| The results of this
Renaissance are seen not only in the works of Samkara, who has given a firm, philosophic
basis to Hinduism, but also in the great Bhakti movements in Vaisnavism and Saivism, in
Southern India. The fifth Renaissance came in the fifteenth century, when as a reaction
from the excessive formalism of scholastic philosophy, there arose the later Bhakti
schools of Ramananda and Kabir in Northern India. The sixth Renaissance amidst which we
are living to day may be said to have begun in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
The present Renaissance was preceded by a
dark period of a century and a half in which nothing creative in religion, literature or
art was done. But from about 1830 we see a faint glimmer caused by the agitation led by
Ram Mohun Roy, the founding of the Brahma Samaj, the starting of the New Universities and
the translations of Sanskrit texts by Orientalists. In fact, we may look upon the second
and the third quarters of the last century as a period of twilight in which new forces of
a far-reaching character begin to shape themselves. |
