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Essay name: Ethical and Spiritual thought of ancient India

Author: Kaberi Sarkar
Affiliation: University of Calcutta / Department of Sanskrit

This essay studies the Ethical and Spiritual thought of ancient India as revealed in the Vedas, Puranas and Tantras. This work explores the discussion of God in Puuranic, Tantric, and Vedic hymns, portraying God as the creator, protector, and destroyer of the universe, and sometimes as the giver of ultimate salvation (moksha).

Chapter 1

Page:

27 (of 62)


External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)


Download the PDF file of the original publication


Copyright (license):

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)


Warning! Page nr. 27 has not been proofread.

27
In the first stotra, the expression of feeling it
the moment of creation is dominant. Hence, in most of the
stotras of vedic literature the deep relationship between
god and man has been portrayed with all effort. In this
literature the beauty of (Usa) dawn, the lustre of the
rising Sun, the thundering roar of rainy clouds and the
devastating power of violent storm have charred the artist
poet so much that he could not keep that away from themselves.
So, in most of the Suktas of vedic literature as we find a
sense of the poet's great wonder on the one hand, a picture
of the creator's zeal and keenness in establishing a deep
relation with his object of worship on the other. The mixture
of erotic sentiment (rati) with wonder somewhere, somewhere
affection (vatsalya), and somewhere of devotion or reverence
(Bhakti), therefore, placed the stotras of vedic literature
in a dignified position of a high class poetry.
Gradually there has been a change of the poet's
feeling. It came to the realization of the vedic seer that
he had deviated far more from the nature that reached the
level of divinity. So the ability to approach the god unhesita-
tingly lost itself. The creator-worshipper then portrayed the
bright picture of enrichment and greatness of the god of
eulogy. In describing the god of eulogy the flow of the
sentiment of affection (vātsalya rasa) or the sense of com-
passion became almost dim. In the Suktas of such types,
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