The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s6.7

c5.s6.7

India has been described by Masson-Oursel as the *terre par excellence de l’ascetisme* (the land specific of asceticism), which seeks to enrich the spiritual life by detaching the individual from his *milieu*. And this country is alleged to owe its complex originality to its separation from the rest of the planet (p. 1). These two statements with which the work begins contradict some of the more important conclusions established by the author himself, as we have seen above, namely, the “utilitarian motives”, devotion to *artha* etc. as well as the extension de *l’indianité* from Madagascar to Tonkin.