chaman Lal p. 24).

 

[talwan]

[FONT=verdana, helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana, helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1] Arnold Hermann Ludwig [/SIZE][/FONT]Heeren (1760-1842) an Egyptologist has observed: "India is the source from which not only the rest of Asia but the whole Western World derived their knowledge and their religion."
"The literature of the Sanskrit literature incontestably belongs to a highly cultivated people, whom we may with great reason consider to have been the most informed of all the East. It is, at the same time, a scientific and poetic literature.
(source: Historical researches into the politics, intercourse, and trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians - By A. H. Heeren Vol. II p. 201).

 

[talwan]

Richard Wagner (1813 -1883) German composer, known for his 13 operas

Wagner absorbed Indian ideas and transformed them to suit his aesthetic purpose. They appear in the libretti of such operas as Parsifal (1882), in which he used an episode from the great epic of the Ramayana (c.400 BC). In a sense, he succeeded in producing a synthesis of East and West, and from it derived the materials of a universal drama. In this, he was in a direct line from the early German romantics. (source: British India: 1772-1947 - By Michael Edwardes p. 306).

 

[talwan]

Thanks,
Alwan

Very good posting.Great.



Cheers.

 

[talwan]

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) French poet, novelist, dramatist, and art and literary critic. He became a leader of the avant-garde in Paris in the early 20th century and is believed to have coined the term surrealist. He was christened Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky. He used the Shakuntala theme in his poem in La Chanson du Mal-Aime:

" L'époux royal de Sacontale
Las de vaincre se réjouit
Quand il la retrouva plus pâle
D'attente et d'amour yeux pâlis
Caressant sa gazelle mâle." ​

"The royal spouse of Sacontale (Shakuntala)
Weary of victories, rejoices
When he finds her paler
From waiting and eyes pale from love,
Petting her male gazelle."
​

(source: The India I Love - By Marie-Simone Renou p. 45-46).

 

[talwan]

Dr. Aidan Rankin author of Lifting the shadow : why Conservatives must reclaim human rights and was a Research Fellow in Government at the London School of Economics and editor of the Britain's leading environmental magazine, the Ecologist has written: "Hinduism, whose rishis or seers the Greeks admired from afar, provides the strongest, most consistent critique of materialism. It is the philosophical tradition best adapted to our post-modern age.
"...Hinduism, offers true universalism, that is to say unity-in-diversity. In the Hindu dharma, the individual can approach the divine in his or her own way. The eternal truth is the same truth, but can be pursued by different means, according to personal or cultural preference. Hindu economics is based on local production for local need, a principle to which the green movement now looks. Rooted in Hindu philosophy it offers a humane alternative to the failed socialist planning of Nehru - and the ascendant Coco Cola capitalism, the iniquities of which become more apparent every day. Similarly, the ethical teachings of the Vedas provide for a healthy balance between masculine and feminine principles, to the advantage of both and the detriment of neither. Above superficial ' rights' for individuals or groups, Vedic teaching exalts our responsibilities - for each other, as human beings, and to our fellow creatures who have souls as we do. Hinduism gives spiritual underpinnings to the new wisdom of Deep Ecology and the revelations of modern science."
"Hinduism has survived its historical tribulations and is finding a new voice in world affairs."

 

[talwan]

Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779 - 1859) was one of the first dissenters. He was aware of the kinship in language between Sanskrit and European tongues, but found the theory of their "spread from a central point...a gratuitous assumption." In his History of India, 1841, he observed,

"Neither in the Vedas, nor in any book...is there any allusion to a prior residence ....out of India...There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present one." He wrote: "In the Surya Siddhanta is contained a system of trigonometry which not only goes beyond anything known to the Greeks, but involves theorem which were not discovered in Europe till two centuries ago."
(source: Sanskrit Civilization - By G. R. Josyer p. 2).

 

[Brahmanyan]

Dear Sri "Talwan",

Very good informative Posts. I appreciate the efforts taken by you to introduce these
wonderful people to us.
Kindly continue.

Regards,
Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

 

[talwan]

Thanks sir,for the encouragement.I will continue to post as much as I can.
Alwan

Dear Sri "Talwan",

Very good informative Posts. I appreciate the efforts taken by you to introduce these
wonderful people to us.
Kindly continue.

Regards,
Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

 

[talwan]

Kenneth Saunders (1883-1937) author of The Heritage of Asia has written: "India is not only a mother of civilization, she is pre-eminently a spiritual mother of Asia. Her arts - noble architecture, fresco painting, sculpture, chamber-music and poetry - these have in India been handmaiden of religion. And this is no less true of her poetry from the rich anthology of the Rig Veda and the Great Epics to the lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore, the best of which are hymns. The tradition, too, of her education, from the university of Nalanda, where ten thousand students sat at the feet of religious teachers, to the guru seated under a tree with his handful of disciples, has been pre-eminently religious. India, in a word, is a God-intoxicated country; and her philosophy, which has in many ways and by many centuries anticipated the systems of European thought, is for the most part a religious philosophy; it deals with the One behind the many, the Real behind the illusory, and is perhaps man's most courageous attempt to reach an ultimate unity.
The essential unity of ancient India may be sufficiently demonstrated for our purpose by two facts. Firstly, her sacred places are known and visited by all; they are a common heritage, and a network of pilgrim-roads links them one with another. "The institution of pilgrimage," says a Hindu writer, "is entirely an expression of love for the motherland, one of the modes of worship of the country which strengthens the religious sentiment and expands the geographical consciousness." Whether amidst the snowy peaks of the Himalayas or the palm-fringed shores of Bengal or Madras, these shrines are all set in scenes of great natural beauty. Indian religion and Indian patriotism are, the, inseparably intertwined; the motherland is a holy land, one for every Indian from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin."

 

[talwan]

Francois Gautier (1950 - )Paris-born, he has lived in India for 30 years, is a political analyst for Le Figaro, one of France's largest circulation newspaper. He defends Indian nationalism. He caused a storm of controversy in India by advocating reunification with Pakistan. He is the uthor of several books, including A Western journalist on India : The Ferengi's Columns and Rewriting Indian History and A New History of India He has called India, Spiritual leader of the world.
"Ancient Hindus were intensely secular in spirit, as their spirituality was absolutely non-sectarian - and still is today in a lesser measure. Seven thousand years ago, Vedic sages, to define the Universal Law which they had experienced within themselves on an occult and supra-spiritual plane, had invented the word dharma. In a nutshell, dharma is all that which helps you to become more and more aware of jiva inside yourself.

 

[talwan]

Count Magnus Fredrik Ferdinand Bjornstjerna (1779-1847) Swedish minister in London, author of The Theogony of the Hindoos with their systems of Philosophy and Cosmogony after quoting from the Vedas says: "These truly sublime ideas cannot fail to convince us that the Vedas recognize only one God, who is Almighty, Infinite, Eternal, Self-existent, the Light and the Lord of the Universe."
He says: “No nation on earth can vie with the Hindus in respect of the antiquity of their civilization and the antiquity of their religion.”
"In a metaphysical point of view we find among the Hindus all the fundamental ideas of those vast systems which, regarded merely as the offspring of fantasy, nevertheless inspire admiration on account of the boldness of flight and of the faculty of human mind to elevate itself to such remote ethereal regions. We find among them all the principles of Pantheism, Spinozism and Hegelianism, of God as being one with the universe; spiritual life of mankind; and of the return of the emanative sparks after death to their divine origin; of the uninterrupted alternation between life and death, which is nothing else but a transition between different modes of existence. All this we find among the philosophies of the Hindus exhibited as clearly as by our modern philosophers more than three thousand years since.

 

[nannilam_balasubramanian]

I visited recently a famous Ashram in Pondycherry. During an interaction,
I could observe that they are very much interested in Sanathana Dharma - Hinduism;
and they express explicitly that they are keen to practice and follow. We see
many foreigners visiting various parts of our Country including Historical Places,
which indirectly shows that they have a keen interest. Some were mentioning
that they are eager to have a coaching under famous Gurus, God Man, etc, about
Hindu philosophy. Above all, they like our rituals, bakthi marg, reading Vedas and
Upanishads besides practice of Yoga and Dhyaana (Meditation) etc. They state
that it gives them happiness and peace.

Balasubramanian
Ambattur

 

[talwan]

Rick Briggs NASA researcher, has written about India's ancient language - Sanskrit: " In ancient India the intention to discover truth was so consuming, that in the process, they discovered perhaps the most perfect tool for fulfilling such a search that the world has ever known -- the Sanskrit language.
It is mind-boggling to consider that we have available to us a language which has been spoken for 4-7000 years that appears to be in every respect a perfect language designed for enlightened communication. But the most stunning aspect of the discovery is this: NASA the most advanced research center in the world for cutting edge technology has discovered that Sanskrit, the world's oldest spiritual language is the only unambiguous spoken language on the planet. Considering Sanskrit's status as a spiritual language, a further implication of this discovery is that the age old dichotomy between religion and science is an entirely unjustified one.
Why has Sanskrit endured? Fundamentally it generates clarity and inspiration. And that clarity and inspiration is directly responsible for a brilliance of creative expression such as the world has rarely seen.
Another hope for the return of Sanskrit lies in computers. Sanskrit and computers are a perfect fit."