Ancient Hindu Culture & Civilization - Some Excerpts

[Ram Chandran]

Excerpts from an interesting introduction by Sir Monier Williams in his
famous and highly respected Sanskrit-English Dictionary : (Source: Swami
Atmananda of Vedanta Mission, India)

" We are appalled by the length of some of India's literary productions (in
Sanskrit) as compared with those of European countries...  In some  subjects
too, especially in poetical descriptions of nature and domestic affections,
Indian works do not suffer by a comparison with the specimens of Greece and
Rome, while in wisdom, depth and shrewdness of their moral apophthegms they
are unrivaled.  The Hindus are perhaps the only nation, except the Greeks,
who have investigated, independently and in true scientific manner, the
general laws which govern the evolution of languages. More than this, the
Hindus had made considerable advances in astronomy, algebra, arithmetic,
botany,  and medicine, not to mention their superiority in grammar, long
before some of these sciences were cultivated by the most ancient nations of
Europe.

Indeed, Hindus were Spinozists 2000 years before Spinoza, Darwinians
centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists centuries before the
doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the Huxleys of our times, and
before any word like evolution existed in any language of the world."

-- Sir Monier Williams

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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