The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s5.11

c5.s5.11

The fundamental standpoint of von Glasenapp is to be found in his remark that the life-denying feature is by no means so prominent (*tritt keineswegs so hervor*) in Indian spiritual life as one should conclude from the extracts in Schweitzer’s book. His logic is as follows. Should anybody, says he, use the works of the mystics and the literature of the monastic orders exclusively in order to exhibit the world-view of the Christian thinkers, the report would with justice be objected to as giving a whole picture which does not correspond to the factual conditions (*die nicht den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen entspricht*). The ascetic writings in India also can give but a fraction (*nur einen Bruchteil*) of her literature. Even the Buddhist literature which was produced in the main to serve the purposes of monks has references to works in which the world-denying tendency is either not at all or very little represented. 'According to Indian view *Erlösung* (*mokṣa*, salvation) is only one of the four objectives of human life, the other three being love (*kāma*), possession (*artha*), and discharge of duties (*dharma*). A survey of Indian world-view which should lay a claim to comprehensiveness must therefore have to exhibit also those works of Indian poets and thinkers in which the *Daseinsfreude* (joy of life), *Tatendurst* (thirst for action), *heroischer Sinn* (heroic sense), *Lebensklugheit* (worldly wisdom) and *werktätige Nächstenliebe* (practical philanthropy) have found expression. The epics, the *Purāṇas*, the *Jātakas* and the poetic maxims (e.g. in Böhtlingk's German collection) furnish many illustrations of these aspects. Finallly, von Glasenapp refers to the existence of "a whole series of philosophical systems" in India from which ascetic thought lies remote. The *Liṅga* cult, Śāktaism, and Kṛṣṇa-worship with its fertility-rites point in the clearest manner to the fact that a one-sided life-denial never found a place in the sphere of religious belief also.