Page 22 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

even the hedonistic being of man in spite of a growing ascetic ten-
dency and a certain high austerity of the summits. The aesthetic
satisfactions of all kinds and all grades were an important part of
the culture. Poetry, the drama, song, dance, music, the greater
and lesser arts were placed under the sanction of the Rishis and
were made instruments of the spirit's culture. A just theory held
them to be initially the means of a pure aesthetic satisfaction and
each was founded on its own basic rule and law, but on that ba-
sis and with a perfect fidelity to it still raised up to minister to
the intellectual, ethical and religious development of the being.
It is notable that the two vast Indian epics have been considered
as much as Dharma shastras as great historico-mythic epic narra-
tives, itihihasa. They are, that is to say, noble, vivid and puissant
pictures of life, but they utter and breathe throughout their course
the law and ideal of a great and high ethical and religious spirit in
life and aim in their highest intention at the idea of the Divine and
the way of the mounting soul in the action of the world. Indian
painting, sculpture and architecture did not refuse service to the
aesthetic satisfaction and interpretation of the social, civic and
individual life of the human being; these things, as all evidences
show, played a great part in their motives of creation, but still
their highest work was reserved for the greatest spiritual side of
the culture, and throughout we see them seized and suffused with
the brooding stress of the Indian mind on the soul, the Godhead,
the spiritual, the Infinite. And we have to note too that the aes-
thetic and hedonistic being was made not only an aid to religion
and spirituality and liberally used for that purpose, but even one
of the main gates of man's approach to the Spirit.
CWSA 20: 227-28

All Life is the Field of Dharma
The wise in our country never accepted any narrow interpreta-
tion of dharma, the right law of Life, the Divine Law, opposed to

22 All India Magazine, August 2025