[KALKI]

L. Adams Beck (? - 1931) author of The splendour of Asia : the story and teaching of the Buddha and The Story of Oriental Philosophy writes:

India has had a spiritual freedom never known until lately to the West. Christianity when it came offering its spiritual philosophy of life imposed an iron dogma upon the European peoples. Those who could not accept this dogma, whatever it happened to be at the moment, paid so heavy a penalty that the legend of the Car of Juggernaut (Jagarnath) is far truer of Europe than Asia.

Whereas in India the soul was free from the beginning to choose what it would, ranging from the dry bread of atheism to the banquets offered by many-colored passionate gods and goddesses, each shadowing forth some different aspect of the One whom in the inmost chambers of her heart India has always adored. Therefore the spiritual outlook was universal. Each took un rebuked what he needed. The children were at home in the house of their father, while Europe crouched under the lash of a capricious Deity whose ways were beyond all understanding.

But while India fixed her eyes on the Ultimate she did not forget that objective science in the beginning of wisdom. In India, in relation to this consciousness, all roads lead home. A prayer daily repeated by millions says: "As different streams, having different sources and with wanderings crooked or straight, all reach the sea, so Lord, the different paths which men take, guided by their different tendencies, all lead to Thee."

There the foundation of mathematical and mechanical knowledge were well and truly laid by the Noble Race. Here, written two thousand years before the birth of Copernicus, is an interesting passage from the Aitareya Brhamana:

“The sun never sets or rises. When people think the sun is setting he only changes about after reaching the end of the day and makes night below and day to what is on the other side. Then, when people think he rises in the morning, he only shifts himself about after reaching the end of the night, and makes day below and night to what is on the other side. In truth, he does not set at all.”

It is interesting to wonder along what lines the philosophies of this great race might have developed later if its ancestral heritage had been less diffused and intermingled with other such different stocks as it found in India on arrival, or were forced by many invasions and conquests to accept later.

Regarding the Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita, he writes:

"I read almost daily in both, marveling at the vast fertility, the tropic splendor of romance unfolded in either, but still more at the nobility of ideals set forth, the great passion for the Unseen, the Beautiful, and Entirely Desirable, both in man and woman, which has always been the soul of India."

"The Bhagavad Gita is known as the Lord's Song - or the Song Celestial - and it represents one of the highest flights of the conditioned spirit to its unconditioned Source ever achieved."

(source: The Story of Oriental Philosophy - By L. Adams Beck p. 10 - 120).