During his first visit to the West for over three years, Swami Vivekananda seldom talked about Sri Ramakrishna, his mentor, in public lectures or classes. The silence surprised many, including his brother disciples. In an interview in 1898, he gave reason for this: “I have never preached personalities. … My own life is guided by the enthusiasm of this great soul [Sri Ramakrishna]; but others will decide for themselves how far they share in this attitude.”[i]
Nonetheless, the Swami had to make an exception before he ended his first visit to America. He delivered a lecture titled “My Master: His Life and Teachings” on 23 February 1896 in New York City —for the day marked the 60th birth anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna. Later in the same year, while in England, Vivekananda spoke again about his Master. But about the essentiality of his Master’s life and message to humankind, none knew like him—and if we look at the way he disseminated both to the world, we feel amazed at his ingenuity.
2
Professor Max Müller shall always be among the timeless scholars of the West. In April 1896, he expressed his admiration for Sri Ramakrishna in a letter[ii] to Vivekananda: “… How can I ever tell you what he is to me, I love and worship him with my whole heart. To think of him makes my eyes fill with tears of gladness that I was permitted to hear of him.”Müller gave reasons for his unlimited admiration for Sri Ramakrishna: “His sayings, published in the Brahmavadin, are my greatest delight. How wonderful that his teachings should have been borne to this far-off land where we had never known of his existence! If I might only have known him, while he was yet with us!” The letter also carries the sublimity of Müller’s feeling: “My greatest desire is to one day visit the spot which [was] sanctified by his presence, while he lived, and I may be so fortunate as to fulfil the wish.”
Incidentally, the Brahmavadin appeared in Madras—inspired and guided by Swami Vivekananda with his trusted disciple Alasinga Perumal as its owner-editor. On the first number of 15 September 1895, the magazine announced: “To enable our readers to see how truly catholic our great religious teachers have been we extract below an English version of some of the sayings of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, the Guru of Swami Vivekananda. …We are in a position to announce that a translation of the Uktis or sayings of the great Paramahansa will be published in these columns from time to time.”[iii]
According to Sankari Prasad Basu, it’s hard to pinpoint when Swamiji first wished to publish magazines. But the apparent fact is, as soon as he decided to spread the teachings and life of Sri Ramakrishna, the idea of having his publication did come to his mind.[iv] In almost every number since its inception, the Brahmavadin published the “Sayings”. The Madras Times of 20 February 1896 wrote: “The little Hindu paper, the Brahmavadin, published in Madras … has lately met with commendation from high quarters, none other than Professor Max Müller, who writes out from Oxford to the Editor: ‘I have read with great pleasure the numbers of the Brahmavadin which you have kindly sent me. What I like is the spirit of pure Hinduism, more particularly Vedantism, unadulterated by so-called Theosophy’.”[v]
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It had been from contemporary English articles or booklets that Professor Max Müller first felt interested in Sri Ramakrishna when he learned about his influence on Keshab Chandra Sen,[vi] the leading Brahmo preacher in Calcutta. In the Western press, he also might have come across his name as the mentor of Vivekananda. What the Professor learned inspired him to write an article on Sri Ramakrishna in The Nineteenth Century, an eminent English journal. But after he read the “Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna” in the Brahmavadin, a marked change came over his views. On 22 June 1896, referring to the “Sayings”, Müller again wrote to Vivekananda: “I wish I had had it when I wrote my article on Rama Krishna which will, I hope, appear in the July number of the xix Century. … But I have several questions to ask you about your great Guru, and I should be obliged if you would let me have your address. What I should like to do would be to rewrite my article on R.K., with a complete collection of his sayings, properly arranged according to their subjects. Do you think that your friends would help me to do that.”[vii]
(Figure 1: ‘Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings’ by Professor Max Müller)
About a month before this letter, Swamiji visited the Professor’s house at Oxford. When he told Müller that thousands of people were worshipping Sri Ramakrishna, Müller’s instant reply was: “To whom else shall worship be accorded, if not to such.”[viii] Daylong, the Professor and his wife warmly treated the Swami and his companion E T Sturdy, and before they left, Müller justified such earnest reception: “It is not every day one meets a disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa” (ibid).
Later, while reminiscing the day, Swamiji wrote: “Whoever could have thought that the life and teachings of a boy born of poor brahmin parents in a wayside Bengal village would, in a few years, reach such distant lands as our ancestors never even dreamed of? I refer to Bhagavan Ramakrishna” (ibid.). Eventually, in October 1898, Max Müller’s Ramakrishna His Life and Sayings was published, wherein he wrote: “…The Vedanta forms the background of the sayings of Ramakrishna.”[ix]
[i]Prabuddha Bharata, September 1898, 19. (see Interview with Swami Vivekananda)
[ii]Indian Mirror, May 23, 1896, see Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers 1893-1902 [hereafter VIN], ed. Sankari Prasad Basu and Sunil Bihari Ghosh (Calcutta, Basu Bhattacharyya And Co, 1969), 96.
[iii]Swami Vivekananda in Contemporary Indian News (1893-1902) with Sri Ramakrishna and the Mission, ed. Sankari Prasad Basu, (Kolkata, Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 2016), 3.75.
[iv]Sankari Prasad Basu, Vivekananda O Samakalin Bharatbarsha [Vivekananda in Contemporary India] (Kolkata, Mondal Book House), vol. 5 (2006), 2.
[v]Swami Vivekananda in Contemporary Indian News, vol. 2 (2007), 405.
[vi]According to a recent book, ‘[Max] Müller was very serious about the opportunities of spreading the Christian faith in India, and this was not only a matter of theoretical interest to him. As Eric J. Sharpe formulated: “In fact he made a tentative missionary effort himself, in his naïf attempt to persuade the Brahmo Samaj to join the Church of England.” Müller welcomed the rapprochement of the members of this enlightened Hindu reform movement, and tried to win them over to Christianity. One of its major representatives, Keshab Chandra Sen, preached in England at the invitation of Unitarian groups, stressing the affinities between his own religious convictions and the teachings of Christ. Müller was impressed by Sen and considered him to be a true “disciple of Christ.”’ – See Arie L. Molendijk, Friedrich Max Müller & the Sacred Books of the East (UK, OUP, 2016), 153.
[vii]Marie Louise Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West: New Discoveries (Calcutta, Advaita Ashrama), 4(1996), 171-72.
[viii]Swami Vivekananda in Contemporary Indian News, vol. 3 (2016), 152.
[ix]Prof. F. Max Müller, Ramakrishna: His Life and Sayings) Calcutta, Advaita Ashrama, 2014 (, viii.
…Cont’d. in Part Two
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