Compared with the mysterious
and grandiose past of India, the ancient Aryavarta, her present
is a natural Indian ink background, the black shadow of a bright
picture, the inevitable evil in the cycle of every nation.
India
has become decrepit and has fallen down, like a huge memorial of
antiquity, prostrate and broken to pieces. But the most
insignificant of these fragments will for ever remain a treasure
for the archeologist and the artist, and, in the course of time,
may even afford a clue to the philosopher and the psychologist.
"Ancient Hindus built like giants and finished their work like
goldsmiths," says Archbishop Heber, describing his travel in India.
In his description of the Taj-Mahal of Agra, that veritable eighth
wonder of the world, he calls it "a poem in marble." He might
have added that it is difficult to find in India a ruin, in the
least state of preservation, that cannot speak, more eloquently
than whole volumes, of the past of India, her religious aspirations,
her beliefs and hopes.
There is not a country of antiquity, not even excluding the Egypt
of the Pharaohs, where the development of the subjective ideal
into its demonstration by an objective symbol has been expressed
more graphically, more skillfully, and artistically, than in India.
The whole pantheism of the Vedanta is contained in the symbol of
the bisexual deity Ardhanari. It is surrounded by the double
triangle, known in India under the name of the sign of Vishnu.
By his side lie a lion, a bull, and an eagle.
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