No More Learning

In dogmatic religion all questions are definitely answered, all doubts
are finally laid to rest. But the poet's religion is fluid, like the
atmosphere round the earth where lights and shadows play
hide-and-seek, and the wind like a shepherd boy plays upon its reeds
among flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere
to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light,
because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of
evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in the
world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that
in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the
Queen Moon is on her throne," and there is:

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-day's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

But all this has not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the
music that teases us out of thought as it fills our being.

Let me read a translation from an Eastern poet to show how this idea
comes out in a poem in Bengali:

In the morning I awoke at the flutter of thy boat-sails,
Lady of my Voyage, and I left the shore to follow the beckoning waves.
I asked thee, "Does the dream-harvest ripen in the
island beyond the blue? "
The silence of thy smile fell on my question like
the silence of sunlight on waves.
The day passed on through storm and through calm,
The perplexed winds changed their course, time after time,
and the sea moaned.
I asked thee, "Does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the
dying embers of the day's funeral pyre? "
No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like
the edge of a sunset cloud.
It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark.
Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my
sadness with its scent.
My hands grope to touch the hem of thy robe, and
I ask thee--"Is there thy garden of death beyond the stars,
Lady of my Voyage, where thy silence blossoms into songs? "
Thy smile shines in the heart of the hush like the
star-mist of midnight.


IV

In Shelley we clearly see the growth of his religion through periods
of vagueness and doubt, struggle and searching. But he did at length
come to a positive utterance of his faith, though he died young. Its
final expression is in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. " By the title
of the poem the poet evidently means a beauty that is not merely a
passive quality of particular things, but a spirit that manifests
itself through the apparent antagonism of the unintellectual life.
This hymn rang out of his heart when he came to the end of his
pilgrimage and stood face to face with the Divinity, glimpses of which
had already filled his soul with restlessness. All his experiences of
beauty had ever teased him with the question as to what was its truth.
Somewhere he sings of a nosegay which he makes of violets, daisies,
tender bluebells and--

That tall flower that wets,
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth,
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears.

He ends by saying:

And then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it! --Oh! to whom?

This question, even though not answered, carries a significance. A
creation of beauty suggests a fulfilment, which is the fulfilment of
love. We have heard some poets scoff at it in bitterness and despair;
but it is like a sick child beating its own mother--it is a sickness
of faith, which hurts truth, but proves it by its very pain and anger.
And the faith itself is this, that beauty is the self-offering of the
One to the other One.

In the first part of his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells
on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty,
which imparts to it an appearance of frailty and unreality:

Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled.

This, he says, rouses in our mind the question:

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,--why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

The poet's own answer to this question is:

Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

This very elusiveness of beauty suggests the vision of immortality and
of omnipotence, and stimulates the effort in man to realise it in some
idea of permanence. The highest reality has actively to be achieved.
The gain of truth is not in the end; it reveals itself through the
endless length of achievement. But what is there to guide us in our
voyage of realisation? Men have ever been struggling for direction:

Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells,--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance and mutability.

The prevalent rites and practices of piety, according to this poet,
are like magic spells--they only prove men's desperate endeavour and
not their success. He knows that the end we seek has its own direct
call to us, its own light to guide us to itself. And truth's call is
the call of beauty. Of this he says:

Thy light alone,--like mist o'er mountain driven,
Or music by the night wind sent,
Thro' strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

About this revelation of truth which calls us on, and yet which is
everywhere, a village singer of Bengal sings:

My master's flute sounds in everything,
drawing me out of my house to everywhere.
While I listen to it I know that every step I take
is in my master's house.
For he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea,
and he is the landing place.

Religion, in Shelley, grew with his life; it was not given to him in
fixed and ready-made doctrines; he rebelled against them. He had the
creative mind which could only approach Truth through its joy in
creative effort. For true creation is realisation of truth through the
translation of it into our own symbols.


V

For man, the best opportunity for such a realisation has been in men's
Society. It is a collective creation of his, through which his social
being tries to find itself in its truth and beauty. Had that Society
merely manifested its usefulness, it would be inarticulate like a dark
star. But, unless it degenerates, it ever suggests in its concerted
movements a living truth as its soul, which has personality. In this
large life of social communion man feels the mystery of Unity, as he
does in music. From the sense of that Unity, men came to the sense of
their God. And therefore every religion began with its tribal God.

The one question before all others that has to be answered by our
civilisations is not what they have and in what quantity, but what
they express and how. In a society, the production and circulation of
materials, the amassing and spending of money, may go on, as in the
interminable prolonging of a straight line, if its people forget to
follow some spiritual design of life which curbs them and transforms
them into an organic whole. For growth is not that enlargement which
is merely adding to the dimensions of incompleteness. Growth is the
movement of a whole towards a yet fuller wholeness. Living things
start with this wholeness from the beginning of their career. A child
has its own perfection as a child; it would be ugly if it appeared as
an unfinished man. Life is a continual process of synthesis, and not
of additions. Our activities of production and enjoyment of wealth
attain that spirit of wholeness when they are blended with a creative
ideal. Otherwise they have the insane aspect of the eternally
unfinished; they become like locomotive engines which have railway
lines but no stations; which rush on towards a collision of
uncontrolled forces or to a sudden breakdown of the overstrained
machinery.

Through creation man expresses his truth; through that expression he
gains back his truth in its fulness. Human society is for the best
expression of man, and that expression, according to its perfection,
leads him to the full realisation of the divine in humanity. When that
expression is obscure, then his faith in the Infinite that is within
him becomes weak; then his aspiration cannot go beyond the idea of
success. His faith in the Infinite is creative; his desire for success
is constructive; one is his home, and the other is his office. With
the overwhelming growth of necessity, civilisation becomes a gigantic
office to which the home is a mere appendix. The predominance of the
pursuit of success gives to society the character of what we call
_Shudra_ in India. In fighting a battle, the _Kshatriya_, the noble
knight, followed his honour for his ideal, which was greater than
victory itself; but the mercenary _Shudra_ has success for his object.
The name Shudra symbolises a man who has no margin round him beyond
his bare utility. The word denotes a classification which includes all
naked machines that have lost their completeness of humanity, be their
work manual or intellectual. They are like walking stomachs or brains,
and we feel, in pity, urged to call on God and cry, "Cover them up for
mercy's sake with some veil of beauty and life! "

When Shelley in his view of the world realised the Spirit of Beauty,
which is the vision of the Infinite, he thus uttered his faith:

Never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery;
That thou,--O awful Loveliness,--
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

This was his faith in the Infinite. It led his aspiration towards the
region of freedom and perfection which was beyond the immediate and
above the successful. This faith in God, this faith in the reality of
the ideal of perfection, has built up all that is great in the human
world. To keep indefinitely walking on, along a zigzag course of
change, is negative and barren. A mere procession of notes does not
make music; it is only when we have in the heart of the march of
sounds some musical idea that it creates song. Our faith in the
infinite reality of Perfection is that musical idea, and there is that
one great creative force in our civilisation. When it wakens not, then
our faith in money, in material power, takes its place; it fights and
destroys, and in a brilliant fireworks of star-mimicry suddenly
exhausts itself and dies in ashes and smoke.


VI

Men of great faith have always called us to wake up to great
expectations, and the prudent have always laughed at them and said
that these did not belong to reality. But the poet in man knows that
reality is a creation, and human reality has to be called forth from
its obscure depth by man's faith which is creative. There was a day
when the human reality was the brutal reality. That was the only
capital we had with which to begin our career. But age after age
there has come to us the call of faith, which said against all the
evidence of fact: "You are more than you appear to be, more than your
circumstances seem to warrant. You are to attain the impossible, you
are immortal. " The unbelievers had laughed and tried to kill the
faith. But faith grew stronger with the strength of martyrdom and at
her bidding higher realities have been created over the strata of the
lower. Has not a new age come to-day, borne by thunder-clouds, ushered
in by a universal agony of suffering? Are we not waiting to-day for a
great call of faith, which will say to us: "Come out of your present
limitations. You are to attain the impossible, you are immortal"? The
nations who are not prepared to accept it, who have all their trust in
their present machines of system, and have no thought or space to
spare to welcome the sudden guest who comes as the messenger of
emancipation, are bound to court defeat whatever may be their present
wealth and power.

This great world, where it is a creation, an expression of the
infinite--where its morning sings of joy to the newly awakened life,
and its evening stars sing to the traveller, weary and worn, of the
triumph of life in a new birth across death,--has its call for us.
The call has ever roused the creator in man, and urged him to reveal
the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself. It is ever claiming from
us, in our own creations, co-operation with God, reminding us of our
divine nature, which finds itself in freedom of spirit. Our society
exists to remind us, through its various voices, that the ultimate
truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his
illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers
of caste and colour; in his recognition of the world, not merely as a
storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man's spirit, with its
eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine
presence.




THE CREATIVE IDEAL


In an old Sanskrit book there is a verse which describes the essential
elements of a picture. The first in order is _Vrupa-bhedah_--"separateness
of forms. " Forms are many, forms are different, each of them having
its limits. But if this were absolute, if all forms remained
obstinately separate, then there would be a fearful loneliness of
multitude. But the varied forms, in their very separateness, must
carry something which indicates the paradox of their ultimate unity,
otherwise there would be no creation.

So in the same verse, after the enumeration of separateness comes that
of _Pram? n? ni_--proportions. Proportions indicate relationship,
the principle of mutual accommodation. A leg dismembered from the body
has the fullest licence to make a caricature of itself. But, as a
member of the body, it has its responsibility to the living unity
which rules the body; it must behave properly, it must keep its
proportion. If, by some monstrous chance of physiological
profiteering, it could outgrow by yards its fellow-stalker, then we
know what a picture it would offer to the spectator and what
embarrassment to the body itself. Any attempt to overcome the law of
proportion altogether and to assert absolute separateness is
rebellion; it means either running the gauntlet of the rest, or
remaining segregated.

The same Sanskrit word _Pram? n? ni_, which in a book of aesthetics
means proportions, in a book of logic means the proofs by which the
truth of a proposition is ascertained. All proofs of truth are
credentials of relationship. Individual facts have to produce such
passports to show that they are not expatriated, that they are not a
break in the unity of the whole. The logical relationship present in
an intellectual proposition, and the aesthetic relationship indicated
in the proportions of a work of art, both agree in one thing. They
affirm that truth consists, not in facts, but in harmony of facts. Of
this fundamental note of reality it is that the poet has said, "Beauty
is truth, truth beauty. "

Proportions, which prove relativity, form the outward language of
creative ideals. A crowd of men is desultory, but in a march of
soldiers every man keeps his proportion of time and space and relative
movement, which makes him one with the whole vast army. But this is
not all. The creation of an army has, for its inner principle, one
single idea of the General. According to the nature of that ruling
idea, a production is either a work of art or a mere construction. All
the materials and regulations of a joint-stock company have the unity
of an inner motive. But the expression of this unity itself is not the
end; it ever indicates an ulterior purpose. On the other hand, the
revelation of a work of art is a fulfilment in itself.

The consciousness of personality, which is the consciousness of unity
in ourselves, becomes prominently distinct when coloured by joy or
sorrow, or some other emotion. It is like the sky, which is visible
because it is blue, and which takes different aspect with the change
of colours. In the creation of art, therefore, the energy of an
emotional ideal is necessary; as its unity is not like that of a
crystal, passive and inert, but actively expressive. Take, for
example, the following verse:

Oh, fly not Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure,
Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay.
For my heart no measure
Knows, nor other treasure
To buy a garland for my love to-day.

And thou too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
Thou grey-eyed mourner, fly not yet away.
For I fain would borrow
Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
To make a mourning for love's yesterday.

The words in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no
appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and
cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer
body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows through
the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On
the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in
unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which
would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a
rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things
which take part in the world's eternal pageantry.

Take the following doggerel:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November.

The metre is there, and it simulates the movement of life. But it
finds no synchronous response in the metre of our heart-beats; it has
not in its centre the living idea which creates for itself an
indivisible unity. It is like a bag which is convenient, and not like
a body which is inevitable.

This truth, implicit in our own works of art, gives us the clue to the
mystery of creation. We find that the endless rhythms of the world are
not merely constructive; they strike our own heart-strings and produce
music.

Therefore it is we feel that this world is a creation; that in its
centre there is a living idea which reveals itself in an eternal
symphony, played on innumerable instruments, all keeping perfect time.
We know that this great world-verse, that runs from sky to sky, is not
made for the mere enumeration of facts--it is not "Thirty days hath
September"--it has its direct revelation in our delight. That delight
gives us the key to the truth of existence; it is personality acting
upon personalities through incessant manifestations. The solicitor
does not sing to his client, but the bridegroom sings to his bride.
And when our soul is stirred by the song, we know it claims no fees
from us; but it brings the tribute of love and a call from the
bridegroom.

It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs
that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner
ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the
emotional motive of the artist, which says: "I find joy in my
creation; it is good. " All the language of joy is beauty. It is
necessary to note, however, that joy is not pleasure, and beauty not
mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of detachment from self and lives
in freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality
which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements but its own
ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realise this
in the world around us, we see the world, not as merely existing, but
as decorated in its forms, sounds, colours and lines; we feel in our
hearts that there is One who through all things proclaims: "I have joy
in my creation. "

That is why the Sanskrit verse has given us for the essential elements
of a picture, not only the manifoldness of forms and the unity of
their proportions, but also _bhavah_, the emotional idea.

It is needless to say that upon a mere expression of emotion--even the
best expression of it--no criterion of art can rest. The following
poem is described by the poet as "An earnest Suit to his unkind
Mistress":

And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay, say nay, for shame!
To save thee from the blame
Of all my grief and grame.
And wilt thou leave me thus?
Say nay! say nay!

I am sure the poet would not be offended if I expressed my doubts
about the earnestness of his appeal, or the truth of his avowed
necessity. He is responsible for the lyric and not for the sentiment,
which is mere material. The fire assumes different colours according
to the fuel used; but we do not discuss the fuel, only the flames. A
lyric is indefinably more than the sentiment expressed in it, as a
rose is more than its substance. Let us take a poem in which the
earnestness of sentiment is truer and deeper than the one I have
quoted above:

The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!

My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet West,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.

The sentiment expressed in this poem is a subject for a psychologist.
But for a poem the subject is completely merged in its poetry, like
carbon in a living plant which the lover of plants ignores, leaving it
for a charcoal-burner to seek.

This is why, when some storm of feeling sweeps across the country, art
is under a disadvantage. In such an atmosphere the boisterous passion
breaks through the cordon of harmony and thrusts itself forward as the
subject, which with its bulk and pressure dethrones the unity of
creation. For a similar reason most of the hymns used in churches
suffer from lack of poetry. For in them the deliberate subject,
assuming the first importance, benumbs or kills the poem. Most
patriotic poems have the same deficiency. They are like hill streams
born of sudden showers, which are more proud of their rocky beds than
of their water currents; in them the athletic and arrogant subject
takes it for granted that the poem is there to give it occasion to
display its powers. The subject is the material wealth for the sake of
which poetry should never be tempted to barter her soul, even though
the temptation should come in the name and shape of public good or
some usefulness. Between the artist and his art must be that perfect
detachment which is the pure medium of love. He must never make use of
this love except for its own perfect expression.

In everyday life our personality moves in a narrow circle of immediate
self-interest. And therefore our feelings and events, within that
short range, become prominent subjects for ourselves. In their
vehement self-assertion they ignore their unity with the All. They
rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art
gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there
to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is
not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire
in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is the script of creation.

Matthew Arnold, in his poem addressed to a nightingale, sings:

Hark! ah, the nightingale--
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark! --what pain!

But pain, when met within the boundaries of limited reality, repels
and hurts; it is discordant with the narrow scope of life. But the
pain of some great martyrdom has the detachment of eternity. It
appears in all its majesty, harmonious in the context of everlasting
life; like the thunder-flash in the stormy sky, not on the laboratory
wire.
Pain on that scale has its harmony in great love; for by hurting
love it reveals the infinity of love in all its truth and beauty. On
the other hand, the pain involved in business insolvency is
discordant; it kills and consumes till nothing remains but ashes.

The poet sings again:

How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!
Eternal Passion!
Eternal Pain!

And the truth of pain in eternity has been sung by those Vedic poets
who had said, "From joy has come forth all creation. " They say:

Sa tapas tapatva sarvam asrajata Yadidam kincha.

(God from the heat of his pain created all that there is. )

The sacrifice, which is in the heart of creation, is both joy and pain
at the same moment. Of this sings a village mystic in Bengal:

My eyes drown in the darkness of joy,
My heart, like a lotus, closes its petals in the rapture of the
dark night.

That song speaks of a joy which is deep like the blue sea, endless
like the blue sky; which has the magnificence of the night, and in its
limitless darkness enfolds the radiant worlds in the awfulness of
peace; it is the unfathomed joy in which all sufferings are made one.

A poet of mediaeval India tells us about his source of inspiration in a
poem containing a question and an answer:

Where were your songs, my bird, when you spent your nights in the nest?
Was not all your pleasure stored therein?
What makes you lose your heart to the sky, the sky that is limitless?

The bird answers:

I had my pleasure while I rested within bounds.
When I soared into the limitless, I found my songs!

To detach the individual idea from its confinement of everyday facts
and to give its soaring wings the freedom of the universal: this is
the function of poetry. The ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of
Othello, would be at best sensational in police court proceedings; but
in Shakespeare's dramas they are carried among the flaming
constellations where creation throbs with Eternal Passion, Eternal
Pain.




THE RELIGION OF THE FOREST

I


We stand before this great world. The truth of our life depends upon
our attitude of mind towards it--an attitude which is formed by our
habit of dealing with it according to the special circumstance of our
surroundings and our temperaments. It guides our attempts to establish
relations with the universe either by conquest or by union, either
through the cultivation of power or through that of sympathy. And
thus, in our realisation of the truth of existence, we put our
emphasis either upon the principle of dualism or upon the principle of
unity.

The Indian sages have held in the Upanishads that the emancipation of
our soul lies in its realising the ultimate truth of unity. They said:

Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinch jagatyam jagat.
Yena tyaktena bhunjitha ma graha kasyasvit dhanam.

(Know all that moves in this moving world as enveloped by
God; and find enjoyment through renunciation, not through
greed of possession. )

The meaning of this is, that, when we know the multiplicity of things
as the final truth, we try to augment ourselves by the external
possession of them; but, when we know the Infinite Soul as the final
truth, then through our union with it we realise the joy of our soul.
Therefore it has been said of those who have attained their
fulfilment,--"sarvam eva vishanti" (they enter into all things). Their
perfect relation with this world is the relation of union.

This ideal of perfection preached by the forest-dwellers of ancient
India runs through the heart of our classical literature and still
dominates our mind. The legends related in our epics cluster under the
forest shade bearing all through their narrative the message of the
forest-dwellers. Our two greatest classical dramas find their
background in scenes of the forest hermitage, which are permeated by
the association of these sages.

The history of the Northmen of Europe is resonant with the music of
the sea. That sea is not merely topographical in its significance, but
represents certain ideals of life which still guide the history and
inspire the creations of that race. In the sea, nature presented
herself to those men in her aspect of a danger, a barrier which
seemed to be at constant war with the land and its children. The sea
was the challenge of untamed nature to the indomitable human soul. And
man did not flinch; he fought and won, and the spirit of fight
continued in him. This fight he still maintains; it is the fight
against disease and poverty, tyranny of matter and of man.

This refers to a people who live by the sea, and ride on it as on a
wild, champing horse, catching it by its mane and making it render
service from shore to shore. They find delight in turning by force the
antagonism of circumstances into obedience. Truth appears to them in
her aspect of dualism, the perpetual conflict of good and evil, which
has no reconciliation, which can only end in victory or defeat.

But in the level tracts of Northern India men found no barrier between
their lives and the grand life that permeates the universe. The forest
entered into a close living relationship with their work and leisure,
with their daily necessities and contemplations. They could not think
of other surroundings as separate or inimical. So the view of the
truth, which these men found, did not make manifest the difference,
but rather the unity of all things. They uttered their faith in these
words: "Yadidam kinch sarvam prana ejati nihsratam" (All that is
vibrates with life, having come out from life). When we know this
world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in
our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with
it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us
to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has
its place in this world. And not only this material universe, but
human beings also, may be used as machines and made to yield powerful
results. This aspect of truth cannot be ignored; it has to be known
and mastered. Europe has done so and has reaped a rich harvest.

The view of this world which India has taken is summed up in one
compound Sanskrit word, Sachid? nanda. The meaning is that Reality,
which is essentially one, has three phases. The first is Sat; it is
the simple fact that things are, the fact which relates us to all
things through the relationship of common existence. The second is
Chit; it is the fact that we know, which relates us to all things
through the relationship of knowledge. The third is Ananda: it is the
fact that we enjoy, which unites us with all things through the
relationship of love.

According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world,
merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws,
is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realises all
things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us
joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in
it, knowing it and making use of it, but realising our own selves in
it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and
dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in
perfect union.


II

When Vikramaditya became king, Ujjayini a great capital, and Kalidasa
its poet, the age of India's forest retreats had passed. Then we had
taken our stand in the midst of the great concourse of humanity. The
Chinese and the Hun, the Scythian and the Persian, the Greek and the
Roman, had crowded round us. But, even in that age of pomp and
prosperity, the love and reverence with which its poet sang about the
hermitage shows what was the dominant ideal that occupied the mind of
India; what was the one current of memory that continually flowed
through her life.

In Kalidasa's drama, _Shakuntala_, the hermitage, which dominates the
play, overshadowing the king's palace, has the same idea running
through it--the recognition of the kinship of man with conscious and
unconscious creation alike.

A poet of a later age, while describing a hermitage in his Kadambari,
tells us of the posture of salutation in the flowering lianas as they
bow to the wind; of the sacrifice offered by the trees scattering
their blossoms; of the grove resounding with the lessons chanted by
the neophytes, and the verses repeated by the parrots, learnt by constantly
hearing them; of the wild-fowl enjoying "vaishva-deva-bali-pinda"
(the food offered to the divinity which is in all creatures); of the
ducks coming up from the lake for their portion of the grass seed
spread in the cottage yards to dry; and of the deer caressing with
their tongues the young hermit boys. It is again the same story. The
hermitage shines out, in all our ancient literature, as the place
where the chasm between man and the rest of creation has been bridged.

In the Western dramas, human characters drown our attention in the
vortex of their passions. Nature occasionally peeps out, but she is
almost always a trespasser, who has to offer excuses, or bow
apologetically and depart. But in all our dramas which still retain
their fame, such as _Mrit-Shakatika_, _Shakuntala_, _Uttara-Ramacharita_,
Nature stands on her own right, proving that she has her great
function, to impart the peace of the eternal to human emotions.

The fury of passion in two of Shakespeare's youthful poems is
exhibited in conspicuous isolation. It is snatched away, naked, from
the context of the All; it has not the green earth or the blue sky
around it; it is there ready to bring to our view the raging fever
which is in man's desires, and not the balm of health and repose which
encircles it in the universe.

_Ritusamhara_ is clearly a work of Kalidasa's immaturity. The youthful
love-song in it does not reach the sublime reticence which is in
_Shakuntala_ and _Kumara-Sambhava_. But the tune of these voluptuous
outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The
moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains,
acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the
Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and
the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it
with their murmur.

In the third canto of _Kumara-Sambhava_, Madana, the God Eros, enters
the forest sanctuary to set free a sudden flood of desire amid the
serenity of the ascetics' meditation. But the boisterous outbreak of
passion so caused was shown against a background of universal life.
The divine love-thrills of Sati and Shiva found their response in the
world-wide immensity of youth, in which animals and trees have their
life-throbs.

Not only its third canto but the whole of the Kumara-Sambhava poem is
painted upon a limitless canvas. It tells of the eternal wedding of
love, its wooing and sacrifice, and its fulfilment, for which the gods
wait in suspense. Its inner idea is deep and of all time. It answers
the one question that humanity asks through all its endeavours: "How
is the birth of the hero to be brought about, the brave one who can
defy and vanquish the evil demon laying waste heaven's own kingdom? "

It becomes evident that such a problem had become acute in Kalidasa's
time, when the old simplicity of Hindu life had broken up. The Hindu
kings, forgetful of their duties, had become self-seeking epicureans,
and India was being repeatedly devastated by the Scythians. What
answer, then, does the poem give to the question it raises? Its
message is that the cause of weakness lies in the inner life of the
soul. It is in some break of harmony with the Good, some dissociation
from the True. In the commencement of the poem we find that the God
Shiva, the Good, had remained for long lost in the self-centred
solitude of his asceticism, detached from the world of reality. And
then Paradise was lost. But _Kumara-Sambhava_ is the poem of Paradise
Regained. How was it regained? When Sati, the Spirit of Reality,
through humiliation, suffering, and penance, won the Heart of Shiva,
the Spirit of Goodness. And thus, from the union of the freedom of the
real with the restraint of the Good, was born the heroism that
released Paradise from the demon of Lawlessness.

Viewed from without, India, in the time of Kalidasa, appeared to have
reached the zenith of civilisation, excelling as she did in luxury,
literature and the arts. But from the poems of Kalidasa it is evident
that this very magnificence of wealth and enjoyment worked against the
ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the
forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the
gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was
slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat
beside all the glories of Vikramaditya's throne the poet's heart
yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual
striving. And it was this yearning which impelled him to go back to
the annals of the ancient Kings of Raghu's line for the narrative
poem, in which he traced the history of the rise and fall of the ideal
that should guide the rulers of men.

King Dilipa, with Queen Sudakshina, has entered upon the life of the
forest. The great monarch is busy tending the cattle of the hermitage.
Thus the poem opens, amid scenes of simplicity and self-denial. But it
ends in the palace of magnificence, in the extravagance of
self-enjoyment. With a calm restraint of language the poet tells us of
the kingly glory crowned with purity. He begins his poem as the day
begins, in the serenity of sunrise. But lavish are the colours in
which he describes the end, as of the evening, eloquent for a time
with the sumptuous splendour of sunset, but overtaken at last by the
devouring darkness which sweeps away all its brilliance into night.

who lives in this palace?

King Dilipa and Queen Sudakshina live in the palace.




In this beginning and this ending of his poem there lies hidden that
message of the forest which found its voice in the poet's words. There
runs through the narrative the idea that the future glowed gloriously
ahead only when there was in the atmosphere the calm of self-control,
of purity and renunciation. When downfall had become imminent, the
hungry fires of desire, aflame at a hundred different points, dazzled
the eyes of all beholders.

Kalidasa in almost all his works represented the unbounded
impetuousness of kingly splendour on the one side and the serene
strength of regulated desires on the other. Even in the minor drama of
_Malavikagnimitra_ we find the same thing in a different manner. It
must never be thought that, in this play, the poet's deliberate object
was to pander to his royal patron by inviting him to a literary orgy
of lust and passion. The very introductory verse indicates the object
towards which this play is directed. The poet begins the drama with
the prayer, "Sanmargalokayan vyapanayatu sa nastamasi vritimishah"
(Let God, to illumine for us the path of truth, sweep away our
passions, bred of darkness). This is the God Shiva, in whose nature
Parvati, the eternal Woman, is ever commingled in an ascetic purity of
love. The unified being of Shiva and Parvati is the perfect symbol of
the eternal in the wedded love of man and woman. When the poet opens
his drama with an invocation of this Spirit of the Divine Union it is
evident that it contains in it the message with which he greets his
kingly audience. The whole drama goes to show the ugliness of the
treachery and cruelty inherent in unchecked self-indulgence. In the
play the conflict of ideals is between the King and the Queen, between
Agnimitra and Dharini, and the significance of the contrast lies
hidden in the very names of the hero and the heroine. Though the name
Agnimitra is historical, yet it symbolises in the poet's mind the
destructive force of uncontrolled desire--just as did the name
Agnivarna in _Raghuvamsha_. Agnimitra, "the friend of the fire," the
reckless person, who in his love-making is playing with fire, not
knowing that all the time it is scorching him black. And what a great
name is Dharini, signifying the fortitude and forbearance that comes
from majesty of soul! What an association it carries of the infinite
dignity of love, purified by a self-abnegation that rises far above
all insult and baseness of betrayal!

In _Shakuntala_ this conflict of ideals has been shown, all through
the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's
court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens
with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The
cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of
the king's life clashing against the spirit of the forest retreat,
which is "sharanyam sarva-bhutanam" (where all creatures find their
protection of love). And the pleading of the forest-dwellers with the
king to spare the life of the deer, helplessly innocent and beautiful,
is the pleading that rises from the heart of the whole drama. "Never,
oh, never is the arrow meant to pierce the tender body of a deer, even
as the fire is not for the burning of flowers. "

In the _Ramayana_, Rama and his companions, in their banishment, had
to traverse forest after forest; they had to live in leaf-thatched
huts, to sleep on the bare ground. But as their hearts felt their
kinship with woodland, hill, and stream, they were not in exile amidst
these. Poets, brought up in an atmosphere of different ideals, would
have taken this opportunity of depicting in dismal colours the
hardship of the forest-life in order to bring out the martyrdom of
Ramachandra with all the emphasis of a strong contrast. But, in the
_Ramayana_, we are led to realise the greatness of the hero, not in a
fierce struggle with Nature, but in sympathy with it. Sita, the
daughter-in-law of a great kingly house, goes along the forest paths.
We read:

"She asks Rama about the flowering trees, and shrubs and creepers
which she has not seen before. At her request Lakshmana gathers and
brings her plants of all kinds, exuberant with flowers, and it
delights her heart to see the forest rivers, variegated with their
streams and sandy banks, resounding with the call of heron and duck.

"When Rama first took his abode in the Chitrakuta peak, that
delightful Chitrakuta, by the Malyavati river, with its easy slopes
for landing, he forgot all the pain of leaving his home in the capital
at the sight of those woodlands, alive with beast and bird. "

Having lived on that hill for long, Rama, who was "giri-vana-priya"
(lover of the mountain and the forest), said one day to Sita:

"When I look upon the beauties of this hill, the loss of my kingdom
troubles me no longer, nor does the separation from my friends cause
me any pang. "

Thus passed Ramachandra's exile, now in woodland, now in hermitage.
The love which Rama and Sita bore to each other united them, not only
to each other, but to the universe of life. That is why, when Sita was
taken away, the loss seemed to be so great to the forest itself.


III

Strangely enough, in Shakespeare's dramas, like those of Kalidasa, we
find a secret vein of complaint against the artificial life of the
king's court--the life of ungrateful treachery and falsehood. And
almost everywhere, in his dramas, foreign scenes have been introduced
in connection with some working of the life of unscrupulous ambition.
It is perfectly obvious in _Timon of Athens_--but there Nature offers
no message or balm to the injured soul of man. In _Cymbeline_ the
mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction
to life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison with
the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In _As You
Like It_ the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does not
bring peace, but preaches, when it says:

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?

In the _Tempest_, through Prospero's treatment of Ariel and Caliban we
realise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connection
with her. In _Macbeth_, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery
and treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the
three witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces;
and in _King Lear_ it is the fury of a father's love turned into
curses by the ingratitude born of the unnatural life of the court that
finds its symbol in the storm on the heath. The tragic intensity of
_Hamlet_ and _Othello_ is unrelieved by any touch of Nature's
eternity. Except in a passing glimpse of a moonlight night in the love
scene in the _Merchant of Venice_, Nature has not been allowed in
other dramas of this series, including _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antony
and Cleopatra_, to contribute her own music to the music of man's
love. In _The Winter's Tale_ the cruelty of a king's suspicion stands
bare in its relentlessness, and Nature cowers before it, offering no
consolation.

I hope it is needless for me to say that these observations are not
intended to minimise Shakespeare's great power as a dramatic poet, but
to show in his works the gulf between Nature and human nature owing to
the tradition of his race and time. It cannot be said that beauty of
nature is ignored in his writings; only he fails to recognise in them
the truth of the inter-penetration of human life with the cosmic life
of the world. We observe a completely different attitude of mind in
the later English poets like Wordsworth and Shelley, which can be
attributed in the main to the great mental change in Europe, at that
particular period, through the influence of the newly discovered
philosophy of India which stirred the soul of Germany and aroused the
attention of other Western countries.

In Milton's _Paradise Lost_, the very subject--Man dwelling in the
garden of Paradise--seems to afford a special opportunity for bringing
out the true greatness of man's relationship with Nature. But though
the poet has described to us the beauties of the garden, though he has
shown to us the animals living there in amity and peace among
themselves, there is no reality of kinship between them and man. They
were created for man's enjoyment; man was their lord and master. We
find no trace of the love between the first man and woman gradually
surpassing themselves and overflowing the rest of creation, such as we
find in the love scenes in _Kumara-Sambhava_ and _Shakuntala_. In the
seclusion of the bower, where the first man and woman rested in the
garden of Paradise--

Bird, beast, insect or worm
Durst enter none, such was their awe of man.

Not that India denied the superiority of man, but the test of that
superiority lay, according to her, in the comprehensiveness of
sympathy, not in the aloofness of absolute distinction.


IV

India holds sacred, and counts as places of pilgrimage, all spots
which display a special beauty or splendour of nature. These had no
original attraction on account of any special fitness for cultivation
or settlement. Here, man is free, not to look upon Nature as a source
of supply of his necessities, but to realise his soul beyond himself.
The Himalayas of India are sacred and the Vindhya Hills. Her majestic
rivers are sacred. Lake Manasa and the confluence of the Ganges and
the Jamuna are sacred. India has saturated with her love and worship
the great Nature with which her children are surrounded, whose light
fills their eyes with gladness, and whose water cleanses them, whose
food gives them life, and from whose majestic mystery comes forth the
constant revelation of the infinite in music, scent, and colour, which
brings its awakening to the soul of man. India gains the world through
worship, through spiritual communion; and the idea of freedom to which
she aspired was based upon the realisation of her spiritual unity.

When, in my recent voyage to Europe, our ship left Aden and sailed
along the sea which lay between the two continents, we passed by the
red and barren rocks of Arabia on our right side and the gleaming
sands of Egypt on our left. They seemed to me like two giant brothers
exchanging with each other burning glances of hatred, kept apart by
the tearful entreaty of the sea from whose womb they had their birth.

There was an immense stretch of silence on the left shore as well as
on the right, but the two shores spoke to me of the two different
historical dramas enacted. The civilisation which found its growth in
Egypt was continued across long centuries, elaborately rich with
sentiments and expressions of life, with pictures, sculptures,
temples, and ceremonials. This was a country whose guardian-spirit was
a noble river, which spread the festivities of life on its banks
across the heart of the land. There man never raised the barrier of
alienation between himself and the rest of the world.

On the opposite shore of the Red Sea the civilisation which grew up in
the inhospitable soil of Arabia had a contrary character to that of
Egypt. There man felt himself isolated in his hostile and bare
surroundings. His idea of God became that of a jealous God. His mind
naturally dwelt upon the principle of separateness. It roused in him
the spirit of fight, and this spirit was a force that drove him far
and wide. These two civilisations represented two fundamental
divisions of human nature. The one contained in it the spirit of
conquest and the other the spirit of harmony. And both of these have
their truth and purpose in human existence.

The characters of two eminent sages have been described in our
mythology. One was Vashishtha and another Vishvamitra. Both of them
were great, but they represented two different types of wisdom; and
there was conflict between them. Vishvamitra sought to achieve power
and was proud of it; Vashishtha was rudely smitten by that power. But
his hurt and his loss could not touch the illumination of his soul;
for he rose above them and could forgive. Ramachandra, the great hero
of our epic, had his initiation to the spiritual life from Vashishtha,
the life of inner peace and perfection. But he had his initiation to
war from Vishvamitra, who called him to kill the demons and gave him
weapons that were irresistible.

Those two sages symbolise in themselves the two guiding spirits of
civilisation. Can it be true that they shall never be reconciled? If
so, can ever the age of peace and co-operation dawn upon the human
world? Creation is the harmony of contrary forces--the forces of
attraction and repulsion. When they join hands, all the fire and fight
are changed into the smile of flowers and the songs of birds. When
there is only one of them triumphant and the other defeated, then
either there is the death of cold rigidity or that of suicidal
explosion.