Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

TANTRA SHASTRA AND VEDA

always, a degraded state, have any religion at all.’ As the Bishop of Peterborough has recently said it is difficult for some to estimate worth in any other terms than £.s.d. It is to be hoped that all such snobbish materialism will be hindered from entrance into this country. These quotations reveal the depths of ignorance and prejudice which still exist. As we are howeveraware, all English criticism is not as ignorant and prejudiced as these, even though it be often marred by essential error. On the contrary there are an increasing number who appreciate and adopt, or appreciate if they cannot accept, Indian beliefs. Further than this, Eastern thought is having a marked influence on that of the West, though it is not often acknowledged. Many have still the notion that they have nothing to learn in any domain from this hemisphere. After all, what any one else says should not affect the independence of our own judgment. Let others say what they will. We should ourselves determine matters which concern us. The Indian people will do so when they free themselves from that hypnotic magic, which makes them often place blind reliance on the authority of foreigners, who, even when claiming to be scholars, are seldom free from bias, religious or racial. Such counsel, though by no means unnecessary to-day, is happily becoming less needed than in the past. There are however still many, particularly those of my own generation, whose English Gurus and their teaching have made them captives. Their mind has been so dominated and moulded to a western manner of thinking (philosophical, religious, artistic, social and political) that they have scarcely any greater capacity to appreciate their own cultural inheritance than their teachers, be that capacity in any particular case more or less. Some of them care nothing for their Shastra. Others do not understand it. The class of whom I speak are, in fact, as I have said, the MAanasaputra of the English in a strict sense of the term. The Indian who has lost his Indian soul must regain it if he 37