^* Bhakti: adoration of God; sikhism: Vishnuist Hindu sect.

¹ It seems that they influenced Christian religious painting through the intermediary of miniatures in Manichean books.

² Where, perhaps, evolution was simply slower. The population of Bengal was considered in antiquity as made up of barbarians.

³ The tribes that invaded India were able to seize political power, but their manpower was not very imposing and they soon learned the language of the conquered people.

⁴ Cf. M. and N. A. Frankfurt, Before Philosophy, Harmondsworth, 1951.

⁵ As a system of symbols of civilization having an objective character, inde pendently of man taken separately.

⁶ This is what Bellah calls the civilizations that preceded capitalism. Cf. Religion and Progress in Modern Asia, edited by R. Bellah, London-New York, 1965, p. 187.

⁷ In classical India, at the time of the building of the great empires, this interest did exist. We have the Arthashastra as testimony, a treatise on the economy and administration of the state.

⁸ Cf. Prajnaparamita—literature in general, "Vimalakirtisutra," "Lankavatara sutra," the school of the Madhyamika.

⁹ Sankara, it is true, does not satisfy at all the exigencies of modern philology. He often, in effect, when studying the thought of an ancient author, finds there more than the latter had wished to put in. In the Middle Ages, there was not a strict boundary between philosophy and philology.

¹⁰ Rodolf Otto has made a comparison between Sankara and Meister Eckhart. Parallels have also been proposed between Sankara and A1 Gazali, between Shandidassa and Dante, etc.

¹¹ Gandhi reacted as a man who had been under the influence of Victorian morality: with disgust. Radhakrishnan tried to pass in silence over the Tantric heritage. Inversely, Mulk Raj Anand writes: "Just as our human love is similar to the great love, the joy of physical contact is similar to the infinite joy of God in creating the world." The forgetting of self in the arms of one's beloved is compared to the trance of the yogi who discovers the deepest levels of his consciousness (cf. M. R. Anand, "On Kamakala," Marg, Calcutta, June 1957, vol. X, no. 3, p. 50).

¹² An odd rite survives in Tibetan monasteries. The lama who has reached the consciousness of the unity of the world enters the "Temple of Oscene Idols" and sitting there observes his sensations. If the specially organized erotic visions and dances arouse in him elementary impulses, he returns to his meditation. If not, he has become a master.

¹³ U. Agarwal, "The Mithunas," Oriental Art, London, 1968, vol. XIV.

¹⁴ In the most ancient period, the word "Brahma" designated at the same time the altar (particular the horizontal part), the priest and the chant linked with the plunge into ecstasy. "Atman" meant the vertical foot of the altar and inner spiritual armor. Sankara merely recalled the neolithic construction: "Atman is Brahma." I take this opportunity to thank V. N. Toporov for having explained this problem.

¹⁵ The Kamasutra is a treatise whose theme corresponds to Ovid's Art of Loving. The ideas of the Kamasutra are close to Tantrism in a number of points (see below). One of the possible dates for the Kamasutra is the 5th century of our era.

¹⁶ In this respect, as in many others, Indian civilization continues the traditions of primitive collectivities in which the man who has violated a tabu dies from a consciousness of the inevitability of his death.

¹⁷ One might go so far as to make this distinction between the founders of Jainism and of Buddhism. The first of these, Mahavira, a pluralist and ration alist in his spiritual make-up, a Stoic by character, could become the propa gandist of a new faith only under certain conditions.

¹⁸ "On the first Buddhist bas-reliefs, Buddha was never represented, and the whole scene happened around an empty space where, one supposed, the Buddha should have been (for example, the scene of the last temptation, the scene of the adoration, etc.)" (Y. L. Smirnov, Mahabharata, Ashabad, tome VII, Part II, p. 101).

¹⁹ L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922, p. 187. For Wittgenstein, this silence has a meaning similar to that of the Buddhist Sutras: " The perception of the world as an organic whole is a mystical perception. " " There is indeed, the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical." " My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these proposition; then he sees the world rightly." (Ibid., p. 189).

²⁰ The Jainist texts seem to have had less influence in this area. They are less paradoxical and penetrate less into the analysis of paradoxical situations. They radically separate objects from each other and are nearer to schoolboy logic than to that of basic scientific research. In any case, the greatest discovery of Indian mathematics, the zero, is tied to Buddhist symbolism and could pro bably have not been born in another context.

²¹ We wish to mention the aphorism of E. Ludwig: "A young girl can sing of her lost love, but the miser cannot sing of the loss of his money."

²² Tathata means the indescrivable unity of being; Tathagata means indescri vably unique; Buddha means radiant or illuminated; mahavira means "great hero", and Jina means "victor". In ancient documents Gotama was often called Jina, and Vardhamana Buddha. Later these terms became rigorously specialized.

²³ Extract from the Udana. Quoted in the book by H. von Glasenapp, Der Buddhismus, eine atheistische Religion, Munich, 1966, p. 241-242.

²⁴ The beatitude of liberation. The personality does not dissolve into the One, as in the models of Nirvana and Moksha, but simply breaks its ties with the world while remaining an undecomposable atom. The meaning of this state, "Kevelajnana, is defined in the Atsharangesutra as omniscience giving the individual an understanding of all objects and a knowledge of all conditions in the universe of gods, man and demons." (B. C. Law, "The essence of Jain religion and philosophy," Arian path, Bombay, 1968, vol. XXXIX, no. 7, p. 311.)

²⁵ "Dhammapada," translated by V. N. Toporov, Moscow, 1960, p. 62. The term "serious" is used by most translators. It refers to something quite similar to the difference in perception between a Mass and an organ concert. For most listeners, serious music is boring music.

²⁶ A ritualistic form of the religion, based formally on the Veda, but which betrayed the spirit of the most ancient ecstatic hymns.

²⁷ Indonesia was the only exception. But it is not known clearly if Buddhist philosophy was assimilated into Indonesia or merely the exterior forms of the cult. In other cases, Buddhism was uprooted in the Moslem manner: the Buddhists' heads were cut off.

²⁸ And in the closely related "Isha", as well as in the "Katha-Upanishad."

²⁹ Brihadaranyaka, translated by A. Y. Syrkine, Moscow, 1964, p. 87.

³⁰ Chandogya, translated by A. Y. Syrkine, Moscow, 1965, p. 115.

³¹ "Nirvana" is a negative term. It means literally: cooling, suffocation, chill.

³² By saying that a tiger is not a camel, we have expressed ourselves very precisely, but without content. By saying that a tiger somewhat resembles a cat, we are not completely precise, but we have just the same said more about the tiger than in the first case. This preference can be related to metaphysics as well, even if it does not seem quite justified.

³³ And not the meaning they took in the synonymous contexts of the Upanishads, where one freely took the place of the other, as well as the intermediary term "Purusha." All these technical facilities of description could not have a determining significance for realized mystics, but the popularity of the philosophy is not their work. Of the two mystical doctrines, the one that wins out is the one that first finds adepts capable of assimilating its language.

³⁴ One could say rather that the environment in which Sankara grew up had been involved before his birth in an anti-Buddhist current, and from his child hood the future philosopher unconsciously absorbed the symbolism of a renewed Hinduism.

³⁵ When Sankara was answered that this was impossible, he retorted, accord ing to the legend: "I have proved it: logical arguments have no value here." At the basis of Sankara's philosophy one finds the experience of being as a state of total liberty, unlimited Me, identity of Me and the world. But this state in itself was experienced in India (and not only in India) numerous times. One is dealing here also with the appreciation of his experience as the only authentic reality. The most ancient school of Hindu philosophy, the Sankhya, considered the world in a dual way: as a pure intuition of unity, a pure spirit (Purusha) and as an objective structure (Prakriti). From the Sankhya point of view, the two aspects of the vision of the world, Purusha and Prakriti, are real. From Sankara's point of view, only Purusha is real (understood as a synonym for Atman).

³⁶ Cf. F. Tokarz, " ‘Theistic' and ‘Atheistic' Indian Systems, " Folia Orientalis, Krakow, 1968, tome IX, p. 131-150.

³⁷ Vedanta means literally achievement of the Veda. From the etymological point of view, all orthodox Hindu philosophy, beginning with Samkhya and Yoga, is Vedanta.

³⁸ Contemporary publicists of Ceylon and Burma see in the Buddhist mon asteries the first models of Asiatic democracy.

³⁹ Bhagavadgita, translated by B. L. Smirnov, Ashhabad, 1956, chap. IV and following.