A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""He434 THE MISSION OF THE VEDANTA.their Molochs, and declared its own Moloch to be theAnd I am sure mdstSupreme Moloch of all the Molochs.of you know the amount of bloodshed, of tyranny, a~.d ofbrutal savagery that this religious conquest entailed.Later on the Babylonians tried to destroy this supremacy of Moloch Yahva, but could not succeed. Itseems to me that such an attempt at trib?Jj^aelfassertionin religious matters might have taken placeon the frontiers of India also. Here, too, all the varioustribes of the Aryans might ^have come into conflict withone another for declaring the supremacy to their severaltribal gods but India s ; history was to be otherwise, wasto be different from that of the Jews.India was to be aloneof all lands the land of toleration and of spirituality, and,therefore, the fight between tribes and their gods did nottake place long here, for one of the greatest sages that wasever born anywherefound out here inIndia even at thatdistant time, which history cannot reach tradition itselfdares not to peep into the gloom of that past when thesage arose and declared, who exists in one the sagescall Him variously Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti;one of the most memorable sentences that were everuttered, one of the grandest truths that were ever discovered ;and for us Hindus this truth has been the very backboneof our national existence. For throughout the vistas ofthe centuries of our national life this one idea, Ekam satvipra bahudha vadanti,vigor as it rolls along, gainingcomes down, gaining strength andin volume and in fullnesstill it has permeated the whole of our national existence, tillit is mingled in our blood, and has become one with us inevery grain. We love that grand truth in every grain, and ourcountry has become the glorious land of religious toleration .It is here and here alone that people built temples and