________________ 52 Homage to Vaisali and in that way, many of the younger generations in the last three decades have grown up in love for Vaisali, Patali, Campa and Girivraja for Vajrasana, Vikramasila and Nalanda-which had scarcely any meaning in the lives of their elders whose horizon was still bounded by the mist of medievalism. For many years I had been urging my senior students, specially since 1938 in connection with the Mass Education Movement which they and I started that year,--to use that n.ovement in reviving the sense of native heritage, by trying to organise national festivals and fairs on the sites of the ancient cities of this region,-by holding Vaisali, Pasali, Gaya, Campa, Rajagpha and Nalanda Festivals, and starting Cultural Societies and constructive institutions at those places. I was therefore delighted, when some of my pupils, headed by Prof. Yogendra Mishra (who is still one of your organisers), approached me early in 1945, with a request to draw up a definite plan for that kind of work at Vaisali,with which, he said, he and his friends were ready to start, and hoped to succeed, for the S. D. O. of the local Subdivision, Mr. J. C. Mathur, also a History Student, was ready to help officially. I drew up a detailed plan accordingly, had a number of consultations with Messrs. Mishra and Mathur, and the Jaintpur Raj, got in touch with a number of Indologists.and you had the first session of the Vaisali Festival. Since then, with several sessions of the Festival, you have had learned lectures on Vaisalian history and culture by scholars from different par : of the country, and important original contributions to the Vaisali commemorative pamphlets, booklets and volumes, from their pens as well; the latest of your publications, 'Homage to Vaisali' could do credit to any Learned Society of Indologists.-Almost all that you could know about the history, culture and traditions, about religious, social, economic and political conditions or about art and archaeology of Vaisali, has, by this time, been placed before you, both by the spoken and the written words.But let us remember, at the same time, that not much of even the very first scheme of Reconstruction, which I drew up for the Sangha four years ago, has yet been realised or attempted. Today, the knowing of the heritage is largely achieved, but the revival of that heritage, and re-application of it to a renascent, rejuvenated people, has now to be attempted; -Vaisali was lost and given up for dead, it has been re-discovered and is breathing,let it stir into active and creative life for the present and the future: Long live Vaisali, the Eternal City of India. The efficacy of a classical renaissance lies in the creation of a modern age and the envisaging of the age to come. li we cannot plan this on the
