On Impersonality and Bengali Religious Biography

Abstract

In commenting on the lack of individual personality in Sanskrit poetry, Daniel H.H. Ingalls has written that impersonality appears in its extreme form in India only in Sanskrit…As to how poetry could exist in the absence of individualism the answer is easier. It existed, just as Indian religion existed under the same circumstances, by making a virtue of its lack. To the Vedantin the advantage of stripping off the personality was that only thus could he arrive at what he considered to be real, at something permanent, unchangeable, and unitary. To the Sanskrit poet the advantage of abandoning personal idiosyncrasy and adventure was that the resultant character by being typical came closer to being universal.