महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

NOTE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR OF
THIS SERIES
WITHIN the last decade, the West and the Far East have become
virtually near neighbours. From the responsibilities of such neighbourhood
there is no escape. We must have to do with the East, and as members
of the world-family of nations we must treat the East aright. To treat the
people of the East aright, we must respect them; and to respect them,
we must know them. And in order that we may know them, competent
scholars must study their history and make it accessible to the Occident.
The business of the Orientalist is something that is in vital relation with
the practical and political needs of to-day.
It is a fact of happy augury that scholars of the East are joining hands
with those of the West in the great work of helping each to understand
the other. The work calls for just such co-operation, and above all things
else for co-operation in a spirit of mutual sympathy and teachableness.
There is much of great moment that America may learn, for example, from
the history of the peoples of India, and much again that the Hindus may
learn from us. But the lessons will indeed be of no avail, unless the spirit
of arrogant self-sufficiency give way to the spirit of docility, and the spirit
of unfriendly criticism to that of mutually helpful constructive effort.
The relation of teacher and taught is here, in an eminent degree, a reciprocal
one, for both East and West must be at once both teacher and taught.
The whole spiritual and material background of the life of the East
differs so completely from that of the West that neither can ever understand
the other from a mere study of the other's literary monuments. Such study
is indeed inexorably necessary, and it must be fortified by broad and
rigorous training in the many-sided methods of to-day. But that is not
enough. An Occidental who would faithfully interpret the East to the West
must also know the life of the East from actual observation and experience,
and must look at it from the Eastern angle of vision. Accordingly, for
example, the Sanskrit professor of the next generation must have resided