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"The Indian never knew the feeling of nationality," says Max Müller. "The very name of India is a synonym for caste, as opposed to nationality," says Sister Nivedita, the pro-Hindu lady already referred to, who likewise notes the emergence of the national idea. "Public spirit or patriotism, as we understand it, never existed among the Hindus," writes Mr.
Says Sister Nivedita: "The Indian ideal is that man whose lower mind is so perfectly under control that he can at any moment plunge into the thought-ocean and remain there at will without the least possibility of a sudden break and unexpected return to the life of the senses." Yes, your interests should be within and not without. You must rise above all personal impulse.
Only I do desire that both the Hindu and the Christian myths should be treated symbolically. That the myths of Hinduism require sifting, cannot, I am sure, be denied. From myths to image-worship is an easy step. What is the meaning of the latter? The late Sister Nivedita may help us to find an answer.
Some scholars, indeed, had had their eyes opened, but even highly cultured persons in the lay-world read the Bhagavad-Gita with enthusiastic admiration but quite uncritically. I have it on the best authority that the apparent superiority of the Indian Scriptures to those of the Christian world influenced Margaret Noble to become 'Sister Nivedita' a great result from a comparatively small cause.
An ardent apostle of the Hindu revival in Bengal, Swami Vivekananda, was the most impressive and picturesque figure at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893 and made converts in America and in Europe, amongst them in England the gifted poetess best known under her Hindu name as Sister Nivedita.
With the lamented Sister Nivedita I hold that, in India, in proportion as the two faiths pass into higher phases, the easier it becomes for the one faith to be brought into a synthesis combined with the other.
They must be rewritten, just as, I venture to think, the original story of the God-man Jesus was rewritten by being blended with the fragments of a biography of a great and good early Jewish teacher. The work will be hard, but Sister Nivedita and Miss Anthon have begun it. It must be taken as a part of the larger undertaking of a selection of rewritten myths. Is Baha-'ullah an avatâr?
Thus as Sister Nivedita has shown in her beautiful writings, cooking, washing and all the humble round of domestic life become one long ritual of purification and prayer in which the entertainment of a guest stands out as a great sacrifice.
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