Transcript of Amazing Quotes About India (Small Images Version)
Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as
this ever walked upon this earth in flesh and blood. ~~~ Einstein
(said about Gandhi) Delhi, India www.pratheep.com
When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical
monuments of the East--above all, those of India, which are
beginning to spread in Europe--we discover there many a truth, and
truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the
meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes
stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the
philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race
the native land of the highest philosophy. ~~~ Victor Cousin
(French philosopher) Soil of Ancient India, cradle of humanity,
hail! Hail, venerable and efficient nurse whom centuries of brutal
invasions have not yet burned under the dust of oblivion! Hail,
farther land of faith, of love, of poetry and of science! May we
hail a revival of thy past in our West in future! ~~~ Louis
Francois Jacolliot www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
Hampi, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com India contains the
whole history of philosophy in a nutshell. ~~~ Victor Cousin (
French philosopher) Their (Indian philosopher's) subtleties make
most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys. ~~~
Thomas Stearns Eliot (American poet & playwright)
I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the
banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis,.. It
is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least
Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he
would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the
reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in
Europe... ~~~ Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (French writer and
philosopher) www.pratheep.com Hampi, Karnataka, India
There is a striking resemblance between the equivalence of mass
and energy symbolized by Shiva's cosmic dance and the Western
theory, first expounded by Einstein, which calculates the amount of
energy contained in a subatomic particle by multiplying its mass by
the square of the speed of light : E=MC 2 . ~~~ Richard Waterstone
(Author & Journelist) The most elegant and sublime of these is
a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning
of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Lord
Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja, the Dance
King. In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of
creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder
that the universe, now newly created, with billions of years from
now will be utterly destroyed. These profound and lovely images
are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern
astronomical ideas. Dr.Carl Sagan (astrophysicist) Talakkadu,
Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all
numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value of position as well
as an absolute value, a profound and important idea which appears
so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very
simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations,
puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we
shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement the more when we
remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Appollnius,
two of the greatest men produced by antiquity. ~~~ Pierre Simon de
Laplace ( French mathematician & philosopher) We owe a lot to
the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no
worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. ~~~ Albert
Einstein (German Physicist) Hampi, Karnataka, India
www.pratheep.com
Sravanabelagola, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com According to
me, the influence of Sanskrit literature on our time will not be
lesser than what was in the 16th century Greece's influence on
Renaissance. One day, India's wisdom will flow again on Europe and
will totally transform our knowledge and thought. ~~~ Arthur
Schopenhauer(German philosopher) The Sanskrit language, whatever be
its antiquity is of wonderful structure, more perfect than the
Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined
than either. ~~~Sir William Jones (English scholar)
Mysore, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com Whatever sphere of
the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be
language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be
law or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere you
have to go to India, whether you like it or not, because some of
the most valuable and instructive materials of the history of man
are treasured up in India and India only. ~~~ Friedrich Maximilian
Meller ( German philologist )
Ajanta, Maharastra, India www.pratheep.com The writers of the
Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in
India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which
it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances. ~~~ Lord
Warren Hastings ( first governor general of British India) India of
the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she
lives and has still something to do for herself and the human
peoples. ~~~ Sri Aurobindo (Indian philosopher) I believe that the
civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world.
Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestry. Rome went; Greece
shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan
has become westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is
still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. ~~~ Gandhi India
is eternal. Though the beginnings of her numerous civilizations go
so far back in time that they are lost in the twilight of history,
she has the gift of perpetual youth. Her culture is ageless and is
as relevant to this present 20th century as it was to the 20th
century before Christ. ~~~ Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala ( Indian lawer
& philanthropist)
Talakkadu, Karnataka, India The strength of Hinduism lies in
its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human
character and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and
abstract side suited to the philosopher, its practical to the man
of the world, its aesthetic and ceremonial side attuned to the man
of the poetic feeling and imagination; and its quiescent
contemplative aspect that has its appeal for the man of peace and
the lover of seclusion. ~~~Sir Monier Williams (Indologist)
www.pratheep.com
www.pratheep.com How glorious the epoch that then presented
itself to my study and comprehension! I made tradition speak from
the temples recess. I enquired of monuments and ruins, I questioned
the Vedas whose pages count their existence by thousands of years
and whence enquiring youth imbibed the science of life long before
Thebes of the hundred gates or Babylon the great had traced our
their foundations. ~~~ Louis Francois Jacolliot India is the cradle
of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of
history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of
tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the
history of man are treasured up in India only! ~~~ Mark Twain
(American writer) Ajanta, Maharastra, India
www.pratheep.com We of the Occident (west) are about to arrive
at crossroads that was reached by the thinkers of India hundreds of
years before Christ. ~~~ Heinrich Zimmer The Portuguese, Dutch and
English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home
the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been
all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but
hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge. ~~~ Henrich Heine
(German poet) Ajanta, Maharastra, India
Ellora,Maharastra, India www.pratheep.com India is not only the
heir of her own religious traditions; she is also the residuary
legatee of the Ancient Mediterranean World's religious traditions.
Religion cuts far deeper, and, at the religious level, India has
not been a recipient; she has been a giver. About half the total
number of the living higher religions are of Indian origin.
~~~Arnold Joseph Toynbee (British historian) It is true that even
across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to us such
unquestionable gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables,
hypnotism and chess, and above all our numerals and our decimal
system. But these are not the essence of her spirit; they are
trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future. ~~~
Will Durant (American philosopher) If there is one place on the
face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home
from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence,
it is India! ~~~ Romaine Rolland (French writer)
Ellora, Maharastra, India www.pratheep.com Our sublimest
delusion is that India is backward. This predicates, of course,
that we are progressive. If backwardness and progress depend on the
rate at which one can gobble up vanities perhaps India does not
need our aid.....India's devotion to being good rather than being
clever comes nearer the heart of a true civilization. Cleverness
dies on the tongue like a social pleasantry, goodness echoes round
the universe in an un extinguishable reality. We in the West are
too busy to see that science without soul is like words without
meaning. India's greatness is in her humility; her weakness is her
strength. She is both wiser and more effective than the West, for
she does not declare that reform is not a new shirt on Sunday
morning but a clean heart at the Throne of Grace. Justice without
spirit of justice is as much of an achievement as a river without
its water. She is grave and old and stupendous. Her accents are for
the calm and gracious. Her temples are laden with symbolism....and
internal beauties. It is true, that India is royal...India has been
royal at heart from her very foundations of her memory. ~~~ W. J.
Grant
Mysore, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com Hinduism is a living
organism liable to growth and decay subject to the laws of Nature.
One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with
innumerable branches. The changes in the season affect it. It has
its autumn and its summer, its winter and its spring. It is, and is
not, based on scriptures. It does not derive its authority from one
book. ~~~ Gandhi
Civilizations have arisen in other parts of the world. In
ancient and modern times, wonderful ideas have been carried forward
from one race to another...But mark you, my friends, it has been
always with the blast of war trumpets and the march of embattled
cohorts. Each idea had to be soaked in a deluge of blood..... Each
word of power had to be followed by the groans of millions, by the
wails of orphans, by the tears of widows. This, many other nations
have taught; but India for thousands of years peacefully existed.
Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist... Even
earlier, when history has no record, and tradition dares not peer
into the gloom of that intense past, even from until now, ideas
after ideas have marched out from her, but every word has been
spoken with a blessing behind it and peace before it. We, of all
nations of the world, have never been a conquering race, and that
blessing is on our head, and therefore we live....! ~~~Swami
Vivekananda (Indian philosopher) And then India appears to me in
all the living power of her originality I traced her progress in
the expansion of her enlightenment over the world I saw her giving
her laws, her customs, her morale, her religion to Egypt, to
Persia, to Greece and Rome I saw Jaiminy and Veda Vyasa precede
Socrates and Plato, and Krishna, the son of the Virgin Devajani
precede the son of the Virgin of Bethelehem. ~~~ Louis Francois
Jacolliot Ajanta, Maharastra, India www.pratheep.com
India is a vast network of sacred places. The entire country is
a sacred land. The sacrality of the land of India, is what, still
today, gives a sense of unity to this country of so many religions,
cultures, races and factions. ~~~ Roger Housden In the literature
of Asia is a great poetry. There is also profound wisdom and some
very difficult metaphysics...Long ago I studied the ancient Indian
languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in
philosophy, I read little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry
shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility. ~~~ Thomas
Stearns Eliot (American poet & playwright) www.pratheep.com
Aurangabad, Maharastra, India
Sravnabelagola, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com During the
early life of a Nation, religion is an essential for the binding
together of the individuals who make the nation. India was born, as
it were, in the womb of Hinduism, and her body was for long shaped
by that religion. Religion is a binding force, and India has had a
longer binding together by religion than any other Nation in the
world, as she is the oldest of the living Nations. ~~~Annie Besant
(English theologiest) Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and
spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the
mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm
of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for
all living things. ~~~ Will Durant (American philosopher)
India is not an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the
context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed
one in an advanced state of decay ~~~ Shashi Tharoor (Indian author
. In his The Great Indian Novel) www.pratheep.com Delhi, India
The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real
way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of
India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the
Creators hand. ~~~ George Bernard Shaw Modern India will find her
identity and the modern Indian will regain his soul when our people
begin to have some understanding of our priceless heritage. A
nation which has had a great past can look forward with confidence
to a great future. It would be restorative to national
self-confidence to know that many discoveries of today are really
re-discoveries and represent knowledge which ancient India had at
her command. World thinkers have stood in marvel at the sublimity
of our scriptures. ~~~ Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala ( Indian lawyer
& philanthropist) www.pratheep.com Mysore, Karnataka,
India
India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of
things. She had the first civilization; she had the first
accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep
thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a
fruitful soul. ~~~ Mark Twain To the philosophers of India,
however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of
light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to
thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000
years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned
with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the
circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of
applying it. It is, indeed, a remarkable circumstance that when
Western civilization discovers Relativity it applies it to the
manufacture of atom-bombs, whereas Oriental civilization applies it
to the development of new states of consciousness. ~~~ Alan Watts
(English philosopher) Talakkadu, Karnataka, India
www.pratheep.com
In Hinduism, there can be as many spiritual paths as there are
spiritual aspirants & similarly there can really be as many
Gods as there are devotees to suit the moods, feelings, emotions
& social background of the devotees. ~~~ Sri Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa (Bengali Saint) As flowing rivers disappear in the sea,
losing their name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name and
form, goes to the divine person who is beyond all. Such a theory of
life and death will not please Western man, whose religion is as
permeated with individualism as are his political and economic
institutions. But it has satisfied the philosophical Hindu mind
with astonishing continuity. ~~~ Will Durant (American philosopher)
www.pratheep.com Ellora,Maharastra, India
Ellora,Maharastra, India Time, for example, is intimately
connected with the goddess Kali, which partly accounts for her
destructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation, E=MC 2 is
personified in India as Shakti in her various guises. ~~~ Roger
Housden (American writer) www.pratheep.com
The whole edifice of Indian civilization is imbued with
spiritual meaning. The close interdependence and perfect
harmonization of the two serve to counteract the natural tendency
of Indian philosophy to become recondite and esoteric, removed from
life and the task of the education of society. In the Hindu world,
the folklore and popular mythology carry the truths and teachings
of the philosophers to the masses. In this symbolic form the ideas
do not have to be watered down to be popularized. The vivid,
perfectly appropriate pictorial script preserves the doctrines
without the slightest damage to their sense. ~~~ Heinrich Zimmer
(German Indologist) www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
This is indeed India! The land of dreams and romance, of
fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of
palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants
and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the
jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a
thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race,
birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of
legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday's bear
date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one
sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable
interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and
ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land
that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a
glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest
of the world combined. ~~~ Mark Twain www.pratheep.com Belur,
Karnataka, India
www.pratheep.com Delhi, India In religion, India is the only
millionaire......the One land that all men desire to see, and
having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse
for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. ~~~ Mark
Twain (American writer) It is important to appreciate that the
historical achievements in India in critical reasoning, public
deliberation and analytical scrutiny as well as in science and
mathematics, architecture, medicine, painting and music, are
products of Indian society involving both the Hindus and
non-Hindus, and including the skeptical as well as the religious.
~~~ Amartya Sen (Indian economist)
By what strange social alchemy has India subdued her
conquerors, transforming them to her very self and substance..... ?
Why is it that her conquerors have not been able to impose on her
their language, their thoughts and customs, except in superficial
ways? ~~~ Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian philosopher &
scholar) www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
Peaceful Indians,... did the rumor of your riches have to
penetrate a clime in which artificial needs know no bounds? Soon,
new foreigners reached your shores; inconvenient guests, everything
they touched belonged to them.... If the British ...neglect any
longer to enrich Europe's scholars with the Sanskrit
scriptures...they will bear the shame of having sacrificed honor,
probity, and humanity to the vile love for gold and money, without
human knowledge having derived the least lustre, the least growth
from their conquests. ~~~ Anquetil Duperron (French Orientalist)
www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries
without ever having to send a single soldier across her border! ~~~
Hu Shih (former Ambassador of China to USA) It has been my
long-standing conviction that India is like a donkey carrying a
sack of gold - the donkey does not know what it is carrying but is
content to go along with the load on its back. The load of gold is
the fantastic treasure - in arts, literature, culture, and some
sciences like Ayurvedic medicine - which we have inherited from the
days of the splendor that was India. ~~~ Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala (
Indian lawyer & philanthropist) www.pratheep.com Bylkuppe,
Karnataka, India
The multiplicity of the manifestations of the Indian genius as
well as their fundamental unity gives India the right to figure on
the first rank in the history of civilized nations. Her
civilization, spontaneous and original, unrolls itself in a
continuous time across at least thirty centuries, without
interruption, without deviation. Ceaselessly in contact with
foreign elements which threatened to strangle her, she persevered
victoriously in absorbing them, assimilating them and enriching
herself with them. Thus she has seen the Greeks, the Scythians, the
Afghans, the Mongols to pass before her eyes in succession and is
regarding with indifference the Englishmen - confident to pursue
under the accidence of the surface the normal course of her high
destiny. ~~~ Sylvain Levi (French Orientalist) www.pratheep.com
Halebeedu, Karnataka, India
When a religious method recommends itself as 'scientific',it
can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this
expectation. Quite apart from the charm of the new and the
fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to
have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable
experience and thus satisfies the scientific need for 'facts'; and,
besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable
age, its doctrine and method which include every phase of life, it
promises undreamed of possibilities. ~~~ Carl Gustav Jung (German
Yogic teacher) We do not yet realize that while we are turning
upside down the material world of the East with our technical
proficiency, the East with its psychic proficiency, is throwing our
spiritual world into confusion. We have never yet hit upon the
thought that while we are overpowering the Orient from without, it
may be fastening its hold upon us from within. ~~~ Carl Gustav Jung
(German Yogic teacher) Very few travelers have sought to understand
India, very few have submitted to the labor necessary to a
knowledge of her past splendor, looking only at the surface they
have ever denied them and with an unreasoning confidence of
criticism that made them the easy victims of ignorance. ~~~ Louis
Francois Jacolliot www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
Sravanabelagola, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
Enter Hinduisms myths, her magnificent symbols, her several
hundred images of God, her rituals that keep turning night and day
like never ending prayer wheels. It is obtuse to confuse Hinduisms
images with idolatry, and their multiplicity with polytheism. They
are 'runways' from which the sense-laden human spirit can rise for
its "flight of the alone to the Alone. Even village priest will
frequently open their temple ceremonies with the following beloved
invocation:
O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human
limitations:
Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;
Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and
salutations,
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human
limitations.
~~~ Huston Smith (American professor)
Going forward, you have a broad and beautiful street, full of
rows of fine houses and streets of the sort I have described, and
it is to be understood that the houses belong to men rich enough to
afford such. In this street live many merchants, and there you will
find all sorts of rubies, and diamonds, and emeralds, and pearls,
and seed pearls, and cloths, and every other sort of thing there is
on earth and that you may wish to buy ~~~ Domingos Paes (Portuguese
traveler who visited Hampi during (AD 1520-22) during the reign of
Vijayanagar Empire) In India I found a race of mortals living upon
the Earth. but not adhering to it. Inhabiting cities, but not being
fixed to them, possessing everything but possessed by nothing. ~~~
Apollonius Tyanaeus ( Greek Thinker and Traveler) Hampi, Karnataka,
India www.pratheep.com
The strength of Hinduism lies in its infinite adaptability to
the infinite diversity of human character and human tendencies. It
has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the
philosopher, its practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic
and ceremonial side attuned to the man of the poetic feeling and
imagination; and its quiescent contemplative aspect that has its
appeal for the man of peace and the lover of seclusion. ~~~ Sir
Monier Monier-Williams (Indologist) www.pratheep.com
Ellora,Maharastra, India
The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths
dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense,
indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only
religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern
scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and
night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer
than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since
the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still. ~~~
Dr.Carl Sagan (astrophysicist) Our present knowledge of the nervous
system fits in so accurately with the internal description of the
human body given in the Vedas (5000 years ago). Then the question
arises whether the Vedas are really religious books or books on
anatomy of the nervous system and medicine. ~~~ Rele (Jewish
writer) www.pratheep.com Ellora,Maharastra, India
Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has
conceived. ~~~ Alfred North Whitehead ( British mathematician) It
is not only a country and something geographical, but the home and
the youth of the soul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of
all times. ~~~ Herman Hesse (German poet and novelist)
www.pratheep.com Ellora,Maharastra, India
When Confucius and the Indian Scriptures were made known, no
claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could be thought of. It is only
within this century (in the 1800s) that England and America
discovered that their nursery tales were old German and
Scandinavian stories; and now it appears that they came from India,
and are therefore the property of all the nations. ~~~ Emerson
(American philosopher) www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka,
India
The Hindu genius is a love for abstraction and, at the same
time, a passion for the concrete image. At times it is rich, at
others prolix. It has created the most lucid and the most
instinctive art. It is abstract and realistic, sexual and
intellectual, pedantic and sublime. It lives between extremes, it
embraces the extremes, rooted in the earth and drawn to an
invisible beyond. ~~~ Octovio Paz (Mexican Nobel Prize laureate in
Literature) www.pratheep.com Ellora,Maharastra, India
A special charm of studying Indian philosophy today is that it
is more truly Western, in the modern, scientific sense, than any
system of philosophy that the West has produced. Whereas Western
rationalism has broken down under the impact of scientific
discoveries, Indian thought cheerfully rides the crest of the wave,
and is only pushed higher by every new scientific finding. ~~~J.
Donald Walters ( singer & composer) India The land of Vedas,
the remarkable works contain not only religious ideas for a perfect
life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity,
radium, electronics, airship, all were known to the seers who
founded the Vedas. ~~~ Wheeler Wilcox (American poet)
www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
Precious stones or durable materials - gold, silver, bronze,
marble, onyx or granite - have been used by ancient people in an
attempt to immortalize themselves. Not so however the ancient Vedic
Aryans (Indians). They turned to what may seem the most volatile
and insubstantial material of all - the spoken word ...The pyramids
have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by
earthquakes, and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is
recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, traveling like a
great wave through the living substance of mind... ~~~ Dr.Jean
LeMee (French author) www.pratheep.com Halebeedu, Karnataka,
India
It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western
beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in
self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous
moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient
Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it
possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family.
~~~Arnold Joseph Toynbee (British historian) India has all along
been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all
the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying
the freedom of maintaining their differences. The tie has been as
loose as possible, yet as close as circumstances permitted. This
has produced something like a United States of a social federation,
whose common name is Hinduism. ~~~ Rabindranath Tagore (Indian poet
& philosopher) Aurangabad, Maharastra, India
www.pratheep.com
Yoga, as a science of achieving this transformation of finite
man into the infinite One, has to be recognized as something
intrinsically Indian or, as 'a specific dimension of the Indian
mind. Yoga constitutes a characteristic dimension of the Indian
mind, to such a point that whatever Indian religion and culture
have made their way, we also find a more or less pure form of Yoga.
In India, Yoga was adopted and valorized by all religious
movements, whether Hinduist or 'heretical. The various Christian or
syncretistic Yogas of modern India constitutes another proof that
Indian religious experience finds the yogic methods of 'meditation'
and 'concentration' a necessity. ~~~ Mircea Eliade (Romanin
philospoher,author) It is certainly true that Hinduism has provided
the broad cultural and religious framework that has held India
together despite its astonishing linguistic, ethnic and political
diversity and divisions. Hinduism is as essential for an
understanding of Indian culture and civilization. ~~~ Dr.Karan
Singh (Indian Diplomat & politician) www.pratheep.com
Ellora,Maharastra, India
India, has accomplished in the field of spirituality what, in
the world of finance, the free market (as opposed to a controlled
economy) has succeeded in doing:The individual seeker has been left
free to explore and develop his own spiritual potentials. Other
scriptures have hinted at the deeper truths of inward religion. But
the priests in every religion seldom quote those passages, which
they rightly see as threatening to their institutional preeminence.
~~~ J. Donald Walters Hampi, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
Indeed, if I may be allowed the anachronism, the Hindus were
Spinozites more than two thousand years before the existence of
Spinoza; and Darwinians may centuries before Darwin; and
evolutionists many centuries before the doctrine of evolution had
been accepted by the scientists of our time, and before any word
like 'evolution' existed in any language of the world. ~~~ Sir
Monier Monier-Williams (British Indologist) The motion of the stars
calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a
single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the
19-th century). The Indian tables give the same annual variation of
the moon as the discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to
the school of Alexandria and also to the Arabs who followed the
calculations of the school... The Hindu systems of astronomy are by
far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and
- even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge. ~~~Jean
Sylvain Bailly (French astronomer) www.pratheep.com
Ellora,Maharastra, India
Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. Nothing
should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and
inadequacy of his acquaintance with India....This is the India that
patient scholarship is now opening up like a new intellectual
continent to that Western mind which only yesterday thought
civilization an exclusive Western thing. ~~~ Will Durant (American
philosopher) Hampi, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
We find among the Indians the vestiges of the most remote
antiquity....We know that all peoples came there to draw the
elements of their knowledge ... India, in her splendor, gave
religions and laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greece owed
to her both their fables and their wisdom. ~~~ Pierre Sonnerat
(French naturalist & author) She (India) has left indelible
imprints on one fourth of the human race in the course of a long
succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim ... her place
amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of
humanity. From Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regions of
Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India has propagated her
beliefs, her tales, and her civilization! ~~~ Sylvia Levi
www.pratheep.com Halebeedu, Karnataka, India
Almost all the theories, religious, philosophical, and
mathematical, taught by the Pythagoreans were known in India in the
sixth century B.C. ~~~ Professor H. G. Rawlinson The Entire Cosmos
is all pervaded by the same divine power. there is no ultimate
duality in human existence or in consciousness. This is a truth
which in the West is only recently being under stood after Einstein
and Heisenberg and quantum mechanics. The
Newtonian-Cartesian-Marxist paradigm of a materialistic universe
has now been finally abolished, it has collapsed in the face of the
new physics. Our ancient seers had a deeper insights into the
nature of reality than people had even until very recently. ~~~
Dr.Karan Singh (Indian Diplomat & politician) Hampi, Karnataka,
India www.pratheep.com
There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into
your heart and wont go. For me, India is such a place. When I first
visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush
beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the
senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells,
tastes, and sounds. It was as if all my life I had been seeing the
world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India,
experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor. ~~~
Keith Bellows (Vice-President, National Geographic Society) I like
to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India
made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our
times. ~~~John Archibald Wheeler (American scientist)
www.pratheep.com Belur, Karnataka, India
Towns and villages have inner gates; the walls are wide and
high; the streets and lanes are torturous, and the roads winding.
The thoroughfares are are dirty and the stalls arranged on both
sides of the road with appropriate signs. Butchers, fishers,
dancers, executioners and scavengers, and so on, have their abodes
without the city. In coming and going these persons are bound to
keep on the left side of the road till they arrive at their homes.
Their houses are surrounded by low walls and form the suburbs. The
earth being soft and muddy, the walls of the town are mostly built
of bricks or tiles. The different buildings have the same form as
those in China; rusher of dry branches, or tiles or boards are used
for covering them. The walls are covered with lime and mud, mixed
with cow dung for purity. At different seasons, flowers are
scattered about. Such are some of their different customs. ~~~ Huen
Tsiang (Chinese traveler visited India 629-645 A.D.) Hampi,
Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
Besides the discoverers of geometry and algebra, the
constructors of human speech, the parents of philosophy, the primal
expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological and physical
science, how even the greatest of our biological and theologians
seem dwarfed! Name of us any modern discovery, and we venture to
say that Indian history need not long be searched before the
prototype will be found on record. Here we are with the transit of
science half accomplished, and all our Vedic ideas in process of
readjustment to the theories of force correlation, natural
selection, atomic polarity and evolution. And here, to mock our
conceit, our apprehension, and our despair, we may read what Manu
said, perhaps 10,000 years before the birth of Christ: The first
germ of life was developed by water and heat. Water ascends towards
the sky in vapors; from the sun it descends in rain, from the rains
are born the plants, and from the plants, animals. ~~~ Louis
Francois Jacolliot (French diplomat) www.pratheep.com Belur,
Karnataka, India
There has been no more revolutionary contribution than the one
which the Hindus (Indians) made when they invented zero. ~~~
Lancelot Hogben (English mathematician) It is impossible not to be
astonished by India. Nowhere on Earth does humanity present itself
in such a dizzying, creative burst of cultures and religions, races
and tongues. Enriched by successive waves of migration and
marauders from distant lands, every one of them left an indelible
imprint which was absorbed into the Indian way of life. Every
aspect of the country presents itself on a massive, exaggerated
scale, worthy in comparison only to the superlative mountains that
overshadow it. It is this variety which provides a breathtaking
ensemble for experiences that is uniquely Indian. Perhaps the only
thing more difficult than to be indifferent to India would be to
describe or understand India completely. There are perhaps very few
nations in the world with the enormous variety that India has to
offer. Modern day India represents the largest democracy in the
world with a seamless picture of unity in diversity unparalleled
anywhere else. ~~~A Rough Guide to India (Travel guide book) Hampi,
Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its
people. ~~~ Gandhi Hampi village, Karnataka, India
www.pratheep.com
At its starting point in India, the birthplace of races and
religions, the womb of the world. ~~~ Jules Michelet ( French
writer) So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone,
either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary
country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have
been forgotten, nothing overlooked. ~~~ Mark Twain (American
writer) Talakkadu, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
Compared to Islam and Christianity, Hinduisms doctrines are
extraordinarily fluid, and multiform. India deals in images and
metaphors. Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thought is,
it is less prone than European theology to the vice of distorting
transcendental ideas by too stringent definition. It adumbrates the
indescribable by metaphors and figures. It is not afraid of
inconsistencies which may illustrate different aspects of the
infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divine within the limits
of a logical phrase. ~~~Sir Charles Eliot ( British diplomat ) The
Hindu understanding of the universe has often been misunderstood as
bizarre and primitive. The Hindu imagery is in fact a sophisticated
iconography conveying universal religious truths only now beginning
to be understood in the West. ~~~ Alistair Shearer India is the
land of dreams. India had always dreamt - more of the bliss that is
man's final goal. And this has helped India to be more creative in
history than any other nation. Hence the effervescence of myths and
legends, religious and philosophies, music, and dances and the
different styles of architecture. ~~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
(German philosopher) www.pratheep.com Halebeedu, Karnataka,
India
Where can we look for sages like those whose systems of
philosophy were prototypes of those of Greece: to whose works
Plato, Thales and Pythagorus were disciples? Where do I find
astronomers whose knowledge of planetary systems yet excites wonder
in Europe as well as the architects and sculptors whose works claim
our admiration, and the musicians who could make the mind oscillate
from joy to sorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modes
and varied intonation? ~~~Colonel James Todd (American pioneer)
Hampi, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
This is the ancient land, where wisdom made its home before it
went into any other country Here is the same India whose soil has
been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived Look
back, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the eternal
fountains that are behind, and after that look forward, march
forward, and make India brighter, greater, much higher, than she
ever was. ~~~ Swami Vivekananda (Indian philosopher) Another
important Vedantic concept is that all human beings, because of
their shared spirituality, are members of a single family. The
Upanishads have an extraordinary phrase for the human race,
Amritasya putrah (Children of immortality), because we carry within
our consciousness the light and the power of the Brahman regardless
of race, colour, creed, sex, caste or nationality. That is the
basis of the concept of human beings as an extended family
Vasudhaiva kutumbakam which is engraved on the first gate into our
Parliament House. ~~~ Dr.Karan Singh (Indian Diplomat &
politician) www.pratheep.com Hampi, Karnataka, India
I shall now speak of the knowledge of the Hindus...of their
subtle discoveries even more ingenious than those of the Greeks and
Babylonians - of their rational system of mathematics or of their
method of calculation which no word can praise strongly enough - I
mean the system using the nine symbols. If these things were known
by the people who think that they alone have mastered the sciences
because they speak Greek, they would perhaps be convinced that
every folk, not only Greeks, but men of a different tongues, know
something as well as they. ~~~ Severus Sebokbt (Bishop ,Syrian
astronomer) Precious stones or durable materials - gold, silver,
bronze, marble, onyx or granite - have been used by ancient people
in an attempt to immortalize themselves. Not so however the ancient
Vedic Aryans (Indians). They turned to what may seem the most
volatile and insubstantial material of all - the spoken word ...The
pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by
earthquakes, and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is
recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, traveling like a
great wave through the living substance of mind... ~~~ Dr.Jean
LeMee (French author) Hampi, Karnataka, India www.pratheep.com
www.pratheep.com Ellora,Maharastra, India We, on the contrary,
now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical
linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to
point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that
they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is just the
same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. In India, our religions
will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human
race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the
contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a
fundamental change in our knowledge and thought ~~~ Arthur
Schopenhauer(German philosopher)
After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the
ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made
much more sense. ~~~ W. Heisenberg (German Physicist) With one foot
grounded in time-honored traditions and the other fervently
striding into the entrepreneurial e-age, India embraces diversity
passionately as few other countries on earth could. ~~~ Lonely
Planet (Travel guide book) www.pratheep.com Elephanta, Maharastra,
India
No other country has lived with so complicated a past so
equably, assimilating everything that has happened to it,
obliterating naught, so that not even the intricate histories of
European states have produced such a rich pattern as that
bequeathed by the Mauryas, the Ashokas, the Pahlavas, the Guptas,
the Chalykyas, the Hoysalas, the Pandyas, the Cholas, the Mughals,
and the British - to identify a few of the people that have shaped
India's inheritance. Religion, flourishes here as it does nowhere
else. Other lands may surrender themselves totally to a particular
faith, but in India most creeds are deeply rooted and acknowledged
fervently. Virtually the whole population practices some form of
devotion. The Indian without the slightest feeling for the divine,
without a spiritual dimension to his life, is exceedingly rare.
Incomparable and inimitable she is, India is also our great
paradigm. ~~~ Geoffrey Moorhouse (Author) This country was
anciently so renowned for knowledge and wisdom that the
philosophers of Greece did not disdain to travel thither for their
improvement. ~~~William Macintosh www.pratheep.com Belur,
Karnataka, India