Swami Vivekananda
Studies from an eastern home
IT was almost midnight, as the moon grew near the full, when we looked for the first time on the fortress of Chitore. The lights in the village at its foot had been extinguished, and the hill with its great length stood dark and isolated against the sky. Almost directly above the black cleft of
Studies from an eastern home
THERE is a picture lately purchased by the committee of the Calcutta Art Gallery, which for those who know anything of the art of Mediæval Italy is full of significance.
Studies from an eastern home
WE were a small and very cheerful party that set out to visit the village of Khardah. It was here that Nityananda--ordered by Chaitanya to take up the life of the householder--had dwelt year after year, organising and instructing the then rudimentary society of Vaishnavism. One day, about A.D. 1
Studies from an eastern home
OF all the creations of a people--their art, their science, their customs, their building, and the like--the highest and most spiritual is their language. In this is expressed the soul of nations. In it is left the impress of their love and hope, their ideals of achievement and their criticism o
Studies from an eastern home
"I HAVE a case for you, Sister." It was the doctor's voice in the doorway, and I knew at once what he meant. My first case of plague. A few minutes later we entered the cottage where the patient lay. It was an ordinary mud hut, with its tiny unlighted compartments opening on a central court. In
Studies from an eastern home
HIGH to the south shone Orion, as, a couple of hours before dawn, on the second day after the full moon of November, we opened the great doors of the house and went forth into the silent lane. About us was the quiet of midnight. The moon, so little waned, made the black sky seem blacker, and the
Studies from an eastern home
"AND there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in Heaven." Archaic sentences here and there in the world's scriptures tell us of the wars that were waged in Heaven bef
Studies from an eastern home
WE realise too little that the world's greatest images and temples are but as mountain-peaks, in which culminate the private adorations of the soul and of the home. Out of the spoils of Marathon, Athene Promachos was set to watch, from the rocky summit of the Acropolis, over the city of violets,
Studies from an eastern home
A SUDDEN chime of bells, a blaze of lights waved before an altar--while without, the watching stars and purple blackness of the midnight sky look down--such is the solemn moment of the Birth of Krishna.
Studies from an eastern home
IT was dawn of the beautiful morning that ends the full-moon night of the month of Phalgun . In the sick room the light in the small earthen cup flickered and went out, and the cool wind that comes with the first light entered the chamber and fanned with its wings both the watcher and the sick. I
Studies from an eastern home
WHETHER or not it is true, as some have held, that all sacred years are built out of the wreckage of more ancient civil years, it is certain beyond any possibility of cavil or question that behind the Hindu sacred year lies another, a weather-year, full of the most loving and delicate observatio
Studies from an eastern home
THE great distinction of Hindu life in English eyes is its vast antiquity. Even its trifles are hoary with age. In the glimpses we catch of the heroic lovers, Sita and Rama, wandering the forest, Sita wears the sari , and follows behind her husband, as she might to-day. No one, I suppose, can tel