સરસ્વતીચંદ્ર ભાગ ૪
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| अन्या जगद्धितमयी मनसः प्रवृत्तिः अन्यैव कापि रचना वचनावलीनाम् |
| In the service of mankind to be A guardian god below; still to employ |
- -Thomson
| રૂ. આ. પ. | |
| સરસ્વતીચંદ્ર ભાગ ૧. ત્રીજી આવૃત્તિ .... | ૧ ૮ ૦ |
| " ભાગ ૨. બીજી આવૃત્તિ.... | ૧ ૪ ૦ |
| " ભાગ ૩. ... ... .... | ૧ ૮ ૦ |
| " ભાગ ૪. ... ... .... | ૩ ૮ ૦ |
| સ્નેહમુદ્રા બીજી આવૃત્તિ ... ... .... | ૧ ૦ ૦ |
| યુરોપ, એશિયા, વગેરે ખંડોમાંની મહાપ્રજાઓમાં જનસ્વભાવનાં લાક્ષણિક દૃષ્ટાંત |
૦ ૨ ૦ |
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ઉપરનાં પુસ્તકો નીચે લખેલે ઠેકાણેથી મળશે.
| મુંબાઈ - | કાળકાદેવી રોડ ઉપર એન. એમ. ત્રિપાઠી એન્ડ કંપની તા. સર્વ બુકસેલરો. |
| બ્હારગામ - | અમદાવાદ, સુરત, રાજકોટ, વગેરે ગામોના પ્રસિદ્ધ બુકસેલરો. |
The last volume of Sarasvati-chandra is here offered
to the public. It endeavours to complete the programme
laid down in the preface of the third volume. In that
preface it was suggested that the varied conflicts of life
and thought at present visible all over India may one day
end in reciprocal assimilation and harmony of the warring elements.
This process of assimilation, while it may not be able to surprise us with any sudden advent of peace, will make its presence felt sooner or later by floating on our horizon ideas and sentiments as foreign to our past experience as possibly Columbus and his ships may be imagined to have been to the minds of the anxious aborigines of old America as they watched his approach towards their shores. This may sound like an exaggerated note of alarm or an idle conceit at first sight. Cooler thoughts will, however, bring home the conviction that our present state of transition must one day end the effervescence of its lighter elements. That stage over, India must have her day of peace and comfort, and the only question is what kind of day that will be.
There seems to be a sort of presumption in proposing to answer such a question and a presumption it might be if this book were of the nature of historical disquisition or a scientific forecast. The writer of a novel may, however, well be allowed to indulge in dreams of future days according to his own lights, even where the forecast of any future at all must fall short of the exacting tests of scientific or philosophical critics. It is in such a dream - land or Mano-rajya that the design of the
present volume is laid out. It is on account of this feature of the volume that it is given the title of the Mano-rajya of Sarasvati or the Dream-land of the Minerva of our Indian Atheneum. And the writer's justification for this part of his performance is not that his dreams are prophetic, but that he may, by allowing the reader to have a clairvoyant view of them, help his countrymen in groping their way out of darkness into some kind of light. It will be some gain if by that procedure he can show and signal “a line clear” for those that may be wishing to know their place in the programme for hastening the hour of peace.
This object the writer has attempted to attain partly by speaking in the language of myths, legends, and traditions familiar to his countrymen. There is, in his opinion, a deep and almost scientific evolutional allegory consistently running throughout the plot of the great and prolific Mahabharata, and he has devoted a long and, perhaps, tedious chapter in this work to the exposition of this feature of that venerable epic. He is aware that in doing so he has obviously sacrificed well known canons of modern art; but considering the use made of this allegory in the latter part of the volume, the critic will probably be disposed to agree with his views as to the necessity of that course and the appositeness of this otherwise irrelevant-looking matter.
This groundwork of that epic has so much in common with some of the leading ideas worked out by modern social and political speculations, that it has been found possible to translate the latter into the terms of the former supplemented by other similar materials drawn from our ancient literature and modern popular beliefs, even where the beliefs are, to all appearances, superstitious. It is expected that such a use of these materials will enable the ordinary Indian mind to grasp and appreciate Western ideas and ideals to some extent and to some useful purpose.
The existence of such common ideas and their possible influence on the people of this country will arouse a varied interest.
If there is a vast distance between modern India on the one hand and modern Europe and America on the other as regards their modes of thought and life, a similar distance can also be traced in several important points between ancient and modern India itself. It is usual to speak as if the present generation of Indians were witnessing the fusion of the great civilization in the contact of the West with the East. If one can admit that, India herself has exhibited more than one phase of civilization, and that the phases presented by her in her ancient days were far different things from the phase she now presents, it will be more accurate to say that we are not only hammed in between the two civilizations of modern East and West, but that the awakenings of the far different ancient Indian civilization are also upon Its as a faird element of the fusion. If this last element differed in essential points from the modern Western civilization, it also agreed with it (as the above-mentioned common ideas will attest) in recognising some very vital principles of thought and life as being of the essence of Progress and Civilization, as for instance, when the Aitareya Brahmana defined the Satya Yuga as the Age of Action or Progress and the Kali Yuga as the Age of Sleep or Stagnation. One of the objects aimed at in this volume is so to lift the veil from this part of our literature and history as to show some of the lines of our ancient thought and life along with those of the West in modern times and to bring their converging points into prominence. For that may enable our readers, as representing a part of modern India, to realize what elements are likely to have a preponderating influence in the fusion of the three great civilizations brought by Providence to bear upon the life of our nation and combined by that same power to shape her destiny by their confluence.
What is popularly called our stage of transition has consisted more or less of a condition in which the communities, professing to be under the influence of the one or the other of these civilizations, have been startled by the near approach and close contact of the rival civilizations, and have at times received one or the other of them with curiosity, suspicion, and distrust. The part played by the ordinary Indian mind during this stage has been shown in the first three volumes of this work. The present volume is mainly taken up with the part that is being played and will be played in that drama by a class of Indians which has been directly evolved by the actual contact and growing relations of these civilizations themselves. This is the class which is composed of educated natives. By reason of these very circumstances and others connected with its genesis and development this class is expected to take upon itself special and active functions in bringing about a happy fusion of the elements which have brought it into being and which constitute the special sphere of its usefulness. It is proposed in this volume to present, on the surface of mythical allegories and doctrinal language dear to Indian hearts, a faint but visible etching of the lines along which, by the performance of these functions by this class, assimilation and harmony may be expected to issue in the country out of the temporary phantoms of that religious, social, and political unrest and conflict. which, in the course of this fusion, apparently disturb the mental peace of so many races in modern India, not excluding our English brethren. It is possible to fancy ourselves having a peep at a situation of peace, co-operation, and harmonious progress for all these; and if we can even conceive the feasibility of such a peep, we may also hope that what is only such a fiction to-day . may become a fact to-morrow.
This hope is not without its foundation so long as educated Indians are assisted in maturing the robustness of their communal body in order that they may be
enabled to perform their legitimate functions with independence. Theirs is the position of the mediastine between the rulers on the one side and the masses of their own countrymen on the other, as also between the masses and the diverse classes of their countrymen themselves. They are a median organism in this way between various other sets of complicate and contradictory organisms, each of which is sufficiently charged with its own latent but powerful and impatient energies. These energies are by no means an evanescent factor in the case, but have in each case been stored up by the long and persistent action of civilizations which are bound to make the severest struggle for self-preservation. It has fallen to the lot of the educated classes to serve as organic sheaths and conductors between the multiform sets of organisms forming the repositories of these energies. The many-sided strain now put upon these classes and likely to grow in quality and quantity while performing those functions, requires that they should find proportionate strength and support from all those who contribute to the strain and will benefit by the capacity of this class to meet it.
The method of developing and maturing,in this mediastine class, a right and beneficent capacity, not only for meeting this strain, but also for performing their difficult functions, is a problem in whose solution all India - including its English population - is deeply and directly interested. The extent to which those at the helm of the State will be equal to the task of pursuing this method with foresight, sympathy and even sacrifice, will also be the measure of their own reward in the long run. But any such method, if method itself be not altogether abjured by them, must in any case involve a concession of the necessary and sufficient amount of free scope for independent action to the median organism, and must thereby afford a valid ground for the hope that some of the fictions, here offered, of what in part are only our hero's visions to-day, may
indeed become facts in some more practical fashion to-morrow.
The existence and the soundness of this hope are assumed in this volume. It is also assumed that educated natives, while grasping at all available extraneous assistance with all their might, will also enter manfully into a struggle on their own behalf, to bear their manifold strain and to perform their functions as much with patience and fellow-feeling as with intrepidity, perseverance, and wisdom. This volume attempts to present a perspective in which the description of this struggle will connect the reader with contemporaneous actualities, while his introduction into the dream-land of the attainment of the final fusion of the heterogeneous elements will open upon him distant but happier vistas of the past and future of his countrymen. Whether the various characters which fill this perspective are drawn with sufficient art and neatness, is a question best left to the critic.
27th August 1901.
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આ કૃતિ હવે સાર્વજનિક પ્રકાશનાધિકાર હેઠળ આવે છે કેમકે આ કૃતિ ભારતમાં પ્રકાશિત થઈ હતી અને તેના પ્રકાશન અધિકારની મર્યાદા પૂરી થઈ છે. ભારતીય પ્રકાશનાધિકાર ધારા, ૧૯૫૭ હેઠળ, દરેક સાહિત્ય, નાટક, સંગીત અને કળાકારીગીરીની (છાયાચિત્રો સિવાયના) કૃતિઓ જો સર્જકના હયાતી કાળ દરમ્યાન પ્રસિદ્ધ થઈ હોય (ખંડ. ૨૨) તો તે સર્જકના મૃત્યુ પછી (એટલે કે, વર્ષ ૨૦૨૪ માટે, ઓછામાં ઓછી ૧ જાન્યુઆરી 1964 પહેલાં)ના વર્ષથી ગણતા ૬૦ વર્ષ બાદ સાર્વજનિક પ્રકાશનાધિકાર હેઠળ આવે છે. સર્જકના મરણોપરાંત પ્રકાશિત થયેલી કૃતિઓ (ખંડ. ૨૪), છાયાચિત્રો (ખંડ. ૨૫), ફિલ્મો (ખંડ. ૨૬), અને ધ્વનિમુદ્રણો (ખંડ. ૨૭) તેના પ્રકાશનના ૬૦ વર્ષ બાદ સાર્વજનિક પ્રકાશનાધિકાર હેઠળ આવે છે. |  |