Epics in Imprints-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

the ‘deep well of strength’ to our
forefathers, from which they derived—and
which inspires us to derive—the ‘enduring
vitality’ of our cultural and spiritual basis
as well as of our social and political life.
Glory to the twin poets whose names are
lost in the morass of time, but whose
message brings strength and peace in a
thousand streams to the door of millions
of men and women even to this day, and
incessantly carries silt from long-past
centuries and keeps fresh and fertile the
soul of India” – Rabindranath Tagore.
(Extracted from the Cultural Heritage of
India, Vol.II The RKM Institute of
Culture, Calcutta 1993)
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FEBRUARY-AUGUST 2003
INFLUENCE OF THE EPICS ON INDIAN LIFE AND CULTURE (5/11)
NILMADHAV SEN
From a study of epic derivatives in classical and regional literature, it is
very easy to imagine how profound the epic influence must have been on
art and culture, and on the general texture of social life. The Ramayana
and the Mahabharata are, in the words of Havell, ‘as much the common
property of all Hinduism as the English Bible and Shakespeare belong to
all English-speaking people. The Indian epics contain a portrait-gallery of
ideal types of men and women which afford to every good Hindu the highest
exemplars of moral conduct, and every Hindu artist an inexhaustible mine
of subject matter’.
(Extracted from Cultural Heritage of India Vol.II The RKM Institute of
Culture Calcutta 1993.)