The cross or the poundWhich? A talk on the modernization of civilization in India with application to the Hindu and Hinduism . anging branches of hoaryold trees, within the shade and beyond in the blazingsun, the radius from the common center beinglimited only by the penetration of the voice of thereader, there are throngs of Hindus oblivious ofthemselves and all the world in the enthrallment ofthe story so real to them its personages are beforetheir very eyes. You come upon such gatheringsnot infrequently, and as you are impressed with thewrapt attention, the intense absorption and won-drous
The cross or the poundWhich? A talk on the modernization of civilization in India with application to the Hindu and Hinduism . anging branches of hoaryold trees, within the shade and beyond in the blazingsun, the radius from the common center beinglimited only by the penetration of the voice of thereader, there are throngs of Hindus oblivious ofthemselves and all the world in the enthrallment ofthe story so real to them its personages are beforetheir very eyes. You come upon such gatheringsnot infrequently, and as you are impressed with thewrapt attention, the intense absorption and won-drous depth of feeling manifested, you appreciatehow little these people really have and how great ause they make of it. So much that they fairly livein that which the bard recites, and at nightfall gohome, illuminate and decorate their houses as thoughthe victory won by their hero had been that veryday and in their very presence. It is the one or the other of the Hindu epic poems—the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. The formeris the lengthiest composition of the nature in ex-istence, being fourteen times greater than the 56 THK FORM VISIBLE. It dates from tlie fifth or sixth century B. C, andthe Ramayana a century earlier, and of them Miillersays: In some respects they rival the Iliad andthe Odyssey. Both poems relate primarily toAryan conquests, the one to operations about Delhiand the other to those in the Oudh region. In thefirst named Krishna is the hero and in the secondRama, both of them human incarnations of Vishnu,the divine incarnation of Brahma—God. In temple,as in the open, these great semi-legends are read orrecited, three to six months time being required tocomplete either of them. For centuries—twothousand five hundred years—this, coupled withthe reading or reciting of the Veda and its subsid-iary books, has been the uninterrupted practiceuntil, as Miiller declares, If every manuscript ofthe Veda were lost we should be able to secure thewhole of it from the
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