Some more quotes and facts about India

1. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American Philosopher, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist and writer. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who aroused in him a true enthusiasm for India.
The force from the Upanishads that Thoreau inherited emerged in Walden and inspired not only those who pioneered the British labor movement, but all who read it to this day. Meandering in northeastern Massachusetts, his reverent outer gaze fell upon Walden Pond. He alluded often to water---the metaphor is clear---the Gita's wisdom teachings are the purifier of the mind: "By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent."
He had found his sacred Ganga (Ganges). Living by it and trying to "practice the yoga faithfully" during his two years at Walden, he wrote:
"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the River Ganga reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water---jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganga (Ganges)."
At Walden he put the Bhagavad Gita to the test, while proving to his generation that "money is not required to buy one necessary for the soul."
(source: The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau - Walden)

Thoreau, the Concord sage, said, "The Vedanta teaches how by 'forsaking religious rites' the votary may obtain purification of mind." And "One sentence of the Gita, is worth the State of Massachusetts many times over" (source: The Bhagavad Gita: A Scripture for the Future )

2. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and writer. He was one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th century. He was the first Western philosopher to have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly affected. Counted among his disciples are such thinkers as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, as well as Sigmund Freud, who takes a large part of his psychological theory from the writings of Schopenhauer.
No other major Western philosopher so signalizes the turn towards India, combined with a disenchantment with the European-Christian tradition. He proclaimed the concordance of his philosophy with the teachings of Vedanta. His contribution to the propagation and popularization of Indian concepts has been considerable. (source: India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding - By Wilhelm Halbfass p. 436).Schopenhauer became acquainted with the thought of the Upanishads through a Latin translation from Persian by a Frenchman, Anquetil Duperron. His eulogy is well known.
"The Indian air surrounds us, the original thoughts of kindred spirits.....And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition! It is the most profitable and most elevating reading which is possible in the world." (source: Eastern Religions and Western Thought - By Dr. S. Radhakrishnan

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