The Garland of Letters

THIS book is an attempt, now made for the first time, to explain to an English knowing reader an undoubtedly difficult subject. I am therefore forcibly reminded of the saying, “Veda fears the man of little knowledge, since injury may be received from him” . It is natural, given this difficulty and the mystery which surrounds the subject, that strangers to India should have failed to understand Mantra. They need not, however, have then (as some have done) jumped to the conclusion that it was “meaningless superstition.” This is the familiar argument of the lower mind which says “what I cannot understand can have no sense at all.” Mantra is, it is true, meaningless to those who do not know its meaning. But there are others who do, and to them it is not “superstition.” It is because some English educated Indians are as uninstructed in the matter as that rather common type of Western to whose mental outlook and opinions they mould their own, that it was possible to find a distinguished member of this class describing Mantra as “meaningless jabber.”