INDIAN INFLUENCE ON THE WESTERN CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION

INDIAN INFLUENCE ON THE WESTERN CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION

The above account makes one feel that in the modern age the West has profoundly influenced the course of Indian civilization and India has been overwhelmingly dominated by the west. It is a fact that India witnessed reawakening due to the impact of the west. But India also influenced considerably the western outlook in many ways.

A group of orient lists encouraged the first regular study of Indian culture. The three Englishmen, Sir Charles Wilkins, Sir Williams Jones an Colebrook ‘aimed at a union of Hindu and European learning’ and had done at a good deal to introduce the ancient Sanskrit classics to the western world. 

Wilkins was the first European to translate the Gita, William Jones founded in 1785 the Asiatic society of Bengal. It was under the patronage of this society that authoritative translation of many Indian Sanskrit classics were published and they have reverberated the fame of the Indian culture throughout the whispering galleries of Europe”. William Jones was the first to declare to the west ‘that Sanskrit was the most scientific language and contained words common both to Latin and Greek language’. Thus, it was he who laid the foundations of the science of comparative philology and paved the path for evolution of the theory of max Muller. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century H.T Colebrook translated the largest number of Sanskrit works. But Germany was the first country in Europe to discover the Hidden treasures of Sanskrit literature and German scholars endeavored hard to bring into light several Sanskrit texts. To the German scholars Schopenhauer the Upanishads came as a new revolution. The Indian poets influenced the German writer and poets for example the influence of Kalidasa’s “meghdoota” (The cloud Messenger) on the ‘Maria Stuart’ of Schiller is most distinct. The famous German poet Goethe had lavishly admired Kailas’s Sanskrit drama ‘Shakuntala’ and he has modeled his prologue to Faust on the prologue of this particular drama. Later on another German scholar Max Muller had completed and published the translation of the text of the Rig-Veda after strenuous labor of thirty years. The famous American writer and thinker Emerson, poet Walt

Whitman and Alcott were profoundly influenced by Indian philosophy. Emerson used to read and re-read the Gita and the Upanishads to a group of poets, authors and thinkers of America in Concord, Massachusetts. Poet Walt Whitman’s poems “passage to India” and “leaves of Grass” reflect distinctly the spiritual life of India and the mixture of the Upanishads and the Bagdad Gita.

Ireland is considerably influenced by Indian religion and culture. The famous jurist “Maine has shown that the old Baron laws of Ireland are derived from the Ve4dic laws of India”. George Russell and years who were the two chief inaugurators of this Irish movement were deeply influenced by the spiritual thought and life of India. The poetry of Russell is soaked in Indian Mysticism.

In the present century many European countries are taking a keen interest Indian culture. The famous French Savant Romain Rooland is well ‘Noted for his dep understanding of the intrinsic meaning of Indian culture’.

The well – known German thinker count Hermann Kesselring was so much influenced by Indian Mysticism and spiritual ideology that he recognized ‘the absolute superiority of India over the West in Philosophy’. The kern Institute in Holland and the Oriental institute in Italy are famous centres where original work is being carried ion Indian fine arts. Archaeology and literature. Stem Know of Norway was renowned for his original researches on the evolution of religious thoughts of India. Interknits of Czechoslovakia is well – known for his monumental work on the growth of Indian literature.

Exhibitions of Indian arts and industries and various Indian cultural programmers have been organized at many places in Europe and America. This has aroused abroad a keen interest in our culture and fine arts. Now the west has developed a taste for the Indian artistic works.