The Banyan Tree

In this comprehensive work Professor Mukerjee has set down the broad philosophical and religious movements of India from the time of the Indus civilisation until the present day. It was Gandhi (I think) who compared Hinduism to a banyan tree: the aerial roots multiply and in their turn become secondary trunks of the parent tree. It would be presumption to criticise, from an inadequate knowledge, this master-work of a scholar and a sociologist. Yet Professor Mukerjee’s analysis of humanism in early Buddhist art, of the warlike chivalry and glamour of the Rajput Renaissance, of the resurgence of Hinduism, is quantitative rather than qualitative, itself another root of the banyan tree. Here is one of its key quotations –

I am the Primeval Cosmic Man, Narayana; I am the king of Gods, wearing the garb of India. I am the foremost of the immortals. I am the cycle of the year, which preserves everything . . . but at the same time I am the whirlpool, the destructive vortex, that sucks back whatever has been displayed . . . I put an end to everything that exists. My name is Death of the Universe.

A suitable epitaph for the tombstone of Atomic Man. The strength of Hindu culture, exemplified in Professor Mukerjee’s chronicle, is its unyielding absorption of every influence; its weakness is a formless dualism that obliterates all boundaries. The many magnificent illustrations, from paintings and temple carvings, themselves illustrate the author’s thesis: the unity in diversity of Indian civilisation. Yet it is well to remember also those factors which he minimises, the disparity between a humanist idea and a rigid caste system, the pains of Indian village life, the bone-fed soil on which the banyan tree flourishes.

1959 (193)