Swami Vivekananda
The gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
IN THE HISTORY of the arts genius is a thing of very rare occurrence. Rarer still, however, are the competent reporters and recorders of that genius. The world has had many hundreds of admirable poets and philosophers; but of these hundreds only a very few have had the fortune to attract a Boswel
(RECORDED BY MISS S. E. WALDO, A DISCIPLE
FRIDAY, July 5, 1895 . Until you are ready to change any minute, you can never see the truth; but you must hold fast and be steady in the search for truth. . . . Chârvâkas, a very ancient sect in India, were rank materialists. They have died out now, and most of their books are lost. They claimed
Studies from an eastern home
IT is empty now, the place on my desk where the little ship of flowers has stood all day. But out on the chill edge of the Ganges, as darkness comes on, the tiny bark lies drifting, hither and thither, scarcely determined betwixt ebb and flow, as we with a few of the children launched it an hour
Studies from an Indian home
WHEN we consider the overwhelming import of the Himalayan range to the people inhabiting the plains of Northern India, it is not surprising that the Hindus should, from time immemorial, have looked upon the snow-capped peaks as the Abode of the Gods and have deified the rivers which take their r
Studies from an eastern home
To Indians themselves, if they have never before been on pilgrimage, the life of the pilgrim-roads is likely to be a revelation. Who uttered a doubt that India had a place and a life for women? Certainly none who had ever seen a pilgrimage. Marching along we meet them, singly or in couples, or m
Studies from an eastern home
THERE is no region, even in India, which was intended to compare, at once in extent and in fertility, with the wide-stretching delta-lands of East Bengal. Placed between the extreme mouth of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, from Calcutta on the west to Chittagong on the east, and Dacca and Mymens
Studies from an Indian home
THE glory has departed from Srinagar, for it is now some eighteen centuries since the city, under a Buddhist sovereign, was capital of the greater part of India. But if the ancient glory has vanished, a new and greater has come in its stead. The quaint old town is to-day the centre of some of th
Studies from an eastern home
BENEATH the neem they sit, as did the Norns of old beneath Yggdrasil--those seven dread sisters, of whom Sitola, goddess of Smallpox, is the first. All the rashes and eruptions they share amongst them, and the youngest of the seven is the old friend of our childhood, no less a personage than Mea
Studies from an eastern home
How full of a mystic antiquity are the names of the lotus, the olive, and the ash! Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Scandinavia spring to our minds as the words are heard. The syllables seem haunted to this day by the dryads that the Greek mind saw in every tree. They carry us back to the age of the n
Studies from an eastern home
INDIAN languages are curiously rich in tender diminutives, the use of which so much depends on association that they are incapable of translation. It is clear, for instance, that if we address a little girl of three as Ma , or a boy of the same age as Bap , that delicate mingling of gravity and
Studies from an eastern home
ONCE upon a time there reigned over the city of Ayodhya a king of royal race, named Parikshit. And Parikshit on a certain day, being out hunting and pursuing a deer, outstripped all his companions and wandered alone in a dense dark forest, far away from human habitations. Now the king was both w
Studies from an eastern home
IT lies beside me as I write, a heavy heart-shaped ornament, in pale old bronze. On it, in low relief, is a quaint design of peacocks, pecking their mutual beaks into a conventional-looking pot of basil that stands between them. Its worth, in money, is some few farthings. For little more it was