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This attitude is illustrated by Chinese and Japanese art. In architecture, this art makes it a principle that
palaces and temples should not dominate a landscape but fit into it and adapt their lines to its features. For the
painter, flowers and animals form a sufficient picture by themselves and are not felt to be inadequate because
man is absent. Portraits are frequent but a common form of European composition, namely a group of figures
subordinated to a principal one, though not unknown, is comparatively rare.
How scanty are the records of great men in India! Great buildings attract attention but who knows the names
of the architects who planned them or the kings who paid for them? We are not quite sure of the date of
Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare, and though the doctrines of Sankara, Kabir, and Nanak still nourish, it is
with difficulty that the antiquary collects from the meagre legends clinging to their names a few facts for their
biographies. And Kings and Emperors, a class who in Europe can count on being remembered if not esteemed
after death, fare even worse. The laborious research of Europeans has shown that Asoka and Harsha were
great monarchs. Their own countrymen merely say "once upon a time there was a king" and recount some
trivial story.
In fact, Hindus have a very weak historical sense. In this they are not wholly wrong, for Europeans
undoubtedly exaggerate the historical treatment of thought and art[58]. In science, most students want to
know what is certain in theory and useful in practice, not what were the discarded hypotheses and imperfect
instruments of the past. In literature, when the actors and audience are really interested, the date of
Shakespeare and even the authorship of the play cease to be important[59]. In the same way Hindus want to
know whether doctrines and speculations are true, whether a man can make use of them in his own religious
experiences and aspirations. They care little for the date, authorship, unity and textual accuracy of the
Bhagavad-gita. They simply ask, is it true, what can I get from it? The European critic, who expects nothing
of the sort from the work, racks his brains to know who wrote it and when, who touched it up and why?
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. The following are the principal abbreviations used: 29
Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I.
The Hindus are also indifferent to the past because they do not recognize that the history of the world, the
whole cosmic process, has any meaning or value. In most departments of Indian thought, great or small, the
conception of [Greek: telos] or purpose is absent, and if the European reader thinks this a grave lacuna, let
him ask himself whether satisfied love has any [Greek: telos]. For Hindus the world is endless repetition not a
progress towards an end. Creation has rarely the sense which it bears for Europeans. An infinite number of
times the universe has collapsed in flaming or watery ruin, aeons of quiescence follow the collapse and then
the Deity (he has done it an infinite number of times) emits again from himself worlds and souls of the same
old kind. But though, as I have said before, all varieties of theological opinion may be found in India, he is
usually represented as moved by some reproductive impulse rather than as executing a plan. Sankara says
boldly that no motive can be attributed to God, because he being perfect can desire no addition to his
perfection, so that his creative activity is mere exuberance, like the sport of young princes, who take exercise
though they are not obliged to do so.
Such views are distasteful to Europeans. Our vanity impels us to invent explanations of the Universe which
make our own existence important and significant. Nor does European science altogether support the Indian
doctrine of periodicity. It has theories as to the probable origin of the solar system and other similar systems,
but it points to the conclusion that the Universe as a whole is not appreciably affected by the growth or decay
of its parts, whereas Indian imagination thinks of universal cataclysms and recurring periods of quiescence in
which nothing whatever remains except the undifferentiated divine spirit.
Western ethics generally aim at teaching a man how to act: Eastern ethics at forming a character. A good
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