The Hindu View of Life. Upton Lectures Delivered at Manchester College Oxford 1926

Hinduism is the religion not only of the Vedas but of the Epics and the Purdnas.1 By accepting the significance of the different intuitions of reality and the different scriptures of the peoples living in India (sarvagamaprämärjya) Hinduism has come to be a tapestry of the most variegated tissues and almost endless diversity of hues. [...] The Hindu thinkers bring out the sense of the otherness of the divine by the use of negatives " There the eye goes not speech goes not nor mind we know not we understand not how one would teach it." I The neti of Yajfiavalkya reminds us of the nescio of Bernard of " the dim silence where all lovers lose themselves " of Ruysbroeck of the negative descriptions of Dionysius the Arepagite [...] bathing-places) those of the more advanced are in the heavens those of the children (in religion) are in images of wood and stone but the sage finds his god in his deeper self." 2 " The man of action finds his God in fire the man of feeling in the heart and the feeblminded in the idol but the strong in spirit find God everywhere." 3 The seers see the Supreme in the self and not in imag [...] The dancing of Kma on Kaliya's head represents the subordintion if not the displacement of serpent worship.40 THE HINDU VIEW OF LIFE Rama's breaking of the bow of Siva signifies the conflict between the Vedic ideal and the cult of Siva who soon became the god of the south (Daksirjamiirti).' There are other stories in the Epic literature indicating the reconciliation of the Vedic and the no[...] The Vedic culture which resembles that of the Homeric Greeks or the Celtic Irish at the beginning of the Christian era or that of the pre-Christian Teutons and Slays becomes transformed in the 1 Commonly explained as the God that faces southward ""CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS 41 Epics into the Hindu culture through the influence of the Dravidians.