Indian Wisdom

The Hymns of the Veda.

TN the following Lectures I propose to offer examples of the most remarkable religious, philosophical, and ethical teachings of ancient Hindu authors, arranging the instances given in regular sequence according to the successive epochs of Sanskrit literature. In attempting this task I am conscious of my inability to do justice in a short compass to the richness of the materials at my command. An adequate idea of the luxuriance of Sanskrit literature can with difficulty be conveyed to occidental scholars. Perhaps, too, the severe European critic will be slow to acquiesce in any tribute of praise bestowed on compositions too often marked by tedious repetitions, redundant epithets, and far-fetched conceits; just as the genuine Oriental, nurtiured under glowing tropical skies, cannot easily be brought to appreciate the coldness and severe simplicity of an educated Englishman s style of writing. We might almost say that with Hindu authors excellence is apt to be measured by magnitude, quality by quantity, were it not for the striking thoughts and noble sentiments which often reward the student who will take the trouble to release them from their surplusage of words; were it not also, that with all this tendency to diffuseness, it is certainly a fact that nowhere do we find the art of condensation so successfully cultivated as in some departments of Sanskrit literature. Probably the very prolixity natural to Indian \\Titers led to the opposite extreme of brevity, not merely by a law of reaction, but by the necessity for providing tbe memory with aids and restoratives when oppressed and debilitated by too great a burden. However that may be, every student of Sanskrit will certainly note in its literary productions a singular inequality both as to quantity and quality; so that in studying Hindu literature continuously we are liable to be called upon to pass from the most exuberant verbosity to the most obscure brevity; from sound wisdom to little better than puerile unwisdom; from subtle reasoning to transparent sophistry; from high morality — often expressed in impressive language worthy of Christianity itself — to precepts implying a social condition scarcely compatible with the lowest grade of culture and civilization.