impoverished present day products. The presence of the fantastic is minimal in the mathematical sciences. Apart from the idea of the zero, a point, dn atom, which are the very basis of these sciences, everything else is very real. The same is true of grammar and related sciences. The Onkar which issued from Shiva's damaroo or was produced by Man's vocal chords torms the fantastic beginning of words. In short, whatever we acknowledge as science has, at its base, a fantastic idea. In realms outside science, the fantastic is all-pervasive, It is allowed to roam in superb freedom. Poetry, drama, the novel, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, music and the other arts are the homeground of fantasy. A single fantastic idea is not enough for these arts to grow on. They must evolve new fantasies at every critical turn Poetry must transform a cloud into a living being; drama must employ a deus ex machina to bring lovers together. The judicious use of such ideas in the arts is capable of giving the sensitive reader deep pleasure; their extravagant use serves only to fill him with revulsion. There is an important difference between the fantastic idea in science and the fantastic idea in art. Whereas in the first, fantasy is developed with the aid of logic, in the the second it attains sovereignty by knocking down logic with hefty shoves and blows. In the sciences it is causality that reigns supreme. In the arts causality finds no refuge. The narrow world of science cannot accommodate the fantastic; and the limitless world of the fantastic cannot contract to fit the world of science. It is an unbridgeable gulf. In order to understand the true nature and power of fantasy, we must go deeper into its history and its traditions. Only then will we understand how ancient it is and how vital a part it has played in man's development The History of Imagination The oldest written tale of fantasy in the Western world is the Old Testament of the Jews. If there is any literature that totally denies causality it is this fantastic novel. Nowhere in the world is there anything comparable, as fantasy.^ojhe story of Ruth, except perhaps in India where we have the stories ofShibi Raja, Harishchandra, Damayanti and Savitri which are comparable. The New Testament of the Christians is also a work of powerful fantasy, comparable perhaps to our own story of Dadhichi RishLThe books and treatises of the Greek philosopher Plato abound in fantastic stories. If one were to collect together all the stories in Plato about dead men's souls travelling in boats to regions of bliss and torture and set them besides stories of dead men's souls to be found in our own Garuda purana, Plato would look like an unweaned baby in the presence ofNyas, the author of the Garuda purana. This difference in stature is not confined merely to the events in their stories. It extends to their understanding of the morality of politics and practical life, of philosophy, of linguistics, of music. In none of these, nor in any other spheres he touches, can Plato, the ancient babe, stand up and brag. Moving on to the European Ages, we have the biographies of Saints with Journal of Arts and Ideas 79