________________
FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
empty legend. Had the legend any foundation of historical truth, India would have had a different philosophy of life. Or, if the mythical “Golden Age" ever was a rcality, that must have been before India became a victim of her “spiritualist” philosophy. Besides, the Ramayan itself does not tell us how the masses of people lived under Ram Raj. It describes the splendour of the Ajodhya Puri, but omits to give any informatio! about the source of the royal riches. These were cvidently not produced by the princely paradites who spent all their time in practising archery ; nor were the riches conjured up by the Brahimins. Even King Janak could not have tilled more than a small patch of land with his golden plough. The riches were produced by others who lived under conditions hardly human. Otherwise, how could they be utterly absent from the picture of the society of thc epoch? The historian obviously did not count them among human beings. Ram Raj, therefore, could not have been a Golden Age for the masses of the people.
I am not engaged in the much needed, but still to be don', composition of a social history of India. Religicus beliefs and philosophical doctrines of a people can be correctly appreciated on!y in the light of such a history, inductively reconstructed and critically written.
My modest life reflects to some extent only contemporary social conditions. But the incentive
