Saradakosh

Europe: On the way to India (Dec 1896)

Total Records Found: 16

The party travelled directly to Milan, via Dover, Calais, and Mont Cenis. During the journey the Swami, who was in his happiest mood, made the long hours pass rapidly. His mind was full of plans for his country and of thoughts of the crowded hours of public life he would probably have on reaching there. His companions entered heartily into his enthusiastic moods and plans of work, for they too were eagerly anticipating their Indian experience and entertained high hopes of what they might be able to do in helping the Swami establish the proposed Ashrama in the Himalayas. Railroad travel generally fatigued him, but on this occasion he seemed to enjoy it. He was like a boy, pleased with everything and keenly observant of everything on the way, and he made the journey a delight.

Across France and into Italy, the train travelled on, and at last the party reached Milan. The Swami and his companions took accommodations at a hotel close to the Duomo of Milan in order to visit frequently this celebrated cathedral. This was the Swami's first experience in Italy; he saw many of Milan's great works of art and was particularly impressed with Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper". The party next visited Pisa, famous for its leaning tower, its cathedral, the Campo Santo, and its baptistery. In Milan and Pisa the Swami admired the rich marble work, which in Pisa, notably, is of both black and white. From Pisa they came to Florence. Its situation on the Arno and its surrounding of picturesque hills makes Florence a beautiful city, apart from its many art treasures and places of architectural and historic interest. The three travellers visited the renowned museums and art galleries, heard the history of Savonarola narrated, and took drives in the parks.

As the train left Florence for Rome, the Swami was full of emotion, for of all cities in Europe he wanted most to see Rome. From the days of his college life, when lie had become acquainted with the events and personalities of Roman history, he had often lived in imagination there. Rome, to his mind, like 'Delhi, was one of the ancient centres of the world — Delhi, the Eastern, Rome, the Western. Long before lie arrived in Rome, he had been discussing with his companions the glories of the ancient Roman world, and before the minds of his hearers there arose in all its historic splendour the glorious pageant of past emperors. And there were other things besides the ruins of the imperial city.. there was the ecclesiastical Rome — medieval and modern — and there was the fabulous Renaissance Rome of architecture, painting, and sculpture. When the train drew into the city, there was none happier than he.

Because of a certain incident, this voyage was most memorable. One night, shortly after he had retired, the Swami had a phenomenal dream, which made a profound impression upon his mind, so much so that he frequently spoke of it in after years. He dreamed that a bearded old man, venerable and Rishi-like in appearance, stood before him and said, "Observe well this place that I show to you. You are now in the island of Crete. This is the land in which Christianity began." The Swami then heard him say, "Do ye come and effect our restoration; I am one of that ancient order of Theraputtas (Therapeutae) which had its origin in the teachings of the Indian Rishis." And he added another word which escaped the Swami's memory. Sister Nivedita wrote, "It is my own belief that the other word was 'Essene'. But alas, I cannot remember the Sanskrit derivation!" The word Therapeutae unmistakably means "sons or disciples of the Theras," from thera, an elder among the Buddhist monks, and putra, which in Sanskrit means "son". The old man concluded: "The truths and ideals preached by us have been given out by the Christians as taught by Jesus; but for the matter of that, there was no such personality by the name of Jesus ever born. Various evidences testifying to this fact will be brought to light by excavating here." "By excavating which place can those proof and relics you speak of be found?" the Swami asked. And the hoary-headed one, pointing to a locality in the vicinity of Turkey, said, "See here." The Swami woke and at once rushed to the deck to ascertain the ship's whereabouts. He met a ship's officer turning in from his watch. "What is the time?" he asked him. "Midnight", he was told. "And where are we?" "Just fifty miles off Crete!" _x000d_ _x000d_ 8. Among those who directly beard about the dream from the Swami, two persons-Sister Nivedita and Surendranath Sen-left on record what he had separately told them. Sister Nivedita's record appears in her book The Master As I Saw Him. Surendranath Sen's record from his private diary has been published in volume five of The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. These two accounts, though basically the same, are not identical in all details. In the narration given here an attempt has been made to include all the details from these two authentic sources.

In seeking a subjective cause for the Swami's dream, one must take into account that during the voyage, in conversations concerning religious subjects, Christianity was now and then in the foreground. Further, during his travels in Catholic Europe he was often startled to find the identity of Christianity and Hinduism in ceremonial details. In the language of Sister Nivedita:

The Blessed Sacrament appeared to him to be only, an elaboration of the Vedic Prasadam. The priestly tonsure reminded him of the shaven head of the Indian monk; and when lie came across a picture of Justinian receiving, the Law from two shaven monks, he felt that lie had found the origin of the tonsure. He could not but remember that, even before Buddhism, India had had monks and nuns, and that Europe had taken her orders from the Thebaid. Hindu ritual had its lights, its incense and its music. Even the sign of the cross, as lie saw it practised, reminded him of the touching of different parts of the body, in certain kinds of meditation. And the culmination of these series of observations was reached, when he entered some cathedral and found it furnished with an insufficient number of chairs and no pews! Then, at last, he was really at home. Henceforth he could not believe that Christianity was foreign.

But while the Swami's vivid dream on board ship may have had a subjective cause, it nevertheless set him thinking about the historicity of Jesus Christ, about which he had never before entertained any doubt. Now he saw that the Acts of the Apostles might be an older record than the Gospels themselves, and that views of the Therapeutae and those of the sect of the Nazarene might have commingled, thus conferring upon Christianity both a philosophy and a personality. But while these speculations could not be offered as evidence in support of this theory of the origin and history of Christianity, lie knew that in Alexandria there had been a meeting of Indian, Greek, and Egyptian elements, which had contributed considerably towards the moulding of Christianity. It is said that the Swami wrote to a friend in England, an archaeologist, about his dream and asked him to find out if there was any truth in it. It was some time after the Swami's death that an item appeared in the Statesman of Calcutta, stating that some Englishmen in the course of excavations in Crete had come across records containing wonderful revelations of the origin of Christianity.

But whatever doubts the Swami may have had on the matter, the dream did not make him yield a whit in his love and adoration of the Son of Mary. There was the instance when a Western disciple requested him to give his blessings to a picture of the Sistine Madonna; he touched the feet of the Divine Child instead. There was also the instance when he turned upon another and exclaimed with fire in his eyes, "Madam, had I lived in Palestine in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, I would have washed His feet, not with my tears but with my heart's blood!"

To judge from a letter the Swami wrote from Florence, the party reached Rome on the night of December 21 and put up at the Hotel Continental. They spent one week in the historic city and each day visited new places of interest. Before Mrs. Sevier had left London, Miss MacLeod had given her the address of Miss Edwards, who was well known in English circles in Rome. With her was staying Miss Alberta Sturges, a niece of Miss MacLeod, already known to the Swami. Both these ladies joined him and Captain and Mrs. Sevier in several of their excursions in and about the city. Miss Edwards became a warm admirer of the Swami and was especially taken with the idealism of his philosophy and with his immense knowledge of Roman history and of human culture in general.

Among other places of beauty and historic importance, they visited many ruins of the ancient city— the palaces of the Caesars, the Forum of Romanum, the Forum of Trajan, the Palatine Hill, the public baths of the ancient Romans, the Capitoline Hill, and the Colosseum, the last of which they revisited on a cool, clear evening to gaze at its silent grandeur in moonlight. At the Forum of Trajan, once adorned with most im-posing buildings and now covered with relies of its former majesty, the Swami closely examined Trajan's Pillar, the most beautiful. column in Rome. Its marble shaft together with its base, stands 125 feet high, and its spiralling bas-reliefs, which depict Trajan's conquest of Dacia, contain over 2,000 human figures. He saw also the Triumphal Arch of Titus on the Summa Sacra Via, which was erected in A.D. 81 to commemorate the conquest of Jerusalem and which is in a good state of preservation. Nor to be overlooked was the Temple of Vesta, one of the oldest and most revered, in which had been kept the sacred shield and sacred fire, always tended by the Vestal Virgins, her priestesses. In addition to sightseeing in the city, Captain and Mrs. Sevier took the Swami on many pleasant drives on those beautiful old Roman highways, notably the Appian Way, permeated with a sense of history and antiquity, through country deserted except for a few shepherds with their flocks.

Viewing the ruins of Rome the Swami was very quiet at first, but. the more one watched him, the more convinced one became of the interest that lay behind his out-ward calm. He was thinking of the Rome of long ago — the Rome of wide-flung im-perial might, which it expressed in architectural forms, marvellous for their size and beauty. As he went from place to place, he began to voice his observations, mingling with them such a wealth of knowledge of history and architecture that a glamour was thrown around the ancient monuments. His talk went flowing on as he traced the rise of the imperial idea under the Roman Empire, when in the heyday of its power the world seemed to lie conquered at its feet, and he described its decline, when the people and their rulers were alike corrupt. Thus he resurrected the inhabitants, the culture, and the events of the great past, and those who were with him remarked, "This is wonderful, Swami! You seem to know every stone in Rome!" And through his luminous consciousness and historical knowledge, they saw the whole meaning of Roman influence on our modern world.

Everything the Swami saw in Rome greatly interested him, and he was always absorbed, as it were, in its many-phased past. But he was especially interested in Chris-tian Rome: he walked through its early catacombs; he visited the splendid palaces, churches, and basilicas of its medieval period; he was impressed with the immense Vatican, its chapels, and its magnificent Renaissance art treasures; he pondered over the wonderful organizing genius and missionary spirit of Christianity, as exhibited in Roman Catholicism. And beneath the vast dome of St. Peter's, before the shrines of the Apostles, he entered, in the silence of meditation, into that apostolic world in which Saint Paul preached and Saint Peter inspired the followers of Christ. One who stood near him, when he was studying the vast interior and the architectural glories, protested at the evident discrepancy between the religious spirit and such enormous pomp. "Swami," she said, "what do you think of this grand extravagance, for such it is? Why such a great outlay of expense for ceremonial and church splendours when millions are starving?" The Swami at once replied: "What! Can one offer too much to God! Through all this pomp the people are brought to an understanding of the power of a character like Christ, who, though Himself possessed of nothing, has by the supreme character of his personality inspired to such an extent the, artistic imagination of mankind. But we must always remember", he added, "that external practices have value only as aids to the development of internal purity. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy."

But on Christmas Day, when he attended the imposing ceremony of High Mass at St. Peter's with Captain and Mrs. Sevier, he seemed after a time to be restless and whispered to them, "Why all this pageantry and ostentatious show? Can. it be possible that the Church that practises such display, pomp, and gorgeous ceremonial is really the follower of the lowly Jesus who had nowhere to lay His head?" He could not help drawing a contrast between these splendours of the outward religious form at St. Peter's and the great spirit of Sannyasa which Christ had taught.

But the Christ spirit filled the air of Rome that Christmastide, and the Swami was caught up into it; many times he spoke touchingly of the Christ Child, comparing the stories of His birth with that of the beautiful Indian Christ Child, Shri Krishna. On Christmas Eve, the party visited the church of 8. Maria di Ara Coeli on Capitoline Hill, which is noted for its Santissimo Bambino. (figure of the Holy Infant), which the faithful believe has miraculous curative powers. A festival is .held in honour of the Bambino from Christmas Day to Epiphany, and the streets outside the church had the appearance of a fair, with their lines of stalls, filled with sweets and toys, fruits and cakes, and cheap pictures of the Bambino. The Swami was amused and said, it reminded him of a Mela (religious fair) in India. The Seviers steered their way through the throng, and helped him to select various articles and to buy cakes and sweets — which, it turned out, were not delectable.

But one cannot follow the Swami everywhere in Rome! Much must be left to the imagination of the reader if he would really enter into the world of the Swami's happiness in that city. He must know the overall charm of Rome and the beauty of its days and nights, when the weather is perfect in the winter time. He must know of Roman history and much of the Italian art that fills the many museums and churches. He must make himself one with the religious spirit of this citadel of Christianity. He must sense in the catacombs the dauntless, burning faith of the early Christians. He must see the grandeur and pomp of the ecclesiastic service and appreciate its significance. Then, too, he must know the Swami. The solemnity of Rome and the solemnity of his own personality mingled in a strange and glorious harmony in the minds of his companions. And in his comparisons between the Roman and the Indian world, they had intellectual illumination as gratifying as the study of Rome's immortal works of art and beauty, with which their days and his were filled.

Dampfer, "Prinz-Regent Leopold"_x000d_ 3rd January, 1897_x000d_ Dear Mary {Hale},_x000d_ I received your letter forwarded from London in Rome. It was very very kind of you to write such a beautiful letter, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I do not know anything about the evolution of the orchestra in Europe. We are nearing Port Said after four days of frightfully bad sailing from Naples. The ship is rolling as hard as she can, and you must pardon my scrawls under such circumstances._x000d_ From Suez begins Asia. Once more Asia. What am I? Asiatic, European, or American? I feel a curious medley of personalities in me. You didn't write anything about Dharmapala, his goings and doings. I am much more interested in him than in Gandhi._x000d_ I land in a few days at Colombo and mean to "do" Ceylon a bit. There was a time when Ceylon had more than 20 million inhabitants and a huge capital of which the ruins cover nearly a hundred square miles!_x000d_ The Ceylonese are not Dravidians but pure Aryans. It was colonised from Bengal about 800 B.C., and they have kept a very clear history of their country from that time. It was the greatest trade centre of the ancient world, and Anuradhapuram was the London of the ancients._x000d_ I enjoyed Rome more than anything in the West, and after seeing Pompeii I have lost all regard for the so-called "Modern Civilisation". With the exception of steam and electricity they had everything else and infinitely more art conceptions and executions than the Moderns._x000d_ Please tell Miss Locke that I was mistaken when I told her that sculpturing of the human figure was not developed in India as among the Greeks. I am reading in Fergusson and other authorities that in Orissa or Jagannath, which I did not visit, there are among the ruins human figures which for beauty and anatomical skill would compare with any production of the Greeks. There is a colossal figure of Death, a huge female skeleton covered with a shrivelled skin--the awful fidelity to anatomical details are frightening and disgusting. Says my author, one of the female figures in the niche is exactly like the Venus de Medici and so on. But you must remember that everything almost has been destroyed by the iconoclastic Mohammedan, yet the remnants are more than all European debris put together! I have travelled eight years and not seen many of the masterpieces._x000d_ Tell sister Locke also that there is a ruined temple in a forest in India which and the Parthenon of Greece Fergusson considers as the climax of architectural art--each of its type--the one of conception, the other of conception and detail. The later Mogul buildings etc., the Indo-Saracenic architecture, does not compare a bit with the best types of the ancients. . . . _x000d_ With all my love,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ PS. Just by chance saw Mother Church and Father Pope at Florence. You know of it already._x000d_ V.