The History Of Man As Determined by Place
Katha - Vivekananda Kendra
The
Character of a people is their history as written in their
own subconscious mind, and to understand that character we
have to turn on it the limelight of their history. Then
each anomaly is explained and the whole becomes a clear and
consistent result of causes traced to their very root. In the
same way the geographical distribution of ideas falls under the
same explanation as absolutely as that of plants or animals. A
map of a country is only a script produced by all the ages of
its making. In the beautiful maps of the past, in which rivers
are seen with their true value as the high roads of nature, the
veins and arteries of civilisations, this fact was still more
apparent than today, when the outstanding lines of connection
between cities are railways, the channels of the drainage of
wealth being of more importance than those of its production.Yet
even now it is the river-made cities that the railways have to
connect. Even the twentieth century
cannot escape the conditions imposed by the past.
Only the history of Asia explains
the geography of Asia. Empire means oranisation,
organisation whose basis the consciousness of a unity that
transcends the family. That is to say, empire demands as
its preceding condition a strong civic concept.
Two types of empire have occurred within the last two thousand
years : One the creation of the fisher-peoples of th European
coast-line, the other of the tribe men of Central Asia and
Arabia. In th one case, the imperialism instinct is to be
accounted for by the commercial thirst natural to those whose
place has always been on the prehistoric trade-route. It may be
true, as suggested by a distinguished scholar, that the
salmonfishery of Norway, with its tightly organised crew, giving
birth to the pirate-fisher, the Viking, and he to the Norman, is
to be regarded as the father of the Feudal System and immediate
ancestor of all modern European Empire. Such considerations can,
however, by no means account for the Roman Empire. To this it
might be answered that behind Rome lay Greece and Carthage;
behind Greece and Carthage, Phoenicia and Crete; and that here
we come once more on the element of trade-routes and
fisher-peoples. A strong sense of unity precedes aggression, and
the sense of unity is made effective through internal definition
and self-organisation. Such organisation is obviously easy to
gain by the conquest of the sea, where captain, first mate, and
second mate will be a father, with his eldest son and second
son, and where the slightest dereliction from military
discipline on the part of one may involve instant peril of death
to all. Thus the family gives place, in the imagination, to the
crew, as the organised unit of the human fabric, and the love of
hearthside and brood becomes exalted into that civic passion
which can offer up its seven sons and yet say with firm voice,
"Sweet and seemly is it to die for one's country".
The second type of imperial organisation, seen within the last
two thousand years, is the pastoral empire of Central Asia and
Arabia. Islam was the religious form taken by the national
unification of a number of pastoral tribes in Arabia. Mohammed
the Prophet of God, was in truth the greatest nation-maker who
has ever appeared. The earliest associations of the Arabs are
inwoven with the conception of the tribe as a civic unity,
transcending the family unity; and the necessity of
frontier-tribal relationships and courtesies at once suggests
the idea of national inclusiveness and creates a basis for
national life. On these elements were laid the foundation of the
thrones of Baghdad, Constrantinople, and Cordova. The Hunnish,
Scythic and Mohamdedan empires of India have, each in its turn,
been offshoots from the nomadic organisations of Central Asia.
The very name of the Mogul dynasty perpetuates its Tartar
origin. Here again, we see examples of the educational value of
tribal and pastoral life, in preparing communities for the
organisation of nations and empires.
-Sister Nivedita (Footfalls of Indian History)
The main theme of my life is to take the message of Sanatana Dharma to every home and pave the way for launching, in a big way, the man-making programme preached and envisaged by great seers like Swami Vivekananda. - Mananeeya Eknathji
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