Devamrita Swami > Quotes

“Especially at the junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European intellectuals expected an “Oriental renaissance.” The idea was that just as the study of Greek had paved the way for the first Renaissance, so the study of Sanskrit and the Vedas would launch the second.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“Oxford University offered prizes for the works that attacked Vedic knowledge.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“Even Indian scholars have been trained to feel apologetic or disdainful about what has come to be viewed as the Vedas’ gross exaggerations and fantasies concerning the ancients.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“I should like to live for ten years quietly and learn the language, try to make friends, and then see whether I was fit to take part in a work, by means of which the old mischief of Indian priestcraft could be overthrown and the way opened for the entrance of simple Christian teaching.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“The British goal, stated and unstated, was to eradicate any notions that India had knowledge in remote antiquity.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“But the breezes of profound appreciation that swept the European continent did not last. After all, the British Crown had serious business to tend in India – with immense consequences for the study of India’s past.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“In 1775 he asserted, “I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges: astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.”42”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“His monumental series Sacred Books of the East is out of print – except, ironically, in India – but shadows of his work march on.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“Near-death experiences (NDEs), though a sensation in the last quarter of the twentieth century, have been with us in the literature of humanity for thousands of years.”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India

“It is, however, of little avail yet to attempt to undeceive the multitude; their superstition is based on ignorance, and until the foundation is taken away, the superstructure, however crazy and rotten, will hold together.57”
― Devamrita Swami, Searching for Vedic India