INDIA a miscellany of foreign observations - -JANUARY - 2011

                    

INDIA a miscellany of foreign observations

     EDITORIAL                 

-Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy, National Professor in Management

In the ancient times, India had very wide contact with the rest of the world.  In Europe, Indian ideas were widespread.  The soul moving to other bodies after death, God being the ‘Haetu” – the ultimate cause of all, the idea of Maya, that is, our world being only a part of reality - were very widespread in Greece.  Greece was the thinking capital of Europe.    In his famous work “The Republic”, Plato considers a form of caste system as an ideal arrangement for society. 

        Aristotle was a student of Plato.  Yet for him this earth and its study was most important. Unlike Plato he was not an Advaithin.  He was the first to consider different subjects as separate units.  In other words, a study of God should not be mixed up with a study of chemistry or history or physics.  Alexander was a student of Aristotle. It was Aristotle’s ideas which paved the way for the European renaissance which flowered in Italy.  The English man Francis Bacon, known as the crowing cock of the renaissance changed the direction of the arts and the sciences.  The study of matters on this earth based on experiments enabled Europe to gain mastery of the earth. 

        As for the Eastern parts of the world, Chinese scholars have always learnt from India.  The Japanese scholar, Okakura, had spoken to Vivekananda and had prepared to take him to Japan on a lecture tour.  But Swamiji died prematurely.  It is this Japanese scholar who had acknowledged in detail, India’s contribution to China and Japan. 

        Swami Vivekananda was one of the very few who could see the rise of India.  

        It is fascinating to see the changes in how we are perceived by others. In ancient times, the prestige which India enjoyed was very high. The East as well as the West looked up to India.  We were respected not only for our intellectual ability, but for our social, physical and moral achievements as also for  material wealth.  With the European Renaissance however, the dominant Western nations initially came to look down upon India as a backward and barbaric land.  It is only with the translation of the Sanskrit epics and its assimilation among the upper classes in Europe and USA that views began to change.  By the end of the 19^th Century, when many Indians mastered the English idiom and publicized our heritage, the seeds of a new renaissance had been sown.  

        This miscellany contains a collection of ‘quotes’ from well-known foreigners.  It is a pot-pourri of opinions spanning the last few centuries up to the present.  They are taken at random.  Some are well-known but all of them are food for thought and potently controversial. The modern view is fashionably optimistic.  India is on the threshold of a ‘great new future’.

        The purpose of such a collection is manifold.  First, we can find them all in one booklet. Secondly they can be very informative and serve to alter misconceptions.  Instead of being the bogeyman that he is made out to be, Lord Macaulay was carrying out the wishes of contemporaneous Indians.  Further, if Indians appear to be indolent, according to Mill it was because most of them did not have any thing to aspire for. Many foreign tourists who are coming to India, get  a culture-shock, may by glancing through these quotes be prevented from forming a wrong opinion of this country. 

        Today, things have changed.  In the global village, India is a keen player.  Our population is predominantly young.  Some quotes can inspire them.  They need not suffer from false modesty or a sense of inherited inferiority.  In our commercial civilization, our corporate sector has taken up the leadership.  Only they are capable of helping our youth to realize their aspirations and to usher in the India Century.      

        As far as India is concerned, it is much easier for the Business Sector to understand and assimilate India’s Ancient Thought and Wisdom (IATW) and draw principles.  Sage Vyasa had assured in the Bhagavatham: “The quest for enough wealth and fulfillment of legitimate desires can be certainly achieved if only mankind observes Dharma”.  This means that principles of Dharma have to be adopted by all segments of society, including business, government, education, media and others. However, more than 5,000 years ago, sage Vyasa had also declared: “In my Bhagavatham and Mahabharatam, consisting of over one million stanzas, I had proposed many ideas and ideals, but nobody is listening to me”.  The situation stands the same even now. Therefore, the task of IHA and ICM is still a dream and an ideal, which may not be achieved for a long time. But it is better to have an ideal and not achieve it, rather than having no ideal at all. 

Sanskrit is being taught in many American Universities, but not in India. In fact, Sanskrit ought to have been the national language of India, as it is the basis of all Indian languages.  India’s religious and spiritual literature is in Sanskrit which is considered to be the most scientific language in the world, easily amenable for computerization.  Chanting of Vedas in Sanskrit is being practiced in some US schools and colleges and even in hospitals during surgery. 

        Our culture and civilization is still vibrant.  Many other civilizations have perished.  Civilization is the outward, visible part of man’s approach to the world.  Culture is something inward.  It is in the mind.  The various festivals like Holi, Navarathri, etc are signs of our civilizations.  They also serve to unite the country.  In the same way Hindi cinema also unites the country.  India’s future civilization and culture will be a composite one.  It will draw from the various strands, such as Sufism. Only then will the world look upto India and its spiritual strength.  The whole world will come to learn from India. That was Vivekananda’s prediction.  Let us hope that it will happen soon. 

                                                       N.S. Ramaswamy - Editor

VIVEKANANDA’S CLARION CALL

        Swami Vivekananda was a rare leader of pre-independence days with a positive view of India.  While India struggled under the yoke of slavery, he alone said that India has a bright future.  When no one hoped that India would ever be rich and great again, he alone said India would once more sit on the throne.

        Swami Vivekananda struggled in cold and hunger, poverty and misery so that India could stand on her own feet again, the masses be awakened, and the glorious message of his country reach the whole world.  Not one to solve national problems through superficial means. Swamiji spoke for a “root-and-branch” reform, as he called it.  We are seeing this glorious change today.

        But India’s rise, as envisioned by him, did not come from the brutality of arms or the inducement of wealth. In Vivekananda’s words, “This is the great ideal before us, and every one must be ready for it – the conquest of the whole world by India – nothing less than that, and we must all get ready for it, strain every nerve for it.  Let foreigners come and flood the land with their armies, never mind.  Up, India, and conquer the world with your spirituality!”

        His most important teaching, which is an echo of the Vedanta, is that “Each soul is potentially divine”.  Alas, we Indians, massacred under centuries of alien rule, had forgotten that we had innate potential.  Swami Vivekananda reminded us of the truth, during us to “Stand up, be bold, be strong. Know that you are the creator of  your own destiny.  All the strength and succor you want is within yourself.  Therefore make your own future.”  Vivekananda’s love and reverence for India was boundless.  “I loved my motherland dearly before I went to America and England,” he said.  “After my return, every particle of dust of this land seems sacred to me”.

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INDIAN CULTURE – THE WAY AND THE GOAL

(Adapted from : Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam)

        Culture is within the mind, spiritual; civilization is the outside part, material.  There was a Pan Indian culture that was harmonious, comprising dance, drama, literature, sculpture, drawing, painting, etc. Their common aim was to glorify God.

        When we think of the contribution of the cultural world for the well being of our nation we need to look at culture as a whole.  Culture is not mere Dance, Music, Drama, Painting, Sculpture or a bundle of books.  It is the sum total of every facet of life, including how we live, why we live, and what we give to the world.  Where do I come from ? Who am I? Where do I go? What do I do? How do I do? What is my relationship with the entire creation? All these are basic questions for which answers were taught in the traditional sense of learning or education.  This was the foundation on which every facet of culture including all arts and science was built.  This approach to education gave self-confidence with humility and induced conviction.

        All the guilds belonging to every walk of life used to function in harmony.  In this polyphony there was no high or low, superior middle or inferior; each had a role to play in the total theatre of life with perfect understanding and team spirit.  That was the dignity of labour, in traditional Hindu society, with recognition of merit in each field.  All guilds  looked upon themselves and their professions as respectable and carried themselves with great honour and dignity.  Each guild proclaimed itself and its work the best and equated work with worship.  In a dance drama written about 250 years ago, a fortune tellilng Gypsy tribal girl introduces herself as belonging to the Kurava tribe which is the best community in the world and boasts of her professional acumen.  The thirukkural gives the highest pedestal of honour to the farmer who tills the ground and declares the others subservient.  No tribe or community earlier liked to be considered backward.  Only when self-esteem grows, will India truly start marching forward with greater self confidence. 

        Indian culture can survive only if the coming generations are taught to value Indian concepts of Beauty and Truth, Faiths and Fellowships and in short the Indian concept of refinement.

        After Independence, many of our regional dance styles, musical forms and dramatic presentations have been revived from oblivion.  Even in the pre Independent India we heard of revival of Bharata Natyam Kathakali, Kathak and Manipuri.  The first all India seminar on dance as held at the Sangeet Natak Academy, had views like renaming Kathak as Bharata Nritya for technical reasons.  This implied that kathak also has a mother in Bharata’s Natya Sastra.  I have chosen that term Bharata Natyam to denote my reconstruction of the technique of Natya Sastra.

        Recent decades saw the development and popularization of other regional terms like the Odissi, Chau, Sattriya and others. All these were referred to as the respective Desiya, regional forms.  They have a common foundation called the Margi – meaning the path shown by Bharata the author of the earliest extent text on performing arts and poetics.  Sanskrit co-existed with all the rich Prakrits including Dravidi (which is Tamil).  The Margi co-existed with all the Desis, as a common National and Cultural Aim.  The aim was spiritual.  The goal was bringing alive to us the Glory of God.  This was the Lakshya.  The various arts and sciences were Lakshanas or signposts on the way or the Marg.  Great authorities from all regions have kept the Margi link alive through their literary works.  The margi was the binding factor uniting not only the whole Bharata Varsha, but also other parts of Asia. May the 21^st century see the light of the common core of a spiritual culture that had bound the whole of Asia to enable the progress of mankind.   

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SRI MAHA SARASWATHI: WISDOM INCARNATE

N.H.Visweswara

        We all know that Sri Saraswathi is the Godess of learning, Music, Art, Dance, Sculpture  etc. It is well known that without her blessings no knowledge can be  achieved. There are many things about goddess Saraswathi which we ought to know.

       According to the Skanda Purana in Kruta Yuga, King Suketa along with his consort Sudevi was ruling the kingdom in a Dharmic way. Being jealous of his wealth and prosperity his cousins waged a war and took over the Kingdom. They drove the King out and banished him to the forest. The king got distressed and dejected about his fate and wandered in the forests. Unable to face the hardship he fell unconscious, His wife got deeply perturbed  about the fate of her husband and started crying loudly out of fear and anxiety. Maharshi Angeerasa, who was in the forest, heard the crying and traced the weeping woman. Sudevi explained the fate that had befallen on them to the Maharshi. He felt very sad hearing  the story and pacified Sudevi. He brought them to his Ashram, gave them food and shelter. To get over the difficulties, the couple under guidance of Maharshi performed Kalpokta Durga Navarathri Vrata from Aswiyuja padyami Masa to Navami Masa. Sudevi gave birth to a son and named him Suryapratapa. In due course of time, Suryapratapa learnt and  mastered all the Martial arts. After attaining age, he waged a war with his cousins and retrieved  the Kingdom. The family owed a lot to all the blessings and boon received from godess Saraswathi and without fail, year after year, performed Navaratri Durga Pooja for Nine days during the month of Ashwayuja. According to Skandapurana, Goddess  Saraswathi  protects the helpless, blesses the devout. There is no god like Saraswati. The message is that if you have  implicit  faith and Bhakti in Goddess Saraswathi,  you can lead a comfortable  and contented life.

           Shumbha and Nishumbha were two treacherous and wicked Asuras who were tormenting  Devas. They laid Siege on Amarawathi and dislodged Devendra from his throne. Having  tormented by the treachery of the two Asuras, the Devas prayed to Bhagawati Devi seeking relief. Devi taking the Swaroopa of “Koushaki” destroyed Shumba and Nishumbha. Purana says Koushaki from thereon was  known as Sarasawati. This Shakti Devata later destroyed the two demons Chanda and Munda and got the name “Chamunda”.

           Another incident about goddess Saraswati is very interesting. Devouts once requestd lord Bramha to give judgement as to who is superior between Lakshmi and Saraswati. Without taking note of the consequences Lord Bramha stated that Lakshminarayana is the most  superior. Saraswati, who was around, heard this and got angry. She urged Bramha to make River Saraswati the greatest. Bramha replied that no river can be greater than  Ganga who originated  from the Pada (feet) of Maha Vishnu. With anger she excited from the Satya-loka.

        

           Later at the request of Devas, Bramaha had to perform  yaga. It is essential that Kartru (person performing yaga) is to perform along with his wife. So, Maharshi Vasista came to Saraswati and requested her to join her husband Bramha in order that the yaga can be performed. She flatly refused to join. Bramha finding no other way took Savithri, daughter of Surya as his wife and started the Yegna.

  

        The Asuras learnt about this and  found  an opportunity to create trouble. They went to Saraswati and reported the development. Saraswati got totally agitated and wanted to teach a lesson to her husband Brahma. She took the form of River “Vegavati” and wanted to flood the Yaga Bhoomi (the yaga platform). Mahavishnu in order to save the yaga  layed across the flow of the river to prevent flooding. He didn’t want  to dishonour Saraswati and he told her that amongst all the rivers in ‘Satyavrata Kshetra, she would be the greatest.  ‘She then entered the Bramhaloka. This is one  part in purana.

             Rig Veda contains praises for Saraswati and her benevolence. She has been described as the goddess of Rivers.

                            Pranodevi Saraswati –

                            Vaje bhirvajanvati

                            Dhi Nama Vitravatu’

{Goddess Supreme, giver of food, protector of devout oh Saraswati provide us sustenance with food and water}

Like wise sages of those days  prayed. Saraswati in the form of a River which flowed and made the earth prosperous with her benevolence and helped sages to perform yagna and yuga. At the request of Bramha, she flowed in Pushkar as Subhadra: as Kanchanakshi in Naimisha, and in holy Gaya. Sage Vasista lost his progeny. He wanted to drown himself in Saraswati River. To save the sage, River Saraswati split into hundreds of parts and flowed. River Saraswati has flown in Various places supporting cultures and prospering the earth. It said that, of all the rivers flowing from the Himalayas, Saraswati is supposed to be the holiest.

      Saraswati  is addressed and offered  prayer under so many  names – Jaganmata, Durga, Kali Vaishnavi, Bramhi, Maheshwari, Varahi, Koumari, Savitri, Gayathri, Parvathi, Soudamini etc,

              Kalidasa describes

“Chaturbhuje Chandrakala Vasante:

 Dandi “Sarva shukla Saraswati:

 Adi Shankara “Katakshe  Dayadram

 Kare Gnanamudram! Kalabhirvinidram:

 Kalapaisubhadram  Purastree Vinidram,

 Purastungabhadram, Bhaje Sharadambam,

 Mujasram, Maudambam”

Let us bow before Goddess Sasaraswati who is the goddess of learning knowledge and prosperity.

             

      { Indian Heritage Academy has a Temple devoted to Goddess Saraswati. Saraswati temple are rare}.

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HINDU GODS IN AMERICA

God made man and man made gods.

“Those who arrived first on the continent, later to be known as America, were groups of men driven by that mighty current that set out from India towards the East”

                                                    (Official History of Mexico)

        Deep in the forests of Copan in Honduras one may see Indra, the god of paradise in Hindu mythology, riding on elephant. It is remarkable piece of sculpture and is one of the many reminders of the possible presence of Hindus in South and Central America in the centuries before Columbus discovered the New World.

        From Mexico to Peru, from Bolivia to Honduras, may be found the sculptured remains of deities of the Hindu Pantheon and the magnificent temples built in their honour. Today they are the stands of a long forgotten story but they speak eloquently of the presence of Hindu gods in America and of the persons who carried their religion to the far-flung American lands.

         There is hardly a Hindu god who was not known to the ancient inhabitants of South America. Trilokinath, the Hindu ruler of the three worlds, was known to the Mexicans by the same name, until the Spanish conquerors mistakenly changed the name into Tloque Nahuaque. Triloknath was acknowledged by the Mexicans as their supreme god and creator.

          In a temple in Guatemala is a statue of an incarnation of Vishnu as Kurma, the tortoise. The sculpture is richly detailed and strongly suggests that it might have been wrought by Hindu hands. At Copan I found no fewer than three images of Hanuman, the monkey-faced and celebrated in the Indian Ramayana epic.

           The biggest temple in Mexico housed an image of Siva, and museums throughout South American countries have several figurines of Siva and Ganesha, his elephant-headed son. Surya, the Hindu sun god was the supreme deity of the South and Central American people and his image is frequently found on monuments, particularly in Bolivia and Peru. In the Palenque Temple of the Sun in Mexico Surya occupies the place of honour.

        Even Yama, the god of death of Hindu mythology, has found his way to Mexico and Peru, while typically Hindu lotus and chakra motifs adorn the temples.

       If the sculpture shows a strong Hindu influence, a comparison between the Mexican gods and the Hindu trinity demonstrates an even more striking resemblance. The Hindu god Siva resembles Huitzlipochtli, the Mexican god of war, and sometimes, the god of destruction. Vishnu is Tlaloc, the preserver, and Brahma resembles Cihuacoatle, the creator. The relationships between the Hindu gods and their shakti or female companions are similar to that between the Mexican gods and their consorts. There is also a great similarity between the Aztec calendar and that of the Hindus, and according to old Spanish records, rituals and ceremonies also showed a great resemblance. Maya and Aztec architectural styles are remarkably similar to those in India and Southeast Asia. In both areas the chief structure were pyramid shaped, with serpent balustrades and surmounted by temples employing the offset arch with sanctuaries, symbolic alter sculptures and inscriptions.

       Comparing the temples of India, Ceylon, Java and mexico, the American scholar E.G.squier wrote nearly a hundred years ago: “a proper examination of these monuments would disclose the fact that in their interior as well in their exterior form and obvious purpose, these buildings (temples in Palenque, Mexico) correspond with great exactness to those of Hindustan…”Sir Stamford Raffles, the Britisher expressed a similar view when he wrote: “the great temple of Borobudur in Java might readily be mistaken for a Central American temple.”

        How does one explain the strong and undoubted affinity between Hinduism and the religions of South and Central America? I believe that the ancestors of the people who practiced these forms of worship ventured across the Pacific Ocean as did the Malayans and the Polynesians in the Fifth century. They reached the Marquesas  Islands which are not more than a 30 day’s journey to Peru. Evidence suggests these travelers used boats much like the junks known to the Chinese and catamarans which is the Tamil word for boat. Perhaps the argument is best concluded by Dr. Robert Heine–Geldern, the Austrian anthropologist and geographer who wrote: “We have little doubt that a sober but unbiased comparative analysis of the Mexican Mayan religions will reveal many traces of the former influences of either Hinduism or Buddhism or of both. To mention but one instance, the conceptions of hell and the punishments inflicted there, resemble those of the Buddhist and Hindu beliefs to such as extent, both in a general way and in specific details, that the assumption of historic relationship is almost inevitable.”

      

America still preserves gods Vamana, Siva, Ganesha, Indra in the museums of Central America. (See pictures in the sixth edition of my book “Hindu America”.)    

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TEACHERS OF CHINA

“Since very ancient days, profound friendship has existed between the peoples of China and India. A border covering a great distance of nearly 3,000 Kilometers links together the two nations. Century after century history has recorded peaceful, cultural and economic interchanges, but never war or animosity between our two countries.

“China and India are two great neighboring countries in Asia. Their combined population of 960 million people represents more than a third of the human race. Both have a splendid cultural heritage of great antiquity. Their first contacts were established at a very early date and their relations have always been marked by peace and friendship. There has been no passage of arms between them: the sole traffic between them has been in trade and culture. That is a phenomenon rarely met with in the history of mankind. It is a fact of which both nations can be justly proud.” – said a Chinese scholar.

Bodhi Dharama The Great Teacher

Hundreds of philosophers, teachers and Buddhist missionaries went to China and played their part in cementing religious and cultural relations between India and China, but the story of Bodhi Dharma, the founder of Zen (Dhyana) sect of Buddhism is full of romance. Practically nothing is known of the history of Zen in India except the fact that Bodhi Dharma went from India. Bodhi Dharma came from that city of vanishing glory in South India called Kanchi or Kanchipuram, 50 miles south-west of Madras. (He was third son of a ruler of Cochin). It was the capital of Pallawa kings of South India. It is famous for its great temples and is still a place of pilgrimage for the Buddhists and Hindus alike. In South India there is an old saying in Sanskrit that as the Ganges is the first of rivers, so Kanchi is the first of cities. “It is from this city of ancient India that Bodhi Dharma, known familiarly as Daruma in Japan, went forth to the lands of the far-east carrying with him the mystic fragrance of the white lotus in Buddha’s hands. It is from Kanchi, again, that the distant University of Nalanda drew some of its most celebrated scholars-Rectors. To Kanchi’s ancient magnificence there is the entire body of post-Vedic literature to testify. It was not only the richest city of those times in India, but even as the centre of learning and pilgrimage it challenges comparison with Kashi (Benaras) itself being counted as one of the seven cities, a pious visit which open the portals of heaven.”*

        Brahmanism and Buddhism alike found patronage and support at the hands of those merchant princes who appeared to have been as magnificent as they were unrivalled for their opulence. Each of them was a veritable medici patronising art and letters as also endowing great religious institutions.

        Of this stories magnificence and ravishing beauty there is no trace except for the great temples that stand silhouetted against the sky as silent witnesses to the splendour that was Kanchi. But Kanchi will remain immortal as long as the name of Bodhi Dharma lives in Asia and the world. The message that Bodhi Dharma preached in China has not only spread to every home in the far – east, but 1500 years after his death, is now spreading to far off places in America, Canada and Capitals of Europe, as is evident from the popularity of Zen philosophy in these countries. Students of Bodhi Dharma’s teaching are flocking in large numbers to the international Zen University in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan.

       

        A story is told that Bodhi Dharma was brought before the emperor Wu who was anxious to see this great sage and to obtain from him some approval of his own devout works.

Nine Years In Samadhi

        Bodhi Dharma is always depicted by Chinese and Japanese artists as a fierce old man with a great black beard and large penetrating eyes. Very little is known about him or his work, but researches in China may lead to valuable information. His influence depended not upon what he did or said but upon what he was, and in neither of his two other recorded interviews with his disciples does he make any statement of his teachings. Shang Kwang, the spiritual successor, had to wait standing outside the temple where Bodhi Dharma was meditating for a whole week before he was granted audience. All the time it was snowing but Shang Kwang was so determined to find out Bodhi Dharma’s secret that he withstood frostbite and even went to the extreme of cutting off his left arm and presenting to the master in order to show that he would make any sacrifice for the privilege of being his pupil. At last he was admitted, but Bodhi Dharma would not give any explanation. All he did was to set him a puzzle which somehow opened his eyes to the truth. Shang Kwang told the sage, “I have no peace of mind. May I ask you, Sir, to pacify my mind?”, “Bring out your mind here before me. I shall pacify it.” Replied Bodhi Dharma. “But it is impossible for me to bring out my mind”, said Shang Kwang. “Then I have pacified your mind” said Bodhi Dharma.

        After nine years; Samadhi Bodhi Dharma’s soul left the body of his own free will. A short time after his death someone reported that he had seen Bodhi Dharma in the mountains on the way back to India walking bare footed and carrying one shore in his hand. Thereafter the master’s Samadhi (tomb) was opened and all that was found was the single shoe that he left behind.

        It was the power of soul alone that altered the whole religious history of the far-east. To a western mind the mysterious behaviour of Bodhi Dharma and his Nirvakalpa Samadhi for 9 years are not easy things to understand. And yet this great teacher inspired artists, writers, soldiers, statesmen and even the hardboiled merchant classes of China and Japan, more than any other sage had done in centuries. The truth was that Bodhi Dharma had found wisdom which could only be transmitted to some one prepared to receive it, and them it was the wisdom which could not be put into any intellectual formula. Only those, who wanted it so much that like Shang Kwang they were prepared to pay anything for it, could, understand. There are hundreds of such instances in Indian history where great saints emerged as a result of the personal touch with great teachers and scholars without passing a course of learning.

        The origin of Zen like so many of the key words of oriental philosophy has no exact equivalent in English. It is a Japanese word derived from Chinese Ch’an’ or Ch’an’an which in turn is a corruption of the Sanskrit Dhyana usually translated as meditation. This is misleading translation because to the Englishmen meditation means little more than deep thought and reflection, whereas in yoga psychology Dhyana is a high state of consiousness in which man finds union with the Ultimate Reality of the Universe. The same is true of Ch’an and Zen expect that the Chinese mentality preferred to find this union less through solitary meditation in the jungle than through the work of everyday life. There is nothing “Other Worldly’ about Zen, it is a constant attitude of mind just as applicable to washing clothes as to performing religious offices, and whereas the Yogi retires from the world to achieve his Dhyana, Zen is found in a monastic community where master and disciples share all the work of starting the monastery, growing rice, gardening, cooking, chopping wood and keeping the place clean. There is a tradition that Zen (Dhyana) originated at the moment when Lord Buddha attained his supreme insight into the mysteries of life that night at Gaya in the 5^th century B.C. That insight was handed down to a line of 28 patriarchs until it came to Bodhi Dharma  who brought Zen to China in the 6^th century A.D. The records show that this insight was passed from to the other without any intermediary scriptures or doctrinal teaching; it was a direct transmission, a communication which passed secretly from spirit, understandable only by that person secretly from spirit, understandable only by that person who was far enough developed to grasp his master’s enlightenment.

A Great Chinese Yogi

        After the death of Bodhi Dharma there followed him a series of five patriarchs of whom the last was Hui Neng. From the time of Hui Neng , Zen lost its distinctively Indian character; it became thoroughly transformed by the more practical mentality. Hui Neng was the last to deliver any distinctively philosophical explanation of Zen. He left a remarkable work-a collection of sermons written down by one of his disciples-its full title being the sutra spoken by the 6^th patriarch on the High seas of the Gem of Law (Dharma Artha). As a rule the term Sutra is only applied to the discourses of Buddha himself or of the great Bodhisattvas who were his immediate disciples, and the one exception to this rule is the Sutra of the 6^th patriarch which has come to known as the only Sutra by a native or China. This was an honour richly deserved, for this Sutra has a place among the Bhagvad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tao Teh Takung and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali which are universally acknowledged as great master-pieces of the great eastern spiritual literature.

Scholar  Pilgrims

        Among the records of China’s scholar pilgrims we find amazing  accuracy in Yuan Chawang’s  Ta-tanghsi-Yuchi (Records of the countries west of Tang) and his disciples Hui Li’s biography of him of the title of Ta-tzu-en-ssu-san-tsangta-shin-chuan (Records of the Tripitaka Master of the Great Compassion Monastery). Both books contain a detailed and clear picture of the conditions of India in general and those of the reign of Harsha in particular in respect  of culture, education calendar, measures, politics, social relations, agricultural produce industrial products and, above all, religious traditions.

        Yuan Chwang was a most beloved and esteemed disciple of Silabhadra and proved such a brilliant and original scholar in Buddhist studies that his master and eminent fellow-scholars showered upon him over whelming admiration and even made him the occupant of the first chair among the lecturers in the Nalanda Monastery, the great centre of learning of the time. His unique academic standing may be compared to the professorship plus deanship in a time-honoured English university, but Yuan Chang was a scholar and personality of such an unparalleled stature of any age. His records and writings have also for centuries helped his follow countrymen to know India and her cultural and philosophical wealth.   

           After and even before Fa Hsien, Chwang and ITsing, there came to India many other Chinese scholar-pilgrims at different times between the third and eight centuries. Their records and writings, though they may not reach the high plane of those of the best known three pioneers, are nevertheless, highly valuable in their own right.

        Here, I cannot do better than to quote the late professor Liang Chi-Chao, an eminent scholar, who made a revealing study of Sino-Indian cultural relations in early times and a far-reaching search for the names and deeds of those  scholar pilgrims first to go to India to build up an intellectual bridge. His essay ‘Chinese students going abroad 1,500 years ago and afterwards’, was generally accepted as a careful treatise on this subject. In his “The study of Chinese History”, a well-known book on Chinese historical methodology, the author told his own story of how he had done the research work:-

        “It has long been my endeavour to maintain relations between China and India and to discover a stream of those Chinese scholar-pilgrims who went to India to cultivate such relations. Fa Hsien and Yuan Chwang are, no doubt, well-known names. But my final findings among historical records and individual biographies covers 104 scholar-  pilgrims whose names can be established and 82 others whose names are in oblivion, to trace out the ancient cultural relations. Anyway for all we know, as many as 187 of them visited or attempted to visit India at different times.

The Chinese medical system of acupuncture seems to have gone from South India.  It is associated with the Siddha system of medicine. An Indian monk and physician, known as Bhogar, is credited with traveling to China and propagating this method. In China, he was remembered as Bog-yu.  Needless to say, acupuncture is now gaining worldwide acceptance as a very effective alternative system of medicine.

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GANAPATHI SACHIDANANDA SWAMIJI OF AVADHOOTA DATTA PEETHAM

        Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Swamiji is the head of the Sri Ganapathi Sachchidananda Ashram also known as Avadhoota Datta Peetham situated at Mysore, Karnataka.  Devotees call Sri Ganapathi Sachidananda Swami as “Appaji” or simply “Swamiji” and consider him as a spiritual living embodiment.  Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Swamiji honours all religions and teaches his disciples to follow their belief as the soul of all religion is the same and all religions are the different paths to reach God or to obtain mukti (salvation).

Healing & Meditation Music

        Sri Ganapathi Sachidananda Swamy is considered as the re-inventor of the ancient Raagaragini Vidya (Raga Ragini Vidya), which is an ancient musical tradition or science which takes human consciousness to higher planes and helps to cure ailments. Swamiji is also famous for His Healing and Meditation Music. Sri Ganapathi Sachidananda Swami combines.

Ganapati Sachidananda Swamiji Bhajan Songs

Sri Ganapati Sachidananda Swamiji has composed more than 7000 Hindu devotional bhajan songs on various Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Swamiji’s compositions are in various languages including Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, and English. Some of Swamiji’s famous bhajans include Pahi Pahi Gajanana (Lord Ganapathi), Akhand Shakti Durgi Maa, Veda Nada Nayaka, Shankaram Shankaram, Kameshi Vameshi, Ehi Pahi, Tvam Sadashivaasi Chaamba, and Varadaraja Vandanam.

Social Organisations & Projects by Datta Peetham

ISERVE or the Institute of Scientific Research on Vedas, headquartered at Hyderabad, is a project started by Ganapati Sachdananda Swamiji of Avadhoota Datta Peetham with a mission to interpret the scientific content in ancient Vedas in to common man. Also known as Veda Pathashala, this traditional school teaches Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda and related Sanskrit studies.

Another noticeable social service project by the Avadhoota Datta Peetham is the old age home called 'Ammavodi' located at Hyderabad.

Avadhoota Datta Peetham also runs the Vagdevi School for Communication Handicapped in Bangalore. This is a school for communication impaired children.

Bonsai Garden & the Vishwam Museum

The Bonsai Garden in the Avadhoota Datta Peetham ashram is regarded as the largest in the country with more than 250 bonsai trees brought from various countries.

The Vishwam Museum at the Avadhoota Datta Peetham is a recent addition which preserves articles received as gift to Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Swamiji during his tour to different countries. Some of the notable ones in the Vishwam Museum include one mercury Ganapati, a Dasavatharam bowl from the United States, and a ship carved in jade from China.

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HOLY  INDIA

(Adapted by T.K. Ramalingam)

The concept of vitality of Nations has never been satisfactorily defined. It is now universally accepted that a nation’s vitality is composed of a wide range of elements and factors including the society’s history, philosophy and culture. Our Society dates 8000 BC. Our culture has survived despites invasions, State tyranny and separative social flux.

The soul force of this country that has kept it safe and enduring is religion. Thus we turn attention to our sacred writings. 

`The Hindu Scriptures

This account purports to be a very concise overview of Our Scriptures (Scripture = Sacred writings : COD)

Our Scriptures encompass

·        The Vedas

·        The Upanishads

·        The Epic Twain

·        Manusmrithi

·        Agamas

·        The Gita

·        Dharamasasthras

·        The Puranas

·        The Upapuranas

·        The Devi Mahatmiyam or  Chandiphat (pat=chanting)

·        Narayaneeyam

·        Bhagavatham

·        Gita Govinda

·        Popular Stothras

The Vedas

They have been handed down by oral tradition and hence the term Shruti. As per the annals of Hindu orthodoxy Vyasa edited them into the four major groups of Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva.

 Later on the Upanishads also came to be regarded as part of the Vedas. Actually Vedangas viz. siksha (phonetics), kalpa (ritualogy), vyakarana (grammar), nirukta (etymology), chanda (metrics) and jyotish (astronomy and astrology) had begun to develop even before the Upanishads.

Apart from the Vedangas, there developed four Upavedas viz. Ayurveda, Dhanurveda, Gandharvaveda, and Arthaveda. In the extended sense the Vedas also include the two major epics.

 Vedas can also be classified into Mantra and Brahmana. Brahmana in turn is subdivided into  Aranyaka and Upanishad. Samhita is the name given to the collection of mantras. Brahmanas contain liturgies in prose. The Aranyakas teach about meditations based on symbolical interpretations of the liturgical rites. The Upanishads may be roughly defined as treatises dealing with the ultimate problems of life. 

The topics dealt with in Rig Samhita fall in three groups; the first dealing with deities, the second  with philosophical speculations like the origin of the universe and the real nature of human beings, the third with subjects like marriage etc (secular ones). The philosophical speculations of this Veda comprise almost all the later ideas of Vedanta including Jnana and Bhakthi. It teaches monotheism although advocacy of sagunopasana i.e. Worship with form, is predominant.

Yajur Samhita is in two major forms – Sukla and Krsna. Perhaps it is called Krsna - Black i.e. mixed as it has both prose and poetry. The Krsna samhita deals with descriptions of sacrifices like Rajasuya. So does the Sukla Samhita.

Samaveda Samhita: Saman is mantra set to music. It is Rig mantras set to music.

           

Atharvaveda Samhita: A major part of this Veda deals with diseases and their cure, trade and commerce, statecraft, black magic and propitiatory rites and penances, and rites for prolonging life. It also has high philosophical ideas much nearer to Upanishads.

           

An interesting picture of the times emerges. The Land extended from Gandhara (Afghanistan) to Magadha (Bihar) and Vanda (Bengal). The Varna system had been well established. Trade and commerce were prosperous though agriculture was the main sway.

Brahmanas i.e. Ananyakas and Upanishads are attached to all the Vedas and are not named or dealt here specifically. In understanding Vedic literature, Bhasyas have done yeoman service.  

The Upanishads

 The Upanishads are an integral part of the Vedas. Although there are 200 Upanishads in Print, 16 of them can be considered important as Adi Sankara and Ramanuja had commented upon these.

The selected sixteen are Aitareya, Brahadaranyaka, Chandogya, Isavasya, Jabala, Kaivalya, Katha, Kausitaki, Kena, Mandukya, Mahanarayana, Mundaka, Prasna, Svetasvatara, Taittiriya, Vajrasuchika respectively.

To touch on them very briefly:

Aitareya Upanishad: Paramatman alone existed in the very beginning. The Jivatman struggles to attain enlightenment. It is in realizing the Atman that frees the Jeeva from its shackles of bondage and rebirth. The Mind or Manas is distinct from Pragnya or pure consciousness.

Vamadeva even whilst in the womb of his mother realised Brahman and became free of bondage He is ranked along with Surya and Manu for this reason and his further spiritual activities. .

Brhadaranyaka Upanishad: This is the biggest and is part of Sukla Yajurveda. The first two chapters deal with Atman and Brahman. The second two deal with Yagnavalkya’s establishment of the fundamentals of Vedanta. To realize Atman one cultivates Vairagya. The sufferings of Jiva are described to induce Vairagya.

 The last two chapters deal with the Pranava mantra, the need to cultivate the virtues of self-control, giving gifts to the needy and compassion.

Chandogya Upanishad: It is considered the oldest Upanishad. It begins with the upasana on Om. Om is meditated upon as the life-force and as the person in the Sun in the first Chapter. The second chapter refers to the various stages of life, as also several upasanas. The third chapter starts with madhuvidya, meditation on the Sun being the madhu or honey. The next chapter deals with the Upasana on the air outside and the one inside as the power that absorbs everything into itself. This is what the sage Raikva teaches to King Pautrayana. It also describes the Jiva travelling to Brahmaloka by the Arciradimarga.

The fifth chapter delineates the process by which the dead return to this world again. The sixth is the most instructive. Aruni starts questioning his son Svetaketu, who was puffed up with his supposed knowledge and provides the answers. The world is one with Sat. Sat enters the world as Jiva. The essential nature of Jiva is Sat itself. The next chapter is a long dialogue between Sanatkumara and Narada. Narada is guided in knowing the Brahman. The last chapter starts with meditation on the Self within the small akasa of the heart. The major part of this chapter is devoted to the teaching of the Atman by Prajapati to Indra.

Isavasya Upanishad: The smallest Upanishad, it teaches of the permeance of the whole world by God.

It advocates the performance of karma. It advises the practice of a balanced combination of meditation and karma as also meditation on Brahman and the duties to be performed in the world. There is a beautiful description of Paramatman.

Jabala Upanishad: This is also a small work describing Upasana on the space between one’s eyebrows as Varanasi. There is a discourse on monkhood as also the lives some great realized souls.

Kaivalya Upanishad: It is in the form of a discourse between Asvalayana and Brahma. It stresses the importance of renunciation. It also details on the technique of meditation. Brahman and the realization of atman-Brahman are described.

Katha Upanishad: It is an extremely readable work. It starts with the famous Nachiketa tale. Yama teaches Nachiketa spiritual wisdom. Every human being has the option between the pleasant and the good – preyas and sreyas The Atman is the highest aspect of shreyas – good. Self control and the grace of God are aids in realizing the Atman.

Diverted by senses if the Charioteer loses control over his horses he will miss the abode of Vishnu or realization of Brahman. The body is the Chariot. Description of the size of the jivatman as that of the thumb and comparing of the jivatman and paramatman to identical birds perched on the same tree and how kapala-moksha leads to Brahman are other special aspects of this work.

Kausitaki Upanishad: It is a fairly long work. Devayana and Pitryana are dealt in the first chapter. The Brahmaloka itself is described. The second chapter details Pranavidya upasana of prana. The third chapter has a long account by Indra to a King who is advised to meditate on Indra as Prana. Prana is also identified with Prajna – consciousness.        

Kena Upanishad: It begins with a description of the atman in the body as the spirit behind the sense organs and the mind. It has been identified with the Brahman. The second section describes a parable involving the divas, Brahma and Uma Haimavati. This work specially mentions that tapas, dama (self-control) and karma i.e. activities ordained by scriptures are the basic disciplines needed to attain the knowledge of Brahman.

Mahanarayana Upanishad: This Upanishad deals with all the three aspects of Vedic religion i.e. rituals, knowledge and meditation. Some popular Vedic Suktas find mention here. 

There is no systematic treatment of any major doctrine and thus it appears to be addenda to some other work. It describes the Cosmic Person in the orb of the sun. Various aspects of spiritual life have been greatly stressed, such as truth, austerity, dharma and mental peace.

Mandukya Upanishad: It comprises only 12 mantras. It delves into the philosophy of Pranava, Atman and Brahman.

Mundaka Upanishad:  It is cast in excellent poetry. It divides all knowledge into the higher (para) and lower (apara). This Upanishad points to the limitations of Vedic ritual and enjoins the seeker to take to a life of renunciation and approach a competent guru for brahmavidya. The famous Satyameva Jayate is declared here.

Prasna Upanishad: Six sages approach their Guru with six questions. The answers are:

God is the origin of all beings. The main life-force is the sole support of the body and the sense-organs. This life force emerges from the Cosmic Person. In the deep sleep state the Jiva merges with the Paramatman. Highest meditation leads to attainment of Brahmaloka. The person with sixteen parts is the Jiva who when these parts get destroyed becomes immortal.

Svetasvatara Upanishad: The first chapter describes the Jiva and Paramatma in elegant phrases. The second deals with the yoga of meditation. The third contains mantras found in other Vedic sections such as Purusasukta and Rudradhyaya. The next chapter declares that realization of Brahman leads to immortality. The fifth chapter deals with the emergence of Hiranyagarba – the Cosmic Egg from Kapila the Supreme Lord... Several aspects of creation are described. The last chapter eulogizes the greatness of Paramesvara the lord of the karmas of individual souls.

An important declaration of this work is that those who are devoted to their spiritual teacher too would be blessed with revelations of the supreme truth.

Taittiriya Upanishad: The first chapter deals with the science of siksha followed by meditations on a few homas and the parting message of a teacher to a student. The second chapter describes the well known sheaths that cover the atman – the kosas etc. The last chapter extols tapas as the means of realizing Brahman.

Kosas: Annamaya Kosa, the sheath of the physical body.

            Pranamaya Kosa, the basic fabric of the

            whole creation

            Manomaya Kosa, the ethereal sheath

            Vigyanamaya Kosa, the sheath of wisdom

            Anandamaya Kosa, the sheath of bliss.  

Vajrasucika Upanishad: This is a small Upanishad. It asks and answers the question “Who is a Brahmana?” One who has attained self realization and possessing peace of mind and absence of desire, jealousy and delusion, as also egotism and thus free from all faults and defects is a real Brahmana. One can find an identity with the stithapragnya described in the Gita as the characteristic of a realized yogi. 

The text closes with the exhortation to one and all to realize Brahman and become true Brahmanas. 

The Upanishads contain the quintessence of Vedic religion and philosophy. The idea of Moksha as the primary goal of life owes its origin entirely to the Upanishads. An earnest study of the Upanishads is bound to inspire one to spiritual heights. 

The Two Great Epics

Ramayana, the story of Maryada Purushottama inspires us to admire the qualities of Rama as a man – his fidelity to his wife, father, truth, teacher, subjects, his simplicity and accessibility, his benevolence – more than once he exhausted his great treasury gifting to the population, his ready acceptance of Vibishana and Hanuman, his valour and steadfastness, his rectitude in not finishing off Ravana on the penultimate day as he was a disarmed rival and unwillingness to take back Sita in deference to possible public backlash …... these qualities have dazzled Indians for centuries.

Mahabharata , despite the extant superstition that a recital would cause rift and turmoil, is great work comprising the Gita, Yakshaprasna, Santiparva and Anusasanika parva – Bhishma’s teaching of statecraft to Yudhistra, the Vishnu/siva Sahasranamas, although admittedly there is much trickery, misconduct and arrogance unlike the other Epic. It is also called the Pancham Veda for its exhaustive coverage of various topics viz. statecraft and dharma.  

Manusmrithi

Smrithis are secondary scriptures which ‘remind’ one of the great spiritual values in the Shrutis or the Vedas.

The Manusmrithi is the most ancient and authoritative among the extant treatises on dharma.

 The topics dealt with include: creation of the world, four asramas, the sixteen samskaras, sraddha (faith), the four varnas, disputes and their resolution, apad-dharmas (apad=emergency), the mortal sins and their expiation, good and bad deeds as also the nature of the Atman.

Atri/Angirasa/Narada/Brhaspati/Katyayana are among other smrithis. The last three are the Trinity of sages considered as authorities in ancient Hindu Law.  

Agamas

The Agamas are ‘sacred books that deal with the truth in all its aspects. They form the basis of Hindu religious practices of the post-Vedic era. They deal elaborately with Siva, Sakti and Vishnu.

A typical Agama has four ‘padas’. The Vidyapada discusses philosophical and metaphysical subjects. The Yogapada details yogic practices to purify the mind and body.

The Kriyapada, usually voluminous, deals with temple architecture and iconography. In the Caryapada details of spiritual sacraments as also the code of conduct expected of the novice are delineated.

There are 28 Saivagamas. Siva is supreme. By his grace ‘pasus’ rid of attachment, get liberated and gain the lotus feet of  Pasupati. Saktagamas are legion and are split into the right hand path and the left hand path. Samaya, the former, conforms to the decent practices whilst vamachara appears to advocate the theory that even aberrations can be sublimated and result in the same supreme Truth. The Vaishnavagamas teach that Vishnu  is the highest truth and stress the importance of temple worship.

Jains too have their Agamas.     

A Gist Of The Gita

It is considered auspicious to recite even one verse from the Gita. We offer six.

Ch IX – 12 :  Divi Surya Sahasrasya bhaveth

                   yugapatha udditha

                  Yadi bah sadhrishi sahsyath upasas

                    tasya  mahatmanah  

        If several thousand Suns arise in the sky it may perhaps equal the radiance of the Parampurusha in his Visvarupa.

Ch X – 03 :   Yo maam ajam anadim cha vetti

                    loka mahesvaram

                     Asammudaha sa martyeshu sarva

                     papaiha pramuchyate

        He who knows me as the unborn, without beginning, as the supreme lord of all the worlds, he only, undeluded among men, is free from all sins.

            

Ch VI – 5  Uttareth Aatmana Atmanam na

                aatmanam avasadayeth

                Atmaivahi aatmano banduh athmaiva

                 ripur atmanah

        The Jiva should elevate the bound atman by the exercise of the mind. Certainly the mind is both the friend an enemy of the atman.

Ch IX – 22     Anananyas chintanayanto maam

                      yeh janah paripasathe  

                   Tesham nityabhi yuktanam

                     yogakshemam vahamyam

        Those who meditate on my divine form and worship me with devotion (Assuredly) I provide them with their needs and protect them.

Ch VI – 7 : Jitatamanha prasantasya

                 pramatma samahitah             

                 Seethoshna sukadukkheshu tatha

                 mana-apmanana

        For one who has conquered his senses and attained Paratman pain and pleasure, heat and cold, praise and insult are all the same.

Ch VI - :   Jnana vignana truptatma

                kutastho vijitendriyah

                Yukta ithyuchyateh yogi 

                samaloshtahma kanchanah

        One who has attained wisdom and self-realiation is modest and restrained. He discriminates not between rock, stone or gold.

And now for a brief overview of the main work:

CH I : Arjuna Visadayoga - Arjuna gets into a despondent mood. He lays down his arms (47 Verses)

CH II: Sankhya yoga  The Soul being immortal, one should not grieve. Work done as a duty leads to perfection. A perfect man is equanimous under all circumstances (72 Verses)

CH III  Karma yoga: The path of Karma is easier for most. Krishna advises Arjuna to perform his duties without selfish motives (43 Verses)

CH IV: Jnana yoga : The Supreme Knowledge -  Krishna is born each time Virtue declines. Krishna extols the greatness of spiritual wisdom.

CH V : Karmasanyasa yoga : Karma is better than Karma Sanyasa for Arjuna. Whata is needed is equanimity while discharging Karma. (29 Verses)

CH VI : Dhyana yoga : - The process of meditation and methods of mind control are described. (47 Verses)

CH VII : Jnana-vignana yoga: Krishna has created the whole world drawing on his two fold Prakriti. Only those who surrender to Krishna can transcend Maya or delusion. (30 Verses)

CH VIIII: Aksharabrahma yoga A person remembering Krishna at the time of death attains him. He mentions the path of light and smoke that the Jiva takes to after death. (28 Verses)

CH IX: Rajavidya-rajaguhya yoga: Krishna is everything in creation.   His devotee never perishes in life. (34 Verses)

CH X : Vibhutiyoga The entire chapter is devoted to the limitless glories of God, the cosmos being supported only by a part of his Vibhuti. (42 Verses)

CH XI: Visvaroopa darshana yoga – Eponymous. Krishna reveals his hitherto unseen cosmic form and states that it can be seen only by the devout.  (55 Verses.)

CH XII Bhakthi yoga -  Contemplation on the Unmanifest also leads to Him. However, Krishna advises Arjuna to cultivate devotion in him. (20 Verses)

CH XIII Kshetrakhetrgnya yoga : The Body and  Soul delineation. The former is the field. The latter is the knower of the field. Those who can intuit the difference between nature and the Self will attain the Brahman. These two constitute what is to be known. (34 Verses)

CH XIV: Gunatraya vibhaga yoga : Detailed description of the three Gunas. These are the three divisions of Nature. (27 Verses)

CH XV : Purushottama yoga : He is the best of all Beings  (20 Verses)

CH XVI : Daivaurasampad vibhaga Yoga  The traits that differentiate the divine from the demoniac are delineated. Avoid Anger, lust and greed – the three pathways to Hell. (24 Verses)

CH XVII : Shraddha traya vibhaga yoga  –  The categorisation of faith, food, sacrifices, austerity and gifts according to the three gunas. The aphorism Om Tat Sat also finds mention here. It is a corrective of deficiencies in religious acts. (28 Verses)

CH XVIII : Mokshasamnyasa yoga : Renunciation, knowledge, action and doer varies as per the three gunas. Miscelaneous topics are dealt such as the four Varnas

 Finally Krishna advises Arjuna to totally surrender to him and he will expiate him from all sins.

Dharmasastras

These are not merely based on Vedas but amplify their teachings for better day to day application. The topics fall under three broad categories; achara (general conduct), vyavahara (social conduct, law and order), and prasyachitta (expiatory rites).

        Achara concerns six daily rituals: snana and sandhya (bath and the sandhya ritual), japa (repetition of Vedic mantras or God’s name), devapuja (worship of gods), athithya (worship of guests)_ and vaisvadeva (offering cooked food to all the gods. Tarpanas (ceremonial offering of water with mantras) to devas, rishis and pitrs also is included in daily routine.

        There are sixteen purificatory sacraments of which Upanayana – the sacred thread ceremony, Vivaha – marriage rites  and Antyesti – the last rites for the dead, are the most prominent. Varnashrama dharmas have also been given the primary place in all the works in the section.

        Vyavahara is used in the technical sense of civil and criminal law. Eighteen subjects have been dealt with: debts, partnership, breach of contracts, purchase and sale, disputes between the master and the servant, boundary disputes, assault, libel, theft, abduction of women, relation between husband and wife, and partition.

        The King’s court was the judiciary. He would be assisted by men of knowledge, wisdom and character. He could also depute a judge.

        Prayaschitta: To err is after all, only human. The reform is in two stages: repentance and a firm  resolve that there shall be no repetition. Sins are classified into mortal sins and venial sins.

        The prayaschittas vary between types of austerities, repetition of the names of God, giving charities, going on a pilgrimage and even religious suicide for major sins.

        We mention some important works: Apastamba, Ausasana, Baudhayana, Gautama, Harita, Hiranyeki, Vaikhanasa, Vasistha, and Visnu Dharmasastras. 

The Eighteen Puranas

The Vedas are the basic scriptures of Hinduism. However at a time when the only access to knowledge for the common masses was by listening to the puranas, as they encompass all aspects of human life and religious practices. Thus we are deeply indebted to Puranas.

Agnipurana – 16000 Verses – AD 800 :-  It is essentially saivite with a large part devoted to the Vishnu cult, his incarnations as Rama and Krishna, also rules regarding worship of various deities, installation of images in temples, astrology, architecture, and sculpture, the science of medicine, toxicology, physiology and so on.

Bhagavatapurana – 18000 Verses – AD 600 : - Also called Srimad Bhagavatha. Suka recited this to Parikshit. Besides cosmology other topics include stories of Prahlada, Kapila, destruction of the Dakshayagna, Dhruva, the descent of Ganga, the churning of the ocean, Vamana etc. It has a graphic description of Kali Yuga.

Bhavishyapurana –  14500 Verses -  AD 500 – 900 : - The topics comprise the samskaras like upanayana, some aspects of Varnashrama Dharma, vratas, Souryam, description of good conduct .. It gives the genealogy of future kings and has hence been called Bhavishya Purana.

Brahmapurana – 10000 Verses AD 1300 : -  Its contents can summarised thus: creation of the world including gods and humans, the seven dvipas, description of some pilgrimage places including Puri, Varaha and Narasimha avatara and so on

Brahmandapurana – 12000 Verses AD 400 – The first two parts deal with the subjects of creation (from the cosmic egg, the Brahmanda), geography of the earth, the manvantaras and the distribution of vedic sakhas (branches).The third section deals with all aspects of after-death rites, Parasurama’s exploits, Dhanvantri receiving the Ayurveda etc. The fourth deals with the future Manus, Pralaya, the; fourteen worlds and hells. There is also a philosophical disquisition of Paramatman.

These are followed by the Lalithopakhyana comprising the famous Lalitha Sahasranamam. 

Brahmavaivarthapurana – 18000 Verses AD 1000 – The word Vaivartha means appearance. The first section traces the evolution of the universe from Brahma who also is Srikrishna. The second traces the emananations of Durga, Lakshmi, Sarasvathi, and Radha from the Mulaprakrithi. The third describes the birth and  exploits of Ganesha and his Six-faced brother. The last section, a fairly large one deals with Radha and Krishna.

Ayurveda, the Sandhya ritual, Salagrama worship, the story of Savitri and Satyavan, Mansa – the Goddess of snakes, Durgapuja etc. also are dealt.   

Garudapurana – 18000 Verses , AD 900 – Its recitation during death and post death ceremonies is considered auspicious.

The first part deals with Ramayana and Mahabharatha, omens and portents, medicine and gemology, astrology and cosmography. The second part is aptly named Prethakalpa and deals with the journey after death, hell, Yamaloka and liberation through devotion to Lord Vishnu 

Kurmapurana  18000 Verses, AD 500 -  A brief synopsis would read: the duties of varnas and the four asramas; evolution of the prakriti into the world; story of Svayambhuva Manu and Daksha; Mahabali; Yaduvamsa; the greatness of Kasi and Prayag; division of the Vedas; Isvaragita; after-death rites and Prayaschittas and so on.

The Isvaaragita elaborates on topics similar in treatement to the Gita.We shall go into a brief synopsis: Atman is the non-dual reality. The world evolves from Prakriti. The glorification of Shiva emphasising the path of devotion,Cosmic dance of Shiva and eulogy by the sages.

 Description of Siva’s Vibhutis. Realisation of Shiva as the means of liberation,Identity of Shiva and the Absolute,The path of liberation through fundamental ethics, ashtanga yoga, pranayama and study of scriptures. The Lord Sri Rama and Devi are also similarly extolled in similar works.

Lingapurana – 11000 Verses, AD 600 – 1000 : It deals with the manifestation of five aspects of Shiva, Shiva appearing as a pillar of fire to Vishnu and Brahma – a motif often occuring in the Thiruvachakam, the Nandi lore, Vyasa and his disciples, the surya and chandravamshis, the famous panchakshari, an account of Kasi, music, astamurthis of Shiva and the fruits of various gifts, and the mrityunjayamantra. 

Markandeyapurana – 9000 Verses, AD 300 : This purana is markedly nonsectarian. The vedic deities get more coverage than Shiva or Vishnu. There is a clear  trend to revive the shrauta and smartha rites which were falling into disuse. This Purana, besides dealing with usual characteristics of genealogies etc. also deals with Harischandra and Kartavirya and some aspects of yoga.

Matsyapurana – 14000 Verses, AD 300 :  Besides the usual subjects the purana delineates such topics as the stories of Yayati, Kacha and Devyani, and Puru, greatness of holy places. One important aspect of this purana is that the last chapter summarises all the subjects.  

Naradiyapurana  - 25000 AD 900 – 1600 : It deals a wide range of subjects : a whole year’s religious observances, devotion to Vishnu, duties of the people of various varnas and asramas, the six vedangas like grammar, the greatness of Prayaga, importance of Ekadasi fast and so on.

  There is a Lalitha Sahasranama attached which however widely differs from the commonly chanted. 

Padmapurana – 55000, AD 800 : It is a voluminous work in five parts:  Shrishtikhanda, Bhumikhanda, Svargakhanda, Patalakhanda and Uttarakhanda.

Besides the usual topics it deals with a variety of subjects : Brahma’s sacrifice, legends of Dadichi, Vrtra, Nahusa, Yayati, Sakuntala, greatness of Ganga, Kasi, Prayag and Gaya, descriptions of the world of goblins and gandharvas, varnasrama dharmas and vratas, sraddhas, ritualistic worship of Vishnu and Shiva, importance of sahasranamas, karma and its result; etc.

It is evidently a collation of matter written by many over various periods of time.      

Skandapurana – 81000 VERSES, AD 700 - 900  : - It deals with a legion of topics, Kasi Puri and Ujjayini get the pride of place among detailed descriptions of many places of pilgrimage. The Satyanarayana Vrata – very popular these days, geographical details of ancient India, various aspects of Shiva and methods of meditation are among the topics.

Vamanapurana – 10000 VERSES, AD 900 : It is stated to consist of two parts although only the first one is in print.

The birth and exploits of Ganesha and Kartikeya, the greatness of Shiva, importance of Ganga, certain vratas, doctrine of karma, legends of Brahma, Prahlada, Bali and Sukracharya, Gajendra Moksham are some of the topics. 

Varahapurana -  24000 VERSES, AD 800-1100 : -  This Purana deals with most of the general topics as in other Puranas. Two episodes of this Purana –Madhuropakhyana and Nachiketopakhyana are popular.

Vayupyurana -   24000 VERSES, AD 200  : - It is closely related to the Shivapurana. It is clearly a saiva-pasupata work. The greatness of Gaya and several details of Sraddha ceremonies find mention.  

Vishnupurana  - 23000 VERSES, AD 300 : - Quite a few philosophical ideas of the Vedas are reflected in this Purana. The description of Kali Yuga is markedly accurate. Vishnu is not part of Trinity but all three. It is a highly readable and popular Purana.

The frequently recurring  subjects are briefly expounded.

Creation : The Vedantic doctrine that Brahman is the ultimate Truth is accepted although sectarian deities are sometimes identified with some puranas.

 The evolution of the world takes place from primeval matter, an aspect of Brahman the order of  evolution being : prakrti-mahat-ahankara (ego sense), manas, Jnanendriyas and karmendriyas, as also the panchabhootas. These first evolutes mke up the Hiranyagarba – the Brahmanda. Brahman enters into it and causes further evolution right up to a blade of grass.

The Earth : - The Puranic descriptions are enigmatic. It is described as a circular body with seven concentric circles called dvipas (continents) arranged one within the other, with oceans of different fluids surrounding each belt like moats. Each continent has its own mountain and river system. In the central continent stands Mahameru the axis of the whole world systems. The Lokaloka mountain runs along the fringe of the outermost continent.

The whole description is evidently for meditative purposes.

Time:  The concept of time connected with creation is mind boggling. Mahavishnu conducts the work of creation through the aegis of Brahma. A cycle of creation is a day-time for him and that of dissolution his night. Pralaya is a quasi dissolution as the worlds manifest again during daytime.

 Brahma lives 100 years comprising 100 such days. One year of human beings is one day of the celestials. Twelve thousand such cselestial years form one chaturyuga, two thousand such chaturyugas constituting one day of Brahma.

Each day of Brahma is divided into fourteen epochs of Manus who maintain the world order and progress. Every manvantra consists of about seventy-six chaturyugas from the perfection of Krita to the degradation of the Kali. The Lord restores the balance at the end of the chaturyuga.

Genealogies: -  One trait seen is to trace lists to a common ancestor Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Surya. Four of his nine sons estalihed dynasties while the Chandravamsa was founded by Pururavas Aila. This King is m entioned in the Rig Veda and Vishnupurana. He is the son of Budha and Ila a Goddess.

FURTHER a Purana is defined to comprise five charactseristics of sarga – creation, anusarga – intermediate creation, vamsa – dynasties of gods and patriarchs, manvantara – the fourteen manus and their periods, and vamsanucharita – genealogy of the kings of the solar and lunar race. A few more characteristics are found such as protection of the world by the avataras, pralaya, the cause of creation – jiva and its karma, vritti – the modes of subsitence and the refuge or Brahman.    

Upapuranas

Along with the Mahapuranas there gradually grew up another similar mass of literature which came to be known as Upapuranas. These are obviously the works of different sages composed over a few centuries.

The Adi Upapurana contains the story of Krishna.

The Bhavisyottara Upapurana is an expostion of codes of conduct.

The Brahmottara Upapurana describes the greatness of a river (known as Balaja in the country of Marwar) and appears to be an appendix of the Brahmapurana.

The Brhad-dharma Upapurana describes creation as depending upon Siva and Sakti. A host of other topics such as descsent of Ganges, one’s filial duties are also dealt herein.

Devibhagavatha Upapurana : A fairly big work. The story of the killing of Mahishasura and a lot material on rituals and worship is also seen.

Kalika Upapurana : A work devoted to the Saktha cult. Various aspects of Parvati, description of the Kamakhya Temple and some Tantrik rites are past of this work.

Kalki Upapurana : This is considered an appendix of Bhagavata. It deals with the future incarnation of Vishnu as Kalki.

Naradiya Upapurana deals with the story of Rukmangada.

Narasimha Upapurana besides hymns to Narasimha talks of THE ASHTAKSHARI, 108 names of the Sun, and pilgrimage places of Vaishnavites.

Purusottama Upapurana is entirely devoted to the glorification of Puri and details of worship of the deities there.

Samba Upapurana : The principal hero is Samba, the son of Krishna.He is a proponent of Sun worship.

Surya Upapurana: An appendix of Brahmapurana it holds that Shiva and Surya are identicaical.

Siva Upapurana : The greatness of Shiva is the main theme.

Visnudharma Upapurana: Various Vaishnava rites are described. The Agnipurana appears to have sourced some of its topics from here.

Vishnudharmottara Upapurana : This is a fairly encyclopaedic work. Many chapters of the Matsyapurana are common with this work.

Apart from the above there are many other Upapuranas such as Ekamrapurana, Yugapurana, Ganesapurana and Chandikapurana.

There is no doubt that these Upapuranas have considerably enriched Hinduism.  

Chandipat Or Devi Mahatmiyam

It is a core literature for Devi-worshippers. The three Charitras are devoted to Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasarasvati respectively.

A quartet of Hymns, exquisite in composition and holy are :

Brahma’s Hymn to Yoganidra – Ch I

Hymn by all gods after the killing of Mahishasura – Ch IV

Hymn by the Gods invoking Devi – Ch V (for relief from Sumba and Nisumba)

Hymn by them after the killing of the Two demons – Ch XI

In his invocation to Yogamaya,  Brahma says that he, Vishnu and Shiva are only her manifestations.

 We quote a few popular verses from Ch V:

Salutations again and again to Her who abides in all beings as consciousness.

Salutations again and again to the Devi who abides as inltelligence, sleep, modesty, faith, compassion, mother etc. etc.

The practice of Satachandi, reciting Chandipath once on the first day,twice on day two, thrice on day three and four times for Lokashemam is popular.

Now turning to Ch XI:

Salutations to you O Narayani,  O you who ride in the heavenly chariot yoked with swans and assume the form of Brahmani, O Devi, who sprinkles water with the kusa grass

Salutations to you O Narayani,jO you who bear the tridnt, the moon and the serpent, and ride a big bull, and have the form of Maheswari

Salautations to you O Narayani, you who hold the great weapons of conch, discus, club and bow and take the form of Vaishnavi, be gracious

In other verses she is Kaumari, the sakti of Karthikeya with his typical externals of peacock, cock etc; Vairahi – sakti of the “Varaha” (Vishnu) tusked etc; Narasimhi in the form of Man-Lion; Aindri – sakti of Indra; Sivaduti and Chamundi .. ..        

Narayaneeyam

It comprises 1036 Verses composed by Narayana Bhattadri over one hundred days, ten  verses each day dealing with the glories of Narayana in his ten avatars

Bhattadri would ask the Lord of Guruvayur at the end of each verse for affirmation and the Lord  would nod! A few samples  follow:

The background is that the Namboodri was terribly sick from an ailment he got transferred from his teacher. In desperation he had turned to Krishna for releif.

Narayaneeyam comprises of episodes from Bhagavatham – the story of Lord Sri Krishna. It practically covers the entire sweep of the said work.

Namboodri asks : Did you not expound to your mother Devahuti in your incarnation as Kapila that Bhakthi is the easier path and that it leads to detachment. Did you also (another verse) not tell her to concntrate to your form  as Vishnu four armed and atop Garuda, equipped with ornaments and weapons? Guruvayrappan nods.

O Supreme One, do you not uphold that devotion to you releives one of fears and bestows all blessings. Cure me of my illness and bestow devotion for you in me. He Nods.

O Guruvayrappa did not Yasodha get infinite plearure cradling you on her lap and feeding you? He nods.

In mortal turmoil did not Gajendra by virtue of having gained previous memory and devotion worship with lotus flowers and great Stotras. Gopala acquiesces. 

 Narayana Namboodri narrates the story of Dhruva and Prahlada and interjects specific questions eliciting nods of acquiescence from the Lord. For example: on suffering neglect from his father and tearfully expressing his anguish to his mother, did she not advise him to seek your feet?

At the tender age of five did not Dhruva  go to forest and chant the mantra Narada bless him with?

Did you not bless Dhruva with a long reign on Earth before coming to your abode and he did it on your diection? The incomparable Lord nods in response. 

Prahlada’s father had entrusted his intransigent son who was bent on worshipping Narayana and other children to a special tutor. In confrontation with his Father did not Prahlada boldly declare that Narayana is your strength, mine and of the three worlds? Guruvayurappan nods. 

Did  not  Prahlada take your name despites all odds and also propogate it among his friends defying his father and O Lord, I am too overcome to describe the aftermath of Hiranyakasibhu’s kicking the Pillar on his son’assertion that the Lord resides in Pillar as also a blade of grass – everywhere! You had appeared as Narasimha killed Prahlada’s father and blessed him. Saying so Namboodri prostrates himself.

Finally he describes how Krishna appears before Parikshit on completion of the recitation by Suka which spectacle he is also accorded in 10 Verses. He describes the flute playing Krishna, his two hands, the glow from his nails, his pink palms, the quality of the tune .. He praises the ankles, feet, toes, heels, knees, thighs of the Lord.

O Lord, of your organs your Lotus Feet are the sweetest to the seekers and a veritable wishing tree (Kalpataru that grants every wish) for your devotees. O Guruvayurappa be constantly in my mind and thought, remove my travails and give me the final liberation Narayana Namboodri pleads with the Lord.

Bhagavatam

It  is in the form of 12 skandas, It was narrated to Parischit in his last days cursed he was fatally by Suka, the son of Vyasa.

The First may be considered supplementary to the tenth one. The Book expatiates the glory of the Bhagavata Dharma and narrates how it came to be composed by Vyasa on the advice of Narada to get peace of mind.

The Second is probably the nucleus of the original. Meditation on the Viratpurusa, glory of the  ten incarnations of the Lord, a brief account of cosmic theories and theological doctrines of Bhagavata are found here.

The Third is interspersed with remarks between Suka and Parikshit and two dialogues between Vidura and Uddhava on the end of yaduvamsa and Krishna’s sojourn to his Abode and Vidura and Maitreya containing the philosophy of Jnana and Bhakthi.

The Fourth, besides dealing with the stories of the progeny of the first Manu narrates the story of Dakshayajna and Dhruva.

The Fifth describes the universe and the earth. There are stories of kings and also various kinds of purgatories.

The Sixth has two episodes of Ajamila and Vrtrasura.

The Seventh developes on the theme of how misconduct would lead to downfall through tales of Narada, Jaya and Vijaya. The varnasrama dharma is  also described.

The Eighth has the stories of Gajendra, the churning of the milk ocean, and the tale of Mahabali.

The Ninth deals with the stories of some eminent personalities. Yayati, Dusyanta and the Pandavas among others find mention.

The Tenth is the biggest book and deals with the story of Krishna in great detail.

The Eleventh comprises the long discourse between Krishna and Uddhava. The main topic is Moksha. The Yadavas perish in internecine fighting and Krishna also departs.

The Twelfth is a prologue. The importance of devotion to God in Kaliyuga forms the main content. A synopsis of the whole  work and the cremonial way of studying it have been added at the end.

Gita Govinda Or Ashtapadhi

This is a highly popular sanskrit work. The main theme is the love between Radha and Krishna. It comprises 12 sections each with 24 stanzas set to music. It is a master piece of sanskrit poetry. It can be adapted for dancing.

Legend has it that while composing it Jayadeva had written  of Radha’s feet reclining on Krishna’s head and left it uncompleted as it could be construed as an irreverance. Jagannatha himself came and finished the verse and subsequently approved the entire  work and also granted darshan to Jayadeva who was peeved that he was denied sighting of Krishna whilst his life could see him entering the hut in the guise of Jayadeva!

Jayadeva is assigned to the twelfth century and is credited to have composed Mahabharat in Hindi. It is also popularly known as Ashtapadi and usually sung before performing Radha Kalyanam – a socio-religious ritual.

There is a theory that Radha is a symbolism. For, in the well known sources of the Krishna legend Radha is not mentioned anywhere. It is plausible that Mother Narture got metamorphosed in to the Radha personality of the later Vaishnava schools. Yet it is the Radha-Krishna temples that predominate.One does not find Satyabhama or Rukmini as Krishna’s Consort. In the Brahmavaivarthana Purana it is described that she emerged out of Krishna as his power. It is Jayadeva who immortalised as described above.    

Popular Stothras

There can be no exhautive list as every Hindu would have a few stothras up his sleeve! Here we mention a few:

·                    Lalitha and Vishnu Sahasranamas

·                    Aditya Hridayam  - Legend has it that Rama’s Guru taught this to him to ensure victory over Ravana prior to battle. Another tale goes that he prayed to Durga for the purpose.

·                    Rudram – Incantations to Lord Shiva and part of Nitya Parayana.

·                    Venkatesa Suprabadham – the awake prayer to the Lord of the seven mountains

·                    Bhaja Govindam – This exhorts Govinda . It is philosophical in content describing the travails of the Jeeva and yearning to attain salvation thru Govinda

·                    Soundarya Lahari – This describes many angas of Devi in ecstatic and elegant verse.

·                    Kanakadhara Stothram – Sankara received the humble Amla from a poor devotee as alms. On singing this Ambika rained golden Amlas in the courtyard to bestow prosperity. Ladies devoutly chant this prayer to be likewise blessed   

·                    Gayathri Manthra: This is held to be the supreme Mantra to be recited thrice by every twice-born.

·                    Ashtakas to Lakshmi, Hanuman, Linga, Vani, Durga, Rajarajeswari etc.

·                    Shodasamantras, couplets, quatrains to deities

·                    Abhirami Andhadhi – There is a beautiful tale in the background. Abhirami Bhattar had wrongly mentioned the tithi as Pournami and to stave the royal wrath in being proved wrong invoked his Goddess who interferes with planetary dynamics to prove her devotee right!

·        Hanuman Chalisa – composed by Kabir and popular both in the North and Southern India

Sankara, held to be an avatar of Shiva had embarked on a mission to rejuvenate Hinduism. He prevailed over Samanas (Jains) who were then ruling the roost in many  a royal court, established five Mutts all over the country and composed many hymns to many deities besides Baja Govindam and Soundarya Lahari listed. He is also considered the forerunner of Shanmadas – Ganapatyam, Kaumaram, Saivam, Saktham, Shouryam and Vaishnavam being centered on Ganesha, Karthikeya – kumara of Siva, Siva, Sakthi – consort of Siva, Sun and Vishnu respectively.

Acknowledgements: A concise Encyclopaedia of Hinduism by Swami Harshananda (recommended on the shelf of every enthusiast of Hindu Heritage)  - RK Mission Publication

Bhagwad Gita as it is by Swami Prabhupada – founder of ISKON – Bhakthi Vedanta Publications - Discourses on the Bhagwad Gita – Ch 10 by Swami Nityananda - .Nityananda Foundation Publication      

Devi Mahatmiyam by Swami Jagadeeswarananda – Advaita Ashram    Publication      

Divya Mangala Stothra by Srivatsa V. Somanatha Sastri (out of print0

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The Two Great Epics And Other Tales

The vast majority of Indians cannot understand the abstract reasoning of the Upanishads.  Their relevance to modern life may not be evident.  Therefore, these concepts have been condensed and integrated in the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual handbook of the Hindus, as the Bible and Quran are to Christians and Muslims.  “The Gita proclaims that each man must do his duty and act according to the sacred law without questioning the results of his action.  The Gita is, from many points of view, a remarkable document.  Not only does it combine philosophical subtlety with a precise and lucid literary style, but even on a purely human plane, it is a work of considerable quality.  Not surprisingly, it has come to be regarded as the sacred book, par excellence, of the Hindus” (Romila Thapar).

The Two Great Epics of India:

For the masses, even Bhagavad Gita is difficult to understand.  Stories appeal to young minds and adults alike.  By reading about the lives of great saints and sages, noble   men and women, character is moulded on right moral lines.  The two great epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are not unitary epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer.  They are epic complexes which have satisfied the craving of the people for religion, poetry, drama, fiction, philosophy, entertainment and moral and intellectual enlightenment.

The Mahabharata, the traditional author of which is the sage Vyasa, contains 90,000 stanzas and is the largest single poem in the world.  It is the story of the struggle between the Kauravas, the hundred sons of the blind Dhritarashtra, led by the eldest, Duryodhana on one side and on the other side their cousins, the five Pandavas, Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva, over the right to rule the Aryan Kingdom of the Kurus.  The epic battle between the two, fought on the plains at Kurukshetra, near modern Delhi, lasted eighteen days and resulted in the annihilation of the Kauravas. It is believed that the battle took place on      BC.  On Krishna’s death, Kaliyuga started on 17 Feb 3102 BC.

The story has a long prelude. Indraprastha and Hastinapura had been ruled by Pandu and Dhritharashtra respectively. With the untimely death of Pandu his elder brother took over the entire kingdom only to cede it to the Pandavas when they came of age. From the very beginning Duryodhana could not countenance the Pandavas. A house of Lac was built for them from which they escaped providentially having been forewarned that arson will be attempted. They went on a self-exile and returned with Arjuna’s winning the hand of Draupadi who became the joint wife of the Pandavas.

Again the kingdom was restored and the eldest performed the Rajasuya – King Superior determinant wherein a horse roams and wherever it rests the kingdom either surrenders to suzerainty of the King to whom it belongs or there is a fight for supremacy.

Unable to digest this glory of Pandavas Duryodhana entices the eldest Prince to play the game of dice wherein Yudhistra lose everything including his wife who is humiliated in the royal court. He was to go on exile for fourteen years with anonymity being preserved as a condition of exile! Even after completion of this exile Duryodhana was in no mood to part off the Indraprastha Kingdom.          

After the decimation of the Kauravas, Pandavas ruled long and peacefully and when their time on earth neared its end they renounced the kingdom and approached the Abode of the Gods on Mount Meru in the Himalayas.   The five brothers and their joint wife, Draupadi were followed by their pet dog and when they reached the gates of Heaven the Gods wishing to test them declared that if the Pandavas wished to enter they must leave the dog outside.  The Pandavas declared that they would rather forsake Heaven than their dog, which had served them faithfully for so many years, and turned away.  This noble answer so pleased the Gods that they opened the portals of heaven to the Pandavas, Draupadi and their faithful dog.

The Mahabharata has many interpolated episodes the most famous being the Bhagvad Gita. Arjuna, the most valiant of the Pandavas, known for his skill in archery, awaits in his chariot the beginning of the battle.  He feels that he cannot fight against those who are his old friends, relatives and preceptors whom he has known all his life.  He wants to surrender and let the Kauravas take everything so that there may be peace and goodwill.  He turns to Krishna who is acting as his charioteer and asks for his advice.

Krishna explains that the death of the body does not involve the death of the soul.  There are many roads that lead to God. For most people the way to God lies in the path of duty.  Arjuna was a Kshatriya and his duty was to fight for righteousness, whatever be the consequences. Arjuna must act without the desire or hope of reward or glory or even success. Right action, said Krishna, was bereft of all desire even the desire for success. 

This is the message of the Bhagvad Gita.  Each individual has to fight the Mahabharata war in and through his own life. 

Emerson’s famous poem “Brahma”:

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord, derived great consolation from reading the Bhagvad Gita and solved the metaphysical problems that had beset his mind.  He was introduced to it by Thomas Carlyle when he met him in England. In the course of the conversation, Carlyle picked up a book from the table and handed it to him saying,  “This is a most inspiring book. It has brought comfort and consolation in my life.  I hope it will do the same for you. Take it and read it.”  It was the first English translation of the Bhagvad Gita published in London in 1785.  After reading it, Emerson wrote his famous poem “Brahma” of four stanzas:

                        If the red slayer think he slays,

                        or if the slain thinks he is slain,

                        They know not well the subtle ways

                        I keep, and pass, and turn again.

                        Fair or forgot to me is near,

                        Shadow and sunlight are the same;

                        The vanished gods to me appear;

                        And one to me are fame and shame.

                        They reckon ill who leave me out;

                        When me they fly, I am the wings;

                        I am the doubter and the doubt,

                        And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

                        The strong gods pine for my abode,

                        And pine in vain the sacred Seven;

                        But thou, meek lover of the good!

                        Find me, and turn they back on heaven.

Nala and Damayanti:

        Of the other interpolated episodes in the Mahabharata the longest is the story of Nala and Damayanti related to Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, to convince him of the evils of gambling because it was in a gambling match that Yudhisthira had lost his kingdom including his brothers and Draupadi to Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kauravas.  The story tells how King Nala won Damayanti at a Swayamvara, (self choice), a ceremony at which a girl passed along the assembled ranks of her suitors until she found the man of her choice. Damayanti chose Nala in preference to the Gods themselves who were among her suitors but then lost his queen and kingdom at a gambling tournament.  He regained them both after many adventures.

        200. The Mahabharata has the story of Shakuntala and King Dushyanta which was made into a play by Kalidasa, the greatest of Sanskrit poets, who lived in the reign of Chandra Gupta II (380-415 A.D).

Legend of Savitri:

        Another interpolation is the legend of Savitri, who insisted on marrying Satyavan, although she had been warned by a seer that he had only one year to live.  When the fatal day arrived Satyavan went to the forest to cut wood and she followed him.  There he fell dying and as she supported him she saw a figure who told her that he was Yama, God of Death, and that he had come for her husband’s spirit.  Yama carried off the spirit towards the shades but Savitri followed him.  Her devotion pleased Yama who offered her any boon except the life of her husband.  She extorted three such boons from Yama but still she followed him, and he was finally constrained to restore her husband to life.

        The legend of Savitri conveys the assurance that we have the power to change our destiny.  In his epic Savitri, Sri Aurobindo has captured the essence of the legend in these words:

                A magic leverage suddenly is caught,

                That moves the veiled ineffable’s timeless will;

                A prayer, a master act, a kind idea

                Can link man’s strength to a

                 transcendent force,

                Then miracle is made the common rule,

                One mighty deed can change the course

                of things;

                A lovely thought becomes omnipotent.

The Ramayana

Most Indians are told of this story by their grandmothers. Besides professional story.tellers also expand on this great Epic usually spread over forty days. Rama, the prince of Ayodhya had his teething in heroic exploits early in life when he accompanied Vishvamitra to the forest to protect sages who were being disturbed by demons. On his way back he married Sita in an open syamvara by breaking the bow of Lord Shiva himself in the court of Janaka, the father of Sita.

When the date had been fixed for his being anointed as heir his step-mother persuades his father to send him to exile and to crown her own son as heir. In the forest his wife is abducted by a valiant Ravana. Rama befriends a tribe of Monkeys when he first meets with his great Dasa the Great Hanuman, himself an amsa of Lord Shiva himelf. It is Hanuman who confirms the whereabouts of Sita. A great battle ensues with the slaying of Ravana. A triumphant Rama returns and is crowned King of Ayodhya.

This tale is composed by hunter turned sage Valmiki at the behest of the celestial bard Narada. It is said to have been recited before Rama by his own sons conceived in a forest where Sita had abdicated at the instance of her husband who could not countenance her virtue questioned by a commoner in his kingdom.      

        The Mahabharata contains as an episode the story of the Ramayana, the traditional author of which was the Sage Valmiki who wrote the Sanskrit original.  The regional languages of India have produced their own versions of the epic, the most outstanding being Tulsidas’s Ramacharitamanasa in Hindi and Kamban’s Ramayanam in Tamil.

        In the countries of South-East Asia, as much as in India, the Ramayana has, in some local version or the other, been established as a national epic.  The Thai Ramakien or Ramakirti is known to Thai choreography as a masked play or Khon, as the Nang or shadow play. The Thai version is derived from the Indonesian version prevailing in the epoch of the Srivijaya Empire. The Malaysian Hi Kayat Seri Rama has been a basis for the repertoire of Malay shadow plays.  The similarity of technique indicates its Indonesian origins.  Burma too has known the Ramayana since the 11^th Century. Nepal has the oldest manuscript of the epic dating back to 1075 AD.

        The Mahabharata is known as the fifth Veda for in it may be found every branch of knowledge.  Into it has been woven history and legend, mythology and folklore, fable and parable, philosophy and religion, statecraft and the art of war, morals and romance.  Compared to the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is a work of greater art. It contains many beautiful descriptive passages which the other epic lacks. 

        K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar in his work The Epic Beautiful has summed up its greatness in the words:

        “The Ramayana is indubitably one of the supreme classics of the world, one of the most ancient, and unquestionably secular in its origin; yet it is also unique in its abiding involvement in the cultural, social, ethical, religious and spiritual consciousness of the people of India.  Whether or not the epic is in some measure a factual record of what had once happened – there intervening a long period when the tribal hero became the racial exemplum, who in turn came to be identified with an avatar of Vishnu – the exile of Rama on the eve  of his intended coronation as Heir Apparent; the gallant if fruitless attempt of the beneficiary, Bharata, to annul the injustice; the fight with the Titans in the forest in defence of the Rishis and their way of life; the deceitful abduction of Sita by Ravana; Rama’s mutually beneficial alliance with Sugriva, the Vanara chief; Hanuman’s quest in Lanka and the finding of Sita; the war in Lanka, the death of Ravana, Sita’s fire ordeal and her reunion with Rama and their coronation in Ayodhya; all this is closer in reality to the popular imagination than any piece of  known or recorded history, ancient or modern. And the principal and ancillary characters –Rama and Sita, Bharata and Lakshman, Kausalya and Kaikeyi and Sumita, Manthara and Surpanaka, Guha and Hanuman and Sugriva, Ahalya andAnasuya and Sabri, Ravana and Vibhishana and Indrajit, Tara and Mandodari and Trijata – these and many others are not just characters in an epic ….. but truly apocalyptic visions of psychic institutions, tremors, surmises, apprehensions and ecstasies.”

        The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have influenced Indian culture for millennia.  What unites India are these two Itihasas.  When they were shown on TV serials, the whole of India watched them.  Their appeal to India is eternal. Emotional fervour for India’s unity and status as a nation depends on these far more than other factors such as Constitution, freedom movement, etc.

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INDIAN LITERATURE – INDO ANGLIAN NOVELS

Prof. Abu Becker

        The Indian novel in English is an allegory of the nation in the making. 

        The novels of Mulk Raj Anand fictionalized the spirit of internal contradictions of Indian society and the perception that redressing those contradictions should form part of the strategy to fight imperial hegemony.  Two major issues which figured in the priorities of the nation were considered by him.  While in Untouchable the novelist called to eradicate the social segregation of the marginalized sections of the people so that they could equally participate in the nation building process; in Coolie, on the other hand, he depicted the budding consciousness of the working class and their struggle to assert themselves.  By exploring two fundamental dimensions of the social situation of the nation then – arguing for equality and justice for the oppressive sections of Indian society and showing the regeneration of the workers of the factories – Anand called for expanding the boundaries of the struggle to make it a mass-based and all pervasive nationalist phenomena. 

        R.K. Narayan’s fiction narrated true Indian ethos in their complex and continued relevance.  His novels fictionalized the response of Indians, in their rootedness in culture, religion, familial values and other relevant values, against the denial of freedom and self-expression.  Narayan, in his inimitable way, focused on the territoriality of sensibility and resilience in adversity and dominance. His English Teacher  depicted the conscience of a English Educated Indian, Krishna, who expresses his reluctance to go along with his profession of teaching English devoid of spirituality and ethical significance.  He at the end opted for a traditional education system, rooted in and strengthening nationalist awareness, which would suit the essential needs of young minds of India.  His reluctance to adapt to a colonially derived system illustrated the stage of nationalist consciousness in the last phase of national struggle for independence.  His Waiting for Mahatma dealt with impact of the ideals advocated and practiced by Gandhi on different sections of society.  Bharati and Sriram, the protagonists, embodied this impact.  The novel also highlighted the soul-force and passive resistance initiated by the mahatma in order to win liberation from the colonial hegemony.  It also showed the commitment to truth, non-violence  and communal harmony, cardinal principles inherent in the collective consciousness of the nation but made as spiritual manifestation of the nationalist awakening by Gandhi.  The first generation of writers explicitly depicted the specificities of the awakening and explored the ambitions and aspirations of the country during the nationalist upsurge after the Government of India Act in 1935.

        As the nation achieved the goal of independence, the struggle gave way to nation building with emphasis on issues like the development and welfare of the people along with unity and integrity of the nation.  The nature and concerns of the novel changed accordingly to fictionalize the events, attitudes and other related problems of the period.  The novels of Amitav Ghosh and Upamanyu Chatterjee brought into the realm of the novel the trauma of partition, angst of the people about the future, and the socio-political intricacies of the nation-state.

        Profound and illuminating, the novels of Ghosh signified the historical and cultural significance of certain events in the making of nations.  They narrated the pitfalls of imperialism and its ravages on the individuals, communities and nations.  Through his fiction, the novelist made an outstanding plea for the human dimension beyond the boundaries of community, ethnicity and nationality.  While the Circle of Reason deconstructed the myth of nation and its attributes, the Shadow Lines dealt with formation of nation-states in the subcontinent and elements of violence and bloodshed engendered in their making and after math.  In an Antique Land   crossed the boundaries of fiction and geography and enquired into the glorious past showing the cultural and economic exchanges between two nations – India and Egypt.  He also looked at the effects of imperialism in an ancient civilization – Egypt.  The Glass Palace, a literary critique of imperialism of the east and the west, narratively organized the diasporic and migrant experiences of the natives in the offshoot of imperial encroachment of Myamanmar and the development of nationalist upheaval in the subcontinent.

        Upamanyu Chatterjee concentrated on the tensions within the nation-state in providing a viable alternative to the colonial power.  He portrayed the fragmentations of Individual consciousness, alienation, erosion of values in family and public life.  His English August measured  the inadequacy of contemporary political and administrative machinery in coming to terms with the aspirations and imaginations of the people in the post-independent epoch of Indian nation. The narrator found that it was very difficult to execute the mission of development in places like Madna.  The basic problem was in selecting priorities before the nation in such places.  So the novel threw light on the complexities of the post-independent nation-state where overall development, a major plank before the independence, got undermined. Its sequel, The Mammaries of Welfare State, in a more jovial and comic tone, portrayed the deconstruction of the welfare state as a verbal exercise of the corrupt bureaucrats and lip-servicing politicians.  His Last Burden underlined the need to preserve the national culture and the tradition of harmony within the domestic sphere.

        Thus, the selected works of the considered writers fictionalized the different facets of nationalist consciousness.  They unfurled the evolution and growth of the nation in the early stages.  Later they also showed the manifestation of tensions within various constituents of the nation-state  in the complex and often-uncomfortable journey of the nation into the eighties and nineties.  The study would open up a number of proliferating ideas related to the growth of Indian fiction in English in its multifaceted implications of nationalist consciousness.  While earlier, novel was considered an enterprise of an individual and his aesthetic exploration of the social realities around him, it today is studied to understand the questions of the collective identity. 

        The fiction of Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan who wrote in English unlike Bankim Chandra Chatterjee represent two definitive attributes of the nationalist consciousness.  In the former the need for immediate reform in social conditions, an integral part of the nationalist resurgence gets narrated; in the latter, the thrust is on the emerging shades of Indian sensibility and its rootedness.   

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FOREIGN SCHOLARS ON INDIA

WILLIAM LOGAN – CELEBRATED VICTORIAN BRITISH OFFICIAL

        The origin of the caste system is to be sought, not so much in any ethnic circumstances of blood connection ….. as in the ordinary everyday system of civil government imported into the country by Aryan immigrants, and readily adopted by the alien peoples among whom the immigrants came not as conquerors, but as peaceful citizens, able by their extensive influence elsewhere, to assist the people among whom they settled.

        The idea embodied in the caste system of Civil Government was the idea which permeates Hindu Society – the idea of the family household.  The Aryans thought and wisely thought, that they could not do better in organizing their state than to copy the example continually before their eyes and to organize it on the model of a well-regulated household.  There they saw each member of it told off to perform some clear and district functions.  The clearer and more distinct these functions were, the better were the household functions managed.  The cook must attend to the kitchen, the Lady’s maid to her mistress, attend the sweeper, must not interfere with the food, nor the water man with the lady’s muslins.  In no country under the sun has the efficient organization by households – by families been better understand or more extensively carried out than in India.  And when questions of civil administration were under consideration it was the most natural thing to turn to the family as a model.

        Society organized on these lines was capable of easy and rapid development.  This no doubt accounts for the advanced state of the people in early times.

        (William Logan on the origin and ability of the caste system : Malabar Manual)

PORUS OR PURUSHOTHAMAN

(Plutarch (40 – 120) AD the Roman Historian writes about the encounter of Alexander the Great and Purus or Purushothaman the king of the Northwestern area of India)

        Porus was a very tall and hefty man.  He was six feet nine inches tall.  When advancing in the battlefield seated on his elephant, he seemed to be as if riding on horseback.  The elephant, itself very large, was also extremely intelligent. Finding its rider shot with many arrows, at first tried its best to shield him.  Later, it set him down kneeling gently and pulled out as many arrows as it could with its nose.  The elephant tried its best to prevent its master being captured by the Greeks.

        Finally when Porus was taken bound, Alexander asked him how he expected to be treated.  Porus answered ‘as a king’.  To hear him talk, Alexander repeated the question.  Porus’s reply was that the phrase ‘as a king’ covers all that needs he said about it.

        Alexander was impressed.  He offered Porus not only the rule of his former kingdom but also that of several surrounding defeated kingdoms which included five thousand towns and several villages – as Satrap under Aleander.

RANJIT SINGH – LION OF THE PUNJAB

        Ranjit Singh succeeded in uniting the warring local chieftains of the Punjab with a common spirit and for a common purpose.  Yet there was nothing parochial about him.  He considered himself an Indian first and foremost.  Shankar Nath was one of  his trusted advisors who hailed from Kerala.  There were many European Generals who trained his army and made it more than a match for the English.  The only time that Afghanistan was ever subdued was by the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh.

        The Maharaja was short and slight of figure.  He has many wound-marks on his body and was blind in one eye.  Yet there was something about him that was compelling and masterful and very attractive.  Gen Avitabele, one of the Europeans who served him, was asked many years on about his appearance.  When asked in which eye, left or right he was blinded in battle, the General could not say.  His answer was that the surviving eye was so blazing that he never dared to look the Maharaja in the face!

        It was only after Ranjit Singh’s death that the British could annexe the Punjab.  On his deathbed, he said : “Sab lal hojayage!’ – meaning that his vast kingdom and the whole of India would become part of the British Empire, all of which at that time was marked in the world maps in a light red colour.  His death ceremonies were done according to Sikh Hindu and Muslim customs.  He had ordered that large donations be given to Houses of worship of all these religions.  The great Vishwanath temple at Kashi (Benaras) was a substantial beneficiary.

        In every way, we may look upon him and his times as the ‘last stand of the spirit of ancient India’.

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RUDYARD KIPLING AND THE INDIAN ETHOS

The Ballad of East and West is a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in 1889, and has been much quoted and is widely known. Its first line is often given  as an example of Kipling's attitudes to race and to the Empire; but those who quote it thus often completely miss the third and fourth lines. It is worth quoting the refrain which opens, and closes, the poem in full:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

This may be read as saying that 'it is indisputable that geographic points of the compass will never meet in this life, but that when two strong men [or equals] meet, the accidents of birth, whether of nationality, race, or family, do not matter at all - the Asian and the European are equals'

The story of the ballad has, to do with theft, honour and strength - like many of the border ballads. Kamal, a chieftain of the lawless North west Frontier, raids into British territory, and in the course of his raid, steals 'the Colonel's mare'. The Colonel's son, an officer in the Guides ^[1], follows him on "a raw rough dun" (poor quality horse) until he sees the white of the mare's eye. He fires, twice - and misses.

'Ye shoot like a soldier,' Kamal said. 'Show now if ye can ride!'

So the chase continues, until the dun founders, whereupon Kamal turns back, and, after knocking the pistol out of the Colonel's son's hand, reveals that they have all along been covered by his men, hiding behind the rocks and thorn. The Colonel's son speaks defiantly of the vengeance that will be exacted should he be killed:

'And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,

'Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!'

This earns Kamal's respect, whereon the Briton tells Kamal to

'Take up the mare for my father's gift - by God, she has carried a man!'

The ballad ends with the mare, who has nuzzled the British chest, returning to the Colonel; Kamal accepting the son's pistol, and sending his only son to be a trooper in the Guides. This is enough for the British officer to order an end to all the blood-feuds within the native troops:

'Ha' done! ha' done!' said the Colonel's son. 'Put up the steel at your sides!

'Last night ye had struck at a Border thief—to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!'

PURAN BHAGAT

There was once a man in India who was Prime Minister of one of the semi-independent native States in the north-western part of the country. He was a Brahmin, so high-caste that caste ceased to have any particular meaning for him; and his father had been an important official in the gay-coloured tag-rag and bobtail of an old-fashioned Hindu Court. But as Purun Dass grew up he felt that the old order of things was changing, and that if any one wished to get on in the world he must stand well with the English, and imitate all that the English believed to be good. At the same time a native official must keep his own master's favour. This was a difficult game, but the quiet, close-mouthed young Brahmin, helped by a good English education at a Bombay University, played it coolly, and rose, step by step, to be Prime Minister of the kingdom. That is to say, he held more real power than his master the Maharajah.

When the old king--who was suspicious of the English, their railways and telegraphs--died, Purun Dass stood high with his young successor, who had been tutored by an Englishman; and between them, though he always took care that his master should have the credit, they established schools for little girls, made roads, and started State dispensaries and shows of agricultural implements, and published a yearly blue-book on the "Moral and Material Progress of the State," and the Foreign Office and the Government of India were delighted. Very few native States take up English progress altogether, for they will not believe, as Purun Dass showed he did, that what was good for the Englishman must be twice as good for the Asiatic. The Prime Minister became the honoured friend of Viceroys, and Governors, and Lieutenant-Governors, and medical missionaries, and common missionaries, and hard-riding English officers who came to shoot in the State preserves, as well as of whole hosts of tourists who travelled up and down India in the cold weather, showing how things ought to be managed. In his spare time he would endow scholarships for the study of medicine and manufactures on strictly English lines, and write letters to the "Pioneer", the greatest Indian daily paper, explaining his master's aims and objects.

At last he went to England on a visit, and had to pay enormous sums to the priests when he came back; for even so high-caste a Brahmin as Purun Dass lost caste by crossing the black sea. In London he met and talked with every one worth knowing-- men whose names go all over the world--and saw a great deal more than he said. He was given honorary degrees by learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of Hindu social reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all London cried, "This is the most fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since cloths were first laid."

When he returned to India there was a blaze of glory, for the Viceroy himself made a special visit to confer upon the Maharajah the Grand Cross of the Star of India--all diamonds and ribbons and enamel; and at the same ceremony, while the cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire; so that his name stood Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E.

That evening, at dinner in the big Viceregal tent, he stood up with the badge and the collar of the Order on his breast, and replying to the toast of his master's health, made a speech few Englishmen could have bettered.

Next month, when the city had returned to its sun-baked quiet, he did a thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the world's affairs went, he died. The jewelled order of his knighthood went back to the Indian Government, and a new Prime Minister was appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of General Post began in all the subordinate appointments. The priests knew what had happened, and the people guessed; but India is the one place in the world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why; and the fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., had resigned position, palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ochre-coloured dress of a Sunnyasi, or holy man, was considered nothing extraordinary. He had been, as the Old Law recommends, twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter,--though he had never carried a weapon in his life,--and twenty years head of a household. He had used his wealth and his power for what he knew both to be worth; he had taken honour when it came his way; he had seen men and cities far and near, and men and cities had stood up and honoured him. Now he would let those things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs.

Behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished brown coco-de-mer in his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on the ground--behind him they were firing salutes from the bastions in honour of his happy successor. Purun Dass nodded. All that life was ended; and he bore it no more ill-will or good-will than a man bears to a colourless dream of the night. He was a Sunnyasi--a houseless, wandering mendicant, depending on his neighbours for his daily bread; and so long as there is a morsel to divide in India, neither priest nor beggar starves. He had never in his life tasted meat, and very seldom eaten even fish. A five-pound note would have covered his personal expenses for food through any one of the many years in which he had been absolute master of millions of money. Even when he was being lionised in London he had held before him his dream of peace and quiet--the long, white, dusty Indian road, printed all over with bare feet, the incessant, slow-moving traffic, and the sharp-smelling wood smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twilight, where the wayfarers sit at their evening meal.

When the time came to make that dream true the Prime Minister took the proper steps, and in three days you might more easily have found a bubble in the trough of the long Atlantic seas, than Purun Dass among the roving, gathering, separating millions of India.

At night his antelope skin was spread where the darkness overtook him--sometimes in a Sunnyasi monastery by the roadside; sometimes by a mud-pillar shrine of Kala Pir, where the Jogis, who are another misty division of holy men, would receive him as they do those who know what castes and divisions are worth; sometimes on the outskirts of a little Hindu village, where the children would steal up with the food their parents had prepared; and sometimes on the pitch of the bare grazing- grounds, where the flame of his stick fire waked the drowsy camels. It was all one to Purun Dass--or Purun Bhagat, as he called himself now. Earth, people, and food were all one. But unconsciously his feet drew him away northward and eastward; from the south to Rohtak; from Rohtak to Kurnool; from Kurnool to ruined Samanah, and then up-stream along the dried bed of the Gugger river that fills only when the rain falls in the hills, till one day he saw the far line of the great Himalayas.

Then Purun Bhagat smiled, for he remembered that his mother was of Rajput Brahmin birth, from Kulu way--a Hill-woman, always home-sick for the snows--and that the least touch of Hill blood draws a man in the end back to where he belongs.

"Yonder," said Purun Bhagat, breasting the lower slopes of the Sewaliks, where the cacti stand up like seven-branched candlesticks-"yonder I shall sit down and get knowledge"; and the cool wind of the Himalayas whistled about his ears as he trod the road that led to Simla.

The last time he had come that way it had been in state, with a clattering cavalry escort, to visit the gentlest and most affable of Viceroys; and the two had talked for an hour together about mutual friends in London, and what the Indian common folk really thought of things. This time Purun Bhagat paid no calls, but leaned on the rail of the Mall, watching that glorious view of the Plains spread out forty miles below, till a native Mohammedan policeman told him he was obstructing traffic; and Purun Bhagat salaamed reverently to the Law, because he knew the value of it, and was seeking for a Law of his own. Then he moved on, and slept that night in an empty hut at Chota Simla, which looks like the very last end of the earth, but it was only the beginning of his journey. He followed the Himalaya-Thibet road, the little ten-foot track that is blasted out of solid rock, or strutted out on timbers over gulfs a thousand feet deep; that dips into warm, wet, shut-in valleys, and climbs out across bare, grassy hill-shoulders where the sun strikes like a burning-glass; or turns through dripping, dark forests where the tree-ferns dress the trunks from head to heel, and the pheasant calls to his mate. And he met Thibetan herdsmen with their dogs and flocks of sheep, each sheep with a little bag of borax on his back, and wandering wood-cutters, and cloaked and blanketed Lamas from Thibet, coming into India on pilgrimage, and envoys of little solitary Hill-states, posting furiously on ring-streaked and piebald ponies, or the cavalcade of a Rajah paying a visit; or else for a long, clear day he would see nothing more than a black bear grunting and rooting below in the valley. When he first started, the roar of the world he had left still rang in his ears, as the roar of a tunnel rings long after the train has passed through; but when he had put the Mutteeanee Pass behind him that was all done, and Purun Bhagat was alone with himself, walking, wondering, and thinking, his eyes on the ground, and his thoughts with the clouds.

One evening he crossed the highest pass he had met till then--it had been a two-day's climb--and came out on a line of snow-peaks that banded all the horizon--mountains from fifteen to twenty thousand feet high, looking almost near enough to hit with a stone, though they were fifty or sixty miles away. The pass was crowned with dense, dark forest--deodar, walnut, wild cherry, wild olive, and wild pear, but mostly deodar, which is the Himalayan cedar; and under the shadow of the deodars stood a deserted shrine to Kali--who is Durga, who is Sitala, who is sometimes worshipped against the smallpox.

Purun Dass swept the stone floor clean, smiled at the grinning statue, made himself a little mud fireplace at the back of the shrine, spread his antelope skin on a bed of fresh pine-needles, tucked his bairagi--his brass-handled crutch--under his armpit, and sat down to rest.

Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, where a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. All round it the tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of the mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the smooth stone circles of the threshing-floors. Looking across the valley, the eye was deceived by the size of things, and could not at first realise that what seemed to be low scrub, on the opposite mountain- flank, was in truth a forest of hundred-foot pines. Purun Bhagat saw an eagle swoop across the gigantic hollow, but the great bird dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. A few bands of scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, catching on a shoulder of the hills, or rising up and dying out when they were level with the head of the pass. And "Here shall I find peace," said Purun Bhagat.

Subsequently, the wild things of the nearby hills become friendly with Purun Bhagat who has now become a holy man.   Through their help and his own piety he is able to save the hill village from a natural catastrophe. This is the miracle performed by Purun Bhagat a former worldlywise Chief Minister and Chevalier, knight commander of the British Empire - now turned into an ascetic and a holy man.

In this story tucked away in the Jungle Book, we see the finest exposition and a perfect understanding of the  Indian ethos.  Bhagat is a Hindu man who despite his great success in the world of his day, aspires for something nobler and greater in life.  It has ever been so since the time of the Vedas and it is a peculiarity of true Indian culture and civilization. 

No writer or thinker has understood or expressed this quality of Indian civilization as magically as Rudyard Kipling.  He alone among all the foreigners understood, sympathized and appreciated the Indian ethos so well.  Again and again he emphasized the great law within which all beings have their duties, their living and their lives.  The ancient Indian idea that the moral law, Dharma, has its counterpart in the natural law, the natural order – is what he tries to convey in the whole body of his work.  Anyone, whether man or animal, who breaks it will have to suffer the consequences – is part of that message.

It is high time to change the wrong label stamped on him as an imperialist or imperial apologist.  On the other hand he should be considered a great exponent of India’s true greatness.  

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EINSTEIN AND VIVEKANANDA

John L. Dobson

Condensed by T.R.Ramalingam

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, a Vedantin of the School of Monism or Advaita had an intuitive understanding of modern Science. All Cosmos with its infinite variations is manifestation of one Energy which we may call Brahman. In the popular application Monism refers to the presentation of the human soul as one with the Divine.  

Swamiji had asked the famous scientist Nikola Tesla whether he could show that matter is energy. For, he perceived a contradiction between the “dualistic” belief of the physics of his times distinguishing between two entities of mass and energy, and his intrinsic faith in Advaita. Nearly two decades later it was Einstein who could establish this prescience of the Swami. It is an extension of this principle that all chemical elements derive from Primordial Hydorgen.

Modern physics knows that at very high temperatures in the bellies of the stars and in the brilliant stellar explosions which scatter the heavier elements all through the galaxies; as also the elements of which our Earth and our bodies are made were fashioned from hydrogen by the gravity of massive stars. We may think of the primordial Hydrogen as Swamiji’s Akasha (‘the first principle of materiality’). Thus Hydogen is our clue to the Universe.

The changeless shows in our physics as inertia. The infinite and undivided show as electricity and gravity. There are no other ingredients out of which Hydrogen  can be made.

The rest of the universe arises from Hydrogen but whereof Hydrogen? Quantum mechanics has an explanation. The Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that if we know the position of a particle in space we can not know its momentum; and if we know the position of an event in time we can not know its energy. In short: if we see something in space and time, there will always be an uncertainty about what it is that we see. It is the classical analogy of mistaking snake for rope.

The Vedantins long back pointed out that this kind of causation has three aspects. Failing to see the rope for what it is, is the play of Tamas. Jumping to the wrong conclusion is the power of Rajas. The revealing power of Sattva reveals the rope for what it is.    

Mass is a very sizeable amount of energy. One Kg of matter is the energy of a thousand atomic blasts. Potential, gravitational, electrical and nuclear energy are all the same thing. They are two sides of the same coin.

Gravity and electricity are opposites. Matter is associated with both gravitational and electric energy. Likewise Space and Time are opposites. Einstein’s physics takes out the line between mass and energy; his geometry likewise unifies space and time.

Swamiji wanted Advaita brought into our physics. It was brought in by Einstein’s equations and by Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle. These are the equations of Vedanta, and with them came the explanation for gravity, electricity and inertia. There is no such thing as matter. There is only energy. It is an apparition. Only the changes of energy are transformational. From the Absolute to the primordial hydrogen and its gravity (Swamiji’s Akasha and Prana) is through Vivarta (apparition). The action of Prana on Akasha –Parinama resulting in what we see around us.

In 1869 Swamiji said in London “The Absolute has become the Universe by coming through time, space and causation. This is the central idea of Advaita. The latter are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen on the lower side and manifesting as the Universe.

Note: The main postulates only are presented herein with very brief explanation. 

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

Will Durant

Hindu Science

        India’s work in science is both very old and very young : young as an independent and secular pursuit, old as a subsidiary interest of her priests.  Religion being the core of Hindu life, those sciences were cultivated first that contributed to religion : astronomy grew out of the worship of the heavenly bodies, and the observation of their movements aimed to fix the calendar of festival and sacrificial days; grammar and philology developed out of the insistence that every prayer and formula, though couched in a dead language, should be textually and phonetically correct.  As in our Middle Ages, the scientists of India, for better and for worse, were her priests.

Astronomy

        Astronomy was an incidental offspring of astrology, and slowly emancipated itself under Greek influence.  The earliest astronomical treatises, the Siddhantas (ca. 425 B.C.), were based on Greek, science, and Varahamihira, whose compendium was significantly entitled Complete System of Natural Astrology, frankly acknowledged his dependence upon the Greeks.  The greatest of Hindu astronomers and mathematicians, Aryabhatta, discussed in verse such poetic subjects as quadratic equations, sines, and the value of pii ; he explained eclipses, solstices and equinoxes, announced the sphericity of the earth and its diurnal revolution on its axis, and wrote, in daring anticipation of Renaissance science; “The sphere of the stars is stationary, and the earth, by its revolution, produces the daily rising and setting of planets and stars.”  His famous successor, Brahmagupta, systematized the astronomic knowledge of India, but obstructed its development by rejecting Aryabhatta’s theory of the revolution of the earth.  These men and their followers adapted to Hindu usage the Babylonian division of skies into zodiacal constellations; they made a calendar of twelve months, each of thirty days, each of thirty hours, inserting an intercalary month every five years; they calculated with remarkable accuracy the diameter of the moon, the eclipses of the moon and the sun, the position of the poles, and the position and motion of the major stars.  They expounded the theory, though not the law, of gravity when they wrote in the Siddhantas : “The earth, owing to its force of gravity, draws all things to itself.”

Mathematics

        To make these complex calculations the Hindus developed a system of mathematics superior, in everything except geometry, to that of the Greeks.  Among the most vital parts of our Oriental heritage are the “Arabic” numerals and the decimal system, both of which came to us, through the Arabs, from India.  The miscalled “Arabic” numerals are found on the Rock Edicts of Ashoka (256 B.C.), a thousand years before their occurrence in Arabic literature.  Said the great and magnanimous Laplace :

        It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by ten symbols, each receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears to simple to us now that we ignore its true merit.  But its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement the more when we remember that it escapes the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.

        The decimal system was known to Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta long before its appearance in the writings of the Arabs and the Syrians; it was adopted by China from Buddhist missionaries; and Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarazmi, the greatest mathematician of his age (e.ca. 850 A.D.), seems to have introduced it into Baghdad.  The oldest known use of the zero in Asia or Europe is an Arabic document dated 873 A.D., three years sooner than its first known appearance in India; but by general consent the Arabs borrowed this too from India, and the most modest and most valuable of all numerals is one of the subtle gifts of India to mankind.

        Algebra was developed in apparent independence by both the Hindus and the Greeks; but our adoption of its Arabic name (al-jabr, adjustment) indicates that it came to western Europe from the Arabs – i.e., from India – rater than from Greece.  The great Hindu leaders in this field, as in astronomy, were Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara.  The last (b. 1114 A.D.) appears to have invented the radical sign, and many algebraic symbols.    These men created the conception of a negative quantity, without which algebra would have been impossible; they formulated rules for finding permutations and combinations; they found the square root of 2, and solved, in the eighth century A.D., indeterminate equations of the second degree that were unknown to Europe until the days of Euler a thousand years later.  They expressed their science in poetic form, and gave to mathematical problems a grace characteristic of India’s Golden Age.  These two may serve as examples of simpler Hindu algebra :

        Out of a swarm of bees one-fifth part settled on a Kadamba blossom ; one-third on a Silindhra flower; three times the difference of those numbers flew to the bloom of a Kutaja.  One bee, which, remained, hovered about in the air.  Tell me, charming woman, the number of bees … Eight rubies, ten emeralds, and a hundred pearls, which are in thy ear-ring, my beloved, were purchased by me for thee at an equal amount; and the sum of the prices of the three sorts of gems was three less than half a hundred; tell me the price of each, auspicious woman.

        The Hindus were not so successful in geometry.  In the measurement and construction of altars, the priests formulated the Pythagorean theorem (by which the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares of the other sides ) several hundred years before the birth of Christ.  Aryabhatta, probably influenced by the Greeks, found the area of a triangle, a trapezium and a circle, and calculated the value of pii  (the relation of diameter to circumference in a circle) at 3.1416 – figure not equaled in  accuracy until the days of Purbach (1423-61) in Europe.  Bhaskara crudely anticipated the differential calculus.  Aryabhatta drew up a table of sines, and the Surya Siddanta provided a system of trigonometry more advanced than anything known to the Greeks.

Physics

        Two systems of Hindu thought propound physical theories suggestively similar to those of Greece.  Kanada, founder of the Vaisheshika philosophy held that the world was composed of atoms as many in kind as the various elements.  The Jains more nearly approximated to Democritus by teaching that all atoms were of the same kind, producing different effects by diverse modes of combination.  Kanada believed light and heat to be varieties of the same substance; Udayana taught that all heat comes from the sun; and Vachaspati, like Newton, interpreted light as composed of minutes particles emitted by substances and striking the eye.  Musical notes and intervals were analyzed and mathematically calculated in the Hindu treatises on music; and the “Pythagorean Law” was formulated by which the number of vibrations, and therefore the pitch of the note, varies  inversely as the length of the string between the point of attachment and the point of touch.  There is some evidence that Hindu mariners of the first centuries A.D. used a compass made by an iron fish floating in a vessel of oil and pointing north.

Chemistry

        Chemistry developed from the sources – medicine and industry.  Something has been said about the chemical excellence of cast iron in ancient India, and about the high industrial development of Gupta times, when India was looked to, even by Imperial Rome, as the most skilled of the nations in such chemical industries as dyeing, tanning, soap-making, glass and cement.  As early as the second century B.C., Nagarjuna devoted an entire volume to mercury.  By the sixth century, the Hindus were far ahead of Europe in industrial chemistry; they were masters of calcinations, distillation, sublimation, steaming, fixation, the production of light without heat, the mixing of anaesthetic and soporific powders, and the preparation of metallic salts, compounds and alloys.  The tempering of steel was brought in ancient India to a perfection unknown in Europe till our own times; King Porus is said to have selected, as a specially valuable gift for Alexander, not gold or silver, but thirty pounds of steel.  The Moslems took much of this Hindu chemical science and industry to the Near East and Europe; the secret of manufacturing “Damascus” blades, for examples, was taken by the Arabs from the Persians, and by the Persians from India.

Anatomy and Physiology

        Anatomy and physiology, like some aspects of chemistry, were by-products of Hindu medicine. As far back as the sixth century B.C., Hindu physicians described ligaments, sutures, lymphatics, nerve plexus, fascia, adipose and vascular tissues, mucous and synovial membranes, and many more muscles than any modern cadaver is able to show.  The doctors of pre-Christian India shared Aristotle’s mistaken conception of the heart as the seat and organ of consciousness, and supposed that the nerves ascended to and descended from the heart.  But they understood remarkably well the processes of digestion – the different functions of the gastric juices, the conversion of chime into chyle, and of this into blood.  Anticipating Weismann by 2400 years, Atreya (ca. 500 B.C.) held that the parental seed is independent of the parent’s body, and contains in itself, in miniature the whole parental organism.  Examination for virility was recommended as a pre-requisite for marriage in men; and the Code of Manu warned against marrying mates affected with tuberculosis, epilepsy, leprosy, chronic dyspepsia, piles or loquacity.  Birth control in the latest theological fashion was suggested by the Hindu medical schools of 500 B.C. in the theory that during twelve days of the menstrual cycle impregnation is impossible.  Foetal development was described with considerable accuracy; it was noted that the sex of the foetus remains for a time undetermined, and it was claimed that in some cases the sex of the embryo could be influenced by food or drugs. 

Medicine and Surgery

        The records of Hindu medicine begin with the Atharva-veda; here, embedded in a mass of magic and incantations, is a list of diseases with their symptoms.  Medicines arose as an adjunct to magic : the healer studied and used earthly means of cure to help his spiritual formulas; later he relied more and more upon such secular methods, continuing the magic spell, like our bed-side manner, as a psychological aid.  Appended to the Atharva veda is the Ayur-veda ( “The Science of Longevity”).  In this oldest system of Hindu medicine, illness is attributed to disorder in one of the four humours (air, water, phlegm and blood), and treatment is recommended with herbs and charms.  Many of its diagnoses and cures are still used in India, with a success hat is sometimes the envy of Western physicians.  The Rig-veda names over a thousand such herbs, and advocates water as the best cure for most diseases.  Even in Vedic times physicians and surgeons were being differentiated from magic doctors, and were living in houses surrounded by gardens in which they cultivated medicinal plants.

        The great names in Hindu medicine are those of Sushruta in the fifth century before, and Charaka in the second century after, Christ. Sushruta, professor of medicine in the University of Benares, wrote down in Sanskrit a system of diagnosis and therapy whose elements had descended to h im from his teacher Dhanwantari.  His book dealt at length with surgery, obstetrics, diet, bathing, drugs, infant feeding and hygiene, and medical education.  Charaka composed a Samhita (or encyclopaedia) of medicine, which is still used in India, and gave to his followers an almost Hippocratic conception of their calling: “Not for self, not for the fulfillment of any earthly desire of gain, but solely for the good of suffering humanity should you treat your patients, and so excel all.”  Only less illustrious than these are Vagbhata (625 A.D.), who prepared a medical compendium in prose and verse, and Bhaba Misra (1550 A.D.), whose voluminous work on anatomy, physiology and medicine mentioned, a hundred years before Harvey, the circulation of the blood, and prescribed mercury for that novel disease, syphilis, which had recently been brought in by the Portuguese as part of Europe’s heritage to India.

        Sushruta described many surgical operations – cataract, hernia, lithotomy, Caesarian section, etc., - and 121 surgical instruments, including lancers, sounds, forceps, catheters, and rectal and vaginal speculums.  Despite Brahmanical prohibitions, he advocated the dissection of dead bodies as indispensable in the training of surgeons.  He was the first to graft, upon a torn ear, portions of skin taken from another part of the body; and from him and his Hindu successors rhinoplasty – the surgical reconstruction of the nose -  descended into modern medicine.

        “The ancient Hindu,” says Garrison, “performed almost every major operation except ligation of the arteries”.  Limbs were amputated, abdominal sections were performed, fractures were set, hemorrhoids and fistulas were removed.  Sushruta laid down elaborate rules for preparing an operation, and his suggestion that the wound be sterilized by fumigation is one of the earliest known efforts at antiseptic surgery.  Both Sushruta and Charaka mention the use of medicinal liquors to produce insensibility to pain.  In 927 A.D. two surgeons trepanned the skull of a Hindu king, and made him insensitive to the operation by administering a drug called Samohini.

        For the detection of the 1120 diseases that he enumerated, Sushruta recommended diagnosis by inspectin, palpation and auscultation. Taking of the pulse was described in a treatise dating 1300 A.D. Urinalysis was a favourite method of diagnosis;  Tibetan physicians were reputed able to cure any patient without having seen anything more of him than his water.  In the time of Yuan Chwang, Hindu medical treatment began with a seven-day fast; in this interval the patient often recovered; if the illness continued, drugs were at last employed.  Even then drugs were used very sparingly; reliance was placed largely upon diet, baths, enemas, inhalations, urethral and vaginal injections, and blood-lettings by leeches or cups.  Hindu physicians were especially skilled in concocting antidotes for poisons; they still excel European physicians in curing snake-bites.

        Vaccination, unknown to Europe before the eighteenth century, was known in India as early as 500 A.D., if we may judge from a text attributed to Dhanwantari, one of the earliest Hindu physicians: “Take the fluid of the pock on the udder of the cow . . . upon the point of a lancet, and lance with it the arms between the shoulders and elbows until the blood appears; then, mixing the fluid with the blood, the fever of the small-pox will be produced.” Modern European physicians believe that caste separateness was prescribed because of the Brahman belief in invisible agents transmitting disease; many of the laws of sanitation enjoined by Sushruta and “Manu” seem to take for granted what we moderns, who love new words for old things, call the germ theory of disease.  Hypnotism as therapy seems to have originated among the Hindus, who often took their sick to the temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestions or “temple-sleep.” As in Egypt and Greece.  The Englishmen who introduced hypno-therapy into England – Braid, Esdaile and Elliotson – “undoubtedly got their ideas, and some of their experience, from contact with India”.

        The general picture of Indian medicine is one of rapid development in the Vedic and Buddhist periods, followed by centuries of slow and cautious improvement.  How much Atreya, Dhanwantari and Sushruta owed to Greece, and how much Greece owed to them, we do not know. In the time of Alexander, says Garrison, “Hindu physicians and surgeons enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for superiod knowledge andskill,” and even Aristotle is believed by some students to have been indebted to them.  So too with the Persians and the Arabs; it is difficult to say how much Indian medicine owed to the physicians of Baghdad, and through them to the heritage of Babylonian medicine in the Near East; on the one hand certain remedies, like opium and mercury, and some modes of diagnosis, like feeling the pulse, appear to have entered India from Persia; on the other we find Persians and Arabs translating into their languages, in the eighth century A.D., the thousand-year-old compendia of Sushruta and Charaka.  The great Caliph Haroun-al-Rashid accepted the pre-eminence of Indian medicine and scholarship, and imported Hindu physicians to organize hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad.  Lord Ampthill concludes that medieval and modern Europe owes its system of medicine directly to the Arabs, and through them to India.  Probably this noblest and most uncertain of the sciences had an approximately equal antiquity, and developed in contemporary contact and mutual influence, in Sumeria, Egypt and India.

                                        From : Our oriental Heritage. 

AKBAR’S ADMINISTRATION

Father Anthony Monserrate of the Society of Jesus had distinguished himself during a Plague epidemic in Lisbon. On arrival in India in 1569 he was deputed by the Province of Goa as the historian to Akbar’s Court. His principal work Mongalicae Legationis Commentarius gives a valuable account of Akbar’s Court and his campaign.

The King exacts enormous sums of money in tribute from the provinces of his empire which is wonderfully rich both for cultivation and pasture, and had a great trade both in exports and imports. He also derives much revenue from the hoarded fortunes of the great nobles, which by law and custom go to the King on the death of the owner. He also trades eagerly exploiting very possible source of profits. He allows no bankers and this enormous banking business brings the King great profit.

There is a law that no horse can be sold without the King’s knowledge. This ensures him the best of the horses. The seller is amply compensated.

Akbar is sparing and tenacious of his wealth and has become the richest oriental king for at least 200 years. Four times in a year his enormous wealth is publicly displayed and money paid out to those entitled.   

JUSTICE: - The King’s severity towards errors and misdemeanors is remarkably. The King is excitable but cools down soon. All the capital cases and important civil cases come before him. The guilty are not punished until he orders the third time.

A Song for a reprieve: During the campaign against the King of Chabulum twelve deserters to the enemy were captured in an ambush and brought to the King. Some were kept in custody for a more thorough investigation and some ordered to be executed. One of these latter begged for a chance to save him from the gibbet. He offered to sing before the King demonstrating his marvelous power of the art, as he put it . To the merriment of the King he sang atrociously. Smartly, she prisoner blamed damage to his vocal chords suffered during his being brought to the court for his performance. The amused King not only pardoned this wretch but the others too.  

ASHOKA : THE PHILOSOPHER KING

 A.L.Basham (1914-1986)

A noted historian and writer associated with the School of Oriental and African studies London had guided a host of Indian historians including Romila Thapar.

The keynote of Ashoka’s reform was humanity in internal administration and the abandonment of aggressive war. In place of a policy of territorial expansion he substituted conquest by Righteousness. He claims to have won many victories by this method including the five Hellenic Kings whose names are found in an extract of Ahoka’s. He believed that by setting an example of enlightened government he might convince is neighbours of his new policy and gain moral leadership of the whole civilized world. By no means he gave up his imperialist ambitions, but only modified them in accordance with the humane ethics of Buddhism.

In domestic affrays the new policy was felt in the relaxation of the stern government of the earlier times. Ashoka declared that all men were his children, and more than once reproved his local governors for their failure to apply this precept thoroughly. He strongly opposed the doctrine of Ahimsa, then rapidly spreading among all peoples, banned animal sacrifices and regulated the slaughter of animals, completely forbidding the killing of certain species. He took pride in the fact that he had substituted pilgrimage to holy places of Buddhism for hunting expeditions, the traditional sports of kings. He proclaimed that he had reduced consumption of meat in the palace to negligible proportions. Thus Ashoka’s encouragement for partly responsible for growth of vegetarianism in India.

He made no mention of reducing the army, and if under the influence of Buddhism he had done so, he would surely have taken pride in the fact. Despite his remorse at the conquest of Kalinga he was too much of a realist to restore it to its original rulers, and continued to govern it as an integral part of his empire.

To ensure effecting his reforms he appointed ‘Officers of Righteousness’  who, taking their instructions direct from the centre, were ordered to investigate the affairs of all the provinces, encourage good relations between man and man, and to ensure the local officials carried out the; new policy. Ashoka’s reforms tended to centralization  than devolution.

A REAL MAN

Inscriptions show that he was no metaphysician, and indeed he probably had little interest in the finer points of Buddhism. Although he never speaks of ‘nirvana’, he speaks frequently of heaven; and he seems to have held the belief that as a result of the growth of morality through his reforms, the gods had manifested themselves on earth, a phenomenon that had not occurred for many years previously. In facts the Dharma officially propagated by him was not Buddhism at all but a system of moral tenets consistent with most of the sects of the Empire and calculated to lead to peace and fellowship in this world and heaven in the next. His metaphysical presuppositions were definitely not Buddhist but were those traditional in India at that time. A streak of Puritanism of the Emperor can be discerned from the edict banning rowdy gatherings and allowing religious gatherings only.

To the modern student Ashoka towers above other kings of ancient India if only for the reason his personality can be discerned with any degree of certainty. But his policy being subject to various judgments even he is not such a clear figure. Critics have accused him of ruling the Mauryan Empire either by antagonizing the Brahmins or sapping the martial classes. We can not accept either of these charges.

In she words of a 19^th Century authority the Ashoka of Buddhist Legends was ‘half monster, half idiot’, his humanity and practical benevolence overlaid by the accretion of monkish legends of later centuries: but the king of the rock and pillar inscriptions comes alive as a real man, and one ahead of his times. He was by no means an other-worldly dreamer, but every inch a king, a little naïve, often rather self-righteous and pompous, but indefatigable, strong-willed and imperious.            

A French traveler in Mughal india

 FRANCOIS BERNIER (1620-1688)

A French traveler he was physician to Aurangazeb for eight years. These are some summarized extracts from his

Travels in the Moghul Empire.

In this vast country many areas are extremely fertile. For instance Bengal surpasses Egypt not only in rice and corn but other necessities of life but of innumerable articles of commerce such as silks, cotton and Indigo. In many parts of the country artisans, despite a natural indolence, perforce manufacture carpets, brocades, embroideries, gold and silver clothes and various silk and cotton goods for domestic use or export.

“You will be anxious to learn” he says “if Delhi and Agra rival Paris in beauty, extent and number of inhabitants. In treating beauty of town one has to consider climate. What is useful and proper in Amsterdam, London or Paris would be entirely out of place in Delhi. The last named is situated on the banks of the Gemna. The fortifications are incomplete. The citadel houses the seraglio. It is separated from the river by a huge stretch of sand where combats of the elephants are exhibited. The large garden is filled all the time with flowers and greenery and is truly beautiful. The garden adjoins the great royal square which faces the gates of the Fortress on one side and culmination of two main streets on the other side. The Rajas are housed in this square and take turns to mount guard. The guard within the Fortress is mounted by the Omrahs and Mansebdars.

The great Delhi Bazaar is held in the Royal Square. Soothsayers can be found here besides the variety of things of common purchase. There was one pitiful half-caste Goan refuge of Portuguese extract among the soothsayers. He had only a mariner’s compass and old Romish prayer books for his assistance!

The principal streets of the city run straight, the one leading to the Lahor gate being much longer. They are arcaded as in Place Royale. Merchants too find their space along these streets. There are also artisans. There are five other streets not as handsome as the principal ones but resembling them in every other respect. Amidst these streets are the habitations of the Mansebdars, Omrahs, officers of justice, rich merchants and others. Very few house are built entirely of brick or stone and several are made only clay and straw, yet they are airy commodious and pleasant. There are also houses thatched with straw habited by lesser mortals due to which Delhi I subject to frequent conflagrations.

Good houses are expected to be situated in the middle of a large flower garden and have large divan-apartments raised to man-height and exposed to the four winds so that coolness can be felt in any quarter.       

However the brilliant appearance of shops that contributes to the beauty of European towns is lacking in Delhi. The streets of S.Denis are unparalleled in any part of Asia.

The Fruit market makes some show. They are well equipped with dry fruit from Persia, Balk, Bokara and Samarkhand. Almonds, pistachios, raisins, prunes, apricots, excellent grapes, melons and mangos are some of the produce found here.  Bread is of indifferent quality.

Kashmir.

The numberless streams which issue from the mountains maintain the valley and the hillocks in most delightful verdure. The whole kingdom wears the appearance of a delightful garden. Meadows and vineyards, fields of rice, wheat, hemp, saffron, many sorts of vegetables with intermingled stretches of trenches, rivulets, canals vary the enchanting scene. The whole ground is enameled with European flowers and plants, and covered with apples, plums, apricots and walnuts trees, all bearing fruit in abundance. There are also melons, beets, radishes, potherbs and others with which we are unacquainted.

The Capital bears the same name. It is built on the banks of a freshwater lake whose circumference is five leagues. The houses, mostly wood, are well built. At one end of the town is an isolated hill called ‘Haryperbet’ or the Verdant Mountain. Opposite this is another hill which houses a mosque named the throne of Solomon held to be raised by the legendary King when he visited Kashmir. However there is reason to believe it was a Temple.

The Lake is full of islands which are so many pleasure grounds. In general they are surrounded by the large-leafed Aspen. These are  healthful.

The most beautiful of these gardens is that belonging to the King called the Shalimar Gardens. The entrance from the Lake is through a spacious canal bordered with green turf and running between poplars. It leads to a large summerhouse in the middle of the garden. A second canal better than the first leads to another summerhouse at the end of the garden. The summerhouses are in the form of a dome and encircled by a gallery into which four doors open.

On Jews.

Despite paucity of Jews there are many signs of Judaism. The inhabitants of frontier villages have the unmistakable countenance and manner that signals to the traveler their distinctness. A second sign is the prevalence of the name Mousa which means Moses. A third is the common tradition that Solomon had visited this country. A fourth is the belief that Moses had visited Kashmir and died in the city. A fifth is the mosque named the temple of Solomon already described. I am disposed to think that Jews had taken up residence here and had after a lapse of customs and time had converted to the Mohammedan faith.

I am charmed with Kashmir. In truth, it has surpassed in beauty all the warm imagination of mine.

Indian Medicine.

As the Gentiles never open up bodies they have no knowledge of Anatomy. Yet they affirm as to the number of veins in the human body. On physic they have a number of books which are more on recipes. Their practice differs essentially from ours. The Mohammedans too abstain from meat broth during sickness. The Gentiles believe in bleeding on extraordinary occasions only whilst the Moghuls resort to it oftener.

Astronomy and Geography.

Bernier would have it that Indian astronomers though not equal to their European counterparts yet predict eclipses with great accuracy. He observes the Indian deification of astronomical bodies. He ridicules the Indian belief of obscuration of the Sun by a demon. In Geography he says the Gentiles are uninstructed. He ridicules the beliefs of the Hindus he details. However he acknowledges the antiquity of the religion of Indians and the Sanskrit language and says that if the renowned sciences of the ancient Brahmanas of the Indies had consisted of all the extravagant follies he had detailed he would have held that mankind had been deceived in their exalted opinion of their wisdom

Bernier had witnessed two solar eclipses. The first one in France had exposed the childlike credulity of the people. The second in India was marked by ‘the ridiculous errors and strange superstitions of the Indians’. The Muslim Emperor however permits ritual ablutions not wishing or daring to disturb the Gentiles.  

Jagannath.

In the town of Jagannath situated on the Gulf of Bengal an annual festival is held in which an incredible concourse of people collect. A superb wooden machine with many grotesque figures is constructed set on fourteen or sixteen wheels to carry the idol of Jagannath by fifty or sixty people. The festival lasts eight or nine days. Public women throw their bodies in indecent postures which even the Brahmanas deem quite consistent.

Fakirs And Saints.

Several Fakirs undertake long journeys naked and laden with heavy iron chains. Some stand upright for days altogether with their feet swelling up to the size of their thighs. One sets of people called Jaguis torture themselves into postures to such an extent they can not be nourished by their novices. No fury in infernal regions can be conceived more horrible than these with their naked and black skin, long hair, spindle arms, long-twisted nails and fixed in very odd positions.

There are certain other Fakirs who are continually perambulating the country and affect to be possessed of most important secrets. When two such Fakirs meet and can be excited to emulation they can perform many acts of sorcery excelling Simon Magus.

Suttee And Other Customs.

The Mohammedans are doing their utmost to suppress this barbarous custom of Suttee whence a wife burns herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. The Law enjoins that permission has to be sought of the Governor who invariably never grants it until he is convinced that she is adamant. However in the territories of the Rajas where no Mohammedan Governors are appointed the custom prevails sizably.

Cremation is common. Some partially broil with stubble and then precipitate them into river from a high bank. These are prey to crows, fish and crocodile.

Sick are sometimes immersed in water in slow degrees and when expiry is imminent left to drown with the accompanists crying out with great vehemence and clapping their hands. The absurd notion that the person is thus washed of all impurities contracted during lifetime is seriously defended by men of the highest reputation for learning.   

BUDDHISM

 Monier Williams (1819 – 1899)

        Monier was the second Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the Oxford University. He taught Asian languages and has authored a Sanskrit Dictionary.

Sir Edwin Arnold comments on this epochal Prince Extraordinary who founded an extant major religion thus:

     “All things spoke peace and plenty; and the Prince

              Saw and rejoiced, but looking deep, he saw

              The thorns which grow on the Rose of Life”

About 555 years before the commencement of the Christian era, a great stir seems to have taken place in Indo-Aryan, as in Grecian minds, and indeed in thinking minds everywhere throughout the then civilized world. Thus when Buddha rose in India, Greece had her thinkers in Pythagoras, Persia in Zoroaster, and China in Confucius.  Men began to ask themselves earnestly such questions as – what am I? Whence have I come? Whither am I going? How can I explain my consciousness of personal existence? What is the relationship between my material and immaterial nature? What is this world in which I find myself? Did a wise, good and all powerful being creature it out of nothing? Or did it evolve itself out of an eternal germ? Or did it come together by the combination of eternal atoms? If created by a Being of infinite wisdom, how can I account for the inequalities of condition in it – good and evil, happiness and misery? Has the Creator form, or is he formless? Has he any qualities or none?

Certainly in India no satisfactory solution of questions such as these was likely to be obtained from the prayers and hymns of the ancient Indo-Aryan poets, which, though called Veda or ‘knowledge’ by the Brahmans, did not even profess to furnish any real knowledge on these points, but merely gave expression to the first gropings of the human mind, searching for truth by the uncertain light of natural phenomena.

Nor did the ritualistic Brahmanas contribute anything to the elucidation of such topics. They merely encouraged the growth of superstitious belief in the efficacy of sacrifices and fostered the increasing dependence of the multitude on a mediatorial caste of priests, supposed to be qualified to stand between them and an angry god. Still these momentous questions pressed for a solution, and the minds of men finding no rest in mere traditional revelation and no satisfaction in mere external rites turned inwards, each thinker endeavoring to think out the great problems of life for himself by the aid of his own reason. Hence were composed those vague mystical rationalistic speculations failed Upanishads. Be it remembered that these treatises were not regarded as antagonistic to revelation, but rather as completory of it. They were held to be an integral portion of the Veda or true knowledge; and even more – they so rose in the estimation of thoughtful persons, that they ended by taking rank as its most important portion, its grandest and noblest utterance, the apex to which all preparations tended. Probably the simple fact was, that as it was found impossible to stem the progress of free inquiry, the Brahmans with true wisdom, determined on making rationalistic speculation their own, and dignifying its first development in the Upanishads with the title of Veda. Probably too, some of their number (like Javali) became themselves infected with the spirit of skepticism, and were not to be restrained from prosecuting free philosophic investigations for themselves.

Some particulars in the life of the great Buddha, are known with tolerable certainty. He is described as he son of a King, Suddhodhana, who reigned in Kapilavastu, the capital of a country at the foot of the mountains of Nepal. He was therefore a prince of the Kshatriya or military caste, which of itself disqualified him in the eyes of the Brahmans from settling up as a religious teacher. His proper family or tribal name was Sakya, and that of his race or clan Gautama or Gotama; for it is well known that this great reformer never arrogated himself an exclusive right to the title ‘Buddha’, ‘enlightened’ or clamed any divine honors or even any special reverence. He is said to have entered on his reforming mission in the district of Magadha or Behar about the year 588 B.C., but he taught that other philosophers (Buddhas) and even numerous Buddhas – that is, perfectly enlightened men – had existed in previous periods of the world. He claimed to be nothing but an example of that perfection in knowledge to which any man might attain by the exercise of abstract meditation, self-control, and bodily mortification. Gentle, however, and unassuming as the great reforming acetic he was, he aimed at the grandest practical results. He stood forth as the deliverer of a priest-ridden, caste-ridden nation, - the courageous reformer and innovator who dared to attempt what doubtless others had long felt was necessary, namely, the breaking down of an intolerable ecclesiastical monopoly by proclaiming absolute free trade in religious opinions and the abolition of all caste privileges.         

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA

Taksha-sila and Nalanda

 E.B.HAVELL (1861-1934)

         

The great monasteries, described by Hiuen Tsang were Buddhist, but they were real universities of learning and non-sectarian, so far that in some cases followers of the main divisions – the Hinayana and Mahayana – dwelt together in the same monastery. Some were famous for particular sciences, like Taksha-sila for its school of Medicine, and Ujjain for astronomy. Nalanda, where Hieun Tsang stayed some years, was the Oxford of Mahayana Buddhism; the rival of Benares, which was the strong hold of orthodox of Brahmanical learning. Nevertheless, it was entirely eclectic in its teaching for the eighteen Hinayana sects were represented there, and among the different recognized branches of learning were included the Vedas, medicine, and mathematics. The resident monks took precedence according to the range of their study rather than their excellence in one particular branch. Among ten thousand within and without the walls, one thousand were accounted proficient in ten works upon the Sutras and Sastras; five hundred had graduated in thirty; ten only, including Hieun Tsang himself, in fifty while the venerable Abbot, Silabhadra, was reputed master of every work which had any bearing upon the knowledge of the Right Law.

The wandering bhikkus had carried reports of the Chinese pilgrim’s great learning from monastery to monastery throughout Magadha, so that on approaching Nalanda, he was met by a deputation sent by the Abbot, and was accompanied to the gates of the monastery by an imposing escort carrying banners and State umbrellas and burning incense. He was garlanded and ceremoniously invited to be a guest of the monastery and then conducted to the presence of the Abbot, the venerable Shilabhadra, “the Treasure of the Right Law”, who received him with the utmost kindness and assigned to him sumptuous quarters and an ample supply of fruits and other provisions, including a special kind of rice of very large grain and fine flavour which was cultivated only in Magadha and reserved exclusively for the cuisine of the royalty and monks of great distinction who were accorded royal honours.

Nature, The seat of learning

The monastery, says Hieun Tsang, had been originally a mango orchard – no doubt with a garden mansion attached to it – belonging to a rich landowner, which had been purchased for a large sum by five hundred merchants who were disciples of Buddha, and presented to the Master. The Buddha himself had lived there for three months preaching to his merchant disciples, many of whom had thus obtained the fruit of the Bodhi Tree. Five successive kings had added to its buildings and endowments, so that now it was the largest and richest of all the monasteries of India. The last of the royal benefactors had enclosed all the different buildings by a high wall.

Hieun Tsang, in flowery language, describes the high towers “piercing the mists of the morning”. From the windows of which one could watch the glowing sunset and meditate on the serene beauty of the moonlight. The numerous pillared halls and pavilions were richly carved and painted, filled with precious shrines and glowing with colour and brilliant jeweled adornment. In the gardens, the thick groves of mango trees afforded a grateful shade, while the kanaka trees (Butea frandosa) with their festoons of brilliant red flowers, the fountains and serpentine canals of canal water filled with blue lotuses, were more beautiful than he had seen anywhere. The monasteries of India, he said, could be counted in thousands, but none equaled Nalanda in the grandeur, richness and loftiness of its construction. 

The discipline maintained by the monks was so admirable that there was no record of any infringement of the rules in the seven hundred years since the abbey had been founded: the brethren of Nalanda were looked up to by all India both for their conduct and learning. There the days were all to short for study and discussion: “day and night they admonished each other, juniors and seniors mutually helping to perfection”. The revenue of a hundred villages had been assigned by the State for the endowment of the abbey, so that the monks and their disciples were well provided with the necessities of life, and the instruction given was gratuitous. Many foreign students came there, attracted by the fame of the university and by the prestige they could win by using the name in their own country, but the standard of learning was so high that few succeeded in gaming admittance to the advanced debating schools.

JAINISM

 A.L.Basham

JAINISM, like Buddhism, is fundamentally atheistic in that, while not denying the existence of the gods, it refuses them any important part in the universal scheme. The world for the Jaina, is not created, maintained or destroyed by a personal deity, but functions only according to universal law.

The universe is eternal. Its existence is divided into an infinite number of cycles, each consisting of a period of improvement (utsarpini), and one of decline (avasarpini) Each period is to all intents and purposes like the last, containing twenty-four Tirthankaras, twelve Universal Emperors (Cakravartins), both classes being  included in the total of sixty-three Great Men (Salakapurusas), who live at  regular intervals in the cycle. At the peak period men are of enormous size and reach a tremendous age. They have no need of laws of property, for wishing trees (Kalpa-vrksa) give them all they need for the asking. At present the world is rapidly declining. The last Tirthankara of this age has passed to final Nirvana, and gradually true religion will be lost – Mahavira in his omniscience even gave his followers the name and address of the last Jaina of this aeon. The process of decline will continue for 40,000 years. Unlike the cosmology of the Buddhists and Hindus, that of the Jainas involves no cataclysms of universal destruction.

              

The universe functions through the interaction of living souls (Jivas, literally “lives”) and five categories of non-living entities (ajiva), “ether “ (akasa), the means or condition of movement (dharma), the means or condition of  rest (adharma), time  (kala) and matter (pudgala). Souls are not only the property of animal, and plant life, but also of entities such as stones, rocks, running water, and many other natural objects not looked on as living by other sects.

The soul is naturally bright, all-knowing and blissful. There are an infinite number of souls in the universe, all fundamentally equal, but differing owing to the adherence of matter in a fine atomic form. This subtle matter, quite invisible to the human eye, is karma, the immaterial entity of the other systems interpreted materialistically. The naturally bright soul becomes dulled and clouded over by karmic matter and thus acquires first a spiritual and then a material body. Karma adheres to the soul as result of activity. Any and every activity induces Karma of some kind. The Karma already acquired leads to the acquisition of further Karma, and thus the cycle of transmigration continues indefinitely.

On these premises transmigration can only be escaped by dispelling the Karma already adhering to the soul and by ensuring that no more is acquired. The annihilation (nirjara) comes about through penance, and the prevention (samvara) of the influx (asrava) fixation (bandha) of Karma in the soul is ensured by carefully disciplined conduct, as a result of which it does not enter in dangerous quantities and is dispersed immediately. When the soul has finally set itself free it rises at once above the highest heaven to the top of the universe, where it remains in inactive omniscient bliss through all eternity. This, for the Jainas, is Nirvana.

Though Jain philosophers developed their doctrines, and evolved a theory of epistemology of great subtlety and a remarkable view of space and time suggesting the world picture of relativity physics, their fundamental teachings remained essentially un-altered. Mahavira and twenty-three other Tirthankaras were adorned in the some way as the Buddha and the Hindu gods, But Jainism never compromised in its atheism, and there was no development in this sect comparable to the Great: Vehicle in Buddhism. Jainism has survived for over 2,000 years on the basis of these austere teachings alone.

Full salvation is not possible to the layman. In this Jainism differs from Buddhism and Hinduism, which concede it in exceptional cases. To attain Nirvana a man must abandon all trammels, including his cloths. Only by a long course of fasting, self –mortification, study and meditation can be rid himself of Karma, and only by the most rigorous discipline can he prevent fresh Karma from clinging to his soul. Hence a monastic life is essential for salvation.      

From Travernier’s Travelogue

JEAN BAPTISTE TRAVERNIER (1605-1689)

A famous French traveler his narration on India also contains interesting incidents showing the character of the people.

Conveyance and manner of travel: Everything is carried by oxen or carriage as country is sufficiently level. All the territory of the Great Mogul is well cultivated; the fields are enclosed by good ditches. This makes it so inconvenient for travelers. (The long caravans block the narrow roads). Four tribes called Manaris transport provisions. The dress of the women is simple bound five or six times like a petticoat from the waist downwards. The Men load their animals in the morning. Women fold up the tents. The priests following them set up idols in the camping sites loaded on an ox assigned for the purpose.

Those who can afford use a palankeen in which they travel very comfortably. It is a long bed with rails all around. A bow supports the cover of the palankeen. Satin screens shield the occupant from heat.

        Men of honour take with them armed men.

Because of the great heat of India travelers who are not accustomed to it travel by night and rest by day.

Articles of trade in modern India

Silks: Bengal furnishes the Silks a third of which the Dutch took for themselves or Holland. Another third were taken by the merchants of Tartary and the whole Mogul Empire. The rest was women into fabrics in Gujarat. Carpets and patoles, which are soft silk decorated with flowers of different colours, satins with bands of gold and silver are also made here.

Cotton: painted cotton clothes are made in the Kingdom of Golkanda. Cotton from Agra, Lathore, and Baroda are bleached in Renonsari and Broach for the lime juice necessary is easily sourced from the quantity of lemons in she neighbourhood.

Indigo: It is cultivated in many parts of the empire. The plant is sown after the rains and resembles hemp before preparation. Great care is taken to prevent contamination from the characteristic blue of the product. The plant is thrown into a tank of lime and stirred up every day until reduced to greasy earth. The water is drained off and the solid residue is cut up for export to Europe and local use.

Saltpeter: It comes from Agra and Patna. The refined product is sent to Hughly. The Dutch tried to set up boilers for bleaching. The locals put up resistance by with holding whey.

Spices: Cardamom is the best of spice but very scarce. It grows in Bijapur an the Mogul Kingdom. It is used only in Asia and the tables of the nobles. Ginger comes in large quantities from Ahmedabad. Pepper comes into two sizes, the larger one, chiefly from Malabar, being the preferred one for exports.

Transparent Muslins: Berhampore is famed for this product which is exported to Persia, Turkey, Poland, Arabia, Cairo and other places. Women use it for veils and scarves. They are also used as bed covers and handkerchiefs.

Incidents Indicative Of Character.

In Patna when the writer was with a venerable noble, a very pretty woman requested for permission to burn herself with the body of husband. She assured him that she does not fear fire. The noble wanted nothing to do with the matter. The people around him wanted to test her capacity to endure fire by bringing a touch which she endured unflinchingly. The Governor was only horrified and commanded that she be removed from his presence.

In another instance a Brahmin demanded a large amount of money and cloth. On being refused he climbed up a tree declaring that he would remain there for thirty days fasting until his demands were met. On the thirty first day fearing that he may die and a course would be upon them they relented.

Religion of the Gentiles Idolators: For one Mussalman there are five or six Gentiles. That they have submitted to the yoke of the less numerical is astonishing. This is because there is no union among them.

There are four principal castes. The Brahmanas derive from the ancient philosophers of India. It is from among them that priests and ministers of the law are selected. The majority among them, however, are superstitious. The second caste is of the Rajputs or Khetris. Their disunion has made them tributaries to the Moghul. Many are however are in the service of the King and are aptly compensated. The latter have quit their arms for merchandise.

The third caste is that of the Banyas. Some are shroffs i.e. money changers are bankers and the rest are brokers. Trade is inculcated in their blood. The fourth are Charados or Soudra. They too are fighters with this difference from the Rajputs that they are foot soldiers. The rest are called Pauzecour. They occupy themselves with the mechanical art. Among other special castes there are those who are engaged in cleaning in houses called Hallal-Khor. They are the bottom of the society and the only people who feed pigs and use stem for food.

TRAVERNIER also describes some incidents of interest. A peasant couple wee crossing a river putting their child in a pot which was carried away in the waters. A snake entered this pot. This pot was retrieved by another couple with a child which was bitten fatally by the snake. They felt that they had a providential claim to this child in the pot. The original parents came to know and the dispute between natural parents and finders reached the Emperor who decreed that this child be restored to its natural parents.

In another instance a barren woman conceived with the aid of a fish being fed to her. Her husband died. The kin laid claim to the estate, but were told by the woman to await her child. Unwilling to code their claim they cast doubts on the legitimacy of the child citing her barrenness. As the child’s breath smelled fish she Governor ruled in favor of the woman. The kin went to Agra in appeal to the Emperor. The test was repeated and the kin had to relinquish their claim.

Another amusing tale is that of a merchant who had the reputation of having never told a lie. When the Governor of Ahmedabad reported this to the Emperor at Agra the latter desired to see the person who despite his reluctance to undertake the journey, being over seventy, yet did present himself for an audience. Asked his name he simply said that he was the one who never lied. Asked of his father he said he knew not, impressed with his frankness the Emperor bestowed huge gifts on him.

On Exposure of Children and other customs: An evil custom is practiced in Bengal of leaving n infant refusing feed in a sling tied across a tree in forest leading to crows rendering the child blind on occasions. This is repeated twice over if the infant persists in refusal to suckle. On sustained such behavior in the belief that it is a demon it is cast in the Ganges. Humane Dutch and Portuguese finding such slings assume patronage of these blighted children.

TRAVERNIER then described in great detail the practice along coast of Coramondel observed when women are going to be burnt with the bodies of their husbands. In the greatest part such women are buried in pits deeper then full height in sandy spots. Sand is thrown and leveled by friends are relatives jumping on the ground.

On the tombs to be found in AGRA, TRAVERNIER comments that there are some which are very beautiful, and every enuch in the Emperor’s harem is ambrnitious to have as magnificent a tomb built for himself. When they have amassed large sums they earnestly desire to go to Mecca, and take with them rich presents; but the Great Mogul, who does not wish the money to leave his country seldom gants the permission, and consequently, not knowing what to do with their wealth, they expend a greater part of it in these buying-places, and thus leave some memorial.

       

 A. LESLIE WILLSON (1923 – 2007) ON INDIA

From Greek sources something was known of India but little of its literature. To the Greeks India was strange in its inexplicable philosophical and religious affinities with the Western world and peculiar customs. 17^th Century novels offered spurious Indic backgrounds although there were a host of travelers after the Portuguese and the Dutch. The countryside was fertile and pleasant to the extent it was likened to the Garden of Eden. The Brahmins were privileged to read Holy Books, their rites recalling a very old system. The body of legend was a token of an ancient society. We have the accounts of Bernier – who functioned as physician to Aurangazeb in the seventeenth century. The closing decades of the eighteenth century saw a spurt of travelogues and treatises on India.  We mention Reinhold Forster: (1729 – 1798), Jean Bernoulli (1744 – 1807). These reported of a civilized and cultured race. That India was the source of all wisdom had prevailed for centuries.

 John Z. Holwell (1711 – 1798) who had delved into many Sanskrit works discerned the influence of the Indic culture on Europe. Holwell terms Hindus spoiled, crafty, superstitious, quarrelsome and malicious just as any other people if not worse. This harsh view of Indians should be set against his experience of the Black Hole of Calcutta.

 Another statement comes from Alexander Dow (d.1779) who translated Firistah’s History of Hindustan in the preface of which he makes a somewhat understatement that Brahmins in ancient times possessed some reputation for knowledge. The French translator of the same work makes a more comprehensive remark that the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks and probably the Chinese originally received their wisdom from Hindustan. The same idea was advanced by in 1975 by Voltaire (1694 – 1778) in a letter to Jean Sylvain in which he said that astronomy, astrology and memtam-psychosis had come to the West from the Ganges. The latter despite his belief that all these people had descended from an ancestral race had held that the wisdom of India was sage and sublime. William Macintosh in 1782 observed “All history points to India as the mother of science and art. They were so renowned that the philosophers of Greece did not disdain to travel thereto for their improvement”. He is all praise or all things Indian He acclaims the graceful gait of Indians. He places Hindoos superior to any people westward of them in politeness and address, in grace of deportment and speech. He comments on the higher castes that their ease and freedom is reserved, modest and respectful. He says that an Indian is polite because he respects you.   

Pierre de Sonnerat (1749 – 1814) had made several trips to East Indies and India. In his account he reinforces the view that many had come to India to borrow Hindu wisdom and that Pythagoras had left Greece to study under the Brahmins who were than regarded as ‘the most enlightened of men’. Sonnerat comments on the joyous and gay nature of the people and how they love games, spectacles and music. He attributes their gentle nature to abstinence from meat and high spices.

Among the German translators Christian Dohm (1751 – 1820) was the first to think of India as the cradle of humanity. He elucidates in detail that the gifts of nature were so plentiful unlike in less mild regions, India had the leisure to nourish human culture. He believed that he was the first to posit that India may be the birthplace of civilization and states that the chief source for his remarks is Holwell. The contention was that the geographical location and bountiful gifts of nature had affected the way of life and mode of thinking. This theory had been implied earlier by Voltaire who states in 1756 that mankind had gathered as a matter of course in its delightful climate.

Dohm conjectures that the heat of the climate shriveled up all violent dissolute passions and led to self-reflection. Sonnerat also concurs and remarks that the first sparks of reason burnt in these beneficial climes because intellectual faculties do not develop where physical needs are not quelled. For Sonnerat the similarity of mythology and religious dogmas in all Asiatic peoples is proof that all Eastern religions had a common source in India.

The translator of the French edition of Dow says the philosophical wisdom one finds in the sastras, the purity of their dogmas concerning the unity, the attributes and the providence of God, concerning the immateriality and immortality of the soul, the liberty of man, the punishments and the requitals to come, the most important questions of theology and metaphysics which one finds discussed there, all of this presupposes a very advanced stage of society, reason perfected by long experience, an immense progress in the march of human spirit, and consequently a preceding antiquity of a prodigious length. Dow himself says “the author has great reasons to believe that the Hindus carry their authentic history farther back into antiquity than any other nation now existing”. Both Ives and Dow comment on the moral conduct of Indians having suffered deleterious effects traceable to the influx of Europeans.

 Sonnerat believes that all people go to a fabulous time in their past while the Hindus have their origin in the most distant antiquity. He also comments on their joy and gaiety, enjoyment of games, dancing, spectacles and music.

A Carmelite Monk Paulinus a Saneto Bartholomew (1748 – 1806) who was among the earliest to study Indian and Sanskrit contrasts Indian culture with the Arabians whom he finds clumsy, coarse and irrational despites being loyal ‘but seldom take regard to reason and propriety’. Paulinus also comments on the Indian talent for acquiring linguistic skills. Paulinus also comments that the Muslims started the process of despoiling the happy ethos of these happy lands which the Europeans finished ‘bringing the refuse of all nations as soldiers’ as he puts it.       

Robertson, in his disquisition on India predicating on the antiquity of Indian commerce finds it evidence of a highly civilized society. He finds proof of this in the vast kingdoms encountered by the Greeks of Alexander’s forces. The author concludes that the conception of India as the very source of civilization, as the nation where human culture first was bred, contributed to a great measure to the formation of the Romantic mystical image of India.

MUSICAL YOGA

 Will Durant

Music in India has a history of at least three thousand years. The Vedic hymns, like all Hindu poetry, were written to be sung; poetry and song, music and dance, wee made one art in the ancient ritual. The Hindu dance, which to the beam in the Occidental eye, seems as voluptuous and obscene as Western dancing seems to the Hindus, has been through the greater part of Hindu history, a form of religious worship, a display of beauty in motion and rhythm for the; honour and edification of the gods; only in modern times have the devadasis emerged from the temples in great number to entertain the secular and profane. To the Hindu these dances were no mere display of the flesh; they were in one aspect, an imitation of the rhythms and processes of the universe. Shiva himself was the god of dance, and the dance of Shiva symbolized the very movement of the world.   

Musicians, singers and dancers, like all artists in India, belonged to the lowest castes. The Brahman may like to sing in private, and accompany himself on a vina or another stringed instrument; he might teach others to play, or sing, or dance; but he would never think of playing for hire, or of putting an instrument to his mouth. Public concerts were until recently, a rarity in India; secular music was either the spontaneous singing or thrumming of the people, or lit was performed, like the chamber music of Europe, before small gatherings in aristocratic homes. Akbar, himself skilled in music, had many musicians at his court; one of his singers, Tansen, became popular and wealthy, and died of drink at the age of thirty-four. There were no amateurs, there were only professionals; music was not taught as a social accomplishment, and children were not beaten into Beethovens. The function of the public was not to play poorly, but to listen well.  

Listening – an Art

For listening to music in India, is itself an art, and requires long training of ear and soul. The words may be no more intelligible to the Westerner than the words of the operas which he feels it his class duty to enjoy; they range, as everywhere about the two subjects of religion and love; but the words are of little movement in Hindu music, and the singer, as in our most advanced literature, often replaces them with meaningless syllables. The music is written in scale more subtle and minute than ours. To our scale of twelve tones it adds ten “microtones”, making a scale of twenty-two quarter tones in all. Hindu music may be written in a notation composed of Sanskrit letters; usually it is neither written nor read, but it is passed down ‘by ear’ from generation to generation, or from composer to learner. It is not separated into bars, but glides in continuous legato which frustrates a listener accustomed to regular emphases or beats. It has no chords, and does not deal in harmony; it confines itself to melody, with perhaps a background of undertones; in this sense it is much simpler and more primitive than European music, while it is more complex in scale and rhythm.

The melodies are both limited and infinite; they must all derive from one or another of the thirty-six traditional modes or airs, but they may weave upon these themes an endless and seamless web of variation. Each of these themes or ragas, consists of five, six or seven notes, one of which the musician constantly returns. Each raga is named from the mood it wishes to suggest – “Dawn”, “Spring”, “Evening Beauty”, “Intoxication” etc – and is associated with a specific time of the day; or the year. Hindu legend ascribes an occult power to these ragas; so it is said that a Bengal dancing-girl ended a drought by; singing, as a kind of “Rain-drop Prelude”, the Megh mallar raga, or rain-making theme. Their antiquity has given the ragas a sacred character; he who plays them must observe them faithfully, as forms enacted by Shiva himself. Once player, Narada, having them carelessly, was ushered into hell by Vishnu, and was shown men and women weeping over their broken limbs; these, said the god, were the ragas and raginis distorted and torn by Narada’s reckless playing. Seeing which, we are told Narada sought more humbly a greater perfection of the art.        

The Indian performer is not seriously hampered by the obligation to remain faithful to the raga he has chosen for his program, any more than the Western composer of sonatas or symphonies is hampered by adhering to his theme; in either case what is lost in liberty is gained in access to coherence of structure and symmetry of form. The Hindu musician is like the Hindu philosopher; he starts with the finite and “sends his soul into the infinite”; he embroiders upon his theme until, through an undulating stream of rhythm and recurrence, even though a hypnotizing monotony of notes, he has created a kind of musical Yoga, a forgetfulness  of  will and individuality, of matter, space and time; the soul is lifted into an almost mystic union, with something “deeply interfused”, some profound, immense and quiet Being, some primordial and pervasive reality that smiles upon all striving wills, all change and death.

Probably we shall never care for Hindu music, and never comprehend it, until we have abandoned striving for being, progress for performance, desire for acceptance, and motion for rest. This may come when Europe again is subject and Asia again master. But then Asia will have tired of being, permanence, acceptance and rest.

JOHN KEATS writes

“……. Ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tones”    

The Sikh Theistic Sect Founded by Nanak

 Monier Williams

It is well known that certain sects of Christians call themselves ’brethren,’ to denote their relationship to each other and to their Head as members of a religious society typified by a family. Much in the same way the sect founded by Nanak styled themselves Sikhs or ‘disciples’ to express their close dependence on their teachers or Gurus. For if the ‘diapason of Kabir’s doctrine, and indeed of all Vaishnava teaching, was, ‘Hear the word of the Guru, the word of the Guru is the guide, much more did Nanak insist on a similar submission. Literally interpreted, the Sanskrit terms Guru (derived from the Sanskrit root gri, ‘to utter words’), and Sishya - corrupted into Sikh,-meaning in Sanskrit “one who is to be instructed: are merely correlatives like teacher and taught. Hence, the system might as suitably be called Guruism or Sikhism.

Great light has recently been thrown on its religious aspect by the labours of Professor Thumpp of  Munich. He was commissioned by our Government to translate what is called the Adi-Granth, or the first Sikh bible, and his work has recently appeared with valuable introductory essays….

It appears to be a well-ascertained fact that this great teacher (Nanak) was born, not in Lahore itself, but in a neighbouring village, called Talvandi, on the river Ravi, not for from Lahore, in the year 1469, a few years before Caitanya  in Bengal Martin Luther in Europe. Of course the various bio-graphies of Nanak –called Janamsakhis, and written in the Panjabi dialect- are filled with myths and stories of miraculous events, invented to justify the semi-defication of the founder of the sect soon after his death.

But we need not disbelieve the statement that at an early age he became a diligent student of Vishnava religious books, and that in his youth he limited the example of other incipient reformers, wandering to various shrines in search of some clue to the labyrinth of Hinduism. It is even affirmed that his travels included the performance of a haji to Mecca, and that on being reproved by the Kazi for lying down with his feet towards the Ka’bath, he replied, ‘Put my feet in that direction where the house of God is not.’

A Reformer

Nanak, however, laid no claim to be originator of a new religion. His teaching was mainly founded on that of his predecessors, especially on that of Kabir, whom he constantly quoted. He was simply a Guru, or teacher, and his followers were simply Sikhs or disciples. But he was also a reformer who aimed, as other reformers had done before him, at delivering Hinduism, and especially the Vaishnavism of   Northern   India, from its incubus of caste, superstition, and idolatry. Yet it does not appear that Nanak directly attacked caste or denounced it in violent language. He simply welcomed persons of all ranks as his followers, and taught that the Supreme   Being   was no ‘respecter of persons.’

The plain fact was that Nanak found him self in a part of India where Muhammadans formed majority of the population. Though himself originally a Hindu, he became partially Islamized, to the extent at least of denouncing idolatry. His idea was to bring about a union between Hindus and Muhammadans on the common ground of a belief in one God. Yet the creed of Nanak was really more pantheistic than monotheistic. God, he said, is the supreme Lord. over all (Paramesvara). He may be called Brahma, or by the other names, such as Govinda, etc. but his especial name is Hari (=Vishnu). This Supreme being does not create the universe out of  nothing, but evolves it out of himself . It is a kind of expansion of his own essence which takes place for his own amusement (khela) – such expansion being made up of the three Gunas, Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, in perfect equilibrium. It is Illusion or Maya which disturbs this equilibrium and causes the apparent separation between God, the world, and the human soul. All this is pure Brahmanism. We find also that, expect in denouncing idolatry, Nanak differed very little from a pure Vaisnava, for he taught that in the present age of the world (the Kali-yuga) the repetition of the name of Hari is the only means of salvation –not withstanding the merit to be gained by benevolent works and religious ceremonies-and that the knowledge of this name is only to be acquired through a properly ordained teacher (Guru). It is curious, too, that a religious movement which commenced in an effort to draw the adherents of Sikhism and Muhammadanism together, should have ended exciting the bitterest animosity between them.

THE GURUS

Nanak’s death is known to have occurred on the 10^th October, on 1538. One of his sons expected to succeed him, but to the surprise of those who were present at his death, he passed over his own son and nominated as second Guru his disciple Lahana, whose name had been changed to Angada  because of his devotion. He had, so to speak, given up his person (anga) to the service of his master. This appears to have been his chief merit. He was quite illiterate, though tradition makes him the inventor of the peculiar alphabet called Gurumukhi (a modification of the Devanagiri) in which the Sikh bible was written. Angada nominated Amardas to succeed him as third Guru. Seven others were appointed to the succession in a similar manner. These make up the ten chief Gurus of the Sikh religion. They were, 4. Ram-das: 5.Arjun: 6.Har-Govind:  7.Har-Rai: 8.Har-Kisan (for Har-Krishna): 9. Teg-Bahadur: and 10. Govind-Sinh.

The first to inspire the Sikhs with a desire fpr political union was the fourth Guru, Ramdas. He was himself a quiet, unassuming man, but he understood the value of money and the advantage of organization. His affable manners attracted crowds of adherents, who daily flocked to his house and voluntarily present him with offerings. With the contributions thus received he was able to purchase the tank called Amrita-sar (sanskrit Amrita-saras, ‘lake of nectar’) and build the well-known lake-temple which afterwards become a rallying-point and centre of union for the whole Sikh community.

Ram-das conveyed his precepts to his followers in the form of verses. Many of his stanzas, together with the sayings of the previous Gurus, and especially of the first Gurus, Nanak, were for the first time collected by his son, the fifth Guru, Arjun, who was appointed by his father to the Guruship just before his death in 1581. From that time forward the succession was made hereditary, and the remaining five Gurus were regarded as rulers rather than as teachers.

The Granth Sahib

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the later Sikh system was the quasi-deification of the sacred book, or Granth. Govind refused to appoint a successor to the Guruship, but he well knew that to maintain the Sikh religion as a distinctive creed, a visible representative and standard of authority was needed. He therefore constituted the Granth as a kind of permanent religious Guru, gifting it with personality, and even endowing it with the personal title Sahib (Lord). “After me” he said ‘you shall everywhere mind the book pf the Granth-Sahib as your Guru: whatever you shall ask it will show you’                                               

It consists of the Adi-Granth or first book, which is the portion most generally revered, and the book of the tenth Guru, Govind, which finds greater favour with the more fanatical section of the community….Adi-Grandh is, in fact, a jumbling together of metrical) precepts and apothegms supposed to have been composed by at least thirty-five different authors, among whom were six of the ten chief Gurus (Nanak, Angada, Amardas, Ram-das, Arjun and Teg- Bahadur), fourteen Bhagats or saints (Ramanand, Kabir, Pipa, Ravi-das, Dhanna, Namdev, Sur-das, etc), and fifteen Bhatts or professional panegyrists whose names are not worth recording .. It is noticeable that one verse by Govind-Sinh has been appended to the Adi-Granth, and is regarded as an instegral portion of the volume .. ..

Amritsar Temple

As  to the golden temple at Amritsar, called Hari-mandira, ‘the temple of Hari’, or some times Durbar Sahib, it may be said to rank next to the Taj at Agra as one of the most striking sights of India. To form an idea of the unique spectacle represented by this sacred locality, one must picture to oneself a large sheet of water, bordered by a marble pavement, in the centre of a picturesque Indian town. Around the margin of this artificial lake is clustered numerous fine mansions …. In the centre of the water rises the beautiful temple with its gilded cupolas and dome, approached by a marble causeway. It is quite unlike any other place of worship to be seen throughout India, and in structure and appearance may be regarded as a kind of compromise between a Hindu temple and a Mohammedan mosque, reminding one of the attempted compromises between Hinduism and Islam, which was once a favorite idea with both Kabir and Nanak.

Hence although the temple is free from images, and is dedicated to the one God under his name Hari (applied to Krishna or Vishnu), a visible representation of the invisible God is believed to be present in the sacred book. The Granth is in fact, the real divinity of the shrine, and is treated as if it had a veritable existence. Every morning, it is dressed out in costly brocade, and reverentially placed on the low throne under a jeweled canopy, said to have been constructed by Ranjit Sinh at a cost of 50,000 Rupees. All day long chowries are waved over the sacred volume, and every evening it is transported to the second temple on the edge of the lake opposite the causeway, where it is made to repose for the night in a golden bed within a consecrated chamber, railed off and protected from all profane intrusion by bolts and bars.

TWO ENGLISHMEN ON TAMIL LITERATURE

This is a twin account by two Englishmen on Tamil Literature.

I. BISHOP CALDWELL

The Sage Agastya occupies a larger role in Tamil vis a vis Kanva in Telegu Literature. The formation of Tamil alphabet is attributed to this sage. Besides Grammar, medicine, chemistry, magic, architecture, astronomy and law are all attributed to him. Of the latter species about fifty species are attributed to him whilst only a fraction of his grammar of disputed origin exists. 

The literary cultivation of Tamil language may have commenced in the age of Agastya, but the author believes, that none of the works were written at much an early age.

Next to Agastya, we have the Tolkappiyam generally admitted to be the oldest grammar treatise and the most ancient Tamil work, this on somewhat slight evidence.

Certain poetical compositions of universal use and popularity are attributed to a sister of the famed Tiruvalluvar. (The author is referring to Avvayar the name signifying ‘a venerable matron’ according to him)

The Chintamani, a most celebrated romantic epic, is the work of a Jain author. Partly because of its Jain origin and partly due to its difficult style it is not much known. But Beschi who composed his Tembavani on this asserts that the author (sic) may justifiably be called the prince among poets. The Chintamani is held be precede Tiruvalluvar’s Kural and the style is held to excel even Kambar’s Ramayanam. The author hailed from Kambanadu, a portion of Chola-desa.

II H.G.RAWLINSON

The early history of Tamil Literature is obscure. Tradition points to an academy at the ancient Pandyan capital of Madurai of which God Shiva himself was President The greatest of poets was Tiruvalluvar who lived at Mylapore near Madras. He probably lived about A.D.100. His Kural comprises 2660 Couplets dealing with the stock subjects of virtue, wealth and pleasure. It has been described as “most venerated and popular book south of Godavari  ... the literary treasure the poetic mouthpiece, the highest type of verbal excellence among the Tamil people”. Its sayings are enshrined in the hearts of common folk.

Another collection of moral epigrams is the Naladiyar; its contents have become household words in Tamil homes. Dr.G.U.Pope, the great authority on the subject, says that they are pervaded by a strong sense of moral obligation, an earnest aspiration after righteousness, a fervent and unselfish charity and generally a loftiness of aim which are almost Christian. The moral maxims alphabetically arranged are taught in indigenous schools.

Early Tamil poetry is non sectarian in character. It shows Jain influence which reached south in 4^th Century A.D. In the 9^th Century a counter-reformation favouring orthodox Hinduism set in and the Jains sect was almost exterminated. Sankara was the leader of the movement. He preached all over the country converting the masses and setting up universities for study of Sanskrit scriptures. Sankara was born 788 A.D., took up sainthood when eight years of age and after preaching all over India died at Kedarnath. Sankara taught the unqualified monism of the Vedanta. The triad of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva is a manifestation of the Brahman, the sole impersonal reality. He wrote a number of commentaries on the Vedas and Upanishads. He has been compared with St. Thomas Aquinas.

THE BHAKTHI CULT

Sankara’s austere philosophy made little appeal to the heart. This came from the latter exponent Ramanujacharya (A.D.1175-1250) who thought a qualified monism. The World Soul, individual souls and matter are equally real. To the farmer’s intellectualism he posed faith in Vishnu in his various avatars. Dr.L.D.Bernett says “ Ramanuja blended in full harmony reason and devotion by worshipping a Supreme Being of infinitely blessed qualities, both in his heaven and his incarnations  ... First there is a belief in a Primal Being, infinite in his qualities of goodness; secondly the doctrine that iln His love for His creatures he becomes incarnate in blessed forms to save men from siln and sorrow, and lad them to union with Him; and thirdly, he teaching that He can be reached by any supplicant seeking him in perfect and sincre love”. This is the doctrine of Bhakthi which had been foreshadowed in the Gita. Ramanuja taught in Kanchi and his influence on later day devotional saints was marled.

The greatest of the later sectarian poets was Manickavachakar of the tenth century A.D. the author of Tiruvachakam or sacred saying. He came from Tanjore to the King’s court as and inspired by a Brahmin guru gave up all devoting himself to composition of hymns to Lord Shiva.

The hymn of Adiyars or Saivite poets forms the Devaram or Divine Garland, which to them was the Vedas and Puranas to the Northern India. The Alvars or wandering teachers of a rival sect of Vaishnavas were celebrating in equally heart-felt verse the praises of Vishnu.

This is a quote from Nammalvar one of the greatest of the Tamil poets:

Eternal Lord of Angels, Who dost deign to veil Thy form,In all creation’s varied state, to save poor souls; Vouchsafe in all Thy grace to stay and hear Thy servant’s cry. That we be saved the dire return to former wretchedness, When we mistook the body for the soul and sinned all sins This clung to us and fixed us ever more to mortal frames. Many Vaishnava hymns devoted to Krishna are of an erotic character. The hymns of the twelve Alvars are collected in to Vaishnava Prabandham of 4000 Verses. In the famous Srirangam Temple these are recited daily. The literature of Kanarese and Telegu languages belong to a later date when the glories of Hindu India blazed once more into a brief but dazzling brilliance at Vijaya Nagar.    

   

              

SOCIAL STRUCTURE – LIFE IN VEDIC INDIA

WILL DURANT (1885-1981) is a famous American historian. His work “The story of Philosophy was acclaimed as a path breaker. He followed it with a 11 Volume work entitled “The story of Civilisation” which was a landmark. 

How did these ancient Indians live?

They raised cattle, used the cow without considering it sacred, and ate meat when they could afford it, having offered a morsel to priests or gods when they could afford it; Buddha, after nearly starving himself in his ascetic youth, seems to have died from a heavy meal of pork. They planted barley, but apparently knew nothing of rice in Vedic times. The fields were divided by each community among its constituent families, but were irrigated in common; he land could not be sold to an outsider, and, could be bequeathed only to the family heirs in direct male line. The majority of the people were yeomen owning their own soil; the Aryans held it a disgrace to work for hire. There were, we are assured, no landlords and no paupers, no millionaires and no slums.

In the towns, handicrafts flourished among independent artisans and apprentices, organized, half a thousand years before Christ, into powerful guilds of metal-workers, wood-workers, basket-makers, house-painters, stone-workers, leather-workers, ivory-workers, decorators, potters, dyers, fishermen, sailors, hunters, trappers, butchers, confectioners, barbers, shampooers, florists, cooks: the very list  reveals the fullness and variety of their life. The guilds settled intra-guild affairs, even arbitrating difficulties between members and their wives. Prices were determined, as among ourselves, not by supply and demand, but by the gullibility of the purchaser; in the palace of the king, however an official Valuer, who, was like our secretive Bureau of Standards, tested goods to be bought, and dictated terms to the makers.

Trade and Travel

Trade and travel had advanced to the stage of horse and two-wheeled wagon, built were still medievally difficult; caravans wee held up by taxes at every petty frontier and as like as not by highwaymen at any turn. Transport by river and sea was more developed: about 860 B.C. ships with modest sails and hundreds of oars carried to Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Egypt such typical Indian products as perfumes and spices, cotton and silk, shawls and muslins, pearls and rubies, ebony and precious stones, and ornate brocades of silver and gold. 

Trade was stunted by clumsy methods of exchange – at first by barter, then by the use of cattle as currency; brides like Homer’s “oxen-bearing maidens” were bought with cows. Later a heavy copper coinage was issued, guaranteed, however only by private individuals. There were no banks; hoarded money was hidden in the house, or buried in the ground, or deposited with a friend. Out of this, in Buddha’s age, grew a credit system; merchants in different towns facilitated trade by giving one another letters of credit; loans could be obtained from such Rothschilds at eighteen per cent interest, and thus was much talk of promissory notes. The coinage was not sufficiently inconvenient to discourage gambling; already dice was essential to civilization. In many cases gambling halls were provided for his subjects by the king, in the fashion, if not quite in the style, of Monaco; and a portion of the receipts went to the royal treasury. It seems a scandalous arrangement to us, who are not quite accustomed to having our gambling institutions contribute so directly to the support of our public officials.

Character

Commercial morality stood on a high level. The kings of Vedic India, as of Homeric Greece, were not above lifting cattle from their neighbors; but the Greek historian of Alexander’s campaign describes the Hindus as “remarkable for integrity, so reasonable as seldom to have recourse to law-suits, and so honest as to require neither locks to their doors nor writings to bind their agreements; they are in the highest degree truthful”. The Rig Veda speaks of incest, seduction, prostitution, abortion and adultery, and there are some signs of homosexuality; but the general picture we derive from the Vedas and the epics is one of high standards in the relations of the sexes and the life of the family.

Marriage

Marriage might be entered into by forcible abduction of bride, by purchase of her, or by mutual consent. Marriage by consent however was considered highly disreputable; women thought it more honorable to be bought and paid for, and a great compliment to be stolen. Polygamy was permitted, and was encouraged among the great; it was an act of merit to support many wives, and to transmit ability. The story of Draupadi, who married five brothers at once, indicates the occasional occurrence in Epic days, of that strange polyandry – the marriage of new woman to several men, usually brothers – which survived in Ceylon till 1859, and still lingers in the mountain villages of Tibet. But Polygamy was usually the privilege of the male, who ruled the Aryan household with patriarchal omnipotence. He held the right of ownership over his wives and children, and might in certain cases sell them or cast them out.

Nevertheless, women enjoyed far greater freedom in the Vedic period than in later India. She had more to say in the choice of her mate than the forms of marriage might suggest. She appeared freely at feasts, and dances, and joined with men in religious sacrifice. She could study, and might, like Gargi, engage in philosophic disputation.

A note by the same author:

“Every Hindu village had its school master, supported out of the public funds; in Bengal alone, before the conmilbg of the British, there were some eighty thousand native schools – one to every four hundred of the population. The percentage of literacy under Ashoka was apparently higher than in India today.  - 

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Veena Player – Raja Ravi Varma

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Regional Variations – Raja Ravi Varma