There Is Not A Country Of Antiquity, Not Even Excluding The Egypt
Of The Pharaohs, Where The Development Of The
Subjective ideal
into its demonstration by an objective symbol has been expressed
more graphically, more skillfully, and artistically, than in
India.
The whole pantheism of the Vedanta is contained in the symbol of
the bisexual deity Ardhanari. It is surrounded by the double
triangle, known in India under the name of the sign of Vishnu.
By his side lie a lion, a bull, and an eagle. In his hands there
rests a full moon, which is reflected in the waters at his feet.
The Vedanta has taught for thousands of years what some of the
German philosophers began to preach at the end of last century and
the beginning of this one, namely, that everything objective in
the world, as well as the world itself, is no more than an illusion,
a Maya, a phantom created by our imagination, and as unreal
as the reflection of the moon upon the surface of the waters. The
phenomenal world, as well as the subjectivity of our conception
concerning our Egos, are nothing but, as it were, a mirage. The
true sage will never submit to the temptations of illusion. He
is well aware that man will attain to self-knowledge, and become
a real Ego, only after the entire union of the personal fragment
with the All, thus becoming an immutable, infinite, universal Brahma.
Accordingly, he considers the whole cycle of birth, life, old age,
and death as the sole product of imagination.
Generally speaking, Indian philosophy, split up as it is into
numerous metaphysical teachings, possesses, when united to Indian
ontological doctrines, such a well developed logic, such a
wonderfully refined psychology, that it might well take the
first rank when contrasted with the schools, ancient and modern,
idealist or positivist, and eclipse them all in turn. That
positivism expounded by Lewis, that makes each particular hair
on the heads of Oxford theologians stand on end, is ridiculous
child's play compared with the atomistic school of Vaisheshika,
with its world divided, like a chessboard, into six categories
of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and
five motions. And, however difficult, and even impossible may
seem the exact representation of all these abstract ideas, idealistic,
pantheistic, and, sometimes, purely material, in the condensed shape
of allegorical symbols, India, nevertheless, has known how to express
all these teachings more or less successfully. She has immortalized
them in her ugly, four-headed idols, in the geometrical, complicated
forms of her temples, and even in the entangled lines and spots
on the foreheads of her sectaries.
We were discussing this and other topics with our Hindu fellow-
travellers when a Catholic padre, a teacher in the Jesuit College
of St. Xavier in Bombay, entered our carriage at one of the stations.
Soon he could contain himself no longer, and joined in our
conversation. Smiling and rubbing his hands, he said that he
was curious to know on the strength of what sophistry our companions
could find anything resembling a philosophical explanation "in
the fundamental idea of the four faces of this ugly Shiva, crowned
with snakes," pointing with his finger to the idol at the entrance
to a pagoda.
"It is very simple," answered the Bengali Babu. You see that its
four faces are turned towards the four cardinal points, South,
North, West, and East - but all these faces are on one body and
belong to one god."
"Would you mind explaining first the philosophical idea of the
four faces and eight hands of your Shiva," interrupted the padre.
"With great pleasure. Thinking that our great Rudra (the Vedic
name for this god) is omnipresent, we repre-sent him with his face
turned simultaneously in all directions. Eight hands indicate his
omnipotence, and his single body serves to remind us that he is One,
though he is everywhere, and nobody can avoid his all-seeing eye,
or his chastising hand."
The padre was going to say something when the train stopped; we
had arrived at Narel.
It is hardly twenty-five years since, for the first time, a white
man ascended Mataran, a huge mass of various kinds of trap rock,
for the most part crystalline in form. Though quite near to Bombay,
and only a few miles from Khandala, the summer residence of the
Europeans, the threatening heights of this giant were long considered
inaccessible. On the north, its smooth, almost vertical face rises
2,450 feet over the valley of the river Pen, and, further on,
numberless separate rocks and hillocks, covered with thick vegetation,
and divided by valleys and precipices, rise up to the clouds. In
1854, the railway pierced one of the sides of Mataran, and now has
reached the foot of the last mountain, stopping at Narel, where,
not long ago, there was nothing but a precipice. From Narel to
the upper plateau is but eight miles, which you may travel on a
pony, or in an open or closed palanquin, as you choose.
Considering that we arrived at Narel about six in the evening,
this course was not very tempting. Civilization has done much
with inanimate nature, but, in spite of all its despotism, it has
not yet been able to conquer tigers and snakes. Tigers, no doubt,
are banished to the more remote jungles, but all hinds of snakes,
especially cobras and coralillos, which last by preference inhabit
trees, still abound in the forests of Mataran as in days of old,
and wage a regular guerilla warfare against the invaders. Woe
betide the belated pedestrian, or even horseman, if he happens to
pass under a tree which forms the ambuscade of a coralillo snake!
Cobras and other reptiles seldom attack men, and will generally try
to avoid them, unless accidentally trodden upon, but these guerilleros
of the forest, the tree serpents, lie in wait for their victims. As
soon as the head of a man comes under the branch which shelters the
coralillo, this enemy of man, coiling its tail round the branch,
dives down into space with all the length of is body, and strikes
with its fangs at the man's forehead.
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