Chapter Two THE SUPPOSED ARYAN INVASION The first question has to be considered under two heads: archaeological and literary. In an article of 1966, "The Decline of the Harappans", G.R. Dales, director of archaeological fieldwork in South Asia, particularly in West Pakistan, for a good number of years, wrote in connection with the topic of an Aryan invasion of India: "The Aryans... have not yet been identified archæologically."1 Even a diehard defender like Sir Mortimer Wheeler of the Aryan-invasion hypothesis and of the theory that the Rigvedic Aryans destroyed the Harappā Culture had to state: "It is best to admit that no proto-Aryan material cultu

Chapter XIII   The Formation of the Nation-Unit — The Three Stages   THE THREE stages of development which have marked the mediaeval and modern evolution of the nation-type may be regarded as the natural process where a new form of unity has to be created out of complex conditions and heterogeneous materials by an external rather than an internal process. The external method tries always to mould the psychological condition of men into changed forms and habits under the pressure of circumstances and institutions rather than by the direct creation of a new psychological condition which would, on the contrary, d

Chapter XX   The Drive towards Economic Centralisation   THE OBJECTIVE organisation of a national unity is not yet complete when it has arrived at the possession of a single central authority and the unity and uniformity of its political, military and strictly administrative functions. There is another side of its organic life, the legislative and its corollary, the judicial function, which is equally important; the exercise of legislative power becomes eventually indeed, although it was not always, the characteristic sign of the sovereign. Logically, one would suppose that the conscious and organised determination of its own rules

Chapter XXIV   The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age   IF A subjective age, the last sector of a social cycle, is to find its outlet and fruition in a spiritualised society and the emergence of mankind on a higher evolutionary level, it is not enough that certain ideas favourable to that turn of human life should take hold of the general mind of the race, permeate the ordinary motives of its thought, art, ethics, political ideals, social effort, or even get well into its inner way of thinking and feeling. It is not enough even that the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, a reign of spirituality, freedom and unity, a real and inner

  Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry   A page of the Arya with changes made in the 1930s   The Human Cycle   Publisher's Note to the First Edition   The chapters constituting this book were written under the title "The Psychology of Social Development" from month to month in the philosophical monthly, "Arya", from August 1

Chapter XVII   Religion as the Law of Life   SINCE the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the One is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last and highest guide; culture, as it is understood ordinarily, cannot be the directing light or find out the regulating and harmonising principle of all our life and action. For reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life

Chapter XXV   War and the Need of Economic Unity   THE MILITARY necessity, the pressure of war between nations and the need for prevention of war by the assumption of force and authority in the hands of an international body, World-State or Federation or League of Peace, is that which will most directly drive humanity in the end towards some sort of international union. But there is behind it another necessity which is much more powerful in its action on the modern mind, the commercial and industrial, the necessity born of economic interdependence. Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon; one might almost say that is the

Chapter XXVI   The Need of Administrative Unity   IN ALMOST all current ideas of the first step towards international organisation, it is taken for granted that the nations will continue to enjoy their separate existence and liberties and will only leave to international action the prevention of war, the regulation of dangerous disputes, the power of settling great international questions which they cannot settle by ordinary means. It is impossible that the development should stop there; this first step would necessarily lead to others which could travel only in one direction. Whatever authority were established, if it is to be a true authority i

Chapter XXIV   The Need of Military Unification   IN THE process of centralisation by which all the powers of an organised community come to be centred in one sovereign governing body, — the process which has been the most prominent characteristic of national formations, — military necessity has played at the beginning the largest overt part. This necessity was both external and internal, — external for the defence of the nation against disruption or subjection from without, internal for its defence against civil disruption and disorder. If a common administrative authority is essential in order to bind together the constituent parts of

Chapter XXIII   Forms of Government   THE IDEA of a world-union of free nations and empires, loose at first, but growing closer-knit with time and experience, seems at first sight the most practicable form of political unity; it is the only form indeed which would be immediately practicable, supposing the will to unity to become rapidly effective in the mind of the race. On the other hand, it is the State idea which is now dominant. The State has been the most successful and efficient means of unification and has been best able to meet the various needs which the progressive aggregate life of societies has created for itself and is still