Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals :Ch-3. Part - 5.

Chapter-3. Rama – The Apotheosis of Human Perfection ( Sri Ramanavami )


Part-5.




There were some over-enthusiastic orientalists in the West particularly, and sometimes in the East also, who began to believe that the culture of India is in the Vedas and the Upanishads.

But, if we bestow a little thought on the actual situation, it will become clear that if the Vedas and the Upanishads were the sole basis of the culture of India, the Indian culture would have been wiped out like the cultures of Egypt, Greece or Rome.

These cultures are only names to us now.

They do not actually exist any more.



They vanished in the process of time on account of their inflexibility, their rigidity of character and their emphasis on a particular aspect of human life.

If, as people often believe, the dicta of the Vedas and Upanishads alone were to be taken as the foundation of Indian culture, there would have been no Indian culture today.


It would have gone to the winds, because what we have in the Vedas and the Upanishads are 'principles' like theorems of geometry or algebra, which are wonderful enough, and which are the basis of all scientific approaches and discoveries.


Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...