Volume I Issue II April 2021

Name of Author : Dr.P.Parthiban

Title of the paper : Eastern Light in a Western Ruin: Indian Metaphysics in T. S. Eliots The Waste Land

Abstract: T. S. Eliots The Waste Land often appears as a poem of European collapse, filled with broken images, dry stones, and exhausted rituals. Yet the poem does not end inside that ruin. The closing movement turns decisively toward Indian metaphysics, especially the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita. The poems Sanskrit words and allusions are not decorative references added for exotic colour they structure the poems movement from paralysis to the possibility of spiritual renewal. The present article examines how concepts such as renunciation, self control, compassion, and inner peace reshape the poems Western landscape of spiritual drought. The analysis focuses on Eliots use of the thunders syllables Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata and the final Shantih shantih shantih, relating them to Upanishadic and Gita based readings of action, suffering, and self knowledge. The article also explores how the Ganges imagery in What the Thunder Said provides a counterpoint to the desolate European cityscapes that dominate earlier sections. By placing Eliots poetic method in dialogue with Indian metaphysical thought, the discussion shows how The Waste Land holds together ruin and hope, fragmentation and the promise of inward order, through a carefully staged meeting of Eastern and Western traditions.

Keywords : Indian metaphysics; Upanishads; Bhagavad Gita; modernism

DOI :

Page No. : 60-65