Surendranath Ganguly

Feast of Lamps by Abanindranath Tagore, Kokka woodblock print
Photo: Mukul Dey ArchivesKakuzo Okakura, in ‘The Ideals of the East’ (published by E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1903, p.1) says:

“Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life.”