tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-101195552024-03-07T21:15:32.884-08:00Bhartiya HistoryReexamining history from a Hindu perspective and exposing the colonial distortion of their Vedic heritage that fails to recognize the spiritual root of Indic civilization.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1157866056420154832006-09-09T22:26:00.000-07:002006-09-09T22:27:37.140-07:00Trials, tribulations & triumph of a cultural archeaologist<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Trials, tribulations & triumph of a cultural archeaologist - I</span></span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">V SUNDARAM</span><br /></div><br /> Barbara Tuchman, the great American woman historian rightly observes: Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilisation would have been impossible. They are agents of change, windows on the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.<br /><br /> These instructive and inspiring words are wholly applicable to 'AN ENTYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGES' by Dr S Kalyanaraman and published by Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines. In more senses than one this is a landmark book in the world of languages, linguistics and culture. This book is a Multilanguage historical and cultural dictionary of South Asia; it is a lexicon; it is an encyclopaedia. To quote his own words: This is a comparative dictionary covering all the languages of South Asia (which may also be referred to, in a geographical/historical sense as the Indian sub-continent ). This dictionary seeks to establish a semantic concordance, across the languages of numeraire facile of the South Asian sub-continent : from Brahui to Santali to Bengali, from Kashmiri to Mundarica to Sinhalece, from Marathi to Hindi to Nepali, from Sindhi or Panjabi or Urdu to Tamil. A semantic structure binds the languages of South Asia, which may have diverged morphologically or phonologically as evidenced in the oral tradition of Vedic texts, or epigraphy, literary works or lexicons of the historical periods. This dictionary, therefore goes beyond, the commonly held belief of an Indo-European language and is anchored on proto-South Asian sememes.<br /> <br /> The great pioneering Indologist Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1783, pronounced with authority the underlying genetic relationship between the classical languages, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit in his third Annual Discourse to the Asiatic Society of Bengal on the History and Culture of the Hindus in February 1786 when he made the following epoch-making observation: The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure : more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident, so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from a common source, which perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.<br /> Long before Sir William Jones in 1786, the 16th century Italian scholar Sassetti apparently studied Sanskrit calling it 'a pleasant musical language' and uniting Deo with Deva. In the 17th century, the Dutch protestant missionary, Abraham Rogerius, published in 1651 the translation of Bhartrihari in Europe for the first time. So we find many Catholic missionaries of South India, French and Belgian, studying a little Sanskrit, and mixing with Tamil, producing the faked Ezour Vedam , the target of Voltaire's criticism; and Anquitil du Perron, visiting India before Sir William Jones, provoked the latter's sarcastic criticism of premature handling of Sanskrit texts. As early as 1725 we find the German missionary (translator of the Bible into Tamil) Benjamin Schultze emphasising the similarity between the numerals of Sanskrit, German and Latin.<br /><br /> Another remarkable Englishman, Horne Tooke, in his 'Diversions of Purley ' in 1786 anticipated Bopp and other pioneers of Comparative Grammar. The German traveller, Pallas, worked out the project of the mathematician-philopher Leibniz (1646 - 1716) and published 'Comparative Vocabularies of all the Languages of the World' in 1787. This uncritical work was soon superseded by the German grammarian-philosopher Adelung's Mithridates or General Science of Languages, published in four volumes between 1806 and 1817.<br /> <br /> Dr S Kalyanaraman legitimately belongs to this great tradition of philologists and lexicographers, dictionary-compilers, etymologists, scholars and savants. He has compiled this unique, multilingual dictionary of the Dravidian, Arian and Mundarica language families which he took 18 years to complete. It has been published in three volumes, running to over 2000 pages with nearly 5 lakh words from over 25 ancient languages. This work covers over 8000 semantic clusters which span and bind the South Asian Languages. The basic finding is that thousands of terms of the Vedas, the Munda languages (eg.Santali, Mundarica, Soral), the so-called Dravidian languages and the so-called Indo-Aryan languages have common roots. This dictionary called Indian Lexicon has also been made available on the internet. He declares with humility: The author assumes full responsibility for the semantic and etymological judgements made and the errors that might have crept in with thousands of database iterations in organizing the semantic clusters found in the word lists (the lexicon includes over half-a-million Indian words). The author hopes that with the impossibility of 'dating' the origin of a word, all its inherent limitations, the omissions, intentional or otherwise and errors that will in due course be pointed out by scholars specialized in their fields, the Indian Lexicon will be a tentative, but bold start of a skeleton dictionary of the Indian linguistic area ca. 3000 B.C. and will be expanded further to include modern words.<br /><br /> Dr S Kalyanaraman was born on 20 October 1939. His mother tongue is Tamil. But all his school and under graduate education was in Telugu and Sanskrit in Andhra Pradesh. He is conversant with Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and Sanskrit languages. He graduated from Annamalai University in Economics and Statistics. He has a Doctorate in Public Administration from the University of the Philippines and his thesis Public Administration in Asia, a comparative study of development administration in six Asian countries ?? India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines. He joined the Asian Development bank in 1978. Earlier he was a Member of the Indian Railway Accounts Service from 1962.<br /><br /> During the last 11 years, starting from 1995, he has been working on Sarasvati River Research Project through his Sarasvati Sindhu Research Centre in Chennai. Ever since his return to India in 1995 and his presentation of a paper in the 10th World Sanskrit Conference on his research findings, he has devoted himself to promoting projects for the revival of the Sarasvati River.<br /> <br /> Apart from the massive multilingual dictionary of South Asian languages, Dr Kalyanaraman has also authored several volumes on Sarasvati Culture and Civilisation. His other notable work is Indian Alchemy: Soma in the Veda. He has also contributed to Professor Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya's multi-volume work on History of Science and Technology in Ancient India<br /><br /> To return to Dr Kalyanaraman's Multilingual Etymological Dictionary of South Asian languages once again. The history of civilization is more than a tally of our dynasties, governments, wars, class struggles and cultural movements. Dr Kalyanaraman proves through this book that it is also the story of how human beings in the South Asian Region have learned to develop and operate systems of reference and information retrieval that are external to the brain. According to current estimates, Homo has been in existence for about 2 million years, although it may not have become Sapiens till around 100,000 years ago. If this estimate is reliable, then for 99.75% of the existence of the species Homo and for some 95% of the time that it has been Sapiens, there were no external systems at all. The brain with its erratic memory was the only apparatus available for knowing, referring and recording??and that was the natural state of things. The bulk of our ancestors would have found anything else unimaginable, and for some aboriginal peoples today, in remote areas, this statement still holds true.<br /><br /> This Etymological Dictionary clearly brings out the fact that language in the region which Dr Kalyanaraman has covered has been the master tool which man, in his endless adventure after knowledge and power, has shaped for himself, and which, in its turn, has shaped the human mind as we see it and know it. It has continuously extended and conserved the store of knowledge upon which mankind has drawn. It has furnished the starting point of all our science. In this context the great words of L.S.Amery come to my mind: 'Language has been the instrument of social cohesion and of moral law, and through it human society has developed and found itself. Language, indeed, has been the soul of mankind'.<br /><br /> We learn from Dr.Kayanaraman's Himalayan effort that language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous works of unconscious generations. Language exists to communicate whatever it can communicate. Language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions. George Steiner in his great work Language and Silence observed: 'Languages code immemorial reflexes and twists of feeling, remembrances of action that transcend individual recall, contours of communal experience as subtly decisive as the contours of sky and land in which a civilization ripens. Any outsider can master a language as a rider masters his mount; he rarely becomes as one with its undefined, subterranean motion'. Eros and Language mesh at every point. Intercourse and discourse, copula and copulation, are sub-classes of the dominant fact of communication'.<br /><br /> As a learned and dedicated etymologist, Dr Kalyanaraman finds the deadest word in the South Asian Region to have been once a brilliant picture. We are delighted to learn at his feet that every language is indeed fossil poetry.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Trials, tribulations & triumph of a cultural archaeologist-II</span><br /></div><br /><blockquote> 'One goes to the potter for pots, but not to the grammarian for words. Language is already there among the people'<br /> <br /> -Patanjali in Mahabhashya</blockquote><br /><br /> In his historic work 'AN ENTYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF SOUTH ASIAN LANGUAGES', published by Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines, Dr S Kalyanaraman states: 'In philology, as in archaeology, the search for 'truth' is an extension of a researcher's imagination. Imagination is not an act of faith, but a statement of hypothesis based on relational entities in linguistic structures identified through painstaking lexical work. Two such entities in linguistic structures are: morpheme and sememe which bind an etymological group. Sememe may be defined as a phoneme imbued with 'meaning'. Morpheme is defined as a 'meaningful' linguistic unit. Sememe constitutes the semantic substratum of a morpheme or simply, 'meaning'. What is 'meaning'? It is a concept closely linked to a social compact for inter-personal communication. The 'private language' of a speaker's brain (with 'personal' experiences embedded in neutral networks) is revealed through sounds uttered by the speaker. Language is formed if these uttered sounds echo the 'private language' of a listener. Such an echo constitutes meaning or the semantic sub-structure of a language. Sememes are the basic semantic structural units of a language which combine to yield morphemes or words. A sememe can, for example, be distinguished from a phoneme or a gesture which does not communicate a message in a social compact. Only those uttered sounds which are heard and accepted in a social compact can constitute the repertoire of a language. Sememes (or, dhatupada' ) are given a variety of phonemic and morphological forms in the lingua franca to constitute semantic expressions, or the vocabulary of an evolving and growing civilization'.<br /><br /> Ramana Maharishi asked the question: 'Who am I?' Likewise Dr S Kalyanaraman asks the introspective question: 'What is the justification for this comparative etymological dictionary of South Asian languages currently spoken by over a billion people of the world?' He says that an answer can be given at a number of levels:<br /><br /> 1) The paramount need to bring people closer to ancient heritage of South Asian language family of which the extant South Asian languages (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda language streams ) are but dialectical forms.<br /><br /> 2) There is an imperative international public need to generate further studies in the disciplines of a) South Asian archaeology, b) general semantics and comparative linguistics , c) design of fifth-generation computer systems<br /><br /> 3) There is a need to provide a basis for further studies in grammatical philosophy and neurosciences on the formation of semantic patterns or structures in the human brain?? neurosciences related to the study of linguistic competence which seems to set apart the humans from other living beings.<br /><br /> Finally Dr Kalyanaraman declares with magisterial clarity: 'The urgent warrant for my etymological dictionary is the difficulty faced by scholars in collating different lexicons and in obtaining works such as CDIAL (A Comparative Dictionary of Indo-Aryan Languages) even in eminent libraries. In tracing the etyma (literally meaning truth in Greek) of the South Asian languages, it is adequate to indicate the word forms which can be traced into the mists of history'.<br /><br /> Dr Kalyanaraman's Dictionary deals with more than 8000 semantic clusters relating to the South Asian Languages. Overarching this vast region??in geographical, linguistic and cultural terms??there is an areal 'South Asian Language Type'. Dr.Kalyanaraman seeks to prove this fact by establishing a semantic concordance among the so called Indo-Aryan, Dravidian and Munda languages. This area covers a geographical region bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south and the mountain ranges which insulate it from other regions of the Asian Continent on the north, east and west.<br /><br /> The semantic clustering attempted by Dr.Kalyanaraman in this Dictionary rests on the following hypothesis:<br /><br /> 1 It is possible to reconstruct a proto-South Asian idiom or lingua franca of circa the centuries traversed by the Indus Valley Civilization (C.2500 to 1700 BC)<br /><br /> 2 South Asia is a linguistic area nursed in the cradle of the Indus Valley Civilization.<br /><br /> Operating within this framework, Dr Kalyanaraman summarily rejects the two long standing and earlier assertions:<br /><br /> a) Sir William Jones's assertion in 1786 of an Indo-European Linguistic Family<br /><br /> b) F W Ellis's assertion in 1816 of a southern family of languages.<br /><br /> This cleavage was mischievously created by the Colonial British Rulers as a part of their strategy of Divide and Rule. Dr Kalyanaraman also dismisses the exclusion of the so-called Austro-Asiatic or Munda (or Kherwari) languages. His thesis is that there was a proto-South Asian Linguistic area (C 2500 BC) which included these three language groups. His underlying assumption is that the so-called Dravidian, Munda and Aryan Languages can be traced to an ancient South Asian Family by establishing the unifying elements in semantic terms. This is in keeping with the views of G.U.Pope in another context: ..that between the languages of Southern India and those of the Aryan family there are many deeply seated and radical affinities; that the differences between the Dravidian tongues and the Aryan are not as great as that between the Celtic for instance and the Sanskrit. It is in this spirit that Dr Kalyanaraman has dedicated this great dictionary to Panini and Tolkappiyam<br /><br /> Reading this fascinating book, we understand that each language is only in part an individual instrument. It is in the main, a community instrument used for community purposes. As such each language tends to launch out on a career of its own, to which individuals contribute very much as the coral insect contributes to the growth of a coral reef or island. The essence of language lies in the intentional conveyance of ideas from one living being to another through the instrumentality of arbitrary tokens or symbols agreed upon and understood by both as being associated with the particular ideas in question. In short language in this world is for keeping things safe in their places. Martin Heidegger rightly says that language is the house of being.<br /><br /> Words are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent. The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend. Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past. Francis Bacon said; 'men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason'. Words may be either servants or masters. If they are servants, they may safely guide us in the way of truth. If they become our masters, they intoxicate the brain and lead into swamps of confused thoughts where there is no solid footing.<br /><br /> Language is the amber in which thousands of precious thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested thousands of lightening-flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing as the lightning. Samuel Taylor Coleridge rightly observes: 'Language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests'.<br /><br /> We can infer the spirit of a nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years of social history has contributed a stone. And, universally, a good example of this social force is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In this context Ralph Waldo Emerson rightly sums up: 'In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety to the sentiments which the language of the people expresses. Proverbs, words and grammar-inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual'.<br /><br /> Language contains so faithful a record of the good and of the evil which in time past have been working in the minds and hearts of men, we shall not err, if we regard it as a moral barometer indicating and permanently marking the rise or fall of a nation's life. No wonder Noah Webster in his Preface to the great AMERICAN DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLIGH LANGUAGE wrote in 1828: 'Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of our country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language'.<br /><br /> Viewed in this light language is the most valuable single possession of the human race. Man does not live on bread alone: his other indispensable necessity is communication. We shall never approach a complete understanding of the nature of language, so long as we confine our attention to its intellectual function as a means of communicating thought. Language is a form of human reason, which has its reasons which are unknown to man. The mastery over reality, both technical and social, grows side by side with the knowledge of how to use a language?more particularly words. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging. In all senses it is the skin of living thought.<br /><br /> I enjoyed reading this Dictionary by Dr Kalyanaraman. I would pay my tribute to his work in the words of W H Auden: 'Though a work of literature can be read in a number of ways, this number is finite and can be arranged in a hierarchical order; some readings are obviously 'truer' than others, some doubtful, some obviously false and some absurd. That is why, for a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary, rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its reader, a dictionary is absolutely passive and may legitimately be read in an infinite number of ways.'Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1155602109583528892006-08-14T17:34:00.000-07:002006-08-14T17:35:09.953-07:00Remnants of temple found in a Mosque washed out in floods• Attempt by Muslims to rebuild the structure overnight<br />• Severe tension in Paithan<br />• Assaults with lathis (sticks) on Shivsainiks<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.hindujagruti.org/images/newsimages/nandi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 280px;" src="http://www.hindujagruti.org/images/newsimages/nandi.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >Idol of Nandi in shattered state in the ruins of the Mosque</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paithan</span>: 13th August-In a 'Mosque' situated at the foot of Nathsagar in Jaikwadi, a wall of the Mosque collapsed with the onslaught of massive floods and some remnants of an ancient temple along with 'Nandi' head have been found.. To suppress this evidence of treasure of Hindu culture, Muslims overnight tried to build the structure. (This is the real nature of Muslims of trying to cover up their misdeeds -Editor)<br /><br />On getting information about it, the Shivsainiks rushed to the spot and stopped the construction. (Congratulations to the Shivsainiks for stopping the construction-Editor) After police assaulted the angry Shivsainiks with lathis, they shouted powerful slogans in the city of,” We will build the temple there only" .As a result of this there is severe tension in the city of Paithan. In the meanwhile the police officer who did lathi assault on the Shivsainiks has been urgently transferred.<br /><br />As the waters of the massive Godavari floods receded, the remnants of the razed Mosque came to light. The steps constructed of stones were also seen going towards the river. In the morning some of the young fishermen had gone to this area. At that time they found carved pillars of the temple and idol of Nandi in shattered state in the ruins of the Mosque. This news spread quickly like air in the whole city of Paithan. Immediately thereafter along with the Shivsena M.L.A Sandeepan Bhumre, the Taluka chief Arun Kale, Shri Somnath Pardeshi of the Durga Group,Khushal Bhavre, Nandalal Kale, Shivsainiks rushed to the incident spot. Thereafter the Tahsildar Madhav Nilawade was given the news about this. The Police Inspector Balasaheb Khillor and the officers of Archaelogy Department inspected the site.<br /><br />While the discussion of the discovery of remnants of temple in the place of Mosque was going on the city, later in the afternoon fanatic Muslims starting immediately pulling strings. Hundred to one hundred and fifty Muslims entered the site with construction material. They started building a new wall after excavating the collapsed mud heap. Moment the Shivsainiks came to know about the construction by the Muslims, in the evening, along with 25-30 Shivsainiks, Raju Pardeshi, Deputy chief of the city Sagar Patil, Vijay Acharya again came to the incident site. Seeing the Shivsainiks coming the frightened Muslims fled the scene. The mob of the Muslims directly went to the police station. Then a big force of police appeared on the dispute scene. The police did a severe assault of lathis on the Shivsainiks who stopped the construction. (Would the police have been so prompt if it were Hindus in this place and would they have dared to do such a lathi assault on the Muslims?- Editor)<br /><br />About 25-30 Shivsainiks were seriously injured in this. On the spreading of news about the inhuman lathi assault by the police, Hindus came on the road .In every square the assembled Hindus gave slogans of 'Har Har Mahadev', We will build the temple there only' and sent the city roaring.<br /><br />With his background the Sub -Divisional Police Officer Raosaheb Nalabe entered Paithan.He tried to pacify both the assembled mobs. But the tension kept on mounting. The Shivsainiks strongly demanded the suspension of the Police Inspector Balasaheb Khillor, Police officer Somnath Gite.<br /><br />Later Police Superintendent Sanjeevkumar Singhal urgently transferred police officer Gite.- (The God of Nature has exposed the cruel acts of the Muslims. There were lakhs of temples all over the world which were demolished and Mosques and Churches were built. Now Hindus at least wake up and fight to redeem the lost glory of Hindu Dharma or else it will never be- Editor)<br /><br />Reference: Daily Saaamana (Marathi)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1152928875894149832006-07-14T18:59:00.000-07:002006-07-14T19:01:17.086-07:00Vedic Mathematicians in Ancient IndiaKosla Vepa Ph.D<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><blockquote>This compendium of notes planned as a series of essays is dedicated to the memory of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), arguably the greatest number theorist in all of human history</blockquote></span><br /><br />Introductory Remarks<br /><br />Uncovering the scope of Ancient Indian Mathematics faces a twofold difficulty. To determine who discovered what we must have an accurate idea of the chronology of Ancient India . This has been made doubly difficult by the faulty dating of Indian Historical events by Sir William Jones, who practically invented the fields of linguistics and philology if for a moment we discount the contributions of Panini (Ashtadhyayi)and Yaska (Nirukta) a couple of millennia before him . Sir William, who was reputed to be an accomplished linguist, was nevertheless totally ignorant of Sanskrit when he arrived in India and proceeded in short order to decipher the entire history of India from his own meager understanding of the language, In the process he brushed aside the conventional history as known and memorized by Sanskrit pundits for hundreds of years and as recorded in the Puranas and invented a brand new timeline for India which was not only egregiously wrong but hopelessly scrambled up the sequence of events and personalities. See for instance my chronicle on the extent of the damage caused by Sir William and his cohorts in my essay on the South Asia File .<br /><br />It is not clear whether this error was one caused by inadequate knowledge of language or one due to deliberate falsification of records. It is horrific to think that a scholar of the stature of sir William would resort to skullduggery merely to satisfy his preconceived notions of the antiquity of Indic contributions to the sum of human knowledge. Hence we will assume Napoleon’s dictum was at play here and that we should attribute not to malice that which can be explained by sheer incompetence. This mistake has been compounded over the intervening decades by a succession of British historians, who intent on reassuring themselves of their racial superiority, refused to acknowledge the antiquity of India, merely because ‘it could not possibly be’. When once they discovered the antiquity of Egypt , Mesopotamia and Babylon, every attempt was made not to disturb the notion that the Tigris Euphrates river valley was the cradle of civilization. When finally they stumbled upon increasing number of seals culminating in the discovery of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa by Rakhal Das Banerjee and Daya Ram Sahni, they hit upon the ingenious idea that the Vedic civilization and the Indus Valley Civilization or the Saraswathi Sindhu Civilization, a more apt terminology since most of the archaeological sites lie along the banks of the dried up Saraswathi river, were entirely distinct and unrelated to each other. The consequences of such a postulate have been detailed in the South Asia File.<br /><br />The second difficulty was the Euro centricity(a euphemism for a clearly racist attitude) of European mathematicians, who refused to appreciate the full scope of the Indic contributions and insisted on giving greater credit to Greece and later to Babylonian mathematics rather than recognize Indic and Vedic mathematics on its own merits. If this was indeed a surprise revelation, I fail to see the irony, when a similar Euro centricity was exhibited towards the antiquity of the Vedic people themselves.<br /><br />The contributions of the ancient Indics are usually overlooked and rarely given sufficient credit in Western Texts (see for instance FAQ on Vedic Mathematics ).<br /><br />The Wikipedia section on Indian Mathematics says the following;<br /><br />Unfortunately, Indian contributions have not been given due acknowledgement in modern history, with many discoveries/inventions by Indian mathematicians now attributed to their western counterparts, due to Eurocentrism.<br /><br />The historian Florian Cajori, one of the most celebrated historians of mathematics in the early 20th century, suggested that "Diophantus, the father of Greek algebra, got the first algebraic knowledge from India." This theory is supported by evidence of continuous contact between India and the Hellenistic world from the late 4th century BC, and earlier evidence that the eminent Greek mathematician Pythagoras visited India, which further 'throws open' the Eurocentric ideal.<br /><br />More recently, evidence has been unearthed that reveals that the foundations of calculus were laid in India , at the Kerala School. Some allege that calculus and other mathematics of India were transmitted to Europe through the trade route from Kerala by traders and Jesuit missionaries. Kerala was in continuous contact with China, Arabia, and from around 1500, Europe as well, thus transmission would have<br /><br />Furthermore, we cannot discuss Vedic mathematics without discussing Babylonian and Greek Mathematics to give it the scaffolding and context. We will devote some attention to these developments to put the Indic contribution in its proper context<br /><br />However in recent years, there has been greater international recognition of the scope and breadth of the Ancient Indic contribution to the sum of human knowledge especially in some fields of science and technology such as Mathematics and Medicine. Typical of this new stance is the following excerpt by researchers at St. Andrews in Scotland .<br /><br />An overview of Indian mathematics<br /><br />It is without doubt that mathematics today owes a huge debt to the outstanding contributions made by Indian mathematicians over many hundreds of years. What is quite surprising is that there has been a reluctance to recognize this and one has to conclude that many famous historians of mathematics found what they expected to find, or perhaps even what they hoped to find, rather than to realize what was so clear in front of them.<br /><br />We shall examine the contributions of Indian mathematics in this article, but before looking at this contribution in more detail we should say clearly that the "huge debt" is the beautiful number system invented by the Indians on which much of mathematical development has rested. Laplace put this with great clarity:-<br /><br />The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India . The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.<br /><br />We shall look briefly at the Indian development of the place-value decimal system of numbers later in this article and in somewhat more detail in the separate article Indian numerals. First, however, we go back to the first evidence of mathematics developing in India .<br /><br />Histories of Indian mathematics used to begin by describing the geometry contained in the Sulvasutras but research into the history of Indian mathematics has shown that the essentials of this geometry were older being contained in the altar constructions described in the Vedic mythology text the Shatapatha Brahmana and the Taittiriya Samhita. Also it has been shown that the study of mathematical astronomy in India goes back to at least the third millennium BC and mathematics and geometry must have existed to support this study in these ancient times.<br /><br />Equally exhaustive in its treatment is the Wiki encyclopedia, where in general the dates are still suspect. See for instance the Wikipedia on Indian Mathematics<br /><br />Evidence From Europe That India Is The True Birthplace Of <br />Our Numerals<br /><br />The views of savants and learned scholars from a non-Indian tradition about Indian mathematics are presented here. Note that most of these are dated prior to the1800’s, when India was still untainted with the prefix of being a colonized country<br /><br />Severus Sebokt of Syria in 662 CE: (the following statement must be understood in the context of the alleged Greek claim that all mathematical knowledge emanated from them<br /><br />"I shall not speak here of the science of the Hindus, who are not even Syrians, and not of their subtle discoveries in astronomy that are more inventive than those of the Greeks and of the Babylonians; not of their eloquent ways of counting nor of their art of calculation, which cannot be described in words - I only want to mention those calculations that are done with nine numerals. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value". (Nau, 1910)<br /><br />Said al-Andalusi, probably the first historian of Science who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqut al-Umam in Arabic (Book of Categories of Nations) Translated into English by Alok Kumar in 1992<br /><br />To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers (3) and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances.<br /><br />Albert Einstein in the 20th century also comments on the importance of Indian arithmetic: "We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."<br /><br />Quotes from Liberabaci (Book of the Abacus) by Fibonacci (1170-1250): The nine Indian numerals are ...with these nine and with the sign 0 which in Arabic is sifr, any desired number can be written. (Fibonacci learnt about Indian numerals from his Arab teachers in North Africa) .Fibonacci introduced Indian numerals into Europe in 1202CE.<br /><br />G Halstead<br /><br /><br />...The importance of the creation of the zero mark can never be exaggerated. This giving to airy nothing, not merely a local habituation and a name, a picture, a symbol but helpful power, is the characteristic of the Hindu race from whence it sprang. No single mathematical creation has been more potent for the general on go of intelligence and power. [CS, P 5]<br /><br />The following quotes are from George Ifrah's book Universal History of Numbers<br /><br /> <br />The real inventors of this fundamental discovery, which is no less important than such feats as the mastery of fire, the development of agriculture, or the invention of the wheel, writing or the steam engine, were the mathematicians and astronomers of Indian civilisation: scholars who, unlike the Greeks, were concerned with practical applications and who were motivated by a kind of passion for both numbers and numerical calculations.<br /><br /><br />There is a great deal of evidence to support this fact, and even the Arabo-Muslim scholars themselves have often voiced their agreement<br /><br /><br />The following is a succession of historical accounts in favor of this theory, given in chronological order, beginning with the most recent<br /><br />.<br />1. P. S. Laplace (1814): “The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India . The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.” [Dantzig. p. 26]<br /><br /><br />2. J. F. Montucla (1798): “The ingenious number-system, which serves as the basis for modern arithmetic, was used by the Arabs long before it reached Europe. It would be a mistake, however, to believe that this invention is Arabic. There is a great deal of evidence, much of it provided by the Arabs themselves that this arithmetic originated in India .” [Montucla, I, p. 375J<br /><br /><br />3. John Walls (1616-4703) referred to the nine numerals as Indian figures [Wallis (1695), p. 10]<br /><br /><br />4. Cataneo (1546) le noue figure de gli Indi, “the nine figures from India ”. [Smith and Karpinski (1911), p.3<br /><br /><br />5. Willichius (1540) talks of Zyphrae! Nice, “Indian figures”. [Smith and Karpinski (1911) p. 3]<br /><br /><br />6. The Crafte of Nombrynge (c. 1350), the oldest known English arithmetical tract: II fforthermore ye most vndirstonde that in this craft ben vsed teen figurys, as here bene writen for esampul 098 ^ 654321... in the quych we vse teen figwys of Inde. Questio II why Zen figurys of Inde? Soiucio. For as I have sayd afore thei werefondefrrst in Inde. [D. E. Smith (1909)<br /><br />7. Petrus of Dada (1291) wrote a commentary on a work entitled Algorismus by Sacrobosco (John of Halifax, c. 1240), in which he says the following (which contains a mathematical error): Non enim omnis numerus per quascumquefiguras Indorum repraesentatur “Not every number can be represented in Indian figures”. [Curtze (1.897), p. 25<br /><br />8.Around the year 1252, Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes (1260—1310) composed a work entitled Logistike Indike (“Indian Arithmetic”) in Greek, or even Psephophoria kata Indos (“The Indian way of counting”), where he explains the following: “There are only nine figures. These are:<br />123456789<br />[figures given in their Eastern Arabic form]<br /><br />A sign known as tziphra can be added to these, which, according to the Indians, means ‘nothing’. The nine figures themselves are Indian, and tziphra is written thus: 0”. [B. N., Pans. Ancien Fonds grec, Ms 2428, f” 186 r”]<br /><br /><br />9. Around 1240, Alexandre de Ville-Dieu composed a manual in verse on written calculation (algorism). Its title was Carmen de Algorismo, and it began with the following two lines: Haec algorismus ars praesens dicitur, in qua Talibus Indorumfruimur bis quinquefiguris<br /><br /><br />“Algorism is the art by which at present we use those Indian figures, which number two times five”. [Smith and Karpinski (1911), p. 11]<br /><br /><br />10. In 1202, Leonard of Pisa (known as Fibonacci), after voyages that took him to the Near East and Northern Africa, and in particular to Bejaia (now in Algeria), wrote a tract on arithmetic entitled Liber Abaci (“a tract about the abacus”), in which he explains the following:<br /><br /><br />Cum genitor meus a patria publicus scriba in duana bugee pro pisanis mercatoribus ad earn confluentibus preesset, me in pueritia mea ad se uenire faciens, inspecta utilitate el cornmoditate fiutura, ibi me studio abaci per aliquot dies stare uoluit et doceri. Vbi a mirabii magisterio in arte per nouem figuras Indorum introductus. . . Novem figurae Indorum hae sun!: cum his itaque novemfiguris. et turn hoc signo o. Quod arabice zephirum appellatur, scribitur qui libel numerus: “My father was a public scribe of Bejaia, where he worked for his country in Customs, defending the interests of Pisan merchants who made their fortune there. He made me learn how to use the abacus when I was still a child because he saw how I would benefit from this in later life. In this way I learned the art of counting using the nine Indian figures... The nine Indian figures are as follows:<br /><br /><br />987654321<br /><br /><br />[figures given in contemporary European cursive form].<br /><br /><br />“That is why, with these nine numerals, and with this sign 0, called zephirum in Arab, one writes all the numbers one wishes.”[Boncompagni (1857), vol.1]<br /><br />11. C. U50, Rabbi Abraham Ben MeIr Ben Ezra (1092—1167), after a long voyage to the East and a period spent in Italy , wrote a work in Hebrew entitled: Sefer ha mispar (“Number Book”), where he explains the basic rules of written calculation.<br /><br /><br />He uses the first nine letters of the Hebrew alphabet to represent the nine units. He represents zero by a little circle and gives it the Hebrew name of galgal (“wheel”), or, more frequently, sfra (“void”) from the corresponding Arabic word.<br /><br /><br />However, all he did was adapt the Indian system to the first nine Hebrew letters (which he naturally had used since his childhood).<br /><br /><br />In the introduction, he provides some graphic variations of the figures, making it clear that they are of Indian origin, after having explained the place-value system: “That is how the learned men of India were able to represent any number using nine shapes which they fashioned themselves specifically to symbolize the nine units.” (Silberberg (1895), p.2: Smith and Ginsburg (1918): Steinschneider (1893)1<br /><br /><br />12. Around the same time, John of Seville began his Liberalgoarismi de practica arismetrice (“Book of Algoarismi on practical arithmetic”) with the following:<br /><br /><br />Numerus est unitatum cot/echo, quae qua in infinitum progredilur (multitudo enim crescit in infinitum), ideo a peritissimis Indis sub quibusdam regulis et certis lirnitibus infinita numerositas coarcatur, Ut de infinitis dfinita disciplina traderetur etfuga subtilium rerum sub alicuius artis certissima Jege ten eretur:<br /><br /> “A number is a collection of units, and because the collection is infinite (for multiplication can continue indefinitely), the Indians ingeniously enclosed this infinite multiplicity within certain rules and limits so that infinity could be scientifically defined: these strict rules enabled them to pin down this subtle concept.<br />[B. N., Paris, Ms. lat. 16 202, p 51: Boncompagni (1857), vol. I, p. 261<br /><br />13. C. 1143, Robert of Chester wrote a work entitled: Algoritmi de numero Indorum (“Algoritmi: Indian figures”), which is simply a translation of an Arabic work about Indian arithmetic. [Karpinski (1915); Wallis (1685). p. 121<br /><br /><br />14. C. 1140, Bishop Raymond of Toledo gave his patronage to a work written by the converted Jew Juan de Luna and archdeacon Domingo Gondisalvo: the Liber Algorismi de numero Indorum (“Book of Algorismi of Indian figures) which is simply a translation into a Spanish and Latin version of an Arabic tract on Indian arithmetic. [Boncompagni (1857), vol. 11<br /><br /><br />15. C. 1130, Adelard of Bath wrote a work entitled: Algoritmi de numero Indorum (“Algoritmi: of Indian figures”), which is simply a translation of an Arabic tract about Indian calculation. [Boncompagni (1857), vol. Ii<br /><br /><br />16. C. 1125, The Benedictine chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote De gestis regum Anglorum, in which he related that the Arabs adopted the Indian figures and transported them to the countries they conquered, particularly Spain . He goes on to explain that the monk Gerbert of Aurillac, who was to become Pope Sylvester II (who died in 1003) and who was immortalized for restoring sciences in Europe, studied in either Seville or Cordoba, where he learned about Indian figures and their uses and later contributed to their circulation in the Christian countries of the West. L Malmesbury (1596), f” 36 r’; Woepcke (1857), p. 35J<br /><br /><br />17. Written in 976 in the convent of Albelda (near the town of Logroño, in the north of Spain ) by a monk named Vigila, the Coda Vigilanus contains the nine numerals in question, but not zero. The scribe clearly indicates in the text that the figures are of Indian origin:<br /><br /><br />Item de figuels aritmetice. Scire debemus Indos subtilissimum ingenium habere et ceteras gentes eis in arithmetica et geometrica et ceteris liberalibu.c disciplinis concedere. Et hoc manifèstum at in novem figuris, quibus quibus designant unum quenque gradum cuiu.slibetgradus. Quatrum hec sunt forma:<br /><br /><br />9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.<br /><br /><br />“The same applies to arithmetical figures. It should be noted that the Indians have an extremely subtle intelligence, and when it comes to arithmetic, geometry and other such advanced disciplines, other ideas must make way for theirs. The best proof of this is the nine figures with which they represent each number no matter how high. This is how the figures look:<br /><br /><br />9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1<br /><br />Al-Khwarismi (783-850 CE) Popularized Indian numerals, mathematics including Algebra in the Islamic world and the Christian West .Algebra was named after his treatise 'Al jabr wa'l Muqabalah'' which when translated from Arabic means 'Transposition and Reduction'. Little is known about his life except that he lived at the court of the Abbasid Caliph al Ma'amun , in Baghdad shortly after Charlemagne was made emperor of the west. and that he was one of the most important mathematicians and astronomers who worked at the house of Wisdom (Bayt al Hikma)<br /><br />'<br /><br />Muhammad Ben Musa aI-Khuwarizmi (circa 783—850.). Portrait on wood made in 1983 from a Persian illuminated manuscript for the l200th anniversary of his birth. Museum of the Ulugh Begh Observatory. Urgentsch (Kharezm). Uzbekistan (ex USSR ). By calling one of its fundamental practices and theoretical activities the algorithm computer science commemorates this great Muslim scholar.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1152147768830556682006-07-05T18:02:00.000-07:002006-07-05T18:02:49.166-07:002,300-year-old artefacts may change Ashoka-Buddhist historyBHUBANESWAR: Orissa Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies (OIMSEAS) has unearthed some 2,300-year-old artefacts at Jajpur district in Orissa, which, it claimed, could change some historical narratives on the Ashokan period.<br /><br />The description of Chinese pilgrim Hieun-Tsang about Ashoka that he had constructed 10 stupas in Odra country where Buddha had preached may come true.<br /><br />Earlier, historians refused to accept the narrative. We have already analysed five stupas and found three more similar structures,” OIMSEAS Director Debaraj Pradhan told mediapersons here. He said a huge inscribed monolithic stupa along with other remnants of Buddhist establishments had been detected on top of Panturi hill in Jajpur district.<br /><br />The current explorations and excavations are unique since nowhere in India will you find old artefacts in such a small area,” Pradhan said. The stupas were found at Langudi, Tarapur, Deuli Kayama hills, Neulipur, Bajragiri, Kantigadia and Panturi.<br /><br />The organisation had extensively surveyed the Brahmani-Kelua river valley since 1996 to explore and excavate Buddhist sites. It had excavated Langudi hill site and discovered ancient Pushpagiri Vihara, an Ashokan stupa, two rare statues believed to be that of Emperor Ashoka himself, besides 54 rock-cut votive stupas, five Dhyani Buddha statues and remains of two monasteries.<br /><br />The excavation of the fort of Radhanagar indicated that it could be the ancient capital of Kalinga, Pradhan, also the curator of state archaeology, said.<br /><br />Either it could be Dantapura mentioned in Ceylonese literature Datha-Ddhatu-Vamsa or Tosali mentioned in special Dhauli rock edict of Ashoka,” he said.<br /><br />The artefacts discovered from last year’s excavation established that Radhanagar or Tosali was a fort city. But interesting findings of this year indicated that it could be a port city.<br /><br />The discovery of Roman Bullae (an earthen ornament) and Roman Rowlletted pottery suggested that the place had connections with Rome. And it could not have happened, had Tosali not been a port city,” Pradhan said. He, however, made it clear that only around five per cent of the total excavation had been completed.<br /><br />Once we excavate the entire archaeologically-rich area in Jajpur district, we would be able to come to a concrete conclusion,” he said. Besides discovery of Ashokan period artefacts, archaeologists have also stumbled upon many antiques, which implies that the whole area could have been a hub of religious activities.<br /><br />The current excavation also threw up broken Buddhist images, votive stupas and collection of pottery remains from the surface near Vajragiri.<br /><br />Pradhan said Vajragiri could have had close cultural relations with Japan because the highest temple of Japan was the Vajragiri temple (Kongobu-Ji) at Kuito, the ancient capital of that country.<br /><br />Interestingly, at the foot of the present Vajragiri a big ancient village Kotpur was situated, he said and added that more research is necessary to establish the connection.<br /><br />The Vajragiri excavation had yielded one piece of stone trident, designed religious lamps 12 pieces of heavy iron rods and two pieces of conch in good condition.<br /><br />Pradhan said most of the inscriptional evidence and its photographs have been sent to Dr K.V. Ramesh, retired director of epigraphy at Mysore, for deciphering.<br /><br />The present inscriptional evidence may prove the association of Buddha with Kayama hill in Kalinga country in his lifetime,” he said.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Orissa Culture Minister Suryanarayan Patro has directed Jajpur District Collector Aurobindo Padhi to visit all hills identified by OIMSEAS and involve eminent historians in the research work.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1146029217193464582006-04-25T22:26:00.000-07:002006-04-25T22:26:57.403-07:00Scientists discover 500 BC sky mapP Revathi<br />CNN-IBN<br />Posted Tuesday , April 25, 2006 at 21:38<br />Email Email Print Print<br /><br />Hyderabad: When the carving of the Great Bear constellation on a stone, made around 500 BC at Mudumala village in Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh were discovered, scientists were suitably astounded.<br /><br />They began to wonder how ancient Indian astrologers could tell exactly how stars and constellations were grouped without the help of modern devices such as the telescope.<br /><br />The mystery was unravelled when scientists discovered an ancient sky map in Hyderabad.<br /><br />The sky map, which is probably the oldest in Asia, was carved out by megalithic Indians with astounding accuracy.<br /><br />The map represents the seven stars also known as the saptarishi mandal, which have for ages been used to pinpoint the North (for the Pole star, located above the North Pole lies opposite the Ursa Major or the Great Bear).<br /><br />According to Reader, Department of History, Central University Hyderabad, Dr K P Rao, "The discovery of the sky map indicates that from olden days itself the Indians had adequate knowledge of Astronomical science. In fact they used this knowledge to construct monuments based on the directions denoted by stars and constellations."<br /><br />According to Historians, this is the only sky map to be unearthed in India, probably even South Asia.<br /><br />Over ages the stone which has the sky map carved on it, is being protected by the local folk.<br /><br />Eighty menhirs (standing stones) and several hundred smaller stones surround the map. There is a local folklore, which talks about how these stones are cursed men and cattle.<br /><br />"With this belief the local people do not even dare to cause any damage to the stones and so the sky map remained intact over ages," says Dr Rao.<br /><br />A detailed study revealed that the megalithic Indians had good knowledge of solar trajectories and the sky map was used to determine the calendar and the seasons with precise information about sun rise-sun set with exact directions.<br /><br />This information was expected to be used predominantly for agricultural operations.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1142557029704316222006-03-16T16:57:00.000-08:002006-03-16T16:57:09.786-08:00Gold idols found in Tripura pondBy Indo Asian News Service <br /><br />Agartala, March 16 (IANS) Two gold idols have been recovered from a pond in Tripura, triggering a debate among experts that Buddhism and Hinduism co-existed in the state in ancient times.<br /><br />The idols were found by labourers Wednesday at Bishramganj in west Tripura, about 35 km from here. One of the idols is a nine-inch Buddha flanked by two dancing girls while the other is an eight-inch image of Vishnu in a standing position.<br /><br />The idols are being kept at the local magistrate's office before officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) take possession of them for ascertaining details regarding age and history.<br /><br />Local historians and archaeological experts say there might have been some relation between Buddhism and Hinduism in Tripura till the 13th century.<br /><br />A huge number of Buddha and Hindu idols have been recovered from north and south Tripura districts. The ASI is taking steps to protect them as national treasures.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1142469342387135372006-03-15T16:35:00.000-08:002006-03-15T16:35:42.443-08:00The universality of SanskritBy Sudhakar Raje<br /><br />About 70 purely Sanskrit words have also been included in the Concise Oxford Dictionary with the same meaning. Additionally, there are more than 80 prefixes/suffixes in English that are Sanskrit-based. These are used to form at least one thousand words given in COD. The Sanskrit-based prefix “over” is used in 170 English words according to the Navneet Advanced Dictionary, and in 270, according to COD.<br /><br />Concerted and continuing research in various fields of scholarship like archaeology, mythology, linguistics, history of religion and so on has conclusively proved that Hindu civilisation had once pervaded the whole ancient world. And as the one vehicle for the worldwide spread of Hindu religion and culture, Hindu science and art, Hindu medicine and mathematics was the Sanskrit language, it also spread internationally. Right from Rigvedic times Sanskrit-speaking emigrants from India had settled in various parts of Asia and Europe, eventually reaching even the so-called New World, the Americas, millenniums ago. This resulted in Sanskrit influence on the local languages of the contemporary world. Conversely, Sanskrit became, in a way, the language of the world.<br /><br />Credible Claim<br />Is this much too sweeping a claim to be credible, or does it have a basis in fact? In search of an honest answer to this question this writer waded through about 60 sources, including around 30 standard works in various aspects of ancient history plus more than a dozen dictionaries. On collating the collected information language-wise as well as region-wise he found that the claim of Sanskrit having been the whole ancient world´s language can certainly be sustained, albeit in varying degrees.<br /><br />This writer found that words based on, or derived from, Sanskrit are present, in one form or another, in 80 languages of the world, from the Far East to the Far West.<br /><br />Among them four languages, for obvious reasons, need to be mentioned separately—English, Greek, Latin and Arabic.<br /><br />English<br />The English language has a Vedic ancestry. In the aftermath of the Rigvedic Dasharajnya war, the Druhyu community, which had taken part in it and had been defeated, migrated westward, eventually reaching parts of Western Europe. There “Druhyu” became “Druid”, and the Druids later came to be called Celts. Their language was Celtic, which was spoken in large parts of Western Europe, including Britain, during the centuries preceding the Christian era. Modern lexicographers of English admit that some Celtic languages are still spoken in Britain, though they maintain that English falls in the “Germanic”, and not “Celtic”, branch of “Proto-Indo-European” languages. Suffice it to say here that no credible evidence exists of an Indo-European language or language-group.<br /><br />So far as current English is concerned, according to Dr N.R.Waradpande one-fourth of the total English vocabulary is Sanskritic. Webster´s, the world´s biggest (18-volume) English dictionary, is said to have as many as 40,000 words described as “akin to Sanskrit”. Even in the “Concise” edition of the Oxford Dictionary this writer identified around 400 Sanskrit-based words. About 70 purely Sanskrit words have also been included in the Concise Oxford Dictionary with the same meaning. Additionally, there are more than 80 prefixes/suffixes in English that are Sanskrit-based. These are used to form at least one thousand words given in COD. The Sanskrit-based prefix “over” is used in 170 English words, according to the Navneet Advanced Dictionary, and in 270, according to COD. In the case of the Sanskrit-derived prefix “non” COD says the number of English words using it is “unlimited”. Many Sanskrit-based prefixes are also used in half a dozen languages like Greek, Latin, French and Gothic.<br /><br />Greek<br />According to the Mahabharat, the descendents of ancient king Yayati´s son Turvasu were called the Yavanas. From Yavana originated the name Ionia. Ionia is a region in Asia Minor, and there is evidence showing that Vedic peoples migrated to Asia Minor after they established themselves in Iran. As Asian Minor is contiguous to Iran the Iranians seemed to have owed their language and culture to a two-fold influence—Indian and Iranian. Greeks from the north-west also came to Ionia, but his was after Vedic influence was well-established and the Ionian Greeks were linguistically and culturally absorbed by the Vedics from India.<br /><br />The most ancient Greek work, Homer´s Illiad (about 900 to 800 BC) is in the Ionian language, which is influenced by the language of Turvasu, that is Sanskrit, and Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian scriptures, which is only a phonetic variant of Sanskrit. This Ionian Sanskritic language was the mother of the Greek language.<br /><br />This writer has identified about 100 Greek words in COD that are derived from Sanskrit. In addition, as mentioned earlier, many Greek prefixes are also Sanskrit-based.<br /><br />Some Greek words not only have a Sanskrit derivation, they also have a Hindu history. A couple of examples:<br /><br />Allopathy: Allopathy is an allied development as a branch of ancient Indian medicine, which prevailed in Europe and other parts of the world till about the end of the 18th century. The Greek prefix allos means “other”. So “allo-pathy” is borrowed from “the other”, that is, from the ancient Indian system of medicine—Ayurveda.<br /><br />Indigo: The English word “Indigo” is derived from the Greek word Indigon, which means “from India”. Proof exits that Indigo was made and used to dye cloth in ancient India.<br /><br />Prometheus: According to Greek mythology Prometheus was the first fire-giver. He is Pra-manth of the Rig Veda. In the Greek language Prometheus means “fore-sight”. The Vedic Atharvan fire was conceived in the brain (intellect) and actually produced by rubbing (manthana) together two hard substances.<br /><br />Latin<br />Along with Greek, Vedic Asia Minor was also the cradle of Latin. Probably as a result of the break-up of the Vedic Hittite empire in Mesopotamia, a people later known as Etruscans first appeared in the Etruria region of Italy around 900 BC, from where, during succeeding centuries, they spread to other Italian areas including Latium, the birth-place of Latin. Later, because of the political dominance of the Roman Empire, Latin became the common language for centuries. This in turn spread Sanskrit roots to languages of Europe.<br /><br />This writer has identified 130 Latin words in the COD that have a Sanskrit base. Also, as pointed out previously, a number of Latin prefixes are derived from Sanskrit.<br /><br />Arabic<br />There is a clear presence of Sanskrit in the Arabic language, albeit in Arabicised forms. This writer has identified 40 such words.<br /><br />Dr Waradpande says there would be more Sanskrit words in Arabic than in English. In his opinion, there is a close connection between Arabic and Zend, the language of Avesta, which signifies that Arabic should contain more Sanskrit words than English does, as Zend/Avestan is only a phonetic variant of Sanskrit.<br /><br />Other Languages<br />Now about the other languages of the world. This writer divided the words he identified into the following global regions: South East, Far East, Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, North America. Then in each region he subdivided the languages into two broad categories—old and current. On so doing, his findings were as follows:<br /><br />South East<br />Current languages: Indonesian (number of words 2), Burmese (3), Balinese (4), Javanese (5), Malaysian (16), Thai (51).<br /><br />Old languages: Busang (Borneo) (5), Lava (Laos) (10).<br /><br />Far East<br />Current languages: Mongolian (3), Japanese (8), Chinese (10).<br /><br />Old languages: Tagalog (Philippines) (2), Maori (New Zealand) (16).<br /><br />Middle East<br />Current languages: Pushtu (Afghanistan) (1), Hebrew (4), Khowari (Afghan region) (15), Kafiri (North Afghanistan) (18), Persian (38).<br /><br />Old languages: Aramaic (Mesopotamia), Assyrian, Babylonian, Mitanni (Mesopotamia) (1 each), Akkadian (Mesopotamia), Khwarezmian (Iran) (2 each), Sumerian (3), Kashshi (Mesopotamia) (4), Hittite (Mesopotamia) (9), Avesta (18).<br /><br />Central Asia<br />Current languages: Armenian (1), Khotanese (2), Tibetan (2).<br /><br />Old languages: Tungus (Siberia), Phrygian (Asia Minor), (1 each), Tocharian (Region north of Black Sea) (3), Parya (Oxus region) (68), Niya Prakrit (Chinese Turkestan) (71).<br /><br />Africa<br />Current languages: Swanili (East Africa), Amharic (Ethiopia) (2 each).<br /><br />Old languages: Yoruba (Nigeria) (1), Egyptian (5).<br /><br />Europe<br />Current languages: Basque (France/ Spain border region), Finnish (Finland) (1 each), Albanian, Lettic (Baltic country Latvia), Maltese (Mediterranean island Malta), Polynesian (Pacific island group), Portuguese (2 each), Danish (Denmark), Rumanian (4 each), Czech, Polish (Poland) (5 each), Dutch (Holland), Lithuanian (Baltic country Lithuania) (6 each), Norse (Norway) (7), Irish (9), Spanish (12), Romany (Roma gypsies of Europe) (23), German (33), Italian, Russian (34 each), French (46).<br /><br />Old languages: Cornish (Celtic language of Cornwall in Britain), Gaulish (France), Umbrian (Italian region) (1 each), Welsh (Celtic language of Wales in Britain) (4), Gaelic (Scotland) (5), Gothic (Western Europe) (14).<br /><br />South America<br />Old languages: Nahautl (1), Qechua (36).<br /><br />North America<br />Old languages: Iroquois (1), O´odham (2).<br /><br />Names<br />Names of persons, peoples, deities, rivers, mountains, regions and even whole countries that were derived from Sanskrit (some of which are still in use) can also be found all over the world. This writer has identified the following numbers of such names:<br /><br />South East (92), Far East (24), Middle East (130), Central Asia (15), Africa (22), Europe (58), South America (24), North America (21).<br /><br />These numerically meagre identifications in this article are clearly inadequate for qualifying it as serious research. However, even this preliminary collation of available information does indicate the global presence of Sanskrit—at times just a trace, at times quite clear. So perhaps some Sanskritists and linguists could team up to establish beyond doubt the truth of a quote with which the writer would like to conclude:<br /><br />“Sanskrit was the original language of the earth.”<br /><br />—Hallhead<br />(Quoted in Indian antiquities, Vol. IV; Ed. Thomas Maurice)<br />(Digest of Sanskrit Abroad! An International Glossary of Sanskrit-based Words in 80 Languages around the World, compiled and edited by the author, and currently under print.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1140178268532697602006-02-17T04:11:00.000-08:002006-02-17T04:11:08.593-08:00Sanskrit in EnglishBy Sudhakar Raje<br /><br />In South-East Asia the influence of Sanskrit was so strong that it can be seen not only in old inscriptions but also in Sanskrit names for people and places that are still in use, such as in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Burma. In the Middle-East, the present homeland of fundamentalist Islam Sanskrit had an undeniable presence.<br /><br />Once upon a time, millenniums ago, the whole world was Hindu. As the mist of antiquity are dispelled, layer by layer, by unceasing research in such diverse disciplines as Archaeology, Mythology, Cosmology, Geology, Linguistics and so on, the truth emerges that from the very dawn of human civilization Arya/Hindu influence pervaded the world from East to West.<br /><br />Worldwide Hindu Civilization<br /><br />The most obvious evidence of this global Hindu history is of course the idols and icons of various deities of the Hindu pantheon that have been found almost all over the world. Some Hindu deities, like Ganesha, Shiva, Vishnu and Durga, have a truly global presence. The worship of the Vedic Sun God was a popular religion in the Roman Empire, Egypt, and all over the Middle-East. As for the western hemisphere, the history of Hindu culture in the Americas is both hoary and extensive.<br /><br />Worldwide Sanskrit<br />For this worldwide spread of Hindu religion and culture, Hindu philosophy and science, the one vehicle was the Sanskrit language. Prof Avinash Chandra writes in his book Rigvedic India, that emigrants from India settled in various parts of Asia and Europe in ancient times. This resulted in Sanskrit influence on local languages. Arnold Toynbee’s book Mankind and Mother Earth contains a map showing Sanskrit speaking nomads to the south-east of the Caspian Sea. When even nomads moving between Asia and Europe spoke Sanskrit, it is certain that the language was used by householders and educational institutions of Asia and Europe in those times.<br /><br />In South-East Asia the influence of Sanskrit was so strong that it can be seen not only in old inscriptions but also in Sanskrit names for people and places that are still in use, such as in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Burma. In the Middle-East, the present homeland of fundamentalist Islam that stretches from Afghanistan to Arabia and extends to Egypt, Sanskrit had an undeniable presence. Sanskrit used to be spoken in the Hindu kingdom of Kabul, and a thousand years ago there was a Sanskrit university here. In Iran, the Zoroastrian scripture is written in the Avestan language, which is just a phonetic variation of Sanskrit.<br /><br />Vedic Ancestry<br />As for Europe, in his monumental work The Story of Civilization Will Durant calls Sanskrit “the mother of Indo-European languages”. In the light of recent research by Indian scholars it would be nearer the truth to say that Sanskrit is not only the mother of Indian languages but the mother of European languages as well. In fact, this research strongly suggests that they have Vedic ancestry.<br /><br />The Rig Veda contains the description of a great battle called Dasharajnya, the “Battle of Ten Kings”, which is the world’s oldest recorded battle. It was fought between the Tritsu King Sudasa on the one hand and a confederacy of ten peoples or clans on the other. These ten peoples were Pakhta, Bhalana, Alina, Shiva, Vishanin, Simyu, Bhrigu, Prithu and Parshu. Collectively they had two group names—Anu and Druhyu. The Druhyu king defeated in this battle was named Angara,. His successor, King Gandhara, migrated to the North-West with his clan and gave his name to the Gandhara country. The Puranas, which are the historical companion texts of the Rig Veda, clearly state that major sections of these Druhyus emigrated to distant lands to the North. Those among them who spread to Europe came to be known as Celts, and the language they spoke came to be called Celtic. During the last some centuries before the Christian era Celtic was spoken over a wide area of Europe from Spain to Britain. These ancient Celts were originally the Druids, who in turn were identifiable with the Druhyus.<br /><br />The languages the peoples that fought the Dasharajnya war spoke had split into two broad groups, called Satem and Kentum, in the original Vedic/Indian homeland itself, the Anu speaking the Satem dialects and the Druhyu the Kentum ones, With the westward spread of the Druhyus the latter evolved into proto-proto-Indo-European languages, some of which became extinct, like Latin, while others developed into extant, spoken languages, including English.<br /><br />This is borne out by a study of the etymology of English words. For instance, the words in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD) are stated to have generally Latin roots and frequently Greek roots. As a matter of fact, in numerous such cases the evolved English word or the Latin/Greek root has such a striking resemblance to a Sanskrit word, both phonetically and in respect of meaning, as to clearly suggest that the root of the given root is Sanskrit. This writer has identified hundreds of such words in COD. In addition, there are at least a thousand words in this dictionary where the prefix or suffix is derived from Sanskrit. COD also lists about 70 purely Sanskrit words as part of the English vocabulary.<br /><br />Dr N.R.Waradpande is currently engaged in compiling a full-fledged dictionary of Sanskrit-based English words, and he is confident of identifying 10,000 such words. What is remarkable, Webster’s, the world’s biggest (18-volume) English dictionary, is said to have as many as 40,000 words described as “akin to Sanskrit”. In fact, says Warandpande, one-fourth of the total English vocabulary is Sanskritic.<br /><br />Interesting Background<br />Some English words not only have a Sanskrit etymology but also a Hindu history. A few such examples are given here:<br /><br />Abba: This word has not only a Sanskrit origin but also a Hindu history. Abba means ‘father’, and is derived from Sanskrit Appa—ap, ‘water’ + pa, ‘to drink’. There is a Hindu ritual to offer water to the father after his death, which he is supposed to drink. So Appa, ‘drinker of water’, means ‘father’.<br /><br />Allopathy: Allopathy is an allied development as a branch of ancient Indian medicine, which prevailed in Europe and other parts of the world till about the end of the 18th century. Allo means ‘a learned borrowing’ from the Greek word allos, meaning “other”. So ‘Allo-pathy’ is borrowed from ‘the other’, that is from the ancient Indian system of medicine, Ayurveda.<br /><br />Bane: The English word ‘bane’, meaning ‘a curse’, has an interesting Hindu mythological background. Ancient king Prithu-Vainya was considered the original Arya king, because he started the practice of agriculture. He is thus honoured as the founder of the Arya (‘agricultural’) civilization. ‘Vainya’ means ‘son of Vena’. King Vena, however, was a tyrant, and was described as a curse on Dharma. So ‘bane’, derived from ‘Vena’, means a curse.<br /><br />Brahmin: A curious example of how not only a Sanskrit term but even the Hindu concept underlying it has become established in the English language is provided by the word ‘Brahmin’. In his magnum opus Kane and Abel best-selling British novelist William Archer frequently uses this term to denote a particular class of people or its style of speech or accent. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary ‘Brahmin’ means “a socially or culturally superior person”.<br /><br />Elephant: The word ‘elephant’ is an interesting combination of Sanskrit and Arabic roots. It has three components, al-ibha-danta. Al is Arabic for ‘the’, while ibha and danta are Sanskrit, meaning ‘elephant’ and ‘tooth’. The English word ‘ivory’, meaning ‘elephant’s tusk’, has a related etymology. The Hebrew word ‘habbin’ is derived from ‘ibha’, as also the Egyptian word ‘abu’. This becomes ‘ebut’ in Etruscan and ‘eboreum’ in Latin, finally becoming ‘ivory’ in English.<br /><br />Indigo: The English word ‘Indigo’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Indikon’, which means ‘from India’. Proof exists that Indigo was made and used to dye cloth in ancient India.<br /><br />Non: The English (and also French and Latin) prefix ‘non’ is derived from the Sanskrit word na/no, meaning ‘no’. Navneet Advanced Dictionary (English-English-Marathi) has given about 550 English words using this Sanskrit-derived prefix. Concise Oxford Dictionary says the number of English words using this prefix is “unlimited”.<br /><br />Over: The English prefix ‘over-’ is derived from the Sanskrit term upari, meaning ‘above’/ ‘upon’, excessive’/ ‘extra’. Navneet Advanced Dictionary has given a list of about 170 words using it. Concise Oxford Dictionary contains about 270 English words formed with this prefix.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1139318196173269022006-02-07T05:16:00.000-08:002006-02-07T05:16:39.353-08:00Is Ramayana a mere epic or part of India’s ancient history?By Arabinda Ghose<br /><br />Most of the Hindus of India and Nepal as also of countries where emigrant Hindus live in sizeable numbers celebrate Ram Navami, which falls on the ninth day of the bright half of the lunar month of Chaitra, corresponding to March-April of the Georgian calendar. Countries of South-East Asia such as Thailand too revere Lord Rama and the predominantly Muslim nation of Indonesia celebrates Ramayana as a ballet.<br /><br />The Valmiki Ramayana in Sanskrit as also the Tulsi Ramayana by Saint Tulsidas in Hindi are extremely popular volumes throughout India and abroad. But is Ramayana a description of the lives and times of Lord Rama and the Raghukul (the descendants of King Raghu) and the times during an unknown period of India’s ancient “history” or is it nothing but an epic which, Hindus believe to be a true account of the events in ancient India?<br /><br />Shri Pushkar Bhatnagar, who is a computer expert, claims that he has not only calculated the exact date and time of Lord Rama’s birth, but all happenings in his life till his age of 39 years, when he had returned to Ayodhya after slaying Ravana. According to him Lord Rama was born at 12.30 p.m. on January 10, 5114 b.c. Shri Bhatnagar has relied entirely on the positions of the sun, the moon and the planets, visible to the naked eye those days, described by Sage Valmiki in his Ramayana for calculating the day and even time of many of the events in the life of Lord Rama.<br /><br />This article is merely a rewriting of the letter of Shri Bhatnagar published by Asian Agri History, dated October-December, 2004, a magazine which is devoted to discovering and writing about the ancient systems of agriculture that was in vogue in the Asian region in ancient times.<br /><br />A computer specialist claims firm dates of Ramayana, says Lord Rama was born in 5114 b.c.<br /><br />The following is the extract of the letter:<br /><br />“Moving forward, it has been stated that on the Amavasya (new moon day) of the 10th month of the 13th year of his exile he (had) fought Khar and Dushan and on that day, a solar eclipse was seen from Panchawati. Not only had a solar eclipse occurred that day, but the planets too were arranged in the sky in a particular manner (that day). Six months later, when Rama (had) killed Bali on the Amavasya of Ashadh (June-July) of the 14th year of (his) exile, another solar eclipse was visible in the morning sky and after five months, when Hanuman went to meet Sita in Lanka, a lunar eclipse was witnessed in the evening. Besides these, several other planetary positions have been mentioned at different other places.<br /><br />“It is important to know that planetary positions keep (on) changing every day in the sky and they do not repeat (the same positions) for lakhs of years. Moreover, if we know the position of all the planets in the sky, they refer to one and only one date in history.<br /><br />“The effort to provide dates to the planetary positions mentioned in (the) Ramayana and other Vedic literature began with (the) legendary Bal Gangadhar Tilak in his well-known book The Orion. However, the efforts made so far were based on manual computations. Since one revolution of these planets is completed in a highly complex fractional number (apparently the author refers to the period of the revolution of these planets around the sun and of the rotations on their axes), it is difficult to arrive at the accurate day and time in history (when these events had taken place). But in the late 1990s, many (computer) software were developed (in order) to track the positions of the planets in the sky and with these software, (the) planets’ position at any given point of time in the sky can be known.<br /><br />“By using a powerful planetarium software, I found that the planetary positions mentioned in the Ramayana for the date of the birth of Lord Rama had occurred in the sky at 12.30 p.m. on January 10, 5114 b.c. It was the ninth day of the Shukla Paksha of Chaitra (March-April) month too. Moving forward, after 25 years of the birth of Lord Rama, the position of (the) planets in the sky tallies with their description in the Ramayana. Again, on the Amavasya of the 10th month of the 13th year of exile, the solar eclipse had indeed occurred and the particular arrangement of (the) planets in the sky was visible. (Date comes to October 7, 5077 b.c.). Even the occurrence of the subsequent two eclipses also tally with the respective descriptions in (the) Valmiki Ramayana. Date of Hanuman’s meeting (with) Sita in Lanka was September 12, 5076, b.c. In this manner, the entire sequence of the planetary positions gets verified and all the dates can be precisely determined.”<br /><br />Is Ramayana a description of the lives and times of Lord Rama and the Raghukul (the descendants of King Raghu) and the times during an unknown period of India’s ancient “history” or is it nothing but an epic which, Hindus believe to be a true account of the events in ancient India?<br /><br />Shri Bhatnagar adds that the entire dating had been conducted objectively because the software does not permit any manipulation and the verses of the Ramayana were also free of any doubts. Leading scientists and those in the field have appreciated this work. Since the entire sequence tallies, it proves that all the observations in the Ramayana were actual recordings and not conjectures.<br /><br />Indologists suggest, Shri Bhatnagar says, that he should produce some archaeological evidences in support of these dates because for western historians, these dates are too old to be accepted. “By God’s grace” he says, “I came across an interesting archaeological evidence also”. He describes that evidence in the following paragraphs.<br /><br />“About a few months ago, NASA (National Aeronautical and Space Administration of the United States) had photographed an ancient bridge like structure between India and Sri Lanka and stated that it appeared to be man-made. Most of our historians and theologists jumped at the story and said that it was related to Lord Rama. NASA denied having made any statement regarding how the bridge got built, etc. The enthusiasm died soon and nothing could be concluded since we were trying to prove that it was built millions of years ago.<br /><br />“Just analyse the situation”, said Shri Bhatnagar, “Suppose you build your house with stones which are millions of years old. Does your house also become millions of years old? The answer is a clear No”.<br /><br />“This was the mistake we were making while trying to claim the ancient bridge and the antiquity of Lord Rama to millions of years ago. Actually, the remains of the bridge, which Lord Rama had built, are still available at a place called “Chedu Karai”in Tamil Nadu. Chedu means setu (bridge) and karai means corner. Interestingly, the remains of the bridge are available at the depth of ten feet below the water and these are about 1.5 kilometres inside the sea.<br /><br />Valmiki mentions that six months later, when Rama (had) killed Bali on the Amavasya of Ashadh (June-July) of the 14th year of (his) exile, another solar eclipse was visible in the morning sky and after five months, when Hanuman went to meet Sita in Lanka, a lunar eclipse was witnessed in the evening. Besides these, several other planetary positions have been mentioned at different other places.<br /><br />“We are all aware that the rise of sea level, ever since the end of the last ice age (about 16,000 b.c.) is a continuous phenomenon. Countries like the USA and Australia which are having large coast lines and large cities on the coasts are making emergency plans to deal with the constant and accelerated rise in sea level which threatens the cities like New York.<br /><br />“So, with the intention of studying the subject I went through a number of research papers and tried to find the scientific data available on the rise of sea-level over a period of time. I, accordingly, sent a mail to one of the research scholars for data on the rise of sea level over the last 7,000 years. And the rate of rise of sea suggests that about 7,000 years ago, the sea level was exactly about 10 feet below the present level.<br /><br />Hence one can prove that the ‘remains of the bridge’ which are about ten feet below the present sea level, are part of the bridge which was built around 7,000 years ago. This is what works out to be the date of era of Lord Rama astronomically.”<br /><br />“One can imagine that at the time when Hanuman crossed the sea and again the army crossed it, the sea level was about ten feet below what we see today and at that time the sea was behind by about 1.5 to 2 km. In about 7,000 years, it has encroached the land by about two km. All these findings, in a comprehensive manner have been published in a book called Dating the Era of Lord Rama.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1137558497758713852006-01-17T20:28:00.000-08:002006-01-17T20:28:17.773-08:00Was Buddhism driven out of India?<i>By M.S.N. Menon </i><br /><br /> No. It is a canard. Alie propagated by vested interests. What are the facts? Buddhism was a reaction to the growing permissiveness and distortions of Aryan society. It was, therefore, puritanical. But by banning drinking, dancing, singing and theatre, Buddhism sowed the seeds of opposition.<br /><br />But Buddhism was also revolutionary. It was “the logical development of the religion of the Hindus,” says Dr. Radhakrishnan. It played a significant role in human history.<br /><br />On this, Northcote Parkinson says: “In the rallying of Asia against western pressure, Buddhism played a central role like no other religion before or since; its influence extended to the whole of Asia. It lent vigour to all that was attractive in Hinduism.”<br /><br /> Naturally, for about a thousand years (from 3rd century BC to 6th century AD), Buddhism was the dominant religion of India, although it broke up into two—Mahayana and Hinayana. It had little opposition. When Fa Hien, the Chinese student, visited India in the 5th century AD, Buddhism was flourishing along with Hinduism. But by the 6th century AD, Buddhism had broken up into 18 sects. So, when Hieun Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim visited India in the 7th century AD, Buddhism was in decline. What is more, by distorting the Master’s message and reverting in some ways to Hindu beliefs and practices, Mahayana had lost its attraction. Buddha himself had anticipated the decline in one of his talks with Ananda, his chief disciple.<br /><br />The conquest of Central Asia and Afghanistan by the Muslims was a major blow to Buddhism. Historian, Pramanath Bose writes that “Buddhism...got so engulfed in the superstitions of Turanians that it transformed itself into some of the grossest forms of Scythian idolatry.” Buddhism as an ethical system had little impact on Central Asia, which explains how Islam was able to overwhelm this huge region in so short a time.<br /><br />It was this decline of Buddhism which brought up the resurgence of Saivism and Vaishnavism. And Shankara, by incorporating many of the Buddhist doctrines into Hinduism, made Buddhism redundant. But the final blow to Buddhism came with the advent of Islam in India.<br /><br />Muslim invaders made it a point to extirpate Buddhism from India. They destroyed every vihara, where the monks lived and taught. Thus, the 500 viharas built by Ashoka in Kashmir and the 600 feet high stupa built by Kanishka were the first to be destroyed. Historian Vincent Smith says that the monks, who survived the holocaust, fled to south and to the Himalayas (Nepal, Tibet). In short, few dared to stay in India. The invaders also destroyed Taxila and Nalanda, the two great Buddhist universities. The cream of Buddhist scholarship lived here. Thus, every symbol of Buddhism was destroyed as part of a deliberate policy.<br /><br />It is not true that Brahmanism opposed Buddhism. The first disciples of the enlightened one were all Brahmins. For example, Maha Muggalanna, Sariputta, Maha Kashyapa, Asita, Kaundinya. Buddha rejected only the Brahminical rituals, the authority of the Vedas and the oppressive caste system.<br /><br />According to Smt Rhys Davids, among the 246 poet-authors mentioned in the Thera Gatha, 113 were Brahmins, 70 Kshatriyas. Thus, it is clear that Buddhism had no real opposition in India. In Fact, the kings gave equal protection to both Hinduism and Buddhism. For example, the Gupta empire, although Hindu, gave full protection to Buddhism. So did Harsha’s empire. Lalitaditya, the greatest king of Kashmir, although not a Buddhist, built the largest Vihara for the Buddhists.<br /><br />If Buddhism was brought down by anyone (which is not the case) it was done by the Buddhist monks. The hasya literature in Sanskrit is full of humour and satire against the Buddhist monks—of how they took to meat, drinks and women. Naturally, Buddhism lost the respect in which it was held earlier.<br /><br />It may be a digression, but let us see how the Buddhists fared in China. In China, it was the growing monkish population that forced the emperor to ban Buddhist activities. In 477 AD there were as many as 6,478 monasteries in northern China. It grew to 30,000 by 534 AD. And there were as many as 77,258 monks. To the industrious Chinese, this growing parasitic population was a drag on their economy and a danger to their way of life. Buddhism never recovered from that blow. But it is also true that, as in India, Taoism absorbed what was noble in Buddhism.<br /><br />Although the Buddha did not advocate a monastic life, the monks propagated that only a monastic life could attain nirvana with any measure of certainty. Thus millions of Hindus took to monastic life. It became a way of life among Buddhists.<br /><br />With focus on nirvana, life itself came to be secondary, not to speak of defence and security matters. India was thus least prepared to meet the onslaught of the Muslims. In the event, the Hindus closed their ranks against the Muslims. And they were not prepared to be tolerant to any divisive criticism from the Buddhists and Jains. Which explains why Buddhism almost disappeared from India.<br /><br />But where did the Buddhists disappear? They went back to their ancient faith—Hinduism—to resist the Muslims.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1137557886419003192006-01-17T20:18:00.000-08:002006-01-17T20:18:06.480-08:00Ancient Hindu civilisation and mathematics<i>By Dr R.N. Das </i><br /><br /> The ancient Hindu sages discovered the miracles of modern scientific tools. Believe it or not, the following are the glorious examples of them.<br /><br /><b>I. The Concept of Zero</b><br /><br />The concept of zero came from the revered Hindu sages in Vedic times thousands of years ago.<br /><br />Without the concept of zero the binary system is blind. No counting, no commerce or no computer business. The earliest documented “date” was found in today’s Gujarat [BC 585-586] in an inscription on Sankedia copper plate. In Brahamaphuta—Siddhanta of Brahamagupta (7th century CE), zero was lucidly explained. Muslim invaders from Central Asia crossing the Hindukush mountain ranges invaded Bharat 1300 years ago and plundered its beauty, riches, books, thrones and what not. They plagued the holy land with sword, loot, arson and rape and destroyed and ravaged the whole land in the name of jehad and “Allah”. There was no Steven Spielberg (Schindler’s List) like cinema director who could document this sordid past of our history. There was no patent system at that time. Might was right. They considered those substances of robbery maal-e-ganimat (booty looted from kafirs to be distributed among themselves and friends of theirs) and thus inculcated those invaluable theorems of mathematics, astronomy and geometry in Arabic books in around 770-1200 CE. From there, those extraordinary concepts were carried to Spanish Europe in the 8th century. However the concept of zero was referred to as shunya in the early Sanskrit texts of the 4th century BC and was clearly explained in Pingala’s Chand Sutra of the 2nd century too.<br /><br /><b>II. The Contribution to Astronomy</b><br /><br />Hindu sages told modern scientists how to map the sky in terms of glaring stars almost 4000 years ago. Copernicus published his theory of revolution of the Earth around the Sun in 1543 AD only. But our Aryabhatta in the 5th century had stated that the Earth revolves around the Sun in these specific words: “Just as a person boarding on a boat feels that the trees on the banks are moving, people on the revolving earth also feel that the sun is moving”. Such illustrious teaching of astronomy was rarely seen in the contemporary writings of the Greek astronomers. In his Aryabhatteem, he clearly stated that our Earth was round and it rotated on its own axis, orbited the Sun and was suspended in the space. It also explained that the lunar and solar eclipses occurred by the interplay of the shadows of the Sun, the Moon and the Earth.<br /><br /><b>III. The Law of Gravity</b><br /><br />The Law of Gravity was known to the ancient Hindu astronomer Bhaskaracharya. In his Surya Siddhanta he noted: “Objects fall on the Earth due to force of attraction of the Earth. Therefore, the Earth, planets, constellations, the Moon, and the Sun are all held in the galaxy due to this great cosmic attraction.”<br /><br />It was in 1687—1200 years later—that Sir Isaac Newton discovered (re-discovered?) the Law of Gravity, which was already invented by the greatest Hindu astronomer Bhaskaracharya, of course which was written in the holiest language, Sanskrit.<br /><br /><b>IV. The Invention of Trikonmiti</b><br /><br />The word geometry seems to have emerged from the Sanskrit word gyaamiti, which means measuring the Earth. And the word trigonometry is similar to trikonmiti meaning measuring triangular forms.<br /><br />Euclid was famous for the invention of geometry in 300 BC whilst the concept of trikonmiti had emerged in 1000 BC in Bharat. It is evident lucidly from today’s “practice of making fire alters (at homagni kshetra) in different shapes, e.g., round, triangular, hexagonal, pentagonal, square and rectangular”. It was part and parcel of daily pujas and homagnis in ancient times. The treatise of Surya Siddhanta (4th century) described in fascinating details about trigonometry, which was introduced in Europe by Briggs 1200 years later in the 16th century.<br /><br /><b>V. The Invention of Infinity</b><br /><br />The value of “Pi” was first invented by the ancient sages of Bharat. The ratio of circumference and diameter of a circle is known as “Pi” which gives its value as 3.14592657932...<br /><br />The old Sanskrit text Baudhayna Sulbha Sutra of the 6th century BC mentioned that above-mentioned ratio as approximately equalled to that of Aryabhatta’s ratio [in 499 BC] worked out the value of “Pi” to the fourth decimal place as [3x (177/1250) = 3.1416]. Many centuries later, in 825 AD, Arab mathematician, Mohammed Ibn Musa admitted: “This value of “Pi” was given by the Hindus (62832/20,000 = 3.1416).”<br /><br /><b>VI. Baudhayna’s Sulbha Sutra versus Pythagoras’s Theorem</b><br /><br />The famous Pythagoras’s theorem states: “The square of the hypotenuse angled triangle equals to the sum of the two sides.” This theorem was actually discovered by Euclid in 300 BC but Greek writers attributed this to Pythagoras. But the irony of fate is that our so-called intellectuals (indeed Macaulay’s sons who have forgotten their old but rich and glorious ancient Hindu heritage) had also accepted that theorem as a contribution of Pythagoras. They never read or tried to know that Baudhayna’s Sulbha Sutra which has been existing for many thousands of years (written in the Sanskrit) had already described lucidly the theorem as follows: “The area produced by the diagonal of a rectangle is equal to the sum of the area produced by it on two sides.”<br /><br /><b>VII. The Measurement of Time or Time Scale</b><br /><br />In Surya Siddhanta, Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the Earth to revolve around the Sun up to the 9th decimal place. According to Bhaskaracharya’s calculation it is 365.258756484 days.<br /><br />Modern scientist accepted a value of the same time as 365.2596 days.<br /><br />The difference between the two observations made by ancient Hindu sage Bhaskaracharya just by using his super brain (in the 4th century AD) and today’s NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Agency) scientists of America by using super computer (in the 20th century AD) is only 0.00085, i.e., 0.0002 per cent of difference.<br /><br />The ancient Bharatbhoomi had given the world the idea of the smallest and largest measuring units of Time. In modern time, only Stephen Hockings, Cambridge University Professor of theoretical physics, had the courage to venture into the abysmal depth of the eternity of Time. Astonishingly, our ancient sages taught us the following units of time: <ol type="a"> <li> Krati =34,000th of a second </li><li>Truti =300th of a second </li><li> 2 Truti =1 Luv </li><li> 2 Luv = 1 Kshana </li><li> 30 Kshana =1 Vipal </li><li> 60 Vipal = 1 Pal </li><li> 60 Pal = 1 Ghadi (=24 Minutes) </li><li> 2.5 Ghadi = 1 Hora (=1 Hour) </li><li> 24 Hora = 1 Divas (1 Day) </li><li> 7 Divas = 1 Saptah (1 Week) </li><li> 4 Saptah = 1 Maas (1 Month) </li><li> 2 Maas = 1 Ritu (1 Season) </li><li> 6 Ritu = 1 Varsha (1 Year) </li><li> 100 Varsha = 1 Satabda (1 Century) </li><li> 10 Shatabda = 1 Saharabda </li><li> 432 Saharabda = 1Yug(Kali Yuga)) </li><li> 2 Yuga = 1 Dwapar Yuga </li><li> 3 Yuga = 1 Treta Yuga </li><li> 4 Yuga = Kruta Yuga </li><li> 10 Yuga = 1 Maha Yuga (4,320,000) </li><li> 1000 Maha Yuga = 1 Kalpa </li><li> 1 Kalpa = 4.32 Billion Years. </li> </ol> <p align="justify">Therefore, the lowest was 34,000th of a second known as krati and the highest of the measurement of the Time was known as kalpa, which equalled to 4.32 billion years. Is it not amazing? Are you not feeling proud to be a Hindu descendent? Swami Vivekananda, the modern sage of Bharat, stated in his famous sermons compiled in his Rousing Call to the Hindu Nation, “Take pride in Hinduism; pronounce yourselves as a descendant of a Hindu. Boast to be a Hindu and give a clarion call to rouse the Hindu nation from its lethargy and slumber.”<br /><br /><b>VIII. The Invention of Decimal System</b><br /><br />It was the ancient Bharatbhoomi that gave us the ingenious methods of expressing all the numbers by means of 10 symbols (decimal systems)—an invaluable and gorgeous idea that escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest Greek philosophers and mathematician produced by antiquity (100-130BC).<br /><br />The highest prefix used for raising 10 to the power in today’s mathematics is “D” for 1030 (for Greek Deca).While as early as 100 BC Hindu mathematicians had exact names for figures up to 1053.<br /><br />a. Ekam = 1<br /><br />b. Dashkam = 10 (101)<br /><br />c. 1 Shatam = 100 (102)<br /><br />d. 10 Shatam = 1 Shahashram = 1000 (103)<br /><br />e. 10 Dash Shahashram = 10,000 (104)<br /><br />f. Laksha = 100,000 (105)<br /><br />g. Dash Laksha = 10,00,000 (106)<br /><br />h. Kotihi = 10, 00, 0000 (107)<br /><br />i. Ayutam = 100,000,000 (109)<br /><br />j. Niyutam = 100,000,000,000 (1011)<br /><br />k. Kankaram = 10,000,000,000,000 (1013)<br /><br />l. Vivaram = 10,000,000,000,000,000 (1016)<br /><br />m. Pararadahaa = 1017<br /><br />n. Nivahata = 1019<br /><br />o. Utsangaha = 1021<br /><br />p. Bahulam = 1023<br /><br />q. Naagbaalaha = 1025<br /><br />r. Titlambam = 1027<br /><br />s. Vyavasthaanapragnaptihi = 1029<br /><br />t. Hetuhellam = 1031<br /><br />u. Karahuhu = 1033<br /><br />v. Hetvindreeyam = 1035<br /><br />w. Sampaata Lambhaha = 1037<br /><br />x. Gananaagatihi = 1039<br /><br />y. Niravadyam = 1041<br /><br />z. Mudraabalam = 1043<br /><br />aa. Saraabalam = 1045<br /><br />ab. Vishamagnagatihi = 1047<br /><br />ac. Sarvagnaha = 1049<br /><br />ad. Vibhutangaama = 1051<br /><br />ae. Tallakshanaam = 1053<br /><br />Is it not amazing to know that the ancient Hindu sages used to remember them just by using their outstanding memory power or was there some super computer known to them also, which we are quite unaware of?<br /><br />In Anuyogadwar Sutra, written 100 BC, one numeral had been shown to be raised to as high as 10140 which is beyond our outmost stretches of imagination. All of our remaining hidden treasures, which had not been destroyed or stolen by the foreign mercenaries and invaders, were written in Sanskrit, mother of all languages, which should be revived. It is our legacy to inherit such rich property that our forefather had left for us by their meticulous observations over thousands of years ago.<br /><br />All hidden treasures are written in Sanskrit, which we are quite ignorant of and our so-called Macaulay’s sons are trying their best to prevent us from knowing about our glorious past. Sir Monier-Williams rightly said: “Hindus are perhaps the only nation, except the Greeks, who have investigated independently and in true scientific manner, the general laws that govern the evolution of languages.”<br /><br /><span class="spl_lines"> There was no patent system at that time. Might was right. They considered those substances of robbery maal-e-ganimat (booty looted from kafirs to be distributed among themselves and friends of theirs) and thus inculcated those invaluable theorems of mathematics, astronomy and geometry in Arabic books in around 770-1200 CE. </span><br /><br />More than this, the Hindus had made considerable advances in astronomy, algebra, arithmetics, botany and medicine, not to mention their superiority in grammar, long before some of these sciences were cultivated by the most ancient nations of Europe.<br /><br />Indeed, Hindus were Spinozists 2000 years before the birth of Spinoza, Darwinians many centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists, centuries before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by Aldus Huxley’s of our times, and before any word like evolution existed in any language in this world.<br /><br />We should take a vow to work together to search those hidden treasures out, propagate the notion that Sanskrit is not a dead language. Sanskrit is the elite of the elitist, classic of the classics and it should be revived once again. We will again sit in the seat of the world assembly with our head held high and with pride. I would like to draw the final touch with the quotation from Swami Vivekananda, “I do not see into the future nor do I care to see. But one vision I see clear as life before me, that the ancient Mother has awakened once more sitting on her throne rejuvenated, more glorious than ever. Proclaim her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction.” </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1137461621434880232006-01-16T17:33:00.000-08:002006-01-16T17:33:42.410-08:00Indian scholar deciphers Indus script1/16/2006 7:28:44 AM HK Correspondent<br /><br />CHENNAI: The Indus valley script, an enigma for scholars for over 130 years, has been deciphered by Dr S Kalyanaraman, a Chennai based scholar. Ever since the first Indus seal with script was discovered in 1870 by Alexander Cunningham, efforts were on to decipher the script. "The decipherment of the script is central to unraveling the true chronology and history of Indian civilization and culture," Dr Kalyanaraman told Haindava Keralam. <br /><br />Dr. Kalyanaraman, a former senior executive with the Asian Development Bank at Manila quit his job to devote full time for the research on Inter-linking of Indian rivers and deciphering the script of the Indus seal. Over the last 26 years, Dr Kalyanaraman has compiled a multi-lingual comparative dictionary for over 25 ancient Indian languages with about half-a-million words and has put it up on the internet.<br /><br />It was a journey in a Pakistan International Airlines flight which made Dr Kalyanaraman to quit his high paying ADB job. "I was presented with replicas of two seals, really paper-weights, by the PIA sincve I was traveling by the first class on that day," said Dr Kalyanaraman. Curiosity forced Dr Kalyanaraman to ask the PIA staff about the replicas. He was literally shocked by the reply given by them. "They said that the seals were from Mohenjodaro and it established the 5,000-year old history of the civilization of Pakistan. They kept silent when I pointed out to them that there was no Pakistan at that time," Dr Kalyanaraman explained.<br /><br />"About 5000 years ago, there was only Bharat mentioned in the Rigveda. Visvamitra, a Rigveda rishi, refers to the people of Bharat as Bharatam Janam (that is, people of the nation of Bharata),"pointed out Dr Kalyanaraman, author of a major book "Saraswathi". <br /><br />He pointed out that the word Bharatiyo in Gujarati means 'caster of metals' and goes on to present an array of evidence from about 4000 epigraphs on a variety of objects from what he calls "Sarasvati Civilization". The epigraphs appear on seals, tablets, potsherds, ivory rods, copper plates, even on metallic weapons.<br /><br />The breakthrough in confirming his decipherment has come from two sources: 1. the presence of Sarasvati hieroglyphs on two pure tin ingots discovered in a ship-wreck in Haifa, Israel; and the presence of Sarasvati hieroglyphs on artefacts in archaeological sites of Jiroft (Iran) and Adichanallur (Tirunelveli, South India).<br /><br />According to Dr Kalyanaraman, the glyphs are pictorials connoting homonyms (similar sounding words which could be depicted pictorially) of metals, minerals, alloys and furnaces. "For example, a jar with a rim, an antelope, an elephant, a rhinoceros, a heifer (bull-calf) can be depicted pictorially. The words related to these glyphs are homonymous with words for varieties of minerals, metals, alloys and furnaces," Dr Kalyanaraman explained. <br /><br />Dr Kalyanaraman, claims that the code of the script or writing system has been decoded simply as representation of the repertoire of smiths, smithy, mines, and metal workshops. The arte facts are gathered from many sites; there are about 2,000 archaeological sites on the banks of a desiccated River Sarasvati (representing about 80% of the 2600 total archaeological sites of the civilization dated to between 3500 to 1900 Before Common Era, BCE).<br /><br />Some of the sites are: Rakhigarhi (near Delhi), Kunal, Kalibangan, Banawali, Ropar (near Kurukshetra, Chandigarh), Dholavira, Lothal, Surkotada, Prabhas Patan, Dwaraka (Gujarat) and of course, Mohenjodaro, Harappa (Pakistan), Mehergarh (Afghanistan). A woman's burial found at Mehergarh contained ornaments including a wide bangle made of s'ankha; the surprise was that this burial was dated to 6500 BCE. The s'ankha industry continues even today in Tiruchendur, near Gulf of Mannar, South Indian coastline where West Bengal handicraft corporation obtains s'ankha to make bangles which are a must for every Bengali bride to wear during marriage. A remarkable continuity of culture and an industry unbroken for the last 8500 years !<br /><br />He quotes profusely from the great Indian epics to substantiate his claims. "The language of the epigraphs is said to be mleccha (Meluhha, mentioned in cuneiform records of Mesopotamia). Vatsyayana refers to cipher writing as mlecchita-vikalpa (alternative representation by copper workers)," according to Dr Kalyanaraman.<br /><br />Mleccha is also referred to as a spoken language in Mahabharata; Yudhishthira and Vidura converse in Mleccha about the shellac palace (lakshagriha) constructed to trap the Pandavas with metallic and non-metallic killer devices. An example of mleccha is 'helava, helava' comparable to the 'elo,elo' boatmen's song by seafaring and river-faring navigators who navigate hugging the coastline and along rivers which were the highways of ancient times, enabling long-distance trade over very long distances exceeding 3,000 kms., making the Sarasvati civilization the most extensive civilization of its times.<br /><br />"Languages of present-day India can be explained from a common source and the theory is called 'Proto-Vedic Continuity Theory', "says Dr Kalyanaraman.<br /><br />These claims could have a significant effect on the study of languages and contribute to historical studies emphasizing the essential continuity and unity of Indian civilization and culture as a continuum from 6500 BCE to the present-day.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1137115836269232392006-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:002006-01-12T17:30:36.336-08:00Studies show most Indians are descendants of early humansAryan impact myth crumbles<br />The Telegraph - Calcutta<br />G.S. MUDUR<br /><br />New Delhi, Jan. 11: Two new genetic studies have disputed long-held beliefs that pastoral central Asian people brought agriculture to India and contributed heavily to the genetic make-up of modern Indian populations.<br /><br />The central Asian people who migrated to India included the Aryans who began arriving around 3,500 years ago.<br /><br />The studies by scientists in Calcutta with colleagues in other countries might force historians to revise current ideas about the impacts of migrations from central Asia beginning about 8,000 years ago on India.<br /><br />A study by scientists at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Calcutta has revealed that most present-day Indians are the descendants of early humans who began to arrive in India about 60,000 years ago. It suggests that modern Indians do not owe much genetic makeup to central Asians who arrived much later.<br /><br />The findings do lend support to the migration of people from central Asia into India.<br /><br />“Although we did find genetic signatures from central Asian populations in Indian communities, there are not enough (signatures) to prove large-scale mixture with local populations,” research team leader Vijendra Kashyap told The Telegraph.<br /><br />The scientists, who analysed the Y-chromosomes of 936 men from 77 castes and tribes across India, published their findings in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, on Monday.<br /><br />The conventional view has been that pastoral central Asians, also called Indo-Europeans, brought agriculture into India, although some researchers have challenged this in the past.<br /><br />“The perennial concept of people, language and agriculture arriving in India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny,” Kashyap and his colleagues at the University of Oxford and the Estonian Biocentre said in their research paper.<br /><br />The analysis of certain sections of the human genome — such as the Y-chromosome in men or the mitochondrial DNA in women — can help scientists determine the “genetic distance” between races and piece together ancient human migratory patterns.<br /><br />Recent studies by international research teams have shown that the earliest modern humans arrived in India from Africa, trudging along the Indian Ocean coast about 60,000 years ago on their way further into southeast Asia.<br /><br />“Our findings suggest most modern Indians have genetic affinities to the early settlers and subsequent migrants and not to central Asians or Aryans, as they’re called,” a research scholar at the CFSL said.<br /><br />The CFSL study also failed to find specific genetic signatures associated with the world’s earliest farmers in any of the 936 men in India. These signatures have been earlier found in central Asia, North Africa and Europe.<br /><br />An independent genetic study by Partha Mazumder at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta with colleagues at Stanford University and elsewhere has found that the majority of genetic signatures among men in India are older than 10,000 years.<br /><br />The study of 1,100 men from 36 ethnic groups in India, 8 in Pakistan and 18 from the southeast Asian region has indicated that many of the genetic signatures have arisen in India and predate the arrival of the Indo-Europeans and their expansion in India.<br /><br />“The genetic contribution from central Asia has not been as large as generally believed,” Mazumder said.<br /><br />His study has also indicated that the genetic input of people who might have brought agriculture into India from West Asia has been limited.<br /><br />The oldest known site of agricultural activity so far in the subcontinent is Mehrgarh in Pakistan where there is evidence of cultivation of barley and wheat in 7000 BC. But some scientists believe that agriculture emerged spontaneously in India and wasn’t brought here.<br /><br />A few years ago, archaeologists had a few years ago unearthed the remains of an ancient settlement near Udaipur in Rajasthan that they say points to the independent evolution of cultivation in India.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1136509731140566002006-01-05T17:08:00.000-08:002006-01-05T17:08:51.176-08:00Grain of rice points to pre-Harappan culture<span style="font-size: 10pt;"> VADODARA: Developed cultures may have existed in India more than 7,000 years ago. This would mean that they existed even before the Harappan civilisation. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> And a clue to this prehistoric culture came from something as simple as a grain of rice. Archaeological Survey of India director BR Mani revealed this in Vadodara during an international seminar on Magan and Indus Civilisation, which ended on Thursday. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> The ASI and MS University have organised the seminar to study the relations between the two civilisations. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Giving details about an older civilisation, Mani said that the recent excavations at archaeological sites of Virana in Haryana and Lahura-Deva in Uttar Pradesh have revealed that developed cultures dating back to the sixth century BC and seventh century BC existed in the country. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> "This would mean that there were pockets were urbanisation would have started before the well-developed urban civilisation of the Harappans," said Mani.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> "Till the 1940s, there was no scientific methodology for dating and hence evidence obtained from excavations at some sites was either not properly studied or was ignored. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> But now we have studied a variety of rice that was obtained from the Lahura-Deva site, which revealed that there were regular farming and cultivation activities going on in 6th century BC," he said. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Mani also said that revelation of developed cultures should not be misunderstood as a separate civilisation. </span><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: 10pt;"> "We have also received pieces of pottery and other evidence from sites like Lahura-Deva and they have created a lot of curiosity as they can themselves become a tool to trace the evolution of Harappan civilisation," he added.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1136264701446145062006-01-02T21:05:00.000-08:002006-01-02T21:05:01.493-08:00Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa?Nicholas Bakalar<br />for National Geographic News<br />December 27, 2005<br /><br />Two archaeologists are challenging what many experts consider to be the basic assumption of human migration—that humankind arose in Africa and spread over the globe from there.<br /><br />The pair proposes an alternative explanation for human origins: arising in and spreading out of Asia.<br /><br />Robin Dennell, of the University of Sheffield in England, and Wil Roebroeks, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, describe their ideas in the December 22 issue of Nature.<br /><br />They believe that early-human fossil discoveries over the past ten years suggest very different conclusions about where humans, or humanlike beings, first walked the Earth.<br /><br />New Asian finds are significant, they say, especially the 1.75 million-year-old small-brained early-human fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" fossils (Homo floresiensis) discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia.<br /><br />Such finds suggest that Asia's earliest human ancestors may be older by hundreds of thousands of years than previously believed, the scientists say.<br /><br />"What seems reasonably clear now," Dennell said, "is that the earliest hominins in Asia did not need large brains or bodies." These attributes are usually thought to be prerequisites for migration.<br /><br />The authors maintain that, although there is no absolute proof, putting all the evidence together requires an open mind about other geographical origins of the first humans.<br /><br />The First Asians?<br /><br />The authors point out that there is very little solid information about the first early humans in Asia, and paleontologists are left with assumptions that are too often treated as historical facts.<br /><br />There is no archaeological or fossil evidence to prove that early humans moved from southern Africa to the Nile Valley in the early Pleistocene (1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago), they say.<br /><br />The earliest evidence of a human ancestor in Asia appears to be the 1.8-million-year-old cranium found in Mojokerto, Indonesia. But, the authors note, the fact that no older specimens have been found in Asia does not prove that they didn't exist. <br /><br />Dennell and Roebroeks get support for their proposal from other experts.<br /><br />"I think this is an interesting and constructively provocative paper," said Chris Stringer, a researcher in the department of palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum.<br /><br />"Evidence of humans in the Caucasus [region of Asia], China, and Java more than 1.6 million years ago implies either a very rapid spread from Africa after about 1.8 millions years ago, or that such populations were established outside Africa earlier than present evidence suggests," he said.<br /><br />"I certainly think we should keep an open mind about the big picture."<br /><br />Best Guess<br /><br />The earliest tools found in Asia are routinely attributed to Homo erectus, a species known to have come from Africa.<br /><br />H. ergaster—an African species that many experts believe gave rise to H. erectus—is assumed to have been the only primate capable of migrating out of Africa.<br /><br />Experts cite its body form—long limbs, humanlike proportions, and a brain capable of figuring out how to hunt for meat—as evidence that it was the only species suited to life in prehistoric Asian terrain.<br /><br />This might be a persuasive argument—except for the fact that australopithecines, an older form of humanlike primates, had colonized the African savannah by 3.5 million years ago.<br /><br />Similar grasslands extended across Asia at the time, suggesting that australopithecines could have survived quite well in the region, the authors say.<br /><br />What's more, fossil evidence for H. ergaster in Asia in the early Pleistocene is weak.<br /><br />No one yet knows where H. floresiensis first came from, but it may turn out that the diminutive species has its origins in Asia.<br /><br />Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, sees this as a possibility.<br /><br />"The unresolved status of the intriguing Flores finds attributed to H. floresiensis leaves open the possibility that this species is the end result and last survivor of an ancient migration of very primitive humans, or even prehumans, that formerly existed more widely across Asia."<br /><br />So when did early humans first leave Africa? Could they have left as early as 2.6 million years ago, as soon as they started making stone tools?<br /><br />"Hominins could easily have left Africa two million years ago," Dennell said. "After all, they certainly didn't need big brains or bodies to do so."<br /><br />Maybe, he concluded, "the Dmanisi [Georgia] hominins are an extremely primitive version of H. erectus that is the ancestor of the H. erectus populations in both Java and those in East Africa.<br /><br />"In other words, we might be looking at [human migration] 'out of Asia,' and not 'out of Africa.'"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1135318652269802942005-12-22T22:17:00.000-08:002005-12-22T22:23:04.393-08:00Stephen Oppenheimer - Science magazine paper on Out of Africa<span style="font-weight: bold;">Stephen Oppenheimer contributes to 'Science' magazine paper on 'Out of Africa'</span><br /><br />This recent paper published in 'Science' by Vincent Macaulay and an international team of researchers including Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Green College, Oxford, and a member of the Bradshaw Foundation Advisory Board, provides irrefutable evidence of the early timing and southern location of the only migration out of Africa to succeed and give rise to all modern non-African peoples.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/images/science-magazine.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 150px;" src="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/images/science-magazine.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The paper states that all non-Africans descend from a single group of humans that left Africa by a coastal route across the mouth of the Red Sea to South Asia. This disproves current theories – which argue for several successful exits via different routes and at different times, including a direct northern route to Europe 45,000 years ago.<br /> <br /><div style="text-align: right;"><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">stephen oppenheimer</span>,<br />photograph byFreda Oppenheimer<br /></div> <br />The paper endorses the claims and new conclusions made by Stephen Oppenheimer 2 years ago in his 2003 book ‘Out of Eden’ [‘The Real Eve’ in the USA], the material of which was used in the Channel 4 programme of the same name, and the Discovery Channel film ‘The Real Eve’, and in the Bradshaw Foundation’s Journey of Mankind Genetic Map.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">One or more exits from Africa? North .v. South</span><br /><br />A commonly held view has been that modern humans left Africa both round the north and the south of the Red Sea in several waves to populate Europe and Asia. New analysis of genetic trees in isolated ‘relic’ populations on the trail in Southeast Asia by Oppenheimer and others now overturns that orthodoxy. The research shows that there was only a single dispersal from Africa, via a southern coastal route, across the mouth of the red Sea, through India and onward into Southeast Asia and Australasia. There was subsequently a northern offshoot from the Gulf region, leading ultimately to the settlement of the Near East and Europe, but this only occurred much later.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/images/dna-sampling-team.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/images/dna-sampling-team.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stephen oppenheimer Stephen Oppenheimer </span><br /></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">DNA Sampling Team</span><br />photograph by<br />Freda Oppenheimer<br /></div> <br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/images/dna-sampling.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/images/dna-sampling.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Semang Villagers</span><br />photograph by<br />Freda Oppenheimer<br /></div> <br />The key to this new and detailed story of our migration is mitochondrial DNA [mtDNA]. MtDNA passes from mother to child, each generation, unchanged, therefore every person alive on the Earth today has inherited this small collection of genes from one single great-great-great-grandmother, nearly two hundred thousand years ago. There are occasional mutations in the mtDNA molecule, enabling the tracing of migrations of people. This trail of maternal inheritance is backed up by the Y-chromosomes passed only down the male line. The mtDNA and Y trees each show only one branch coming out of Africa, implying only one exit.<br /><br />The key findings in ‘OUT OF EDEN’, all now supported by the research published this week in SCIENCE, are:<br /><br />There was one exodus from Africa via an earlier southern route 60 to 80 thousand years ago that led to the peopling of the rest of the planet.<br /><br />Modern humans only reached Europe the long way round, via Southern Arabia, with this retarded movement into Europe taking place approximately 50,000 years ago.<br /><br />Malaysian tribes provide a living link to the route pursued east after the exodus across the Red Sea, as modern humans beachcombed their way to Australia over several thousand years.<br /><br />Early Europeans were not the first to learn to paint, carve, develop complex culture and speak, and do not represent a major biological advance. Evidence indicates that humans must have arrived in India already painting and fully ‘modern’.<br /><br />Bradshaw FoundationUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1135318473326418372005-12-22T22:14:00.000-08:002005-12-22T22:14:33.380-08:00Did Early Humans Go North or South?Peter Forster and Shuichi Matsumura
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<br />Abstract
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<br />When the first early humans ventured out of Africa, which way did they go? Studies of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA are revealing the excursion choices of our earliest ancestors. In their
<br />Perspective, Forster and Matsumura discuss two new studies of the mitochondrial DNA of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia and the Andaman islands (Macaulay et al., Thangaraj et al.). These studies suggest that the earliest humans took a southern route along the coastline of the Indian Ocean before fanning out over the rest of the world.
<br />
<br />Extract from Forster & Matsumura
<br />
<br />"In Europe, Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans only about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, whereas southern Australia was definitely inhabited 46,000 years ago and northern Australia and Southeast Asia necessarily even earlier (9, 10). Or did our ancestors instead depart from East Africa, crossing the Red Sea and then following the coast of the Indian Ocean (11)?
<br />
<br />References:
<br />9. G. Barker, Asian Perspect.44, 90 (2005).
<br />10. J.M. Bowler et al., Nature421, 837 (2003).
<br />11. S. Oppenheimer, Out of Eden (Constable, London, 2003).".Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1133697223840042542005-12-04T03:53:00.000-08:002005-12-04T03:53:43.840-08:00The Rigveda and the historical sense of IndiansBy T.P. Sankaran Kutty Nair
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<br />History divorced from truth, does not help a nation—its future should be laid on the stable foundations of truth and not on the quicksands of falsehood, however alluring it may appear at present. India is now at the crossroads and I urge my young friends to choose carefully the path they would like to tread upon.
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<br />—Ramesh Chandra Majumdar
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<br />History has had assigned to it the task of judging the past; of instructing the present for the benefit of the ages to come
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<br />—Leopold von Ranke
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<br />These two views of two great historians carry considerable weight even today. Ranke is the father of modern scientific history and R.C.Manjumdar, doyen among Indian historians.
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<br />With the opening of the Vascoda Gama epoch in Indian history, began the long interaction between the East and the West. In those days, one of the charges against India was that India produced, “no great historian or historical work, and Indians had no historical sense, although Indians excelled in other branches of learning”. The western scholars charged Indians of not having written a proper history of India. To this charge, Indians reacted by projecting the Rigveda, which remains even today the oldest book of knowledge. Cole Broke had revealed that the oldest product of Indian literature is the Rigveda. The three German scholars Bopp, Grimm and Humboldt established the intimate relationship among all Aryan languages, the most primitive form of which was shown to be preserved in the language of the Rigveda. Max Mueller (1823-1900) a German Orientalist and Indologist settled at Oxford acquired a mastery over Sanskrit without the help of a teacher. He then turned to comparative language studies which involved him in the study of the Zend Avesta. The Zend Avesta led him to the study of comparative religion and of the editing of the whole text of the Rigveda (1845-79) with the commentary of Sayana. His History of Sanskrit literature (1859) mapped out in chronological order all the Sanskrit texts known till then. His interest in mythology on which he wrote appealing essays led him further into the study of comparative religion and to the publication of The Sacred Books of the East (1879-1904) A monumental achievement, this collaborative enterprise made available in English, translations of 50 major oriental non-Christian scriptures. The Rigveda is neither a historical nor a heroic poem, but mainly a collection (Samhita) of hymns by a number of priestly families, recited or chanted by them with appropriate solemnity at sacrifices to the God. Of the various recensions of the Rigveda known in tradition only one, namely the Sakala recension consisting of 1017 hymns of very unequal length has come down to us apparently complete, and it is this Sakala recension that is meant when one speaks of the Rigveda. The Rigveda is not— as it is often represented to be—a book of folk poetry nor does it mark the beginning of a literary tradition. Bucolic, heroic and lyrical elements are not entirely absent, but they are submerged under a stupendous mass of dry and stereotyped hymnology dating back to the Indo-Iranian era and held as a close preserve by a number of priestly families whose sole object in cherishing those hymns was to utilise them in their sacrificial cult.
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<br />Most of the hymns were not composed as such but were mechanically manufactured out of fragments of a floating anonymous literature and the process of manufacturing hymns in this manner must have continued for a long time. The division of the whole Samhita into ten mandalas and the number and arrangement of hymns in these mandalas are not at all arbitrary. It is hardly an accident that the number of hymns contained in the first and the last mandalas is exactly the same, namely 191. The kernel of the Rig Samhita is however constituted by the so called family mandalas ie. the six consecutive mandalas from the second to the seventh, each of which is supposed to have been composed by a particular family of priests. The ninth mandala is most pronouncedly a ritual mandala. The principle governing the original arrangement of hymns in the family mandalas seems to have been determined by three considerations—deity, metre and the number of verses contained in the hymns concerned. Each family a mandala opens with a group of hymns dedicated to Agni, immediately followed by another group addressed to Indra, then dedicated to various gods. That the tenth mandala is later in origin than the first nine is however perfectly certain from the evidence of the language. But it is also certain that the whole of the Rig Samhita including the tenth mandala has assumed practically the same form in which we find it today, already before the other Samhitas came into existence. The hymns of the Rigveda contain abundant geographical data including reference to the mighy Himalayas. Out of the 31 rivers mentioned in the Vedic texts about 25 names occur in the Rigveda alone. The Rigveda enumerates several streams most of which belongs to the Indus system. The Rigvedic people not only knew the sea but were mariners and had trade relations with the outside world. Vedic literature confined itself to religious subjects and notices political and secular occurrences only incidentally so far as they had bearing on the religious subjects. As Pargiter has very pertinently observed, “ancient Indian history has been fashioned out of compositions which are purely religious and priestly, which notoriously do not deal with history and which totally lack historical sense. The extraordinary nature of such history may be perceived if it was suggested that European history should be constructed merely out of theological literature. What would raise a smile if applied to Europe, has been soberly accepted when applied to India. The force of these remarks is undeniable and no student of Indian history should ignore legendary element in the Puranas and epics. It is necessary to remember that the traditions are not genuine historical facts so long as or so far as they are no corroborated by contemporary texts as other reasonable evidence. But the traditional history is valued beyond doubt because it helped us to reconstruct genuine history. The historical sense of Indians as we projected earlier through the Rigveda is then proved to be not a reality but more a myth.
<br />
<br />The Rigveda is neither a historical nor a heroic poem, but mainly a collection (Samhita) of hymns by a number of priestly families, recited or chanted by them with appropriate solemnity at sacrifices to the God.
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<br />The Rajatarangini and the Indian historical sense
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<br />Some Indian scholars pointed out the importance of Rajatarangini written by Kalhana of Kashmir. It is not only a classic of Sanskrit narrative poetry but is the earliest extant history of Kashmir written in the middle of the 12th century, in the age when the crusaders of Europe were fighting in western Asia. It is a unique masterpiece of Kalhana, a blend of authentic chronicle and imaginative poetry inspired by the poet’s passionate love of his exquisitely beautiful homeland. It was in 1892 that Pandit Durga Prasad published the Rajatarangini in a Sanskrit text form, followed by similar efforts made by Sir Aurel Stein. Stein brought out an English translation in two volumes in 1900 under the caption Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir based on a French translation done by Troyer during 1840-1852.
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<br />The name of the book indicates the meaning as saga of the kings of Kashmir or river of kings. It is narrated in eight cantos, each canto being called a taranga or wave by the author. It is a continuous history of the kings of Kashmir from mythical time (1184 BC) to the date of its composition ie. 1148-1149. The colophon of the work informs us that its author Kalhana was the son of Champaka, the Minister of King Harsha of Kashmir (1088-1100). The Rajatarangini is the only Sanskrit work, with a historical perspective.
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<br />To quote Jawaharlal Nehru, “Rajatarangini is the only work hitherto discovered in India having any pretensions to be considered as history. Such a book must necessarily have importance for every student of old Indian history and cultural.” (sic-Ancient Indian History)
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<br />The principle governing the original arrangement of hymns in the family mandalas seems to have been determined by three considerations—deity, metre and the number of verses contained in the hymns concerned.
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<br />It is a history and it is a poem, though the two perhaps go ill together, and in translations we see their unavoidable admixture of myth and reality combined together. Written eight-and-half centuries ago the work covers the history of over two millenniums. The early part of mythological phase is brief and vague and sometimes fanciful (first three taranginis) but Kalhana’s period had been covered in a close up narrative. It is not at all a pleasant story as it was a period of romanticism and warfare side by side. Consider it as the romantic age in Indian history as testified to by the romances of Rajput princes and princesses, spread all over the Indian subcontinent. It was also an age of quixotic chivalry and knighthood wherein the people of Kashmir suffered under mighy feudal barons. It is too much of palace intrigue, murder, treason, tyranny and civil war. It is the story of autocracy and military oligarchy. In essence it is a story of the kings, the royal families and the nobility, not of common folk. No wonder it is given the title “River of Kings”.
<br />
<br />(To be continued)
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<br />(The author retired as Head, Department of History, University College, University of Kerala.) Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1133697064279439502005-12-04T03:51:00.000-08:002005-12-04T03:51:04.386-08:00Early humans settled India before Europe, Study suggestskazinform.org
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<br />LONDON. November 15. KAZINFORM - Modern humans migrated out of Africa and into India much earlier than once believed, driving older hominids in present-day India to extinction and creating some of the earliest art and architecture, a new study suggests.
<br />The research places modern humans in India tens of thousands of years before their arrival in Europe, Kazinform cites Brian Vastag for National Geographic News.
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<br />University of Cambridge researchers Michael Petraglia and Hannah James developed the new theory after analyzing decades' worth of existing fieldwork in India. They outline their research in the journal Current Anthropology.
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<br />"He's putting all the pieces together, which no one has done before," Sheela Athreya, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University, said of Petraglia.
<br />
<br />Modern humans arrived in Europe around 40,000 years ago, leaving behind cave paintings, jewelry, and evidence that they drove the Neandertals to extinction.
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<br />Petraglia and James argue that similar events took place in India when modern humans arrived there about 70,000 years ago.
<br />
<br />The Indian subcontinent was once home to Homo heidelbergensis, a hominid species that left Africa about 800,000 years ago, Petraglia explained.
<br />
<br />"I realized that, my god, modern humans might have wiped out Homo heidelbergensis in India," he said. "Modern humans may have been responsible for wiping out all sorts of ancestors around the world."
<br />
<br />"Our model of India is talking about that entire wave of dispersal," he added. "[T]hat's a huge implication for paleoanthropology and human evolution."
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<br />A New Model
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<br />Petraglia and James reached their conclusions by pulling together fossils, artifacts, and genetic data.
<br />
<br />The evidence points to an early human migration through the Middle East and into India, arriving in Australia by 45,000 to 60,000 years ago, they say.
<br />
<br />Their model begins about 250,000 years ago, when Homo heidelbergensis arrived in India toting crude stone tools. Digs in central India in the 1980s turned up skeletal remains of the species, and other sites revealed almond-shaped hand axes chipped from stone.
<br />
<br />Meanwhile in Africa modern humans arose about 190,000 years ago, most archaeologists believe. These humans too developed stone tools.
<br />
<br />
<br />Scattered evidence, such as red ochre—perhaps used as body paint—suggests early African humans also dabbled in the creative arts.
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<br />The new theory posits that as much as 70,000 years ago, a group of these modern humans migrated east, arriving in India with technology comparable to that developed by Homo heidelbergensis.
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<br />"The tools were not so different," Petraglia says. "The technology that the moderns had wasn't of a great advantage over what [Homo heidelbergensis] were using."
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<br />But modern humans outcompeted the natives, slowly but inexorably driving them to extinction, Petraglia says. "It's just like the story in Western Europe, where [modern humans] drove Neandertals to extinction," he says.
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<br />The modern humans who colonized India may also have been responsible for the disappearance of the so-called Hobbits, whose fossilized bones were discovered recently on the Indonesian island of Flores.
<br />
<br />But Athreya of Texas A&M argues that the evidence for such a "replacement event" in India remains weak.
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<br />"You have to explain the reasons for the replacement, [such as] technical superiority," she said.
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<br />"The genetic evidence shows there were multiple migrations out of Africa, so there would have been multiple migrations into [India]. But I think these migrating populations didn't completely replace the indigenous group."
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<br />Early Art
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<br />Petraglia and James's report presents evidence of creativity and culture in India starting about 45,000 years ago. Sophisticated stone blades arrive first, along with rudimentary stone architecture.
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<br />Beads, red ochre paint, ostrich shell jewelry, and perhaps even shrines to long-lost gods—the hallmarks of an early symbolic culture—appear by 28,500 years ago.
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<br />This slow change is in contrast to what many scientists believe played out in Europe. Modern humans blew through the continent like a storm about 40,000 years ago, and Neandertals quickly disappeared.
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<br />The switch happened so rapidly—as evidenced by the sudden arrival of advanced stone tools and an explosion of cave painting and other art—that anthropologists call it the "human revolution."
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<br />"What we have is a much patchier, very slow and gradual accumulation of what we call modern human behavior in South Asia," Petraglia says.
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<br />"And that just simply means that culture developed in a slightly different way in South Asia than it did in Western Europe."
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<br />A dearth of fossils and artifacts in India makes Petraglia and James's research even more valuable, writes Robin Dennell, professor of archeology at the University of Sheffield, in a comment accompanying the study.
<br />
<br />The subcontinent has produced just one set of early Homo sapiens fossils, found in a cave in Sri Lanka and dated to about 36,000 years ago.
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<br />Despite this, Petraglia hopes his analysis throws new light onto early human history in India.
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<br />"We're trying to give a wake up call to anthropologists … saying that we have to be looking at all parts of the world," he says.
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<br />"If we really want to tell the story of human evolution we've got to bring all parts of the world into the story."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1128829234813645022005-10-08T20:33:00.000-07:002005-10-08T21:11:20.810-07:00Legend of Dwaraka<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.a.jpg"><img area="41600" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 160px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.a.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Krishna- the protector of Mathura, the lord of Dwaraka and the reciter of the Bhagwad Gita on the battlefield of Kurukshetra-is one of the most enduring legends of India. But was he also a mortal, historical figure? Two books look at connections between the ancient texts and archaeology.<br /><br />By T.R. Gopaalakrushnan<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">After killing Kamsa, Krishna and his brother Balarama placed Ugrasena on the throne and remained in Mathura. This greatly angered Kamsa's father-in-law Jarasandha, the emperor of Magadha. He repeatedly attacked Mathura to avenge Kamsa's death. Although Krishna and his small Yadava army were able to defeat Jarasandha's hordes every time, it was an unequal contest in which superior numbers were bound to tell in the long run. So Krishna led the Yadavas to the west coast. They built the fortified town of Dwaraka on the site of the ancient Kushastali, which became Krishna's seat for the rest of his eventful life. Dwaraka was submerged in the sea 36 years after the Mahabharata War. Forewarned, Krishna had persuaded the Yadavas to move to higher ground in Prabhas (near modern Somnath). Shortly thereafter, the Yadavas, or at least their leaders, destroyed themselves. Krishna himself died a few days later, killed by a hunter's arrow.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.jpg"><img area="41600" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Does this bare-bones out- line of the colourful story of Krishna have a true, historical core?</span> Are Krishna and Dwar-aka actual historical entities? For a majority of Indians, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Some archaeologists and historians too are now willing to accept that the common man's faith does have a basis in fact.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">RECREATING A PAST THAT WAS CONSIDERED A MYTH: A scale model of coastline and township of Dwaraka displayed in the Birla Science Museum in Hyderabad; (above) The main temple at Dwaraka</span><br /><br />The strongest archaeological support comes from the structures discovered under the sea-bed off the coast of Dwaraka in Gujarat by the pioneering team led by Dr S.R. Rao, one of India's most respected archaelogists. An emeritus scientist at the marine archaeology unit of the National Institute of Oceanography, Rao has excavated a large number of Harappan sites including the port city of Lothal in Gujarat. In his book The Lost City of Dwaraka (Aditya Prakashan, Rs 1500), published in 1999 he writes about his undersea finds: "The discovery is an important landmark in the history of India. It has set to rest the doubts expressed by historians about the historicity of Mahabharata and the very existence of Dwaraka city. It has greatly narrowed the gap in Indian history by establishing the continuity of the Indian civilisation from the Vedic Age to the present day."<br /><br />The strongest archaeological support comes from the structures discovered under the sea-bed off the coast of Dwaraka in Gujarat by the pioneering team led by Dr S.R. Rao, one of India's most respected archaelogists. An emeritus scientist at the marine archaeology unit of the National Institute of Oceanography, Rao has excavated a large number of Harappan sites including the port city of Lothal in Gujarat. In his book The Lost City of Dwaraka (Aditya Prakashan, Rs 1500), published in 1999 he writes about his undersea finds: "The discovery is an important landmark in the history of India. It has set to rest the doubts expressed by historians about the historicity of Mahabharata and the very existence of Dwaraka city. It has greatly narrowed the gap in Indian history by establishing the continuity of the Indian civilisation from the Vedic Age to the present day."<br /><br />But not all are convinced. Some point to 'contradictions' in his findings and lack of other corroboration. Others believe that the entire story of Krishna as written in the Mahabharata is pure mythology, and any claims of archaeological evidence must necessarily be incorrect. As historian R.S. Sharma has written in his history textbook for class X students: "Although Lord Krishna plays an important role in the Mahabharata, the earliest inscriptions and sculpture pieces found in Mathura between 200 BC and 300 AD do not attest his presence." (The BJP has attempted to have these lines deleted from the textbook.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">But there are archaeological finds that do attest to Krishna as a historical figure.</span> For instance excavations in Bedsa (near Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh) have unearthed the remains of a temple of 300 BC in which Krishna (Vasudeva) and Balarama (Samkarshana) are identified from their flagstaff. Krishna's son Pradyumna, grandson, Aniruddha and another Yadava hero, Satyaki, have also been identified.<br /><br />A more recent historical record, dated 574 AD, occurs in what are called the Palitana plates of Samanta Simhaditya. This inscription refers to Dwaraka as the capital of the western coast of Saurashtra and states that Krishna lived here.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">No one has so influenced the course of India's religion, philosophy, art and literature as Krishna.</span> Traditional belief is that Krishna lived in Dwaraka at the end of the Dwapara Yuga. Dwaraka, in fact, is considered one of the seven holiest and most ancient Indian cities. The others are Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Varanasi, Kanchi and Ujjain, which together are known as Mokshada-that which leads to salvation.<br /><br />According to Hindu historical tradition, Kali Yuga began with the death of Krishna more than 5,000 years ago. The Puranas are emphatic on the cultural degradation that set in after the Mahabharata war, which is seen as one of the most important turning points in ancient Indian history. Krishna, according to traditional belief, participated in that transition.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.b.jpg"><img area="13200" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 80px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.b.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Artefacts recovered from the sea bed, like the reconstructed perforated jar (left) found in Bet Dwaraka, included a low footed stool of basalt and a pestle of granite and a grinder cum pounder of dolerite, among others.</span><br /><br />"Krishna very much existed in flesh, blood and bones," said Madhav Acharya, archaeologist at the Haryana archaeological department. "It is difficult, if not impossible, for a thing like the Mahabharata to be believed till today in the same spirit and faith unless there is some truth to the story. And that truth is the power struggle, and the main characters. One of them was Krishna. The power struggle is not a myth. If the heart of the story is to be believed as a historical event, then Krishna too should be seen as a historical character."<br /><br />Excavations all over north and western India, however, show that a highly developed society had existed long before the accepted dates and theories of ancient Indian history. But researchers like N.S. Rajaram and David Frawley argue that the Harappan civilisation represents the material remains of the Vedic Age.<br /><br />The postulate has its opponents, notably the well-known historian Romila Thapar. "The latest entrants into the field (of history) are Indian scientists from the US, who in the guise of using science and computers are now holding forth on the Aryan problem," she wrote some time ago in an article. "They are neither willing to acknowledge that they know little about archaeology, history or linguistics nor willing to work with such specialists."<br /><br />A few others are straddling the fence. "This debate about ancient Indian history is in fact not at all about finding the truth," said Dr Bhagwant Josh, professor of contemporary history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. "One side wants to appropriate the glory and pride of what is considered the most systematised civilisation of city dwellers, by linking their past to it, and the others want to deny them that." On the specific issue of the legend of Dwaraka, Josh said, "Krishna must have been historical as well as mythical. Much before the historical Krishna was born, the mythical Krishna must have existed (there is a reference to a Krishna in the Rig Veda); the historical Krishna would have been named after the mythical one."<br /><br />The other important issue is the nature of the connection between archaeology and India's ancient texts and literature. Pratnakirtim apavirnu, know thy past, exhort the Vedas and Upanishads, which for long had been described as myth and legend or as religious texts without much historical value. Some historians have consistently opposed making any connection between Harappan archaeology and Vedic literature as part of the same historical and cultural stream. A position that is increasingly being challenged. "The core reality of these texts must be taken as the basis of further exploration of the sites of the Mahabharata tradition," said Rao, "as whatever was there in the late Indus Valley civilisation period is reflected in the civilisation of the Mahabharata."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inevitably, some scholars and historians disagree.</span> "No individual character like Krishna or Rama can be found through archaeology," said Prof. B.D. Chatopadhyay of the Centre for Historical Studies at JNU. "Archaeology can reconstruct the material culture of a people. Krishna is known from legends, epics and puranas. Interpolating archaeology with literature is fraught with difficulties. The efforts of some historians and archaeologists to correlate textual evidence with archaeological finds have not found a consensus even among themselves, and serious archaeologists are questioning the exercise."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.d.jpg"><img area="37680" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.d.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">AN ARTIST'S IMPRESSION OF FORTIFIED DWARAKA: The general layout of the city described in ancient texts agrees with that of the submerged city</span><br /><br />Not so, said R. S. Bisht, director of excavations and exploration at the Archaeological Survey of India, Delhi, who is a strong believer in correlating archaeological finds with the ancient literature, as he did in the case of the Harappan civilisation and Rig Veda. "The Rig Vedic people were the authors of the Harappan civilisation," he said. He has little doubt of the historicity of Krishna. "In the Upanishads, as I see it, there are no fictitious kings. So Krishna was a historical figure."<br /><br />Other well-known historians like Prof. B.B. Lal, former director-general of ASI and author of a recent book on the Saraswati civilsation, too have said that it is time for a rethink. But while the numbers of those who agree on this point is increasing, there is as yet no consensus on the period mentioned in the texts, especially the Mahabharata, which is pounced upon by critics of this approach. As Chatopadhyay pointed out, "If one is sure about the dates of the texts, then some idea of the society that produced it can be had, but we have no knowledge of the dates, and the Mahabharata was authored over a long-drawn period."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Leaving aside the date issue for </span>now, it seems reasonable to accept the postulate that the Harappan sites relate to the Vedic culture described in the Vedas, Puranas and the Mahabharata. "The Vedic literature matches with the description of the archeological finds," said Madhav Acharya. As Rao said, "religion, language, yoga, town planning and maritime activities point to the mature Harappan as the Vedic period. And the connecting link between this and the Mahabharata or late Harappa period is what some call the ochre coloured pottery and what we call late Harappan pottery. Geography also shows similar evidence."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.c.jpg"><img area="8400" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 80px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.c.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Krishna very much existed," said Madhav Acharya. "If the Mahabharata is to be believed then Krishna too should be seen as a historical character."</span><br /><br />Rajaram and fellow researcher N. Jha say the Harappan seals are full of Vedic motifs. Madhav Acharya feels that that was a time "when people had language but no script. Till Brahmi, which can be read, there was no script but there was an oral tradition. The Harappan script has not been found in huge volumes." Rao said people who recited the Vedas might not have written it down because of difficulties with pronunciation. But he is convinced the Harappan civilisation could not have been built without writing and advanced knowledge.<br /><br />Be that as it may, archaeological finds do show that coastal Gujarat could well have been an important part of the Vedic and pre-Harappan fold. As Rao writes in his book, "Long before the Mahabharata period the Indus valley civilisation had penetrated deep into Kutch at Dholavira and Surkotada by 3000 BC. It reached its climax between 2800-1900 BC at Lothal. They spoke a proto-Aryan language akin to Old Indo-Aryan (Vedic Sanskirt) and their basic concept of cosmic, moral and religious order mentioned in the Indus seals was similar to that of the Rig Veda."<br /><br />The underwater discoveries in the Gulf of Cambay subsequent to Rao's expeditions off Dwaraka, and other excavations off the coast show that the region probably had human settlements from very ancient times, 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. One of them could well have been Krishna's Dwaraka (known in ancient times as Kushastali or 'Place of Kusha'), the destruction of which is so graphically described by Arjuna in the Mausala Parva of the Mahabharata: "The sea, which had been beating against the shores, suddenly broke the boundary that was imposed on it by nature. The sea rushed into the city. It coursed through the streets of the beautiful city. The sea covered up everything in the city. I saw the beautiful buildings becoming submerged one by one. In a matter of a few moments it was all over. The sea had now become as placid as a lake. There was no trace of the city. Dwaraka was just a name; just a memory."<br /><br />According to the ancient texts, the west coast around Gujarat has been the traditional land of the Yadavas, or Yadus who claimed descent from Yadu, the eldest son of Yayati. Centuries before Krishna, the Yadu king Arjuna Kartavirya had been defeated by Parashurama. Bhrigukaccha, the modern Broach, is named after the Bhrigu clan of Parashurama. (Krishna undertook a sea voyage from Bhrigukaccha to Prabhas, according to Bhagavata Purana.) So Krishna was only returning to the land of his ancestors.<br /><br />The location and topography of the site selected by Krishna made it safe from Jarasandha's attacks. Reaching Dwaraka bounded by the sea and Rann was a hazardous task for Jarasandha's army. Secondly, being a good port, Dwaraka promised prosperity to the enterprising people. Not that it was totally immune from attack. Krishna's Dwaraka was attacked by the king of Salva (modern Sind) while he was away at Indraprastha to attend Yudhishtira's rajasuya ceremony.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Many scholars accept all this mainly on literary grounds.</span> What was lacking was archaeological evidence linking Gujarat, Dwaraka and Krishna. Which is what prompted Rao to lead a marine archaeological expedition to the coastal region near modern Dwaraka in search of submerged settlements that might correspond to Krishna's capital.<br /><br />The underwater expeditions-which won Rao the first World Ship Trust Award for Individual Achievement-were undertaken after extensive on-shore excavations had yielded incontrovertible evidence of a protohistoric settlement of 1600 BC destroyed by the sea. Conducting 12 expeditions during 1983-1990, Rao identified two underwater settlements, one near the present-day Dwaraka and the other in the nearby island of Bet Dwaraka. In the book The Lost City of Dwaraka describing his discoveries, Rao suggested that Krishna occupied these places around 1500 BC.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.e.jpg"><img area="70400" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.e.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">In search of submerged human settlements: A diver inspecting the rocky ridge having man-made holes for securing boats</span><br /><br />What Rao and his team discovered was a well-fortified township that extended more than half a mile from the shore. The sketch plan of Dwaraka, prepared on the basis of structural remains exposed in the sea-bed, suggests six different sectors of the town all fortified and some interconnected. Two major roads, each about 18m wide, connect a group of three buildings on the east which formed another designated enclosure, in which six bastions were found in a line.<br /><br />The foundation of boulders on which the city's walls were erected showed that the land had been reclaimed from the sea some 3,600 years back. The submerged township extended in the north up to Bet Dwaraka (Also known as Sankhodhara-said to have been the pleasure resort of Krishna and his consorts Satyabhama and Jambavati. The area is noted for its conch shell of good quality which was in great demand as a non-corrosive substitute for metal). It extended up to Okhamadhi in the south, and Pindara in the east. (A pearl fishing village for more than 3,000 years, Pindara is a holy place-Pinda Taraka is mentioned in the Mahabharata where sage Durvasa had his hermitage.)<br /><br />The general layout of the city of Dwaraka described in ancient texts agrees with that of the submerged city and shows evidence of town planning. For example: "Land was reclaimed from the sea near the western shores of Saurashtra. A city was planned and built here. Dwaraka was a planned city, on the banks of the river Gomati. This beautiful city was also known as Dwaramati, Dwarawati and Kushastali. It had well-organised six sectors, residential and commercial zones, wide roads, plazas, palaces and many public utilities. A hall called Sudharma Sabha was built to hold public meetings. The city also boasted of a good harbour."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.f.jpg"><img area="8320" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 80px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.f.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The excavations show that Dwaraka was an urban centre with certain specialised industries such as boat building and metal working as evidenced by this copper lota (left) found in the sea bed. Iron too was known to the smiths of Bet Dwaraka.</span><br /><br />The Sabha Parva text of the Mahabharata describes houses, but none had survived the sea. A few paved paths, drains, etc. were traced. Some houses or public buildings had pillared halls. "An idea of the houses built of dressed and undressed stones in ancient Dwaraka can be had from the structures laid bare in the Harappan town of Surkotada in Kutch," said Rao.<br /><br />Kushastali is the name given to a pre-Dwaraka (or Harappan) settlement that had been abandoned and reoccupied and rebuilt during the Mahabharata period, said Rao, who identifies Bet Dwaraka with Antardvipa of the epic. "The word dvipa as used in the Mahabharata often conveys the sense of any land between two rivers or two waters, although it is also used for a continent," said Rao. "The Harappan seal inscriptions mention happta dvappa (sapta dvipa-seven lands) and bhadrama dvappa (bhadrama dvipa-a seal found at Kalibanga meaning most auspicious land). Also, "the fort wall and submerged walls in the sea confirm the appellation varidurga, citadel in the water, given to Dwaraka in the Mahabharata."<br /><br />Rao also finds confirmation of the reference to Dwaraka as nagara (city) in the epic. The high level of civilisation in ancient Dwaraka is borne out by the engineering skill, advanced technology and the high literacy of the people. "It was an urban centre with certain specialised industries such as boat building, shell working, pearl diving and perhaps metal working also," said Rao.<br /><br />The stone mould found in the intertidal zone compares favourably with similar moulds found in Lothal and other Indus towns just as the tidal dock at Lothal built in 2300 BC is seen as the precursor of the port installation of Dwaraka. Iron was already known to the smiths of Bet Dwaraka as attested to by iron stakes, nails and other iron objects. Terracotta wheels of toy carts were also recovered.<br /><br />By 1500 BC almost the entire township seems to have been destroyed. But while it existed, one later description of the city reads, "The yellow glitter of the golden fort of the city in the sea throwing yellow light all round looked as if the flames of vadavagni (volcano) came out tearing asunder the sea."<br /><br />Among the objects recovered from the sea-bed that establish the submerged township's connection with the Dwaraka of the Maha-bharata was a seal (just 18mmx20mm) with the images of a bull, unicorn and goat engraved in an anticlockwise direction. "The motif is no doubt of Indus origin but the style shows considerable influence from Bahrain," writes Rao. "The bull, unicorn and goat motif on seals from mature Harappan levels of Kalibangan and Mohenjo Daro is distinct from that of Bet Dwaraka which belongs to the late Indus period." But the seal does corroborate the reference made in the ancient text, the Harivamsa, that every citizen of Dwaraka should carry a mudra as a mark of identifiction and none without a seal should enter it.<br /><br />"When we got the seal we were really excited," said Dr. Rao. "Secondly, we got a stone mound in which they cast some spear heads. So some weapons were definitely locally manufactured. The Mahabharata mentions that when Dwaraka was attacked they inserted iron stakes. We got one of those. These are evidences which corroborate what the texts said. But the evidence that really clinched the issue was the mudra and the references to two Dwarakas at the place mentioned in the ancient texts like Sabha Parva."<br /><br />Over 12 expeditions during 1983-1990, with funding for just 20 days in a year: Dr Rao and his pioneering team working off the coast of Dwaraka<br /><br />The topography of the Okha region reveals seven parts interspersed by the Rann. They may be the seven islands that existed during the Mahabharata period and referred to in later texts. The occurrence of proto-historic (1600 BC) pottery on land suggests there were smaller towns between Dwaraka and Kushastali in ancient times. "With a large port town of Dwaraka, a shipyard in Bet Dwaraka and three other satellite towns at Aramda, Varwala and Nagewsar, the concept of the city state of Darukavana or Dwaravati must have been given a concrete shape," speculates Rao. If all these settlements are taken as one unit, Darukavana extended over 45 km from north to south and at least 25 km from east to west approximating to eight yojanas, if not more.<br /><br />Also, the Dwaraka harbour provided the earliest clear evidence of modifying natural rock to serve the needs of a harbour. Two rock-cut slipways of varying width extending from the beach to the intertidal zone were discovered, which "could have been designed for launching boats of different sizes." This technique was adopted by the Phoenicians much later, around 900-800. The structures and the large stone anchors lying under the sea at Dwaraka are also seen as indicative of large ships being anchored out at sea while smaller boats carried men and cargo up the river.<br /><br />Among artefacts reovered from Dwaraka and Bet Dwaraka were pottery carrying inscriptions in old Indo-Aryan (Vedic or archaic Sanskrit) script and were found to be 3,528 years old in thermoluminescence testing. Rao deciphers one of the potsherds recovered to read baga (God) in late Harappan characters and assignable to 1800-1600 BC and another as Mahakaccha sah pa, conveying the sense of "sea (or sea god) king (or ruler) protect"-an appeal to the sea god for protection. A similar appeal has been deciphered in a seal inscripion from Mohenjo Daro.<br /><br />Triangular three-holed anchors weighing 120-150 kg, the biggest weighing 560 kg, found were similar to pre-Phoenician anchors found in Syria and Cyprus and were dated around 1500 BC. Another archaeologically significant find was a lunate shaped moonstone (chandrasila). This and a beam found in the vicinity suggested to Rao's team that there existed a temple here. Stone artefacts recovered from the sea-bed included a low footed stool of basalt, finely polished found along with brass arches, a pestle of granite and a grinder cum pounder of dolerite. Two single-holed spheroid stone objects, use unclear, datable to 1500-1400 BC were found, besides iron nails, brass objects, a copper bell, a highly corroded copper lota and a few bronze nails. Low zinc brass produced at Lothal in 2300-2000 BC is similar in composition to that found at Dwaraka.<br /><br />Admittedly, there is not much dispute about the general area of Krishna's kingdom. "The dating of Rao's material was done, not by archaeologists, but by scientists at the Physical Research Lab, and that cannot be disbelieved. So it is definitely ancient Dwaraka," said Acharya. But in terms of time, Rao's explorations place Krishna and the Mahabharata in the post-Harappan period or after the break-up of the Harappan empire due to natural causes around 2200-1900 BC.<br /><br />"Generally our findings have been accepted," said Rao. "There are a few who think that the date 1700-1800 BC that we have assigned is not in consonance with the traditional date of 3102 BC. But so far as the archaeological evidence from on shore and off-shore excavations and thermoluminescence dating is concerned Kushastali with its late Harappan relics where the first Dwaraka was built may be assigned to 1700 BC and the town on the mainland may be slightly later," Rao said. "Although traditional date of 3102 BC cannot be confirmed by avaiable evidence, it is better to explore deeper waters of Bet Dwaraka," said Rao. "There is one other possibility. In Bet Dwaraka there are the mudflats. We are not able to dig because you hit water at an early depth and neither diving nor excavations are possible." (Archaeological excavations show that modern Dwaraka is the seventh settlement of the name on this site. It is now generally accepted that the earlier cities have been, at various times, swallowed by the sea. Interestingly, the only ancient temple for Matsya, Vishnu's incarnation at the time of the great flood, is to be found at Sankhodhara in Bet Dwarak.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.h.jpg"><img area="49800" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.h.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The structures and stone anchors lying under the sea indicate large ships being anchored out at sea while smaller boats carried men and cargo up the river as visualised in this artist's impression of the harbour of ancient Dwaraka.</span><br /><br />Madhav Acharya too favours the later dates. "There is a difference in the geographic areas as well as the time frame of the Saraswati civilisation that is wholly Vedic, and the setting of the Mahabharata," he said. According to him, while the Saraswati-or the Harappan-civilisation centres on the Saptasindhu rivers (the Indus, the Saraswati and the five rivers that make up Punjab), the Mahabharata has the Ganga and the Yamuna, besides the Kurukshetra area in Haryana, as the backdrop. "The earliest habitation in the Ganga-Yamuna region does not go back beyond 1200-1100 BC, and in Mathura and the Mahabharata sites there is no evidence of earlier inhabitation."<br /><br />The date arguments notwithstanding, there can be no denying the importance of Rao's findings. With Krishna consigned to mythology, the modernists of course insist that the undersea discoveries must have an explanation different from Rao's interpretation and correlation with the ancient texts, though they have yet to come up with one. Researchers like Rajaram view Rao's findings as confirmation of their theories that the Mahabharata belongs to a much earlier period.<br /><br />Rajaram, in his yet to be published book Search for the Historical Krishna, cites three main reasons as to why the site discovered by Rao is actually a later Dwaraka than the one built by Krishna. First, considering the abundant Vedic symbolism found in Harappan archaeology, which Rao too says, the lack of any Vedic motifs in the artefacts found in the undersea excavations suggests that the settlement was a later one. Rajaram theorises that Krishna's Dwaraka most probably lies below the existing ruins at a further depth of around 2.5 to 5 metres based on his calculations on the likely rise in sea levels over the past 5,000 years.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.i.jpg"><img area="9520" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 80px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.i.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Low zinc brass produced at Lothal in 2300-2000 BC is similar in composition to that found in artefacts like this bronze bell excavated at Dwaraka. Also, a stone mould compares favourably with similar mould found in Lothal and other Indus towns.</span><br /><br />The second reason cited is that Krishna of the Mahabharata and the archaeology of his Dwaraka must fit the picture of the region and society portrayed in the ancient texts. This, Rajaram says, better fits in the early Harappan (3100 BC) period than the post Harappan period favoured by Rao and some others. Especially since some of the artefacts recovered from the sea-bed show a strong affinity with West Asia, especially the Kassite empire of Babylon.<br /><br />The third reason is the mismatch between the political situation described in the Mahabharata and the picture given by post-Harappan archaeology. "There can be little doubt that Krishna was a Vedic figure," said Rajaram. According to the Mabhabharata, Krishna's links were with the Kurus, the Panchalas and Mathura, all in the Vedic heartland to the north. "Just as there is no denying the Kassite influences on Rao's Dwaraka, there is no denying the historic Vedic link between the Purus (or Kurus) and the Yadus along the Saraswati river, which should place them before the complete drying up the ancient river around 2200-1900 BC."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.j.jpg"><img area="9300" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 100px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.j.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">This seal establishes the submerged township's connection with Dwaraka of Mahabharata. It corroborates the reference in the Harivamsa that says every citizen of Dwaraka should carry a mudra as a mark of identification.</span><br /><br />Further, Rajaram argues, the Mahabharata describes India as made up of established kingdoms, with good communications and a common elite language. "It was an age of large kingdoms and empires and imperial aspirations," he insists. In fact the geography as described in the epic is accepted by many scholars. Historian S.M. Ali is quoted in Rao's book: "The georgrapahical matter contained in the Mahabharata is immense. It is perhaps the only great work which deals with georgraphic details and not incidentally as other works." So Krishna's Dwaraka must fit into the geography and society described in the epic, which obviously corresponds far more to the early Harappan rather than the post-Harappan period which saw the rise of regional cultures, what Rao calls Janapadas, Rajaram argues in his book. (Rao gives the following chronology: Pre-Harappa 3400-3100 BC; mature Harappa 3100-1900 BC; late Harappa 1900-1500 BC.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.k.jpg"><img area="28200" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.the-week.com/23jun01/cov.k.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The town was well-fortified with engineering skill, as seen in the hemispherical door-socket (left) and literacy as seen in the inscription in the earthern trough (right) in old Indo-Aryan script which Rao deciphers as Mahakaccha sah pa, conveying the sense of "sea (or sea god) king (or ruler) protect".</span><br /><br />Moreover, in looking at the historical basis for the Dwaraka legend, a key question is not just about Krishna but also whether the Mahabharata war and other participants in the war were historical also. One cannot have one without the other. And Rajaram and Jha, in their yet to be universally accepted decipherment of the Harappan seals, say there are many references to Krishna and other Mahabharata characters in the Indus Valley seals, some of which date back to 5000 years.<br /><br />For instance, one seal they have deciphered as Devapi, the elder brother of Bhishma's father, Shantanu. Among other names related to Krishna deciphered are Akrura (Krishna's friend), Yadu (Krishna's ancestor), and Sritirtha (old name for Dwaraka). Another seal they read as 'Murari Vrishni anga' meaning 'Murari of the Vrishnis,' and one more as 'Vrishni varpa,' implying he had a beautiful body. In fact, Jha and Rajaram say they have found the word 'Vrishni' appearing on numerous Harappan seals. Vrishni of course was Krishna's clan, living in a region where recent excavations have shown that the Harappan Civilisation was thriving.<br /><br />The identification of Krishna's Dwaraka thus calls for devising methods of identifying sites and artefacts that belong to the Mahabharata period, though there is little consensus among historians and archeologists on dating this period. For this, it is necessary to get at the root of the main literary source of the period, the Mahabharata. "Recent research has shown that the epic is not a myth but a recreation of history. This is the consensus among most historians and archaeologists," Rao argues.<br /><br />While one may or may not agree with Rao's conclusions, he has made an important contribution by connecting literature and archaeology. He has shown that identifying Krishna's Dwaraka and other places connected with the Krishna story as well as the larger story of the Mahabharata itself and other ancient texts is possible by looking for similar connections between literature and archaeology, and be the starting point for excavations for other historic and legendary places.<br />with Vijaya PushkarnaUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1128823510095019412005-10-08T19:05:00.000-07:002005-10-08T19:11:18.403-07:00Newly-discovered Mamallapuram temple fascinates archaeologistsBy T.S. Subramanian<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/10/images/2005041004161801.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/10/images/2005041004161801.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><b> Parts of the ancient temple discovered to the south of the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram during the excavation done from February to April 2005. — Photo Courtesy ASI</b><br /></div><br /><br />CHENNAI, APRIL 9 . The temple discovered by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), a few hundred metres to the south of the Shore Temple at Mamallapuram, near Chennai, must have been as big or even bigger than the Shore Temple, said archaeologists conducting the excavation there. The ASI had discovered massive remains of a temple on the shore, close to the Shore Temple during the excavations it had conducted in February and March.<br /><br />While continuing the excavation, it discovered a subsidiary shrine adjacent to the remains of a square garbha graham (sanctum sanctorum) of the newly- discovered temple.<br /><br />The garbha graha measures 2.6 metres by 2.6 metres. The sanctum sanctorum is surrounded by an open courtyard, which is encircled by a massive prakara (outer wall). A beautiful ring-well, made of terracotta; a sculpted capstone, a shikara stone; parts of a stupa; granite architectural members with sockets; and beautiful potsherds have been found within this temple complex.<br /><br />The newly discovered temple "is a separate complex by itself. Its magnitude and area is akin to that of the Shore Temple," said T. Satyamurthy, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI, Chennai Circle. Alok Tripathi, Deputy Superintending Archaeologist, Underwater Archaeology Wing, ASI, who is heading the current excavation at Mamallapuram, said, "This temple must have been as big or bigger than the Shore Temple."<br /><br />What has fascinated archaeologists is that mason's marks (engravings) have been found on the granite architectural members of the square garbha graha.<br /><br />These mason's marks depict a bird, a lamp, a bow and arrow, and two interconnected triangles. The bird occurs like a leitmotif on several stones.<br /><br />"We have found a lot of mason's marks, who built this temple. We have to compare these mason's marks [with those found elsewhere] and find out whether the same group built the temples at Kancheepuram. In the temples in north India, the mason's marks have been studied quite well," Dr. Tripathi said.<br /><br />Mamallapuram is known for its unparalleled works of architecture including open-air bas relief, rock cut temples and structural temples built by the Pallava kings Mahendravarman, Narasimhavarman I, Paramesvara and Narasimhavarman II, during the 7th and 8th century A.D.<br /><br />The majestic Shore Temple, which stands on the edge of the sea, was built by Narsimhavarman II (circa 690- 715 A.D.). He also built the huge Kailasanatha temple and the Iravatanesvara temple at Kancheepuram. Nandivarman II (circa 736-769 A.D.) built the Vaikunta Perumal temple.<br /><br />Obviously, the newly discovered temple close to the Shore Temple, was built by the Pallava kings. The question that arises is: why did the Shore Temple survive while this one did not?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/10/images/2005041004161802.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/10/images/2005041004161802.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><b> The ring well of the temple, made of terracotta. — Photo Courtesy ASI</b><br /></div><br />Dr. Satyamurthy said, "The Shore Temple was built on bed rock. So it survived all these years. But this temple was constructed on sand and it collapsed. There was some setback, it developed cracks and collapsed." There must have been several reasons behind the survival of the Shore Temple and the collapse of the newly discovered temple, he said.<br /><br />The ASI so far has not been able to find the deities of the square garbha graha and the subsidiary shrine adjacent to it. "There must have been deities inside because it was a structural temple. The deities must have been at a high level. We are now excavating at a lower level," said Dr. Tripathi. He pointed out that the garbha graha had a definite pattern. It was divided into four parts. Stones had been arranged in a specific manner.<br /><br />The ring-well made of terracotta, found in the open courtyard, is an arresting sight. "Four rings have been exposed. There may be more. We have to see how deep it is," he added.<br /><br />The ASI has also discovered the remains of a second temple, built on a low-slung rock, to the south of the Shore Temple. To the north of the Shore Temple, it has found onland a wall under water (because the water table is very high). Six blocks of stones of this wall ran to a length of 20 metres, said Dr. Tripathi. More trenches would be dug on land to see how far this wall ran. This wall extended into the sea (that is west to east) and its remains have been found in the sea. The ASI officials are keen on finding out the extent to which this wall runs into the sea and where it turns. For, they want to know whether the Shore Temple was surrounded by a prakara on all its sides. A wall existed north to the south, they said.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1128647534811541452005-10-06T18:12:00.000-07:002005-10-08T20:24:21.560-07:00The discovery that added 2,000 years to Indian historyby RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051007/images/07lead1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 100px;" src="http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051007/images/07lead1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was Discovered By Nayanjot Lahiri, Permanent Black, Rs 750<br /><br />It is difficult to believe today that even in the early twenties of the last century, recorded Indian history was said to have begun with the Vedic Age around 1200 BC. One archaeological discovery changed all this and pushed back the frontiers of Indian history by at least 2,000 years.<br /><br />The announcement that the Indus Valley Civilization had been discovered was made in 1924 by John Marshall, the then director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India. The discoveries were hailed as similar in scale to the discovery of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann, and of Minoan Crete by Arthur Evans. The discoveries announced by Marshall added a new dimension to the Indian and world civilization.<br /><br />Nayanjot Lahiri, a trained archaeologist herself, tells the story of how the civilization came to be discovered. Her research is detailed and the documents she mines have never been used before. She has a great story to tell and she tells it well, with a wealth of fact and interpretation. Written from an archaeologist’s viewpoint, there was always the danger of the book descending into too many technical details. Lahiri avoids this and has produced a book that is enjoyable.<br /><br />The ruins in Harrappa — one of the principle sites of the Indus civilization — were visited and described by 19th century British explorers and some of them even guessed that underneath the mound lay the relics of an ancient city. The first archaeologist to visit Harrappa was Alexander Cunningham who began the first excavations there in 1872. Cunningham discovered that some of the bricks from the ruins had been carried away to provide ballast for the railway lines being laid to link Multan to Lahore. Cunningham, as Lahiri explains, saw his excavations through a Buddhist grid. Thus he saw the artefacts and the seals he unearthed as going back to Buddhist times. He was unaware of the full significance of the past he had delved into. A proper excavation of Harrappa had to wait till 1921 upto which date it “teetered on the verge of being excavated”.<br /><br />Before excavations at Harrappa could proceed apace, news came that Rakhaldas Banerji, a historian and archaeologist from Calcutta, had discovered in Mohenjo-daro in Sind seals similar to those found in Harrappa. From the ruins of Mohenjo-daro, or mound of the dead, Banerji had retrieved what can only be described as a treasure. He had found and recognized seals of the Harrappa type. By the early Twenties, it was clear that archaeologists in India, led by Marshall, were poised to make a major breakthrough.<br /><br />It fell to Marshall, of course, to string together the findings of the two sites, and he was forced to confront “a range of cultural congruences between the two sites”. The seals were similar; the bricks were identical; there were clay bangles of the same kind in both places. He wrote, “this forgotten civilization, of which the excavations of Harrappa and Mohenjo-daro have now given us a first glimpse, was developed in the Indus valley itself, and just as distinctive of that region as the civilization of the Pharraohs was distinctive of the Nile…There is no reason to assume that the culture of this region [i.e. the Indus Valley] was imported from other lands, or its character was profoundly modified by outside influences.”<br /><br />Marshall’s initial conclusions were remarkably perceptive and accurate. In many ways, Lahiri’s book is a tribute to Marshall and his achievements. But the book also brings to life the careers of such early pioneers of Indian archaeology as Banerji and Daya Ram Sahni. She has also rescued from obscurity the work of the Italian, Luigi Pio Tessitori, to whom history owes the first findings of Kalibangan in Rajasthan, another important site of the Indus Valley Civilization.<br /><br />What happened in history is often a mystery. Lahiri enlightens us on how what happened in prehistoric India became a part of known history.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1128471915234692252005-10-04T17:25:00.000-07:002005-10-04T17:25:15.263-07:00Lord Krishna’s Dwarka not in Jamnagar but in Junagadh: ISRONavhind Times on the Web: India
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<br />PTI Ahmedabad Oct 4: Giving a totally new twist to the location of Lord Krishna’s birthplace Dwarka, satellite pictures taken by the Indian Space Research Organisation have indicated that Dwarka did not exist in Jamnagar, as the historians believe, but in Junagadh district of Gujarat.
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<br />A senior scientist with the ISRO’s space application centre, Dr P S Thakker, who has worked on this project, said, “What is interesting is that ISRO’s findings corroborate what is mentioned in the vedas and other ancient Hindu scriptures about the geographical location of Dwaraka but contradicts what the archaeologists and modern historians say about the present Dwarka which they claim is in Jamnagar district of Gujarat.”
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<br />Though the study was done by the ISRO four years back it was confined to abstract papers on a dusty shelf.
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<br />Satellite images can pinpoint things that are not visible to the naked eye. For example, it can indicate the presence of ruins of a city which has been long buried under the soil.
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<br />Mr Thakker said that there are nine sites in Gujarat which claim to be the original Dwarka.
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<br />Those sites are: the town of modern Dwarka in Jamnagar district, Mul Dwarka near Kodinar in Junagadh district, Muli in Surendranagar district, Panch Dwaraka near Vankaner in Rajkot district, Bet Dwarka in Jamnagar district near Okha and a city believed to be submerged in the great Rann of Kutch.
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<br />Another site which also claims to be Dwarka is Jima Durga in Junagadh district. Descriptions of Lord Krishna’s Dwarka mentions the presence of rivers, forests, mountains, gardens having colourful flowers in its environs. But the present-day Dwarka, which exists in Jamnagar, doesn’t match with the descriptions found in literature but what matches perfectly are the satellite images which were taken of Junagadh district, Mr Thakker added.
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<br />He said the available literature indicates existence of two different Dwarkas at two different periods. One Dwarka was that of Lord Vasudeva and the other was that of Lord Krishna’s.
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<br />Lord Vasudev’s Dwarka, which was submerged in the Arabian Sea about 3500 years ago, and Lord Krishna’s Dwarka were both located in Junagadh district near Prabhash Kshetra, according to Mr Thakker.
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<br />In 1988, the sixth marine archaeological expedition of the National institute of Oceanography, Goa led by Dr S R Rao, emeritus scientist, had discovered hitherto unknown features of a city in Jamnagar which Dr Rao had claimed to be Lord Krishna’s Dwarka.
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<br />The expedition carried out by Dr Rao had come across inner and outer gateways of the proto-historic port city flanked by circular bastions built of massive blocks of sandstone.
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<br />From the inner gateway, a flight of steps led to the Gomati river the submerged channel of which has been traced over a length of 1.5 km in the seabed.
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<br />However, Mr Thakker claims this unknown feature of a city discovered by Dr Rao could be any other city settled after he said that the study of the satellite data perfectly matches with the description given in Tri Shasthi Shlaka Purush Charta (history of 63 outstanding personalities) written by Hemchandrachary, a distinguished Jain muni of the 11th century who has given a geographical description of Lord Krishna’s Dwarka built by kuber at Lord Indra’s behest.
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<br />Mr Thakker said the presence of Navda village in the vicinity (which means boat) and milollite limestone found in the vicinity of Girnar in Junagadh suggested the presence of a sea in this area.
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<br />“Thus it seems that Lord Vasudev’s dwarka which was submerged in the sea as well and the Dwarka of Lord Krishna were located in Junagadh district near Prabhash Kshetra. Excavation and further study is required to get more scientific information on Dwarka,” he added.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1128068598140486982005-09-30T01:23:00.000-07:002005-09-30T01:23:18.166-07:00Mahabharata war in the history of the HindusBy S. Govindaswamy
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<br />It is claimed that the civilisation that originated on the banks of river Saraswati is the most ancient in the history of mankind, based on historical and linguistic study of the Rig Veda. It is also claimed that Rig Veda is the world's oldest available text. These sweeping statements can only be wishful thinking as no references to support research works have been given. How proper is it to call Rig Veda as a text, as Vedas (smiritis) did have only an oral tradition.
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<br />If Shantanu was the great grandfather of the Kauravas and Pandavas, he would have lived three generations earlier and not four as mentioned.
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<br />What is the independent evidence that the 'accepted date' of Mahabharata war was 3101 B.C? Taking the above figure to be correct the latest verses of Rig Veda were composed around 3200 b.c.
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<br />From Krishna to Rama
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<br />a) In the discussion the author has used Solar (Sauramana) year, precession of equinoxes (seasons) and lunar (Chandramana) year.
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<br />b) Before drawing conclusions it is necessary to know which Panchangams (Almanacs) were in use and when these were computed. As per one Panchangam, year 5107 of Kaliyuga, the most ancient, is running now. Does it not mean that there were no Panchangams earlier than 3000 B.C.? If so,this coincided with the given date for Mahabharata war. The astrological references to Rama's birth and observation of Ashwins in winter solstice have probably been made prior to the start of the Kaliyuga Panchangam!
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<br />c) In the calculation of the periods of Krishna and Rama, the author has mixed up precession of equinoxes with thithis (phases) of moon. The former is based on the wobbling of earth's axis in clockwise (opposite to its rotation and orbit around sun) direction. The latter is the relative angles between the sun and moon due the latter's rotation around the earth. It is true that the difference. Between Chaitra Shukla Saptami and Chaitra Pournami, is eight days. The author points out, that winter ended on Chaitra full moon day during Rama's period and on Chitra Shukla Saptami during Mahabharata war. Application of precession of the equinoxes to the thithis is not correct. If the end of winter had been given based on sun's motion the above calculation would be correct. The moon's phases do not occur at the same corresponding position of sun with respect to stars, in any two years. Precision refers only to sun's position with respect to the equator (Bhumadhya rekha), Tropic of Cancer and Carpricorn (Kataka and Makara rekhas). For example sun is in winter solstice on December 23. If the preceding new moon (Amavasya) occurred at the same star (degree) during Rama's birth and Bhishma's death, it would establish sun's position also. If so the author's calculation is acceptable.
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<br />d) It is mentioned that Bhishma breathed his last when Uttarayana started on Magha (February-March) Shukla Ashtami. In the next line it is mentioned that winter ended on Chaitra (April-May) Shukla Sapta Saptami. The difference is two months. This needs clarification.
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<br />e) Sidereal day is approximately four minutes longer than solar day. Sidereral year is one day more than solar year because earth's rotation around the sun amounts to one extra revolution with respect to stars. The statement that sidereal year is longer than solar year by 20 minutes 23 seconds due to precession of the equinoxes, is wrong.
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<br />Sun comes to Ashwini on April 14/15 (Tamil New Year Day). This is start of Chittirai month (Mesha month in Kerala). This is called as Baishaki in Punjab. Is there an advance of one month sun is having a declination of approximately 90 34' North. If Ashwini was in winter solstice as per riches 7/69/3 and 1/112/13 the declination would have been 23030' south. The precession between December 23 and April 14 is 110 days. Hence the period would be 110X 72=7920 years; approximately 5000 b.c. The author has given this as 7000 b.c. I hope that the author will go through my comments and correct me and give clarifications where ever required. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10119555.post-1127435730826801562005-09-22T17:35:00.000-07:002005-09-22T17:35:30.873-07:00Was Indian temple hit by ancient tsunami?Archaeologists find 2,000-year-old ruins in danger zone
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<br />Updated: 1:13 p.m. ET Sept. 21, 2005
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<br />BANGALORE, India - Archaeologists in southern India have discovered the ruins of an ancient Hindu temple that may have been destroyed centuries ago by a tsunami, an official said Wednesday.
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<br />The temple appears to have been built between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D. It was excavated this month just north of Mahabalipuram, a port town in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, by a team from the government Archaeological Survey of India, the team’s chief Thyagarajan Satyamurthy said.
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<br />The region where the temple was found is in the same area affected by the Dec. 26 Asian tsunami. But the hardest-hit areas of India were farther south near Nagappattinam.
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<br />“This is the earliest temple discovered in this region so far,” Satyamurthy said.
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<br />The archaeologists are trying to determine the date of the tsunami from sand and seashells found at the brick temple, dedicated to Lord Muruga, a Hindu god, Satyamurthy told The Associated Press.
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<br />He said there was more damage on the side of the temple facing the sea, and that the sand and shell deposits at the structure were not normally found so far inland.
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<br />Geophysicists at a government laboratory in southern Trivandrum city called them “palaeo-tsunami” deposits, he said.
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<br />Temple built upon temple
<br />The temple was found one layer below a granite temple excavated by the same team in July, leading archaeologists to theorize that the Pallava kings, who ruled the region between A.D. 580 and 728, built the latter temple atop the remains of the older one.
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<br />The team also found stucco figurines, terra-cotta lamps, beads and roofing tiles. Similar articles and large bricks were typically used around the beginning of the first millennium, he said.
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<br />Just as an ancient tsunami may have ravaged the temple outside Mahabalipuram, last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami revealed other temples and monuments that had been buried for centuries.
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<br />But the ruins of this temple were not uncovered by the recent tsunami, and excavation did not begin until after the tsunami struck.
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<br />The finding also revived a debate over whether references in ancient literature to cities and towns being submerged by violent waves referred to a tsunami.
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<br />“Our discovery now poses very interesting questions not only about ancient Tamils but also about the history of tsunami,” Satyamurthy said.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1