i8 LIFE AND WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



was magical, tjiough Kama knew it not ; so it flew back 

 into his hand and spoke to him : "I was made to kill 

 Arjuna ; with my winged sharpness and your aim we are 

 invincible : aim me once more/' But Kama threw it away, 

 saying, " I will have no advantage ; I fight but in my own 

 strength ! " And so he took again another arrow. But this 

 time the unfriendly god suddenly opened an earth-crack 

 which swallowed Kama's chariot-wheel ; he leapt down 

 to lift it out, and as he stooped Arjuna cut him down with 

 his great sword ; and so he fell, still defiant of his fate ! 



' This too was the hero I loved to identify with my own 

 father always in struggle for the uplift of the people, yet 

 with so little success, such frequent failures, that to most 

 he seemed a failure. All this too gave me a lower 

 and lower idea of all ordinary worldly success how small 

 its so-called victories are ! and with this a higher and 

 higher idea of conflict and defeat ; and of the true 

 success born of defeat. In such ways I have come to feel 

 one with the highest spirit of my race ; with every fibre 

 thrilling with the emotion of the past. That is its noblest 

 teaching that the only real and spiritual advantage and 

 victory is to fight fair, never to take crooked ways, but 

 keep to the straight path, whatever be in the way ! ' 



Again and still in his own words ' I feel how necessary 

 it is to keep alive the great traditions of the heroic age 

 of India through travelling Jatra players and the reciters 

 of the epics. It is through them that the highest national 

 culture has been kept alive among the people. They are 

 fast disappearing, and we must either revive the institu- 

 tion or have its modern equivalent. Last night I was 

 thinking of your Edinburgh and London Masques of 

 Learning, with our Indian students presenting our tradi- 

 tions. Why not do the same here, on the full Indian 

 scale, from the old Aryan forefathers onwards, and with 

 all races, all castes, with their heroes and their sages ? 

 And the cities too, from the early days of old Pataliputra, 

 and holy Benares ! Yes, and on to modern Bombay. 



