[GHHF] Henry David Thoreau's fascination with the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, the Manu Smruti, and other Hindu scriptures is illimitable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau(Born on July 12, 1817; Died on May 6, 1862), and Walt Whitman are the trio who spread the teachings of Hindu scriptures to the rest of the world around the 1830s. They were called transcendentalists, fascinated by Hindu scriptures, who practiced yoga and meditation and read all major Hindu scriptures. He spent hours, from sunrise till noon, “rapt in reverie…in undisturbed solitude and stillness.” He said, “I cannot read a single word of the Hindus without being elevated.”
In the 1840s, Thoreau discovered India; his enthusiasm for Indian philosophy was thus sustained. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who aroused in him a true enthusiasm for India. From 1849-1854, he borrowed a large number of Indian scriptures from the Harvard University Library, and in 1855, when his English friend Thomas Chilmondeley sent him a gift of 44 Oriental books which contained such titles as the Rig Veda Samhita, the Mandukya Upanishads, the Vishnu Puranas, the Institutes of Manu, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bhagavata Purana, etc.
“The Hindus are more serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent, and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindu philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable.”
“In the Hindu scriptures, the idea of man is quite illimitable and sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He is at length lost in Brahma himself….there is no grandeur conception of creation anywhere…. The very indistinctness of its theogeny implies a sublime truth."
In the following pages, we will read some of his quotations about his reading and appreciation in his own words. Let us also read and appreciate it. Most of the famous European writers, scholars, and scientists benefited from reading them. Some Nobel Prize winners acknowledged that our scriptures contributed to their research.
Bhagavad Gita
"One sentence of the Gita is worth the State of Massachusetts many times over".
“In the morning, I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water,
"I would say to the readers of the Scriptures, if they wish for a good book, read the Bhagvat-Geeta …. translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to be read with reverence even by Yankees…."Besides the Bhagvat-Geeta, our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green… Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light it is destined to derive thence."
"The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a bigger, purer or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagavad-Gita. The Gita's sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds of even soldiers and merchants."
Vedas
Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities, and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night
"What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky."
"The Vedas contain a sensible account of God." "The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable feat. Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindus and in such a case there is no other truth than sincerity. Truth is such by reference to the heart of man within, not to any standard without.
Manu Samhita
Thoreau was introduced to Indian scriptures by reading the Laws of Manu or Manu Samhita, as it is known in India. It has a profound influence on him. Immediately after reading the book in 1841, he made an entry in his journal:
“The impression which those sublime sentences made on me last night has awakened me before any cockcrowing.”
The following passage, taken from Thoreau’s various writings, suggests his admiration for the laws of Manu:
“I know of no book which comes to us with greater pretensions than the “Laws of Manu”: and this immense presumption is so impersonal and sincere that it is never offensive or ridiculous. Observe the modes in which modern literature is advertised, and then consider this Hindoo prospectus. Think what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it expects. What wonder if the times were not ripe for it.”
“The Laws of Manu” are a manual of private devotion, so private and domestic and yet so public and universal a word as is not spoken in the parlor or pulpit in these days. It is so impersonal that it exercises our sincerity more than any other. It goes with us into the yard and into the chamber and is yet later spoken than the advice of our mother and sisters.”
“The sublime sentences of Manu carry us back to a time when purification and sacrifice and self-devotion had a place in the faith of men, and were not, as now, a superstition. They contain a subtle and refined philosophy also, such as in these times is not accomplished with so lofty and pure a devotion.”
The Global Hindu Heritage Foundation requests that every Hindu take pride in their Sanatana Dharma. There is everything one wants to either know or read. Mark Twain once said, “There is nothing under the sky our ancient Rishis have not addressed.” By reading them, we realize the richness of our Hinduism. Once we know its value, we will appreciate it, practice it, transmit it, share it, and protect it.














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