The Hindu View of Life

102 Pages·2018·26.011 MB·English

by  S Radhakrishnan

v
THE HINDU IEW OF L1FE
Professor S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was a prominent
philosopher, author and educationalist. He was equally
at home in the European and Asiatic traditions of
thought, and devoted an immense amount of energy to
interpreting Indian religion, culture and philosophy for
the rest of the world. He was a visiting professor at many
foreign universities, and, served as India's Ambassador
Extraordinary to the USSR from 1949 to 1952. He was
elected to the office of vice-president of India in !957. He
became the President of India in 1962 and held this rank
until 1967, when he retired from public life.
He wrote a number of books for readers the world over.
Some of his outstanding works are An Idealist View of Life,
Indian Philosophy, Vols I and II, and a se~inal translation
of and commentary on the Bhagavadgita.
Fim publi hcd by Unwin Hyman Ltd, UK, 1927
First published in India by
HarperColljns Publishers in. 199 3
Building 10, Tower A, 4ch Floor, DLF Cyber City, Phase II,
Gurugram Haryana - 122002, India
www.barpercollins.co. in
This edition published in India by HarperCollins Publishers in 2018
18th Impression
Copyright© S. Radhakrishnan 1927, 1993, 2018
P-ISBN: 978-81-7223-845-2
£-ISBN: 978-93-5136-045-2
The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author's
own and che faces are as reported by him, and che publishers
are not in any way liable for the same.
S. Radhakrishnan asserts the moral right co be identified as the aucho~ of chis work.
All righcs reserved. No pare of chis publication may be reproduced,
scored in a retrieval system, or cransmicced, in any form or by any means,
deccronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
wichouc che prior permission of che publishers.
Typeset in l 0/13.5 Palac.ino
InoSofc Systems
Printed and bound in India by
Replika Press Pvt. Ltd.
to my wife
NOTE
Tlte material for this book was originally delivered
in the fon11 of lectures, the Upt'on Lectures, in
1926, at Manchester College, Oxford.
on ten ts
I. Religious Experience:
Its Nature and Content 1
II. Conflict of Religions:
The Hindu Attitude 19
m.
Hindu Dharma: 41
1
IV. Hindu Dharma: 66
II

CHAPTER I
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: ITS NATURE AND CONTENT
At the outset, one is confronted by the difficulty of defining
what Hinduis ·s.-'f.0-:rr-tnt-1: 4t ems t without
-
ease wi ti). ~cb..I::Li..Mw.i&~a&&read.il: bsorbed tbe.. customs-
y.ndideas.. .0 £.peoples-wil om it has come into contact is
as great as the difficulty we feel in ·finding a common feature
__,_,.~· ...._,-J......,,.-:~~....... ....... " -----... .. ,.,......__~ ~ ..... ..__~~---------
b_~ingJ9g£fu~r. i~ ilift~~ ~m~. But, if there is not a unity
of spirit binding its different expressions and linking up the
different periods of its history into one organic whole, it will
not be possible to account for the achievements of Hinduism.
The dictum that,\if.Fe leave aside the blind forces of nature,
nothin moves in this wor hich is not Greek in its origin,
has become a common lace w-it,h -us. But it is not altogether
trueJialf the world moves on independent foundations
which Hinduism supplied. ~hina and Japan, Tibet and Siam,
Burma and Ceylon look to India as their spiritual home.
The civilization itself has not been a short-lived one. Its
historic records date back for over four thousand years, and
even then it had reached a stage of civilization which has
l II ll II I N I> V 111 W () I' L I I' H
ntinu d H unbrc k.t.'n, thnuHh ol Um \N Rlow and ahnrn l
t ti~ ur~ , until th ' pr'Sl'nl d y. IL hos stood t·h • sln1'iH
nd tr~ in t ll1{ r' th Hl four or fiv mlll ·nniL1ms of BplrJtual
l
th ught nd p d '"' '· Though p 'Oplcs of differ lnt rac
'H
n ulttn s h b 'l"'I pourin.g into India from th dawn of
'i i m ha b en ab to maintc: in its su prcmacy,
pr
~d ) nth yttz1n cree s back d .b ol!ticalp~owcr
vha
n t be nab e to coerce the large majority of Indians to
th ir views. The Hindu culture possesses some vitality which
m to be denied to some other more forceful currents. ft is
no more n cessary to dissect Hinduism than to open a tree to
whether the sap still runs.
The Hindu civilization is so called, since its original
founders or earliest followers occupied the territory drained
by the Sindhu (the Indus) river system corresppnding to the
North-West Frontier province and the Punjab. This is recorded
in the ~g Veda, the oldest of the Vedas, the Hindu scriptures
which give their name to this period of Indian history. The
people on the Indian side of the Sindhu were called Hindu by
the Persian and the later western invaders. From the Punjab,
the civilization flowed over into the valley of the Ganges
where it met with numerous cults of primitive tribes. In its
southward march the Aryan culture got into touch with the
Dravidian and ultimately dominated it, though undergoing
some modification from its influence. As the civilization
extended over the whole of India, it suffered many changes,
but it kept up its continuity with the old Vedic type developed
on the banks of the Sin~Jhe term 'Hindu' had originally
a territorial and not a ~~edii\ significance. It i · · ence.
p_a
we.U--dafig'lcl g.eogm~boriginal tribes, savage
and half-civiJized people, the cultured Dravidians and the
Vedic Aryans were all Hindus as they were the sons of the
same mother. The Hindu thinkers ~ith the striking
3
REL IG IOUS EXPE Rrl!NCE
fact that the men and women dwelling in India belonged
to different communities, worshipped different gods, and
practised different rites.1
As if this were not enough, outsiders have been pouring
into the country from the beginning of its history, and some
have made for themselves a home in India and thus increased
the difficulty of the problem. How was Hindu society built
up out of material so diverse, so little susceptible in many
cases to assimilation, and scattered across a huge continent
measuring nearly two thousand miles from north to south
and eighteen hundred miles from west to east? It cannot
be denied that in a few centuries the spirit of cultural unity
spread through a large part of the land, and racial stocks
of varying levels of culture became steeped in a common
atmosphere. The differences among the sects of the Hindus
are more or less on the surface, and the Hinq.us as such remain
a distinct cultural unit, with a common history, a common
literature and a common civilization. Mr Vincent Smith
observes, 'JnQia beyond all doubt possesses a deep ungerl}liDg .
fundamental unity, far more profound than that produced
'>either b eographical isolation or by political su e · ·
_..J:bem..WJille..ill.. ce and order, in uism as had t'o ado t
--·
·th little or no historic wisdom to uide
~~u .e.2rt ~The world is now full of racial, cultural and
religious misunderstandings. We are groping in a timid and
tentative way for some device which would save us from our
suicidal conflicts. Perhaps the Hindu way of approach to the
1 Kurma PuriiJJa.
2 Oxford History of India (1919), p. x.