I  The Issue: Is India Civilised? Is India Civillsed?   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 dʼesprit 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 of unspe

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 peopleʼs culture is of the highest importance and demands almost as much scrutiny and carefulness of appreciation as the

            The Renaissance in India    The Renaissance in India                                                       THERE has been recently some talk of a Renaissance in India. A number of illuminating essays with that general title and subject have been given to us by a poet and subtle critic and thinker, Mr. James H. Cousins, and others have touched suggestively various sides of the growing movement towards a new life and a new thought that may well seem to justify the description. This Renaissance, this new birth in India, if it is a fact, must become a thing of immense importance both to herself and the world, to herself bec

ANANDAMATH OF BANKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJEE First thirteen chapters only PROLOGUE A wide interminable forest. Most of the trees are Sāls, but other kinds are not wanting. Treetop mingling with treetop, foliage melting into foliage, the interminable lines progress; without crevice, without gap, without even a way for the light to enter, league after league and again league after league the boundless ocean of leaves ad­vances, tossing wave upon wave in the wind. Underneath, thick dark­ness; even at midday the light is dim and uncertain; a seat of terrific gloom. There the foot of man never treads; there, except the illimitable

The Birth of the War-God cANTO one : second rendering A God concealed in mountain majesty Embodied to our cloudy physical sight In snowy summits and green-gloried slopes, To northward of the many-rivered land, Measuring the earth in an enormous ease, Immense Himaloy dwells1 and in the moan Of eastern ocean and in western floods Plunges his giant sides. Him once the hills Imagined as the mighty calf of Earth When the wideness milked her udders; gems brilliant-rayed Were born and herbs on every mountain marge. So in his infinite riches is he dressed, Not all his snows can slay his opulence, And though they chill the fe

K A L I D A S KUMARASAMBHAVA THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD Three Renderings canto ONE: first rendering   1 A God mid hills northern Himaloy rears His snow-piled summits' dizzy majesties, And in the eastern and the western seas He bathes his giant sides; lain down appears Measures the dreaming earth in an enormous ease. 2 Him, it is told, the living mountains made A mighty calf of earth, the mother large, When Meru of that milking had the charge By Prithu bid, and jewels brilliant-rayed Were brightly born and herbs on every mountain marge. 3 So is he in his

CHAPTER THREE urjoona O “If indeed to Thy mind Thought is mightier than action, O Janardan, vexer of the host, wherefore then dost thou yoke me to a dark and fearful deed? ‘Tis as if thou wouldst bewilder me with mixed and tangled speech, therefore speak decidedly one clear thing which shall guide me to my highest welfare.” krishna                              “Two are the ways of devotion in this world; already have I declared it to thee, O sinless one: the devotion of the men of the Sankhyas is by single­ness in knowledge, by singleness in works is the devotion of the men of Yoga. Not by refraining from works shall a man taste actionlessness, and not by renounci

SELECTED POEMS OF JNANADAS Selected Poems of Jnanadas The soul, as yet divided from the Eternal, yet having caught a glimpse of his intoxicating beauty grows passionate in remem­brance and swoons with the. sensuous expectation of union. 0 beauty meant all hearts to move! 0 body made for girls to kiss! In every limb an idol of love, A spring of passion and of bliss. The eyes that once his beauty see, Poor eyes! can never turn away, The heart follows him ceaselessly Like a wild beast behind its prey. Not to be touched those limbs, alas! They are another’s nest of joy. But ah their natural loveliness! Ah Go

To Lesbia ‡ 0 my Lesbia  let us live for loving, Suns can set and return to light the morrow, We when once has sunk down the brief light of living One long night must be slept and slept for ever. Give me kisses a thousand, then a hundred, One more thousand again, again a hundred, Many thousands of kisses, crowding hundreds — Kisses numberless like to sands on sea-shore, Burning Libya's sands in far Cyrene. Then the thousands confound and mix the hundred Lest some envious Fate or eye discover The reckoning of our love and kisses.         ‡Catullus Page - 411