Looking towards India : study in East - West contacts

Czechoslovakia, the land of heroes, is, indeed, a country of romance. Its people were among the leaders of Medieval Europe in culture art, architecture, literature, music. They built their capital, Prague (Praha), on the green hills through which meanders the stream of the Vltava. The hills, the dales and the river with its quaint bridges make it one of the most beautiful cities of Europe. The fortified palaces with vast halls and turreted walls, the ancient basilica of St. George, St. Guy's cathedral and other churches, with wonderful stained glass windows filling their interiors with polychrome light, and the dignified monuments and distinguished mausoleums scat tered over the Old and Lesser Towns vest it with a strangely moving atmosphere of old-world mystery and modern ele gance.

This country has experienced great vicissitudes of fortune. Surrounded by the Germans towards the west, the Hungari ans in the south, the Poles in the north, and the Russians in the east, the land-locked country has had to fight for its existence through centuries. Its kings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries extended their dominion over a large part of Europe, making Bohemia one of the foremost powers and one of the great centres of European culture.