I believe oral transmission of the message of the masters over the centuries has corrupted their content and shown the masters in a poorer light instead of a purer light as would have been the case had they been recorded instantly and accurately at that. This has been the fate of many a scripture the world over, and, yet, despite the possibility of such corruption in content, the Hindu scriptures shine in unparalleled glory, both in terms of philosophical content and rational exposition thereof. I guess this has been due to the succession of great savants and sages in every generation in India in every school of thought which has allowed the oral transmission to be free of crude errors from creeping in and the written records also to remain free of fantastic attributions as being intrinsic to its content. Mythology prevails, like in the Semitic scriptures, in the Hindu scriptures as well, but unlike the former where it forms the fundamental feature of faith, in the latter it is an embellishment, an artistic adornment to expound abstruse philosophy in understandable simple terms for the masses who thus can absorb and assimilate sublime principles into their very lifeblood.
The Sanatan Dharma has not had to borrow its philosophy from the Greeks to expound its spiritual principles as Christianity has had to do in a rather roundabout way that has robbed it of its bold original assertion and compromised it to a large theological baggage adhering to it. The Sanatan Dharma, on the other hand, has had a philosophical beginning and resorted to mythology by way of common communication much later. The myths have centred round core philosophical principles and lent them substance in narrative rather than it being in the reverse order as in Christianity where theology has somehow engaged in self-torture to accommodate fantastic features of faith. Overall, the message of the Messiah has been largely lost in this accretion and interpolation of the ages and in the subsequent attempt to rationalise the irrational suppositions of the creed that Christianity is. The net result of all this has been that the original spiritual impetus of the movement, wholly oriental and possibly even Indian in influence -- going by the way Buddhist influence was prevalent in the Middle East in those early days of Christ's upbringing --, was lost and Christianity was made into a doctored religion to suit the exigencies of sheer survival in a brutal world of Roman tyranny. The loss was irreparable and the history of the Church, persecuted for three centuries on inception, became an extension of the Roman regal saga whose unending persecution precipitated Europe into the abyss of the Dark Ages, exterminated indigenous populations by the millions wherever Christendom extended its frontiers, and thrust the world into rampant superstition and fear in the name of securing salvation for the converted soul. This is not to forget, though, that Christianity has also had its great and glorious share of civic service through its countless charities the world over. But the discussion is not that. The Messiah has been misunderstood through the inevitable error of the oral transmission and the way back to him must be through the cultivation of the spirit of the Upanishads which can yet salvage for Christianity its lost heritage in the depths of the realised soul.
Written by Sugata Bose
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