| Fittingly, the Book University's first
venture is the Mahabharata, summarized by one of the greatest living Indians, C.
Rajagopalachari; the second work is on a section of it, the Gita, by H.V. Divatia, an
eminent jurist and a student of philosophy. Centuries ago, it was proclaimed of the
Mahabharata: "What is not in it, is nowhere.
'After twenty five centuries, we can use
the same words about it. He who knows it not, knows not the heights and depths of the
soul; he misses the trials and tragedy and the beauty and grandeur of life.
The
Mahabharata is not a mere epic; it is a romance, telling the tale of heroic men and women,
and of some who were divine; it is a whole literature in itself, containing
a code of life,
a philosophy of social and ethical relations, and speculative thought on
human problems that
is hard to rival, but, above all, it has for its core the Gita, which is, as the world is
beginning to find out, the noblest of scriptures and the grandest of sagas in which the
climax is reached in the wondrous Apocalypse in the Eleventh Canto.
Through such books alone the harmonies
underlying true culture, I am convinced, will one day reconcile the disorders of modern
life. I thank all those who have helped to make this new branch of the Bhavan's
activity successful. |
