BY Pragyansharma Polavarapu
We generally like good classic English novels of old days like those of Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens ,Jane Austin, Sir Arthur Connan Doyle, R.L.Stevenson ,Thomas Hardy, John Galsworthy etc and poetry of John Dryden, William Wordsworth, Percy Bische Shelley ,John Keats, Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson etc-and also enjoy reading many good old American authors .Always first in all comes the great William Shakespeare for his majestic dramas written in majestic blank verse reminding of slow march of elephants.The style and beauty in above writings can satisfy even the new scientific age . Such books can create a new international reading taste.
Every person's touch with the English language starts with English rhymes in early school books and later majestic poems of great writers in college days. In high school (1950s)we had always a small piece from Shakespeare’s dramas. This reading habit continued with reading English newspapers a habit in our house which existed for last 70 years . “The Hindu” and “ Indian Express” with their international pages, giving weekly reports from Europe, US ,Africa,Australia etc were mines of knowledge .
Being immensely interested in
international political events rather than in very slow national news , I glanced through the many political and scientific and economic and
engineering journals in the library which was luckily near to our house. In student community we can observe a great thirst
for knowledge . In india there was awakening from centuries long slumber .Now people moved to the online versions and the internet sites and various encyclopedias--coming floating in the
e/m waves with priceless old photos of famed people and priceless photos . There is knowledge
explosion. The on-line things are really
a new boon to students. If only the atom bombs let us live on this planet earth!
We Indians have already good and deep
reading tastes in English –science, politics and economics. We have equally
precious knowledge bases relating to our most artistic and intellectual and
philosophic ancient Indian literary
traditions of 2000 years ago.
Due to having such English-oriented reading tastes some people possess a kind of eagerness to know about land of England
There was a connection between India and England for 350 years from the times of British East India Company(EIC)-- the commercial association of “billionaire” merchants of old England formed with big support from the kings , noblemen and politicians . The reason for forming EIC was to get spices and silks from the eastern countries --- India , China and some far eastern islands . Even before EIC and from the Middle Ages(500-600 years ago or even earlier)spices were sold in European lands at high prices like gold. The silks of east and perhaps gold ornaments of India were in great demand among noble and wealthy families of England and Europe. The famed “silk road” was a centuries- old land route of thousands of miles . It required risky and laborious travel among mountains, forests and deserts but the huge profits coming to the eastern and western merchants and middlemen fuelled the trade for centuries. Very much later(in 1870s) the Suez Canal was opened and it cut the distance . The trade channels surely were window on eastern and western cultures and in a limited way channels for communication between eastern and western societies having vastly different cultures.
Such was the ancient world –far different from the present age
of jet travel, computers ,digital phones
,i-pads and skyscrapers .Things now move
at speed of light . But still some
people feel that only the Old World is
good with conservative serious view of life, high morals and deep religiosity. There was also no
chlorine pollution and other pollution
and no radiation from radioactive substances. People however feel that we have the great boon of modern science .We
scientifically studied the “outer space” and
already travel in it in a very limited
way like boats crawling along coast of an unknown sea. We
have the all- powerful computer which does even mountainous statistical work and
book writing work in seconds . Such work took even weeks in old environment.But
the new world is a world of uncertainity
-- without a strong concrete base in morality and philosophy. The new world is a world of chemical pollution, atomic weapons and gamma rays which attack the DNA .
I have not mentioned anything about the two most beautiful mythological epics of the west --the Aeneid and Odyssey. Those beautiful stories were familiar from school days --school level story books with color plates of Greek heroes and Greek gods. They are two beautiful oceans of philosophy and poetry like the Atlantic and Arctic of the western literary universe .very good translations into modern English were made by the great intellectual Alexander Pope( 1688-1744) The wonder is Europeans were not quite aware of these books till Renaissance( 14th century AD ). Then they embraced those books as their precious property and precious jewels
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