A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""THE SAGES OF INDIA. 467Temple of* <0uggernath is an old Buddhistic Temple."Wetook this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shallhave to do many things like that yet. In Juggernaththere was not one Brahmin then, and yet we^are told that Jesus Christ came to study with the Brahmins there. Thus says our great Russian archaeologist.Thu^in spite of the preaching of mercy unto animals, inspite of the sublime ethical religion, in spiteof ^he hairsplitting discussions about the existence of a permanentsoul, or the non-existence of a permanent soul, the wholebuilding of Buddhism tumbled down peace-meal and the;ruin was simply hideous. I have neither the time nor theinclination to describe to you the hideousness that came inthe wake of Buddhism. Tjhe most hideous, ceremonies, themost horrible, the most obscene oooks that ^ human handsever wrote or the human brain ever conceived, the mostbestial forms that ever passed under the name of religion,have all been the creation of degraded Buddhism.But India has to live, and the spirit of the Lorddescended again. He who declared that I will comewhenever virtue subsidescame again, and this time themanifestation was in the South, and up rose that youngBrahmin of whom it has been declared that at the age1 6 he had completedall his writings ;the marvellousftoy Sankara Acharya arose. The writings of this boy of16 are the wonders of the modern world, and thus wasthe boy. He wanted to bring back the Indian world toits pristine purity, but think of the amount of thetask before him. I have told you a few points aboutthe state of things that existed in India. All these *horrors that you are trying to reform are the outcome ofthat reign of degradation. The Tartars and the Balluchisand all the hideous races of mankind came to India andof