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Virtue, Success, Pleasure, Liberation - The Four Aims of Life in The Tradition of Ancient India

 
Alain Danielou (Author)
Synopsis

What is the nature of the social order that unquestionably produced one of the greatest and longest lasting civilizations known to humankind? Alain Danielou, distinguished Orientalist, musicologist, and linguist, reveals the foundations of India’s culture and the four aims of human life as they are viewed in traditional Hindu society: virtue on a moral plane; success on the material and social planes; pleasure on a sensual plane; an liberation on a spiritual plane, Coexistent with these aims are the four stages of life: quest for knowledge, family life, retreat into the forest, and renunciation. A four fold division can be found in all traditional societies throughout the world, symbolically representing the progression of creative consciousness into order that differs profoundly from those accepted in the contemporary Western addresses issues of race, individual rights, sexual mores, marital practices, and spiritual attainments. In this light, he exposes the inherent flaws and hypocrisies or our modern egalitarian governments and shows how the shadow side of the ancient caste system persists, disguised and unacknowledged, beneath contemporary economic regimes. Danielou explains how Hindu society has served as a model for the realization of human potential on many levels, addressing sociological and human problems that are both timeless and universal.

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About the author

Alain Danielou

Alain Danielou is Director of the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation, Berlin, and adviser for Oriental Music to the International Music Council (UNESCO). Born in Paris, he pursued scientific and artistic studies before specializing in musicology. He traveled extensively in North Africa, the Middle East, China and Japan and then settled in India, where he studied Indian Music and philosophy, Hindi and Sanskrit, and made a unique collection (over 800) of Sanskrit manuscripts on music. In 1949 he was appointed Research Professor of Music at Benares Hindu University and in 1954 became Director of the Adyar Library and Research Centre in Madras. In 1959 he returned to Europe, joining the Ecole Francaise d' Extreme Orient in Paris, and subsequently became Director of Studies of the Centre d'Etudes de Musique Orientale of Paris. He has written extensively in both French and English on Oriental Music and on many aspects of Indian history and culture, and has also published two novels. He is the general editor of the three UNESCO collections of records: "Anthology of the Orient" (Barenreiter Musicaphon), "Musical Sources" (Philips, Holland) and "Musical Altas" (EMI, Italy).

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Bibliographic information

Title Virtue, Success, Pleasure, Liberation - The Four Aims of Life in The Tradition of Ancient India
Format Softcover
Date published: 31.12.1993
Edition 1st ed.
Language: English
isbn 9780892812189
length 192p., 9.00 X 6.00cm.