Done!

Our Oriental Heritage is the first book in the "Story of Civilization" series by Will and Ariel Durant. It provides an overview of eastern culture, from Sumeria to Judea to India to Japan, from prehistory to today - "today" being 1933. I got this book for Christmas 2006, started reading it shortly afterwards, and finally finished it this week. It's not often I spend a year and a half on a book, so I thought I'd mark the occasion.

It's a great book, as long as you can overlook 1930s-style comments like "the people of India are lazy and weak, as centuries of an unbearably hot climate have worn them down." Yikes. The occasional foray into racism aside, the densely-packed 940 pages of factfactfact were fascinating. Some points (of the many) I thought were interesting:

Civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it has to be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption may bring it to an end. Man differs from beast only by education, and education may be defined as transmitting of civilization (p4).

Our incredible work ethic: probably thanks to centuries of slavery. No one would do any hard, drawn-out work if he could avoid it without penalty, after all. All those ancient slaves instilled the discipline that prepared man for industry (p20).

The Indian caste system was started by the invading Aryans. Outnumbered by a subject people they believed inferior to themselves, the Aryans saw that without restrictions on marriage they would lose their racial identity. The first caste division therefore, was not by status but by color. The first Untouchables were war captives and slaves (p399).

To Buddha, the worst delusion of mankind was individuality. We are all simply parts of the whole. When we have learned to love not our separate life, but of all men and living things, then at last we will find peace (p436).

Good times, good times.