Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

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GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
said, "To those who are not acquainted with the powers of the human memory when well disciplined or rather when not systematically ruined as ours have been, it may seem almost incredible that so much of the ancient traditional literature should have been composed, and should have survived during so many centuries, before it was finally consigned to writing. Still, we have got so far (and I beg to call your attention to this remarkable confession) that everybody now admits that the poets of the Veda did not write the hymns, and that Zoroaster did not leave any written documents. The truth is that there is no equivalent word for writing or to write in the Vedas."
named, Prof. Max Muller says "If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow-in some parts a very paradise on earth-I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of the choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problem of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant--I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic face, the Jewish, may draw that corrective wisdom which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life-again I should point to India."
The second mistake which I desire to correct relates to the origin and purpose, and supposed sacred character of the caste system prevailing in India
But my American brothers and sisters, the argument for the more ancient history of India than the date of the Vedas, that is to say the committal of the Vedic hymns to writing which is conceded to have been done two thousand years before the birth of Christ, will be found in the study and comprehension of the Vedas themselves. In their composition in the fullness of expression, in the sublimity of thought, in the perfection of imaginary, and in the simplicity of detail, they show a lineage and point to evolutions, gradations and acquired perfections, that imply untold centuries of human development & narration in speech, in art, in religion, in philosophy and in the considerable factors of great civilizations. Such monuments of learning both subtle and simple, suggesting a knowledge of nature and of man which only centuries upon centuries of growth can answer for, cannot be considered as modern, even as similar monuments of Egypt, of Greece, or of the Hebrew nation, but must antedate them all and in a sense which will yet be appreciated, prove to be their motherhood. In closing this part of my utterance to you, I will quote one more passage from the same distinguished authority that I have already
The second mistake which I desire to correct relates to the origin and purpose, and supposed sacred character of the caste system prevailing in India. Those of you who have honored me by attending my private lessons at this place on the philosophies of India, need not be told that I set up no defense of the cast institutions as it exists there today. The popular explanation of this system accepted by the people of the Western world, I will give in this way: The four great divisions of caste are named as the Brahmin, the Kshatriya, the Vaishya and the Shudra, and their origin and
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