E HISTORY OF A FAILURE THAT WAS GREAT

There has been some complaint that the experiment of meeting out cut and
dried moral texts as a part of school routine has not proved to be so
effective as was expected by their promulgators. The moral education
which we received in our childhood was very indirect and came from
listening to stories recited by the 'Kathas' on various incidents
connected with our great epics. Their effect on our minds was very
great; this may be because our racial memory makes us more prone to
respond to certain ideals that have been impressed on the consciousness
of the nation. These early appeals to our emotions have remained
persistent; the only difference is that which was there as a narrative
of incidents more or less historical, is now realised as eternally true,
being an allegory of the unending struggle of the human soul in its
choice between what is material and that other something which
transcends it. The only pictures now in my study are a few frescoes done
for me by Abanindra Nath Tagore and Nanda Lal Bose. The first fresco
represents Her, who is the Sustainer of the Universe. She stands
pedestalled on the lotus of our heart. The world was at peace; but a
change has come. And She under whose Veil of Compassion we had been
protected so long, suddenly flings us to the world of conflict. Our
great epic, the Mahabharata, deals with this great conflict, and the few
frescoes delineate some of the fundamental incidents. The coming of the
discord is signalled by the rattle of dice, thrown by Yudhisthira, the
pawn at stake, being the crown. Two hostile arrays are set in motion,
mighty Kaurava armaments meeting in shock of battle the Pandava host
with Arjuna as the leader, and Krishna as his Divine Charioteer. At the
supreme moment Arjuna had flung down his earthly weapon, Gandiva. It was
then that the eternal conflict between matter and spirit was decided.
The next panel shows the outward or the material aspect of victory.
Behind a foreground of waving flags is seen the battle field of
Kurukshetra with procession of white-clad mourning women seen by fitful
lights of funeral pyres. In the last panel is seen Yudhisthira
renouncing the fruits of his victory setting out on his last journey. In
front of him lies the vast and sombre plain and mountain peaks, faintly
visible by gleams of unearthly light, unlocalised but playing here and
there. His wife and his brothers had fallen behind and dropped one b