This Week's Books
ONE approaches Professor Maedonell's survey of the litera- tures, religions, languages and antiquities of India (India's Past. Oxford University Press. 10s.) with respect, indeed with a certain awe, for such a book could hardly have been written without its background of fifty years of study. At the end of the fifteenth century the English met their ancestors the Aryans in India again after a separation of 3,000 years. Since then we have gradually been learning more about each other, but there is still much misunderstanding and false pride on both sides of our common stock. Professor Macdonell is one of the heralds of the more liberal learning that is destined to increase and flourish as Sanskrit literature becomes better known. A survey as vast as this intellectual history of India could hardly be reviewed in two columns ; in a note all we can do is to commend the book most warmly . It is not light reading, but it is material which will most generously repay the time and care which must be devoted to it. Professor Macdonell quotes from the Rik Veda the hymn of Ushas, the Dawn Maiden, eternally pursued by the sun god Savitar, as an instance of the beautiful imagery in this 4,000-year-old poem. There are, of course, passages of even deeper beauty and more exalted thought, as this on Death :
" First must each several element That joined to form thy living frame Fly to the region whence it came And with its parent source be hlent Thy life-breath to the wind shall fly, Thy part ethereal to the sky . . . (Mum.)
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