Yet persuasion is never an all-or-nothing act. For an argument to succeed, it has always to be willing to shed some of its purity, its absoluteness: to live with compromise. (Location 441)
How Japanese aggression in China had moved India deeply and revived the age-old friendship for China; how Italy’s rape of Abyssinia had sickened us; how the betrayal of Czechoslovakia had hurt and embittered us; how the fall of Republican Spain, after a struggle full of heroic endurance, had been a tragedy and a personal sorrow for me and others. (Location 526)
‘We must look the world in the face with calm and clear eyes even though the eyes of the world are blood-shot today.’ (Location 916)
‘I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped, nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed aside like a moth with indifference. If you deign to keep me by your side in the path of danger and daring, if you allow me to share the great duties of your life, then you will know my true self.’ (Location 963)
the materialist philosophy was professed in India for centuries and had, at the time, a powerful influence on the people. In the famous Arthashastra, Kautilya’s book on political and economic organization, written in the fourth century BC, it is mentioned as one of the major philosophies of India. (Location 2052)
Many of these legends and poets’ fancies have been delightfully adapted by F.W Bain in his series of little books containing stories from Indian mythology. (Location 2209)
Note: A book recommendation
he took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of the creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephants’s trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot’s bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakravaka; and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man’. (Location 2212)
Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, and Buddha were contemporaries, and both came from the Kshatriya warrior class. Buddha died at the age of eighty, in 544 BC, and the Buddhist era begins then. (Location 2491)
Many of the Rajput Kshatriya clans date back to the Shaka or Scythian invasions which began about the second century BC or from the later invasion of the White Huns. (Location 2508)
Rebels against caste have drawn many followers, and yet in course of time their group has itself become a caste. Jainism, a rebel against the parent religion and in many ways utterly different from it, was yet tolerant to caste and adapted itself to it; and so it survives and continues in India, almost as an offshoot of Hinduism. Buddhism, not adapting itself to caste, and more independent in its thought and outlook, ultimately passes away from India, though it influences India and Hinduism profoundly. Christianity comes here eighteen hundred years ago and settles down and gradually develops its own castes. The Muslim social structure in India, in spite of its vigorous denunciation of all such barriers within the community, is also partly affected. (Location 2515)
Before the Buddha, seven hundred years before Christ, a great Indian, the sage and lawgiver Yagnavalkya, is reported to have said: ‘It is not our religion, still less the colour of our skin, that produces virtue; virtue must be practised. Therefore, let no one do to others that he would not have done to himself.’ (Location 2529)
Buddhism spread gradually in India. Although in origin a Kshatriya movement, and representing a conflict between the ruling class and the priests, its ethical and democratic aspect, and more especially its fight against priestcraft and ritualism, appealed to the people. It developed as a popular reform movement, attracting even some Brahmin thinkers. (Location 2533)
Alexander’s invasion of the north-west gave the final push to this development, and two remarkable men arose who could take advantage of the changing conditions and mould them according to their will. These men were Chandragupta Maurya and his friend and minister and counsellor, the Brahmin, Chanakya. (Location 2540)
Both had been exiled from the powerful Nanda kingdom of Magadha, which had its headquarters at Pataliputra (the modern Patna); both went to Taxila in the north-west and came in contact with the Greeks stationed there by Alexander. Chandragupta met Alexander himself; he heard of his conquests and glory and was fired by ambition to emulate him. Chandragupta and Chanakya watched and prepared themselves; they hatched great and ambitious schemes and waited for the opportunity to realize them. Soon news came of Alexander’s death at Babylon in 323 BC, and immediately Chandragupta and Chanakya raised the old and ever-new cry of nationalism and roused the people against the foreign invader. The Greek garrison was driven away and Taxila captured. The appeal to nationalism had brought allies to Chandragupta and he marched with them across north India to Pataliputra. Within two years of Alexander’s death, he was in possession of that city and kingdom, and the Maurya Empire had been established. (Location 2543)
Long before Clausewitz, he is reported to have said that war is only a continuance of state policy by other means. (Location 2566)
Chanakya was in the pursuit of his aim, he never forgot that it was better to win over an intelligent and high-minded enemy than to crush him. His final victory was obtained by sowing discord in the enemy’s ranks, and, in the very moment of this victory, so the story goes, he induced Chandragupta to be generous to his rival chief. (Location 2571)
Buddha is reported to have said: ‘If by the absolute is meant something out of relation to all known things, its existence cannot be established by any known reasoning. How can we know that anything unrelated to other things exists at all? The whole universe, as we know it, is a system of relations: we know nothing that is, or can be, unrelated.’ (Location 2654)
We use terms and descriptions in this world of experience and say ‘it is’ or ‘it is not’. Yet neither may be correct when we go behind the superficial aspect of things and our language may be inadequate to describe what is actually happening. Truth may lie somewhere in the middle of ‘is’ and ‘is not’ or beyond them. The river flows continuously and appears to be the same from moment to moment, yet the waters are ever changing. So also fire. The flame keeps glowing and even maintains its shape and form, yet it is never the same flame and it changes every instant. So everything continually changes and life in all its forms is a stream of becoming. Reality is not something that is permanent and unchanging, but rather a kind of radiant energy, a thing of forces and movements, a succession of sequences. The idea of time is just ‘a notion abstracted by mere usage from this or that event.’ We cannot say that one thing is the cause of something else for there is no core of permanent being which changes. The essence of a thing is its immanent law of relation to other so-called things. Our bodies and our souls change from moment to moment; they cease to be, and something else, like them and yet different, appears and then passes off. In a sense we are dying all the time and being reborn and this succession gives the appearance of an unbroken identity. It is ‘the continuity of an ever-changing identity.’ Everything is flux, movement, change. (Location 2662)
Once, it is said, he took some dry leaves in his hand and asked his favourite disciple, Ananda, to tell him whether there were any other leaves besides those in his hand. Ananda replied: ‘The leaves of autumn are falling on all sides, and there are more of them than can be numbered.’ Then said the Buddha: ‘In like manner I have given you a handful of truths, but besides these there are many thousands of other truths, more than can be numbered.’ (Location 2693)
Seated on the lotus flower, calm and impassive, above passion and desire, beyond the storm and strife of this world, so far away he seems, out of reach, unattainable. Yet again we look and behind those still, unmoving features there is a passion and an emotion, strange and more powerful than the passions and emotions we have known. His eyes are closed, but some power of the spirit looks out of them and a vital energy fills the frame. The ages roll by and Buddha seems not so far away after all; his voice whispers in our ears and tells us not to run away from the struggle but, calm-eyed, to face it, and to see in life ever greater opportunities for growth and advancement. (Location 2721)
It is interesting to note that while Indian philosophy is highly individualistic and deals almost entirely with the individual’s growth to some kind of inner perfection, the Indian social structure was communal and paid attention to groups only. The individual was allowed perfect freedom to think and believe what he liked, but he had to conform strictly to social and communal usage. (Location 2965)
But the necessity for change and continuous adaptation was recognized and hence grew a passion for synthesis. It was a synthesis not only of the various elements that came into India but also an attempt at a synthesis between the outer and inner life of the individual, between man and nature. There were no such wide gaps and cleavages as seem to exist today. This common cultural background created India and gave it an impress of unity in spite of its diversity. At the root of the political structure was the self-governing village system, which endured at the base while kings came and went. Fresh migrations from outside and invaders merely ruffled the surface of this structure without touching those roots. The power of the state, however despotic in appearance, was curbed in a hundred ways by customary and constitutional restraints, and no ruler could easily interfere with the rights and privileges of the village community. These customary rights and privileges ensured a measure of freedom both for the community and the individual. (Location 2977)
The Greeks, as a race, may have lived more in the present and found joy and harmony in the beauty they saw around them or which they themselves created. (Location 3103)
The Indians found this joy and harmony also in the present, but, at the same time, their eyes were turned towards deeper knowledge and their minds trafficked with strange questions. (Location 3104)
The Chinese, fully aware of these questions and their mystery, in their wisdom avoided entanglement with them. (Location 3105)
History has shown that India and China had stronger foundations and greater staying power; they have thus far survived, though they have been badly shaken and have greatly deteriorated, and the future is obscure. (Location 3106)
Old Greece, for all its brilliance, had a short life; it did not survive except in its splendid achievements, its influence on succeeding cultures, and the memory of that short bright day of abundant life. Perhaps because it was too much engrossed in the present, it became the past. (Location 3108)
And yet Hellenism has among its many splendid achievements one that is even more unique than others, the early beginnings of experimental science. This was developed far more in the Hellenic world of Alexandria than in Greece itself, and the two centuries from 330 to 130 BC stand out in the record of scientific development and mechanical invention. There is nothing to compare with this in India, or, for the matter of that, anywhere else till science again took a big stride from the seventeenth century onwards. Even Rome for all its empire and the Pax Romana over a considerable area, its close contacts with Hellenic civilization, its opportunities to draw upon the learning and experiences of many peoples, made no significant contribution to science, invention, or mechanical development. After the collapse of classical civilization in Europe it was the Arabs who kept the flame of scientific knowledge alight through the Middle Ages. (Location 3143)
He emphasized the ethical aspects of life and evidently felt that these suffered and were neglected because of a preoccupation with metaphysical subtleties. Early Buddhism reflected to some extent this philosophic and rational spirit of the Buddha, and its inquiries were based on experience. In the world of experience the concept of pure being could not be grasped and was therefore put aside; so also the idea of a creator God, which was a presumption not capable of logical proof. Nevertheless the experience remained and was real enough in a sense; what could this be except a mere flux of becoming, (Location 3489)
He established four great maths or monasteries, locating them far from each other, almost at the four corners of India. One of these was in the south at Sringeri in Mysore, another at Puri on the east coast, the third at Dvaraka in Kathiawad on the west coast, and the fourth at Badrinath in the heart of the Himalayas. At the age of thirty-two this Brahmin from the tropical south died at Kedarnath in the upper snow-covered reaches of the Himalayas. (Location 3890)
‘The power which has succeeded in welding all the subordinate ruling powers into one great system of government is essentially naval; and since it controls the sea-ways, it has been forced in the interests of security, to close the land-ways. This has been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which lie on the frontiers of the Indian Empire—Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and Burma. Political isolation has thus followed as a necessary consequence of political unity. But it must be remembered that this political isolation is a recent and an entirely novel feature in the history of India. It is the great landmark which separates the present from the past. (Location 11459)
