The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s4.21

c5.s4.21

In my studies on Hindu culture (1910-22) attention was directed to two fallacies of Orientalists and traditional sociologists. One was monism and the other was their inveterate obsession by the dogma of alleged distinction between the East and the West. It is interesting that Sorokin's works have not only challenged the monistic interpretations of culture and social relationships but the ideologies of race-distinctions also. In his historico-comparative and statistico-psychological investigations there is no place for India as a country in splendid isolation, geographical or cultural. The "facts" and "ideas" examined by him point to no extraordinary dominating or monistic impacts of region, climate or race. India's affinities with the rest of the world in institutions as well as ideology are thus automatically established wherever affinities are in evidence. From the standpoint of general sociology Sorokin's work as a reformer is to be appraised as considerable, nay, revolutionary. And its impacts on indology ought to be profound. For one thing, they are immensely calculated to militate against the indology as established by Max Müller, Sénart and Max Weber.