10 January 2003, 12:01am IST
H B Kathuria
German philosopher Oswald Spengler wrote about the history of western civilisation in his work, Decline of the West. Spengler's work was based on the premise that the main thrust for high cultures which arose in Greece, the Middle East and post-renaissance Europe came from the physiognomy of men who were driven to direct the destiny of a whole people. Spengler has given them special names. All that is manifested in Greek art, architecture, literature and philosophy, for instance, he calls ‘Classical and Apollonian soul'. For those who contributed to the cultural profile of the Semitic and Arabian people of the Middle East, Spengler coined the name ‘Magian soul'. The destiny resulting in the superabundance of Renaissance, Baroque, Gothic, Rococo art and architecture, great music and literature, all emerged from the prevalence of the ‘Faustian soul'. Spengler chose this name from Goethe's Faust II representing the physiog-nomy of the era of the most remarkable rise of western culture during its incredibly productive and creative period. Was there a similar force or physiognomy (‘soul') that had directed the destiny of the Indian people? The Indus Valley civilisation, one of the earliest civilisations in the world, flourished in these parts. Archaeological discoveries have found evidence of meticulous town planning at Mohenjodaro and Harappa. A high civilisation was born in India. The Vedas were composed, and a little later, the Upanishads. The epics Ramayana and Mahabha-rata epitomised the great attainment of Indians in much more than just the skilled art of kingship. Two of the world's greatest thinkers, Gautama Buddha and Mahavira generated new schools of thought. The Mauryan kings Chandragupta and his grandson Ashoka established a vast empire in India which extended from the north-western Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal in the east, three to four centuries before Christ. Followers of Buddha and Mahavira set up universities for imparting the teachings of their founders. Ashoka, who became a Buddhist after the Kalinga war, began to focus on education and left behind guidelines to live by in stone edicts. With the decline of his empire India later came under the rule of the Scythians and Kushans. After a long interval of 500 years, India rose once again like a phoenix under the Gupta kings. Arnold Toynbee wrote that this was a rare occasion in the history of mankind when a civilisation that had declined long ago had revived itself. This period of Indian history has been called the golden age of the Guptas and lasted more than 150 years. Presumably during this period and after, there was a turnaround in India's destiny caused by what may be termed the ‘Gitaian soul' based on the Bhagavad Gita. This poetic work containing 700 shlokas appears in the middle of the Mahabharata, and it has had a profound influence on the destiny of the Indian people both in the distant past, right up to the present day. The ‘Gitaian soul' meets all the physiognomic requi-rements laid down by Spengler. The Gita has been held as a high ideal; it is something with which all Indians have identified themselves regardless of class, status or occupation. The essential attributes of the ‘Gitaian soul' are summed up in the sub-titles of the two main divisions of the Gita's subject matter, namely the Knowledge of Brahman or Brahman vidya and the Book of Yoga or Yoga Shastra. Swami Vivekananda is a good example of the ‘Gitaian soul'. He believed that the goal of humankind is Knowledge of the Creator of the worlds which is Brahman vidya. As regards the second subject, yoga, Krishna, the author of the Gita, tells Arjuna: ‘‘Be a yogi!'' That is, pursue one-pointedly the goal to become a man of perfection.
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