The Web of Indian Life

The upsetting of truth in the relationship of the ruler and the ruled can never be compensated by the power that lies in the grip of the mailed fist. [...] From sunrise to sunset the life of the nation moves on and the hum of labour and the clink of tools rise up as in some vast monastery accompanied by the chanting of prayers and the atmosphere of recollectedness. [...] And to the student of history she is the continuity of Aryan thought and civilisation through the ages giving unity and meaning to the lives of races and centuries as she passes through them carrying the message of the past ever into the future a word of immense promise an assurance of unassailable cetainty. [...] The costant dropping of the veil in the presence of a man or before a senior is the token of a real retirement the sacrament of an actual seclusion within which all the voices of the world lose distinctness and individuality becoming but faint echoes of that which alone can call the soul and compel the eager feet. [...] With regard to the last point indeed their idea is that man should precede woman 42 THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE maintaining the tradition of the path-breaker in the jungle ; and one of the most touching incidents in the national epic of heroic love is Sita's rectuest to go first along the forest paths in order to sweep the thorns from her husband's path with the end of her veil.