Indian Tradition Its Continuity

Indian Tradition: Its Continuity It is rather difficult to identify 'Indianness', which constitutes the salient trait of Indian Culture and Indian Tradition. The Book 'Indian Tradition: Its Continuity' makes a modest attempt to identify this 'Indianness', and in its search after the same, it arrives at spirituality and the concept of solidarity of the universe, as also at the basic proposition that the Real is incapable of being fragmented into parts. In its five chapters, the Book tries to identify the significant tissues in the magnificent fabric of Indian Culture and to show how the concept of solidarity of the universe and divinity of the man appear and reappear in different systems of Indian Philosophy and diverse types of Religion.

A retired Professor of Sanskrit, Jadavpur University, a former Vice-Chancellor of the Universities of Burdwan and Rabindra Bharati, Calcutta, a past President of the Association of Indian Universities, Professor Ramaranjan Mukherji is presently the Chancellor of Tirupati Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha (Deemed University), an Emeritus Fellow of the Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, and a Senior Research Fellow of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta.

A widely travelled exponent of Indian Culture, Professor Mukherji has delivered lectures in a number of Universities abroad and has led many Indian Cultural Delegations, including one delegation to China.

It is very difficult to identify 'Indianness', which constitutes the essential salient feature of Indian culture and Indian tradition. It is equally difficult to formulate a clear-cut definition of 'Indology', that has emerged as a distinct discipline of fundamental importance in the twentieth century. An attempt may be made to describe 'Indology' as a study of the wisdom of ancient India, but in such a situation a further attempt is required to be made to locate this 'wisdom'. This probe emerges as a more complicated problem, because the wisdom of India has manifested itself in diverse forms in different periods of history in various regions, as a result of confrontation with the challenges posed by opposing thought-currents and contradictory ideas.

In spite of these differences in diverse forms of expressions of the same culture in different areas and in different periods of history, it is possible to locate a few main tissues, that constitute the fabric of Indian culture, - - a few qualities, that represent the salient traits of - Indian tradition. Once these tissues are identified 'Indianness' lying latent in Indian culture, Indian tradition and Indian civilisation re veals itself in its full splendour.

**Contents and Sample Pages**