In India, Sanskrit and the Sanskrit
literatures have been almost forgotten but it has influenced the European
writers in a big way. Very recently it was found in New-Zeeland that if a
student knows Sanskrit it can very easily master the English. So Sanskrit is
included in the school syllabus there.
In the beginning, the Sanskrit works which
have influenced the European writers were three works: the Jataka stories, the Panchatantra
and the Hitopadesa. Being
stories, communicating classical Hindu themes with ethical message those suited
the medieval taste. They rationally appealed to all those who loved to listen
to and tell mysterious stories. People used to hear and enjoy such stories,
especially when they moved from one place to another as merchants or soldiers
or pilgrims or travelers or ascetics .
The story of
Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer’s (1340-1400), was based on one of the Jataka stories. In the similar
manner, the tales of Panchtantra by Vishnu Sharma mixed up with some
tales of the Hitopadesa and
the Kathasaritsangare came to be known to the literary world as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpai. It is almost a source of much European literature
related with folk-lore tradition. -1
The earliest English references to these tales are found in Sir Thomas North’s
(1535-1601), The Moral Philosophy of Doni.
For centuries the India that
evoked some response in the western brains and world was the India of tale collections or the India of
amazing wealth. The India
that Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) mentioned in his Suppliant Women:
And tales I know, how
Indian women roam;
By camels drawn, each
in the tented home. -2
This India was not the golden India of later
times. The India
that appears colorfully in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale in the account of ‘Emetreus Kyng of Inde’ (11.2155-2189)-3,
is the India of Gold. Shakespeare (1564-1616) mentions India which
testifies to this golden Inde idea of tradition. -4 Robert
Ralston Cawley in the section on ‘The East Indies’ in his book, The Voyagers and Elizabethan Drama, echoes that with the golden India concept were related
a range of other ideas indicating wonderful geography, anthropology, flora,
fauna and customs.-5 Yet it was from the late sixteenth century
onwards that pragmatic accounts of India began to appear, such as the accounts
of the Dutch missionary Abraham Roger, Edward Terry, Thomas Coryate (1577-1617)-6,
John Ogilvy (1600-1676), Richard Eden (1521-1576)-7, Richard Willes
and Sir Thomas Herbert. The impact of the belief of India as an actual rather that amazing
country can be seen in Restoration Literature and the orientation of Samuel
Johnson’s (1709-1784) Rasseles (1759) and Voltaire’s (1694-1778) Zadig.
Prior to the
eighteenth century, India
for Western World was known for her wealth and affluence. Western people were
concerned only with the gold and other valuable materials. But at the end of
the eighteenth century their approach was changed. Now India was also
known for her rich philosophy. With the luxury goods, philosophical ideas also
traveled to western world from India .
Times Literary Supplement, comments:
Between East and West
the cultural wind, blows both ways,
though a hasty
present-day inspection might suggest that
it
blew mainly eastward . . . . The wind from the East is quieter,
older, less immediately
detectable; it penetrates and mingles,
and its note is deep .
. . . Today the student from the Orient may
find himself to some
degrees at home in Western Thought
for the elements of his
own cultures, that are mixed in it.-8
Towards the fag end of the
eighteenth century, curiosity in Indian literature and philosophy was aroused
in the West by the translations of some major Indian scriptures and literary
works. Germans were the first to show curiosity in the Indian writings on
religion, philosophy and literature. About five hundred years ago we find a
German translation of the Panchatantra,
entitled as Panchatantra Das Buch der
byspel der alten Wyseen, by Anthonius Von Pforr (1488)-9 ,
based on Sanskrit via Phalavi, Old Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. Bhartrihari’s
verses were translated into German in 1663.-10 B.Hirzal translated Sakuntala in 1833. -11
The translation of the Manusmriti
by J.C.Huttner appeared in 1797 and one of the Upanishads in 1808.-12
A wave of translations came out after Peiper (1834) who enlarged the value of
his metrical depiction by copious grammatical, mythological and philosophical
notes. Max Muller (1823-1900) contributed greatly to the translation of
Sanskrit literature as editor of The
Sacred Books of the East. He translated Hitopadesa (1844), Meghduta
and parts of the Rig-Veda.-13
Bhagavad Gita’s Journey To West
In India ,
due to the faulty secular policy and vote bank politics this great book has
been rendered controversial book. So much so, in Soviet Russia very recently it
was banned and it was declared a book preaching violence. But Bgagavad Gita has influenced and
impressed large number of western scholars. This book is more than five thousand years
old.
J.W.Hauer, a Sanskrit Scholar who served for a few years
as missionary in India ,
gave to the Bhagavad Gita a
central place in German faith.-14 A huge number of German scholars were deeply
influenced by the Indian philosophy. Kant (1724-1804), Herder (1744-1803),
Fitche (1762-1814), Hegel (1770-1831),
Schlegal (1772-1829), Schiller (1759-1805) and
Goethe-15 (1749-1832) are very significant names in this regard.
Friedrich Von Schlegal (1767-1829) who translated the Bhagvad Gita, quoted a few passages of the Bhagvad Gita in his own metrical
translation (1808), collectively with lines from the Ramayana; Manusmriti and Sakuntala. The German pioneer
Baron Wilhelm Von Humboldt started studying Sanskrit in 1821. After reading the
Bhagvad Gita he thanked God
that he had lived long enough to read such an inspiring book. He delivered a
famous lecture on the Bhagvad Gita
before the Academy of Science in Berlin in
1825.-16 In German there is a museum named after the name of Herder
‘Herder Museum India
during the last more than a thousand years are conserved.
Schlegal (1772-1829), Schiller (1759-1805) and
Goethe-15 (1749-1832) are very significant names in this regard.
Friedrich Von Schlegal (1767-1829) who translated the Bhagvad Gita, quoted a few passages of the Bhagvad Gita in his own metrical
translation (1808), collectively with lines from the Ramayana; Manusmriti and Sakuntala. The German pioneer
Baron Wilhelm Von Humboldt started studying Sanskrit in 1821. After reading the
Bhagvad Gita he thanked God
that he had lived long enough to read such an inspiring book. He delivered a
famous lecture on the Bhagvad Gita
before the
There are also evidences
of the early Roman contact with India ,
though the contacts are limited to trade only. But quickly these contacts
resulted in intellectual interactions. As a result of this interaction, Anquetil
du Perron (1731-1805) translated Upanishads
into Latin. In Surat , Gujrat , India
The
Nelopakhyana episode of the Mahabharata was translated from
Sanskrit in 1819,-19 while the first Latin collection from the Gita was published by O.Frank in
1820. A.W Von Schlegal was the first to bring out a complete Latin translation
of the Bhagvad Gita in 1823.
With the support of Goethe, Von Schlegal also started a Latin translation of
the Ramayana but did it only
partly.-20 Lassen also contributed in the field of translating Gita and other Hindu scriptures
in the European languages.
The
invasion of the East India Company in India
brought England and India nearer
not only politically and commercially but also culturally. In England Sir William Jones (1756-1794), who passed
away at the age of forty eight was a pioneer and almost a crusader in this
field.-21 He lived in India for ten long years. As proved
by the records, he was the first English intellectual to command the Sanskrit
language and interpreted the Eastern classics to the West. He was also and the
first to translate Kalidasa’s Abhigyan
Sakuntalam into English in 1789.-22 William Jones also was
the first man to bring out an edition of a Sanskrit text. This was a short poem
entitled Ritusemhara or Cycle of the Season published in
1792-23. In the same year he published his English translation of
Jaydeva’s Gitagovindam. -24
The first Governor General of
Literature is also
a philosophy. Though some critics may not agree with this notion. There are
countless examples of seer poets enlightening ancient truths. Such graceful
revelations are universal spiritual truths to which no one person, age, or
religion can lay claim but certainly Hindu scriptures are closest to universal
truth. In their effort to unravel the
mystery of life and death poets and writers tried to make rapport with the Indian
spiritual reality, like Hindu sages.
J. Marshman and William Carey
edited The Ramayana of
Maharishi Valmeeki in the original Sanskrit -33 with a prose
translation and explanatory notes in 1806. H.H. Wilson came to India as a
doctor of the East India Company but was soon interested in Hindu scriptures.
In 1813 he published his first translation of Kalidasa’s Meghduta and Select
Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus. -34 from the
original Sanskrit. He also prepared the first Sanskrit English Dictionary in
1819-35 and was the first to take up the chair of Sanskrit in Oxford in 1832. In this
respect Britain lagged
behind the French where the first Chair of Sanskrit in Paris
was established 1814 and in Germany
where it was first set up in Bonn
in 1818. Sir Edwin Arnold in 1860 translated Hitopadesa, in 1875 Jaydeva’s Gita-Govinda and finally in 1885 The Song Celestial i.e. the Gita. His famous book, The Light of Asia is also
heavily influenced by the Indian philosophy especially the Gita. Charles Wilkins’ translations of the Bhagavad Gita (1785), the Hitopadesa (1787), the story of Sakuntala from the Mahabharata
(1793); A Grammar of the Sanskrit Language (1823)-36 were parts of
that zeal for Indology, that from the last quarter of the eighteenth century
onwards, extend over a number of western countries such as Britain, America,
France, Germany, France, Russia, Italy and others.
These
translations and transcriptions of Sanskrit scriptures and literary books
created a culture in Europe in the nineteenth
century, influencing the important English writers. Of all the translations of
Indian scriptures and literarily works, the translation of the Bhagavad Gita exercised the broadest
and deepest influence on the imagination of western writers and thinkers. The
reasons are not difficult to understand. The Bhagavad Gita has a significance and message which is apparently
so universally human that its meaning remains significant to all ages and
cultures. It is not a ‘neutral text’, but one which has played the most noteworthy
role in India ’s
religious and philosophical movements as well as in the political life of a common
man. It is one book which is not sectarian because, it does not drive its sacredness
from the subjective belief of its worshippers. The Bhagavad Gita is replete with dynamic inspiration which
lifts up and moves the heart and mind of the reader. D.S. Sarma rightly points
out:
We may read the Bhagavad
Gita a thousand times and
think we have exhausted
its meaning, but the next time
we go to it we get a new
light, which we never dreamt
of before. The
suggestiveness of the wonderful book is
really infinite, If
only we begin to interpret it for ourselves
In terms of our own
experience. -37
Bhagavad Gita and the
English Literature
The Gita
influenced the large number of English men of letters but in a big way, famous
Romantic poet S.T.Coleridge was the first important English poet to respond to
the Wilkins’ translation of the Bhagavad
Gita. Coleridge more than any other of his generation poets, was familiar
with the works of a number of ideologists such as Sir William Jones.
In this field the Asiatic
Researchers, founded by Sir William Jones did a lot. It also holds the
proceeding of the Bengal Asiatic Society which was established in 1784, and The Ordinance of Manu; written in
1794, is also an important name. Major Runnel,
prepared the first correct map of India in his Bengal Atlas in 1779-38, Thomas Maurice’s History of Hindustan 1795 -39,
Sir William Ouseley’s, Oriental
Collection, 3 vols., 1797-99-40, and Jean Antoine Dubois’ Hindu, Manners, Customs and Ceremonies,
in English was translated from the original text in French in 1816. -41.
Kathleen Coburn observes:
mention’s Wilkins’ translation
in connection with the poet’s
projected poem of the fancy and the
understanding to
be entitled The Conquest of India by
Bacchus. -42
One of the Indian scholars, Dr.
Munir Ahmed, who has made a thorough
examination of the reflections of
Indian thought in Coleridge’s poetry, maintains:
The pantheism of ‘The Eolian Harp’, the demonic agencies
in ‘The Ancient Mariner’, the intense longing for deep self-possession and calm
response in ‘Osorio’ and ‘The Triumph of Loyalty’ and also perhaps the idea of
the
soul’s transmigration suggested in ‘Christable’, can be
related to his Indian readings.-43
It is clearly
mentioned in the ‘Philosophical Lectures’, that Coleridge read the Gita translated by Wilkins. Between
December 1818 and January 1819, Coleridge read the Bhagavad Gita, just as he read The Ordinances of Manu, The
History of Hindustan and other Indian books, as a part of his extensive
pursuit for a religious philosophy and his deep interest in Hindu philosophy.
He writes:
We have in this work
(The Wilkins’ Gita), which I
have now before
me, an extract from the great poem of India
of men; and this has been published in England as a proof of sublimity beyond the
excellence of Milton
Coleridge also has read an article
in the Annual Register which
he borrowed from the Bristol Library on 10 March 1796, which contains, “It is
better, say the Hindoos, to
sit than walk and to sleep than to wake; but death is the best of all.-45 He
echoes these words in a letter written twenty months later to his friend Thelwall
on 14th October, 1797:
At other times I adopt the Brahman
creed and say – It is better
to sit then to stand, it is better
to lie then to sit, It is better to sleep
than to wake-but death is the best of all! – I
should much wish like
the Indian Vishnu to float along an infinite ocean
cradled in the
flower
of the Lotus and wake once in a million years for a few minutes.-46
In Coleridge’s poetry, there are
evidences to the effect that he read the Wilkins’ Gita. The pantheistic outlook that Coleridge had found in
the Bhagavad Gita, is present
in ‘The Eolian Harp’, composed at Clevedon, Somersetshire, the home country of
Charles Wilkins:
O: the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound like power an light,
Rhythm
in all thought, and joyance everywhere,
Methinks, it should
have been impossible,
Not
to love all things in a world so filled.-47
These lines and the lines
immediately below them refer to all animated nature as organic harps diversely
framed one intellectual breeze sweeps. These lines very closely echo the idea
of the following lines of the Bhagavad-Gita
as translated by Wilkins:
The man whose mind is
endued with this devotion, and looketh on all
things alike, beholdeth
the supreme soul in all things, and beholdeth
all thing in me, I
forsake not him, and he forsaketh not me. The ‘Yogee’
who believeth in Unity, and worshippeth me
present in all things, dwelleth
in me in all respects, even whilst He liveth. -48
Parallels to the
Bhagavad Gita are easily visible in many other poems of Coleridge. Likewise
Wordsworth was also responsive to the greatly constant influence of the Bhagavad Gita. Wordsworth’s own
experience of pantheistic Immanence was made stronger by his contact with
Coleridge. In ‘Tintern Abbey’ the following lines easily recall to mind the
Indian thinking as expressed in the Bhagavad
Gita:
That blessed mood,
In
which the burthem of the mystery,
In
which the heavy and the weary weight
Of
all this unintelligible world,
Is
lightened:-that serene and blessed mood. -49
The following extract from the Bhagavad Gita expressing the same idea:
The ‘Yogee’ of a
subdued mind; thus employed In the exercise of his
devotion, is compared to
a lamp, standing in a place without wind,
Which waveth not. He
delighteth in his own soul, where the mind,
regulated by the
service of devotion, is pleased to dwell, and where,
By the assistance of
the spirit, he beholdeth the soul. He becometh
acquainted with the boundless
pleasure which is far more worthy
of the understanding
than that which ariseth From the senses . . . he
is not moved by the severest
pain. This disunion from the conjunction
of pain may be
distinguished by The appellation of ‘Yog’, spiritual union
or devotion. It is to be attained by resolution, by
the man who knoweth his own mind. -50
Wordsworth
feels the same state when the “breath of this corporeal frame” is “almost
suspended” and then, “we are laid asleep in body, and become a living
soul.”
The Bhagavad Gita talks of that intellectual and ethical state
in which the ‘Yogi’, the entity who has subjected his mind and body to rigorous
order and has controlled his senses, experience tranquil mood, as expressed by William
Wordsworth.
Among
the younger romantic poets, Shelly was most vulnerable to greater idealistic principles.
He was very well well-known with the works of Sir William Jones, who belonged
to the University College Oxford, where Shelley studied. Shelley had read ‘The
Genius of the Thames ’ written by his friend
Thomas Love Peacock who himself was well-known with the English account of
Jaydeva’s Gita Govindam and
who worked in the office of East India Company. A book that Shelley knew well
and which contributed significantly to the range of his imagery, myth and
symbol, was Edward Moor’s Hindu
Pantheon. In a paper entitled ‘Possible Indian Influence on Shelley’,
published in the Ninth Bulletin of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association
of London, Dr. S.R. Swami Nathan has established the Hindu Pantheon and the Irish novelist Miss Sydney Owenson’s
novel The Missionary, as the source of some important images of Shelley.
Commenting on Dr. Swami Nathan’s paper, the Times Literary Supplement wrote in
an editorial:
So the Greek Aphrodite- Shelley’s Promethean Asia-born
of the sea foam stood- Within a veined
shell, which floated on over the calm floor of the crystal sea.. -51
Lakshmi- Miss Owenson’s
luxima-who tints all Shelley’s projections into
womanly form of intellectual beauty,
is the love that Shelley, Plato, and the Christian vision alike place at the
core of being. -52
Shelley’s basics of the philosophy predominantly regarding
good and Evil, the Avatar and the relations of the individual soul to the celestial
soul seem to have been based on the Bhagavad
Gita. Shelley, like Coleridge, widely read Indian scriptures and
literature. There are passages and lines in Shelley that are similar to the
passages in the Bhagavad Gita.
For example following lines of ‘Love’s Philosophy’:
The fountains mingle
with the river
And the rivers with the
ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix
for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in this world
is single,
All things by a law
divine
In one spirit meet and
mingle. -53
Recollect the image given in the Bhagavad Gita:
AaPaUYaRMaa<aMacl/Pa[iTaï&
SaMaud]MaaPa" Pa[ivXaiNTa YaÜTa( )
TaÜTk-aMaa Ya& Pa[ivXaiNTa SaveR
Sa XaaiNTaMaaPanaeiTa Na k-aMak-aMaq ))
äpüryamäëam acala-pratiñöhaà
samudram äpaù praviçanti yadvat
tadvat kämä yaà praviçanti sarve
sa çäntim äpnoti na käma-kämé
A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of
desires—that enter like rivers into the ocean, which is ever being filled but
is always still—can alone achieve peace, and not the man who strives to satisfy
such desires. Ch-2, Sl. 70. -54
These lines are translated in English by Wilkins as:
The men whose passions
enter his heart as
Waters run into the unswelling
passive ocean. -55
Here there is a picture of water of
rivers entering into and losing themselves in the unmoving sea. In relation to
lines of the poem of Shelley, the reference to ‘law divine’ and ‘one spirit’
has its echo in the Bhagavad Gita’s
as Servabhutasthamatmanam sarvabhutani
ca tmani. (Ch. VI, sl.29)
This sloka
was translated by Wilkins as:
The man whose mind is endued with this devotion, and
looketh on all things
alike, beholdeth the supreme soul in
all things, and
beholdeth all things in me. I forsake not him,
and he foresaketh not me. The ‘Yogee’ who believeth in
unity, and worshippeth me present in all things, dwelleth in me . .
. -56
Shelley again refers in Adonis to ‘sustaining love’
and the light whose smile kindles the Universe’ in the following lines:
The one remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s
light for ever shines, Earth’s shadows fly. -57
On the
death of Keats, Shelley recognizeed: “He hath awakened from the dream of life.”
The Absolute Ultimate in the center
of the transitory lots of is the idea of the Bhagavad Gita too. The concept of Maya also runs in
Shelley’s poems. The Bhagavad Gita’s
ideas of ‘soul’ and ‘water’ are also again and again referred to by Shelley in
his important works.
Southey
(1774-1843), a contemporary of Wordsworth had direct knowledge with the Bhagavad Gita and other Indian
works. His footnotes to, The Curse of
Krishna (1810), very frequently refers to the Bhagavad Gita and there are suggestions also to The Institute of Manu, The Mahabharata, Songs of Jayadeva, and Maurice’s History of Hindustan.
Even
there are big numbers of poets of the nineteenth century but are elapsed today could
not get away the sway of The Bhagavad
Gita. One such poet is Richard Henry Horne (1803-1884) who refers to
the Indian thought of ‘Yoga’ in his epical work Orion (1843). This poem discusses
to the doctrines of Nishkam Karma
and predestination. The following lines are significant in this regard:
Not in thee
Was
failure born, its law preceded thing:
It
governs every act, which needs must fail-
I
mean give place-to make room for the next
.
. . . . . . . .
Sit
still, Remain with me. No difference
Will
in the world to be found:‘t will know no charge,
Be
sure, say that an act hath been ordained?
Some
hand must do it: therefore do not move:
An
instrument of action must be found,
And
you escape both toil and consequences: -58
This extract is a direct suggestion to the well-known idea
of the Bhagavad Gita that the
doer and master is only, God.
Likewise
one more poet, William Bell Scott (1811-1890), in his Autobiographical Notes, confesses
to have referred to the Cosmogony of the Hindoos
in his famous and popular poem ‘The Fear of the World’ a philosophical poem
on freedom from the fall (1846). Again In the Autobiographical Notes, (vol.
I, p.237), he says that in the poem referred to, he has repeated a portion of
the Bhagavad Gita.-59
this he does in section III of part ii of the poem in which his hero, Lyremmos,
is shown, standing on the banks of Holy Ganges. He listens to a divine voice. Actually
this was the clear influence of the Bhagavad
Gita on him. The God, he feels, pervades and sustains all things.
Thomas
Carlyle (1795-1881), a powerful thinker and writer of the Victorian age was
among those who read the Bhagavad Gita
and incorporated its philosophical ideas in his works like Sartor Resartus
(1832), etc. it was he who gave a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to the famous American Poet and philosopher,
Emerson, when the latter visited him at Craigenputtock.-60 Carlyle’s
concept of Duty, (work is worship), his theory of the great man, i.e., the
Hero, and his firm conviction of the world’s being an illusion are so close, in
letter and script, to the teachings of Bhagavad
Gita, that in the mid-nineteenth century he may be called the greatest
apostle of Indian philosophy. It is not without significance that he alone
among all English men of letters has been acknowledged as prophet. An
independent work of the influence of the Bhagavad
Gita on Carlyle is possible.
Another great Victorian poet Robert Browning, his view,
values, vision and convictions are very close to Hindu vision in general and
the Bhagavad Gita in
particular.-61 Similarly it is also believed that Karl Marx’s
Enlightenment Theory is nothing but the reinterpretation of Hindus’ philosophy
of Vasudhevkutumbakum although
it is a different issue that he was a very bitter critic of Hindus and
Hinduism.
Tennyson accepts that intellect is not strong enough to
understand the final reality. It only “stirs the surface-shadow” but never “hath
dipt into …/ The abysm of all abysms”. Hindu Vedic scriptures assert
the illusory (maya) dualistic mask or
surface-shadow as ‘maya’. This is something we need to understand and defeat.
Only Hindu mystics or saints see this truth or maya through Self-realization and poets and thinkers declare
it through transcendental imagination. Once they experience out-of-body awareness,
mystics attain the area of pure consciousness and the self seems “to dissolve
and fade away into boundless being; and this is not a confused state, but the
clearest of the clearest… the loss of external personality, (if so it were)
seeming not annihilation but the only true life.”Tennyson here conveys the
essence of advaita vedanta, the cardinal tenet of Hinduism.. Brahmn (God) alone is real. The universe
is unreal, and the individual soul is none other than the universal soul. This
idea is taken by Tennyson from the Bhagavad
Gita.
Evidently
this state is not confined to sages. At times poets also realize this
state:
In
‘Memoirs’ Tennyson informs Mrs Bradley: “There are moments when this
flesh is nothing to me, when I feel and know the flesh to be the vision, God
and the spiritual the only real and true.”
D H
Lawrence is overjoyed at the prospect of discarding his flesh “Like luggage of
some departed traveller”.
The
poet William Blake confidently said: “I am in God’s presence night and day.” In
this mystical trance, which is seeing the soul with bodily eyes closed, is when
we receive the highest kind of intuitive knowledge.
This is
nothing but influences of the Bhagavad
Gita: Evidently this
state is not confined to sages only.
A
parallel is found in the Bhagavad
Gita: “The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness
I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no
longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced the circumambient atoms…. An
oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The spirit of God, I realized,
is exhaustless Bliss.”
In the Kathopanishad, Yama tells Nachiketa that
the supreme person, the size of a thumb, dwells forever in the hearts of all
beings. Krishna assures
us in the Bhagavad Gita: that
He is seated in the heart of all beings.
Vivekananda said: “After long searches here and there, in temples and
churches…at last you come back completing the circle from where you started, to
your own soul and find that He …is nearest of the near, in your own Self.”
However, among the poets of the
Victorian era it is Matthew Arnold who seems to have been more deeply
influenced by the Bhagavad Gita
than any of his contemporary poets. He was born in an age which was surcharged
with orientalism due to the increasing political and cultural intimacy of the
West and the East. It was the age which had several translations of the Bhagavad Gita and other Indian
scriptures and literary works by a number of European scholars, and of Omer
Khayyam by Fitzgerald. It also witnessed the growing popularity of the Koran
references to which were made by Carlyle in his lecture on Mohammad, the Hero
as Prophet, and of the Arabian Nights, etc.
Son of a
distinguished educationist and a strict disciplinarian, Mathew Arnold felt ill
at ease in his family. He felt equally dissatisfied with the atmosphere of Oxford University Rugby School
A bad carriage on a
filthy lane, a bun snatched hastily in railway station,
thirty pupil, teachers
to examine in an inconvenient room, and nothing to
eat, except a biscuit given by a charitable lady,
eighty training college candidates to supervise for seven hours a day, with the
gas burning most
of the time, either to
give light or to help warm the room.-64
Environment around
him further intensified his pain. The industrial revolution ushered in an era
of ‘haves and have nots’, and presented a social view of naked poverty and
ugliness. The old social order was cracking and nothing concrete was there to
replace that. The untimely and sudden death of his father upset him emotionally
and spiritually. It was therefore natural that a sensitive man of the nature of
Arnold found
himself between two worlds ‘one dead and the other powerless to be born’.
“Always at war with the worldliness-the worldliness within the worldliness
without”,-65 Arnold
was poignantly conscious of his inner conflict. Some critics think that ‘he on
occasions behaved in the most unpredictable manner’. -66 In September 1849, he went to France
and there he met a girl named Marguerite. Arnold
was infatuated with the girl and wanted to marry her but he could not do so.
This further upset him emotionally. However, she became an important character
in Arnold ’s
life.-67
All
these factors convinced him of the meaningless of life. Legouis and Cazamian
write: “The vague Christianity of Arnold, the moral pantheism to which all his
philosophical reflection lends, seems to have left in his inner self an
emptiness, a scar which is revealed only in his poetry”.-68 He felt
as Arjuna did before the commencement of the war at Kurukshetra. He was in
search of spiritual peace. It was therefore, natural that he developed deep
interest in Hindu scriptures, particularly in the Bhagavad Gita. He wrote to his friend Clough in Sep.1849,
My dearest Clough these
are damned times, everything is against one-the
height to which knowledge is come to spread of
luxury, our physical
enervation, the absence
of great natures, the unavoidable contact with
millions of
small ones, newspapers, cities, light profligate friends, moral desperados like
Carlyle, our own selves and the sickening consciousness of
our difficulties, but for God’s sake let us neither be
fanatics nor yet half blown by the mind.-69
For these reasons
his interest in the Bhagavad Gita
increased day after day. He particularly admired the doctrine of Nishkam Karma. He carefully read
the Wilkin’s Gita, as his
letter to Clough shows. In one of his letters to Clough on March 1, 1848 he
wrote: “I am disappointed the Oriental wisdom, God grant it were mine, pleased
you not”. -70 The two, had been, no doubt, acquainting themselves
with oriental wisdom sometime before this date. On March 4, 1848, he again
wrote to Clough: “The Indians distinguish between mediation and absorption, and
knowledge; and between abandoning practice and abandoning the fruits of action
and all respect thereto. This last is a supreme step, and dilated throughout
the poem”. -71
The
“Poem” referred to in the letter is the Bhagavad
Gita. Arnold ’s language and a few words
used in the above letter show that Arnold
had read Wilkin’s Gita.
Wilkin’s translates the twelfth Sloka
of the twelfth chapter thus:
Knowledge is better
than practice, meditation
Is distinguished from
knowledge, forsaking the
Fruits of action from
meditation, for happiness,
Hereafter is derived
from such forsaking. -72
Again, in the depiction
of the forty third Sloka of
the second chapter, Wilkin’s introduced the word “absorption”, for which there
is no identical in the original. He also used the word “meditation” for both
the Sanskrit words Dhyana and
Samadhi. These peculiarities of explanation
are in none of the other translations available to Arnold such as Schlegel’s Latin translation
published in 1823, Lassen’s bigger and better account of the later published in
1846. It is a different matter that Arnold
might have also discussed with either Schlegel or Lassen or Cockburn Thomson,
who published his translation in 1855. Cockburn Thomson writes that the Schlegel’s
edition was the one “most generally used”. Lionel trilling believes;
that Arnold
read the Essay of W. von Humboldt on the Gita
(Berlin
and the improved and
amplified Latin rendering of A.W. Von Schlegel (1823). -73
These facts have
now been confirmed by Kenneth Allots’ publications of Arnold ’s reading lists contained in his three
early diaries. -74 H.F. Lowry in his editorial note to Arnold ’s letter of March-4, to Clough suggests that the Bhagavad Gita “heavily
influenced” Arnold ’s
‘Resignation’ and other early poems. But Clough did not like Arnold ’s curiosity in Oriental philosophy. In
a review of Arnold’s 1852 volume which incorporated ‘Empedocles on Etna’, he
quoted Arnold’s poem ‘Mortality’ and was happy to find that Arnold had “for
once” escaped from “the dismal cycle of his rehabilitated Hindoo Greek Philosophy”.-75 But the fact is that
Arnold could not escape from the eastern influence as Basil Willey points out,
“Arnold is a child of new era and has felt the full strength of the modern
spiritual east Wind”.-76
Edwin Arnold, R.W.
Emerson, Walt Whitman, T.S.Eliot,
W.B.Yeats etc., are some other names who were deeply influenced by the Bhagavad Gita, Vedic philosophy
and Hindu way of life. There are numerous such examples. It is said that then
Ambassador to USSR ,
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, famous philosopher-politician used to give lectures to
ruthless communist dictator Stalin on the Bhagavad
Gita. It was to everybody’s surprise that Stalin was charmed by this
great philosopher. In a lecture on Hindu philosophy Stalin listened
Dr.S.Radhakrishnan. After that meeting Stalin almost became a disciple of
Dr.S.Radhakrishnan. At the time of Dr. Radhakrishan’s departure from U.S.S.R.
to India ,
Stalin expressed his wish to see him. Dr. Radhakrishan met him and before
leaving, he patted Stalin on the cheek and back like a father blessing his son.
Stalin almost in tears and reacted emotionally, “you are the first person who
has treated me like a human being and not like a monster-you are leaving and I
am sad.” -77
World order in Hindu cosmology was governed by
immutable cycles of an almost
inconceivably vast scale — millions of years long. Kingdoms would fall,
and the universe would be destroyed, but it would be re-created, and new
kingdoms would rise again. The true nature of human experience was known only
to those who endured and transcended these temporal upheavals. --Henery
Kissinger
Now the Bgagavad Gita is either part of syllabus or taught in a
number of universities in America
and universities in other countries, especially European universities. After the
establishment of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, (ISKON),
in July, 1966, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami Prabhupada in New York,
U.S.A., the Bgagavad Gita
became one of the most popular books world over and it was translated in almost
all the languages. -78
Father
of atomic bomb J.Robert Oppenheimer was also a big fan of the Gita.
“Death
fell from the sky and the world was changed,” US President Barack Obama said on
Friday at Hiroshima, where his country dropped an atomic bomb – the first –
that killed 140,000 people in August 1945.
Obama’s
words were evocative of what J. Robert Oppenheimer, the’ father of A-bomb’ said
– or remembered thinking – after the bomb, christened ‘Little Boy’, was dropped
on Hiroshima on the orders of the then President, Harry Truman.
“We
knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried.
Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the
Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his
duty, and, to impress him, takes his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am
become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way
or another.”
Oppenheimer,
Jewish by birth, was quoting a translation of verse 32 from Chapter 11 of the
Gita:
“Divi
soorya-sahasrasya
Bhavad yugapad
uthitaa
Yadi bhaah
sadrshi saa syaaad
Bhaasas tasya
mah’aatmanaah!
Kaalo’ami
loka-kshaya-krt pravrddho
Lokaan samaahatum
iha pravrttah!”
In
1933, when Oppenheimer was in Berkeley – prior heading the atomic bomb project
called the Manhattan Project - he became a student of Arthur Ryder, a Sanskrit
professor. That’s when he developed an interest in the Gita and read it in
Sanskrit.
Oppenheimer
would later say the Gita was one of the books that shaped his philosophy of
life. -79
Everyone has
infinite potential and talent. Yet most people live and die without so much as
a glimpse of who they really are or what they bring to the world. The Bhagwad
Gita helps unlock your potential so that you gain power to rock the world. All
it takes is a slight shift in attitude, change in thinking.
M K Gandhi was a
timid barrister who transformed into a Mahatma. Swami Vivekananda, initially
trembled at the thought of trembling the thought of addressing the Parliament
of Religion, became a world famous preacher! Abdul Kalam rose from humble
origins to become President of India. -80
World
celebrates, 21 December as ‘Gita Jayanti Day,’ means that the Shreemad Bahgawad
Gita came on earth on this day.
References-
1--P.Harvey, The oxford Companion to
English Literature: (London
2-Quoted by M.K. Naik et al. (ed.), The
Image of India
3-A.C. Cowley (Ed.), Chaucer :
Canterbury Tales, (London
4-C.R. Banerji, ‘India
5-R.R. Cawley, The Voyagers and
Elezabethan Drama (rpt)., (New York, 1966), pp.107-161.
6-In 1612, Thomas Croyate visited India and reached Agra Surat Harvey
7-He published in 1533 a translation of Munster’s
Cosmography, in 1555 of Peter Martyr’s Decade of the Newe Worlde or West
India. (Harvey
8-Times Literary Supplement (London
9-W.M.Callewaert and S.Hemraj, The Bhagvadgitanuvada, (Ranchi
10-ibid.
p294.
11-Idem.
12-Idem.
13-Harvey, p.506
14-Hauer Calls it (Gita) a, work of imperishable significance. He declares that
the book “gives us not only profound insights that are valid for all times and
for all religious life, but it contain as well, the classical presentation of
one of the most significant phases of Indo-Germanic religious history. It shows
us the way as regards, the essential nature and basal characteristic of
Indo-German religion. Here spirit is at work that belongs to our spirit”. He
states the central message of the Gita
in these words: “We are not called to solve the meaning of life but to find out
the Deed demanded of us and to work so, by action, to master the riddle of
life”.
(Quoted in Hibbert Journal, April 1940,
p.341).
15-Goethe wrote in 1826: I have no means
of aversion to things Indian, but I am afraid of them, for they drew my
imagination into the formless and the diffuse against which I have to guard
myself more than ever.
(Quoted by R.K. Das Gupta, ‘Western Responses
to India Literature’, Indian Literature; Sahitya Akademi, Jan-March,
1967, pp.5-15.
16-Callewaert and Hemraj, p.294.
17-ibid.,
p.288.
18-Idem.
19-Ibid.,
p.289.
20-Ibid.,
p.291.
21-A.L. Basham (Ed.). A Cultural
History of India, (Oxford
22-Naik et al., p.91.
23-A. Macdonnel, A History of
Sanskrit Literature, (London
24-Callewaret and Hemraj, p.235.
25-Ibid.,
p.234-35.
26-Bashem, pp.409-10.
27-“While he (Jones) believed in Christ
and Christianity, he was attracted to the Hindu concept of the non-duality of
God, as interpreted by Sanskara, and
the transmigration of soul . . . ‘I am no Hindu’, but I hold the doctrine of
the Hindus concerning a future state to be incomparably more rational more
pious, and more likely to deter men from vice than the horrid opinions
inculcated on punishment without end”. (D.P. Singhal, India World
Civilization, (Calcutta
28-Macdonnel, p.2.
29-Callewaret and Hemraj, p.235.
30-idem.
31-Idem.
32-Idem.
33-Idem.
34-Ibid., p.236.
35-Idem.
36-Naik, et al., p. 235.
37-D.S. Sarma, ,The Bhagavad Gita, (Madras
38-Naik et al., p.38.
39-Idem.
40-idem.
41-idem.
42-K. Coburn (ed.), The Note Book of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (London
43-M. Ahmad, “Coleridge and The Bahaman
Creed “:Indian Journal of English Studies, (1960), pp. 18-37.
44-Philosophical Lectures, (ed)
K. Coburn, (London
45- The Annual Register, (London
Page-20
46-Coleridge; Collected Letters,
1, p.350.
47- E.H.Coleridge (ed.) Coleridge
Poetical Works, (London
48-C.Wilkins, (trans.), The Bhagavad Gita, London
49-The Poetical Works of Wordsworth
(ed.), T.Hutchinson, (London
50-Wilkins, ibid., pp.64-65.
51-H.Bloom,Shelley, (ed.), New York
52-Times Literary Supplement, (26 th
December, 1958), p.751.
53-The Complete Poetical Works of
P.B.Shelley , (ed.), T.Hutchinson, (London
54-OM-TAT-SAT
SRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA RAHASYA OR KARMA-YOGA-SASTA, Bal Gangadhar Tilak,
Third Edition, (Poona
****Hereafter referred as the Gita. Sanskrit, Roman, and First translation
are downloaded from Goggle.
55-Wilkins, ibid., p.42.
56-Wilkins, p.65.
57-Bloom, p.343.
58-Orin (ed.), Eric Partridge, (London
59-Naik et. Al., p.54.
60-Emerson was deeply disturbed on
account of the death of his wife at an early age. It was again the reading of
the Bhagavad Gita that
alleviated his spiritual journey and rejuvenated him.
61- Arti Gupta, ROBERT BRWNING,
(SARUP & SONS, New Delhi
62- L. Trilling, Mathew Arnold (New
York, 1949), p.19.
63- G. Saintsbury, Mathew Arnold,
(London
64- J.D.Jump, Matthew Arnold, (London
65- D. Bush, Matthew Arnold: A
Survey of his Poetry and Prose, (New York, 1971), p.71.
66- A. Wright, Victorian Literature,
(Ed.), (London
67- H. Park, Matthew Arnold, A Life,
(1970), p. 496.
68- E. Legouis & L. Cazamian, A
History of English Literature, (London
69- The Letters of Matthew Arnold to
Arthur Hugh Clough, (ed.) H.F. Lowry, (London
70- Ibid.,
p.69.
71- Ibid.,
p.71.
72- Wilkin’s, p. 72.
73- Trilling, p.25.
74- Kenneth Allott, Matthew Arnold’s
Reading Lists in Three Early Diaries, VL, II (1959), pp.254-266.
According to the reading lists published
by Allott, Arnold
The yogi
searches only for god, but he finds him equally in everything. Only in order to
contemplate him in all things, make an abstraction of that which is not him; it
is only the substance of things, pure being that it is necessary to consider,
and as the end of contemplation is to unite ourselves to God, the means of
arriving at this union is to resemble him as much as possible, that is to
reduce ourselves to pure being, by the abolition of all thought of every
interior act; for the least thought, the least act would destroy the unity in
dividing it, would modify and alter the absolute substance. This state of
artificial absorption of the soul in itself, this suppression of every internal
and external modification and consequently of consciousness, and consequently
of memory, is ecstasy. Ecstasy is the end of contemplation, it is to this that
the Yogi tends, and he aspires
to annihilate himself in God.
Course of the History of Modern
Philosophy (trans.), O.W. Wright,
(New York, 1852), I, pp.397-398.
75- Prose Remains, ed., Mrs.
Clough, (London
76- B.Willey, ed., Nineteenth
Century Studies, London
77- S. Lal, 50 Magnificent Indians of
the 20th Century, Jaico.
78-A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, The
Path of Perfection, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, Hare Krishna Land,
Juhu, Mumbai-400049, 1979.
79- ‘When the
father of the atomic bomb quoted the Bhagad Gita’, Shailaja Neelakantam, The
Times of India, (E-Paper), New-Delhi, India, May 27, 2016.
80-
‘The Gita makes You A High Networh Individual’, Jaya Row, The Times of India,
New Delhi, Wednesday, Augusat 31, 2016, p- 24.
N.B. In this article information has
been gathered from different sources. It has been tried to give their sources
but due to shortage of space some references are not given. Every effort has
been made to trace the owners of copyrighted material, but if any have been
inadvertently overlooked, the writer will be pleased to make necessary
arrangements at the first opportunity. It
should be seen as unintentional lapse. Kindly bear this omission.
