Hinduism

WHETHER the claim made in the introductory chapter that Vedanta can create a conscience for social obligations is accepted or not, this book will have served its purpose if it gives to those who read it a clear idea of the philosophy of the Hindus and the way of life flowing from it. Hinduism has been the subject of study by quite a number of earnest men from foreign lands.Some, repelled by features of the social structure still in existence among Hindus, have condemned Hindu philosophy itself as worthless. Others have found great and rare things in it, but in trying to give expression to what they admire, they confuse and mystify their readers and leave them sceptical.This is only what may be expected, for while difficulties of language and idiom can be overcome by patient scholarship, the complex product of the gradual synthesis of philosophy and social evolution, that is to say, of the eternal with the ephemeral, which has taken place through millennia and which reflects vicissitudes of a chequered history, is not easy for a foreigner to understand or explain.