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VII
The institution of a coloured people particularly of a politically servient one are very likely to appear inferior to those without understanding and freedom from prejudice. Though there is an answer, it is not unnatural to ask why, if a civilization is Of value, it has not kept its people free? Why, if it .possesses an uplifting religious doctrine,does it not raise them from political subordination and the lack of the virile side of morality which such subordination implies?
The extent to which from early times Indian civilization has been the subject of of cultural .attack and scolding abuse is a noteworthy fact. All Asiatic civilizations have had. their share; but my reading of this literature disposes me to the conclusion that India has suffered much more than any others. Even in 1830 (to go no further back) Sir Thomas Strange (" Hindu Law") thought it necessary to say " It is the duty aswell is the interest of Britain to foster those whom it has become the unworthy fashion. to undervalue and abuse. It were at least more magnanimous course pareere subjectis. Nor can it be a commendable one irritate by insulting them."
There are and have, been both in the present and past those who, without accepting the principles of Indian civilization, have striven (not always successfully) to be just to it. There has always been a Smaller band of what Mr. Archer calls " Orientali-zers " and " India-worshippers." That great man and Orientalist Sir William Jones said : " It is impossible to read the Vedant or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages of India." Though he did not live in a time when the political aspect of the cultural question was dominant, there is no reason to suppose that, if he had, his greatness of mind and judgment would have been affected by any, considerations not strietly germane to a criticism of the great philosophy and religion which he thus praised. The celebrated French historian of Philosophy Victor Cousin wrote : " When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East, above all those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe, we discover there many a truth and truths so profound and which make such contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy." Freidrich Schlegel wrote: " Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealism of reason, as it is set forth by the Greek philosophers, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigour of Oriental idealism like a feeble Promethean spark in the full blood of heavenly glory of the noon day sun, faltering and feeble and ever ready to be extinguished. The Divine origin of man is-continually inculcated to stimulate his efforts to return, to animate him in the struggle and incite him to consider a re-union and re-corporation with Divinity as the one primary object of every action and exertion." The lines I have italicised indicate " uplifting spiritual concepts " if mankind has ever known such. Upon Schopenhauer's well known saying that "in the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as the Upanishad. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death :" Professor Max Muller (by no means given to an uncritical admiration of things Indian and who has in several matters misjudged then) said: " If these words of Schopenhauer required any endorsement I should willingly give it as the result of my own experience during a long life devoted to the study of many philosophies and many religions."
These are the sayings of the greater men but the world is not made up of such. The bulk of criticism of Indian culture has been hostile and a good deal of it ignorant, abusive and unfair. A missionary author whom I have already cited has recently said: (' Christian Thought and Hindu Philosophy ' by A. H. Bowman)—" It is not many years ago that the whole literature of Brahmanism was considered a mass of intellectual and moral rubbish. To-day the verdict of Western Scholars has completely changed. Indeed, the danger is lest now we may have gone to the other extreme;" There is some exaggeration in this statement. I do not know of any Orientalist Scholars who are over-appreciative of India though there are an increasing number of laymen both English and others who are commencing in a just spirit to value its culture. Nevertheless the passage cited errs on the right side in so far as it indicates the unfavourable character of the general past verdict of the Western world. The change is by no means so complete, as the reverend author supposes. Moreover, political reasons have in recent years accentuated the cultural attack. Those who have read the previous sections will have understood the reasons.
Here two facts may be noted. The first is that there must be something peculiar in Indian civilization which is the cause of this animosity : and the second is the proof such attacks afford of the living force of this civilization. No one now goes into moral hysterics over the absurdities or iniquities of Phaenician, Carthaginian or Babylonian civilization. They are dead and gone but India lives. Up to now India has presented itself as one of the " immortal" peoples, to use the word of (I think) some French writer whose name I forget. Suffering racial and social division, politically disrupted, with a great variety of languages and scripts, governed for centuries by the strangers, She has yet held together so that we can still speak of " India." This I think is due primarily to certain religious and philosophical concepts held in common by Her people—and as regards " Hinduism " in its technical sense the wonderful organization called Varnashrama dharma.
An English author has spoken of that hideous blot India " : a criticism which at least marks it as distinct from the rest of the " unblotted " world. That distinguished thinker Professor Lowes-Dickinson, in an essay which seeks with justice to define the character of Indian civilization, profoundly remarks that it is so unique that the contrast is not so much between East and West as between India and the rest of the world. Thus India stands for something which distinguishes it from all other peoples, and so she calls Herself a Karma bhumi as opposed to the Bhoga bhumi of all other peoples. For this She has been wonderfully preserved until to-day. Even now (and in this consists one cause of the extraordinary interest which India arouses) we can see the life of thousands of years ago. Standing on the Ghats at Benares or by any village well we are transported into the beautiful antique world. One of the greatest (amongst several) services which England has rendered India consists in this—that She has not only aroused this country to new life, but She has during such process also largely helped to preserve Her archaic customs and ancient thought until to-day. For social and religious institutions are the body in which the spirit of ancient ideals is conserved. India is now about to be drawn into the world vortex, wherein She must herself struggle to preserve herself. Until now England has been a protection and a shield. For had India been drawn into that vortex before commencing to recover her strength, She was like to have altogether disappeared.
The author, whom I have just cited, finds the uniqueness of India to consist in Her religion of eternity and in this he is right ; though, as I show later, Indian doctrine is not, when rightly understood, one-sided out has a " time-religion " also. One form of Vedanta—that of the Shakta— effects one of the most complete syntheses of the life of the world and of spirit that T. know. It is perhaps a misunderstanding on this point which may account, in part, for the repulsion which many Westerns feel towards Indian religion and philosophy. The missionary author whom I have cited quotes Dr. Matheson as saying :—" It is not too much to say that the mind of the West with all its undoubted impulses towards the progress of humanity has never exhibited such an intense amount of intellectual force as is to be found in the religious speculations of India.........These have been the cradle of all Western speculations, and wherever the European mind has risen into heights of philosophy, it has done so because the Brahman was the pioneer. There is no intellectual problem in the West which had not its earlier discussion in the East, and there is no modern solution of that problem which will not be found anticipated in the East" Upon this the author who makes the citation observes " We may think this language too strong but we shall never again depreciate the intellectual value, the philosophic subtleties, the religious purpose of the sacred books of the East." This prophecy has not proved correct-Mr. Archer's and other criticisms belie it... On the whole, however, it rightly indicates the general tendency where political motives do not intervene. In the Adminis tration Report of the United Provinces (1913—1914) there is the following happy and yet unhappy statement: "It is satisfactory to note that the vernacular Christian literature has almost freed itself from vituperation and abuse of other religions." Progress has also been made in a higher class of literature towards a better understanding of Indian culture. It is being found that some of its philosophic teachings harmonise with the conclusions and generally accepted hypotheses of modern Western natural science and psychology. Again, what is called Occultism has made great strides in recent years. Even so-called " scientific " men have been constrained to accept against their will occult phenomena which have for ages been known and recognised in this country. The doctrine of the Vedanta is being. widely spread. When Western thought has worked independently it has been in the same direction. A recent philosophical work ( Religion and Reality'—J. EL Tuckwell) rightly says " In our main conclusion we have long ago been anticipated by the religious philosophy of India. In the West our philosophy has been surely but slowly moving to the same inevitable monistic goal. In Professor Ladd of Harvard we have a notable Western thinker who by a process of careful and consistent reasoning, concrete in character, has also arrived at the conclusion that the ultimate Reality must be conceived of as an Absolute Self of which we are finite forms or appearances-But it is the crowning glory of the "Vedanta that it so long ago announced, re-iterated and emphasized this deep truth in a manner that does not permit us for a moment to forget it or explain it away. This great stroke of identity, this discernment of the ultimate unity of all things in Brahman or the One Absolute Self seems to us to constitute the masterpiece and highest achievement of India's wonderful metaphysical and religious genius to which the West has yet to pay the full tribute which is its due."
But this increase in appreciation of India's culture rouses to stronger effort those who are opposed to it. From the religious side it is natural enough that Hinduism should still encounter opposition from other forms of religion. Philosophers will also continue their age-long debate. Lately, however, a political motive has worked strongly at the back of hostile •criticism both in this specific class of literature and in the Press. The motive is to show that, notwithstanding claims and appreciations to the contrary, India is unqualified for the political advancement which (rightly or wrongly) She seeks. We find therein such arguments as that the doctrine of Karma, Reincarnation, Pessimism, Absolutism and so forth are such sapping influences on moral and intellectual character as to render this country unfit for self-governance. Such critics are, as likely as not, without interest in such philosophical questions considered in themselves. Most would be hard put to define accurately for instance what Karma is Others who know more have written erroneously of it. But it is obvious that if it can be established that India on this and other accounts is not civilized but barbarous, that is an argument against Her capacity for political autonomy. If Her face can be made ugly, religiously, morally, intellectually and socially and in every other way, then the British people will not like the look of it. In the meanwhile do not let them be deluded by the idea that She has real civilized worth. She is barbarous. If other Western critics, judging the matter without political bias, have approved any form of Indian culture, steps must be taken to discredit them and to show they are all wrong or interested. They are either, as the " Times" charges, seeking a " cheap popularity " or as Mr. Archer says they are Orientalists (how many ?) making the most of a subject which, meagre in worth though it be, has cost them years of study; or they are " Theosophists" or gullible, or cranks, and so forth. It is necessary in particular to deny the alleged spiritual character of Indian civilization. It would never do to admit this. For spirituality is honoured of all men and where it truly exists, there are other excellences. For this reason too " The Times " approves Mr. Archer's work as establishing that Indian culture does not provide "anywhere any great moral or spiritual concept capable of uplifting a nation" It follows, of course, that others must provide these concepts and take in charge the business of " uplift." Similarly, the leader-writer of an Anglo-Indian Calcutta Daily, after drawing attention to the fact that a British Statesman to whom he referred had the " Christian outlook on politics," stated that in India " the Tantric view of life and its problems still insidiously survives," as an argument against political change. What the writer meant I cannot say unless it be that as the word Tantra ' makes many people shudder the association of the word with Indian political claims would give them a sinister colour. Similarly a correspondent in the same Journal, after stating that to grant self-government to India would be to subject the Englishman to the control of races " who are not his peers in the sense of their having attained to the same plane of civilization and culture " and denying that the Indians are " a very highly civilized people ." says:—" Is it sound and far seeing statesmanship to subordinate to the rule of Tantric worshippers "races who profess a religion (to wit, Christianity) " which exterminated the cults of Isis, Mithra, Astarte, the Eleusinian and other mysteries of classical times." Whether such writers are politically right I do not here discuss. I am only concerned with the motive of their criticisms so far as it affects their value. They continually talk of their superior civilization : and it may be that in some matters it is superior. But what as regards others? Mr. Archer belongs to this class. Claims have been made for the essentially spiritual character of the Indian mind. Mr. Archer first says " The glory which is claimed for India by serious Western thinkers—in words re-echoed a thousandfold by Indians themselves—is that of a high spirituality, an unique genius for grasping and expounding the realities behind the phenomenal world and the innermost meanings of life." But it is just on this point that Mr. Archer is most markedly dissentient. For he says " It is precisely on the religious side that the character of the Indian people, as I read it, is conspicuously defective." " India's real distinction lies, not in evolving, but in killing, the germs of sane and virile spirituality." "The Indian people have always gravitated towards the lower rather than the higher element in religion ; towards the form rather than the substance; towards the letter rather than the spirit. That is why I hold it the very acme of I paradox to claim for them an exalted spirituality." Only a " few fanatics" would say that India " has evolved a noble pure progressive religion in intimate relation with high racial and individual morality." Higher Hinduism, he says, is so contaminated by the lower that " except in small reforming sects " it can be scarcely said to exist. By Higher Hinduism he evidently understands Theistic movements similar to and influenced by, Christianity; a common notion of English writers who naturally and with greater ease understand these movements than orthodox Hinduism. The latter he finds is based on an " enervating " metaphysic and certain false notions of Pessimism, Asceticism, Karma and Reincarnation. In particular it preaches " the unreality of the world, detachment from terrestrial interests, the unimportance of the life of the moment compared with the endless chain of past and future existence : all doctrines which lead to the enfeeblement of volitional individuality." "It presents speculation in the guise of dogma." Its cosmology, physiology, psychology are found to consist of " baseless classifications ingenious guesses." But to mistake hoping for seeing, guessing for knowing— it is the very unspiritual habit into which has fallen." The Indian people have manifested an " unique religio-philosophic genius." On the contrary " the genius the Indian people, from the Brahmin downwards, has displayed to great function is a genius for obfuscating reason formalizing, materializing, degrading " Great thinkers she may have assessed but she has not extracted from thoughts a rational, ennobling, or morally helpful religion."
It is somewhat of a surprise to learn from book that it is thought to be part the business of Census Officers to pass arangments on the religions of this country ; Hinduism is said in the (1901) Census of (cited as an authority by Mr. Archer) by "Animism more or less tempered by philosophy" or more briefly "Magic tem by metaphysics." These smart sayings however, Mr. Archer thinks too favorite for " to my thinking the animism
and the magic are much more palpable than the transformation and tempering." "The ' spirituality' manifested in the lower Hinduism is that to which anthropologists have given the name of 'Animism'." " Hinduism as a popular religion consists in the cult of a monstrous folklore oppressing and paralysing the imagination." It is " the lowest professed and practised by any people that purports to have arisen above savagery. Beside it the devotion of the Russian or Spanish peasant is rational and enlightened." " Hinduism is the character of the people and it indicates a melancholy proclivity towards whatever is monstrous and unwholesome." It is not a "morally helpful religion." If nevertheless he finds in the Hindu writings many admirable ethical doctrines " it is only because Hindu philosophy is after all .too human to be logical." " Hinduism though it has much talked of righteousness has never claimed moral teaching as one of its functions." It is true he says that " there are vices and stupidities among the nations of the West from which the Hindu is comparatively free " but even this is not to be counted to his credit—the reason being that it is " rather because they do not come his way than because he rises superior to them."
As for metaphysics which, as is well' known, is associated with the Hindu religion, it is true that India " has displayed an unequalled diligence in thinking about the unthinkable ; that being an exercise agreeably compatible with physical immobility and living upon the alms of the faithful." Its philosophy " denies all. value to life " and has led the people " not towards the study of nature but away from it." It is an effect of climatic influences. " Only in a hot country is it possible for a human being to spend months, years, or even a lifetime in sitting cross-legged and contemplating his own navel. Only in a hot country could the opinion arise that this was the best way of ascertaining the truth as to the nature and constitution of the universe." Its metaphysic is " enervating " expelling all volitional individuality. But any kind of metaphysic even the best is "a man-made illusion." It is quite a mistake to suppose that " familiarity with metaphysical conceptions—perhaps even the capacity of arguing with some subtlety a metaphysical point, is necessarily a proof of great mental capacity." He is sceptical " of the value of thought in a region where there is no possible test of values." Such speculations " are all efforts to know the unknowable and think about the unthinkable." It is conceded on the other hand that India can claim priority of date in some of her philosophical speculations and that India may have had great and subtle thinkers. The appraisement of India's contribution to metaphysics he would leave to the experts; whilst he in fact forestalls them with his own criticisms.
In short the spiritual genius of the Indian people everywhere expresses itself in forms " which not only the Western world but China and Japan have for ages outgrown." " The Western mind has decisively outgrown the Eastern : has embraced a wider range of experience and touched greater depths and—I do not hesitate to say— deeper depths of thought." " The ordinary daily practices of the (Indian) cult are sufficient to place it beyond the pale of civilisation." "Wherever you turn you meet repulsive performances of piety." Hinduism is "anti-rational." "It is in short the great anachronism of the modern world." " Hinduism has not been cleansed for thirty centuries." " It is true that corruptions have crept into other religions which have relapsed into something like primitive fetichism, and that attempts at filtration have been only partially successful." But " Hinduism on the other hand is a wholly unfiltered religion—a paganism which has resolutely declined filtration. It is this tendency towards pollution rather than purification that assigns it its place— incomparably the lowest—in the scale of world religions. Until Hinduism has somehow got itself filtered, India cannot reasonably claim fellowship on terms of equality with the civilised nations of the earth."
Mr. Archer is not alone in this class of criticisms. He has the countenance of some learned Orientalists. Dr. A. E. Gough described the Upanishads as " the work of a rude age, a deteriorated race and a barbarous unprogressive community." " It is no more spiritual than the old observance of prescriptive sacra." " There is little " as he says " that is spiritual in all this." "In treating of Indian Philosophy a writer has to deal with thoughts of a lower order than the thoughts of the every day life of Europe. The great difficulty lies in this, that a low order of ideas has to be expressed in a high order of terms, and that the English words suggest a wealth of analysis and association altogether foreign to the thoughts that are to be reproduced. The effort is nothing less than an endeavour to revert to a ruder type of mental culture and to become for the time being barbarous'. So when the sage uttered his wonderful generalization " That thou art" he gave pression to a thought lower than the thoughts of the every day life of any Western Dick, Tom or Harry. Another English Professor went a step further when he told a young Indian friend of mine upon has return to India: "Not to waste his time over Indian religion or metaphysics for there was nothing in them." If Dr. Gough found that that the former contained thoughts of a " lower order," the other of learning deemed them to be of no value at all. If I remember rightly, my friend was counselled to seek the satisfaction of his soul's needs in the Science-doubtless useful in its way) of Numisdtics.
With such views among some orientalists it is not surprising that others with less, portunity for knowledge go astray. A well known English traveller in Africa the Hindu religion as " a mixture of nightmare nonsense and time-wasting rubbish fulfilling no useful purpose whatever; only adding to the general burden of existence borne by Humanity in its struggle for existence." Another tourist applying the £. s. d. test wrote : " For an Englishman to get a plain statement of what Brah-manism really means is far from easy. The only wonder is that people who have to live on nine pence a week, who marry when they are ten years old, are prevented by caste life from rising out of what is often, if not always, a degraded state have any religion at all." The journalist, Mr. Harold Begbie, in a work (" the Light of Asia ") published by the " Christian Literature Society for India " speaks of Hinduism (to summarise a longer criticism) as " a weltering chaos of terror, darkness, and uncertainty. It is a religion without the apprehension of a moral evolution, without definite commandments, without a religious sanction in the sphere of morals, without a moral code, without a God, except a Being which is a mixture of Bacchus, Don Juan and Dick Turpin. It is the most material and childishly superstitious animalism that ever masqueraded as idealism : not another path to God but a pit of abomination as far set from God as the mind of man can go; staggering the-brain of a rational man; filling his mind with wild contempt for his species and which has only endured because it has; failed." The publishers of this " Christian Literature " are evidently no believers in the more modern so-called " sympathetic-treatment" of Indian culture : which, to use the words of one of its exponents, while finding something precious in Indian civilization finds also much that is false and unwholesome. I have never but once come across offensive criticism written of Christianity by a Hindu ; and that was the case of a man who published a short lived " comic " paper in Calcutta modelled on a French anticlerical journal, the illustrations of which he seemed to have borrowed. " Christian Literature," of this kind serves at least the purpose of contrasting this form of Christian aggression with the doctrine of the Vedanta and Gits, that all religions should be respected.
To return to Mr. Archer. As regards Art he is of opinion that India has not been lacking in talent and abounds in noteworthy works; but he is strongly opposed to the view that it is a supreme expression of the spirit of man, superior or even equal to European art. He desires to show the " anti-rational bases of the Unqualified and unmeasured eulogies of the Indian genius." India " is a hotbed of imagination." " Hindu (as distinct from Mahomedan) art habitually tends to extravagance and excess." If for instance one compares the Javanese Boro-Buder sculptures with the reliefs and friezes at Mamallapuram and Badami, " the difference almost amounts to that between fine, art and barbarism." The broad shoulders and thin waist of the typical Indian heroic figure "are due to the fact that the ideal of strength was based on the proportions of the lion or tiger. Such an ideal is very naturally formed by a people in a state of semi-savagery and adherence to it might not unfairly be interpreted as showing-that the semi-savage state has not been far outgrown." India, it is said, thus " goes to the jungle for its ideas instead of to the gymnasium and the council hall;" which I may add in modern days does not always provide models of masculine beauty. " There is more spirituality in (for example) the ideal head of Homer, seamed by suffering and furrowed by thought than in the whole pantheon of Buddhist or Hindu sculpture." Hindu sculpture "carries to excess all the faults noted in the Amaravati relief and adds to them the undesirable •characteristic of constantly dealing in grotesque monstrosities." " Within the temples it is just the same colossal contorted forms looming menacingly through the gloom, everywhere a riot of violent, often sensual, imagery, nowhere one touch of nature or one point of rest" except in the " pot bellied Falstaff of Hinduism" Ganesha. " The monster gods of India are originally ogres; figures in which cowering savages embodied their conception of the destructive powers of nature. Kali is set " in a ravening attitude like that of a barn-storming player of the good old days tearing a passion to tatters." " Sophisticate them as you please the monster gods of India are survivals from a low stage of spiritual development."
Mr. Archer then passes to the Hindu epic and drama in which " we seem to see the over-strained over-elaborated overcrowded sculptures and in viewing the sculptures we seem to hear the vast labyrinthine multitudinous epics." " The Indian imagination suffers from habitual and ancestral over-fatigue." "There is an insensitiveness to normal and wholesome stimulation." "The epics keep the Indian mind stagnant." " The Greek epics would make ten times better Bibles than the huge accumulations of sacerdotalised folk-lore from which the Indian populace derive their notions of the heroic and divine." Then he objects to the stories of asceticism, the generation stories, the spectacular, sensational and passionate, the stories of magic and so on. Similar ideas, he says, doubtless prevail elsewhere but not so extravagantly. The character is dehumanized such as the saintly Bama who is too saintly and the long suffering Sita whose heroism is "too often like that of Alkestis and Griselda excessive to the verge of immorality."
Then there is the "self-defeating, the enervating, the exhausting extravagance of hyperbole, the wildest monstrosities and folk-lore incapable of awakening any feeling, other than scientific, in a civilized person or person aspiring to civilisation."" " The MahaBhârata is in no way behind the Ramayana in crudity and extravagance:" " It is in many respects the more barbarous of the two." There are " limitless insensate conceptions of heroism, expressing itself in terms of frenzied ferocity," " contortions, convulsions " " of a turbid flood of primitive and barbarious legendry." The passion for hyperbole is blended with an " amazing and amusing euphemism."
It is somewhat of a relief to pass with the author to the Drama where he says the imagination can move healthily and at ease instead of "passing through epilepsy to paralysis." Yet still " the Hindu drama remains a curiously undeveloped art form ;" meagre as compared with the literature of the West or Far East. It is the drama of passivity where the characters are the passive puppets of supernatural wirepulling." " A people which thus leaves out of its drama the element of will, probably does so because the element of will plays no efficient part in its life."
As for architecture no doubt the giant temples of the south are marvels of massive construction and have often a sort of titanic impressiveness. But they look as if they had been built by demon Rakshasas. " Of unity, clarity, nobility of design they show no trace." "It is a disease of gigantesque barbarism." "When we pass further north we still find the same ponderousness the same absence of anything like lightness and grace. " They are less barbarous perhaps than the Gopuras of the south but scarcely more beautiful. There is a "self defeating wastefulness in Hindu architecture " which provides " incredible marvels of insensate over-elaboration." Mahomedanism however begets things of beauty. Mr. Archer who does not seem to admire anything except his own rationalistic civilisation (whatever it be) says " I am no admirer of Islam; but the glory of its architecture is a patent, palpable fact which proves what India can do when it wakes from the hallucinations of Yoga and the multitudinous nightmares of its indigenous cults."
Indian painting is then brought up for judgment. Apart from the Ajanta frescoes it is said to be a late and post-Mahommedan development. But just as "monstrous" is the epithet for Hindu sculpture, "miniature" is a reproach against painting. It is allowed that there is wonderful illuminative richness, extraordinary draughtsmanship, great beauty of decorative detail (remarkable gifts on the part of a barbarous people) but, as one might expect, there is a drawback to all. this in the shape of " a total inability to escape from a laborious convention, to attain freedom and breadth of design, to suggest to the imagination anything more than is presented to the eye." There is a "certain hard limited cleverness." " Though they may be great by Indian standards by world standards they remain small." " The arrest of development in Indian art seems to be closely paralleled by the arrest of development in Indian civilization." " There is however no question that India has splendid artistic capacities " but what she wants is restraint; for a self-satisfaction was from the first her besetting sin." In other countries artistic movements germinate ripen, culminate and decay but in the extraordinary climate of India "they do not ripen but are checked before they have even approached maturity." Mr. Archer once more writes foolishness about "Reality." Others "have fallen under India's illusion that art inspired by transcendental truth must be the greatest art in the world." But Indian truth if it is true is said to be destructive of art " because it is only in so far as India ignores her own truth and accepts provisionally the real existence of the visible universe that she possesses any art at all." He concludes with the " radical inferiority of Indian art." " Europe even in virtue of its works of the second and third order is incomparably richer than India in products of artistic genius." Certainly Abanindranath Tagore's " Buddha as mendicant" has great nobility of character " but the type is European." We must, it is said, attribute all this inferiority to the " general undervaluing in religion and philosophy of will and endeavour." "Life is conceived as a shoreless expanse in which generations rise and fall as helplessly and purposelessly as waves in mid-ocean. The individual life is everywhere dwarfed and depreciated." " India has contributed only one great character Gautama Buddha to the world's pantheon;" but this limited concession is rendered nought by the sceptical remark " and he perhaps never existed." " If a claim be put in for Asoka it may possibly be allowed (Mr. Archer relents) but then the old mood surges up— " but after all how featureless he is!"
Then Mr. Archer states that European history, literature, and Art swarms above everything with great characters but " when we have named the Buddha and Akbar" (who it may be noted was so. kindly disposed to the Hinduism which to Mr. Archer is so great an offence) "we have exhausted the supreme personalities whom India has given to history." Where are the Indian Charlemagnes, Alfreds, Columbus, Luther, Cromwell Richelieu and Napoleon? Where he again asks are the fictitious characters Hamlet, Falstaff, shylock, Lear, Quixote, Alcestis, Tartuffe, Don Juan, and Mephistopheles ? Where are the Raphaels, Titians and others ? " At whatever point we institute a comparison we find India deficient in the record, at any rate, of strong, energetic, domnant personality." " There is throughout a depression of will and energy."
Music is then bid to appear and though Mr. Archer says "in the absence of technical knowledge I can at best speak vaguely " he cannot resist a depreciative criticism on this point also for fear apparently that he might not be complete. Mr. Archer is decidedly " Purna" on his theme. " In music it seems to me we have the irrefragable proof that the Western mind has decisively outgrown the Eastern." "The delicate tinklings of Indian melody cannot be compared with the titanic harmonies of Handel and Haydn, Beethoven and Wagner."
Mr. Archer himself overcome by his excess of depreciation winds up " I unfeig-nedly regret in conclusion the controversial and even depreciatory tone of this Chapter." But why? If the facts be as stated, why regret the statement of them, if a statement be at all considered necessary. It seems however that India's art strangely enough " contributed to the spell she cast upon me." India must indeed be a Rakshasi. But Mr. Archer resists this spell because he has been aroused by the claims made for India that in art, as in other things, India is supreme, and sanity is essential for India's salvation ; and so he has thus written to cure Her of Her pride.
Mr. Archer then proceeds to deal with "the insensate racial vanity and the bacillus of arrogance," as displayed in social institutions, " the inhuman snobbery" of caste (so unlike the class snobbery and injustice to the poor of the west); the priesthood, (existing in Europe also), marriage (as to which " our habits are not like those of India mere crystallizations of barbarism") Sati, infanticide, (so rare to-day that their mention is evidence of an untempered desire to defame) widow-remarriage, sea voyage, and the like. As for " progress," he says, that " the country in its inmost heart resents and despises it." The conclusion is stated by Mr. Archer in connection with the caste question in the following query:—are the people who adhere to such customs justified in claiming an independent and equal place among the nations of the world ?
I have neither the space nor time to meet in detail all these criticisms. Indian culture cannot be disposed of, as Mr. Archer has one, in a few summary Chapters. As agards Indian Art I refer the reader to three writers on the subject who have understood it—Mr. Havell, Dr. Coomara-swamy, and Srijut O. C. Gangooly. There is much that is absurd in Mr. Archer's criticisms but some of it is not without ground; though it is weakened by his excessive language and generalizations. In some matters of taste I not unnaturally, being a Western as he is, prefer what is our own. The glories of the great Gothic Cathedrals, the wondrous expressions of Christian worship in the ages of faith and the noble simplicity of Greek architecture appeal to me more than any Hindu Temple, with him again I think that Indian music cannot be compared with, say, the heroic grandeur and sensuous magic of Wagner. But what of that ? Naturally what is our own in literature or art and culture generally appeals to us best. This can be admitted without unnecessary or excessive and let me add offensive, depreciation of the culture of others. These comparisons in matter of taste seem to serve no useful purpose. Let each mind feed upon what it likes best; and do not let overselves intrude <on the peace of its enjoyment. I will therefore in the succeeding sections mainly deal shortly with some of the fundamental concepts of Indian religion and metaphysic which are the root of, and are expressed in, Other forms of Indian civilization.
Meanwhile it may be pointed out that Mr. Archer refutes himself on all points. He is not a logical thinker and has evidently been carried away by his feelings. So after this plethora of hostile criticism we come across the following passage:— " There are in Calcutta, Bombay and elsewhere a certain number of emancipated and highly cultivated families with whom social intercourse is a privilege and a pleasure. The difficulty in their case is that one is apt to feel like a semi-barbarian upon an abode of ancient, fine spun aristocratic culture" " Awe " he adds " is perhaps not quite the feeling with which these grave Orientals regard our Western crudities" Just so. Even Mr. Archer feels himself a semi-barbarian in the presence of high examples of Indian culture. For it is Indian culture of which he speaks. He would not of course feel a semi-barbarian in the presence of his own. We then ask where does this ancient fine spun aristocratic culture come from ? Is it not an inheritance from the Indian past the glories of which Mr. Archer denies. Is it possible, for what is essentially an unspiritual barbarism, to produce results which make even Mr. Archer abashed ? And if, as he says, many thousands have in the past arisen and are now arising from Barbarism and have become so civilized as to make him feel a semi-barbarian, how did they do it ? A worthless tree cannot bear good fruit. Why not then say that the tree is a good one and if to-day its fruit is not always what one might expect, it is because the tree is suffering from disease, want of nourishment, or may be from the infirmity of age. In the latter case let us look and see if some young shoots are springing from the base of its age-old and weathered trunk. |
