Echoes of the East in T.S.Eliot‘s ̳The Waste Land‘

Thomas Sterns Eliot, the Nobel Laureate of 1948 ‘for his work as a trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry’, is perhaps the only modern English poet who has brought his vast learning to bear on his poetry. Various fields of study marks his successful culmination of a long time campaign towards the book of modern manas we may call his literary works. Throughout the poet’s life-long spiritual quest he acquired a peculiar sensibility which he tried to covey in the ‘right language’. Eliot insists on the technique most to give perfection to his subject. It is obvious that his poems portray decayed and disintegrated modern European metropolis in general and sordidness of London in particular. Yet his preoccupation with a technique to suit his Subject imparts a peculiar taste to his poetry. The most important formative period of Eliot’s personality is at Harvard. The sensitive Harvardian was welltrained to have ‘a saner outlook on life’ through his study of philosophy of East and West. Oriental religions guided him to sooth considerably his tormented soul. There, he became much attracted towards Sanskit and Pali and was influenced by Rig veda, Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali’s yoga sutra and above all, Buddhism left indelible impression on his mind. The Waste Land, his masterpiece of his first phase explicitly shows the impact of Buddhism and Hindu upanishadic myths. In the present study the significance of this eastern influence upon Eliot is deemed important for his juxtaposing facts and fantastic to find an objective co-relative to serve his purpose of finding a healing balm for ailing Modern man. Both primary and secondary sources are taken into account for the