Today's Beautiful Gem: "Farewell to India"
from "Our Oriental Heritage" by Will Durant (1935).

"One cannot conclude the history of India as one can conclude the
history of Egypt, or Babylonia, or Assyria; for that history is
still being made, the civilization is still creating. Culturally
India has been reinvigorated the mental contact with the West, and
her literature today is as fertile and noble as any. Spiritually
she is still struggling with superstition and excess theological
baggage, but there is no telling how quickly the acids of modern
science will dissolve the supernumerary gods. Politically the
last one hundred years have brought to India such unity as she has
seldom had before: partly the unity of one alien govrenment, partly
the unity of one alien speech, but above all the unity of one welding
aspiration to liberty. Economically India is passing, for better or
for worse, out of medievalism into modern industry; her wealth and
her trade will grow, and before the end of the century she will
doubtless be among the powers of the earth.

"We cannot claim for this civilization such direct gifts to our own
as we have traced to Egypt and the Near East; for these last were the
immediate ancestors of our own culture, while the history of India,
China and Japan flowed in another stream, and is only now beginning
to touch and influence the current of Occidental life. It is true
that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to us such
questionable gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables,
hypnotism and chess, and above all, our numerals and our decimal
system. But these are not the essence of her spirit; they are
trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future. As
invention, industry and trade bind the continents together, or as
they fling us into conflict with Asia, we shall study its civili-
zations more closely, and shall absorb, even in enmity, some of its
ways and thoughts. Perhaps, in return for conquest, arrogance and
spoilation, India will teach us the tolerancce and gentleness of
the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the
calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love
for all living things."

Om Santih! Peace! - J. K. Mohana Rao

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