CHAPTER X   INDIAN LITERATURE   THE arts which appeal to the soul through the eye are able to arrive at a peculiarly concentrated expression of the spirit, the aesthesis and the creative mind of a people, but it is in its literature that we must seek for its most flexible and many-sided self-expression, for it is the word used in all its power of clear figure or its threads of suggestion that carries to us most subtly and variably the shades and turns and teeming significances of the inner self in its manifestation. The greatness of a literature lies first in the greatness and worth of its substance, the value of its thought and the beauty of its forms,

II   A RATIONALISTIC CRITIC ON INDIAN CULTURE   CHAPTER I   WHEN we try to appreciate a culture, and when that culture is the one in which we have grown up or from which we draw our governing ideals and are likely from overpartiality to minimise its deficiencies or from overfamiliarity to miss aspects or values of it which would strike an unaccustomed eye, it is always useful as well as interesting to know how others see it. It will not move us to change our view-point for theirs, but we can get fresh light from a study of this kind and help our self-introspection. But there are different ways of seeing a foreign civilis

PUBLISHERS' NOTE   The Foundations of Indian Culture comprises, under a single connecting title, the series of articles that appeared in the ARYA, from 15th December, 1918 to i5th January, 1921, in the following sequence: "Is India Civilised?" (Vol. V. No. 5 —Vol. V. No. 7), "A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture" (Vol. V. No. 7—Vol. V. No. 12) and "A Defence of Indian Culture" (Vol. VI. No. I-Vol. VII. No. 6). The essays have since undergone revision by the author. The essay "Indian Culture and External Influence" which originally appeared in the ARYA Vol. V. No. 8, has been appended to this volume as it bears on th

CHAPTER XV   I HAVE spoken hitherto of the greatness of Indian civilisation in the things most important to human culture, those activities that raise man to his noblest potentialities as a mental, a spiritual, religious, intellectual, ethical, aesthetic being, and in all these matters the cavillings of the critics break down before the height and largeness and profundity revealed when we look at the whole and all its parts in the light of a true understanding of the spirit and intention and a close discerning regard on the actual achievement of the culture. There is revealed not only a great civilisation, but one of the half dozen greatest of which we have a still exi

INDIAN CULTURE AND EXTERNAL INFLUENCE   IN considering Indian civilisation and its renascence, I suggested that a powerful new creation in all fields was our great need, the meaning of the renascence and the one way of preserving the civilisation. Confronted with the huge rush of modern life and thought, invaded by another dominant civilisation, almost her opposite or inspired at least with a Very different spirit to her own, India can only survive by confronting this raw, new, aggressive, powerful world with fresh diviner creations of her own spirit, cast in the mould of her own spiritual ideals. She must meet it by solving its greater problems

I   THE ISSUE   IS INDIA CIVILISED ?   CHAPTER I   A Book under this rather startling title was published some years ago by Sir John Woodroffe, the well-known scholar and writer on Tantric philosophy, in answer to an extravagant jeu d'esprit by Mr. William Archer. That well-known dramatic critic leaving his safe natural sphere for fields in which his chief claim to speak was a sublime and confident ignorance, assailed the whole life and culture of India and even lumped together all her greatest achievements, philosophy, religion, poetry, painting, sculpture, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana, in one wholesale condemnation as a repulsive mass o

IS INDIA CIVILISED ?   CHAPTER II   THIS question of Indian civilisation, once it has raised this greater issue, shifts from its narrow meaning and disappears into a much larger problem. Does the future of humanity lie in a culture founded solely upon reason and science ? Is the progress of human life the effort of a mind, a continuous collective mind constituted by an ever changing sum of transient individuals, that has emerged from the darkness of the inconscient material universe and is stumbling about in it in search of some clear light and some sure support amid its difficulties and problems ? And does civilisation consist in man's endeavour t

CHAPTER VI   INDIAN ART   A GOOD deal of hostile or unsympathetic western criticism of Indian civilisation has been directed in the past against its aesthetic side and taken the form of a disdainful or violent depreciation of its fine arts, architecture, sculpture and painting. Mr. Archer would not find much support in his wholesale and undiscriminating depreciation of a great literature, but here too there has been, if not positive attack, much failure of understanding : but in the attack on Indian art, his is the last and shrillest of many hostile voices. This aesthetic side of a people's culture is of the highest importance and demands almost as much scrutiny

III   A DEFENCE OF INDIAN CULTURE   CHAPTER I   RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY   I HAVE described the framework of the Indian idea from the outlook of an intellectual criticism, because that is the standpoint of the critics who affect to disparage its value." I have shown that Indian culture must be adjudged even from this alien outlook to have been the creation of a wide and noble spirit. Inspired in the heart of its being by a lofty principle, illumined with a striking and uplifting idea of individual manhood and its powers and its possible perfection, aligned to' a spacious plan of social architecture, it was enriched not only by a stro