Now, the superiority of a culture depends upon the longevity of the nation whose culture it is. To quote a Christian scholar, “A merely material or intellectual civilisation bears within it a disease which leads to death. The end of culture is the realisation of the kingdom of Heaven on earth, ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven.’ Histories of Greece and Rome, and the recent continental war testify to the above statement almost word for word. But what about India? A vedic scholar writing about the people of Ancient India in the second millennium B C proves how little Indra has changed these four thousand years.
Almost every custom, every institution referred to in the Vedas can be yet observed, many mantras mentioned can be heard, many images described can be seen in thousands of villages today. And this, notwithstanding that during the long period India has witnessed numerous volcanic upheavals of society like that which was caused by the spread of the teachings of the Jina, and the Buddha, notwithstanding the tremendous thunderstorms that have broken over India from the invasion of Alexander of Macedon down to the invasion of Babel, the Moghul.
The conservative instincts of man, his adverseness to change of all kinds which dominated Europe up to the age of the French Revolution, still hold India in their icy grip, and affords us this spectacle of people that have remained unchangeable at their own Himalaya during the shocks of ages. This shows the genuinity of the Indian culture.
Form of the spirit - What can possibly be the form of culture which is seen to be spiritual in essence? Though it is extremely difficult to give any particular concrete form as the country abounds with so many creeds and sects of Religion, yet they can be profitably analysed to contribute to one fundamental form ; this is, the finite to be controlled by the infinite, the relative by the absolute, the personal by the impersonal, and the ultimate submersion of the former in the latter. The concept of the absolute can be traced even to the hymn portion of the Vedas.
Atharva Veda 8, 1, declares, “The greatest who presides over the past, the future, the universe and whose alone is the sky “. In the Samaveda Samhita 47 is put the question what light is equal to the sun? What lake is equal to the sea? The next verse supplies the answer, “Brahma is the light equal to the sun; the sky is the lake equal to the sea”.
This is the root of the Vedantic conception which has been expounded in various ways, and has given rise to various schools of thought and belief with their corresponding sects and societies.
Of these one has knowledge, other has lover third has self-less action and so on, as the central note for the realisation of the impersonal higher be it soul, Brahma or Iswara (God).
Extracts from Vedanta Kesari, an English monthly of the Ramakrishna Order, published from Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.