Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 128

POLITICAL GEOMETRY from 1918 on: King Alexander's Yugoslavia, Voldemaras' Lithuania, Pilsudski's Poland, Kemal Ataturk's Turkey, and the Greece of the general-dictators. Everyone feels always endangered. Every king-utterly vulnerable though armed to the teeth -is watching constantly to forestall surprise. No one is fully master of any situation for any length of time. Sudden changes bring death or disgrace. Intrigues and murder from within, intrigues and aggression from without, threats of surprise, upset the strong. Direct, crushing blows annihilate the weak. Māyā, fratricide, poison, and the dagger constitute the order of the day.
Political Geometry
Britain's balance of power policy will serve to introduce another of the basic principles of the Indian Arthašāstra, that of the mandala, or political circles of neighbors. British statesmen have always and everywhere exhibited tact and skill in their manipulation of this weapon of the game. In order to maintain the balance of Europe, when Louis XIV threatened to disturb the political equilibrium by putting his grandson on the throne of Spain, Marlborough (whose life, by the way, supplies several fine examples of the subject of our last discussion) brought England into an alliance with the Netherlands, a number of the German states, Portugal, Denmark, and the house of Hapsburg, waging the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) against the threat of the rising empirc of France. Shortly after, in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), when France had combined with Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony against the Prussia of Frederick the Great, the British threw their weight on the side of Prussia, and came off so well in the gamble that they shattered the French
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