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In order to find it again, I should have to go through the new Europeanized India that is so alien to me. I know that the world I lived in will always exist but has simply retreated into its shell, waiting for the storms of the modern age to clear away. He wrote in The Way to the Labyrinth, "I have never gone back to India. Sharan, though he left India in the early sixties never to return, remained a Hindu throughout his life. Cloarec makes sure that all visitors to this villa continue the dialogue, which Sharan poignantly started decades ago on the subjects of Indian music, Hinduism and especially Saivism. His presence can be felt all the time in the Solstice of Labyrinth. Here Sharan spent his latter years with Jacques Cloarec, his assistant and disciple. This ancient pre-Roman Etruscan settlement is one of those places where the spirit breathes and peace prevails. His unflinching devotion to our culture and, above all, love for Mother India, defy all expression."Īt the request of Hinduism Today, I visited his simple villa home, the "Solstice of Labyrinth," 30 km away from Rome, set among the vineyards of the village of Zagarolo. To this day his continuous contribution to the promotion of India's cultural heritage abroad through his works has no parallel in modern history. In 1987 famed sitarist Ravi Shankar, whom Sharan introduced to Europe in 1958, wrote of him, "Having covered the entire length and breadth of our great heritage during his long span, so deep were his feelings for the Motherland that he embraced Hinduism and took the name of 'Shiv Sharan.' Thus began the incessant flow of his glorious writings on Indian culture especially covering music, philosophy and religion. This son of French aristocracy turned Benaras pundit had a wide effect upon Europe's understanding of Hinduism, though upon his passing in 1994, at the age of 87, only a few circles of scholars and musicians really appreciated the extent of his influence. I found a rudderless humanity, clutching the dying tree of Christianity, without even understanding why it was dying." He was an author, artist, musician and philosopher and perhaps the first European to boldly proclaim his Hinduness. "I was as far removed from the modern world as though I had been miraculously transported back to the Egypt of the Pharaohs." "On returning to Europe," Sharan went on with characteristic bluntness, "I was amazed at the childishness of theological concepts, and of the barrenness of what ness of what is called religion. "I spent more than twenty years in India in the traditional Hindu world," wrote Shiv Sharan–known in Europe as Alain Daniélou of Paris, France–in Shiva and Dionysus.