Essays In National Idealism

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM

SELECT PRESS OPINIONS.

<c The IndianWationa 1!Movemen t appears to us to have-
entered a new phase, and the publication of the present
volume from Dr. Coomaraswamy’s pen marks a definite-

stage in the progress of that movement.It is clear

that a very important step has been taken to pi-omote the*
cause of Indian Nationalism along Indian as distinguished
from Western lines by the publication of the work.”—
Damn Magazine.

cc One could hardly be prepared for the vigour of
thought and masculine energy of English, by which they
are marked ...Their author is a logical and uncompro¬
mising reactionary.Yet we cannot deny the beauty

and truths of the pure ideal as he so nobly and persis¬
tently holds it up /before us.We think the hook he

has written to be of surpassing value .’ 1 —Modem Review.

ESSAYS

IN

NATIONAL IDEALISM

ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY, D.Sc.

PRICE: ONE RUPEE.

G. A. NATESAN AND CO.
MADRAS.

CONTENTS.

PACtfC.

Preface.

I.

The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle

i

II.

Indian Nationality

.. r

III.

Mata Bharata

.. 14

IV.

The Aims and Methods of Indian Art

.. 17

V.

Art and Yoga, in India

.. 52

VI.

The Influence of Modern Europe on Indian Art. 64

VII.

Art of the East and of the 'West ,.

.. 84

VIII.

The Influence of Greek on Indian Art

.. 94

IX.

Education in India,

• , 99

X.

Memory in Education

.. 113

XI.

Christian Missions in India .,

.. 130

XII.

Swadeshi

.. 158

XIII.

Indian Music

172

XIV.

Music and Education in India

.. 192

XV.

Gramophones—and why not?

208

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Plate I. Nataraja .. Facing Page. • IT

Plate II. Prajnaparamita .. .. . * 32

Plate III. Avalokitesvara ., .. .. 35

Plate IV. Capital of Asoka Column at Sarnath ,. 40

Plate V. Dhyani Buddha .. ,. 48

Plate VI. The Poet Sadi Listening to a Singer • * 17T

* c Fair were my fate, beloved, if I be yet on the earth,

When the world is awaken at last, and from mouth to
mouth they tell

Of thy love and thy deeds and thy valour, and thy hope
that nought can quell.”*

“ The Pilgrims of Hope.” By William Morris,

PREFACE.

fr\HESE Essays represent an endeavour towards an ex~
A. planation of the true significance of the national
movement in India. This movement can only be
rightly understood, and has ultimate importance only, as
an idealistic movement. Its outward manifestations have
attracted abundant notice; the deeper meaning of the
struggle is sometimes forgotten, alike in England and in
India. Were this meaning understood, I believe that not
only the world at large, but a large part even of the
English people, would extend to India a true sympathy in
her life-and-death struggle with foreign bureaucracy and
their parasitic dependents. For thisstriiggle or a

; thanjj L political conflict. It is a struggle for spiritual and
mental freedom from the domination of an alien ideal. In
such a conflict, political and economic victory are but half
the battle ; for an India, u free in name, but subdued by
Europe in her inmost soul,” would ill justify the price of
freedom. It is not so much the'material, as the moral
and spiritual, subjection of Indian civilisation that in the
end impoverishes humanity.

William Moms wrote some twenty-seven years ago
concerning Socialism,—and few have worked more whole¬
heartedly for a cause than he did for the ideal that he
understood by Socialism,— 4< Meantime I can see no use in
people having political freedom unless they use it as an
instrument for leading reasonable and manlike lives; no
good even in education if, when they are educated, people
have only slavish work to do, and have to live lives too

PREFACE,

ii

much beset with sordid anxiety for them to be able to
think and feel with the more fortunate people who produc¬
ed art and poetry and great thought.”

To a few it may appear strange that in a book devot¬
ed to the ends of Indian nationalism, so much space
should be given to art, so little said of politics. It is be¬
cause nations are made by artists and by poets, not by
traders and politicians, and because I wish to lay more
stress upon things that are essentially and permanently
true, than upon any sense, however justified, of wrongs
temporarily suffered. Art contains i n i tself the deepe st
pdlndpl es, of life, the truest guide t o the gre at est ar t, the
Art o f Living. The true life, the ideal of Indian culture,
is itself a unity and an art, because of its inspiration by
one ruling passion,, the desire to realise a spiritual inherit¬
ance. All things in India, have been valued in the light
of this desire. No other ideal can ever ultimately shape
or determine the Indian character. In the immediate
future, this passion for self-sacrifice and self-realisation will
; find expression in a nationalism which will be essentially
religious in its sanction. Thus, once more by the inspiration
of a ruling passion—the religious and national ideal in one
—the Art of Life will he realised again ; only by thus be¬
coming artists and poets can we again understand our
own art and poetry, and thereby attain the highest ideal
of nationality, the will and the power to give.

Something of this kind is the burden of my Essays,—
that we should endeavour mor e to be gre at than to possess
great things. All honour to those who have spent their
lives ih. the political struggleyet I believe that it is not
through politics that revolutions are made, and that
National Unity needs a deeper foundation than the percep¬
tion of political wrongs. The true Nationalist is an

PREFACE.

Ill

Idealist; and for him that deeper cause of the Unrest
feulhe longing—for— Se l f H roaUs a tion. He realises that
Nationalism is a duty even more than a right; and
that the duty of upholding the national Dharma is
incompatible with intellectual slavery, and therefore
he seeks to free himself, and through others like himself T
his country.

It is possible to find in true art not merely the spiri¬
tual, but, or rather therefore, the material regeneration
of India.. The educated Indian of to-day, says only too
truly a sympathetic writer, is behind the rest of the world
in artistic understanding. Few have realised in how far
the inefficiency and poverty of modern India, is the direct
result of this. Contrast Japan.

Japan is to a large degree living upon the strength of
her past. That strength lies far more than we suspect,,
in her art:

“To many persons it may appear incredible that the consist¬
ence of Japan *s statesmanship and strategy, the far reach of her
military plans, the splendid qualities of her soldiers and sailors*
the steadiness of nerve, the accuracy of aim, the coolness of ad¬
vance, the deadliness of attack, the self-immolation of regimen ta
at the word of command, are not unconnected with the fact that
she alone among living nations has a truly national art, that her
senses are refined and her taste fastidious, that her poor love beauty
and seek their pleasure amongst flowers. This is a hard saying,
but the truth is even so.”*

The causes which have led to the degeneration of
Indian art, and prevent its revival, are identical with those
that prevent the recovery of her political efficiency.

I do not believe in any regeneration of the Indian
people which cannot find expression in art; any reawakening

worth the name must so express itself. .Th ere.c an be. no

true.realisatioxr of political unity .ui^iilndia'n lifeia* again

inspired by the unity of the nation al culture. More*

.: 1 — ....——— — — _

• “ Hibbert Journal,” October, 1905.

PREFACE.

IV

.necessary, therefore, than all the labours of politicians, is"
National Education, We should not rest satisfied until
the entire control of Indian education is in Indian hands.
It is a matter in which no European should have a voice,
save by the express invitation of Indians. For those only
can educate who sympathise. Every Government and
missionary college and school must be replaced by colleges
and schools of our own, where young men and women are
taught to be true Indians. So long as Indians are pre¬
pared to accept an education, the aim of which is to make
them English in all but colour—and at present they do in
the main accept such education—they cannot achieve a
national unity.

An India, united by even one generation of National
Education, would not need to ask or fight for freedom. It
would be hers in fact, for none could resist that united
•aloofness of spirit which would make the mental atmos¬
phere of India unbreathable by any but friends. The
vital forces associated with the^ national movement i n India
are not liie rely politicah but moral, iiterary, and artistic ;
-and their significance lies in the fact that India
'henceforth will, in the main, judge all things by her own
standards and from her own point of view. But the two sides
of the national movement, the material and the spiritual, are
inseparable and must attain success or fail together. Political
freedom and full responsibility are essential to self-respect
and self-development. Believing this, it will be xmderstood
how impossible it is that any supposed or real advantages
resulting from the British dominion in India could ever lead
, us to accept the indefinite continuance of that dominion as
part of our ideal. Granting the reality of some of these
-advantages—and no.one would pretend* that the government
of India by England has been an absolutely unmixed evil—

PREFACE.

Y

the fact remains that we in India hold the price of any such
advantages to be too high. In- the words of Thoreau, the
Cost of a thing is the whole, amount of what may be called
life, which has to be exchanged for it, immediately, or in
the long run. The advantages, such as they may be, are
outweighed by the paralysis of the live moral forces of the
nation, resulting from the removal of responsibility.

It is a paradox to speak of preparing a people for self-
government. Alien government, by removing responsi¬
bility and the natural motives for public spirit, tends only
to unfit a subject people for independent action. The
•chief lessons in self-government which England has given
to India, have been given in the last few years; given,
however, not in the officially controlled municipalities and
universities, but in the necessity which the present situa¬
tion has revealed to the Indian people,—the necessity for
unity and combination in the national interest. In the
words of one of our leaders, India is ‘ learning through
her own struggles all her lessons of a free and self-regulated
and self-sustained national life/ Those lessons, there is
but too much reason to say, are being learnt in spite of,
not with the help of, England.

The gift of a seat on the Executive Council, or of a
few official posts, more or less, no more fxxlfils or tends to
fulfil the objective of the national movement, than a seat
in the Cabinet for an Ulster Unionist would meet the Irish
demand for Home Rule, or the elevation of Mr. Burns to
the Presidency of the Board of Trade, the Socialist demand
for the nationalisation of natural monopolies. The objec¬
tive of the true nationalist is control of government—not
a share in the administration of his country.

[None can be truly qualified to educate or govern, who
cannot, in the words of the great Sinhalese chronicle,

VI

PREFACE.

4 make themselves one with the religion and the people. v
44 When,” says Confucius, 44 the prince loves what the
people love and hates what the people hate, then is he
what is called the father of the people.” These ideals are
absolutely unattainable by Englishmen in India. However
conscientious a Civil Servant or a Governor may be, his
heart is far away in England, and he counts the days till
he returns. He is, at best, the conscientious bailiff of an
absentee landlord ; a person profoundly ignorant of the
nature of the soil that he attempts to cultivate.

It is not out of hatred for England that India
demands her freedom, it is partly for England’s sake. The
ownership of India is a, chain about England’s neck,—a
weight not less hurtful, because scarcely felt as such. “When
. we learn to sing that Britons never will be masters we
shall make an end of slavery, ” are true words spoken by a
well-known English writer. Ho nation can serve faithfully
two ideals without hypocrisy. In Italy, in Japan, in
Persia, in Turkey, England’s sympathies have been or still
are, with the great idealistic movements ; only in Egypt
and India, where these movements clash with her material
interests, her attitude is different! The exercise of despotic
power in India provides for England a large and powerful
reactionary element in her own governance. Those who on
the plea of necessity resort in India to punish men without
trial, or the suppression of free speech, will be ready on
the same plea to fall back upon the same resources in the-
government of Ireland or the suppression of the unemploy¬
ed, or of women, in England. England may lose something
of her own liberties, through the denial of liberty to others..
Harmful, too, to England is that change that comes over
nearly all Englishmen (of course, with noble exceptions),,
in the course of weeks or months after they set foot in

PREFACE.

VU

India as rulers ; the attitude of patronage and contempt,
the conceit and aloofness of the Anglo-Indian do not drop
like a mantle from his shoulder when he retires to England
to spend the rest of his days in the enjoyment of an Indian
pension, and qualities thus fostered scarcely tend to the
progress of England towards an ideal life. More obviously
and directly injurious to England’s moral fibre are the
partial justice she administers, and her reliance—an un¬
avoidable reliance it may be for one in her position—upon
informers, underpaid police and spies. As she sows, she
must also reap ; and it cannot be that she should escape
the reaction upon herself of stooping to such means. For
England’s truest interests it were far best that she should
be free of such a burden. The life of European nations
is as yet so little ordered, so chaotic and unorganised that
it were well for each of them had they more time to set
in order their own house; but Imperialism and social
reform are incompatible.

We do not stand alone in the awakening of our
national genius; the phenomenon is world-wide, and
may be studied in lands so far apart as Ireland and
Japan. The movement is a protest of the human
spirit against a premature and artificial cosmopolitanism
which would destroy in nations, as modern education
destroys in individuals, the special genius of each. It
would take too long to correlate all the phases of national¬
ism in East and West; but to illustrate its unity of pur¬
pose, and the character of idealism, I make two quotations
from its current literature elsewhere.

The first is a passage from a pamphlet issued by the
Oaelic League, replacing only the word 4 Irishmen, ’ by
the word 4 Indians. * f

via

PKEFACE.

“ Indians we all are, and therefore our only possible perfection
consists in the development of the Indian nature we have inherited
from our forefathers. Centuries of real development, of civilisa¬
tion, of noble fidelity to all the highest ideals men can worship,.
Lave fixed for ever the national character of India ; and if we be
not true to that character, if we be not genuine Indians, we
can never be perfect men, full and strong men, able to do a true man’s
part for God and motherland. Our forefathers are our best models
and patterns ; they alone can show us what common Indian nature
can and ought to be. We must copy their greatness and their
goodness ; truly worthy are they of affectionate and
reverent imitation, for were they not men of renown in their
day, men of highest saintliness, of Indian genius and
learning and love of learning, of might and valour or the-
dread field of battle—saints, scholars, heroes.... Look
to your forefather's, read of them, speak of them; Dot in
unworthy mendicant eloquence, nor yet in vulgar boasting about
our ancient glories while we squat down in disgraceful content
with our present degeneracy, nor least of all in miserable petty
controversy with the hireling'.liars who ealumniateour dear India.
No! but to learn from them what you ought to be, what God
destined Indians to be.”

One of tlie most beautiful of exhortations to a people-
in a position akin to ours, is the message which Pierre-
Loti addresses to the young Egyptians :

44 Reawaken, 5 ’he says, “before it be too late. Defend yourselves
against this disintegrating invasion—not indeed by violence,* not
by inhospitableness or bad temper—but by despising this Western-
crowd that overwhelms you when it is weary of us. Try to preserve
not only your traditions and your beautiful Arab tongue, but also
all that went to make the grace and mystery of your town, the
refined luxury of your homes. This is not a question of the fancies
of artists, it is your national dignity that is in danger. You were
Orientals (I speak with respect when I use this word, that implies
a past of early civilisation, and of pure greatness), but a few years
more, and if you do not take heed, they will have made mere
Levantine courtiers of you, interested only in the enhancement of
land-values and speculations in cotton. ”

It is in this spirit that the other nations look to us
for sincerity in our lives ; shall we answer them with lies or
truth ? Upon that answer depends our future as a nation.

* Nothing could be more futile than a reliance upon violence
as a means of achieving Indian national independence. It is not
by destruction, but only through self-development that that end
can be achieved.

PREFACE.

IX

The inspiration of our Nationalism must be not hatred
or self-seeking ; but Love, first of India, and secondly of
England and of the World. The highest ideal of nation¬
ality is service ; and it is because this service is impossible-
for us so long as we are politically and spiritually dominat¬
ed by any Western civilisation, that we are bound to
achieve our freedom. It is in this spirit that we
must say to Englishmen, that we will achieve this
freedom, if they will, with their consent and with them
help ; but if they will not, then without their consent and
in spite of their resistance.

Ananda K. Ooomaraswamy.
Campden, December 1909 .

p. g .—l mn indebted to Mr . Vincent A. Smith for the *
photograph reproduced on Plate /F., to Mr. E. B. Havell
for Plate F., and to Major S. C. Basufor Plate VI.

Many of the chapters in this book are reprinted by permission
from the Modern Review, the Hindustan Review , the Indian
Review , and Orpheut*, with additions and revision.

Preface to the Second Edition.

In this edition a few minor alterations and corrections,
are embodied.

CHAPTER I.

The Deeper Meaning of the Straggle.

fjAHE world is now familiar with the phenomenon
I commonly known as the “ Unrest in India.” In
this unrest or struggle, there have been many more or less
dramatic episodes, that have called attention to its exist¬
ence otherwise often ignored, sometimes unsuspected.
We have had, for example, the series of events connected
with the partition of Bengal, the deportation and imprison¬
ment of many Indian leaders without trial, the resignation
of a Lieutenant-Governor, attempted assassinations, the
use of bombs, innumerable press prosecutions, the
suppression of free speech, and, on the other hand, some
attempts at political reform. These things are signs ; but
of what struggle, what desire ?

So much depends upon our conception of the issues at
stake. India for the Indians ! True; but why ? Is it
that we may have, or that we may be, and give ? Do we
fight with attachment to the fruits of works, such as
political rights and commercial prosperity; or do we fight
for an idea, the duty of self-realisation for the sake of
others ? If it is for an idea that we fight, victory is assured,
if only for a material end, it may be that there also we
shall win—or it may be not—but if we do win, it is
not obvious what the great gain to humanity will be.
Five hundred years hence it will matter little to
humanity whether a few Indians, more or less, have
held official posts in India, or a few million bales of
doth been manufactured in Bombay or Lancashire

2

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

factories ; but it will matter much whether the great ideals
of Indian culture have been carried forward or allowed to
die. It is with these that Indian Nationalism is essenti¬
ally concerned, and upon these that the fate of India as a
nation depends.

Our struggle is part of a wider one, the conflict
between the ideals of Imperialism and the ideals of Nation¬
alism. Between these two ideals the world has now to
choose. Upon that choice depends the salvation of much
that is absolutely essential to the future greatness of
civilisation and the richness of the world’s culture. For,
Imperialism involves the subordination of many nation¬
alities to one; a subordination not merely political and
economic, but also moral and intellectual. Nationalism is
inseparable from the idea of Internationalism, recognising
the rights and worth of other nations to be even as one’s
own. For Britain we cannot speak ; but for ourselves, the
ideal is that of Nationalism and Internationalism. We
feel that loyalty for us consists in loyalty to the idea of an
Indian nation, politically, economically and intellectually
free; that is, we believe in India for the Indians; but if
we do so, it is not merely because we want our own India
for ourselves, but because we believe that every nation has
its own part to play in the long tale of human progress,
and that nations, which are not free to develop their own
individuality and own character, are also unable to make
the contribution to the sum of human culture which the
world has a right to expect of them.

The world may be likened to a vast, as yet un ordered
garden, having diverse soils and aspects, some watered,
some arid, some plain, some mountain ; the different parts
of which should properly be tended by different gardeners,
having experience of diverse qualities of soil and aspect;

THE DEEPER MEANING OF THE STRUGGLE.

3

but certain ones liave seized upon the plots of others, and
-attempted to replace the plants natural to those plots,
with others more acceptable or profitable to themselves.
We have not to consider only the displaced gardeners, who
naturally do not admire and are not grateful for the
changes introduced into their plots; but to ask whether
these proceedings are beneficial to the owner of the garden,
for whom the gardeners work. Who is this owner but the
Folk of the World of the future, which is ever becoming
the present ? Shall they be glad or sorry if uniformity
has replaced diversity, if but one type of vegetation is to be
found within their garden, flourishing perhaps in one
part, but sickly in another ; what of the flowers that might
have flourished in that other part had they not been swept
.away ?

The world has progressed from the idea of individual
slavery to that of individual freedom ; it has become an
instinct to believe that men are equal at least to this
degree, that every man must be regarded as an end in
himself ; but progress is only now being made from the
idea of national slavery (Empire) to that of national free¬
dom (Internationalism). The dominant nations have to
learn that nations no less than men are ends in themselves.
They have yet to realise that a nation can no more ulti¬
mately justify the ownership of other nations, than a man
can justify the ownership of other men ; and that it is not
by the withdrawal of responsibility that character is
-strengthened.

Many of the difficulties that beset the path of Indian
nationality are real. The one thing strange to us is the
delight with which they are insisted on, as though the
possibility of an Indian nation, conscious of its past, and
led by hope of days to come, were in itself an evil thing.

4

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

"Why is there not rejoicing at a nation’s birth, or adoles¬
cence ? For to all men the gift is given, and to all is
brought the fame. “ How many things shalt thou quicken,,
how many shalt thou slay ! How many things shalt thou
waken, how many gather to sleep! How many things,
shalt thou scatter, how many gather and keep ! 0 me, how
thy love shall cherish, how thine hate shall wither and
burn ! How the hope shall be sped from thy right hand,,
nor the fear to thy left return ! 0 thy deeds that men shall
sing of !.... 0 Yictory yet to be ! ”

Let us not forget that in setting this ideal of Nation¬
alism before us, we are not merely striving for a right, but
accepting a duty that is binding on us, that of self-realisa¬
tion to the utmost for the sake of others. India’s ancient
contribution to the civilisation of the world does not and
never can justify her ehildern in believing that her work
is done. There is work yet for her to do, which, if not
done by her, will remain for ever undone. W T e may not
shirk our part in the re-organisation of life, which is needed
to make life tolerable under changed conditions. It is foc¬
us to show that industrial production can be organised on
socialistic lines without converting the whole world into-
groups of state-owned factories. It is for us to show that
great and lovely cities can be built again, and things of
beauty made in them, without the pollution of the air by
smoke or the poisoning of the river by chemicals ; for us
to show that man can be the master, not the slave of the
mechanism he himself has created.

It is for us to proclaim that wisdom is greater than
knowledge ; for us to make clear anew that art is something
more than manual dexterity, or the mere imitation of
natural forms. It is for us to investigate the physical and
4 iupersensual faculties anew in the light of the discoveries-

THE DEEPER MEANING OF THE STRUGGLE.

5

•of Physical Science and to show that Science and Faith
may be reconciled on a higher plane than any reached as
yet. It is for us to intellectualise and spiritualise the
religious conceptions of the West, and to show that the
"true meaning of religious tolerance is not the refraining
from persecution, but the real belief that different religions
need not be mutually exclusive, the conviction that they
are all good roads, suited to the varying capacities of those
that tread them, and leading to one end.

This and much more is our allotted task. Other
peoples have found other work to do, some of which we
may well share, and some leave to those still best fitted to
perform it; but let us not turn from our own task to
attempt the seemingly more brilliant or more useful work
of others. “ Better is one’s own duty, though insignificant,
than even the well-executed duty of another.” Let us not
be tempted by all the kingdoms of the earth ; granted
there is much that we have not, which others have, and
which we may acquire from them; what is the price to be ?
M What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
lose his own soul ? ”

Think of our duty from another point of view ; is not
the ancient virtue of hospitality binding on us ? Yet now
the shame of hospitality refused is ours ; how many have
•come to India, reverencing her past, ready to learn
of her still, and have been sent empty away ! The student
of Social Economy finds a highly organised society in the
process of disintegration without any of the serious and
constructive effort required for its re-organisation under
•changed conditions ; the student of Architecture finds a
tradition living still, but scorned by a people devoted to
the imitation of their rulers, building copies of English
palaces and French villas in the very presence of men who

8

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

still know how to build, and under the shadow of buildings
as noble as any that the world has seen. The student of
Fine Art is shown inferior imitations of the latest European
‘ styles/ where he should find some new and living revela¬
tion ; the decorative artist sees the traditional craftsmen
of India thrown out of employment by the mechanical
vulgarities of Birmingham and Manchester, without the-
least effort made to preserve for future generations the
accumulated skill and cunning of centuries of the manufac¬
ture of materials and wares which have commanded the-
admiration of the world. The musician of other lands
hears little but the gramophone or the harmonium in India ;•
the man of religion finds the crudest materialism replacing
a reasoned metaphysic ; the lover of freedom beholds a
people who can be imprisoned or deported for indefinite
periods without trial, and too divided amongst themselves,
to offer adequate resistance to this lawlessness ; in a word,
every man seeking to widen his own outlook, sees but his
own face distorted in an Indian mirror.

It is from this inhospitableness, this cowardice, that
the call of the Motherland must waken us. "We are cons¬
cious that the best in us is sleeping still; but when the-
sleeper wakes, who knoweth what shall come of it ? One
thing at least we are certain of, that the awakening must
be no waking in a prison cell, hut that of a free man, “full
of good hopes, of steady purpose, perfect strength.”* It is
for this that we are stirred, for this that we shall suffer ;
and this is the deeper meaning of the great Indian struggle-
for freedom.

* Taittiriya Upamshad.

CHAPTER II.

Indian Nationality •

W HAT are the things which make possible national
self-consciousness, which constitute nationality ?
Certainly a unity of some sort is essential. There are
certain kinds of unity, however, which are not essential*
and others which are insufficient. Racial unity, for
example, does not constitute the Negroes of North
America a nation. Racial unity is not even an essential;
the British nation is perhaps more composed of diverse
racial elements than any other, but it has none the less a
strong national consciousness. To take another example,
many of the most Irish of the Irish are of English origin ;
Keating and Emmet, for instance, were of Norman
descent; but neither they nor their labours were on that
account less a part or an expression of Irish national
feeling and self-consciousness. Neither is a common and
distinctive language an essential; Switzerland is divided
among three languages, and Ireland between two.

Two essentials of nationality there are,—a geographi¬
cal unity, and a common historic evolution or culture*
These two India possesses superabundantly, beside many
lesser unities which strengthen the historical tradition.

The fact of India’s geographical unity is apparent on
the map, and is never, I think, disputed. The recognition
of social unity is at least as evident to the student of
Indian culture. The idea has been grasped more than
once by individual riders,—Asoka, Yikramaditya and
Akbar. It was recognized before the Mahabharata was
written; when Yudhishtira~ performed the Rajasuya
sacrifice on the occasion of his inauguration as sovereign*

8

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

a great assembly (sabha —simply the gam-sabhava, or
village council on a larger scale) was held, and to this
assembly came Bhima, Dhritarashtra and his hundred

sons, Subala (King of Gandhara), etc.and others from

the extreme south and north (Dravida, Ceylon and
Kashmir). In legends, too, we meet with references to
councils or motes of the gods, held in the Himalayas,
whither they repaired to further common ends. No one
can say that any such idea as that of a Federated
States of India is altogether foreign to the Indian mind.
But more than all this, there is evidence enough that the
founders of Indian culture and civilization and religion
(whether you call them Bishis or men) had this unity
in view; and the manner in which this idea pervades
the whole of Indian culture is the explanation of the
possibility of its rapid realisation now. Is it for nothing
that India’s sacred shrines are many and far apart; that
one who would visit more than one or two of these must
pass over hundreds of miles of Indian soil ? Benares is the
sacred city of Buddhist and Hindu alike; Samanala in
Ceylon is a holy place for Buddhist, Hindu and Muham-
medan. Is there no meaning in the sacred reverence for
the Himalayas which every Indian feels ? Is the gets
altogether meaningless which forbids the orthodox Hindu
to leave the* Motherland and cross the seas ? Is the
passionate adoration of the Indian people for the Ganges
thrown away ? How much is involved in such phrases as
* The Seven Great Bivers ’ (of India)! The Hindu in the
north repeats the mantram :

Om gange cha yamune chaiva godavari, sarasvati,
narmade, sindhu kaveri jale 5 smin sannidhim kuru.*

* “ Hail! O ye Ganges, Jamna, Godavari. Sarasvati, Narmada*
Sindhu atfd Kaveri, come and approach these waters.”

INDIAN NATI0N1LITY.

9

when performing ceremonial ablutions ; the Buddhist in
-Ceylon uses the same prayer on a similar occasion. Or
take the epics, the foundation of Indian education and
•culture ; or a poem like the Megha Duta, the best known
and most read work of Kalidasa. Are not these expressive
of love for and knowledge of the Motherland ? The 4 holy
land ’ of the Indian is not a far-off Palestine but the Indian
land itself.

The whole of Indian culture is so pervaded with this
idea of India as The Land, that it has never been necessary
to insist upon it overmuch, for no one could have supposed
it otherwise. 44 Every province within the vast boundaries
fulfils some necessary part in the completion of a nation¬
ality. 2STo one place repeats the specialised functions of
^another.” Take, for example, Ceylon (whose people are
now the most denationalised of any in India); can we
think of India as complete without Ceylon? Ceylon is
unique as the home of Pali literature and Southern Bud¬
dhism, and in its possession of a continuous chronicle in¬
valuable as a check upon some of the more uncertain data
of Indian Chronology. Sinhalese art, the Sinhalese religion,
■and, structure of Sinhalese society, bring most vividly before
us certain aspects of early Hindu culture, which it would be
hard to fincl so perfectly reflected in any other part of modem
India. The noblest of Indian epics, the love-story of
Kama and Sita, unites Ceylon and India in the mind of
every Indian, nor is this more so in the .south than in the
north. In later times, the histories of northern India
-and Ceylon were linked in Vijaya’s emigration, then by
Asoka’s missions (contemporaneous with earliest ripples of
the wave of Hindu influence which passed beyond the
Himalayas to impress its ideals on the Mongolian east) ;
■and later still a Sinhalese princess became a Rajput bride

10

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

to earn the perpetual love of her adopted people by her
fiery death, the death which every Rajput woman would
have preferred above dishonour. To this day her name
is remembered by the peoples of northern India, as that of
one who was the flower and crown of beauty and heroism-
And just in such wise are all the different parts of India
bound together by a common historical tradition and ties
of spiritual kinship ; none can be spared, nor can any live
independent of the others.

The diverse peoples of India, are like the parts of some
magic puzzle, seemingly impossible to fit together, but
falling easily into place when once the key is known ; and
the key is that realization of the fact that the parts do fit
together, which we call national self-consciousness. I am
often reminded of the Cairene girl’s lute, in 'the tale of
Miriam and Ali 1STur-al-Din. It was kept in a a green
satin bag with slings of gold.” She took the bag, “ and
opening it, shook it, whereupon there fell thereout two-and-
thirty pieces of wood, which she fitted one into other ?
male into female and female into male, till they became
a polished lute of Indian workmanship. Then she un¬
covered her wrists and laying the lute in her lap, bent
over it with the bending of mother over babe, and swept
the strings with her finger-tips ; whereupon it moaned
and resounded and after its olden home yearned ; and it
remembered the waters that gave it drink and the earth
whence it sprang and wherein it grew and it minded the
carpenters who cut it and the polishers wdio polished it and
the merchants who made it their merchandise and the ships
that shipped it; and it cried and called aloud and moaned
and groaned; and it was as if she asked it of all these
things and it answered her with the tongue of the case.”
Just such an instrument is India,, composed of many parts

INDIAN NATIONALITY. 1 V

seemingly irreconcilable, but in reality each one cunningly-
designed towards a common end ; so, too, when these-
parts are set together and attuned, will India tell of the
earth from which she sprang, the waters that gave her
drink, and the Shapers that have shaped her being; nor
will she be then the idle singer of an empty day, but the
giver of hope to all, when hope will most avail, and most
be needed.

I have spoken so far only of Hindus and Hindu
culture; and if so it is because Hindus form the main
part of the population of India, and Hindu culture the
main part of Indian culture : but the quotation just made
from Arabian literature leads on to the consideration of the
great part which Muhammadans, and Persi-Arabian
culture have played in the historic evolution of India, as
we know it to-day. It would hardly be possible to think
of an India in which no Great Moghul had ruled, no Taj
been built, or to which Persian art and literature were
wholly foreign. Pew great Indian rulers have displayed
the genius for statesmanship which Akbar had, a greater
religious toleration than he. On the very morrow of con¬
quest he was able to dispose of what is now called the
Hindu-Muhammadan difficulty very much more success¬
fully than it is now met in Bengal; for he knew that
there could be no real diversity of interest between Hindu
and Muhammadan, and treated them with an impartiality
which we suspect to be greater than that experienced in
Bengal to-day. It was not his interest to divide and rule..
Like most Eastern rulers (who can never be foreigners in
the same way that a Western ruler necessarily must be) he
identified himself with his kingdom, and had no interests
that clashed -with its interests. This has, until modern
times, been always a characteristic of an invader's or nsur-

12

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

per’s mile in India, that the ruler has not attempted to
remain in his own distant country and rule the conquered
'Country from afar, farming it like an absentee landlord,
but has identified himself with it. The beneficent rule of
Elala, a Tamil usurper in Ceylon two centuries before
•Christ, w r as so notorious that deep respect w T as paid to the
•site of his tomb more than 2,000 years later; and to men¬
tion a more modern case, the 18th century Tamil (Hindu)
ruler, ELirti Sri and his tw 7 o brothers, so identified them¬
selves with the Sinhalese (Buddhist) people as to have
deserved the chronicler’s remark that they w r ere “ one with
the religion and the people.” To show that such a situa¬
tion is still possible, it -will suffice to cite the States of
Hyderabad, Baroda and Gwalior.

Even suppose the differences that separate the Indian
^.communities to be twice as great as they are said to be,
they are nothing compared with the difference between the
Indian and the European. Western rule is inevitably
.alien rule, in a far deeper sense than the rule of Hindus by
Muhammadans or the reverse could be. And what does
alien rule mean ? “ The government of a people by itself,”
-says John Stuart Mill, “ has a meaning and a reality, but
such a thing as the government of one people by another
•does not and cannot exist. One people may keep another
.as a warren or preserve for its own use, a place to make
money in, a human farm to be worked for the profit of its
own inhabitants.” 3STo cant of the “ white man’s burden ”
alters the stern logic of these facts ; to us it appears that
the domination of the East by the West is a menace to the
-evolution of the noblest ideal of humanity; the “ white
man’s burden ” translated into the language of Asiatic
thought becomes “ the white peril ”; and this is not
because we despise the achievements of Western civilisa-

INDIAN NATIONALITY.

1&

tion, or fail to appreciate the merits of Europeans as such r
but because we think that a whole world of Europeans
would be a poor place, quite as poor as a whole world of
Indians or Chinamen. We feel it then our duty to realise-
our unity and national self-consciousness in concrete form
as much for the advantage of others as of ourselves; and*
this without any feeling of bitterness or exclusiveness
towards other races, though perhaps for a time such feel¬
ings may be inevitable. And to show what spirit moves
us we have such a statement of belief in the unity of the
Indian people, as the credo of Shiv Narayen; and the
beautiful national song, called c Bande Mataram ’ (‘ Hail!.
Motherland ’) which expresses the aims and the power of
the awakened Indian nation, as the Marseillaise embodied
the ideal of awakened France, or as those of Ireland are
expressed in the songs of Ethna Carberry.

Their words are not the hysterical utterance of a
people uncertain of their unity or doubtful of their future.
They express the Indian recognition of the Motherland,,
their quiet but profound assurance of her greatness and
their consciousness of the high calling which is hers. They
voice the hope of an INDIAN NATION, which shall not
be disappointed.

CHAPTER III.

Mata Bharata*

T HERE was once a tall, fair woman,—not indeed
young, no one could have thought that—but serene
to the uttermost and possessed of great patience and grace.
In years past she had been famed for wisdom, and the wise
men of the world had sat at her feet and caiTied away her
teachings to the ends of the earth. Rut now she was
older, and a little weary, and the light in her eyes served
• only as a star for the few who still beheld reality behind
appearance. She was, moreover, wealthy, and many
had sought her hand, and of these, one whom she
loved least had possessed her body for many years; and
now there came another and stranger wooer with promises
• of freedom and peace, and protection for her children ; and
she believed in him, and laid her hand in his.

For a time it was well, her new lord was contented
with the wealth of her treasure houses and gave her the
peace of neglect. But ere long he took more interest in
his cold bride and her children, and said to himself, “ This
woman has strange ways unlike my own and those of my
people, and her thoughts are not my thoughts ; but she
shall be trained and educated, that she may know what I
know, and that the world may say that I have moulded
her mind into the paths of progress.” For he knew not of
her ancient wisdom, and she seemed to him slow of mind
and lacking in that practical ability on which he prided
himself.

And while these thoughts were passing in his mind,
.some of her children were roused against him, by reason of

MATA BHARATA.

15

his robbing them of power and interfering with the rights
-and laws that regulated their relations to each other; for
they feared that their ancient heritage would pass away
for ever. But still the mother dreamed of peace and rest
and would not hear the children’s cry, but helped to subdue
their waywardness; and ere long all was quiet again.
But the wayward children loved not their new father and
could not understand their mother. And their new father
turned to other ways, and sent the children to schools
where they were taught his language and his thoughts, and
how great his people were, and self-sacrificing ; and from
what unrest and wretchedness he had saved their mother,
and with no thought of gain or profit; and they were
taught, too, to forget their ancient glory and from the
height of the new learning to despise their ancient man¬
ners.

But now another thing happened ; the mother bore a
child to the foreign lord, and he was pleased thereat, and
deemed that she (for it was a girl) should be a woman after
his own heart, even as the daughters of his own people, and
•she should be fair and wealthy, and a bride for a son of his
people. But when this child was born, the mother was
roused from her dream, and lived only for the girl, and
she grew up to remind the mother of her own youth, and
favoured the foreign lord little ; yet she had somewhat of
his energy and turn for practical affairs. The mother
talked long and deeply with her, and the foreign lord did
not take it aught amiss, for he deemed that all must go even
as he, such a, great man, would have it go. And he got
teachers, and she "was taught the wisdom and manners of
his people. But in secret the mother taught her the ancient
wisdom, and her heart was turned away from her father and
his people and his teaching. And the mother was content;

16

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

and now she was white-haired and weak with age, and a
time came when she passed hence, for her work was done..
And the foreign lord himself grew a little weary, for there
were troubles in his own land, and some had said that he
was a tyrant in a foreign land ; and thereby his heart was-
pained, for had not he spent his life for others, and surely
the labourer was worthy of his hire % But the girl grew
strong, and would brook little of her father’s tyranny, and
she was a mother to the children of the children who came
before her, and she was called the Mother by all; and
perhaps she and her mother were after all the same. One
day there arose murnmrings amongst the children as of
old, and they said that they: needed no foreign lord to take
their revenues and school their ' minds. Still they were
subdued with a high hand and some were cast in prison,,
or worse, for the father was a patriarch of the old type and
deemed it amiss that he had not the power of life and
death over all his subject peOpfe.. But now they would not
brook his tyranny—for he himself unwittingly had taught
them that the king-days were over, and made them dream
of freedom.

All these trials were upon him, and he grew old and
weary; and the young mother (she would be mother of all
.she said, but wedded unto none) helped all the children
and taught them to love and help each other and to call
her mother ; and she left- the foreign lord and went to live
in a place apart, where the children came to her for counsel..
And when the foreign lord would have stopped it, she was
not there, but elsewhere ; and it seemed that she was
neither here nor there but everywhere,

%

And this tale is yet unfinished ; but the ending is not
far away, and may be foreseen.

Plate t.

To Face Page 17.

CHAPTEB IT.

The Aims and Methods of Indian Art.

/JAHE extant remains of Indian art cover a period of
X more than two thousand years. During this time
many schools of thought have flourished and decayed,
invaders of many races have poured into India and con¬
tributed to the infinite variety of her intellectual resources ;
countless dynasties have ruled and passed away ; and so
we do not wonder that many varieties of artistic expres¬
sion remain to record for us, in a language of their
own, something of the ideas and the ideals of many
peoples, their hopes and fears, their faith and their
desire. But just as through all Indian schools of thought
there runs like a golden thread the fundamental idealism
of the Upanishads, the Vedanta, so in all Indian art there
is a unity that underlies all its bewildering variety. This
unifying principle is here also Idealism, and this must of
necessity have been so, for the synthesis of Indian thought
is one, not many.

What, after all, is the secret of Indian greatness ?
Not a dogma or a book; but the great open secret that
all knowledge and all truth are absolute and infinite,
waiting not to be created, b nt t.o be found ; the secret of

"the infinite superiority of JLntuiti on...the method of direct

perception, over the intellect, regarded as a mere organ of
discrimination. There is about us a storehouse of the
As-Yet-Unknown, infinite and inexhaustible; but to this
wisdom, the way of access is not through intellectual
activity. The intuition that reaches to it, we call Imagina-

a —^

18

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

tiq u and fiftpina. 1 >. came to Sir Isaac Kewton when he saw
the apple fall, and there flashed across his brain the Law of
Gravity* It came to the Buddha as he sat through the
silent night in meditation, and hour by hour all things
became apparent to him ; he knew the exact circumstances
of all beings that have ever been in the endless and infinite
worlds; at the twentieth hour he received the divine
insight by which he saw all things within the space of the
infinite sakvalas as clearly as if they were close at hand ;
then came still deeper insight, and he perceived the cause
of sorrow and the path of knowledge, 4 He reached at last
the exhaustless source of truth.’ The same is true of all
4 revelation ’; the Veda (sruti), the eternal Logos, 4 breathed
forth by Brahma,’ in whom it survives the destruction
and creation of the Universe, is 4 seen,’ or 4 heard,’ not

made, by its human authors.The reality of such

perception is witnessed to by every man within himself
upon rare occasions and on an infinitely smaller scale. It
is the inspiration of the poet. It is at once the ^ vis ion of
the artist,jyodj^ of the natural philosopher.

There is a close analogy between the aims of art and of
science. Descriptive science is, of course, concerned only
with the record of appearances ; but art and theoretical
science have much in common. The imagination is required
for both; both illustrate that natural tendency to seek
•the one in the many, to formulate natural laws, which is
expressed in the saying that the human mind functions
..aaturally^feWBxd^s unity. The aim of the ‘traiheT'scxenEHcT
or artistic imagination is to conceive ( Concipio , lay hold of)
invent (invenio, to light upon) or imagine (visualise) some
unifying truth previously unsuspected or forgotten. The
theory of evolution or of electrons or atoms the rapid dis¬
covery (unveiling) by a mathematical genius of the answerto

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN-ART.

4 *n abstruse calculation ; the conception that flashes into
the artist’s mind, all these represent some true vision of
the Idea underlying phenomenal experience, some message

from the 4 exhaustless source of truth,’ Jdeal art. is..thus-

rather a* spirituaLdiscogery^^ kan a creation . It differs
from science in its concern primarily with subjective things,
things, as they are for us, rather than in themselves.
Empirical science is a record of 4 facts ’; art is the controlled
and rhythmic expression of emotion. But both art and
science have the common aim of unity; of formulating
natural laws.

The real aim, both of art and of science^ is to reach
the type, the Platonic Idea. Art seeks this end deductive ly.

. d synthetic ally_nmphdcaL science only inductively, and

analytically.

Genius may be metaphorically described as a thin¬
ning of the veil, or a permeability of the diaphragm,
which, as it were, separates the ^conscious fro m t he
superconscious self. It is characteristic of genius that
ideas, inspiration, appear to arrive altogether from outside
the ordinary (, i^<ymg)_c onsciousness. They originate in fact
in a region external to the mere intellect (manas)^ being
apprehended by the reaso n (budclhi) acting as a sixth sense
organ (intuition). As unity is the characteristic of,
buddhic consciousness, so it is characteristic of ideas thus
apprehended, that they are 4 seen ’ or 4 heard ’ as a whole,
and have as it were to be subsequently disentangled in
space and time.

A great poem or picture or musical composition is
thus first apprehended as a unity;. by concentration, the
details of this presentation may be developed, like the
image on a photographic plate. The most effective genius
one in whom this process of development is most per?

20

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM*

fectly accomplished, who sees and hears, and is able to*
retain the presentation most complete.

The artist has, indeed, a sense almost of terror lest
the vision should be lost before he is able to impress it
upon his empirical consciousness. It is owing to the same
cause that we feel the sense of irreparable loss which is
associated with the destruction of a work of real art; for
by such destruction something has been taken out of the
circle of our ordinary consciousness, which perhaps can
never be restored to it.

It is said of a certain famous craftsman that, when
designing, he seemed not to be making, but merely to be
outlining a pattern that he already saw upon the paper
before him. The true artist does not 4 compose ? (put-
together) his picture, but 4 sees } it; his desire is to re¬
present his vision in the material terms of line and
colour. To the great painter such pictures come conti¬
nually, often too rapidly and too confusedly to be*
caught and disentangled. Could he but control his mental
vision, define and hold it! It is here that the relation
between the methods of the Indian worshipper and the
Indian artist becomes significant.

44 Fickle is the mind, forward, forceful, and stiff; I
deem it as hard to check as is the wind.” Yet by 44 con¬
stant labour and passionlessness it may be held,” and this-
concentration of mental vision has been from long ago the
very method of Indian religion, and the control of thought
its ideal of worship. It is thus that the Hindu worships
daily his Ishta Devata, the special aspect of divinity that is
to him all and more than the Patron Saint is to the Catho¬
lic. Simple men may worship such an one as Ganesa r
<<easy to reach, not far away ; some can make the greater
aibrt needed to reach even JSTatara|a; and only for those

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART. 21

whose heart is set upon the Unconditioned, is a mental
image useless as a centre of thought. These last are few;
and for those that adore an Ishta Devata, or conditioned
and special aspect of God, worship of Him consists
first in the recitation of the brief mnemonic mantrcmi
•detailing His attributes, and then in silent concentration^
•of thought upon the corresponding mental image. These
mental images are of the same nature as those the artist
sees, and the process of visualisation is the same.

Here, for example, is a verse from one of the imager’s
technical books (the Bupavaliya) :

“ These are the marks of Siva, a glorious visage, three
•eyes, a bow and an arrow, a serpent garland, ear-flowers^
.a rosary, four hands, tristda , a noose, a deer, hands betoken¬
ing mildness and beneficence, a garment of tiger skin, His
vahan a bull of the hue of the chank.”*

It may be compared with the Dhyana mantrams used
in the daily meditation of a Hindu upon the Gayatri
visualised as a Goddess :

“ In the evening Sarasvati should be meditated
upon as the essence of the Sama Yeda, fair of face, having
two arms, holding a trisula and a drum, old, and as
Rudrani, the bull her valiant

Almost the whole philosophy of Indian art is con¬
tained in the verse of Sukracharya’s Sukranitisara which
enjoins this method of visualisation upon the imager:

“ Let the builder establish images in temples by
meditation on the deities who are the objects of his devo¬
tion ; for the successful achievement of (this) dhyana yoga
(yoga of contemplation) the elements and characteristics of
the image are described in books to be dwelt upon in detail.
In no other way, not even by direct and immediate vision.

* i,e., riding upon a snow-white bull.

22

'ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

of an actual object, is it possible to be so absorbed in con~
texnplation, as thus in the making of images.”

It cannot be too clearly understood that the-

is never, the aim of
JL&dkm^art. Probably no truly Indian sculpture has been
wrought direct from a living model, or any religious-
painting copied from the life. Possibly no Hindu artist
of the old schools ever drew from nature at all. His store-
ojLmemory... pictures, his power of visualisation and his-
imagination _ were for his purpose finer means; for he
desired to suggest the Idea behind sensuous appearance,
not to give the detail of the seeming reality, that was in
truth but may a, illusion. For in spite of the pantheistic
accommodation of infinite truth to the capacity of finite
minds, whereby God is conceived as entering into all things,
Nature remains to the Hindu a^ vei l^n^ ;

art is to be something more than a mere imitation of this
may a, it is to manifest what lies behind. To mistake the
rnaya for reality were error indeed :

u Men of no understanding think of Me, the umnani-
fiest as having manifestation, knowing not My higher being
to be changeless, supreme.

a Veiled by the Magic of My Rule (Yoga-Maya), I am
not revealed to all the world ; this world is bewildered, and
perceives Me not as birthless and unchanging.” (Bhagavad
Gita VII., 24, 25.)

Of course, an exception to these principles in Indian
art may be pointed to in the Mughal and Rajput schools
of portrait miniature ; and this work does show that it was
no lack of power that in most other cases kept the Indian
-artist from realistic representation. But there the deliber¬
ate aim is portraiture, not the representation of Divinity
or Superman. And even in the portraits there are many

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN AET. 23

ideal qualities apparent. In purely Hindu and religious
art, however, even portraits are felt to be lesser art than
the purely ideal and abstract representations; and such
realism as we find, for example, in the Ajanta paintings,
is due to the keenness of the artist’s memory of familiar
things, not to absorption in the imitation of appearances.
For realism that thus represents keenness of memory
picture, strength of imagination, there is room in all art;
duly restrained, it is so much added power. But realism
which is of the nature of imitation of an object actually
seen at the time of painting is quite antipathetic t a
imagination, and finds no place in the ideal of Indian art. •

Much of the criticism applied to works of art in
modern times is based upon the idea of 4 truth to nature.
The first thing for which many people look in a work of
art, is for something to recognize ; and if the representa¬
tion is of something they have not seen, or symbolizes
some unfamiliar abstract idea, it is, for them, thereby self-
condemned as untrue to nature.

What, after all, is reality and what is truth ? The
Indian mind answers that nature, the phenomenal world
that is, is known to it only through sensation, and that we
have no warrant for supposing the sensations convey to
us any adequate conception of the intrinsic reality of
things in themselves ; nay, they have no such reality
apart from itself. At most, natural forms are but incar¬
nations of ideas, and each is but an incomplete expression.

The conception that the object of art is the reproduc¬
tion of the external forms of nature, as in modern Europe,
is the natural product of a life divorced from beauty.
Pictorial imitations of nature are the substitute in which
men seek for compensation for the - unloveliness of an
artificial life. We are nowhere able to observe that

24

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM*

realistic art is or lias anywhere been the ideal of men whose
lives have been lived—-as in Egypt, India, Persia or
Mediaeval Europe—in the real intimacy of nature herself*
The imitation of nature, indeed, has been seen by all true
artists and philosophers to be both impossible and unneces¬
sary. “ For why, 55 as Deussen says, “ should the artist wish
to imitate laboriously and inadequately what nature offers
everywhere in unattainable profusion ? 55 viz., individual,
and in so far, limited, manifestations of Ideas ?

In the realm of nature we see the thousandfold
repeated reflections of Ideas, in these individual manifesta¬
tions. It is for the artist, by yoga, that is by self-
identification with the soul of such reflections, fully to
understand them and explain their inner significance.
“ Guided by an insight into the nature of things which
fathoms deeper than all abstract knowledge, he is able to
understand the c half uttered words of nature, 5 to infer
from what she forms that which she intends to form, to
anticipate from the direction she takes the end she is un¬
able to reach. 55 But it is further possible, by imagination,
the first and essential quality of genius, to apprehend Ideas
which, though subsisting in the cosmic consciousness, have
not yet assumed, and may never assume, a physically visible
form. Such are the forms of gods or nature spirits, and
flowers or animals or scenes m 1 other worlds 5 ; personifica¬
tions of abstract qualities and natural forces, and by no
means least, the imagined forms of legendary heroes, in
which the race-idea finds its most complete expression. This
race expression is most perfect when, as is so often the case,
hero and god are one.

It is for the artist to portray the ideal world of true
treality, the world of imagination, and not the phenomena
World perceived by the senses.

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ABT.

25

How strangely this art philosophy contrasts with that
-characteristic of the modem West, so clearly set forth in
Browning’s poem:

“ But why not do as well as say.paint these

Just as they are, careless what cones of it ?

God’s works—paint any one.

.Have you noticed, now,

Yon cullion’s hanging face ? A bit of chalk,

And trust me but you should though! How much more
If I drew higher things with the same truth l
That were to take the Prior’s pulpit-place,

Interpret God to all of you! ”

For such realists, this last is not the function of art ;
but to us it seems that the very essential function of art
is to ‘interpret God to all of you ! 7

Burne-Jones almost alone amongst artists of the
modern West seems to have understood art as we in India
understand it. To a critic who named as a drawback in
the work of a certain artist, that his pictures looked as if
he had done them only out of his head, Burne-Jones
replied, “ The place where I think pictures ought to come
from.”

Of impressionism as understood in the West, and the
claim that breadth is gained by lack of finish, Burne-Jones
spoke as an Eastern artist might have done. Breadth

• could he got “ by beautiful finish and bright, clear colour well-
matched, rather than by muzzy. They (the Impressionists)
do make atmosphere, but they don’t make anything else :
they don’t make beauty, they don’t make design, they
don’t make idea, they don’t make anything but atmos¬
phere—and I don’t think that’s enough—I don’t think it’s
very much.” Of realism he spoke thus: “ Realism ?
Direct transcript from Nature ? I suppose by the time the

* photographic artist ’ can give us all the colours as cor¬
rectly as the shapes, people will begin to find out that the

26

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

realism they talk about isn’t art at all, but science ;
interesting, no doubt, as a scientific achievement, but
nothing more.... Transcripts from Nature, what do I want
with transcripts ? I prefer her own signature; I don’t
want forgeries more or less skilful.... It is the message,,
the ‘ burden ’ of a picture that makes its real value.”

At another time he said, “ You see, it is these things
of the soul that are real.... the only real things in the-
universe.”

Of the religiousness of the art he said:

“ That was an awful thought of Buskin’s, that artists,
paint God for the world. There’s a lump of greasy pig¬
ment at the end of Michael Angelo’s hog-bristle brush, and
by the time it has been laid on the stucco, there is some¬
thing there that all men with eyes recognize as divine..
Think of what it means. It is the power of bringing God
into the world—making God manifest.”

“ The object of art must be either to please or to*
exalt; I can’t see any other reason for it at all. One is a
pretty reason, the other a noble one.”

Of 4 Exj>ression ’ in imaginative pictures he said :

u Of course my faces have no expression in the sense-
in which people use the word. How should they have any?'
They are not portraits of people in paroxysms of terror,,
hatred, benevolence, desire, avarice, veneration and all
the 4 passions ’ and 6 emotion ’ that Le Brun and that
kind of person find so magnifique in Raphael’s later-
work .... The only expression allowable in great portrai¬
ture is the expression of character and moral quality, not
of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental. Apart from
portraiture you don’t want even so much, or very seldom:
in fact, you want only types, symbols, suggestions. The
moment you give wh it people call expression, you destroy

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

27

the typical characters of heads and degrade them into-
portraits which stand for nothing.” *

Common criticisms of Indian art are based on
supposed or real limitations of technical attainment in
representation, especially of the figure. In part, it may be-
answered that so little is known in the West of the real
achievement of Indian art, that this idea may be allowed to*
die a natural death in the course of time; and in part, that
technical attainment is only a means, not an end. There is
an order of importance in the things art means to us....
.is it not something thus, first, What has the artist to say ?
and second only, Is his drawing scientifically accurate ?
Bad drawing is certainly not in itself desirable, nor good
drawing a misfortune; but, strange as it may seem, it has
always happened in the history of art, that by the time-
perfection of technique has been attained, inspiration has
declined. It was so in Greece, and in Europe after the-
Renaissance. It almost seems as if concentration upon
technique hindered the free working of the imagination a
little ; if so, however much we desire both, do not let us
make any mistake as to which is first.

Also, accuracy is not always even desirable. It has-
been shown by photography that the galloping horse
has never been accurately drawn in art; let us hope it
never will be. For art has to make use of abstractions
and memory pictures, not of photographs ; it is a synthesis,
not an analysis. And so the whole question of accuracy
is relative; and the last word was said by Leonardo da
Yinci: “ That drawing is best which by its action best
expresses the passion that animates the figure.” This is

* Quotations from “ Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones/’ by
Lady Burne-Jones, 1904.

28

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM,

the true impressionism of the East, based on the idea that
the whole aim of art is the expression of rasa, i.e., passion,
in the sense of the above quotation.* Beside this true
standard of art criticism, questions of archaeological or
anatomical accuracy sink into relative insignificance.

It will be seen that impressionism, as now understood
in the West, is of a quite different character.

Indian art is essentially religious. The conscious aim
of Indian art is the intimation of Divinity. But the
Infinite and Unconditioned cannot be expressed in finite
terms ; and art, unable to portray Divinity unconditioned,
and unwilling to be limited by the limitation of humanity,
is in India dedicated to the representation of Gods, who
to finite man represent comprehensible aspects of an infinite
whole.

Sankaracharya prayed thus: “ 0 Lord, pardon my
three sins: I have in contemplation clothed in form Thy¬
self that hast no form ; I have in praise described Thee
who dost transcend all qualities ; and in visiting shrines
I have ignored Thine omnipresence.” So, too, the Tamil
poetess Auwai was once rebuked by a priest for irrever¬
ence, in stretching out her limbs towards an image of God :
44 You say well, Sir,” she answered, “ yet if you will point
out to me a direction where God is not, I will there stretch
out my limbs.” But such conceptions, though we know
them at heart to be true and absolute, involve a denial of
all exoteric truth ; they are not enough, or rather they
are too much, for ordinary men to five by :

u Exceeding great is the toil of these whose mind is
attached to the Unshown ; for the Unshown Way is pain¬
fully won by them that wear the body.

“ But as for them who, having cast all works on Me

* See also pp. 37, 38 below.

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART. 29

and given themselves over to Me, worship Me in medita¬
tion, with whole hearted yoga.

“ These speedily I lift up from the sea of death and
life, O Partha, their minds being set on Me.” (. Bhagavad
Gita , XII. f 5-7.)

And so it is, that u any Indian man or woman will
worship at the feet of some inspired wayfarer who tells
them that there can be no image of God, that the world
itself is a limitation, and go straightway, . as the natural
consequence, to pour water on the head of the Siva-
lingam.”* Indian religion has accepted art, as it has
accepted life in its entirety, with open eyes. India, with
all her passion for renunciation, has never suffered from
that terrible blight of the imagination which confuses the
ideals of the ascetic and of the citizen. The citizen is
indeed to be restrained ; but the very essence of his method
is that he should learn restraint or temperance by life, not
by the rejection of life. For him, the rejection of life, called
Puritanism, would be m-temperance.

What then of the true ascetic,f with his ideal of
renunciation ? It has been thought by many Hindus and
Buddhists, as it has by many Christians, that rapid spiritual
progress is compatible only with an ascetic life. The goal
before us all is salvation from the limitation of individuality,,
and realisation of unity with Unconditioned Absolute-
Being. Before such a goal can be attained even the

. * Okakura, ‘ Ideals of the East, 7 p. 65.

t True asceticism is a search fora reality beyond.conditioned
life. “ If we are to be excused for rejecting tbe arts, it must bfr
not because we are contented to be less than men, but because we
long to be more than men . 71 —William Morris.

All others who reject the arts, are able to do so only because
their ideal is one of purely material prosperity; they are willing to-
be less than men. "But Industry without art is brutality
MusTcin.

30 .

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM*

highest intellectual and emotional attachments must
he put away; art, like all else in time and space, must
he transcended. Great art suggests ideal forms in terms
of the appearances of the phenomenal world; . but
what is art to one that toils upon the TJnshown Way,
seeking to transcend all limitations of the human intellect
to reach a plane of being unconditioned even by ideal
form ? For such an one, the most refined and intellectual
-delights are but flowery meadows where men may linger
and delay, while the strait path to utter truth waits
vainly for the traveller’s feet. This thought explains the
belief that absolute emancipation is hardly won by any but
human beings yet incarnate; it is harder for the Gods
to attain such release, for their pure and exalted bliss
.and knowledge are attachments even stronger than these
of earth. And so we find such an instruction as this :

“Form, sound, taste, smell, touch, these intoxicate
beings; cut off the yearning which is inherent in them.”—
(Dhammika Sutta).

The extreme expressions of this thought seem to us
more terrible than even the 6 coldness of Christian men to
■external beauty ’; we feel this, for instance, in reading
the story of the Buddhist monk, Chitta Gutta, who dwelt
in a certain cave for sixty years without ever raising his
eyes above the ground so far as to observe the beautifully
painted roof ; nor was he ever aware of the yearly flower¬
ing of a great na -tree before his cave, except through seeing
the pollen fallen upon the ground. But Indian thought
■has never dreamed of imposing such ideals upon the citizen,
whose dharma lies, not in the renunciation of action, but in
right action without attachment to its fruits ; and for such,
who must ever form the great majority of the people, art
is both an aid to, and a means of spiritual progress. This

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

31

•same-sightedness explains to us the seeming paradox, tha-^
Hinduism and Buddhism, with their ideals of renunciation
have like Mediaeval Christianity been at once the inspira¬
tion and the stronghold of art.

Symbolism must be briefly spoken of. Most familiar,
but often more exclusively of religious than of artistic
significance, is the use of concrete attributes and symbols,
such as the serpent garland, the trisula and the tiger skin
of the verses quoted. More subtle is the symbolism of
posture of body or position of the hands: the body in
.activity or in repose, the hands beseeching, granting^
•destroying, or in some posture of uttermost abstraction.
These symbolisms compose an expressive art speech so
easily understood by those familiar with it, that the
religious end may be attained even where the artistic
value of an image may be small. In greater work they
serve both to define and to explain ; the mysticism of
Oriental art is always expressed in definite forms.

India is wont to suggest the eternal and inexpressible
infinities in terms of sensuous beauty. The love of man for
woman or for nature are one with his love for God.
Nothing is common or unclean. All life is a sacrament,
no part of itjmore so than another, and there is no part of
it that may not symbolize eternal and infinite things. In
this great same-sightedness the opportunity for art is
great. But in this religious art it must not be forgotten
that life is not to be represented for its own sake, but for
the sake of the Divine expressed in and through it. It is
laid down :—

a It is always commendable for the artist to draw the
images of gods. To make human figures is wrong, or even
unholy. Even a, misshapen image of God is always better
than an image of man, however beautiful ” (Sukracarya).

32

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

The doctrine here so sternly stated, means, in other words r
that imitation and portraiture are lesser aims than the
representation of ideal and symbolic forms : the aim of the
highest art must always be the intimation of the Divinity
behind all form, rather than the imitation of the form
itself. One may, for instance, depict the sport of Krishna
with the G-opis, but it must be in a spirit of religious
idealism, not for the mere sake of the sensuous imagery
itself.

By many students, the sex symbolism of some Indian
religious art is misconceived: but to those who com¬
prehend the true spirit of Indian thought, this symbolism
drawn from the deepest emotional experiences is proof of
the power and truth alike of the religion and the art.
India draws no distinctions between sacred and profane
love. All love is a divine mystery ; it is the recognition
of Unity. Indeed, the whole distinction of sacred and
profane is for India meaningless, and so it is that the
relatioti of the soul to God may be conceived in terms of
the passionate adoration of a woman for her lover.

Again, the conception of a personal aspect of the
Infinite is not in India, any more than in ancient Egypt,,
limited to that of a male being. The energic power (sakti)
of a divinity is symbolised in literature and art as a divine
woman. I choose, to illustrate this type of symbolism r
the strangely lovely Prajnaparamita (Plate II) from Java r
now in the Rijks Museum at Leiden. This figure of
personified “ Transcendent 'Wisdom,” is the sakti of the
Tantric Buddha, Adibuddha, who here in Maliayana Bud-
dhism occupies the pl ace of Siva.* She is Nature, the

* “ Whose fairer half is the Mother who gave birth to all the
fourteen worlds and the animate and inanimate kingdoms thereof ,r
— Kailayamcilai.

PRAJNAPARAMm..

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

3£

concentration of every intellectual and physical power of
matter, represented in a state of complete abstraction and
personified as Wisdom. By Her union with the acting
spirit (Adibuddha) are produced the Bodhisattvas * and
all the phenomenal universe.

There are thus two main motifs in the sex-symbolism
of Indian art, that may be represented by feminine con¬
ceptions, and even by the actual embrace of the Divine
figures : these are the complete surrender of the soul to
God f—and the reaction between two aspects of a personal
Divinity, whence is imagined to arise the whole phenomenal
universe after submergence in the formless ( pralaya ).

Few aspects of Indian culture are so often, perhaps so
wilfully misunderstood as this < sex-symbolism^m art.
Sufficient tribute to the Indian attitude is paid by Sir
Monier Williams, wiien in, referring to the presence of
many words of erotic significance in his Sanskrit Diction¬
ary, he says that “ in India the- Relationship between the
sexes is regarded as a sacred mystery/and is never held to-
be suggestive of improper or indecent ideas,” As much
could hardly be said for Europe.

The explanation of the possibility of such symbolism
lies, as I have indicated above, in the acceptance of all life
as religious, no part as profane. In such an idealisation
of life itself there lies the strength of Hinduism, and in
its absence the weakness of modern Christianity. The
latter is puritanical; it has no concern with art or agri¬
culture, craft or sex or science. The natural result is

* So in Christianity we find a similar sex-symbolism— u con¬
ceived of the Holy Ghost”, “ only-begotten son,” and the like.

t u For just as one who dallies with a beloved wife has no cons¬
ciousness of outer or inner, so the spirit also, dallying with the
self whose essence is knowledge, has no consciousness of outer or
inner ,”—Brihadaranyakct Upanishad t 4, 3, 21.

5

34

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

that these are secularised, and that men concerned with
these vital sides of life imist either preserve their life and
their religion apart in separate water-tight compartments,
or let religion go. The Church cannot well complain of
the indifference of men to religion when she herself has cut
off from religion, and delimited as 4 profane/ the physical
and mental activities and delights of life itself. Passing
through the great galleries of modern art, nothing is more
impressive than the fact that none of it is religious. I do
not merely mean that there are no Madonnas and no
crucifixes ; but that there is no evidence of any union of
the artistic with the religious sense. The same is true of
dancing and music. Such art appears, therefore, let us not
say childish, for children are wiser, but empty, because of
its lack of a true metaphysic. Of this the cries of realism
and * art for art’s sake ’ are evidence enough. A too
confident appeal to the so-called facts of nature is to the
Indian mind conclusive evidence of superficiality of thought.
For the artist above all must this be true, for the first
essential of true art is not imitation, but imagination.

What is the ideal of beauty implicit in Indian art ? It
is a beauty of type, impersonal and aloof. It is not an
ideal of varied individual beauty, but of one formalised
and rhythmic. The canons insist again and again upon
the Ideal as the only true beauty:

“ An image whose limbs are made in accordance with
the rules laid down in the sastras is beautiful. Some,
however, deem that which pleases the fancy to be beauti¬
ful ; but proportions that differ from those given in the
sastras cannot delight the cultured”— (Sukracharya).

The appeal of formalised ideal beauty is for the Indian
mind always stronger than that of beauty associated with
the accidental and unessential. The beauty of art, whether

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

35

fictile or literary, is more compelling and deeper than that
of nature herself. These pure ideas, thus disentangled
from the web of circumstance by art, are less realised and'
.so more suggestive than fact itself. This is the explana¬
tion of the passionate love of nature expressed in Indian
art and literature, that is yet combined almost with
indifference to the beauty, certainly to the ; picturesque-
ness 5 of nature herself.

An essential part 'of the ideal of beauty is restraint in
representation :

a The hands and feet should be without veins. The
(bones of), the wrist and ankle should not be shown h
{Swkracharya). 1 Invisible ankles ’ and wrists are also
considered beautiful in real life (see Brihacl Scmihitc^ II.
xxi., 3, and xxm., 2). The sinews too should not be
visible. One of the 80 lesser teches of the Buddha was
this : 4 neither veins nor bones are seen.’

The figure of Avalokitesvara (Plate III.), a small and
^exquisite bronze of about the Seventh Century, well
Illustrates this ideal of generalisation .and abstraction.

Over-minuteness would be a sacrifice of breadth.
It is not for the imager to spend his time in display¬
ing his knowledge or his skill; for over-elaborated
detail may destroy rather than heighten the beauty
-of the work. The feeling behind this desire for abstract
form, and the suppression of unessential detail is exactly
analogous to the feeling for pure line and expressive
lines in Japanese, and some modern European black
.and white work. All that is not necessary to express the
artist’s thought is actually a hindrance to its complete
•expression and reception. But this objection to the
laborious realisation of parts of a work of art, must not be
confused with the pernicious doctrine of the excellence of

36

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

unfinished work; it is essential that the artist should
always do his best. Oriental art is essentially clear and
defined ; its mystery does not depend on vagueness.

. Adherence to the proportions laid down in the sastras-
is even inculcated by imprecations :

“If the measurements be out by even half an inch,,
the result will be loss of wealth, or death ”— (SaHputra).

“ One who knows amiss his ci*aft.after his death

will fall into hell and suffer”— (Mayamataya ).

In such phrases we seem to see the framers of tlie-
caiion, consciously endeavouring to secure the permanance'
of the tradition in future generations, and amongst igno¬
rant .or inferior craftsmen. We shall see later what lias
been the function of tradition in Indian art. It appears*
here as an extension in time of the idea of formal beauty
and symbolism.

It is not necessary for all art to be beautiful, certainly
not pretty. If art is ultimately to ‘interpret God to
all of you/ it must be now beautiful, now terrible, but
always with that living quality which transcends the limit¬
ed conceptions of beauty and ugliness. The personal God'
whom alone art can interpret, is in and through all
nature; “All this Universe is strung upon Me as gems r
upon a thread.” Nature is sometimes soft and smiling,,
sometimes also red in tooth and claw; in her both
life and death are found. Creation, preservation and
destruction are equally His work: His images may
therefore be beautiful or terrible.

In nature there are three gunas , or qualities, Sattva
(truth), liajas (passion), and Tamas (gloom). These
qualities are always present in nature ; their relative pro¬
portion determines the character of any particular subject
#r object. They must, therefore, enter into all material

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN AST. 37

=and conditioned representations, even of Divinity,. And
so we find a classification of images into three, sattvik .
rajasik , and tamasik :

•« “ An image of God, seated self-contained, in the
posture of a yogi, with hands turned as if granting boon
and encouragement to his worshippers, surrounded by
praying and worshipping Indra and other gods, is called a
sattvik image.

“ An image seated on a- oahan , decked with various
ornaments, with hands bearing weapons, as well as granting
boon and encouragement, is called a, rajasik image.

“ A tamasik image is a terrible armed figure fighting
and destroying the demons ”— (Snkracharya).

The Indian conception of art, which may be defined as
the controlled and rhythmic expression of emotion (rasa). The
■conception of rasa (feeling, flavour, burden, passion) is the
■essential factor in Hindu ideas of aesthetics. The aesthetic
faculty is called ranjini vritti , i colouring faculty/ because
in art all tilings are conditioned or coloured by rasa^
All true artistic creation is a, passionate experience.

Now the rasas are nine in number: Xringard—^
Love, with a sex reference, but fundamentally as a
spiritual experience ; oira — the heroic ; karima —-
sympathy ; compassion ; adhlmta —wonder ; hasya —the
ridiculous ; bhayanaka —fear ; hibhatsa —disgust; raudra —
the terrible ; and lastly shanta— dispassion, peace, the sum¬
mation and antithesis of the other eight. Of these sringara
is called the fundamental fall) rasa . The first and last/
which involve the conception of unity, a,re permanent,*

* It is not to form and colour, but to feeling that the art,
‘Consciousness f a nd-mien tally relates us. Form, colour and sound
are merely means of expression, the immediate beauty of which ia
very far from representing the whole content of art.

ZB

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

the others implying 4 differentiation’ impermanent. The
first and last correspond nearly to the most ideal Western
conception of the ‘Beautiful’; they represent• the
Absolute ; but in Indian aesthetic thought, this Absolute or
Universal is regarded as Rasa . The difference between
Eastern and Western thought is thus less than' at first
appears ; it appears in the greater generalisation of the
conception Rasa , as compared with that of Beauty.

We can understand this by a comparison with Greek
art and drama. Greek art {i, e. classic sculpture—not
vase paintings) is limited by the conception of the gods as
beautiful Olympians ; there is nothing in it like ‘ Bacchae f
of Euripides. But in Greek drama -we find the wonder and
mysticism which the art, with all its beauty, lacks. Indian
art has the wider content of Greek drama. Curiously
enough, however, Indian drama is limited somewhat, as is-
Greek sculpture, by the idea of pleasure or beauty.

All conceptions of Beauty are coloured by Love ;
gara L the adi rasa. All aesthetic delight has its founda¬
tion in the Universal and Absolute. But this Absolute—
Unjty—or Love, is not an abstraction but a Person, God,
Absolute beauty—the idea that has ever haunted the
imagination of the world—is also God ; discrete beauty is
for each of us, whatsoever part of God we can identify our
being with, temporarily and permanently. Thus it becomes
clear to us how it is that the highest aim of art, which is
the expression of rasa , is conceived to be the interpretation
and intimation of the Divine, the Ultimate Reality spoken
of in the Tedas as Rasa, and apprehended in Yaishnavic
thought as Uikhilarasamx*ita-murti, the Universal Form of
all Emotion and all Bliss.

Ideas of formal beauty identical with those above
indicated are also expressed in decorative art. The aim of

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

39

such art is not, of course, in the same sense consciously
religious; the simple expression of delight in cunning
workmanship, or of the craftsman’s humour, or his fear or
his desire, are motifs that inspire the lesser art that belongs
to the common things of life. But yet all art is really one,
consistent with itself and with life; how should one part
of it be fundamentally opposed to another? And so we
find in the decorative art of India the same idealism that
is inseparable from Indian thought; for art, like religion, is
really a way of looking at things, more than anything else.

Eastern decorative art is characterised especially by
rhythm, definite form and clear outline. It is the entire
lack of these, and particularly of rhythm, in ‘ l ’ art nouveau*
and in 1 naturalistic decorative ’ art generally, which best
explains their failure to dignify an object ornamented, or
to satisfy the eye or heart.

The love of nature in its infinite beauty and variety
has impelled the Oriental craftsman to decorate his handi¬
work with the forms of the well-known birds and flowers*
and beasts with which he is most intimate, or which have
most appealed to his imagination. But these forms he
never represents realistically, they are always memory
pictures, combined with fanciful creations of the imagina¬
tion, into symmetrical and rhythmic ornament.

Take, for example, the treatment of lions in decorative
art. Yerses of the canon relating to animals often show
that the object of the canon has been as much to stimulate
imagination, as to define the manner of representation.

u The neigh of a horse is like the sound of a storm ?
his eyes like the lotus, he is swift as the wind, as stately
as a lion, and his gait is the gait of a dancer.

u The lion has eyes like those of a hare, a fierce
aspect, soft hair long on his chest and tinder his

40

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

shoulders, his back is plump like a sheep’s, his body is
that of a blooded horse, his gait is stately, and his tail
long — (Sariputm).

For comparison I quote another description, from an
old Chinese canon :

“ With a form like that of a tiger, and with a colour
tawny or sometimes blue, the lion is like the
Mukurinw , a shaggy dog. He has a huge head, hard as
bronze, a long tail, forehead firm as iron, hooked fangs,
eyes like bended bows, and raised ears ; his eyes flash like
lightning, and Jus roar is like thunder.”*

SuqIi descriptions throw light on the representation
of animals in Oriental decorative art. The artist’s lion
need be like no dion on earth or in any zoological
gardenfor he is not illustrating a woi*k on natural
history. *Fneed"^rom such a limitation, he is able to
express through his lion the whole theory of his national
existence and individual idiosyncracy. Thus has Oriental art
been preserved from such paltry and emasculated realism
as that of the lions of Trafalgar Square. Contrast
the absence of imagination in this handiwork of the
English painter of domestic pets, with the vitality
of the heraldic lions of Mediaeval England, or the lions
of Hokusai’s 4 Daily Exorcisms.’ The sculptured lions
of Egypt, Assyria, or India (see Plate IV.) are true works
of art, for in them we see, not any lion that could to-day
be shot or photographed in a desert, but the lion as he
existed in the minds of a people, a lion that tells us some
thing of the people who represented him. In such artistic
subjectivity lies the significance of Ancient and Eastern de¬
corative art: it is this which gives so much dignity and
value to the lesser arts of India., and separates them so

* Quoted in 4 The KoM'a? No. 198, 1906.

Plate IV.

To Pace Page 4&

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

41

-entirely in spirit from the imitative decorative art of
modern Europe.

Take Indian jewellery as another illustration of
idealism in decorative art. The traditional forms have
distinctive names, just as a 4 curb bracelet ’ or a 4 gipsy
ring’ may be spoken of in England. In India the names
are usually those of special flowers or fruits, or generic
terms for dowers or seeds, as 4 rid -dower thread,’ 4 coeoanut-
dowei* garland,’ 4 petal garland,’ 4 string of millet grains,’

4 ear-dower,’ 4 hair-dower.’ These names are reminiscent
of the garlands of real dowers, and the dowers in the hair,
that play so important a part in Indian festal dress. These,
with the dowers and fruits worn as talismans or as
religious symbols, are the prototypes of the dower forms
of Indian jewellery, which thus, like all other Indian art,
redects the thought, the life and history of the people by
and for whom it is so beautifully made.

The traditional forms, then, are named after dowers ;
but it is highly characteristic that the garlands and dowers
are in design purely suggestive, not at all imitative of the
prototypes. The realism which is so characteristic of
nearly all modern Western art, in jewellery producing the
unimaginative imitations of dowers, leaves, and animals of
the school of Lalique, is never found in Indian design.

The passion for imitation may be taken as direct
evidence of the lack of true artistic impulse, which is
always a desire, conscious or sub-conscious, to express or
manifest Idea. Why indeed imitate where you can, never
rival ? Nor is it by a conscious, intellectual effort that a
dower is to be conventionalised and made into applied
ornament. No Indian craftsman sets a, dower before him
and worries out of it some sort of ornament by taking

42

ESSAYS IX NATIONAL IDEALISM.

thought; his art is more deeply rooted in the national life^

than that,* If the flower has not meant so much to him
that he has already a clear memory picture of its essential
characters, he may as well ignore it in his decoration ; for*
a decorative art not intimately related to his own experience,,
and to that of his fellow men, could have no intrinsic
vitality, nor meet with that immediate response which
rewards the prophet speaking in a, mother-tongue. It is
of course, true that the original memory pictures are-
handed on as crystallised traditions ; yet as long as the art
is living, the tradition remains also plastic, and is moulded
imperceptibly by successive generations. The force of its.
appeal is strengthened by the association of ideas,—artistic,,
emotional and religious. Traditional forms have thus a
significance not merely foreign to any imitative art, but
dependent on the fact that they represent rather race con¬
ceptions, than the ideas of one artist or a single period*.
They are a vital expression of the race mind : to reject
them, and expect great art to live on as before, would be
to sever the roots of a forest tree, and still look for
flowers and fruit upon its branches.

Consider, also, patterns. To most people patterns
mean extremely little ; they are things to he made and
cast aside for new, only requiring to be pretty, perhaps
only to be fashionable ; whereas they are really things
which live and grow, and which no man can create,—all

* The Western craftsman will not recover his power of design
until he worships God with flowers ; until the sacraments of life
are once more made a ritual; nor until he gets back some real
superstitions in place of the superstition of 1 facts/ Any Roman-
Catholic would understand this.

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART* 4$

he can do is to use them, and to let them grow. The
artist is not one who makes, but one who finds.

Every real pattern has a long ancestry and a story to*
tell. For those .that can read its language, even the most
strictly decorative art has complex and symbolical associa¬
tions that enhance a thousandfold the significance of its
expression, as the complex associations that belong to-
words, enrich the measured web of spoken verse. This is
not, of course, to suggest that such art has a didactic
character, but only that it has some meaning and some¬
thing to say ; but if you do not want to listen, it is still as
a piece of decoration far better than some new thing that
has c broken with tradition ’ and is 4 original.’

May Heaven preserve us from the decorative art of
to-day, that professes to be new and original. The truth
is expressed by Buskin in the following words :—

“ That virtue of originality that men so strain after
is not newness (as they vainly think), it is only genuineness ;
it all depends on this single glorious faculty of getting to-
the spring of tilings and working out from that.”

Observe that here we have come back to the essentially
Indian point of view, getting to the spring of things, and
working out fronylhat. You will get all the freshness
and individuality you want if you do that. This is to be
seen in the vigour and vitality of the design of William
Morris, comp fired with the work of designers who have
deliberately -striven to be original. Morris tried to do no
more than .recover the thread of a lost tradition and carry
it on ; and yet no one could mistake the work of Morris for-
that of any other man or any other century or coimtry—
and is’hiot that originality enough % The one thing essential
is imaginative intensity; and with novelty of form, this
intensity has little or no connection.

44

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Convention may be defined as tlie manner of artistic
presentation, while tradition stands for a historic continuity
in the use of such conventional methods of expression.
Many have thought that convention and tradition are the
foes of art, and deem the epithets i conventional and
traditional ’ to be in themselves of the nature of destruc¬
tive criticism. Convention is conceived of solely as
limitation, not as a language and a means of expression.
But to one realising what tradition really means, a quite
contrary view presents itself; that of the terrible and almost
hopeless disadvantage from which art suffers w T hen each
artist and each craftsman, or at the best, each little group
and school, has first to erea/te a language, before ideas can
be expressed in it. For tradition is a wonderful, expres¬
sive language, that enables the artist working through
it to speak directly to the heart without the necessity for
explanation. It is a mother-tongue, every phrase of it rich
with the countless shades of meaning read into it by the
simple and the great that have made and used it in the past.

It may be said that these principles hold good only in
relation to decorative art. Let us then enquire into the
place and influence of tradition in the fine art of India.
The’ written traditions, once orally transmitted, consist
mainly of memory verses, exactly corresponding to the mne¬
monic verses, of early Indian literature. In both cases,
the artist, imager or story-teller, had also a fuiler and more
living tradition, handed down in the schools Lorn genera¬
tion to generation, enabling him to fill out the meagre
details of the written canon. Sometimes, in addition to
the verses of the canon, books of mnemonic sketches were
in use, and handed down from master to pupil in the same
way. These give us an opportunity of more exactly under¬
standing the nature and method of tradition. In Fig. 1

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN A JUT.

45-

is reproduced from an old Tamil craftsman’s sketch book, a
figure of Siva as Nataraja. In order to understand this it
is necessary first to explain the legend and conception of
Siva’s appearance as the 4 Dancing Lord.’ The story is
given in the Koyil Puranam, and is familiar to all Saivites.
Siva appeared in disguise amongst a congregation of ten
thousand sages, and in the course of disputation, confuted
them and so angered them thereby, that they endeavoured
by incantations to destroy Him. A fierce tiger was created
in sacrificial flames, and rushed upon Him ; but smiling
gently, He seized it with His sacred hands, and with
the nail of His little finger stripped off its skin, which
He wrapped about Himself as if it had been a silken
cloth. Undiscouraged by failure, the sages renewed their
offerings, and there was produced a monstrous serpent,
which He seized and wreathed about His neck. Then He
began to dance ; but there rushed upon Him a last monster
in the shape of a hideous malignant dwarf. Upon him the
God pressed the tip of His foot, and broke the creature’s
back, so that it writhed upon the ground ; and so, His last
foe prostrate, Siva resumed the dance of which the gods
were witnesses. A modern interpretation of this legend
explains that He wraps about Him, as a garment, the tiger
fury of human passion ; the guile and malice of mankind,.
He wears as a necklace, and beneath His feet is for ever
crushed the embodiment of evil. More characteristic of
Indian thought is the symbolism, in terms of the marvellous
grace and rhythm of Indian dancing, the effortless ease
with which the God in His grace supports the cosmos ; it
is His sport. The five acts of creation, preservation, destruc¬
tion, embodiment and gracious release are His ceaseless
mystic dance. In sacred Tillai, the 4 New Jerusalem ’ the
dance shall be revealed; and Tillai is the very centre of the

46

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Universe, that is, His dance is within the cosmos and the
soul.*

“ Our God/’ says a Tamil text, “ is the Dancer Who
like the heat latent in firewood diffuses His. Power in Mind
and matter and makes them dance in their turn.” Sivan
here is one with Eros Protogonos, Lord of Life and Death,
•of whom Lucian spoke when he said, u It would seem that
•dancing came into being at the beginning of all things, and
was brought to light together with Eros, that ancient one,
for we see this primeval dancing clearly set forth in the
choral dance of the constellations, and in the planets and
fixed stars, their interweaving and interchange and orderly
harmony.”

The necessity for such an explanation emphasizes the
apparent difficulty of understanding Indian art; but it
must be remembered that the element of strangeness in
Indian art is not there for its makers and those for whom
they worked ; it speaks, as all great national art must
speak, in a language of its own and it is evident that the
grammar of this art language must be understood before
the message can be appreciated, or the mind left free to
•consider what shall be its estimate of the artistic qualities of
a work before it.

Here then is a rough sketch, drawn by an ordinary
•craftsman, and representing very fairly just that amount
of guidance which tradition somewhat precisely hands
on for the behoof of each succeeding generation of imagers.
This conception is fairly often met with in Southern
India, sculptured in stone or cast in bronze. Some of
these representations have no especial artistic excellence ;

* Pope, ‘ Tiruvachagam: p. nxm.; Nallasawmi Pillai
* Sivagnana Bothamf Madras , 1895, p. 74.

TBE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN AKT. 47

'but so subjective is appreciation of art, so- dependent on
qualities belonging entirely to the beholder, and transferred
by him into the object before him, that the symbolic and
religious aim is still attained. Such is one of the func¬
tions of tradition, making it possible for ordinary craftsmen
•to work acceptably within its limits, and a,voiding all danger
of the great and sacred subjects being treated with loss of
•dignity or reverence. But tradition has another aspect,
.as enabling the great artist, the man of genius, to say, in
the language understanded of the people, all that there is
in him to express.

A bronze figure of Nataraja, is shown in Plate I.; it re¬
presents a figure in the Madras Museum, perhaps of the seven¬
teenth century, probably older. It would be superfluous to
praise in detail this beautiful figure ; it is so alive, and yet so
balanced, so powerful and yet so effortless. There is here
realism for the realist, but realism that is due to keenness of
memory for familiar things, not to their imitation. The
imager grew up under the shadow of a Sivan temple in one of
the great cathedral cities of the South; perhaps Tanjore ; he
had worked with his fathei* at the columns of the Thousand
Pillared Hall at Madura,, and later at the Choultry, when
-all the craftsmen of Southern India, flocked to carry out
the great buildings of Tirumala Nayaka; himself a Saivite,
he knew all its familiar ritual, and day after day had seen
the dancing of the devadasis before the shrine, perhaps in his
youth had been the lover of one, more skilled and graceful
than the rest; and all his memories of rhythmic dance, and
mingled devotion for devadasi and for Deity, he expressed in
the grace and beauty of this dancing Siva. For so are
religion and culture, life and art, bound up together in the
web of Indian life. Is the tradition that links that art to
fife of little value, or less than none, to the great genius ?

48

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Shall he reject the imagery ready to his hand, because it
is not new and unfamiliar ? Look well at the figure, with
its first and simplest motif of victory over evil; observe*
the ring of flaming fire, the aura of His glory ; the four
hands with the elaborate symbolism of their attitude ; the
Ganges and crescent moon in His hair; the fluttering
cmgavastiram , and the serpent garland, and think whether
any individual artist, creating his own convention and
inventing newer symbolisms, could speak thus to the
hearts of men, amongst whom the story of Siva's dance is
a gospel and a cradle tale.

The seated Buddha (Plate Y.) is a more familiar type.
Here, too, convention and tradition are held to fetter artistic
imagination. Indian art is sometimes condemned for show¬
ing no development, because there is, or is supposed to be,
no difference in artistic conception between a Buddha of the
first century and one of the nineteenth. It is, of course,
not quite true that there is no development, in the sense
that the work of each period is altogether uncharacterised •
for those who know something of Indian art are able to
estimate with some confidence the country to which a
statue belongs. But it is true that the conception is really
the same; the mistake lies in thinking this an artistic
weakness. It is an expression of the fact that the Indian
ideal has not changed. What is that ideal so passionately
desired ? It is one-pointedness, same-sightedness, control
little by little to control the fickle and unsteady mind;
little by little to win stillness, to rein in, not merely the
senses, but the mind, that is as hard to check as is the-
wind. As a lamp that flickers not in a windless spot, so is
the mind to be at rest. Only by constant labour and
passionlessness are this peace and the realization that is its
end to be attained. What is the attitude of mind and

Plate V,

DHYANI BUDDHA.

the aims and methods* of Indian art. 49

body of one that seeks it ? He shall be seated like the
image, for that posture once acquired, is one of perfectly
bodily equipoise.

“ He shall seat himself with thought intent and the
workings of mind and sense instruments restrained, for
purification of spirit labour on the yoga.

44 Firm, holding body, head, and neck in unmoving
equipoise, gazing on the end of his nose, and looking not
round about him.

44 Calm of spirit, void of fear, abiding under the vow
of chastity, with mind restrained and thought set on Me,
so shall he sit that is under the Buie, given over unto Me.

44 In this wise the yogi . . . conies to the peace that
ends in nirvana and that abides in Me ”—( Bhagavad Gita ,
Yl., 12-15).’

How then should the greatest of India’s teachers be
represented in art ? How otherwise than seated in this
posture that is in the heart of India associated with every
striving after the great Ideal, and in which the Buddha
himself was seated on the night when the attacks of Mara
were for ever foiled, and that insight came at last, to gain
which the Buddha had in countless lives sacrificed his body
4 for the sake of creatures’ ? It was the greatest moment
in India’s spiritual history; and as it lives in the race -
memory, so is it of necessity presented in the race-art.

It is usual now-a-days to demand what is called origin¬
ality in works of art, to ask that they shall bear not only
the artist’s name, but the impress of his individuality, he
is. expected to 4 be himself,’ 4 break away from tradition 7
and the like. Only with such work, do men now associate
that emotional intensity that men less feverishly seeking
for some new thing, associated of old with the retelling of
a twice-told tale,

4

50

ESSAYS IN , NATIONAL IDEALISM.

For these nameless artists, the one great thing was
not so much to express themselves in their- work, hut to
tell the great thing itself, that meant so much to' them ancl
which it was theirs to re-express. ]STot by their names do
we remember them. Theirs is an immortality more perfect,
because more impersonal. Art that is altogether original
can never be truly great. How could one man’s labour
rival the results of centuries of race-imagining ? The true
material of art must ever be that which has already com¬
manded the hearts of men rather than any fancy of the
passing hour.

Such, then, have been the aims and methods of Indian
Art in the past. Two tendencies are manifested in the
Indian art of to-day, the one inspired by the technical
achievement of the modern West, the other by the spiritual
idealism of the East. The former has swept away both the
beauty and the limitation of the old tradition. The latter
has but newly found expression ; yet if the greatest art is
always both National and Beligious (and how empty any
other art must be), it is there alone that we see the ,begin¬
nings of a new and greater art, that shall fulfil and not
destroy the past. When a living Indian culture arises
out of the wreck of the past and the struggle of the
present, a new tradition will be born, and new vision find
expression in the language of form and colour no less than
in that of words than rhythm. The people to whom the
great conceptions came are still the Indian people, and,
when life is strong in them again, strong also will be their
art. It may well be that the fruit of a deeper national life,
a wider culture, and a profounder love, will be an art
greater than any of the past. But this can only be through
growth ancl development, not by a sudden rejection of the
past. A particular convention is the characteristic

THE AIMS AND METHODS OF INDIAN ART.

51

^expression of a period, the product of particular conditions 5
it resumes the historic evolution of the national culture.
The convention of the future must be similarly related to
the national life. We stand in relation both to past and
future; in the past we. made the present, the future we
.are moulding now, and our duty to this future is that
we should enrich, not destroy, the inheritance that is not
India’s alone, but the inheritance of all humanity.

CHAPTER V.

Art and Yoga in India-

I K these notes it is proposed briefly to indicate the*
connection betweenjmtjmcLxogarin India. The yoga
philosophy of India is the applied science of psychology,,
and has naturally, as such, profoundly influenced the-
whole development of Indian culture. Yoga is the science-
of the mind, particularly in relation to concentration and
attention, and, though in its highest and most usual'
sense the aim of union of the self with the Self is implied,
its methods are perfectly general and applicable to every
kind of mental activity.

These methods are briefly indicated in Patanjali,.

in. 1-4. 44 Attention (dharana) is the fixing of the mind

in a given place : contemplation (dhycma) consists in the*

uninterrupted current of cognition thereof: the same-

shining on the object only, and emptied of all self-reference,.

is rapture (samadhi). These three together constitute-

identification of subject with object (sanycima)”

Kow, Indian art stands related to yoga in three ways r

In respect of the Divine Ideal,* characteristic methods, and

ultimate purpose. The present notes deal chiefly with the*

methods and briefly with the’ aims of Indian art. The

following summary of an imager's ritual will illustrate their-

yogie character. The details are taken from Tantric books

of about the 12th century, summarised by M. Toucher in

his 4 Iconographic Bouddhique ’ (Part II). The methods are

no doubt much older than the extant literature, in which

•See Ch. iv. supra, and Mr. E. B. HaveU’s "Indian Sculpture
nd Painting ”

AHT AND YOGA IN. INDIA.

;53

moreover they are presented perhaps in a somewhat rigid
and extreme form. Indeed, adherence to the letter rather
than to the spirit of these formulas "may have contributed
to the ultimate decline of the very art originally developed
•on the lines of the essential truths underlying them. How¬
ever that may be, we are able to gain from these texts a
remarkable insight into the relations of art and yoga.

The artist then, or magician ( sadhcoka , mmitrm or
yog in) as he is called, is to proceed to a solitary place, after
purificatory ablutions, and wearing newly-washed garments.
There he is to perform the 4 Seven-fold office 5 beginning
with the invocation of the hosts of Buddhas and Bodhisatt-
vas in the open space before him and the offering to them
of real or imaginary flowers, and ending with a
dedication of the merit acquired, to the welfare of
all beings. Then he has to realise in thought the
four infinite qualities (love, compassion, sympathy, same¬
sightedness). Then he must meditate on the original purity
of the first principles of things, and on (what comes to the
same thing) their emptiness or absolute non-existence.

' u By the fire of the idea of emptiness, it is said, there are
destroyed beyond recovery the five elementswhich
compose the individual consciousness. Only when the
personality of the individual is thus set aside is he able to
invoke the divinity desired to be represented, and to attain
identity, with this divinity which last condition is strictly
enjoined. Bor complete comprehension is only possible
when the consciousness is thus identified with an object of
'Cognition. All this takes place in the imagination. The
•divinity appears 1 like a reflection 5 or 4 as in a dream. 5 Very
rarely indeed is any drawing made use of, even in the most
complicated conceptions, where the principal personage is
surrounded by disciples in the centre of a mandala. It is

54

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

only when the mental image’is thus defined that the artist,
begins to mould or paint.

Another analogy between art and yoga is found in a
reliance upon knowledge obtained in sleep or dreams. One-
method of overcoming obstacles to yoga, says Patanjali, is-
by 44 dwelling on knowledge that presents itself in dream
or sleep.” Just this knowledge is referred to in the Agni
Purana (Oh. 43), where the imager is instructed, on the
night before beginning his work, and after ceremonial
.purification, to pray : 44 0 thou Lord of all gods, teach me¬
in dreams how to carry out all the work I have in my
mind.”

The same principles hold good in secular art. Every¬
thing is painted or carved out of the artist’s own head
(whence, as Burne-Jones truly said, all pictures ought to-
come) not from any visible model posing before him. Even
4 drawing from nature’ means 4 drawing from memory.’'
And this applies likewise to the modern school of Bengali
painting, which represents a. return to Indian idealism r
largely inspired by the painting of the Moghul period.

- It will be seen that the artistic method is thus practi¬
cally identical with the method of personal devotion-
meditation on and self-identification with the mentally
conceived form of the Ishta Derate*. And what a training-
such a method of -worship provides for the imagination of
• the artist! For the true artist is not he who 4 composes ’ a
-picture, but he who 4 sees ’ it. This apprehension of ideas,
apparently arriving from outside the ordinary conscious¬
ness is 4 inspiration,’ the real characteristic of genius. This,
is well expressed in the Persian distinction between*
award (to bring), applied to rhyming and composition by
one’s own personal effort, and amad (to come), applied
to writing with spontaneous flow' of thought, inspiration-

ART AND YOGA. IN INDIA,

55

Observe how Yyasci demanded of Ganesha that he should
write down his slokas without stopping. A public speaker
is at his best when he 4 forgets himself ’; and if-the thread
of his discourse is broken, he becomes self-conscious, and
the remainder of his speech may be spoilt. Many speakers
too, could not repeat or remember afterwards, 4 in cold
blood,’ the words they used viien 4 carried aw r ay ’ by the
temporary stimulus. Very significant is the way in winch
Sri Krishna, when asked to repeat the Gita after the battle
was not able to do so—he had forgotten it. 4 We cannot
.kindle when we will the fire that in the soul resides ’ ; or
would it be truer to say that in some measure w r e can,
when by 4 standing still from self-thinking and self-willing
(Behmen) room is left for greater things, from wiiich at
ordinary times self-consciousness divides us ?

Such, is the teaching of yoga, and such also is
the meaning of art.

u Of beauty they have sung in every age
He who perceives it is from himself set free.”

The Indian conception of the artistic imagination,
whether in artist or spectator, is akin to that of religious
ecstasy. The great philosopher Abhinavaguptapadacharya
explains that, when we enjoy a beautiful piece of poetry,
we realise our own higher self. What is called bhogct
(delight) is nothing but the revelation of our own higher
nature conditioned by sattva (truth), and previously
obscured by rajas (selfish activity,) and tamos (inertness).
Since our higher nature is essentially blissful, the delight
vre experience is comparable to Brahmanic bliss.*

This view is akin to that of the neo-Platonists.
According to Plotinus: 44 The explanation of delight in
sensible beauty, so far as it can be explained, is that

* Prof. V. V, Sovani, Vedic Mag. Vol. II, No. 10.

56

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

when the soul perceives something akin to its own nature
it feels joy in it.” Good and beauty in themselves—Sattva
and Rasa—are the principles to which souls naturally aspire.
u This is to be reached by closing the eyes to common
sights and arousing another power of vision which all have
but. few make use of.”*

Another parallel is afforded by the lives of saints and
heroes. “ Christ and his disciples were artists inasmuch
as their speech and action were penetrated by the rapture
of an inward vision. Art and religion are a motion of the
soul, or self-forgetfulness of the individual before the uni~
versal life. The artist sees or half sees a vision, which 5
though it is yet formless, though as yet he has not realised
it or made it his own, draws him from himself..” t

The true significance of art, in a view of life which
values all things solely in so far as they conduce to the
attainment of moksha,% lies in the self-forgetfulness and
Self-realisation which it involves alike for artist and

spectator.

It is said that men dread Pantheism, not because they
are afraid of losing God, but because they fear to lose
themselves. This is the secret of the Western shrinking
from those Oriental religions which are supposed to preach
4 extinction ’ as the desired goal. But- only he that will
Jose his life shall save it; and he that would save his life
shall lose it. Compare the consciousness of a savage with
that of a refined and cultured man. Most of the savage’s
self-consciousness, ideas of good, self-protection, hunting

. 1 The Neo-PIatonists (Plotinus. Enn 1., 6 8)

I ?; de Selmeourt, “ Hibberfc Journal,” January 1907.’

g0al ° f a ! 1 . rel , i 8 ion ’ self-realisation, i.e., passing
from the superficial ego, empirical and sensational in conscious?
ness, to the Self seated in the heart of all things.

ART AND YOGA IN INDIA.

57

find" fighting, have for the other passed into the region of
•sub-consciousness, accessible at will, but no longer filling
the whole circle of the mind. The ordinary consciousness
of the cultured man, on the other hand, is composed of
thoughts outside the range of the savage mind, and at
the same time, as we have said, relegates ideas of the
latter to the region of sub-consciousness. Yet even the
savage too may have intuitions of these higher things ;
but he may hardly be able to explain them except in terms
of negation of ordinary experience. Just so the higher
man is lifted at times by the exaltation of love, by art, by
philosophy, or by deliberate effort {yoga) above his ordinary
consciousness. And this is not a loss—it is an infinite
gain. It is not extinction but realisation. But from the
standpoint of the empirical consciousness it has often to be
described only in terms of negation.

According to Plato, the things we see about us are but
the shadows of real things we do not see. Just so it is
imagined by the Indian mind that the life of a Hindu,
his art and architecture, and music are, as it were, shadows
or echoes of realities elsewhere. “Send to the world of
the devas,” said the royal builder, “and procure for me a
plan of their palace.”

Devanagari , £a Sanskrit,’ is in a very literal sense the
language of the gods. The Hindu temple and its ritual
are, as it were, reflections of the actual adoration of Maha-
dev 01 Kailas. There are manifest the realities which Plato
called Ideas, whose shadows only are seen by mortal men.
But the true artist is not mortal, he is a £ hero,’ one who
has eyes to see and ears to hear. It is for him to make
manifest to us what he himself has seen, to make the ideal
real, to lift us thereby, if only for a moment, to the level
of his truer vision. Can we wonder that architecture so

58

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

imagined is both grand and beautiful, or can such conceptions
fail to be reflected in the dignity and serenity of life itself ?
Under such conditions the builder is not an individual’
expressing individual whims, but a part of the Universe
giving expression to the ideals of its own beauty, rhythm
and unchanging law.

Plato conceived only of an imitative art, a shadow of
the shadows : he did not imagine the possibility of the
artist’s direct approach by intuition to the more profound
reality. He perceived that the art of his own time was not
in the liighest sense religious, he saw that it was built on
no deep metaphysic. Greek art— i. e. classic Greek sculp¬
ture—has no touch of mysticism. It may be that Plato-
would have distrusted equally any art that had. How¬
ever that may be, he gives no sign of recognition of the-
possibility of a spiritually idealistic art such as that of
Egypt, India, or Mediaeval Europe.

As the ideal, so, as nearly as possible, the real—this
is the fundamental principle through which alone Indian
culture can be understood or judged. The great civilising*
force called Hinduism is a. literal attempt to realise the
kingdom of heaven on earth. This is the explanation of
religious art traditions, of the continuity in Indian music r
architecture and ritual. Those for whom the Ideal was a.
matter of actual experience, who saw and heard the true
realities and revealed them to less gifted men, willed that
they should not be forgotten.

It is for us, not to follow after our own vain imagin¬
ings in art or life, not even—though this might well
content us—to follow blindly on the lines laid down by the-
ancient shapers of Indian culture; but to so refine
ourselves that we may see and hear again the true realities*
and re-express them in terms of our present consciousness,.

ART AND YOGA IN INDIA.

59

The Indian artist set himself deliberately to make the
unseen moral real than the seen. And by strange good for¬
tune he was therein in the perfect sympathy and under¬
standing of those for whom he worked ; for it was said in
India, that only those 4 devoid of Reason ’ think of Him r
the unmanifest, as having manifestation, knowing not the
reality that is hidden by His yoga may a.

Asia, indeed, has been almost continuously free from
the, to her, childish conception that the highest aim of art
lies in the successful imitation of nature. It has been left
for modern Europe to follow the example of Pheidias in an
endeavour rather to reproduce than to understand. Europe,
though temporarily freed in Gothic art from the purely
physical idealism of Greek, fell with the Renaissance once
more under the sway of its unsatisfying intellectmlism ;
the logical conclusion follows in the modern complete sub¬
jection of art to science. Corrupted by science, as lias
been truly said, the "Western mind now r demands of artists?-
not great ideas, imagination, fancy, tenderness, but what
it calls 4 realism/ little dreaming how far removed this may
be from 4 truth.’ Modern art is primarily an intellectual
process. The historical or religious painter has become an
archaeologist—and this, forsooth, is what w r e mean by
4 faithfulness.’ Not thus did the great painters of mediaeval
Italy or of China, or the sculptors of Egypt or of India w’ork.
They indeed sought truth, but they sought it where alone it
is to be found, within. We talk of the faithful presentation
of life: but what is life? We do not realise that these men
lived in a world more real and wonder fid than any that -we
know r . That life was the life they represented for us.
Because we know’ it not w’e call it unreal. It is what men
dream, not anything they do, that is real. Infinitely
greater is thought than action. The dreams of a race.

-60

ESSAYS IN' NATIONAL. IDEALISM.

the thoughts of God, and not the acts of the bodies
of individuals are the true realities of art. A_rt is not an
.analysis of things, but then 1 synthesis, a revelation of the
reality enduring behind the evanescent, a revelation above
all of love, that is Unity.

The most general definition of art is the 4 rhythmic
expression and suggestion of controlled emotion’ (rasa)*
Art that is uncoloured by rasa* is no longer art, but
science. How then are we to judge of art ? Not surely as
we judge of empirical science, by the test of accuracy of
■observation. The true basis of art criticism is embodied
£n the pregnant words of Leonardo da Yinci: ^UCJbai
drawing is best which best expresses the passion that
^animates the figure.” 4 Passion’ isTiere the exact equivalent
*of ‘rasa.’ We do wrong to demand of the artist that he
should compete with the appliances of science—we should
.ask from him not 4 realism, ’ but truth, sincerity, imagi¬
nation and emotionL How far second to these are the
standards of archaeological and anatomical accuracy, by
reference to which the modern public tests a work of art I
This modern public, Indian or English, with its complacent
ignorance, provides a mental atmosphere which is—with
rare exceptions of men who are able definitely to live in a
world of their own—quite fatal to the possibility of any
real art.

The keynote of all great art, no less than of yoga, is
•selflessness. And yet originality is actually thought of
by the modern art student as a duty ! He loves to be
■described as 4 seeing things with his own eyes, ’ as 4 eman-

* Dispasssion is included under rasa. Perfect balance (same¬
sightedness) is not the absence of emotion, but the transcending of
emotions. In the Buddha type, dispassion itself is the ‘ passion
that animates the figure. ’

ART AND YOGA IN INDIA,

61

cipated from the last traces of tradition/ He does not
long to make himself a medium of expression of the spirit
of his race, but to impress his own more limited individuality
upon the work of his hand ; and he would shrink in horror
from the idea of leaving his work unsigned, of being but a
nameless unit in a group of workers inspired by one ideal.
Each modern artist seeks to invent for himself a new
artistic Esperanto, unmistakably his and his alone. The*
result of this artistic egoism is a corresponding barrenness *-
for isolation is limitation. In how different a spirit the
great sculptors and painters and writers of old have-
worked ! Nearly all great things are impersonal.

Who “wrote the Mahabharata ? Vyasa, 4 the compiler/
Who were the authors of the Vedas ? 4 Eishis 7 4 heard 7
them, Who first 4 saw 7 the great cat-gods of Egypt, the-
Chinese dragon, or the dance of Sivan ? Who carved the
images* at Chartres ? Who shaped the Keltic otherworlds or
dreamed of that Himalayan forest of Broceliande that is
the innermost sanctuary of the Land of Gods ? Not one of
these is known to us by name, nor are the records of their-
lives detailed in interesting biographies.

To seek after originality, as Novalis truly perceived,,
is egoism. How much greater to stand aside from this
4 gross egoism , 7 more than content if by intensity of
imagination we too can grasp and represent some shadow
of the great realities that artists in all ages have seen and
heard. And this intensity of imagination is true inspi¬
ration (in breathing); it is the setting aside of the lower
self, and the inflow- of a larger self, in touch with a more-
real reality. And this, once more, is yoga : to stand still
from self-willing and seif-thinking ; from a part to become
the whole; from dreams to awaken to the truth behind,
them.

62

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Such then are some aspects of the relation between
art and yoga in India. It has been said that when a new
inspiration comes into "Western art, it will come again from
the East. This I believe. It is the lack of a metaphysic
that makes so much of modern art uninteresting and
monotonous. Art which has no concern with the subjec¬
tive life, with things unseen that are more real
than those that are called real, is little more than science.
It may be that the influence of the East will restore to the
world some measure of the romance and beauty that com¬
merce and materialism have taken away. This is, indeed,
the only hope ; for it is of little use to be more ingenious
than our forefathers if our real life is smaller. The great¬
ness of men lies in their beliefs, not in the multiplicity of
things they disbelieve. Religion, for India, is personal
■experience of the supersensual within one’s own conscious*
ness—Thou art That; Thou art the Buddha; The
Kingdom of heaven is within you. It is part of the mess¬
age of the East that this inward vision, this divine imagin¬
ation, is essential to all real art; that the impersonal beauty
of a type is greater far than the representation of the
transitory and individual.

And if we desire to understand why this ideal art is
greater than any imitation of the beauty of nature as we
•see it with physical eyes, we shall find that it is because
this ideal art, by reason of the element of timelessness and
universality in its presentation, frees us most from' self,
raising us for a, time to the plane of aesthetic contemplation,
which the artist himself attained when he first saw the
picture itself. To understand a poem or a picture, you
must, however dimly, enter into the spiritual atmosphere
pi which it was conceived ; “ to read poetry, you must be
a poet; to see a picture, you must he an artist.” It is

ART AND YOGA IN INDIA*

63

this demand of ideal art upon the spectator’s own imagina¬
tion which is the secret of its power, and which explains the
Indian saying, that the image of a, God, even though mis¬
shapen, is better than the image of a, man, however beautiful.
Realistic, and fully realised, art is finite, and carries the
spectator nowhither that he was not already; ideal and
.suggestive art is infinite and may carry the true spectator
•as far as, nay farther than the artist himself has gone. I
.say the true spectator, because there is as much distinction
•of spectators as of artists, and for both in almost equal
measure is true imagination needed. It is in this power
of carrying the spectator away from his empirical and
rsensational self, by self-forgetfulness, some little way
towards that higher £ Self that is seated in the heart of all
things,’ that there lies the explanation of the truth that
artists are amongst the prophets.

CHAPTER VI.

The Influence of Modern Europe on Indian Art.

w It is on the architecture of to-day that the preservation of Indian*
Art in any semblance of healthy life now hinges.”

J. L. Kipling, Journal of Indian Art , Vol. I.

f|AHE fate of Indian decorative art in modern times'
needs no elaborate demonstration. A comparison
of the manufactures of a hundred, or even fifty r
years ago, as seen in the museums of Europe and India r
with the productions of to-day, reveals a degradation in
quality of material and design which it would be practically
impossible to exaggerate. There is no more depressing*
aspect of present-day conditions than the universal decline
of taste in India, from the Raja, whose palace, built by
the London upholsterer* or imitated from some European
building,f is furnished with vulgar superfluity and uncom¬
fortable grandeur, to the peasant clothed in Manchester*
cottons of appalling hue and meaningless design. The-
Delhi Exhibition was a sufficient revelation of the extent
to which the degradation has advanced. References to it
appear on every page of bools like Sir George Birdwood’s
e Industrial Arts of India/ Sir George Watt’s ‘Indian Art
at Delhi/ and amongst incidental references of almost every
traveller and writer on Indian matters. In 1879 an
address to Sir George Birdwood, signed by William Morris,.

* Like ore now in progress, being made by a. firm of upholster¬
ers in London for the ruler of a small State in the Punjab, at a cost
of 35 lacs

t Like a well-in own palace in Calcutta, a copy of Windsor
Palace.

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 65

Edward Burne-Jones, MonierWilliams, J. E. Millais, Edwin
Arnold, Walter Crane and others spoke of “ the rapid
deterioration that has of late befallen the great historical ■
arts of India.” They further remarked that “ goods which
ought to be common in the market are now becoming
rare treasures for museums, or the cabinets of rich men ”
Let us examine a few instances of this degeneration select¬
ed from various authorities.

“The carpets of Masulipatam were formerly among the finest
produced in India, but of late years have also been corrupted by
the European, chiefly English, demand for them. The English
importers insisted on supplying the weavers with cheaper materials,
and we now find that these carpets are invariably backed with
English twine. The spell of the tradition thus broken, one
innovation after another was introduced into the manufacture.
The designs, which of old were full of beautiful detai,l and more
varied than now in range and scheme of colouring, were surround¬
ed by a delicate outline suggested as to tint by a harmonising
contrast with the colours with which it was in contact. But the
necessity for cheap and speedily executed carpets for the English
market has led to the abandonment of this essential detail in alt
Indian ornamentation. Crude inharmonious masses of unmeaning
form now mark the spots where formerly varied, interesting and
beautiful designs blossomed as delicately as the first flowers of
spring: and these once glorious carpets of Masulipatam have sunk
to a mockery and travesty of their former selves.” (Sir George
Birdwood, I860).

The following quotation from Sir George Watt’s
* Indian Art at Delhi’ illustrates the nature of the process
now taking place throughout the East:

u While examining a large series of old designs, one of the
chief kinkhab manufacturers expressed amusement at the interest
shown in worthless old mica sketches, long out of fashion. He
explained that he possessed a hook of great value from which all
his most successful designs had, for some years past, been taken.
On being desired to show this treasured pattern book, he produced
a sample book of English wall papers. ..... This at once
explained the monstrous degeneration perceived in the Benares

lcinkhabs., not in Benares only, but throughout

India the fine old art designs that have been attained after centuries
of evolution are being abandoned and models utterly unsuited and
far inferior artistically are being substituted. The writer can
confidently affirm that he found in at least 50 per cent, of the

66

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

important silversmiths’ workshops of India, the # illustrated trade
catalogues of European firms and stores being employed as the
pattern books upon which their silver plate was being modelled.”

The same is true of Ceylon, where 'Western influence
is stronger ; every jeweller uses European trade catalogues;
it is now the fashion to melt down old jewellery, the most
beautiful in design and perfect in workmanship, in order
to have copies made of Birmingham designs which a
machine has already reproduced a thousand times (the
people want, in their own words, “ improved jewellery; ”
but they will find it only where they will last of all turn
for it, and then too late, in the workshop of the hereditary
draftsman). To take other examples; of Benares brass
WO rk—by which Indian art is typically represented to the
tourist mind—only two pieces were good enough to show
at the Delhi Exhibition.

“ All but one or two pieces were bad in design and worse in
execution. They had departed from the fine old patterns that
made Benares famous for its brass wares, most being poor
imitations of swami work or of Poona copper ware. Many were in
European shapes and purposes.” (Sir G-. Watt.)

Enamelling has been called the master craft of India ;
of the most famous centre Sir George Watt remarks:—

“Formerly every attention was given to effect, and a back¬
ground or field colour was regularly employed, most frequently a
rich creamy white. Within the past few decades this has been
discontinued, and complex and intricate designs substituted in
which it can hardly be said there is a field colour at all. The
result is distinctly inferior and may be described as garish rather
than artistic. The utilitarian spirit of the times is also marked by
the production of a large assortment of sleeve links, lockets,
bracelets, brooches and the like, and the decoration of the backs of
pieces of jewellery, in place of enamelling, being the chief orna¬
mentation of charms, sword-hilts, plates, etc., as in former times.”

Notice particularly the degradation of the art from
its application to objects entering into the serious life of
the people of the country, to trivial objects intended
mainly for the passing tourist.

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 67

Taste in dyed and printed textiles has declined
enormously. Perhaps the most glaring example known to
me is the replacement of beautiful Indian printed cottons
in Madras, by cheaper products of Manchester, having
greatly degraded imitations of Indian ornament, or
perfectly meaningless decoration such as rows of bicycles,
•or pictures of banknotes. Some of these have been
published as an object lesson, in contrast with Indian
prints. * It has been well remarked that such monstro¬
sities are an insult to European knowledge and an outrage
.on Indian art. Yet I have known educated Indians defend
.their use on the ground that Indians 4 cannot be expected
•to keep to one pattern always, J and that 4 if it is light
for Europeans to admire Indian patterns, why is it not
right for Indians to make use of European forms ? 5 In the
same way, it is sometimes asked why Indians should not
, CO py modern, Western, classical, or any forms of
•architecture that may please them, with the suggestion
that the European advice to build in an Indian style is
merely the result of a particular fancy, and that there can
be no real guiding principle in such matters. Only a
century of education, entirely false in aims and method,
<could have produced such a result as this. Those who
o-ave and those who accepted that education are equally
:at fault.

In illustration of architectural degeneration, a, few
.quotations will suffice.

u The modern palaces of the Nawabs of the Carnatic, of the
Raias of Ramnad or Travaneore, are all in the bastard Italian
style, adopted by the Nawabs of Lucknow and the Babus of
Calcutta. Sometimes, it must be confessed, the buildings are im¬
posing from their mass, and picturesque from their variety of
outline, but the details are always detestable, first from being bad

# Journal of Indian Art, 1897.

68

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

copies of a style that 'was not understood or appreciated, but also*
generally from their being unsuited for the use to which they
were applied. To these defects it must be added, that the whole-
style is generally characterised by a vulgarity it is difficult to*
understand in a people who have generally shown themselves cap¬
able of so much refinement in former times.”*

A Buddhist building lately erected in Colombo, is-
thus described by a local paper : “ The building is a very
pretty structure, a vaulted roof with a fine dome, gothic
windows, doors and a porch, with parapet battlements of'
classic design, being very effective.” This is a typical
illustration of Mr. Growse’s statement + that in India
<£ the essence of European architecture is supposed to con¬
sist in a reckless disregard of all recognized canons of*
ornament and proportion.”

It would he easy to multiply examples of the degene¬
ration of Indian crafts, but, as the fact is generally ad¬
mitted, it will be more profitable to consider the causes*
of this degeneration and the possibilities of arresting it..
The causes fall into two groups, external and internal,,
very closely related, it is true, but for convenience consi¬
dered separately. To take the external first, we have to-
consider chiefly the attitude of the British Government
in India and in England, the influence of the genera!
export demand, the tourist demand, and the influence of
the personal example of Europeans in India. We meet
first with the deliberate discouragement of Indian produce
tion where it in any way competed with English, and
sometimes even where it did not. The first result of'
British trade with India was to open to India a new
market for her textiles in particular. But when it was-

* Ferguson, ‘Indian and Eastern Architecture,M899 ed

p. 385, *

t Journal of Indian Art, Vol. I, ‘ Indian Architecture To¬
day,’ by J. L. Kipling, p. 3.

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 69

found possible to manufacture goods of the same charac¬
ter in England,

“endeavours were made, which were fatally successful, to
repress Indian manufactures and to extend British manufactures.
'The import of Indian goods to Europe was repressed by prohibi¬
tive duties ; the export of British goods to India was encouraged

by almost nominal duties.In 1816-17 ‘India not only

clothed the whole of that vast population, but exported £1,659,438
worth of goods. 5 Thirty years later the whole of this export had
‘disappeared, and India imported four millions sterling of cotton

goods.When Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837,

the evil had been done. But nevertheless there was no relaxation
in the policy pursued before. Indian silk handkerchiefs had still
a sale in Europe; and a high duty on manufactured silk was
maintained. Parliament enquired ‘ how cotton could be grown in
India for British looms, 5 not how Indian looms could be improved.
Select committees tried to find out how British manufactures
could find a sale in India, not how Indian manufactures could be

revived.During a century and a half the commercial

policy of the British rulers of India has been determined, not by
the interests of Indian manufacturers, but by those of British
manufacturers. The vast quantities of manufactured goods which
were exported from India by the Portuguese and Dutch, by Arab
and British merchants, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
have disappeared.”—(Romesh Dutt).

The same policy has been maintained until a later
period. As late as 1905, Mr. Pennington reviewing the
book from which I have just quoted, could say :—

“ One cannot read such an indictment of England by one of
her most capable Indian officials without a feeling of humiliation

. The quite recent story of the imposition of an excise

duty on Indian goods which did not compete at all with any Lan¬
cashire goods and yet affected seriously the rival mills of India, is
=a disgrace to Lancashire as well as to the English Government.
It is quite certain that if India had as many votes as even the
single county of Lancashire, that scandalous duty would never
have been imposed. When shall we get to govern us, ‘ men of
truth, hating unjust gain.’ ? ”

Mr. J. Nisbet, writing in the * Nineteenth Century 5
for November, 1908, repeats the same well-known facts :—

u As regards Swadeshi, certainly so far as fiscal matters are
-concerned, the history of the Indian tariff under Crown Govern¬
ment has been one long and almost continuous betrayal of
Indian interests in order to win the Lancashire vote for party
purposes. 55

10

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Here is the result of such an attitude.

“ The weavers of India were, until recently, a very prosperous-
class, but the importation of machine-made piece-goods from
Manchester has, of late, thrown many thousands of them out of
employ. These dragged on a life of poverty for some years, and
at last either died of semi-starvation, or were forced by necessity
to become menial servants or tillers of the 8011.”—J. N. Bhatta-
eharya, 6 Hindu Castes and Sects.’

These disastrous results have been often enough
insisted on by Indians, but from an economic point
of view only, it being supposed that, if the weavers-
and dyers could take to other employment, and if the
trade in textiles could be restored to India by the esta--
blishment of flourishing mills in towns, the evil would he
ended. The disaster is more serious far than that ; for-
you might take as tribute from every weaver half his
earnings and still leave to the country his technical capa¬
city, and, a greater thing still, his art knowledge, his
power of applying to the productions of his loom the-
traditional ornament which is still a live expressive thing,,
embodying the hope of the past and with an ever fresh
~ message to the future : but if you so disorganize society
as to make it impossible for him to live at all by weaving
—when English manufactures u successfully contest the-
village weaver’s market ”—yon destroy, not merely the-
national wealth, but also the national culture.

Let us turn to the direct influence of the British
Government in India itself.

“The worst mischief,” says Sir George Birdwood, “is*
perhaps done by the architecture foisted on the country by the-
Government of India, which being the architecture of the State,,
is naturally thought to be worthy of all imitation. The Nawab
of Bahawalpur was installed the other day on the throne of his
ancestors, and in anticipation of the auspicious event, the Indian
. Government built him a palace, which is the ghastliest piece of
bare elassicalism it is possible to imagine, even with so many
examples before us in this country of the dissenting chapels and
vestry halls of the last century. And now Holkar, in obvious

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 71

emulation of this preposterous production, is building for himself
a vast Italian palace at Indore, which is to cost many lakhs of
rupees, and will be like Trentham, or Buckingham Palace, or any¬
thing else in the world but a habitation meet for kings. This sort
of thing has been going on all ever India ever since the establish¬
ment of the British peace.”

Just how the process is carried on in detail is ex¬
plained by Mr. Havell in an article entitled 4 Indian
Administration ’ in the 4 Nineteenth Century 5 for June,
1907.*

As an example of Government at its best I give
the following details of endeavour to build in the national
style, in a particular case in Ceylon. Needless to say,
traditional craftsmen were not employed.

The building referred to is a memorial rest house at
Buvanvella. The moulding round the wall, a few feet
from the floor, instead of forming an actual part of the
wall, as in all old work, consists entirely of plaster ap¬
plied to the surface of the wall, and is already breaking
away. But perhaps the worst feature is a part of the
doors. The contractor has remarked the massive arched
lintel of a Kandyan door, and by way of imitation, has
fastened on to each half of the double door a half sham
lintel, so that when the doors are closed, it would be just
possible at a little distance to suppose that a real lintel
was there. And so on with other details. I

have pointed out that such work is the in¬
evitable result of employing ignorant contractors
and ignoring the traditional craftsmen ; and that the only
method of saving the traditional skill of Sinhalese crafts¬
men is to return to the old system of .State recognition. If
men in the future are to be able still to avail themselves
* See appendix to my w Indian Craftsman.”

*72 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

of the spiritual and economic benefits of the union of art-
with labour characteristic of all true civilization in the past,
the State must assume, as for example in thirteenth
century Florence, the role of protector of the craftsmen,
who must be supported, endowed, and respected no less
than the other servants of the State, or of the Church.

British influence has been adverse to Indian Art in
other ways. The output of cheap and inferior carpets in
jails went far to destroy the trade in well-made and fairly
priced carpets, a fact so well known as to need no further
mention. Of the influence of art schools little need be
said; by some the whole degeneration of Indian art has
been attributed to them and while this is a great exag¬
geration, there can be no doubt that their influence has
oeen pernicious. It is now otherwise in the case of certain
art schools, particularly Lahore and Calcutta, but it is too
late to arrest the harm already - done, and still being done
elsewhere. So also with the jails, there are many, such as
Agra and Poona, where work of good quality is now done,
and chemical dyes are totally avoided; but much of the
evil is done, and the force of example is still seen in the
case of such jails in Native States as continue to make use
of chemical dyes, to the detriment of the quality of their
productions ( e . < 7 ., Gwalior.)

.Indian kings have been great religious builders from
the earliest times, spending their resources gladly on
temples built to the glory of God, and hostels for the
shelter of man. They were just such great builders as the
earlier English kings. But now imagine the injury to
English art that would have come about, if English inde¬
pendence had ceased in the time of Henry III., as a result
of the rapacity of some nation of materialists and

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 73

.-agnostics*—Westminster Abbey left unfinished, Gothic
*-art no more the vehicle of the national religious sense ;
imagine the invaders also destroying the possibility of
popular art in the other ways referred to, and you will
have some picture of what has taken place in India.

But it is but fair to refer to the few efforts that have
been made directly or indirectly, by Englishmen, officially
-or otherwise, to save the Indian arts from extinction. We
have occasional efforts to build in the style of the country,
.as in Lahore, but these are not more successful than
XlXth century efforts in Europe to build in XIY century
wise. We have the establishment of schools of art in
India, with good intention, but, in the opinion of even
most English artists, bad results; even where great and
-good work is done, as now in Calcutta, its continuance is
~at the mercy of chance selection of a Principal having
knowledge and sympathy adequate to the situation. We
have the publication of books and journals illustrating fine
-examples of Indian art; but these, valuable as they are,
•are really written by Englishmen for Englishmen, and are
-of more use to the English manufacturer than to the
village craftsmen ; and does the reproduction of details of
•architecture and jewellery (often ill-drawn by men not in
■the tradition) compensate in any way for the deserted
workshops and forgotten knowledge of the hereditary
•craftsmen ? Lord Curzon has done good service in securing
the preservation of Indian monuments; but archaeology
is not art: and even his appeal to the Indian aristo-

* The relation between the British Government and Indian
people is purely secular—a suggestion in itself of the evil neces>
s&rily resulting from the government of one nation by another, the
difference of faith making impracticable that identification of
•sentiment between ruler and craftsmen which alone made possible
isuch buildings as Westminster Abbey.

74

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

cracy at the Delhi Exhibition seemed to them little more
than the Englishman’s strange fancy for Indian 4 curiosit¬
ies.’ A certain Maharajah shortly after the utterance of
that appeal had to entertain Lord Curzon ; his own palace
was a modern building, designed and furnished in a French
style. To please the Viceroy he sent to Bombay for 20
lakhs worth of Bombay blackwood furniture, and put away
the French stuff; but when Lord Curzon left, the latter
all came out again ! Now Bombay blackwood is but half
Indian at best; but the Maharajah neither knew this, nor
was actuated by any deeper motive than a desire to please
the Viceroy. And so it must ever be, that, the best-meant-
endeavours of outsiders can effect but little ; while a little
germ of love for the motherland might effect everything.
It is easier to destroy than to create ; it is impossible for
England to build up what she has demolished ; if the
re-awakening is to come at all, it will be the fruit of India’s
recognition of her national self ; but that, alas, will be in
spite of England’s opposition, not with England’s help !
Not that all sympathetic and disinterested counsel is alto¬
gether thrown away ; but that advice is a totally inade¬
quate solution.

So much for external influence on Indian art; it has
been on the whole an influence contributing to 44 the rapid
deterioration that has of late befallen the great historical
arts of India.”* Let us for a time consider the changes

* In charging England with the responsibility for much of the
deterioration of Indian art, I do not forget that a world process of
the same character is everywhere at work, and that England is
only for us the particular medium through which these tendencies
affect us. But “approved departmental methods, instead of reviv¬
ing original creative activity, have done everything possible to sup¬
press it, and, by rooting out the traditional practice, they have given
a wholly unnecessary impulse to the natural process of decay which
has acted upon all Eastern art in the last few generations.”"

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 75-

in Indian society and ideas which hare from within contri¬
buted to the same result.

The internal influences ai*e complex, and closely
related to the external. Architecture is the mistress of all
arts; and where architecture is neglected the lesser arts
must also perish. Even Native States no longer give-
employment to the hereditary builders ; and so blindly do
individuals also imitate the examples of Europeans, that it
is the echo of the English suburban villa which shapes the
ideal of the house in the modern Indian mind. If England
has in her public buildings set before us examples of
bastard Anglo-Classic and Neo-Gothic architecture, we have
made haste to blindly copy example. If Brussels carpets-
come from Europe, it is we who buy them in preference to-
the productions of Indian looms. If coloured crystal balls
are made in England, it is we who buy them to £ adorn r
our temples. If English dress appears unlovely and absurd
on us, it is we ourselves who are responsible for the wear¬
ing of it. Nothing can possibly be more fatal to the arts
than this attitude of snobbishness, or, at the best, weakness,,
which leads us to imitate without consideration. The Art
of Life is now less and less for us ruled by principle, but
more and more by impulse; and so it is natural that in our
attitude towards art itself we are undisciplined and unprin¬
cipled. For this we are ourselves responsible ; the fact of
foreign rule need not compel the Indian to acquire a foreign
mind ; and as long as we so carelessly contribute ourselves
to the decay of art amongst us, our complaint against

(E. B. Havell, the 6 Studio ’ Vol. 44, p. 116). In the words of the-
group of artists already referred to (Morris, Crane, etc., 1879) “ we
cannot conceive that any thoughtful person will deny the responsi¬
bility of England in the matter, or the duty which a great country
owes to the arts.”

?6

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

^others for the same thing loses force. Hope alone lies in
the National ideal.

What has Swadeshi done for Indian art ? Almost
nothing ; when a decaying industry can be used to political
-advantage it gives it loud support, and in this way the
hand-loom industry of Bengal is receiving attention now;
hut the whole country from north to south is full of decay¬
ing industries and perishing hereditary skill, to save which no
•effort is made. Efforts are made to establish all sorts of
factories for making soap, matches, cotton, nibs, biscuits
-and what not, while the men who can still weave, still
build, still work in gold and silver, copper and wood and
stone, are starving because their work is out of fashion.
Swadeshi often ignores the thing which India has from
time immemorial made perfectly, to seek to manufacture
things which it would be better to do without altogether,
or to frankly buy from other nations more able to make
them easily.

The Swadeshi impulse is as yet a too purely commer-
•cial one, too unimaginative, too solely based on an ideal of
dull prosperity to greatly help the cause of Indian art. It
is indeed, rather art that can help Swadeshi, than
'Swadeshi, art. Things are bettering as the national
-consciousness develops; but those who now are benefited
•are the enterprising promoters of small capitalist concerns
—not the traditional craftsmen. What cares the South
Indian village weaver whethei* his Zemindar buys
Manchester or Bombay cotton ? What avails it for Indian
-culture if the mean design and glaring colours are printed
in England or in India ? Ought we not rather to starve
than to compete with Europe on such degrading terms ?
Yet men must live ; material necessities now more than
-ever control our lives ; the day is far distant when work

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 7 T

for an hour and a half will again suffice for daily bread"
winning. Men must live by manufacture, agriculture,.,
or trade, or by the practice of some profession. But for
all that, India is India still, and shall not even her mete-
rial production be controlled by the spirit of her real self ?
If she is to grow wealthy, let it be by as far as possible-
ministering to the higher needs of men as in the past; let
it be possible for the Swadeshist to buy Swadeshi
manufactures because they are better, more beautiful or
more enduring than the work of others. Let India supply
the world again with beautiful fabrics, holding the market
by sheer superiority of design and workmanship— a thing
still possible if the existing traditional capacity of Indian
craftsmen were rightly organized. There is a real demand-
in other lands for things worth making things, made well;
if in England it still pays even a few groups of men to-
turn out linen, tapestry or carpets by hand, (for the sake-
of the fine quality of material, and still more for the art
qualities of the Accomplished work) it should still be ■
possible for those who can work much cheaper, (and could
still command the services of craftsmen possessing here¬
ditary skill sufficient to make the fortune of any manufac¬
turer in Europe) to find a market for their own best w r ork.
The aim must be for quality not quantity. There is no •
country in the world where so much capacity for design
and workmanship exists ; but we are recklessly flinging
this, almost our greatest treasure, to the winds, and with
it all spontaneous expression in art.

In the opinion of thinking men it must appear that
it is not worth while being a nation at all, or making any
attempt at political freedom, if India is to remain in the
end thus enslaved at heart by purely material ideals. The •
national movement has no justification if it does not cany

78

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

with, it some hope of a new manifestation of the Indian
genius in relation to the real things of life. The signific¬
ance of the movement, however, consists just in this, that
such a hope is indeed bound up with it.

I have spoken of foreign trade ; but what is far more
important, from the art point of view, is- the Indian
attitude towards Indian art. For Indian art can never be
great, can never mean to Indians or foreigners what it
once meant, until it is again made for Indians and can
count upon their sympathy and comprehension as a birth¬
right. An art, which is primarily concerned with supply¬
ing the particular requirements of peoples entirely out of
real touch with its producers, must always be slavish and
artificial. It is as evil a thing* for us to supply the
American market with bales of cheap and vulgar phulkarisf
embroidered in offensive colours and mean designs and
sloppy needlework, as it is for Manchester to send us
bicycle-patterned saris. The only true remedies that can
be effectual are the re-generation of Indian taste, and the
re-establishment of some standard of quality. Nearly
thirty years ago Sir George Birdwood said truly that—

“Indian native gentlemen and ladies should make it a point
of culture never to wear any clothing or ornaments but of native
manufacture and strictly native design, constantly purified by
comparison with the best examples and the models furnished by
the sculptors of Amaravati, Sanehi and Barhut.”

Indian art can only revive and flourish if it is beloved
"by Indians themselves. _

* If anyone should doubt that the attempts to wrest the
Indian market in textiles from the hands of the village printer and
dyer has had any but a grossly degrading effect on the English
manufacture and English workman, let him study the specimen of
English prints reproduced in the Journal of Indian Art, Vol. VII*
as examples for comparison with Indian work. Fdr the converse
result, see Vol. II, p. 27, of the same Journal, exhibiting degene¬
rate Indian embroidery.

1* See Mrs. Steel, Journal of Indian Art, Vol. II. 1888*

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 79

Somewhat apart from architecture stands the question
•of Western influence on Indian painting. This influence
has been exerted very largely through the schools of art.
In these schools there is done much oil and water colour
painting, some of it clever, some extremely poor but all
quite undistinguishable—unless by general weakness of
drawing—from ordinary European work of the same class.
The best-known exponent of this style, though not, I believe,
a school of art pupil, has been the oil-painter Bavi Yarma,
whose works, constantly reproduced, are everywhere
popular in India. The 4 educated ’ public of modern
India, having learnt to judge all things by what was
understood to be a Western standard, misunderstood
the conventional art of India herself; sincere and tender,
it was often over-formal, and represented in many cases
the decline rather than the zenith of tradition ; and so the
public, seeking for an art easily understood without pre¬
paration or effort, welcomed this painter who broke through
traditions and gave them realistic and sentimental pictures
-of familiar subjects.

A picture of 4 Sita in Exile’ well illustrates the
►difference between Tagore’s and Bavi Yarma’s work. In
the latter’s 4 Sita in the Asoka Grove ’, we see only a woman
bullied by her captor ; in the Sita by Tagore we see the
►embodiment of a national ideal. In Bavi Yarma’s well-
known picture of Sarasvati, again, the lotus-seat—essenti¬
ally an abstract symbol of divine and other worldly origin,
is represented as a real flower growing in a lake ; so that
the spectator is led immediately away from the ideal, to
wonder how the stalk can be strong enough to support a
full-grown woman and why she is not toppled over by the
movements, of the very living elephants behind. I say
4 woman ’ advisedly, because Bavi Yarma’s divinities, in

80

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

spite of tlieir many arms, are very human, and often not-
very noble human types. At best the goddesses are £ pretty’ r
stronger condemnation of what should be ideal religious art
it would be hard to find.

It has indeed been Ravi Varma’s reward for choosing-
Indian subjects, that he has been to some degree a true-
.nationalising influence ; but had he been also a true artist
with the gift of great imagination, this influence must have*
been tenfold deeper and greater. He is the landmark of a
great opportunity, not perhaps wholly missed, but ill availed
of, melo-dramatic conceptions, want of imagination, want of
restraint, anecdotal aims and a lack of Indian feeling in
the treatment of sacred and epic subjects are his faults.
His art is not truly national—he merely plays with local
colour. His gods and heroes are men cast in a very
common mould, who find themselves in situations for
which they lack a proper dignity. The resulting degrada¬
tion of wliat should be heroic and ideal types is quite-
unpardonable. Ravi Yarma’s pictures, in a word, are not
national art ; they are such as any European student could
paint, after only a superficial study of Indian life and
literature.

A reaction from these ideals is represented by wliat
has been called the Hew School of Indian Painting,
■founded by Abanindra Hath Tagore, Yice-Principal of the
Calcutta School of Art. In Mr. Havell, late Principal of
this school, India for the first time found a European
artist able to divest himself of early prejudices and willing-
as well to learn as to teach. In the £ Studio’ of July,
1908, Mr. Havell relates how when he went to the Calcutta
School twelve years ago, it was like other schools, an
institution established by a benevolent Government for the-
purpose of revealing to Indians the superiority of European

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 81

art. Mr. Havell succeeded in revising the whole course of
instruction, making Indian art the basis of the teaching.
This was not done without opposition from the Bengalis
themselves, who saw in these proceedings only a sinister
attempt to discourage high art in Bengal. .Two pieces
of good fortune attended Mr. HavelTs efforts, one the
opportunity of acquiring for the Calcutta gallery a large
number of paintings of the finest Moghul period, many of
them by Shah Jahan’s court painters, and secondly, and
most important, the discovery of Mr. Abanindra Nath
Tagore. This artist had until then followed European
ideas of artistic expression, but soon realised the significance
of Indian art traditions and set himself to study their
technique and recover something of their spirit. Mr*
Tagore afterwards became Vice-Principal, and finally
acting Principal of the Calcutta School of Art,—the firsts
and with the exception of Lahore, and now, perhaps, of
Madras, the only modern school of art in India related
effectively to the past traditions of Indian art, and to the
new national spirit of self-realisation. Tagore’s own work
is a significant omen of what may be given to the world of
India, when the Indian people realize to the full the duty
which is theirs, not to borrow what they can from others,
but themselves to give.

Of Tagore’s work, a number of examples have been
reproduced in the £ Studio,’ and others in the 44 Modern
Beview.” The best of them is perhaps 4 The Banished
Yaksha ’, illustrating the well-known work of Kalidasa,
Megha Dutta. Mr. Tagore has painted also 4 The Passing
of Shah Jahan 7 ; the 4 Siddhas of the Upper Air ’;
* Aurangazeb Examining the Head of Bara,’ and there are
other important works, some of which are . reproduced in
Mr. Havell’s 44 Indian Painting and Sculpture.” There
6

82

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

can be traced in these works both European and Japanese
influence ; but their significance lies in what is after all
their essential Indianness. These delicate water colours,
portfolio pictures like those that delighted the Moghul
Emperor’s court of old, are supremely tender, and carry in
them that mingled reticence and revelation that belong
to all great art, but which demand something also of
the public, before they can be fully understood and realised.
Such work, a true expression of Indian nationalism, is the
flowering of the old tradition; a flower that speaks not
only of past loveliness, but is strong and vigorous with
promise of abundant fruit.

Several pupils have indeed already followed in
Tagore’s footsteps. The pictures, 4 The Flight of
Lakshman Sen ’, by the late Surendra Nath Ganguly, and
4 Raja Yikram ’ and the 4 Yampire ’, by Nanda Lai
Bose, reproduced in the 4 Studio’ of July, 1908, are full
of promise ; and indeed remarkable as the work of men so
young. The best of Nanda Lai Bose’s work is the wonder¬
ful £ Sati ’ with its burden of passionate self-devotion.
Almost equally perfect in another way is the £ Kaikeyi 9
and £ Agni’ most vigorously drawn and magnificently
coloured. The same artists’ copies of Ajanta frescoes are
most accomplished. A younger painter whose work has
attracted much attention is Yenkata Appa. What is now
most needed for the healthy development of Indian
painting is real and generous patronage and intelligent and
sympathetic criticism. Indiscriminate abuse or overpraise
are alike more than useless. No art can live entirely
alone. It must have its public—those for whom it is made
* and who can co-operate with the artist himself. Only a
great demand can recreate a living art.

Great art or science is the flower of a free national

THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EUROPE ON INDIAN ART. 83

life pouring its abundant energy into ever new channels,
giving some new intimation of a truth and harmony before
unknown or forgotten. It is not strange that India, after
.-a thousand years of alien government, often puritan and
now philistine, economically and morally impoverished
should have lost her position in the world of art. But we
believe that India stands upon the threshold of a freedom
:and a unity greater than any yet realised. If this be so
we need not fear for Indian art; for the new life must
find its self-expression. It rests with each individual to
make this fruition possible.

CHAPTER YII.

t Art of the East and of the West *

I T is not possible to understand the art of India without,
some comprehension of the whole culture and historical
tradition of which it is an immediate expression. It.
is impossible to treat of art as an isolated phenomenon
apart from the spiritual and physical life of the people who
gave it birth. Indian art cannot be understood by those
without sympathy for Indian culture; and this is still a
rare thing. The orthodox Christian, the materialist, and
the Imperialist are all, in so far as they are what these
names imply, constitutionally unable to sympathise with
the ideals of Indian civilization. Indian art is essentially
religious, as well as those who in the name of’
Puritanism would secularise or abolish art entirely, have-
not in them a capacity for understanding. Even with the*
best intentions, the study of Indian art proves difficult.
There have until lately been no books to guide the student
and no collections of Indian painting and sculpture, except
those brought together with a purely archaeological purpose..
Unfamiliarity with Indian religious philosophy, and its
traditional expression in art and literature, and the now
complete divorce between art and life in Europe, have-
added to the difficulties of those who have sought to know*
anything of Indian art. A majority—from Ruskin on¬
wards—have rested happy in the conviction that there was,
nothing to be known.

* This essay originally formed part of a lecture given to the
members of the Art-workers’ guild, and is primarily phrased as if
ior European readers.

ART OF THE EAST AND OF THE WEST.

85

I give a typical example of tlie ordinary attitude, a
quotation from Mr. Maskell’s book on “ Ivories ” :

“ There is a sameness, a repetition, an overloading, a crowd¬
ing and elaboration of detail which become wearisome before we
have gone very far. We are spoken to of things, and in a language
of which we are ignorant. We regard them with a listless kind of
attention. In a word, we are not interested. We feel that the
artist has ever been bound and enslaved by the traditions of Hindu
mythology. We are met at every turn by the interminable proces¬
sions of monstrous gods and goddesses, these Buddhas and
Krishnas, Vishnus and Ramas, these hideous deities with animals’
heads and innumerable arms, these dancing women _ with expres¬
sionless faces and strange garments. In his figures the

Hindu artist seems absolutely incapable—it may be reluctant—to
reproduce the human form; he ignores anatomy, he appears to
have no idea of giving any expression to the features. There is
no distinction between the work of one man and another. Is the
•name of a single artist familiar ? The reproduction of type is
literal: one divinity resembles another, and we can only distinguish
them by their attributes, or by the more or less hideous occupa¬
tions in which they may be supposed to be engaged.”

This ignorant and childish rhodomontade is here
quoted only because it is so typical. Perhaps the easiest
way to show its true value would be to ask you to imagine
•similar words spoken by an Oriental, who should substi¬
tute the word “ Christian ” for the word u Hindu ” :
• u Enslaved by the traditions of Christian mythology,
interminable processions of crucifixes and Madonnas ”—
would not this be an idle criticism of mediaeval European
art ?

I take another instance. Professor Nelson Eraser,
an English teacher in India, and a student of Indian art
and religious ideas, tells us that one day he had a young
lady visitor from England, something of an artist, and she
was examining his treasures gathered from East and West
and of all periods. She flitted lightly over the Hindu
bronzes and settled down on a case of Greek coins. He
xemonsrated against this, and pointed out that she might
-see the Greek coins any day at the British Museum,

86

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

whereas she might never see the bronzes again at all. u I
don't care for grotesques ”, she answered, u I don't-
understand these things.”

A characteristic difference between Eastern and
Western art is found in the sacred images. In Western
art, the sacred images are almost always entirely human
in form, in Eastern art they are sometimes four-handed,,
sometimes zoomorphic, sometimes grotesque. In part this-
represents in the West, the lasting influence of Hellenism
with its representations of the beautiful Olympians as
perfect men; and is clue to the Western temperament
which more naturally than the Eastern seeks for the-
realisation of objective perfection. In the East, it repre¬
sents the fact that Eastern art traditions carry an
inheritance from Egypt and Assyria, and that common
‘ Early Asiatic ’ behind all Eastern art, inheritances that a.
brief period of classic influence failed to affect to any
significant extent. But this distinction of images is not
essentially due to art, but rather to the centre of gravity
of religious ideas ; and yet even here the line of division
between East and West is not so sharp as it appears. The*
images of the West have been almost entirely those of the
incarnation, an avatar, or of saints ; these, of course, just
as an image of Hama or Sita would be, are altogether
human in form ; but when the Western artist has to
represent an immanent divinity, the Holy Ghost, at once-
he falls back upon an animal symbol,—the dove. To the
true mystic it is evident that a representation of the divine-
in human form carries with it a certain limitation—it is
not easy to constantly recall that the anthropomorphic
appearance is but an appearance, a manifestation of the
deity, and not the deity himself. And the anthropomorphic-
image easily degenerates, as the form of Eros degenerated

ART OF THE EAST AND OF THE WEST.

8t

into a Cupid, and Nike became a woman stooping
to tie her sandal, as the Virgin and Child of
Early Italian art became at a later period the
pretty domestic picture of the artist's wife and child,
Indian religion lias been always a search for the infinite,
seeking to escape the limitations of individuality and time
and space ; how could it then be satisfied with the
beautiful divine humanities of Hellas, or with represen¬
tations of merely human figures ? We must then in
looking at Oriental art judge, not by our own precon¬
ceived ideas, but by its own standards. If we cannot
sympathise with the aims of an alien art, so be it, it is
our limitation. It may be thus a limitation in some that
they cannot realise in full all the significance of the art
of Hellas ; it is a limitation imposed by temperament and
inheritance. But they recognize the futility of judging
it by an Indian standard, because the Greek artist did
not even want to say what the Indian strove to say. It
is equally futile to criticise Indian art by a Hellenic
standard. Even in limitations there are advantages ;
through concentration comes understanding, intensity, and
fruitfulness, while eclecticism brings with it the danger of
indifference. But limitations need not mean intolerance :
and as it is worth while for man and woman to try to*
understand each other, however far their points of view
must also differ, so also it is worth while for the East and
West to understand each other's art. Perhaps in their
difference humanity will find a complementary perfection
greater than any single manifestation of the human spirit
can achieve alone. If then humanity would be so much
poorer for the loss of either art, do we do well to complain
of either for being what it has never striven to be, do we
do wisely in rejecting an alien art contemptuously, because

88

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

it does not recognize the standards that have moulded our*
own ?

There are indeed many difficulties in the way of the
Western student of Indian art, but they are not insuper¬
able. The first perhaps lies in the fact that the Indian
ideal of beauty is not altogether the same as the Greek
ideal which has influenced all "Western art ; and a greater
difficulty lies perhaps in the fact that for India, art, to
be great, need not necessarily be beautiful at all, unless
we give to 1 beauty,’ the deeper meaning of ‘ harmony/
which really belongs to it. In India the beautiful and the
grotesque are not distinguished as the greater and lesser
kinds of art ; each manifests its own idea, each may be a
harmony. There is something in great ideal art that
transcends the limited conceptions of beauty and ugliness
and makes any criticism founded on such a basis seem
but idle words.

In art, as in life, we pray for deliverance from the
bondage of the pairs of opposites, the “ Delusion of the
Pairs.”

And even when the representation of physical human
beauty is the immediate aim, we find that the ideal of the
human form is different in East and West. The robust
muscularity and activity of the Greek athletic statue, or
of Michael Angelo’s ideal, is repugnant to the lover of the
repose, and the smooth and slender refinement of the
bodies and limbs of Orientals. It is the same with the
features and the colour. For example, the perfect colour
in our eyes, which we call fair, is a light golden brown,
and not at all the snow-white paleness of the European
ideal. But the real division lies deeper still. The absence
of mystery, the altogether limited ideal of Greek art, its
satisfaction with the expression of merely physical beauty

ART OF THE EAST AND OF THE WEST.

89

conceived as an end in itself ; tlie dead mechanical per¬
fection of its decorative details ; the intellectual rather
than imaginative aims—all these things make it possible
for us to look upon the great classic art which has so pro¬
foundly influenced the aims of later Western art, as having
striven for, and perhaps attained, a goal to which we do
not ourselves aspire. In these remarks I refer to Pheidian
.and later art only, not to such beautiful archaic art as the
Antenor of the Acropolis.

“ Greek work as known to us,” says Prof. Gardner,
is restrained on the emotional side; nor has it any touch
of mysticism.” In most Pheidian Greek art there is little
■or nothing that corresponds to such work as the
-“Bacchae” of Euripides in literature. The Yen us of
Milo, for example, is only a very beautiful figure, a com¬
bination of perfections, intellectually selected and skilfully
•combined. It is limited by the idea of external, physical
.and human beauty. This is perhaps an indication of the
point at which the Eastern and Western views of art part
accompany. The Western artist sees nature with his eyes
-and judges art by intellectual and aesthetic standards. The
Indian seeks truth in his inner consciousness, and judges
•of its expression by metaphysical and imaginative
standards. Art for him is not to please, but to
manifest.

We are told that Zeuxis, when commissioned to
paint a figure of Helen for the people of Croton, stipulated
-to be allowed to use as models five of the most beautiful
virgins of the city. The Indian artist, on the other hand,
would have demanded opportunity for meditation and
mental concentration, in order that he might visualise the
idea of Helen in his inner consciousness, aiming rather at
•discovery than construction, desiring rather to draw bac k

90 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

the veil from the face of super-woman than to combine-
visible perfections by a process of intellectual selection.
The result would be a work suggesting, more or less per¬
fectly in accordance with his keenness of inner vision and
technical capacity for its material embodiment, the real
Helen as she lived in the national consciousness, a Helen
more real than she who in the flesh brought death and
sorrow to the Greek and Trojan heroes.

The Greek, indeed, was above the “ aesthetic nihilism 9 *'
(to borrow a phrase from Professor Gardner) which sees
the aim of art in the faithful reproduction of nature ;
but he made an intellectual selection from natural forms,
instead of seeking the highest truth where alone it is to be
found, in one’s inner consciousness. It is true that Greek
art was to an extent religious ; but it failed in the greatest
qualities, because the religion expressed in it was in no
sense transcendental, and this is the explanation of the
humanism, almost the bourgeois character, one might say,,
of the Greek gods. There are, for instance, many Apollos,.
of which it is said that there are equally good grounds for
regarding them as representations, or even portraits, of'
athletes.*

Hinduism, like Christianity, knew that life could not
be an end in itself, but that the true end of our existence
transcends it. But the Greeks and " Bomans placed this.
end absolutely in life itself. This limitation could not fail
to find expression as much in their art as their religion.
“ The Greeks ”, says Burne-Jones, “give you the godlike
beauty, strength, majesty. They suggest that wisdom is
Godlike. They nowhere suggest the mystery of life.”t

In all these respects Greek literature is immeasur-

* Walters, “The Art of the Greeks” (p. 73).

t E. B. J. Life (p. 263).

AKT OF THE EAST AND OF THE WEST.

91

ably greater than Greek art. It is unfortunate that
almost all Greek art belongs to the Olympian, not to the
mystic, side of Greek religion.

The great cat-gods of Egypt, the sublime Buddhas of'
Java, the four-handed gods of India, even the great
Chinese dragon, are greater imaginative art, belong more
to the divine in man, than do the Hermes of Praxiteles or
the Yenus of Milo. The ideal of the last is limited, and
the very fact and possibility of its attainment show it. I
do not mean, of course, that even post-Plxeidian Greek art.
could be spared from the world, or that it is not one of
the great achievements of humanity; only that it was in
certain respects definitely limited, and does not necessarily
stand on a pinnacle by itself as the greatest of all art the
world has seen. Once the spell of this limited ideal is
broken, you can never again be satisfied by it, but seek in
art for that which has often been suggested but never can,,
and never will, be perfectly expressed—the portrayal not
merely of perfect men, but of perfect and entire divinity.
You seek for an art which, however imperfectly, seeks to
represent neither particular things nor merely physical or
human grandeur, but which aims at an intimation of the
universe, and that universe conceived not as an empirical
phenomenon, but as noumenon within yourself.

And if it is thus possible for India to feel unsatisfied
with even the refined, and in some degree idealistic art of
Greece, it will be clear how much less the naturalism and
aestheticism of modern European art appeals to her—the
pictures of Poynter, the portraits of Sargent, the landscapes
in the exhibition walls, the jewellery of Lalique, or to go
farther back, the wood-carving of Grinling Gibbons or the
naturalistic borders of the later mediaeval manuscripts. All
these are pictorial, reminiscent, or anecdotal in their

92

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

character. But when we come hack to the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, with the .glorious work of
the imagers at Chartres, the sweet ivory Madonnas, the
’Crisp and prickly borders of the manuscripts, and the
Gothic rose bequeathed to later times as the symbol of the
idealism of the Middle Ages, then at last we find an art
that expresses or endeavours to express something of that
which we too desire to say. Xo thing is more remarkable
than the u Gothicness ” and, in Buskin’s sense, the
Christianity ” of Oriental art. From this point of view,
indeed, I should like to classify Gothic, Egyptian, Indian,
and Chinese art as Christian, and Greek, Boman, Benais-
•sance, and modem European as pagan, or to use more
.general terms, as religious and materialistic respectively.

To speak again of the present day: it is not that there
is no art in the West which, from the Indian point of view,
is great; there has been such art; but it has come only
from men fighting desperately against the spirit of the age,
living in another world of theirs and ours. Of these,
Burne-Jones and William Morris are the greatest: the
former in that his work possesses something of that im¬
personality and aloofness which we seek for, and because
he uses form less for its own sake than as a manifestation
of something more changeless and eternal; because, too,
he was made wise by love to paint not the beauty of the
passing hour or the transient emotion, but the changeless
might and glory of the gods and heroes ; and Morris was
.great, because he proved again that all art is one, the
'distinction between art and craft illusory, and that this
■single art is not merely a trivial pastime, but essential to
humanity and civilisation.

In the immediate future we may, both in England
rand in India, have less and less art. English art flourishes

ART OF THE EAST AND OF THE WEST.

9 $

at present mainly as an exotic, a luxury for those wlxo can
afford it. It appeals to a special class, and is not a
spontaneous expression of the national life as a whole. Its
appeal, like that of much of the later Japanese art which
finds acceptance in the West, is trivial, not fundamental
it must be pretty and pleasing; its aim is primarily
aesthetic, where it should be prophetic. This divergence
between art and life and art and religion is increasing. 'It
is a sign of the times. I cannot think it possible for great
art to flourish again in England, or in India, till we have-
all once more civilised ourselves, and learnt to believe in
something more real and more eternal than the external
face of nature—until we are able to re-unite art with
labour, and imagination with technique.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Influence of Greek on Indian Art.

^pHE orthodox archaeological view of the history of
A Indian sculpture is much as follows :—

The Early Indian School (B. C. 250—A. D. 50) is a
compound of Hellenistic, Persian and Indian elements.
From this period we have scarcely any detached statues in
stone, and no representations of Buddha, whether free or in
low relief. Of the greatest importance is the second or
Kushan Period (A. D. 50—350), to which the two local
schools of Gandhara and Amaravati belong. The works
of the Gandhara school are 44 probably equal in merit to
much of the contemporary sculpture in the provinces of
the Roman empire,” and are 44 infinitely superior to any
truly Indian production.” Images of Buddha become
abundant; the representations of Buddha and personages
of Buddhist mythology are adaptations of Greek gods;

the ideal type of Buddha.was created for Buddhist

art by foreigners.” The type thus evolved was the founda¬
tion of all later representations of Buddha. The classic
influence is traceable in all later work, and responsible for
most of the little value it possesses. 44 After 300 A. D.
Indian sculpture properly so called, hardly deserves to be
reckoned as art. The figures both of men and animals
become stiff and formal, and the idea of power is clumsily
expressed by the multiplication of members. The many¬
headed, many-armed gods and goddesses whose images
crowd the walls and roofs of mediaeval temples have no
pretensions to beauty, and are frequently hideous and

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK ON INDIAN ART. 95

grotesque.Every mediaeval temple of importance

throughout India might be cited as illustrating these
remarks ; ” individual examples merit consideration only as
marking stages in the decadence of Indian art.”*

Those who do hold other views disagree, not as to the
fact of the Greek-Roman influence in the Gandhara period,
but as to its ultimate importance in the history of Oriental
art; and form a very different estimate of the value of
Indian sculpture after 300 A. D. So far from foreigners
having given to India the ideal type of Buddha, the
Gandhara sculptures should perhaps be regarded as the
work of late Greek-Roman craftsmen striving in vain to
interpret Indian ideals. The sculptures themselves, crowd¬
ed and effeminate, show how little of value in art the
Western world at this time had to offer to the East.
Foreign influence on Indian art, during the first few cen¬
turies of the Christian era, was perhaps as much to be
regretted as the results of Western influence on Indian art
at the present day. Had Asiatic ait developed independently
of late classic influence, it might at an earlier period have
freed itself from various disadvantageous conditions. As'
a matter of fact, it was not until the direct effects of the
foreign influence were passing away, that the Indian ideal
emerged, and the truly Indian schools of sculpture rose.
What has been most of all misunderstood by archaeologists
is the nature of this influence. They have confused the-
assimilation of foreign forms and foreign technique with
artistic inspiration. No sooner is the same ait studied
by artists, as in the case of Mr. Havell’s work on c Indian
Sculpture and Painting,’ or of Mr. Lawrence Binyon’s on

* V. A. Smith, Imperial Gazetteer of India, II, Ch. Ill,

A, Grunwedel, Buddhist Art in India, p. 68.

96

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

4 Painting in the Par East/ than it is discovered that the*
archaeologists may be correct as to outward details, but
entirely misled as to informing spirit.

It is probable that none of the most beautiful or-
important Indian sculpture can be certainly assigned to a
date earlier than 300 A.D. The true problem of Indian
art criticism is the study of the development of the Indian
ideal, and its gradual emancipation from the fetters of'
borrowed art formulas little adapted to its adequate-
expression. This development and emancipation went on
during the centuries when Hinduism itself was emerg¬
ing from earlier Brahmanism and Buddhism, when
Yishnu and Siva took final shape in the Indian imagina¬
tion, that is to say, as far as it is possible to lay down a
date between the third and eighth centuries of the Christian
era. When the philosophy of Indian art is understood, it
will be seen how little it could have depended upon the art
philosophy even of classic Greece, and the idea of tracing-
its inspiration to late Greek-Roman influence will appear*
still more absurd. The philosophies of Greek and of Indian
art are poles apart. Putting aside the rare and beautiful
fragments of archaic art, and vase paintings that illustrate
the mystic and orgiastic sides of Greek religion, Greek art.
has in it no touch of mysticism ; the Greek representations-
of the gods belong entirely to the Olympian aspect of Greek
religion. They are but grand and beautiful men ; some¬
times, as in the case of many Apollos, it is uncertain even*
whether the representation is of a god or of an athlete.*
Indian art on the contrary is essentially transcendental ;
its concern is not with the representation of perfect men T
but with the intimation of an unknown Divinity, the
symbolism of the Infinite. It has, like the art of ancient
* Quoted on p. 90.

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK ON INDIAN ART. 9 ?

Egypt, that sense of ‘ Being beyond (or behind) Appear¬
ance’ which we miss in the Greek representations of
beautiful Olympians.

And so we may read anew the meaning of the Gandhara
.sculptures, and see in them, not the influence of Greek-
Roman art on Indian art, but the influence of Indian art
upon Greek-Roman. We see, not foreign craftsmen creat¬
ing an ideal afterwards imitated throughout the East, but
we see the transforming influence of Indian philosophy, at
the time when Hinduism in its modem aspects was emerg¬
ing from a diversity of origins, exerted upon, and gradually
Indianising, Greek-Roman art. The foreign influence
coincided with the first general development of ritual and
imagery ; but the late classic gods of Europe were ill-fitted
to express the infinities of Indian thought. And so we
gradually find in the later Gandhara work the germ of the
Indian ideal,—centred at first round the image of Buddha
conceived as a divine being, with a spiritual, superhuman
body—and soon finding expression in a thousand forms of
gods and angels. By the seventh or eighth century this
truly Indian art had reached its zenith ; the artistic canons
of Sukracharya and others had already been formulated, the
necessity of meditation and visualisation perfectly realised
and the finest work of Elephanta and Borobodur was done.
The Mahayana Buddhist bronzes of Ceylon and Java
attained the highest level of attainment in the seventh or
eighth century. Hindu art flourished still for several
centuries. The advent of the Muhammadans then put an
end to the natural development of Hindu art in the north,
but work of the finest type, and perhaps the most distinc¬
tively Indian of all, continued to be produced in Southern
India and in Nepal for some centuries.

At last the great traditions seemed to lose their

7

98

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

strength; the guilds of artists little by little lost their
power and culture, and at the same time the corrupt¬
ing influence of Europe was felt, until at the present
day neither the old traditions nor any new develop¬
ment, except in special cases, reveal the real artistic
instinct of the Indian people. Such, from the Indian
point of view, is a brief reading of the history
of Hindu art. That history in all its detail remains yet to
be written; the day is far distant when we can date a
bronze or a stone sculpture with certainty even to a
century, lacking the evidence of inscriptions; but when
the history of Indian art is thus at last made known, and
correlated with the life and ideas of the people, it will be
abundantly clear how small was the ultimate importance,
of the classic influence in the development of all that
is most essential in it. Indeed, if originality be regarded
as of so much importance, it is certain that no art in the
world is further removed in aims and in form from
that of Greece, than is the art of the Dravidian South
or even the Buddhist art of Borobodur. And it
must always be borne in mind that if a survival of
Greek influence is anywhere traceable in later
Indian art, this no more itself invalidates a claim for
genius and originality in that art, than the fact that all
his plots are borrowed makes Shakespeare a poor dramatist.
ISTo mature art stands absolutely alone, or lacks an inheri¬
tance from other arts. It is the nature and extent of this
inheritance in Indian art, which have been misunderstood
and exaggerated. The question, moreover, is one at issue
essentially between archaeologists and artists who accept
their facts but question their interpretation; it is not a
question between patriots claiming originality—obvious
in any case—and foreign students denying it. Compared
with the vital significance of Indian art as a manifestation
of the Indian genius, the question is, indeed, of hardly
more than academic importance.

CHAPTER IX.

Education in India.

O NE of the most remarkable features of British rule
in India has been the fact that the greatest injuries
done to the people of India have taken the outward form
of blessings. Of this, Education is a striking example ; for
no more crushing blows have ever been struck at the roots
of Indian National evolution than those which have been
struck, often with other, and the best intentions, in the
name of Education. It is sometimes said by fiiends of
India that the National movement is the natural result
of English education, and one of which England should
in truth be proud, as showing that, under ‘ civilisation 9
and the Pax JBritannica , Indians are becoming, at last,
capable of self-government. The facts are otherwise.
If Indians are still capable of self-government, it is in
spite of all the anti-national tendencies of a system of
•education that has ignored or despised almost every ideal
informing the national culture.

By their fruits ye shall know them. The most
crushing indictment of this Education is the fact that it
destroys, in the great majority of those upon whom it is
inflicted, all capacity for the appreciation of Indian culture.
Speak to the ordinary graduate of an Indian University,
or a student from Ceylon, of the ideals of the Mahabharata
—he will hasten to display his knowledge of Shakespeare ;
talk to him of religious philosophy—you find that
he is an atheist of the crude type common in Europe
a generation ago, and that not only has he no religion

100

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

but be is as lacking in philosophy as the average English¬
man ; talk to him of Indian music—he will produce a
gramophone or a harmonium, and inflict upon you one-
or both ; talk to him of Indian dress or jewellery—he will
tell you that they are uncivilised and barbaric ; talk to
him of Indian art—it is news to him that such a thing
exists ; ask him to translate for you a letter written in his
own mother-tongue—he does not know it.* He is indeed
a stranger in his own land.

Yes, English educators of India, you do w T ell to-
scorn the Babu graduate ; he is your own special pro¬
duction, made in your own image ; he might be one of
your very selves. Do you not recognize the likeness ?
Probably you do not ; for you are still hidebound in
that impervious skin of self-satisfaction that enabled
your most pompous and self-impoitant philistine, Lord
Macaulay, to believe that a single shelf of a good Euro
pean library was worth all the literature of India, Arabia,.
|land Persia. Beware lest in a hundred years the judgment
be reversed, in the sense that Oriental culture will
occupy a place even in European estimation, ranking at.
least equally with Classic. Meanwhile you have done
well nigh all that could be done to eradicate it in the land
of its birth.

England, suddenly smitten with the great idea of'
4 civilising’ India, conceived that the way to do this was to-
make Indians like Englishmen. To this task England set-
herself with the best will'in the world, not at all realising
that, as has been so well said by the Abbe Dubois :

* I describe the extreme product of English education, as
seen, for example, in Ceylon. Not all of these statements apply
equally to every part of India. The remarks on dress and music
•are of universal application.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

101

“ To make a new race of the Hindus, one would have to
begin by undermining the very foundations of their civilisation,
Teligion and polity, and by turning them into atheists and bar¬
barians.”

And no words of mine could better describe the
typical product of Macaulayism. Even suppose success
were possible, and educated Indians were to acquire in
some numbers, a thoroughly English point of view : this
in itself would be damning evidence of failure, not merely
because the English point of view is already sufficiently
disseminated in a world of growing monotony, or even
because of its many and serious limitations, but because
it would prove that the education had failed to educate,
that is, to draw out or set free the characteristic qualities
of the taught. And in actual fact, it is not the English
point of view that is acquired, but a caricature of it.

Imagine an ordinary English schoolmaster set down
to educate the youth of Classic Greece. Obviously, he
■could teach the Greek innumerable facts ; but it is diffi¬
cult to see how he could have taken any adequate part
in his serious education. Merely to inform is not to
■educate ; and into how little of the inner life of Greece,
its religion and ideals could the English schoolmaster, for
all his Classic education, truly enter. The English school¬
master to-day knows less of Indian culture and sympa¬
thises far less with Indian ideals, than he could with
those of Greece. You cannot educate by ignoring (being
ignorant of) the ideals of the taught, and setting up an
ideal which they do not at heart acknowledge ; if at the
same time considerations of material advantage secure an
outward acceptance, perhaps, even a willing acceptance, of
the alien formula, the destruction of indigenous culture is
assured.

102

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

All departments of education in India—primary,,
secondary and university—are directly or indirectly
controlled by Government. A few indigenous insti¬
tutions for imparting a knowledge of Sanskrit and Arabic-
carry on a forlorn struggle for existence. A few
modem institutions, such as the Central Hindu
College in Benares, and the Hardwar Gurukula, are carried
on entirely without Government aid; but most of these*
are bound to the University curriculum, as otherwise their
students would be unable to obtain degrees. Two-thirds-
of Indian Arts Colleges are Missionary institutions,—
equally bound to the Government codes and selected text¬
books. The net result is that Indian culture is practically
ignored in modern education ; for this culture, whether
Hindu or Muhammadan, is essentially religious, and -so,,
regardless of the example of almost every Indian ruler
since history began, the Government practises toleration
-—by ignoring it,—and the Missionary practises intolerance*
-—by endeavouring to destroy it, in schools where educa¬
tion is offered as a bribe, and where the religion of the*
people is of set purpose undermined. The great tragedy
of the present situation lies In this, that the schools are 1
not part of Indian life (as were the tols and mahtabs of
the past), but antagonistic to it. Of the tw r o types of
English schools in India, Government and Missionary, the
one ignores, the other endeavours to break down the ideals
of the home. Sir George Birdwood truly . says : “ Our
education has destroyed their love of their own literature*,
the quickening soul of a people, and their delight
in their own arts and, worst of all, their repose in
their own traditional and national religion. It has dis¬
gusted them with their own homes—their parents, their
.sisters, their very wives. It has brought discontent into*

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

103

every family so far as its baneful influences have
reached.”

The real difficulty at the root of all questions of
Indian education is this, that modern c education/ this
education which Englishmen are so proud of having
4 given ’ to India, is really based on the general assump¬
tion—nearly universal in England—that India, is a savage
country, which it is England’s divine mission to civilize.
This is the more or less conscious underlying principle
throughout. The facts were more truly realised by Sir
Thomas Munro, when he wrote that 4 4 if civilisation were
to be made an article of commerce between the two-
countries, England would soon be heavily in debt.”

None can be true educators of the Indian people who
do not inherit their traditions, or cannot easily work in a
spirit of perfect reverence for those traditions. Others
can be, not educators, but merely teachers of particular
subjects. As such there is still room in India for English
teachers; but they should be, not in power, but sub¬
ordinate ; they should be engaged by, paid by, and
responsible to Indian managers, as, in Japan, English
teachers are responsible to Japanese authorities. Professor
Nelson Fraser, in a valuable discussion upon u The English
Teacher in India,”* shows how little the English teacher
can know of the real life of the Indian people, and deduces
that—

M The Englishman is the last person to put forward any view
as to possible reforms in Hindu institutions.”

To do so, should not, indeed, be conceived as part of
the English teacher’s function—a fact which most English
teachers (other than missionaries) are in the end driven
reluctantly to admit. At first it is otherwise.

* ‘ Indian Review,’ April 1907.

104

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

“The conscientious professor does not merely desire to
impart knowledge, but to impart useful knowledge, which will
elevate the lives of his pupils ; and he may perhaps wish to* help
them to apply it. Is there any prospect of his assisting this task ?
I suppose many teachers ccme to India with the hope of doing so ;
I should like to ask each of them, in the hour of his final depar¬
ture, when he gave it up, and why. Possibly he would answer,
when he candidly admitted to himseif the impossibility of knowing
much about India.”

For tlie English Professor is debarred by ignorance
of the language (very rarely adequately overcome),
and by exclusion from familiarity with the home life
of Indians, from ever really understanding them.

The English Professor who arrives in India at the age,
let us say, of twenty-five, is generally qualified to teach
one or more special subjects, such as Chemistry, English
Literature, or Greek. Ten years of sympathetic study of
Indian religious philosophy, Sanskrit or Pali, some verna¬
cular language, Indian history,* art, music, literature and
etiquette might enable him to understand the problem of
Indian education, probably would do so, prejudice apart ;
but the more he thus understood, the less would he wish
to interfere, for he would either be Indianised at heart, or
would have long realised the hopeless divergence between
his own and Indian ideals; he would have learnt that true
reforms come only from within, and slowly. But English
teachers have neither the time nor the inclination to spend
ten years, or even two, in such a study of Indian culture ;
and so when, as often happens, they rise to a position of
power, the Fellowship of some University, the Headship
of a College, or even of a Department of Public Instruc¬
tion, they cheerfully apply the solutions suited (or unsuited
as the case may be) to an English environment, to problems

* Not merely recent history, but especially the periods in
which the ideals of Indian civilisation were partly realised—Asoka*
the Guptas, Akbar.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

105

f

the elementary and fundamental conditions of wioSh they

do not understand, nor through mere book-learnin|L can

-.1 &

ever come to understand.

It must be understood that 4 change ’ and (real)

' 4 progress ’ are not interchangeable terms. The idea of
•education must be separated from the notion of altering
the structure of Indian society,—still one of the avowed
objects of the Western educator. As we have seen, though
it may require alteration, and certainly cannot remain
unchanged, or be restored in any old form, yet the English
teacher is of all men essentially ill-qualified to contribute
to the solution of the problem. Even Sir Henry Craik,
however, who thinks that English education in India is in
its main lines 44 hopelessly wrong,” and says that it is the
opinion of every man capable of judging that it requires
recasting, goes on to speak of the “ hopeless hindrances ”
which it is necessary 44 to contend against.” 44 The system
•of caste,” he says, 44 the habits of the people, their inert¬
ness in manual labour, their fixed idea that clerical work
has a dignity of its own—all these will take long before
they are overcome.”

What an incredible relief it would be to all concerned
if the 4 educator 5 would for a little while give over his
'* contending/ and concern himself with education. For
education, and the destruction of caste, purdah and
religion are not convertible terms ; education is the build¬
ing up of character, essentially a constructive, not a
contentious, process. Too often the 44 contention ” is a
tilting at a windmill*; or the educator himself may be the
Jons et origo of the evil to be remedied. Take the last point
raised by Sir Henry Craik, the idea of the dignity of cleri-
•cal work. This is no more than a natural development
resulting from the type of education offered, and the

106

ESSAYS IN' NATIONAL IDEALISM.

example set, by Englishmen. They with pain and labour
have destroyed and are still endeavouring to destroy the*
caste idea of the dignity and duty of the heaven-ordained
■work, whether clerical or manual, to which a man is born ;
they in their educational system have ignored the Indian
Gospel, wherein a well-known text declares, “ Better is one’s-
own duty, albeit insignificant, than even the well-execut¬
ed duty of another.” It is childish to be surprised at the-
result of a deliberate policy.

However convinced the English or Anglicised Indian
educator may be of the superior value of European
ideals, he must even then as an educator realise that
you can only educate by means of ideals accepted by'
the taught. Ideals are not to be transferred from one-
people to another as easily as furniture from house to house.
It is only too easy to ridicule and to disparage, but when*
you have destroyed belief in one ideal it is not easy to*
secure acceptance of another. Not only, then, are the-
ideals of Indian civilization actually higher than those of*
any other, at least in our view; but, were it not so, it-
would still be true that only by means of those ideals can
the Indian people be educated.

The aim of education in India must be no longer the-
the cultivation of the English point of view or an ability to-
use the English fonnula correctly. In the words of Sir-
Henry Craik, it is necessary to abandon :

u the senseless attempt to turn an Oriental into a bad imitation-
of a Western mind. , . . . . It is not a triumph for our

education—it is, on the contrary, a satire upon it—when we find
the sons of leading natives expressly discouraged by their parents

from acquiring any knowledge of the vernacular.We*

must abandon the vain dream that we can reproduce the English
public school on Indian soil. We must recognise that it is a
mistake to insist that a man shall not be considered to be an*
educ&ted man unless he can express his knowledge otherwise than.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

10 r

in a language which is not his own. Place no restriction on*
English as an optional subject, but cease to demand it as the one*
thing necessary for all.”

And, I would add, baring learnt English, use *it
tbe key to all extra-Indian litera.ture and culture; do not
teach Greek or Latin unless in rare cases there is a reason¬
able prospect of the attainment of proficiency sufficient to-
ensure the enjoyment of the literature in the original-
India has classic tongues of her own, the doors of culture
for all who hare the opportunity of passing beyond the
merely bi-lingual stage of education, which should be the-
general goal.

"What are the essentials in the Indian point of view
which for their intrinsic value, and in the interests of the
many-sidedness of human development, it is so important to
preserve ? Space will not admit of their illustration at any
length, but these appear to the writer to be some of the-
ideals that must be preserved in any true education system
for India:—

Firstly, the almost universal philosophical attitude,,
contrasting strongly with that of the ordinary Englishman,
who hates philosophy. Eor every science school in India
to-day, let us see to it that there are ten to-morrow.* But
there are wrong as well as right ways of teaching science-
A 4 superstition of facts ’ taught in the name of science*
were a poor exchange for a metaphysic, for a conviction of
the subjectivity of all phenomena. In India, even the-
peasant will grant you that 44 All this is may a ; ” he may

* There is of course a danger of a new kind threatening Indian
education at present—the desire to restrict free development, and-
confine instruction to such subjects and books as are not likely to-
awaken the spirit of progress or revolt. This conspiracy—it is no-
less—can only be properly cheeked if the entire control of Indian-
education is assumed by Indians themselves. My suggestions are
based entirely on this assumption.

108 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

not understand the full significance of what he says; but
consider the deepening of European culture needed before
the peasant there could say, however blindly, that li The
world is but appearance, and by no means Thing-in-Itself

Secondly , the sacredness of all things—the antithesis
•of the European division of life into sacred and profane*
'The tendency in European religious development has been
to exclude from the domain of religion every aspect of
•* worldly ’ activity. Science, art, sex, agriculture, commerce
■are regarded in the West as secular aspects of life, quite
apart from religion. It is not surprising that under such
•conditions, those concerned with life in its reality, have
• come to feel the so-called religion that ignores the activities
•of life, as a thing apart, and of little interest or
worth. In India, this was never so; religion idealises
•and spiritualizes life itself, rather than excludes it.
This intimate entwining of the transcendental and
material, this annihilation of ’the possibility of profanity
or vulgarity of thought, explains the strength and perma¬
nence of Indian faith, and demonstrates not merely the
stupidity, but the wrongness of attempting to replace a
religious culture by one entirely material.

Thirdly , the true spirit of religious toleration, illus¬
trated continually in Indian history, and based upon a
•consciousness of the fact that all religious dogmas are
formulas imposed upon the infinite, by the limitations of
the finite human intellect.

Fourthly , etiquette,—civilisation conceived of as the
production of civil men. There is a Sinhalese proverb that
runs, “ Take a ploughman from the plough, and wash off
his dirt, and he is fit to rule a kingdom.” “ This was
spoken,” says Knox, “ of the people of Cande TTda (the
highlands of Ceylon) because of the civility, understanding.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

109’

and gravity of the poorest men among them. Their,
ordinary Plowmen and Husbandmen do speak elegantly ?
and are full of compliment. And there is no difference
between the ability of speech of a Country man and a
Courtier.” There could be said of few people any greater
things than these ; but they cannot be said of those who
have passed through the ‘ instruction machines’ of to-day ;
they belong to a society where life itself brought culture,,
not books alone.

Fifthly , special ideas in relation to education, such as
the relation between teacher and pupil, implied in the words-
of guru and chela (master and disciple); memorizing great
literature, * the epics as embodying ideals of character
learning a privilege demanding qualifications, not to be
forced on the unwilling, or used as a mere road to material
prosperity; extreme importance of the teacher’s perso¬
nality.

“ As the man who digs with a spade obtains water,,
even so an obedient (pupil) obtains the knowledge which
lies in his teacher” (Manu II. 218). This view is
antithetic to the modern practice of making everything
easy for the pupil.

Sixthly , the basis of ethics are not any commandments,,
but the principle of altruism, founded on the philosophical
truth: “ Thy neighbour is thyself.” Recognition of the
unity of all life.

Seventhly , control, not merely of action, but of
thoughts; concentration, one-pointedness, capacity for
stillness.

These are some of the points of view which are-
intrinsic in Indian culture, and must be recognized in any
sound educational ideal for India; but are in the present
* See “ Memory in Education.”

110

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

system ignored or opposed. The aim should be to develop
the people’s intelligence through the medium of their own
national culture. For the national culture is the only
A•msichtS2) , unkt from which, in relation to a wider lands¬
cape, a man can rightly sich am Denhen orientiren. To
"this culture has to he added, for those brought into contact
with the modern idea, some part of that w T ider synthesis
that should enable such an one to understand what may be
the nature of the prospect seen from some other of the
great headlands, the other national cultures, wherefrom
humanity has gazed into the dim sea of the Infinite
Unknown. To effect this wider synthesis, are needed
signals and interpretations, rather than that laborious
backward march through the emptiness of a spiritual
desert where one may perish by the way, or if not
so, then weary and footsore arrive at last upon one
of those other headlands, only to learn, it may be,
that there is to be found a less extensive prospect and a
more barren soil.

As has been well said, Western knowledge is necessary
for India, but it must form for her, (and especially for her
women) a postgraduate course.

6 Every man who is capable of judging * knows that
the educational system of modern India requires re-casting.
'The task may be Herculean ; the more reason to begin
before it becomes impossible. The work must be done by
Indian hands. It is true, as Professor Geddes wrote to
me lately, that:

“The trouble is not only with the vested interests of the
official class (which are sure to be protected in any change), but in
the wooden heads, the arrested minds, the incompetent hands etc
etc., of those who have gone through this machine, whether’ here
or with you m India. It lies in your thousands of barristers and
clerks and crammers, who know all the programme of the Univer-
sity of London in its darkest days.but who know nothing of

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

Ill

the vital movements in literature, science, art, etc., by which we in
some measure here escape or at least mitigate our official oppres¬
sion, or even begin to modify it.

“ In short, then, the strife is not between 1 Eastern and
Western Education * (Instruction, Cram rather) but between
Gram and Education , and for both alike, in West as in East.
It is very hard indeed, upon your thousands of graduates to say
that they must be considered as lost victims of a mistake, and put
aside as useless for practical purposes, save here and there the
man who has the will and power to re-educate himself; but the
same is true here at home, and nothing could be more disastrous,

I think, than for you in India- to give your present Europeanised
graduates the re-organizing of things: that would be continuing
our mistake, not correcting it. But recover your own arts, etc.,
on one hand, and utilise also the Western progress since the
futilitarian doctrinaires and their bureaucratic successors. Learn
from France—non-official France primarily, of course,—from
America on her non-philistine side, from Germany at her best
(though this is being materialised in most of the universities or
elsewhere), from the small countries you as yet practically ignore
— Scandinavia, Netherlands, etc-., and soon. Don’t believe the
usual contempt of South American States; they are far more
advanced than most Europeans know: in short, open yourselves
more widely to the Western influence— similia similibus
•ewrantur?

From such advice there is not a little to be learnt.
But this does not mean that any others can do for us the
work that is our own ; the re-organisation of Indian educa¬
tion, if it is to he of any use, must he accomplished by
Indian hands. The most denationalized Indian is still
more Indian than a European. It is for Indians to nation¬
alize Indian education. Given the responsibility, and the
power to act, and even Europeanized India will rise to the
occasion; to those who cannot think so, India must appear
to he not worth the saving. Let Indians place the control
of education in the forefront of the nationalist programme.
By control, let absolute control be meant, not merely a
half control, or a control sanctioned by some royal charter
that may he withdrawn as easily as given. There is one
true service, and one only, which England can now render
to the cause of Indian education ; it is the placing of the

112

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

education budget and the entire control of education in
Indian bands. It will then be for us to combine with
our own national culture, all that we may learn from
Denmark, Hungary, and the other smaller lands more-
educationally advanced than England, if it seems good to¬
ns to do so. It will be for us to develop the Indian
intelligence through the medium of Indian culture, and
building thereupon, to make it possible for India to resume-
her place amongst the nations, not merely as a competitor
in material production, but as a teacher of all that belongs
to a true civilization, a leader of the future, as of the past.
Herein the ordinary English educator can help but little,,
and can hinder much. In the last words of Buddha to his
beloved disciple :

w O, Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves ; be ye refuges to-
yourselves. Hold fast to the dharma as to a lamp ; hold fast to
the dharma as a refuge. Look not for refuge to any one beside**
yourselves.”

CHAPTER X.

Memory in Education.

Few therefore are left who have suffieier-t memory.”

Plato, Phjsdrus.

O NE of the most conspicuous features in Indian
education as it used to be, was the training of
memory. For long after writing was introduced, reli¬
gious literature, history and technical knowledge were-
handed on orally from one generation to the next. Edu¬
cation, as m ancient Greece, was by means of oral
instruction, and the learning by heart of classic literature.,
The learned man did not rely upon his library, but upon
his memory alone. The memory thus trained and relied
upon was capable of marvellous feats ; even now there are
men who know by heart hundreds and thousands of verses
of Sanskrit literature which they have learnt once for all
and can never forget. So too the singer of hymns or
player of instruments used no written music, but relied
altogether on memory ; in the dark, or on a journey, it
was all the same, what he knew was always at his com¬
mand. Learning of this kind is growing rare ; in India
it has been generally superseded by the State systems of
primary education.

Socrates, in the Phsedrus, is made to relate the story
of an Egyptian named Theuth, who invented numbers;
and arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, draughts and
dice, and above all, letters. At that time Thamus was
king of all Egypt. a To him Theuth went and showed
him his arts, and told him that they ought to be distri¬
buted amongst the rest of the Egyptians. Thamus asked
him what was the use of each, and as he explained it
8

114

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

according as he appeared to say well or ill, he either
praised or blamed him. Now Thamus is reported to have
: said many things to Theuth respecting each art, both for
and against it, which it would be tedious to relate. But
when they came to the letters, “ This knowledge, 0
3dn<* ” said Theuth, “ will make the Egyptians wiser, and
better able to remember ; for it has been invented as a
medicine for memory and wisdom.” But the king replied,
4 < o m0 st ingenious Theuth, one person is able to give
birth to art, another to judge of what amount of detri¬
ment or advantage it will be to those who are to use it,
^tnd now you, as being the father of letters, out of fond¬
ness have attributed to them the contrary effect to that
which they will have. For this invention will produce
forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it through
the neglect of memory, for that, through trusting to
writing, they will remember outwardly by means of
foreign marks, and not inwardly by means of their own
faculties. Bo that you have not discovered a medicine for
memory, but for recollection. And you are providing for
your disciples the appearance and not the reality of
wisdom.”

The distinction between wisdom anti knowledge must
never be forgotten. It is wisdom which is the true end
of education ; in comparison with it, knowledge is a small
thing. It is not a question of a useful as against a
u fancy ” education. It is one of point of view. Culture
in the East has been only secondarily connected with
books and wilting ; it has been a part of life itself. Knox
tells us, in a passage which I have already quoted,*
of 17th century Ceylon, that the “ ordinary Plow¬
men and Husbandmen do speak elegantly, and

*P. 108.

MKMOKY IN EDUCATION.

115

;are full of compliment. And there is no difference bet¬
ween the ability and speech of a Country man and a
'Courtier.” The Sinhalese proverb, “ Take a ploughman
from the plough and wash off his dirt and he is fit to rule
.a kingdom,” was spoken, he says, “ of the people
■ of Cande Uda.. because of the civility, under¬
standing and gravity of the poorest among them.” *

How could this have been ? It is explained by the
^existence of a national culture , not dependent altogether oil
.a knowledge of reading and writing. I still take Ceylon
.as the special case. Think of a party of women spinning
in a Sinhalese village, ten or twenty illiterate and super¬
stitious country women working at a common daily task;
but they sang meanwhile, principally Vesscmtara and Fid-

* So too with the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders of Scotland.
*“ All were as courteous as the courtier,” says Alexander Carmi¬
chael, almost in Knox’s own words. One Hector Maeisaae knew
-stories and poems that would have tilled several volumes; he
could not write, or speak any 1 inguage bub Gaelic, and had never
been out of Uist; yet he “was as polite and well-mannered and
•courteous as Ian Campbell, the learned barrister, the world-wide
traveller, and the honoured guest of every court in Europe. Both
•were at ease and at home with one another, there being neither

servility on the one side nor condescension on the other. The

people of the outer Isles, like the people of the Highlands and
Islands generally, are simple and law-abiding, common crime being

'rare and serious crime unknown among them . During all

the years that I lived and travelled among them, night and day, I
never met with incivility, never with rudeness, never with vulgari¬
ty, never with aught but courtesy.” How like Knox’s description
-of Kandyan Sinhalese! But observe, “Gaelic oral literature
was widely diffused, greatly abundant, and excellent in quality,”
.And now courtesy^and culture together are being civilised away.
“ Ignorant school teaching and clerical narrowness have been
•painfully detrimental to the expressive language, wholesome
’literature, manly sports and interesting amusements of the people’
(in the Highlands of Scotland). Is not the same thing happening
in India ? And is the new education going to be any compensation
for the old culture ? Certainly few signs of such a thing have
ye|:appeared. Were it not for the hope of * change beyond!
-change ’ we should be hopeless indeed.

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

116

hum Jatakas , the story of Yasodhara, or the struggle of
Buddha with the powers of evil. The field labourer- still
sings of the exploits of Gaja Bahu ; or as he reaped the-
golden rice, the praise of some splendid tala ’-palm ; or a
$emi-religious song by moonlight on the threshing’ floor..
Women still sing the story of Padmavati as they weed iir
the fields. .It is, thus, in the existence a common culture-
independent of the written word that we must seek the-
explanation of the classical character of even the collo¬
quial language at the present day, which is emphasised
by Prof. Geiger in his “ Litteratur und Sprache* der-
Singhalesen,” (1901, p. 6.) where he prints side by¬
side extracts from the Ummagga JataJca in high and
colloquial Sinhalese. So elegant indeed is some of'
the up-country Sinhalese still, that English-educated Sin¬
halese from Colombo are unable to respond in language of*
the same quality. This is natural enough, as Sinhalese-
and Tamil are usually not taught in the English schools at
all, orally or otherwise.

It has not always been the case even in the West that,
education and culture were so much matters of' book-
learning only. , ,

“ Irish poetry ”, says Mr. Yeats. “ and Irish stories .were
made to be spoken or sung, while English literature alone, of all*
great literatures, because the newest of them all, has all but com¬
pletely shaped itself in the printing press. In Ireland to-day the
old world that sang and listened is, it may be for the last time in
Europe, face to face with the world that reads and writes, and
their antagonism is always present under sojne name or other in-
Irish imagination and intellect. I myself cannot be convinced that
the printing press will be always victor; for change is inconceiva¬
bly swift, and when it begins—well as the proverb has it, every¬
thing comes in at the hole. The world soon tires of its toys, and
'©ur exaggerated love of print and paper seems tome to. pome put
of passing conditions and to be no more a part of the final cons¬
titution of things than the craving of a woman in child,-bed for-
jgreen apples^ * . -

MEMORY IN EDUCATION. : • :

nr

rt The old culture came to a man at his work ] it was nofcafc'
■t^he expense of-life, but an exaltation of, life it.self. It came in
at the eyes as some civic ceremony sailed along ' the streets, or
-as one arrayed oneself before the looking-glass, onifc.vcame in at-
the ears in a song as one bent over the plough or the anvil, or
at that great table where rich and poor sat down together and
{ liea,rd the minstrel bidding them pass around the wine-cup and
say a prayer for G-awain dead. Certainly it came without*
a price ; it did not take one from one's friends and one’s handi¬
work ; but it was like a good woman who gives all for love and
is; never jealous and. is ready to do all the talking when we are tired.

“ How the old is to eome>gain, how the other aide of the penny
is to come up, how the spit is to turn the other side of the meat to‘
the fire, I do not know, but that the time will come I am certain ;
when one kind of desire has been satisfied fora long time it
becomes sleepy, and other kinds, long quiet, after ranking a noise,
begin to order life. ”

In Ceylon the old culture has not entirely died out,
-especially in the up-country villages ; it is however passing
:away, and in the most “ civilised ” districts is a thing of
the past. This is partly due to the competition of Govern¬
ment and Mission schools, partly to the decay of Buddhism,,
^partly to the general indifference to the importance of
vernacular education. So much is the mother-tongue'
neglected and despised that instances of “ educated ”
^Sinhalese unable to speak to, or read a letter from, their
>own relations are by no means unknown; those who
have been through the mill in an ordinary English school
:a,re usually very ignorant of the geographyj history and
literature of Ceylon. Most stupid of all is the affectation,
of admiring everything English and despising everything
'Sinhalese, or Tamil; recalling that time in England.when
' il Falsehood in a Ciceronian dialect had no opposers, Truth,
in patois no listeners.” ;

The old system had, no doubt, its faults ; but it did
not divorce the “ educated ” from their past, nor raise an
Intellectual bander between the upper classes and the lower.
"The memory system itself has many merits. It may be*

118

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

doubted whether the examination system, with its tendency
to superficiality and cramming, is any great improvement*
The most obvious fault of the Eastern memory system is,
tlie lack of provision for the development of the reasoning:
faculties and too great a reliance upon authority and?
precedent. But the examination system at present in vogue*
is also a memory system, and as such is inferior to the old r
inasmuch as information is merely got up for the immedi¬
ate purpose and afterwards forgotten ; this essentially
temporary storage of facts has undoubtedly a weakening:
effect on mind and memory ; the old-fashioned student,
at any rate remembered what he so laboriously learnt by-
heart ; and this thorough knowledge of a considerable*
amount of real literature was in itself of no small value ~
through it he attained to what we call “ culture. ” As*
Professor Macdonell has lately pointed out, “ the redeeming*
feature of the native system, single-minded devotion to the*
subject for its own sake, is replaced by feverish eagerness
for the attainment of a degree, through examinations which
must be passed by hook or by crook. ” The examinations*
are not even good of their kind, for they make no provision
for the history or languages of Ceylon, with the inevitable-
result that these subjects are neglected in schools. Under
the old regime even those unable to read and write were-
often familiar with a great deal of legendary verse and 1
and ancient literature, and this general acquaintance with
national literature produces a seriousness and dignity of
speech foreign to the present-day youth. The grave-
Kandyan villager, ignorant of English and of the great,
world of business, was not lacking in courtesy and real?
culture.

Even the method of noisy repetition in the village-
schools (which indeed still characterises them) was not aim

MEMORY IN EDUCATION#

119

unmixed evil. Scholars repeated their lessons 44 with a
certain continu’d tone which hath the force of making deep*
impression on the memory ” (P. della Valle, describing
schools in the Deccan, 1623, quoted by W. Crooke). Sir
Kichard Burton says of such schools that their chief merit-
lies in the noise of repetition aloud, which teaches the boy •
to concentrate his attention ! The 44 viva voce process is a
far better mnemonic than silent teaching.”

It is mainly, however, of older scholars that I speak*
and of what they carry away from their education. An
ordinary ‘English’ education may leave one with little-
capacity for self-entertainment, and does not give repose-
and dignity such as belonged to the old cultures of the-
East. Examinations do not do away with the necessity
for learning by rote ; they only make that learning of a
temporary character. Does not every examinee know the-
relief with which, the pass list issued, he relaxes the
effort to retain a mass of knowledge which he acquired
only for the special purpose of that examination ? I, for
one, know it. One learns far too many subjects. I think
no subject should be taken up which cannot be carried to-
some adequate length, no language studied by pupils who
may not reasonably be expected to progress so far as to-
read the literature of that language with pleasure. It is.
extraordinary how easily what one learns for a puipose-
and not for its own sake is forgotten. I once passed the
London Intermediate Arts examination in the various,
subjects, including Greek. In that Greek I took no
real interest, and in less than a year after I could hardly
spell out a few words, much less translate them. It was-
never supposed that I should become a Greek student ;
the Greek was part of a general education ! But it did
not teach me anything of the real Greece itself, its philo-

120

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Sophy or art or literature. I came to read those later in
translations, when the love of sages led me to read Homer,
and Indian philosophy led me to appreciate Plato, and
Indian art led me to study Greek art too.; and thus only
-did Greek culture come to mean anything to me. I
.studied Chaucer too ; but not for years after did I know
that Chaucer was pronounced differently from modem
English and was beautiful poetry. There is thus some¬
thing lifeless about English education by examinations
-even in England ; a tendency to study many subjects
without reaching culture by means of any.

What this education becomes when imposed upon the
East may be imagined. It was no doubt much easier to
take the cut and dried curriculum, say, of the Cambridge
Locals, and apply it to Ceylon, than it would have been to
study the local conditions, and make provision for edu¬
cation in the mother-tongues of the people, or the study
of their literature. It would have been a laborious and
•difficult task (but how fascinating to one whose heart was
in the work !) to examine Indian educational ideals, and
-embody them with the new ideas into a live scheme of
education which should develop the people's intelligence
through the medium of then* own national ideals. It
would be a great undertaking now even to organize a
University in Colombo adapted to the needs of the
•Ceylonese.* It is infinitely easier to provide a scholar¬
ship in London. That may readily be granted; only
those who shirk this labour and do not recognize their
responsibility to the past, must not expect great credit
for their labours in the cause of education. If Western
-education is to destroy, not to fulfill the ideals of the

* Or to vitalise the Universities of India, the ‘sordid and
squalid’ atmosphere of which is now fatal to all real culture.

MEMORY IN EDUCATION.

121

-past, those who impose it cannot expect thoughtful men
to welcome it.

I cannot think that European teachers and education¬
alists quite realise how far u English ” education as it is
given in the East is crushing all originality and imagi¬
nation in the unfortunate individuals who pass through
the mill. Yet the “ Babu ” and the “ failed B. A. ”
upon whom the Englishman looks down so contemptuously
.are the fruit of his own handiwork, the inevitable result
of the methods of education which he himself has
introduced. Broadly speaking, you take a people,
..and educate its children in foreign subjects, and do so in a
foreign language, almost completely ignoring their own
♦culture—and then are surprised at their stupidity! Suppose
that England wrns governed by Chinamen, and a. premium
set on Chinese culture; English children taught Chinese
.subjects in the Chinese language, and left to pick up the
English language and English traditions anyhow at home—
would there not be some “ failed mandarins ? ”

The question is really one of the evasion of res¬
ponsibility. If Empire carries with it duties and res¬
ponsibilities, as we are told by its apologists, a part of that
responsibility is towards the already existing culture and
ideals of the subject peoples. These ideals may be different
from those of the rulers; upon these then is laid the hard
-task of conquering not only the subject race, but their
■own selves and their own prejudices. Men have no right
*to be intolerant of the ideals of others. And only those
■teachers can truly serve the East and especially India, who,
in a spirit of entire respect for her existing conventions
.-and for her past, recognize that they are but offering new
modes of expression to qualities already developed and
expressed in other ways under the old training.”

122

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Even science is not everything; it is as easy to fetter*
the imagination with the bare facts of science, taught as-
knowledge, and not as wisdom, as to fetter it in any other
■way. Science is a poor thing without philosophy ; and
philosophy was a part of the old culture. The Buddhist
books speak of the “ three worlds, ” the world of desire*
{kama loka ), the world of form (nopa loka), and the formless
(amopa loka) ; to Buddhists these profound ideas are quite
familiar. Of the idealism of the Epanishads, which
permeates all indian life and thought, Professor Deussen
says that therein lie the roots of all religion and philosophy r
{£ We do not know what revelations and discoveries are in
store for the restlessly enquiring human spirit; but ©no¬
thing we may assert with confidence,—whatever new
and unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may
strike out, this principle will remain permanently un¬
shaken.” The idealism of the Epanishads—which is-
continually i*e-expressed in all Indian, including Buddhist,,
literature— is in marvellous agreement with the philosophies,
of Parmenides and Plato, and of Kant and Schopenhauer..
And all this is an inseparable part of Indian culture as it
was. The far-reaching character of these basic ideals of'
Indian culture have expressed themselves in an infinite-
variety of ways ; but they are always there. Is not this
culture worth saving ? An English writer on Indian
administration * remarks on the absurdity of the idea that-
“ teaching Indian schoolboys a smattering of modern
experimental science will be a revelation to a culture-
and a civilisation which constructed a theory of the-
Eniverse, based on what we call modern scientific principles,,
five thousand years ago. ”

It will be said that all this lies beyond the simply
* Havell, ‘Nineteenth Century,’ .June, 1907.

MEMORY IN EDUCATION.

123*

education required by many Indians, wlio bave their work
to do in the world, and have little need for philosophy..
But the genius of the old culture was seen in this very
thing, that all partook of it in their own measure; culture-
came to a man at his work, it was an exaltation of life, not
something won in moments stolen from life itself. And
one way in which this came about, perhaps the best and
most universal way was through the literature ; and that
literature was mainly orally transmitted, that is, it was
very much alive; it belonged both to the illiterate and to the
literate ; it expressed the deepest truths in allegorical forms,
which, like the parables of Christ, have both their own
obvious and their deeper meaning, and the deeper-
meaning continually expressed itself in the more obvious
and both were beautiful and helpful. The literature was.
the intellectual food of all the people, because it was really
a part of them, a great idealisation of their life ; and w r hat
is most important of all, it was such as to be of value to-
all men ; large and deep enough for the philosopher, and
simple enough to guide and delight the least intellectual..
So that all, however varied their individual attainments,,
were united in one culture, the existence of which de¬
pended largely on the existence of a living literature* •
forming an inseparable background to daily life, known
that is by heart. Just as the Icelandic family histories
were the stories of lives lived in the light of the heroic -
stories of the North, so Indian life is lived in the light of
the tales of India's saints aud heroes.

The two great Indian epics have been the great medium >
of Indian education, the most evident vehicle of the-
transmission of the national culture from each generation
to the next. The national heroic literature is always and’
everywhere the true basis of a real education in the forma-

.124

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

tion of character. Amongst the Buddhists in Ceylon, the
place of the epics has been taken by the stories of the life
•of Buddha and the legends that have clustered round his
name. The value of the epics in Education is partly in
this, that they are for all alike, the literate and the
illiterate, men, women or children; all are united in a
common culture, however varying the extent of their
knowledge. It is this common culture which the modern
English education ignores and destroys. The memorising
of great national literature was the vehicle of this cul¬
ture ; and hence the tremendous importance of memory
in education. For great literature of this kind does not
yield its message to the casual or unsympathetic reader at
once, it must be part of the life of men, as the Greeks
made Homer a part of their life, or the Puritans the
Bible. It is no use to prescribe some one or two books of
the Bam ay ana or the Mahabharata, or a Jataka for an
-examination course. 1STo, the great stories in their com¬
pleteness must be a means of the development of the
imagination—a faculty generally ignored and sometimes
deliberately crushed by present-day educators. The great
heroic figures must express to us still the deepest, most
religious things. For all purity is included in the purity
• of Sita, all service in the devotion of Hanuman, all knight¬
hood in the chivalry of Bhishma. “ Such are some of the
< characters who form the ideal world of the Hindu home.
Absorbed in her £ worship of the feet of the Lord/ the
little gild sits for hours in her corner, praying, 4 Make
me a wife like Sita ! Give me a husband like Bama l 9
Each act or speech of the untrained boy rushing in from
•.school, may remind some one, half-laughing, half-admiring*
-of Yudhishtira or Lakshmana, of Kama or Arjuna, and the
name is sure to be recalled. It is expected that each

MEMORY IN EDUCATION.

1

member of the family shall have his favourite hero,, who-
will be to him a sort of patron saint, and may appeal* as
the centre of the story if he is bidden to recount it. Thus,,
when one tells the Ramayana, Ravana is the hero ; an¬
other makes it Hanuman ; only the books keep it always •
Sita and Rama. And it is well understood that the chosen
ideal exercises a preponderant influence over one’s own
development. None could love Lakshmana without growing
more full of. gentle courtesy and tender consideration for
the needs of others ; he who cares for Hanuman cannot ■
fail to become more capable of supreme devotion and ready
service. And justice itself must reign in the heart that,
adores Yudhishtira.* 77

Yery great too has been the part which the-
Pumnas have played in moulding Indian character.

I have often thought that not all the efforts of a hundred
Moral Instruction Leagues and Moral Education Leagues
can do for England what the Epics and the Puranas have
done for India. The foundation of all true education lies in
the national heroic literature. Poor, indeed, is the nation-
lacking such a means of education ; and mistaken an edu¬
cator who should dream of deliberately ignoring such a
means of education laid ready to his hand in India.

Not less related to the fundamental realities of life is-
the epic literature of Buddhism, with which the people,,
literate or not, were familiar. For the cycle of Buddhist
literature may fairly be called epic, with Buddha as its hero.
Is not all sacrifice summed up in his renunciation of the
attainment of Nirvana, when as the Brahman Sumedha
the Bodhisat preferred to pass on through yet more
existences towards the attainment of saving knowledge for-
the sake of creatures ? What can be more beautiful than.

♦Sister Nivedita, 6 The Web of Indian Life.’

125

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

the story of his temptation by Mara, beneath the bo-tree,
deserted by even the devas, save only Mahikantava, Mother
Earth herself ? Or the way in which, when four bowls were
• offered to him by the Four Regents, he accepted all mak¬
ing them into one, that he might not refuse the offering of
. any ? For the Sinhalese Buddhist again, it is in the
-Jatakas and in the rest of the Buddhist classical literature
that Indian culture and civilization are presented; the
stories are of Benares and of the life of India long ago.

' The Vessantara Jataka is a perpetual delight to the simple
•country people ; they see it all before them just as it is
painted on the vlharcc wall; do not they think of that
•sojourn in the forest, when they too go to make their
pilgrimage to Samanala ? Into their very mats are woven
symbols of the pansala at Yangagiriya where Yessantara
and Madri Devi dwelt! Many of the Jatakas are perfect
'Stories. There is the chhadanta , telling of the elephant
that yielded up its tusks to the hunter, and of the queen
that died of shame and grief when she saw her evil wishes
thus fulfilled ; there are beautiful tales like the Sosa and
Bhaddha Seda Jatakas , and amusing ones like the tales of
the pandits in the Ummagga and Y idJmra-pandita Jatakas .
Is it not worth while to teach these to young people of every
generation? Are they not good literature to be in the
minds of the old folk ?

But it is not only from the point of view of the thing
remembered that memory is important in education.
Memory, in the Indian view, is itself a most important part
-of personal character, associated especially with the ideals
of self-control and mental concentration. “ From wrath
is confusion born ; from confusion, wandering of memory ;
from breaking of memory, wreck of understanding ; from
wreck of understanding a man is lost.” (Bhag&md-Gita)*

MEMORY IN EDUCATION.

127

"The memory stands for a man’s grip upon himself ; its loss
is characteristic of a disintegration of personality.

I pass then to the kindred subject of concentration.
Psychology is for India, the synthesis of all the sciences.
As by clay everything made of clay is known, so all know¬
ledge is founded on a knowledge of the self. How is this
•self to be controlled and focussed ? Only by the power of
•concentration, the capacity for fixing the attention of the
whole mind for more than a brief, moment upon a single
•aim or thought. Try to do this, try for example to think
•of a triangle, to see it in your mind’s eye, and nothing else
but it for, say, two minutes ; unless you have practised
•concentration of thought before, you will not be able to do
it, other thoughts will slip into your consciousness before
you know it, and you will find that your mind has wandered
from its object. But in any case you will realise what it
means to be able thus to concentrate the thoughts at will, to
rule and not be ruled by them. Thoughts are not guests
to come and go of themselves ; they must be chosen and
.invited, or turned away at will,

I will give an instance or two of the way in which
this concentration enters into the ideal of Hindu culture,
.•and of the ways in which it is learnt. A typical story in
the Mahabharata describes the shooting lesson of the
young princes. A clay bird is the target. Each prince in
turn is asked what he sees. One says “ A bird” ; another,
A branch with a bird upon it,” and so on. At last
Arjunna, the youngest, answers ; “ A bird’s head, and in
that head only the eye.” “ The moment,” says a writer on
Hindu life, “ of the telling of this story to an Indian child
is tense with feeling. For it embodies the culminating ideal
of the nation, inasmuch as concentration of mind stands
=among Hindus for the supreme -expression of that greatness

128

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

■which we may recognize in honour or courage or any kind-
of heroism.”

Here is an illustration of the way in which concentra¬
tion is learnt by those brought up in the atmosphere of '
Hindu culture. A part of the scmclhya or daily prayer of"
the Hindus consists in the mental repetition of certain
prayers (mantras) a certain number of times, in many cases-
108. This might easily become a mind-deadening mecha¬
nical process ; but this result is carefully guarded against,,
and it is instead good practice in concentration. For one
thing, the counting is much insisted on; for repetition
without keeping count leads to mental vacuity. Let any¬
one, on the contrary, try to repeat any two lines of poetry
exactly 108 times, and see whether it does not require-
mental concentration to do it without failure. With the
scmclhya prayers there are also associated physical practices,,
especially that of breathing, retaining and expelling the
breath, while prayers are repeated a certain number of
times; this cannot be done without intense attention.
Many of the prayers too are, it is to be noted, “ affirmations”'
of a very positive and beneficial character, practically auto¬
hypnotic suggestions. It is not surprising that Sandow
found his most receptive* pupils in India ; for they already
understood the importance of throwing the whole mind into*
every effort, not taking it in slovenly fashion with the body
alone. The sankalpa is a resolve to perform scmclhya; a
Hindu writer remarks that upon this strong determination,
of the mental effort depends the efficacy of the worship..
If the mind is not put into the act, it is done mechanically
and loses half its value. The same thing was insisted on
by Sandow in his system of physical training.

A great and real responsibility rests upon those who*
control education in the East, to preserve in their systems-

MEMORY IN EDUCATION. 129

the fundamental principles of memory-training and mental
concentration which are the great excellence of the old
culture. No doubt, as I said before, it will be a difficult,
and troublesome process to so combine and fuse the old
ideals with the new as to preserve the best in each. It is
much simpler to reject the whole past and replace it by
methods already cut and dried and defined. Nevertheless,,
unless the necessity for doing the reverse of this is recog*
nized, the English educator must not expect that his work
will be taken at his own valuation but must look forward
to a constant struggle with those who wish, and intend, to-
preserve whatever was best in the old culture, especially the*
old appreciation of the value of memory training (most of
all in connection with the making of great national litera¬
ture an organic part of the individual life), and of mental
concentration. But as I have already indicated, the future*
is not with the English educator in India, but with
the Indian people and the National Movement. The
responsibility of preserving and continuing the great-
ideals rests with these, and not with any foreign educator.

9

CHAPTER XI.

Christian Missions in India-

“ Self-control is meritorious, to wit, hearkening to the Law of
others, and hearkening willingly.”

“ There is no such charity as the charitable gift of the Good
Law. ( Dhamma )”—Asoka’s Edicts.

“ I do not strive with the world, but the world strives with me.
A teacher of the truth does not strive with anyone whatsoever in
the world.”—(Saying attributed to Buddha.)

fTAHE following remarks deal only with missionary
1 endeavour to convert Hindus and Muhammadans to
some form of dogmatic Christianity, without touching upon
the question of missionary activity as it presents itself in
other countries, or in relation to the primitive tribes in
India, whose beliefs are purely animistic and outside the
pale of Hinduism proper.

Two questions require separate consideration in any
discussion of Christian missionary activity in India ; these
are, first, is missionary effort justifiable at all, and second,
are the methods employed defensible ?

The first question must be answered in the affirmative.
It is natural and desirable that every thinking man, who
feels himself to be in possession of some key to the solution
of the difficult problem of life, should desire to share this
knowledge with others to whom it is still unknown. All
to whom personal religious experience has come with the
force of revelation long to share the gladness of it with
others. Every teacher, every disciple, every common man
desires by argument and persuasion, or indirect influence,
to impress upon others some of the ideas which are, or seem

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INIHIA,

131

to be, peculiarly his own, and peculiarly important. Christ¬
ianity, Buddhism, Socialism, Nationalism, Imperialism*
have alike inspired their missionaries and gained adherents.
.Naturally it has been so; enthusiasm is contagious, and
•affirmation more constructive than negation. Rightly it
has been so, for only by spreading the truth can the truth
be known ; and in the end truth prevails over error. The
mistakes have arisen when the preacher has forgotten that
no truth is complete or absolute, only relative. No religion
possesses a monopoly, unless it be of the errors peculiar to
itself. The garment of the soul must be various, in rela¬
tion to individual nature and environment, no less than
must the garment of the body. The Christian missionary
is generally bent upon the regimentation of the garments,
both of soul and body.

Any man may prophesy ; the African fetish-worship¬
per has a right to speak if he feels a call to witness to the
truth within him. He has no right to complain if he is
not heard. Bo with the Christian ; he may ask, as a
■Salvationist is said to have done, “ Friend, how is your
soul V 9 ; but if he receives the answer, “ Thank ye, pretty
well, Sir, how is yours ? ” he cannot be surprised, and
ought not be shocked. Still less ought he to proceed by
force, social influence or bribery to coerce the answerer’s
convictions ; least of all by insidious means to undermine
his children’s faith in himself and his belief. Such con¬
siderations do not weigh with the Christian missionary.

The Hindu and the missionary conceptions of tolera¬
tion are poles apart. The missionary is bent upon destroying
.heathendom; there probably could not be found a Hindu
•desirous of destroying Christianity. For the Hindu religi¬
ous formulas are not absolute truth, but truth in a mythical
.and allegorical form; how should that which is infinit

132

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

be compressed into the tiny vessel of a single dogma ? He-
may think his own allegory best, or the best for him ; it.
may be best for others, but it is not likely to be so for-
all; and so while he is willing and even 1 eager to explain
his form of belief to others, he is not bent upon securing-
their acceptance of it; what he looks for is belief, not a
belief.

A missionary after a painfully intense discussion once-
exclaimed to me, t£ The light that is in you is darkness.”'
Of course, I never dreamed of thinking that of him. For
him, light had to be filtered through glass of a familiar
colour before it could be recognised as light. Forms of'
religion are like coloured glasses that we hold up to a
light too bright for human eyes ; pure white light is the-
truth behind them all; not seeing this, men say to each
other : u That is not light shining through your glass ; the-
only light shines through mine.” The whole endeavour to-
prove that the light in heathen belief is not the same light
as in Christian is an appalling waste of energy, when the-
real need is to awaken men to the fact that there is a light
at all. What devout Hindu or Mussalman has ever doubted!
that ? The materialist is the true heathen.

Many missionaries know but little of Hinduism or
Buddhism; they have not time to study them ; as these
faiths are not Christian, they must be wrong,—why enquire
further % The home supporters of Christian missions are
even more in the dark; an ardent advocate of missions-
told me once that “ Hindus were Muhammadans
and worshipped Confucius.” But this is no impediment ;
for as Schopenhauer in his Essay on Beligion says: “ One-
finds the ordinary man as a rule merely trying to prove
that the dogmas of the foreign belief do not agree with his
own ; he labours to explain that not only do they not say

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA. 133

the same, hut certainly do not mean the same as his.
With that he fanciesin his simplicity that he has proved
the falsity of the doctrines of the alien belief. It really
never occurs to him to ask the question, which of the two
is right, ”— or whether both may not be right.

Hear this story which I have been told of a Jewish
.and a Christian religious leader. Both were sincere
religious men, cultured and devoted. The Christian
•cordially welcomed all converts that came to him from
• other faiths, to be received into his own. The Jew, when
^Christians came, as many did, to be received into the
-Jewish church, said to them : “ Why do you wish to be
received ? you wish to worship in our synagogues ? the
•doors are open, do so when you will. You wish to keep
•our moral laws ? do so by all means, you will be a better
•citizen. Yon want to conform to our ritual ? what good
will that do you ? it is the traditional discipline of a race,
unsuited to you and a useless burden for you. You wish
to be born of Abraham that I cannot give you. You say
that I have taught you what is good ? well, if so, go away
:and practise it and teach it in your own church. 75

Buddhism and Hinduism are themselves missionary
religions. The Buddhist Emperor Asoka (272. B.G.)
■organized foreign missions on a truly magnificent scale*
These were perhaps the most successful missions ever
undertaken, for it was his support that “ made the fortune
•of Buddhism, and raised to it the position which enables ,it
?.still to dispute with Christianity the first place among the
religions of the world, so far as the number of believers is
•concerned 55 (Yincent Smith). With all his devotion to
the Law of Buddha, what was his attitude to other sects ?
It is summed up in this extract fi;om one of his edicts :
41 All sects have been reverenced by me with various forms

134

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

of reverence. Nevertheless, personal adherence to a man’s
particular creed seems to me th# chief thing. ” In
another edict he says: 44 The adherents of the several
sects must be informed that His Majesty cares not
so much for donations or external reverence, as that there-
should be a growth, and a large growth, of the essence of

the matter in ail sects.The growth of the essence o£

the matter assumes various forms, but the root of it is
restraint of speech, to wit, a man must not do reverence to*
his own sect by disparaging that of another man for trivial
reasons.” What then was the burden of Asoka’s missions,,
what was the message he so desired to communicate to all,,
what did he understand by conversion? It was not a
dogma at all ; it was the 44 Law of Piety ” (Dhctmma)

64 The Law of Piety is excellent. But what is the Law
of Piety ? It requires innocuousness, many good deeds,,
compassion, truthfulness, purity ” (Pillar Edict II). This r
with an insistence upon the greater value of meditation
than of ceremonial observances, was the gospel of Asoka’&
missions. 4 Conversion J was a turning of the heart, not,
the acceptance of a formula. Such was ^the work of the
greatest and most successful missionary the world has seen.
Were the ideals of the Christian missionary similar, he
might make fewer 4 converts 9 —and more followers^of Christy
What of Hinduism ?

“ If,” says Mr. Grierson, “ the bhakti-QvXt is to be counted as-
a form of Hinduism (and if it is not, there would be veiy few
Hindus in India), few statements so inaccurate have been made as
that Hinduism is not a missionary religion. Here we have a form,
of belief which actually lives upon its missionany work. It ignores
all caste and condemns no religion as utterly useless, and ever
since its foundation its converts have increased in geometrical,
progression. Every follower of the cult is, and if he is genuine,,
must be, a missionary. Nor is the missionary field confined to-
existing forms of Hindu belief. The common statement that no*
Mussalman can become a Hindu is disproved by the fact that some,
of the greatest saints of the cult, men whose hymns are household.

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

135

•words and are printed and sold by thousands, were converts from
Islam. Others, such as Kabir and Prananatha, succeeded in form¬
ing important sects whic®labsorbed many of the actual doctrines
of that belief. As in Buddhism, what we may term the laity was
not called upon to abandon caste or its old household worship.”*
Tbe spirit of this mission work is expressed in Pratapa Simha’s
Bhdktakalpadruma , which Mr. Grierson goes on to translate ;

‘ Somewhere it is written in the scriptures that he who takefch
one that is averse and turneth him towards the Holy One, hath

earned the fruits of a thousand horse-sacrifices......The pity

of it is that so many who gain wealth spend not more of it upon
the spreading abroad of the Gospel of Grace (Bhagavata JDharma ,

.Therefore let every man so far as in him lieth, help the

reading of the Scriptures, whether those of Ms own church or
those of another. 7

This also is the spirit of the Bhagavad-Gita : u They also who
worship other Gods and make offerings to them with faith, O Son
of Kunti, do verily make offering to Me ” : tfc Howsoever men
approach Me, even so do I welcome them, for the path men take
from every side is mine “ If any worshipper whatsoever, seeks
with faith to do reverence to any form whatsoever, that same
faith in him I make stead fast.”+

Per contra , the missionary teaches : “ I, the Lord f

am a jealous God; thou shalt have none other gods but
Me.”

In India any man may preach any doctrine even
upon the temple doorstep. He may believe what
he will, if only his practice do not undermine the
structure of organized society-^ There has never been
a conflict between science and religion, for science has
always been religious, % and religion philosphical. It is a

* Grierson, “ The Modern Hindu Doctrine of Works;’ J. R.
A. S., 1908, p. 340.

t See also Tulsi Das’ Ramayana (Bk. VI, Doha 3) where Rama
(avatar of Vishnu) avows that 4 there is none so dear to me m

t « Hinduism has never produced an exclusive, dominant,
orthodox sect, with a formula of faith to be professed or rejected
under pain of damnation.” (Vincent Smith, * Asoka,’ p. 39).

^ Especially mathematics and astronomy. For example,
fractions with a zero denominator are considered by Bhaskara-
charya. Such quantities can neither be increased or decreased by
addition or subtraction of any finite quantity whatever ; hence he

136

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

debated question whether there has ever been serious
religious persecution in India; it i^ certain that it was
the regular practice of Buddhist, Hindu and some
Muhammadan rulers, not merely to tolerate, but to support
sill sects alike. Such tolerance the missionary uses to
.spread his own intolerance. His aim is to win souls for
'Christ; and for him no other duty, principle or right can
be allowed to interfere with his effort to accomplish this
-end.

The use of physical force* is now indeed rejected ;
but all that money, social influence, educational bribery and
misrepresentation can effect, is treated as legitimate.
With all this is often combined great devotion and sincer¬
ity of purpose; the combination is dangerous in the
•extreme.

says, they are similar to Ananta,, or the infinite in a Theological
sense: “ In this quantity consisting of that which has cypher for

Its divisor there is no alteration though many be inserted or extract¬
ed; as no change takes place in the infinite and immutable God
at the period of the destruction or creation of worlds, though
numerous orders of things are created or put forth. 5 ’ To the
Indian student of mathematics such a remark is at once illuminat¬
ing ; it would seem out of place in the naively materialistic
scientific text-book of the West. As a Western Scientist wrote
to me the other day, “ Western science has a great deal to learn
from Oriental philosophy,”

* Missionaries in the last resort rely on force. This is noto¬
riously so in China. “Force,” says Lafeadio Hearn (quoted
“Modern Review,” III, 234), “the principal instrument of
Christian propagandism in the past, is still the force behind our

missions. We force missionaries upon China, for example,

under treaty clauses extorted by war, and pledge ourselves to
support them with gunboats and to exact enormous penalties
for the lives of such as get themselves killed.” It would be the
same in India, did not Hindu tolerance (apart from ‘India held
fay the sword’) make it needless ; but even Hindu tolerance may
some day be overstrained. If it be intolerance to force one’s way
into the house of another, it by no means necessarily follows that
it would be intolerence on the owner’s part to drive out tha
Intruder.

CHB3ST1AN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

137

We come thus to the second question, the legitimacy
*of missionary methods. It is impossible in a short essay
to cover the whole field of missionary activity in India.
I propose to deal with two special points, viz., Education,
.■and Misrepresentation.

The most subtle, and in a certain sense, I suppose,
•effective, proselytizing agency in India is the Mission
School. When adult conversion was found to proceed
too slowly, it was decided to reach the children; hence
the education bribe. The magic word itself stills opposi
tion and enquiry ; everyone is convinced that India needs
•educating,—it would be intolerant to deny to Christians
a right to share in this noble work, impertinent to doubt
their capability. A deliberate effort is being made to
u keep the education of girls predominantly in Christian
hands for perhaps a generation,” as it is thought that
u upon the character and extent of the education provided
for girls during the next few years will depend the spread of
the Christian faith amongst all the higher castes of India
Let us see what this education of girls in mission schools
implies.

The education is undertaken with an ulterior motive,
that of the conversion. The first qualification of a teacher
is therefore good sectarian Christianity ; but for educa¬
tional problems,—in these it is only necessary that she
should be interested as a means to an end. However, the
•qualifications next desired are the ordinary qualifications
of an English school-teacher; and in some cases the teacher
may even be an University graduate. Such persons are
sent out after some preliminary theological training, to
teach in, or to take charge of, a mission school for girls.
It is sometimes not decided until nearly the lash
* * The East and the West,’ 1908, p. 104.

138

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

moment to what part of the c mission field* the teacher
is to be sent. In any case she is not prepared for her
work of education by a sympathetic study of local ideas,,
culture and traditions; if she studies the heathen religion
at all, it is mainly in books written by those who do not
sympathize with, and therefore do not fully understand it-
Upon arrival, she finds herself in an altogether unfamiliar
mental atmosphere; and she has only her Christian dogma
and at the best a good English education on classical lines,,
as her resources. Unless she is to be a preaching mission¬
ary, which as a teacher she is not proposing to do, she will
probably learn no more of the mother-tongue of her pupils'
than suffices to direct her servants; the mission is short-
handed, and she has to devote her whole time to class work*
and management.

But suppose that by a rare chance (how rare I need*
not say) she belongs to the microscopic percentage of*
Europeans in India for whom Indian culture, litera¬
ture, philosophy, art and music have a real fascination*.
The more she knows of Indian culture, the less can she-
found her scheme of education upon it, that is, so long as'
she remains bound by honour and inclination to prosely¬
tize. For all Indian culture is essentially religious; the*
aim of art is to interpret God to man through the medium
of the heathen mythology she has been sent out to destroy-
music is most often the expression of man’s love for God r
expressed in the same terms; the epics, the fundamental
moulding agencies of national character, are practically
heathen Bibles; and Indian philosophy and religion are*
inseparable. So that, however keen her educational instinct,,
she has but one course to follow,—to create a spiritual
desert in which to plant the Christian dogma. The greater*
part of the educational work of a mission is thus destruc-

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

139

tire. To a girl in such a school one of three things happens::
either she is true to the ideals of the home, and so absol¬
utely out of sympathy with her teachers ; or she is convert¬
ed and regards her parents as ignorant idolaters ; or she*
pretends conversion for the sake of certain material
advantages. Sometimes she is persuaded that both the-
religion of her parents and the new religion intended to*
replace it are alike superstitions. (With young men this
happens oftener.) In neither case is she 4 educated/ in the
-sense of being given the freedom of her own national,
culture, the only true standpoint from which she can, in
relation to a wider world, educationally 4 find herself.' She-
is demoralised ( c unmannered ’) and rendered less, not more-
fit to take her palace in life amongst her own people.

Now, the time work of education is not merely to*
impart this, that or the other information, or develop a
particular intellectual aptitude; it is to build up character,.
This is a constructive work; but as we have seen, the object
of the missionary is primarily (and with his conception of'
the meaning of conversion must remain) destructive. In¬
deed it may be said of the two types of purely English:
schools in India, Government and missionary, that
the one ignores, the other endeavours to destory, the-
ideals of the home. Under such circumstances the possi¬
bility of true education is reduced to a minimum.

Why then send our girls to mission schools ? It is, I
think, unwise. But some of us are so convinced of the*
importance of education that we are driven to take what"
we can get. In desiring for our girls the kind of educa¬
tion given in mission schools, it may be that we have'
accepted, at your valuation, that which has no value. It
is true that Indian women are not even now uneducated or
non-educated; but their education is highly specialised; it isr.

140

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

rather culture than learning; it is not recognised as educa¬
tion by the modern world. The education of Indian wo¬
men in the past fitted them to satisfy all the demands
of a beautiful social ideal. Moulded upon the national
ideals of character enshrined in the heroic and romantic
literature familiar to Indian women, the beauty of
Indian womanhood is beyond the breath of criticism.
But the time has come when new demands are made
upon the Indian people; in the national and civic
synthesis in progress woman must play her part, as she
has done in other syntheses before. Hence the need for
an education no longer so exclusively specialised in relation
to the home and to religion ; the need for a scientific, geo¬
graphical, historical synthesis. Recognition of this need
has led to the desire' for 1 ^English Education.’ Hesitation
.-as to the real aims of the education offered has kept many
from seeking it; it might have been well had it kept more,
for too often have those who asked for bread been given
4i stone. Be that as it may, English education is now
•desired by many ; that which purports to be this thing is
•offered at low rates in missionary schools.

India is poor. The average income of individuals is
•estimated at from l|d. (official) to fd. (Mr. Digby) per
head per diem. Can India afford to erect in a day such
-educational institutions as those of Newnham or Girton ?
India is hard put to it to pay for the education of her
:Sons; and has also to wage a desperate struggle for
national existence on any terms; and yet does find money
for such institutions as the Ladies’ College in Mysore, the
girls’ school of the Arya Samaj at Jalandar, and other
educational work. It is true that by now, Indians might,
had they been wise, have done more for the modern edu¬
cation of Indian women ; yet all things considered it is

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

141

•wonderful that so much has been, and is being done..
Nevertheless, for those who desire 4 English education ’ for-
girls, it is still generally a case of the mission school, or
nothing. The mission school is subsidised by the contribu¬
tions of the supporters of missions all over the world, and
can afford to offer the 4 English education ’ at less than
cost price. The bribe is then accepted. Not till India
refuses to be thus pauperised by those whose aim is the
destruction of her faiths, can she be free.

The motive of the parent is not always a pure desire-
for education; it is sometimes a desire, not elsewhere
unknown, to get something for nothing ; sometimes a wish
for mere material advantage for the girls. 44 Education is
valued in India,” says the Archdeacon of Madras ( 4 The
East and the West,’ January, 1908) 44 not so much

because it is enlightening as because it is profitable,” and
the missionary provides the easiest and cheapest avenue to •
the attainment of it. The first statement, in so far as it
is true of modern India, is in direct opposition to Indian
tradition, and to all that is best in Indian educational
ideals. But the missionary does not scruple to take-
advantage of the situation, as a keen man of business •
might take advantage of a rival. Such methods may
result in brief success amongst the least Hinduised sections.
of society. They will not touch the heart of India ! In
Ceylon the Cambridge Locals are for a girl as good as a
dowry ; but they are not education, for they leave the girl
ignorant of her own language, history and social culture.,
Europeanised parents desire their daughters taught ac¬
complishments; Berlin woolwork to be framed on the
parlor wall; 4 a few strokes on the violin before she leaves
a little strumming on a cheap piano; painting flowers,
sometimes a little French. They learn also to wear shoes,,

142 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

-and feathers in their hats, often also to eat meat. This
-of course is pure' snobbery : but since 6 Christian influence *
not education, is the aim, these things must be provided ;

■ and it often happens that these bourgeois ideals are the
teachers’ very own.

The teaching of mere accomplishments to all girls,
irrespective of talent, is in the West, to be correlated with
-the overstocked matrimonial market; piano-playing and
foreign languages were supposed to attract the average
man. In the East, the matrimonial market is not over¬
stocked. Most of the girls in Christian boaiding schools
, are recruited from the villages ; they will not be called to
. any station in life different from that in which they were
born; for them the first essential of education should be to

■ fit them for the life they will assuredly lead, that of the
mother of a family. But still accomplishments attract ;
.piano-playing, crewel-work and English manners (or the
lack of them) here also contribute to matrimonial bargains,
and so the village parent is content to take some risks.

' Take on the other hand the case of the cultured man with

* daughters whom he desires to educate in the best way, and
who understands what education means. I think of one
such, a learned Hindu, a Cambridge graduate, who has

- travelled with his wife in Europe, and is intellectually the
superior of all his associates in the Civil Service. There is
. as yet no Hindu school for girls where modern education
is available ; he does not wish to send them far away to
Mysore or to England ; and so he too sends his daughters
. as they grow up, one by one, to the C. M. S. Ladies’

• College, where they are duly prepared for the Cambridge
Locals, taught Christian dogma, French, fancy work and
the piano, besides the English mathematics and other sub-
jects of value for which they really go. Out of school he

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

14a

lias to arrange for tlieir instruction in their own mother-
tongue, in Indian music and literature. It will be seen that
time thus already over-filled, is too much occupied for the
Sanskrit he would like to have them learn. In this,
particular case the strength of home ties and of religious
feeling render the possibility of conversion quite remote ;
but how far removed is the education offered by the would-
be proselytizers, from that which would be of real
value.

Alas for wasted opportunity! To share in the true
‘education of the Indian woman were indeed a privilege*
Behind her are the traditions of the great women of Indian
history and myth, women strong in love and war, sainthood,
in submission and in learning. She is still a guarded
flame, this daughter of a hundred earls. She has not to
•struggle for a living in a competitive society, but is free to
be herself. Upon her might be lavished the resources of
.all culture, to make yet more perfect that which is already
most exquisitely so. You that have entered on the task
.so confidently, with the ulterior motive of conversion, have
proved yourselves unfit. Lay no blame on India for her
.•slowness to accept the education you have offered to her
women ; pi*aise her rather for the wise instinct that leads
her to mistrust you. When you learn that none can
rfcruly educate those against whose ideals they are blindly
prejudiced ; when you realise that you can but offer new
modes of expression to faculties already exercised in other
ways ; when you come with reverence, as well to learn as
to teach; when you establish schools within the Indian
social ideal, and not antagonistic to it—then, perhaps, we
may ask you to help us build upon that great foundation.
USTot I trust, before ; lest there should be too much for the
•daughters of our daughters to unlearn.

144

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

I speak now of missionary misrepresentations. There-
is no part of the Christian code of ethics more consistently
ignored in missionary circles, than the commandment,.
“ Thom shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh¬
bour.”

It has been said, “ By their fruits ye shall judge-
them.” Now, if the fruits are grapes anrl figs, obvi¬
ously the plants cannot be thorns or thistles. Hence-
the necessity for seeing and describing the fruits of
Hinduism and Islam not as grapes or figs, but as something
more appropriate to the missionary conception of the plant.
The result is a relentless and systematic campaign of
vilification of all things Indian. When I say, 4 necessity, 5
I do not mean to say that the missionary quite deliberately
falsifies the facts ; on the contrary, he deceives himself as.
well as others; this is easy, for when the plant is already
identified as a thistle, it is difficult to see figs upon it, even
if they be there. The missionary is not aware of his fake-
witness ; he does generally present things as he sees them,
but he sees through highly-coloured spectacles, which he*
removes when turning for comparison to inspect a Christian
society at home. Thus he blackens India’s name in all
good faith, if one may call it so, and with the best
intentions. %

Those who wish to understand the process should
study missionary literature, attend meetings, or read what-
missionaries say of those who see India in a different way.
The method is simple and even obvious : Indian society,,
being like all others, mixed good and evil, the missionary
(by no means free from the ordinary prejudices of other
Anglo-Indians) sees and describes only evil; much that
is merely strange he mistakes for evil, or notices only
because it is strange; much he argues from particular

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIAl

145

instances to be universal; and all be sets down to the vile
nature of the Hindu religion or of Islam or Buddhism a&
the case may be. It is as if a Chinese visitor to England,,
courteously received, were to describe to his friends in
Pekin, the effects of drink and poverty, agricultural de¬
pression, the overcrowded slums with their moral and
physical results, sweated industries and dangerous trades,,
baby-farming, street prostitution, the unemployed, and the
idle rich, and ascribe all together to the vile nature of the
Christian dogma. How easy it would be for him to do-
this has, by the way, been suggested by Mr. Lowes Dickin¬
son, in his 4 Letters of a. Chinaman. ’ In just this way
the missionary home on furlough preaches his mission
sermon or gives his mission lecture ; and the collection is.
swelled by the contributions of a sympathetic but uncritical
congregation, not quite free from a suspicion of gratitude
to God, that they are not as other (heathen) men. Mis¬
sionary literature is similar. A typical volume is Miss.
Carmichael’s 4 Things as they are in Southern India, 5 from
which I have already quoted. No volume could be a more-
impressive monument of the unfitness of the ordinary mis¬
sionary to concern himself with the 4 civilisation 5 of India.
■When in another man’s heart you can see only blackness,,
the fault is likely to be your own ; when in another civili¬
sation you can see only unutterable vileness, it means that
you have not understood the parable of the mote and the
beam. The method of such a book is simplicity itself ;
ignore the presence of virtues in non-Christian, and of
vices in Christian, communities; describe all individual and
local instances of evil known to you in a heathen society as
typical; add violence of language and morbid religious
sentiment, suggest all that you do not say, and the volume
is completed.

10

146

JSSSAXS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

I shall now quote some few examples of missionary
mis-statements from various less extreme sources. Easily
refuted, such statements perhaps do less harm, except
amongst the most ignorant, than do those which contain
.some element, of truth, or extend a local or particular
instance to cover a whole race of country.

Here is a statement absurd upon the face of it, yet
given as an absolute fact, without any qualification
at all: 44 The Hindu Christian (sic), who is going
to disgrace his family once for all by breaking
-caste through baptism, will be quietly poisoned by
his nearest relative to avert such a catastrophe.” Another
statement in the same article perhaps explains the value
of such a writer’s evidence: 44 Students of non-Christian
religions must consider Heathenism on its worst side, if
only to counteract the sentimental fancies of some who
chatter about 4 the beautiful religions of the East.’ ” *

Take another kind of statement; Hinduism is said to
have contributed to Indian poverty by making the arts
degrading: 44 The civil architect is branded as a bastard.
‘The carpenter and the goldsmith are accursed, because the
Brahmans choose to take umbrage at them. How could
the arts flourish in such a society ? ” f Sir George Birdwood
may be allowed to answer this ignorant and stupid state¬
ment. He says of the Indian handicraftsman:

“ The cause of all his comfort, of his hereditary skill, and of
the I'eligious constitution under which his marvellous crafts¬
manship has been perfected is the system of landed tenure which
has prevailed in India, and stereotyped the social condition and
•civilization of the country from the time of the Code of Manu.”

* “ Heathenism as a Social Influence,” by Mrs. Ashley Carus-
Wilson, ‘India’s Women and China’s Daughters.’ January, 1907,
.page 2.

t K M. Banerjea, quoted, “The Fruits of Hinduism,” 1893,
page 3. (Christian Literature Society.)

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

147

Again: u In the happy religious organisation of Hindu 'village-life
there is no man happier than the hereditary potter.” “ The village
-communities have been the stronghold of the traditionary arts of
India; and where these arts have passed out of the villages into the
wide world beyond, the caste system of the Code of Manu has stall
been their best defence.”*

I take an even more serious example of very special
pleading, from a more widely-read volume 4 Lux Christi 7 +,
published for the Central Committee of the United Study
-of Missions. This hook in 1903, the date of my copy, and
the year after first publication, had already been reprinted
iseven times; I do not know how often since. Here we
xead (p. 211):

It should be borne in mind that the mighty systems of paganism
in India., whether Hindu, Buddhist, or Muhammadan, are alike
destitute of all those fruits of Christianity which we term charitable,
philanthropic, benevolent. Where are the hospitals, dispensaries,
orphanages, asylums for the leper, the blind, the deaf and the mute ?
They have no place in the heathen economy.

Such a statement hardly needs refutation; but since
there must be persons able to believe it, let me answer it by
quotations from a single volume, the Sinhalese Mahavamsa.J
King Duttha Garnani (161-137, B. C.) on his death-bed
•could say:

I have daily maintained at eighteen different places, (hospitals)
provided with suitable diet, and medicines, prepared by medical
practitioners for the infirm.

Buddhadasa (A. D. 339) was not only himself a
physician, but “ out of benevolence towards the inhabitants
of the island, the sovereign provided hospitals for all vil¬
lages, and appointed physicians to them. The Raja, having
composed the work Saratthcc-sangraha , containing the sub¬
stance of all medical science, ordained that there should be

* Bird wood, * Industrial Arts of India,’ I. 137 and II. 146.

f‘Lux Christi, An Outline Study of India, A Twilight Land^?
by Caroline Atwater Wilson, Macmillan.

± This particular lie has been more fully dealt with in the ‘ Dawn
Magazine,’ July and August, 1909.

1%8

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

a physician for every twice live villages, and set apart one-
twentieth of the produce of fields for the maintenance of
these physicians.” Parakrama Bahu (A. D. 1164-1197')'
built a large hall that could contain many hundreds of sick
persons:

To every sick person he allowed a female servant (nurse,) that-
they might minister to him by day and night, and furnish him with
the physic that was necessary, and with diverse kinds of food. . . .
And he also made provision for the maintenance of wise and learn¬
ed physicians who were versed in all knowledge and skilled in

searching out the nature of diseases.

And it was his custom, on the four Pohoya days (‘ Sabbaths ’) of
every month, to cast off his king’s robes, and after solemnly taking
the five precepts, to purify himself and put him on a clean gar¬
ment, and visit that hall together with his ministers. And being
endued with a heart full of kindness, he would look at the sick
with an eye of pity, and being eminent in wisdom and skill in the
art of healing, he would call before him the physicians that were*
employed and enquire fully of the manner of their treatment

..also to some sick persons he would give physic with his-

own hands.unto such as were cured of their diseases he would

order raiment to be given.In this manner indeed did this-

merciful king, free from disease himself, cure the sick of their
diverse diseases from year to year.

Yijaya Baku (A. D. 1236) “established a school in
every village.” Such refutations could be multiplied
indefinitely, but the association of charity with religion in
modern India is too familiar to require proof. It is.
unfortunate that libels upon nations and religions cannot-
be punished as can libels upon individuals. At any rate,,
it is obvious that missionaries capable of making such
statements are unfitted to be teachers in India ; whether
by ignorance or insincerity, it may be left to them to*
explain.

Commoner than the simple lie described above, is the
half truth or misrepresentation. Many of these relate to
the position of -women. Bister Nivedita says that she has
beard the following thirteen statements made and support-

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

>ed in a single speech ; each statement has a familiar ring,
to the student of missionary literature. They were as
follows :— . «

(1) That the Hindu social system makes a pretence of
honouring women, but that this honour is more apparent thai?.
>real ; (2; That women in India are deliberately kept in ignorance ;
(3) That women in India have no place assigned to them,in heaven, :
save through their husbands ; (4) That no sacramental rite
is performed over them with Vedie texts ; (5) That certain absurd
old misogynist verses., are representative of the attitude of Hindu-
men to their women-folk in general ,* (6) That a girl at birth gets
a sorry welcome; (7) That a mother’s anxiety to bear sons is
.appalling ; 4 her very wifehood depends on her doing so 1 ; (8) That
the infanticide of girls is a common practice in India; (9) Thais
•■the Kulin Brahman marriage system is a representative fact; (10)
That parents unable to marry off their daughters are in the habit
-of marrying them to a god (making them prostitutes) as an alter¬
native ; (11) That Hindu wedding ceremonies are unspeakably
gross; (12) Tnat the Hindu widow lives a life of such misery and
insult that burning to death may well have seemed preferable ;
*(13) That the Hindu widow is almost always immoral.

Sucli indeed, as I judge from personal experience, is
the picture which a majority of professing Christians in
England have formed of the life of their Indian sisters;
they are helpless prisoners awaiting their release at the
hands of chivalrous Western knights ! To hasten that
release they unselfishly contribute both their time, their
money, and their prayers. No wonder it has been said
that the Nonconformist conscience is a greater obstacle in
the way of India’s freedom, than even Imperial greed.
It would be waste of time to give the answers to these
thirteen statements here ; but I may, as Sister Nivedita
does, classify them. Nos. 1, 3, 7, 11 and 13 are entirely
false ; Nos. 2, 5 and 12 are the result of misinterpreting
or overstating facts ; Nos. 4, 8, 9 and 10 may be true of
certain limited localities, periods, or groups, yet are spoken
of as representative of Hindu life as a whole. The last
class is the most important ; take only one example, No*

150 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

it is true that infanticide was at one time common?
amongst a certain class of Rajputs ; but 44 it is in no sense*'
a common Indian practice, any more than, if as much
as, it is a common London practice. Indeed, in almost all
these cases, a terrible tu quoque can be alleged, — not to*
speak of vices peculiar to the Christian West.

I briefly review some other common missionary-
statements. The sacrifice of goats to Kali is condemned,.
—though they are slain at a blow. The scene*
is described in all its horror ; the simple English,
audience is led to think of it as typical of heath¬
endom ; and to forget their slaughterhouses and ;
their rabbit eoursings, the 4 accidents’ that happen to the*
carted deer,- and the young ladies of the country-house
who assist at the death of carefully imported foxes, only
too happy if the bloody tail is their reward for a successful'
chase. The mode of worship of Hindus and Buddhists is
called idolatrous; whereas every missionary must know-
that this is in direct opposition to the statements of the
Hindus and Buddhists themselves. This is not the place
to enter into a discussion of the rationale of image-wor¬
ship ;* suffice it to say that the distinction between a
symbol and a fetish is, to the Protestant missionary, nil..
Hindu literature is said to be gross and impure ; to those*
who see in sex-love merely the gratification of an animal"
passion, this may seem to be so, for certainly, like-
Shakespeare and the Old Testament, Eastern literature^
is not fettered by the conventions of Victorian England.,
Bishop Caldwell has said, 44 The stories related of Krishna V
life do more than anything else to destroy the morals and*
Corrupt the imagination of the Hindu youth,” : but honv

* But see J. M. Nallasawmi Pill ay’s e Sivajnana Bodham
1895, notes to sixth Sutra, (pp. 73, 74.)

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

151

soit qui mal y pense ,.. the stories of the child-Krishna
delight the mother-heart of every Indian woman, the love
of Krishna for Radha typifies to Indian men and women
that ideal love which Dante felt for Beatrice, and the
love of the soul of man for God ; the teachings of Krishna
in the Gita, are the consolation and guide in life alike of
the learned and unlearned, the ‘New Testament’ of
Hinduism. Indian dress, again, is ‘indecent’; we hear noth¬
ing of its beauty, freshness and refinement. But decency
is not intrinsic in one part of the human body, and indecen¬
cy in another; the Lord made them all, and saw that they
were good. "What constitutes decency at a given time or
with a given people is a social convention, the details of
which depend on a variety of local causes. A number of
English customs appear indecent to the Oriental who
ignores this point; and it is a fact that the conventional
Englishwoman’s dress, with its strong sexual exaggerations-
(pinched waist, small shoes, uncovered neck, etc.), is far
more indecent than any state of nature. But let not the
hearts of Indian men and women be troubled; there is no
reason why Indians should dress in such a manner as to
spare the tender susceptibilities of European visitors; the
latter, if they are philistine enough not to see the beauty
of our dress, may look the other way.

Of caste, only evil is spoken, its trade-guild and
eugenic aspects being altogether ignored. It is related
as horrible that men are divided into groups that may not
intermarry ; as if the situation were not almost identical
in Europe, only there the rank depends more on wealth
than on descent; and as if the missionary did not himself
belong to the most arrogant of Indian castes, the Anglo-
Indian. How many missionaries would care to see their
daughters marry an Indian of any caste ?

152

ESSAYS IN .NATIONAL . IDEALISM.

Finally, we have tlie misrepresentation of Hinduism
itself; or of Buddhism, or Islam as the case may be.
' u Sometimes,” says an English writer, “ a faint suspicion..
haunts us that Englishmen are constitutionally unable to
realise the spiritual life of any other people. ” It is
perhaps worth while to briefly illustrate both the ignorance
of bare facts, and the incapacity to understand unfamiliar
religious experience by one or two typical quotations from
missionary books. One writer says :—

- The fundamental error of Hinduism is to judge God by our
own standard. The doctrine of Maya is pure imagination, utterly

■opposed to common sense.Christianity, on the other hand, affirms

the reality of the universe, and the trustworthiness of our senses

.Every one of our five senses.bears witness to the

reality of the objects around us. To any man endowed with a
grain of common sense, the opinion maintained by some of the
schools that the soul is infinite, like ahtisa % must seem the height
of absurdity. Other views held are scarcely less extravagant, that
it is eternal, svayambhu , self-existent. Not a single character in
the Hindu pantheon, or in the pantheon of any other nation, has
•claimed the position of one who offered himself as a sacrifice for
the benefit of humanity.

The author of 4 Holy Himalaya,’ a missionary book of
the worst type, writes :

“ Hinduism has no system of moral teaching, with definite
.sanctions or adequate basis. 5 ’

It would be cruel to continue making quotations
which illustrate the 4 constitutional inability to realise the
•spiritual life of any other people.’ Suffice it to say that
those who suffer from it are not fitted to educate the
Indian people, and it is questionable whether we do well
to permit them to do so.

The question of our attitude towards the Christian
missionary is not an academic one. His misrepresentation
of India at home, and miseducation of Indians in
India, do us serious injury by suggesting that it is
England’s God-given mission, not only to mile, but to

..CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA* 153

civilise and to convert us, and -by raising up a generation
of ‘educated ’ Indians who are indeed strangers in their
own land. What is to be our course of - action in relation
to these facts ? The answer is fairly simple. The power
of the missionary .at home to misrepresent is being con¬
tinually lessened with the increasing knowledge of Indian
religion and Indian civilisation, contrasting so markedly
with the indifference of even ten years ago. The funds of
missionary societies in America were considerably lessened
for a time subsequent to the ■ speeches of Swa.mi Yiveka-
nanda at the World’s Parliament of Religions ; “if that is
what Hinduism means, why are we helping to destroy it %
We wish to know more ”, they said. Just now in
America, the keenest interest is being taken in Indian
religion and philosophy, and the tables are indeed
turned by the presence of Hindu missionaries in California
.and New York. In England, progress has been slower?
owing to political prejudice, an incidental illustration of
the injury done, not only to ruled but to ruler, by the
-ownership of one nation by another. Yet there have
recently been founded in London, both a Buddhist Society
.and a Yedanta Society. Still more significant is the ready
market found for books on Indian thought: the ‘ Wisdom
•of the East ’ series published by Mr. Murray ; the inclusion
-of the G-ita in Messrs. Dent’s ‘Temple Classics’; the
publication in English of Deussen’s; works on the Yedanta.
Then there are the writings of Sister Nivedita, of Mrs.
Besant, of Fielding Hall; recent articles by Mr. Nevinson
in the Manchester Guardian; and, not least, the strong
.sympathy of the Labour Party for Indian aspirations.
Labouring classes are very little interested in missions ;
they know what ‘ Churchianity ’ at home means. Indeed,
-the supporters of missions belong for the most part to

154

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

particular sections of the middle class ; and even these are**
becoming leavened by the New Theology, or have lost their-
interest in forms of conventional religion. The trend of 1
Western science has been at first to make materialists ; its
philosophy is now more transcendental; either way, it has.
helped to educate Europeans away from proselytising'
ideals. And so, as far as misrepresentation is concerned,—
it is not at all dead (we saw plenty of it at a recent mis¬
sionary exhibition in London, where there was a daily-
pageant representing the 4 bringing of light to the.*
heathen ? ),—but it is slowly dying a natural death, and we-
may assist this process by making clear to the world what-
the ideals of Indian civilisation really are, and totally ignor¬
ing ill-informed criticism.

In respect of education, the remedy is almost *
altogether in our own hands. Let us cease to allow
ourselves to be pauperised by sending our sons and?
daughters to schools supported by the contributions of-
those in far-off lands who know nothing of us, but are quite-
sure that we are living in the deepest spiritual darkness*
It is shameful for us to allow these worthy people to do fon¬
us, so badly, what we could (if we would) do so much?
better for ourselves. The subject of National Education is.
perhaps the most important of all before us, for it lies atr-
the root of all other problems. There are already signs**
that the missionaries themselves are waking up to the fact;
that something different in the way of education must be-
given if they are to retain their present power and position
amongst us. The healthy rivalry of Hindu and Buddhist;
schools in part accounts for this; the presence amongst;
the missionaries of a few men with serious educational
ideals is another cause. Do not let us be behind them in
the work. We must not rest content for a single moment;

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA. 155 :

until the whole of Indian educational machinery is taken
out of the hands of Government and the missionaries, to be
controlled by ourselves. And as at present so many of us-
are almost as unfitted by the existing systems of so-called.
education as the missionaries themselves to do this work,
let us prepare ourselves for it, (as Professor Geddes*
suggests so forcibly in a letter quoted above) by studying-
the most important educational movements going on in the
West, and specially by studying the educational systems
of small and important independent nations, such as
Denmark, Hungary ; but above all, by deeper knowledge of'
our own country, which contains within itself all the'
elements of a cult more profound and a faith more reasoned
than that of any other land.

A most clear recognition of the true character of
missionary activity, and a most determined resistance to*
its aims and methods are needed now. The author of
* Holy Himalaya ’ writes :

‘‘ The true friends of India are those who would change its

root ideas.the bogey of religious neutrality.will have to be

laid to a considerable extent.else in the end we shall have to-

make the confession that we, as a nation, have no rational objects,
in India beyond commercialism and exploitation.”

It has been well said that the Nonconformist consci¬
ence is the greatest barrier to Indian freedom !

In a recent number of the School Guardian, the editor-
refers to the Church Missionary Society’s school at Srinagar-
as follows:—

“ 1.400 boys—mostly Hindus and a large proportion of then*
of high caste—are being changed from superstitious, cowardly,
idle, and untruthful beings into manly Christians.”

As a commentary on these characteristic statements,,
and in illustration of the effects of the policy they reflect,
the following extract is given here from an article by Lala..
Har Dyal:—

15 $

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

. u The missionary is the representative of a society, a polity, a
social system, a religion and a code of morality which are totally
•different from our own. He comes as a belligerent and attacks
our time-honoured customs and institutions, our sacred literature
and traditions, our historical memories and associations. He
wishes to give us a new name, a new place of worship, a new
set of social laws. He has declared war to the knife against
•everything Hindu. He hates all that we hold dear. Our religion
is to him a foolish superstition ; our customs are the relic of
barbarism ; our forefathers are to him black heathens con¬
demned to burn in the fires of hell for ever. He wishes to destroy
■our society, history, and civilization. Our Shastras, Darsanas and
Vedas are for him so much waste paper. He regards them as
monstrous machines devised by misguided priests to prepare
millions for damnation in the next world. He condemns our manners,
pooh-poohs our holy lore, laughs at our heroes and heroines and
paints us as black as the devil to the whole civilised world. He is
the great enemy of the Hindu people—the Principle of Anti-
Hinduism Incarnate—the Ravana of to-day who hates all that we
cherish, despises all that we revere, all that we are prepared to
■defend with our very lives.

“ He looks forward to the time when the Smritis shall be
unknown to the descendants of present-day Hindus, and the
'Ram Lila, shall have become a meaningless word in their ears.
He shall cover India with acres of burial-grounds ; cremation
is anathema to him. He is the arch enemy who appears in many
guises, the great foe of whatever bears the name of Hindu, the
ever-watcbful, ever-active, irreconcilable Destroyer of the work
•of the Rishis and Maha Rishis, of that marvel of moral, intellectual
and civic achievement which is known as Hindu civilisation.
Let us labour under no delusions ou this point You may forget
your own name; you may forget your mother. But do not
for a moment forget the great, all-important, outstanding fact
that the missionary is the most dreadful adversary you have to
meet....the greatest enemy of dharma and Hindu national life in
the present age.”

In these words there may he exaggeration—-they do
not apply throughout to the work of every missionary ;
“but there is neverthelss essential truth ; and it is resistance
in this spirit which missionaries must expect in the future,
if they persist in their mistaken aims and methods.

Is there to be no salvation then for the Christian
missionary, no place found for him in our ideal? Not
quite so, perhaps. No church or sect can presume to say

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

157 "

that its presentation of Divinity to man is complete or*
perfect ; were that possible, Divinity must be itself as-
finite as the doctrine. It is time that there is ample work
for missionaries in their own so-called Christian countries;;
but there is work for them in India too: “ He that-
taketh one that is averse, and turneth him towards the-
Holy One, hath earned the fruits of a thousand horse-

sacrifices .Therefore let every man so far as in him

lies, help the reading of the scriptures, whether those of
his own church or those of another.” Let them in this
spirit help us both to restore, and to build upon the-
religious ideals of the past, not to destroy them ; and, so
coming, they will not lack a -welcome from a people so
serious and so religious as the people of India.

A time will come when Christian missions, as at-
present understood, will seem to Christians as wide a
departure from the true spirit of Christianity as the
crusades appear to us to-day.

Meanwhile, the missionary must not be allowed to-
4 educate, ? until he really understands the Indian people
and desires to help them to solve their own problems in
their own way ; he must not be allowed to teach, until h e
himself has learnt.

CHAPTEB XII.

Swadeshi.

word Swadeshi means literally 4 Own Country J
Jl and has been used in recent years in India to denote
-rfchat side of the national movement which aims at making
India, to a far larger degree than is at present the case,

• self-contained and self-sufficient, especially in respect of
•industries and manufactures. Briefly expressed, the object
-of the movement is to check the drain on Indian capital
involved in the purchase of imported goods, by manufactur¬
ing the said goods locally; replacing the removal of money
•.from Indian shores, by a circulation of money within the
limits of India herself.

So far so good. But there have been manifested
•certain weaknesses in the movement, perhaps unavoidable
at first, which it is the intention of the present chapter to
■ discuss. Let us consider for a moment the nature of manu¬
factured goods. We may from the Indian point of view
divide them in two ways :

(1) into (a) things which are worth having, and (b)
things which are not worth having; and

(2) into (a) things for the manufacture of which India
is well adapted by natural resources, national temperament,
or existing tradition, and (b) things which other countries

. are better able, for analogous reasons, to produce or manu¬
facture.

It will be found that, to a great extent, the classes
(1) a and (2) a, and (1) b and (2) b, have a common appli-

SWADESHI.

U»

nation. Tlie imitation of European ways of living, whether
in respect of dress, food, architecture or what not, has led
to the adoption of many European luxuries which are quite
unnecessary, and sometimes positively injurious. We shall
-certainly be much wiser to do without these useless or
injurious things altogether—with economy to ourselves—
than we should be in making them locally, even worse than
■they are made in Europe. There is, for example, a large
•class of goods, cheap and nasty, which are manufactured
•solely for the Eastern market, and which no one with edu¬
cation or taste would use in England. Yet these are pur¬
chased eagerly by Indians who desire to furnish in the
European style, and in such quantities that their drawing¬
rooms are more like shops than living-rooms. Not long
•ago an Indian Prince consulted an European friend as to
i}he furniture in his palace. He said, 4 Look here, you are
an old friend, I want you to go through my palace and
reject everything European which is not worth having, and
which only excites the ridicule of Europeans.’ The result
was that over two lakhs worth of rubbish was sold in
‘Calcutta. It would be difficult to say how many lakhs
worth would be disposed of if a similar process were carried
nut on a wider scale.

Probably ninety per cent, of European articles pur¬
chased by Indians are either ugly or -useless or both. The
rich offend as badly as the poor, indeed more so, as they
can afford to buy a larger quantity of useless and ugly
things. All of these things cost money, and it is a waste
of money not merely because the money goes out of India.
It is a spending of substance for 4 that which is not bread/
We shall certainly gain nothing by transferring the seat of
their manufacture to India.

Humanity is not in want of manufactures.

160 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

6t Already, all over the world, man is labouring beyond all*

reason, and producing beyond all demand.Longer, harder toil

for the producer, frenzied, criminal extravagance in the consumer,
these are the direct results of the development of manufacturing
industries, which tends constantly towards increased production
and lower prices.” —(Max Nordau.)

This is not civilisation; this not the art of living.
Civilisation consists, not in multiplying our desires and the-
means of gratifying them, but in the refinement of their
quality. Industry y;er se, is'no advantage. The true end
of material civilisation is not production, but use; not'
labour, hut leisure; not to destroy, but to make possible,,
spiritual culture. A nation which sees its goal rather in
the production of things than in the lives of men must in
the end deservedly perish. Therefore it is that the Swadeshi
movement, a synthesis of effort for the regeneration of
India, should be guided by that true political economy that-
seeks to make men wise and happy, rather than merely
to multiply their goods at the cost of physical and spiritual
degradation.

Take one or two examples of Indian imports. Of Euro¬
pean haberdashery, India imports over 1ST lakhs value-
annually. What does this mean ? It means woollen caps
and leather shoes for infants, hats, ties and collars for men r
sometimes even corsets for women, and if not that, at least
safety-pins and ribbons and high-heeled shoes, besides;
English curtains and carpets for our homes. All this-
results merely from the mistaken idea of imitating others,,
in other words, from the attitude of snobbery which not-
long since was spreading through * educated ’ India like a
gigantic fungus. The immediate point to be considered
here, however, is merely economic; an enormous sum of
money per annum might be saved in India by returning to
the simple ideas and plain living of our forefathers. There

SWADESHI.

161

is, then, a Swadeshi, a higher Swadeshi, which should boycott
certain goods, not because of their foreign origin, but
because of their intrinsic worthlessness. Take another
class of miscellaneous goods, such as nibs, stationery,
scientific instruments, clocks and watches, and a large part
of machinery in general and many of the things made by

it. Some of these things have with great difficulty been
produced in India. But in such cases the quality of the
locally manufactured article has been altogether wretched*
The patriotic Swadeshist has to pay more for an inferior
article. Now, I say that, in the face of this state of affairs, it
is no use having Swadeshi manufactures unless the home¬
made things are at least as good as the imported ones, and
unless the people of India are benefited by their manufacture.

Take for example textiles, which are a speciality of the
Swadeshi movement. Here we have clearly something
which India has formerly excelled in producing, and still
produces in large quantities. But the most vulgar Man¬
chester prints are still fast driving out locally made and
artistic materials. At the Madras Exhibition of 1903, says
Mr. Harris :

“Side by side with the very many good examples displayed in
various textiles, there were a number of specimens of gaudy-
coloured goods of weak design, colour and quality, poor imitations
of art fabrics and European textiles. ”

Why, then, do people stand with folded arms and
look at a declining industry in which there is money with¬
out any attempt, in a practical way, to revive the trade ?

“ Already a change for the worse is visible in the tastes of the
common people, and one has only to go into any street or 'village
near a large town to see the glaring cloths of Manchester or Ger¬
man production freely worn by the populace. These are rapidly
taking the place of the beautiful white and tinted cloths of hand-
loom work, so lately in general use all over India, and so much of
which was, until the middle of the nineteenth century, exported to
various countries. ”

11

162

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

The Swadeshi movement has created a new demand for
India-manufactured textiles. This has been a true instinct,
hut the essential weaknesses of the Swadeshi ideal, as hitherto
conceived, have limited the value of the result. It matters
very little to the village peasant whether his work is
stopped by the competition of factories in Lancashire or in
Bombay, or whether a few Indian or a few Manchester
mill-owners get rich quickly. Just what the factory
system is beginning to mean for India may be guessed
from some details and extracts from the recent report of
the Indian Factory Commission. In daylight mills, the
average working time for the whole year is 1 2 hours and 5
minutes; in mills fitted with electric light, 13-13| hours;
hut the Commissioners say, a in some provinces the law is
ignored to an extent not hitherto imagined.” The law re¬
ferring to the half-hour’s recess, “ is generally disregarded
in rice-mills, ginning factories, presses and flour mills
throughout India.”

A writer in the Modern Review for October, 1908
commenting on the Report, makes the following extraordi¬
nary statements regarding women’s work.

“ Coming to the restrictions imposed upon the employment of
women by the present Act, the Commission very fairly and reason¬
ably opine that they are neither suitable to the operatives nor to
the employers. That has been the general experience of all factorv-
owners who have to employ a large number of females. In Bom¬
bay, it is seldom the case that they have to work for more than ten
hours a day. So that they have no need to avail themselves of
the. hour's mid-day rest prescribed for their benefit by the
existing A*ct. In practice it has been proved beyond cavil that
the women prefer to come late to their work and continually work
at their winding or reeling machines for the whole time that th*»v
wish to work, generally from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.” y

Italics are mine.

I quote this statement to show what modern India is
prepared to accept for the sake of commercial ‘ progress/

SWADESHI*

16a

'Those familiar with the factory system and its results, in
"Europe, and the resistance made to regulation and inspec¬
tion, will be able to read between the lines, and to under¬
stand how mistaken India will be if she believes that th§,
agitation for factory regulation is engineered from Lanca¬
shire u for the purpose of arresting as far as possible the
progress of the cotton industry,” by placing restrictions on
the indigenous labour employed. It is of no consequence
to India whether or no an agitation be engineered in part
from Lancashire, or not; what is of consequence to her is
whether or no the problems of physical and moral deteriora¬
tion, overcrowding, drunkenness and unemployment,
characterising the development of the commercial system
in the great cities of the West, are to be imposed upon the
East as well. That there is only too much reason to fear
such a result, while there is too little to hope that Indians
rare any more alive to the danger than Europe was fifty
years ago, is evident by other statements in the Report.
It appears that in Bombay the operatives inhabit slums of
the most wretched character, crowded and insanitary. The
rent of a room 12 x 10 X 9 ranges from 2 to 5 rupees a
month, the wages of an ordinary ‘hand’ being from 7 to 18
rupees a month. They remark that the consumption of
liquor among factory workers is undoubtedly greater than
among men of the same rank in life engaged in other occu¬
pations. The Commission appear to regret that the opera¬
tives are still very largely connected with their villages,
.and are not entirely dependent on factory work!

u There is as yet”, say the Commissioners, “practically no
factory population, such as exists in European countries, consist¬
ing of a large number of operatives trained from their youth to
one particular class of work and dependent upon employment at

that work for a livelihood.Matters, however, are gradually

improving; the standard of living is undoubtedly rising all over
India, though slowly ; and there are some indications that a class.

164

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

of factory operatives, detached from agricultural and village-
life, and depending largely or solely upon industrial employment,,
is beginning to be formed.” “ This,” remarks the writer already
quoted, u is a happy augury of the future physical and material
welfare of operatives.”

It is indeed sad, for anyone .acquainted with the
mature developments of industrialism in Europe, the*
i town and country ’ problem, the filth and squalor of
manufacturing centres,* and the now increasing desire to
once more relate the life of the people to the land,* to see
India thus light-heartedly plunging into inevitable suffer¬
ing of the same character,

“ It may be,” says Mr. Haveli, “that legislation, by imposing
restriction on the hours of labour and improving sanitary condi¬
tions, may check the rapacity of mill-owners and shareholders,
and it may be that the latter in their own interests will some day
do as much for their employees as wise and considerate men do for*
their horses and cattle, but even the wisest and most humane can¬
not in the pursuit of the ideal of cheapness make the modern
system of labour, in power-loom mills, otherwise than intellectually
and morally degrading. Nor can they remove the even greater
evils which the system brings with it—the overcrowded, filthy, air-
polluted cities, the depopulation of rural districts and the struggles*
between capital and labour which in Western countries constantly,
threaten the very foundations of society.”

It is indeed astonishing to find in Bengal that politi¬
cians have supported the very ■ un-Swadeshi system of
power-loom mills. It is true fcliat the boycott of foreign
goods has incidentally brought renewed prosperity to the*
band-loom weavers ; but it is only too evident that in
many cases the principle of Swadeshi has been Conceived
of merely as a political weapon, rather than as the true*

* “ It may well be the case, and there is every reason to feax 4
it is the case, that there is collected * a population in our great
towns which equals in amount the whole of those who lived in
England and Wales six centuries ago ; but whose condition is more-
destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose means are more
uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless than those of the-
poorest serfs of the Middle Ages and thq meanest drudges of the-
medieeval cities.” Thorold Rogers : “ &ix Centuries of Work andi
Wages,” pJ 46,

SWADESHI.

165

Ibasis of the re-organization of Indian life, and the means
•of bringing not merely wealth, but happiness to the Indian
people.

I take musical instruments as a further illustration i
'The manufacture of Indian ' instruments is a decaying
industry. Thirteen lakhs of rupees annually are spent on
imported instruments—pianos, violins (including mechani¬
cal ones) and harmoniums and gramophones, the universal
popularity of which is ample testimony of the degradation
•of Indian taste in recent times. And so while small
Indian capitalists are in a, position to exploit the national
sentiment by making wretched imitations of good English
paper, nibs, or soap, the skilled craftsman, in this case tlie
m&ker of musical instruments, is starving for want of
■occupation, and his hereditary knowledge, a definite asset
in the national credit, is passing away for ever. While
groups'of well-meaning individuals are busy making bad
Swadeshi biscuits, and others sacrifice a few pice per pound
to buying them, the carver of wood, the ivory inlayer,' the
•drawer of wire and the professional musician are all neg¬
lected for, the travesties of music performed on harmoniums
■or lily flutes, or reproduced cal nauseam on gramophones,
the’profit on whose manufacture goes out of India. Not
that.it would-be any advantage to make them locally.
The hope of reviving trade by reproducing locally afiy
article that may come into fashion, without regard to its
lml value, is as delusive as it is mean. It is never an ad¬
vantage tQ-'a nation to produce useless or vicious luxuries; it
does* not increase the national wealth. By the time'your
harmonium factory is doing well, and Indians in it,' working
Seventeen hours a day, are producing for the' shareholders
a dividend of 35 percent, or more (as in the Bombay cotton
mills), some European or American invents a 4 harmoniola *

166

ESSAYS IK NATIONAL IDEALISM.

or something equally insane, cheaper and easier to play,—-•
and where are you then ? But no foreigner could make
for you a vina, or paint or inlay it with ivory, or carve for-
it a figure of Sarasvati ; those are things which European
or American factories cannot do.

It is just so with other arts and industries: we
neglect what lies at our doors, to buy from afar what we
do not understand and cannot use to advantage. ISTo
wonder that we are poor; aesthetic demoralisation and
commercial failure will always be inseparable in the long
run. Cast aside the village weaver’s traditional skill, not
only in technique but in design, and you destroy so much
of the national culture, and the whole standard of living
is ultimately lowered. Competition with Europe, on the
lines of modern commercialism, must involve intellectual,,
and ultimately industrial, ruin. It matters little whether
it is the Lancashire manufacturer or the great mill-owner
of Bombay wiio successfully contests the village weaver's
market.

Men will do more for a sentiment or an ideal than
they will for a material advantage. But the sentiment
must be real and definite. At present it is the weakness
of the Swadeshi movement that the arguments put for¬
ward in favour of it so often appeal to a purely material
i(|eal of prosperity. I have sought in vain for any
expression in Swadeshi waitings of a primary desire to make*
goods more useful or more beautiful than those imported,,
or to preserve for the country any art, qua art, anil not
merely as an industry. Indeed, such statements can be*
found, but they have come from the mouths not of
nationalists, but of Imperialists like Sir George Birdwood
mxd Lord Curzon!

In India the primary aim of at least a certain section

SWADESHI.

16f

of tlie Nationalist party, has been to compete with
Europe in cheapness. But the idea of learning just
enough of Western science or Western manufacturing
methods to be able to undersell the imports at any given
moment is as delusive as it is mean. Some more construc¬
tive aims and methods are needed if Indian manufactures
are to recover their lost status, and if India is to avoid
even some of the horrors associated with modern industrial
production in the West.

Do not then let us compete with Western nations by
evolving for ourselves a factory system and a capitalist
ownership of the means of production corresponding to
theirs. Do not let us toil through all the wearisome stages
of the industial revolution—destruction of the guilds,
elimination of small workshops, the factory system, laissez
faire , physical degeneration, hideousness, trusts, the un¬
employed and unemployable, and whatever may be to
follow. We may perhaps not think on these things now,
we may be too much concerned with the political problems
of to-day. But if we are wise, we, who want India
to be free, must bethink ourselves that, when that freedom
comes, these problems will be with us still; the possibility
of their solution depends on foresight and wisdom now.
The history of the industrial revolution in Europe has
been a long and sad one, and only now, and slowly, are
some of its worst results being recognized, and their remedy
devised. That this industrial revolution was in a sense
inevitable may be granted, and it may also be that
at least the outlines of it must be imposed upon the
development of the social organism in the East • as well
as in the West; and indeed, not only in Japan,
but also in India, we see the process already at work.
But it is probably possible for Eastern nations to

368

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

run through some of its stages quickly, and with
the experience of other nations as their guide, to
avoid some of the worst evils. The Japanese, who are
sometimes as much in advance of Europe, as India is
behind it, have shown, in spite of the great disorganization
and vulgarisation of their national life that has taken place
already,’* some signs of this pre-vision. In 1885 the
Japanese Government arranged for the establishment of
silk guilds by the local authorities; one of their chief
functions was to preserve the standard of production.
There are nearly 129 such guilds at present.t It is also
stated, says Mr. Ha veil, in the Indian Trade Journal of
February 16, 1907, that the Japanese, in preparing to
compete with European nations for commercial prosperity,
are showing a distinct reversion to former ways and me¬
thods ; amongst other things, steps were being taken to
reorganise the old trade guilds. The Trade Journal com¬
ments : “ As the various guilds grow in power and influence
they will be able to dictate to European and American
traders, unless the latter also enter into combination.”

It is absolutely necessary for Swadeshi in India to be
a foresighted and constructive movement if it is to be of
ultimate and real benefit to the Indian people. The
gaining of a temporary trade advantage, though valuable
as a political weapon to-day, is a small matter compared
with the ultimate development of Indian society.

It is true that there exist the germs of regeneration
in the "West; the ideals of democracy and socialism (equality
of opportunity) must sooner or later be in some measure

* Someone has said that ‘a typical modern Japanese is a hybrid
creature, either an intellectual bastard, or a renegade devoting his
fine intelligence to degrading the old standard of his country*.

f M. N, De. ‘How Sericulture is encouraged in Japan.’—
‘ Modern Review,* Oct. ’09.

SWADESHI.

16»

■attained ; and a time will come again, or the hopes of civilisa¬
tion are vain indeed, when there will he for all men, work
worth doing, a life not over-hard or over-anxious, and such
surroundings as are fit for human beings. We are little
in touch with these regenerative tendencies. It does not
• even follow that the situation must be saved for us in just
the same way. But many of these ideals were already
-attained under the industrial systems prevailing in India.
Each caste or trade possessed an organisation largely
socialistic in character and embodying democratic and
communistic ideals. It may well be doubted whether the
true hope for Indian industry does not lie in some such
developments of the caste system itself, in the village and
home industries of the past, aided by such improvements
as are needed (e.g., the liy-shuttle or the distribution of
•electric power.)

No doubt a great many common things must be made
by machinery in future ; and it may even be that a time
will come when machinery will be actually used as a labour-
saving, and not as a. profit-making device; but it is
probable that men will not ultimately rely nearly as much
upon machinery as is supposed; and where they must, or at
any rate now do so, we may for the present very well leave
other nations to do such hewing of wood and drawing of
water for us, and concern ourselves with the revival, both
for our own use and for export, of what are really our own
industries, now decaying everywhere for lack of intelli¬
gent encouragement.

Not infrequently the Swadeshi cry is an exhortation
to self-sacrifice. It seems to me that this is an entirely
false position. It is never worth while in the long run
putting up with second best. Swadeshi for the very poor
may mean a real sacrifice of money. But how far this is

170

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

really the case is very doubtful. If one should regard a*
standard of simple living, conditioned by quality rather
than quantity of wants, where durability of materials
was preferred to cheapness alone, it is fairly certain
that even the peasant would be better advised to use-
(real) Swadeshi than foreign goods. And for those better-
off, for those who have adopted pseudo-European fashions
and manners to talk of Swadeshi as a sacrifice is cant of
the worst description. It implies entire ignorance of India’s
achievement in the industrial arts, and an utter lack of
faith in India. The blindest prejudice in favour of all
things Indian were perferable to such condescension as that
of one who casts aside the husks and trappings of modern
luxury, to accept the mother’s exquisite gifts as a
{ sacrifice.’

ISTot till the Indian people patronize Indian arts and
industries from a real appreciation of them, and because*
they recognize them not merely as cheaper, but as better
than the foreign, will the Swadeshi movement become com¬
plete and comprehensive. If a time should ever come—
and at present it seems far off—when Indians recognize*
that “ for the beautification of an Indian house or the*
furniture of an Indian home, there is no need to rush to*
European shops in Calcutta, or Bombay,” there may be a
realisation of Swadeshi. But (i so long as they prefer to*
fill their palaces with flaming Brussels carpets, Tottenham-
court-road furniture, cheap Italian mosaics, French
oleographs, Austrian lustres, German tissues and cheap
brocades, there is not much hope.” When will Indians
make it impossible for any enemy to throw in their teeth a
reproach so true as this ?

Even more important, then, than the establishment of
new industries on Indian soil, are the patronage and revival

SWADESHI.

171

of those on the verge of extinction, the purification of those-
which survive in degraded forms, and the avoidance of useless
luxuries, whether made in India or not. Swadeshi must
be inspired by a broad and many-sided national sentiment,
ami must have definitely constructive aims ; where such a
sentiment exists, Industrial Swadeshi will be its inevitable-
outcome without effort and without failure.

CHAPTER XIII.

Indian Music.

u We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds?
-and lesser slides of sounds : diverse instruments likewise to you
•unknown, some sweeter than any you have ”

Bacon’s New Atlantis .

“ The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned
as imperilling the whole state; since styles of music are never
disturbed without affecting the most important political institu¬
tions.”

Plato, Republic .

rpHE earliest records of Indian music are found in the
1 Rig Yeda. The drum, the flute and the lute are
mentioned. Instrumental music was performed at certain
religious rites ; the lute (vina) was played at the sacrifice
to the manes. The existence of several kinds of profes¬
sional musicians is implied in the Yajur Yeda. The chant¬
ing of the Sanaa Yeda shows that vocal music was consider¬
ably developed.

In later times, references to music in the Sanskrit
and Pali hooks abound. In the sculptures of Amaravati
and Sanchi and the paintings of Ajanta are represented
instruments almost identical with those in use at the
present day. There are also represented one or two
instruments of an Assyrian or Egyptain type, particularly
a kind of harp, not now in use.

The prototypes of most or all European instruments
in use at the present day are still to be found in the East,
the source of the foundations of so much of Western culture.
The Greeks attributed the greater part of their science
of Music to India.'* Notwithstanding the differences
- s — bo ^ ni ’

■ INDIAN MUSIC.

173 -

between modern and ancient Hindu music, it is -
probable that the music of Southern India is more akin to
ancient Greek music than any other music remaining in the
world. Not only is this the case in respect of structure
and theory, but as regards the point of view from which
music is regarded. Of the Greeks it has been said that:

“ Inferior to the moderns in the mechanical resources of the
art, they had made, it appears, a far finer and closer analysis of its-
relation to emotional states ; with the result that even in music,
which we describe as the purest of the arts, congratulating our¬
selves on its absolute dissociation from all definite intellectual con¬
ceptions, the standard of the Greeks was as much ethical as
aesthetic, and the style of music was distinguished aud its value
appraised, not only by the pleasure to be derived from it, but also
by the effect it tended to produce on character

Of this attitude Mr. Dickinson remarks :

“ that moral effects should be attributed to music and to dancing
and that these should be regarded as of such importance as to
influence profoundly the whole constitution of a State, will appear
to the majority of modern men an unintelligible paradox

An acquaintance with Indian music would make such
conceptions less incomprehensible. The fine and close
analysis of the relation of music to emotional states is
particularly characteristic ; and when we realise the part
that music plays in Indian life, how far more inseparably
it is bound up with poetry than is the case in the modern
West; how it enters equally into the daily life of king and
peasant, how it is felt to be the natural expression of all
deep emotion and finally how, as explained below, the
neglect or decay of Indian music is, as in the case of other
arts, inseparably associated with a loss of stability in the
economic structure of society, we may believe that Plato
spoke advisedly in saying that styles of music are never
disturbed without a,fleeting the most important political
institutions.

* G, Lowes Dicldnson, ‘ The Greek View of Life.’

174

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

A suggestion made by Lafcadio Hearn respecting
•Japan, holds good also for India; reading 4 Indian ’ for
* 4 Japanese/ I quote : 44 to witness the revival of some
perished Greek civilisation.... were not any more of a
privilege than is the opportunity actually afforded to us
to-day to study Indian life.” I often think it strange that
.anthropologists and scientists so eagerly investigate the
lives and culture of savage peoples, and neglect the great

• expressions of the human spirit, still remaining in the
Eastern civilisations whose character is being changed so
rapidly before our eyes. It is, I suppose, a result of the
European conviction that while it may be of interest to
study others, it were absurd to think that anything could
be learnt from them. Europe, indeed, cannot expect to
learn much from India so long as she is convinced that her

• only mission is to teach.

The golden age of Indian music, as of art, belongs to
the early Middle Ages, perhaps from the 5th to the 12th

• centuries. But in the South, owing to its comparative
‘freedom from the influence of Persian music and from
the puritanism of Islam, the science of music was cultivated
more nearly in its original forms to a much later time, in
: some degree even to the present day.

Two causes have adversely affected Indian music in'
the later Middle Ages. One of these is the puritanism and
intolerance of Islam, by which a serious injury was done
to Indian music in the ISTorth. One day the minstrels of
Delhi paraded through the streets with a bier. Asked by
Aurangzeb what they meant, they said that Music was
Mead, and must be buried. 44 Bury him deep, ” replied
this Calvin of Islam, 44 that no sound may ever rise from
him. ” But Akbar and Shah Jehan were men of broader
‘Culture; the former was himself a musician and composer;

INDIAN MUSIC.

175

the latter is said to have rewarded a famous minstrel with
fee of his weight in gold.

Another cause of the neglect of Indian music has
been its association with dancing girls and musicians of
low caste. This in many parts of India has led to an idea
that music, like dancing, was not a becoming occupation
for other persons, and there has resulted a neglect of its
study in the homes of respectable families. Amongst danc¬
ing girls, however, and by the musicians associated with
them, both arts have been maintained in great perfection.
A recent puritanical movement known as the ‘ Anti-nautch ’
movement, has had a reverse influence.

In modern times, more injury has been done to Indian
music by the stupidity of educationists, the snobbery of
anglicised Indians, and the mechanism of commercial civili¬
sation, than could have been effected by many Aurangzebs
As we have seen, music has been always the delight of
Hindu kings. *

At their courts were to be found the best musicians.
Whatever the luxury or corruption of* some Indian courts
may at times have been, they were always centres of
culture. The place of the royal craftsmen, pandits, astro¬
nomers and musicians was assured; their maintenance
belonged to the ideal of kingly state. Culture was thus
State-endowed, and pursued its way undisturbed by politi¬
cal events. When the Indian courts were done away with
and Indian rulers succeeded by, British* Governors, all this
intellectual and artistic life was undermined, f The English

* Yoga Narendra Malla of Palam (17th cent.) used on his
coins the title Sangitarnava-Paraga, “ skilled in the sea of music ”

t The last Nawab of Lucknow when deposed, brought manv
musicians and artists with him to Calcutta, where even now some
of their descendants remain. The Nawab himself composed a sons
which is still often heard— Jab se chora Lakhviciu Nagari ‘Now
they have robbed me of Lucknow town. * *

176

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

Governor with his efficiency and his reforms, needed no-
minstrels and no craftsmen ; all that he needed was a
supply of clerks. Compare the state of Tanjore to-day
with the evidences of the rule of the Hindu Rajas ; the
great library neglected, a dead thing not being added to or
playing a great part in the growth of national culture; the
royal musicians dispersed, and the famous collection of'
splendidly decorated and ancient musical instruments,
also scattered ; the fine weaving done for the court
now forgotten ; the training and the emoluments of adminis¬
trative office in the hands of foreigners to whom the old
life and the old culture mean little or nothing,—it is a
strange evidence of the greatness of Western civilisa-tion
and the grandeur of British rule in India, that it should
so often appear as the destroyer of culture!

Even in Native States the Same process is going
on; false ideals of economy or efficiency, and a still
falser taste have led to the- -dispersal of the musicians
and neglect of Indian music ; what does a Maharajah want
with the common music that any one can hear, when he
can spend hundreds of pounds on gorgeous gramophones
and mechanical violins ? Baroda might as well be Claphaim.
The Raja of to-day, with his French palaces and his tutor,,
the Resident, has too often ihost of the vices, more than
the weakness, and little of the dignity of his predecessors..
Indian princes might yet do great work for the Indian
people, in preserving the national culture ; but they have-
hurried to dispense with it. The king-days are over ; it is
vain to put one’s trust in princes ; the national culture must
be preserved by the people if it is to be preserved at all. But
at present, the lives of the so-called educated, the profession¬
al classes in India, are extraordinarily material in their,-
aims, and narrow" in their outlook. India, ‘ progressive-

IKE POET SADI LISTENING TO A SINGER.

INDIAN MUSIC.

177

India, ’ does not want art; she wants desperately to be
practical. Time will show whether she alone, and for the first
time in history, can be or become great with such ideals.

Early Indian music, as explained in the Sanskrit
books, appears to have differed much from the modern
practice. Its principal feature was a division of the scale
into 22 parts called srati, of which four corresponded to a
major tone, three to a minor, and two to a semitone. The
modern theory, modes and notation are derived from the
ancient; but “ the whole system has undergone a complete
change and gradual refinement, until between the ancient
and modern music there exists a difference as clearly mark¬
ed and perceivable, to even the most casual observer, as
that between the modern Anglican chant and the ancient
Gregorian tones.”*

But there is music still in India. It is not too late
to* understand this intimate expression of Indian culture.
The principal characteristics of modern Indian music are
briefly as follows. The octave is divided into 12 semitones,
as nearly as possible identical with the notes of European
instruments, tuned to equal temperament.+ From these
twelve semitones, 72 scales or modes (melakartas) are
formed; of these only 36 are in general use. A raga or
melody-type, is a £i melodic extension of certain notes of a
particular scale or mode, according to certain fixed rules
the number of rag as is exceedingly large. Each is deemed
to correspond to or awaken a particular definite emotion.
Almost the only harmony consists in the use of a drone, a
continuation of the low or dominant music as in the
Scottish bagpipes. The seven notes of the Indian scale

* Captain Day, ‘Music and Musical Instruments of S. India
and the Deccan.’

t Do ; but see below.

12

178

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

are named, in tonic sol-fa wise, sa, ri , ga, ma ., pa, dha, nL
All that can be written down in this notation is the mere
skeleton, or succession of notes proper to the rag a. Thus
the text of the rag a ‘Sri’ runs :—

Ascending mode: sa, ri, ma, pa, ri, sa.

Descending mode: sa, ri, pa, dha, ni, pa, ma, ri, ga, ri, sa.

It will be seen that neither the relative values of the
notes, accentuation, tempo, grace notes, or any other details
can be thus indicated. These, composing what is called the
miurckana of the rag a, can be learnt only by hearing it
actually performed, and are in fact so learnt, mainly
through the medium of songs in the same raga. There is
thus in music that necessary dependence of the disciple
upon the master, winch is characteristic of every kind of
education in India.

I have stated that the 12 semitones of modern Indian
music are almost or quite the same as the 12 semitones .of
Western instruments. But it is said by others that the
scale thus employed is a just scale and not the scale of
equal temperament necessitated by the use of harmony
and also that the notes based on a division of the octave
into 22 srutis are still employed,f and of this there can be
little doubt. It is at least certain that attempts to write
down Indian music in staff notation are generally failures.}
This may be partly due to the survival of the use of quar¬
ter and third tones in the essential part of the melody. It
is certainly partly due to the fact that the grace notes
which play so important a part in Indian music are actually
of this character.

* C. Tirumalayya Naidu, ‘Asiatic Quart. Review,’ 1904, p. 117.

t A. C. Wilson. ‘ Short Account of the Hindu System of
Music.’

t But with the introduction of new signs and conventions,
t is not impossible to write down Indian music in staff notation.

INDIAN MUSIC.

179

A great part of the effect of Indian vocal music de¬
pends on the peculiar manner and the skill with which the
singer dwells on certain notes, which are varied or trilled,
—“ vibrating like a bird above the water before it pounces
upon its prey ”—but not to the extent of a semitone above
or below the main note. The same effect (gamakam) is
produced in stringed instruments by varying the tension
•of the string by deflection.

Such effects, so intimately dependent, in the degree
and manner of their expression, upon the musician’s,
individual mood and powers, cannot be written down,
and so it is that an Indian air, set down upon the staff
■and picked out note by note on a piano or harmonium*,
becomes the most thin and jejune sort of music that can
be imagined, and many have abandoned in despair all such
•attempts at record. The music is, moreover, so personal,
•and so capable of variation according to the singer’s mood
that no record can quite adequately interpret it. The
same singer may vary his own rendering from verse to
verse, and improvise upon the main theme according to his
mood or environment.t It must therefore be understood
that the examples given are merely suggestive illustrations*
.and do not make possible an accurate reproduction of the
•originals. The only way to adequately study Indian
music, is, at first hand, by patient discipleship, a practical

* Cheap harmoniums are now everywhere common in India.

t Cf: u To avoid misunderstanding, ife must be pointed out that
by a 1 true record of a song ’ must not be understood one given
variation of it, something fixed once for all. The accuracy or
correctness of a record applies to most widely-differing variations
of one and the same song,and the greater the number of variations,
the richer the material for comparative study, the easier it is to
find out the most artistic specimen. A comprehensive collection
of songs should contain different movements in the development
of the same song, both as regards locality and time,” E. Lineff,

‘ The Peasant Songs of Russia,’ p, 14.

180

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

acquaintance with the instruments, and the help of learned
Indians.

All attempts at ‘ harmonizing 9 Indian airs, have been,,
so far, unsuccessful. Whatever the reasons, it has. been
proved by repeated experience that the natural beauties-
and national character of the melodies are lost in the
process, and the result is something devoid of all the-
peculiar charm of the original, and lacking in the essential
qualities of their Indian or European music. Even the-
employment of the piano or harmonium proves fatal to the
delicacy and purity of Indian music, because ' of the
limitation to exact and mechanically limited ranges of
notes; and the harmonium especially from its destructive
effect upon the quality of the voice and fatal effects on
individual taste and refinement.

It is quite likely, however, that when sufficient study
is given to the matter, harmonisation of Eastern music
may be possible. On this point M. Bourgault-Ducoudray
in his Melodies Populaires de Grece writes :—

“ We trust that we have been able to show that the applica¬
tion of harmony to Oriental scales is productive of result. Eastern
music, till now exclusively melodic, will start upon a new harmonic
career; Western harmonic music, hitherto restricted to the
exclusive use of two modes, the major and minor, will escape at
last from its long confinement. The fruit of this deliverance will,
be to provide Western musicians with fresh resources of
expression, and with colours hitherto unknown to the palate of
the musician.”

Harmonisation, if possible, with due regard to the
preservation of the mode, will similarly add to the resour¬
ces of the Indian musician.*

The impression conveyed by Indian music is that of
a limpid purity of colour effect, and, compared with

* See ‘ Music in the East and West,’ by Maud MacCarthy,.,
Ovpfoeus , No. 3, 1908. This article is a valuable comparison of
musical ideals and practice in East and West.

INDIAN MUSIC.

181

Western concerted music, suggests a comparison of refined
-and delicate Indian dyes with the brilliant variety of
modern chemical colouring matters, or the flow of a deep
river with the rush of a noisy torrent. Western music,
:apart from emphasis laid upon technique often at the
■expense of feeling, is complex, troubled, reflecting as it
were many sides of life and thought at once. In Indian
music the emotions are unmixed, and each in turn exerts
its pow r er. Of this sort must have been the music dreamt
of by More in his Utopia , which in this respect might
have been written of India.

“ For all their musike bothe that they play upon instrumentes,
and that they singe withmannes voyee dothe so resemble and expresae
■natural affections, the sound of the tune is so applied and made
agreable to the things, that whether it bee a prayer, or els a dytty
■of gladnes, of patience, of trouble, of mourninge, or of anger; the
fassion of the melodye dothe so represente the meaning of the
thing, that it dothe wonderfullye move, stirre, pearee, and enflame
the hearers myndes.”

(More’s Utopia.)

A little of the tenderness of Indian music is reflected
in a passage from the Arabian Nights already quoted.
Those who once fall beneath its sway are for ever*
spell-bound by its magic. For the modern world it is too
perfect and too refined. It is more the misfortune than
the fault of Europeans and Europeanized Indians that they
cannot appreciate its beauty. Accustomed to the noisy
music of an orchestra, the artificial atmosphere of an
upholstered and crowded concert hall, and the complexity
•and variety of emotion awakened by the elaborate develop-
ments of modern Western music, it is not surprising that
the delicacy and subjectivity of Indian music leave them
little moved, or give only an impression of monotony.

If in comparing the music of East and West, it may
be said that in harmony and combined effects, the West

182

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

excels in a field which is almost unknown to the East,,
there can, on the other hand, be no doubt that in individual
singing, whether technique, expression or subtlety, the
East as far exceeds the West. Each has much to learn,
from, and to admire in, the other.

The Indian singer, as Miss MacCarthy (loc. tit.) says,

“seems to concentrate upon his very inmost self in the
exercise of his art. His eyes close often in prayerful ecstasy. Hi*
pauses are long and frequent. Those who accompany him hang,
upon his mood and follow its windings without any other support
than that of intention. The audience, too, must follow as best it?
can —he leads it, it does not lead him. ”

Much of this description is realised in the accompany¬
ing reproduction (Plate YI) of an Indian painting (in the
collection of the Raja of Satara), representing the poet.
Sadi listening to a singer.

Whatever may be gained by possible combination in
the future developments of Indian music, the necessity for
this intensely personal and rhapsodical singing—so perfect
and so natural an expression of the Indian mind—cannot
pass away. It were well indeed if room could he found in
the West, which, with all its magnificent choral and
orchestral development, lacks this lyrical and intensely
personal and religious element, for individual expression of
the same kind. To some extent, no doubt, the revival of
folk-song in England is due to a sense of this need at the-
present time.

It would be difficult to explain to a foreigner the*
countless ways in which music in India is bound up with
the national culture. It is the resource of India in joy
or sonw. It is a symbol of the immanence of God.
u Thou art present even as music in the vincc” says a
Tamil poet. It is essential at every festivity, and insepara¬
bly connected with all religious ceremonies.

INDIAN MUSIC.

183

“The Vedie chant, composed in the simple Sanskrit spoken
three thousand years ago and handed dcrwn from generation to

generation for more than thirty centuries,.is to Hindus what

plain song is to us. For this ancient chant, like plain song, is
bound up with the sacred ceremonials and is wedded to language
alike sonorous and dignified. And the place where it is heard,
for it is heard only in the temple, is considered so holy, and the
strain itself is so simple and devotional that all who hear it
cannot fail to be impressed. ”

The form of the Vedie chants is fixed, and constant
throughout India, but this is not the case with other
hymns such as those of the Southern Saivites, which are
sung to many airs in the homes and temples of the South.
Manikka Vachagar’s hymns are familiar to all and are sung
with tears of rapture ; there is a saying that ‘ he whose
heart is not melted by the Tlruvachagam must have a
stone for a heart. ?

Of dramatic music there is no lack. Certain classica
dramas, Rama Charitam, Harischandra, and the like, are
known to the whole people, lettered or illiterate, and appeal
equally to both. The South Indian drama is of much im¬
portance in the life of the people, just as miracle and
mystery plays in the life of Mediaeval Europe. But
these representations are now often degraded by the
use of cheap harmoniums, called in the South 4 Lily-flutes’,
and by the use of unsuitable and tawdry European scenery
and costume, imitations of those tenth-rate travelling
companies.

Of special interest are the songs of agriculture and
the crafts. By these I mean all music serving to lighten
heavy labour, such as the songs of husbandmen, carters and
boatmen ; songs embodying technical recipes and serving
as craft mnemonics; songs of invocation of craft or agri¬
cultural divinities, or expressing a sacramental conception
of a craft; and religious songs,—such as used to be sung

184

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

at £ spinning bees ’ in Ceylon before the village weaver’s
market was u successfully contested ” by the products of
the wage-slaves of English factory towns. In all these
songs, music and words are inseparable. The greater part
of Eastern literature, popular or otherwise, is written in
verse, and verse implies song. Men and women may be
illiterate; but when they can recite classical poetry for
hours—in language differing at least as much, and in the
same way from that in every-day use, as does the lan¬
guage of the Psalms or of Chaucer from the daily speech
of an Englishman—then we can hardly deny them i edu¬
cation.’

Song and agriculture are intimately associated ; as you
walk along some narrow village track, you may come
suddenly upon a hillside clearing where twenty or thirty
men are working, and singing at their work, led by an old
man with a quavering voice ; or a row of stooping women
weeding, and singing as they progress steadily across the
held in the hot sun, at work in the water, transplanting
rice. Such scenes did not escape the notice of Sinhalese
poets; a mediaeval version of the Makha Deva Jataka
relates that as a certain prince went on his way, he saw
u hundreds of girls tending the ear-laden fields, singing
sweet songs without fault, wherein his own life was praised.
One song relates the exploits of a national hero named
Oaja Bahu. In a well-known reaping song, the tala palm
is praised :

In Rayigam Korale renowned there grew a famous tala palm,

Fairer than speech can tell.

With various beauty crowned,

From village unto village known ;

Fair of hue this palm-flower bloomed,

Like lotus petals blowing on the tree.

The religious character of many of the agricultural

INDIAN MUSIC.

185

•songs is very noteworthy; one sowing song begins as
follows:—“ When the fields are well prepared, wdiieh lie round
Balagala-hill, right quickly then the seed is sown by the
Four Regents of the Earth. ” A threshing song runs:
'“This is not our threshing door, ’tis the Moon-god’s
threshing floor; this is not our threshing floor, ’ tis the
Sun-god’s threshing floor. ” Such songs are the fruit of
that ‘ pagan ’ conception of all life as a sacrament, which
gives in the East so much beauty and dignity to common
things. What more perfect picture can be imagined of
the simple agricultural life of an Indian village, than the
bright moonlit threshing-floor, freshly cleaned and con¬
secrated, where the corn is trodden out by the feet of
bulls driven round a 4 bull-post 5 in the middle ? Even the
bulls are in the song:

O bull-king, leader of the team,

O Veriya going next him,

And Kalata the bull-ealf,

Make haste to get the threshing done !

I will get your twin horns gilt,

Deck your pair ot* ears with pearls,

And eke your dew-claws,

So shall I adorn ye 1
Ye bulls that wander by the hillside,

Yoked together by a woodbine,

Wearing pearls and coral beads,

And eating tender leaves,.

Draw the gra.in into this threshing floor!

Such are the agricultural songs. Simple as they are,
those who have heard them in their own surroundings, will
not easily forget them. But even these are less used than
formerly, and in a little time will be gone.

Women transplanting rice in the wet fields of Ceylon,
sin gjatakas, and other songs about the Buddha ; Samanala
hella (the song of Adam’s Peak); Padmavati kathava —
the loveliest of Sinhalese princesses who became a Rajput

186

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

bride and sail; others sung by Kandyan women trans¬
planting rice, include a number of jatakas.

Music has been thought to have power even over-
animals and inanimate things. How profound and intimate
has been the appeal of Eastern Music to the East, may be
guessed from stories of the influence of certain ragcis over
nature that recall the legends of Orpheus and Apollo.

Indian music can best be heard, and dancing seen, in
the great Southern cities such as Madura and Tanjore, and
in the Kative States, Mysore and Travancore. In such
places it is still studied as a science by learned Brahmans
and patronized by princes. You may engage a dancing-
girl and her musicians, and invite your friends; seated
upon a carpet in a room bare of all furniture, your enter¬
tainment is more wonderful than any that money could
buy in any other land ; more wonderful at least for you,,
for it is one expression of that national culture of which
you too are a part; it is your love and your emotion, your
adoration for the Lord which the dancer dances and the-
singer sings. Sometimes she is to sing only for you
then she brings a tamburi or a vina, and seated, like you,,
upon the ground, pours out for as long as you will, songs-
of passionate love, or devotion moving you to tears.

Or it may be a man who plays or sings for you ; one-
who has wandered from court to court and received the
rewards of princes and kings. He plays the sctmngi as.
none else can ; the Kashmir shawl he wears is the token
of a raja’s favour. There are no young men following in
his steps ; it is well to hear him while you may. In the*
JSTorth he will be perhaps a player on the terns, the c peacock/'
He too sings a song of passionate love, something at’ once*
so simple and so universal that it includes the love of God
and the love of woman ; it is part of the method of Indian

INDIAN MUSIC.

1ST

poetry to carry double meanings, of which each deepens
and explains the other, like the shot colours of a double-
woven cloth. There are only four of you listening, and
to-night you think only of devotion to the Lord, for that
thought is in the singer’s heart, and he is carried away by
his own emotion and neither sees nor thinks of you. And
yet if one in his heart thinks only of his beloved on earthy
for him too is each love the symbol and revelation of the
other.

I am mad for my beloved; they say, what say they ? Let them

say what they will!

Take me for a fool or a mad mao ; they say, what say they ?

Let them say what they will!

1 have nothing to do with them,

Whether they be pleased with me or angry,

May one only be gracious to me !

They say, what say they ? Let them say what they will.
The Shaikh walks around his sanctuary ;

I offer up myself at thy altar,

Call it sanctuary or hovel.

They say, what say they ? Let them say what they will 1
I have gazed on the glory and sheen of the cheeks of my

beloved,

I am burnt up as a moth in the flame,

I am as one drunken :

They say, what say they ? Let them say what they will.

Bo simple is tbe cry ‘ but it tells alike of tbe love of
those great ones wlio “ are so enchanted with the beauty^
of tbe Creator of appearances, that they have nothing to-
do with the beauty of appearance itself,” and of those with
whom all the kingdoms of the earth weigh less than a
feather in the scale against one woman only, upon whom
their heart is set.

Even this is not the most wonderful experience which,
Indian music holds fox* those that have ears to heai.
There is a music which comes once or twice only to you r
and which it is vain to seek. The very greatest of Indian
musicians are not professionals, but wandering holy men.

188

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

players of the terns or sarangi or vina, or singers. Some
♦evening in a [Northern town, such an one passes by your
■door. You press him eagerly .to lodge with you ; if he
will, to play for you; and he consents. You invite a few
friends, and seated on the floor in an upper room, prepare
to listen. A brass lamp burns by your side, and all is still.
The player chooses an even simpler theme than the last,—
u These many days I have not seen thee.” He sings and
plays, and varies infinitely the expression of this one idea.
He becomes almost a part of his instrument, and it and
the sound of him. You lose consciousness of things exter¬
nal, and forget to move the wick, which burns dimly and
more dimly still. As he plays on—“ These many days I
have not seen thee,” this passionate cry materialises before
your eyes as a dancing figure, it may be as the Lord
Krishna Himself, it may be as B&dha, it may be in the
form of one beloved on earth, whomsoever your thoughts
-are set upon, and to whom your love is given. You forget
-all else, and see only this rhythmic sweet appearance. At
last the player ceases, leaving you silent and breathless,
and the vision is gone like a dream. What did you see ?
You ask of one another, and you find that each saw before
him his own thought, the one he loved best, and for whom
in his heart was lamentation made,—“These many days I
have not seen thee.”

Perhaps you are in the South. You have gone to a
musical party, a wedding at the house of a friend, you are
seated with many others on the cotton carpet, and before
you is a band of drummers, oboists and players of the vina
•and tambwri. A Brahman drums on an earthen pot. A
slender girl of fifteen years sits demurely on the floor,
•dressed in silk brocade and golden chains, her feet and
arms bare, and flowers in her hair. Her mother is seated

INDIAN MUSIC.

189

near, back against the wall; she it is that trained the girl,
and now she watches her proudly. The only sounds are
those of the four strings of the ivory inlaid tamburi and
the tapping of the drum. As you are waiting for the
music to begin, a man with untidy hair and a saffron robe
comes in, and your host gives him eager welcome, laying a
white cloth on a stool for him to sit upon, All know him
w r ell—he is a sctnyasi who wanders from temple to temple,,
preaching little, nor performing many ceremonies, but
singing tevcimms and the hymns of Manikka Yachagar, As
he sits silent, all eyes are turned towards him, and conver¬
sation drops to a whisper. Presently he sings some hymn
of passionate adoration of Siva. His voice is thin but very
sweet, melting the heart; his gentle strong personality
holds every listener spell-bound, not least the little-
dancer to whom the words and music are so familiar;
he is the dancer’s and the drummers’ friend and hero as
much as yours. Some one asks for a special hymn, £ My
Clod, w T hy hast thou forsaken me ? ’ and he sings :

Me, meanest one, in mercy mingling Thou didst make Thine
own,

Lord of the Bull! Lo, thou’st forsaken me! O Thou who*
wear’st

Garb of fierce tiger’s skin ! Abiding Uttarakosamangai’s
King !

Thou of the braided lock ! I fainting sink. Our Lord, uphold
thou me !

What though I press no more the crimson lips of maidens
fair,

With swelling breasts ; behold ! Thou hast forsaken me
though in.

Not out Thy worthy service, Uttarakosamangai’s King,

I am ! Thou mad’st false me Thine own, why dost Thou
leave me now ?*

Boon he rises, smiles at the musicians and speaks for

* Adapted from the translation by Dr. Pope.

190

ESSAYS JN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

■a few moments with your host, and so goes away. And
then you forget for a time this dreamer, in the beauty of
the dance and the clamour of the drums. Of the dance
you never weary ; there is eternal wonder in the perfect
refinement of its grace, and the mental concentration
needed to control each muscle so completely; for this is
not the passionate posturing bom of a passing mood, but
the elaborated art of three thousand years, an art that
deceives you by its seeming simplicity, but in reality
idealizes every passion, human and divine ; for it tells of
the intensity of Radha’s love for Krishna. Radha was
the leader of the herd-girls in Brindaban, and she, more
than any, realised the depth and sweetness of the love of
Krishna.

Whatever place is held in the heart of Europe by
the love of Dante for his Lady Beatrice, of Paolo for
Francesca, of Deirdre for Kaoisi, is held in India by the
love stories of Rama and Sita, of Padmavati and Ratan
Sen, and the love of Radha and Krishna. Most wonder¬
ful of these was the love of Radha; in the absolute
self-surrender of the human soul in her to the Divine in
Krishna is summed up all love. In this consecration of
humanity there is no place for the distinction—always
foreign to Indian thought—of sacred and profane. But
when in love the finite is brought into the presence of the
infinite, when the consciousness of inner and outer is des¬
troyed in the ecstasy of union with one beloved, the
moment of realisation is expressed in Indian poetry, under
the symbol of the speech of Radha, the leader of the Gopis,
with Krishna, the Divine Cowherd. And Krishna is the
Lord, Radha, the soul that strives in self-surrender, for
inseparable oneness. And so both have told of the Lord,
—the ascetic, for whom all earthly beauty is a vain thing,

INDIAN MUSIC.

191

and the dancing girl, who is mistress of every art that
charms the senses.

The music is to last all night; but you have to be
home ere dawn, and as you pass along the road in the
bright moonlight, you see that life, and the renunciation
of life, lead both to the same goal at last. Both ascetic
and musician shall be one Brahman with himself; it is
only a question of time, more or less, and time, as every
one knows, is unreal.

Oh Lord, look not upon my evil qualities !

Thy name, O Lord, is same-sightedness.

Make us both one Brahman.

This Hindu song of Surdas is said to have been sung by
a dancing girl at a Rajput court. And there comes to you
too the thought, that “ Whoso seeth all beings in That
One, and That in all, henceforth shall doubt no more/’

All this is passing away; when it is gone, men
will look back on it with hungry eyes, as some
have looked upon the life even of Mediaeval Europe,
or of Greece. When civilization has made of life a
business, it will be remembered that life was once an art;
when culture is the privilege of bookworms, it will be
remembered that it was once a part of life itself, not some¬
thing achieved in stolen moments of relief from the serious
business of being an engine-driver, a clerk, ora Governor.

Let those who are still part of such a life take note of
it, that they may tell their children of it when it is noth¬
ing but a memory. A 4 practical ’ and 4 respectable 7 world
has no place for the dreamer and the dancer; they belong
to the old Hindu towns where the big temples and the
chatrams te)l of the faith and munificence of kings and
merchant princes. In Madras, there is the military band,
or the music hall company on tour,—what does it want
with ascetics or with dancing girls ?

CHAPTER XIY.

Music and Education in India-

“ In future years it is to be hoped...that the study of the
national music of the country will occupy, as it should, a fore¬
most place in all Indian Schools.”—

Captain Day, ‘Music and Musical Instruments of Southern
India,’ p. 7.

/T\HE essential error in modern Indian education, as
understood by Government, missionaries, and
anglicised Indians, is a refusal or inability to re¬
cognize any responsibility to tlie past. The consequent
break in the continuity of the historical tradition is fatal
to Indian culture. It is much as if the care-takers of some
ancient building, of complex origin, and various ages r
hitherto accustomed to make additions and enlargements
where and when required, had suddenly abandoned this
process of development, in order to pull down the whole
building, with the intention of rebuilding it upon a new
plan, with the result that most of their energies became
occupied with the provision of temporary huts for the
inhabitants of the old house thus turned out into the cold.
While scarcely any time was thus left for the serious work
of reconstruction, and the needs of the day continued to
grow faster than ever before, it would not have been sur¬
prising if some of the builders and their critics had regret¬
ted their haste in abandoning the old building, and reflect¬
ed that their labours would have been better directed in
building a new wing worthy of the old, than in pulling
down what already existed. This is in fact just what is
happening in India to-day j the destructive rather than

MCIiSlO AND EDUCATION IN INDIA.

193

constructive character of much of the education given
in Indian schools and colleges is being recognized, but
so slowly that it is an open question whether any part
of the old structure can be saved, to witness that the
ancient builders builded well.

Take music as a single case. The importance of music
in education could hardly be over-estimated.

“ Is not,” says Plato, “education in music of the greatest
importance, because that the measure and harmony enter in ihe
strongest manner into the inward part of the soul....The man who
hath here been educated as be ought, perceives in the quickest
manner whatever workmanship is defective, and whatever execu¬
tion is unhandsome, or whatever productions are of that kind ; and
being disgusted in a proper manner, he will praise what is beauti¬
ful, rejoicing in it and receiving it into his soul, be nourished by
it, and become a worthy aud good man....Education in music is
for the sake of such things as these ”

These words a modern Welsh writer does but echo
when he says :

u Rightly studied, music has all the exactness of pure reason
and science, all the expansiveness of the imaginative reason, all the
metaphysie of the profoundest philosophy, and all the ethic of the
purest religion in it....It is an energy of the mind in the first
instance, and is of incalculable advantage in obtaining dominion
over the body....Music, properly taught, includes all that is
generally conceded to belong to a liberal education.”*

These ideas are far more clearly recognizable in Indian
than in English culture. But English education, as
hitherto imparted and understood in India, has totally
ignored the importance, of music and art in education.
There is in India no educational institution under Euro¬

pean guidance where Indian music has any place whatever
in the scheme of education. There is no Indian university
where Indian music is recognized. Of Europeans engaged
in education in India, it is safe to say that not 1 per cent,
have any knowledge of Indian music as a science, or

* D. Frangcon Davies, in 4 Wales To-day
(1907,)

and To-mor row/

13

194

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

appreciation of it as an art. The majority frankly regard it as
so muck noise. This is only one instance, but a typical one,
of the unfitness of Englishmen to control Indian educa¬
tion ; they are unfitted alike by lack of knowledge and by
lack of sympathy. The only place for English teachers in
India to-day, whatever it may have been in the past, is in
the employ of Indian educationalists, to whom alone they
should be responsible. They should be engaged only for
special purposes, as in Japan, and should not be allowed to
control in matters concerning the aim of method of education
as a whole. The control of Indian education is of so much
importance that the necessity of gaining this would alone ■
testify the present endeavours to attain political freedom.

Indian girls are often taught to play the piano in
English schools, especially in Mission schools. 4 * The only
result of this is that they lose the power of appreciating
their own melodies ; their execution scarcely ever reaches
a high level; they cannot afford so expensive an instru¬
ment as a good piano in after life ; and they despise the
inferior taste of their parents and companions at home,
who understand Indian music, and for whom European
music is meaningless. A writer on Scottish song has
remarked, in words most applicable to India: “I
have often wondered if the introduction of the cheap
piano has any thing to do with .the decline of song as
a means of expression amongst the people. Before
the era of universal piano playing, the people used to think

* In many such schools they are taught to sing to a ‘ baby
organ* or harmonium, instruments which, in comparison to Indian
instruments, are related much as the steam organ of an English
fair is related to the music of Purcell and William Byrd. Few
things, too, can be more sad than the waste of faculty involved in
the teaching of European scales and songs to children who are
capable of using the more elaborate and varied scales of the East.

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA.

195

music; and from thinking to expressing is but a step....
now their ambition is to have a piano* and to have their
•children learn to play. ‘Learning music 5 to them means
learning to play the piano, and so that unfortunate instru¬
ment has become to them, as to the vast majority, a substi¬
tute for music in the brain.... many.... think it a mark
of inferiority to confess acquaintance with their own songs
when they can have English music and a piano.”t

Music, in fact, is contemplated in modern ‘English*
■education in India by no means as an energy of the mind,
but essentially as an accomplishment ; and it is in the vast
majority of cases only as an accomplishment that European
music can be taught in India.

The introduction to India of the piano, and Western
music generally, is sometimes defended on the plea that
both types may be 4 enjoyed. 5 ! The superficiality of this
view is evident;—as if the origin and purpose of music
were but ‘ amusement.’ Music and art are not amusements
invented by idle men to pass away the time of other idlers ;■
they are expansions of personality, essential to true civili¬
sation, expressions of the human spirit, confirming the
sincere conviction that man does not live by bread alone.
Music, even more than plastic art, ■ is a function of the
higher consciousness. The true musician is the Keltic
harper who hears the music of the fairies or the Indian
singer who hears the voices ot Grandharvas* Only such, like
Guttila, can call angels down from heaven. I heard of one
living singer at Tanjore, who had no voice or power to sing
but longed to express 1 devotion to the Lord hi music : be

* In modern India more frequently the cheap harmonium.

t Helen Hopekirk, 1 Seventy Scottish Songs, ’ Boston, 1905.

I The word being used in the limited sense of gratification or
amusement.

196

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

called upon Sarasvati, and like Caedmon, his lips were*
opened. This true music is as exalted as its source. All
great art is truly of supersensuous origin. If art and music-
are thus expressions, manifestations, it is obvious that the
result of imitation and borrowing of the natural modes of
expression belonging to other nations whose idiosyneracy

environment are different, must be disastrous ; and in
point of fact, the attempt to replace Indian by Western
music in India, results only in vulgarization,—that essential
vulgarization which, as Huskin remarks, consists in not
understanding the effect produced by the imitation.

There may be some whose broad culture enables them
truly to appreciate the music evolved by temperaments and
in environments so different as those of East and West..
There must necessarily be few, and meanwhile the standard
of Western music in India, is set by those altogether out of
touch with it, a bourgeois public satisfied with gramophones,
dne thing is certain, that a pretence at the same time of
despising Indian and of admiring European music is for a,
true Indian ridiculous. Western culture may be, and will
he, of value to the East, but it must be as a post-graduate
course—it will not stand in the place of mother milk. We
cannot understand others by ceasing to understand our-
selves.

Pierre Loti in his book on India, describes the music which
he heard in Travancore. The Maharajah’s musicians had been
playing. This orchestra, ” he says, “and these singers belong to-
* the. Maharajah...How far away this Prince’s dreams must be from
ours, how different his conceptions of the sorrows that belong to
love and death. But this exquisite and rare music of his, reveals to-
me something of his soul, something that t should never see in our
short and formal interviews, burdened with ceremony and foreign
words. ”

Now mark the effect of the introduction of European
music at such a court; the Raja replaces his group of skilled

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. : 11>7

musicians, whose music even to a stranger is in some measure
•an interpretation of the national genius, by a newly trained
brass band, the performances of which may, with good
fortune, rival those of a third rate German band in
England. The Raja buys also gorgeous gramophones and
.a mechanical violin, paying fabulous sums to have them
'decorated by their English manufacturers. ■ The true
:artists of the past he neglects ; the hereditary craftsmen,
makers of exquisite inlaid and painted lutes and marvel¬
lous drums, are left to starve; and to the cultured
stranger it can but seem that his must have been an
inferior race, with little learning and few traditions worth
preserving, for he finds there no new revelation of human¬
ity, only a distorted image of himself.

Quite possibly, such a Raja is at the same time f pro
.gressive’ and ‘ enlightened/ He spends money on
4 female ’ education ; adopts the Resident’s suggestions of
founding a museum, or the like, and believes himself to be
•all that he can or should be. There can be few more
-depressing sights than that of such men destroying with
•one hand what they endeavour to build up with the other.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that one were to
■admit a superiority of harmony to melody, of European to
Indian music. It would be much as if we shauld say th\t
Greek architecture was superior to Gothic, or vice verm,
instead of recognising that each is the expression of a
'different temperament in relation to different environment
and different needs ; but let that pass, and ask even on
this assumption of superiority, what does and must result
from an endeavour to introduce European music into India
■at the cost of Indian.

The comprehension of harmony, especially of its later
developments, is even in Europe necessarily confined to

198

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

those who hare had an elaborate musical education, more-
particularly intellectual than emotional. Only those,
•moreover, who can afford to pay the cost of expensive con¬
certs, can often hear this highly elaborated music. But in
• India, music is not only for the wealthy virtuoso ; it is a
part of the national life, it is still an art, not an accom¬
plishment or an intellectual exercise ; the music of India is
found in the hearts of the people. Bob them of this, by
setting up a false standard of 4 correctness,’ and in a
■hundred years, how many Indians will have learnt to ap¬
preciate elaborate harmonies, or even have the opportunity
4 of hearing European music adequately performed ? Prob¬
ably not one in ten thousand. At. the same time, the-
possibility of creative expression, now common amongst
Indian musicians, must die out; for it is not easier to use
.a foreign musical language than to use a foreign literary
. speech. So long, in fact, as education is founded upon a
foreign culture, you can only produce 4 accomplishments
•and impart 4 useful information ’; you cannot give the-
means of creative self-expression, possible only in the-
mother-tongue, whether of speech or song.

And if, in a hundred years, some slight acquaintance-
with European harmonized music should be acquired by a
small section of the community, how many will have for¬
gotten in that time the refinement and vitality of their own
melodies, and have turned instead to the gramophone and"
cheap harmonium, or whatever more vulgar mechanical
. devices may by then have been invented ? Almost all
* will have so forgotten and so turned away, for it is the*
gramophone and the harmonium, and the cheap ill-taught
piano, that stand in India for European music.

It is certain then, that, while the importance
of music in education can hardly be over-ratecl

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA.

199

such education must be primarily an education
in Indian music, if it is to have any value as a
discipline or as an art, or in any more serious sense than
as a mere accomplishment. This is not to say that Indian
music must not change or t be in Hue need in any way by-
changed conditions ; but that such change must be organic,
not sudden, and that it must be an evolution in accordance
with the bent of the national genius. In all education
schemes, music must be taken into account as a part o£
everyday life. Religious songs, songs of agriculture and
the crafts, of the love of the land, folk songs must be
heard in every school.

In hundreds of Indian schools, under more or less
direct British control, the only musical edneat,ion recieved
to-day is the annual singing of a. bad translation of the
English National Anthem. All this is puerile. The
object of education must be to make good Indian citizens,
and this can only be effected by using the national culture
and the national languages-—literary, musical, artistic—as
the medium of instruction.

In all these respects, music is but the type of every
factor in culture and education. The peoples intelligence
can be developed primarily only by means of education in
the national culture. One must learn to understand that
with which they are already familiar before it is possible
to understand the unfamiliar, and relate it to one’s own
life. Only vulgarity can result from imitating what one
does not so understand and cannot so relate to one’s own
individuality. The first necessity in India to-day is
National Education.

Music has sometimes been divided into two kinds,
folk-music and art-music, much as art is sometimes
classified into decorative and fine. Both distinctions are

200 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

half-truths, and sometimes obscure the deeper fact that
all art has a fundamental unity. But, accepting the
distinction as a temporary convenience, it maybe remarked
that, in spite of the neglect of Indian art-music in recent
times, the folk-music of the people is still everywhere to be
heard, and it is only in a living relation to this that a
national school of music can be preserved. The attempt
to denationalise Indian music by learning European music
instead is the sure way to an extinction of the musical
faculty, comparable to that which took place in England
after the time of Charles I. This decadence coincided
with the day when no gentleman’s education was
considered complete until he had made the 4 grand tour ’
on the Continent—and returned from it to turn up his
nose, as the Rev. S. Baring Gould remarks, at his old
English Manor house, and to call in Italian architects to
tear it down and substitute for it a Florentine Palazzo.
This is what English-educated and £ England-returned 5
Indians are doing in India to-day.

As a matter of fact, no School of Music has arisen
and flourished in Modern Europe that has not been founded
on national folk-music, and been concerned with the
expression of national aspirations and ideals, Russia may
be taken as an example. The founder of the Russian
School was Glinka (1803-1857) who was called by Liszt
the 4 Prophet-Patriarch ’ of Russian music. He grew up
steeped in the folk-music of his own country and early in
life, conceived the idea of composing a national opera-
This ambition he eventually satisfied in 4 The Life of the
Tsar’ (1836), an opera which marked an epoch in the
musical history of Russia. As Mrs. Newmarch has said:*

* Grove’s Mus. Diet., Ed. II, f 180-188.

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 201

c The more thoughtful critics saw that the opera was now in
"the best sense of the word, and marked a fresh departure in Arty-
Tfche will of a genuine school of Russian music....He did not merely
play with local colour, but recast the primitive speech of the
folk-song into a new and polished idiom, so that henceforth Russian
music was able to take its place among the distinctive schools of
■Western Europe.’

India may learn from England’s experience. From
tlie age of Purcell to the present day, the music of England
has been essentially foreign—Italian, German, Russian,
Hungarian, but not English.

“ The question now to be considered,” says a writer quoted above,
““ is whether English music is capable of resuscitation. One thing
is certain, the present vogue of training English musicians to
lisp in the tongue of the foreigner can have no beneficial outcome*
It is emphatically not that way that salvation lies. ”*

It was long believed that the English people were
^actually unmusical, and that there were amongst them no
folk-songs, comparable to those of other European nations.
'This opinion has proved in recent times erroneous; a vast
body of English folk-song still exists, and is known to the
last generation of country folk, though the present gene¬
ration is generally scornful of the old songs. It is, however,
with the true folk-music that the hope of a School of Eng¬
lish music rests. The movement for the teaching of
folk-music as a part of all educational schemes is growing
stronger daily. Its importance has long been recognised
in other countries, as Denmark and Hungary.

As Mr. Sharp remarks, the spectacle of a great
progressive nation like England, “ intent upon the in¬
struction of her people in their own folk-songs,” gathered,
very often, from the lips of illiterate peasants is a strange
one. And yet, if in India we have no more love for our
own music than England had in the early nineteenth cen¬
tury, we too must pass through a long epoch of barrenness

C. J. Sharp, ‘English Folk-Song.’ 1907.

202

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

and formalism, before we awaken to the fact that we have-
neglected the one thing vital, that is, the music living in
the hearts of peasants, uneducated and illiterate—but
more truly Indian than their 6 educated 7 4 superiors/ We,,
too, in time to come, shall be intent upon the instruction
of the people in tlieir own folk-songs.* Would it not be-
wiser to bethink ourselves in time, to save what is with us
now, instead of making so needlessly hard the task of those
that will come after us, and so needlessly barren our own
lives and the lives of those who like some of us have not
understood ?

These are the days of nation-building. Yet how
many 4 nationalists’ are in truth 4 denationalists 7 in their
lives and aspirations ! The}- want to be 4 free,’ to compete
with Europe on her own lines, to be 4 progressive,’ 4 advan¬
ced,’ to gain political power and material success. It is
not with these that the future of India lies. It lies in the
lives of those who are truly Indian at heart, whose love for
India is the love of a child for its mother, who believe that
India still is (and not merely may be, when duly 4 educat¬
ed ’) the light of the world, who to-day judge all things
by Indian standards, and in whom is manifest the work of*
the shapers of India from the beginning until now. With¬
out these, there can be no Indian future worth the name.
How may they be known ? Like answers unto like ; but*,
if an empirical test be asked for, I believe that the love of
Indian music and the comprehension of Indian ait are
tests unfailing.

The direct results of making Indian music an
essential part of the educational ideal may be many

* In speaking of folk-musie in India, it must be understood
that there is not in India that marked divorce between folk-music
and art-music which, like the distinction between decorative and.
fine art, is so unfortunate a feature of European culture.

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA. 203 :

ftnd various. We have already seen that a proper-
education in music is everywhere recognized as an
invaluable aid in the training of character—the true-
aim of education. But some aspects of the results
may be noted in greater detail. There can be no true-
patriotism without patriotic education. The primary aim
of education in India should be the production of Indian
citizens. hTo Indian can be a true citizen of the world,,
except by being first an Indian citizen, and from that
standpoint entering into the life of humanity outside of'
India. This, however, is not the time for cosmopolitanism,,
it is the time when India herself needs Indian citizens; and
education in Indian music is an essential part of education-
in Indian citizenship, whether for those who may never*
learn a word of English or see even a, Raja’s brass band
but are more Indian at heart than many of those whose-
false education has brought so much that is vulgar, so much
that is unlovely into the life of modern India, or for those-
whose life-work leads them into other lands, to bear the-
inessage of the East, or to become intellectual parasites, as
the case may be. In schools, then, Indian folk-music must
he taught as a matter of course—religious, agricultural and'
craft songs, and songs of the love of the land—not forget¬
ting “ Bande Mataram. ” These songs must be orally
taught, or to a drum or tambur accompaniment only, nob
to the piano. To older students the really quite simple-
theoretical part of Indian music should be taught, as
European musical theory is taught in European schools.
The result of this education in taste will be that, as the-
boys and girls grow up, they will be in a position to under¬
stand and care for the most highly developed art-music of
India.

In almost all cases, it will be found that Oriental art,.

-204

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

•and music and literature have been produced for audiences
far more cultivated in respect of imagination and sympathy
than the audiences appealed to by the artist and musician
in the modern "West. A. great part of this cultivation
depended on the existence of a common national culture,
in which all shared in the measure of theii* capacity. The
result of this is that the artist in his art relies on his
•audience to understand refinements and suggestions which
now are not understood by reason of the divorce of educa¬
tion from the real life and desires of the people. Hence it
is that the ‘ educated ’ of to-day have lost their love of
Indian music, and find amusement in gramophones. They
-are no more able to understand real Indian music than
the frequenter of London music halls could understand
Greek drama. The restoration of Indian folk and art-
music to its proper place in Indian education will alter
this, and restore the necessary attitude of mind, the
preparation, which are required to understand the self-
■ expression of India in her music.

How exactly opposite the result at present attained
•can be, the following episode, only too typical, will illus¬
trate. Not long ago a relation of my own, mother of
many children, well educated, and understanding Tamil,
some Sanskrit, and English, sang for me certain Tamil
•and Sanskrit songs. Meanwhile her son, who was then a
•student at a Government College where his own language,
and much more his own music, was ignored and despised,
•continued to work a gramophone, showing neither any
appreciation of the Indian songs, or any respect for mother
•or guest. If 1 civilisation ’ be the production of, in the
best sense, civil persons, how had it failed here ! I have
met also many who have been ashamed of their own music,
*even of their own language. The same results may be

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA.

20 5-

seen, depending on the same causes, in Scotliy5jt and*
Ireland. Ireland has had the strength to react
and renationalise her education, as far as might be in 'the ^
face of educational authorities quite as unimaginative as.
those we are familiar with in India. The only hope in
India, lies in a control of education by Indians.

Another direct result of the present neglect of Indian
music in education is what I may call the boycott of Indian
musical instrument makers in favour of manufacturers of
gramophones and harmoniums. This fact, further elaborat¬
ed on p. 165, I present to workers in the Swadeshi move¬
ment for due consideration in all its ramifications and
parallels.

Education in Indian music, that is, education in folk-
music in elementary schools, will make possible the educa¬
tion of older boys and girls, and young men and women,,
who possess musical talent, in the art-music of India, song,,
the vina, the sarangi. The advantage of these over more
mechanical instruments lies in the fact that only the truly
musical can master them. A gramophone, and even a
piano, often enables the most unmusical person to inflict'
a, suffering audience with his ideas. It is true some efforts
have been made by Indians in recent years to provide for-
education in Indian music, and some of these may be
briefly noticed. The Gayan Samaj in Poona and Madras ;
the Academy of Music in Calcutta, founded by Raja Sir-
S. M. Tagore, Mus. D. (Oxon.) ; the Bengal Music School
in Calcutta; schools in the Central Provinces ; individual'
teachers such as the TJstad of Baroda, court musicians of
the Gaekwar, and others : all these by their publications*,
and through their pupils have contributed to the preserva¬
tion of Indian music. But the influence of even these
.schools is not always certain. One of the most important

:206

ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

is the Gandharva Maha Yidyalaya, or Indian Mimical
College in Lahore, founded in 1901, for the 44 revival of
ancient Hindu music and its diffusion among the general
public,” It is a. musical college with a variety of courses,
•extending over periods from six months to two years in
•extent. The learned principal is assisted by six other
pandits. But even here the decline of true Indian music
was to be remarked. "When I visited the college in 1907,

I found 14 boys learning the harmonium, and one only the
vina, the classical and best instrument of India. One
wonders how any college professing to teach Indian music,
can allow a harmonium within its doors. They told me it
was so easy,—in three months you can play a tune on it,
■and earn money at weddings and other entertainments. It
is said that the vino, takes sixty years to learn, and it is
hard to find ten more to play it in. Assuredly the
harmonium is easy, it does not require musical talent,
merely a little, very little, perseverance. It is above all
.easy as played in India ; the player attempts no harmonies
^wisely perhaps), but picks out a mere succession of notes,
the bare skeleton of some Hindustani air, omitting lessei
intervals and cadence : or an English music hall ditty.
Yes it is easy. Is not that the secret, or one of the

secrets of the degeneration of Indian taste? It is easier
to boil your cloth in an aniline dye, than to spend months
in producing a beautiful and permanent colour ; easier
to pick out notes on a harmonium than to play the rina or
violin * easier to subscribe for shares in a Swadeshi factory
than to re-organize and support a village industry ; easier
to drift than to swim. But for India, i>s it worth while
is this the Art of Living ? I* not an India thus subdued
in soul more lost than any India governed by the sword

-could be ?

MUSIC AND EDUCATION IN INDIA.

207

One cannot gather grapes of thorns ; you cannot in
the long run get something for nothing. Do not let us
pretend that it is possible. If our ideal is one of purely
material prosperity, and we have no time for music or the
■arts, let us have done with them altogether; but if we
think that music and the arts belong to the most signifi¬
cant, the most real part of our lives, let us cherish them
accordingly. Let us decide ; but in either ease do not let
us pretend that the harmonium and the gramophone are
compensations for Indian music*. It is not possible for
-anything to. be a compensation for the loss of Indian
music.

CHAPTEB XY.

Gramophones—and why not?

T HE present age is often,—and correctly,—described
as an age of' mechanism. For nearly a century,,
scientific discoveries have been utilised with unpre¬
cedented rapidity and success, in making life faster and
more comfortable, and in increasing the available sum of
concrete knowledge. There are no limits to the possible-
extension of this process, except in a reaction, of which
traces are already recognizable, against the intrusion of
the Frankenstein of mechanism upon domains to which
he should never have been admitted. For surely mechanism
must be for man, not man for mechanism, and man sooner
or later will revolt against his own slavery.

Meanwhile, the discovery of each new mechanical
device, and of each new method of. “ conquering nature ”—
as the stupid phrase runs—is hailed as self-evident proof
of progress. With every fresh 4 scientific miracle ’ the-
self-conceit of a sensation-and-comfort-loving public rises,
higher.

Yet it is more than possible that later ages will look
back upon the present period as one of peculiar blindness
in respect of the realities. For a society which sees wealth
and progress in things rather than in men must sooner or
later stand condemned.

In the present paper I do not intend to treat at any
length of the relation of mechanism to industry. It is
well to remember, however, that, the promise of mechanism
lias not yet been fulfilled. So far from ‘ saving labour r

GRAMOPHONES—AND WHY NOT?

20 £

for the worker, its chief results have mostly been increased
possibility of profit-making for manufacturers, and the
replacement of quality by quantity as the means of success¬
ful trade. Simultaneously there has been accomplished the
degradation of the worker from the level of an intelligent,
craftsman to that of a living machine. Just how this
process works may be illustrated by the following slightly
adapted extract from the preface to my ‘ Mediaeval
Sinhalese Art. 5 :—

u Not merely is the workman through division of labour no
longer able to make any whole thing, not only is he confined to
making small parts of things, but it is impossible for him to im¬
prove his position or to win reward for excellence in the craft
itself. Under guild conditions it was possible and usual for the
apprentice to rise through ail grades of knowledge and experience
to the position of a master-erartsman. But take any such trade as
weaving* under modern conditions by power-loom. The operator
has no longer to design or weave in and out the threads with his
own fingers or to throw the shuttle with his own hand. He is
employed, in reality, nob as a weaver, but as the tender of a
machine...That craft is for him destroyed as a means of culture
and the community has lost one more man’s intelligence, for it is
obviously futile to attempt to build up by evening classes and free
libraries what the whole of a man’s work is for ever breaking down.
It is no longer possible for culture and refinement to come to the
•craftsman through his work ; they must be won. If Avon at all, hi
spite of his work, he must seek them in a brief hour snatched
from rest and sleep, at ttie expense of life itself...There can be no
quality of leisure in his work. In short, commercial production
absolutely forbids a union df art with labour. 3 ’

In the words of Buskin, u Industry without art is
Brutality. 55 Yet it should not be thought that the recogni¬
tion of these facts involves a wholesale attack upon every
form of mechanism, or an impossible desire to revert
absolutely to mediaeval conditions. Mechanism bus come
to stay, and has its due purpose to serve as a hewer of wood
and drawer of water. But it is for man to see that his

* I have here substituted * weaving’ for tho original ‘carpet-
making 7 as no carpets are made on power-looms in |ndia at present
and the problem as it concerns weaving is actually before us.

14

210 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM,

servant does not become his master. TKat is to say, a discrimi¬
nation must be made between the legitimate and illegitmate-
functions of machinery in industry. I do not propose to-
speak further of this part of the subject here ; but this
much at least is clear, that the multiplication of unskilled
labour which results from the complete subordination of
the craftsman to the machine is injurious to the national
quality. Ceteris paribus, a handicraft is always preferable
to a mechanical industry.

The immediate object of this paper, however, is
briefly to treat of the relation of mechanism to art, as
typified in the relation of the gramophone to music.

Whatever the relation of mechanism to industry, it'
should be self-evident that it can have no real relation to'
art. The non-relation of mechanism to art will need no-
proof to the man who, in Plato’s words, u hath here been
educated as he ought and perceives in the quickest manner
whatever workmanship is defective, and whatever execution
is- unhandsome.” It is significant, moreover, that it was
through education in music that Plato would have attained
this very end, that one should, while still young and
k before he is able to understand reason,” instinctively
know wbat is to be praised and received into the soul, and
what is to be despised and rejected. This is the highest
understanding, to know without reasoning what is worthy
or unworthy. For those who have this understanding,
« reasonable proof” is superfluous, and at the same time
difficult.

; Let us, however, consider the gramophone. It
provides, you say, innocent entertainment for all It
will, be found that this statement needs considerable
qualification. In the first place, to a, person of culture—
especially musical culture—the sound of a gramophone is

GRAMOPHONES—-AND WHY NOT?

211

not an entertainment, but the refinement of torture. The
combination in one person of a highly developed musical
taste, and of pleasure in the sound of a gramophone could
hardly be imagined. Above all, those who are themselves
musicians understand what a blunting of sensibilities is
indicated in the acceptance of the gramophone approxima¬
tion as a substitute for music. The more often and more
fully you are pleased and satisfied by this approximation,
the more the finer musical sensibilities are dulled. So
much for the audience—the effect is to degrade the
standard of appreciation.

‘Ah, you have never heard a good gramophone/—so
I am often told. This mythical instrument I never
expect to hear. But let us suppose, by way of meeting nil
possible eventualities,* that a gramophone is 'available
which even a musician cannot distinguish from the real
thing. "Which is to he desired in a community, the
possession of musicians, or of machines that can amuse us?
Do we desire men, or things ? Every time you, accept a
gramophone in place of a man, you degrade the musician,
take from him his living, a.nd injure the group-soul of
your people. Bo it appears that your amusement is not
quite so innocent as it appeared.

But to return to the audience—do you really think
that the most perfect machine can take the place of a
living singer or player'? The performance of a musician
is never exactly repeated—on each occasion he adapts
himself insensibly to the different , conditions, and finds
:also in himself new expression through the old form,

* As a matter of fact, the eventuality considered is really impossi¬
ble, because it is’not the principle of the gramophone to, reproduce
the original sound, bat to produce vibrations sufficiently ..near .to
•the original one to have a similar effect, • • >

212

ESSAYS * IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

There is, moreover, Ms personal influence, the power of
his personality, the vision of a living man giving ex¬
pression to emotions in a disciplined traditional art language-
For pure hideousness and lifelessness, on the other hand,,
few objects could exceed a gramophone. The more decorated
it may be, the more its intrinsic ugliness is revealed.*

Again, musical instruments such as a vina, sitar or-
sarangi have each their own individuality, they possess an
individual temperament which the artist must understand
and with which he can co-operate. The more such an in¬
strument is played on, the richer it becomes in association,,
and the more it will be valued by the musician. The-
manufacture of such instruments is a means of culture to-
the craftsman; not so the mechanical production of the*
various parts of a gramophone or harmonium in great,
factories, where each part is made by a different man, and.
the whole put together by another. %

The intervention of mechanism between the musician*
and the sound is always, per se, disadvantageous. The-
most perfect music is. that of the human voice. The most*
perfect instruments are those stringed instruments where*
the musician^ hand is always in contact with the string-
producing the sound, so that every shade of his feeling can
be reflected in it. Even the piano is relatively an inferior-
instrument, and still more the harmonium, which is only

* It should be understood that the condemnation of the gramo¬
phone here given is concerned solely with its use as a substitute for
music as an art. Just as maehiuory has a due place in industry,,
-so even the gramophone has a use. This use is, howexer, as a
scientific instrument—not d s' an interpreter of human emotion.
In the recording of songs, the analysis of music for theoretical?
purposes, and especially,-perhaps, in the exact* study of the elabo-
rate melody of Indian music, the gramophone has a place. This,
however, is work for the few, and, so far Irem this use being-
recognized hitherto, we have had merely the hfcuseand not the uses
before us. .... * > ,

GRAMOPHONES—AND WHY NOT?

213

second to the gramophone as evidence of the degradation,
of musical taste in India.

One great disadvantage of mechanical instruments is
the facility they afford to the undisciplined and untrained
mind to attempt the work of the true musician. A few
rupees spent on a gramophone, a few months spent in
playing with one finger on a harmonium, and the half-
educated philistine of to-day is prepared to dispense with
the services of the interpreters of national music, disciplined
by years of study and training to the expression of the
highest ideals of the race consciousness.

It will be seen that the use of the harmonium 'is only
in a degree less vicious. Easy to learn, it degrades popular
taste almost as effectively as the gramophone displaces the
trained musician, and destroys the true character
of Indian music, and the voice-quality even of the trained
musician who makes use of it. These two instruments, if
care be not taken, will in a few years more complete the
vulgarisation of Indian music.

The highest ideal of nationality is that of service*
India, by the scorn which she has cast upon her own arts*
by the degradation of standard in her own culture, here
sufficiently evidenced by the possibility of finding pleasure
in a gramophone or a harmonium, is casting aside this
highest privilege of service. Nations are judged not by
what they assimilate, but by what they contribute to
human culture. India, by her blindness to the beauty
that till yesterday was everywhere in and around her in
art and music, is forfeiting this privilege of service.
Eor no man of another nation will come to learn of India*
if her teachers be gramophones and harmoniums and

BY THE SAME AUTHOB.

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