Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 119

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUCCESS
he chose to consider to be the devilish distortion (as he was not) of Christ's true message. Napoleon was carrying into effect forcibly the mandate of modern thought, as created by Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, and as sounded forth in the "Eroica" of Beethoven. He was the deputy of the New Age. So we regard him, and so we value him, in our Western view of the progress (through ourselves) of the destiny of man.
No such mandate from Providence, history, or mankind descends to form a wreath around the head of the Hindu despot. He is the actual temporary holder of despotic power, but not borne on by the mission of a new idea, some new dream of human affairs with which his age is pregnant and which he fancies himself as chosen to bring into the world. He stands merely for himself-himself and those whom he can pay or bribe, gain with favor, or threaten and bully into his service. And when he falls, it is simply he who falls-together with those who depended on his rule or misrule. Thus in India kingship lacks the prestige of divine right by which it has been supported elsewhere, both in Asia and in Europe. Sanctity such as pertains to the Chinese Son of Heaven, the Mikado of Japan, the Pharaoh of Egypt, and the royal head of the Anglican church, is attributed in India not to the members of the Ksatriya caste-warriors, kings, aristocratadventurers, and conquerors-but to the Brahmans: the priests, the sages, the knowers and conjurers of the transcendental Brahman. For millenniums the summit of the Hindu social pyramid has been occupied by those born inheritors of the secret wisdom of the Holy Power. They, the living repositories of tradition, the professional wizards and teachers, are the depersonalized intermediators between the divine zones of power and the human world. But as for kings (il y avait tant de rois!): their valor, their fate, their agony, is their own.
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