INDIAN CULTURE AND ITS MESSAGE The exact dates of the antiquity of Indian history are difficult to determine, but the earliest records of this history are surprisingly available to us with almost the same precision as they were composed in those ancient times. And these records are voluminous and consist of four anthologies or collections. Their generic name is Veda, which literally means "Book of Knowledge”. These four Vedas are: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. This is not an occasion to dwell. upon the contents of these anthologies, but if we want to give a quintessential idea, it can be summed up by stating that it insists on the quest

LANDMARKS OF HINDUISM I. The Vedic Age To understand the significance of the development of Hinduism, it is necessary to go back to the Veda, which can be regarded as the luminous seed of the huge banyan tree of what in course of time came to be known as Hinduism. (It may be noted that the ancient Indian Religion that was developed from the Veda was known as Sanatana Dharma or Arya Dharma. The word Hinduism came to be used at a later stage when foreigners referred to the religion practised by the people of India.) In the eyes of the Rishis, who composed the Veda, the physical and the psychical worlds were a manifestation and twofold and diverse and yet c

VEDIC TRADITION AND CONTEMPORARY CRISIS The Vedic tradition has a powerful message for contemporary humanity which is gripped with a crisis, the nature of which is difficult to be described in the ordinary and familiar terms of sociology, economics and polity. But this message can be discerned only if we consent to look upon the Vedic tradition not merely in its outer religious import but in its deeper pursuit of knowledge relating to what the Vedas call Prithvi, the earth, Antariksha, subtle levels of existence between matter and mind, Dyau, the plane of the higher mind, Svah, the world of light, and Surya, the world of everlasting day or of the

VEDAS, PURANAS AND THEREAFTER — Continuity and Change — I The Vedas stand out in Indian history as the Himalayas of spirituality and as the perennial source of multisided culture. The Vedic Samhitas bear witness to epical struggle and victory of the Vedic Rishis, and those Rishis are felt even today as the spirits who assist their offsprings as the new dawns repeat the old and lean forward in light to join the dawns of the future. And as we read the inner history of India, we find these great Rishis shaping and moulding new Rishis age after age and helping them to build the bridges between the past and future. Continuity and change mingle with each other i

VEDIC PHILOSOPHY OF DHARMA (in brief and essential terms) I The immortal mystic fire of aspiration adores cosmic powers and beings so that the eternal principles of Dharma may not be violated. The concepts of Dharma and Karma have been derived from some of the important discoveries which were made by the Vedic -Rishis. We shall refer mainly to five of these discoveries. I Greatest of these discoveries was that of the fourth world as distinguished from the world of matter (prithm), world of life (antariksha) and the world of mind (dyau). This fourth world was called "turiyam svid, the world of truth and of everlasting light. Three words

CONCEIT OF DHARMA: REFLECTIONS ON ITS APPLICATIONS TO CONTEMPORARY PROCESS OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION I There is today a deep but painful search for the fundamental ideals of social reconstruction, which is being done under the influence of three principles of progress, which came to be formulated in the West under the interrelated concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which, in turn, have been imprinted powerfully on humanity under the impress of the French Revolution. The history of modern West, as also of developing nations in the world, can be studied as an account of social, economic and political experimentation the aim of which has been