Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOLUME 80. NUMBER 6 YAKSAS (With 23 Plates) BY ANANDA K. GOOMARASWAMY Keeper of Indian, Persian, and Muhammadan Art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Publication 2926) CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION MAY 8, 1928 ZU Boxi) (^afttmore (preee BALTIMORE, MD., C. S. A. YAKSAS By ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY (With Twenty-three Pi.ates) I. INTRODUCTION In centuries preceding the Christian era, when the fusion of races in India had already far advanced, the religion of India passed through its greatest crises and underwent the most profound changes. Vedic ritual, indeed, has survived in part up to the present day ; but the religious outlook of medieval and modern India is so profoundly different from that of the Vedic period, as known to us from the extant literature, that we cannot apply to both a common designation ; medieval and modern Hinduism is one thing, Vedic Brahmanism another. The change is twofold, at once inward and spiritual, and outward and formal. No doubt we are sufificiently aware of the spiritual revolution indi- cated in the Upanisads and Buddhism, whereby the emphasis was shifted from the outer world to the inner life, salvation became the highest goal, and knowledge the means of attainment. But while this philosophic development and spiritual coming of age have gradually perfumed (to use a characteristically Indian phrase) the whole of Indian civilization, there are here a background and ultimate signifi- cance given to the social order, rather than the means of its actual integration ; the philosophy of the Upanisads, the psychology of Buddhism, indeed, were originally means only for those who had left behind them the life of a householder, and thus in their immediate application anti-social.
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