T.S. ELIOT: INDIAN INFLUENCES AND HIS FAITH

Thomas Sterns Eliot was an American by birth, but an Englishman by adoption. He grew to become a naturalized British citizen. Eliot's interest in Indian thought came largely through the influence of his teachers at Harvard. The most important influence in Eliot's Harvard days seems to have been Irving Babbitt whose system of thought was based upon the study of the Pali manuscripts, the earliest authentic Buddhist documents. In The Waste Land there are two well-known examples of Hindu influence both coming at the end of the poem in the section entitled "What the Thunder Said." At the very end we find the triple use of the word ‘shanti’ which is both Vedic in origin and Upanishad in content. It pacifies all sorts of anguish, anxiousness, hesitation, doubt of our head and makes us calm. The Christian scheme seemed the only possible scheme which found a place for values which he had to maintain or perish. . . , the belief, for instance, in holy living and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, austerity. He expressed the discovery of a faith that would last. He felt that modern life was rife with futility and anarchy. It was his interest in the institution of society that led him to see the importance of communal worship, and the significance of religious practice for all nations, as well as for individual souls. He believed that religious ritual would bring solace to mankind.