Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 283
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0141004371
Description
The classic discourse on Indian culture reissued for the first time with the original notes and annotations. Cogently and brilliantly argued, this collection of essays, accompanied by an excellent new introduction that contextulizes for the modern reader the life and writing of Max Muller, is a must-read for anyone interested in India.
In 1882, Max Muller, scholar, translator and life-long student of Indian literature and religion, delivered a series of lectures at Cambridge in which he spoke at length on his idea of India and what it represented for the world. Refuting the notion that Indian society was in any way inferior to the West, he sought to establish the importance of the Vedas and the complexity of the mythology that is at the heart of the Hindu way of life.
To read these lectures today is to encounter afresh the range of responses that were evoked by the Indian subcontinent: from the baffled incomprehension of the public school-educated 'pucca' Englishman to the awed reverence of the dedicated indophile. The rational approach of Max Muller, grounded on years of observation and study, did more in this context to promote understanding of the nuances of Indian culture and of the Indian character than anything else written during the period.
Cogently and brilliantly argued, this collection of essays, accompanied by an excellent new introduction that contextulizes for the modern reader the life and writing of Max Muller, is a must-read for anyone interested in India.