History of Bengali Language and Literature c11.196

c11.196

From the home to the world—it was a descent from the Himalayas to the plains,—from the lofty spiritual idea permeating the Hindu home,—the visions of beatitude which it was the dream of every great Hindu to attain,—to the matter-of-fact world and to an observation of things that are taking shape and changing all arround ;—from the great examples of Bhīṣma and Rāma—cherished in the heart of every Hindu—the loftiest like the loftiest peak of the Himālayas,—to the stories of Duval's assiduity in learning, and Sir Philiph Sydney's offering his cup of water to the dying soldier ;—from the pursuit and acquisition of Yoga to the knowledge of a Geographical catechism,—to be able to point out Popocatepetl on a map of the globe,—from the celestial songs of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, which while gratifying all our yearnings for the loftiest of human love, have kept a door constantly open heaven-wards,—to the stories of Paul and Virginia or of Æneas and Dido : the descent is as great as one from the Himalayas to the plains. But a race of people confined within the narrow grooves of their own thoughts were dragged out to observe the wonders of the world, of which they had hitherto known nothing, nor cared to know,—nipping in the bud all curiosity about the material world by fabrication of monstrous stories to explain the origin of things. To explain earthquakes, they had fabricated the story of Vāsuki, the great serpent who upholds the earth, as shaking his hydra-heads a little. To explain the origin of the universe they had invented the story of the golden egg that burst; with regard to the sea their idea was, that there were seven seas—one of curd, one of wine, one of salt, one of milk, and so forth; and as to the earth, that it consisted of seven islands and had a triangular shape. I do not mean to say that the race, who first formulated the principles of Arithmetic, Trigonometry, Geometry and Astronomy, and from whom the world learned these sciences, was so stupid as not to know the simple truths of Physical Geography; a Bhaskarāchāryya or a Varāhāmihira certainly knew them, and many things more, in advance of their age. But after the revival of Hinduism the spirit of inquiry had been directed from the material to the metaphysical world; the masses cared not to know the facts or the laws of the external world, and were content with fables regarding them, because the temporal had no longer any attraction for them. They took the same interest in the outer world as a globe-trotter takes in what he sees. Their knowledge of their surroundings was as superficial and as full of mistakes as that of one who merely passes through a country, thinking that this is not his true home. The Hindus showed the subtlest knowledge with regard to that world which they considered to be the only real one, and their Metaphysics is a mixture of the simple and the complex, in various grades of spiritual thoughts, springing from those of home life—reaching the loftiest range in the conception of the Nirguṇa.