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Written by Swami Chandrashekarendra
Saraswati |
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In the present sorry state in which the nation finds itself it has to
learn
about its own heritage like the Vedas from the findings of Western
soholars called "orientalists" and from Indians conducting research on
the
same lines as they. I concede that European scholars have made a very
valuable study of the Vedas. We must be thankful to them for their work.
Some of them like Max Muller conducted research out of their esteem for
our scriptures. They took great pains to gather the old texts and
published volume after volume incorporating their findings.
Two hundred years ago Sir William Jones, who was a judge of the Calcutta
high court, started the Asiatic Society. The number of books this
institution has published on Vedic subjects should arouse our wonder.
With the help of the East India Company, Sir William published the
Rgveda with the commentry of Sayana and also a number of other Hindu
works. Apart from Englishmen, indologists from France, Germany and
Russia have also done outstanding work here. "The discovery of the
Vedas of the Hindus is more significant than Columbus's discovery of
America, " thus exclaimed some indologists exulting in their findings.
These foreigners discovered Vedic and Vedantic texts from various parts
of the country. They translated the dharma-, grhya- and srauta - sutras.
The Kundalini Tantra gained importance only after Arthur Avalon had
written extensively on it. A number of Westerns have contributed studies
of other aspects of our culture also. It was because of the Protection
of
Ancient Monuments Act that came into force during the viceroyalty of
Lord Curzon that our temples and other monuments were saved from
vandals. Fergusson took photographs of our artistic treasures
(sculptures)
and made them known to the world. Men like Cunningham, Sir John
Marshall and Mortimer -Wheeler did notable work in Indian archaelogy. It
was because of the labours of Mackenizie who gathered manuscripts
from various parts of India that we come to know about many of our
sastras. The department of epigraphy was started during British rule.
We suffered in many ways at the hands of the British but it was during
their time that some good was also done. But this good was not unmixed
and had undesirable elements in it. The intention of many of those who
called themselves orientalists or indologists was not above reproach.
They wanted to reconstruct the history of India on the basis of their
study
of the Vedas and, in the course of this, they concocted the Aryan-
Dravidian theory of races and sowed the seeds of hatred among the
people. Purporting to be rationalists they wrongly interpreted, in an
allergorical manner, what cannot be comprehended by our senses. In
commenting on the Vedas they took the view that the sages were
primitive men. Though some of them pretended to be impartial, their
hidden intention in conducting research into our religious texts was to
propagate Christianity and show Hinduism in a poor light.
A number of Westerners saw the similarity between Sanskrit and their
own languages and devoted themselves to comparative philology.
We may applaud European indologists for their research work, for making
our sastras known to a wider world and for the hard work they put in.
But
they were hardly in sympathy with our view of the Vedas. What is the
purpose of these scriptures? By chanting them, by filling the world with
their sound and by the performance of rites like sacrifices, the good of
mankind is ensured. This view the Western indologists rejected. They
tried to understand on a purely intellectual plane what is beyond the
comprehension of the human mind. And with this limited understanding
of theirs they printed big tomes on the Vedas to be preserved in the
libraries. Our scriptures are meant to be a living reality of our speech
and
action. Instead of putting them to such noble use, to consign them to
the
libraries, in the form of books, is like keeping living animals in the
museum instead of in the zoo. |
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