与印度教同道共度之夜
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中文
斯瓦米·辨喜以令人信服的方式证明，我们在水一方的所有邻邦，即便是最偏远者，都是我们的近亲，彼此之间不过在肤色、语言、习俗与宗教上略有差异。这位能言善辩的印度教僧侣在周六晚间（四月十四日）于市政厅发表演讲，开篇便以一段历史性的素描，描绘了自己民族与地球上其他主要民族的起源，由此论证了一个真理：种族亲缘关系是一个再简单不过的事实，只是许多人不知晓，或不愿承认罢了。
其后的非正式演讲涉及印度教民族的若干习俗，更多地呈现出一种轻松愉快的客厅闲谈风格，以善于交谈者所惯有的从容自如表达出来。对于听众中那些对此话题抱有天然兴趣与涵养的人而言，无论是这位演讲者本人还是其思想，都因种种难以一一列举的缘故而令人无比着迷。然而对于另一些听众来说，演讲者却令人失望，因为他的言辞图景所涵盖的范围太过有限。这篇演讲虽以美国演讲台的标准而言已属极长，却只涉及所论述的这一独特民族的寥寥数项「风俗习惯」，而其个人生活、公民生活、家庭生活、社会生活与宗教生活，本可从这位最古老种族的最优秀代言人口中获得更多，平均水平的人性研究者理应对此抱有极大兴趣，而实际上却了解得最少。
关于印度教徒生活的描述，从一幅印度教男孩诞生的图景开始，继而是他接受教育训练、步入婚姻，对家庭生活稍作提及，但并非听众所期望的那些内容。演讲者频频转入题外，对自己民族与英语民族在社会、道德与宗教层面的习俗与观念作比较性评论，在所有情形中，言下之意都清晰地倾向于本民族，尽管表达方式极为得体、亲切而优雅。听众中一些对印度各阶层社会与家庭状况了解颇深的人，本很想就他所触及的诸多论点向演讲者提出一两个尖锐的质疑。例如，当他以如此雄辩而优美的笔墨描绘印度教的女性观——将其视为神圣母性的理想，须永远受到崇敬，甚至以一种连最尊重女性、最无私、最真诚的美国之子、丈夫与父亲都难以想象的忠诚加以礼拜——此时便令人想知道，倘若向他提问：这一美好的理论，在大多数拥有妻女姐妹的印度教家庭的实践中，究竟得到了多大程度的体现，他将如何作答？
对贪婪逐利之风、追求奢靡之欲、自私自利的「金钱种姓」情结的痛斥——这一顽疾腐蚀着主导性的白人欧美种族，危及其道德与公民生命——可谓精准有力、振聋发聩。那缓慢、柔和、沉静而不激昂的音乐般声音，将其思想蕴含的全部力量与热忱传递出来，其力度丝毫不逊于最激烈的肢体呼号，直直射中靶心，犹如先知的「你便是那人」。然而，当这位生来便是贵族、本性与教养皆属高贵的印度教学者，试图证明——正如他在频繁而显然半无意识地从所论主题上转入题外时反复所做的那样——他的民族那种典型地以自我为中心、以自我修炼为要务、以个人灵魂的自我救赎为最高目标、消极被动而非主动进取（甚至不妨说是自私懒惰）的宗教，在其对世界的功用上已证明优越于那种充满生命力的、忘我的、以帮助他人为首要使命、奉行「你们往普天下去传道」的积极入世宗教——即我们所称的基督教——时，他实在是揽下了一项艰巨的任务。毕竟，在基督教的名义下，世界上十分之九的真正具有实践意义的道德、精神与慈善工作，已经完成并仍在进行，尽管其不智的热忱者犯下了种种令人痛惜的严重错误。
然而，亲眼目睹并聆听斯瓦米·辨喜，对任何有智识、公正的美国人而言，都是一个不容错过的机会——如果一个人有意目睹一道明亮之光，见证这一以千年计算自身历史（而我们只以百年论）的古老种族之精神文化最精粹的产物，并且愿意用心研究每一位思考者都会发现其无比值得的这一民族。
周日下午（四月十五日），这位卓越的印度教徒在史密斯学院的晚祷礼拜上向学生们发表演讲，其主题实质上是上帝的父性与人类的兄弟情谊。每一位听众的反映都表明，这篇演讲留下了深刻的印象，真正宗教情操与教义的最广博的自由精神贯穿了整个思想的始终。
English
AN EVENING WITH OUR HINDU COUSINS
(Northampton Daily Herald, April 16, 1894)
For Swami Vive Kananda proved conclusively that all our neighbors across the water, even the remotest, are our close cousins differing only a trifle in color, language, customs and religion, the silver-tongued Hindu monk prefacing his address in city hall Saturday evening [April 14] by an historic sketch of the origin of his own and all other leading nations of the earth which demonstrated the truth that race-kinship is more of a simple fact than many know or always care to admit.
The informal address that followed regarding some of the customs of the Hindu people was more of the nature of a pleasant parlor talk, expressed with the easy freedom of the conversational adept, and to those of his hearers possessing a natural and cultivated interest in the subject both the man and his thought were intensely interesting for more reasons than can be given here. But to others the speaker was disappointing in not covering a larger scope in his word-pictures, the address, although extremely lengthy for the American lecture-platform, referring to very few of the "customs and manners" of the peculiar people considered, and of whose personal, civil, home, social and religious life much more would have been gladly heard from this one of the finest representatives of this oldest of races, which the average student of human nature should find preeminently interesting but really knows the least about.
The allusions to the life of the Hindu began with a picture of the birth of the Hindu boy, his introduction to educational training, his marriage, slight reference to the home life but not what was expected, the speaker diverging frequently to make comparative comments on the customs and ideas of his own and English-speaking races, socially, morally and religiously, the inference in all cases being clearly in favor of his own, although most courteously, kindly and gracefully expressed. Some of his auditors who are tolerably well posted as to social and family conditions among the Hindoos of all classes would have liked to have asked the speaker a challenging question or two on a good many of the points he touched upon. For instance, when he so eloquently and beautifully portrayed the Hindu idea of womanhood as the divine motherhood ideal, to be forever reverenced, even worshipped with a devotion of loyalty such as the most woman-respecting unselfish and truest of American sons, husbands and fathers cannot even conceive of, one would have liked to know what the reply would have been to the query as to how far this beautiful theory is exemplified in practice in the majority of Hindu homes, which hold wives, mothers, daughters and sisters.
The rebuke to the greed for gain, the national vice of luxury-seeking, self-seeking the "dollar-caste" sentiment which taints the dominant white European and American races to their mortal danger, morally and civilly, was only too just and superbly well-put, the slow, soft, quiets unimpassioned musical voice embodying its thought with all the power and fire of the most vehement physical utterance, and went straight to the mark like the "Thou art the man" of the prophet. But when this learned Hindu nobleman by birth, nature and culture attempts to prove — as he repeatedly did in his frequent and apparently half-unconscious digressions from the special point under consideration — that the distinctively self-centred, self-cultivating, preeminently self-soulsaving, negative and passive, not to say selfishly indolent religion of his race has proven itself superior in its usefulness to the world to the vitally aggressive, self-forgetful, do-good unto-others-first-last-and-always, go-ye-into-all-the-world and work religion which we call Christianity, in whose name nine tenths of all the really practical moral, spiritual and philanthropic work of the world has been and is being done, whatever sad and gross mistakes have been made by its unwise zealots, he attempts a large contract.
But to see and hear Swami Vive Kananda is an opportunity which no intelligent fair-minded American ought to miss if one cares to see a shining light of the very finest product of the mental, moral and spiritual culture of a race which reckons its age by thousands where we count ours by hundreds and is richly worth the study of every mind.
Sunday afternoon [April 15] the distinguished Hindu spoke to the students of Smith college at the vesper service, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man being, virtually, his theme, and that the address made a deep impression is evinced by the report of every auditor, the broadest liberality of true religious sentiment and precept characterizing the whole trend of thought.
文本来自Wikisource公共领域。原版由阿德瓦伊塔修道院出版。