Language Distortions for Sanskrit and Vivekananda's lecture
Prof Hambarde says in his comments on changing of our language that we should not change the meanings of the specific terms in our Sanskrit language. I AGREE! He talks about Dharma and Sanskriti etc. I was recently reading a lecture of Swami Vivekananda (an intellectual GIANT of the last 2 centuries) and he says something about "Creation" and the Sanskrit word used for it – Srishti. Here is what he says:
Our Sanskrit word for creation, properly translated, should be
projection
and
not
creation. For the word creation in the English language has unhappily got that fearful, that most crude idea of something coming out of nothing, creation out of non-entity, non-existence becoming existence, which of course, I would not insult you by asking you to believe. Our word, therefore, is projection. The whole of this nature exists, it becomes finer, subsides; then after a period of rest, as it were, the whole thing is again projected forward, and the same combination, the same evolution, the same manifestations appear and remain playing, as it were, for a certain time, only to break into pieces, to become finer and finer, until the whole subsides and again comes out. Thus it goes on backwards and forwards with a wave-like motion throughout eternity. Time, space, and causation are all within this nature. To say, therefore, that it had a beginning is utter nonsense.
The more I read Vivekananda’s words, the more I realize that the way amateur and useless minds in India who masquerade as seculars have infested the very fabric of our ethos, such a giant is not probably possibly within our midst! His oratory was clear and unmistakeably learned…. but it went beyond. It was as if Lord Krishna had himself descended to give another Gita to us… to re-interpret the Vedic knowledge which was mired in nonsensical dualist quagmire and rituals!