A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

DR. PAUL DEUSSEN. 571tThe, earliest school of Sanskritists in Europe enteredthe study of Sanskrit with more imagination thttncritical ability. They knew a little, expectecPiJiuch fromthat little, and often tried to make too much of whatlittle the^ knew * Then in those days even such vagariesas the estimation of Sakuntcda as forming the high watermark of Indian philosophy were not altogether unknown IThsewere naturally followed by a reactionary band ofsuperficial critics more than real scholars o# any kind,,who "kn^wlittle or nothing of Sanskrit, expected nothingfrom Sanskrit studies,* and ridiculed everything from theEast. While criticising the unsound imaginativeness ofthe early school to whom every thing in Indianliterature w*s rose and musk^ these, in their turn, wentinto speculations which, to say the least, were equallyhighly unsound and indeed very venturesome. Andtheir boldness was very naturally helped by the fact thatthese over-hasty and unsympathetic scholars and criticswere addressing an audience whose entire qualification forpronouncing any judgment in the matter W?JB their absoluteignorance of Sanskrit. What a medley of results fromsuch critical scholarship Suddenly, on one fine morning,!the poor Hindu woke up to find that every thing that washiswas gone ;one strange race had snatched away fromhim his arts, another his architecture, and a third whatevertfyere was of his ancient sciences ;why^ even his religion wasnot his own !yes that too had migrated into India in thewake of a Pehlevi cross of stone ! ! After a feverish -periodof a Pehlevi treading-on-each-other s-toes of original researcha better state of things has dawned. It has now beenfound oul that mere adventure without some amount.of the capital of real and ripe scholarship produces nothing;but ridiculous failure even in the business of oriental