QUEST (27.11.1995) i.e Questions:

Quest i.e. questions searching for and finding answers was the basic ingredients to the human progress in all material and spiritual spheres. What? Wherefrom? Why? And how? They are the basic questions that are asked and sought resolution. The questions were almost the same throughout history but answers were several and different depending on the time, circumstances and people concerned. Same questions were answered separately and differently by several historical communities and their predecessors. Throughout the world questions were posed and they were answered. Thoughts, thought processes, ideologies, theories developed and exhausted through questioning by men continued.

Truth is found to be many sided and imprecise. Research went on from one set of truths to others and in the process nullified the earlier truths. The quest continued so that the progress did not get interrupted in the middle. But the progress was not uniform the world over, stagnating here and there legendary (?) for periods extending for centuries. History of India show quest interrupted and stagnated and at certain times quest was completely forgotten. One of its reasons might be the fact that education and knowledge were the monopoly of certain groups for a long historical past. Brahmin the repository of Vedas did not try to educate himself on Vedas but confined it to recitations correctly. The reference here is to the late Kanchi Periavaal. Although they preserved the Vedic hymns they were put in writing very late. By that time the language in which Vedas were composed has undergone vast changes and became almost a dead language. Some of the budding hindutva scholars who claim so many innovations and discoveries from Vedic sources are unable to explain the fact, why all those innovations and discoveries were kept unknown for thousands of years. One of the oldest civilizations i.e ancient India did progress to certain limits for years and centuries. If so fantastic was that civilization and technologies in all spheres, one fails to understand the reasons for such abject failure and surrender of that civilization to invaders during the later centuries. Certain gentlemen saw the use of atomic weapons in Ramayana and Mahabharata wars. They found the aeroplanes in the Viman but not able to explain, why such weapons and carriers did not progress or were not available to face the crisis in later years. Hundreds or thousands of years after those legendary (?) wars our people used primitive weapons against the invading Alexander and others.

There is no rationale to those fantastic claims. They remain egoistic consolations to new found lovers of Hindutva in the present. Western thought, philosophy and science were unbroken efforts at quest in the present era. They were able to progress by discarding failed ideas and practices and establish the supremacy of QUEST even today.

K.N.Krishnan