Influence of Vedic Culture Around
the World
The Vedas
and the Bhagavad-gita especially are not new to the Western
world. There have been seekers, writers, poets, philosophers, and
people of all levels who have appreciated the depth, inspiration,
and insight of Vedic thought for many years. For centuries, interest
in India, where the Vedic literature originated, was usually for
reasons of trade. Goods like spices, jewels, and fine cloth were
always in demand. Even Marco Polo wrote of seeing the great wealth
of India and described it as one of the richest countries in the
world. Christopher Columbus read Marco Polo’s descriptions and
devised a plan to find a new route to India. (He discovered America
instead.)
This
interest in India continued, but in the early 1800’s the traders of
Indian goods also began bringing with them books in Sanskrit.
Sanskrit literature started to become popular. Up to the end of the
civil war in America, the influence of Vedic thought continued to
spread. This was especially noticeable in places such as Concord,
Massachusetts where personalities like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Minister James Freeman Clark,
and others began to express in their writing the philosophical
insight which was inspired directly by the Vedic literature. Emerson
in particular was known to have read such Vedic books as the
Bhagavad-gita, Vishnu Purana, Laws of Manu, Bhagavata Purana,
and even the Kathopanishad. One quote of his is: “I owed a
magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of
books; it was as if an empire spake to us, nothing small or
unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old
intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus
disposed of the same questions that exercise us.”
Henry David
Thoreau is also well known for his philosophical leanings in his
writings. He was an avid reader of Vedic literature and openly
expressed his admiration for Vedic thought. During his stay at
Walden Pond, he would regularly read Bhagavad-gita. Thoreau
once remarked, “What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall
on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes
a loftier course through a purer stratum.” Also, “In the morning I
bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of
the Bhagavad-gita, since whose composition years of the gods
have elapsed and in comparison with which our modern world and its
literature seems puny and trivial.” (Walden, Chapter XVI)
Thoreau was
so impressed with the Bhagavad-gita that he went on to say:
“The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a bigger, purer
or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagavad-gita. The
Gita’s sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds of even
soldiers and merchants.” He also admitted that, “The religion and
philosophy of the Hebrews are those of a wilder and ruder tribe,
wanting the civility and intellectual refinements and subtlety of
Vedic culture.” Thoreau’s reading of literature on India and the
Vedas was extensive: he took it seriously. Even Mahatma Gandhi
respected him and accepted him as his teacher.
Other
recognized writers that were influenced by Vedic philosophy were T.S.
Eliot, Paul Elmer More, and Irving Babbitt, all of whom had studied
at Harvard under the great Sanskrit teacher Charles Rochwell Lanman
who taught for over forty years and also published works on Sanskrit
and Hindu philosophy. As Harvard had a succession of outstanding
teachers of Sanskrit, so did Yale, but even earlier. In fact, Elihu
Yale had a deep respect for Vedic philosophy.
Part of the
reason for introducing the study of Sanskrit and Eastern philosophy
in universities was due to the influence of such organizations as
the American Oriental Society, which was founded in 1842. Through
the years, there have been many great Sanskritists and American
Indologists who have helped point out how unique and profound is the
Vedic philosophy. Such people include Edward Elbridge Salisbury
(1814-1901), who went to India and continued his studies there;
Fitzedward Hall (1825-1901); William Dwight Whitney (1827-1901);
Edward Washburn Hopkins (1857-1932); James Bradstreet Greenough
(1833-1900); and many others. Not only in America but in other
Western countries the ideas from India were received among
interested intellectuals, some of whom were Max Mueller and Aldous
Huxley of England, Romain Rolland of France, Tolstoy of Russia, and
Schlegel, Deussen and Schopenhauer of Germany. In fact, Schopenhauer
went so far as to predict that the Vedas would one day be
accepted as the religion of the world.
This concept
of exchanging ideas and culture can no doubt more easily be seen in
recent times as many sages and svamis from India have come to
America to teach students, and Western students have gone to India
in search of teachers. Surely, this is no accident: for while
America is rich in modern technological know-how but seems to lack
spiritual vision, India, on the other hand, has been rich in
spiritual heritage.
This is
similar to the example of a blind man and a lame man working to help
each other. The blind man may be able to walk or even run, but
without eyes he may run many miles in the wrong direction. And a
lame man may be able to see where to go but move only with great
difficulty. In this way, they help each other accomplish their
goals. So, it is natural, as in this example, for the East and the
West to assist each other until a proper combination is found. It
has been understood by great thinkers that this combination of East
and West can be accomplished through the study and utilization of
the Vedic philosophy, culminating in the Bhagavad-gita, in
which case they will produce the epitome of human civilization.
In this way,
numerous writers and poets of the West, which we have admired for
years, have gotten much of their inspiration from Eastern
philosophy. Thus, the Bhagavad-gita has already made a
definite contribution to the spiritual and intellectual development
of Western society.
THE WIDE INFLUENCE OF VEDIC
INDIA
First of all, as
explained in The Ancient World by John Haywood, “India is the
birthplace of two of the world’s great religions, Hinduism and
Buddhism. Today, nearly half the world’s population live in
countries whose cultural development has been influenced by one or
both of these religions. Apart from India itself, these countries
include China, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand,
Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia. The influence of ancient
India was not just limited to its religions. Indian mathematicians
were the first in the Old World to discover the mathematical value
of zero, and gave the world quadratic equations and the now
universally used system of ‘Arabic’ numerals. The alphabets of
Tibet, Mongolia and all of the Southeast Asian languages are of
Indian origin. Yet despite their wide-ranging influence, the early
civilizations of the Indian subcontinent are the least well known of
any of the ancient civilizations.” 1
Many others also
had complimentary things to say about the importance of India and
its Vedic traditions, such as Mark Twain: “Let us remember,... That
India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit, the mother of
Europe’s languages; that she was the mother of our philosophy,
mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics, mother,
through Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity, mother,
through the village community, of self-government and democracy.
Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.” 2
Mark Twain went on
to say: “This is India! Cradle of the human race, birthplace of
human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend,
great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the
moldering antiquities of the rest of the nations,... one land that
all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse,
would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the
globe combined. India had the start of the whole world in the
beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the
first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep
thinkers and subtle intellects. India is the prime source of human
development.” 3
William H Gilbert
said in his Peoples of India: “In the history of human
culture, the contribution of the Indian people in all fields has
been of the greatest importance. From India we are said to have
derived domestic poultry, shellac, lemons, cotton, jute, rice,
sugar, indigo, the buffalo, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, sugar-cane,
the games of chess, pachisi, and polo, the zero concept, the decimal
system, the basis of certain philological concepts, a wealth of
fables with moral import, an astonishing variety of artistic
products, and innumerable ideas of philosophy and religion such as
asceticism and monasticism.”
In this same
regard, Rabindranatha Tagore also related, “I cannot but bring to
your mind those days when the whole of Eastern Asia, from Burma to
Japan was united with India in the closest ties of friendship.”
A. L. Basham also
felt that India was extremely important, as he says in his
Cultural History of India: “There are four main cradles of
civilization, from which elements of culture have spread to other
parts of the world. These are, moving from east to west, China, the
Indian subcontinent, the ‘Fertile Crescent’, and the Mediterranean,
especially Greece and Italy. Of these four areas, India deserves a
larger share of the credit than she is usually given, because, on a
minimum assessment, she has deeply affected the religious life of
most of Asia, as well as extending her influence, directly or
indirectly, to other parts of the world.”
Pierre Sonnerat
also explained, “We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most
remote antiquity... We know that all peoples came there to draw the
elements of their knowledge... India, in her splendour, gave
religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed
to her both their fables and their wisdom.” 4
The German
historian and novelist Friedrich Schlegel saw in Sanskrit the
“original language,” or what is now called the Proto-Indo-European
language, and declared in 1803 that, “Everything without exception
is of Indian origin... ” 5 Also, “Whether directly or
indirectly, all nations are originally nothing but Indian
colonies... The oriental antiquity could, if we consented to deepen
it, bring us back more safely towards the divine.” 6
Regardless of how
much various religions in the past or even today have tried to wipe
out or minimize the advanced nature of Vedic culture, they still
could not do that, as explained as follows by Higgins: “The
peninsula of India would be one of the first peopled countries, and
its inhabitants would have all the habits of the progenitors of man
before the flood in as much perfection or more than any other
nation... In short, whatever learning man possessed before his
dispersion may be expected to be found here, and of this, Hindustan
affords innumerable traces... notwithstanding ... the fruitless
efforts of our priests to disguise it.” 7
Even Vedic
culture’s deep spirituality is found to be the underlying basis of
other religions, as explained by Maurice Maeterlinck: “Thanks to the
labors of a science which is comparatively recent, and more
especially to the researches of the students of Hindu and Egyptian
antiquities, it is very much easier today than it was not so long
ago to discover the source, to ascend the course and unravel the
underground network of that great mysterious river which since the
beginning of history has been flowing beneath all the religions, all
the faiths, and all the philosophies: in a word, beneath all the
visible and everyday manifestations of human thought. It is now
hardly to be contested that this source is to be found in ancient
India. Thence in all probability the sacred teaching spread into
Egypt, found its way to ancient Persia and Chaldea, permeated the
Hebrew race, and crept into Greece and the north of Europe, finally
reaching China and even America.” 8
Professor James
Traub, in India–The Challenge of Change, goes on to say:
“Five thousand years ago, civilization of India was age-old. This
civilization should be much older with many millennia of human
endeavor behind it. Five thousand years ago, when the peoples of
Europe were hauling stones across the face of the continent and
grubbing out a meager existence, Indians throughout what is now
western and southern Pakistan and Punjab, and even farther to the
East, were living in elaborately designed cities, with sturdy
houses, broad, straight roads, public baths, and drainage systems
that were hardly equaled until the Roman era three thousand years
later.... But five thousand years ago, according to archeologist
John Marshal, the Indus Valley civilization was already age-old and
stereotyped on Indian soil, with many millennia of human endeavor
behind it. Usually we think of Mesopotamia as the cradle of
civilization, but evidence suggests that the society of northwestern
India, which has preserved its essential spirit over countless
generations, deserve equal billing.”
Not only was the
Vedic Indian influence recognized to the west of India, but also far
to the east, as explained by Rene Grousset in Farther India and
the Malay Archipelago (Volume II): “In the high plateau of
eastern Iran, in the oases of Serindia, in the arid wastes of Tibet,
Mongolia, and Manchuria, in the ancient civilized lands of China and
Japan, in the lands of the primitive Mons and Khmers and other
tribes of India-China, in the countries of the Malaya-Polynesians,
in Indonesia and Malay, India left the indelible impress of her high
culture, not only upon religion, but also upon art, and literature,
in a word, all the higher things of spirit... There is an obstinate
prejudice thanks to which India is constantly represented as having
lived, as it were, hermetically sealed up in its age-old
civilization, apart from the rest of Asia. Nothing could be more
exaggerated. During the first eight centuries of our era, so far as
religion and art are concerned, central Asia was a sort of Indian
colony. It is often forgotten that in the early Middle Ages there
existed a ‘Greater India,’ a vast Indian empire. A man coming from
the Ganges or the Deccan to Southeast Asia felt as much at home
there as in his own native land. In those days the Indian Ocean
really deserved its name.”
Will Durant in his
Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, goes on to say,
“It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to
us such questionable gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and
fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all, our numerals and our
decimal system. But these are not the essence of her spirit; they
are trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future. As
invention, industry and trade bind the continents together, or as
they fling us into conflict with Asia, we shall study its
civilization more closely, and shall absorb, even in enmity, some of
its ways and thoughts. Perhaps, in return for conquest, arrogance
and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of
the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the
calm of the understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for
all living things.”
However, that may
depend on how much the people of India retain their culture.
Otherwise, the more Westernized they become in their thinking and
values, the more the above statement may be called into question.
Nonetheless, to remain aware of its possibilities, we should not
forget the well-known and glowing words that Max Muller had for
India and its culture: “If I were to look over the whole world to
find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power
and beauty that nature can bestow–in some parts a very paradise on
earth–I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the
human mind most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most
deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found
solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of
those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. If I
were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, may draw
the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life
more perfect, more universal, in fact more truly human, again I
should point to India.” 9
Lord Curzon, while
Viceroy of India, in his address at the Great Delhi Durbar in 1901,
expressed, “Powerful empires existed and flourished here (in India)
while Englishmen were still wandering, painted, in the woods, and
while the British Colonies were still a wilderness and a jungle.
India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and
the religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the
universe.”
From a more
political perspective, Lord Curzon, before he went to India as a
Viceroy, two or three times emphasized the importance of India to
the British Empire when he said: “India was the pivot of our Empire.
If this Empire lost any other part of its dominion we could survive,
but if we lost India, the sun of our Empire would be set.” (Times,
3/12/1898)
Lord Roberts, after
retiring for good from India, also said a similar statement to the
London Chamber of Commerce: “I rejoice to learn that you recognize
how indissolubly the prosperity of the United Kingdom is bound with
the retention of that vast Eastern Empire.” (Times,
25/5/1893)
“That retention of
our Eastern Empire is essential to the greatness and prosperity of
the United Kingdom.” (Times, 29/7/1893)
“However efficient
and well-equipped the army of India may be, were it indeed absolute
perfection, and were its numbers considerably more than they are at
present, our greatest strength must ever rest on the firm base of a
united and contented India.” 10
In this way, the
Vedic empire was a different kind of empire and showed its influence
by its qualities and beneficial nature to one and all, rather than
by power and military dominance. In A History of India by
Kulke and Rothermund (1986, p.152), they explain how the influence
of ancient India traveled over many lands: “The transmission of
Indian culture to distant parts of Central Asia, China, Japan, and
especially Southeast Asia is certainly one of the greatest
achievements of Indian history or even the history of mankind. None
of the other great civilizations–not even Hellenic–had been able to
achieve a similar success without military conquest.”
The attractive
nature of the Vedic Aryan Culture is explained more completely by
David Frawley: “In the beginning there was one culture–that of the
Spirit–and one language–that of Truth. This culture was outwardly
one of worship and inwardly one of meditation. The language was one
of mantra and communication was from the heart. The outer life was
simple. There were small cities and villages, mainly along the
rivers. Agriculture was practiced with the use of domesticated
animals. Boats and wagons were used for travel. The emphasis was on
the inner life and the outer life was not considered important, nor
was there any great effort or need to improve it. Nature was
abundant. This culture did not come from the outside but came from
within and was guided by the sages, who generally lived in retreat
in the mountains, who visited the peoples periodically and gave them
instruction. From it later cultures diversified, along with
divisions of language and religion, as we gradually fell from truth
and our connection to the Divine to pursue outward and sensate
values.” 11
Some additional
information of the peaceful and developed ways of the Harappan
culture is described by Michel Danino in his book, The Invasion
that Never Was. “Dancing, painting, sculpture and music (there
is evidence of drums and stringed instruments) were part of Harappan
culture. Probably drama and puppet shows too, as a number of masks
were found. The Harappans may also have been the inventors of the
game of chess, of which one terracotta set was found at Lothal.
Other kinds of gaming board and pieces have come up at many sites,
as well as cubical dice identical to those used today. Children do
not seem to have been neglected, judging from the exquisite care
with which craftsmen fashioned toy oxcarts and figurines, spinning
tops, marbles, rattles and whistles. And they could also amuse
themselves with pet dogs and monkeys, pet squirrels and birds, too.
“Naturally, with
hundreds of rural settlements, agriculture was practiced on a wide
scale, the result of a long tradition going back four millennia.
There is evidence of networks of canals for irrigation, of carefully
shaped ploughs and ingenious tilling methods: at Kalibangan, for
instance, excavations revealed a field ploughed with two
perpendicular networks of furrows, in which higher crops (such as
mustard) were grown in spaced-out north-south furrows, thus casting
shorter shadows, while shorter crops (such as gram) filled
contiguous east-west furrows. In the Indus valley, wheat, barley,
pulses, a number of vegetables, and cotton were some of the common
crops, and were planted following the two-season pattern still in
use today (rabi or winter, kharif or summer); in
Gujarat, rice and various millets were grown, too.” 12
THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT–STILL
ATTRACTIVE TODAY
One of the major
factors of the Vedic society was their spiritual orientation, which
many people seek out even today. Max Muller mentioned this in one of
his books: “I wish to point out that there was another sphere of
intellectual activity in which the Hindus excelled–the meditative
and transcendent–and that here we might learn from them some lessons
of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ignore or to despise.”13
It was the
Bhagavad-gita philosophy that charmed and attracted people. As
the Britisher Sir Charles Elliot explains, more than military or
economic power, Vedic India spread into the hearts of people because
of her way of thinking, and through that process spread over the
globe. “Scant justice is done to India’s position in the world by
those European histories which recount the exploits of her invader
and leave the impression that her own people were a feeble dreamy
fold, sundered from the rest of mankind by their seas and mountain
frontiers. Such a picture takes no account of the intellectual
conquests of the Hindus. Even their political conquests were not
contemptible, and are remarkable for the distance, if not the
extent, of the territories occupied... But such military or
commercial invasions are insignificant compared with the spread of
Indian thought.”
Sir William Jones
(1746-94) once said about his admiration for India: “I am in love
with Gopia, charmed by Crishen (Krishna), an enthusiastic admirer of
Ram and a devout adorer of Brihma (Brahma), Bishen (Vishnu),
Mahisher (Maheshwara); not to mention that Judishteir, Arjen, Corno
(Yudhishtira, Arjun and Karna) and the other warriors of the
Mahabharata appear greater in my eyes than Agamemnon, Ajax and
Achilles appeared when I first read the Iliad.” 14
Arthur Schopenhauer,
the German scholar (1788-1860), as quoted by Nehru, 15
once said that he expected Vedic Dharma to become accepted by the
majority of people: “From every sentence (of the Upanishads)
deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole world is
pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit... In the whole world
there is no study ... so beneficial and as elevating as that of the
Upanishads... (They) are products of the highest wisdom ... It is
destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people.”
It was also
Schopenhauer who said, “The truth was recognized by the sages of
India.” 16
GREATNESS OF VEDAS
Much of the reason
for the qualities of ancient India and its great sages are held and
can be seen by the greatness of the Vedic texts. This has been
recognized by numerous scholars over the years. Here are a few, such
as Professor Paul William Roberts in Empire of the Soul: Some
Journeys in India: “The Vedas still represent eternal
truth in the purest form ever written.”
Of course, we know
that Henry David Thoreau greatly admired the Vedic literature, as
mentioned in Quotes of Henry David Thoreau: “What extracts
from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a
higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through
a purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars
have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky.”
He also said in
The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, “In the morning I bathe my
intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the
Bhagavad-gita, since whose composition years of the gods have
elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its
literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is
not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is
its sublimity from our conceptions.”
Another famous
quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson is, “I owed a magnificent day to the
Bhagavad-gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small
or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old
intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus
disposed of the same questions which exercise us.”
Even Aldous Huxley
once related, “The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic
statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value of mankind. The
Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries
of the spiritual thoughts ever to have been made.” 17
Annie Besant brings
up another idea, that even westerners who are now drawn to the rare
teachings of the Vedic philosophy are experiencing an attraction
that was attained in a previous life. In India: Essays and
Lectures she says: “Among the priceless teachings that may be
found in the great Indian epic Mahabharata, there is none so
rare and priceless as the Gita... This is the India of which
I speak–the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For
those who, though born for this life in a Western land, and clad in
a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which
they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their
true mother–they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past;
must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination; for
they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past and
with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a
future which they know they will share with her who is their true
mother in the soul-life.” 18
CHAPTER NOTES
1. Haywood, John, The
Ancient World, New York, Metro Books, 2013, p.54.
2. Twain, Mark, Following
the Equator, 1897, p. 347.
3. Ibid.
4. Sonnerat, P., Voyage aux
Indes orientales et a la Chine, Paris, 1782.
5. Schlegel, Friedrich von,
Letter to Ludwig Tieck of 15 December, 1803, quoted by Leon
Poliakov in The Aryan Myth.
6. Schlegel, Friedrich von,
Essay on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, quoted by
Roger-Pol Droit in L’Oubli de I’Inde, Paris Presses
Universitaires de France, 1989, p. 129.
7. Higgins, The Celtic
Druids) (Niranjan Shah, India: The Birthplace of Human Speech,
International Vedic Vision, Sands Point, N.Y., 2013, p. 66.
8. Maeterlink, Maurice, in
The Great Secret) (Niranjan Shah, Indian Origins of Ancient
Civilizations, International Vedic Vision Foundation, New York,
2011, p.4.
9. Muller, F. Max, India,
What can it teach us? Published by Rupa & Co., New Delhi,
reprint in 2002.
11. Frawley, David, Gods,
Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization, Passage
Press, Salt Lake City, 1991, p.239.
12. Danino, Michel, & Sujata
Nahar, The Invasion That Never Was, The Mother’s Institute of
Research, Delhi, 2000, p.91.
13. Muller, Max, India: What
Can it Teach Us?, Longmans, Funk & Wagnalls Company, London,
1999, p.138.
14. Mukharji, S.N., Sir
William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth Century British Attitudes to
India, Orient Longman, 1987.
15. The Discovery of India,
Calcutta, Signet Press, 1946, pp. 92-93.
16. Schopenhauer, Arthur,
The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, trans. E. Payne,
New York: Dover Publishing Inc., 1969, p.3.
17. Galav, T. C. Philosophy
of Hinduism–An Introduction, p.65.
18.
Besant, Annie, India: Essays and Lectures, Vol. IV, The
Theosophical Publishing Company, London, 1895, p.11.
[From www.stephen-knapp.com]
