China and the West

Yeats, W.B. Introduction. Hamsa, Bhagwan Shri. The holy mountain : being the story of a pilgrimage to lake Manas and of initiation on mount Kailas in Tibet. (London : Faber and Faber, 1934).
"It is that whenever I have been tempted to go to Japan, China or India for my philosophy, Balzac has brought me back, reminded me of my preoccupation with national, social, personal problems, convinced me that I cannot escape from our Comédie humaine…"
"Much Chinese and Japanese painting is a celebration of mountains, and so sacred were those mountains that Japanese artists, down to the invention of the colour print, constantly recomposed the characters of Chinese mountain scenery, as though they were the letters of an alphabet, into great masterpieces, traditional and spontaneous. I think of the face of the Virgin in Siennese painting, preserving, after the supporting saints had lost it, a Byzantine character. To Indians, Chinese and Mongols, mountains from the earliest time have been the dwelling places of the Gods. Their kings, before any great decision have climbed some mountain, and of all these mountains Kailas, or Mount Meru, as it is called in the Mahabharata, was the most famous. Sven Hedin calls it the most famous of all mountains, pointing out that Mont Blanc is unknown to the crowded nations of the East. Thousands of Hindu, Tibetan and Chinese pilgrims, Vedantin, or Buddhist, or of some older faith have encircled it, some bowing at every step, some falling prostrate, measuring the ground with their bodies ; an outer ring for all, an inner and more perilous for those called by the priests to its greater penance."