European Civilization 2 ( comparison between European and Indian civilization )

The subsequent development of European civilization followed a different course from Islamic civilization. In Islam, the caliph, the authority of the faith, lost real power (political rights), and the Sultan emerged as a political figure through the Great Amir, but in European civilization, the Pope, the leader of Catholicism, gained authority by lending his support to political unification. The coronation of Charles in the Frankish Kingdom (although before that, there was the Donation of Pepin), and Charles' kingdom could be said to have occurred amid the threat of Islam (Henri Pirenne). Europe eventually entered the feudal era, and churches and monasteries in Europe contributed to the expansion of agricultural production and the livelihood of the people*. It was the Holy Roman Emperor who attempted to centralize power in a decentralized state and utilize the church, but the church ended up gaining power, and this is where the distinctive characteristics of European civilization were born.

 

*Similar situations have occurred many times in European civilization. The Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the development of America, and colonial development. It seems that European expansion was not necessarily driven solely by economic reasons. If European civilization is in decline in modern times, it may be largely due to the loss of religious energy and the inability to find a substitute for it . It may be that they have lost sight of the ethical values of their own civilization.

 

European civilization was a world where spiritual and secular leaders were separated, and for a time, the spiritual was superior to the secular in a material sense. The materialist view of history holds that the secular world, for example the economy, shapes the spiritual, but the Middle Ages in Europe was a time when people were serious about creating an ideal community with a Catholic spirit. This tendency was not only seen in medieval Europe, but also in India during the Gupta Dynasty.*1 However, the difference between India and Europe is that the Catholic Church was an organization more independent from the state (secular organization), and unlike India at that time, people in Europe gradually became interested in economics and trade. The development of secular society caused people to question religion, which led to the Renaissance and the Reformation. However, this is also a matter of degree, and the comparison between European and Indian civilization is endlessly interesting.*2

 

*1In India, there was a renaissance (a revival of the classics) with works such as the Code of Manu, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata, but in the case of the Gupta dynasty (5th century!), this was the beginning of feudalism, whereas the European Renaissance was an event that marked the end of religious feudalism as feudalism drew to an end, cities developed, and freedom began to sprout, so the two are different. After the Renaissance, development-oriented, secular Protestantism was born in Europe, the spiritual world suddenly became lively, and gave birth to the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, whereas India sank into the world of Tantra after the Gupta dynasty.

 

*2When comparing European and Indian civilizations, the similarity is that the spirit tried to dominate the secular world. However, the values of that spirit - the first principle (principle of value) - were contrasting. While Europe is monistic (although Catholicism is not necessarily monistic, as it has created many saints), India was a civilization that tolerated plurality. The revival of classics in the Gupta dynasty was the revival of Brahmins against Buddhism (knights and merchant class), and the content was qualitatively different from the revival of classics, philosophy, and thought in Greece and Rome in Europe. Although the content was different, it was a revival, and they tried to make it a guideline for the way the community should be, but in the case of Europe, this aspect may have been more pronounced not in the Renaissance but in the Reformation. While the Renaissance was to a certain extent for the aristocracy, the Reformation had an impact on the masses. The revival of classics in the Gupta dynasty, the Code of Manu and the Gita, were for the Brahmins and aristocracy, and the rule of the masses by the Brahmins was also the revival of the secular world through the revival of the spirit. At the very least, the Hinduism that emerged during the Gupta period could be said to be an affirmation of Indian humanity. Although the north and south of India are different, they are the same in the sense of Hinduism, and perhaps the spirit of Indian humanity was subsequently buried in the materialistic world of civilization.

 

This is a sketch of two civilizations (European civilization and Indian civilization) next to Islamic civilization, but European civilization also inherited the cosmopolitan elements of Islamic civilization. In modern Europe, Italian city-states were initially dominant, probably due to trade in the Mediterranean. This hegemony was deeply connected to Islamic civilization (Mamluk dynasty), but this hegemony was overturned by the rise of Spain and Portugal, who rounded the Cape of Good Hope and discovered the New World, and was then passed on to the Netherlands. During the British era, the Industrial Revolution occurred, and humanity entered a new stage. Up until now, civilization has progressed mainly through the power of social structure: the third principle (the principle of community development), that is, through organizational reform, but we are now in a stage where the power of efficiency: the second principle (the principle of improving living standards) has begun to become much stronger*.

 

*Before the Industrial Revolution, there was little difference in military power, and great changes occurred due to improvements in organization. The most significant and rapid changes were the founding of Islamic civilization by Mohammed, who integrated and reorganized the Arabs, and the rise of the Mongol Empire by Genghis Khan. However, there were similarities between the two, in that they controlled trade and information, were relatively tolerant of religion and culture, and provided a social structure that worked hard to ensure security in the commercial sphere: the power of the third principle (principle of community development). In terms of continuity, Islam had a universal religion, while the Mongol Empire did not, which may have been one of the reasons why it ended so quickly. In the case of Mongolia, they respected Islamic merchants on land and sea (the international language of the Mongol Empire was Persian), so there is some overlap between Islamic civilization and the Mongol Empire. It was a merchant civilization based on information and mobility. Therefore, the Age of Discovery in Europe may have been a response to the challenge of the Mongol Empire.

 

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