QUOTES ON HINDU SCRIPTURES - I

SANATANA DHARMA

Hinduism - part 4-A

SCRIPTURES

Quotes
by the Most Knowledgeable

I dedicate this blog to my late Mother, Srimati (Mrs.) Kusum Satchidanand Sinha, who passed away on the 1^st of January, 1999.

The Four Vedas
Rig, Sama, Yajur & Atharva

I have written about what ‘Sanatana Dharma’ 'सनातन धर्म'  stands for, in the first blog. Then, in the following two posts I wrote about the two symbols, the 'Aum ॐ'  and the 'Swastika स्वस्तिक' which represent the ideology and philosophy of Hinduism.

In my fourth blog on the subject I started by writing about the scriptures of Sanatana Dharma. However, as I was researching and learning more about them something struck me dramatically. I came across some profound intellectual quotes from some of the greatest minds of last two centuries. It convinced me that I should be putting these on the blog before I write about the scriptures. These quotes are great insights into great intellectual minds who despite being renowned Scientists, Public figures, great thinkers, Philosophers and Theologists of their times, read these scriptures and were greatly influenced by them.

Before I write about the scriptures, this is my tribute to these great visionaries who have/had greater knowledge than I do presently.

FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN MULLER : (1823-1900) German philologist and Orientalist.

Max Muller

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India." 

"And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life ... again I should point to India."

"I maintain that for everybody who cares for himself, for his ancestors, for his history, for his intellectual development, a study of Vedic literature is indispensable ".

^"The Upanishads उपनिषद्  are the.....sources of .....the Vedanta वेदान्त  philosophy, a system in which human speculation seems to me to have reached its very acme."

"I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood."

- The MahaBharat - 
The Scene when Lord Krishna sermons Arjuna
(this sermon is the Srimad Bhagvatam (Bhagvad-Gita)

"The Vedic literature opens to us a chamber in the education of human race to which we can find no parallel anywhere else. Whoever cares for the historical growth of our language and thought, whoever cares for the first intelligent development of religion and mythology, whoever cares for the first foundation of Science, Astronomy, Metronomy, Grammar and Etymology, whoever cares for the first intimation of the first philosophical thoughts, for the first attempt at regulating family life, village life and state life as founded on religion, ceremonials, traditions and contact must in future pay full attention to the study of Vedic वैदिक  literature."

"In the Rig Veda ऋग वेद  we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah...the Veda is the oldest book in existence..."

"Historical records (Sanskrit litratures) संस्कृत ग्रन्थ extend in some respects so far beyond all records and have been preserved to us in such perfect and legible documents, that we can learn from them lessons which we can learn nowhere else... and supply missing links." 

In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as the Upanishad. It has been the solace of my death... If these words of Schopenhauer required any endorsement I should willingly give it as the result of my own experience during a long life devoted to the study of many philosophies and many religions."

"It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedanta वेदान्त  should have been slowly elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy, as in mounting last steps of the swaying spire of a Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lighting. Stone follows on stone after regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman (soul) आत्मा  or Brahman (God) ब्राह्मण ."

Romain Rolland (1866-1944): French Nobel laureate, Author, Thinker and Professor of the history of music at the Sorbonne

Nobel Laurette
Romain Rolland

"If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India....For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay." 

(Note: Until recently it was believed that the Vedas were written between 1500-2500 bce. However, scientific evidences prove that these are at least 11,000 years old)

"Let us return to our eagle's nest in the Himalayas.  It is waiting for us, for it is ours, eaglets of Europe, we need not renounce any part of our real nature...whence we formerly took our flight."

"Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief." 

"The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe." 

SWAMI VIVEKANAND:  (1863-1902) Founder of VEDANTA SOCIETY, Preacher and Philosopher

Swami Vivekanand

"The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti (freedom) मुक्ति, freedom from bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery."

The Lord has declared to Hindus in His incarnation as Krishna: "I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there."

"I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance."

“The time has come for the Hinduism of the Rishis ऋषि  to become dynamic. Shall we stand by whilst alien hands attempt to destroy the fortress of the Ancient Faith?…shall we remain passive or shall we become aggressive, as in the days of old, preaching unto the nations the glory of the Dharma? (धर्म). In order to rise again, India must be strong and united, and must focus all its living forces. To bring this about is the meaning of my sanyasa (renunciation) - सन्यास !”

"To my mind', our religion is truer than any other religion, because it never conquered. Because it never shed blood, because its mouth always shed on all, words of blessing, of peace, words of love and sympathy. It is here and here alone that the ideals of toleration were first preached. And it is here and here alone that toleration and sympathy become practical; it is theoretical in every other country; it is here and here alone, that the Hindu builds mosques for the Mohammedans and churches for the Christians.”

JULIUS ROBERT OPPENHEIMER - (1904-1967): Scientist, philosopher. A theoretical  physicist and the Supervising Scientist for the Manhattan Project, the developer of the atomic bomb.

He says about the Bhagvad Gita: “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.”

Oppenheimer,
The Nuclear Physicist

"Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries."

"The general notions about human understanding… which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist बौद्ध and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find [in modern physics] is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.In this context it is worth emphasizing that India’s contribution of Buddhism to China (and other countries of the region) is by no means insubstantial. These civilizations would hardly exist without the Indian contribution in all aspects of culture— from science and technology, the arts, philosophy and spirituality.”

Oppenheimer's spontaneous conjunction of a Hindu mystical poem with a nuclear explosion was of great symbolic significance. Nowhere in Western literature could he have found an almost clinical description of mystical rapture that also fits the description of a nuclear explosion in the outer world."The general notions about human understanding...which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture, they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom."

"Where can we look for sages like those whose systems of philosophy were prototypes of those of Greece: to whose works Plato, Thales & Pythagoras were disciples? Where do I find astronomers whose knowledge of planetary systems yet excites wonder in Europe as well as the architects and sculptors whose works claim our admiration, and the musicians who could make the mind oscillate from joy to sorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modes and varied intonation?" 

ALAIN DANIELOU: a.k.a  Shiv Sharan (1907-1994):
son of a French aristocrat, author of numerous books on philosophy, religion, history and arts of India

Alain Danielou

"Under the name of Gandharva Vedas गन्धर्व वेद, a general theory of sound with its metaphysics and physics appears to have been known to the ancient Hindus. From such summaries: The ancient Hindus were familiar with the theory of sound (Gandharva Veda), and its metaphysics and physics. The hymns of the Rig Veda ऋग वेद  contain the earliest examples of words set to music, and by the time of the Sama Veda सम वेद  a complicated system of chanting had been developed. By the time of Yajur Veda यजुर वेद, a variety of professional musicians had appeared, such as lute players, drummers, flute players, and conch blowers."

"Hinduism especially in its oldest, Shivaite form, never destroyed its past. It is the sum of human experience from the earliest times. Non-dogmatic, it allows every one to find his own way.”

Shiv-Shankar -शिव -शंकर

He also noted as early as 1947 that "the Egyptian myth of Osiris seemed directly inspired from a Shivaite story of the Puranas and that at any rate, Egyptians of those times considered that Osiris had originally come from India mounted on a bull (Nandi) नन्दी , the traditional transport of Shiva शिव ."

‘Ultimate reality being beyond man's understanding, the most contradictory theories or beliefs may be equally inadequate approaches to reality. Ecological (as we would say today), it sees man as part of a whole, where trees, animals, men and spirits should live in harmony and mutual respect, and it asks everyone to cooperate and not endanger the artwork of the creator. It therefore opposes the destruction of nature, of species, the bastardization of races, the tendency of each one to do what he was not born for. It leaves every one free to find his own way of realization human and spiritual be it ascetic or erotic or both. It does not separate intellect and body, mind and matter, but sees the Universe as a living continuum.  "I believe any sensible man is unknowingly a Hindu and that the only hope for man lies in the abolition of the erratic, dogmatic, unphilosophical creeds people today call religions."

"The Hindu lives in eternity. He is profoundly aware of the relativity of space and time and of the illusory nature of the apparent world. Hinduism is a religion without dogmas. Since its origin, Hindu society has been built on rational bases by sages who sought to comprehend man's nature and role in creation as a whole.”

HENRY DAVID THOREAU - (1817-1862): American Philosopher, social critic, transcendentalist, Unitarian and writer

He alluded often to water---the metaphor is clear---the Gita's wisdom teachings are the purifier of the mind: "By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent." 

Living by The Ganga and trying to "practice the yoga faithfully" during his two years at Walden, he wrote: "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma ब्रह्मा, and Vishnu विष्णु  and Indra इंद्र , who still sits in his temple on the River Ganga गंगा reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water---jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganga (Ganges)."

At Walden he put the Bhagavad Gita भग्वद-गीता to the test, while proving to his generation that "money is not required to buy one necessary for the soul."

In the 1840s Thoreau's discovered India, his enthusiasm for Indian philosophy was thus sustained. From 1849-1854, he borrowed a large number of Indian scriptures from the Harvard University Library, and the year 1855 when his English friend Thomas Chilmondeley sent him a gift of 44 Oriental books which contained such titles as the Rig Veda Samhita ऋग वेद सम्हिता, and Mandukya Upanishads मन्दुक्य  उपनिषद् , the Vishnu Puranas विष्णु पुराण , the Institutes of Manu, the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagvata Purana भग्वद  पुराण etc. 

In Indian contemplation he found a "wonderful power of abstraction" and mental powers which were able to withdraw from the concerns of the empirical world to steady the mind and free it from distractions. "What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky."

"Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climes and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night."

A verse from the  -Bhagvat Gita'
in the epic 'Maha-Bharat'

"I would say to the readers of the Scriptures, if they wish for a good book, read the Bhagvat-Geeta. It deserves to be read with reverence even by Yankees...."Besides the Bhagvat-Geeta, our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green... Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light it is destined to derive thence."

"How much more admirable the Bhagavad Geeta than all the ruins of the East.'

"The Vedas contain a sensible account of God." "The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable feat. Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindus and in such a case there is no other truth than sincerity. Truth is such by reference to the heart of man within, not to any standard without."

 “The Hindoos are most serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes, is admirable.”

"I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganga (Ganges), and seems as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour, unworn by time with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English dress as indifferently as the Sancrit."

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER - (1788-1860): German philosopher and writer. Among his disciples were such thinkers as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud, who takes a large part of his psychological theory from the writings of Schopenhauer. 

"There is no religion or philosophy so sublime and elevating as Vedanta."

Arthur Schopenhauer

About Upanishads Schopenhauer writes: "The Indian air surrounds us, the original thoughts of kindled spirits.....And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition! It is the most profitable and most elevating reading which is possible in the world."

"How entirely does the Oupnekhat (Upanishad) breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one, who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul!”

Schopenhauer was in search of a "philosophy which should be at once ethics and metaphysics. In the Upanisads he found - "tat twam asi"  (तत त्वं असी ), "that thou art".

"From every sentence (of the Upanishads) deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit...."In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people."

About the Upanishads, he said: "It has been the solace of my life - it will be the solace of my death."

To Schopenhauer the Upanishads were documents of  'almost superhuman conception,' whose authors could hardly be thought of as 'mere mortals.' He remarked: "How every line is of such strong, determined, and consistent meaning! And on every page we encounter deep, original, lofty thoughts, while the whole world is suffused with a high and holy seriousness."

The War of 'Kurukshetra'
in MahaBharat

He wrote in his book: "We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff.  "In India, our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought."

Schopenhauer regarded the Hindus as deeper thinkers than Europeans because their interpretation of the world was internal and intuitive, not external and intellectual. For intuition unites everything, the intellect divides everything. The Hindus saw that the "I" is a delusion, that the individual is merely phenomenal, and that the only reality is the Infinite One "That art Thou"

"According to me, the influence  of Sanskrit literature on our time will not be lesser than what was in the 16th century Greece's influence on Renaissance. One day, India's wisdom will flow again on Europe and will totally transform our knowledge and thought." 

Schopenhauer, had extracted from Indian philosophy its contempt for the mere intellect. He admitted “extracting philosophical outlook from the Vedanta and attempting to weld "empirical realism" with transcendental idealism."  

It is well-known that the book 'Oupnekhat' (Upanishad) always lay open on his table and he invariably studied it before retiring to rest.  He called the opening up of Sanskrit literature 'the greatest gift of our century', and predicted that the philosophy and knowledge of the Upanishads would becomes the cherished faith of the West. The Upanishads came to Schopenhauer as a new Gnosis or revelation. "That incomparable book," he says, "stirs the spirit of the very depths of the soul."

Ralph Emerson

RALPH WALDO EMERSON-(1803-1882) author, essayist, lecturer, philosopher, Unitarian minister who lectured on theology at Harvard University.

The first time he read the Bhagvad Geeta, the same evening he wrote: "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."

"By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible taste for Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited modish life, made up of trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, there is no remedy like the Oriental largeness. That astonishes and disconcerts English decorum. For once, there is thunder it never heard, light it never saw, and power which trifles with time and space. I am not surprised to find an Englishman like Warren Hastings, who had been struck with the grand style of thinking in the Indian writings, depreciating the prejudices of his countrymen while offering them a translation of the Bhagavat Gita. "

"All science is transcendental or else passes away. Botany is now acquiring the right theory - the avatars of Brahman will presently be the text-books of natural history."

"And of books, there is another which, when you have read, you shall sit for a while and then write a poem--[it is] the "Bhagvat-Geeta,"

WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT - (1767- 1835) Prussian minister of education, a brilliant linguist and the founder of the science of general linguistics

Wilhelm Von Humbolt

“I read the Indian poem for the first time when I was in my country estate in Silesia and, while doing so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and sublime thing to be found in the world. “

MARK TWAIN (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens) - (1835-19..) as Adventures of Huckleburry Finn, Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Following the Equator.10): Legendary American writier. Author of classics 

"So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked."

"Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition. The land that all men desire to see and having seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the globe combined."

"India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soul."

"Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India."

Twain was awed by Hindu tradition. He said, "the one land that all men desire to see, and having once seen, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined."

Dr. ARNOLD JOSEPH TOYNBEE - (1889-1975) the great British historian

"It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family." 

“So now we turn to India. This spiritual (आध्यात्मिक)gift, that makes a man human, is still alive in Indian souls. Go on giving the world Indian examples of it. Nothing else can do so much to help mankind to save itself from destruction.”

‘‘There may or may not be only one single absolute truth and only one single ultimate way of salvation. We do not know. But we do know that there are more approaches to truth than one, and more means of salvation than one.’’

‘‘This is a hard saying for adherents of the higher religions of the Judaic family (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but it is a truism for Hindus. The spirit of mutual good-will, esteem, and veritable love ... is the traditional spirit of the religions of the Indian family. This is one of India’s gifts to the world.’’

"At the close of this century, the world would be dominated by the West, but that in the 21st century India will conquer her conquerors." 

 "I guess that both the West and the world are getting to turn away from man - worshipping ideologies - Communism and secular individualism alike - and become converted to an Oriental religion coming neither from Russia nor from the West. I guess that this will be the Christian religion that came to the Greeks and the Romans from Palestine, with one or two elements in traditional Christianity discarded and replaced by a new element from India, I expect and hope that this avatar of Christianity will include the vision of God as being Love. But I also expect and hope that it will discard the other traditional Christian vision of God as being a jealous god, and that it will reject the self-glorification of this jealous god's "chosen people" as being unique. This is where India comes in, with her belief that there may be more than one illuminating and saving approach to the mystery of the universe."

Dr. ANNIE WOOD BESANT - (1847-1933): Freedom fighter for Indian Independence, member of the Indian National Congress, and of the Theosophical Society. She was a housewife, a propagator of atheism, a trade unionist, a feminist leader and a Fabian Socialist (and on its executive committee along with George Bernard Shaw), and a friend of Swami Vivekanand.

"After a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world, I find none so perfect , none so scientific, none so philosophical and none so spiritual that the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. Make no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil in to which India's roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out from its place.  And if Hindus do not maintain Hinduism who shall save it?  If India's own children do not cling to her faith who shall guard it. India alone can save India and India and Hinduism are one. "



"among the priceless teachings that may be found in the great Indian epic Mahabharata, there is none so rare and priceless as the Geeta (श्रीमद भग्वतम )."  

"This is the India of which I speak - the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother - they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past; and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life."

The MahaBharat
The Epic

 "India is the mother of religion. In her are combined science and religion in perfect harmony, and that is the Hindu religion, and it is India that shall be again the spiritual mother of the world."

"The religion based on the Vedas, the Sanatana Dharma सनातन धर्म  or Vaidika Dharma वैदिक  धर्म , is the oldest of living religions and stands unrivalled in the depth and splendor of its philosophy, while it yields to none in the purity of its ethical teachings, and in the flexibility and varied adaptation of its rites and ceremonies. It is like a river, which has shallows that a child may play in, and depths which the strongest diver cannot fathom. It is thus adapted to every human need, and there is nothing which any religion can add to its rounded perfection. The more it is studied and practiced, the more does it illuminate the intellect and satisfy the heart."

VICTOR COUSIN - (1792-1867) eminent French philosopher

"When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East--above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe--we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy." 

He has observed:  “The history of Indian philosophy is the abridge history of the philosophy of the world.” 

"India contains the whole history of philosophy in a nutshell."

JULES MICHELET - (1798 -1874) French writer and historian

"At its starting point in India, it was the birthplace of races and religions, the womb of the world." 

While seeking for the wisdom of ages, he cried at the commencement of his work, “The Bible of Humanity”: “The year 1863 will remain dear and blessed to me. Why? Because, I had read India’s sacred poem, the Ramayana.”

"Ramayana is the Divine poem, ocean of milk!"  he had said on discovering this ancient Scripture. 

“Each year, it is necessary to respire, to take breath again, to revive ourselves at the great living sources that forever keep their eternal freshness. Where can we find them if not at the cradle of our race, on the sacred summits from where descend the Indus and the Ganga....?

"That year will always remain a dear and cherished memory; it was the first time I had the opportunity to read the great sacred poem of India, the divine Ramayana. If anyone has lost the freshness of emotion, let him drink a long draught of life, and youth from that deep chalice."

रामायण  - The Ramayana

"Whoever has done or willed too much let him drink from this deep cup a long draught of life and youth...Everything is narrow in the West - Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant. Let me look toward lofty Asia, and the profound East for a little while. There lies my great poem, as vast as the Indian ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all living things, an ocean (without bottom or bound) of love, of pity, of clemency." 

Voltaire, Francois

FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOTAIRE-(1694-1774)

French writer, philosopher and a theist

"We have shown how much we (Europeans) surpass the Indians in courage and wickedness, and how inferior to them we are in wisdom. Our European nations have mutually destroyed themselves in this land where we only go in search of money, while the first Greeks travelled to the same land only to instruct themselves."

"I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganga-astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc."

"It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganga (Ganges) to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe..."

He described India as a country "on which all other countries had to rely, but which did not rely on anyone else." He also believed that Christianity derived from Hinduism. He wrote to and assured Fredrick the Great of Prussia that "our holy Christian religion is solely based upon the ancient religion of Brahma." 

WILL DURANT - (1885-1981) American historian

“Would like the West to learn from India, tolerance and gentleness and love for all living things”

Will Durant

"It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to us such questionable gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all our numerals and our decimal system. But these are not the essence of her spirit; they are trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future."

"Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for all living things."

"India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. Nothing should  more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India....This is the India that patient scholarship is now opening up like a new intellectual continent to that Western mind which only yesterday thought civilization an exclusive Western thing."

"As flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name and form, goes to the divine person who is beyond all." Such a theory of life and death will not please Western man, whose religion is as permeated with individualism as are his political and economic institutions. But it has satisfied the philosophical Hindu mind with astonishing continuity.”

Maha Rishi Ved Vyasa
The sage who Penned the Vedas
and dictated the MahaBharata

"Even in Europe and America, this wistful theosophy has won millions upon millions of followers, from lonely women and tired men to Schopenhauer and Emerson. Who would have thought that the great American philosopher of individualism would give perfect expression to the Hindu conviction in his poem 'Brahma', that individuality is a delusion?"

He wrote this about the Upanishads, and how they had begun to stir Western thought: "They are the oldest extant philosophy and psychology of our race; the surprisingly subtle and patient effort of man to understand the mind and the world, and their relation. The Upanishads are as old as Homer, and as modern as Kant."

“But hardly had the British established themselves in India before editions and translations of the Upanishads began to stir Western thought. Fichte conceived an idealism strangely like Shankara’s शंकर; Schopenhauer almost incorporated Buddhism, the Upanishads and the Vedanta into his philosophy; and Schelling, in his old age, thought the Upanishads the maturest wisdom of mankind. Nietzsche had dwelt too long with Bismark and the Greeks to care for India , but in the end he valued above all other ideas his haunting notion of eternal recurrence – a variant of reincarnation.”

ALDOUS HUXLEY - (1894-1963) the English novelist and essayist

“Gita is for the whole world”

"The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. The Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the spiritual thoughts ever to have been made."

He observed that while historical religions have been violent, eternity-philosophies like "Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism, which have gone hand in hand with the political and economic oppression of the colored people."

"The Gita occupies an intermediate position between scripture and theology, for it contains the poetical qualities of the first with the clear-cut methodicalness of the second."

"The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people."

"The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi तत  त्वं  असि ('That art thou'); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is."

JOSEPH CAMPBELL - (1904-1987): prolific writer, dedicated editor, beloved teacher, inspiring lecturer, avid scholar of spiritual and cultural development.

The Four Vedas

"It is ironic that our great western civilization, which has opened to the minds of all mankind the infinite wonders of a universe of untold billions of galaxies should be saddled with the tightest little cosmological image known to mankind? The Hindus with their grandiose Kalpas कल्प  and their ideas of the divine power which is beyond all human category (male or female). Not so alien to the imagery of modern science that it could not have been put to acceptable use."

"There is an important difference between the Hindu and the Western ideas. In the Biblical tradition, God creates man, but man cannot say that he is divine in the same sense that the Creator is, where as in Hinduism, all things are incarnations of that power. We are the sparks from a single fire. And we are all fire. Hinduism believes in the omnipresence of the Supreme God in every individual. There is no "fall". Man is not cut off from the divine. He requires only to bring the spontaneous activity of his mind stuff to a state of stillness and he will experience that divine principle with him."

"There is an illuminating story told of the deity Krishna कृष्ण , who, in the form of a human child, was raised among a little company or tribe of herdsmen. One day he said to them, when he saw them preparing to worship one of the great Gods of the Brahminical pantheon: "But why do you worship a deity in the sky? The support of your life is here, in your cattle. Worship these!" Whereupon, they hung garlands around the necks of their cattle and paid them worship. This wonderful art of recognizing the divine presence in all things, as a ubiquitous presence, is one of the most striking features of Oriental life, and is particularly prominent in Hinduism."

"I have found no people in Europe more religious, none more patiently persevering in common duties."

"Starting from the Vedas, Hinduism has ended in embracing something from all religions, and in presenting phases suited to all minds. It is all tolerant, all-compliant, all-comprehensive, all-absorbing."

Lord Shri RamaChandra
(incarnation of Vishnu)
Hero of the epic 'Ramayana'  - The most
widely read scripture in Modern times

"It must be admitted, however, that, in exhibiting pictures of domestic life and manners, the Sanskrit epics are even more true and real than the Greek and Roman. In the delineation of women the Hindu poet thrown aside all exaggerated coloring and drawn from nature - Kaikeyi कैकेई , Kausalya कौशल्या , Mandodari मन्दोदरी  (favorite wife of Ravana रावण ), and even the humble-backed Manthara मंथरा  are all drawn to the very life. Sita सीता, Draupadi द्रौपदी, and Damayanti दमयन्ती  engage our affections and our interest for more than Helen or even Penelope. Indeed Hindu wives are generally perfect patterns of conjugal fidelity; can it be doubted that, in these delightful portraits of the Pativrata पतिव्रता  or purity and simplicity of Hindu domestic manners in early times."

"Indeed, in depicting scenes of domestic affection, and expressing those universal feelings and emotions which belong to human nature in all time and in all places, Sanskrit epic poetry is unrivalled even by Greek Epics.....In the Indian epics, such passages abound, and besides giving a very high idea of the purity and happiness of domestic life in ancient India, indicate a capacity in Hindu woman for the discharge of the most sacred and important social duties."

"Yet there are not wanting indications in the Indian Epics of a higher degree of civilization than that represented in the Homeric poems. The battlefields of the Ramayana रामायण and Mahabharata महाभारत ...are not made barbarously wanton cruelties; and the description of Ayodhya अयोध्या  and Lanka लंका  imply far greater luxury and refinement than those of Sparta and Troy."

Laxman, Rama & Sita, Hanuman, (kneeling)
The RAMAYANA

"He (Rama) is the type of a perfect husband, son, and brother. Sita also rises in character far above Helen and even above Penelope, both in her sublime devotion and loyalty to her husband, and her indomitable patience and endurance under suffering and temptation.....it may be affirmed generally that the whole tone of the Ramayana is certainly above that of the Iliad."

"It may be with truth be asserted that no description of Hinduism can be exhaustive which does not touch on almost every religious and philosophical idea that the world has ever known. It is all-tolerant, all-comprehensive, all-compliant, all-absorbing. It has its spiritual and its material aspect; it’s esoteric and exoteric; it’s subjective and objective; it’s rational and irrational. It has one side for the practical; another for the severely moral; another for the devotional and the imaginative; another for the philosophical and speculative."

Sir MONIER WILLIAMS - (1819-1899) Indologist and head of the Oxford's Boden Chair 

Monier WIlliams

"Indeed, if I may be allowed the anachronism, the Hindus were Spinozites more than two thousand years before the existence of Spinoza; and Darwinians may centuries before Darwin; and evolutionists many centuries before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the scientists of our time, and before any word like 'evolution' existed in any language of the world."

“Pythagoras and Plato both believed in this doctrine, and that they were indebted for it to Hindu writers.”

"Anyone who has studied the great Hindu writings cannot but be struck by the moral tone which everywhere pervades them...constantly represent the present condition of human life as the result of actions in the previous existence. Hence a right course of present conduct becomes an all-important consideration as bearing on future happiness...."

“Whatever conclusions we form as to the source of the first astronomical ideas in the world it is probable that we owe to the Hindus the invention of algebra and its application to astronomy and geometry. And that from them the Arabs received the numerical symbols and decimal notation, which now used everywhere in Europe have rendered untold services to the cause of science.”

“The motions of the sun and moon were carefully observed by the Hindus and with such success that their determination of the moon’s synodical revolution is a much more correct one than the Greeks ever achieved. They introduced the period of Jupiter with those of the sun and moon into the regulation of their calendar in the form of sixty years common to them and the Chaldeans. They were keenly interested in logic and grammar, and in medicine and surgery they once kept pace with the most enlightened people of the world.”

"The Panini grammar reflects the wondrous capacity of the human brain, which till today no other country has been able to produce except India."

SYLVAIN LEVI-(1863-1935) French scholar, Orientalist-wrote on Eastern religion, literature, and history. Taught Sanskrit at Sorbonne, lecturer at the school of higher studies in Paris 

"The Mahabharata is not only the largest, but also the grandest of all epics, as it contains throughout a lively teaching of morals under a glorious garment of poetry."

GEORGE WIHELM FREIDRICH HEGEL-(1887-1961): German philosopher, philosophical predecessor of the New England Transcendentalists.

HEGEL

He wrote in his "lectures on the Philosophy of History." Hegel belongs to the period of "German idealism" in the decades following Kant. He wrote: “India has always been an object of yearning, a realm of wonder, a world of magic.”

“India is the land of dreams. India had always dreamt - more of the Bliss that is man's final goal. And this has helped India to be more creative in history than any other nation. Hence the effervescence of myths and legends, religious and philosophies, music, and dances and the different styles of architecture."

"India has created a special momentum in world history as a country to be searched for."

He was the first to proclaim that, alongside Greece and Germany, India had produced the greatest and most profound philosophers. And the great Hegel himself, who understood India far more profoundly, was to remark in his work on The Philosophy of History: "It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought..."

ERWIN SCHROEDINGER-(1887-1961) Austrian theoretical physicist, professor at several universities in Europe. He was awarded the Nobel prize Quantum Mechanics, in 1933.

“the stages of human development are to strive for Possession (Artha-अर्थ), Knowledge (Dharma-धर्म ), Ability (Kama-काम), Being (Moksha-मोक्ष )”

“Nirvana - निर्वाण is a state of pure blissful knowledge.. It has nothing to do with individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further – when man dies his karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.”

"insight is not new...From the early great Upanishads the recognition Atman = Brahman (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent, the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts."

“Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.” 

NOTE: Schrodinger’s influential What is life? the physical aspect of the living cell & Mind and matter (1944) also used Vedic ideas. The book became instantly famous although it was criticized by some of its emphasis on Indian ideas. Francis Clark, the co-discoverer of the DNA code, credited this book for key insights that led him to his revolutionary discovery."insight is not new...From the early great Upanishads the recognition Atman = Brahman (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent, the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts."

“Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.”

"The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West."

Dr. JEAN LeMee – (1931)  Author of the Hymns from the Rig Veda says:

"Precious stones or durable materials - gold, silver, bronze, marble, onyx or granite - have been used by ancient people in an attempt to immortalize themselves. Not so however the ancient Vedic Aryans. They turned to what may seem the most volatile and insubstantial material of all - the spoken word ...The pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes, and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, traveling like a great wave through the living substance of mind. .."

"The Rig Veda is a glorious song of praise to the Gods, the cosmic powers at work in Nature and in Man. Its hymns record the struggles, the battles, and victories, the wonder, the fears, the hopes, and the wisdom of the Ancient Path Makers. Glory be to Them!" 

Dr. CARL SAGAN - (1934-1996) Astrophysict, in his book, Cosmos says:

Carl Sagan

"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.  And there are much longer time scales still. There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who, after a Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic dream."

(Note: The life time of our star, the Sun is approximately 8.64 billion years- Siddharth S. Sinha)

नटराज
Natraja

"The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Lord Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja नटराज , the Dance King. In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, with billions of years from now will be utterly destroyed."

“These profound and lovely images are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical ideas." Sagan continues, "A millennium before Europeans were wiling to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions"

The Sun

In the episode entitled "The Edge of Forever" in the "Cosmos" television series, Carl Sagan visits India, and by way of introducing some of the bizarre ideas of modern physics, he acknowledges that of all the world's philosophies and religions those originating in India are remarkably consistent with contemporary scenarios of space, time and existence.

In his book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, he remarks:

"Immanuel Velikovsky (the author of Earth in Upheaval) in his book Worlds in Collision, notes that the idea of four ancient ages terminated by catastrophe is common to Indian as well as to Western sacred writing. However, in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Vedas, widely divergent numbers of such ages, including an infinity of them, are given; but, more interesting, the duration of the ages between major catastrophes is specified as billions of years. .”

“The idea that scientists or theologians, with our present still puny understanding of this vast and awesome cosmos, can comprehend the origins of the universe is only a little less silly than the idea that Mesopotamian astronomers of 3,000 years ago – from whom the ancient Hebrews borrowed, during the Babylonian captivity, the cosmological accounts in the first chapter of Genesis – could have understood the origins of the universe. We simply do not know”

The Hindu holy book, the Rig Veda (X:129), has a much more realistic view of the matter: 

“Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it?
Whence was it born, whence came creation?
The gods are later than this world’s formation;
Who then can know the origins of the world?
None knows whence creation arose;
And whether he has or has not made it;
He who surveys it from the lofty skies,
Only he knows- or perhaps he knows not."

*****

These were a few quotes I gathered from the innumerable quotes.

Kindly send me your comments if you would be interested in reading some more.

I am a student of ‘Santana Dharma’, and this is my humble presentation for those who are interested learning more about Sanatana Dharma. I welcome feeds, comments and further quides.

Siddharth S. Sinha

सिद्धार्थ स सिन्हा

ssselan@yahoo.in

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