தனிநாயக அடிகள்
தEN
மெய்யியலும் தமிழ் மானுடவியலும்·ஒப்பீட்டுத் தத்துவவியல்·1963·வாசிக்க

Indian Thought and Roman Stoicism

அருள்திரு. முனைவர் சேவியர் தனிநாயகம் அடிகள்

நூலியல் பதிவு

Tamil Culture, தொகுதி X எண் 3 (சூலை–செப்டம்பர் 1963), பக். 1–36. Collected Papers இலும் (ஒப்பீட்டு ஆய்வுகள்; மலாயாப் பல்கலைக்கழகத் தொடக்க உரைச் சூழல், 14 டிச. 1962).

வாசிப்பு

பிரிவுத் தலைப்புகளுடன் சுத்தம் செய்யப்பட்ட முழுக் கட்டுரை கீழே உள்ளது. அடிக்குறிப்பு ஐயமாக இருந்தால் படிமத்தைப் பயன்படுத்துக.

Indian Thought and Roman Stoicism

Re-OCR’d from Internet Archive page images (Tamil Culture, Vol. X No. 3, July–Sept. 1963, pp. 1–36; IA leaves 3717–3752) and lightly edited for readability. Hyphenation rejoined; obvious character errors corrected against the scan. Prefer the scan for disputed footnotes.

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Synthesis in Education
  3. Stoicism and Later Times
  4. Tamil–Roman Trade
  5. Cosmopolitanism
  6. Human Brotherhood
  7. The Wise Man
  8. Conclusion

Introduction

Xavier S. Thani Nayagam · Tamil Culture, Vol. X No. 3 (July–September 1963), pp. 1–36 When Indian thought is compared with early Western philosophy, the Orphic and Pythagorean schools, Platonism, Epicureanism, neo-Platonism, and Stoicism, are those most mentioned.? In these comparisons it is not the metaphysical speculations of Indian philosophy, but the religious mysticism, the belief in metempsychosis, the ethical codes, the ascetic discipline, and vegetarianism, which were commonly stated as offering similarities and as worthy of notice. Lately, however, the mass of Indian metaphysical speculation and even significant legends have received from a widening circle of Western critics a more accurate and comparative interpretation than they used to receive, say, at the time of Lord Macaulay or John Ruskin. It is hardly necessary to remind you of Macaulay’s famous Minute on Education (1835), in which with characteristic rhetoric, he asserted, in opposition to those who would favour the continuation of the traditional learning of India, that “a single shelf of a good European Library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”, and asked facetiously 1 RADHAKRISHNAN S., (Ed.) History of Philosophy Eastern and Western, 2 vols, London, 1953., RADHAKRISHNAN S., East and West, Some Reflections, London, 1955; Eastern Religions and Western Thought, 2nd ed. Oxford, 1940. ZIMMER HEINRICH, Philosophies of India, London, 1952. “whether when we can patronise sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance at public expense medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns 30,000 years long, and geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.”? John Ruskin, in an inaugural lecture delivered at the Kensington museum a hundred years ago (1858), said that Indian Art, in spite of its delicacy und refinement, never represented a natural fact, but dealt in distorted and monstrous forms: “1¢ will not draw a man but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zig-zag.’’® Today the statements of Macaulay regarding Indian Science and thought, and of Ruskin regarding Indian Art, are statements which are recalled merely to show the change which has occurred among cultured persons in the West regarding things Indian. There is no great need any more even for the spirited and eloquent presentations of the foundations of Indian culture which Sri Aurobindo made in the twenties of this century.* This change has been brought about gradually by the persevering labour of Western Indologists during the last hundred years and more. and by the popularisers who have made use of their research. Max Miiller, Hermann Oldenberg, * THOMSON EDWARD and GARRAT, G.T, Rise und fulfilment of British Rule im Indw, London, 1934. ’ The Two Paths. * Sri) AUROBINDO, Foundations of Indian Culture, Pondicherry, 1959. W. E. Hopkins, Berriedale Keith, Julien Vinson, Rhys Davids, Heinrich Zimmer, Louis de la Vallée Poussin, Jean Filliozat, Pierre Meile, Louis Renou, J. Gonda, Giuseppe Tucci, M. B. Emeneau, Thomas Burrow, A. L. Basham, and Kamil Zvelebil are representative names of western scholars, both dead and living, whose works continue to present Indian culture and Indian thought in reasonable perspective. Several other names too could be mentioned; and yet Henry Maine and his “nothing moves in the world which is not Greek in origin”, still continues to be quoted; and Werner Jaeger in the last decade stated, in spite of so much literature on India, that one does wrong to ascribe the word “cuiture” to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, because while these do not have a single word for real culture as an ideal to be striven after, it is only the Hellenocentric world which possesses it.® There is greater evidence available today to illustrate that the development of cultures, howsoever ancient, was hardly achieved in isolation, or by cultural mutation. The Greek genius did not bloom suddenly in the Eastern Mediterranean according to an Aristotelian concept of creation, ex mthilo sut et subjecti. The Greek phenomenon of the pre-Christian era is explained in part as the Indo-Aryan phenomenon of the pre-Christian era in the Indo-Gangetic plain is explained in part, by anterior migrations, existing religious cults and oral literatures, and by the influences exerted on incoming groups by civilised peoples _already in possession of the land. 5 JAEGER WERNER, Puideia, Ideals of Greek Culture, Translated from the German, Vol. I. p. xvii, Oxford, 1946.

Synthesis in Education

Because of new and expanding lines of communication which have been opened, our mid-century tends more towards synthesis than analysis and modern educational objectives and methods seem to promote the tendency to find interrelationships and interdependence. The fragmentation of History like the fragmentation of the other Arts and Sciences, necessary, perhaps, because of the time-space limitations of the human mind, promotes an uneven emphasis and an imbalance which only synoptic and synthesising surveys may rectify. It was Alfred North Whitehead who observed. “a\ well-planned university course is a study of the wide sweep of generality”, a generality which draws principles and power from a variety of concrete details.® The thinkers, creative writers and poets of this mid-century represent this synoptic and synthesising trend, a trend already desired twentyfour centuries ago by Alexander ‘the Great in founding Alexandria. In an historic address at a banquet of reconciliation which took place at Opis, after his -Macedonian troops had mutinied because of the favour he had shown his Persian troops, Alexander called for a union of hearts (homonoia) and a joint commonwealth of peoples of the world. Alexandria which he founded became a commercial and intellectual centre of the Hellenic world where the East and the West met.’ ® Aims of Education. 7 BARKER ERNEST, Art. “ Stoicism” in Ency. of Soial Sciences, Since then, the idea of a synthesis of world thought came into prominence now and then; it was prominent especially in the writings of a great educational thinker and pedagogue, John Amos Komensky (Comenius) (1592—1671), who outlined the plans for a University of the world to be located in England, where instruction undertaken in an artificially constructed international language would include pan-sophia, pandogmatica, and pan history. Pandogmatica was to contain the ‘quintessence of authors” from age to age and from Jand to land.* Today, it should be hardly considered scholar. ship to compile the history of University education and ignore Taksasila, Nalanda and Kancipuram; to discuss the nature of epic poetry and ignore the Mahabharata the Ramayana, and the Silappatikaram; to write on the history of the scientific study of politics beginning with Machiavelli and yet not to mention the older Arthaégastra, to analyse mysticism and forget the Tamil bhakti poets; to explain methods of Scholasticism and fail to mention altogether Samkara and Raméanuja; to teach of architecture and by pass the Moghuls; to teach the history of sculpture and ignore the Nataraja bronze which in spite of its four arms, pace Ruskin, or was it because of them, Auguste Rodin and Ananda Coomaraswamy were convinced, synthesised the highest achievement and total exploitation of sculptural possibilities ° 8 CURTIS, 8.3. and BOULTWOOD,. M.EA., A Short Mistory of Educational Ideas. p. 186 ff London, 1953. *See ZIMMER HEINRICH Pazilosophies of India, p. 28 ff. op. cit.

Stoicism and Later Times

Stoicism in our times is a name given to an attitude of mind as well as to a system of Philosophy which originated in Greece and was later expounded in Rome. As an attitude of mind denoting patient endurance it may be met anywhere. As a system of philosophy, some of its principal tenets seem similar to beliefs also obtaining in. antiquity both in China and India. These similarities do not argue any identity of origin, or even identical sources of influence, but only demonstrate that the solutions to the problems of the practical aspects of life are limited in number and range, that philosophers are fairly well distributed in the civilized world and that similar social conditions in widely. distant areas may create similarity in thought. Within India itself, the isolated life of ascetiés, the control and extinction of desire, the indifference to pain and pleasure, the search for mental calm or ataraxy, the theistic and monistic order and harmony verified in the universe, and the human participation of divinity, buddhir buddhimatam asmi tejas tejasvinam aham I am the intelligence of the intelligent, I am splendour of the splendid,}° are possible fields of comparison with Roman Stoicism. Roman or later Stoicism is claimed to be the greatest system of organised thought which the mind of man built up for itself in the GraecoRoman world. Because of its way of looking at ” BG. VII. the world and at the problems of life it is still said to possess a permanent interest for the human race, and a permanent power of inspiration. Stoicism influenced the evolution of Roman jurisprudence, especially of the lex naturalis and the lex gentium and contained in germ the origins of international law. It furnished considerable proof and expression to the growth of natural theology and the thesis of the anima nuturaliter christiana. Stoic ideas influenced Grotius (1583— 1645) and Pufendorf (1632—1694) in the seventeenth century to formulate principles of international law, and it humanised the thinking of Erasmus and Montaigne as well as of the French Enlightenment.?? In the Arab world thinkers like Al Farabi (c. A.D. 870—950) and Ibn-Sina (980—1037) profitted by concepts they found in Stoic theology and ethics.2% Such Stoic ideas of permanent interest need to be known wherever they may exist, and therefore, I propose to discuss two or three elements which may be termed “Stoic” as they are found in the Latin and Greek literature of Rome, and in the classical literature in Tamil, ascribed to the same first two centuries of the Christian era. The comparison between these two literatures is made more resourceful and apperceptive because of similar political and commercial factors which contributed to the widening of horizons in the two areas and because of the two-way trade GILBERT MURRAY, Stoic, Christian and Humanist, p. 89 ff. 2nd ed. London, 1950. 19 SVARLIEN OSCAR, An Introduction to the Law of — Nations, Mcgraw-Hill, New York, 1955. 18 See R. WALZER, Islumic Philosophy in History of Philosophy Eastern and Western, op. cit. ; then obtaining between the Tamil country and the Roman empire.

Tamil–Roman Trade

Of the countries and peoples mentioned in the Tamil classics of this period as being engaged in active commerce with the Tamil country, there is mention either explicit or implied of North Indian kingdoms, of Ceylon, of Burma, and of Kedah in Malaya, but the Yavanar a general term used for peoples from the Mediterranean seaboard, occurs oftener than the names of other non-Indian foreign peoples. The wealthy quarters of the Yavunar to be found in Tamil harbour cities are explicitly mentioned in the Tamil classics while other foreigners are classed together as “multilingual groups.” Valiant and hardlooking Yavanar clothed in leathern jackets .are found as bodyguards in palaces and war-camps of Tamil kings; they also guard the city of Maturai and are employed as engineers operating defence, machinery. Impressive Yavana ships, very large ones even as the classical geographers observe, and the “Greek ships from Egypt” as the Periplus notes, arrive churning the waters of the harbour of Musiri on the west coast, unload their cargoes especially of gold and silver, and return westwards with the pepper which brought excessive profits to Roman traders. Bronze Roman lamps bearing the figure of a swan or of a woman burn in the palaces of royalty; and 14 See E.H. WARMINGTON, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, Cambridge, 1928. WHEELER MORTIMER, R.E., Rome beyond the Imperial frontiers, London, 1954. FILLIOZAT JEAN, Les Relations Extérieures de l'Inde, Pondicherry, 1956. - Yavana wine is drunk from Yavana goblets of gold, refilled by bangled damsels. Yavana contingents are stationed to protect Yavana trade. One such contingent is located near a harbour in which the Peutinger tables have marked a temple dedicated to Augustus-templum Augusti.*5 The number of ships sailing to Southern India from Alexandria and the Red Sea ports increased appreciably during this period. Archaeology. the insignificant tiny areas which have been dug. takes the evidence further and confirms the literary evidence. Sherds of wine amphorae made in Arezzo or in Puteoli near Naples found among the basement ruins of an ancient storehouse near Pondicherry, on chemical analysis were found to contain the residue of a popular Grecian resin wine, the inferior quality meant for export.. The gold of Rome mentioned in the Tamil poem has been found in abundance in hoards and in single specimens in the South of India and in coastal Ceylon and of these impressive finds, all first-century coins which are of Augustus (B.C. 63—A.D. 14) and Trajan (A.D. 53—117) not associated with later coinage, have been found only in the South. Sufficient Roman coinage found in the Tamil areas is preserved in museums, but an equal amount or more of the finds has also gone into the jewellery of women living near the ancient harbours of the Southern coast. Fragments of Roman lamps, a great attraction to the Tamil % THOMSON J. OLIVER, History of Ancient Geography p. 298 ff. Cambridge. 1948 MEILE PIERRE, Les Yavanas dans l'Inde Tamoule in Journal Asiatrque, 1940, pp. 85—123. T. 21—2 poets, have also been found along with Roman and native pottery.’® The literary evidence for this flourishing trade from the Roman side is remarkably revealing. The classical geographers have known the harbours of these three kingdoms as their knowledge has been continually increasing since the time of Megasthenes, (fl. 305 B.C.). The Naturalist, Pliny (A.D. 23—79), the Periplus Maris Erythraci (1st cent. A.D.) and Ptolemy (2nd c. A.D.) mention at least forty harbours, towns, rivers and emporia along this southern coast, names most of which can he identified as those mentioned also in contemporary Tamil literature. Some of these prosperous towns and harbour cities are compared in beauty and resource to the heroines of love poetry. “You are as rich and resourceful as Kuala Lumpur and Penang” might sound strange in love poetry today, but that is how the Tamil poet looked on his beloved drawing his comparisons from the pleasures: and comforts that cities like Musiris and Tyndis and Khaberts emporion could provide.?’ The classical geographers know of the three Tamil kingdoms (Pandyan, Céran, Colan), their capital cities, and the source of their wealth ; they know other smaller dynasties and clans, Atoi, Batoi, Kareoi, Toringoi; they know of 1% FILLLOZAT J&AN, Les relations extericures de l'Inde op. cit. ° WHEELER MORTIMER, Rome beyond the Imperial frontiers, op. cit. 17 THANL NAYAGAM, XAVIER. S., Nature in Tamil Poetry, Singapore, 1963. : Ceylon and the sailings from Ceylon to the South Indian coast, and mention in detail the merchandise which the Romans sought from the Tamil emporia such as fine textiles, pearls, beryls, pepper, cinnamon and other spices and perfumes.?® Tamil trade appears to have been even more voluminous with the Orient, with the Gangetic regions, the Malayan Archipelago and with China. The Romans and Arabs headed directly to the Tamil ports using the trade winds, and the Southern harbours were emporia from which Roman goods were transhipped to further East, and SouthEastern and Eastern goods, such as silk from China and tortoise-shell from Malaya, transhipped to the West. The Periplus is emphatic in assigning an important role to these emporia in the trade with the Ganges region and the Golden Chersonese or the Malay peninsula: “There are imported into these places everything made in Damirica; what is brought at any time from Egypt comes here, together with most kinds of all the things that are brought from Damirica and of those that are carried through Paralia.”'® WA close analysis of the information available from the classical geographers and writers shows that they knew more of the Tamil country than has been conceded hitherto by those who have interpreted them without examining the evidence of the Tamil sources. See Mc. CRINDLE. J W. Ancient India as described by Ptolemy, London, 1885 and The Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraean sea, Calcutta, 1879; VINCENT, W. The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, 2 vols., London, 1807; VINCENT, W: The Voyage of Nearchus and the nertplus of the Erythraean Sea, Oxford, 1809; R.C. MAJUMDAR, The Classical accounts of India, Calcutta, 1960. . % W.H. SCHOFF, The Perrplus of the Erythraean Sea p. 46, New York, 1912. See PAUL WHEATLEY, The Golden Chersonese, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1961. Later sources, Chinese, Arabic and European, point to the .continuity of this centralised trade which developed because of a favourable geographical position, and the availability of merchandise coveted in East and West. The trade in spices left certain Tamil names in Greek and Latin such as zingibert, zinpiberi for ginger from incivér, and piper for pepper from pippali. Another Tamil word for pepper used at this period, Aav7. once the chief ingredient of Tamil culinary art, is left with us in curry and rice said to be according to one school of modern philosophers India’s greatest contribution to world civilization} Huge barns along the Tiber erected in A.D. 92 stored this pepper, and the problem of exchange and the drain of Roman gold and silver into India worried Pliny who with Stoic austerity wishes to know who was the first to introduce this pungent spice to augment an already existing appetite, obtaining an unsavoury condiment all the way from India. The derivation of the Latin word for pear] (margarites) is not certain but the pearls of the Gulf of Mannar and of Korkai (Kolkhoi) were put to most extraordinary uses around the Mediterranean. , You will remember the pearl which Cleopatra dissolved in vinegar in order to drink, as well as the dinner of a certain Clodius who gave each guest a pearl to swallow, and Nero throwing precious stones and pearls to the people and hanging his first beard "oe with pearls for veneration at the Capitol. / Lollia Paulina, wife of the Emperor Gaius had 30 million of ses RENOU, L. La Geographie de Ptolomee, l’Inde, Paris, sesterces worth of pearl ornaments; and Roman ladies had pearls on their fingers, toes, ears, sandals and shoes so that the rattling of pearls could be heard as they walked.?° The Tamil kingdoms provided the bulk of luxury articles the use of which the Roman Stoics and the early Christian writers deprecate with vigour. In examining Roman relations with India one is surprised at the association famous Roman Stoics have with the Greek and Latin evidence concerning [ndia. Seneca (4 B.C.—A.D. 65), the best representative of Roman Stoicism of the first century, whose furniture included five hundred tripod tables embellished with legs of ivory imported most probably from India, wrote a book on India which has not reached us; and Flavius Arrianus (circ. 90—175) the most eminent Stoic of the first half of the second century, who has preserved the discourses of Epictetus, is also the one who wrote the Jndika, and preserved the fragments of Megasthenes, Eratosthenes and Nearchus. Eratosthenes, the: librarian in Alexandria from about 234 to 196 B.C. who preferred to divide men rather into good and bad than into Greeks and barbarians, is the earliest of the classical geographers of India. Posidonius (about 135—51 B.C.) who instructed Cicero and the Roman circles in a modified Stoicism who was a geographer as well, suggested, anticipating Columbus by sixteen centuries, that sailing from Spain one might strike India.?? % WARMINGTON, E.H. The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, op. cit. 167 ff. THOMSON, OLIVER, J; History of Ancient Geography op. cit. See also TARN, W.W. The Greeks in Baciria and India, 2nd ed, Cambridge, 1951. . The outline of mutual trade given above is a useful background to understand the sense of universality which is a dominant and characteristic element in Roman Stoicism and the Tamil thought of this era. It is of interest to note that while Grecian contacts with India occur through the overland route and are confined most to Northern India, the Roman contacts occur mainly by the sea route and during these first two centuries of the Christian era are predominantly with Southern India.

Cosmopolitanism

One of the contributions made by the Stoics to Western thought, significant for our century, is the inclusion of all men within an ethic of universal brotherhood, and within the bonds of a direct altruistic relationship of man to man. Near Plato’s ideal and actual states, and Aristotle’s reports of Hellenic attitudes, the idea of a city-republic (the polis), isolated in its setting, rigorous in its maintenance of a ruling class, exclusive and selective in its citizenship and expressive of Hellenic or Athenian superiority in respect of the barbaroi, governed political thought and government. The ideal city of Plato was to be located about ten miles from the sea and away from the highroads so that its citizens might not suffer ideologically by contact with foreigners, and the government of the city might not become corrupt by the preference of foreign settlers for their own laws.?2 The inferior classes set % PLATO, The Laws, 704—707, ARISTOTLE, Politics, VII, 4—6. On Stoic reactions see BARKER EARNEST, Greek Political Theory, 4th ed. London, 1960; SINCLAIR, T. A. A History of Greek Political Thought, Londan, 1959. permanently apart for crafts and agriculture were denied the rights of full citizenship and of education; there were those born to rule and others born to obey; slaves were denied the capacity for virtue, and women were denied even academic equality with men; and the foreigner was generally looked upon as unequal in culture and refinement compared with the Greek. Aristotle whose views of the barbaroi are only in partial agreement with Plato’s, says: “ The Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their own country; but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home, thereby, implying that there are two sorts of nobility and of freedom, the one absolute, the other relative” (Politics, I, 6). In the Greek world there was another trend less exclusivistic, and that was traced to the Sophists, but assumed a supreme importance with the decline of the city-state and as Alexander’s concepts of empire gained adherents. As early as the fifth century B.C. Antiphon, the sophist, repudiated the distinction between nobleman and slave and between Greek and barbarian as unnatural. This was the attitude of: the Cynics as well, but the philosophers of the Porch, whose most important exponents were not Athenians and who had no loyalty to Attica, made it a fundamental principle of their system. Zeno had the same attitude as the Cynics, and said: ‘“ why should I be proud of Attica with its worms and its slugs?” In his Ideal State, a book lost to us, Zeno is said to have visualised the world as TARN, WILLIAM and GRIFFITH, G.T. Hellenistic Civilization, London, 1959. one great city where all were citizens bound together by a law of love. This concept of the cosmopolis has received more tributes than any other Hellenistic concept, and has formed the foundation of the Stoic sense of universality. The temper of these foreign Stoic teachers who came from the periphery of the Hellenistic world, was the same as that of Meleager, the father of the Greek anthology, a Syrian from Gadara educated in Tyre: “What is the wonder if [ am a Syrian? There is one motherland, stranger, in which we all dwell, and that is the Cosmos: there is one Father of whom we are all begotten, and He is the void.” The Stoics were prepared to overlook differences of race, of colour and of class in one great osmic unity, and these equalising principles acbsire great practical import. within the Roman mpire, comprising as it did a wide range of ethnic and culture groups over a distended geog-. raphical area, and a wider world made familiar to it through commerce. The Latin poets of the Empire .at the same time that they are patriotic and crown Rome with their tributes and laurels as the goddess of the earth, are yet sensitive to this new universal outlook and introduce new sentiments of solidarity and unity in mankind and in the cosmos. Slavery becomes so mitigated that manumission and _ self-purchase cMeates a new wealthy class of those who had once been slaves.?2 The statesmen-philosophers like Seneca % Very few books were available in Malaya on the Romans, their culture and civilisation, at the time of the composition of this lecture. and Marcus Aurelius are very explicit on the dual citizenship which they professed, one of Rome and the Roman Empire, and the other of the world at large. Seneca (4 BC—AD. 65) says in words which seem deliberately chosen to contradict the earlier views of Plato and Aristotle: “no man is nobler than his fellow, even if it happen that his spiritual nature is better constituted and he is more capable of higher learning. The world is the mother of us,. all, and the ultimate origin of each one of us can be traced back to her, whether the steps in the ladder of descent be noble or humble. To no one is virtue forbidden; she is accessible to all; she admits everyone, she invites everyone in; free men and freedmen, slaves, kings and exiles. She regards neither birth nor fortune; the man alone is, all she wants.” Epictetus, (c. 90) the lame slave and philosopher says: , “Nature is wonderful and full of love for aJl creatures.” And Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121—180): “My nature is rational and social, and my city and my country, so far as I am Antonious is Rome, but so far as I am a man, is the world.”?4 These Stoic teachings caused the recognition of the equality of all men, gave equal legal status to men and women, conferred human % These and similar texts may be found in SCHWEITZER ALBERT, £thics and Civilizution. See ARNOLD VERNON, Roman Stowcism, London, 1911; BEVAN EDWYN, Stoics and Sceptics, ZELLER D., The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, Oxford, 1892; BARROW, R.H. The Romans, (Penguin). I. 2l—3 is TAMIL CULTURE rights on the slave and humanised the institution of slavery though not abolishing it. The Christian writer, Lactantius, finds it worth stating that the Stoics mode if possible for ‘‘women and slaves to become philosophers.” During the comparable period, there were different systems of thought within India providing their own answers to the problems concerning which the Stoics speculated or provided practical answers. Of these systems, the best known is the stream of Brahminic thought, the recorded literature of whichis the earliest which India has to offer. By this time, Brahminism had developed a literature which was very exclusivistic in its concept of group life. Though Vedic and post-Vedic Monism should have developed into an all-embracing ethic of love, the Arthasastras and Dhurmasastras basing their stratification of society on colour and _ caste imposed limits on the education of the masses, denied Vedic learning to the éudras. and were in theory less flexible in their laws than the ideal and actual states contemplated by Plato and Aristotle. Brahminie law literature also defined the area between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, “where the black antelope roams” as the sacred land of the Aryas, the karmabhumi, within which one would have to be born or teborn to be saved. 75 , ‘ 9% See MANU, 156. MANU, X, 102, 103; APASTAMBA, 1, 2, 7, 20, 21; MANU, IL, 22. Vusisthadharma, I, 12—13. “Some (declare the .country of the Aryas to be situated) between the rivers Ganga and Yamuna, Others (state as) an alternative that spiritual pre-eminence (is found) as far as the black antelope grazes.’ See HOPKINS E. W.., Ethics of India, p 52 ff., Yale University Press, New Haven, 1924. R.C. MAJUMDAR, Hinduism, a retrospect and a re- While Brahminie social thought bears some resemblance to the excluvism of the city republics of Greece, the social thought of the ascetic schools bears resemblance to the cosmopolitanism of the Stoics. Jainism, Buddhism and Ajivikism seem to be older in their traditions than the age of their known founders, and point to the existence of non-Vedic systems and _ ascetic schools which developed contemporaneously with Brahminic thought. The ascetic religions were missionary religions, especially Buddhism, which embarked on a missionary programme, one of the most thorough and intelligent in the history of religions in Asia. ' Brahminic and Buddhist social thought is contained in priestly or monastic religious literatures. But the earliest Tamil literature is a secular literature, and Tamil society is one in which the poets and thinkers have the prestige which the Brahmins have in Aryanised society and the monks have in states which foster Jainism and Buddhism.?* There is no monism or mysticism of identity with the Primal origin - of Being or ethical pluralism evident in this literature; the reasons for universal brotherhood are drawn merely from the nature of man (the phusis and natura of the Stoics), and from a rationalistic and humanistic unity to be found in Nature and the Cosmos. For a Tamil poet in the first or second century A.D. to have said almost like Seneca or Marcus Aurelius: view, in Group prejudices tn Indw, a sympostum, Vora and Company, Bombay, 1931, p. 72. KANE P.V., History of Dharmugastra, Vol. {f, Part II, p. 110 ff. Poona, 1946. *% See MEILLE PIERRE, Littérature Tumoule in , Hist. des littératures I, Ency. de la Vléiade. “Every country is my country and every man is my kinsman,” seems remarkable indeed.?7 The motive to embark on a life-long education of the self, a process so clearly outlined-in Confucius and in Plato and revived in our times under the total concept of Adult Education is stated in this literature to be man’s citizenship of the world. Since every country and every city is his own, he ought therefore to continue to learn about them all his life. A more suitable motto for education for membership in the world community would be hard to find in antiquity than the verse: “Yatanum nadamal uramal en oruvan santunayum kallatavaru.” *° The broader solidarity in cosmopolitanism is generally strengthened by the loyalty to a particularistic national society, and in Tamil thought a triple loyalty is implied, one to a particular Tamil kingdom, the second to a citizenship in the pan-Tamilism of three kingdoms; and a third, the citizenship of the word. There is no slighting of the foreigner ; foreign countries are merely those where the language differs, and the multilingual foreign groups of the harbour cities are mentioned with deference. The references to the few and small vedic communities in different parts of the country are always courteous even when their peculiarities are mentioned. One cannot help concluding that 37 THANI NAYAGAM. XAVIER S. Ideal of the Expanding self in Annals of Oriental Research of the University of Madras, Vol. XVII (1960—61). % Tirukkural. 397. the political and commercial importance of the Tamil states and their harbour cities and capitals during the first two centuries of the Christian era, and urbanisation and frequent travel have developed this sense of universality.

Human Brotherhood

Human Brotherhood is a concomitant concept of universality, either as its cause or as its result. The stratification of society, the institution of slavery and the total dedication to the city-state, were the main obstacles to the notion of human brotherhood in Greece in the same manner that particularistic racial and religious sentiments and laws governing Sudras and foreigners were the main obstacles to the development of human brotherhood in the society where ‘Aryan law was paramount. It has been the tendency among some scholars to rationalise the caste system of India and justify it by a great number of arguments and after-thoughts which do not bear scrutiny, as it has been the fashion for certain classical scholars to mitigate the . nature of slavery in Greece. Those of us who are unable to be so romantically inclined towards these institutions, accept slavery in Greece as slavery and caste in India as caste. ?° There was always in India a current of opinion which was hostile to caste restrictions. Of this antagonism we have adequate evidence in the Buddhist books as well as in Vaisnava and Saiva literature. The Buddhist books, however, are those most eloquent in repudiating ** See SHARMA, RAM SHARAN, Sudras in Ancient India, Delhi, 1958. 22 TAMIL CULTURE colour and caste prejudices, and these prejudices must have been insupportable to those discriminated against judging from the trend of the argument in the Nikayas. The Buddhist books consider caste prerogative based on birth and colour as the greatest social evil with which they have to contend, and open the doors of asceticism to men and women and lay following to all groups without distinction. Rhys Davids has considerable evidence to support him when in one of his erudite and searching introductions to the Suttas, he says, ‘‘Had the Buddha’s views on the whole question won the day and widely shared as they were by others, they very nearly prevailed—the evolution of social grades and distinctions would have gone on in India on lines similar to those it followed in the West. and the caste-system of India would never have been built up.” #° Some of the arguments used in the Nikayas against caste prerogatives are most amusing as when it is said oxen are not classified by their colour but by their strength and activity, and so, too should honours be conferred on men according to ability, and if a sudra were wealthy, the brahmins would be there to serve him. *: It all sounds so much like the arguments used in this twentieth century by platform orators in India in the reform and self-respect movements. The concept of human brotherhood gained adherence in India not so much on account of % RHYS-DAVIDS, Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, p. 141. 1 Anqgutlara, I, 162, See MALALASEKARA GP. and K.N. JAYATILLEKE, Buddhism and the Race Question, Unesco, 1958. the--universalistic. implications of. metaphysical postulates, but because faced with the doctrine of varna both those who suffered its disabilities as well as those who rebelled at its deficiencies as a social doctrine were compelled to define human rights and human equality. This situation seems to have arisen in Tamil society for its thirikers-to reiterate human equality and state that birth equalises all men and that social differences are due to occupations. Jainism and Buddhism which were gaining adherents and the -inter-religious tolerance of a Hyde-Park corner kind then obtaining in the Tamil country, were additional factors in the increase of the sense of cosmopolitanism. The structure of Tamil society was very different from what the brahminic books on politics and ethics were advocating in other territories. There were no _ distinctions and disabilities arising from caste divisions, and education and perfectibility were open to all groups. No one was considered a “ moving burial ground”, and no occupation was considered too low or too manual as to deny to those engaged in it the possibility of advancement in virtue. The poets and poetesses and bards of both sexes who move with kings without losing the common touch, as moralists, counsellors, royal messengers and teachers, come from a great many occupational groups; kings, queens, ministers, landlords, chieftains, astronomers, teachers, arithmeticians, merchants, and actors and blacksmiths. And their literature is a literature of the people, not of an aristocracy or of an élite. There is a unity seen in the cosmos of sentient and non-sentient being, but that unity is of a naturalistic kind and not the theistic or panth- eistic unity of Stoicism.

The Wise Man

Stoicism is again noted for hypostatising its ideals of life in the ideal of a Wise Man—the sapiens. Various moral and political philosophers, have portrayed the ideal who embodies in himself the spirit and the qualities which they hold desirable for their particular society and age. Thus Plato draws the picture of the philosopher—statesmen in ‘his various dialogues, Aristotle, the picture of the ideal ruler and the ideal citizen, and Confucius the qualities of the chün-tzu. 32, The Stoics more than any other school of western ethics pointed to their ideal, the Wise Man, an ideal, which precisely because it was ideal, embodied a great many virtues, attitudes and dispositions hardly ever to be realised in the one and the same person, an 2 WALEY ARTHOR, The Analects of Confucius, p. 34 ff. London, 1956. The Wise Man from India in the person of the yogi has been an attraction in the West ever since the days of Alexander and the ten Yogis whom he interviewed because they had incited a rebellion against him. Plutarch recounts how ten of these gymnosophists gave their characteristic short and pithy answers. The first was asked whether he thought the living or the dead to be the more numerous. He answered “ The living for the dead are not.” The second was asked “which breeds the largest animals, the sea or the land?”. He answered “the land for the sea is only a part of it.” The following eight too gave similar answers, and Alexander sent them away with gifts instead of putting them to death. Gymnosophists seem to have been included in the embassies sent to Rome, and the Christian writers like Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria know a little about Brahmins and Gymnosophists and their doctrines and mode of life. anomaly of which their critics did not hesitate to ridicule them. Though it was held by them that the Wise Man was rare, and Seneca even describes. him as rare as the phoenix and honestly disclaims any corresponding character as being verified in his own self, the Stoics of the Roman principate generally affirm the existence of many Wise Men. The Stoic sapiens was to foster a mental calm even in the face of trouble and disaster and crush desires; was generally supposed to be aloof and remote so as not to become immersed in public affairs or civic strife, and instead devote his time to the cultivation of his mind and his virtues. Cicero who is far more precise concerning public and private duties, belongs to an earlier age, and though influenced by Stoicism and had Stoic teachers, does not identify himself as a Stoic. To Tamil thought more than to any other section of contemporary Indian thought, the ideal of a Wise Man of human proportions with human qualities was fundamental. He may not have any of the thirty-two great marks, or the numerous smaller marks which designate the superman or Mahapurusa of other traditions. He may not be endowed with the physical qualities of the magnanious man of Aristotle. In fact, there is an explicit warning not to confound physical appearance with personality or wisdom though pleasant looks and family upbringing are useful. He was the sanr6n, a word - derived from a root signifying fullness and completeness, so that he was not merely the Wise Man or desirable man as implied in the T. 21—4 etymon of sapiens, but the Complete or Perfect man, well made and full of those qualities, intellectual, moral, emotional and aesthetic which signify all-round robust goodness. It is because these complete men exist that the world becomes a livable place; if their greatness were to diminish, the world would cease to exist. One does not acquire grey hairs in a hurry when several such wise men live in one’s vicinity. The Tamil Wise Man is not to be an anchorite or a recluse or a muni like the ideal of the ascetic schools, or live in the world in splendid isolation or in magnificent detachment. He is to live fully his days of courtship and of married life rejoicing in the laughter and the love of his children and of friends. His aim should be the development of individual excellence by a complete dedication to his social and civic duties. In no section of Indian thought does life with a social reference obtain such measured consideration. Any attempt to describe in brief a personality profile of the Wise or Complete Man of the Tamil books must seem as despairing as summarising the features of the Wise Man of the Stoics, because of the numerous virtues which the Tamil is called upon to exercise’ in the complex situations of his daily life as a lover, a husband, a parent, a citizen and a friend. The almost unattainable character of the Wise Man could make the Stoics as well as the Tamil philosophers persistent in refusing to accept in concrete anything short of the Ideal in every character placed before them: “No, not that, not that; the one we have dreamed of is fairer far than that, more magnificent and wonderful. Earth has never seen him, or at best it saw him but for a moment, and he was gone.”23 ALTRUISM AND CULTURE Certain individuating characteristics of the Tamil Wise Man refute the pessimism, negativism, and fatalism sometimes attributed to Indian thought in general. The basis of his life should be altruism, that is, informed by the ideal to live not for self but for others. He is one who would not consume selfishly and alone even the nectar of immortality. His acquisition of wealth is merely to serve as a means to provide for social and educational opportunities for the less fortunate, to be philanthropic and to acquire the pleasure which comes from hospitality. Even marriage is conceived primarily as a joint partnership which facilitates the joint provision of entertaining friends and strangers and offering a limitless hospitality. His altruistic life is not motivated by “mercenary motives” of rewards possible in another life; even if there were no other life he would have to be benevolent, for it is the right life and the humanism proper to a Wise Man. He must find his “good” and the right in the performance of his duty, and in the concept of justice. Humanism and optimism are two of his important characteristics. The Stoic and the Tamil agree that in the service of his fellow men they must be prepared to sacrifice their health, their possessions, their lives; to be forgiving to enemies. But there is one thing that the Stoic should never sacrifice, S BEVAN EDWYN, Stoics and Sceptics, op. cit, p. 57 ff. his own eternal calm. Therefore, pity to the Stoic in the sense of a painful. emotion caused by the sight of others suffering is actually a vice. The most a Stoic may do is to feign pathy, but he must take care not feel it. /He may sigh, says Epictetus, provided the sigh does not come from his heart./ The Tamil Wise Man’s philosophy of ‘indifference to pain and pleasure and the cultivation of tranquillity in the face of. disaster is for personal discipline, but his equanimity is reconciled with sympathy for the sufferer in the Greek and derivative sense. Pity is not only encouraged, but positive and expansive love and benevolence as the fountain of all service is prescribed, and a sincere moistening of the eyes is explained as the indication of true and overwhelming sympathy within. There is a difference between Epictetus and Tiruvalluvar in their ideals of the Ideal Man. Albert Schweitzer in surveying the world’s ancient literatures for ethical values, was quick to perceive the contribution which Tamil thought had to make by emphasising this ethic of love. Of the Tirukkural, a codex of gnomic verse which epitomises the ethical Tamil thought of this period, he says that its ethics is more advanced than that of Brahminism, Buddhism, and Bhagvadgita) Hinduism. ' “Tike the Buddha and the Bhagavad- Gita, the Kural desires inner freedom from the world and a mind free from hatred. Like them it stands for the commandment not to kill and not to damage. It has ap- propriated all the valuable ethical results of the thought of world and life negation. But in addition to this ethic of inwardness there appears in the Kural the living ethic of rn “With sure strokes the Kural draws the ideal of simple ethical humanity. On the most varied questions concerning the conduct of man to himself and to the world its utterances are characterised by nobility and sense. There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty wisdom.”>¢ % Indian thought and its Development p. 203, London 1991. The following are some of the books which will be found helpful in studying the Indian religions and ethics of the period and in the interpretation of the pertinent texts. ADIKARAM, E.W. Eurly history of Buddhism in

  • Ceylon, Ceylon, 1946 APTE, V.M. Soctal and religious life in the Grhyasutras, Bombay, 1954. BASHAM, A.L The Wonder that was Ind1a, London, 1961.; BHANDARKAR, R.C. Vatshnavism, Satvism and other minor religious systems, Strassburg, 1913, Poona 1928; DUTT, NK. Origin and growth of caste in India, Vol. I (C. B.C. 2000—300) London. 1931; DUTT, Sukumar, FHurly Buddhist monachism, 600 B.C.—100 B.C, London, 1924; ELIOT, C. Hinduism and Buddhism, re-issue 3 vols. London, 1957, (first published 1921); FICK, Die sociale Ghederung im Nordéstlichen Indien zu Buddhas zeit, Kiel, 1897 (English translation by S. MAITRA, The Social organisation 1n North-East India in Buddha's time, University of Calcutta, 1920); FORMICHI, C. JI penstero reliqioso nell’ India prima del Buddha, Bologna, 1925 (French translation by F. HAYWARD revised by author, Paris, 1930); GHURYE, G.S. Caste and class in India, Popular Book Depot, Bombay, 1950; GUERINOT, A. La religion Djaina, histoire, culte, coutumes, institutions. Paris, 1926; HOPKINS, Washburn E. The religions of India, Yale, 1895; JOLLY, J. Hindu law and custom. Translated by S.K. Das from the German edition of 1896, Calcutta. 1928; OLDENBERG, H. Ancient India, Second ed. Chicago, 1898; OLDENBERG, H. Buddha: Seine Leben, Seine Lehre, Seine Gemeinde Berlin, 1890. English translation Buddha: his life, his doctrine His order., London, 1892; RENOU, Louis, Religions of Ancient India, University of London, 1953; RHYS DAVIDS, T.W. Buddhism, London, 1917; RHYS DAVIDS, T.W. Buddhist India, London, 1903 (reprint) Bombay, 1955; RHYS DAVIDS, T.W. Early Buddhism, London, 1908; SCHUBRING, W. Die lehre der Jatnas, Leipzig, 1935; trans. The doctrine of the Jainas, Banaras, 1962 ; TUCCI, G. What the Tirukkural embodies is the rationalisation and synthesis of the wisdom and ideals of the earlier Tamil literatur¢é which is contemporary with the writings of “eee of Epictetus, of Pliny, of Arrian and of Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics agree far more with the Buddhist ideal of ataraxy than with that of the Tamil. The former two tend to a detached intellectualism at the expense of the emotional and the aesthetic life, but in the third, the emotional and aesthetic aspects of personality are important means of self-realisation. Though altruism is his great ethical characteristic, it is his culture which enables the Tamil Wise Man to develop the marks of gracious living and the sentiments and attitudes which make him a pleasant member of society. While the word sanr6n denotes completeness, tHe world for culture (panpu) denotes quality or the effort to obtain quality by constant striving and fertilising, and has the same sense as when Cicero derives culture from agriculture, the cultores agri. Culture in Tamil thought is a quality which should be found in the sovereign, in the lover, in the parent and in the child. It includes in its code a humaneness towards all human beings and towards all life, including animals and even plants. Persons endowed even with the sharpest intellects are not cultured but just timber if they Il Buddhismo, Foligno, 1926. VALLEE POUSSIN Louis de la, Le dogme et la philosophie du Buddhisme. Paris, 1930 (with bibliography); VALLEE POUSSIN Louis de la, La morale Bouddhique, Paris, 1927; WILLIAMS, W. Monier, Buddhism and its connection with Brahminism and Hinduism and tts contrast with Christianity, John Murray, London, 1890; WILLIAMS, W. Monier, Religious thought and life in India, John Murray, London, 1883; ZAEHNER, R.C. Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, London, 1960. , possess not the humane feelings common to common humanity. Familiarity with persons of culture produces increasing joy like that which familiarity with the classics engenders. Culture includes the humanism of interest in man; it includes the tolerance and forbearance of dissentient views with the patience of Mother Earth who sustains and supports, and harms not those who dig, and scope and tunnel her. To forgive enemies is culture, but to forgive friends is a higher culture. To return good to those who have been bad to you is culture. To be accessible and friendly with the lowly is culture. Culture includes the learning which considers itself inadequate, the service which expects no reward, the greatness which ever is humble, the largeness which forgives, the gentlemanliness which never inflicts pain, the purity of intention and the spotlessness of mind which are born of truth and justice, and the expansiveness which comes of not harbouring petty thoughts resulting in the shrivelling of personality. Culture is fostered by learning, by the critical search for knowledge in books, by association with the learned, by the art of conversation which includes as well the art of listening, by the eloquence which should be able to express lucidly one’s subtlest thoughts, and by friendships which provide the opportunity to give and to receive. Culture includes the humanism which enjoys humour and laughter. “To those who are unable to laugh it is pitch dark even amidst the blaze of noon.”35 Culture is fed on ideals— 36 Tirukkural 999. The following books give accounts of Tamil Literature and its characteristics : the man without ideals is a corpse. Culture, cannot be an ideal which “ only a Hellenocentric world possesses.” In this comparable period, there is a literature in Tamil on friendship which bears comparison with Cicero, on eloquence with Cicero and Quintilian, on morality with the writings of Seneca, and a love poetry not less interesting than Catullus but much more impersonal and universal in its appeal.

Conclusion

These comparisons of Indian thought with Roman Stoicism may be made not only in the domain of ethics but also in several other fields. Three great books of Indian ethical thought illustrate three great traditions, and point to a certain unity as well as diversity within the complex systems which come under Indian thought. They are the Bhaguvad Gita, the Dhammapada, and the Tirukkural; the first theistic and incorporating several traditions, the second representing the “sramanic” tradition of asceticism and Buddhist in inspiration, and the third humanistic, representative of a poetic tradition, and of a society in which priests and monks have as yet no traditional social functions. These three books are in three different languages, CASIE-CHITTY, SIMON, Tamil Plutarch, Colombo, 1946; JESUDASON, C. & H., History of Tamil Literature, Calcutta, 1961; KANAGASABAI PILLAI, V. The Tamils Erghteen hundred years ago, Madras, 1904 (reprinted Madras, 1959); SESHA IYENGAR, T.R. Dravidian India, Madras, 1925; SIVARAJA PILLAI, K.N. Chronology of the, early Tamils, Madras, 1982; SRINIVASA IYENGAR, P.T., Htstory of the Tamils from the earliest times to 600 A.D., Madras, 1929; TAMBYAH ISAAO, T. Psalms of a Sativa Satnt, Luzac, London, 1926. Sanskrit ‘and Pali and Tamil, and while the two are representative of the Northern traditions in religion and ethics, the third is representative of the Southern tradition.?® I believe that what I have said will also indicate that it would be hardly valid to generalize on Indian thought on the basis of any single Indian literature, classical or modern, or on the basis of one single tradition, or region or religion. Literary evidence, both classical and modern, elements Dravidian and Aryan, philosophies of the North and of the South, and the beliefs and values of the masses preserved in popular cults and folk literature, all contribute to our study of Indian thought. This lecture has been mainly concerned with one tradition, and that tradition links up the past and the present through a living language and literature which have maintained an unbroken recorded continuity at least for the last twenty-three centuries, a continuity not verified in the fortunes of many of Tamil’s ancient contemporaries. That recorded tradition opens up new perspectives of relevance when connected, as it seems most reasonable to do, with earlier oral traditions and with the Indus Valley Culture and its monuments of the second and third millenia before the Christian era. a + Spe ey ee See eer eee 36 The attempt to trace all Indian thought to Sanskritic sources still persists even among a section of scholars whose knowledge of the Tamil language might suggest a more accurate interpretation. What grounds might Prof. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri have for the following statement made in his mature years: “ All these literatures owed a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch alone raised each of the Dravidian languages from the level of a patois to that of aed idiom" (A History of South India, 2nd ed. p. ; During its long history, the Tamil tradition has come to include the main currents of Indian religious and philosophical thought, while preserving its identity unchanged by the political upheavals which occurred in the territory north of the Tamil borders. Saivaism, Vaisnavism, Buddhism, Jainism, [slam, Christianity and Roman Catholicism have all of them great literary works in Tamil. Throughout the larger portion of its history, it has had the advantage of contact with a great classical dead language and a great classical literature in Sanskrit, as Latin had in Greek. Unless the evidence of the Indus Valley, of the TZolkappiyam, of the love and bhakti poetry in Tamil, of the siddhanta philosophy, of the ethical verse, of the epic poetry and of the fine arts and crafts of the South, enter into the syllabuses and studies of Indological research, a more accurate and balanced presentation of Indian thought than that which obtains now will not be possible. It would be true to say, that since the last war, there is a marked decrease in the tendency to build Indological interests on IndoKuropean language and racial affinities as the sole or main determinants or as inspirational motives. Nor is an indefinable attitude of selfefficiency or an esoteric Boston Brahminhood now assumed by those who study the Vedas and the Upanisads. But “the too exclusive examination of India from the Indo-European standpoint” still continues. The term “Indian Studies” is itself so comprehensive that hardly any University would be able in its teaching and research to cover every field of study which may be included in : \ the term. Consequently certain fields have necessarily to be selected for special study taking into consideration such facts as the needs of the country and of society, the availability of funds, the demand for such studies, and the contribution that has to be made along with other departments to the implementation of the declared policy of sustaining and fostering the cultures and languages of the component groups of the nation. To scatter energies over a wide field is no help in the slow building up of ordered knowledge, and in the establishing of our own traditions which should supplement and dovetail the work of similar departments in South East Asia and in the world. In Departments of studies of this kind, there is a tendency to a static antiquarianism and to a conservatism which have to be counterbalanced by a consciousness of the importance of the present and by a vision of the future. Modernization of courses should maintain teaching continually revised; and creative teaching should beware of “inert ideas”, that is “ideas which are not tested or utilised or thrown into fresh combinations.” Extending the frontiers of knowledge, a phrase which reveals the adventure and the joy of discovery incidental to University research in an atmosphere of academic freedom, is a vital function of a University. A Department of Indian Studies with specialist courses in Tamil Studies, (and Tamil studies to include courses in Dravidology and Sanskrit), should be able to restore to Indology some of the equipoise it needs, and exploit the possibilities of new discoveries and approaches available to Indian Studies in South East Asia. We cannot just afford to continue repeating what Coedès and Krom and Stutterheim and Winstedt have stated. There are considerable new areas which remain to be studied, and these require in a Department both the energy and enthusiasm of youth as well as the breadth and depth and the richness and ripeness which comes with experience and the years. New areas exist in the interpretation available to Indian Studies by the close collaboration possible in this University with Malay, Islamic and Chinese Studies. New areas exist for Indian Studies as defined in this University, in the history and culture of Malaya, in Sumatra, in the Dieng Plateau of Java and in Bali, amid the ruins of Mison and Po-Nagar and in Oc-eo in Vietnam, in Angkor Vat and Angkor Thom in Cambodia, and in the speech and literature and the monuments of Thailand. We might even go further in this adventure and study Chinese thought and literature and uncover sources and similarities yet unknown, or travel further North to find resemblances with the tanka in Japanese poetry and with Zen Buddhism. The scope is great and the opportunities are many. Let us hope and trust that this University will be rich in the utilisation of these opportunities while fulfilling its role as a centre of learning in South East Asia.*

  • Inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Malaya on Dec. 14, 1962.