डॉ. रवींद्रनाथ टागोर ४३१
build images, draw pictures, compose poems, errect stone temples- behind all these endeavours going on ceaselessly at home and abroad there is nothing but the prayer of one human heart to be immortalised within other human hearts. This striving for permanence is the dearest of human strivings.” *
“Once in this India emperor Asoka devoted his imperial power to spread religion, to perform beneficial activities. We know how powerfully intoxicating royalpowercanbe. Like ahungryfire, this power eagerly seeks to spread its fiery and greedy tongue from one home to another, from one village to another, from one country to another.
Asoka employed this royal power, hungry to consume the world, in the cause of welfare. He gave up a life of insatiable hedonism and em- braced a life of timeless service. This was not necessary to rule the kingdom; this was not arming the country for war ; this was not conquest; nor expansion of commerce; this was the endless bounty of the spirit of altruism, which suddenly made the sovereign its vehicle, putting at once into shade the splendour of royalty and bringing the entire human society into the limelight. Countless great kingdoms of countless great mon- archs have suffered devastation and have been razed to dust but the glorious emergence of the power of benevolence in Asoka has become our proud asset, and is breathing strength into us.” ~
“Wherever beauty attains its culmination, it discards its excess of ornaments and there invariably the flower transforms its excess of colour and fragrance into the more compact sweetness of the nature fruit. In this culminiation beauty becomes one with god.
One who has witnessed the union of beauty with good can never associate beauty with hedonism. The materials of sucha man’s life are usually plain and simple, this happens not because of one’s deficiency in one’s sence of beauty but because of its excellence. Where was the pleasure garden of Asoka? No sign of it at all can be found in his royal palace. But the stupa and the column built by Asoka are still standing near the roots of the Bodhibanyan tree in Buddhagaya. His works of art and craft are notnegligible. Atthe very holy site where Lord Buddha had discovered the path of man’s salvation from suffering, at the very site of the memorial of supreme good, Asoka set up beautiful works of art. He never paid such tributes of worship to his own pleasurers.” t
It will be relevant to state in this connection that Rebindranath visited Buddagaya twice, in 1311 and in 1321, (B. S.) in the month of Aswin on both occasions, presumably during the puja vacation in Santiniketan Ashram.
ar
Sahityer Samagri (Sahitya) Bangadarshan, Kartick, 1310.
” : Utsaver Din (Dharma), Bangadarshan, Magh, 1310.
t: Saundaryabodh (Sahitya) Bangadarshan, Pous 1313.
All the above extracts reprinted from, Asoka 2300, edited by Chowdhury, P. P. 9-10.
डब्ल्यू-२०७३-२८ अ