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Indian Culture Indian Culture (A Collection of Eassays) INDIAN CULTURE INDIAN CULTURE (A COLLECTION OF EASSAYS) Editor S.Nagaiah Editor S.Nagaiah Published by Executive Officer Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, Tirupati. Tirupati 2013 INDIAN CULTURE A Collection of Essays FOREWORD Indian culture is one of the richest and most diverse of its kind Edited by in the world as it has stimulated the growth and development of PROF. S. NAGAIAH several philosophical systems and religious thoughts. This culture T.T.D. Religious Publications Series No. 995 has exercised considerable influence over the spiritual life of the © All Rights Reserved people all over the world. The present volume is a collection of lectures delivered by well First Edition : 2013 known scholars at the religious educational center set up by Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams in 1980. The lectures were aimed at Copies: inculcating religious ideas and ideals enshrined in our scriptures into the minds of the educated. The book covers a wide range of topics Published by focussing upon our culture, philosophy and Vedanta. L.V. SUBRAHMANYAM, I.A.S. Executive Officer We hope the students as well as the general readers find it Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams interesting and useful. Tirupati In the Service of the Lord D.T.P. Office of the Editor-in-Chief T.T.D., Tirupati L.V. Subrahmanyam I.A.S. Executive Officer Printed at Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Press Tirupati - 517 507 CONTENTS Indian Culture 1 - I.V. Chalapathi Rao The Vedas 11 - Dr. T.N. Ganapathi Indian Philosophy 42 - Dr. Saraswathi Chennakesavan The Spirit and Substance of the Gita 73 - Dr. P. Nagaraja Rao Indian Philosophy with Special reference to the three Systems - Advaita Visishtadvaita and Dvaita 101 - Dr. P. Nagaraja Rao Gita - Nishkama Karma Yoga 133 - Dr. P. Nagaraja Rao Upanishads, Gita and the Brahma Sutras 138 - Dr. P. Nagaraja Rao Modern Science and Vedanta 145 - Swami Jitatmananda Gandhi on Religion 155 - Prof. G.S. Herbert The Educational System in Ancient India 167 - I.V. Chalapathi Rao INDIAN CULTURE - I.V. Chalapathi Rao India is a home of people of different religions, racial origins, sects, creeds and ways of living, with a common culture running through all the ages - each generation expanding and altering what it has received from its predecessors. It will be seen from a close study of history that the sub-continent of India has been one cultural unit throughout the ages, cutting across political boundaries and linguistic barriers. The cultural heritage of India is a multi-faceted diamond representing a bewildering diversity of thought and an infinite variety of forms. The essence of this culture is its catholicity - the idea that it is possible for two or three persons to sleep together keeping their heads on the same pillow and having different dreams. As Professor Pratt said, “mutually contradictory creeds can and do keep house together without quarrel within the wide and hospitable Hindu family”. Spiritual life is the oxygen which sustained and held India together and kept its culture alive despite frequent inroads of foreign civilisations. The core remained unchanged although there were peripheral changes. Its most challenging and distinctive feature is that religion became science. The Upanishads (The breath of the eternal) maintain that science is the greatest which makes man know THAT which never changes and by knowing which everything is known. This science of the soul dealing with the secret of birth and death, may rightly be regarded as a national characteristic showing the vitality of its culture. India lives today in spite of visible degeneration and depravity all round, political and social, because these spiritual and cultural values are still kept alive in the national consciousness. 2 Indian Culture Indian Culture 3 India’s culture is closely interwoven with spiritual values. The salvation for others. Great men are those who build highways for truly cultured man is not driven by instincts but guided by reason, others with their heart’s blood”. Kumarila said in ‘Tantravarthika’: untouched by emotions and momentary stress. He lives in the “Let all the sins of the world fall on me and let the world be saved.” consciousness of the welfare of the world. Renunciation should not Commenting on the Mundaka Upanishad, Sankara said : “He who be misconstrued as negation of action, but unselfish conduct. has reached the all - penetrating Atman enters into the all.” Thus the Vivekananda said, “Here activity prevailed when the very fathers of value of the Indian culture diminishes if it is divorced from spirituality. the modern Europeans lived in jungles and painted themselves blue, In his poem ‘Bharata Tirtha’, Rabindranath Tagore pointed out even earlier when history has no record…” in attractive language the principle of ‘unity in diversity’ underlying In India through the Ages, Jadunath Sarkar says : “India’s India’s culture. He said that different people came into India from geography has always influenced its history. Each race, dynasty and pre-historic times to the modern European history and as a result of school of thought contributed to the common store of culture through their joint efforts we have today a cosmposite culture. Not only many centuries and lost their identity by being transformed and people who lived within India’s borders but also those who belonged assimilated into India’s cultural heritage just as millions and millions to several races who came into contact with India through accidental of small insects have given up their bodies in building up the coral encounters in history, have contributed to its diversity. We find reefs on which many of the Pacific islands stand today secure from evidence of this in pre-historic Indus Valley Civilisation which storm and tempest. From early times the internal isolation was broken flourished over four thousand years ago. We find that its foundations and a pan Indian community of customs, ideal and culture was created were laid in Vedic civilization. It is a pleasing cocktail of blood and by certain agencies.” race, speech and patterns of thought and inter - play of ideologies. In the final analysis it is an evolving culture - not something that ever The sources of cultural integration are identified as the following attained completeness or finality and ceased to grow from then on. a) The pilgrim student The examination and expression of good through society are b) The wandering mendicant distinctive features of western culture. The keynote of India’s culture c) The career - hunting warrior is “charity in spirit and hospitality in mind.” Its distinctive features d) The ambitious kings / military conquerors are splendid unselfishness and emphasis on the individual (as key to e) The son-in-law / daughter-in-law imported from society). In order to reform society, you should transform yourself. neighbouring countries from the centres of aristocracy. The Mughal rule and the British rule brought certain new influences f) The holy rivers which led to cross fertilization of cultures. The integration of cultures g) The great, sacred cities. does not mean the merging or submerging of one culture into another. Our solution to mankind’s ills is renunciation - unworldliness. Western culture retains its basic feature of outward expression - Swamy Vivekananda said - “The good live for others alone. The going outwards to conquer external nature. India’s culture possesses wise should sacrifice himself for others… Go to hell yourself to buy the power to perceive the underlying spiritual unity of all things. 4 Indian Culture Indian Culture 5 Western culture is mainly engaged in transcending physical limitations. nation has its own separate pattern of culture. There is much that is India’s culture makes it possible to transcend mental and spiritual common between all the nations and at the same time there is limitations. Western culture tries to justify the ways of science to something that is peculiar to each of them. Literature, art, religion man. India’s culture will retain its basic idea that the aim of man is to and science taken together and at their best would reflect culture. manifest the divinity within him, transcending mental and spiritual Literature and art are a socializing and edifying experience of the limitations. But this ability to prove the inner recesses of the mind artist, which would be passed on to the reader, spectator or listener. (internal nature) would automatically lead to great activity and striving Culture is a social virtue manifesting itself in consideration for the for social welfare. “Social good will thus become the expression of feelings of others and respect for others’ rights. It moulds and refines the underlying spiritual unity.” (‘India’s Cultural Heritage’ published the behaviour of people in a gentle and imperceptible manner. The by Ramakrishna Mission). Government regulates people’s moral and civic life through its police force and law courts. Culture restrains people from improper Rome stood for politics, Greece for art and India for Eternal behaviour through its internal force. It trains and elevates the senses Spiritual Values. The standard - bearers of the Indian Culture are and discourages over - indulgence. Rajaji says, “The standard placed not military heroes or men of wealth or monarchs and ministers but by the people accepted by its collective conscience as foot rule for sages (wise men) like Vyasa, Yagnavalkya, Uddalaka, Janaka, measure and judgement should be taken as the culture of a particular Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi and nation or the community rather than the factual condition. Semantically Aurobindo who believed in simple living and high thinking, conducted speaking, it is the standard of behaviour set before a people and researches in the greatest of all sciences namely the Science of the kept up steadily by the enlightened among them.” Soul and discovered the hidden secrets of life.
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