The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t6.66

c14.s9.t6.66

The position may be understood if we take a simple analogy from modern conditions. An Indian author today who writes in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil or Urdu is automatically taken as a man of the people, a representative of the people's aspirations, although he may not be writing specifically on the folk-interests. The contrast between such a writer and one who writes in a foreign tongue places him in bold relief in the folk imagination. The use of the mother-tongue, the language of the folk, as the vehicle of literary contributions establishes at once a spiritual nexus between the author's work and the mass-mind. Mitra-Miśra's dependence on the *Purāṇas*, those encyclopaedic storehouses of world-culture for the folk, those products of the Hindu Home University Library, as it were, and his extensive utilization of the *Purāṇa* texts in season and out of season have contributed to the establishment of *nītiśāstra* as a *vidyā* of the people and for the people. And in this tremendous expansion of its influence as well as in the transformation of its character is to be seen one of the most phenomenal achievements of Mitra-Miśra.