Wednesday, 29 December 2004
Hauma Hamiddha
The Bahmanid sultans were amongst the most monstrous Islamic rulers in world history. While people talk of the massacres of Timur-i-lang in Inner Asia as epitomizing the violence of Islamic regimes, the violence of the Bahamanids is hardly touched upon. We shall briefly outline some of the acts of these Sultans, which represent one of the most blood stained phases on Indian history. It is hardly surprising given the current political proclivities in India that this period of history is not properly described. We shall confine ourselves here to the core Bahmanid dynasty and not the five successor Sultanates of the later period. As KAN Shastri mentions, there were few among the line of 18 Sultans, who were not drunkards or debauchees and their courts were teeming with Islamic adventurers from all over the Moslem world (compare with modern terrorist havens in Pakistan and now Iraq) seeking fortune in Jihad and pleasures derived from the riches of India.The Bahmanid sultans were amongst the most monstrous Islamic rulers in world history. While people talk of the massacres of Timur-i-lang in Inner Asia as epitomizing the violence of Islamic regimes, the violence of the Bahamanids is hardly touched upon. We shall briefly outline some of the acts of these Sultans, which represent one of the most blood stained phases on Indian history. It is hardly surprising given the current political proclivities in India that this period of history is not properly described. We shall confine ourselves here to the core Bahmanid dynasty and not the five successor Sultanates of the later period. As KAN Shastri mentions, there were few among the line of 18 Sultans, who were not drunkards or debauchees and their courts were teeming with Islamic adventurers from all over the Moslem world (compare with modern terrorist havens in Pakistan and now Iraq) seeking fortune in Jihad and pleasures derived from the riches of India. The condition of Hindus in their reign was very pitiable as explicitly mentioned by the Russian observer Athanasius Nikitin who visited during the late Sultanate period.
-The empire was founded by Alla-ad-din Bahman Shah, who crowned himself Sultan in 1347. The caliph of Egypt declared him a great Sultan and requested him to extend the sword of Islam.
-1358, his son Muhammad I became sultan. He killed the Hindu chief Vinayaka Deva, son of Kaapaya Nayaka the great freedom fighter of the Telugu country in a fierce battle in 1362. The Bahmanid army suffered heavy losses in the battle. In frustration, he devastated Telengana slaughtering thousands of Hindus.
-1365: Muhammad I destroyed the Hindu population in all the villages around Mudgal in a Jihad.
-1367 Muhammad I launched a successful attack on Vijayanagara and slaughtered 400,000 Hindu civilians, including 10,000 Brahmins amongst them, within a span of a week. Their corpses and piled as huge pyramids "declaring the glory of the army of Islam". Firishta has nothing but praise for Muhammad for his religious treatment of the Kaffrs and waxes eloquently on this. Nearly a million Hindus were killed in his reign.
-1397 After a bloody intercine struggle amongst the Bahmanids, Firuz a grandson of Alla-ad-din I ascended the throne. He is said to have lived a pious Islamic life constantly copying out the Quran. Nevertheless he was a drunkard and a debauchee who had one of the largest harems possessed by any Indian Islamist- 800 women. He had a particular taste for European women and collected Hungarian, Polish and Serbian women for his harem with the help of his Osman allies from Turkey. The 800 women were housed in the palace of Firuzabad on the Bhima river.
-1398 Firuz exterminated the Hindu Shudra kingdom of the Kolis after their brave resistance on the North Bank of the Krishna. He then killed the son of Harihara II by sending a band of assassins, captured 10,000 Brahmins, whom he ransomed for a large sum from Vijayanagara, and slaughtered 50,000 other Hindu civilians.
-1399 Firuz seized the harvests from the Hindu farmers throughout the farmlands in the Deccan and caused 1000's of deaths due to famine throughout the land.
-1400 Firuz ravaged the Gond kingdom of Kherla and slaughtered over 20,000 Hindus and adds the daughter of the Gond kingdom to his harem.
-1401 Firuz sent a mission to Timur-i-lang of Samarqand expressing his admiration for his Jihads on the Kaffrs and recognition of him as the Exalted Sultan of the World. Timur acknowledged Firuz as the supreme Sultan of the "lower Hindustan" and issued a decree bestowing Gujarat and Malwa on Firuz for his services to Islam.
-1404 Firuz launched a Jihad into Bankapur killed the Hindu males in the cities and took 1000's of boys and girls for the harem.
-1417 The great battle of Rajamahendravaram was fought. The Hindu king Katayavema Reddi died fighting in the battle and 30,000 Hindus were slain in the city.
-1422 Firuz's brother, Ahmad, killed the former and made himself Sultan.
-1423 Ahmad decided to erase the Kaffrs along the Tungabhadra River. He starts systematic destruction of all temples in the region along with large scale cow-slaughter to drive home his message to the Hindus. Up to 500,000 Hindus were killed in two months.
-1424 Ahmad invaded Warrangal and killed the Hindu ruler of the kingdom and massacred uncounted numbers of Hindus. He regularly employed foreign Moslem adventurers- Turks, Arabs, Mongols and Persians, for all civil and military positions.
Ahmad was a superstitious Moslem who supported all kinds of foreign Islamists and fraudulent Sufi preachers in his court. He invited the bigoted Islamist poet, Azari from Khorasan to his court and asked him to composed paeans on the Bahmanid dynasty. For this he endowed the poet with a huge payment of gold. Ahmad had converted two of the young Brahmin boys from Northern Tamil Nad, whom he had captured, and named them Maliq Hasan and Fathullah Imad-al-Mulq.
-1436 Ahmad was succeeded by his son Alla-ad-din II.
-1437 he staged a Jihad on the Hindus of the Konkan, kidnapped the Hindu princess of Samgameshvar and added her to his harem.
-1443 The Hindu armies liberated Raichur, Bankapur and Mudgal. Alla-ad-din launched a retaliatory strike in which he broke several Hindu temples in North Karnataka with the help of his fanatic general, Maliq-ut-Tujjar from Basra, Iraq. He rounded up 200,000 Hindus held them in a concentration camp as hostages to extort a ransom from Devaraya of Vijayanagara.
-1446 The Army of Islam invaded the Konkan and was ravaging the region. The Raja of Samgameshvar defeated the army and by a ruse trapped the Islamic fighters in the Chakan fort near Pune. With the help of some Hindu mercenaries in the Bahmanid army a peace plan was negotiated. At the time of the peace talks, the Hindu fighters took the Ghazis by surprise and killed 1200 Arab Sayyids and 1000 Turkish officers.
-1451 Azari, the central Asian, the poet sent a message to the Sultan to slay Hindus and give up wine. Alla banned his subjects from drinking ferments, but he himself drank heavily and was constantly inebriated.
-1454 He started recycling the Hindu temples he had broken to build grandiose Mazars and Masjids.
-1458 Alla died and was replaced by his son Humayun-i-Zaalim, who even by Islamic standards was a savage tyrant.
-1459 He tortured many courtiers to death with utmost brutality suspecting that they were plotting against him.
-1460 Routine torture and murder of Hindu subjects went on throughout his capital.
-1461 He was assasinated in drunken brawl with his courtiers and was succeeded by his son Nizam. He was very young and his administration was managed by the fanatic Turks, Mahmud Gavan from Iraq and the Khwaja Jahan from Central Asia.
-1463 The Sultan died and was succeed by his brother Muhammad III. Mahmud Gavan killed Khwaja Jahan and became the sole control of the young Sultan.
-1467-1472 Mahmud Gavan's savage Jihads in the Konkan have been previously discussed.
-1472 Maliq Hasan, the Brahmin convert, leads a fierce Jihad against the Reddis of Rajamahendravaram and Kondavidu for the new Sultan. Maliq Hasan was made governor of Telangana. Fathullah, the other Brahmin convert, was also particularly brutal on the Hindus and a great friend of the Turks who loitered in the court. He became the governor of Berar where he later founded a Sultanate of his own- the Imad Shahi.
-1476 The Moslem governor of Kondavidu started torturing and murdering Hindus in the area. The Hindus organized a resistance under the Orissan chief Kumara Hamvira Mahapatra. Hamvira Mahapatra killed the Moslem governor and liberated Kondavidu. He along with the Orissan King Purushottama began the liberation of North Eastern Telengana from the Moslems. Maliq Hasan was defeated and besieged in Rajahmundry. But Mushmmad the Sultan lead a terrible Jihad and repulsed the Orissans. He besieged Hamvira at Kondavidu
-1478 The Hamvira Mahapatra ran out of supplies and had to run for life. Muhammad stormed the fort and killed the Hindus in the town. He savagely demolished the great temple of Kondavidu built by the Orissans and Reddis and slit the throats of all the brahmins in the town with his own hands and took on the title Ghazi and annihilator of Hindus. In its place he built a large Masjid.
-1479 Muhmmad distracted the Vijayanagarans by sending Yusuf Adil Khan and Mahmud Gavan on a terrible westward thrust. He took advantage of this launched a surprise attack on Kanchipuram. He leveled the temples in the city, plundered them, and slew all the Brahmins he could captured and heaped their corpses in mounds in the city. But on the way back he was defeated by the Hindu general Narasimha Nayaka and lost all his booty, while escaping with life.
-1481 He murdered fellow Ghazi and Prime Minister Mahmud Gavan in his court suspecting he might have designs on the throne.
-1482 Muhammad drank heavily and passed away in midst of a drunken raving. He was succeeded by his son Mahmud.
-1487 A terrible fight between the local Moslem converts (Deccanis), some Hindu supporters of theirs, and Africans on one side and the Turko-Mongols, Arabs and Afghans on the other broke out in which Dilpasand Khan, a Turk, murdered Maliq Hasan. The Sultan was lost in drink and debauchery in his harem and hardly bothered about what happened outside. The Deccani and Black faction tried overthrow the Sultan, but he called the Turkic faction for help which squashed the attempt and massacred several thousands of Deccanis and Africans in 3 days.
-1490 Fathullah Imad Shah, the Brahmin convert in Berar, Ahmad Nizam Shah, the son of the Brahmin convert Maliq Hasan in Ahmadnagar, Qasim Barid, a Turk from Azerbaijan in Berar, Yusuf Adil Khan, the brother of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Mehmed II (the destroyer of Constantinople) in Bijapur, and Quli Qutb Shah, A Turk of the Shi'ite Qara Qoyunlu Turkish tribe from Azerbaijan, in Golconda, declared themselves independent Sultans. The Bahmanid sultan was kept as a puppet under the Barid Shah in Bidar. Mahmud tried many times to escape but remained a prisoner of the Barid Shah. He was followed by his 4 sons the first 3 of whom were put to death for not toeing the line of the Barid Shah.
His last son Kalimullah made an attempt to contact the Mogol Babar in Delhi to help him out. But Barid Shah got wind of his plot and Kalim had to flee for life to Ahmadnagar where he died ending the dynasty.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Deeds of the Bahmanid Sultans By Hauma Hamiddha
Friday, December 28, 2007
Comparison of Timeline of Ancient Greece and Persia
Comparison of Timeline of Ancient Greece and Persia
(all dates are B.C. unless otherwise noted)
(under construction)
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Monday, December 24, 2007
Hail Narendra Modi, the Man of the People of Gujarat!!!
Ugly Indian secularists and ugly India media - I
V Sundaram | Mon, 24 Dec, 2007 , 02:01 PM (News Today)
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Hail Gujarat! Hail the people of Gujarat!!
Hail Narendra Modi, the Man of the People of Gujarat!!!
Through his principled, courageous, rock-like, statesman-like and charismatic leadership of the BJP Party, he has trounced the Congress Party in Gujarat. The disgraceful spokesmen of the graceless Congress Party have commented: "Fascists sometimes do win and repeat their wins".
The truth of the matter is that the Congress Party – indeed even the UPA Government in New Delhi – is under the stranglehold of a fascist leader from distant Italy who has the temerity to think that she is the Mahatma Gandhi of today.
On the day of polling last week, while coming out of the polling booth after casting his vote, Modi had said, 'It will be a historic win for the BJP in Gujarat'. What has happened yesterday in Gujarat, may not be a historic win by means of number of seats, but it is indeed a historic win through the yardstick of its unprecedented nature and character. The BJP has won for the fourth time in Gujarat and Narendra Modi —the Man of the Match — Modi the Monarch has single-handedly carried his BJP Team to a landslide victory against all odds!
To quote the brilliant and unsurpassed words of my friend and freelance journalist K Vijayan: "The TV Channels yesterday and the Press today have revealed a most dangerous trend in UPA politics – they are vindictive, vituperous and venal in their One Point Agenda of seizing and holding on to Power. Power at any cost, and National Interest be damned.
All notorious Fascists have been European and Sonia's roots, religion, and loyalties are Mafia-Fascist. She herself is a good example of a Fascist Dictator, fake names, costumes, and non-existent Cambridge degrees, Bofors and Cousin Qs. A coal scuttles calling the Hindu kettle black. A FOOT-IN-MOUTH-KA-SAUDAAGAR. Sonia is a poor loser – neither she, nor her dimwit son, had the grace to congratulate Narendra Modi after he won.
Others are possibly afraid of getting purged by Sonia if they did. Her highly divisive Aaam Aadmi Plank is another name for an Alien Agenda to Balkanise India by pitting Muslims against Hindus.
Alien Antonia's Mafia tricks will not wash in Hindu India. The Congress under her birdbrain leadership is following Communal politics; it has always done so. We should not overlook the strange coincidence of how would-be rivals to power in Congress and rising Stars of other Parties die early, un-natural deaths. Let us pray for Modi. Paradoxically, all the Hindu-Hinduthva bashing has helped Hinduthva. Maybe Sonia & Son and the Dummy PM should continue up to 2009 and commit Mass-Suttee taking the Commies and secessionists with them".
In these columns on 8th December 2007, under the title 'An Archangel of Death from Italy in Gujarat', I had reacted to the barbarously fascist Hitler-like description of Narendra Modi by Sonia Gandhi in Hindi as: "Mouth Ka Saudaagar" which means "A Merchant of Death". I had observed as follows: Sonia Gandhi is no Archangel of Peace in Gujarat or for that matter in any other part of India.
The experienced people of Gujarat know her to be an unrivalled 'Archangel of Death'. Digressing for a moment from Sonia's sustained and continuous psudo-secular and historic peace initiatives in Jammu and Kashmir, let me turn to Gujarat where elections are taking place in the next few days.
All the Hindus of India know that Islam-embracing and Christianity-coveting Sonia promoted peace in Godhra through the Muslim terrorists in February, 2002. Later she promoted peace through the Muslim terrorists when they attacked 'Sankat Vimochan Temple' at Benares. When the Muslim terrorists killed scores of people in a railway train in Mumbai through the use of cleverly deployed Bombs, Sonia Gandhi expressed her compassion towards the minorities saying that they were being targeted unnecessarily by the Hindu fundamentalists." ...
About three weeks ago Sonia Gandhi went to Gujarat and during an election speech described Narendra Modi as a dishonest Merchant of Death. She rose to poetic heights by saying that Narendra Modi has converted Gujarat into a Godse Land. It is a pity that the grand old Congress party has gone dearth of strategies and become bankrupt of vital national issues to be raised and placed before the people of Gujarat in its on-going electoral campaign.
Sonia Gandhi and her party have been driven to the helpless desperation of being forced to rake up the issue of encounter death of a criminal and a terror suspect Shorabuddin. What is disgusting and disgraceful to note is that the shameless Congress Party in Gujarat has joined forces with the Sardar Patel Utkarsh Samiti led by Gordhan Zadaphia who was Home Minister in Narendra Modi's Cabinet during the 2002 violence in Godhra. Thus a pro-Hindu terrorist of 2002 fame has become an acceptable pseudo-secular and anti-Hindu Congress nationalist of today after he has been duly baptised by Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress President Sonia, has always treated the Hindu majority in Gujarat—and of course in the rest of India—with contempt and describes all the Hindu leaders as 'Communalists'. She duly follows the Nehru legacy of appeasing the Muslims, but unlike Nehru, she has a hidden Christian agenda of de-Hinduising this great nation by dividing the people on communal lines.
The people of Gujarat have understood the fact that the Congress Party is a blatantly anti-Hindu Party and that Sonia Gandhi is a dastardly anti-Hindu Roman Catholic Christian from Italy, owing her allegiance to the Pope in Rome and not to the Indian Nation. She wants to pit the minority Muslims of India against the majority Hindus. Even during the recent UP Assembly elections, she had written a personal letter to thousands of Muslim clerics and leaders saying, 'help me generously to fight against communalism (read majority Hindus), so that, I can build a society of your dreams'.
This is just one example and many such irrefutable facts can be cited. Deriving inspiration and courage from the people of Gujarat, all the innocent and peace loving Hindus of India must unite to adopt this daily working slogan: "Hindus of India unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! Congress Hatao aur Desh ko Bachao".
Our Nation owes a deep debt of gratitude to that indefatigable freedom fighter and Champion of eternal human freedom, Dr Subramanian Swamy for having brought out the whole truth about the undeniable 'Fascist Origins' of Sonia Gandhi and her family. In a historic statement of national significance he has spoken on behalf of all the nationalistic and patriotic Indians of India. Let us hear the rousing 'Roar of this Lion':
"The impressive victory at the polls of the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi was a result of a potent combination of his first rate development record, unalloyed Hindutva, and unreticent anti-Sonia exposure. This same combination will work in other States going to polls in 2008, and finally in the Lok Sabha elections. Instead of recognizing that the people of India are rejecting Ms. Sonia Gandhi and her dumb son Rahul Gandhi in State after State including from where they both were elected to Parliament, namely, Uttar Pradesh, the Congress Party is quoted to have stated gracelessly (New Indian Express, Chennai, today) that "Fascists do sometimes win, sometimes more than once".
This crude remark is however more applicable to Ms. Sonia Gandhi whose father Stefano Maino had volunteered and joined Hitler's fascist German army in 1941, and landed in a Soviet prison in Vladimir, near St. Petersburg. There, seeing the German army being routed, he defected to another version of the Fascists, viz., the Soviet KGB.
Ms.Sonia Gandhi's mother Paola is even today a member of the National Front in Italy which adores Mussolini and Fronts for the Fascists. Hence, seeing the trend in India, Ms. Sonia and her family should pack up their bags and leave for Italy. In the time of 1971 War and 1977 JP victory, she had fled with her children temporarily. But now she should do so permanently".
In conclusion, Narendra Modi's unquenchable Himalayan love for Gujarat and its people has decisively defeated the Modi-hating Pan-Islamic, Pan-Christian and Pan-Marxist Anti-National and Anti-Hindu forces spearheaded by the Congress Party under the fascist leadership of Sonia Gandhi.
The wretched men and women in the pseudo-secular mafia of mainstream mass media (Both print and electronic), the 'Secular Brigade' collecting their weekly bribes from the Congress Party and the other Parties in the UPA Coalition, have suffered a bigger defeat than either Sonia Gandhi or the Congress Party. Self-styled activists, leftist liberals, insipid intellectuals, arrogant artists, callous columnists, elusive editors, lifeless lyricists and sickening speech writers have been describing Narendra Modi as 'An Ugly Indian'.
In my view they are only Uglier Indians committed to the chief Congress-cause, Communist-cause of total destruction of the soul of Bharat Matha and Sanathana Dharma.
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Sunday, December 23, 2007
Hindu Dharma Summit 2007
1.. Hindu Dharma Summit 2007 Takes Action on Key Issues for Hindus Worldwide
2.. Charges Dropped Against Ethnic Indians in Malaysia
3.. Baptized South Gujarat Tribals Re-embrace Hinduism
4.. Rain Water Enters Meenkashi Temple
1. Hindu Dharma Summit 2007 Takes Action on Key Issues for Hindus Worldwide
Press Release
ORLANDO, FLORIDA, December 18, 2007: A meeting of Hindu religious leaders, intellectual leaders, academics and activists has decided to file a petition against the Indian Government in the Supreme Court of India against the taking over of the management of temples in India by the government. A unanimous resolution to this effect was passed at the end of the three days of the Second biennial Hindu Dharma Summit, convened by the Hindu Collective Initiative of North America (HCINA). The HCINA is a collaborative body of 80 large Hindu organizations and temples across the US, formed in August 2005. Its mission statement is "To serve as a collective body of Hindu organizations including temples in North America; to facilitate networking and collaboration to address issues of common concern and benefits; and to co-ordinate collective initiatives to promote the understanding, practice and propagation of Hindu Dharma and culture through proper education and public policy."
The HCINA general secretary, Ved Prakash Chaudhary, said a meeting would be held in New Delhi next year, when a petition would be filed against the government's decision to take over the management of Hindu temples. "Why they are taking control of only Hindu temples and siphoning off the money to the treasury? Why they do not take over the management of a gurudwara, a mosque or a church? Most of us felt that this is the situation that we have to take up seriously," Chaudhary said. Various alternative models were discussed during the meeting including the option of a Hindu Develaya Prabandhak C ommittee that would manage the temples.
Leading Hindus came from all over the globe to participate. The conference was planned and hosted by Hindu University of America.
The Summit leaders agreed that the Government of India should be paying more attention to the human rights issues in Kashmir, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan - where thousands of Hindus are involved. "We would soon be approaching the Government of India in this regard," Chaudhary said.
The Dharma Summit - 2007 also decided to constitute a committee of Hindu academicians and teachers to prepare a supplementary text book material for schools in the United States. These supplemental books would be distributed to teachers and schools all over the US so that a true picture is presented to the students about Hinduism and Indian culture.
There were sessions on various other topics including one coordinated by youth relating to youth issues such as inter-faith marriages, effect on family, progeny and culture and accepting non-Hindus as Hindus.
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Friday, December 21, 2007
The hounding of Tasleema Nasreen
We are told that she is hurting the sentiments of the Muslims , by her pronouncements. First we ask our Muslim brethren is this true (that what she has said has hurt your feelings). If so, one needs to ask whether her pronouncements are true ? If what she says is true , then surely she has every right to speak the truth. If you 're sentiments are hurt, that is the price of living in a civilized society.
But where are the moderate Muslims and the so called liberal press for not calling a spade a spade. And shame in the Central government and the West Bengal Govrernment that with their vast armies of security guards they cannot provide protection to one woman , Today it is Taleema Nasreen, tomorrow it may be one of us.
K
Kolkata, December 20, 2007
First Published: 20:10 IST(20/12/2007)
Last Updated: 05:06 IST(21/12/2007)
Can't go to Kolkata, Centre tells Taslima
The External Affairs Ministry has informed Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen that she cannot return to Kolkata because of security reasons.
The ministry has also told Taslima, who is now in an unknown location close to New Delhi, that even if she stays back in India, she has to keep away from the public and will not be allowed to meet people in her house.
Taslima's friends feel this is a message from the central government to tell Taslima to leave India for good. Her friends also doubt if Taslima's residential permit visa will be renewed early next year.
Sources said the Centre's decision on Taslima comes after the latest meeting between West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The CM informed Mukherjee that he would not allow Taslima to return to Kolkata as he would not be able to ensure her security.
Taslima, who spoke to HT over the phone, said a senior foreign ministry official, Amit Dasgupta, met her on Wednesday evening at a different location to communicate the central government's decision.
After spending days in what she described as "solitary confinement", Taslima said she has received the shock of her life. "I am wiling to stay back in Delhi till normalcy returns and return to Kolkata. But I cannot even imagine the Indian Government driving me out of this country," said a sobbing Taslima.
"How can a human being remain locked in a house and be stopped from meeting her own people. My life has become unbearable. I want the Indian Government to give me back my normal life," she said.
With her back to the wall, Taslima, however, ruled out leaving India and settling in Europe. "I want to stay here without any restrictions," she said.
The author said she wants to remain in Delhi till things are normal but the Indian Government should provide her with adequate security and ensure a normal life, as she loves this country and its people.
"Ever since I have been exiled from Bangladesh in 1994, India has been my country. And I want to return to Kolkata, where I have been staying for the past three years. How can a democratic country like India drive out a writer in distress?" asked a harassed Taslima.
The writer said it seems immense pressure was being mounted on her and the Indian Government by some vested interests, as her six-month residential permit expires on February 17.
Because Taslima believes that for the last three years every time the renewal of her residential permit draws close, controversies are raked and she finds herself in the eye of a storm.
A few weeks ago, Taslima instructed her publishers to drop the blasphemous portions of her novel Dwikhondito to appease Muslim leaders in Bengal.
http://hindustantimes.com
| Thursday, December 20, 2007 11:49:00 AM |
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| Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo must be obtained from www.3dsyndication.com. |
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| Taslima must return, no more pressure on Nandigram farmers |
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| KOLKATA: Bengali intellectuals, who recently took part in a huge march here to denounce the 'recapture' of Nandigram, have floated a platform for a set of demands. These include immediate return of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen to the city and no further pressure on farmers of Nandigram for setting up industry. "Enough injustice has been done to Taslima by the state government. Now, both the state and central governments should see to it that the writer can return and live in Kolkata with honour and dignity," theatre actress-director Shaonli Mitra, the spokesperson of the platform 'Swajan', said. "We need to know where she is. She might have been under pressure to withdraw three pages of her book 'Dwikhandito'. I do not hold it as her defeat," said eminent thespian Bibhas Chakrabarty, also a member of 'Swajan'. The uncertainty over Taslima must end immediately, said another theatre personality Arpita Ghosh. Referring to Nandigram, Mitra said that pressure on farmers for setting up industry in the area might be mounted again once the CRPF was withdrawn from the area. "The administration knows very well the hurdles of Nayachar, the alternative site for the proposed chemical hub. "Under such circumstances, we want to convey the message to the people of Nandigram that Swajan is with them. We are regularly keeping contact with the local people. No decision can be allowed to be imposed on them. Consent cannot be engineered," she said. For Singur, all eyes were on the Calcutta High Court verdict due this month, Mitra said. Stating that Swajan's purpose was to fight for democratic values and institutions under attack in West Bengal by the ruling party, Chakrabarty said when any government violated the Constitution, the judiciary became the only path to get justice. "In this context, the recent Supreme Court verdict on judicial activism has created confusion. The verdict is unfortunate. I hope a larger bench will modify the verdict," he said. Referring to the controversy over American thinker Noam Chomsky's statement on the political turmoil in the state, he said, "Chomsky's stand is irresponsible. When he said that the Left should not be divided, he must know the reality. We cease to call CPI(M) a left party. Chomsky has a wrong notion about the current left politics in India". Theatre personality Kaushik Sen said Swajan was in search of an alternative economic model for the country. "We have with us eminent economists, scientists, doctors, social As for political parties, Swajan did not have any confidence on the opposition, he said. However, time might reorient them. "But we don't believe in a 'reformed CPI(M)' as "Swajan has started a political process, but it is not a political group. We will work as a watchdog. We regret that intellectuals have not done it for the past thirty years," Sen Echoing the same view, actor-director Bratya Basu said he pinned much hope on Swajan's success. "We will organise seminars, street theatre, make documentaries, write songs, draw pictures and take them to villages. Something more will follow". Arpita Ghosh was in favour of holding debate on political ideologies. "Gandhi appears to be more relevant now," she said. Swajan, floated on December 12, has on its roll, eminent personalities including film director Aparna Sen, painter Shuvaprasanna and poet Joy Goswami. |
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Indic mathematicians through the Ages
Skeletal List of India Mathematicians through the millennia
| Acyuta Pisarati (c. 1550-1621)
Apastambha Aryabhata Ib (author of Aryabhattiyum of Kusumapura) A 1b = or not = A 1a Aryabhata II (author of Mahasiddhanta,950 CE) Bakshali Manuscript Baudhayana Bhattotpala of Kashmir (966 CE) Bhutivesnu son of Devaraja, circa 14th century CE ? Chandrasekhara Simha or Chandrasekhar Samanta (are they the same – yes)) 1835 CE Cangadeva (f 1205 CE)
Damodara, son of Parameswara and guru of Nilakantha Somasutvan also referred to as son of Padmanabha (1417 CE) are they one and the same Deva (Deva Acharya) Dasaballa (son of Vairochana) 1055 CE
Gangadhara Gaargeya Ghatigopa Govinda Bhatta
Halayudha (975 CE) Harish Chandra Haridatta (circa 850 CE) Hemchandra Suri 1089 CE Jagannatha Pandit 1700 CE Kodandarama (1807-1893) of the Telugu country alternate (1854CE ) son of Venkatakrishna Sastri (source , sourcebook KVS) Krisnadesa Kumararajiva Lalla son of Bhatta Trivikrama Latadeva , pupil of Aryabhata Ib Lokavibhaga (Jaina text) Madhava of Sangramagama in Kerala (1340 to 1425 CE Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh Mahavira , founder of Jainism, author of Surya prajnapati and Chandraprajnapati, ? 5th century BCE Malikarjuna Suri , 1178 CE, name suggest Telugu country Mahendra Suri, pupil of Madana Suri , (1370 CE) Mahadeva (son of Bandhuka) Mahadeva son of parasurama , Malayagiri, Jain Monk from Gujarat Mallikarjuna Suri Mahavira of the Digambara sect Manjula 930 CE Padmanabha son of Narmada (same as Parameswara ?) Pandurangaswami Prashastidhara ( 958 CE)
Raghunath Raj Rajagopal Sankara Varman (1850 CE) Saamanta Chandrasekhar Simha (see also Chandrasekhar Sinha) Somaswara circa 11 century CE Suryadeva Yajwan (1191 CE of Gangaikonda Cholapuram in Tamilnadu) Yaajnavalkya Yallaiya (1482 CE of Skandasomeswara of the Telugu country ) Yaska YatavrishamAcharya
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Bibliography
- Bose, D. M., S. N. Sen, and B. V. Subbarayappa (Eds.).
A concise history of science in India. Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, 1971. - Clark, W. E., editor. The Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata. Open Court, Chicago, 1930.
- Chattopadyaya, D. History of Science and Technology in Ancient India: the Beginnings. Firma KLM PVY, Calcutta, 1986.
- Colebrook, H. T. Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sankrit of Brahmagupta and Bhaskara. J. Murray, London, 1817.
- Datta, Bibhutibhusan. The science of the Sulba: a study in early Hindu geometry. Univ Calcutta, Calcutta, 1932. Reviewed: Isis 22, 272-277.
- Datta, Bibhutibhusan., and A. N. Singh. History of Hindu mathematics. Asia Publ House, 1962. Reviewed: Isis 25, 478-488. Reprint: Asia Publishing House, 1962.
- Delbos, Leon. Les mathematiques aux Indes Orientales. Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1892.
- George Gheverghese Joseph. The Crest of the Peacock. Penguin Books, 1991.
- Ibn Lablan, Kushyar. Principles of Hindu Reckoning. Univ. Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1966.
- Murthy, T. S. Bhanu. A Modern Introduction to Ancient Indian Mathematics. Wiley Eastern Ltd., New Delhi, 1992.
- Pingree, D. Census of the Exact sciences in Sanskrit. Four volumes. Amer. Phil. Soc. Philadelphia, 1970-1981.
- Rao, S. Balaachandra. Indian Mathematics and Astronomy. Jnana Deep Publications, Bangalore, 1994.
- Sarasvati, T. A. Geometry in Ancient and Medieval India. Indological Publ., Delhi, 1979.
- C. N. Srinivasiengar. The History of Ancient Indian Mathematics. World Press Private Ltd., Calcutta, 1967.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Why do you need to realize the self? A.V. Srinivasan
Otherwise it has been rather a busy year.
I conducted a seminar at Dallas on Distorted History. The abstracts are available at HEC2007
A synopsis or abbreviated version of the papers will be published by The Hindu Renaissance
I plan to bring this out in book form by end of 1Q08.
We are planning more seminars in India and the US to publicize and correct most of what we learn in indic history. Let me know if you would like to participate in the future
In the meantime I am glad to inform you that my book on The DhaarmicTraditions will be available by the end of the year in Amazon. The review of your book forms one of the appendices.
Best wishes for the season and the new year
More later,
with warm regards,
Kosla Vepa (Kaushal)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Dec 13, 2007 1:25 PM
Subject: Hello:
To: Kosla <kaushal44@gmail.com>
It has been a long time. Hope all is well at your end. Below is an article that I thought might be interested. Please comment.
nosce te ipsum
atamanam viddhi
know thyself
connai-toi toi meme
et cetera,
Sheenu Srinivasan
www.avsrinivasan.com
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Purushottam Nagesh Oak 1917 - 2007 truly a PURUSHOTTAMA and a Kshatriya
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P.N.Oak (1917-2007): the lone fighter, etymologist, and historian
By Prof. Shrinivas Tilak
Dec 9 2007
I landed in Mumbai in the night of Tuesday, Dec 4. When I opened the papers on Wednesday morning (Dec 5) there were reports of P. N. Oak's death on Tuesday at the age of 91. I was looking forward to meet with him to discuss a write-up I had prepared about him (see below). I had known Oak for many decades and had last met him in February 2007 at his residence to present him with my latest book Understanding karma in light of Paul Ricoeur's philosophical anthropology and hermeneutics. He then looked as he always did: tall, slim, and ramrod straight. He was sharp, alert, and moved his 90 year old frame gracefully with the agility of a leopard. As usual, he alternated between etymologies of proper names and place names from all over the world and their Sanskrit equivalents and the history of India. After an hour or so I got up to say adieu and told him I would be back in December. The grand-daughter of my sister had accompanied me. She requested Oak to pose with me for a picture which he did gladly.
P.N.Oak: the lone fighter, etymologist, and historian
There are no final answers to our questions about humanity's past. In world history, all "conclusions" must be tentative. Yet, accounts of the past construed by Western historians usually come neatly packed in western cultural and sociological paradigms. But the nagging question diligent seekers of truth about the past ask remains, "Is world history written from a Christian or Islamic perspective alone credible?" The fact is, world's distant past is pre-Christian and pre-Islamic. Though it remains unknowable, scattered evidence of an older world (that is periodically reported in world media) tends to arouse the speculative impulse of a historian like India's P.N. Oak who believed that our world's origins go back to its Vedic heritage.
Oak, the lone fighter
Born in 1917 in Indore (Madhya Pradesh, India), Purushottam Nagesh Oak was educated in Pune (Fergusson and Law College) and trained as a lawyer. When World War II began Oak enlisted in the Indian army. But when the legendary Subhas Chandra Bose gave a call to rise against the British raj, Oak threw himself (body and soul) into the Azad Hind Sena (Indian National Army = INA) started by Bose. For some time he acted as a private assistant (PA) to Bose and was later stationed in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh Ville), where he worked on the Azad Hind Radio as a broadcaster. When Japan lost the war and Bose himself was killed in a plane crash, the stranded INA soldiers were left to their own devices all across South-East Asia. Oak decided to walk back to India alone across the hostile and inaccessible mountainous terrain between Burma (Myanmar) and India.
My first memories of meeting Oak go back fifty years to May 1957. I had just graduated from a high school in Pune and had gone to Delhi with my three sisters to spend the summer with our father who worked in the Railway Board. Our mother had passed away in 1946 and we therefore attended a boarding school for boys and girls in Pune. A lonely widower, my father took to studying astrology as a hobby when he met Oak who used to supplement his income by writing astrology columns for a variety of magazines and newspapers. Since he had no secure government job and a large family to feed, Oak was forced to try his hand at a variety of jobs including a reporter for the Statesman and the Hindustan Times. For many years he was employed as information officer with the United States Information Service (USIS) at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. During the 1960s Oak often used to come to meet our father to discuss issues in astrology over a morning cup of tea. We used to take that opportunity to pump him about the legendary Bose and the exploits of the INA.
But the lone fighter in Oak was now pre-occupied with something else. Having done his part in the struggle for India's political independence, he became a one-man brigade of an independent historian who had taken upon himself the thankless task of rescuing India's history which, he insisted, was hijacked by invaders from medieval times on.
Oak began his historical odyssey with the hypothesis that (1) India's history has been thoroughly distorted by invaders to such an extent that Indians today suffer from cultural amnesia; (2) Indians have forgotten their own glorious tradition preserved in the epics and purāņas which are as good a source of history as modern historical documents; (3) In post-independence India secular and Marxist historians have drained Indian history of its Aryan and Vedic content and context; (4) The emphasis in today's historiography is on secularism and on appeasement of minorities of all sorts: cultural, linguistic, regional or religious; (5) In producing "idealized versions" of the past, India's Vedic heritage has been distorted beyond recognition; and (6) In fabricating history to serve contemporary goals of a secular society, historians of modern India have robbed India of its authentic past.
In 1964 Oak established the "Institute for Rewriting Indian History" in Delhi to provide corrections to what he insisted were the biased versions of India's history written by its invaders, colonizers, and modern secular historians. The institute made no pretence at writing history in the sense implied in the works of western or westernized historians in India. The academic historian and the professional scholar are bound by firm rules of evidence. Assertions must be supported by verifiable facts. Speculation can go only so far. Though historical writing may be a part of literature, its professional practitioners avoid anything that might be exposed as mere fiction. Oak rather relied on a historiography that is more akin to the traditional Indian ways of recording history where the line between "myth" and "history" is not clearly drawn.
Oak, the etymologist
Oak claimed that the mother civilization, from which all world civilizations grew, was centred in India. Humanity came to be divided into two major groups: devas (progeny of Aditi, wife of Kaśyapa) and dānavas/daityas (progeny of Diti, another wife of Kaśyapa). While Indians trace their origin to Aditi and devas, populations of Europe and Egypt are the descendants of Diti and therefore are called daityas. The Greeks accordingly were known as Danao in Latin. Denmark, Danube, and Don are clearly derivatives of dānava.
The Iranians and Mesopotamians are daityas too. Russia is derived from ŗşiya (Rushiya = land of the ŗşis--sages). The Mayas of Central and South America are the followers of demon Maya who escaped to Pātāla (the land beneath India) by the western seas. The Caspian Sea takes its name from the sage Kaśyapa and the Samarkanda region from the sage śrī Mārkaņdeya. Palestine is derived from Pulastin, another Vedic sage. Cyprus is a mal pronunciation of the Sanskrit term śivaprastha signifying a centre of śaiva worship.
Oak argued that the so-called Indo-European groups of languages are local variations and/or mal pronunciations of Sanskrit. In support of the claim he advanced, Oak made liberal use of the discipline of etymology, which goes back to Nighantu. A key concern in the Vedic texts (including the Upanişads) is to uncover the hidden correspondences that obtain among the sacrificial ritual (yajna), the cosmos, the social world, and the microcosm of the human body. These correspondences (also known as counterparts = bandhu; equivalences = sampad; and secret connections = upanişads) have cognitive value: they reveal knowledge which is not directly evident. A striking example of the knowledge that one can recover through meditation is to be found in the bandhus stated directly in propositional form in the five great statements (mahāvākyas) in the Upanişads: I am brahman (bandhu between I and brahman); that thou are (bandhu between that and thou) etc.
The science of etymology is also based, in large part, on the phonetic similarities or resemblance (bandhu ) between words and the things they designate. Resemblances between words are evidence of a direct connection between the 'word' and the 'world.' Sanskritist Patrick Olivelle cautions us in this context that Yāska, Sāyaņa, and others in that long line should not be dismissed as 'folk' etymologists too unsophisticated to know the true etymologies of the words they explain. Rather, they proceed on the assumption that the surface forms of language provide clues to the 'deeper and hidden connections' (see The Early Upanishads, New York: OUP, 1998: 25).
With Johannes Bronkhorst, another Sanskritist, one may accept that such etymologies may not be historical or truly etymological. But they nevertheless express and enrich meaning (see "Etymology and magic: Yaska's Nirukta, Plato's Cratylus, and the Riddle of Semantic Etymologies," Numen 48 (2001): 147-203). Like poetry, fictitious etymologies are designed to substitute for the absence of a natural or empirical connection between language and reality. Poetry is not necessarily expressive of reality but rhetoric. It builds on appearances of similarities or resemblances between words.
Victor Turner's discussion of fictitious etymologies used by Ndembu to explain their rituals as an important part of the 'inside view' or 'emic explanation' would also relevant in trying to understand Oak's reliance on etymology. Turner counsels us to pause and reflect before using etic arguments to dismiss such devices deployed emically. Fictitious etymology, like homonymy, is a device whereby the semantic wealth of a word or symbol is augmented (see Revelation and Divination in Dnembu Riual . Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1975).
Even though most of the etymologies suggested by Oak will not stand academic scrutiny, each must examined carefully before rejecting it. His effort should not be summarily dismissed as mere Oakisms.
Oak, the historian
The objective of Oak's Institute for Rewriting Indian History was subsequently expanded and extended to inform the world that Vedic culture and Sanskrit language have been humanity's divine heritage until monotheistic religions came to dominate the world and control its written history. Oak's magnum opus is World Vedic Heritage, a huge tome (1375 pages, 150 pictures and illustrations; price Rs 400) wherein he cogently documents principal arguments and evidence gathered by Oak and other members of the institute. The institute also publishes an annual research journal.
In writing World Vedic Heritage Oak was concerned with recreating, what he strongly believed, the vanished history of the world which began with the Aryans: their successes, failures, and ultimate fate. It is a spellbinding history of the world narrated by a master storyteller. Though general Indian reader will be enchanted by it, most professional historians will be greatly annoyed. True, physical evidence of Aryan origins in India and their migration beyond India is scarce but relevant archaeological finds uncovered in different parts of the world baffle historians and archaeologists. In the course of more than fifty years of research and on-site inspections Oak connected them to existing structures and constructions usually associated with the Indus Valley Civilization.
World Vedic Heritage relies on this germ of ancient history that most academics and scholars will not touch with a ten foot pole because they dread being laughed at by their peers. Oak could not prove his thesis with a body of solid evidence, but he did tell his fascinating tale persuasively. He cleverly made logical use of the scraps of evidence that do exist, such that the reader begins to feel that something like what Oak describes could have happened. In this, Oak drew on a living tradition of speculative and imaginative historiography going back to Vyāsa and Vālmiki where myth, fact, and fiction imperceptibly flow together. Yet he was graceful enough to acknowledge that some of his conclusions or accounts were founded on conjecture and analogy. Like Vyāsa and other purāņa writers he often deviated from the conditional into the indicative mood when hard evidence was lacking.
Oak surmised that Vedic culture and Sanskrit (its medium of expression) were spread over vast areas of the ancient world--particularly Europe and Asia. Vedic culture only insisted that every person be a good, peaceful, and helpful member of society. It did not interfere in the personal belief system of individuals whether theist or atheist. A theist was free to choose whatever mode and form of worship. Religions of Egypt, Israel, and Iran, therefore, have several points of resemblance to the rites, beliefs, and mythology of the Vedic people ( i.e. Aryans). European archaeologists and historians begin their theories with an untested and childlike hypothesis (based principally on Biblical accounts of genesis) that human habitation began only a few thousands years ago. Modern archaeological finds are forcing them to push back their estimates of the antiquity of human habitation by millions of years.
With this founding presupposition Oak built what he believed an alternative and more credible account of genesis of the ancient world. In an article published in his institute's Annual Research Journal (1997: 25) he referred to the Scandinavian scholar Sten Konow who had argued (citing the famous French Indologist Sylvain Levi) that in the remote past there existed a widespread civilization comprising India and other continents and islands bordering on the seas around India's coasts. This may explain the existence of parallels in Europe to the Durgā Pūjā, which "takes us back to the times when Indian and European tribes were one people with a common language and common religious conceptions" (Oak 1997: 25).
Yayāti was one of the mightiest kings of ancient India whose progeny eventually peopled many western regions. Pharaohs of Egypt, for instance, are the Pauravas, i.e. descendants of Puru, the youngest son of Yayāti. Jews are Yudus, the progeny of Yadu who was Yayāti's eldest son. Modern Druids are descendants of Yayāti's third son--Druhyu. Yayāti's two other sons--Anu and Turvasu, respectively settled Anatolia and the area north of the Black Sea.
Pending solid corroborating evidence, Oak's thesis and books based on it must be construed as "fiction," but it is fiction with a ring of truth. There is, for instance, evidence to suggest that ancient Indians were excellent seafarers and travelled far more widely than European and Muslim historians of India had led us to believe.
Two international conferences held in Vilnius (capital of Lithuania) on June 22-23, 1998 broadly supported Oak's basic thesis that in the ancient world Sanskrit was an important link language. World Pagan Conference and World Congress of Ethnic Religions were held simultaneously in Vilnius and coincided with the annual summer solstice festival locally known as Rasa. The dominant themes of these conferences (one universal religion underlying a variety of religious expressions and tolerance of religious plurality) have been, as Oak ceaselessly points out, the hallmark of the Vedic culture.
India has had close linguistic and cultural ties with Lithuanian (and perhaps European) language, history, and tradition. These two conferences are testimony to growing awareness in the world that (1) India is the homeland of one universal and eternal religion ( sanātana dharma) and (2) Sanskrit and sanskŗti, through which sanātana dharma is expressed, have served (can do so now) a bridge to world cultures and religions.
Formerly a Baltic republic of the Soviet Union, Lithuania today is an independent country. The people of Lithuania speak the oldest surviving Indo-European language, which closely resembles ancient Sanskrit. It continues to have, for instance, seven declensions ( vibhaktis). The words for god, day, and son in Lithuanian are dieva, diena, sunus (deva, dina, sunu in Sanskrit). Lithuanian language has preserved until the present day the complex phonetic system of the Indo-European speech ( Encyclopedia Britannica 1980 edition; curiously though, the 1992 edition has dropped any reference to this similarity of Lithuanian with Sanskrit).
Scholars now recognize that Sanskrit can be employed as a tool of research in the comparative study of the past history and mythology of Europe and Asia. It can also contribute significantly to the cross-cultural study of world religions and cultures. Not surprisingly, the University of Vilnius has a large Department of Sanskrit. Lithuania was the last stronghold in Europe of nature religion and a syncretistic, tolerant cultural tradition before being Christianized in the fourteenth century. Subsequently, as indeed elsewhere, Lithuanians were divided into Christians (saved ones) and Pagans (doomed ones). Over the centuries vigorous efforts were made to obliterate all pre-Christian religious traditions in Europe and elsewhere where Christianity came to prevail.
The fact nevertheless remains that Pagan religions did foster harmony between the natural and human. Paganism discounted the artificial division of our world into "believers" of this or that organized religion and those others who are pejoratively dismissed as non-believers ("pagans," "kafirs," "mleccha" etc). Pagan worldview rejects those military and political authorities who, in the name of organized religions, subjugate and enslave those who profess natural spiritual practices.
Such an outlook shares much in common with modern liberal trends sweeping across the world. It is therefore not surprising that there is a renewed interest in and revival of Pagan religion in the world today. Particularly in Europe people are eager to rediscover their lost cultures and traditions. They are thirsty and hungry for the spiritual lore that disappeared with the advent of monotheistic religions. In Modern Lithuania it has given rise to the "Romuva Movement."
This mood of optimism and perspective was also evident at the World Congress of Ethnic Religions held in London in 1998. Representatives of different ethnic religions (non-missionary religions that have no ambition to reduce local religions to one dominant world religion) endorsed the pagan worldviews that there is not just the absolute one God and the absolutely profane plural world, as in monotheism. There is both sacredness and profaneness within the world, as there is both oneness and plurality within the divine. Like Paganism, ethnic religions see themselves as a culture of truth, an exploration, and an experience, not as a belief in a fixed set of dogmas or creed.
Delegates expressed opposition to the worship of a "jealous and wrathful god" who exhorts his followers to force or induce non believers to give up their ways of worship. God cannot be partisan or jealous because such a depiction sows discord and violence amongst different groups and factions. Truth is, god and nature are not jealous. Is the sun jealous? Does the moon betray jealousy? The rivers, stars, forests, fields, lakes, oceans are all manifestations of god who showers beneficence upon all. God/Goddess is absolutely free of jealousy or favour.
Thus interpreted, "pagan" worldview shares much in common with Vedic culture in general and with sanātana dharma in particular. In his various writings Oak speculated that "pagan" was a corrupt form of bhagavān. This claim received some support in the papers read by Rajinder Singh, Surinder Paul Attri, and Arwind Ghosh who represented India at Vilnius explaining the Hindu perspective on the central theme of the conference "unity in diversity." They shared the thoughts and points of views of the religions of India on the means of restoring in the modern world sacredness of all life and divinity of nature.
Oak's work is comparable in many respects to Canadian writer Farley Mowat who has put forth a theory (developed in his latest book The Farfarers) that Albans (ancient inhabitants of northern British Isles) explored and even settled North America fifteen centuries ago. Formidable seafarers and traders in walrus tusks and hides, Albans reached, according to Mowat, western Newfoundland in search of their hunt centuries ago. Some of them settled there and were eventually absorbed by the indigenous people of North America.
Like Mowat, Oak made good and sensible use of the odd clues and the evidence that fifty years of personal investigation and study gave him.The two volumes of his World Vedic Heritage will no doubt provoke controversy, as Oak's works always do, but academic historians must not simply ignore him. They must take up his challenge and engage him [his writings now] in a scholarly debate.
Oak [and Godbole] on the Taj Mahal
Back in 1965 Oak put forward a theory that the Taj Mahal was not a mausoleum built by Shahjahan but a Rajput Palace. In 1968 he found supporting evidence to that effect in Shahjahan's official chronicle Badshahnama and in 1974 he came across a letter by Aurangzeb written in 1652 (the year when Taj Mahal is supposed to have been just completed) complaining that the Taj Mahal was leaking all over.
In 1978 Oak's book The Taj Mahal is a Temple Palace came out which V. S. Godbole (an engineer working for the London Underground in UK and also a researcher in Indian history and in the thought of V.D . Savarkar) read and found thought provoking . Over the next two years Godbole went through the relevant references provided by Oak and was convinced of Oak's assertion. In 1981 Godbole's research went deeper and he began to ask "Were the British scholars just a neutral third party who were either (1) misled by the prolonged misuse of Hindu buildings as Mosques and Tombs or (2) were not cunning enough to see through chauvinistic Muslim claims? Or (3) did they know the truth about Taj Mahal and other monuments all along but had, for political reasons, hid the truth?"
By the end of 1981 Godbole had prepared an eighty page dossier on the subject and placed his findings in a chronological order. He was surprised at the findings. There was indeed a British conspiracy of suppression of truth about Taj Mahal and other monuments over the last two hundred years. The main personalities involved either knew each other and/or referred to works of each other. With time new information came to light which confirmed Godbole's findings. In his painstakingly done research now published as a book "Taj Mahal: The Great British Conspiracy," Godbole makes the following points (admirably summarized in B. Shantanu's Blog Hindu Dharma News Letter # 5):
(1) Architect: On the question of who planned the Taj Mahal, there is very little agreement amongst various writers and travelers. Even the origin of the person (whether he was Farsi, Indian, Italian) is disputed. The name that comes up most frequently though is that of Ustad Isa: For Godbole, it is certainly a fabrication because there is no mention of him prior to the 19th century.
(2) Time Taken and People Involved: Almost all the accounts quote Tavernier who says that the building took 20,000 people and was twenty-two years in the making. This account differs considerably from Manrique's (a Portuguese preacher) who was in India during the same time. He only noticed one thousand people working there. Although Manrique's testimony is not completely reliable either, the difference in numbers is too stark to ignore. One way of resolving the contradiction would be to say that twenty-two years were taken and 20,000 people were employed to build the original Taj Mahal; not by Shahjahan but by Raja Mansingh or someone else. Manrique saw one thousand people engaged in the "embellishment" and other suitable changes that were ordered by Shahjahan to (i) formally complete the acquisition of the property and (ii) to change the character of the building by including Islamic motifs and style (inscribing verses from the Qu'ran on it).
(3) Badshahnama: There are scant references to this official chronicle of Shah Jahan's reign in most accounts by historians or Indologists. It makes no mention of any grand building newly constructed by Shahjahan during his reign. One important passage in Badshahnama is ignored by the mainstram scholars and historians presumably because they are unable to verify the authenticity of the actual document itself. The passage in question clearly states that Shahjahan acquired Raja Mansingh's "manzil" (not "zamin" i.e. plot or tract of land as quoted by some scholars).
(4) Architecture: The architecture of the building, when examined in detail and without bias, clearly reveals a number of features that are unmistakably "Hindu."
(5) Unexplained structures and underground chambers: Other than long corridors and rooms at several levels (actually, there are seven of them!), the Taj complex includes moorings for pleasure boats (what purpose could they conceivably have in a mausoleum?). Several photographs, drawings and reports about the Taj are either still classified or are untraceable. No one quite knows when was the last time (or indeed at all that the monument was "surveyed" by the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) (In February 2007 I attended a lecture on Taj Mahal by Godbole in Pune where he emphatically asserted that to date the Taj Mahal has not been properly surveyed).
(6) Missing evidence: No extant blueprints or scale models of the building have been found to date. There is no mention about these at all except for a "legend" of a wooden model that was supposedly built.
(7) Missing credits: The only signature on the tomb is that of the calligrapher. Was he the only person of note or the only important contributor to the structure? How is it that there is no mention of the designer or the architect or indeed even of Shahjahan? Is that realistic if a building of such grandeur was constructed from the scratch? Continued silence by the ASI and the Government of India does not inspire confidence.
Many historians and academics are fearful of a backlash if the building that has been proudly trumpeted as representing the best of Islamic art may turn out to be Hindu. The challenge before us is how to balance historical truth and academic integrity with public peace and "communal harmony."
Oak on secularism
Oak documents one instance of a twisted logic behind a secularist interpretation of history by an agency of a state ruled by a Marxist government. In 1970, an issue of a magazine published by the Directorate of Information and Publicity of the West Bengal government carried a photo of a 'mosque' in Murshidabad showing on its verandah badly mutilated images of Ganesa. The caption underneath the photo explains that the Muslim Sultan who commissioned the 'mosque' was so secular that to satisfy Hindu sentiments he had the 'mosque' decorated with the the images of Ganesa. At the same time, to respect the dicta of Islam, he had them badly mutilated! (see P.N.Oak World Vedic Heritage (2 vols). Delhi: Hindi Sahitya Sadan, 2003 1: 1163.
I have always found the mainstream Indologists' verdict on Purushottam Nagesh Oak as a lunatic and his writings worthless (without seriously examining his arguments) very troubling because it is uncivil, unacademic, and counterproductive to Indology.
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Friday, December 07, 2007
Where are the moderates in Islam and why will they not speak up
Islam’s Silent Moderates
The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. (Koran 24:2)
IN the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise up in horror.
A 20-year-old woman from Qatif, Saudi Arabia, reported that she had been abducted by several men and repeatedly raped. But judges found the victim herself to be guilty. Her crime is called “mingling”: when she was abducted, she was in a car with a man not related to her by blood or marriage, and in Saudi Arabia, that is illegal. Last month, she was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes with a bamboo cane.
Two hundred lashes are enough to kill a strong man. Women usually receive no more than 30 lashes at a time, which means that for seven weeks the “girl from Qatif,” as she’s usually described in news articles, will dread her next session with Islamic justice. When she is released, her life will certainly never return to normal: already there have been reports that her brother has tried to kill her because her “crime” has tarnished her family’s honor.
We also saw Islamic justice in action in Sudan, when a 54-year-old British teacher named Gillian Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in jail before the government pardoned her this week; she could have faced 40 lashes. When she began a reading project with her class involving a teddy bear, Ms. Gibbons suggested the children choose a name for it. They chose Muhammad; she let them do it. This was deemed to be blasphemy.
Then there’s Taslima Nasreen, the 45-year-old Bangladeshi writer who bravely defends women’s rights in the Muslim world. Forced to flee Bangladesh, she has been living in India. But Muslim groups there want her expelled, and one has offered 500,000 rupees for her head. In August she was assaulted by Muslim militants in Hyderabad, and in recent weeks she has had to leave Calcutta and then Rajasthan. Taslima Nasreen’s visa expires next year, and she fears she will not be allowed to live in India again.
It is often said that Islam has been “hijacked” by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates.
But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted — and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done?
Usually, Muslim groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference are quick to defend any affront to the image of Islam. The organization, which represents 57 Muslim states, sent four ambassadors to the leader of my political party in the Netherlands asking him to expel me from Parliament after I gave a newspaper interview in 2003 noting that by Western standards some of the Prophet Muhammad’s behavior would be unconscionable. A few years later, Muslim ambassadors to Denmark protested the cartoons of Muhammad and demanded that their perpetrators be prosecuted.
But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India have done more to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now.
I wish there were more Islamic moderates. For example, I would welcome some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq Ramadan. But when there is true suffering, real cruelty in the name of Islam, we hear, first, denial from all these organizations that are so concerned about Islam’s image. We hear that violence is not in the Koran, that Islam means peace, that this is a hijacking by extremists and a smear campaign and so on. But the evidence mounts up.
Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above: more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.
If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate?
When a “moderate” Muslim’s sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch Parliament and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Infidel.”
More on Lies with long legs
Discoveries, Scholars, Science, Enlightenment
Documentary Narrative by Prodosh Aich
To this book
Our daily life is organised by "Information". World wide. A continuously increasing flow of "Information" leading to more and more consolidated social and political order. "Information" is brought to us not only through the so-called print� and electronic media, but also by our environment, by the family, by educational institutions, etc. extensively. But, where does "Information" come from, where is it produced, who puts it into circulation, what are the channels, how fast does it reach us from its source? Can we really find out? Is it important to know all the facts?
These are the reasons, these are the backgrounds that made our search for answers to our rather harmless questions so difficult, so complicated: who the "Aryans" are, the "Indogermans" and the "Indoeuropeans"? Who they are, since when has their existence been known, how has it become known that they existed, who discovered them, and how, why and for what purpose? But we have made progress in our search. With the help of our unusual questions. And as it seems, we have banged on Pandora�s box and it is open now.
CONTENTS, Prolouge: WE ARE, WHAT WE KNOW, THE IMPETUS, Epilogue: AN ERA OF BRAINWASHING and THE BACK OF THE COVER.
CONTENTS
The impetus 7
Prologue: We are, what we know 9
What is happening to us? 28
Who paved the way
for the �epochal discoverer� William Jones? 52
Who is this William Jones? 119
Calcutta - Sir William�s Eldorado 155
All trails lead to Calcutta 227
Treading in Sir William�s steps 282
Epilogue: An era of brainwashing 383
PROLOGUE: WE ARE, WHAT WE KNOW
And we know what knowledgeable people tell us. We readily accept a story if it is consistent, if it does not create a feeling of unease and if it doesn't contradict our experience and our knowledge stored so far. We save it as an addition, and we increase our knowledge a little. We are inclined to accept stories from far away fields innocently, otherwise an inner assessment is due; assuming that our memories function well, we won't have time to sublime contradictions. We are accustomed to this process. Mostly we don't care about who the narrator is, how he got the story, how he earns his living, who is harmed by the story, who gains and so forth.
We wanted to know about "Aryans", "Indogermans" and "Indoeuropeans". And we found many stories. Who doesn't know them? Most learned people know these stories found in "references" in "standard books of history" and in more detail in specialised books: The "Aryans", the grazing nomads, were, in pre-historic age, residents in the Steppes between the Caspian Sea and China's western boundary. How does one define "pre-historic"? Well!
Those grazing nomads had domesticated horses and cows for the time in history around 6000 years ago. They discovered copper, iron and other precious metals. They invented bronze and steel. They prospered. Their population increased. They expanded their "Lebensraum". Whose living space did they invade? We won't know. Who is to tell us? Is it important to know? Did they perhaps occupy "Lebensraum" of animals only? An earlier age of "discoveries" eventually? Nothing is known yet. If our type of questions was important, we would have found answers in the end. Are we perhaps on a wrong track?
Some of these grazing nomadic people with cows, horses, copper, iron, bronze and steel emigrated. So it is told. To the west and to the south. The circumstances of this expansion of "Lebensraum" are either veiled in "early or pre-history" or even buried. We can imagine why they didn't go into the inhospitable northern regions, into the cold, if some of these grazing nomads did really emigrate. But why did they not expand their "Lebensraum" eastwards too? No one tells us. No one has, for that matter, as yet asked.
But there seems to be no doubt about "expansion" of "Lebensraum" of these people. Naturally, as "cultured" people they had a common language. So the language wandered with them too. Some of these "Aryan wanderers" reached Northwest India. The Hindukush was the only pass through the Himalayan massif. How could these nomads from the Turkmenian steppe find this single pass? Wandering from an area thousands of kilometres away? Should we be detained by such "useless" questions? Isn't it solely important that they did find the pass? Otherwise they would not have arrived in India. Did they really arrive? Anyway. They were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed, and obviously "dynamic" as well. Otherwise they could not have made this long journey.
They settled down in Northwest India. They brought their language with them. Quite logically. This was Sanskrit. But without scripts. They invented the device of writing in India only. Had they had brought also a script with them, we would have found it in their initially native area. However, the Sanskrit script was found nowhere. Therefore it is deduced that the need to store their knowledge for future generations in writing was first felt in Northwest India. And they accomplished the job nicely. How long does it usually take for a cultural community to devise a script? "Philologists" or "Comparative Linguists" do not tell us anything about that. We must be content with the fact that "Aryans" from central Asia moving around discovered the Hindukush pass, drove out the inhabitants from this hospitable Northwest India to the South, settled down, acquired new knowledge, invented a script for writing and produced a huge amount of highly sophisticated literature. We naturally won't know where the initial inhabitants of the North forced the inhabitants of the South to go after they had been forced out from the North. Is it important to know that? So far, so good. In the oldest parts of this literature these "New Indians" called themselves "Aryans"; so we are told. We shall yet have to identify the "historian" who told us these stories for the first time. No one can tell us, however, why only those grazing Nomads in India should call themselves "Aryans" but not their brothers, sisters and cousins elsewhere in western Europe and/or the ones who remained at home. Why not? Shouldn't we know it?
Let us take it as a fact for the time being. We are assured that the "New Indians" called themselves "Aryans" and the language they brought with them was "Sanskrit". Up to now Sanskrit is universally regarded as the best arranged language. As Sanskrit has been found nowhere else, it is logically assumed that the nomadic "Aryans" in central Asia must have spoken a simpler version of Sanskrit. So we are told. This simple form, the early Sanskrit, Sanskrit in its childhood so to say, is called "Protosanskrit". Well and good. Those "Aryans" wandering towards the West also had to take along the same "Protosanskrit" Isn't it absolutely logical? Well, it didn't keep its initial form. The language and culture of the "Aryans" did change with time and through encounters with other languages and cultures in different continents. But the "kinship" naturally remained in regard to language and otherwise. So we are told. A convincing story.
It is supposed to be sufficiently established that there is a close kinship between Sanskrit, the language of the Northwest-Indian "Aryans" on the one hand and Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic languages on the other hand. The family of the "Indoeuropeans". So to speak. And who has discovered and established this kinship? Not those "Aryans" who passed through the Hindukush and created the world-wide known literature like Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras, and so forth and allegedly called themselves "Aryans" in their literature. No! None of them, not in any of their writings, not even once has it been indicated that at some period in central Asia their "Lebensraum" became so congested that a lot of their brothers, sisters, cousins set out on a search for new space to live and emigrated in the end. No! The "Sanskrit-Aryans" did not remember anything else, so it is told, than that they were "Aryans". An absolute "black out" otherwise. The kinship was claimed rather late by the remote cousins and relatives belonging to the "Abendland" (occident); only while they were engaged in robbing and killing in the "Morgenland" (orient). They were robbing India indiscriminately, carrying away whatever was not riveted and nailed, occupying the country for enduring exploitation. But they blessed also their remote cousins and relatives first with "language kinship" and then the "Linguistics". This branch of "science" has also invented the term "language family", but only in the 19th century AD, to be more exact, between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th century.
Terms like "family" and "kinship" however, even when they are designed in the context of languages, develop their intrinsic dynamics. The "occidental" inventiveness was at that period quite effective. The distant cousins from the "occident" deduced consequently that if their languages were from a common origin, then they belonged also to the same family, then there was a "blood relationship" as well; even if this had remained in oblivion for centuries. This was how the "Aryan race" was added to the "Aryan language" hardly fifty years later. And we have also been blessed with further branches of "science": Ethnology, anthropology, psychology, psychoanalysis, and so forth.
In the 1995 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica we can read about these inventions: "During the 19th century there arose a notion - propagated most assiduously by the Comte de Gobineau and later by his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain - of an 'Aryan race', those who spoke Indo-European languages, who were considered to be responsible for all the progress that mankind had made and who were also morally superior to 'Semites', 'yellows'� and 'blacks'. The Nordic, or Germanic, peoples came to be regarded as the purest 'Aryans'. This notion, which had been repudiated by anthropologists by the second quarter of the 20th century, was seized upon by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and made the basis of the German government policy of exterminating Jews, Gypsies, and other 'non-Aryans'." The second half of the 20th century has proved, however, that this rejection of the "Aryan theory" by anthropologists didn't have any effect. Shouldn't the anthropologists, historians, indologists, political scientists and social scientists of this culture have known from their own professional experience that a bare rejection rather confirms? As "makers" of a "media society" they should know that "denials" rather amplify the refuted statement? What has been undertaken by the anthropologists or representatives of other new disciplines after it was established that the rejection of the theory about the alleged superiority of the Aryan race had had no effect whatsoever?
In 1990 the second revised edition of the biography of German indologists was handed over from the "Max Mueller Bhawan (House)" in New Delhi. The German Institute for Culture in foreign countries is called "Goethe Institute". But in India quite interestingly it is called "Max Mueller House", named after Friedrich Maximilian Mueller. We shall deal with him in detail later. An impressive number of 130 German indologists have been referred to who are known through their publications on the "early history" of India. The youngest one in this "gallery of ancestral portraits" was born in 1931. There are younger indologists, of course, and a lot of young persons are engaged in "research" on this topic in Germany and elsewhere. Many books have been printed; the "Aryan race" lives on and is still going strong.
Helmuth von Glasenapp (1891-1963) wrote a lot in large editions about religion and philosophy. Here we quote from his book, first published in 1963, from "an unabridged paperback edition", printed in 1997 as a 6th edition: The five world religions. (He did not include Judaism!) Under the heading "The historical development" we read on page 29: "The old city Prayága (i. e. sacrificial site), which the Muhammadans renamed Allâhâbâd (Allah's residence) and as such familiar to us, happens to be the holiest place of India because both the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuná join here. That is symbolic for Hinduism: as it is according to its essential spirit also a merger point of two big evolutional streams, though emerging from different origins, merging to a new unit: one of these streams is Aryanism that penetrated from the north four millenniums ago to India and reshaped it to a large extent in linguistic and cultural respect, the other stream is represented by the indigenous element already before the Aryan immigration and has been maintaining its characteristic until today. The origin of Indian culture goes back to the creative synthesis of these two components; through them the Indian religion received its distinct mark, unique in the world."
Is it not pretty, light, and smooth convincing and saleable in style? Under the heading "The pre-Aryan period" we read on page 31: "The oldest history of India is to us still today a book with seven seals. Ethnographers accept that the oldest inhabitants of the Indian continent, which then did not have its contemporary appearance, were Negroid, standing to their tribal comrades in Africa and Melanesia in spatial and genetic connection. These are supposed to have been forced away by Europides coming from the north to the south and into remote fields and to have been absorbed by degrees so that they are not to be found today anymore in a pure state. Under the Europides, who, moving in several waves, took their residence in the wide country, ancestors of the delicate brown peoples which, with its inherent variety of aspects, had its seat in India talking in Dravidian languages in the south represented the most developed type. ... Fifty years ago (that is around 1913) the prevailing view was still that it were the Aryans who brought a higher culture and religion to India and that the pre Aryan inhabitants of the continent of Ganges, however, had been primitives lacking in culture. This view changed entirely through the great archaeological discoveries made since the years 1921/1922 in the Indus area. In Mohenjo Daro (in the region of Sindh) and in Harappa (in Punjab) the ruins of large cities were then laid open. The spacious buildings, artistic tools and form-beautiful sculptures found there betray a state of culture that was highly superior to that of the Aryans living only in villages that had no developed technique and art yet. This so-called Indus culture shows a striking similarity with the simultaneously existing Near East culture, on the other hand it bears again so individual traits, however, that it can not be considered as a simple subsidiary of the latter and is therefore to be taken as an independent link of the international world culture of the 3rd millennium. ... While some researchers are holding the Induspeople for Indogermans that belonged not to the Aryan branch, but to an older group of this language-family, most accept that they were ancestors of Dravidians and as such to be rather related to the Sumerians and pre-indogerman Mediterranean peoples."
Isn't it delightfully narrated? Why didn't Helmuth von Glasenapp come to the obvious conclusion that the results of excavation led to a thorough collapse of existing theories in "history"? Unfortunately we can not ask him anymore. But we can continue our reading in "The vedic period" on page 32: "Those Aryans who immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC, were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work."
Our apologies for the long quotation. As mentioned, we are quoting from a large paperback edition. It has a pretentious appendix: It has a pretentious appendix: "Comparative survey over teachings and customs of the Five Religions", "Comparative chronological table", "Regarding the pronunciation of words in Asiatic languages", "List of the abbreviations", "Section-wise Literature and Index of names". A pure "scientific" book at its best. We refrain here from a subject-wise criticism. We ask simply: what were the sources of Helmuth von Glasenapp's stories, which he tells us in this apparently pretentious book?
So we looked at the bibliography. The first chapter "History of Religion, General Theology" has three sections. The oldest mentioned source for "Overall views" goes back to 1920, for "References" to 1956 and for "Sources" to 1908. The next chapter: "Brahmanism and Hinduism" has two sections only for reasons we don't know: "References" and "Overall views" are put together. The oldest source referred to here is from 1891 and in "Sources" from 1912. A critical review of sources doesn't occur. Was every printed word holy for Helmuth von Glasenapp? What would be the benefit of a critical review of sources? Isn't it rather depressing to note what is being sold as science? How does it look like in other "scientific" books? We have not yet been able to identify a different "science-culture". Therefore, before we go into stories, we have decided to put a few simple questions: who is the narrator, how does he earn his living, who supports his story-telling, who is benefited by his stories and what were his sources. The result of this practice is even more depressing. But first things first. We haven't been able to detect a single primary source in Helmuth von Glasenapp's book. But he knew all about human races and their ranking. Tellingly, during the "Tausendjähriges Reich" under Hitler he certainly did not suffer any setback to his career.
Knowing the modern-science-culture as manifested in the book by Helmuth von Glasenapp we are not amazed to note that sources have been referred to in the latest edition of the book, which were first published after 1963, that is after his death. Of course not real sources, but new printed products. In "notes" we are informed that "a number of other publications, mainly of recent dates, that could be suitable for further studies of the five great religions have been made available." We would have liked to know, which "spirit" has selected 'a number of other publications' and whether this "spirit" has also fumbled in the text. To make the book more sellable, of course!
In one of the "standard history books" in Germany, History of India: from Indus Culture to Today by Hermann Kulke and Dietmer Rothermund, 2nd expanded and revised edition, Beck, Munich 1998, first edition 1982, the same story reads on pages 44-45 as follows: "The second millennium BC witnessed, after the fall of Indus Culture, another important event of the early history of India, when groups of central Asiatic nomads migrated through the Hindukush pass to Northwest India, who called themselves 'Arya' in their writings. In 1786 William Jones, the founder of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, discovered close linguistic affinity between Sanskrit, the language of Aryas, and Greek, Latin, and the Germanic and Celtic languages. This epochal finding laid the foundation stone for exploration of the Indo-European family of languages, to which according to our contemporary knowledge more languages belong to than Jones had assumed in the beginning. Since the late 19th century more and more researchers came to the conviction, that the origin of this Indo-European family of languages was to be searched for in the spread of the East European and central Asiatic steppe (We include William Jones in our list for later scrutiny).
The important findings of the early Linguists about the close linguistic affinity within the Indo-European family of languages were however overshadowed increasingly by racial-nationalistic ideologies, in which the origin of one's own nation was postulated in a mystic-Aryan race. This applies particularly to German nationalistic historians since the 19th century and recently also to nationalistic historians of India. This development led to devastating results in Europe and also resulted recently in India to vehement quarrels between historians and to heavy communal riots. It appears therefore to be appropriate in the context of the early Indian history, to speak of 'Aryas' in the German language, to distinguish the mythical primary race of Indo-Europeans of Northwest India more clearly from the ideological construct 'Arier' of recent times."
This quotation is even more cynical than the one circulated in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, isn't it? Are these "historians" not clandestinely trying to escape the moral responsibility for their so-called scientific doings? Even today they talk about 'the Indo-European family of languages', but do not tell us which languages are not to be assigned to this family. They act as if all those problems created during the "Tausendjähriges Reich" had been over for them since long. But do they really believe that it will work if they just spell the term "Aryans" differently? Should it now concern the Indian historians only? Can one be more hypocritical?
So, the immigrating "Aryans" bring the "Aryan" language "Protosanskrit" along with them to Northwest India. Then they refine their language to Sanskrit, devise the Sanskrit script and produce and deliver an abundance of great literature to the world. The "modern historians" specialised on this period and on this area are busy with their dating of events. What else could be more important than to determine precise dates when each and every writing was first published and to dispute on such issues "scientifically" with colleagues in the same field?
Since the emergence of Jainism and Buddhism about 2600 years ago the history of India is well documented. During that period Sanskrit was no longer spoken. The literature on metaphysics, on science, on history, the books (Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras) and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were, however, already known in the 7th century BC. So the "modern scientists" concluded precisely that this abundance of Sanskrit literature emerged before the 7th century BC only. So far, so good. The conquest and/or immigration is, however, dated around the 15th century BC. How was this dating determined? We add this question to our list of notes to be dealt with later. The ancient Sanskrit literature could accordingly by no means be older than the invasion and/or immigration of the "Aryans", with Sanskrit as their language.
Rigveda is established as the oldest of the four Vedas because it does not mention in the other three Vedas. It is also supposed to be the oldest of all Sanskrit scripts composed around 1200 BC. We cannot see how a "scientific" fixing of the dates of these books could particularly enlighten us. We won't pass judgement on that. We only wonder why we are so totally unable to comprehend the stories told by the "modern historians" and indologists about the origin of Sanskrit literature. It would be unfair not to mention here that there is dissent about the dating acrobatics among these "scientists" as well as among different "scientific" disciplines.
It is agreed by all "modern scientists" that something like an "Aryan invasion" or an "Aryan immigration" must have taken place in India. How else would Sanskrit have found its way to India? Brilliant, wouldn't you agree? Where else would Sanskrit have come from? Do we find Sanskrit elsewhere? We do not know. No one can tell us. But one fact is striking indeed: the inventors of the theory of the "Aryan invasion" and/or of the "Aryan immigration" resemble the "Aryans" in their physiognomy. Is it just coincidence? We won't know. The diligent diggers, the archaeologists have yet to find evidence of an "Aryan conquest", however. On the contrary. Their finding shocked the "Aryan-looking-scientists" for a while but could not shatter the whole theory. Because the archaeologists are unable to disprove the immigration of a language. Immigration of a language does not leave behind archaeological evidence. No one can deny the presence of Sanskrit in India. Does it not brilliantly prove that the "Aryans" did at least immigrate into India?
And as already mentioned, the "Aryans" were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. So they would have been absolutely able to conquer Northwest India if their immigration had faced resistance. There was no doubt about the presence of the "Aryans" in India. Every simpleton who visits India can obviously see the "Nordic race" in Northwest India. In the south on the other hand the people are of short stature, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. "Scientists" imaging the "Aryans" are obsessed in describing this physical appearance They were, as said, tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. People with these features are of course superior to others. Does the scientists' obsession not actually indicate an urgent desire to identify themselves with these "Aryans"? Is this desire rather an indication of "Ich-Stärke" (ego-strength) or of "Ich-Schwäche" (ego-weakness)?
Naturally the "race", allegedly inferior to the "Aryans", had also a name. They were "Dravidians". Unfortunately we have not come across such an exceptional "scholar" having the "qualities" of a Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, who could have told us whether they also did call themselves "Dravidians" in their early literature. Did the "Dravidians" have "early writings"? Did they have literature at all? We do not know. We do however wonder how the dynamic, self-conscious and clever "Aryans" obviously never compared themselves with the "Dravidians" in order to develop their own "we-consciousness". There is no reference whatsoever to "Dravidians", to "two races" or to "race" in any ancient Sanskrit script.
Shouldn't this lacuna have been noticed by the "modern scientists" and been reflected upon? Anyway. We are not yet through with the stories we are told. The "Aryans", having either invaded India or immigrated into India, displaced the "Dravidians" to the South, settled down, developed their "Protosanskrit" almost to perfection, devised a script, produced literature of high cultural value, brought this culture to the pushed out "Dravidians" and spread the "Aryan" culture over entire India. Helmuth von Glasenapp gave clear indication that the "Dravidians" too are not indigenous people (Ureinwohner) of India. They immigrated in the "earliest early period" from 'Africa and Melanesia' to India. We won't comment on this. We just take a note of this version of the earliest history of India. But we have many questions. It needs not be specially mentioned that we don't find answers to our questions in the "modern-scientific-literature". It is even worse. Most of these questions have not even been raised yet.
What was the numerical ratio, for example, when the "Aryans" sent the "Dravidians" scuttling South? Is it in the realm of imagination of these scientists that the more unfavourable the ratio of the conquerors or of the immigrants to the inhabitants was, the more difficult and more improbable it would have been to drive them out? The "Aryans" could not have passed the Hindukush in masses. Which routes could they have taken from the steppe to the south? How were the conditions of the routes? Did they encounter human beings on their way? Which ones? How much did they roam around until they discovered the only pass, the Hindukush?
What logistics? What were the prerequisites for logistic considerations for these grazing nomads in the central-Asiatic steppe? Were there any? Did these "historians" ever study a map of this area? Even if we accepted the story of "population explosion" leading to immigration, how could they have found and kept direction in a vast, unknown, incalculable terrain thousands of miles from their steppes? Besides, if, against all odds, the nomads did find direction, we should find these central Asiatics all over the place not just India. And to add to it, the nomads were no star gazers. Their eyes were on the ground or ahead of them. How did they suddenly learn astronomy?
And what has been told by Helmuth von Glasenapp? Under the heading "The vedic period" on page 32? " Those Aryans who immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC, were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work.
Instead of asking at least a few of the many obvious questions, the "Glasenapps" describe how different the physical characteristics of those the two races, "Aryans" and "Dravidians", were. As already said, the "Aryans" were tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed and the "Dravidians" were of short stature, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. Would it actually have been possible that the "Dravidians" were inferior to the "Aryans" due to the differences of their physical features and were therefore conquered? In spite of a vast majority of "Dravidian" people? Which question is more relevant, the numerical ratios or physical features? And how could those "modern scientists" determine the appearance of people of those "two races" who lived 3500 years ago? Is there any comprehensible method for that? Can there be a method to that purpose?
Obviously the designers of the "theory of two races" and their descendants do not only sympathise with but admire them and identify themselves with "Aryans" and their assumed physical attributes. It goes without saying that the physical aspects dominate their subjective evaluation. These designers projected their own physical appearance to the assumed superior "Aryans" and developed with it a common "we-consciousness" vis-a-vis the "others", whoever these others might have been. There are just the "others". And the "others" were by no means tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. What is not wished cannot be.
After the creation of the "we-feeling" the individual features develop independently. We don't have to remember the impressive meeting of Hitler and Mussolini in the movie "The Great Dictator" by Charles Chaplin, to understand the powerful motivation behind the internalised values, the all too prevalent misconception that "big" is "great". In the Chaplin film, the two dictators are sitting on a swivel chairs and, throughout their conversation, each is trying to sit�appear�higher than the other this hilarious scene brings amply to light that inferiority complex � a sense of security � is the root motivator of all dictators.
We leave it at that, emphasising the fact that every "we-feeling" presupposes actual or pretended positive qualities which "the others", of course, don't possess. It is irrelevant who � linguists, historians or indologists � when they pen such imaginary theories in the guise of "scientific" history, a classic example being the following: 'in the context of the early Indian history it appears to be appropriate, to speak of "Aryans" in the German language, to distinguish the mythical primary race of Indo-Europeans of Northwest India more clearly from the ideological construct "Arier" of recent times. In their purely subjective desire to hold on to the "racial superiority" theory � whether it be the beauty or the virtues of the Aryans � the author has thrown to the winds one of the key elements in research ethics: Objectivity.
The impilcite massage is that In fact, the "short-statured" persons are not just "not tall", they are also "incalculable and mischievous"; dark-skinned people are in fact "shady customers", not frank and open like fair skinned people. And if they have dark eyes in addition, who would like to meet them? Be they citizens or not, who would seriously think about integrating them into the "we-group"? A culture which has generated the superiority consciousness of the "blond-blue-eyed-white" people for centuries must also be named accordingly. We should no longer allow "experts on culture" to confuse us by inventing new labels for this culture. The "Aryans" could not have been Christians. Christianity emerged later. But who are the "Indo-Europeans"? Are they only the Christian descendants of the "Aryans" or also products of the blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian culture? Are they not more civilised than the "Indo-Aryans"? And a little superior too?
And superiority is not superiority if it is not constantly scrutinised and being evidenced. This can be observed when physical violence is used against those fellow-habitants in Europe, in "America", in "Australia", in "New Zealand", who obviously do not belong to the "blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian" culture. And in Germany, of course. Why do we have the public appeals of the celebrities against the infringements? Is it more than just "celebrating"? It should be added that all pioneers of this culture have not necessarily to be "blond-blue eyed-white-Christian". Not all pioneers/leaders of this culture need to be blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian. Take Hitler and Gobbles. There should not be any misunderstanding. We, the authors, also belong to this culture. We lack the essential features but cannot root out the internalised "values" either.
But let's get back to the original "Aryans" who are supposed to have started the whole affair. They were basically simple people, who 'were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work', but nonetheless 'immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC'. They just 'were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen. That was it. We wanted to know in which period all these things happened. But there is no concrete evidence. And what about the spread of this culture up to the southern tip of India? When did it happen? From the time of Vardhamana, the first Mahavira of the Jains and Gautama Buddha, the history of India is well documented. There is no evidence of any "Aryan" invasion, occupation and spreading of the culture into the diminished "land of the Dravidians" in the south of India. Apparently this must then have occurred in the period between the 15th and 7th century BC. Why was it not even mentioned in the extensive literature of the "Sanskrit-Aryans"?
Even if we bought the theory of "population explosion" among the grazing nomads, we would need to try to find out what section of population would be ready for a collective emigration: The "well established" ones or the "inferior" ones? Which of these two would foster the common language better: the established ones or the inferior ones? Who is inclined to emigrate? If the "Aryans" brought "Protosanskrit" to India, must we not assume that those remaining at home spoke the same language? If the "Aryans" abroad produced an abundance of Sanskrit literature, shouldn't the same "breed" have produced literature at home? May be not in abundance and in good quality, but some literature anyhow? Where is the literature of the "Aryans" at home? Where is their history? And why didn't the other "Aryan" emigrants, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans and the Celts, produce literature similar to "Sanskrit literature"?
Then we would like to know how �modern historians� were able to acquire their knowledge. What were the sources of all these theories which are being served even today? In that exemplary German "standard history book" of 1998 we get a hint about the quality of their sources on page 49: "The dating of the texts and the cultures that produced them was vigorously disputed for quite a long time also among western Indologists. Based on astronomical information the famous Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak has published in his book 'The Arctic Home in the Vedas' at the beginning of this century his belief that the origin of the Vedas was to be backdated to the 5th and 6th millennium BC. The German Indologist H. Jacobi came independently to similar conclusions and dated the beginning of the vedic period in the middle of the 5th millennium. Mostly one followed, however, the dating set by the famous German Indologist Max Mueller who taught in Cambridge in the late 19th century. Setting out from the lifetime of the Buddha around 500 BC he dated the origin of the Upanishads in the centuries from 800 to 600 BC as the philosophy in them had originated before Buddha's deeds. These were preceded by the Brahmana- and Mantra texts in the centuries from 1000 to 800 respectively from 1200 to 1000 BC. Today one dates the oldest vedic text, that of Rigveda, into the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Since the Vedas soon after this genesis as a divine manifestation were not allowed to be changed anymore and handed down to our contemporary time by priest families verbally in an unbelievably precise manner, they can now be considered, after their dating can be regarded as being fixed at least in specific centuries, as historical sources of first rank for the history of the vedic society in northern India."
Impressive style, indeed. In fact the whole book is in the same impressive style, made more so by its "scientific" character. Each sentence, each paragraph is convincingly presented. The book, from the first to the last word, is a demonstration of the scientific character of the "Humanities". Who can still have doubts about its contents? The most important aim is to convince readers - no, not exactly. It is to make believe. The weak points, wherever possible, camouflaged in insignificant portions. And the debatable points which might lead to criticism are just touched upon, signalling that these issues have been recognised, but could not be dealt with in detail due to the lack of space. Right?
At the beginning of the "modern humanities", we suppose, it was more difficult "to make others believe". But today the means of manipulation are almost perfect. It is not that the scientists of our time have become cleverer and packed their messages more impressively. No that is not the danger. What is happening is we are increasingly losing our ability to recognise manipulations. It begins with the family, continues at school, on the job, in the subcultures and finally takes control of the entire culture. The mass media always play a major role. Nothing depends on the actual truth. Whatever is sold becomes truth. The logic is primitive but effective. The people wouldn't buy it if it was not true, would they? Have we already forgotten the media report on the "Gulf war", "Kosovo-air strokes" and "Afghanistan-crusade"? And the bombshells enriched with uranium?
We have to apologise because of these provocative sentences. We are particularly angry because we have long been victims of this manipulation. It will not make much sense if we describe our way to emancipation in all details. There is no point here in going into all the details. Rather, what is needed is to read again the following "exemplary" paragraph carefully. "The dating of the texts and the cultures that produced them was vigorously disputed for quite a long time also among western Indologists (What could be the purpose of 'for quite long time also among western Indologists' in this connection? Is it important to know? Is it not more important to know why it 'was vigorously disputed ... also among western Indologists'? Why? And what is the meaning of 'also among western Indologists' in particular? And all these controversial items in one sentence? Why aren't we informed in a simple way that: for a long time the dating was controversial among Indologists? And thereafter the issues of controversies? Was all this done just by mistake?).
"Based on astronomical information (Is the information correct or wrong?) the famous Indian freedom fighter ('famous Indian freedom fighter'? What are we to be conditioned for now?) Bal Gangadhar Tilak has published in his book 'The Arctic Home in the Vedas' at the beginning of this century his belief ('belief'?) that the origin of the Vedas was to be backdated to the 5th and 6th millennium BC (Did Bal Gangadhar Tilak give some reasons also?). The German Indologist H. Jacobi came independently to similar conclusions and dated the beginning of the vedic period in the middle of the 5th millennium."
The 'famous Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak' is not easily available to us. However, 'the German Indologist H. Jacobi' is. Hermann Jacobi (1850-1937) was a mathematician. He got his doctorate in 1872 on: De astrologiae Indicae "Hora" appellatae originibus. In translation it is: About the origins of the term "Hora" in the Indian astrology. He worked with Jainic texts dealing with mathematical and calculational background. He was proficient in Prakrit and in Pali, both spoken versions of Sanskrit 2600 years ago in the eastern area in India, in the contemporary Union state of Bihar. Up to his middle age he remained a mathematician and natural scientist. He also wrote a Prakrit-grammar. He contributed an article on the age of Vedas on the basis of astronomical calculations on the occasion of a commemorative volume for the indologist Rudolf von Roth, which then was published in 1908 also in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society". In his published biography we can not find any indications about his knowledge in Sanskrit. Having gained this background knowledge the next three sentences in our exemplary paragraph cast a different light.
"Mostly one followed, however, (why so?) the dating set by the famous German Indologist Max Mueller who taught in Cambridge in the late 19th century (Was he famous because he taught as a German in Cambridge, or did he teach in Cambridge because he was famous before? Did he become "the leader of the (indologist)pack") because he was famous, or did he become famous because he had ascended to "the leader of the pack"? We would prefer to know instead how this indologist established the dating of the Vedas. Absolutely no indication. And what is more, there had never been 'a German Indologist in Cambridge' called Max Mueller. We continue in that paragraph.). Setting out from the lifetime of the Buddha around 500 BC he dated the origin of the Upanishads in the centuries from 800 to 600 BC as the philosophy in them had originated before Buddha�s deeds. These were preceded by the Brahmana� and Mantra texts in the centuries from 1000 to 800 respectively from 1200 to 1000 BC ."(Are these methodological indications or arguments? Instead they foist upon us that the famous German indologist Max Mueller could read these texts brilliantly, judge them and consequently deduce when these texts were written. Nothing like that in fact. We shall deal with Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, that is his full name, in detail giving special attention to his knowledge of Sanskrit in particular and to the knowledge of Sanskrit of the indologists in general. Now we can continue our reading.).
Today one dates (just like that?) the oldest Vedic text, that of Rigveda, into the middle of the 2nd millennium of BC. Since the Vedas soon after this genesis (had there been anything before that?) as a divine manifestation (A divine manifestation is always related to a person. To whom was the Rigveda divinely manifested and by which God?) were not allowed to be changed anymore (how could it be ascertained?) and handed down to our contemporary time by priest families (priest families?) verbally in an unbelievably precise manner, they can now be considered, after their dating can be regarded as being fixed at least in specific centuries, as historical sources of first rank for in northern India (Is this sensible reasoning?)."
How does 'the history of the vedic society' emerge? We also fail to comprehend the meaning and purpose of: 'a divine manifestation', 'historical sources of first rank' and 'the history of the vedic society'. Another aspect is striking in this exemplary paragraph. It applies adjectives and adverbs, positively and negatively loaded, as an instrument of manipulation, like: vigorously disputed', 'for quite a long time', 'western Indologists', 'famous Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak', 'the German Indologist', 'mostly one followed', 'the famous German Indologist Max Mueller'. We were not led astray by this trick. We have frequently endured such fruitless disputes staged in order to scuttle essential discussions. Just to give an example, we all remember the quarrels about "tapped-records" being "illegally" published in many "democratic" countries. Mostly the public disputes were focused on the legitimacy of the publication. The essential question remained in the dark: What in fact did honourable democratic political personalities tell their political friends, opponents and leading administrators? Why should it be kept away from the democratic public? A diversion of focus as a technique of manipulation.
Again we must apologise because of a small naughtiness of ours. In the beginning we talked about "Aryan conquerors". Later we introduced "Aryan conquerors and/or immigrants" just like that. It was only done to get the reader tuned to understand the way we become victims of a common method of manipulation by the "historians". The 2nd section of that standard history book, The history of India: from Indus culture to today by Hermann Kulke and Dietmer Rothermund, 2nd expanded and revised edition, Beck, Munich 1998, first edition 1982, is titled: "Immigration and Settlement of Aryas". Now, "immigration of Aryas" is an event which was called "Conquest by the Aryans" till the first quarter of the 20th century. Due to absolutely unavoidable interdisciplinary rivalries among "modern scientists", the "historians" and indologists got involved into more than a dating conflict with the archaeologists. The archaeological finds refute the conquest theory insofar, as the so called war trophies as a proof of the defeat of "Dravidians" were unfortunately already there much earlier, before the "Aryans" were supposed to have had their "population explosion" in the central-Asiatic steppe and gone on their march to a new "Lebensraum".
In fact, this should have not only led to the collapse of the theory of the Aryan conquest, but also of the theory which claims that India is a country of two or three races. But 'mostly one followed' the flexibility of the "historians" and indologists: If there was no conquest, then there must nevertheless have been an immigration! By this twist the theory of the "superior Aryan race" was rescued. These "Indo-Europeans", no, these "Aryan-Europeans" were and are emotionally convinced of their own superiority. What would happen to them if the theory collapses? Perish the thought!
These manipulators of opinions know very well how deeply the racial consciousness is rooted in this "blond-blue-eyed-white-Christian" culture, which is still on the search for an innocent name. They are confident that even if they have to use the term "immigration" it will nonetheless automatically be converted in the mind of the members of this culture into "conquest". And their smug confidence has no limits. They do not even feel that while writing a little more attention has to be paid to keep their innermost conviction about the superiority of the "Aryan-Europeans" under restrain lest it be exposed. Thus we can already read on page 50 of the 2nd section: "The victory of the Indo-Aryas over the indigenous population seems to have been as in the case of other conquering nations in the Near Orient, based considerably on their sophisticated two wheeled horse chariots (ratha). The spokes of their wheels were so valuable and sensitive that the chariots were carried occasionally on ox carts in order to spare them until the beginning of the battle. The land-taking of the Aryas seems nevertheless to have been carried out only in a step by step manner and slowly. The reason for that might have lain indeed also in the width of the country and in the great number of hardly passable rivers.
The resistance of the indigenous population seems however to have carried more weight. As dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu they are named in the texts again and again as the real adversaries of the conquerors. They defended themselves in fortified places (pura, later = city) that were mainly surrounded by several palisade rings or ramparts, or they moved back onto the mountains into their retreat-castles. Numerous hymns celebrate the God Indra as the «castle breaker» (purandara) and King of Gods of the Aryas who stormed the castles and killed the Dasyu intoxicated from the Soma drink."
Apart from the fact that these "historians" and indologists, who, in spite of the archaeological discoveries, let themselves be led by the "race superiority of the Aryans", our attention is attracted by two other facts that are not less fatal. By insertions of simple Sanskrit words these "scientists" create the impression that they are proficient in Sanskrit. Whether this is true, remains to be examined thoroughly. We will systematically track down, how Sanskrit and "Vedic Sanskrit" or the one that is just being called Sanskrit came to Europe.
The second aspect is still more pathetic. We recall the part of the quotation: 'The resistance of the indigenous population seems however to have carried more weight. As dark-skinned Dasa or Dasyu they are named in the texts again and again as the real adversaries of the conquerors.' As already mentioned, in their tales these "historians" and indologists describe the Aryans" as tall, strong, fair skinned, fair haired, blue or grey-eyed. As these physical characteristics are still positively evaluated and are in flesh and blood those of the members of this culture, we will also trace the time when these physical characteristics were applied to distinguish the quality of human beings and where this theory originated.
A very last remark on "modern humanities" to reveal their treacherous arts. Since the third quarter of the last century archaeologists in India are laying open entire cities concealed under the earth for millenniums. These cities were planned with coherent settlements, straight roads, play grounds with stadium, efficient water management, public baths, drainage, artificial irrigation plants, channel systems, dry docks and so forth on banks of mighty rivers later dried up by drought. These cities didn't have palaces and temples. An intensive discussion at least on one issue should have started. Is it conceivable that such a civilisation could exist without a language, without writing, without literature, without science, without philosophy? The answer is obvious. It is not conceivable. Where are those cultural achievements?
And what would happen if we had reasonable doubts about Sanskrit being the language of the 'Aryans who immigrated through the mountain route of the Northwest into the watershed of Indus and subjugated in continuous fight the prior residents of the north-west corner of India in the 2nd millennium BC, were warriors of a youthful group of herdsmen, who did already some farming, but knew nothing of town planning and of fine artistic work.' What are we supposed to do then? What would have to be done?
The impetus
The Faculty of Social Sciences of the Oldenburg University announced a seminar on "Might, Media and Manipulation: The invention of 'Indogermans', 'Indoeuropeans', 'Aryans' as an exemplary case-study" for the winter term of 1996/1997. It was a project of "learning by doing it". It was research at its purest�seeking answers to open questions free of any prefixed projects and unprejudiced by preconceived or prefabricated theories.
No one could have anticipated that the seminar would last for four long years, to the beginning of the winter term 2000-2001. And, the extensions were always on students' demand, though with changing participants. Some students were dropping out and new students were constrained for time. They had to go through the work already done � the collected material, protocol of the sessions, and their evaluation � and then develop new areas for further research.
When more than 35 students wish to participate in the seminar it is time for rethinking. A seminar of "learning by doing research" needs a manageable size of between 5 to 15 participants. So in the first session of the term a detailed report was presented on what had already been done and what the open questions were. Thereafter, only five participants were left. They decided to evaluate the results achieved so far and to prepare an interim report before proceeding to further research work. After the evaluation, only two participants remained at work. And these were not to undergo any more university-examinations.
They added new materials to fill up the gaps so as to get a comprehensive view of what had been accomplished. In this process the realisation came that m
Lügen mit langen Beinen
The author of this article has just studied, with increasing fascination, a remarkable voluminous book (1) by Prodosh Aich, a Bengali Indian who has, however, for decades been a member of the German academic Establishment. He has studied ethnology, philosophy, and sociology at Cologne University and has taught sociology at universities in Cologne, Rajasthan (India), and Oldenburg. His "documentary story", as he calls it is a revealing report about the real origins and the de facto coming into existence of the Thesis of an (at first) "Indo-Germanic" or (later) "Indo-European" so-called "language family" and, by inference, of an Indo-European "race".
The idea of an "Indo-European language family"
It is a rather shocking report indeed. One has to read it, to believe it. Although I have for years been highly sceptical of that Indo-European "story", as it is generally propagated by the that Indo-European "storv", as it is generally propagated by the mainstream, and have regarded it as rather "windy". I was nevertheless shocked by the degree of carelessness, combinedideological bias, which, as Aich demonstrates, has been a distinguishing feature of the work of all these Western "Indologists" and "Sanskntists".
Aich has meticulously studied the life and background, and the works of all the well-known scholars of the 17th to 19th centuries in this field, like e.g. Filippo Sassetti, Roberto de Nobili, Sir William Jones, Franz Bopp, Leonard de Chézv, Alexander Hamilton and F. Max Müller. Not one of them did possess the necessary linguistic and generally necessary, comprehensive scholarly competence to pronounce at their time about these matters in the way they did.
The invention of the "Aryan race"
It is Aich's thesis that all these scholars of the 17th – 19th centuries were heavily influenced by contemporary European superiority, supremacy and hegemony interests, at first more of a clerical-missionary, later of an imperialist-colonizing nature, and that they were expected to busily inflate that "balloon" of a superior "Aryan" (i.e. European) "race". Therefore incidentally the "Aryans" always had to have their origin in Europe. Because of all these rather suspect circumstances which have accompanied the coming into existence of the "Indo-European" and "Aryan" paradigm. Aich, when he uses the German word "Lügen" (lies) already in his book title; obviously does not simply mean an untrue or incorrect statement, but a deliberately misleading one.
It may well be that this concept of an "Indo-European" (or "Aryan") "race" has a rightful claim to the title of the most fatal, mental "balloon" of the history of the sciences. Because it is well-known that from it evolved, first within Establishment science and then also among non-Establishment "Weltbild" ideologists, the whole modern "race" hysteria: the idea of allegedly existing, distinctly different "races" of mankind, of which certain (especially of course the "Aryan race") were alleged to be of "superior", others of "inferior" quality.
Whereas originally it had only been a belief in the existence of an "Indo-European language family ", in the course of only a few centuries it had become belief in the undeniable fact of an "Aryan race": typical product of the strange European-Christian self-concept at least among the "élite", which had become used to regard themselves as a somehow chosen, superior race, with a mission to fulfil, namely to dominate the world. Almost nobody objected that the whole edifice rested on shaky foundations, to wit have linguistic arguments became confused wlth somatic considerations in an obviously “pseudoscientific” manner. As a sidelight we may mention in passing that, against this 17th – 19th century background, the "race" hysteria in Hitler's Germany (1933 – 1945) may well be understood as the culmination of an almost pan-European mental aberration.
The phantasm of an "Aryan invasion" of India
It seems that from the viewpoint of the "science of science" (history, philosophy, and sociology of the sciences, epistemology) all these scenarios of an Indo-European "race", and Indo-European "homeland", an Indo-European "language family", and an Indo-European migration from somewhere in the West (preferably Europe) as far as India, can only be regarded as highly suspect.
Especially in view of the fact that the enormously numerous and manifold Vedic and other Sanskrit works of ancient India never mention any "Aryan invasion" of India. A recent work by Feuerstein. Kak & Frawley (2) has two chapters with revealing titles: "The Aryans: Exploding a Scientific Myth", and "Why the Arian Invasion Never Happened: Seventeen Arguments". In accord with these authors I can therefore only recommend that we throw this "package" of untenable interrelated hypotheses overboard.
When there is no "Aryan race", there is of course also no "Indo– European Homeland". Besides, as Morgan Kelley (3) states:
"In attempting to reconstruct a genetic relationship among languages, Linguists amass a common vocabulary which itself can be used to reconstruct much about their material culture. Names for divinities and tribes, as well as for domestic items, animals, crops and trees indicate a common culture from a very early time. Yet even these basics do not lead all researchers in the same directions" (p.208).
Interpretations and "reconstructions" of prehistoric events dependent on assumptions and presuppositions
Exactly this is the problem: although a knowledge of such basics has doubtless a certain worth, it does not and cannot quasi-automatically lead scholars to the correct scenario. There are too many unknowns in the equation. After all we cannot expect more than qualified speculation, because we are dealing with a past which no one of us has personally witnessed. The interpretations of our basics and our "reconstructions" of die factual relevant circumstances and events in a far distant past are unavoidably heavily dependent on our assumptions and presuppositions. These may be correct, or wrong, or a mixture of both.
The thesis of so-called "language families" is such an a priori assumption or presupposition, which has an effect comparable to an instance of rail shunting: from now on all ensuing thinking has to go in only one direction, to the exclusion of all other possibilities.
Such "language families" are normally understood as a direct genetic relationship between languages, reminding one of the genealogical "trees" of palaeontology. We can visualize an ethnic entity (people, tribe), which for some reason split into two or more factions, which migrate by land or sea to distant regions, have in the course of time their original language may evolve in different directions.
Doubtless such events will have occurred repeatedly in the long history of the human race. But the present author is of the opinion that such instances will have played only a minor role in the unfolding of the bewilderingly multifarious linguistic "landscape" on our planet.
Superstrata, substrata, and adstrata
By far the most important factor in the development of this "landscape" will quite obviously have been instances of linguistic superstrata, substrata, and adstrata, i. e. instances where the language of a newly arrived ethno-linguistic superstratum has affected the language of the "indigenes" or "natives" of the substratum or, in the case of an adstratal influence, even the language of a neighbouring people.
I am quite convinced that most ethnic entities on our planet have been formed in a manner reminiscent of the layers or strata of geology, by layer upon layer of ethno-linguistic superstrata, with the difference that the strata of geology remain more or less separate and distinct, whereas the ethno-linguistic layers will, in the course of time, tend to result in an ethno-linguistic amalgam.
Probably great majority creolized or amalgam languages
Therefore I propose that we will have to take it as a fact that the great majority of today’s languages cannot belong to the kind of above-described. conventional "language families", but will have to be regarded as creolized or amalgam languages, formed by an amalgamation of quite different languages.
That such things can and do indeed occur, has been repeatedly shown. A creolized language shows features from two or more "unrelated" (i.e. only very distantly related) languages as a result of contact between different language communities. Typically we find such in the Caribbean region. But as I said above, I am today convinced that the great majority of today's spoken languages belong to this group. Most interesting cases abound. I remember having once studied a work by an eminent linguist about a certain region in central India, have three languages belonging to different "language families" (she still believed in that concept), by close contact between the three language communities, were in the process of forming a new creolized language even in our time. Sadly I have mislaid my Xerox copies I made then, and so cannot cite from, or name my source.
Quite naturally, as my readers will probably have sensed by now, I regard the so-called "Indo-European" languages, too, as creolized languages. They, i.e. the great majority of today’s European languages, plus some other languages (e.g. Persian). had been given the name "Indo-European" because in certain elements they seemed somehow related to the Sanskrit language of ancient India.
Vennemann's thesis of a pre-Indo-European, Vasconic and Proto-Semitic Europe
Before I can continue to proceed with the thread of my thesis that the "Indo-European" languages should be regarded a creolized languages, I have to digress a bit and invite my reader to a little detour or excursion.
In a recent issue of the journal MIGRATION & DTFFUSION I have reported about the thesis by Theo Vennemann, who incidentally is a professor for Germanistic linguistics at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, about the probable ethno-linguistic realities and movements in late prehistoric Europe (4). In his view, after the so-caIled "End of the Great Age" (in contemporary, i.e. non-catastrophic geological doctrine), a Vasconian, i.e. Basque-related population spreading r from south western France over almost all of Europe. They lived relatively unsophisticated, perhaps comparable to the way of the Berbers of Morocco. This population is designated (A), the accompanying map (Fig. 1),
Later on, from a centre designated (B) around the Strata Gibraltar, where Vennemann sees the original homeland centre of diffusion of all Hamito-Semitic peoples, an advanced sea-faring civilization colonized the Atlantic coastland of Europe. This people might be called Atlanto-Semites. Proto–Semites. Hamito-Semites, or Proto-Phoenicians, and they obviously also been the bearers of the Atlanto-European Megalithic culture.
Only as the last step did the "Indo-Europeans" arrive from the East in Vennemann's scenario. Vennemaan analyses by methodical reasoning in a really masterly and convincing manner Western and Central European languages like Insular Celtic, modern English, or the vocabulary of Germanic to demonstrate the most remarkable ethno-linguistic amalgams between Old Vasconians, Hamito-Semitic and "Indo-European" peoples, with which we will have to reckon in the gradual "nation building" of today's European peoples (5). The present author is of the opinion that Vennemann's reasoning is highly convincing.
The probable solution: A twofold ethno-linguistic influence from India on ancient Europe
He thinks, however, that in spite of this positive judgment Vennemann's scenario could and should be amended. To this end I have therefore tried to produce in the accompanying map (Fig. I) an amalgamation of Vennemann's and my own tentative scenario.
By (C) are designated migrations of less sophisticated, more war-like tribes from the Indian subcontinent, speaking Sanskritrelated languages. These tribes may have been forcibly expelled from India by the advanced civilization there. Perhaps the legendary tradition of Parashu-Rama, "Rama with the Battle-ax", an "avatar" or divine incarnation (not to be confused with the Rama of the Ramayana epic, another "avatar"), refers to such an event. He is said to have expelled war-like races from India.
It may well be that India at these late-prehistoric times may have been the most populated region on our planet. So such migrations by expelled tribes may have been rather substantial movements. And in view of the Tibetan landscape and the innumerable mountain ranges between India and China it would be only natural if these migrations took the routes indicated, to wit towards the West and Europe.
But I feel that we will also have to reckon with another colonizing influence from ancient India on Europe; designated (D) on the map, of quite another character. India has a very ancient seafaring tradition, and a most potent one at that, and the advanced civilizations there would probably very early have found the way around the Cape of Good Hope, to the Americas (which expeditions from India may also have reached via the Pacific) as well as to at least southwestern Europe.
From these considerations I propose that we should look for linguistic traces of colonizers from India, speaking Sanskritrelated languages, especially on the Iberian Peninsula, but also in the other Atlantic coastlands of Europe. Beside their much more advanced culture such seafarers and colonizers from ancient India may have impressed by their charisma the less sophisticated Vasconians in such a way that amalgam or creolized languages were a natural result. In which way, however, (B) and (D), i.e. the Atlanto-Semites or Proto-Phoenicians and the colonizers from India might have interacted, will not be easy to establish, especially in view of the fact that a tradition also exists according to which the Phoenicians themselves had their original homeland somewhere on the coasts of the Indian Ocean.
(1) Prodosh Aich: LÜGEN MIT LANGEN BEINEN. Oldenburg 2003 (ISBN: 3-935418-O1-9).
(2) Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak & David Frawley: IN SEARCH OF THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION. Wheaton (IIIinois) 1995 (ISBN: 0-8356-0720-8).
(3) E. Morgan Kelley: THE METAPHORICAL BASIS OF LANGUAGE, Lewiston (N.Y.), 1992 (ISBN: 0-7734-9534-7).
(4) Horst Friedrich: "A Linguistic Breakthrough for the Reconstruction of Europe's Prehistory" in: MIGR.ATION & DIFFUSION, Vol. 5/No.17, 2004 (pp. 6-15).
(5) cf; also by Theo Vennemann: EUROPA VASCONICA - EUROPA SMITICA, Berlin/New York, 2003 (ISBN: 3-M-017054-X).
Dr Horst Friedrich, FMES, Wörthsee, Germany
THE "INDO-EUROPEANS" AND THE CONCEPT OF "LANGUAGE FAMILIES";
In: MIDWESTERN EPIGRAPHIC JOURNAL, Volume 17, Number 2, 2003
Vor dem Beginn und nach dem Ende
Weltformel, Strings, Quanten, Trigger, Determinismusstreit sind nur einige Chiffren, die die Suche des Menschen nach Entstehen, Werden und Vergehen der eigenen Spezies im Gitterfeld zwischen Physik und Philosophie zum Ausdruck bringen. Wurden erschöpfende Antworten gefunden? Nein! Zeitigt jede Antwort sieben neue Fragen, läßt die Hydra grüßen? Ja! Können erschöpfende Antworten gefunden werden? Nein! Damit ist es legitim, die Veden des alten Indien als alternatives Erklärungsmuster für das Universelle, das Kosmische, das "Ich" zu Rate ziehen. Auch nach acht Monaten konnte ich die 423 Seiten dieses Buches nicht annährend (er) fassen, gehen die Veden doch deutlich über Esoterik und Exoterik hinaus uns können zumindest als Inspirationsquellen für so gut wie alle Wissenschaften interpretiert werden. Bei mir wird das Buch noch lange auf dem Nachtisch liegen, und ich hoffe, die spürbare Erklärungsmacht der Veden eines Tages zu begreifen. Freilich ist das Buch zum Großteil symbolisch zu lesen. Der Verdienst liegt darin, daß es dazu anstiftet, seinen eigenen Kopf zu gebrauchen, dies bringt auch die als Anhang abgedruckte Kurzgeschichte von Isaac Asimov "Das Gefühl von Macht" auf den Punkt. Ein tiefes Buch mit Langzeitwirkung!
In: Das Dosierte Leben Numero 40 Reh-Zensionen
Monday, December 03, 2007
Book Review Lies with Long legs by Prodosh Aich
In a sequel to the South Asia File we will document the works of Indologists through the millennia and show that beginning with the Jesuits in 1540 CE there was a concerted effort to purloin the intellectual property of the Indic civilization while at the same time denigrate it as being of little value.
The work of Prodosh Aich is of great value in exposing the fact that the Emperor has no clothes (see Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales), and that the entire history of India is based on the work of people with meager scholarship in the traditions of the Indic civilization. I trust this book will be read by every Indian who can afford to buy the book or borrow it from a library
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2005/20050918/spectrum/book1.htm
Macaulays, Muellers exposed
Satish Misra
Lies with Long Legs
by Prodosh Aich. Samskriti. Pages 404. Rs 650.
IN his painstakingly long academic journey through mountains of source material available in Europe, Prof Prodosh Aich establishes that the entire understanding of India developed by self-claimed scholars from West is erroneous, since the initial attempt to comprehend ancient India through the Vedas was itself faulty.
He questions the validity of the works of the famous western scholars who translated the Vedic literature from Sanskrit into Italian, English and German. A vast majority of them did not even set foot on the Indian soil and those who came here did not learn the ancient language in an organised manner, even though translation needs an equal command of both languages. Since Sanskrit was not a spoken language, it was all the more difficult for them to develop language skills required for translation.
Colonialist Imperial England had prepared a concerted design to establish the superiority of white, blue eyed, blond, Christian culture over other cultures that they opted to define as "primitive", particularly in case of India.
Prof Aich uses juxtaposition to drive home a point and leaves judgement to readers. He frames a question and then answers it by using the primary source material. The book is bound to trigger an academic debate in the West also and would go a long way to establish once for all that the much-trumpeted and self-championed discipline of Indology in the West has in fact been based on falsehood.
It must have been a design that none of the scholars so far bothered to use the existing material, so abundantly available, which could have helped to unravel the truth about the colonial powers and imperial administration and bureaucracy. Scholars after scholars, even after the end of colonial empire, have continued to overlook the material that would have removed the well-laid myths about Indian society, polity and culture.
It would raise questions on popularly accepted theories on India, such as did the Aryans come to this part of the world from the north or they emigrated and then pushed back the original inhabitants to south. The book also puts a serious question mark on the anthropological understanding of the ancient Indian society as sought to be explained on the basis of the colour of the skin.
Prof Aich has dissects the methods adopted by famous Indologists for collecting material for their renowned works and made rightful inquires into their sources. A Jesuit father, Roberto de Nobili, in his missionary zeal, went to the extent of claiming that he had been able to find the lost Yajur Veda, which in fact was a copy that he had written to establish that there was indeed a relationship between Christianity and ancient Indian practices preserved and followed by Brahmins. In order to win the confidence of the local Brahmin community, he even called himself a Brahmin from Rome.
The author has put every Indologist under the microscope and exposed the majority. Comparing their descriptions with the writings of Megasthenes and others, the author shows how the 18 and 19th century Indologists did irreparable damage to the people of India.
Sir William Jones, celebrated as the Father of Indology in the UK, befooled not only his superiors but also the entire academic community by claiming that he knew 32 languages, including Sanskrit. He came to India as one of the Judges and went on to set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which closed its doors to the Asians, on January 15, 1784. He disseminated so much false information about India that an entirely wrong image of this ancient society was painted in the popular mind. German Indologist, Friedrich Maximilian Mueller, known here as Max Mueller, despite never visiting India, came to be known as the most authoritative Sanskrit expert.
It’s now beyond doubt that it was an English conspiracy hatched by none other than Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wanted to control Indian minds by ensuring that they should know, comprehend and understand India through books written in English. Mueller became an instrument in Macaulay’s plan to convince the majority of the local population that the English alien rule was better for them.
Macaulay had written in 1835 in absolutely clear terms: "We are not content to leave the natives to the influence of their own heredity prejudices..."
Till the l6th century, social studies, including historical studies, did not use racial terminology.
It was used later, by the British, to create a conscious divide between the ruled and the ruling classes, by bringing in words like "us" and "them" alien and local, Aryans and non-Aryans, Indo-European or Indo-German, so much so that a new discipline, "ethnography" came to be established at the European academic institutions.
Even physical descriptions like skin colour and types of lips, etc. were consciously used to drive a wedge between people. Stories of conquests were designed as the "historical justification" for looting, building strongholds, colonising foreign lands with the purpose of sustained exploitation and presented as an inherent law of evolution. The conquerors, the deliberate killers, the occupants, the exploiters were hailed for having brought culture and "civilization" into the "colonies". They were just following the pattern of the nomads on grazing grounds who came in some "pre-historic" period and brought "civilization" into India. "What could be wrong with that?
The book has exposed the western scholars who are never tired of claiming their objectivity and impartiality.
India Appeases Radical islam - Wall Street Journal
| OMMENTARY | ||
India Appeases Radical Islam
By?SADANAND DHUME
November 27, 2007;?Page?A18
Friday's multiple bomb blasts in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh -- which killed 13 people and injured about 80 -- ought to give pause to those who see the world's largest democracy as a linchpin in the war on terror. India's leaders and diplomats seek to portray the country as a firebreak against radical Islam, or the drive to impose the medieval Arab norms enshrined in Shariah law on 21st century life. In reality, India is ill- equipped to fight this scourge.
Like neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh, (and unlike Turkey or Tunisia) India has failed to modernize much of its Muslim population. Successive generations of politicians have pandered to the most backward elements of India's 150-million strong Muslim population, the second largest in the world after Indonesia's. India has allowed Muslims to follow Shariah in civil matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. An increasingly radicalized neighborhood, fragmented domestic politics and a curiously timid mainstream discourse on Islam add up to hobble India's response to radical Islamic intimidation.
Most Indian Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism, and are more concerned with the struggles of daily life than the effort to create a global caliphate. Muslim contributions to the fabric of national life -- most visible in sports, movies and the arts -- should not be dismissed. Furthermore, religious zealotry in India is not a Muslim monopoly. Still, the notion that Indian Islam is uniquely tolerant, or somehow immune to the rising tide of world-wide radical sentiment, is a myth.
Last year, Haji Muhammad Yaqoob Qureshi, a minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, publicly offered a $11 million bounty for beheading the Danish cartoonists who had drawn the prophet Mohammed. In high-tech Hyderabad, parts of which are Muslim strongholds, three sitting legislators of a local Islamic party recently roughed up Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi author critical of her country's treatment of its Hindu minority and her faith's treatment of women. Last week, the government of West Bengal state in eastern India had to call in the army to quell Muslim rioters in Calcutta, whose demands included Ms. Nasreen's expulsion from the country.
India's historically weak-kneed response to radical Islamic intimidation only encourages such behavior. In 1988, India was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." (Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous death sentence on the author only after reading about disturbances in India.) In 1999, after terrorists hijacked an Indian aircraft to then Taliban-controlled Kandahar, New Delhi responded by releasing three prominent Islamic militants from prison in Kashmir. One of them, the British-Pakistani London School of Economics dropout Omar Saeed Sheikh, went on to mastermind the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. True to form, the authorities have responded to the latest outbreak of violence in Calcutta by bundling off Ms. Nasreen to distant Rajasthan, and from there to Delhi.
As in other democracies -- Britain and Holland to name just two -- a permissive approach toward radical Islam has only made the country more vulnerable to terrorism. In August this year, 42 people died in attacks on a Hyderabad restaurant and an open-air auditorium. Last year, a series of explosions on commuter trains in Bombay killed over 200 people. Two years ago, the Hindu festival of Diwali was rung in with bombs that claimed 62 lives in Delhi.
New Delhi has blamed the attacks on groups such as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba and Bangladesh's Harkat-ul Jihad-al-Islami. Though much of India's terrorism problem is imported, part of it is homegrown. Instead of reflexively blaming Islamabad, Indians need to ask themselves why foreign terrorists appear to have little trouble recruiting accomplices from India. (The Uttar Pradesh attacks appear to be the work of a previously unknown outfit called Indian Mujahideen.) The bromide about the lack of Indian Muslim involvement in international terrorism, accepted unquestioningly by much of India's liberal intelligentsia, must be called into question after the involvement of Indian doctors in this year's failed attacks in London and Glasgow.
India's experience offers important lessons to other democracies struggling to integrate large Muslim populations. It highlights the folly of attempting to exempt Muslims from universal norms regarding women's rights, freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. It reveals that democracy alone -- when detached from bedrock democratic principles -- offers no antidote to radical Islamic fervor.
Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. "My Friend the Fanatic," his book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be published by Melbourne next year.
