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http://shikshanic.nic.in/cd50years/u/45/3Z/453Z0703.htm other research bodies survey
http://shikshanic.nic.in/cd50years/u/45/3Z/Toc.htm sanskrit related
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http://www.iskcon.org/main/twohk/philo/roots/systems.htm 6 schools of philosophy
1 existence (sat) 2 consciousness (chit/sri) 3 joy (anand/akaal) 4 being 5 becoming: (1,2,3/1,3,2/2,3,1/2,1,3/3,2,1/3,1,2) (???)
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP) wondering/wandering….
200 B.C.E: Patanjali – YogaSutra 1.1: “ Yogasch Chit Vriti Nirodh.. “ (Yoga is Control over Movements of the Mind ..)
Reference:
http://hrih.hypermart.net/patanjali/download/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6709/page6.html
"Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali"
- by Samkhya-Yogacharya Swami Hariharananda Aranya -
Published by Calcutta University Press
APPENDIX F
COLLECTION OF YOGA APHORISMS
BOOK I
ON CONCENTRATION
1. Now then Yoga is being explained.
2. Yoga is the suppression of the modifications of the mind.
3 Then the Seer abides in Itself.
4. At other times the Seer appears to assume the form of the modification of the mind.
5. They (modifications) fall into five varieties, of which some are 'Klista' and the rest 'Aklista'.
6. (They are) Pram®na, Viparyaya, Vikalpa, (dreamless) sleep and recollection.
7. (Of these) Perception, inference and testimony (verbal communication) constitute the Pramanas.
8. Viparyaya or illusion is false knowledge formed of a thing as other than what it is.
9. The modification called 'Vikalpa' is based on verbal cognition in regard to a thingwhich does not exist. (It is a kind of useful knowledge arising out of the meaning of a word but having no corresponding reality. )
10. Dreamless sleep is the mental modification produced by the condition of inertia as the state of vacuity or negation (of waking and dreaming).
11. Recollection is mental modification caused by reproduction of the previous impression of an object without adding anything from other sources.
12. By practice and detachment these can be stopped.
13. Exertion to acquire Sthiti or a tranquil state of mind devoid of fluctuations is called practice.
14. That practice when continued for a long time without break and with devotion becomes firm in foundation.
15. When the mind loses all desire for objects seen or described in the scriptures it acquires a state of utter desirelessness which is called detachment.
16. Indifference to the Gunas or the constituent principles, achieved through a knowledge of the nature of Purusha, is called Paravairagya (supreme detachment).
17. When concentration is reached with the help of Vitarka, Vichara, Ananda and Asmita, it is called Samprajnata-sam®dhi.
18. Asamprajnata-Samadhi is the other kind of Samadhi which arises through constant practice of Paravairagya which brings about the disappearance of all fluctuations of the mind, wherein only the latent impressions remain.
19. While in the case of the Videhas or the discarnates and of the Prakrtilayas or those subsisting in their elemental constituents, it is caused by nescience which results in objective existence.
20. Others (who follow the path of the prescribed effort) adopt the means of reverential faith, energy, repeated recollection, concentration and real knowledge (and thus attain Asamprajnata-samadhi).
21. Yogins with intense ardour achieve concentration and the result thereof quickly.
22. On account of the methods being slow, medium and speedy, even among those Yogins who have intense ardour, there are differences.
23. From special devotion to isvara also (concentration becomes imminent).
24. Isvara is a particular Purusha unaffected by affliction, deed, result of action or the latent impressions thereof.
25. In Him the seed of omniscience has reached its utmost development which cannot be exceeded.
26. (He is) The teacher of former teachers because with Him there is no limitation by time (to His omnipotence). '
27. The sacred word designating Him is Pranava or the mystic syllable OM.
28. (Yogins) Repeat it and contemplate upon its meaning.
29. From that comes realisation of the individual self and the obstacles are resolved.
30. Sickness, incompetence, doubt, delusion, sloth, non-abstention, erroneous conception, non-attainment of any Yogic stage, and instability to stay in a Yogic state-these distractions of the mind are the impediments.
31. Sorrow, dejection, restlessness of body, inhalation and exhalation arise from (previous) distractions.
32. For their stoppage (i.e. of distractions) practice (of concentration) on a single principle should be made.
33. The mind becomes purified by the cultivation of feelings of amity, compassion, goodwill and indifference respectively towards happy, miserable, virtuous and sinful creatures.
34. By exhaling and restraining the breath also (the mind is calmed).
35. The development of higher objective perceptions called Visayavati also brings about tranquillity of mind.
36. Or by perception which is free from sorrow and is radiant (stability of mind can also be produced).
37. Or (contemplating) on a mind which is free from desires (the devotee's mind gets stabilised).
38. Or by taking as the object of meditation the images of dreams or the state of dreamless sleep (the mind of the Yogin gets stabilised).
39. Or by contemplating on whatsoever thing one may like (the mind becomes stable ).
40. When the mind develops the power of stabilising on the smallest size as well as on the greatest one, then the mind comes under control.
41. When the fluctuations of the mind are weakened, the mind appears to take on the features of the object of meditation-whether it be the cogniser (Grahita), the instrument of cognition (Grahana) or the object cognised (Grahya)-as does a transparent jewel, and this identification is called Samapatti or engrossment.
42. The engrossment, in which there is the mixture of word, its meaning(i.e. the object) and its knowledge, is known as Savitarka Samapatti. .
43. When the memory is purified, the mind appears to be devoid of its own nature (i.e. of reflective consciousness) and only the object (on which it is contemplating) remains illuminated. This kind of engrossment is called Nirvitarka Samapatti.
44. By this (foregoing) the Savichara and Nirvichara engrossments, whose objects are subtle, are also explained.
45. Subtlety pertaining to objects culminates in A-linga or the unmanifest.
46. These are the only kinds of objective concentrations. .
47. On gaining proficiency in Nirvichara, purity in the inner instruments of cognition is developed. .
48. The knowledge that is gained in that state is called Rtambhara (filled with truth).
49. (That knowledge) Is different from that derived from testimony or through inference, because it relates to particulars (of objects).
50. The latent impression born of such knowledge is opposed to the formation of other latent impressions.
51. By the stoppage of that too (on account of the elimination of the latent impressions of Samprajnana) objectless concentration takes place through suppression of all modifications.
BOOK II
ON PRACTICE
1. Tapas (austerity or sturdy self-discipline -mental, moral and physical), Svadhyaya (repetition of sacred Mantras or study of sacred literature) and Isvara-pranidhana (complete surrender to God) are Kriya-yoga (Yoga in the form of action).
2. That Kriya-yoga (should be practised) for bringing about Samadhi and minimising the Klesas.
3. Avidya (misapprehension about the real nature of things), Asmita (egoism), Raga (attachment), Dvesa (aversion) and Abhinivesa (fear of death) are the five Klesas (afflictions).
4. Avidya is the breeding ground for the others whether they be dormant, attenuated, interrupted or active.
5. Avidya consists in regarding a transient object as everlasting, an impure object as pure, misery as happiness and the non-self as self.
6. Asmita is tantamount to the identification of Purusha or pure Consciousness with Buddhi.
7. Attachment is that (modification) which follows remembrance of pleasure.
8. Aversion is that (modification) which results from misery.
9. As in the ignorant so in the learned, the firmly established inborn fear of annihilation is the affliction called Abhinivesa.
10. The subtle Klesas are forsaken (i.e. destroyed) by the cessation of productivity (i.e. disappearance) of the mind.
11. Their means of subsistence or their gross states are avoidable by meditation.
12. Karmasaya or latent impression of action based on afflictions, becomes active in this life or in a life to come.
13. As long as Klesa remains at the root, Karmsaya produces three consequences in the form of birth, span of life and experience.
14. Because of virtue and vice these (birth, span and experience) produce pleasurable and painful experiences.
15. The discriminating persons apprehend (by analysis and anticipation) all worldly objects as sorrowful because they cause suffering in consequence, in their afflictive experiences and in their latencies and also because of the contrary nature of the Gunas (which produces changes all the time).
16. (That is why) Pain which is yet to come is to be discarded.
17. Uniting the Seer or the subject with the seen or the object, is the cause of that which has to be avoided.
18. The object or knowable is by nature sentient, mutable and inert. It exists in the form of the elements and the organs, and serves the purpose of experience and emancipation.
19. Diversified (Visesa), undiversified (Avisesa), indicator-only (Lingamatra), and that which is without any indicator (Alinga) are the states of the' Gunas.
20. The Seer is absolute Knower. Although pure, modifications (of Buddhi) are witnessed by Him as an onlooker.
21. To serve as objective field to Purusha, is the essence or nature of the knowable.
22. Although ceasing to exist in relation to him whose purpose is fulfilled, the knowable does not cease to exist on account of being of use to others.
23. Alliance is the means of realising the true nature of the object of the Knower and of the owner, the Knower (i.e. the sort of alliance which contributes to the realisation of the Seer and the seen is this relationship).
24. (The alliance has) Avidya or nescience as its cause.
25. The absence of alliance that arises from lack of it (Avidya) is the freedom and that is the state of liberation of the Seer.
26. Clear and distinct (unimpaired) discriminative knowledge is the means of liberation.
27. Seven kinds of ultimate insight come to him (the Yogin who has acquired discriminative enlightenment).
28. Through the practice of the different accessories to Yoga, when impurities are destroyed, there arises enlightenment culminating in discriminative enlightenment.
29. Yama (restraint), Niyama (observance), Asana (posture), Pranayama (regulation of breath), Pratyahara (withholding of senses), Dharana (fixity), Dhyana (meditation) and Samidha (perfect concentration) are the eight means of attaining Yoga.
30. Ahimsa (non-injury), Satya (truth), Asteya (abstention from stealing), Brahmacharya (continence) and Aparigraha (abstinence from avariciousness) are the five Yamas (forms of restraint).
31. These (the restraints), however, become a great vow when they become universal, being unrestricted by any consideration of class, place, time or concept of duty.
32. Cleanliness, contentment, austerity (mental and physical discipline), Svadhyaya (study of scriptures and chanting of Mantras) and devotion to God are the Niyamas (observances).
33. When these restraints and observances are inhibited by perverse thoughts, the opposites should be thought of.
34. Actions arising out of perverse thoughts like injury etc. are either performed by oneself, got done by another or approved ; performed either through anger, greed or delusion; and can be mild, moderate or intense. That they are the causes of infinite misery and unending ignorance is the contrary thought.
35. As the Yogin becomes established in non-injury, all beings coming near him (the Yogin) cease to be hostile.
36. When truthfulness is achieved, the words (of the Yogin) acquire the power of making them fruitful.
37. When non-stealing is established, all jewels present themselves (to the Yogin).
38. When continence is established, Virya is acquired.
39. On attaining perfection in non-acceptance, knowledge of past and future existences arises.
40. From the practice of purification, aversion towards one's own body is developed and thus aversion extends to contact with other bodies.
41. Purification of the mind, pleasantness of feeling, one-pointedness, subjugation of the senses and ability for self-realisation are acquired.
42. From contentment unsurpassed happiness is gained.
43. Through destruction of impurities, practice of austerities brings about perfection of the body and the organs.
44. From study and repetition of the Mantras, communion with the desired deity is established.
45. From devotion to God, Samadhi is attained.
46. Motionless and agreeable form (of staying) is Asana (Yogic posture).
47. By relaxation of effort and meditation on the infinite (,sanas are perfected).
48. From that arises immunity from Dvandvas or opposite conditions.
49. That (Asana) having been perfected, regulation of the flow of inhalation and exhalation is Pranayama (breath control).
50. That (Pranayama) has external operation (Vahya-vrtti), internal operation (Abhyantara-vrtti) and suppression (Stambha-vrtti). These, again, when observed according to space, time and number become long and subtle.
51. The fourth Pranayama transcends external and internal operations.
52. By that the veil over manifestation (of knowledge) is thinned.
53. (Moreover) The mind acquires fitness for Dharana.
54. When separated from their corresponding objects, the organs follow, as it were, the nature of the mind, that is called Pratyahara (restraining of the organs).
55. That brings supreme control of the organs.
BOOK III
SUPERNORMAL POWERS
1. Dharana is the mind's (Chitta's) fixation on a particular point in space.
2. In that (Dharana) the continuous flow of similar mental modifications is called Dhyana or meditation. .
3. When the object of meditation only shines forth in the mind, as though devoid of the thought of even the self (who is meditating), then that state is called Samadha or concentration.
4. The three together on the same object is called Samyama.
5. By mastering that (Samyama), the light of knowledge (Prajna) dawns.
6. It (Samyama) is to be applied to the stages (of practice).
7. These three are more intimate practices than the previously mentioned ones.
8. That also is (to be regarded as) external in respect of Nirvija or seedless concentration.
9. Suppression of the latencies of fluctuation and appearance of the latencies of arrested state, taking place at every moment of blankness of the arrested state in the same mind, is the mutation of the arrested state of the mind.
10. Continuity of the tranquil mind (in an arrested state) is ensured by its latent impressions.
11. Diminution of attention to all and sundry and development of onepointedness is called Samadhi-parinama or mutation of the concentrative mind.
12. There (in Samadhi) again (in the state of concentration) the past and the present modifications being similar, it is Ekagrata-parinama, or mutation of the stabilised state of the mind.
13. By these are explained the three changes, viz, of essential attributes or characteristics, of temporal characters, and of states of the Bhutas and the Indriyas (i.e. all the knowable phenomena).
14. That which continues its existence all through the varying characteristics, namely, the quiescent, i e. past, the uprisen, i.e. present, or unmanifest (but remaining as potent force), i.e. future, is the substratum (or object chracterised).
15. Change of sequence (of characteristics) is the cause of mutative differences.
16. Knowledge of the past and the future can be derived through Samyama on the three Parinamas (changes).
17. Word, object implied, and the idea thereof overlapping, produce one unified impression. If Samyama is practised on each separately, knowledge of the meaning of the sounds produced by all beings can be acquired.
18. By the realisation of latent impressions, knowledge of previous birth is acquired.
19. (By practising Samyama) On notions, knowledge of other minds is developed.
20. The prop (or basis) of the notion does not get known because that is not the object
of (the Yogin's) observation.
21. When perceptibility of the body is suppressed by practising Samyama on its visual character, disappearance of the body is effected through its getting beyond the sphere of perception of the eye.
22. Karma is either fast or slow in fructifying. By practising Samyama on Karma or on portents, fore-knowledge of death can be acquired.
23. Through Samyama on friendliness (amity) and other similar virtues, strength is obtained therein.
24. (By practising Samyama) On (physical) strength, the strength of elephants etc, can be acquired.
25. By applying the effulgent light of the higher sense-perception (Jyotismati), knowledge of subtle objects, or things obstructed from view, or placed at a great distance, can be acquired.
26. (By practising Samyama) On the sun (the point in the body known as the solar entrance) the knowledge of the cosmic regions is acquired.
27. (By practising Samyama) On the moon (the lunar entrance) knowledge of the arrangements of stars is acquired.
28. (By practising Samyama) On the pole-star, motion of the stars is known.
29. (By practising Samyama) On the navel plexus, knowledge ofthe composition of the body is derived.
30. (By practising Samyama) On the trachea, hunger and thirst can be subdued.
31. Calmness is attained by Samyama on the bronchial tube.
32. (By practising Samyama) On the coronal light, Siddhas can be seen.
33. From knowledge known as Pratibha (intuition), everything becomes known.
34. (By practising Samyama) On the heart, knowledge of the mind is acquired.
35. Experience (of pleasure or pain) arises from a conception which does not distinguish between the two extremely different entities, viz. Buddhisattva and Purusha. Such experience exists for another (i.e. Purusha). That is why through Samyama on Purusha (who oversees all experiences and also their complete cessation), a knowledge regarding Purusha is acquired.
36. Thence (from the knowledge of Purusha) arise Pratibha (prescience), Sravana (supernormal power of hearing), Vedana (supernormal power of touch), Adarsa (supernormal power of sight), Asvada (supernormal poker of taste) and Varta (supernormal power of smell).
37. They (these powers) are impediments to Samadhi, but are (regarded as) acquisitions in a normal fluctuating state of the mind.
38. When the cause of bondage gets weakened and the movements of the mind are known, the mind can get into another body.
39. By conquering the vital force (of life) called Udana, the chance of immersion in water or mud, or entanglement in the thorns, is avoided and exit from the body at will is assured.
40. By conquering the vital force called Samana, effulgence is acquired.
41. By Samyama on the relationship between akasa and the power of hearing, divine sense of hearing is gained.
42. By practising Samyama on the relationship between the body and akasa and by concentrating on the lightness of cotton wool, passage through the sky can be secured.
43. When the unimagined conception can be held outside, i.e. unconnected with the body, it is called Mahavideha or the great discarnate. By Samyama on that, the veil over illumination (of Buddhisattva) is removed.
44. By Samyama on the grossness, the essential character, the subtlety, the inherence and the objectiveness, which are the five forms of. the Bhotas or elements, mastery over Bhutas is obtained.
45. Thence develop the power of minification and other bodily acquisitions. There is also no resistance by its characteristics.
46. Perfection of body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.
47. By Samyama on the receptivity, essential character, I-sense, inherent quality and objectiveness of the five organs, mastery over them can be acquired.
48. Thence come powers of rapid movement as of the mind, action of organs independent of the body and mastery over Pradhana, the primordial cause.
49. To one established in the discernment between Buddhi and Purusha come supremacy over all beings and omniscience.
50. By renunciation of that (Visoka attainment) even, comes liberation on account of the destruction of the seeds of evil.
51. When invited by the celestial beings, that invitation should not be accepted nor should it cause vanity because it involves possibility of undesirable consequences.
52. Differentiating knowledge of the self and the non-self comes from practising Samyama on moment and its sequence.
53. When species, temporal character and position of two different things being indiscernible they look alike, they can be differentiated thereby (by this knowledge).
54. Knowledge of discernment is Taraka or intuitional, is comprehensive of all things and of all times, and has no sequence.
55. (Whether secondary discriminative discernment is acquired or not) When equality is established between Buddhisattva and Purusha in their purity, liberation takes place.
BOOK IV
ON THE SELF-IN-ITSELF OR LIBERATION
1. Supernormal powers come with birth or are attained through herbs, incantations, austerities or concentration.
2. (The mutation of body and organs into those of one born in a different species) Takes place through the filling in of their innate nature.
3. Causes do not put the nature into motion, only the removal of obstacles takes place through them. This is like a farmer breaking down the barrier to let the water flow. (The hindrances being removed by the causes, the nature impenetrates by itself).
4. All created minds are constructed from pure I-sense.
5. One (principal) mind directs the many created minds in the variety of their activities.
6. Of these (minds with supernormal powers) those obtained through meditation are without any subliminal imprints.
7. The actions of Yogins are neither white nor black, whereas the actions of others are of three kinds.
8. Thence (from the other three varieties of Karma) are manifested the subconscious impressions appropriate to their consequences.
9. On account of similarity between memory and corresponding latent impressions, the subconscious impressions of feelings appear simultaneously even when they are separated by birth, space and time.
10. Desire for self-welfare being everlasting, it follows that the subconscious impression from which it arises must be beginningless.
11. On account of being held together by cause, result, refuge and supporting object, Vasana disappears when they are absent.
12. The past and the future are in reality present in their fundamental forms, there being only difference in the characteristics of the forms taken at different times.
13. Characteristics, which are present at all times, are manifest and subtle, and are composed of the three Gunas.
14. On account of the co-ordinated mutation ofthe three Gunas, an object appears as a unit.
15. In spite of sameness of objects, on account of there being separate minds they (the object and its knowledge) follow different paths, that is why they are entirely different.
16. Object is not dependent on one mind, because if it were so, then what will happen when it is not cognised by that mind ?
17. External objects are known or unknown to the mind according as they colour the mind.
18. On account of the immutability of Purusha who is master of the mind, the modifications of the mind are always known or manifest.
19. It (the mind) is not self-illuminating being an object (knowable).
20. Besides, both (the mind and its objects) cannot be cognised simul taneously.
21. If the mind were to be illumined by another mind then there will be repetition ad infinitum of illumining minds and intermixture of memory.
22. (Though) Untransmissible, the metempiric Consciousness getting the likeness of Buddhi becomes the cause of the consciousness of Buddhi.
23.The mind-stuff being affected by the Seer and the seen, is all-comprehensive.
24. That (the mind) though variegated by innumerable subconscious impressions, exists for another, since it acts conjointly.
25. For one who has realised the distinctive entity, I-e. Purusha, inquiries about the nature of his self cease.
26. (Then) The mind inclines towards discriminative knowledge and naturally gravitates towards the state of liberation.
27. Through its breaches (i.e. breaks in discriminative knowledge) arise other fluctuations of the mind due to (residual) latent impressions.
28. It has been said that their removal (i.e. of fluctuations) follows the same process as the removal of afflictions.
29. When one becomes disinterested even in omniscience one attains perpetual discriminative enlightenment from which ensues the concentration known as Dharmamegha (virtue-pouring cloud).
30. From that, afflictions and actions cease.
31.Then on account of the infinitude of knowledge, freed from the cover of all impurities, the knowables appear as few.
32. After the emergence of that (virtue-pouring cloud) the Gunas having fulfilled their purpose, the sequence of their mutation ceases.
33. What belongs to the moments and is indicated by the completion of a particular mutation is sequence.
34. The state of the Self-in-Itself or liberation is realised when the Gunas (having provided for the experience and liberation of Purusha) are without any purpose to fulfil and disappear into their causal substance. In other words, it is absolute Consciousness established in Its own Self.
Reference: http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/patanjal/patanyog.htm
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali interpreted by William Q. Judge
Theosophical University Press Edition
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Book 1: Concentration
Book 2: Means of Concentration
Book 3
Book 4: The Essential Nature of Isolation
BOOK 1. -- CONCENTRATION
1. Assuredly, the exposition of Yoga, or Concentration, is now to be made.
The Sanskrit particle atha, which is translated "assuredly," intimates to the disciple that a distinct topic is to be expounded, demands his attention, and also serves as a benediction. Monier Williams says it is "an auspicious and inceptive participle often not easily expressed in English."
2. Concentration, or Yoga, is the hindering of the modifications of the thinking principle.
In other words, the want of concentration of thought is due to the fact that the mind -- here called "the thinking principle" -- is subject to constant modifications by reason of its being diffused over a multiplicity of subjects. So "concentration" is equivalent to the correction of a tendency top, diffuseness, and to the obtaining of what the Hindus call "one-pointedness," or the power to apply the mind, at any moment, to the consideration of a single point of thought, to the exclusion of all else.
Upon this Aphorism the method of the system hinges. The reason for the absence of concentration at any time is, that the mind is modified by every subject and object that comes before it; it is, as it were, transformed into that subject or object. The mind, therefore, is not the supreme or highest power; it is only a function, an instrument with which the soul works, feels sublunary things, and experiences. The brain, however, must not be confounded with the mind, for the brain is in its turn but an instrument for the mind. It therefore follows that the mind has a plane of its own, distinct from the soul and the brain, and what is to be learned is, to use the will, which is also a distinct power from the mind and brain, in such a way that instead of permitting the mind to turn from one subject or object to another just as they may move it, we shall apply it as a servant at any time and for as long a period as we wish, to the consideration of whatever we have decided upon.
3. At the time of concentration the soul abides in the state of a spectator without a spectacle.
This has reference to the perfection of concentration, and is that condition in which, by the hindering of the modifications referred to in Aphorism 2, the soul is brought to a state of being wholly devoid of taint of, or impression by, any subject. The "soul" here referred to is not Atma, which is spirit.
4. At other times than that of concentration, the soul is in the same form as the modification of the mind.
This has reference to the condition of the soul in ordinary life, when concentration is not practised, and means that, when the internal organ, the mind, is through the senses affected or modified by the form of some object, the soul also -- viewing the object through its organ, the mind -- is, as it were, altered into that form; as a marble statue of snowy whiteness, if seen under a crimson light will seem to the beholder crimson and so is, to the visual organs, so long as that colored light shines upon it.
5. The modifications of the mind are of five kinds, and they are either painful or not painful;
6. They are, Correct Cognition, Misconception, Fancy, Sleep, and Memory.
7. Correct Cognition results from Perception, Inference, and Testimony.
8. Misconception is Erroneous Notion arising from lack of Correct Cognition.
9. Fancy is a notion devoid of any real basis and following upon knowledge conveyed by words.
For instance, the terms "a hare's horns" and "the head of Rahu," neither of which has anything in nature corresponding to the notion. A person hearing the expression "the head of Rahu" naturally fancies that there is a Rahu who owns the head, whereas Rahu -- a mythical monster who is said to cause eclipses by swallowing the sun -- is all head and has no body; and, although the expression "a hare's horns" is frequently used, it is well known that there is no such thing in nature. Much in the same way people continue to speak of the sun's "rising" and "setting," although they hold to the opposite theory.
10. Sleep is that modification of the mind which ensues upon the quitting of all objects by the mind, by reason of all the waking senses and faculties sinking into abeyance.
11. Memory is the not letting go of an object that one has been aware of.
12. The hindering of the modifications of the mind already referred to, is to be effected by means of Exercise and Dispassion.
13. Exercise is the uninterrupted, or repeated, effort that the mind shall remain in its unmoved state.
This is to say that in order to acquire concentration we must, again and again, make efforts to obtain such control over the mind that we can, at any time when it seems necessary, so reduce it to an unmoved condition or apply it to any one point to the exclusion of all others.
14. This exercise is a firm position observed out of regard for the end in view, and perseveringly adhered to for a long time without intermission.
The student must not conclude from this that he can never acquire concentration unless he devotes every moment of his life to it, for the words "without intermission" apply but to the length of time that has been set apart for the practice.
15. Dispassion is the having overcome one's desires.
That is -- the attainment of a state of being in which the consciousness is unaffected by passions, desires, and ambitions, which aid in causing modifications of the mind.
16. Dispassion, carried to the utmost, is indifference regarding all else than soul, and this indifference arises from a knowledge of soul as distinguished from all else.
17. There is a meditation of the kind called "that in which there is distinct cognition," and which is of a four-fold character because of Argumentation, Deliberation, Beatitude, Egoism.
The sort of meditation referred to is a pondering wherein the nature of that which is to be pondered upon is well known, without doubt or error, and it is a distinct cognition which excludes every other modification of the mind than that which is to be pondered upon.
1. The Argumentative division of this meditation is a pondering upon a subject with argument as to its nature in comparison with something else; as, for instance, the question whether mind is the product of matter or precedes matter.
2. The Deliberative division is a pondering in regard to whence have come, and where is the field of action, of the subtler senses and the mind.
3. The Beatific condition is that in which the higher powers of the mind, together with truth in the abstract, are pondered upon.
4. The Egoistic division is one in which the meditation has proceeded to such a height that all lower subjects and objects are lost sight of, and nothing remains but the cognition of the self, which then becomes a stepping-stone to higher degrees of meditation.
The result of reaching the fourth degree, called Egoism, is that a distinct recognition of the object or subject with which the meditation began is lost, and self-consciousness alone results; but this self-consciousness does not include the consciousness of the Absolute or Supreme Soul.
18. The meditation just described is preceded by the exercise of thought without argumentation. Another sort of meditation is in the shape of the self-reproduction of thought after the departure of all objects from the field of the mind.
19. The meditative state attained by those whose discrimination does not extend to pure spirit, depends upon the phenomenal world.
20. In the practice of those who are, or may be, able to discriminate as to pure spirit, their meditation is preceded by Faith, Energy, Intentness (upon a single point), and Discernment, or thorough discrimination of that which is to be known.
It is remarked here by the commentator, that "in him who has Faith there arises Energy, or perseverance in meditation, and, thus persevering, the memory of past subjects springs up, and his mind becomes absorbed in Intentness, in consequence of the recollection of the subject, and he whose mind is absorbed in meditation arrives at a thorough discernment of the matter pondered upon."
21. The attainment of the state of abstract meditation is speedy, in the case of the hotly impetuous.
22. Because of the mild, the medium, and the transcendent nature of the methods adopted, there is a distinction to be made among those who practise Yoga.
23. The state of abstract meditation may be attained by profound devotedness toward the Supreme Spirit considered in its comprehensible manifestation as I's'wara.
It is said that this profound devotedness is a preeminent means of attaining abstract meditation and its fruits. "I's'wara" is the Spirit in the body.
24. I's'wara is a spirit, untouched by troubles, works, fruits of works, or desires.
25. In I's'wara becomes infinite that omniscience which in man exists but as a germ.
26. I's'wara is the preceptor of all, even of the earliest of created beings, for He is not limited by time.
27. His name is OM.
28. The repetition of this name should be made with reflection upon its signification.
The utterance of OM involves three sounds, those of long au, short u, and the "stoppage" or labial consonant m. To this tripartiteness is attached deep mystical symbolic meaning. It denotes, as distinct yet in union, Brahma, Vishnu, and S'iva, or Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. As a whole, it implies "the Universe." In its application to man, au refers to the spark of Divine Spirit that is in humanity; u, to the body through which the Spirit manifests itself; and m, to the death of the body, or its resolvement to its material elements. With regard to the cycles affecting any planetary system, it implies the Spirit, represented by au as the basis of the manifested worlds; the body or manifested matter, represented by u, through which the spirit works; and represented by m, "the stoppage or return of sound to its source," the Pralaya or Dissolution of the worlds. In practical occultism, through this word reference is made to Sound, or Vibration, in all its properties and effects, this being one of the greatest powers of nature. In the use of this word as a practice, by means of the lungs and throat, a distinct effect is produced upon the human body. In Aphorism 28 the name is used in its highest sense, which will necessarily include all the lower. All utterance of the word OM, as a practice, has a potential reference to the conscious separation of the soul from the body.
29. From this repetition and reflection on its significance, there come a knowledge of the Spirit and the absence of obstacles to the attainment of the end in view.
30. The obstacles in the way of him who desires to attain concentration are Sickness, Languor, Doubt, Carelessness, Laziness, Addiction to objects of sense, Erroneous Perception, Failure to attain any stage of abstraction, and Instability in any stage when attained.
31. These obstacles are accompanied by grief, distress, trembling, and sighing.
32. For the prevention of these, one truth should be dwelt upon.
Any accepted truth which one approves is here meant.
33. Through the practising of Benevolence, Tenderness, Complacency, and Disregard for objects of happiness, grief, virtue, and vice, the mind becomes purified.
The chief occasions for distraction of the mind are Covetousness and Aversion, and what the aphorism means is, not that virtue and vice should be viewed with indifference by the student, but that he should not fix his mind with pleasure upon happiness or virtue, nor with aversion upon grief or vice, in others, but should regard all with an equal mind; and the practice of Benevolence, Tenderness, and Complacency brings about cheerfulness of the mind, which tends to strength and steadiness.
34. Distractions may be combated by a regulated control or management of the breath in inspiration, retention, and exhalation.
35. A means of procurement of steadiness of the mind may be found in an immediate sensuous cognition;
36. Or, an immediate cognition of a spiritual subject being produced, this may also serve to the same end;
37. Or, the thought taking as its object some one devoid of passion -- as, for instance, an ideally pure character -- may find what will serve as a means;
38. Or, by dwelling on knowledge that presents itself in a dream, steadiness of mind may be procured;
39. Or, it may be effected by pondering upon anything that one approves.
40. The student whose mind is thus steadied obtains a mastery which extends from the Atomic to the Infinite.
41. The mind that has been so trained that the ordinary modifications of its action are not present, but only those which occur upon the conscious taking up of an object for contemplation, is changed into the likeness of that which is pondered upon, and enters into full comprehension of the being thereof.
42. This change of the mind into the likeness of what is pondered upon, is technically called the Argumentative condition, when there is any mixing-up of the title of the thing, the significance and application of that title, and the abstract knowledge of the qualities and elements of the thing per se.
43. On the disappearance, from the plane of contemplation, of the title and significance of the object selected for meditation; when the abstract thing itself, free from distinction by designation, is presented to the mind only as an entity, that is what is called the Non-Argumentative condition of meditation.
These two aphorisms (42-43) describe the first and second stages of meditation, in the mind properly intent upon objects of a gross or material nature. The next aphorism has reference to the state when subtile, or higher, objects are selected for contemplative meditation.
44. The Argumentative and Non-Argumentative conditions of the mind, described in the preceding two aphorisms, also obtain when the object selected for meditation is subtile, or of a higher nature than sensuous objects.
45. That meditation which has a subtile object in view ends with the indissoluble element called primordial matter.
46. The mental changes described in the foregoing, constitute "meditation with its seed."
"Meditation with its seed" is that kind of meditation in which there is still present before the mind a distinct object to be meditated upon.
47. When Wisdom has been reached, through acquirement of the non-deliberative mental state, there is spiritual clearness.
48. In that case, then, there is that Knowledge which is absolutely free from Error.
49. This kind of knowledge differs from the knowledge due to testimony and inference; because, in the pursuit of knowledge based upon those, the mind has to consider many particulars and is not engaged with the general field of knowledge itself.
50. The train of self-reproductive thought resulting from this puts a stop to all other trains of thought.
It is held that there are two main trains of thought; (a) that which depends upon suggestion made either by the words of another, or by impression upon the senses or mind, or upon association; (b) that which depends altogether upon itself, and reproduces from itself the same thought as before. And when the second sort is attained, its effect is to act as an obstacle to all other trains of thought, for it is of such a nature that it repels or expels from the mind any other kind of thought. As shown in Aphorism 48, the mental state called "non-argumentative" is absolutely free from error, since it has nothing to do with testimony or inference, but is knowledge itself, and therefore from its inherent nature it puts a stop to all other trains of thought.
51. This train of thought itself, with but one object, may also be stopped, in which case "meditation without a seed" is attained.
"Meditation without a seed" is that in which the brooding of the mind has been pushed to such a point that the object selected for meditation has disappeared from the mental plane, and there is no longer any recognition of it, but consequent progressive thought upon a higher plane.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
BOOK 2. -- MEANS OF CONCENTRATION
1. The practical part of Concentration is, Mortification, Muttering, and Resignation to the Supreme Soul.
What is here meant by "mortification" is the practice laid down in other books, such as the Dharma S'astra, which includes penances and fastings; "muttering" is the semi-audible repetition of formulae also laid down, preceded by the mystic name of the Supreme Being given in Aphorism 27, Book I; "resignation to the Supreme Soul," is the consigning to the Divine, or the Supreme Soul, all one's works, without interest in their results.
2. This practical part of concentration is for the purpose of establishing meditation and eliminating afflictions.
3. The afflictions which arise in the disciple are Ignorance, Egoism, Desire, Aversion, and a tenacious wish for existence upon the earth.
4. Ignorance is the field of origin of the others named, whether they be dormant, extenuated, intercepted, or simple.
5. Ignorance is the notion that the non-eternal, the impure, the evil, and that which is not soul are, severally, eternal, pure, good, and soul.
6. Egoism is the identifying of the power that sees with the power of seeing.
I.e. it is the confounding of the soul, which really sees, with the tool it uses to enable it to see, viz. the mind, or -- to a still greater degree of error -- with those organs of sense which are in turn the tools of the mind; as, for instance, when an uncultured person thinks that it is his eye which sees, when in fact it is his mind that uses the eye as a tool for seeing.
7. Desire is the dwelling upon pleasure.
8. Aversion is the dwelling upon pain.
9. The tenacious wish for existence upon earth is inherent in all sentient beings, and continues through all incarnations, because it has self-reproductive power. It is felt as well by the wise as the unwise.
There is in the spirit a natural tendency, throughout a Manvantara, to manifestation on the material plane, on and through which only, the spiritual monads can attain their development; and this tendency, acting through the physical basis common to all sentient beings, is extremely powerful and continues through all incarnations, helping to cause them, in fact, and re-producing itself in each incarnation.
10. The foregoing five afflictions, when subtile, are to be evaded by the production of an antagonistic mental state.
11. When these afflictions modify the mind by pressing themselves upon the attention, they are to be got rid of by meditation.
12. Such afflictions are the root of, and produce, results in both physical and mental actions or works, and they, being our merits or demerits, have their fruitage either in the visible state or in that which is unseen.
13. While that root of merit and demerit exists, there is a fructification during each succeeding life upon earth in rank, years, pleasure, or pain.
14. Happiness or suffering results, as the fruit of merit and demerit, accordingly as the cause is virtue or vice.
15. But to that man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation, all mundane things are alike vexatious, since the modifications of the mind due to the natural qualities are adverse to the attainment of the highest condition; because, until that is reached, the occupation of any form of body is a hindrance, and anxiety and impressions of various kinds ceaselessly continue.
16. That which is to be shunned by the disciple is pain not yet come.
The past cannot be changed or amended; that which belongs to the experiences of the present cannot, and should not, be shunned; but alike to be shunned are disturbing anticipations or fears of the future, and every act or impulse that may cause present or future pain to ourselves or others.
17. From the fact that the soul is conjoined in the body with the organ of thought, and thus with the whole of nature, lack of discrimination follows, producing misconceptions of duties and responsibilities. This misconception leads to wrongful acts, which will inevitably bring about pain in the future.
A. The Universe, including the visible and the invisible, the essential nature of which is compounded of purity, action, and rest, and which consists of the elements and the organs of action, exists for the sake of the soul's experience and emancipation.
19. The divisions of the qualities are the diverse, the non-diverse, those which may be resolved once but no farther, and the irresolvable.
The "diverse " are such as the gross elements and the organs of sense; the "non-diverse," the subtile elements and the mind; the "once resolvable," the intellect, which can be resolved into undifferentiated matter but no farther; and the "irresolvable," indiscrete matter.
20. The soul is the Perceiver; is assuredly vision itself pure and simple; unmodified; and looks directly upon ideas.
21. For the sake of the soul alone, the Universe exists.
The commentator adds: "Nature in energizing does not do so with a view to any purpose of her own, but with the design, as it were, expressed in the words 'let me bring about the soul's experience.'"
22. Although the Universe in its objective state has ceased to be, in respect to that man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation, it has not ceased in respect to all others, because it is common to others besides him.
23. The conjuncture of the soul with the organ of thought, and thus with nature, is the cause of its apprehension of the actual condition of the nature of the Universe and of the soul itself.
24. The cause of this conjuncture is what is to be quitted, and that cause is ignorance.
25. The quitting consists in the ceasing of the conjuncture, upon which ignorance disappears, and this is the Isolation of the soul.
That which is meant in this and in the preceding two aphorisms is that the conjuncture of soul and body, through repeated reincarnations, is due to its absence of discriminative knowledge of the nature of the soul and its environment, and when this discriminative knowledge has been attained, the conjuncture, which was due to the absence of discrimination, ceases of its own accord.
26. The means of quitting the state of bondage to matter is perfect discriminative knowledge, continuously maintained.
The import of this -- among other things -- is that the man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation maintains his consciousness, alike while in the body, at the moment of quitting it, and when he has passed into higher spheres; and likewise when returning continues it unbroken while quitting higher spheres, when re-entering his body, and in resuming action on the material plane.
27. This perfect discriminative knowledge possessed by the man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation, is of seven kinds, up to the limit of meditation.
28. Until this perfect discriminative knowledge is attained, there results from those practices which are conducive to concentration, an illumination more or less brilliant which is effective for the removal of impurity.
29. The practices which are conducive to concentration are eight in number: Forbearance, Religious Observances, Postures, Suppression of the breath, Restraint, Attention, Contemplation, and Meditation.
30. Forbearance consists in not killing, veracity, not stealing, continence, and not coveting.
31. These, without respect to rank, place, time, or compact, are the universal great duties.
32. Religious Observances are purification of both mind and body, contentment, austerity, inaudible mutterings, and persevering devotion to the Supreme Soul.
33. In order to exclude from the mind questionable things, the mental calling up of those things that are opposite is efficacious for their removal.
34. Questionable things, whether done, caused to be done, or approved of; whether resulting from covetousness, anger, or delusion; whether slight, or of intermediate character, or beyond measure; are productive of very many fruits in the shape of pain and ignorance; hence, the "calling up of those things that are opposite" is in every way advisable.
35. When harmlessness and kindness are fully developed in the Yogi [he who has attained to cultivated enlightenment of the soul], there is a complete absence of enmity, both in men and animals, among all that are near to him.
36. When veracity is complete, the Yogi becomes the focus for the Karma resulting from all works good or bad.
37. When abstinence from theft, in mind and act, is complete in the Yogi, he has the power to obtain all material wealth.
38. When continence is complete, there is a gain of strength, in body and mind.
It is not meant here that a student practising continence solely, and neglecting the other practices enjoined, will gain strength. All parts of the system must be pursued concurrently, on the mental, moral, and physical planes.
39. When covetousness is eliminated, there comes to the Yogi a knowledge of everything relating to, or which has taken place in, former states of existence.
"Covetousness" here applies not only to coveting any object, but also to the desire for enjoyable conditions of mundane existence, or even for mundane existence itself.
40. From purification of the mind and body there arises in the Yogi a thorough discernment of the cause and nature of the body, whereupon he loses that regard which others have for the bodily form; and he also ceases to feel the desire of, or necessity for, association with his fellow-beings that is common among other men.
41. From purification of the mind and body also ensure to the Yogi a complete predominance of the quality of goodness, complacency, intentness, subjugation of the senses, and fitness for contemplation and comprehension of the soul as distinct from nature.
42. From contentment in its perfection the Yogi acquires superlative felicity.
43. When austerity is thoroughly practised by the Yogi, the result thereof is a perfecting and heightening of the bodily senses by the removal of impurity.
44. Through inaudible muttering there is a meeting with one's favorite Deity.
By properly uttered invocations -- here referred to in the significant phrase "inaudible mutterings," the higher powers in nature, ordinarily unseen by man, are caused to reveal themselves to the sight of the Yogi; and inasmuch as all the powers in nature cannot be evoked at once, the mind must be directed to some particular force, or power in nature -- hence the use of the term "with one's favorite Deity."
45. Perfection in meditation comes from persevering devotion to the Supreme Soul.
46. A posture assumed by a Yogi must be steady and pleasant.
For the clearing up of the mind of the student it is to be observed that the "postures" laid down in various systems of "Yoga" are not absolutely essential to the successful pursuit of the practice of concentration and attainment of its ultimate fruits. All such "postures," as prescribed by Hindu writers, are based upon an accurate knowledge of the physiological effects produced by them, but at the present day they are only possible for Hindus, who from their earliest years are accustomed to assuming them.
47. When command over the postures has been thoroughly attained, the effort to assume them is easy; and when the mind has become thoroughly identified with the boundlessness of space, the posture becomes steady and pleasant.
48. When this condition has been attained, the Yogi feels no assaults from the pairs of opposites.
By "pairs of opposites" reference is made to the conjoined classification, all through the Hindu philosophical and metaphysical systems, of the opposed qualities, conditions, and states of being, which are eternal sources of pleasure or pain in mundane existence, such as cold and heat, hunger and satiety, day and night, poverty and riches, liberty and despotism.
49. Also, when this condition has been attained, there should succeed regulation of the breath, in exhalation, inhalation, and retention.
50. This regulation of the breath, which is in exhalation, inhalation, and retention, is further restricted by conditions of time, place, and number, each of which may be long or short.
51. There is a special variety of breath regulation which has reference to both that described in the last preceding aphorism and the inner sphere of breathing.
Aphorisms 49, 50, 51 allude to regulation of the breath as a portion of the physical exercises referred to in the note upon Aphorism 46, acquaintance with the rules and prescriptions for which, on the part of the student, is inferred by Patanjali. Aphorism 50 refers merely to the regulation of the several periods, degrees of force; and number of alternating recurrences of the three divisions of breathing -- exhalation, inhalation, and retention of the breath. But Aphorism 51 alludes to another regulation of the breath, which is its governance by the mind so as to control its direction to and consequent influence upon certain centers of nerve perception within the human body for the production of physiological, followed by psychic effects.
52. By means of this regulation of the breath, the obscuration of the mind resulting from the influence of the body is removed.
53. And thus the mind becomes prepared for acts of attention.
54. Restraint is the accommodation of the senses to the nature of the mind, with an absence on the part of the senses of their sensibility to direct impression from objects.
55. Therefrom results a complete subjugation of the senses.
END OF THE SECOND BOOK.
BOOK 3
1. Fixing the mind on a place, object, or subject is attention.
This is called Dharana.
2. The continuance of this attention is contemplation.
This is called Dhyana.
3. This contemplation, when it is practised only in respect to a material subject or object of sense, is meditation.
This is called Samadhi.
4. When this fixedness of attention, contemplation, and meditation are practised with respect to one object, they together constitute what is called Sanyama.
We have no word in English corresponding to Sanyama. The translators have used the word restraint, but this is inadequate and misleading, although it is a correct translation. When a Hindu says that an ascetic is practising restraint according to this system in respect to any object, he means that he is performing Sanyama, while in English it may indicate that he is restraining himself from some particular thing or act, and this is not the meaning of Sanyama. We have used the language of the text, but the idea may perhaps be better conveyed by "perfect concentration."
5. By rendering Sanyama -- or the operation of fixed attention, contemplation, and meditation -- natural and easy, an accurate discerning power is developed.
This "discerning power" is a distinct faculty which this practice alone develops, and is not possessed by ordinary persons who have not pursued concentration.
6. Sanyama is to be used in proceeding step by step in overcoming all modifications of the mind, from the more apparent to those the most subtle.
[See note to Aphorism 2, Book I.] The student is to know that after he has overcome the afflictions and obstructions described in the preceding books, there are other modifications of a recondite character suffered by the mind, which are to be got rid of by means of Sanyama. When he has reached that stage the difficulties will reveal themselves to him.
7. The three practices -- attention, contemplation, and meditation -- are more efficacious for the attainment of that kind of meditation called, "that in which there is distinct cognition," than the first five means heretofore described as "not killing, veracity, not stealing, continence, and not coveting."
See Aphorism 17, Book I.
8. Attention, contemplation, and meditation are anterior to and not immediately productive of that kind of meditation in which the distinct cognition of the object is lost, which is called meditation without a seed.
9. There are two trains of self-reproductive thought, the first of which results from the mind being modified and shifted by the object or subject contemplated; the second, when it is passing from that modification and is becoming engaged only with the truth itself; at the moment when the first is subdued and the mind is just becoming intent, it. is concerned in both of those two trains of self-reproductive thought, and this state is technically called Nirodha.
10. In that state of meditation which has been called Nirodha, the mind has an uniform flow.
11. When the mind has overcome and fully controlled its natural inclination to consider diverse objects, and begins to become intent upon a single one, meditation is said to be reached.
12. When the mind, after becoming fixed upon a single object, has ceased to be concerned in any thought about the condition, qualities, or relations of the thing thought of, but is absolutely fastened upon the object itself, it is then said to be intent upon a single point -- a state technically called Ekagrata.
13. The three major classes of perception regarding the characteristic property, distinctive mark or use, and possible changes of use or relation, of any object or organ of the body contemplated by the mind, have been sufficiently explained by the foregoing exposition of the manner in which the mind is modified.
It is very difficult to put this aphorism into English. The three words translated as "characteristic property, distinctive mark or use, and possible change of use" are Dharma, Lakshana, and Avastha, and may be thus illustrated: Dharma, as, say, the clay of which a jar is composed, Lakshana, the idea of a jar thus constituted, and Avastha, the consideration that the jar alters every moment, in that it becomes old, or is otherwise affected.
14. The properties of an object presented to the mind are: first, those which have been considered and dismissed from view; second, those under consideration; and third, that which is incapable of denomination because it is not special, but common to all matter.
The third class above spoken of has reference to a tenet of the philosophy which holds that all objects may and will be finally "resolved into nature" or one basic substance; hence gold may be considered as mere matter, and therefore not different -- not to be separately denominated in final analysis -- from earth.
15. The alterations in the order of the three-fold mental modifications before described, indicate to the ascetic the variety of changes which a characteristic property is to undergo when contemplated.
16. A knowledge of past and future events comes to an ascetic from his performing Sanyama in respect to the three-fold mental modifications just explained.
See Aphorism 4, where "Sanyama" is explained as the use or operation of attention, contemplation, and meditation in respect to a single object.
I7. In the minds of those who have not attained to concentration, there is a confusion as to uttered sounds, terms, and knowledge, which results from comprehending these three indiscriminately; but when an ascetic views these separately, by performing "Sanyama" respecting them, he attains the power of understanding the meaning of any sound uttered by any sentient being.
18. A knowledge of the occurrences experienced in former incarnations arises in the ascetic from holding before his mind the trains of self-reproductive thought and concentrating himself upon them.
19. The nature of the mind of another person becomes known to the ascetic when he concentrates his own mind upon that other person.
20. Such concentration will not, however, reveal to the ascetic the fundamental basis of the other person's mind, because he does not "perform Sanyama" with that object before him.
21. By performing concentration in regard to the properties and essential nature of form, especially that of the human body, the ascetic acquires the power of causing the disappearance of his corporeal frame from the sight of others, because thereby its property of being apprehended by the eye is checked, and that property of Sattwa which exhibits itself as luminousness is disconnected from the spectator's organ of sight.
Another great difference between this philosophy and modern science is here indicated. The schools of today lay down the rule that if there is a healthy eye in line with the rays of light reflected from an object -- such as a human body -- the latter will be seen, and that no action of the mind of the person looked at can inhibit the functions of the optic nerves and retina of the onlooker. But the ancient Hindus held that all things are seen by reason of that differentiation of Sattwa -- one of the three great qualities composing all things -- which is manifested as luminousness, operating in conjunction with the eye, which is also a manifestation of Sattwa in another aspect. The two must conjoin; the absence of luminousness or its being disconnected from the seer's eye will cause a disappearance. And as the quality of luminousness is completely under the control of the ascetic, he can, by the process laid down, check it, and thus cut off from the eye of the other an essential element in the seeing of any object.
22. In the same manner, by performing Sanyama in regard to any particular organ of sense -- such as that of hearing, or of feeling, or of tasting, or of smelling -- the ascetic acquires the power to cause cessation of the functions of any of the organs of another or of himself, at will.
The ancient commentator differs from others with regard to this aphorism, in that he asserts that it is a portion of the original text, while they affirm that it is not, but an interpolation.
23. Action is of two kinds; first, that accompanied by anticipation of consequences; second, that which is without any anticipation of consequences. By performing concentration with regard to these kinds of action, a knowledge arises in the ascetic as to the time of his death.
Karma, resultant from actions of both kinds in present and in previous incarnations, produces and affects our present bodies, in which we are performing similar actions. The ascetic, by steadfastly contemplating all his actions in this and in previous incarnations (see Aphorism 18), is able to know absolutely the consequences resultant from actions he has performed, and hence has the power to calculate correctly the exact length of his life.
24. By performing concentration in regard to benevolence, tenderness, complacency, and disinterestedness, the ascetic is able to acquire the friendship of whomsoever he may desire.
25. By performing concentration with regard to the powers of the elements, or of the animal kingdom, the ascetic is able to manifest those in himself.
26. By concentrating his mind upon minute, concealed or distant objects, in every department of nature, the ascetic acquires thorough knowledge concerning them.
27. By concentrating his mind upon the sun, a knowledge arises in the ascetic concerning all spheres between the earth and the sun.
28. By concentrating his mind upon the moon, there arises in the ascetic a knowledge of the fixed stars.
29. By concentrating his mind upon the polar star, the ascetic is able to know the fixed time and motion of every star in the Brahmanda of which this earth is a part.
"Brahmanda" here means the great system, called by some "universe," in which this world is.
30. By concentrating his mind upon the solar plexus, the ascetic acquires a knowledge of the structure of the material body.
31. By concentrating his mind upon the nerve center in the pit of the throat, the ascetic is able to overcome hunger and thirst.
32. By concentrating his mind upon the nerve center below the pit of the throat, the ascetic is able to prevent his body being moved, without any resistant exertion of his muscles.
33. By concentrating his mind upon the light in the head the ascetic acquires the power of seeing divine beings.
There are two inferences here which have nothing to correspond to them in modern thought. One is, that there is a light in the head; and the other, that there are divine beings who may be seen by those who thus concentrate upon the "light in the head." It is held that a certain nerve, or psychic current, called Brahmarandhra-nadi, passes out through the brain near the top of the head. In this there collects more of the luminous principle in nature than elsewhere in the body and it is called jyotis -- the light in the head. And, as every result is to be brought about by the use of appropriate means, the seeing of divine beings can be accomplished by concentration upon that part of the body more nearly connected with them. This point -- the end of Brahmarandhra-nadi -- is also the place where the connexion is made between man and the solar forces.
34. The ascetic can, after long practice, disregard the various aids to concentration hereinbefore recommended for the easier acquirement of knowledge, and will be able to possess any knowledge simply through the desire therefor.
35. By concentrating his mind upon the Hridaya, the ascetic acquires penetration and knowledge of the mental conditions, purposes, and thoughts of others, as well as an accurate comprehension of his own.
Hridaya is the heart. There is some disagreement among mystics as to whether the muscular heart is meant, or some nervous center to which it leads, as in the case of a similar direction for concentrating on the umbilicus, when, in fact, the field of nerves called the solar plexus is intended.
36. By concentrating his mind upon the true nature of the soul as being entirely distinct from any experiences, and disconnected from all material things, and dissociated from the understanding, a knowledge of the true nature of the soul itself arises in the ascetic.
37. From the particular kind of concentration last described, there arises in the ascetic, and remains with him at all times, a knowledge concerning all things, whether they be those apprehended through the organs of the body or otherwise presented to his contemplation.
38. The powers hereinbefore described are liable to become obstacles in the way of perfect concentration, because of the possibility of wonder and pleasure flowing from their exercise, but are not obstacles for the ascetic who is perfect in the practice enjoined.
"Practice enjoined," see Aphorisms 36, 37.
39. The inner self of the ascetic may be transferred to any other body and there have complete control, because he has ceased to be mentally attached to objects of sense, and through his acquisition of the knowledge of the manner in and means by which the mind and body are connected.
As this philosophy holds that the mind, not being the result of brain, enters the body by a certain road and is connected with it in a particular manner, this aphorism declares that, when the ascetic acquires a knowledge of the exact process of connecting mind and body, he can connect his mind with any other body, and thus transfer the power to use the organs of the occupied frame in experiencing effects from the operations of the senses.
40. By concentrating his mind upon, and becoming master of, that vital energy called Udana, the ascetic acquires the power of arising from beneath water, earth, or other superincumbent matter.
Udana is the name given to one of the so-called "vital airs." These, in fact, are certain nervous functions for which our physiology has no name, and each one of which has its own office. It may be said that by knowing them, and how to govern them, one can alter his bodily polarity at will. The same remarks apply to the next aphorism.
41. By concentrating his mind upon the vital energy called Samana, the ascetic acquires the power to appear as if blazing with light.
[This effect has been seen by the interpreter on several occasions when in company with one who had acquired the power. The effect was as if the person had a luminousness under the skin. -- W. Q. J.]
42. By concentrating his mind upon the relations between the ear and A'kas'a, the ascetic acquires the power of hearing all sounds, whether upon the earth or in the aether, and whether far or near.
The word A'kas'a has been translated both as "aether" and "astral light." In this aphorism it is employed in the former sense. Sound, it will remembered, is the distinctive property of this element.
43. By concentrating his mind upon the human body, in its relations to air and space, the ascetic is able to change at will the polarity of his body, and consequently acquires the power of freeing it from the control of the laws of gravitation.
44. When the ascetic has completely mastered all the influences which the body has upon the inner man, and has laid aside all concern in regard to it, and in no respect is affected by it, the consequence is a removal of all obscurations of the intellect.
45. The ascetic acquires complete control over the elements by concentrating his mind upon the five classes of properties in the manifested universe; as, first, those of gross or phenomenal character; second, those of form; third, those of subtle quality; fourth, those susceptible of distinction as to light, action, and inertia; fifth, those having influence in their various degrees for the production of fruits through their effects upon the mind.
46. From the acquirement of such power over the elements there results to the ascetic various perfections, to wit, the power to project his inner-self into the smallest atom, to expand his inner-self to the size of the largest body, to render his material body light or heavy at will, to give indefinite extension to his astral body or its separate members, to exercise an irresistible will upon the minds of others, to obtain the highest excellence of the material body, and the ability to preserve such excellence when obtained.
47. Excellence of the material body consists in color, loveliness of form, strength, and density.
48. The ascetic acquires complete control over the organs of sense from having performed Sanyama (concentration) in regard to perception, the nature of the organs, egoism, the quality of the organs as being in action or at rest, and their power to produce merit or demerit from the connexion of the mind with them.
49. Therefrom spring up in the ascetic the powers; to move his body from one place to another with the quickness of thought, to extend the operations of his senses beyond the trammels of place or the obstructions of matter, and to alter any natural object from one form to another.
50. In the ascetic who has acquired the accurate discriminative knowledge of the truth and of the nature of the soul, there arises a knowledge of all existences in their essential natures and a mastery over them.
51. In the ascetic who acquires an indifference even to the last mentioned perfection, through having destroyed the last germs of desire, there comes a state of the soul that is called Isolation.
[See note on Isolation in Book IV.]
52. The ascetic ought not to form association with celestial beings who may appear before him, nor exhibit wonderment at their appearance, since the result would be a renewal of afflictions of the mind.
53. A great and most subtile knowledge springs from the discrimination that follows upon concentration of the mind performed with regard to the relation between moments and their order.
In this Patanjali speaks of ultimate divisions of time which cannot be further divided, and of the order in which they precede and succeed each other. It is asserted that a perception of these minute periods can be acquired, and the result will be that he who discriminates thus goes on to greater and wider perception of principles in nature which are so recondite that modern philosophy does not even know of their existence. We know that we can all distinguish such periods as days or hours, and there are many persons, born mathematicians, who are able to perceive the succession of minutes and can tell exactly without a watch how many have elapsed between any two given points in time. The minutes, so perceived by these mathematical wonders, are, however, not the ultimate divisions of time referred to in the Aphorism, but are themselves composed of such ultimates. No rules can be given for such concentration as this, as it is so far on the road of progress that the ascetic finds the rules himself, after having mastered all the anterior processes.
54. Therefrom results in the ascetic a power to discern subtile differences impossible to be known by other means.
55. The knowledge that springs from this perfection of discriminative power is called "knowledge that saves from rebirth." It has all things and the nature of all things for its objects, and perceives all that hath been and that is, without limitations of time, place, or circumstance, as if all were in the present and the presence of the contemplator.
Such an ascetic as is referred to in this and the next aphorism, is a Jivanmukta and is not subject to reincarnation. He, however, may live yet upon earth but is not in any way subject to his body, the soul being perfectly free at every moment. And such is held to be the state of those beings called, in theosophical literature, Adepts, Mahatmas, Masters.
56. When the mind no longer conceives itself to be the knower, or experiencer, and has become one with the soul -- the real knower and experiencer -- Isolation takes place and the soul is emancipated.
END OF THE THIRD BOOK.
BOOK 4. -- THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF ISOLATION
1. Perfections of body, or superhuman powers are produced by birth, or by powerful herbs, or by incantations, penances, or meditations.
The sole cause of permanent perfections is meditation performed in incarnations prior to that in which the perfection appears, for perfection by birth, such as the power of birds to fly, is impermanent, as also are those following upon incantations, elixirs and the like. But as meditation reaches within, it affects each incarnation. It must also follow that evil meditation will have the result of begetting perfection in evil.
2. The change of a man into another class of being -- such as that of a celestial being -- is effected by the transfusion of natures.
This alludes to the possibility -- admitted by the Hindus -- of a man's being altered into one of the Devas, or celestial beings, through the force of penances and meditation.
3. Certain merits, works, and practices are called "occasional" because they do not produce essential modification of nature; but they are effective for the removal of obstructions in the way of former merit, as in the case of the husbandman who removes impediments in the course of the irrigating stream, which then flows forward.
This is intended to further explain Aphorism 2 by showing, that in any incarnation certain practices [e.g. those previously laid down] will clear away the obscurations of a man's past Karma, upon which that Karma will manifest itself; whereas, if the practices were not pursued, the result of past meditation might be delayed until yet another life.
4. The minds acting in the various bodies which the ascetic voluntarily assumes are the production of his egoism alone.
5. And for the different activities of those various minds, the ascetic's mind is the moving cause.
6. Among the minds differently constituted by reason of birth, herbs, incantations, penances, and meditation, that one alone which is due to meditation is destitute of the basis of mental deposits from works.
The aphorism applies to all classes of men, and not to bodies assumed by the ascetic; and there must always be kept in view the doctrine of the philosophy that each life leaves in the Ego mental deposits which form the basis upon which subsequent vicissitudes follow in other lives.
7. The work of the ascetic is neither pure nor dark, but is peculiar to itself, while that of others is of three kinds.
The three kinds of work alluded to are (1) pure in action and motive; (2) dark, such as that of infernal beings; (3) that of the general run of men, pure-dark. The 4th is that of the ascetic.
8. From these works there results, in every incarnation, a manifestation of only those mental deposits which can come to fructification in the environment provided.
9. Although. the manifestation of mental deposits may be intercepted by unsuitable environments, differing as to class, place, and time, there is an immediate relation between them, because the memory and the train of self-reproductive thought are identical.
This is to remove a doubt caused by Aphorism 8, and is intended to show that memory is not due to mere brain matter, but is possessed by the incarnating ego, which holds all the mental deposits in a latent state, each one becoming manifest whenever the suitable bodily constitution and environment are provided for it.
10. The mental deposits are eternal because of the force of the desire which produced them.
In the Indian edition this reads that the deposits remain because of the "benediction." And as that word is used in a special sense, we do not give it here. All mental deposits result from a desire for enjoyment, whether it be from a wish to avoid in the next life certain pain suffered in this, or from the positive feeling expressed in the desire, "may such and such pleasure always be mine." This is called a "benediction." And the word "eternal" has also a special signification, meaning only that period embraced by a "day of Brahma," which lasts for a thousand ages.
11. As they are collected by cause, effect, substratum, and support, when those are removed, the result is that there is a non-existence of the mental deposits.
This aphorism supplements the preceding one, and intends to show that, although the deposits will remain during "eternity" if left to themselves -- being always added to by new experiences and similar desires -- yet they may be removed by removing producing causes.
12. That which is past and that which is to come, are not reduced to non-existence, for the relations of the properties differ one from the other.
13. Objects, whether subtile or not, are made up of the three qualities.
The "three qualities" are Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, or Truth, Activity, and Darkness: Truth corresponding to light and joy; Activity to passion; and Darkness to evil, rest, indifference, sloth, death. All manifested objects are compounded of these three.
14. Unity of things results from unity of modification.
15. Cognition is distinct from the object, for there is diversity of thoughts among observers of one object.
16. An object is cognized or not cognized by the mind accordingly as the mind is or is not tinted or affected by the object.
17. The modifications of the mind are always known to the presiding spirit, because it is not subject to modification.
Hence, through all the changes to which the mind and soul are subject, the spiritual soul, I's'wara, remains unmoved, "the witness and spectator."
18. The mind is not self-illuminative, because it is an instrument of the soul, is colored and modified by experiences and objects, and is cognized by the soul.
19. Concentrated attention to two objects cannot take place simultaneously.
20. If one perception be cognizable by another, then there would be the further necessity for cognition of cognition, and from that a confusion of recollection would take place.
21. When the understanding and the soul are united, then self-knowledge results.
The self-knowledge spoken of here is that interior illumination desired by all mystics, and is not merely a knowledge of self in the ordinary sense.
22. The mind, when united with the soul and fully conversant with knowledge, embraces
universally all objects.
23. The mind, though assuming various forms by reason of innumerable mental deposits, exists for the purpose of the soul's emancipation and operates in co-operation therewith.
24. In him who knows the difference between the nature of soul and mind, the false notion regarding the soul comes to an end.
The mind is merely a tool, instrument, or means, by which the soul acquires experiences and knowledge. In each incarnation the mind is, as it were, new. It is a portion of the apparatus furnished to the soul through innumerable lives for obtaining experience and reaping the fruit of works performed. The notion that the mind is either knower or experiencer is a false one, which is to be removed before emancipation can be reached by soul. It was therefore said that the mind operates or exists for the carrying out of the soul's salvation, and not the soul for the mind's sake. When this is fully understood, the permanency of soul is seen, and all the evils flowing from false ideas begin to disappear.
25. Then the mind becomes deflected toward discrimination and bowed down before Isolation.
26. But in the intervals of meditation other thoughts arise, in consequence of the continuance of old impressions not yet expunged.
27. The means to be adopted for the avoidance and elimination of these are the same as before given for obviating the afflictions.
28. If the ascetic is not desirous of the fruits, even when perfect knowledge has been attained, and is not inactive, the meditation technically called Dharma Megha -- cloud of virtue -- takes place from his absolutely perfect discriminative knowledge.
The commentator explains that, when the ascetic has reached the point described in Aphorism 25, if he bends his concentration toward the prevention of all other thoughts, and is not desirous of attaining the powers resulting just at his wish, a further state of meditation is reached which is called "cloud of virtue," because it is such as will, as it were, furnish the spiritual rain for the bringing about of the chief end of the soul -- entire emancipation. And it contains a warning that, until that chief end is obtained, the desire for fruits is an obstacle.
29. Therefrom results the removal of the afflictions and all works.
30. Then, from infinity of knowledge absolutely free from obscuration and impurity, that which is knowable appears small and easy to grasp.
31. Thereupon, the alternation in the modifications of the qualities, having accomplished the soul's aim -- experience and emancipation -- comes to an end.
32. It is then perceived that the moments and their order of precedence and succession are the same.
This is a step further than Aphorism 53, Book III, where it is stated that from discrimination of ultimates of time a perception of the very subtle and recondite principles of the universe results. Here, having arrived at Isolation, the ascetic sees beyond even the ultimates, and they, although capable of affecting the man who has not reached this stage, are for the ascetic identical, because he is a master of them. It is extremely difficult to interpret this aphorism; and in the original it reads that "the order is counterpart of the moment." To express it in another way, it may be said that in the species of meditation adverted to in Aphorism 53, Book III, a calculative cognition goes forward in the mind, during which, the contemplator not yet being thoroughly master of these divisions of time, is compelled to observe them as they pass before him.
33. The reabsorption of the qualities which have consummated the aim of the soul or the abiding of the soul united with understanding in its own nature, is Isolation.
This is a general statement of the nature of Isolation, sometimes called Emancipation. The qualities before spoken of, found in all objects and which had hitherto affected and delayed the soul, have ceased to be mistaken by it for realities, and the consequence is that the soul abides in its own nature unaffected by the great "pairs of opposites" -- pleasure and pain, good and evil, cold and heat, and so forth.
Yet it must not be deduced that the philosophy results in a negation, or in a coldness, such as our English word "Isolation" would seem to imply. The contrary is the case. Until this state is reached, the soul, continually affected and deflected by objects, senses, suffering, and pleasure, is unable to consciously partake universally of the great life of the universe. To do so, it must stand firmly "in its own nature"; and then it proceeds further -- as is admitted by the philosophy -- to bring about the aim of all other souls still struggling on the road. But manifestly further aphorisms upon that would be out of place, as well as being such as could not be understood, to say nothing of the uselessness of giving them.
END OF THE FOURTH BOOK
May I's'wara be near and help those who read this book.
OM
How to Read the Timeline
-2.5m to -1000
The thick line represents the flow of time from the date on the top to dates on the bottom. The thinner lines to the left indicate the duration of major ruling dynasties. Not all are included, for at times India was divided into dozens of small independent kingdoms. Approximate dates are preceded by the letter "ca," an abbreviation of the word "circa," which denotes "about," "around" or "in approximately." all dates prior to Buddha (624 bce) are considered estimates.
bce: Abbreviation for "before common era," referring to dating prior to the year zero in the Western, or Gregorian calendar, system.
ce: Abbreviation for "common era." Equivalent to the abbreviation ad. Following a date, it indicates that the year in question comes after the year zero in the Western, or Gregorian calendar, system.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/himalaya.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/earth/birth.html
1 -2.5 m: Genus Homo originates in Africa, cradle of humanity. http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/links/evolinks.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
http://www.asu.edu/clas/iho/
2 2 -2 m: Stone artifacts are made and used by hominids in North India, an area rich in animal species, including the elephant.
3 -500,000: Stone hand axes and other tools are used in N. India.
4 -470,000: India's hominids are active in Tamil Nadu and Punjab.
5 -400,000: Soan culture in India is using primitive chopping tools.
6 -360,000: Fire is first controlled by homo erectus in China.
7 -300,000: Homo sapiens roams the earth, from Africa to Asia.
8 -100,000: Homo sapiens sapiens (humans) with 20th-century man's brain size (1,450 cc) live in East Africa. Populations separate. Migrations proceed to Asia via the Isthmus of Suez.
9 -75,000: Last ice age begins. Human population is 1.7 million. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html
10 -45,000: After mastery of marine navigation, migrations from Southeast Asia settle Australia and the Pacific islands.
11 -40,000: Groups of hunter-gatherers in Central India are living in painted rock shelters. Similar groups in Northern Punjab work at open sites protected by windbreaks.
12 -35,000: Migrations of separated Asian populations settle Europe.
13 -30,000: American Indians spread throughout the Americas.
14 -10,000: Last ice age ends after 65,000 years; earliest signs of agriculture. World population 4 million; India is 100,000.
15 -10,000: Taittiriya Brahmana 3.1.2 refers to Purvabhadrapada nakshatra's rising due east, a phenomenon occurring at this date (Dr. B.G. Siddharth of Birla Science Institute), indicating the earliest known dating of the sacred Veda.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/3588/hinduism.htm
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501d.txt
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ electronic jnl of vedic studies
http://www1.shore.net/~india/
16 -10,000: Vedic culture, the essence of humanity's eternal wisdom, Sanatana Dharma, lives in the Himalayas at end of Ice Age.
Reference: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2003/01/21/stories/2003012100110200.htm
An ecological view of ancient India
We need to look at the civilisation of India according to geographical and ecological imperatives that are far more certain than historical speculation conditioned by simplistic ideas of ethnicity, linguistics or migrations.
Ecology is beginning to define how we look at the world and how we look at ourselves. Each geographical region in the world constitutes a special ecosystem — an interrelated habitat for plants and animals shaped by climate and terrain. These ecological factors have a strong effect upon culture as well.
As part of nature ourselves, society arises out of an ecological basis that we cannot ignore. Most civilisations, both in their advance and decline, reflect how people manage the ecosystems in which they live along with their natural resources. Human culture derives largely from its first culture, which is agriculture, our ability to work the land. This depends largely on water, particularly fresh water that is found in rivers, and flat land that can be easily irrigated.
However, so far we have looked at history mainly in a non-ecological way, mainly trying to define it according to political, economic or racial concerns. Our account of ancient history — particularly that of India — has not given adequate regard to ecological factors. It has put too much weight on migration, as if culture came from the outside, rather than on the characteristics and necessities of the ecosystems in which people live and must rely upon for developing a sustainable way of life.
The Aryan invasion theory is such a product of the pre-ecological age of historical theory that emphasised the movements of peoples over the natural development of culture within well-defined geographical regions. Nineteenth century thought — the product of a colonial age — found it easy to see culture as something brought in by intruders, rather than as something developed by the inhabitants of a region who had to develop suitable methods to harness their natural resources as shaped by the ecology around them.
River systems
It is a well known fact that the main civilisations of the ancient world of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India (Indus Valley), and China were possible only because of the great river systems around which they grew up. The rivers made these civilisations possible, not simply human invention or any special ethnic type that migrated there. If we examine these four great river centres of early civilisation it is clear that the largest and most ideal river region in the world for developing civilisation is India. Egypt grew up around one great river, the Nile that flowed through what was otherwise a dry, rainless desert. Mesopotamia had two rivers but only of moderate size, the Tigris and the Euphrates, flowing through a large desert as well. Both Egypt and Mesopotamia were located in subtropical regions that provided abundant warmth and sunshine for crops, but otherwise suffered from the limited size of their river banks that were their sole steady water supply. China had a large but unpredictable river system, the Yellow River, which frequently overflowed its banks in various floods. It also received abundant rain. But it was centred in a cold northern region, with a limited growing season.
Ancient India, on the other hand, had a massive nexus of numerous great rivers from the Indus in the west to the swamplands of the Gangetic delta in the east. It had both a warm subtropical climate and seasonal abundant rains. This river region included relatively dry regions of the west to the very wet regions of eastern India affording an abundance of crops both in type and quantity. The Indian river system was much larger in size and in arable land, and better in climate than perhaps all the other three river regions put together. No other ecosystem in the world could so easily serve to create an agricultural diversity or the cultural richness that would go with it. Ecologically speaking, north India was the ideal place in the world for the development of a riverine civilisation via agriculture. Bounded by the Himalayas in the north, and lower mountains on the west, east and south, this north Indian river plain is a specific geographical region and ecosystem, whose natural boundaries could easily serve to create and hold together a great civilisation. It was also ideal for producing large populations that depend upon agriculture for their sustenance.
This same network of rivers was ideal for communication and trade. Not surprisingly, the Rigveda, the oldest book of the region, is full of praise for the numerous great rivers of the region, the foremost of which in early ancient times was the Sarasvati, which flowed east of the Yamuna into the Rann of Kachchh, creating an unbroken set of fertile rivers from Punjab to Bengal. This Vedic goddess of speech was a river goddess. The Vedic idea of One Truth but many paths (Rigveda I.164.46) probably reflects this experience of life of many rivers linked to the one sea.
The main point of this article is that if we really want to understand the development of civilisation in ancient India we cannot ignore such ecological and geographical factors. Ancient India was the ideal ecological region for the development of civilisation in the ancient world. Therefore, we should look to an indigenous development of civilisation in the region. We need not import its people, animals, plants, culture or civilisation from the outside, particularly from barren and inhospitable Central Asia, for example, which would not have been suitable to India and which is separated from it geographically by very hard to cross mountain and desert barriers.
New approach
It is time to take a new ecological look at the Vedas, which so far have not been examined adequately ecologically but have been approached mainly according to linguistic, Marxist or Freudian concerns that easily miss the obvious geography or ecology of the text. If we do this, we will discover that even the oldest Vedic text, the Rigveda, clearly describes a region of many vast rivers flowing to the sea, the most important of which was the Sarasvati. The climate that it describes of great rains and monsoons, the symbolism of the great God Indra, is also clearly that of India. The flora and fauna mentioned including the Brahma bull, water buffalo and elephant and its sacred trees of the Pipal, Ashvatta and Shamali is also that of India.
The fall of the Indus or Harappan culture, just as was the case for many in the ancient world, was owing to ecological factors, something that Nineteenth and early Twentieth century migrationist views of history completely missed. It occurred not because of the destruction wrought by the proposed Aryan invaders but by ecological changes brought about by the drying up of the Sarasvati River around 1900 BCE. This did not end civilisation in the region but caused its relocation mainly to the more certain waters of the Ganga to the east. Such a movement is reflected in the shift from Vedic literature that is centred on the Sarasvati to the Puranic literature that is centred on the Ganga.
The great north Indian river system from Punjab to Bihar is perhaps the greatest breadbasket or agricultural centre in the world. Any humans in the region would have been aided by the land, the waters and the climate, affording them a great advantage in the development of language and culture as well. The natural resources provided by the riverine ecosystem of north India could uphold great civilisations over the centuries. From it the peoples and literature of the region had adequate support from nature to sustain their cultural traditions.
Southern river regions
The type of civilisation developed on the rivers of north India could easily connect with the cultures developing on the rivers in the south of the country that shared a common climate and geographical ties. The other main great river region for India is the basins of the Krishna and Godavari rivers in the southeast of India, mainly Andhra Pradesh. This provides another important agricultural centre in the ancient world, which has also not been examined properly. Another important river area is the Narmada and Tapti rivers in Gujarat and Maharashtra. As these were nearby the delta of the Sarasvati, they could have been an extension of it (which is perhaps why the Bhrigu Rishis of this region are so important in Vedic literature).
That the civilisation of north India could have had connections with these southern cultures is also ecologically based. For this we must consider the ecological factors that existed when agriculture began to arise in the world around 10,000 BCE. Before the end of the Ice Age north India was much drier and cooler in climate. This means that if there was any pre-Ice Age basis for agriculture in north India it would have more likely come from these more suitable southern river regions which had better rainfall at that time.
We need to look at the civilisation of India according to geographical and ecological imperatives that are far more certain than historical speculation conditioned by simplistic ideas of ethnicity, linguistics or migrations. In this regard the study of the Sarasvati river system by the geologists of India and linking it to the Sarasvati river as lauded in Vedic literature is probably the key. Civilisation is like a plant that owes its existence to the land on which it grows. We cannot ignore this important fact either for our past or for our future. The current Government of India plan to link all the great rivers of the country represents such a responsible ecological approach which, including reconstituting the old Sarasvati river channel, links the great future of the country with its great past.
DAVID FRAWLEY
17 -9000: Old Europe, Anatolia and Minoan Crete display a Goddess-centered culture reflecting a matriarchial order.
18 -8500: Taittiriya Samhita 6.5.3 places Pleiades asterism at winter solstice, suggesting the antiquity of this Veda.
19 -7500: Excavations at Neveli Cori in Turkey reveal advanced civilization with meticulous architecture and planning. Dr. Sri B.G. Siddharth believes this was a Vedic culture.
20 -7000: Proto-Vedic period ends. Early Vedic period begins.
21 -7000: Time of Manu Vaivasvata, "father of mankind," of Sarasvati-Drishadvati area (also said to be a South Indian Maharaja who sailed to the Himalayas during a great flood).
22 -7000: Early evidence of horses in the Ganga region (Frawley).
23 -7000: Indus-Sarasvati area residents of Mehrgarh grow barley, raise sheep and goats. They store grain, entomb their dead and construct buildings of sun-baked mud bricks.
24 -6776: Start of Hindu lists of kings according to ancient Greek references that give Hindus 150 kings and a history of 6,400 years before 300bce; agrees with next entry.
25 -6500: Rig Veda verses (e.g., 1.117.22, 1.116.12, 1.84.13.5) say winter solstice begins in Aries (according to Dr. D. Frawley), indicating the antiquity of this section of the Vedas.
http://www.san.beck.org/EC7-Vedas.html
http://www.san.beck.org/index.html
-6000: Early sites on the Sarasvati River, then India's largest, flowing west of Delhi into the Rann of Kutch; Rajasthan is a fertile region with much grassland, as described in the Rig Veda. The culture, based upon barley (yava), copper (ayas) and cattle, also reflects that of the Rig Veda.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/members/indus.html
-5500: Mehrgarh villagers are making baked pottery and thousands of small, clay of female figurines (interpreted to be earliest signs of Shakti worship), and are involved in long-distance trade in precious stones and sea shells.
-5500: Date of astrological observations associated with ancient events later mentioned in the Puranas (Alain Danielou).
-5000: World population, 5 million, doubles every 1,000 years.
-5000: Beginnings of Indus-Sarasvati civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Date derived by considering archeological sites, reached after excavating 45 feet. Brick fire altars exist in many houses, suggesting Vedic fire rites, yajna. Earliest signs of worship of Lord Siva. This mature culture will last 3,000 years, ending around -1700.
-5000: Rice is harvested in China, with grains found in baked bricks. But its cultivation originated in Eastern India.
-4300: Traditional dating for Lord Rama's time.
-4000: Excavations from this period at Sumerian sites of Kish and Susa reveal existence of Indian trade products.
-4000: India's population is 1 million.
-4000: Date of world's creation (Christian genealogies).
-3928: July 25th, the earliest eclipse mentioned in the Rig Veda (according to Indian researcher Dr. Shri P.C. Sengupta).
-3200: Hindu astronomers called nakshatra darshas record in Vedic texts their observations of full moon and new moon at the winter and summer solstices and spring and fall equinoxes with reference to 27 fixed stars (nakshatras) spaced nearly equally on the moon's ecliptic or apparent path across the sky. The precession of the equinoxes (caused by the wobbling of the Earth's axis of rotation) causes the nakshatras to appear to drift at a constant rate along a predictable course over a 25,000-year cycle. From these observations historians are able to calculate backwards and determine the date when the indicated position of moon, sun and nakshatra occurred.
-3102: Kali Era Hindu calendar starts. Kali Yuga begins.
-3100: Reference to vernal equinox in Rohini (middle of Taurus) from some Brahmanas, as noted by B.G. Tilak, Indian scholar and patriot. Traditional date of the Mahabharata war and lifetime of Lord Krishna.
-3100: Early Vedic period ends, late Vedic period begins.
-3100: India includes Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia.
-3100: Aryan people inhabit Iran, Iraq and Western Indus-Sarasvati Valley frontier. Frawley describes Aryans as "a culture of spiritual knowledge." He and others believe 1) the Land of Seven Rivers (Sapta Sindhu) mentioned in the Rig Veda refers to India only, 2) that the people of Indus-Sarasvati Valleys and those of Rig Veda are the same, and 3) there was no Aryan invasion. This view is now prevailing over the West's historical concept of the Aryans as a separate ethnic or linguistic group. Still others claim the Indus-Sarasvati people were Dravidians who moved out or were displaced by incoming Aryans.
-3000: Weaving in Europe, Near East and Indus-Sarasvati Valley is primarily coiled basketry, either spiraled or sewn.
-3000: Evidence of horses in South India.
-3000: People of Tehuacan, Mexico, are cultivating corn.
-3000: Saiva Agamas are recorded in the time of the earliest Tamil Sangam. (A traditional date.)
-2700: Seals of Indus-Sarasvati Valley indicate Siva worship, in depictions of Siva as Pashupati, Lord of Animals.
-2600: Indus-Sarasvati civilization reaches a height it sustains until 1700 bce. Spreading from Pakistan to Gujarat, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, it is the largest of the world's three oldest civilizations with links to Mesopotamia (possibly Crete), Afghanisthan, Central Asia and Karnataka. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have populations of 100,000.
-2600: Major portions of the Veda hymns are composed during the reign of Vishvamitra I (Dating by Dr. S.B. Roy).
-2600: Drying up of Drishadvati River of Vedic fame, along with possible shifting of the Yamuna to flow into the Ganga.
-2600: First Egyptian pyramid is under construction.
-2500: Main period of Indus-Sarasvati cities. Culture relies heavily on rice and cotton, as mentioned in Atharva Veda, which were first developed in India. Ninety percent of sites are along the Sarasvati, the region's agricultural bread basket. Mohenjo-daro is a large peripheral trading center. Rakhigari and Ganweriwala (not yet excavated in 1994) on the Sarasvati are as big as Mohenjo-daro. So is Dholarvira in Kutch. Indus-Sarasvati sites have been found as far south as Karnataka's Godavari River and north into Afghanistan on the Amu Darya River.
-2500: Reference to vernal equinox in Krittika (Pleiades or early Taurus) from Yajur and Atharva Veda hymns and Brahmanas. This corresponds to Harappan seals that show seven women (the Krittikas) tending a fire.
-2300: Sargon founds Mesopotamian kingdom of Akkad, trades with Indus-Sarasvati Valley cities.
-2300: Indo-Europeans in Russia's Ural steppelands develop efficient spoked-wheel chariot technology, using 1,000-year-old horse husbandry and freight-cart technology.
-2050: Vedic people are living in Persia and Afghanistan.
-2051: Divodasa reigns to -1961, has contact with Babylon's King Indatu (Babylonian chronology). Dating by S.B. Roy.
ca -2040: Prince Rama is born at Ayodhya, site of future Rama temple. (This and next two datings by S.B. Roy.)
http://www.hanumanchalis.com
-2033: Reign of Dasharatha, father of Lord Rama. King Ravana, villain of the Ramayana, reigns in Sri Lanka.
-2000: Indo-Europeans (Celts, Slavs, Lithuanians, Ukranians) follow cosmology, theology, astronomy, ritual, society and marriage that parallel early Vedic patterns.
-2000: Probable date of first written Saiva Agamas.
-2000: World population: 27 million. India: 5 million or 22%. India has roughly G of human race throughout history.
http://www.bible.ca/maps/maps-near-east-abrahams-journey.htm (2000 bc ?)
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/abraham.html
The Story of Abraham, from the Hebrew Bible
(Genesis 16:1-3, 15-16, 17, 21:1-2)
When the Jews tried to explain that the Land of Israel was theirs by divine right though they acknowledged that their ancestors had not originated there, they pointed to the promise made to Abraham (originally from the Neobabylonian city of Ur). Although the modern Zionist movement was largely non-religious, the idea of the "promised land" has had a powerful influence in creating and maintaining the modern state of Israel. Ironically, this same story also tells of the origin of another people, the offspring of Ishmael, whom Muslims identify as the Arabs. Both religions therefore trace their origins back to Abraham, and both hold the land of Israel sacred, though neither accepts the other's claims. Like Isaac, several major figures in Jewish tradition are younger brothers or outsiders who eventually triumph through virtue, wit, or skill--Jacob, Joseph, and David, for instance. This pattern reflects the self-image of a people who view themselves as survivors who needed the special intervention of God to triumph. Note the emphasis on a high reproduction rate, desirable in most ancient cultures, for only a minority of children survived infancy.
What effect on the story does the extreme age of Sarai and Abram have?
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her. "And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. . . .
Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty;" walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous." Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God."
God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." (1)
God said to Abraham, "As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her." Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" And Abraham said to God, "O that Ishmael might live in your sight!" God said, "No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year." And when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
Then Abraham took his son Ishmael and all the slaves born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised; and all the men of his house, slaves born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him. . . .
The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me. " And she said, "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."
The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac." The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring." So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand for I will make a great nation of him." Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. . . .
New Revised Standard Version
(1) Circumcision was widely practiced in the ancient Middle East and in Egypt, but contact with people who did not follow the custom in later times made the Jews highly self-conscious of their distinctiveness. Note that in Jewish tradition the covenant (agreement) is "everlasting," not superseded by a "new covenant" as in Christianity. The whole body of the Jewish law comes to be incorporated into this covenant.
-1915: All Madurai Tamil Sangam is held at Thiruparankundram (according to traditional Tamil chronology).
-1900: Late Vedic period ends, post Vedic period begins.
-1900: Drying up of Sarasvati River, end of Indus-Sarasvati culture, end of the Vedic age. After this, the center of civilization in ancient India relocates from the Sarasvati to the Ganga, along with possible migration of Vedic peoples out of India to the Near East (perhaps giving rise to the Mittani and Kassites, who worship Vedic Gods). The redirection of the Sutlej into the Indus causes the Indus area to flood. Climate changes make the Sarasvati region too dry for habitation. (Thought lost, its river bed is finally photographed from satellite in the 1990s.)
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/members/indus.html
-1500: Egyptians bury their royalty in the Valley of the Kings.
-1500: Polynesians migrate throughout Pacific islands.
-1500: Submergence of the stone port city of Dwarka near Gujarat, where early Brahmi script, India's ancient alphabet, is used. Recent excavation by Dr. S.R. Rao. Larger than Mohenjo-daro, many identify it with the Dwarka of Krishna. Possible date of Lord Krishna. Indicates second urbanization phase of India between Indus-Sarasvati sites like Harappa and later cities on the Ganga.
-1500: Indigenous iron technology in Dwarka and Kashmir.
-1500: Cinnamon is exported from Kerala to Middle East.
-1472: Reign of Dhritarashtra, father of the Kauravas. Reign of Yudhisthira, king of the Pandavas. Life of Sage Yajnavalkya. Date based on Mahabharata's citation of winter solstice at Dhanishtha, which occurs around this time.
-1450: End of Rig Veda Samhita narration.
-1450: Early Upanishads are composed during the next few hundred years, also Vedangas and Sutra literature.
-1424: Bharata battle is fought, as related in the Mahabharata. (Professor Subash Kak places the battle at -2449. Other authors give lower dates, up to 9th century bce)
-1424: Birth of Parikshit, grandson of Arjuna, and next king.
-1350: At Boghaz Koi in Turkey, stone inscription of the Mitanni treaty lists as divine witnesses the Vedic Deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas (Ashvins).
-1316: Mahabharata epic poem is composed by Sage Vyasa.
-1300: Panini composes Ashtadhyayi, systematizing Sanskrit grammar in 4,000 terse rules. (Date according to Roy.)
-1300: Changes are made in the Mahabharata and Ramayana through 200 bce. Puranas are edited up until 400 ce. Early smriti literature is composed over next 400 years.
-1255: King Shuchi of Magadha writes Jyotisha Vedanga, including astronomical observations which date this scripture-that summer solstice occurs in Ashlesha Nakshatra.
-1250: Moses leads 600,000 Jews out of Egypt.
-1200: Probable time of the legendary Greek Trojan War celebrated in Homer's epic poems, Iliad and Odyssey (ca -750).
-1124: Elamite Dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar (-1124-1103) moves capital to Babylon, world's largest city, covering 10,000 hectares, slightly larger than present-day San Francisco.
-1000: Late Vedic period ends. Post-Vedic period begins.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #2 -1000 to 1000
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
-1000: World population is 50 million, doubling every 500 years.
-975: King Hiram of Phoenicia, for the sake of King Solomon of Israel, trades with the port of Ophir (Sanskrit: Supara) near modern Bombay, showing the trade between Israel and India. Same trade goes back to Harappan era.
-950: Jewish people arrive in India in King Solomon's merchant fleet. Later Jewish colonies find India a tolerant home.
-950: Gradual breakdown of Sanskrit as a spoken language occurs over the next 200 years.
-925: Jewish King David forms an empire in what is present-day Israel and Lebanon.
-900: Iron Age in India. Early use dates to at least -1500.
ca -900: Earliest records of the holy city of Varanasi (one of the world's oldest living cities) on the sacred river Ganga.
-900: Use of iron supplements bronze in Greece.
-850: The Chinese are using the 28-nakshatra zodiac called Shiu, adapted from the Hindu jyotisha system.
ca -800: Later Upanishads are recorded.
-800: Later smriti, secondary Hindu scripture, is composed, elaborated and developed during next 1,000 years.
-776: First Olympic Games are held in Greece.
Third Intermediate Period (1070 B.C.– 747 B.C.)
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_7.html
The Dynasty 20 pharaohs, with their capital at Pi Ramesses in the Delta, were not able to maintain control over the High Priests of Amen in Thebes. At the end of Dynasty 20, the Viceroy of Kush, Panehsy, began a civil war with Rameses XI, which was put down by his General Herihor. After the war, Herihor took control of Thebes as the High Priest of Amen and depicted himself as a pharaoh and inclosing his name in a cartouche at Karnak [17450]. At the same time, Smendes, the new pharaoh in Lower Egypt, moved the capital to Tanis in t http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_7.htmlhe Delta. The new Temple of Amen at Tanis was modeled after the Temple of Amen at Karnak. The dynastic rivalry was subdued when the High Priest of Amen, Pinedjem I, married into the royal family at Tanis.
The local populace had been robbing the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings since Dynasty 20. This prompted the High Priests of Amen to rebury many of the royal mummies in a hidden location above Dayr al Bahri (TT 320) [13615]. Pharaohs of Dynasty 21 to 24 were buried within the walls of Temple of Amen at Tanis, thus adding a level of security, perhaps due to the tomb robberies of the Valley of the Kings. Likewise, the High Priest of Amen and other local clerics were buried within the enclosure wall of Madinat Habu.
The beginning of Dynasties 22 and 23 witnessed political stability, during which Libyan pharaohs ruled from the Delta, first in Tanis and then Bubastis. The Libyan kings were able to maintain control from the Delta over the High Priests of Amen by placing their children in high positions in the clerical hierarchy. They carried out various building works at Karnak and throughout Egypt [17430].
The reunification of Egypt under Libyan rule did not endure. Centralized authority declined further and further until three dynasties were ruling simultaneously from three cities in the Delta (Tanis, Bubastis and Sais), along with smaller chiefdoms, toward the end of the Third Intermediate Period.
-750: Prakrits, vernacular or "natural" languages, develop among India's common peoples. Already flourishing in 500 bce , Pali and other Prakrits are chiefly known from Buddhist and Jain works composed at this time.
-750: Priestly Sanskrit is gradually refined over next 500 years, taking on its classical form.
-700: Life of Zoroaster of Persia, founder of Zoroastrianism. His holy book, Zend Avesta, contains many verses from the Rig and Atharva Veda. His strong distinctions between good and evil set the dualistic tone of God and devil which distinguishes all later Western religions.
http://www.avesta.org/other/qsanjan.htm
http://www.avesta.org/avesta.html
http://www.avesta.org/
Avesta -- Zoroastrian Archives Contents Prev qsanjan.htm Next Glossary
The Qissa-i Sanjan
Translated by Shahpurshah Hormasji Hodivala, M. A., from Studies in Parsi History (Bombay, 1920, pp. 94-117.)
This text is an account of the emigration of Zoroastrians from Iran to India. It was written in 1600 A.C. The settlement at Sanjan appears to have occurred in 936 A.C. The Muslim sacking of Sanjan probably occurred in 1465 A.C. The sacred fire Iranshah was moved from Navsari to Udwada in the eighteenth century.
Electronic edition prepared by Joseph H. Peterson, copyright 2000. Spelling has been normalized to conform with other texts in this series.
In praise of the unity of the Creator exalted. NOTES:
In the name of the Wise and Most Holy Lord, whose praises I sing with all my soul every moment. Him I thank profusely night and day, for my spirit rejoices only when grateful to Him. In season and out of season, I do nothing but repeat His name, for He is of the Universe Eternal King. He only is puissant and mighty everlastingly and the eyes of His slaves have the gift of vision (lit. are seeing) only through Him. He is in all places our refuge and our protector, the forgiver of our transgressions and the acceptor of our apologies. He has always hearkened to our grievances and it is He who has given us wisdom and shown unto us [the path of] Faith. Cherisher of the stranger and Sovereign of the Universe, pardoner of the sins and overlooker of the backslidings of mankind, He is our Eternal Guide, the companion of our private hours and the resolver of our difficulties. Thou hast, [O Lord], perfect power over creation, Thou only art Ruler Absolute and thy Kingdom only is never-fading. Thou art the Lord of Lords, marvelous, peerless, and without a second. By Thy might, thou fashionest out of clay the figure of a man and then instillest into it the joyous and gladsome soul. Thou conveyest the seed from the spinal column unto the matrix and it is Thou who delineatest upon the [seminal] fluid the picture [of humanity].
It is Thou who hast given body and form to the germ and implanted therein the Macrocosm (lit. the World) itself. Thou hast given unto man not only a tongue for outward [expression], but an inner sense likewise. Two eyes hast Thou bestowed upon him for seeing, two ears for hearing, and a tongue for speech, which may revolve in Thy praise like a wheel. A nose Thou hast endowed him with for appreciate pleasant odours, and feet for standing [erect] in prayer. Thirty-two pearls hast Thou linked together in a row and imparted the sense of taste also to our mouths. So perfectly does Thy Creation coincide with the first design on Thy Tablets-----1 that one would stake (lit. give) life itself on the perfection of Thy art. It is Thou who hast instilled sorrow into the hearts of lovers and the joy and luxury of grief are also Thy gift. Thou hast built up both worlds out of Nothing and it was Thou who madest Man superior to the Angels.-----2 Deity Supreme is befitting without question only to Thee, and of all things Wisdom has borne witness to Thee only. Whenever I give Thee boundless thanks, it is my tongue that is honoured thereby. Love of Thee hath thrown its halter (lit. cord) around my neck and I must perforce run wherever I am dragged in its train (lit. noose). Nor can I help obeying the behests of the Lord who has cast us hither and thither according to His will. Of Everlasting Existence no one is worthy except God, for He only is without His like. The entire Creation has proceeded from Thee to the cosmos hast Thou given this form out of Wisdom. Thou madest Adam out of clay and inscribed [upon his forehead] the name of Thy Vicegerent.-----3 Thou only dost not admit of change; Thou art also He who taketh us by the hand. No one else is like Thee, nor dost Thou resemble any one. All that exists has proceeded out of Thee. Earth and Sky are Thy handiwork, and the children of Adam Thou hast made the Glory (lit. ornament) of creation. 1. The 'doxology' is a stereotyped feature of all lengthy poetical compositions among the Arabs and Persians and Bahman while imitating those models, employs here, as in some other places, phraseology which a Moslem, not Zoroastrian. cf. Quran, Koran. VI. 38. "There is no kind of beast on earth, nor fowl which flieth with its wings, but the same is a people like unto you: we have not omitted anything in the book of our decreed." that is, "the Preserved Table, wherein God's decrees are written and all things which come to pass in the world, as well the most minute as the more momentous are exactly registered." Sale, Koran, 10-1-2 note. 2. cf. "And when we said to the angels, 'Bow down and worship Adam,' then worshipped they all save Iblis." Koran, Sura II. 32. Rodwell, 345. 3. cf. Koran, Sura II. 28. "When Thy Lord said to the angels, 'Verily I am about to place one in my stead on earth,' they said, 'Wilt thou place there one who will do ill therein and shed blood, when we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness'? God said, 'Verily, I know what you know not.' Rodwell, 340.
Bahman has set his face towards Thy presence-gates; keep Thou his heart enlightened in this world. Replenish it with the Good Religion and release him (lit. his head) from the bonds of sorrow. Keep him ever abounding in faith and render out of Thy bounty his soul full of the light [of the spirit]. Save Thou, I possess no patron and in both worlds my hopes are all in Thee, O Master loving-kind, Thou hast pardoned my faults and my tongue is for ever weighing epithets [in Thy praise]. Thou hast succoured my worthless soul and graciously shown favour unto Thy slave. To whom shall I turn if Thou cast'st me off, to whom shall I flee, for Thou hast no compeer. [Lord], I am ashamed of the imperfection of my words [in Thy praise], for this sort of learning [i.e. poetry] has not fallen to my lot. I have come before Thee apologising [for my shortcomings] for Thine is the Kingdom for ever. O Thou who upholdest the Universe, lift me up [also], for I am thy thrall, humble as the dust of the earth. Never shall I make aught but Thy doorway my Kibla (i.e. address my prayers to anyone but Thee). Tell me only what I shall choose that it may be good in Thy sight (lit. to Thee), and which may bestead (lit. go with) me in the Life [Beyond], for this yokefellow of mine (i.e. the physical body), I know, will not wend with me there. In the end, the rolling spheres will turn me to dust [like everything else]; why then should I have any dread or fear of Death? Give me but to utter with my tongue the Ashem Vohu-----4 at the moment when my soul is about to take its way to Paradise and whenever my Spirit departs from its body, do Thou show unto me an angel and make one of the Holy Guardian Spirits-----5 befriend my soul, so that it may be glorified (lit. receive light). 4. cf. "A time may be when the merit of one Ashem Vohu is as much as the value (qimat) of this world and that other world," and "that [Ashem Vohu] whose nature is as much as this world and the other world is when they recite it at the time of the dissolution or life, for if he be not able to recite it himself, friends and relations give it into his mouth. If he be fit for hell, he becomes fit for the Ever-Stationary, and if he be fit for the Ever-Stationary {hamistagan, i.e. purgatory}, he becomes fit for Heaven and if he be fit for Heaven he becomes fit for the Supreme Heaven". Saddar, 80.5, 10-11. West, Sacred Books of the East, XXIV. 344. See also M. R. Unvala's Lithographed edition of Darab Hormazdyar's Rivayat, I. 18. 5. Farohar (Av. Fravashi). "Embryonic or immaterial existences, the prototypes, spiritual counterparts or guardian angels of the spiritual or material creatures afterwards produced." West, Note on Bundahishn 1.8: Sacred Books of the East. V. 5.
Gracious Lord, forgive for Thy Mercy's sake, any sins that may have been by me committed unwittingly (lit. secretly). Indeed, what excuses can old Bahman urge before Thy tribunal, for [he knows] he has been very remiss in Thy service. Forgive his offences notwithstanding and exonerate his soul from its secret lapses. Accept, O Lord, these utterances and fervent prayers, for I have beheld Thy wondrous works of every sort. Lord, Thou knowest my [most] secret thoughts, why then dost Thou toss me thus about on fruitless errands? [I know that) in this world our salvation can come from Thee only; wherefore then should I look for my redemption from others? My youth hath departed and old age arrived and my straight cypress (i.e. erect stature) is lifting its head heavenwards. Old Bahman is the humblest of the humble; be Thou his friend and take him by the hand on all occasions. Thou only art my Judge in both worlds, Thou only my help in feebleness and old age. Wash off from my eyes the sleep of ignorance, O Lord, and turn Thou my face towards knowledge (lit. wakefulness). Do not, O beneficent Sovereign, take me away in the state [of sin] in which I am. Nothing save transgression can come out of man; lead Thou me towards Thyself along [the path of] Faith. I have been groaning thus piteously at Thy gate only that Thou mayest not reckon my name among the sinners. Wert Thou but to show Thy slave any favour, his head would be exalted in both worlds. I have set my heart (lit. face) on meditation of Thee and repeatedly turned my thoughts towards Thee. I now beseech Thee, who art the Judge of our needs and our prayers that Thy Mercies (lit. wonders) may be made manifest to me. NARRATIVE OF THE COMING OF THE MEN OF THE GOOD FAITH FROM KHORASAN TO INDIA.
Hearken now to a wondrous tale (lit. a wonder among tales) recounted by Mobeds and ancients. Were I to tell it [at length], no description would be adequate, and no paper sufficient for the writing thereof. Therefore will I select but a portion and say but one word out of a hundred. I have heard it from a wise Dastur who was ever renowned for goodness. May the Dastur whose name is Hoshang and whose wisdom had always great excellence live long.-----6 The Zend and the Avesta likewise he had studied and driven away all Evil Spirits from himself. He was manifestly the Dastur (ayyán, evidently, plainly) of the city and from him the Faith had always become full of lustre. In those times, his authority was exercised over all (i.e. his commands were obeyed by all) and he managed many spiritual affairs. Every one who took counsel with him on the mysteries of the Faith acted according to his advice in matters of religion. In the town in which he was the preceptor, the hearts and souls of his disciples were delighted with him.-----7 He repeated to me this tale in the words of the ancients and discovered to me the hidden secrets of the Righteous. He narrated this story to us one day and strung the pearls of history with skill. May the Dastur who told me this tale have virtue everlastingly for his fellow. I repeat the story as he told it and relate the [hitherto] unknown deeds of the People of the Good Faith.-----8 6. This couplet is left out in some copies, but I have found it in at least three old and good Manuscripts and M. Huart of the Bibliotheque National has borne witness to its occurrence in Anquetil du Perron's copy of the KissehLV, Suppl. Persan. 200). There can be no doubt, therefore, of its genuineness. See Mody, A Few Events in the Early History of the Parsis 4 note. Anquetil, Le Zend Avesta, Tome I, Pte. ii. xxxiv. 7. or "he cordially delighted in teaching his pupils." 8. I have discussed the significance of this passage in a foregoing paper, "Jadi Rana and the Kisseh-i Sanjan."
The saintly Zartosht-----9 showed us the true path in Religion in the days when king Vishtasp lived. He had described in the Avesta all the stages (lit. states) through which his Faith would pass and said: "A Tyrant will appear; three times will the Good Creed be shattered and the People of the Faith ruined and worsted. That conqueror will be named Sitamgar-----10 [the Tyrant] and by him will the Religion of Virtue be reduced to despair. Give heed then unto what I now say of the Faith's doings." Everything happened as he had spoken and the People of the Good Faith groaned and made moan. Sikandar (Alexander the Great), came at last upon them and publicly burnt the scriptures of the Creed,-----11 which was despised for three hundred years-----12 and the Faithful were oppressed. Then after a time-----13, a Defender of the Faith appeared and Ardeshir seized the kingdom. Then once more the Good Religion revived and in the world became of good report. He got Arda Viraf sent to the Presence Divine for [securing] a description of the World of Spirits. But after a time, the Evil Spirit again wrecked this [right] road and once more brought disruption into the Faith, of which evil reports arrived from all sides. When after a while-----14 king Shahpur appeared, he once more made it illustrious and Adarbad Mahraspandan the Devout girded up his loins in its service. Seven kinds of metal (lit. brass) were molten together and poured upon his body [without doing him harm]. Thus did he resolve all the doubts of the Faithful and the Creed once more acquired lustre. From the times of Shahpur to those of Yazdagar it continued to receive honour and worship. Then the days [assigned] to Zartosht by Time (Fate) came to an end and not a vestige of the Good Religion remained, [so that] when the Millennium of Zartosht was over, the [happy days of] the Good Creed also reached their limit.-----15 9. The writer here follows pretty closely the Pahlavi Vohuman Yasht, II 15-22. West, Sacred Books of the East V. 198-201. See the Persian translation of the same in M. R. Unvala's lithographed text of Darab Hormazdyar's Rivayat, II. 86-88. 10. Alexander the Great is supposed by some to be referred to in the Pahlavi Vohuman Yasht (II. 19) as Akandgar-i-Kilisiyakih. Darmesteter suggested that "'Skandger' (Av. Skendo-Kara, Pers. Sikandgar) 'causer of destruction' would be an appropriate punning title for Alexander from the Persian point of view." West, on the other band, thinks that Akandgar is probably a miswriting of Alaksandar or Sikandar. Sacred Books of the East, V. 200 note. Others, again, are of opinion that there is no reference whatever to Alexander in the above passage. However that may be, Bahman Kaikobed's "Sitamgar" (oppressor) can be nothing else than "a punning title" for the great Macedonian. 11. See a brilliant note vindicating this statement of the Parsi books in Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Arda Viraf, 142-3. 12. Alexander the Great defeated Darius at Arbela in 331 B.C. and Ardeshir Papak's accession cannot be placed earlier than 226 A.C. There was therefore an interval of 557 years and not 300 between Alexander and the Sasanian. See Alberun's remarks on this confusion in the Persian Chronology in the Athar-al-Bakya, tr. Sachau. 116-121. West, S.B.E. XLVII. Introduction, xxxii 13. Pas az wai Muddati -- Muddat is here employed to signify a period of three hundred years. 14. Here also the phrase is "Pas az Muddat." Ardeshir died in 241 A.C. Shahpuhr III reigned from 309 A.C. to 379 A.C. See, West, S.B.E. XLVII. xxxv. 15. The Millennium of Zartosht and its termination are distinctly mentioned in the Pahlavi Vohuman Yasht, II. 23. West Sacred Books of the East. V. 201.
When the sovereignty departed from Yazdagar, the Unbelievers-----16 came and seized his throne. From that period-----17 Iran was shattered. Alas for the land of the Faith which was rendered desolate. During those days-----18 all were dispersed, all (lit. everyone) whose hearts were attached to the Zand and Pazand. When all the laymen and Dasturs suddenly went into hiding for the sake of the Faith, they left their homes, dwellings, gardens, palaces, and halls and abandoned them all for their Religion. In Kohistan, they abode for a hundred years. When they were in this plight, a virtuous sage once bethought him seriously [of their state] and said to his companions, "It will be difficult [for us] to remain here [much longer] for fear of the Unbelievers." So the Dasturs and laymen incomparable departed for the city of Hormuz.-----19 When fifteen years were spent in that clime, every one of them had endured much trouble from the Miscreants.-----20 The sage Dastur who was with them there was a mighty astrologer. He looked into his ancient Tables [and said,] "The period during which we were [permitted by Fate] to eat and drink [in this land] has come to an end. It will be well if we leave this country. We must go out of this region forthwith, [otherwise] we shall all fall into a snare and prudence will then be useless and our business spoilt. It will be better therefore for us to fly from these fiends and Miscreants to Hindustan, and run away towards Ind for fear of life and religion's sake." Then a ship was made ready for the sea. Instantly they hoisted sail, placed the women and children in the vessel and rowed hard for Hind. When the ship came in sight of land, the anchor fell at Div. There they went down, took up their abode and their feet stuck fast in the soil of that spot. The People of the Good Faith stayed there for nineteen years, at the end of which the Stargazer once more [sought to] divine the future. The aged Dastur having looked into his Tables, said: "O my enlightened friends, hence also must we hie to another spot in which will be our second home." All of them were delighted by his words and they set sail quickly towards Gujarat. When the vessel had made some way into the sea, a disastrous storm approached. All the Dasturs of the Faith were thrown into consternation and their heads turned as in a whirlpool.-----21 They rubbed their faces before the Presence Divine and stood up and made loud laments, [saying], "O Thou Wise One, come to our aid on this occasion (lit. business) and for once deliver us from this distress. [And] Thou, All conquering Warharan, befriend us and bring us out triumphant from this trouble. [If we possess] Thy favour, we shall not care for the tempest and give no place to fear in our hearts. Hearken then to the complaints of the helpless and show Thou the way to us who are lost [in this waste of waters]. If we escape from this dreadful storm, (lit. whirlpool), if disaster does not confront us and if we reach the realm of Hind with cheerful hearts and merry, we shall kindle a great fire to Warharan. Deliver us then from this strait and keep us sound (stong). We are resigned to everything [that comes] from the Lord, for save Him we possess no other [friend]." By the blessing of the Fire of the Glorious Warharan, all of them luckily got over that trouble; their supplications were instantly heard and the Lord came to the rescue. A prosperous gale began to blow, the light of Heaven [to shine) and the contrary wind ceased. When the Captain with (lit. opened his tongue to utter) the Holy name of God upon his lips steered the ship with vigour, and all the Dasturs and laymen also made Kusti,-----22 the vessel drove instantly into the sea. Then Providence so ordered it that all those people arrived near Sanjan. 16. Juddin. lit. People of another faith. The Arabs are meant. 17. Here again the phrase is az-an-muddat, an exceedingly vague expression which seems to be applied to a period of almost any length. 18. Badàngàhi. See the paper on the Traditional Dates of Parsi history, ante 8-9, for my view of the real signification of the whole passage. 19. This is not the famous island of Hormuz, but the old city on the main land. "It was on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf, about 30 miles east of the site of Bunder Abbas or Gombroon. Sir Louis Pelly has traced the extensive ruins of the old city, which stand in the present district of Minao, about 6 or 7 miles from the fort of that name. 'Hormuz', says the Geographer Abul Fela, 'is the port of Kerman, a city rich in palms and very hot. One who has visited it in our days tells me that the ancient Hormuz was devastated by the incursions of the Tartars and that its people transferred their abode to an island in the sea called Zarun, near the Continent and lying west of the old city. At Hormuz no inhabitants remain, but some of the lowest order (in Busching, IV. 261-2).'" Ibn Batuta also discriminates between Hormuz or Moghistan on the main land and New Hormuz on the island of Jerun. Yule, Marco Polo. ed. Cordier, I. 110-111. The name [Moghistan -- the land of the Moghs -- Fire-worshippers -- is most instructive and significant. 20. Darwand, Av. Dregwant; The Darwand, 'wicked', is the infidel who does not keep the Zoroastrian law. Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Ardaviraf, 178, note. 21. Or "they felt giddy in (or were stunned by) that calamity." 22. The "Kusti is tied round the waist in a peculiar manner during the recital of a particular formula in which Ohrmazd is blessed and Ahriman and the demons are cursed." West's Note on Bundahishn, XXX. 30, S.B.E. V. 129.
In that region was a virtuous Raja who had opened his heart (lit. head) to holiness. His name was Jádi Rana; he was liberal, sagacious, and wise. A Dastur renowned for learning and prudence went to him with gifts and invoked blessings upon him and said: "O Raja of Rajas, give us a place in this city: we are strangers seeking protection who have arrived in thy town and place of residence. We have come here only for the sake of our Religion, for we heard that there was in this place a Raja descended from the beneficent Shillahras,-----23 ever renowned throughout Hindustan, who gave people shelter in his town and kingdom and regarded them with the eye of compassion. We were cheered by these tidings (lit. thoughts) and have approached thee under favourable auspices. We have now reached thy city in the hope of escaping from the Miscreants." The hearts of all the followers (lit. men) of the virtuous Raja were gladdened and their souls charmed by these words. But when that prince beheld them-----24, a terror suddenly fell upon his heart. Fears for his crown entered his mind and [he thought] that they might lay waste his kingdom. Frightened by their dress and accoutrements, he questioned the Dastur about their religious mysteries (lit. inner secrets). "O thou devout Dastur", he at last said, "Tell us, first of all, the gist of the matter (lit. the secret of the business). What are the customs of your Creed, which of them are open and which concealed-----25? Let me first of all see what your beliefs are and we will then arrange for your residence here. Secondly, if we give you shelter, you must abandon the language of your country, disuse (lit. cast aside) the tongue of Iran and adopt the speech of the realm of Hind. Thirdly, as to the dress of your women, they should wear garments like those of our females. Fourthly, you must put off all your arms and simitars and cease to wear them anywhere. Fifthly, when your children are wedded, the marriage knot must be tied at evening time. If you first give a solemn promise to observe all this, you will be given places and abodes in my city." When the Dastur heard all this from the Raja, he could not help agreeing to all his demands.-----26 23. I read Shillahràyán, not Sháhràyàn, for the reasons stated in the paper on Jadi Rana and the Kisseh-i-Sanjan. 24. Shan, 'them', but it may also mean "dignity, stature." 25. i.e. outward professions as well as the really secret doctrines. Persecuted sects were often under the necessity of having two sets of opinions, one for home and the other "for foreign consumption." 26. There is evidently something wrong here. The Raja first says that he would not give them permission to reside in his territory, until he was satisfied of the unobjectionable character of their rites and doctrines. But without waiting to hear a word of explanation, he forthwith proceeds to dictate four conditions, the last of which -- that relating to their marriage ceremonies -- discovers an unexpected familiarity with their usages. If they were such utter strangers to him, how could he know such a minor matter as that their marriages were celebrated in the morning and not in the evening as with the Hindus? Can it be that the lines relating to the conditions have by some accident been misplaced and that they should come after the Dastur's harangue? It is perhaps also worthy of note that Bahman Kaikobad repeatedly avers that the first emigrants brought the women of their own race with them.
Then the old Mobed addressed him thus, "O sagacious king, hearken now to what I say of our Creed. Do not be heavy-hearted on our account, for never shall any evil [deed] proceed from us in this land. We shall be the friends of all Hindustan and everywhere scatter the heads of thy foes. Know then for certain that we are the worshippers of Yazdan (One God) and have fled from the Miscreants only for our religion's sake. We have abandoned all we possessed and borne many hardships on the road. Houses and mansions and goods and chattels we have all forsaken, O auspicious prince. We strangers are of the seed of Jamshed and reverence the Sun and the Moon. Three other things also out of Creation-----27, we hold in honour, viz. the Cow, Fire, and Water. Thus we adore the Fire, Water, Cows, and the Sun and the Moon likewise. It is the Lord who has created all those things that are on earth and we pray to them, because He Himself has preferred (lit. chosen) them.-----28 Our sacred girdle (Kusti) is made of seventy-two threads and we repeat (lit. make) when we tie it on, solemn professions of Faith. Our women when in their manner behold not either the sun or the sky or the moon, because they are the sources of light in excelsis; nor do they touch fire or water. They stand strictly aloof from everything, whether during the radiant day or the darksome night and sit apart, until the catamenia have ceased. They look at the fire and the sun only when they have washed from head [to foot]. So also, the female who gives birth to an infant must live apart for forty days. She ought to keep aloof [all the while] just as if she were in her manner and if this rule is not observed, it is vile. [Similarly], when a child is born of a woman before its time (lit. in a few months only) or when the babe is still-born, the mother (lit. she) does not [among us] go or run about hither and thither, nay does not even hold converse with any one. A female in that state also must keep severely aloof for forty-one days." All their other rites and customs also he described one by one to the Raja. When the mysteries of the Good Faith were thus expounded and the pearls of discourse strung in this most elegant manner, and when the Hindu Raja heard the oration, his mind regained perfect ease. 27. I read Káinàtash. All the Mss have Jáinátash or Jàinànash, which is unintelligible to me. 28. or 'We pray to him who is Self-chosen or Self-Existent.'
That good king forthwith commanded that they should reside in his dominions. Then some persons who were intelligent, good-natured and resourceful surveyed the land, discovered a spacious plain and informed the Mobed. A spot in this wilderness was chosen, of which the soil was excellent and there they made their abode. The people also liked the place and a city appeared where there had formerly been a jungle, desolate and uncultivated, but there they all descended, old as well as young. When the Dastur beheld that fine spot, he chose a site for their dwellings. The Dastur gave it the name of Sanjan and it was soon flourishing even as the realm of Iran. From that day the surname Sanjana came into vogue; know that the town is named after them.-----29 There they remained in joy and comfort and every one prospered in the end according to his wish. 29. Strangely inconsistent not only with the statement in the first hemistich of the same couplet but also with fact.
One day,-----30 they happened to have some business with the Raja, and all of them went with cheerful hearts (lit. thoughts) to him. The Dastur then addressed him thus: "O Prince, you have given us a dwelling spot in this land. We now wish to install in the Indian clime the Fire of Bahram [Warharan]. [But] the land must be cleared for three farsangs,-----31 so that the ceremonies [connected with the consecration] of the Nirang-----32 may be duly performed. No alien should be there present, save and except the Wise Men of the Good Faith. No person belonging to another creed might be there. Then only will the Fire be consecrated. If any strange person make a noise there, the religious rites will doubtless, be all of a sudden interrupted." Quoth the Raja then, "I have given you the permission. I am disposed to be very liberal in this matter. I rejoice (lit. prefer, choose) with all my soul that such a Prince (shâh) should be installed in my time. Indeed O sage, than this [act] what can be better? Go then speedily after his business, and gird up thy loins." That very instant, the Prince issued his commands and gave the Dastur a pleasant site. The Hindu Rana Jadi had the land at once cleared on every side. All the Unbelievers within three Farsangs were removed and no one remained there except the People of the Good Faith. No one dwelt around within three Farsangs of it, and no one stayed there save Zoroastrians (lit. men) of knowledge. Round the Aurvisgâh,-----33 on all sides [stood] Dasturs, every one of whom shone, in virtue of his sanctity, like the sun himself. They watched there day and night, for to do so was the command of the Lord. In those days, they were all men full of knowledge and capable in matters relating to the Faith. For several days and months they recited Yazashnes [Yasnas] and Yashts and worked with great energy. The laymen also were preoccupied in the business and provided, out of [their zeal for] the Faith, all various things necessary. The Prince Jádi Rana also sent offerings of every sort. In those days, all the arts and industries (lit. workshops) were in the hands of the People of the Good Faith. Things were everywhere easy for them for they had brought along with them all the tools (or means) from Khorasan. With all those resources derived from Khorasan, they were able to accomplish their task without any trouble. The reason was that several parties of Dasturs and Laymen of holy lives had also arrived at that spot. In their company were several alchemists also and the favor of the Lord thus made things easy for them. They had brought along with them ample resources and they thus consecrated the Fire according to the dictates of religion. The aged Dasturs thus installed the Iranshah-----34 beaming with light, in conformity wit the rites [prescribed] in our creed. In those times, men were [deeply] versed in spiritual matters and were able to observe religious precepts on account of their wisdom. In our own age, the Lord only knows what True Religion is; [men do not], and [all religious] action is, [after all], only a matter of personal satisfaction.-----35 30. Note that there is nothing here which can support Dr. Mody's assumption as to five years having elapsed between the landing and the consecration of the Fire temple. All that Bahman says is that they went to the Raja one day after they were settled in the town. 31. Farsang. A measure of length which varies considerably according to different authorities. It is sometimes said to be equivalent to a league, sometimes to 12000 cubits -- or 18000 feet. For the different estimates, see Alberuni, India, W. Sachau, II. 67-68; Elliot and Dowson, History of India, I. 24, Ain-i-Akbari, tr. Jarrett. II. 415-6 note. Pietro Della Valle says a Cos is half a Ferseng or league of Persia and that a Cos will answer to a little less than two Italian [English] miles. Vorsages, ed. Grey, I. 23. 32. Nirang, "The ceremony relating to the preparation of the gomez, Cow's urine, which is used as the most efficacious means of purification." Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Arda Viraf 147 note. 33. Arvisgah or Aurvisgah. "The consecrated space within which the Yazashna [Yasna] ceremony is performed." West supposes the word to be derived from the Av. Uvesa, goal. Note on Dadestan-i Denig XLVIII. 13. Sacred Books of the East, XVIII. 163. 34. "The Prince or Lord of Iran" [Persia]. The ancient Fire now lodge at Udwada is still known by this name. 35. The whole passage is most significant and throws, when read side by side with the Persian Rivayats, considerable light on the history of the Indian Atash Warharans.
All the laymen and Dasturs then celebrated in that land an extraordinary festival with entertainments. In this way, three hundred years, more or less, passed away and the people in small numbers or large, left the place. They dispersed in the land of Hind in all directions, and selected places to their minds. Some turned their faces toward Bânkâner, others fell off towards Broach, a few went away in the direction of Bariâv. All hastened towards different spots. Some reached the town of Anklesar or walked away proudly to the city of Cambay. Others dragged all their goods and chattels to Navsari, with pleasure and good luck. Wherever anyone felt [himself] comfortable, there he made his home. In this manner were spent two hundred years in joy, prosperity, and quiet. In those times, several Dasturs' houses were left in Sanjan town. One of God's Judgments then came down upon them, but I do not know what became of all those Dasturs, (or where all of them went). There dwelt one virtuous Dastur, young, well-intentioned and fluent of speech. The name of that Dastur was Khushmast and his aspirations were always towards virtue. A son [he had], who bore the name of Khujastah and whose [sole] delight was the performance of the ceremonies of the Baj-----36 and the Barsom.-----37 His perpetual avocation was the celebration of the Yazashne [Yasna], and the Baj and the Barsom were his constant companions. He was so deeply versed in the Yazashne that he has still left his mark in the Aurvisgâh (i.e. he is still remembered there). That saintly person lived in good repute [on earth]; may he possess joy and bliss in Paradise [also].*-----38 In this manner, seven hundred years went by and many of their descendants had lived in that town. When several years passed over, the heavens became untoward, the world suddenly became strait unto them and Time (Destiny) resolved to take their lives. 36. Baj. "This kind of prayer, Av. Vâk, a word or phrase, Pah. Vâj, Pers. Bâz, is a short formula, the beginning of which is to be muttered in a kind of whisper, or (according to the Pahlavi idiom) 'is to be taken' and 'retained' inwardly (as a protection while eating, praying, or performing other necessary acts) by strictly abstaining from all conversation until the completion of the act, when the prayer or Vâj is to be spoken out, that is, the conclusion of the formula is to be uttered aloud, and the person is then free to speak as he likes." West, Note on Shayast-Na Shayast III. 6, Sacred Books of the East, V. 278. 37. The Barsom, "Av. Baresma, or bundle of sacred twigs is an indispensable part of the ceremonial apparatus; it is held in the hand of the officiating priest while reciting many parts of the liturgy and is frequently washed with water and sprinkled with milk. It consists of a number of slender rods varying with the nature of the ceremony, but usually from five to thirty-three. These rods were formerly twigs cut from some particular trees but now thin metal wires are generally used." West's note on Dadestan-i Denig, XLIII, 15. S. B. E. XVIII. 142. 38. Eastwick says with some reason of the lines placed between asterisks, that they are very obscure and appear entirely unconnected. J. B. B. R. A. S. I. 181. But see the paper on the Traditional Dates of Parsi History, 12-14 ante.
SHAH MAHMUD SENDS AN ARMY AGAINST THE RAJA OF SANJAN, WHO HEARS OF THE SAME.
When some years had passed by in the revolution of the spheres, the Shah came to know of the Raja in Sanjan.* Islam reached Chapaner some time after five hundred years had expired in India. A good and fortunate Shah appeared and sat on the throne in that city. They used to call him Sultan Mahmud and his subjects spoke of him as the Shadow of the Glorious Lord. When he was informed some years afterwards, (i.e. after his accession to the throne) that there was in Hindustan a Raja somewhere near (lit. in the direction of) Sanjan, one of the Vazirs spoke thus to Alf Khan;-----39 "The victorious king commands that you should speedily set out with an army for Sanjan and wrest the country from the Raja." At the command of the Sultan Mahmud, Alf Khan rushed forth like smoke, got all his soldiers instantly ready and let his eagle [standard] fly in the air. Then, he led forth his troops and arrived at the prosperous town of Sanjan. When the Hindu Raja heard of his troops, and learnt that he had brought together from all quarters a host of thirty thousand chosen horsemen,-----40 each of whom had two mounts,-----41 and who were all heroes in battle and [cavaliers] of renown, he was terror-stricken by the tidings. But he regained his senses in an hour and immediately summoned all the Mobeds, Ervads and laymen.-----42 The virtuous Raja then said to them, "What do you now propose to do, O my faithful friends? My ancestors have patronised you and always been good to you. Gird up your loins, all of you, then, in my service (lit. business) and take you the lead in the battle. If you acknowledge the obligations you owe to my forbears, do not forget the duty (lit. bring your head out) of gratitude." Then the ancient Mobed made answer, "Do not, O Raja, be heavy-hearted on account of this host. So long as even one of us is alive, the heads of a hundred thousand (of the foes will we scatter. Verily, such is our wont in battle and so long as we are in life, such is our worth. Not a single individual from among us will turn back even were a millstone to whirl upon his head." The Prince on hearing this speech, bestowed upon him a suit of honour of every sort-----43. In those days, there were several warlike (lit. worthy, fit to fight) males of the Good Faith, old as well as young. When they were all reckoned, fourteen hundred were entered on the rolls. Forthwith they saddled their steeds, the drums were beaten and the horsemen stood up. Then all the men of the Good Faith drew themselves up in line with the Raja's forces in the battle field. 39. The name can be read Alaf Khan as well as Ulugh Khan. 40. Eastwick has two thousand in his translation. Journal B. B. R. A. S. I. 182. Anquetil puts the number at Soixante mille. Le Zend Avesta, Tom. I i. 321. Si-hazar (thirty thousand) is so likely to be mistaken in Persian for Sih-hazar (three thousand) that the latter is, as likely as not, to have been what Bahman himself wrote. Bahmanji Patell also understood the words to mean three thousand. Parsi Prakash, 4. 41. 'Duaspah.' "A trooper is called 'Duaspah' if he has two horses and Sihaspah, if three, in order to change horses during elghars or forced marches." Blochmann, Ain-i-Akbari. (Tr.). I. 241. See also Irvine, Army of the Moguls, 23. 42. Dasturs, Mobeds and Hirbads are the three classes of Zoroastrian priests, the first being the highest. 43. I take this to mean a complete suit, i.e. of seven pieces. "There were," says Irvine, "five degrees of khilat", those of three, five, six, or seven pieces. * *A three piece khila't given from the Khila't-khanah consisted of a turban (dastar), a long coat with very full skirts (Jamah) and a scarf for the waist (kamarband). A five piece robe came from the Toshah khanah (storehouse for presents), the extra pieces being a turban ornament (Sarpech) and a band for laying across the turban (Balaband). For the next grade, a tight fitting jacket with short sleeves called a Half-sleeve (Nimah-astin) was added. A European writer, Tavernier, (Ball, I, 163) thus details the seven-piece Khilat; (1) cap, (2) a long gown (Kabah) (3) a close-fitting coat (arkalon) which I take to be alkhaliq, a light coat, (4) two pairs of trousers, (5) two shirts, (6) two girdles. (7) a scarf for the head or neck." Army of the Moguls. 29. See also Yule and Burnell, Hobson Jobson. ed. Crooke, S. V. Killut.
ALF KHAN FIGHTS WITH THE HINDU RAJA AND FLIES BEFORE ARDESHIR.
When the first white [streak of] light emerged (lit. showed) from the sable night and the sheen of the stars descended into the bottom of the abyss (lit. cave), Alf Khan and his horsemen put on their armour and approached the field. Embroidered (lit. jewelled, inlaid) saddles were placed on the chargers and banners on the backs of the elephants. The horses were harnessed for fight and the battle-field was crowded by the elephants.-----44 The captains marshalled their troops in battle array and the fighting gear was everywhere held ready. When that great host was drawn up in the plain, the brazen bugles were at once blown. Thus was arrayed a host on either side, one [belonging to] the Moslems and the other to the Hindu Raja. Day and night were astounded at the sight, and even the horses were exhausted by over-much galloping. The leaders on the two sides were as two water-dragons struggling with each other with the fury of tigers. The earth grew dark as pitch with the clouds from which rained swords and spears and darts. So many were slain of both ranks in that strife that there were everywhere heaps of slain. There was no one to hearken to their moans nor any one to help them, for such was the Eternal Judge's doom against them. Not a man could be seen from among that host; all appeared to have fallen without discrimination in the action. Suddenly, there was a rout in the Hindu ranks, so that no one could recognise another in the encampment. Then a devout Layman of the Good Faith said to his comrades: "I do not behold, either in front or rear, so much as one of our Indian allies. The Hindus have fled from the field. No one save ourselves of the Good Faith remains on the battleground. Now is the hour of combat, O my dear friends, now does it behove us to march in line of battle like lions. If we all rush upon them in a body, we shall surely pour out the blood of the foe with sword and arrow." The Layman who was the first to enter the field was one who bore among them the name of Ardeshir. That very moment, the renowned Ardeshir spurred his swift courser into the field. Springing all of a sudden, he came up to the [Moslem] ranks clutching an iron spear. Then he stood up in the arena, javelin in hand, clad in armour and girding a sword. And first, the arrows rained everywhere, the corslets of the warriors were pierced and the world-illuminating sun was so hidden from view that no one could tell (lit. know) if it was day or night. The eyes of the luminary were blinded (lit. covered) by the dust, and everywhere man fell upon man; you might say that the earth had a coat of pitch out of which the arrow heads glistened like diamonds. At last, of the throwers of spears and wielders of maces, but few remained [alive] out of thousands, and though land and sky grew black and gloomy, the soil was, by the blood of the chiefs, dyed red like the tulip. [Indeed], the blood gushed out of their bodies as from fountains and their bucklers were, by the blades, shivered into fragments. Men's armours then became the calamities of their lives. Every minute, men were becoming the guests of Death (lit. Time)-----45 and the [dead] warriors buried from head to foot in iron [mail] were blazing like the shining sun. Shafts kept flying on both sides and blood was flowing along the black soil. Javelins penetrated (lit. dug into) breasts and bosoms and blood oozed out from coats of mail. But no one turned his face away from the blow of an adversary and every weapon was crying for blood.-----46 The soil itself looked as if [it were made] of iron on account of the horseshoes [with which it was bestrewn]. Men were wading in blood upto their knees (lit. calves of the legs). The struggle lasted in this wise for three days and nights until men's hands and feet were aweary. The sabres flashed like lightning on all sides and heads were scattered by the trenchant blades. The [might of] Islam was at last overthrown and destroyed in that engagement with the Hindu prince. Alf Khan ran away in the darksome night, forgetting his baggage and losing also the (right) road. Before Ardeshir, his entire army fled, now stumbling now picking themselves up. Many of the enemy fell into his grasp and he stood triumphant at the close. All the tents, baggage and furniture [also] came at once into the possession of Ardeshir. 44. Or 'The field seemed too narrow on account of the fighting of the elephants.' 45. This obscure line may also mean 'Time (Death) became the guest of mankind every moment.' 46. Or, 'All the instruments of bloodshed were in requisition.'
ALF KHAN FIGHTS AGAIN WITH ARDASHIR AND IS VICTORIOUS.When the sun rose from above the hills on another day, and the earth became once more resplendent with light, a great shout arose on either side of the two hosts. Once again the land was in commotion and many were the heads which turned stupid on account of the noise of the bells and the Hindi trumpets. Once more Alf Khan was ready for fight and the drums resounded when the famous Ardeshir beheld that host, he strode up swiftly and said forthwith to the well-advised Hindu Prince, "We are only one to their hundred. What do you think it [lit. see] good for us to do, now that a still larger force has arrived. [As for ourselves] we will either give up our own lives or take theirs, and stand [firm] on the battle field with that determination and the Lord will stand our friend, for He has always been the resolver of our difficulties." All of them were cheered by this speech and many hearts were thus delivered from sorrow. That instant, Ardeshir donned his coat of mail and once more came out to do battle with the Khan. Then Ardeshir the renowned rushed like a lion upon the ranks of the foe, with a lasso hanging by his saddle as on a squire errant's, a sabre of Indian [steel] at his girdle [lit. waist] and a javelin in his grasp. Then he proudly shouted aloud, "O lions! why were you so confounded [the other day] in the [hour of] fighting? Who now is your commander, what may be his name and what does he wish to have?" A champion advanced and said, "Here am I who can pour out the blood of [many] men at a [single] blow." Under him was a spirited (lit. bounding) charger and he came up at a gallop (lit. run) to do battle with Ardeshir, with a javelin in his hand and glaring on all sides like a drunken man. He hailed Ardeshir and said, "Now be on thy guard, O thou of stainless birth, for an adversary is before thee. Show then thy own skill or mastery." Ardeshir called out in reply, "Here is thy antagonist quite ready." Then the two fought like lions in the arena and as if they were weary of their own lives. In the end, Ardeshir vanquished him and hurled him down from the back of his steed. Then flinging the lasso and dragging him towards himself, he dismounted and struck off his head. When Alf Khan saw him slain, his heart was filled with woe. That instant, he gave orders that all the Parsis as well as the Raja should be slaughtered and that not one of them should be left alive. Longing for vengeance, he rushed to support his men-at-arms and the din of battle (lit. the cry of "Give, Give") arose. Swords clashed and blood flowed in rivers on land. When the troops on both sides joined battle, blood gushed from their bodies in torrents. It was as if a wave had rushed in from an ocean of gore. Everywhere men were [lying] exhausted. There was not room enough for even an ant to creep in. But what [avails it] if man proposes, unless God disposes [likewise]. Then Ardeshir dashed into the thick [of the fight] and his days came to an end. An arrow pierced his middle and came out on the other side. His body was enfeebled by wounds, for every one of his limbs was a fountain of blood. Then he tumbled down headlong from the saddle and his troops were thrown into disorder and confusion (lit. without feather or wing). Alas for that courageous chief, whom Time at last gave to the winds. When the Fates are angry, the hard stone becomes [soft] like wax. Though he fought and strove [with all his might], of what avail was it since Fortune had turned its face away from the man? On both sides, many warriors were slain, leaders and men of renown and worth. Then also was the Raja killed and a loud wail arose on the battlefield. Alas for that Hindu prince who fell and whose city became on all sides a desert.FLIGHT OF THE MEN OF THE GOOD FAITH TO THE HILL OF BAHROT AND THEIR GOING TO BANSDAH.
The People of the Good Faith also were dispersed. There is in Hindustan a hill named Bahrot. Many crept into it to save their lives. Man has no resource against God's decrees. Twelve years thus passed and they had carried the Iranshah along with them. After a time, by the Lord's command, they forgathered again with their relatives and kindred. Taking the Fire of Warharan also with themselves, all of them arrived at Bânsdâh. When the tidings reached that town, every one came out with loving kindness and three hundred horsemen with several persons of note went forward to escort them. They brought the Fire into the town with a hundred [marks] of reverence. It was as if a sick man had secured a panacea.-----47 Thence forward, Bânsdâh flourished as if it was perpetual spring there. Time passed in this wise and persons of Behdin lineage, old men as well as women, came to adore the Iranshah from every district in which there were [People of] that pure Creed. Just as, in earlier times, men used to go on a pilgrimage extraordinary (lit. unparalleled) to the far-famed Sanjan, so the Parsis now came to Bânsdâh from various places with numerous offerings. Afterward, when fourteen years had elapsed,-----48 the spheres [again] revolved [in a manner] favourable to their affairs. 47. Pazahr Padzahr., protecting from poison, an antidote, in which sense it is used habitually by Avicenna. Bezoars are hard concretions formed in the bodies of animals, to which antidotal virtue, were ascribed, and especially to one obtained from the stomach of a wild goat in the Persian province of Lar. Ibn Baithar says that Bezoars were laid upon the bites of venomous creatures and were believed to extract the poison. Yule and Burnell, Hobson Jobson, ed. Crooke, S. V. Bezoar. 48. These lines have been by some taken to mean that twelve years were spent at Bahrot and fourteen others in Bansdah, making in all twenty-six. Others have understood Bahman to say that the fourteen years last spoken of include the preceding twelve, and that fourteen years express the extreme length of the period which intervened between the Sack of Sanjan and the establishment of the Fire temple at Navsari. See ante, p. 8.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CONVEYANCE OF THE FIRE OF WARHARAN TO NAVSARI BY CHANGASHAH.
A layman then appeared who had not his peer at the time. He came forward in those days to preserve the religion and many notab1e things (lit. signs, marks) proceeded from him. He was the Dahyovad;-----49 his name was Changa, son of Asa and he solaced the hearts of the People of the Good Creed. That good-natured man would not suffer the Faith to fall into neglect in those latter days. He gave money (lit. purse) out of his own wealth to those who had no Sudra and Kusti (the sacred shirt and girdle). Many [excellent] provisions that man made for the creed. No afflicted person [ever] went to him for whom, poor man, he did not provide some relief or whose heart he did not cordially set at ease. In those times, several Behdin people came into the Faith under his auspices (lit. by his good fortune.) Indeed, my tongue cannot fully (lit. plainly) praise this layman who managed the affairs of the creed so well. One Year, that man of stainless birth went to the Fire-temple in pursuance of a vow. It was the time of the Jashan-i Sadeh, and the Fire-temple was then at Bansdah. O brother, the Jashan-i Sadeh fell on Roz Adar, Mah Adar.-----50 That devout and enlightened Dawar-----51 carried along with him several laymen and Dasturs. All of them prostrated themselves at the sight of the Fire and offered it worship. Every one then took once more the road [homewards] from the House of Prayer with pleasure and pride. Starting thence, the men returned to their homes; full of gladness and joy. When two or three months of that year-----52 had elapsed, an idea occurred to (lit. he brought the idea into his heart) that benevolent person and he called a meeting of the whole community (anjoman) and led the discourse on to the Fire-Temple. "I desire, O my well-wishers," he said, "to bring that Prince of Princes here. If we behold the face of that Lord every day, our religious merit will be exceeding great. Moreover, we have to endure great hardships every year on the journey, for there is heavy rain during that month,-----53 [Adar], and it is difficult for us to go there then. What can be better, O friends, than that we should proceed to Bansdah with some men of discernment, and bring here the Fire of the glorious Warharan, so that we can view it every day. Our means of livelihood [are sure] by its blessing to grow much more abundant and the hearts also of the People of the Good Faith will be filled with light." All were delighted by this speech because they would be longer dependent (lit. free from, i.e. rid of the trouble of going to) Bansdah. With a hundred marks of reverence they brought the Fire away and gave it a fine house. It had three attendants of the Good Faith, who accompanied it. Night and day, the worship was celebrated by that one associate [of the three] whose appointed [duty] it was. Of one of them the name was Nàgan Râm,-----54 and his desires were always turned towards the observance of [the precepts] of the Religion. The second Dastur's name was Khurshed and his father was Kiâm-ud-din who was in Eternity. The third Dastur, Chàyyàn the son of Sâer, also was always to be seen in its service. They had their families and kindred also with them and all of them accompanied the Iranshah. They were received with great respect and pomp and were treated honourably, The three Dasturs thus reached Navsari with their relatives after a long journey. In those days, that pious Dawar befriended these priests of the Iranshah. May this slave's homage reach him from this world. May he have a place among the Celestial Spirits. 49. Pahl. Dahyopat, Av. Danghu-paiti, chief ruler. Changa Asa's son Manak also is styled Dahyovad (Desai) in the Rivayat of Shapur Asa or Kama Asa of 896 A.Y., (1527 A.C.) 50. Bahman seems to have thought that the Jashn-i Sadah of the ancient Iranians was identical with what is now called Adar Jashn, but Alberuni declares that the former fell, not on the ninth day of Adar, but on the tenth of Vohuman. Athar-ul-Bakyah, Chronology of Ancient Nations, tr. Sachau. 213 and 424. The Burhan-i-Kataa says the same. S. V. Sadah. 51. The Dawar. "Pahl. Datobar, upholder of Justice or Judge was, like the Dastur, a ratu, head or chief in the old Zoroastrian community. He appears to have held a high rank which was probably hereditary, as it is still claimed by a Parsi family at Surat, though not acknowledged by the majority." Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Arda Viraf. 143 note. Sea also Parsi Prakash, 15, 70. 52. Bahman declares here that the Iranshah was brought to Navsari two or three months after the Adar Jashn, that is, the event must have taken place, making allowance for the days passed in negotiations and the journey from Bansdah, in the month of Frawardin. This will be a hard nut to crack for those who pin their faith in Bahman's chronology and at the same time uphold the reliability of the traditional date, Roz Mahrespand, Mah Shahrewar, Samvat 1475. The truth is that the two are absolutely irreconcilable. 53. It has been urged against Bahman that Adar mah must, in Changa Asa's time have fallen in September, and that September is not at all a rainy month in Gujarat, but both these assertions can be easily proved to be of very doubtful accuracy. 54. Bahman himself was a lineal descendant of this Nagan Ram, the pedigree being Bahman, Kaikobad, Hamjiar, Padam, Kaman, Narsang, Nagan, Ram. See ante. p. 87.
CONCLUSION OF THE NARRATIVE.Thanksgivings infinite and praises boundless, to the Creator of the World and the Cherisher of his slaves, who set my tongue going on this subject and graciously revealed unto me this door out of the Unknown. Lord, make the Dastur who revealed this tale to me happy in both worlds. I am the humble person hight Bahman who has his home and household goods in Navsari. Know further that my father is Kaikobad whose heart is delighted [only] when calling the Iranshah to mind. His sire was the Dastur Hormazdyar. May his place be in the resplendent Abode of the Blest, Know, O friend, that his surname was Sanjana, for by all kinds of wisdom was he fitted (Sanjideh, lit. weighed,) for affairs. This surname of Sanjana was given him on account of the wisdom which he showed [to exist] in our religious practices. They gave him the title of 'Dastur of the Faith' also, and the road of piety was everywhere kept open through him, (i.e. he solved all religious difficulties). He had been settled in Navsari, you may reckon, (i.e. approximately), for two hundred years. A hundred thousand blessings upon him and also upon the souls of all the other Pillars of the Faith.
Thus have I, by the will of the Lord, successfully indited the story of our People, [in the hope] that when a devout person reads it, he may pronounce a blessing on me at the end. Many many thousand blessings from me on that virtuous character and man of those times. May He of the Immortal Soul [Zartosht] send his Spirit to God and secure his pardon from the Supreme. May his Spirit always receive praise and his soul be perpetually at peace (lit. freedom from want). It was in the nine hundred and sixty-ninth year of the Era of Yazdegird that this tale was completed by my pen. On the day Hordad of the month Frawardin, were these verses finished correctly (lit. according to rule). I have written this narrative and brought it to a conclusion, and I expect for it a reward from no one save the Lord, and I desire from my readers nothing but benedictions, for thus will my honour and fame grow. May that soul abide with Him of the Immortal Soul (Zartosht), who reads me with a pleased heart. I have related in this narrative what I have seen and what I have heard from the conversation of the old. My preceptor-----55 has, moreover, corrected it and thus have many flowers sprung up in this pleasance. May the Lord bestow upon him the full period of natural life (i.e. may he live for a hundred years,) and may all the years of that life be like the spring time. In telling this tale, I have ever observed the ways of the truthful. Pronounce then befitting blessings upon me, whenever you peruse (lit. see) this delectable narrative of mine. Laudations infinite and praises countless on the pious Zartosht. May you [reader] have given you the Grace Divine to invoke blessings upon my soul. 55. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that Dastur Hoshang [Asa] from whom Bahman declares he heard the whole story was this teacher as well as the corrector of these verses.
Author: Hodivala, Shahpurshah Hormasji.
Title: Studies in Parsi history. -- Bombay [Shahpurshah Hormasji Hodivala] 1920.
(APW3764UW)
Location: University of Wisconsin, Madison, Memorial Library Stacks
Call Number: DS432 P3 H6
Format: [4], 2, 349 p. fold. facsims.
Avesta -- Zoroastrian Archives Contents Prev qsanjan.htm Next Glossary
-700: Early Smartism emerges from the syncretic Vedic brahminical (priestly caste) tradition. It flourishes today as a liberal sect alongside Saiva, Vaishnava and Shakta sects.
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_8.html
Late Period (747 B.C.–332 B.C.)
Piankhi, the ruler of a Nubian kingdom centered at Napata in the area of the Fourth Cataract, took advantage of the disunity in Egypt at the beginning of Dynasty 25 to conquer Egypt. He met little resistance. After his victory, Piankhi returned to his capital, leaving his sister, Amenirdis, as the God's Wife of Amen at Thebes, a position that allowed her to maintain control of Egypt in the absence of her brother.
In this way, Nubian pharaohs maintained control over virtually all of Egypt during the dynasty. They carried out many building projects throughout Egypt and Nubia [17446]. They adopted Egyptian customs, beliefs, religion, and kingship in their own culture, and this influence continued long after the end of Dynasty 25. They made Amen the state god of Nubia, were buried under pyramids in Nubia [17425], and adapted the hieroglyphic script for writing their own language.
The Nubians and Assyrians fought several campaigns for control of Egypt. Eventually the Assyrians were successful in ousting the Nubians from power, but soon an Egyptian, Psamtik I, took control of Egypt, beginning Dynasty 26. He arranged for his daughter, Nitocris, to be adopted by the Kushite God's Wife of Amen at Thebes, thus assuring that she would be the next God's Wife of Amen. This position gave Nitocris extraordinary power over the region and significant land endowments throughout Egypt. Psamtik I also allied himself with Mentuemhat [17447], the powerful mayor of Thebes who owned the largest and most complex private tomb in Thebes (TT 34), effectively gaining control over the whole of Egypt.
During this period there was a large influx of foreigners into Egypt. Phoenicians came as traders; Greeks and Carians came as mercenaries. Immigrants from the Near East, Libya, the Aegean, Nubia, and elsewhere settled in Egypt. A new, simplified script, called demotic, was introduced mainly for written documents. On the other hand, monumental architecture, language, and art styles harkened back to the Old Kingdom. These archaizing tendencies also led to the copying of numerous works from the Old Kingdom, most of which are the only surviving copies today.
In 525 B.C., the Persian army under Cambyses conquered Egypt and its kings ruled the country as Dynasty 27 through local representatives based at Memphis. They established juridical guides for Egypt published in both in the demotic Egyptian script and Aramaic, the lingua franca of the age. Like many of their foreign predecessors, the Persian kings built temples in Egypt, and achieved a new technological level by digging a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea.
During Dynasties 28 to 30, Delta princes gained independence from Persian rule. These dynasties were weak and the Persians eventually reconquered Egypt in 341 B.C., but were able to maintain control for less than a decade.
-623-543: Life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, born in Uttar Pradesh in a princely Shakya Saivite family. (Date by Sri Lankan Buddhists. Indian scholars say -563-483. Mahayanists of China and Japan prefer -566-486 or later.)
http://www.theindiatravel.com/cityguide/state/up/kapil.html 020602yd
Identified today with ancient Kapilvastu, modem Piprahwa lies at a distance of 20 km from Siddharthnagar. Kapilvastu was the ancient capital of the Sakya clan whose ruler was the father of the Buddha, for which reason the Buddha is also referred to as the Sakyamuni. The Sakya domain was one of the sixteen independent principalities of the 6th century BC.
Prince Gautam, as the Buddha was then known, left his palace in Kapilvastu at the age of 29, and revisited it 12 years later, long after he had attained enlightenment.
Today, Kapilvastu Comprises of Several villages, chief among them being Piprahwa and Ganvaria. A large stupa stands at the ancient site which is said to have housed the bone relics of the Buddha. The presence of these relics are testified by an ancient Brahmi inscription discovered at Piprahwa. The ruins of the palace are spread over a large area.
Stupa ComplexThis is the main archaeological site which was discovered during excavations in 1973-74. The seals and inscriptions over the lid of the pot discovered read "Om Deoputra Vihare Kapilvastu Bhikschu Mahasanghasa" and "Om Deoputra Vihare Kapilvastu Bhikschu Sanghasa". The title Deoputra refers to Kanishka, a great patron of Buddhism who built the biggest Vihara at Kapilvastu and renovated the main stupa here.Palace SiteExcavations carried out by Dr. K.M. Srivastava indicated the ruins of the palace of King Shuddhodhan, the father of Prince Gautam (Lord Buddha). It is said to be the place where Lord Buddha spent the first 29 years of his life.
Lumbini86 km., situated across the border in Nepal, Lumbini is the birthplace of Lord Buddha.
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Buddhist Western Calendar Major Events Significant World Events
- 120* 6th Century B.C.E. * Life of Siddhartha Guatama, the historical Buddha: conventional dates: 566-486 B.C.E. (According to more recent research: 490-410 B.C.E.). Zarathustra, 630-553 B.C.E.Birth of Mahavira, 550 B.C.E.Pythagoras, 582-507 B.C.E.
- 20 5th Century B.C.E. • First Buddhist Council at Rajagaha (486 B.C.E.) after the Parinirvana. Socrates, 469-399 B.C.E.Plato, 427-347 B.C.E.
144 4th Century B.C.E. • Second Buddhist Council at Vesali (386 B.C.E.) about 100 year after the Parinirvana.First schism of the Sangha occurs in which the Mahasanghika school parts ways with the traditional Sthaviravadins or the Theravada.Non-canonical Buddhist Council at Pataliputra (367 B.C.E.). Beginning of Buddhist sectarianism. Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.E. Alexander the Great, 356-323 B.C.E.
244 3rd Century B.C.E. Reign of Indian Emperor Asoka (272-231 B.C.E.) who converts and establishes the Buddha's Dharma on a national level for the first time.• Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra (modern Patna) (250 BCE). under the patronage of Emperor Asoka about 200 years after the Parinirvana. The modern Pali Tipitaka now essentially complete.Asoka's son and missionary Mahinda converts Sri Lanka (247 B.C.E.) Euclid, 300 B.C.E.
344 2nd Century B.C.E. The beginnings of Mahayana Buddhism (20O B.C.E.).Composition of Prajnaparamita literature.Historical record has it that two Buddhist missionaries from India in 68 AD, arrived at the court of Emperor Ming (58-75) of the Han Dynasty They enjoyed imperial favour and stayed on to translate various Buddhist Texts, one of which, The 'Sutra of Forty-two Sections' continues to be popular even today. Han Dynasty in China, 206 BCE - 220 C.E.
444 1st Century B.C.E. The entire scriptural canon of the Theravada School was committed to writing on palm leaves in Pali at the Aloka Cave, near Matale, Sri Lanka (35-32 B.C.E.) Julius Caesar, 100-44 B.C.E.
544 1st Century C.E.* Reign of King Kaniska in India.• Fourth Buddhist Council at Jalandhar or in Kashmir around 100 AD. (This is not recognized by the Theravadins).Composition of Lotus Sutra and other Buddhist texts.Buddhism enters Central Asia and China. Jesus of Nazareth, 0-33 C.E.
644 2nd Century C.E. Age of Indian Buddhist philosopher Nargarjuna, (150 AD) founder of the school of Madhyamika ('the Middle Way'). Roman Empire reaches the height of its power.
744 3rd Century C.E Expansion of Buddhism to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity, 312 C.E.
844 4th Century C.E. Asanga (310-390) founds the Yogacara school of Buddhism.Development of Vajrayana Buddhism in India.Translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese by Kumarajiva (344-413), Hui-yüan (334-416). Buddhism enters Korea in 372. Gupta Empire (India), 320-490 C.E. Augustine, 354-430 C.E.
944 5th Century C.E. Buddhist monastic university founded at Nalanda, India.Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) in Sri Lanka.Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien visits India (399-414).Amitabha (Amida) Pure Land sect emerges in China.Sri lankan Theravadin nuns introduce full ordination lineage into China (433 CE). Earliest hospital in Sri Lanka, 437 C.E.Fall of the Western Roman Empire, 476 C.E.
1044 6th Century C.E. Bodhidharma arrives in China from India (520).Sui Dynasty in Chinese History (589-617) beginning of Golden Age of Chinese Buddhism.Development of T'ien-tai, Hua-yen, Pure Land, and Ch'an Schools of Chinese Buddhism.Buddhism enters Japan (538) becomes state religion (594).Buddhism flourishing in Indonesia. Mohammed, 570-632 C.E.The Age of Islamic Expansion, 630-725 C.E.
1144 7th Century C.E. Buddhism established in Tibet (650).Chinese pilgrim Hsuan-tsang (602-664) visits India. Tang Dynasty in Chinese history, 618-906 C.E.
1244 8th Century C.E. Academic schools (Jöjitsu, Kusha, Sanron, Hossö, Ritsu, and Kegon) proliferate in Japan.First Tibetan monastery at Sam-yas.Great debate between Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist schools.Ch'an declared heretical in Tibet.Nyingma School of Tibet Buddhism established. Nara Period in Japanese history, 710-784 C.E.
1344 9th Century C.E. Khmer kings build Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious monument.Tendai School (founded by Saichö 767-822) and Shingon School (founded by Kukai: 774-835) appear in Japan.Great Buddhist persecution in China (845) Heian Period in Japanese history,794-1185 First printed book, 868 C.E.Diamond Sutra, China
1444 10th Century C.E. First complete printing of Chinese Buddhist Canon (983), known as the Szechuan edition. Sung Dynasty in Chinese History, 960-1279
1544 11th Century C.E. Conversion of King Anawrahta of Pagan (1044-77) by Shin Arahan.Atisha (982-1054) arrives in Tibet from India (1042). Marpa (1012-1097) begins Kargyu School of Tibetan Buddhism.Milarepa (1040-1123) becomes greatest poet and most popular saint in Tibetan Buddhism.The bhikkhu and bhikkhuni (monk and nun) communities at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, die out following invasions from South India.Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism established.Revival of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Burma.Decline of Buddhism in India. Great Schism between Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, 1054 C.E.1st Crusades, 1096-1099 C.E.
1644 12th Century CE. Theravada Buddhism established in Burma.Hönen (1133-1212) founded the Pure Land School of Japanese Buddhism.Eisai (1141-1215) founds the Rinzai Zen School of Japanese Buddhism. In 1193 the Moslems attacked and conquered Magadha, the heartland of Buddhism in India, and with the destruction of the Buddhist Monasteries in that area Buddhism was wiped out. Buddhism in Korea flourishes under the Koryo dynasty (1140-1390). Kamakura Period in Japanese history, 1192-1338 C.E.
1744 13th Century C.E. Nalanda Buddhist University destroyed in India (1200).Shinran (1173-1263 ) founds True Pure Land School of Japanese Buddhism.Dogen (1200-1253) founds Soto Zen School of Japanese Buddhism.Nichiren (1222-1282) founds school of Japanese Buddhism named after him.Mongols converted to Vajrayana Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism spreads to Laos. Magna Carta, 1215 C.E. Genghis Khan invades China, 1215 C.E.Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274 C.E.Clement of Alexandria, ?-1227 C.E.Mongol conquest of China complete, 1279
1844 14th Century C.E. Bu-ston collects and edits Tibetan Buddhist Canon.Rulers of the north (Ching Mai) and northeast (Sukhothai) Thailand adopt Theravada Buddhism (becomes state religion in 1360). Theravada Buddhism adopted in Cambodia and Laos.Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419) Tibetan Buddhist reformer and founder of Dge-lugs-pa (or Gelug-pa, or 'Yellow Hat') order. China regains its independence from the Mongols under the Ming dynasty. 1368
1944 15th Century C.E. Beginning of Dalai Lama lineage in Tibetan Buddhism.In Cambodia, the Vishnuite temple, Angkor Wat, founded in the 12th century, becomes a Buddhist centre. Development of printing in EuropeLeonardo DaVinci, 1452-1519 Columbus "finds" the new world,1492
2044 16th Century C.E. 1578: Tibet's Gelug-pa leader receives the title of Dalai from Altan Khan. "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama meets Qing Emperor Shunzhi near Beijing. Martin Luther, 1483-1546Protestant ReformationShakespeare, 1564-1616 Galileo, 1564-1642
2144 17th Century C.E. Control of Japanese Buddhism by Tokugawa Shögunate (the ruling feudal government) (I603-1867)Hakuin (1686-1769) Priest, writer and artist who helped revive the Rinzai Zen Sect in Japanese Buddhism. Establishment of Tokugawa Shogunate (Japan) 1603-1867Japan closes the door to foreigners, 1639 Pilgrims reach America, 1620 Galileo recants, 1633
2244 18th Century C.E. Colonial occupation of Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.King Kirti Sri Rajasinha obtains bhikkhus from the Thai court to reinstate the bhikkhu ordination line which has died out in Sri Lanka. American independence, 1776 French revolution, 1789-1802 Burmese destroy Ayudhaya(Thai capital), 1768
2344 19th Century C.E. New sects begin to emerge in Japanese Buddhism.Sri Lankan forest monks go to Burma for reordination (1862).First Western translation of the Dhammapada. (German-1862).• 5th Buddhist Council in Mandalay, Burma (1868-1871) where the text of the Pali Canon was revised and inscribed on 729 marble slabs. Meiji Restoration in Japanese history 1868, marking end of military ruleAmerican Civil War, 1861-1865
2444-2544 20th Century C.E. Buddhist Society of Great Britan Founded (1907).Taishö Shinshü Daizokyö edition of Chinese Buddhist Canon printed in Tokyo (1924-1929).Communist persecution and then control of Tibetan Buddhism (1950-).Founding of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1952).Buddha Jayanti Year, commemorating 2,500 years of Buddhism (1956). • 6th Buddhist Council held at Rangoon, Myanmar (Burma) (1954-1956 CE).Dalai Lama flees Tibet to India (1959)Buddhism spreads to western countries.H.H. Dalai Lama receives Nobel Peace Prize. WW I, 1914-1918 Russian revolution, 1917-1922WW II, 1939-1945Cultural Revolution (China) 1966The Pope, John Paul II, pardons Galileo, 1995. The Fall of the Berlin Wall; The Cold War ends, 1989.
* The Buddhist calendar starts (year 1) from the Buddha's Parinirvana (death and final release) which occured in his eightieth year.* B.C.E. = Before Common Era (Equivalent to B.C.) * C.E. = Common Era (Equivalent to A.D.)
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Year Major Events in Theravada Buddhism
383 B.C.E. The Second Council convenes in Vesali to discuss controversial points of Vinaya. The first schism of the Sangha occurs, in which the Mahasanghika school parts ways with the traditionalist Sthaviravadins. At issue is the Mahasanghika's reluctance to accept the Suttas and the Vinaya as the final authority on the Buddha's teachings. This schism marks the first beginnings of what would later evolve into Mahayana Buddhism.
250 B.C.E. Third Council is convened by King Asoka at Pataliputra (India). Disputes on points of doctrine lead to further schisms, spawning the Sarvastivadin and Vibhajjavadin sects. The Abhidhamma Pitaka is recited at the Council, along with additional sections of the Khuddaka Nikaya. The modern Pali Tipitaka is now essentially completed.
247 B.C.E. King Asoka sends his son, Ven. Mahinda, on a mission to bring Buddhism to Sri Lanka. King Devanampiya Tissa of Sri Lanka is converted.
240 B.C.E. Ven. Mahinda establishes the Mahavihara (Great Monastery) of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The Vibhajjavadin community living there becomes known as the Theravadins. Mahinda's sister, Ven. Sanghamitta, arrives in Sri Lanka with a cutting from the original Bodhi tree, and establishes the bhikkhuni-sangha (nuns) in Sri Lanka.
100 C.E. Famine and schisms in Sri Lanka point out the need for a written record of the Tipitaka to preserve the Buddhist religion. King Vattagamani convenes a Fourth Council, in which 500 reciters and scribes from the Mahavihara write down the Pali Tipitaka for the first time, on palm leaves. Theravada Buddhism first appears in Burma and Central Thailand.
200 C.E. Buddhist monastic university at Nalanda, India flourishes; remains a world centre of Buddhist study for over 1,000 years.
425 C.E. Ven. Buddhaghosa collates the various Sinhalese commentaries on the Canon - drawing primarily on the Maha Atthakatha (Great Commentary) preserved at the Mahavihara - and translates his work into Pali. This makes Sinhalese Buddhist scholarship available to the entire Theravadin world. As a cornerstone to his work, Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purity) which eventually becomes the classic Sri Lankan textbook on the Buddha's teachings.
Dhammapala composes commentaries on parts of the Canon missed by Buddhaghosa (such as the Udana, Itivuttaka, Theragatha, and Therigatha), along with extensive sub-commentaries on Buddhaghosa's work.
1050 The bhikkhu and bhikkhuni communities at Anuradhapura die out following invasions from South India.
1070 Bhikkhus from Pagan arrive in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka to reinstate the Theravada ordination line in Sri Lanka.
1164 Polonnaruwa destroyed by foreign invasion. With the guidance of two monks from a forest branch of the Mahavihara sect - Vens. Mahakassapa and Sariputta - King Parakramabahu reunites all bhikkhus in Sri Lanka into the Mahavihara sect.
1236 Bhikkhus from Kañcipuram, India, arrive in Sri Lanka to revive the Theravada ordination line.
1279 Last inscriptional evidence of a Theravada Bhikkhuni nunnery (in Burma).
1287 Pagan (Burma) looted by Mongol invaders; its decline begins.
13th cen. A forest-based Sri Lankan ordination line arrives in Burma and Thailand. Theravada spreads to Laos. Thai Theravada monasteries first appear in Cambodia shortly before the Thais win their independence from the Khmers.
1753 King Kirti Sri Rajasinha obtains bhikkhus from the Thai court to reinstate the bhikkhu ordination line, which had died out in Sri Lanka. This is the origin of the Siam Nikaya.
1777 King Rama I, founder of the current dynasty in Thailand, obtains copies of the Tipitaka from Sri Lanka and sponsors a Council to standardize the Thai version of the Tipitaka, copies of which are then donated to temples throughout the country.
1803 Sri Lankans ordained in the Burmese city of Amarapura found the Amarapura Nikaya in Sri Lanka to supplement the Siam Nikaya, which admitted only brahmins from the Up Country highlands around Kandy.
1828 Thailand's Prince Mongkut (later King Rama IV) founds the Dhammayut Sect.
1862 Forest monks headed by Ven. Paññananda go to Burma for reordination, returning to Sri Lanka the following year to found the Ramañña Nikaya. First translation of the Dhammapada into a Western language (German).
1868 Fifth Council is held at Mandalay, Burma; Pali Canon is inscribed on 729 marble slabs.
1873 Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda defeats Christian missionaries in a public debate, sparking a nationwide revival of Sri Lankan pride in its Buddhist traditions.
1879 Sir Edwin Arnold publishes his epic narrative poem Light of Asia, stimulating popular Western interest in Buddhism.
1880 Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, founders of the Theosophical Society, arrive in Sri Lanka from the USA, embrace Buddhism, and begin a campaign to restore Buddhism on the island by encouraging the establishment of Buddhist schools.
1881 Pali Text Society is founded in England by T.W. Rhys Davids; most of the Tipitaka is published in roman script and, over the next 100 years, in English translation.
1891 Maha Bodhi Society founded in India by the Sri Lankan lay follower Anagarika Dharmapala, in an effort to reintroduce Buddhism to India.
1899 First Western Theravada monk (Gordon Douglas) ordains, in Burma.
1900 Ven. Ajaan Mun and Ven. Ajaan Sao revive the forest meditation tradition in Thailand.
1902 King Rama V of Thailand institutes a Sangha Act that formally marks the beginnings of the Mahanikaya and Dhammayut sects. Sangha government, which up to that time had been in the hands of a lay official appointed by the king, is handed over to the bhikkhus themselves.
1949 Mahasi Sayadaw becomes head teacher at a government-sponsored meditation center in Rangoon, Burma.
1954 Burmese government sponsors a Sixth Council in Rangoon.
1956 Buddha Jayanti Year, commemorating 2,500 years of Buddhism.
1958 Ven. Nyanaponika Thera establishes the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka to publish English-language books on Theravada Buddhism. Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is founded in Sri Lanka to bring Buddhist ideals to bear in solving pressing social problems. Two Germans ordain at the Royal Thai Embassy in London, becoming the first to take full Theravada ordination in the West.
1970's Refugees from war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos settle in North America, Australia and Europe, establishing many Buddhist communities in the West. Ven. Taungpulu Sayadaw and Dr. Rina Sircar, from Burma, establish the Taungpulu Kaba-Aye Monastery in Northern California, USA. Ven. Ajaan Chah establishes Wat Pah Nanachat, a forest monastery in Thailand for training Western monks. Insight Meditation Society, a lay meditation center, is founded in Massachusetts, USA. Ven. Ajaan Chah travels to England to establish a small community of monks at the Hamsptead Vihara, which later moves to Sussex, England, now known as Chithurst Forest Monastery.
1980's Lay meditation centers grow in popularity in North America, Australia and Europe. First Theravada forest monastery in the USA (Bhavana Society) is established in West Virginia. Amaravati Buddhist Monastery established in England by Ven. Ajaan Sumedho.
1990's Continued western expansion of the Theravada Sangha: monasteries from the Thai forest traditions established in California, USA (Metta Forest Monastery, founded by Ven. Ajaan Suwat; Abhayagiri Monastery, founded by Ven. Ajaans Amaro and Pasanno). Buddhism meets cyberspace: Buddhist computer networks emerge; several editions of the Pali Tipitaka become available online.
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Year Major Events in Tibetan Buddhism
c200 C.E. Buddhism begins to percolate into Tibetan region and teachings affect Bon religion in kingdom of Shang-Shung (South Tibet).
3rd cen. Buddhist scriptures begin to reach early Tibetan Kingdoms (North Tibet) during reign of King Lhatotori Nyentsen
641 King Songtsen Gampo unifies Tibet and marries Chinese princess Wen Cheng and Nepalese Princess Bhrkuti who bring Buddha images
641-650 Construction of Potala Palace, and Jokang and Ramoche temples to house Buddha images
773? King Trisong Detsen (r.755-797) invites Shantarakshita to Tibet.
774 King Trisong Detsen invites Padmasambhava, yogin of Swat, to Tibet, and construction of Samye begins (775).
c785 Samye, Tibet's 1st monastery, built by Trisong Detsen and Padmasambhava. Great Convocation, 3000 monks ordained. Translating begins.
792 Exponents of Indian Buddhism prevail in debate with Chinese at Samye.
840 Persecution of Tibetan Buddhism under King Lang Darma. period of conflict and civil strife begins
877 Destruction of Tibetan Dynasties. Buddhism almost completely wiped out in Tibet.
978 Commencement of second Buddhist period in Tibet
1038 Atisha comes to Tibet and founds the Kadampa school (which later becomes the Gelugpa order)
c1039 Marpa the translator (1012-1099) founder of the Kargyu school, travels to India, studies under Naropa
1040 Birth of Milarepa, 2nd hierarch of Kagyu order and a renowned poet.
1055 Birth of Marchik Labdron (1055-1153) founder of the Chod lineage, the main lineage founded by a woman.
1073 Founding of Sakya, the first monastery of the Sakya monastic order.
1247 Sakya Pandita submits to Godan Khan; beginning of the first priest/patron relationship between a Tibetan Lama and a Mongol Khan.
1261 Tibet is reunited with Sakya Pandita, Grand Lama of Sakya, as king.
1350 King Changchub Gyaltsen defeats Sakya and founds a secular dynasty.
1409 Ganden, 1st Gelug monastery, built by monastic reformer Tsongkhapa.
1435-81 In prolonged warfare, Karmapa supporters gain control of royal court.
1578 Gelug-pa leader gets the title of Dalai ("Ocean") from Altan Khan.
1642 Gushri Khan enthrones the 5th Dalai Lama as temporal ruler of Tibet.
1653 "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama meets Qing Emperor Shunzhi near Beijing.
1682 Fifth Dalai Lama dies; regent conceals death for the next 14 years.
1716-21 Italian Jesuit priest, Ippolito Desideri studies and teaches in Lhasa.
1717 Dzungar Mongols invade Tibet and sack Lhasa; Fifth DL's tomb looted.
1720 Dzungars driven out; Qing (Chinese) forces install Kesang Gyatso as the 7th Dalai Lama.
1721 The position of Amban is created by a 13-point Qing decree on Tibet. 29-point Qing decree prescribes "golden urn" lottery for picking DL and PL, bans visits by non-Chinese, and increases Amban's powers.
1904 British troops under Colonel Younghusband enter Tibet and occupy Lhasa.
1910-12 Chinese troops occupy Tibet, shoot at unarmed crowds on entering Lhasa.
1911 Bogh Haan, the Urga "Living Buddha," proclaims Mongolia independent.
1913 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibet a "religious and independent nation".
1924-25 Pressure from monks causes Dalai Lama to dismiss his British-trained officers.
1933 Truce ends China/Tibet fighting; the 13th Dalai Lama dies at age 58.
1934 Reting Rimpoche named regent. China permitted to open Lhasa mission.
1940 The five-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama.
1941 Unable to keep celibacy vow, Reting is replaced as regent by Taktra.
1945 Newly opened English-language school is closed after monks protest.
1950 Red China invades Tibet; Tibetan army destroyed in battle at Chamdo.
1951 17-point agreement between China and Tibet; Chinese occupy Lhasa.
1956 Tibetans in Kham and Amdo (Qinghai) begin revolt against Chinese ruler. Dalai Lama visits India for 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's birth.
1959 Dalai Lama flees to India; 87,000 Tibetans die in anti-Chinese revolt.
1960 International Commission of Jurists: "acts of genocide [have] been committed... to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group."
1963 Dalai Lama approves a democratic constitution for the Tibetan exile community.
1964 The Panchen Lama is arrested after calling for Tibetan independence.
1978 Visitors find 8 temples left in TAR, down from 2,700 in 1959.
1979-80 China allows a series of three delegations from Dalai Lama to visit Tibet.
1989 Dalai Lama receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
1995 Dalai Lama recognizes six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as 11th Panchen Lama. China denounces the Dalai Lama's choice.
1999 The Karmapa (Urgyen Trinley Dorje) flees Tibet to join the Dalai Lama in exile.
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Year Major Events in Chinese Buddhism
1st century CE Historical record has it that two Buddhist missionaries from India in 68 AD, arrived at the court of Emperor Ming (58-75) of the Han Dynasty (25-220 AD). They enjoyed imperial favour and stayed on to translate various Buddhist Texts, one of which, The 'Sutra of Forty-two Sections' continues to be popular even today.
4th century CE Translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese by Kumarajiva (344-413) and Hui-yüan (344-416).
5th century CE Chinese pilgrim scholar Fa-hsien visits India (399-414).Amitabha (Amida) the Pure Land School (Ching t'u) emerges in China (402).Persecution of Buddhism under Emperor Wu or Shih-tusu (424-451).Restoration under the new Emperor, Wen-ch'eng-ti (454).
6th century CE Bodhidharma, First Patriarch of the Ch'an School arrives in China from India in 520 (variant 526).The T'ang dynasty (618-907) was the Golden Age of Chinese Buddhism.The T'ien-tai School was established by Chih-i (538-597), Hua-yen School establish by Fa-shun (557-640) Dhyana School (Ch'an; Jap.Zen) Schools of Chinese Buddhism.
7th century CE The Southern School of Ch'an or new Ch'an begins in earnest with Hui-neng (638-713) the Sixth Patriarch.The Persecution in 845. During the reign of Emperor Wu-tsung (841-7) an order came to the effect that all Buddhist establishments should be destroyed, initiating a decline in Chinese Buddhism. The invention of block printing by Chinese Buddhists. The oldest extant book printed is the Tun-hung book of 868 it contained excerpts from the Diamond Sutra .
10th century CE In 972, the first emperor of the Sung Dynasty ordered the complete printing of the Chinese Tripitaka. This was achieved in 983, known as the Shu-pen (Szechuan edition). Two classic collections appeared, the 'Blue Cliff Record', (Pi-yen-lu; Jap. Hekiganroku) compiled by Hsueh Tou Ch'ung Hsien (980-1152) and the 'Gateless Gate' (Wu-men-kuan; Jap. Mumonkan) compiled by Wu-men Hui kai (1184-1260).
12th to 15th century CE China during the Yuan Dynasty was under Mongolian rule and the influences of Tibetan Lamaism. It was during the Mogol Dynasty that the Buddhist-Taoist controversy was brought before Mangu Khan in 1255. The acrimonious debate, which had started over a 1000 years before was finally concluded in the Buddhist's favour by an edict of Kublai Khan in 1281.Movement toward unity among the schools developed under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)Master Chu-hung, (born 1535) united in his person the two leading trends in Ming Buddhism - harmonization of the different schools (specifically Cha'n, Pureland) and the inauguration of a lay Buddhist movement.
The Modern Era The revolution of 1911 that toppled the Manchu Dynasty and established the Republic of China brought problems for the Buddhist Sangha. To combat these trends arose a remarkable monk, T'ai-hsu (1898-1947) who was able to rally his fellow religionists and to initiate a program of reform. On the national scale he organised a Chinese Buddhist Society in 1929.A revival of the Idealistic School was initiated by the publication in 1901of the Ch'eng-wei-shih-lun (Notes on the Completion of the Idealistic Doctrine) of K'uei-chi, long lost in China but brought back from Japan. The leader of this revival was the layman Ou-yang Chien, and the Institute of Inner Learning, which he organised in Naking (Nanjing) in 1922.Hsu Yun, Ch'an Master (1840-1959) 'Universally regarded as the most outstanding Buddhist of the Chinese Sangha in the modern era' (Richard Hunn). Dharma successor of all five Ch'an schools; main reformer in Chinese Buddhism revival (1900-50). Wong Mou-Lam translated the The Platform Sutra into English and founded the journal Chinese Buddhism (1930).(1898-1978) Upasaka Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk) Translator and Writer on Ch'an. Born in Canton. Lived in exile in Hong Kong.The official formation of the Chinese Buddhist Association by the government of the People's Republic of China on May 30th, 1953.The Cultural Revolution (1965-75) Buddhist temples and monasteries were sacked and the already weakened Sangha was further depleted. The excesses of this time have since been regretted, however, and a more liberal policy introduced.
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Year Major Events in Japanese Buddhism
538 or 552 Buddhism introduced into Japan.
594 C.E. Imperial Decree Encouraging Buddhism promulgated.
607 Horyu-ji Temple built, completed in 615 C.E.
621 or 622 "Commentaries on the Three Scriptures", by Prince Shotoku.
752 The Huge Statue of the Vairocana Buddha of the Todai-ji Temple of Nara completed.
770 One Million Miniature Stupas (Pagodas) built in 794 C.E. Capital moved from Nara to Kyoto.
805 Saicho (767-822) established Tendai Buddhism.
806 Kukai (774-835) established Shingon Buddhism.
822 The Establishment of the Mahayana Disiplines.
972 Kuya (903-972), an advocator of the Pure Land Faith, died.
985 Genshin (944-1017) wrote the 0-jo-yo-shu (Collection of Essential Documents to Attain the Birth in the Pure Land)
1124 Ryonin (1072-1132) founded the Yuzu- gatari) written Nembutsu Sect.
1175 Honen (1133-1212) founded the Jodo Sect.
1191 Eisai (1141-1215) founded the Rinzai Sect of Zen Buddhism.
1224 Shinran (1173-1262) founded the Jodo-Shin Sect.
1227 Dogen (1200-1253) founded the Soto Zen Sect.
1252 The Huge Image of Amida Buddha at Kamakura cast.
1253 Nichiren (1222-1282) founded the Nichiren Sect of Buddhism.
1275 Ippen (1239-1289) founded the Ji Sect.
1339 The Moss-garden of the Saiho-ji Temple in Kyoto built.
1397 The Kinkaku-ji Temple or the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto built.
1499 The Rock-garden of the Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto built. Rennyo (1415-1499), restorer of the Jodo-Shin Sect, died.
1602 The Jodo-Shin Sect Split into the Higashi (East) and the Nishi (West) Hongan-ji Schools.
1613 The Danka System or the Family-temple system formed.
1654 Ingen or Yin-yuan (1592-1673) introduced the Obaku Sect of Zen Buddhism.
1681 Buddhist Scriptures in Chinese Version published by Tetsugen.
1868 Buddhism suppressed by the Shintoists. The Meiji Restoration.
1872 Celibacy and vegetarianism allowed by governmental permission. Ban on Christianity cancelled. Women admitted to Buddhist temple.
1873 Religions in Japan put under government control.
1934 Taisho Edition of the Buddhist Scriptures in Chinese Version completed in 100 volumes.
1951 The Religious Juridical Persons Law Japan's Peace Treaty enforced signed.
1952 The Second World Buddhists Conference held in Tokyo.
1959 Buddha Jayanti, commemorating 2,500 years of Buddhism is held in Japan.
1968 International Buddhist Exchange Centre incorporated.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/sri_timeline.htm 020320yd
Year Major Events in Sri Lankan Buddhism
247 B.C.E. King Asoka sends his son, Ven. Mahinda, on a mission to bring Buddhism to Sri Lanka. King Devanampiya Tissa of Sri Lanka is converted.
240 B.C.E. Ven. Mahinda establishes the Mahavihara (Great Monastery) of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The Vibhajjavadin community living there becomes known as the Theravadins. Mahinda's sister, Ven. Sanghamitta, arrives in Sri Lanka with a cutting from the original Bodhi tree, and establishes the bhikkhuni-sangha (nuns) in Sri Lanka.
100 C.E. Famine and schisms in Sri Lanka point out the need for a written record of the Tipitaka to preserve the Buddhist religion. King Vattagamani convenes a Fourth Council, in which 500 reciters and scribes from the Mahavihara write down the Pali Tipitaka for the first time, on palm leaves. Theravada Buddhism first appears in Burma and Central Thailand.
425 C.E. Ven. Buddhaghosa collates the various Sinhalese commentaries on the Canon - drawing primarily on the Maha Atthakatha (Great Commentary) preserved at the Mahavihara - and translates his work into Pali. This makes Sinhalese Buddhist scholarship available to the entire Theravadin world. As a cornerstone to his work, Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) which eventually becomes the classic Sri Lankan textbook on the Buddha's teachings.
Dhammapala composes commentaries on parts of the Canon missed by Buddhaghosa (such as the Udana, Itivuttaka, Theragatha, and Therigatha), along with extensive sub-commentaries on Buddhaghosa's work.
1050 The bhikkhu and bhikkhuni communities at Anuradhapura die out following invasions from South India.
1070 Bhikkhus from Pagan arrive in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka to reinstate the Theravada ordination line in Sri Lanka.
1164 Polonnaruwa destroyed by foreign invasion. With the guidance of two monks from a forest branch of the Mahavihara sect - Vens. Mahakassapa and Sariputta - King Parakramabahu reunites all bhikkhus in Sri Lanka into the Mahavihara sect.
1236 Bhikkhus from Kañcipuram, India, arrive in Sri Lanka to revive the Theravada ordination line.
1279 Last inscriptional evidence of a Theravada Bhikkhuni nunnery (in Burma).
13th century A forest-based Sri Lankan ordination line arrives in Burma and Thailand. Theravada spreads to Laos. Thai Theravada monasteries first appear in Cambodia shortly before the Thais win their independence from the Khmers.
1753 King Kirti Sri Rajasinha obtains bhikkhus from the Thai court to reinstate the bhikkhu ordination line, which had died out in Sri Lanka. This is the origin of the Siam Nikaya of Buddhist monks.
1803 Sri Lankans ordained in the Burmese city of Amarapura found the Amarapura Nikaya in Sri Lanka to supplement the Siam Nikaya, which admitted only brahmins from the Up Country highlands around Kandy.
1862 Forest monks headed by Ven. Paññananda go to Burma for reordination, returning to Sri Lanka the following year to found the Ramañña Nikaya. First translation of the Dhammapada into a Western language (German).
1873 The revival of Buddhism got fully under way in Sri Lanka when Ven. Sri Sumangala and Ven Dharmanada established two Buddhist monastic colleges, the Vidyodaya and the Vidyolanka Pirivenas (monastic colleges), in 1873 and 1875 respectively. At about the same time a brilliant young monk, Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda defeats Christian missionaries in a public debate, sparking a nationwide revival of Sri Lankan pride in its Buddhist traditions.
1880 Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, founders of the Theosophical Society, arrive in Sri Lanka from the USA, embrace Buddhism, and begin a campaign to restore Buddhism on the island by encouraging the establishment of Buddhist schools.
1891 Maha Bodhi Society founded in India by the Sri Lankan lay follower Anagarika Dharmapala, in an effort to reintroduce Buddhism to India.
1958 Ven. Nyanaponika Thera establishes the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka to publish English-language books on Theravada Buddhism. Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is founded in Sri Lanka to bring Buddhist ideals to bear in solving pressing social problems. Two Germans ordain at the Royal Thai Embassy in London, becoming the first to take full Theravada ordination in the West.
ca -600: Life of Sushruta, of Varanasi, the father of surgery. His ayurvedic treatises cover pulse diagnosis, hernia, cataract, cosmetic surgery, medical ethics, 121 surgical implements, antiseptics, use of drugs to control bleeding, toxicology, psychiatry, classification of burns, midwifery, surgical anesthesia and therapeutics of garlic.
ca -600: The Ajivika sect, an ascetic, atheistic group of naked sadhus reputated for fierce curses, is at its height, continuing in Mysore until the 14th century. Adversaries of both Buddha and Mahavira, their philosophy is deterministic, holding that everything is inevitable.
ca -600: Lifetime of Lao-tzu, founder of Taoism in China, author of Tao-te Ching. Its esoteric teachings of simplicity and selflessness shape Chinese life for 2,000 years and permeate the religions of Vietnam, Japan and Korea.
-599-527: Lifetime of Mahavira Vardhamana, 24th Tirthankara and revered renaissance Jain master. His teachings stress strict codes of vegetarianism, asceticism and nonviolence. (Some date his life 40 years later. )
-560: In Greece, Pythagoras teaches math, music, vegetarianism and yoga-drawing from India's wisdom ways.
-551-478: Lifetime of Confucius, founder of Confucianist faith. His teachings on social ethics are the basis of Chinese education, ruling-class ideology and religion.
-518: Darius I of Persia (present Iran) invades Indus Valley. This Zoroastrian king shows tolerance for local religions.
ca -500: Lifetime of Kapila, founder of Sankhya Darshana, one of six classical systems of Hindu philosophy.
“ What is Truth ?” “What’s the path to it ? “
1 500 bce Sankhya - Kapila - analyse/understand (chit) existence/nature (sat) in term of 25 tattvas/elements: purush, prakriti, guna, sattva, rajas, tamas, bhog, dharma, artha, kaam, moksh, 4 purushartha;
526 sutras in 6 chapters (164, 47, 84, 32, 129, 70)
2 200 bce Yoga - Patanjali - control movements (sat) of consciousness (chit)
195 verses in 4 chapters (1: samadhi 55;2: sadhna 51;3:vibhuti 55 ;4:kaivalya 34)
3 400 bce Vedanta - Badarayana – understand (chit) what’s in Upanishads and Aranyakas at “end”, anta, of the Vedas rather than the hymns and ritual portions of the Vedas
555 verses in 4 chapters (1.1 31,1.2 32,1.3 43,1.4 29;2.1 37,2.2 45,2.3 53,2.4 22;
3.1 27,3.2 41,3.3 66,3.4 52;4.1 19,4.2 21,4.3 15,4.4 22)
4 300 bce Nyaya - Gautama - use logic and reasoning (chit) correctly
5 300 bce Vaiseshika – Kanada – analyse/understand (chit) existence/nature (sat) in term of 9 parts/elements (dravyas) earth, water, light, air, ether, time, space, soul and mind
393 verses in 10 chapters (1.1 31,1.2 17;2.1 31,2.2 37;3.1 20,3.2 21;4.1 13,4.2 12;
5.1 18,5.2 26,6.1 16,6.2 17;7.1 25,7.2 27;8.1 11,8.2 6;9.1 15,9.2 13;10.1 7,10.2 10)
6 200 bce Mimasa - Jaimini - perform rites in the Vedas correctly
in 12 chapters (1.1 32, 1.2 53, 1.3 35, 1.4 30; 2.1 49, 2.2 29, 2.3 29,2.4 32; 3.1 27, 3.2 43, 3.3 46, 3.4 51,3.5 53, 3.6 47, 3.7 51, 3.8 44; 4.1 48, 4.2 20, 4.3 41 4.4 11 4.5 41; 5.1 35,
5.2 23, 5.3 44,5.4 26;6.1 52, 6.2 32,6.3 41,6.4 47,6.5 56,6.6 39
ca -500: Dams to store water are constructed in India.
-500: World population is 100 million. India population is 25 million (15 million of whom live in the Ganga basin).
ca -500: Over the next 300 years (according to the later dating of Muller) numerous secondary Hindu scriptures (smriti) are composed: Shrauta Sutras, Grihya Sutras, Dharma Sutras, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas, etc.
ca -500: Tamil Sangam age (500 bce-500 ce) begins. Sage Agastya writes Agattiyam, first known Tamil grammar. Tolkappiyar writes Tolkappiyam Purananuru, also on grammar, stating that he is recording thoughts on poetry, rhetoric, etc., of earlier grammarians, pointing to high development of Tamil language prior to his day. He gives rules for absorbing Sanskrit words into Tamil. Other famous works from the Sangam age are the poetical collections Paripadal, Pattuppattu, Ettuthokai Purananuru, Akananuru, Aingurunuru, Padinenkilkanakku. Some refer to worship of Vishnu, Indra, Murugan and Supreme Siva.
ca -486: Ajatashatru (reign -486-458) ascends Magadha throne.
-480: Ajita, a nastika (atheist) who teaches a purely material explanation of life and that death is final, dies.
-478: Prince Vijaya, exiled by his father, King Sinhabahu, sails from Gujarat with 700 followers. Founds Singhalese kingdom in Sri Lanka. (Mahavamsa chronicle, ca 500.)
-450: Athenian philosopher Socrates flourishes (ca -470-400).
-428-348: Lifetime of Plato, Athenian disciple of Socrates. This great philosopher founds Athens Academy in -387.
ca -400: Panini composes his Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi. (Date accepted among most Western scholars.)
ca -400: Lifetime of Hippocrates, Greek physician and "father of medicine," formulates Hippocratic oath, code of medical ethics still pledged by present-day Western doctors.
ca -350: Rainfall is measured by Indian scientists.
-326: Alexander the Great of Greece invades, but fails to conquer, Northern India. His soldiers mutiny. He leaves India the same year. Greeks who remain in India intermarry with Indians. Interchanges of philosophy influence both civilizations. Greek sculpture impacts Hindu styles. Bactria kingdoms later enhance Greek influence.
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_9.html
\Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., thus ending unwanted Persian rule. The Egyptians willfully accepted him as pharaoh because he adopted the Egyptian kingship and religion. Among other building projects, Alexander laid the foundations of a new city called Alexandria on the Mediterranean Coast, which became the new capital of Egypt. Upon Alexander's death, control of Egypt fell to one of his generals, Ptolemy I Soter, who began a line of monarchs who ruled Egypt for the next 275 years.
Greek became the official language of the government. Demotic, however, was still used by the majority of the Egyptians and used in lesser administrative offices. Likewise, high officials were Greek, while local administration remained in Egyptian hands. Throughout most of Ptolemaic rule, the Egyptians were unsettled with Greek rule and often revolted.
Religiously, the Ptolemies combined Egyptian and Greek religion. They established the national cults of Serapis, of Arsinoe II, and of the Ptolemies themselves. They continued to build many traditional temples all over Egypt, including Philae, Dandarah, and Idfu, as did their successors, the Roman emperors [10250]. The Greeks blended the traditional Egyptian styles with contemporary Hellenistic styles in these edifices, and in other artwork.
The well-known Cleopatra VII was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers and the only Ptolemy to know how to speak Egyptian. After her lover Mark Antony lost the battle of Actium to Octavian, Cleopatra committed suicide and Egypt became simply another province of the Roman Empire.
While Romans filled the upper levels of the administration in Egypt, most power fell into the hands of the Egyptians. City councils were in charge of local administration. The use of the demotic script dwindled, as Coptic began to replace it. But more importantly, Greek continued to be used for administrative purposes; Latin was hardly used at all.
The Ptolemies had exploited the Fayyum for food, heavily increasing its yield and establishing many towns in that region. The Romans took advantage of this, turning Egypt into the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, by exacting heavy taxes from the people mainly in the form of grain. Meanwhile, Egypt was at the center of a vast network of international trade that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to India.
Egyptian temples continued to be decorated in the traditional Egyptian style throughout the Roman period [10246]. There was, however, a steady decline of Egyptian cults as more and more Egyptians accepted Christianity.
indica by Arrian:____________
http://www.und.ac.za/und/classics/india/arrian.htm
Reference: http://www.pothos.co.uk/alexander.asp?ParaID=7
359 BC
Death of Perdiccas III, King of Macedonia: Perdiccas leaves infant heir Amyntas; Philip II elected King of Macedonia
358 BC
Philip subdues Paeonians and Agrians
357 BC
Marriage of Philip II and Olympias, mother of Alexander
Philip captures the cities of Amphipolis and Pydna
356 BC
July 20 - Birth of Alexander III at Pella, Macedon
August - Philip captures city of Potidaea
355 BC
Birth of Cassander, son of Antipater, ruler of Macedonia after Alexander
354 BC
Philip captures city of Methone: Philip loses one eye
353 BC
Philip defeats Greek state of Phokis
352 BC
Persian noble Artabazus receives asylum at Philip's court
348 BC
Philip captures city of Olynthus (Chalcidice peninsula)
343 BC
Aristotle appointed as tutor of Alexander
342 BC
Philip's conquests in Thrace
Alexander gets Bucephalas, his personal horse
340 BC
Alexander regent in Macedonia during campaign of Philip against Byzantium; Alexander defeats Thracian tribe
Persia aids city of Perinthus against Philip
Probable end of the tutorship of Aristotle
338 BC
August 2 - Battle of Chaeronea: King Philip defeats Greeks, Alexander commands cavalry
Autumn - Establishment and first meeting of the Corinthian League: Philip confirmed as hegemon of Greece
337 BC
Spring - Second meeting of the Corinthian League: Philip reveals plans for invasion of Persia
Marriage of Philip and Cleopatra; Alexander and Olympias leave for exile
Autumn - Alexander returns from his exile in Illyria
336 BC
Spring - Officers Parmenion and Attalus take advance force into Persia
October [June] - Murder of King Philip; Alexander ascends throne of Macedonia
Autumn - Execution of Amyntas, son of Perdiccas III and heir to the throne; Execution of Cleopatra, widow of Philip, and her newborn son; Third meeting of Corinthian League at Corinth: Alexander confirmed as hegemon of Greece; Possible legendary meeting with philosopher Diogenes
Other events - King Darius III ascends the throne of Persia; Marriage of Alexander of Epirus and Cleopatra, sister of Alexander
335 BC
Spring - Campaign to the Danube; Battle of the Lyginus: Alexander defeats Triballians
May - Alexander crosses river Danube: establishment of northern frontiers
Summer - Attack on Pelium: Alexander defeats Illyrians
September - Alexander ends revolt at Thebes
Other events - Persian commander Memnon stops advance force of Parmenion and Attalus
334 BC
May - Alexander crosses Hellespont into Persia
May/June - Battle of the Granicus: Alexander defeats Persian defense force
Summer - Alexander captures Milete
Autumn - Alexander captures Halicarnassus, Persian stronghold; Alexander grants winter leave to newly wedded soldiers
Other events - Antigonus the One-Eyed appointed as satrap of Phrygia; Queen Ada re-instated as ruler of Caria
333 BC
Winter - Alleged conspiracy: arrest of Alexander of Lyncestis; Legendary miraculous passing of Mount Climax; Campaign against Pisidians
March - Alexander solves riddle of the 'Gordian Knot', Gordium
May - Alexander of Epirus invades Italy (defeated and killed around 331 BC)
May [July] - Alexander leaves Gordium
June/July [Spring] - Memnon dies of illness
Summer - King Darius III and Persian army leave Babylon
September [July] - Alexander falls ill at river Cydnus
September - Alexander arrives at Tarsus, Cilicia
September/October - King Darius III and Persian army arrive at Sochi, base camp near Mediterranean
November - Battle of Issus: Alexander defeats Persian King Darius III; Alexander captures Persian Royal family
Autumn - Parmenion captures Damascus: capture of Barsine, widow of Memnon and future mistress of Alexander and possibly mother of his first child, Heracles
Other events - Idarnes (or Hydarnes) re-captures Milete; Balacrus defeats Idarnes in 332 BC
332 BC
January-July [August] - Siege of Tyre
Spring [Summer 331 BC] - Statira, wife of Darius III, dies in childbirth
Summer - First peace offer of King Darius
July 29 [August] - Fall of Tyre
September-October - Siege of Gaza
November 14 - Alexander crowned Pharaoh in Memphis, Egypt
331 BC
Winter - Oracle of Siwa allegedly confirms divinity of Alexander
April 7 [Winter] - Foundation of Alexandria, Egypt
Spring - Return to Phoenicia
Summer - Second peace offer of King Darius
September 20 - Army witnesses total eclipse of the moon in northern Mesopotamia: single 100% sure dating of the Alexander period
October 1 - Battle of Gaugamela (Arbela): final defeat of Persian King Darius III
October 21 - Alexander enters Babylon
November 25 - Alexander leaves Babylon
December 15 - Alexander enters Susa
December - Campaign against the Uxians
330 BC
January - Alexander forces his way through Persian Gates: defeat of last Persian defence troops
Winter/Spring - Five months stay in Persepolis, ceremonial Persian capital
April - Campaign against the Mardians
May [Summer/Autumn 331 BC] - Battle of Megalopolis: Alexander's Macedonian regent Antipater defeats King Agis III of Sparta
May - Alexander burns Persepolis
July - Persian King Darius III murdered by his kinsmen
Summer - Alexander dismisses allied troops
Autumn [Summer 329 BC] - Alleged but unlikely legendary meeting with the Queen of the Amazons
Autumn - Revolt of Satibarzanes, satrap of Aria; Satibarzanes killed by officer Erigiyus
October - Alleged conspiracy: execution of officers Philotas and his father Parmenion; Craterus becomes second in command; execution of Alexander of Lyncestis
329 BC
Spring - Alexander crosses Hindu Kush into Central Asia
May - Arrest of Bessus, usurper of Persian throne
Summer - Alleged massacre of the Branchidae; Founding of Alexandria-the-Furthest; Battle of the Iaxartes: Alexander defeats Scythians; Rebel leader Spitamenes annihilates Macedonian forces at Maracanda
328 BC
Spring - Submission of Pharasmenes, ruler of the Chorasmians
Spring/Summer/Autumn - Army split in five divisions against rebellions in Central Asia
Autumn - Defeat of rebel leader Spitamenes; Alexander kills officer Cleitus the Black during brawl
327 BC
Winter - Attempt to introduce 'proskynesis'; Alleged conspiracy: execution of court historian Callisthenes
Spring - Alexander captures 'Sogdian Rock', rebel stronghold; Surrender of rebel Chorienes; Defeat of rebels Catanes and Austanes
Spring [August] - Marriage to Roxane, daughter of Bactrian noble Oxyartes
Summer - Invasion of India
326 BC
Winter - Siege of Massaga: Massaga's Queen Cleophis allegedly concieves a son of Alexander (named Alexander)
April - Alexander captures 'Rock of Aornus', Indian stronghold
May [July] - Battle of the Hydaspes: Alexander defeats King Porus; Death of Bucephalas
September - Army refuses further advance at river Hyphasis; Alexander orders retreat
Autumn - Death of officer Coenus; Roxane's first child dies at birth at the river Acesines
November - Start of voyage down the Indus
December - Campaign against the Mallians: Alexander's lung pierced by an arrow
325 BC
June - Craterus leads part of the army through Arachosia towards Carmania
July - Alexander reaches Indian Ocean
August - Alexander starts march through Gedrosian desert
September 20/21 - Fleet under command of Nearchos sets sail for Persian Gulf
October/November - Alexander reaches Pura, capital of Gedrosia
December - Reunion of Alexander and Craterus in Carmania
Other events - Mercenary revolts in Bactria; Desertion of Harpalus
324 BC
Winter [December 325 BC]- First reunion between Alexander and Nearchos near Salmus, Carmania
Winter/Spring - 'Reign of Fear': Alexander punishes and executes Persian satraps who abused power in his absence
January - Restoration of tomb of Cyrus the Great
February - Alexander orders mass wedding at Susa, Persia: marriage to Statira, daughter of Darius III, and to Parysatis, daughter of Artaxerxes III
Spring - Second reunion between Alexander and Nearchos near mouth of the Tigris
April/May - Alexander founds last Alexandria (Charax) at the mouth of river Tigris
July - Mutiny (or strike) of the army at Opis, Mesopotamia
August 4 [September 3] - Alexander issues Exiles' Decree
Summer - Craterus leaves with veterans for Macedonia
October - Death of Hephaestion, Alexander's lifelong friend and lover, in Ecbatana
323 BC
Winter - Campaign against Cossaeans
April - Alexander returns in Babylon
May - Funeral of Hephaestion
June 10 - Alexander dies after ten days of illness
321 BC
Ptolemy hi-jacks Alexander's sarcophagus and brings Alexander's body to Egypt
Winter - December-February; Spring - March-May; Summer - June-August; Autumn - September-November; [ ] - alternative dating
Timeline compiled according to accounts of Arrian, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Justin and especially the footnotes and comments of their translators and editors. All dates mentioned are subject to debate. For corrections or suggestions please e-mail me: dhulqarnain@hotmail.com
305: Chandragupta Maurya, founder of first pan-Indian empire (-324-184), defeats Greek garrisons of Seleucus, founder of Seleucan Empire in Persia and Syria. At its height under Emperor Ashoka (reign -273-232), the Mauryan Empire includes all India except the far South.
--
reference: http://www.apnapunjab.com/history/index.htm
History Of Punjab Ancient Times Aryan Migrations Alexander's invasion Muslim Invasions Rise Of Sikh Power Punjab Before Partition Archeologists have traced the signs of human habitation to times long before that of Mughals arrival . The upper basin of Indus and Baluchistan plateau hosted one of the earliest human civilizations known as the Indus Valley civilization . The earliest signs of life human activity date as far back as 7000 BC . The Indus Valley civilization grew from small settlements to highly refined urban life . At its height , around 3000 BC , it boasted the splendid of Harrapa ( Near present day Sahiwal in West Punjab ) and Mohen- jo –daro in the lower Indus Valley . The story of the decline , whose reasons are still not completely explained , of civilizations is also told through the remains of the these cities . Aryan MigrationsAmong other reasons like the change in the weather patterns , urbanization without any rural agricultural production base one factor is reported to be the series of raids or small scale migrations by the Aryans from the north – west ( 1500-100 BC ) . The next thousand year history of Punjab ( or Arya – Varta , the land of Aryans ,a s Aryas called it ) is dominated by the Aryans and their interactions with the natives of the Indus basin . Easternmost Satrapy of the PersiansPunjab lied at the outskirts of the great Persian empires and came under their control from time to time . The Persian King Darius the great is reported to have attacked Punjab and occupied some parts . But for the first time the occupation of Punjab was completed by the Persian King Gustasp in 516 BC . Punjab became the wealthiest Satrapy i.e., the province in the Persian kingdom .Greeks , the rival empire of the Persians , also had some knowledge of the area . The great Persian Emperor Darius 1( 521- 486 BC ) appointed Skylax the Greek to explore the area around Indus river for commercial expeditions who provided an account of his voyage in his book “periplus” . Alexander’s expeditions were documented in the works of Strabo , Ptolemy , Pliny , Arrian and others . They described a region that had plenty of mighty rivers and was divided into four kingdoms .In Greek maps we find the mention of the mightiest of river of all the world called the Indos ( Indus ) and its tributaries of Hydaspes ( Jhelum ) , Akesines ( Chenab ) , Hydroatis (Ravi), Hyphasis( Satluj) and Hesidros(Beas). Alexander’s InvasionIn 321 BC Alexander the great after breaking the might of the Persians entered their final Satrapy of Punjab . He invited all the cheiftans of this satrapy to come to him and submit to his authority , which is exactly what the ruler of the northwest most ( west of Hydases kingdom of Gandhara with its capital at Taxila . But the ruler of the Kingdom Beteen refused to submit to Alexander’s authority and the two armies fought the historical battle on the bank of Akesines outside the town of Nikia ( somewhere around modern city of Jhelum).Porus put up a tough fight but his army was no match for Alexander's army .Alexander as with his other occupied areas established two cities in the area of Punjab , where he settled people from his multi – national armies which included a majority of Greeks and Macedonians . These cities along with the rule of the Indo – Greek thrived long after Alexander’s departure .Alexander’s eastern empire ( from Syria to Punjab ) was inherited by Selecus Nicator , the founder of the Seleucid dynasty . However the Greek empire in the east was disrupted by the ascendcy of the Bacterians . The Bacterian King Demetrius I added Punjab to his Kingdom in the second century BC . The best known of the Indo – Greek kings was meander who established his independent Kingdom centered at Taxila in 170 BC . He later moved his capital to Sagala ( the modern Ssialkot ) . Meander soon captured territories east of his kingdom and grew to rival the power of Bacterians .Meander’s successors maintained their rule on Punjab till 55 BC when the whole area was disrupted by the events happening in greater Euro- Asia . In the middle of the second century BC . YuI Chi tribe of modern China to move westward which caused in turn to Sakas or Scythians to move . Northern Sakas successfully wrestled the power of the areas from the Indo – Greeks . Another Central Asiatic people to make Punjab their home were the white Huns who made continuous campaigns towards this part of the world . Finally establishing their rule in the later 3rd century AD. Muslim InvasionsFollowing the birth of Islam in Arabia in 6th century AD , Arabs rose to power and replaced the Persians as the major power in the area . In 711- 13 AD , Arabs advanced to the land of five rivers , occupying Multan . Further north the area that survived the Arab attack was divided into small kingdoms .Meanwhile in Ghazni after the death of Subuktgin ,, the Turk , his son Mahmud assumed power in 997 AD . He was to expand his fathers kingdom far to the west and east of Ghazni through his military conquest . he was to attack Punjab 17 times during his reign . The Ghaznavids were uprooted by the Ghauris who extended their rule as far as Delhi . Shahabuddin Ghauri annexed Lahore to his kingdom in 1186 . After Ghauris death his governor Outubdin Aibak became an independent ruler of Punjab and funded the Mamluk sultanate . Khiljis replaced the Mamluks in 1290 . The rule of Khiljis was briefly disrupted by the two successful raids by the Mongols who marched their way to Delhi twice during Allaudin Khilji rule . Tuglaks succeeded Khiljis in 1320 AD . Tuglak rule was replaced by the Sayyids in 1414 AD . Lodhis gained control of Delhi in 1479 AD . The Rise of Sikh powerPunjab presented a picture of chaos and confusion when Ranjit Singh took reins of Sukerchikas misal . The edifice of Ahmad Shah Abdalis empire in India and crumbled . Afganistan was dismembered . Peshawar and Kashmir though under the Suzerainty of Afganistan had attained de facto independence .Barakzais were the masters of these places . Attock was ruled by Wazirkels and Jhang lay at the feet of Sials . Pathans were ruling kasur . Multan had thrown yoke and Nawab Muzaffar Khan had taken its charge . Both Punjab and Sind were under Afghan rule since 1757 after Ahmed Shah Abdali was granted suzerainty over these two provinces . They were confronted with the rising power of Sikhism in Punjab . Taimur Khan , a local governor was able to turn away Sikhs from Amritsar . He razed to the ground the fort of Ram Rauni . But this state of affairs did not last long and the Sikh misl joined hands and defeated Taimur Shah and his Chief Minister Jalal Khan . The Afghans were forced to retreat and Lahore was occupied by the Sikhs in 1758 , Jassa Singh Ahluwalia proclaimed Sikhs sovereignty and became its head . He struck coins to commemorate his victory .When Ahmad Shah Abdali was engaged in his campaign against the Marathas at Panipat in 1761 . Jassa Singh fled to Kangra hills after Sikhs forces were totally routed after the departure of Ahmad Shah abdali , Jassa Singh Ahluwalia attacked Sirhind , it was razed to ground and the Afghan Governor Zen Khan was killed . This was a great victory to Sikhs who were rulers of all area around the Sirhind . Jassa Singh hastitily paid visitto Hari Mandir at Amritsar , and he made amends and restored it to original shape as it was defiled by Ahmad Shah slaughtering cows in its precincts .Ahmad Shah died in June 1773 . After his death power of Afghans declined in Punjab . taimur shah ascended the throne at Kabul . By then misls had established themselves in Punjab . They had under their control the area as far as Saharnpur in east , Atock in west , kangra , Jammu in North and Multan in south . Efforts were made by Afghan rulers to dislodge Sikhs from the citadels . Taimur Shah attacked Multan and defeated the Bhangis . The Bhangi Sardar , Lehna Singh , and , Sobha Singh were driven out of Lahore in 1767 by the Abdali but soon reoccupied it . They remained in power in Lahore till 1793 – the year when Shah Zaman succeeded to the throne of Kabul .The first attempt by Shah Zaman was made in 17093 . He came upto Hassan Abdal rom where he sent an army of 7000 strong cavalry under Ahmad Shah Shahnachi but the Sikhs totally routed them . It was a great set back to Shah Zaman but again in 1795 he reorganized forces and attacked Hassan Abdal , snatched Rohtas from Sukerchikas , whom leader was Ranjit Singh who suffered at Shah zaman hands but did not lose courage . however , shah had to be back in Kabul as an invasion was apprehended on his own country from the west . after he went back , Ranjit dislodged the afghans from Rohtas .Shah Zaman could not sit idle. In 1796 he moved , crossed Indus for the third time and dreamt of capturing Delhi.Shah Zaman could not sit idle . In 1796 he moved , crossed Indus for the third time and dreamt of capturing delhi . His ambition knew no bounds . By now he had collected 3000 strong afghan army . he was confident a large number of Indians will join with him. Nawab of Kasur had already assured him help. Sahib singh of Patiala betrayed his countrymen and declared his intentions of helping Shah Zaman was also assured help by the Rohillas , Wazir of Oudh , and Tipu sultan of Mysore . The news of Shah Zaman invasion spread like wild fire , people started fleeing to hills for safety . Heads of Misls , though bound to give protection to the people as they were collecting Rakhi tax from them were the first to leave the people in lurch . By December Shah occupied territory upto Jhelum . when he reached Gujrat sahib Singh Bhangi panicked and left the place .Next was the territory of Ranjit Singh . He was alert and raised an army of 5000 horsemen . But they were inadequately armed with only spears and muskets . The afghans were equipped with heavy artillery . Ranjit Singh thought of a stiff united fight against the invaders . He came to Amritsar . A congregation of Sarbat Khalsa was called and many Sikh Sardars answered the call . An almost unanimous opinion prevailed that Shah Zaman ‘s army should be allowed to enter the Punjab , and they all should retire to hills .Forces were reorganized under the command of Ranjit Singh and they marched towards Lahore . They were able to give Afghans a crushing defeat in several villages and ultimately surrounded the city of Lahore . Sorties were made in night in which they would kill a few Afghan soldiers and then leave the city in the thick of darkness. Following this tactic they were able to dislodge Afghans at several places .In 1797 , Shah Zaman , suddenly left for Afghanistan as his brother Mahmud had revolted . Shahanchi Khan with considerable force was left at Lahore . The Sikhs however followed Shah upto jhelum and snatched many goods from him . The Sikhs returned and in the way were attached by the army of Shahnanchi Khan near Ram Nagar . The Sikhs routed his army . It was the first major achievement of Ranjit Singh . He became the hero of the land of five rivers and his reputation spread far and wide .Again in 1798 , Shah Zaman ,suddenly left for Afghanistan as his brother Mahmud had revolted . Shahanchi Khan with considerable force was left at Lahore . The Sikhs however Shah upto Jhelum and snatched many goods from him . The Sikhs returned and in the way were attached by the army of Shahnachi Khan near Ram Nagar . The Sikhs routed his army . It was the first major achievement of Ranjit Singh . He became the hero of the land of Five rivers and his reputation spread far and wide .The Afghans struggled hard to dislodge Sikhs but in vain .Sikh cordon was so strong that they made impossible for the Afghans to break it and proceed towards Delhi . Ranjit Singh became terror to them . The moment Zaman Shah left , Ranjit Singh pursued his forces and caught them unawares near Gujranwala . They were chased further up to Jhelum . many Afghan were put to death and their war equipment was taken into possession and they were made to run their lives . Shah Zaman was overthrown by his brother and was blinded . he became a helpless creature and 12 years later came to Punjab to seek refuge in Ranjit Singh’s darbar , who was now the ruler of land . Destiny wished it like that .Ranjit Singh combined with Sahib Singh of Gujrat ( Punjab ) and Milkha Singh of Pindiwala and a large Sikh force , fell upon the Afghan garrison while Shah Zaman was still in the vicinity of Khyber Pass . The Afghan forces fled towards north after having been routed by the Sikhs leaving behind at Gujrat their dead including the Afghan deputy .By this time the people of the country had become aware of the rising strength of Ranjit Singh , the rising star on the horizon . He was the most popular leader of the Punjab and was already yearning to enter Lahore . The people of Lahore being extremely oppressed raised their voices of wailing to the skies and were looking towards their liberator . Muslims joined Hindus and Sikhs residents of Lahore in making an appeal to Ranjit Singh to free them from the tyrannical rule .A petition was written and was signed by Mian Ashak Mohammed , Mian Mukkam Din , Mohd. Tahir , Mohd. Bakar , Hakim Rai , and Bhai Gurbaksh Singh . It was addressed to Ranjit Singh to free them from Bhangi sardars . Ranjit Singh was invited to liberate Lahore as early as possible . He mobilized a 25000 Army and marched Lahore on July 6 , 1799.It was a last day of Muharram when a big procession was to be taken out in the town in the memory of the two grandsons of Prophet Mohammad who were martyred in the battlefield without having a drop of water . It was expected that Bhangi sardars will also participate in procession and mourn with their Shia brethren . By the time procession was over Ranjit Singh reached outskirts of city .Early morning on July 7 , 1799, Ranjit Singh’s men had taken their positions. Guns glistened and the bugles were sounded . Rani Sada Kaur stood outside Delhi gate and Ranjit singh proceeded towards Anarkali . Ranjit Singh rode along the walls of the city and got the wall mined . A breach was blown . It was created panic and confusion . Mukkam Din , who was one of the signatories to the petition made a proclamation with the beat of drum that town had been taken over by him and he was now head . He ordered all the city gates to be opened . Ranjit Singh entered the city with his troops through the Lahore gate. Sada Kaur with a detachment of cavalry entered through Delhi Gate . Before Bhangi Sardars had any inkling of it , a part of the citadel was occupied without any resistance . Sahib Singh and Mohar Singh left the city and sought shelter at some safer place . Chet Singh was left either to fight ,defend the town or flee as he like . He shut himself in Hazuri bagh and Chet Singh surrendered and he was given permission to leave the city along with his family .Ranjit Singh was well entrenched in the town now . Immediately after taking possession of the city , he paid visit to Badashahi mosque . This gesture increased his prestige and his status was in the eyes of people . He won the hearts of the subjects , Hindus , Muslims and Sikhs alike . It was July 7 , 1799 when victorious Ranjit Singh entered Lahore .
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ca -302: Kautilya (Chanakya), minister to Chandragupta Maurya, writes Arthashastra, a compendium of laws, administrative procedures and political advice for running a kingdom.
-302: In Indica, Megasthenes, envoy to King Seleucus, reveals to Europe in colorful detail the wonders of Mauryan India: an opulent society with abundant agriculture, engineered irrigation and 7 castes: philosophers, farmers, soldiers, herdsmen, artisans, magistrates and counselors.
http://www1.fhw.gr/chronos/06/en/politics/left.html post Alexander
ca -300: Chinese discover cast iron, known in Europe by 1300 ce.
ca -300: Pancharatra Vaishnava sect is prominent. All later Vaishnava sects are based on the Pancharatra beliefs (formalized by Shandilya around 100 ce).
ca -300: Pandya kingdom (-300-1700 ce) of S. India is founded, constructs magnificent Minakshi temple at its capital, Madurai. Builds temples of Shrirangam and Rameshvaram, with its thousand-pillared hall (ca 1600 ce).
-297: Emperor Chandragupta abdicates to become a Jain monk.
-273: Ashoka (-273-232 reign), greatest Mauryan Emperor, grandson of Chandragupta, is coronated. Repudiating conquest through violence after his brutal invasion of Kalinga, 260 bce, he converts to Buddhism. Excels at public works and sends diplomatic peace missions to Persia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Crete, and Buddhist missions to Sri Lanka, China and other Southeast Asian countries. Under his influence, Buddhism becomes a world power. His work and teachings are preserved in Rock and Pillar Edicts (e.g., lion capital of the pillar at Sarnath, present-day India's national emblem).
-251: Emperor Ashoka sends his son Mahendra (-270-204) to spread Buddhism in Sri Lanka, where he is to this day revered as the national faith's founding missionary.
ca -250: Lifetime of Maharishi Nandinatha, first known satguru in the Kailasa Parampara of the Nandinatha Sampradaya. His eight disciples are Sanatkumar, Shanakar, Sanadanar, Sananthanar, Sivayogamuni, Patanjali, Vyaghrapada and Tirumular (Sundaranatha).
ca -221: Great Wall of China is built, ultimately 2,600 miles long, the only man-made object visible from the moon.
ca -200: Lifetime of Rishi Tirumular, shishya of Maharishi Nandinatha and author of the 3,047-verse Tirumantiram, a summation of Saiva Agamas and Vedas, and concise articulation of the Nandinatha Sampradaya teachings, founding South India's monistic Saiva Siddhanta school.
ca -200: Lifetime of Patanjali, shishya of Nandinatha and gurubhai (brother monk) of Rishi Tirumular. He writes the Yoga Sutras at Chidambaram, in South India.
ca -200: Lifetime of Bhogar Rishi, one of eighteen Tamil siddhas. This mystic shapes from nine poisons the Palaniswami murti enshrined in present-day Palani Hills temple in South India. Bhogar is either from China or visits there.
ca -200: Lifetime of Saint Tiruvalluvar, poet-weaver who lived near present-day Madras, author of Tirukural, "Holy Couplets," the classic Tamil work on ethics and statecraft (sworn on in today's South Indian law courts).
ca -200: Jaimini writes the Mimamsa Sutras.
ca -150: Ajanta Buddhist Caves are begun near present-day Hyderabad. Construction of the 29 monasteries and galleries continues until approximately 650 ce. The famous murals are painted between 600 bce and 650 ce.
-145: Chola Empire (-145-1300 ce) of Tamil Nadu is founded, rising from modest beginnings to a height of government organization and artistic accomplishment, including the development of enormous irrigation works.
-140: Emperor Wu begins three-year reign of China; worship of the Mother Goddess, Earth, attains importance.
-130: Reign ends of Menander (Milinda), Indo-Greek king who converts to Buddhism.
Reference: http://www.miami.edu/phi/bio/Buddha/Milinda.htm 020320yd
As a consequence of the conquest of the Persian empire, the Greeks gained control of Bactria, modern Afghanistan, together with northern India. The local Greek rulers managed to establish their independence from the Seleucid empire which first held control over the area. Greek rule of Bactria continued until about 165 BC when the Shakas destroyed the Bactrian kingdom. Greeks continued to rule, however, in southern Afghanistan and northwestern India for another 150 years. The most important of these kings was Menander, known as Milinda in Buddhist sources, who ruled about 115-90 BC. Buddhism had reached the area as a consequence of the missionaries which the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka had sent more than a century earlier.
Reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd65.htm 020320yd
Dharma Data: Milinda, King
Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BC and after his death the territories he had conquered in what today is Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India were ruled by his heirs. The greatest of the Greek Indian Kings was Milinda, known in Greek sources as Menander, who ruled from about 163 to 150 BC. Menander was both an effective statesman and fine soldier and he greatly extended his empire into India. he also converted to Buddhism. Greeks living in India had probably adopted Buddhism before Milinda but he is the first western Buddhist about which we have definite information. See Milindapanha
Reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd66.htm 020320yd
Dharma Data: Milindapanha
A work composed in Pali that proports to be the record of a dialogue between the Buddhist monk Nagasena and the Greek King Milinda. Milinda asks a series of questions highlighting what seem to be anomalies and contradictions in Buddhist doctrine, to each of which Nagasena gives clear, even ingenious answers. The effectiveness of these answers is enhanced by the numerous similes and analogies that are included within them. Although there is no doubt that the two protagonists of the Milindapanha really existed and that they held discussions with each other, it is not a verbatim record of the discussions as such but a work of literature. Despite this, it may well have captured something of the personalities of the two men. Nagasena comes across as dignified but accessible, confident of his abilities to convince, intellectually alert, learned and witty. Milinda on the other hand, appears to be appears to be interested in Buddhism but by no means prepared to accept its tenets without good reasons. The Milindapanha is the most important book of Theravada Buddhist doctrine outside the Pali Tipitaka and is still widely studied. A translation of it is also included in the Chinese Tipitaka.
-58: Vikrama Samvat Era Hindu calendar begins.
-50: Kushana Empire begins (-50-220 ce). This Mongolian Buddhist dynasty rules most of the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia.
ca -10: Ilangovadikal, son of King Cheralathan of the Tamil Sangam age, writes the outstanding epic Silappathikaram, classical Tamil treatise on music and dance.
Western Calendar Begins. C.E. - Common Era
-4: Jesus of Nazareth (-4-30 ce), founder of Christianity, is born in Bethlehem (current Biblical scholarship).
10: World population is 170 million. India population is 35 million: 20.5% of world.
ca 50: South Indians occupy Funan, Indochina. Kaundinya, an Indian brahmin, is first king. Shaivism is the state religion.
53: Legend records Saint Thomas' death in Madras, one of the twelve Apostles of Christ and founder of the Church of the Syrian Malabar Christians (Syrian Rite) in Goa.
ca 60: Buddhism is introduced in China by Emperor Ming Di (reign: 58-76) after he converts to the faith. Brings two monks from India who erect temple at modern Honan.
ca 75: A Gujarat prince named Ajishaka invades Java.
78: Shaka Hindu calendar begins.
ca 80: Jains divide, on points of rules for monks, into the Shvetambara, "white-clad," and the Digambara, "sky-clad."
ca 80-180: Lifetime of Charaka. Court physician of the Kushan king, he formulates a code of conduct for doctors of ayurveda and writes Charaka Samhita, a manual of medicine.
ca 100: Lifetime of Shandilya, first systematic promulgator of the ancient Pancharatra doctrines, whose Bhakti Sutras, devotional aphorisms on Vishnu, inspire a Vaishnava renaissance. The Samhita of Shandilya and his followers, the Pancharatra Agama, embody the chief doctrines of present-day Vaishnavas. By the 10th century the popular sect leaves permanent mark on many Hindu schools.
100: Zhang Qian of China establishes trade routes to India and as far west as Rome, later known as the "Silk Roads."
105: Paper is invented in China.
117: The Roman Empire reaches its greatest extent.
125: Shatakarni (ca 106-130 reign) of Andhra's Satavahana
(-70-225) dynasty destroys Shaka kingdom of Gujarat.
ca 175: Greek astronomer Ptolemy, known as Asura Maya in India, explains solar astronomy, Surya Siddhanta, to Indian students of the science of the stars.
180: Mexican city of Teotihuacan has 100,000 population and covers 11 square miles. Grows to 250,000 by 500 ce.
ca 200: Lifetime of Lakulisha, famed guru who leads a reformist movement within Pashupata Saivism.
ca 200: Hindu kingdoms established in Cambodia and Malaysia.
205-270: Lifetime of Plotinus, Egyptian-born monistic Greek philosopher and religious genius who transforms a revival of Platonism in the Roman Empire into what present-day scholars call Neoplatonism, which greatly influences Islamic and European thought. He teaches ahimsa, vegetarianism, karma, reincarnation and belief in a Supreme Being, both immanent and transcendent.
ca 250: Pallava dynasty (ca 250-885) is established in Tamil Nadu, responsible for building Kailasa Kamakshi Temple complex at their capital of Kanchi and the great 7th-century stone monuments at Mahabalipuram.
ca 275: Buddhist monastery Mahavihara is founded in Anuradhapura, capital of Sri Lanka.
337 – Helena mother of Constantine travels to Jerusalem. Inspires building of Holy Cross Church at Jerusalem after demolishing a temple dedicated to Venus there because in a dream she saw that as the place of Jesus’s crucufixion. (ref : voi-srg-jc p 18).
350: Imperial Gupta dynasty (320-540) flourishes. During this "Classical Age" norms of literature, art, architecture and philosophy are established. This North Indian empire promotes Vaishnavism and Saivism and, at its height, rules or receives tribute from nearly all India. Buddhism also thrives under tolerant Gupta rule.
ca 350: Lifetime of Kalidasa, the great Sanskrit poet and dramatist, author of Shakuntala and Meghaduta. (The traditional date, offered by Prof. Subash Kak, is 50 bce.)
ca 350: Licchavi dynasty (ca 350-900) establishes Hindu rule in Nepal. Small kingdom becomes the major intellectual and commercial center between South and Central Asia.
358: Huns, excellent archers and horsemen possibly of Turkish origin, invade Europe from the East.
375: Maharaja Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, greatest Hindu monarch, reigns to 413, expanding the prosperous Gupta empire northward beyond the Indus River.
391: Roman Emperor Theodosius destroys Greek Hellenistic temples in favor of Christianity.
392: Christianity was made the state religion, and pagan temples were closed in Egypt. Ref: http://www.ewtn.com/new_evangelization/africa/history/countries1.htm#Egypt
ca 400: Laws of Manu (Manu Dharma Shastras) written. Its 2,685 verses codify cosmogony, four ashramas, government, domestic affairs, caste and morality (others date at -600).
ca 400: Polynesians sailing in open outrigger canoes reach as far as Hawaii and Easter Island.
ca 400: Shaturanga, Indian forerunner of chess, has evolved from Ashtapada, a board-based race game, into a four-handed war game played with a die. Later, in deference to the Laws of Manu, which forbid gambling, players discard the die and create Shatranj, a two-sided strategy game.
ca 400: Vatsyayana writes Kamasutra, famous text on erotics.
416: St Cyril is bishop in Alexandria, Egypt (now Coptic Church) when Christians kill non-Christian (pagan) mathematician Hypatia.
Reference: http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/Mangasarian.html
The Martyrdom of Hypatia (or The Death of the Classical World)
by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
A speech given before the Independent Religious Society at the Majestic Theater in Chicago
Our subject this morning takes us to the city of Alexandria, one of the greatest intellectual centers in the days when Athens and Rome still ruled the world. The capital of Egypt received its name from the man who conceived and executed its design -- Alexander the Great. Under the Ptolemies, a line of Greek kings, Alexandria soon sprang into eminence, and, accumulating culture and wealth, became the most powerful metropolis of the Orient. Serving as the port of Europe, it attracted the lucrative trade of India and Arabia. Its markets were enriched with the gorgeous silks and fabrics from the bazaars of the Orient. Wealth brought leisure, and it, in turn, the arts. It became, in time, the home of a wonderful library and schools of philosophy, representing all the phases and the most delicate shades of thought. At one time it was the general belief that the mantle of Athens had fallen upon the shoulders of Alexandria.
But there was a stubborn and superstitious Oriental constituency in the city which would not blend with the foreign element -- namely, the Greeks and the Romans. This antagonism between the Egyptian born and the children of Hellas and Rome, who were Alexandrians only by adoption, was frequently the occasion of street riots, feuds, massacres, and civil wars.
In or about the year 400 A.D., Alexandria, which is today a third-rate Mohammedan town, enjoyed a population of 600,000 inhabitants. The city proper comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles. It enjoyed the distinction of being quite free from the curse of poverty. No beggars could be seen loitering in its streets. No one was idle, and work brought good wages. Such was the demand for labor that even the lame and the blind found suitable occupation. The Alexandrians understood the manufacture of papyrus, a kind of vegetable paper used extensively by the authors, and they knew how to blow glass and weave linen.
After its magnificent library, whose shelves supported a freight more precious than beaten gold, perhaps the most stupendous edifice in the town was the temple of Serapis. It is said that the builders of the famous temple of Eddessa boasted that they had succeeded in creating something which future generations would compare with the temple of Serapis in Alexandria. This ought to suggest an idea of the vastness and beauty of the Alexandrian Serapis, and the high esteem in which it was held. Historians and connoisseurs claim it was one of the grandest monuments of Pagan civilization, second only to the temple of Jupiter in Rome, and the inimitable Parthenon in Athens, which latter is certainly the best gem earth ever wore upon her zone.
The Serapis temple was built upon an artificial hill, the ascent to which was by a hundred steps. It was not one building, but a vast body of buildings, all grouped about a central one of vaster dimensions, rising on pillars of huge magnitude and graceful proportions. Some critics have advanced the idea that the builders of this masterpiece intended to make it a composite structure, combining the diverse elements of Egyptian and Greek art into a harmonious whole. The Serapion was regarded by the ancients as marking the reconciliation between the architects of the pyramids and the creators of the Athenian Acropolis. It represented to their minds the blending of the massive in Egyptian art with the grace and the loveliness of the Hellenic.
But the greatest attraction of this temple was the god Serapis himself, within the vaulted building. It is difficult for us to form an idea of his enormous proportions. He filled the house with his presence. He stretched his arms and took hold of the two walls, the one on his right and the other on his left. The artist had conceived, also, the idea of making the body of the god as all-embracing as his arms. He fused together all the then known metals -- gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead -- to create a substance fit to represent a god. He inlaid this multifarious composition with the rarest gems -- the most costly stones which the markets of the world offered. He polished them all until the colossal statue shone like a huge sapphire. Its exquisite tints and shades are said to have provoked the jealousy of the azure skies. For a crown, the god wore on his head a bushel, symbol of plentiful harvests. At his side, in silence, stood a three-headed animal with the forepart of a lion, a wolf, and a dog. The lion was meant to represent the present; the rapacious wolf symbolized the past -- the devoured past; while the dog, the faithful, friendly animal, stood for the future. Wound around the body of the god was a mammoth serpent, which, after its many turns and twists, returned to rest his head on the hand of the god. The sinuous serpent was meant to personate Time, whose mysterious birthplace, or birthday, has yet to be discovered.
Serapis, whose statue adorned the temple, was once the most popular god in the Orient. He was believed to be the source of the Nile, whose breasts he swelled until they poured their wealth upon the surrounding soil. As long as his eye remained open, the sun would shine, and the land would produce, and women would give birth. But if he should close his eye, life would became as a sere and sapless leaf. But Serapis was a stranger in Egypt. He was not an African by birth, but was imported from Sinope, on the Euxine. When he first made his appearance in the land of the Nile, the people -- the Alexandrians, especially -- rose up en masse and protested vehemently against the introduction of a foreign deity. Did they not have Osiris, the great god of their ancestors, and Isis, his consort -- the divine woman with her infant, Horus, sitting upon her knees? Why, then should a strange god be admitted to the throne or to the bed of Osiris and Isis? Did they not have their holy trinity, Osiris, Isis, and Horus -- father, mother, and child -- the best trinity ever conceived? But Ptolemy was king, and his will prevailed. He told them that Osiris had, in a dream, commanded him to accept Serapis as a new and well-beloved god, and he did not wish to do anything contrary to his dream.
In all this do we not see a similarity to the story about Jesus, and how his friends compelled solitary Jehovah to accept him as his son, and share with him the honors of divinity? We know how the people objected at first to Jesus, precisely as the Alexandrians did to Serapis, and how, finally, through dreams and miracles, Jesus, the new God, grew to be even more popular than the old one.
When Christianity gained the upper hand in Alexandria, it set its mind from the start upon destroying two of the principal monuments of its powerful rival, Paganism -- the library and the temple of Serapis. Let me at this juncture remind you that Alexandria, at a very early period, became one of the foremost strongholds of the Christian religion. Of the five capitols of the new faith -- Jerusalem, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria, Rome -- Alexandria at one time led Constantinople, and was not second even to Rome. What was said about Christianity being essentially an Asiatic philosophy is confirmed, it seems to me, by this additional fact; that out of five of its greatest centres four were in the Orient. It felt more at home in Asia and Africa than in Europe. A still stronger confirmation of the affinity between Asia and Christianity is the fact that as soon as the Roman Empire became Christian it shifted its capital from Europe to Asia, from Rome to Constantinople. The first Christian emperor, Constantine, impelled, as it were, by the logic of his new religion, left Rome to take up his residence on the Bosphorus, which washed the shores of the continent that had cradled Christianity. For a ruler who coveted absolute power, who feared democracy, who hated liberty and who preferred stagnation of thought to the movement of ideas, who desired slaves for subjects, Asia was the more suitable place. Without wishing to offend anyone, I must say that Christianity was more Asiatic than Paganism, and the Orient was better fitted to be the home of political and religious absolutism than the occident. Christianity, as the religion of meekness and obedience, had irresistible attractions for Constantine. He not only embraced it, but he went to dwell as close to where its cradle had swung as he could.
It is not the fault of Christianity that the Asiatic is servile, but the fault of the Asiatic that Christianity is so supple and submissive. It is not so much religion that makes the character of a people, as it is the people who determine the character of their religion. Religion is only the resume of the national ideas, thoughts, and character. Religion is nothing but an expression. It is not, for instance, the word or the language which creates the idea, but the idea which provokes the word into existence. In the same way religion is only the expression of a people's mentality. And yet a man's religion or philosophy, while it is but the product of his own mind, exerts a reflex influence upon his character. The child influences the parent, of whom it is the offspring; language affects thought, of which, originally, it was but the tool. So it is with religion. The Christian religion, as soon as it got into power, turned the world about. It struck at the Roman Empire, and grabbing everything it could lay its hands on -- the sceptre, the sword, the imperial diadem, the throne -- it walked away with them to Asia. We could never ask for a more eloquent defense of the position that Christianity is Asiatic than is found in this historic transfer of the seat of power from Europe to Asia, from Rome to Constantinople.
Now, naturally enough, a religion which combats the culture and traditions of European life in Europe, will not tolerate them in Asia. Do we understand this point? If it seeks to down European thought in Europe, how much more will it seek to expel it from Asia? If it persecutes Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Seneca in Europe, it cannot, of course, tolerate them in Asia. Christianity tried to destroy all the monuments of Paganism in Rome, in free and proud Rome; could it, then, leave them standing in Alexandria, in Constantinople, or in Antioch? On the contrary, in Asia, which is her proper home, the seat of her power, and with the Emperor transferred to Constantinople, Christianity became more aggressive against Paganism and civilization than even in Europe. Religion, like everything else, is consistent as long as it is young and virile, and Christianity in the early centuries was both young and virile, and therefore logical. Changing slightly the great words of Shakespeare, we might say:
There is a logic which shapes our ends
Rough hew them as we may.
We wonder sometimes that a Japanese gentleman or an Arab, or a Siamese, who has never mingled with Europeans or Americans, should think as we do, or exhibit the polite manners of occidental races. There are those who refuse to believe that a Pagan, living three thousand years ago, could possess the very virtues which we prize today. The sectarian who believes that only people of the size and calibre of his creed can be good, is at a loss to explain the universality of culture and virtue. This is explained by his inability to perceive that there is a logic in the development of the human being which brings about the same results the world over -- before Christ, and after. Let us appreciate this truth. How can a Moslem or a Jew or a Pagan be as good as a Christian? By a law of nature and evolution the ripened human fruit is the same the world over. If only Mohammedanism or Christianity or Judaism possessed the power to make men good, then there would be no morality outside these religions. But history contradicts so sweeping a conclusion. There is a logic, we repeat, in the culture of the mind which makes a Trajan, who was a Pagan, as sweet and sane as a Washington, who was born in a Christian era, or the Chinese Confucius, as noble and independent as the French Voltaire. I say there is a universality in the evolution of man, before which all sectarian pretenses and conceits are like chaff for the wind to sport with. And we cannot be really large-minded, nor can we read history and philosophy aright, until we appreciate the power of the logic which shapes our ends "rough hew them as we may."
The transference of the capital of the world and the seat of authority from Europe to Asia was not an accident. It was a logical step. Christianity, to be consistent, had to break up housekeeping in Europe and move its menage from Rome to Constantinople. She was homesick for the climate, the atmosphere, the peoples, the traditions, the spirit, the institutions -- the milieu in which she was born. Unable to assimilate western ideas, she pined for Asia. By the same logic, she wished to wipe out in Asia every trace of European thought and culture. When, therefore, we read of the destruction of Pagan schools, libraries, and monuments, let us not look upon such acts as accidents in the history of Christianity, but as the logical unfolding of its genius. Why, you may ask, does it no longer pursue the policy of extermination? For the best of reasons; it is no longer virile enough to be logical. It has stumbled into the ways of inconsistency by reason of old age. Fifteen hundred years ago, in Alexandria, when our religion was both young and lusty, it attempted to, and succeeded in, destroying everything that reminded the world of the glory and liberty of ancient Rome and Greece.
Theodosius was at the time, of which we will now speak, the Christian ruler of the Empire. In reply to a request by the Archbishop of Alexandria, he sent a sentence of destruction against the ancient religion of Egypt. Both the Pagans and the Christians had assembled in the public square to hear the reading of the Emperor's letter, and when the Christians learned that they may destroy the gods of the Pagans, a wild shout of joy rent the air. The disappointed Pagans, on the other hand, realizing the danger of their position, silently slipped into their homes through dark alleys and hidden passage-ways. Yet they did not stand aside and see the temples of their gods razed to the ground without first offering a desperate resistance. Under the leadership of a zealot, Olympus, the Pagans fell upon the Christians, maddened with the cry in their ears of their leader, "Let us die with our gods!" Then came the turn of the Christians. Theophilius, the Archbishop of Alexandria, with a cross in his hand, and followed by his monks, marched upon the temple of Serapis, and proceeded to pull its pillars down. When they came to strike at the colossal statue of the god, for centuries worshiped as a deity, even the Christians turned pale with superstitious awe, and held their breath. A soldier armed with a heavy axe, was hesitating to strike the first blow. Will the god tolerate the insult? Will he not crash the roof upon the heads of the sacrilegious vandals? But the soldier struck the thundering blow right in the cheeks of Serapis, who offered no remonstrance whatever. The sun shone as usual, and the laws of nature maintained their even pace. Encouraged by this indifference of the god to defend himself, the Christian rabble rushed upon the statue, and pulling Serapis off his seat, dragged him in pieces through the streets of Alexandria that the Pagans might behold the disgrace into which their great god had fallen. Thousands of Pagans, seeing how helpless their gods were to avenge this insult, deserted Paganism and joined the Christians. As soon as the ground of the temple was sufficiently cleared, a church was erected on the ancient site. The Alexandrian library was the next point of attack. Its shelves were soon cleared, and you and I, and twenty centuries, were most lamentably deprived of the intellectual treasures which our Greek and Roman forefathers had bequeathed unto us.
When the archbishop under whose influence the monuments and libraries of Pagan civilization were pillaged and pulled down died, he was succeeded by his nephew, St. Cyril, who was even more Asiatic in his sympathies and more hostile to European thought than his uncle, Theophilius. The new archbishop directed his efforts against the living monuments of Paganism -- the scholars, the poets, the philosophers -- the men and women who still cherished a passionate regard for the culture and civilization of the Pagan world. The most illustrious representative of Greco-Roman culture in Alexandria about this time was Hypatia, the gifted daughter of Theon, a mathematician and a philosopher of considerable renown. It is said that Theon would have come down to us as a great man had not his daughter's fame eclipsed his.
Hypatia was a remarkably gifted woman. Her example demonstrates how all difficulties yield to a strong will. Being a girl, and excluded by the conventions of the time from intellectual pursuits, she could have given many reasons why she should leave philosophy to stronger and freer minds. But she had an all-compelling passion for the life of the mind, which overcame every obstacle that interfered with her purpose. The example of a young woman conquering tremendous difficulties, and becoming the undisputed queen of an intellectual empire, ought to be a great inspiration to us faint hearts. She won the prize which was denied her sex, and became "the glory of her age and the wonder of ours."
To pursue her studies, she persuaded her father to send her to Athens, where her earnest work, her devotion to philosophy, the readiness with which she sacrificed all her other interests to the cultivation of her mind, earned for herself the laurel wreath which the university of Athens conferred only upon the foremost of its pupils. Hypatia wore this wreath whenever she appeared in public, as her best ornament. Upon her return to Alexandria, she was elected president of the Academy, which at this period was the rendezvous of the leading minds of the East and West. In fact, it was in this academy that the effort of the advanced thinkers to bring about a pacification between the culture of Europe and that of Asia originated. They wished to make Alexandria, situated midway between the occident and the orient, the point of confluence of the two streams of civilization. They wished to celebrate the marriage of the East as bride to the West as bridegroom. It was their plan to make Alexandria a sort of intellectual distillery, refining and fusing the two civilizations into one. But this amalgamation -- this assimilation -- Christianity, alas, helped to prevent by bringing into still bolder relief the Asiatic habits of mind, and by refusing to concede an inch to the larger spirit of the West. Christianity is responsible for the miscarriage which has ever since left Asia a widow, or, to change the simile, a withered branch upon the tree of civilization. Christianity broke the link which scholarship and humanity were trying to forge between Europe and Asia. The world has never since been one as it came near being under the Roman Empire.
Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, persuaded himself that Hypatia's good name and talents were giving the cause of Paganism a dangerous prestige, and thereby preventing the progress of the new faith. Hypatia was indeed a great power in Alexandria. She was the most popular personage in the city. When she appeared in her chariot on the streets people threw flowers at her, applauded her gifts, and cried, "Long live the daughter of Theon." Poets called her the "Virgin of Heaven," "the spotless star," "of highest speech the flower." Judging by the chronicles of the times, it appears that her beauty, which would have made even a Cleopatra jealous, was as great as her modesty, and both were matched by her eloquence, and all three surpassed by her learning.
Her beauty did astonish the survey of eyes,
Her words all ears took captive.
Her renown as a lecturer on philosophy brought students from Rome and Athens, and all the great cities of the empire, to Alexandria. It was one of the great events of each day to flock to the hall in the academy where Hypatia explained Plato and Aristotle. Cyril, the Asiatic archbishop, passing frequently the house of Hypatia, and seeing the long train of horses, litters, and chariots which had brought a host of admirers to the female philosopher's shrine, conceived a terrible hatred for this Pagan girl. He did not relish her popularity. Her learning was rubbish to him. Her charms, temptations for the ruin of man. He hated her because she, a frail woman, dared to be free and to think for herself. He argued in his mind that she was competing with Christianity, taking away from Christ the homage which belonged to him. With Hypatia out of the way the people would turn to God, and give him the love and honor which they were wasting upon her. She was robbing God of his rights, and she must fall; for He is a jealous God. Such was the reasoning of Cyril, whom the Church has canonized.
Moreover, Orestes, the Prefect of Alexandria, respected Hypatia, and was a constant attendant at her lectures. Cyril believed that she influenced the Prefect and tainted him with her Paganism. With Hypatia crushed, Orestes would be more responsive to Christian influences. Ah, it is a cruel story which I am about to unfold. Generally speaking, if a man is jealous and small, no religion can make him sweet; and if he is generous and pure-minded, no superstition can altogether poison the springs of his love. Religion is strong, but nature is stronger. Unfortunately Cyril was a barbarian, and the doctrines of his religion only sharpened his claws and whipped his passion into a rage.
If we were living in those days we would have witnessed at the close of each day, when both sea and sky blush with the departing kiss of the sun, Hypatia mounting her chariot to ride to the academy, where she is announced to speak on some philosophical subject. She is followed by many enthusiastic and devoted admirers impatient to catch her eye. She is nodding to her friends on her right and on her left. She, who refused lovers that she may love philosophy, is not insensible to the appreciation of her pupils. Approaching the academy, she dismounts, ascends the white marble steps and enters by the door, on either side of which sit two silent sphinxes. As we follow her into the hall, we see that it is lighted by numerous swinging lamps filled with perfumed oil; the rotunda of the ceiling has been embellished by a Greek artist, with figures of Jupiter and his divine companions, who appear to be rapt in the words which fall from his lips. The walls have been decorated by Egyptian artists, with pictures of the sacred animals, the crocodile, the cat, the cow, and the dog; and with sacred vegetables, the onion, the lotus, and the laurel. Besides these there is a scene on the walls representing the marriage of Osiris and Isis. On an elevated platform is a divan in purple velvet, and upon a little table is placed the silver statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom and patron of Hypatia. Behind the table sits the philosophic young woman dressed in a robe of white, fastened about her throat and waist by a band of pearls, and carrying upon her brow the laurel crown which Athens had decreed to her. A musical murmur sweeps over the audience as she rises to her feet. But in a moment all is silent again save the throbbing and trembling of Hypatia's silvery voice. She speaks in Greek, the language of thought and beauty, of the ancient world. Alas! this is her last appearance at the academy. Tomorrow that hall will be a tomb. Tomorrow Minerva will be childless. When Hypatia's listeners bade her farewell on that evening they did not know that within a few hours they would all become orphans.
The next morning, when Hypatia appeared in her chariot in front of her residence, suddenly five hundred men, all dressed in black and cowled, five hundred half-starved monks from the sands of the Egyptian desert -- five hundred monks, soldiers of the cross -- like a black hurricane, swooped down the street, boarded her chariot, and, pulling her off her seat, dragged her by the hair of her head into a -- how shall I say the word? -- into a church! Some historians intimate that the monks asked her to kiss the cross, to become a Christian and join the nunnery, if she wished her life spared. At any rate, these monks, under the leadership of St. Cyril's right-hand man, Peter the Reader, shamefully stripped her naked, and there, close to the alter and the cross, scraped her quivering flesh from her bones with oystershells. The marble floor of the church was sprinkled with her warm blood. The alter, the cross, too, were bespattered, owing to the violence with which her limbs were torn, while the hands of the monks presented a sight too revolting to describe. The mutilated body, upon which the murderers feasted their fanatic hate, was then flung into the flames.
Oh! is there a blacker deed in human annals? When has another man or woman been so inhumanly murdered? Has politics, has commerce, has cannibalism even committed a more cruel crime? The cannibal pleads hunger to cover his cruelty -- what excuse had Hypatia's murderers? Even Joan of Arc was more fortunate in her death than this daughter of Paganism! Beautiful woman! murdered by men who were not worthy to touch the hem of thy garment! And to think that this happened in a church -- a Christian church!
I have seen the frost bite the flower; I have watched the spider trap the fly; I have seen the serpent spring upon the bird! And yet I love nature! But I will never enter a church nor profess a religion which can commit such a deed against so lovable a woman. No, not even if I were offered as a bribe eternal life! If, O priests and preachers! instead of one hell, there were a thousand, and each hell more infernal than your creeds describe, yet I would sooner they would all swallow me up, and feast their insatiable lust upon my poor bones for ever and ever, than lend countenance or support to an institution upon which history has fastened the indelible stigma of Hypatia's murder!
I wish I could live a thousand years to admire the noble spirit and delight in the courage and beauty of this brave martyr of Philosophy, Hypatia! O that my voice were strong enough to reach the ends of the world! I would then summon all independent minds to join with me in a hymn of praise to that incomparable woman, who has joined the choir invisible and
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
Honor and love to beautiful Hypatia! Pity to the monks who killed her! A delicious feeling of satisfaction, like a warm sunshine on a wintry day, spreads over me as I contemplate the privilege I am enjoying of vindicating her memory against her assassins. Fortune has smiled upon me in selecting me as one of her defenders. I congratulate myself on having both the heart and the head to weep over her sad fate. And I tremble and shrink, as from a paralyzing nightmare, when I think that, under different circumstances, I might still have a minister of the Church whose hands are, after fifteen hundred years, still unwashed of her innocent blood. The thought overpowers me; I labor for breath. But I am free. O joy, O rapture! I am free to speak the truth about Hypatia. Let the clergy praise Peter and Paul, St. Cyril and St. Theophilius. I give my heart to thee, thou glorious victim of superstition!
If we, of this present generation, are responsible for Adam's sin, and deserve the penalties of his disobedience, as the clergy say we do, then the Church of today is responsible for Hypatia's fate. How will they take this practical application of their own dogma? It will not do for them to say: "We wash our hands clean of St. Cyril's sin"; for if Adam can, by his remote act, expose us all to damnation, so shall Bishop Cyril's dark deed cleave for ever unto the religion which his followers profess. Yet, let the Church people apologize, and we shall forgive them; but no apology short of discarding this Asiatic slave-creed, which in the Old Testament stoned the free thinker to death, and in the New pronounces him a "heathen and a publican," will satisfy the ends of justice.
I have intimated, by the wording of my subject, that it was a classic world which was murdered in the person of one of its last and noblest representatives, Hypatia. Hypatia embodied in her life and teaching, the proud spirit, the beauty, the culture, and the sanity of Greece. With her, fell Greece; fell the intellectual world from her eminence.
Then followed the nearly ten centuries of Egyptian darkness, which settling over Europe, paralyzed all initiative. During the thousand years in which the spirit of St. Cyril and his Church managed, with undisputed sway, the affairs of religion and the State, night folded to its sterile bosom our orphaned humanity, and the chains of slavery were upon every mind. A cloud of dust rising heaven-high choked the flow and dried up the fountains which had, in the days of Pericles and Antoninus, poured forth a world of living waters. The barren and lumbering theology of the Church crowded out the Muses from their earthly walks, and the world became a prison after having been the home of man. One by one the great lights went out; Athens was no more, Rome was dead. The bloom had vanished from the face of the earth, and in its place there fell upon it the awful shadow of a future hell.
Symonds, in his "The Greek Poets," says that while Cyril's mobs were dismembering Hypatia, the Greek authors went on creating, "Musaeus sang the lamentable death of Leander, and Nonnus was perfecting a new and more polished form of the hexameter." These authors, ignorant that the Asiatic superstition had destroyed their world, or that they had themselves been stabbed to death -- like one who has been shot, but whose wound is still warm, and who does not know that he has but a few more breaths to draw -- kept on singing their song. But their song was, indeed, the "very swan's notes" of the classical world. "With the story of Hero and Leander, that immortal love poem, the Muse," says the same author, "took her final farewell of her beloved Hellas."
After a thousand years of night, when the world awoke from her sleep, the first song it sang was the last long of the dying Pagan world. This is wonderfully strange. In the year 1493, when the Renaissance ushered in a new era, the first book brought out in Europe was the last book written in Alexandria by a Pagan. It was the poem of Hero and Leander. The new world resumed the golden thread where the old world had lost it. The severed streams of thought and beauty met again into one current, and began to sing and shine as it rushed forth once more, as in the days of old. A Greek poem was the last product of the Pagan world; the same Greek poem was the first product of the new and renascent world.
Between the dying and reviving Pagan world was the Christian Church -- that is to say, ten dark centuries.
If Greece and Rome made art, poetry, philosophy, sculpture, the drama, oratory, beauty, (and) liberty classical, (then) Christianity the Syrian, Asiatic cult made for nearly fifteen hundred years persecution, religious wars, massacres, theological feuds and bloodshed, heresy huntings and heretic burnings, prisons, dungeons, anathemas, curses, opposition to science, hatred of liberty, spiritual bondage, the life without love or laughter, a classic!
But the dawn is in the sky, and it is daybreak everywhere!
We are reasonably confident that never again will this religion, born and bred in Asia, command sufficient influence over the minds of modern men to burn or murder the intellectual aristocrats, the daily beauty of whose lives makes the ugliness of superstition so very noticeable. What a difference there would have been in our attitude toward the Christian Church, if, instead of fearing the thinker and the inquirer, and persecuting him with a hatred too awful to contemplate, it had opened both its arms to welcome him with affection and gratitude! But the "divine" is always jealous of the human. Hypatia eclipsed the glory of God. She was murdered because only "the poor in spirit" -- the intellectual babes, are the elect of Heaven.
It is good news, however, that while the Church may still exclude the mental giants from the world to come, it can no longer exclude them from the world that now is!
Bibliographic information:
· Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, Mangasarian's lectures Chicago : s.n., 1912-1919 (v. ; 22 cm) Series: Rationalist (Independent Religious Society of Chicago), v. 1-4
· Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, "The martyrdom of Hypatia, or, The death of the classical world.", The Rationalist, May 1915
Text entry by someone who wishes to remain anonymous, from The Rationalist. HTML conversion by Howard A. Landman.
Howard A. Landman / howard@polyamory.org
Created 1996 April 10
Last updated 1999 April 29
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/
o The Life of Hypatia from The Suda. This is the first ever English translation of this important source.
o The Life of Hypatia by Socrates Scholasticus. This biography tells the story of her murder.
o The Life of Hypatia by John, Bishop of Nikiu. This Christian writer spoke with approval of the murder of Hypatia because "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music."
o http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/primary-sources.html
1) Treasures of the Alexandrian Library - By John P. Mater
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/rel-jvm.htm
2) Revival of the Alexandrian Library - By Paul Johnson
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-pjoh.htm
3) Alexandrias's Beacon against the Dark - By I. M. Oderberg
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-imo3.htm
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/rel-jvm.htm
Treasures of the Alexandrian Library
By John P. Mater
The concert of reincarnation enhances our understanding of history. Like pictures viewed through a stereoscope we suddenly see them in spectacular new depths. In a similar fashion reincarnation helps us comprehend the nature of civilizations, the stages of their development, and the causes of their decline.
For any age is the souls that are incarnated in it and the karma they are working out. The golden age of Greece in the time of Pericles was magnificent because of the great men and women then living. Without these creative individuals there would not have been an Age of Pericles. Similarly, when a nation, empire, or city becomes wealthy and powerful and its citizens no longer have to strive for their liberties or even for their livelihood, other souls begin to incarnate, softer, more effete. In time the civilization loses its virility and sinks into obscurity, or it may be overrun by a race or nation often less civilized than itself, whose cycle or karma is on its rise to power -- generally at the expense of its contemporaries. In such times the wide avenues and halls of learning and art ring with the hoarse cries of the destroyers, and the accumulated wisdom of centuries is burned. Yet, in the throes of its decline the Alexandrian flowering achieved a new birth, like Phoenix rising from the ashes.
The collection of manuscripts at Alexandria was probably the largest in the western world until the invention of printing, though there may have been even larger libraries in India and China during the many flowerings that marked their long and glorious civilizations. As for the New World, Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatan, speaks of the Mayan manuscripts he burned as creations of the devil, thus rendering voiceless the true genius of this great people at the height of their accomplishments.
The story of Alexandria should properly begin with Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great. In a series of campaigns Philip unified for the first time in history the various Greek city-states, which for centuries had warred continuously with one another. After creating the Hellenic League he turned his eyes towards Persia, the Greeks' traditional enemy. Xerxes had burned Athens in 480 B.C. and stolen its library. But Philip was unable to fulfill his desire to conquer Persia, for he was assassinated by one of his own courtiers. When Alexander at 20 years of age succeeded to the throne in 336 B.C., he defeated the Persians, first at the Dardenelles not far from legendary Troy, and later at Issus in Asia Minor. He then liberated the Greek kingdoms along the coast of the Mediterranean and, continuing southward, subjugated Egypt. Working his way eastward, he again defeated the Persians at Arbella. Then he took Babylon, Susa, and finally Persepolis, capital of the Persian empire, burning the marvelous palaces surrounding the city. Such was the revenge of the Greeks.
Continuing eastward toward India, Alexander made war against Chandragupta, founder of the Maurya dynasty, whose empire was even larger than his own. After occupying a portion of India bordering the Indus River, he turned back, reaching Babylon in 323 B.C. Soon after, in the midst of plans to conquer Arabia, he died of the fever.
Upon the death of Alexander three dynasties emerged, descending from three of his generals. The Antigonids, who ruled over Macedonia and Greece, was the most short-lived and soon became attached to the expanding Roman empire. Seleucus, the youngest and strongest of the generals, became ruler of the largest part of Alexander's empire, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to India. Seleucus built many cities, among them what was perhaps the most beautiful in the ancient world -- Antioch. Founded in 300 B.C., it endured for over a thousand years. The Seleucid dynasty can be dated from 312 to 65 B.C., when it was annexed by Pompey, the Roman general. Five months after Alexander's death, his childhood friend, General Ptolemy took over the province of Egypt.
The Nile River as it flows through the enormous Delta seeks several channels leading to the Mediterranean Sea. Alexandria is located on the westernmost of these. Alexander had personally chosen the site for the city which bears his name, traced the boundaries and pointed out where temples and public works should be located; but he did not live to see a single structure rise, for when he resumed his conquests he never returned. He had charged Dinocrates with building a magnificent city and improving the harbor. From the outset Alexandria was a city of stone and marble. Underneath were cisterns connecting with the Nile, which provided water for domestic use. Eventually there were enormous docks and warehouses along the harbor; boulevards 100 feet wide intersected one another, with side streets wide enough for chariots. A good deal of work must have been accomplished even during the short interval before Alexander's death.
Ptolemy I was an able general, diplomat, and ruler, yet his other claims to fame are even more significant. Between 300 and 290 B.C. he founded the Museum and the great Library. In this he was advised by the erudite and gifted Demetrios of Phaleron, who had come to Ptolemy seeking asylum, was made welcome and later put in charge of the Library. He was devoted to Athens and his influence no doubt strengthened in Ptolemy a desire to make of Alexandria a second Athens (The early rulers of Egypt were called Pharaoh -- ruler or king. The name Ptolemy supplanted the title pharaoh, as a succession of Ptolemies became kings of Egypt. There were in all 14 Ptolemies, the last being the son of Caesar and Cleopatra, Caesarion, murdered at age 17 by order of Augustus in 30 B.C. Thereafter Egypt became a Roman province.).
Ptolemy brought the body of Alexander to Egypt and housed it in a magnificent tomb which appears to have been on display throughout the kingships of the Ptolemies. But when the forces of destruction ran rampant through the streets, it was somehow dismantled, removed, hidden, or perhaps destroyed so that its whereabouts are still a mystery. Possibly the renovation of Alexandria* will help fill in some of the gaps in history. (*Cf. Paul Johnson, "Revival of the Alexandrian Library," SUNRISE, April/May 1989).
Ptolemy II called Philadelphus, who reigned from 283 to 246 B.C., is considered the most gifted of the Ptolemies. Off the shores of Alexandria was an island called Pharos, mentioned centuries before by Homer in his Odyssey (IV: 355). A spit of land had been laid down linking Pharos with Alexandria and creating an outer and an inner harbor. Philadelphus decided to build a lighthouse on Pharos, and about 270 B.C. a splendid one was constructed 140 meters (460 ft) in height. This mighty structure remained until the 13th century A.D., a span of some 1,600 years, when it was destroyed by an earthquake (The word pharos eventually acquired the meaning "lighthouse," French phare, Italian and Spanish fero; sometimes pharos is used in English to designate a ship's lantern).
Another achievement of Philadelphus was the sending of an embassy to Jerusalem, to the high priest Eleazar, asking if he would lend to Alexandria the manuscript of the Old Testament, and to send six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. In due course, according to the story, the 72 scholars arrived and were given quarters on Pharos. In 72 days they produced a Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was called Septuagint -- 70 in round numbers -- in memory of the 72 scholars and the 72-day task they had accomplished.
An interesting custom adopted by the early Ptolemies was to search ships that entered the harbor. If manuscripts were found that were not in the library collection, the vessel would be held in port until a copy could be made -- a form of highway robbery!
As time went by, Alexandria divided into ethnic sections. The native Egyptian quarter housed the Serapeum, one of the most majestic buildings of the ancient world. There Greek and Egyptian devotees met in common worship. A second part of the city was called the Brucheion, the Greek-Macedonian quarter, which included the offices of government and the mausoleum of Alexander. Above all, it contained the great Museum and Library. There were other adjuncts to this huge complex, such as the theater for lectures and performances, and the palaces of the Ptolemaic kings. The third section of Alexandria consisted of the large Jewish quarter, which had its Sanhedrin (council).
The city was pictured by a classic writer in the 3rd century as "a universal nurse; every race of men did settle there"; Greeks from every part of the Mediterranean, Syrians, Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians. There also were Carthaginians, Romans, Gauls, and Iberians. The intellectual life was similarly diversified: scholars, priests, and philosophers of every conceivable affiliation. Merchants, tradesmen from throughout the known world came and went. There were also workmen, laborers, and a horde of governmental and private slaves. By the beginning of the 1st century A.D. the population of Alexandria is estimated at one million.
The late George Sarton, professor of history at Harvard University, described the Museum as occupying several large buildings equipped for various scientific purposes, much like a research institute today, with an astronomical observatory, and rooms for physiological and medical experiments. There were also botanical gardens and a zoological collection. The members lived together like the tutors or Fellows of a medieval college.
Some of the greatest figures in Greek science at one time or another visited or worked in the Museum and Library. Eratosthenes was chief librarian from 228-196 B.C. under Ptolemy III. He was an omnivorous scholar and scientist, delving into mathematics, astronomy, geography, philosophy, and also literature. Among other accomplishments, he calculated the circumference of the earth. Contrary to popular opinion, he and many of his colleagues recognized that the earth and the other planets traveled around the sun. In the same century the great geometrician Euclid brought his genius to the Museum as did Aristarchus of Samos who wrote upon the sizes and distances of the sun and moon, while Aratos of Soloi (Soli) named the constellations. The famous Archimedes, although a resident of Syracuse, discussed physics, geometry, and mathematics with the savants of the Museum. Apollonius of Perga was sent to Alexandria; and there he wrote his Elements and his 8-volume work on conic sections; also his theory of epicycles to account for the motions of the planets which appear at times to move retrograde. Specialists in all these fields and many more frequented the Museum in the course of its long and brilliant history.
The chief activity of the Library, aside from preserving, copying, repairing, and cataloguing the scrolls, was to compare the texts of the great works on drama, history, fiction, poetry, etc., from most ancient times; also more recent works by contemporary poets, dramatists, and philosophers of Greece and elsewhere. These were in many languages, but an effort was made to render them into Alexandrian Greek. Meticulous scholarship characterized the Alexandrian Library. There were also lectures on a wide variety of topics, for the librarians were not merely cataloguers and custodians, but full-fledged philologists, and the manuscripts that have survived show their erudition. Aristophanes of Byzantium, one of the most distinguished critics and grammarians, formulated rules for punctuation and capitalization, which up to that time had been hit or miss. He became head of the Library upon the death of Eratosthenes in 195 B.C.
Over the centuries Alexandria became the crossroads of the world. Scriptures from many lands found their way into the Library, while Egyptian or Pharaonic beliefs remained influential. Zoroastrian texts were there, for Egypt had been a Persian satrapy from 525-332 B.C., and many Persian ideas must have taken root. Undoubtedly there were texts from as far away as the Orient, with which there were trade relations. There was a commingling of cultures. Gymnosophists, the "naked philosophers" of India, were also present, as were Jewish beliefs and the ideas of the Babylonian Magi.
Among the Greeks and perhaps other nations as well, science and the arts were part of the Lesser Mysteries, which included teaching and discipline. The science of architecture was well understood, and in the Museum and Library of Alexandria this and other subjects were discussed openly, though the details were not broadcast, nor are they found in the literature of the times. The same secrecy was undoubtedly enforced elsewhere in both Occident and Orient, yet the high level of expertise in applied science, architecture, and art supports the view that there existed among the ancients hidden sources of knowledge. In the Greater Mysteries, according to tradition, the candidate who was considered ready by the hierophants, was led stage by stage, first to an awareness of his higher self or inner god, and finally through his own strength and perception to bring to birth the god within him.
There were a number of secret and semi-secret organizations in Egypt and the Near East, such as the Essene communities and the early Gnostics. One can only speculate to what extent the Mysteries were active in the Library and Museum; most certainly they were an important although esoteric aspect of the Alexandrian experience. H. P. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine refers to the initiates at Alexandria (II:574), and to Gnostics "divulging the secret of initiations" at that center (I: 416).
With the decline of the Mysteries the vitality of the Library and Museum diminished, and the Roman civilization soon swept over the Mediterranean world and most of Asia Minor. The Christian movement was also in the offing, and the Roman republic was about to give way to the rule of the Caesars. In 48 B.C. Julius Caesar visited Egypt where he met Cleopatra. During his stay there was an uprising among the Macedonian troops and others protesting his presence. Caesar retaliated by burning the Egyptian fleet in the harbor. Unfortunately the fire spread to the docks and warehouses, and thousands of manuscripts were accidentally burned. He returned to Rome where he was assassinated in 44 B.C.
Later Antony came to Egypt. Since Pergamon had been incorporated into the Roman empire, its library of some 200,000 scrolls was given by Antony to Alexandria to compensate for the accidental burning by Caesar. In 37 B.C. Antony joined Cleopatra in Alexandria. A split developed between Antony and Octavian resulting in a sea battle in 31 B.C. in which Antony was defeated, whereupon he returned to Egypt where he and Cleopatra took their own lives (Cleopatra had a son by Julius Caesar, and two sons and a daughter by Antony. The tragic fate of these offspring illustrates graphically the cruelty that invariably accompanies the surge of empire). Now Octavian, taking the name Augustus, became the first of a long line of Roman emperors called Caesars.
The activities at Alexandria continued for some centuries, but on a declining scale. The dawning Christian movement became organized: several churches sprang up in the city, which eventually became the diocese of Christian bishops. The new religion did not look kindly upon so-called pagan activities. Under the Emperor Aurelian in the 3rd century A.D. the greater part of the Museum and Library were destroyed. Books were packed into the Serapeum for safe keeping, but eventually (400 A.D.) these too suffered a similar fate by order of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria. There were riots and in 415 A.D. the brilliant Hypatia, last head of the Library-Museum complex, was brutally murdered. The treasures of the Library, Museum, and Serapeum were open to pillage. The final destruction took place in 642 A.D. when the Arabs conquered Egypt and eventually, it is reported, used what was left of the Library to heat the baths.
Meanwhile, about the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. a remarkable man, Ammonius Saccas, founder of Neoplatonism, began to teach. His best known and perhaps greatest pupil was Plotinus, who was in Alexandria in 205 A.D. Plotinus wrote some powerful treatises based upon the precepts of his teacher. He gained wide popularity and in his later years taught at Rome. Following Plotinus came others, such as Porphyry, Amelius, Synesius, and Iamblichus. Neoplatonism had a broadening influence on some of the fathers of the Church, such as Origen who, according to Porphyry, had attended the classes of Ammonius Saccas. The last great Neoplatonist was Proclus, who taught at Athens and headed the Academy until his death in 485 A.D.
Neoplatonism was indeed a Platonic philosophy in that it researched into first principles. But it contained another element: it sought not merely to give man clear knowledge, but encouraged him to enter into a loftier state of consciousness, which Plotinus termed ecstasy, defining it as "the flight of the soul towards God, on whom it gazes face to face and alone" (Dictionary of Christian Biography, IV, "Neoplatonism," an excellent article on Plotinus by J. R. Mozeley. See also Plotinus, Enneads VI. 9. 11).
Like Phoenix rising from the ashes, Neoplatonism had a profound influence, coming as it did near the end of the Alexandrian cycle and amid sometimes violent chaos. Three centuries later Proclus expounded this doctrine to quite a following at the Academy in Athens, the home of philosophy, founded by Plato nearly a thousand years earlier. It was like a sunset, however, for not more than forty years after the death of Proclus, the Emperor Justinian in 529 A.D. suppressed the philosophical schools and closed the Academy. But by that time the Phoenix bird had risen and flown away.
One might suppose that all the treasures of the Alexandrian Library were destroyed, yet there are traditions, echoed by H. P. Blavatsky in her monumental The Secret Doctrine (I:xxiii-ix; II:692, 763), that the most valuable and irreplaceable volumes were rescued and housed secretly, to be revealed at times and in places where they will most profitably serve the welfare of humanity.
All this is particularly reassuring when we deplore the destruction of the Alexandrian treasures. Yet from the viewpoint of reincarnation, the real treasures of the Alexandrian School were the grand souls who created and composed it. From life to life these remarkable individuals will bring religion, philosophy, science, and art to flower wherever they may incarnate. The Phoenix bird never really dies but is perpetually reborn.
It is fitting to close with a few words about Alexander the Great. In spite of the brutality of his conquests, Alexander was not a crude and vulgar person. He envisioned the establishment of a world polis, a world civilization, where all men would be brothers, and the sciences, religions, and arts could flower side by side in peace and cooperation. This dream was in part achieved at Alexandria. In this spirit it is exciting to follow the present efforts by UNESCO, the Egyptian government, and other nations to rebuild the Alexandrian Library.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
· Blavatsky, H. P., The Secret Doctrine, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, 1988.
· Desmond, Alice D., Cleopatra's Children, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1972.
· Heur, Kenneth, City of the Star Gazers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1972.
· Mackenna, Stephen, Plotinus V, Sixth Ennead, The Medici Society, London, 1930.
· Mozeley, J. R., "Neoplatonism," A Dictionary of Christian Biography, TV: 18-23, edited by Wm. Smith and Henry Wace, John Murray, London, 1877.
· Parsons, Edward A., The Alexandrian Library, Cleaver Hume Press, London, 1952.
· Sarton, George, "Hellenism," History of Science, II, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1959.
(Reprinted from Sunrise magazine, February/March 1990. Copyright © 1990 by Theosophical University Press)
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2) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-pjoh.htm
Revival of the Alexandrian Library
By Paul Johnson
The future relevance of the theosophical heritage is confirmed by a plan recently announced for the rebuilding of the Alexandrian Library. Library Journal for February 1, 1988 reported:
The rebuilding will take place close to what archaeologists believe is the original site; the complex will include a conference center, a research library, a school of information studies, and housing for visiting scholars. The project, constructed on 48,000 acres with an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean Sea, is expected to be completed in 1995.
An international appeal for funds similar to those made for the preservation of the Acropolis and the treasures of Venice has been launched by UNESCO. The American Library Association passed a resolution of support of the revival of the Alexandrian library at Council in San Francisco last summer. -- 113:2:13
What relevance does this have to the future of theosophical values and teachings? Alexandria can be regarded as a precursor of the modem theosophical movement, as indicated by H. P. Blavatsky in her discussion of Ammonias Saccas and his eclectic theosophical system. Alexandria is one likely source of the basic synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom which is the foundation of all HPB's teaching. The Library at Alexandria was the most celebrated library of the ancient world, and its repeated destruction the greatest blow to preservation of the ancient wisdom which could possibly have been dealt.
The Library, which flourished between 300 B.C. and 400 A.D., is believed to have been founded by Ptolemy I Soter (reigned 323-285 B.C.) in conjunction with a Museum which served as an international academy. The Library's collection included Greek works as well as works translated from other languages. Under Ptolemies II and III the Library was expanded and a subsidiary library added. The total collection exceeded 500,000 papyrus rolls before it was damaged by fire during the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C. In a civil war during the late third century A.D., the main library was ravaged, but the auxiliary collection at Serapeum lasted until 391 A.D. "when Christians, following the edict of Emperor Theodosius, destroyed the temple and its literary treasures" (Encyclopedia Americana 1:544). Whatever was left was finally destroyed when the Muslims sacked Alexandria in the year 645 A.D.
In both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, HPB asserts that this was a temporary setback, rather than a permanent defeat, for those who valued the wisdom of the ancients:
There are strange traditions current in various parts of the East -- on Mount Athos and in the Desert of Nitria, for instance -- among certain monks, and with learned Rabbis in Palestine.... that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by Caesar, by the Christian mob in 389, and by the Arab general Amru, perished as is commonly believed; . . .
No more do sundry very learned Copts scattered all over the East in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine believe in the total destruction of the subsequent libraries. -- Isis II:27-28
In her Introductory to The Secret Doctrine, HPB elaborates:
It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, every work of a character that might have led the profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed. In India, the last of the precious manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. -- SD I:xxiii-xxiv
Perhaps it is naive to regard the project of the Egyptian government as much more than a symbolic gesture. All the king's horses and men cannot restore what was lost in the destruction of the Alexandrian Library. Yet, as HPB insists, evolution proceeds from within outward. Was not the entirety of her lifework a rebuilding of the purpose and spirit of the Alexandrian Library? The modern theosophical movement was intended in large part to reimbody the Alexandrian synthesis. If we dismiss the rebuilding of the Library on the physical plane as an intellectual achievement alone, we are denying ourselves the joy of celebrating a symbolic fulfillment of our deepest yearnings as theosophists. HPB clearly states that the destruction of the Alexandrian Library marked the beginning of an era when the "mysteries of the secret science" were deliberately hidden from unworthy humanity. Her work, then, was the partial unveiling of long-hidden truths. Can we see the rebuilding of the Library through international cooperation as a powerful statement that humanity is once more ready to accept and appreciate the ancient wisdom we call theosophy?
Even in the century cycle of modern theosophical history, we can discern a pattern of destruction and rebuilding. HPB's unique role in history has been misinterpreted through reductionism on the one hand and mythmaking on the other. The world at large has dismissed her as unworthy of serious interest, while theosophists have not yet convinced it otherwise. But as we approach the end of the century, there is a rising tide of interest in HPB and theosophy. Could the revival of the Library at Alexandria be inspired by the same inner current? The centrality of Egypt in HPB's association with these "very learned Copts" in her early years would make it an apt setting for an event of such theosophical
significance.
(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1989; copyright © 1989 Theosophical University Press)
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Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-imo3.htm
Alexandrias's Beacon against the Dark
By I. M. Oderberg
One of the 'Seven Wonders' of the ancient world was the Pharos of Alexandria, the remarkable lighthouse of many stories built in 279 B.C. on a foundation of solid blocks of glass, on Pharos Island at the harbor entrance. Its ingenuity embodied scientific purpose and architectural beauty. The architect Sostratus chose glass above all other materials because tests indicated that the sea did not corrode it. The Pharos was planned to endure, warning and guiding ships far into the future; also providing a fort and accommodation for garrisons to protect the city. What the natural elements did not destroy, man's greed and rapacity succeeded in accomplishing. In 700 A.D. the threat of war and a zealous search for Alexander's treasure rumored beneath the Pharos, led to the demolition of the upper stories which fell into the sea, together with the scientific instruments kept there. The truncated remains now house what is called the Castle, and a mosque. However, the real beacon of Alexandria was not the Pharos, sending its beam far out to sea, but rather the great library which shed a pervading light over Europe for more than eight centuries.
In the latter part of the fourth century B.C. the Athenian culture seemed to be in decay, when Alexander of Macedon propelled himself like a meteor across Greece and into Asia. After numerous victories in war he became known as Alexander the Great, but his most magnificent work was not the conquest, it was the reopening of the traffic of ideas from the orient to the west, and the creation of a new city destined to play an important role in this process. Alexandria was built upon a sandbank in the Nile, and lifted high the Hellenic glory achieved in science, art, speculative thought; enduring through the Roman occupation of Egypt, it influenced the civilizations of Europe and Asia Minor.
When Alexander died in 323 B.C., his battle-won empire was divided among his generals as satraps. Ptolemy, his close friend and possibly half-brother, received Egypt and Libya over which he ruled more like a king than a governor. He assumed the royal title in 305 B.C. and began the Macedonian or XXXIst Dynasty, the last to reign over an independent Egypt. He was a successful general in subsequent campaigns in Syria and Cyrenaica, and for preserving the nation from invaders he was surnamed Soter. But he is entitled to our respect for more than his prowess in war and astuteness as an administrator. We remember him for raising Alexandria into pre-eminence as Europe's center of learning, through the library and museum he founded.
Ptolemy I Soter invited leading Hellenic philosophers, scientists and literary figures of the day to come to his city. Among them was Demetrios of Phaleron, a famous Greek statesman and litterateur who suggested the establishment of the library and himself assembled the first collection for it, donating many of the scrolls he possessed. Ptolemy took personal interest in the enterprise, which soon grew into a vast treasurehouse of the Greek inheritance. In the process it also became a center of the inherited knowledge and wisdom in general, responsible for translating into the Greek tongue many important writings of other peoples, especially of India. However, it was more than a mere repository of learning, for it not only attracted scholars and editors of texts capable of deciding upon the authenticity of received versions of Homer, Hesiod and other authors, but it also provided laboratories, gardens and a small zoo for research. Beyond this, it became the living heart from which flowed an influence such as that of Eleusis and Samothrace in earlier times, and we may assume it had connections with similar centers located in Egypt from time immemorial.
The post of chief librarian carried court dignity and the prestige of association with a number of very distinguished scholars, such as Eratosthenes, the mathematician and astronomer who was also eminent in other fields. Aristarchos of Samothrace, believed to be the first archaeologist of language, Apollonius of Rhodes, whose Argonautica with its Orphic overtones still survives, and Theocritus the poet, are a few of them. The library and museum established by Ptolemy I Soter and by Demetrios were housed in a complex of buildings modeled on the Museion of Athens and given the same name, but it was very much more extensive in scope and size. The prototype in Athens once held the considerable library of Aristotle that passed to his pupil and heir Theophrastus, and a large portion of this collection was purchased by Soter's son Ptolemy II Philadelphus and located in Alexandria.
Ptolemy's Museion included museums, lecture theaters, astronomical and other laboratories, study rooms and dining halls; the buildings of white marble and stone were reported as being of harmonious design, and liberally ornamented with sculptures and artifacts of various kinds. We do not know how the library was classified, but many passages that have come down to us state that the Greek section was paramount and disposed through ten large halls, containing all the extant works the Greeks had produced, each hall being devoted to a separate department in accordance with the ten divisions of Hellenic knowledge set out in Callimachus' Catalogue, the famous Pinakes. From scattered references, we are led to believe that the contributions of other peoples radiated out from the Greek theme, so the whole collection might well have been arranged according to countries of origin.
Each faculty was superintended by a priest-president responsible to the king and to the chief librarian who was the foremost official of the entire Museion. At its peak the library housed over 500,000 books and a catalogue of 120. We should remember that all of these were in the form of scrolls, requiring specialized care different from our own books. Each scroll, written by hand, had to be checked with master texts and classified according to source and subject. So the various librarians had to be philologists and editors, as well as skilled in performing the duties usual in our own libraries.
The project grew so rapidly that an annex was established in the temple compound dedicated to Serapis, a somewhat benign Zeus, Egyptian in name (derived from the fusion of Osiris with Apis) but purely Greek in character. These buildings were called the Serapeum.
Not all the rulers between the first Ptolemy and the last were committed to the library; Ptolemies VI, VII and VIII could not have cared less what happened to it. After 150 B.C. it fell into serious neglect. But it was revived during the time of Cleopatra, after the disastrous fire for which Julius Caesar has been unjustly blamed. Plutarch says that Cleopatra was very distressed and ordered the immediate restoration of the library and its satellite institutions in the Serapeum. Mark Anthony endeavored to repair the loss by transferring 100,000 scrolls from the famous Pergamum library. To distinguish between the two Alexandrian institutions, the first library (Soter's) is known as the 'Mother' and the second (Cleopatra's) as the 'Daughter.' The latter is supposed to have been the larger because it contained over 700,000 manuscripts (some authorities say 800,000 and others more: even a million, but the evidence is inconclusive). There must have been a continuity in spirit between the two, as suggested by the fact that Gnosticism was connected with the first library, and both the Christian form of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism with the second.
After the Church was granted official recognition and power, and its teachings made compulsory, the monks thought they were free to attack the worship of Serapis. The library in the Serapeum was particularly detested, because it was the home of philosophy, 'magic,' and learning of various kinds and therefore considered "a citadel of disbelief and immorality." As the power of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and the associated bishops grew, the derided paganism ebbed away, making the library and its museums the last publicly known refuges of the ancient wisdom in Europe.
The monks under the extremely hate-ridden Patriarch Theophilus attacked it in 391, destroying the library and installing a monastery on the ruins. The persecution of the non-Christians continued under the Patriarch's equally fanatic nephew and successor Cyril, who in 415 aroused a mob of monks and sent them on a rampage. The Imperial Prefect was murdered and, as E. M. Forster writes: "Cyril's wild black army filled the streets, human only in their faces, and anxious to perform some act of piety before they retired to their monasteries. In this mood they came upon Hypatia who was driving from a lecture . . . dragged her from the carriage to the Caesareum, and there tore her to pieces with tiles . . . with her the Greece that is a spirit expired -- the Greece that tried to discover truth and create beauty and that had created beauty." Even Socrates, the Church historian, said Hypatia surpassed all contemporary philosophers in character as in learning.
Somehow manuscripts were regathered and the library continued, though much reduced in size and effectiveness, until the seventh century when the Arab Muslims are said to have razed to the ground all that remained of the Serapeum. But the story of this destruction in 645 has never been proved; indeed, it has been questioned, for the Muslims had nothing to fear from the library -- they did not read Greek nor did the rolls have value for them. The late historian, Dr. George Sarton, viewed the collection as having been far more dangerous for the overzealous, bigoted Christians of the day.
There is reason to assume that not all the scrolls were destroyed, not even after the first fire in Cleopatra's time. The staff was large, numbering possibly as many as 160 experts with assistants of various grades, and an indefinite number of unskilled help. It was the custom for the librarians to take to their quarters rolls for checking, repairs or even reading. (In Isis Unveiled, H. P. Blavatsky relates that a monk in a Greek convent had shown her a scroll attributed to Theodas, a scribe employed in the Museum during Cleopatra's reign.) A major part of the building was undergoing repairs at the time and those manuscripts possessed only in single copies were temporarily stored in the home of one of the senior librarians. When Caesar ordered the firing of the rebel Egyptian fleet, the flames spread inadvertently to the neighboring wharf and from there to the city. The flames and smoke would surely have warned the library staff long before the fire reached the Museion, affording them plenty of time to rescue at least the most treasured material. It is as likely that books were hidden away at the first signs of violence and persecution in the latter half of the fourth century A.D. -- the trend of events had already been evident for some time.
This possibility might explain how a Turkish portolano map of 1513 could have contained parts of a more ancient map, drawn with great skill and knowledge of cartography, evidently projected from a center close by Alexandria. This map was found in dusty archives in Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, the last stronghold of the Hellenic culture. It would have been natural for scholars to have fled there from Alexandria carrying precious manuscripts. Just as greed and hatred destroyed the main part of the Pharos, so fanaticism and hatred despoiled a spiritual center of the ancient wisdom. The latter was not destroyed; through the centuries afterwards there appeared flickers of light as dedicated individuals or groups here and there in Europe seem to show connections with an unseen stream of culture stretching back to an earlier age.
What did the library contain? Of course we can only hazard guesses. We know that Eratosthenes' important researches were carried out in the laboratories of the Museion, and that other scientists also worked there. Astronomers may have had their tables of observations, botanists and zoologists their classifications. But the humanities were richest, especially in literature, for the very masterpieces themselves were there in accredited texts.
All of this pertains to the library's aspect as a university. Beyond this function extended its inner range. In its early days, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, himself a fine scholar, asked for a translation into Greek of the Old Testament, and the chief librarian convened the group of 72 Hebrew specialists who worked independently of each other to produce what is called the Septuagint, or LXX as it is designated in its Latin translation, the Roman Vulgate. Much later, Philo attempted to fuse Greek philosophy with Hebraic theology, and he would surely have worked in the Serapeum consulting its vast resources with its many texts of Plato and other philosophers. Where else in Alexandria could he have had access to these and so much besides, but in the library?
In any event, his efforts flowed into the stream that later took the form of Neoplatonism, leading exponents of which were Ammonius Saccas, who is reputed to have frequented the library, and his greatest pupil, Plotinus. There are many parallels between the text of Plotinus and the Hermetica, and while it has been assumed that this proves the latter are younger than Neoplatonism and so incorporate its concepts, it can also mean that both derive from the same source: that hidden wisdom which was for a time focalized through the inner resources of the Alexandrian institutions in the Serapeum.
We should not, however, think that only Greek and Egyptian systems were studied in the library. The wise men of India were students there under the Hellenic name 'Gymnosophists' -- not merely students but sharing the treasures of their homeland. We know also that many manuscripts were copied from the oldest parchments in the Chaldean, Phoenician, Persian and other languages, including the ancient hieratic script of the Egyptians. The earliest Fathers of the Church, such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria, were students at the Museion, and despite the later proscription against their teachings, not a few of their central ideas, sometimes under other terms, seem to have crept into aspects of Christian mysticism.
Persecution may appear to drive the light and fire of the ancient wisdom-religion out of existence, but it is really only a case of temporary eclipse. The expression of the innermost soul of man cannot be annihilated, although at times its voice may be repressed. So days return when the stream rises to the surface once more and all may drink of its life-giving waters. The Alexandrian library had its day, but the sun will never set upon what it represented. Or we may say that there will be no end to the dawns, for others will come again and again, far into the future.
(From Sunrise magazine, August-September 1972; copyright © 1972 Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
419: Moche people of Peru build a Sun temple 150 feet high using 50 million bricks.
438-45: Council of Ferrara-Florence, Italy, strengthens Roman Catholic stance against doctrine of reincarnation.
ca 440: Ajanta cave frescoes (long before Islam) depict Buddha as Prince Siddhartha, wearing "chudidara pyjama" and a prototype of the present-day "Nehru shirt."
450-535: Life of Bodhidharma of South India, 28th patriarch of India's Dhyana Buddhist sect, founder of Ch'an Buddhism in China (520), known as Zen in Japan.
ca 450: Hephtalite invasions (ca 450-565) take a great toll in North India. These "white Huns" (or Hunas) from China are probably not related to Europe's Hun invaders.
ca 450: As the Gupta Empire declines, Indian sculptural style evolves and continues until the 16th century. The trend is away from the swelling modeled forms of the Gupta period toward increasing flatness and linearity.
453: Attila the Hun dies after lifetime of plundering Europe.
499: Aryabhata I (476-ca 550), Indian astronomer and mathematician, using Hindu (aka Arabic) numerals accurately calculates pi () to 3.1416, and the solar year to 365.3586805 days. A thousand years before Copernicus, Aryabhata propounds a heliocentric universe with elliptically orbiting planets and a spherical Earth spinning on its axis, explaining the apparent rotation of the heavens. Writes Aryabhatiya, history's first exposition on plane and spherical trigonometry, algebra and arithmetic.
ca 500: Mahavamsa, chronicling Sri Lankan history from -500 is written in Pali, probably by Buddhist monk Mahanama. A sequel, Chulavamsha, continues the history to 1500.
ca 500: Sectarian folk traditions are revised, elaborated and reduced to writing as the Puranas, Hinduism's encyclopedic compendium of culture and mythology.
500: World population is 190 million. India population is 50 million: 26.3% of world.
510: Hephtalite Mihirakula from beyond Oxus River crushes imperial Gupta power. Soon controls much of N.C. India.
ca 533: Yashovarman of Malva and Ishanavarman of Kanauj defeat and expel the Hephtalites from North India.
ca 543: Pulakeshin I founds Chalukya Dynasty (ca 543-757; 975-1189) in Gujarat and later in larger areas of West India.
548: Emperor Kimmei officially recognizes Buddhism in Japan by accepting a gift image of Buddha from Korea.
553: Council of Constantinople II denies doctrine of soul's existence before conception, implying reincarnation is incompatible with Christian belief.
565: The Turks and Persians defeat the Hephtalites.
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_10.html
In A.D. 395, a separation occurred between the western and eastern parts of the Roman Empire, leaving Constantinople with the supremacy of the East. Egypt maintained its role as grain provider for the Empire, but Alexandria lost its predominant position to Constantinople. As a consequence, Egypt was left out of the conflicts created by the imperial successions and international politics.
During the fourth and the fifth centuries A.D., as Egyptians converted to Christianity, they were able to access important functions first in religious life and then in public life. The increasing power of the clergy of Alexandria eventually posed a threat to the clergy of Constantinople. At the Council of Chalcedon, in A.D. 451, their differences resulted in a break between the Church of Alexandria and the Church of Constantinople. The emperors, unwilling to let Egypt slip from their influence, tried to reinstate the authority of Constantinople by persuasion and persecution, without any real success. In A.D. 619, the Persians managed to invade the Eastern Empire and Egypt, ruling over the country for a decade. The emperor managed to expel the Persians, but the resulting weakness of the Empire's borders paved the way for the Arab conquest and the beginning of the Islamic period in A.D. 641.
Christian monasticism originated in Egypt during this period. In Thebes several churches and monasteries were set up in the ruins of temples at Karnak and Luxor [13511]. On the West Bank, Madinat Habu became the Coptic village of Djeme. Monasteries were built at the site of the Hathor temple of Dayr al Madinah and on the ruins of the Hatshepsut's Memorial Temple at Dayr al Bahri. Other monasteries were constructed on hilltops such as Qurnat Mura'i and Dayr al Bakhit above Dira' Abu al Naja. Many tombs in Shaykh Abd al Qurna were used by monks as dwellings, while in the Valley of the Kings, several of the Dynasty 19 and Dynasty 20 tombs (KV 1, KV 2, KV 3, KV 4, KV 8, KV 9) were used as dwellings or chapels [10514].
Reference: http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaabaa.htm
Note: A recent archeological find in Kuwait unearthed a gold-plated statue of the Hindu deity Ganesh. A Muslim resident of Kuwait requested historical research material that can help explain the connection between Hindu civilisation and Arabia.]
Was the Kaaba Originally a Hindu Temple?
By P.N. Oak (Historian)
Glancing through some research material recently, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a reference to a king Vikramaditya inscription found in the Kaaba in Mecca proving beyond doubt that the Arabian Peninsula formed a part of his Indian Empire.
The text of the crucial Vikramaditya inscription, found inscribed on a gold dish hung inside the Kaaba shrine in Mecca, is found recorded on page 315 of a volume known as ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ treasured in the Makhtab-e-Sultania library in Istanbul, Turkey. Rendered in free English the inscription says:
"Fortunate are those who were born (and lived) during king Vikram’s reign. He was a noble, generous dutiful ruler, devoted to the welfare of his subjects. But at that time we Arabs, oblivious of God, were lost in sensual pleasures. Plotting and torture were rampant. The darkness of ignorance had enveloped our country. Like the lamb struggling for her life in the cruel paws of a wolf we Arabs were caught up in ignorance. The entire country was enveloped in a darkness so intense as on a new moon night. But the present dawn and pleasant sunshine of education is the result of the favour of the noble king Vikramaditya whose benevolent supervision did not lose sight of us- foreigners as we were. He spread his sacred religion amongst us and sent scholars whose brilliance shone like that of the sun from his country to ours. These scholars and preceptors through whose benevolence we were once again made cognisant of the presence of God, introduced to His sacred existence and put on the road of Truth, had come to our country to preach their religion and impart education at king Vikramaditya’s behest."
For those who would like to read the Arabic wording I reproduce it hereunder in Roman script:
"Itrashaphai Santu Ibikramatul Phahalameen Karimun Yartapheeha Wayosassaru Bihillahaya Samaini Ela Motakabberen Sihillaha Yuhee Quid min howa Yapakhara phajjal asari nahone osirom bayjayhalem. Yundan blabin Kajan blnaya khtoryaha sadunya kanateph netephi bejehalin Atadari bilamasa- rateen phakef tasabuhu kaunnieja majekaralhada walador. As hmiman burukankad toluho watastaru hihila Yakajibaymana balay kulk amarena phaneya jaunabilamary Bikramatum".
(Page 315 Sayar-ul-okul).
[Note: The title ‘Saya-ul-okul’ signifies memorable words.]
A careful analysis of the above inscription enables us to draw the following conclusions:
1. That the ancient Indian empires may have extended up to the eastern boundaries of Arabia until Vikramaditya and that it was he who for the first time conquered Arabia. Because the inscription says that king Vikram who dispelled the darkness of ignorance from Arabia.
2. That, whatever their earlier faith, King Vikrama’s preachers had succeeded in spreading the Vedic (based on the Vedas, the Hindu sacred scriptures)) way of life in Arabia.
3. That the knowledge of Indian arts and sciences was imparted by Indians to the Arabs directly by founding schools, academies and cultural centres. The belief, therefore, that visiting Arabs conveyed that knowledge to their own lands through their own indefatigable efforts and scholarship is unfounded.
An ancillary conclusion could be that the so-called Kutub Minar (in Delhi, India) could well be king Vikramadiya’s tower commemorating his conquest of Arabia. This conclusion is strengthened by two pointers. Firstly, the inscription on the iron pillar near the so-called Kutub Minar refers to the marriage of the victorious king Vikramaditya to the princess of Balhika. This Balhika is none other than the Balkh region in West Asia. It could be that Arabia was wrestled by king Vikramaditya from the ruler of Balkh who concluded a treaty by giving his daughter in marriage to the victor. Secondly, the township adjoining the so called Kutub Minar is named Mehrauli after Mihira who was the renowned astronomer-mathematician of king Vikram’s court. Mehrauli is the corrupt form of Sanskrit ‘Mihira-Awali’ signifying a row of houses raised for Mihira and his helpers and assistants working on astronomical observations made from the tower.
Having seen the far reaching and history shaking implications of the Arabic inscription concerning king Vikrama, we shall now piece together the story of its find. How it came to be recorded and hung in the Kaaba in Mecca. What are the other proofs reinforcing the belief that Arabs were once followers of the Indian Vedic way of life and that tranquillity and education were ushered into Arabia by king Vikramaditya’s scholars, educationists from an uneasy period of "ignorance and turmoil" mentioned in the inscription.
In Istanbul, Turkey, there is a famous library called Makhatab-e-Sultania, which is reputed to have the largest collection of ancient West Asian literature. In the Arabic section of that library is an anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. That anthology was compiled from an earlier work in A.D. 1742 under the orders of the Turkish ruler Sultan Salim.
The pages of that volume are of Hareer – a kind of silk used for writing on. Each page has a decorative gilded border. That anthology is known as Sayar-ul-Okul. It is divided into three parts. The first part contains biographic details and the poetic compositions of pre-Islamic Arabian poets. The second part embodies accounts and verses of poets of the period beginning just after prophet Mohammad’s times, up to the end of the Banee-Um-Mayya dynasty. The third part deals with later poets up to the end of Khalif Harun-al-Rashid’s times.
Abu Amir Asamai, an Arabian bard who was the poet Laureate of Harun-al-Rashid’s court, has compiled and edited the anthology.
The first modern edition of ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ was printed and published in Berlin in 1864. A subsequent edition is the one published in Beirut in 1932.
The collection is regarded as the most important and authoritative anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. It throws considerable light on the social life, customs, manners and entertainment modes of ancient Arabia. The book also contains an elaborate description of the ancient shrine of Mecca, the town and the annual fair known as OKAJ which used to be held every year around the Kaaba temple in Mecca. This should convince readers that the annual haj of the Muslims to the Kaaba is of earlier pre-Islamic congregation.
But the OKAJ fair was far from a carnival. It provided a forum for the elite and the learned to discuss the social, religious, political, literary and other aspects of the Vedic culture then pervading Arabia. ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ asserts that the conclusion reached at those discussions were widely respected throughout Arabia. Mecca, therefore, followed the Varanasi tradition (of India) of providing a venue for important discussions among the learned while the masses congregated there for spiritual bliss. The principal shrines at both Varanasi in India and at Mecca in Arvasthan (Arabia) were Siva temples. Even to this day ancient Mahadev (Siva) emblems can be seen. It is the Shankara (Siva) stone that Muslim pilgrims reverently touch and kiss in the Kaaba.
Arabic tradition has lost trace of the founding of the Kaaba temple. The discovery of the Vikramaditya inscription affords a clue. King Vikramaditya is known for his great devotion to Lord Mahadev (Siva). At Ujjain (India), the capital of Vikramaditya, exists the famous shrine of Mahankal, i.e., of Lord Shankara (Siva) associated with Vikramaditya. Since according to the Vikramaditya inscription he spread the Vedic religion, who else but he could have founded the Kaaba temple in Mecca?
A few miles away from Mecca is a big signboard which bars the entry of any non-Muslim into the area. This is a reminder of the days when the Kaaba was stormed and captured solely for the newly established faith of Islam. The object in barring entry of non-Muslims was obviously to prevent its recapture.
As the pilgrim proceeds towards Mecca he is asked to shave his head and beard and to don special sacred attire that consists of two seamless sheets of white cloth. One is to be worn round the waist and the other over the shoulders. Both these rites are remnants of the old Vedic practice of entering Hindu temples clean- and with holy seamless white sheets.
The main shrine in Mecca, which houses the Siva emblem, is known as the Kaaba. It is clothed in a black shroud. That custom also originates from the days when it was thought necessary to discourage its recapture by camouflaging it.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Kaaba has 360 images. Traditional accounts mention that one of the deities among the 360 destroyed when the place was stormed, was that of Saturn; another was of the Moon and yet another was one called Allah. That shows that in the Kaaba the Arabs worshipped the nine planets in pre-Islamic days. In India the practice of ‘Navagraha’ puja, that is worship of the nine planets, is still in vogue. Two of these nine are Saturn and Moon.
In India the crescent moon is always painted across the forehead of the Siva symbol. Since that symbol was associated with the Siva emblem in Kaaba it came to be grafted on the flag of Islam.
Another Hindu tradition associated with the Kaaba is that of the sacred stream Ganga (sacred waters of the Ganges river). According to the Hindu tradition Ganga is also inseparable from the Shiva emblem as the crescent moon. Wherever there is a Siva emblem, Ganga must co-exist. True to that association a sacred fount exists near the Kaaba. Its water is held sacred because it has been traditionally regarded as Ganga since pre-Islamic times (Zam-Zam water).
[Note: Even today, Muslim pilgrims who go to the Kaaba for Haj regard this Zam-Zam water with reverence and take some bottled water with them as sacred water.]
Muslim pilgrims visiting the Kaaba temple go around it seven times. In no other mosque does the circumambulation prevail. Hindus invariably circumambulate around their deities. This is yet another proof that the Kaaba shrine is a pre-Islamic Indian Shiva temple where the Hindu practice of circumambulation is still meticulously observed.
The practice of taking seven steps- known as Saptapadi in Sanskrit- is associated with Hindu marriage ceremony and fire worship. The culminating rite in a Hindu marriage enjoins upon the bride and groom to go round the sacred fire four times (but misunderstood by many as seven times). Since "Makha" means fire, the seven circumambulations also prove that Mecca was the seat of Indian fire-worship in the West Asia.
It might come as a stunning revelation to many that the word ‘ALLAH’ itself is Sanskrit. In Sanskrit language Allah, Akka and Amba are synonyms. They signify a goddess or mother. The term ‘ALLAH’ forms part of Sanskrit chants invoking goddess Durga, also known as Bhavani, Chandi and Mahishasurmardini. The Islamic word for God is., therefore, not an innovation but the ancient Sanskrit appellation retained and continued by Islam. Allah means mother or goddess and mother goddess.
One Koranic verse is an exact translation of a stanza in the Yajurveda. This was pointed out by the great research scholar Pandit Satavlekar of Pardi in one of his articles.
[Note: Another scholar points out that the following teaching from the Koran is exactly similar to the teaching of the Kena Upanishad (1.7).
The Koran:
"Sight perceives Him not. But He perceives men's sights; for He is the knower of secrets , the Aware."
Kena Upanishad:
"That which cannot be seen by the eye but through which the eye itself sees, know That to be Brahman (God) and not what people worship here (in the manifested world)."
A simplified meaning of both the above verses reads:
God is one and that He is beyond man's sensory experience.]
The identity of Unani and Ayurvedic systems shows that Unani is just the Arabic term for the Ayurvedic system of healing taught to them and administered in Arabia when Arabia formed part of the Indian empire.
It will now be easy to comprehend the various Hindu customs still prevailing in West Asian countries even after the existence of Islam during the last 1300 years. Let us review some Hindu traditions which exist as the core of Islamic practice.
The Hindus have a pantheon of 33 gods. People in Asia Minor too worshipped 33 gods before the spread of Islam. The lunar calendar was introduced in West Asia during the Indian rule. The Muslim month ‘Safar’ signifying the ‘extra’ month (Adhik Maas) in the Hindu calendar. The Muslim month Rabi is the corrupt form of Ravi meaning the sun because Sanskrit ‘V’ changes into Prakrit ‘B’ (Prakrit being the popular version of Sanskrit language). The Muslim sanctity for Gyrahwi Sharif is nothing but the Hindu Ekadashi (Gyrah = elevan or Gyaarah). Both are identical in meaning.
The Islamic practice of Bakari Eed derives from the Go-Medh and Ashva-Medh Yagnas or sacrifices of Vedic times. Eed in Sanskrit means worship. The Islamic word Eed for festive days, signifying days of worship, is therefore a pure Sanskrit word. The word MESH in the Hindu zodiac signifies a lamb. Since in ancient times the year used to begin with the entry of the sun in Aries, the occasion was celebrated with mutton feasting. That is the origin of the Bakari Eed festival.
[Note: The word Bakari is an Indian language word for a goat.]
Since Eed means worship and Griha means ‘house’, the Islamic word Idgah signifies a ‘House of worship’ which is the exact Sanskrit connotation of the term. Similarly the word ‘Namaz’ derives from two Sanskrit roots ‘Nama’ and ‘Yajna’ (NAMa yAJna) meaning bowing and worshipping.
Vedic descriptions about the moon, the different stellar constellations and the creation of the universe have been incorporated from the Vedas in Koran part 1 chapter 2, stanza 113, 114, 115, and 158, 189, chapter 9, stanza 37 and chapter 10, stanzas 4 to 7.
Recital of the Namaz five times a day owes its origin to the Vedic injunction of Panchmahayagna (five daily worship- Panch-Maha-Yagna) which is part of the daily Vedic ritual prescribed for all individuals.
Muslims are enjoined cleanliness of five parts of the body before commencing prayers. This derives from the Vedic injuction ‘Shareer Shydhyartham Panchanga Nyasah’.
Four months of the year are regarded as very sacred in Islamic custom. The devout are enjoined to abstain from plunder and other evil deeds during that period. This originates in the Chaturmasa i.e., the four-month period of special vows and austerities in Hindu tradition. Shabibarat is the corrupt form of Shiva Vrat and Shiva Ratra. Since the Kaaba has been an important centre of Shiva (Siva) worship from times immemorial, the Shivaratri festival used to be celebrated there with great gusto. It is that festival which is signified by the Islamic word Shabibarat.
Encyclopaedias tell us that there are inscriptions on the side of the Kaaba walls. What they are, no body has been allowed to study, according to the correspondence I had with an American scholar of Arabic. But according to hearsay at least some of those inscriptions are in Sanskrit, and some of them are stanzas from the Bhagavad Gita.
According to extant Islamic records, Indian merchants had settled in Arabia, particularly in Yemen, and their life and manners deeply influenced those who came in touch with them. At Ubla there was a large number of Indian settlements. This shows that Indians were in Arabia and Yemen in sufficient strength and commanding position to be able to influence the local people. This could not be possible unless they belonged to the ruling class.
It is mentioned in the Abadis i.e., the authentic traditions of Prophet Mohammad compiled by Imam Bukhari that the Indian tribe of Jats had settled in Arabia before Prophet Mohammad’s times. Once when Hazrat Ayesha, wife of the Prophet, was taken ill, her nephew sent for a Jat physician for her treatment. This proves that Indians enjoyed a high and esteemed status in Arabia. Such a status could not be theirs unless they were the rulers. Bukhari also tells us that an Indian Raja (king) sent a jar of ginger pickles to the Prophet. This shows that the Indian Jat Raja ruled an adjacent area so as to be in a position to send such an insignificant present as ginger pickles. The Prophet is said to have so highly relished it as to have told his colleagues also to partake of it. These references show that even during Prophet Mohammad’s times Indians retained their influential role in Arabia, which was a dwindling legacy from Vikramaditya’s times.
The Islamic term ‘Eed-ul-Fitr’ derives from the ‘Eed of Piters’ that is worship of forefathers in Sanskrit tradition. In India, Hindus commemorate their ancestors during the Pitr-Paksha that is the fortnight reserved for their remembrance. The very same is the significance of ‘Eed-ul-Fitr’ (worship of forefathers).
The Islamic practice of observing the moon rise before deciding on celebrating the occasion derives from the Hindu custom of breaking fast on Sankranti and Vinayaki Chaturthi only after sighting the moon.
Barah Vafat, the Muslim festival for commemorating those dead in battle or by weapons, derives from a similar Sanskrit tradition because in Sanskrit ‘Phiphaut’ is ‘death’. Hindus observe Chayal Chaturdashi in memory of those who have died in battle.
The word Arabia is itself the abbreviation of a Sanskrit word. The original word is ‘Arabasthan’. Since Prakrit ‘B’ is Sanskrit ‘V’ the original Sanskrit name of the land is ‘Arvasthan’. ‘Arva’ in Sanskrit means a horse. Arvasthan signifies a land of horses., and as well all know, Arabia is famous for its horses.
This discovery changes the entire complexion of the history of ancient India. Firstly we may have to revise our concepts about the king who had the largest empire in history. It could be that the expanse of king Vikramaditya’s empire was greater than that of all others. Secondly, the idea that the Indian empire spread only to the east and not in the west beyond say, Afghanisthan may have to be abandoned. Thirdly the effeminate and pathetic belief that India, unlike any other country in the world could by some age spread her benign and beatific cultural influence, language, customs, manners and education over distant lands without militarily conquering them is baseless. India did conquer all those countries physically wherever traces of its culture and language are still extant and the region extended from Bali island in the south Pacific to the Baltic in Northern Europe and from Korea to Kaaba. The only difference was that while Indian rulers identified themselves with the local population and established welfare states, Moghuls and others who ruled conquered lands perpetuated untold atrocities over the vanquished.
‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ tells us that a pan-Arabic poetic symposium used to be held in Mecca at the annual Okaj fair in pre-Islamic times. All leading poets used to participate in it.
Poems considered best were awarded prizes. The best-engraved on gold plate were hung inside the temple. Others etched on camel or goatskin were hung outside. Thus for thousands of years the Kaaba was the treasure house of the best Arabian poetic thought inspired by the Indian Vedic tradition.
That tradition being of immemorial antiquity many poetic compositions were engraved and hung inside and outside on the walls of the Kaaba. But most of the poems got lost and destroyed during the storming of the Kaaba by Prophet Mohammad’s troops. The Prophet’s court poet, Hassan-bin-Sawik, who was among the invaders, captured some of the treasured poems and dumped the gold plate on which they were inscribed in his own home. Sawik’s grandson, hoping to earn a reward carried those gold plates to Khalif’s court where he met the well-known Arab scholar Abu Amir Asamai. The latter received from the bearer five gold plates and 16 leather sheets with the prize-winning poems engraved on them. The bearer was sent away happy bestowed with a good reward.
On the five gold plates were inscribed verses by ancient Arab poets like Labi Baynay, Akhatab-bin-Turfa and Jarrham Bintoi. That discovery made Harun-al-Rashid order Abu Amir to compile a collection of all earlier compositions. One of the compositions in the collection is a tribute in verse paid by Jarrham Bintoi, a renowned Arab poet, to king Vikramaditya. Bintoi who lived 165 years before Prophet Mohammad had received the highest award for the best poetic compositions for three years in succession in the pan-Arabic symposiums held in Mecca every year. All those three poems of Bintoi adjudged best were hung inside the Kaaba temple, inscribed on gold plates. One of these constituted an unreserved tribute to King Vikramaditya for his paternal and filial rule over Arabia. That has already been quoted above.
Pre-Islamic Arabian poet Bintoi’s tribute to king Vikramaditya is a decisive evidence that it was king Vikramaditya who first conquered the Arabian Peninsula and made it a part of the Indian Empire. This explains why starting from India towards the west we have all Sanskrit names like Afghanisthan (now Afghanistan), Baluchisthan, Kurdisthan, Tajikiathan, Uzbekisthan, Iran, Sivisthan, Iraq, Arvasthan, Turkesthan (Turkmenisthan) etc.
Historians have blundered in not giving due weight to the evidence provided by Sanskrit names pervading over the entire west Asian region. Let us take a contemporary instance. Why did a part of India get named Nagaland even after the end of British rule over India? After all historical traces are wiped out of human memory, will a future age historian be wrong if he concludes from the name Nagaland that the British or some English speaking power must have ruled over India? Why is Portuguese spoken in Goa (part of India), and French in Pondichery (part of India), and both French and English in Canada? Is it not because those people ruled over the territories where their languages are spoken? Can we not then justly conclude that wherever traces of Sanskrit names and traditions exist Indians once held sway? It is unfortunate that this important piece of decisive evidence has been ignored all these centuries.
Another question which should have presented itself to historians for consideration is how could it be that Indian empires could extend in the east as far as Korea and Japan, while not being able to make headway beyond Afghanisthan? In fact land campaigns are much easier to conduct than by sea. It was the Indians who ruled the entire West Asian region from Karachi to Hedjaz and who gave Sanskrit names to those lands and the towns therein, introduce their pantheon of the fire-worship, imparted education and established law and order.
It may be that Arabia itself was not part of the Indian empire until king Vikrama , since Bintoi says that it was king Vikrama who for the first time brought about a radical change in the social, cultural and political life of Arabia. It may be that the whole of West Asia except Arabia was under Indian rule before Vikrama. The latter added Arabia too to the Indian Empire. Or as a remote possibility it could be that king Vikramaditya himself conducted a series of brilliant campaigns annexing to his empire the vast region between Afghanisthan and Hedjaz.
Incidentally this also explains why king Vikramaditya is so famous in history. Apart from the nobility and truthfulness of heart and his impartial filial affection for all his subjects, whether Indian or Arab, as testified by Bintoi, king Vikramaditya has been permanently enshrined in the pages of history because he was the world’s greatest ruler having the largest empire. It should be remembered that only a monarch with a vast empire gets famous in world history. Vikram Samvat (calendar still widely in use in India today) which he initiated over 2000 years ago may well mark his victory over Arabia, and the so called Kutub Minar (Kutub Tower in Delhi), a pillar commemorating that victory and the consequential marriage with the Vaihika (Balkh) princess as testified by the nearby iron pillar inscription.
A great many puzzles of ancient world history get automatically solved by a proper understanding of these great conquests of king Vikramaditya. As recorded by the Arab poet Bintoi, Indian scholars, preachers and social workers spread the fire-worship ceremony, preached the Vedic way of life, manned schools, set up Ayurvedic (healing) centres, trained the local people in irrigation and agriculture and established in those regions a democratic, orderly, peaceful, enlightened and religious way of life. That was of course, a Vedic Hindu way of life.
It is from such ancient times that Indian Kshtriya royal families, like the Pahalvis and Barmaks, have held sway over Iran and Iraq. It is those conquests, which made the Parsees Agnihotris i.e., fire-worshippers. It is therefore that we find the Kurds of Kurdisthan speaking a Sanskritised dialect, fire temples existing thousands of miles away from India, and scores of sites of ancient Indian cultural centres like Navbahar in West Asia and the numerous viharas in Soviet Russia spread throughout the world. Ever since so many viharas are often dug up in Soviet Russia, ancient Indian sculptures are also found in excavations in Central Asia. The same goes for West Asia.
[Note: Ancient Indian sculptures include metal statues of the Hindu deity Ganesh (the elephant headed god); the most recent find being in Kuwait].
Unfortunately these chapters of world history have been almost obliterated from public memory. They need to be carefully deciphered and rewritten. When these chapters are rewritten they might change the entire concept and orientation of ancient history.
In view of the overwhelming evidence led above, historians, scholars, students of history and lay men alike should take note that they had better revise their text books of ancient world history. The existence of Hindu customs, shrines, Sanskrit names of whole regions, countries and towns and the Vikramaditya inscriptions reproduced at the beginning are a thumping proof that Indian Kshatriyas once ruled over the vast region from Bali to Baltic and Korea to Kaaba in Mecca, Arabia at the very least.
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570-632: Lifetime of Mohammed, preacher of the Quraysh Bedoin tribe, founder of Islam. Begins to preach in Mecca, calling for an end to the "demons and idols" of Arab religion and conversion to the ways of the one God, Allah.
Reference:
http://www.hindutva.org/AnwarShaikh/Reviews/ISLAM.html
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[GuestBook by TheGuestBook.com] Review on Anwar Shaikh's ISLAM: The Arab National MovementBy Bhagawandas P. LathiFrom: India Post
AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF ISLAMThis scholarly critique of Islam, written by Anwar Shaikh, an Urdu poet and an Islamic theologian from Pakistan, now residing in Great Britain, is the most riveting book on Islam that I ever read. Generally speaking, critical books exposing the truth about Islam are not easy to find because the author immediately earns a fatwa on his life. Anwar Shaikh, who was once a pious Muslim, has a dubious honor of being a fatwaee (who is under a fatwa). Shaikh was trained to be an Islamic cleric (Mullah), but along the way he discovered the sad truth about Islam, which greatly disillusioned him. Ever since, he has been writing about Islam for his co-religionists to awake them to the truth about Islam. This book will shock many, who have been brought up on the constant Mantra of Hindu Gurus that all religions teach the same (nice) things, etc. It will force them to have a first-hand look at the primary Islamic sources. Hindus (and Muslims too) would do well to look at the Quran (and the Hadis) to discover the truth about Islam for themselves. This book demonstrates the awesome power of brainwashing which can easily overpower natural human decency, compassion, and reasoning ability. It explains how decent people can do horrible things to other innocent humans without any remorse and feel it as a duty commanded by God. It helps in understanding the blood-soaked Islamic history and the puzzling behavior of Muslims all over the world in general, and on Indian subcontinent in particular. It explains what makes Islam tick. The main thesis of Shaikh in his own words is "Islam has caused more damage to the national dignity and honor of Non-Arab Muslims than any other calamity, yet they believe that this faith is the ambassador of equality and human love. This is a fiction which has been presented as a fact with an unparalleled skill. The Islamic love of mankind is a myth of even greater proportion. Hatred of non-Muslims is the pivot of the Islamic existence. It not only declares all dissidents as the denizens of hell but also seeks to ignite a permanent fire of tension between Muslims and non- Muslims; it is far more lethal than Karl Marx's idea of social conflict." He further states that "Islam does not qualify as a religion. It is an instrument for Arabs to colonize the world in the name of Islam. Moreover, it has succeeded remarkably well in brainwashing non-Arab Muslims, who have divested themselves of all pride for their own heritage, ancestry, language, dress and customs. They have no loyalty to their motherland for being devoid of national honor. Indeed, Muslims take pride in vandalizing their ancient heritage from the pagan era to adore the Arab sanctity, superiority and supremacy. Its spring is the mythical intercessory Power of the Prophet Muhammad. This psychological paralysis caused the decline of great Asian nations such as India, Egypt and Iran, which once constituted as the great gushers of civilization but now rank as members of the "Third World" for losing their national identity and zest under the influence of Islam." The book opens with a perceptive statement "Islam is an offshoot of the Semitic culture, which is an expression of man's aggressive behavior." All the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have conducted repeated genocide in the name of their revealed religions. In revealed religions, God reveals His will and the only Truth to mankind through his agent, the Prophet, or the Son. There is no scope for dissent because the final word is contained in the revelation. Hence, official dogmas, blasphemy, heretics and massacres are inevitable. The author believes the concept of revelation is the pivot of Semitic culture. The tradition of Semitic chiefs to claim as God's representative, viceroy goes back to mythical times well before 3000 years. This tradition was maintained masterfully by assigning to the deity incredible powers and attributes to frighten people into submission. Thus, the king could do anything in the name of revelation without much danger of rebellion. God's messenger is God's servant in name only. In practice, he is God's superior. Basically, revelation is nothing but a tool of dominance. The two Prophets, Moses and Muhammad used this device of revelation with great skill to their advantage. A prophet desperately wants to be loved and adored as God but without being called so. A prophet's urge of dominance is much stronger than that of a secular suzerain; a prophet wants to become immortal and wants to command people from the grave and desires to be worshipped exclusively. Muhammad even warns people that he was the last prophet, and any prophet after him would be an impostor. However, to be remembered and loved after his death, he must have a devoted band of followers. This is why a prophet also has to be a national leader, openly or discretely. Every person who seeks dominance as a prophet through the device of revelation creates a god of his own, and when another person aspires to be a prophet he has to demolish the god of his competitor and erect the image of new god to establish his Prophethood to operate the device of revelation. This truth is well illustrated by the examples of Assur (of Shalmanester III), Marduk (national god of Babylonia), Yahweh (of Moses) and Allah (of Muhammad). The Author then analyzes Moses' prophethood to show how it follows exactly this pattern. Then he analyzes Mohammed's claim in details. Mohammed's religion was named Islam and his God was Allah. Muhammad claimed that all earlier prophets (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus) were Muslims, whose teachings were corrupted by their followers. So he adopted most of the Jewish principles and practices with a view to renovating the old religion of God. He made great effort to convert Jews. In earlier part of the Quran, Jews are eulogized and treated with lavish praise, even making Jerusalem, the KIBLA. Mohammed adored Abraham, the common ancestor of the Jews and the Arabs. When the Jews ignored his loving approach, they were damned (in later part of the Quran) with the apostolic wrath: "God has cursed them for their unbelief." Jerusalem was demoted as the Kibla of the believers and Kaaba, the Arab sanctuary, was bestowed this honor. The policy of ethnic cleansing (of banishing and slaughtering Jews) was adopted. Now the Prophet consciously started elevating Islam above Judaism and Arabs above Jews. Bible declares (Genesis 17-18) that God made an everlasting covenant with Isaac (the Jewish patriarch), but now the Quran says (Cow:115) that the God made covenant with Abraham and Ishmael (the Arab patriarch). So, earlier Jews were the God's chosen people, now the Arabs are the chosen people. Thus, among all people of the world, God chose two Semitic tribes, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael (the two sons of Abraham) as the best. Among these two tribes He chose the descendants of Ishmael (the Arabs) as the best. Among Arabs, God chose Quresh (Mohammed's tribe) as the best people, and from this clan He chose Muhammad as the best of all men. On the day of judgment, Muhammad (and nobody else) would occupy the right-hand side of God's throne with a power of intercession ( Waseela) to forgive sins and act as a medium to paradise (Christians make the same claim for Jesus). The portrait of Allah as seen from the Quran is not a pretty one. He resembles more a Mafia don than a loving and caring father. Allah says that He has created man for no purpose but worship and adore Him (The Scatterers:55). Every possible sin can be pardoned, but Shirk (worshipping anything besides Allah) is the only unpardonable sin in the eyes of Allah. Allah sings His own glory that there is no God but He, He is the King, all-holy, all- peaceable, all-faithful, all-preserver, all-mighty, all-compeller, all-sublime, all-wise, all-forgiving, all-merciful, and so on. The unbelievers in general, and idolaters in particular, are the filth of the earth, and must be destroyed by whatever means, fair or foul. God says in the Quran "Then when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them, and prepare an ambush for each of them,.... Those who disbelieve our revelations, We (God) shall expose them to the fire.... As often as their skins are consumed, We shall exchange them for fresh skins (and burn again and again) that they may taste the torment.... Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a fierce slaughter.... Idolaters and their gods are fuel of hell.... The fire is the reward of Allah's enemy, payment for denying Our revelation.... Disbelievers are an open enemy to you,.... Murder those disbelievers.... and let them find harshness in you,... The idolaters only are unclean,... Those who won't accept Islam are to be killed. When you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until you have made a great slaughter among them.... How many populations have we destroyed.... Humiliate the non-Muslims.... These are just samples of the Allah's threats to his children for disobeying and disbelieving Him. But are the unbelievers (kafirs) so vile as to deserve the Allah's wrath. No! Allah preordains who shall be a believer and who shall not. He says so in many places (none can be believer except by the will of Allah....). Allah says that He has Himself led unbelievers astray. He has deliberately put them---complete with their obstinate unbelief, their scheming and treachery---in the way of believers so as to test the believers. In other words, the believers will have to fight them, they must fight them---till the unbelievers submit (accept Islam) or they are exterminated. How interesting! Allah creates unbelievers (kafirs) by his will and then visits them with the most terrible vengeance for disbelieving Him. Poor kafirs! While on this earth the believers humiliate, torment, and then slaughter them. When they are dead, Allah tortures them for eternity. And all this, not because kafirs want to disbelieve Allah, but because Allah wants them to disbelieve Him and wants then as targets for practice by His believers. Surely, this no-win situation of kafirs must have caused many people to become Muslims. Of course, the Muslims fully believe all this to be the word of God. This is why the author observes "Revelation is the greatest medium of brainwashing because this is the agent of faith, which shuts down all doors of reasoning. The Author wonders about such a jealous, vengeful, cruel, unstable, and unjust God who desires constant worship from man. "Is worship really noblest desire? In fact it is the lowest wish a being can have because it is the worst form of flattery. Someone who wants to be praised all the time is a maniac who has lost all sense of decency. He is a danger to his own dignity as well as to the self-respect of those who are required to creep, crawl, and cry before him. Desire for praise is a human weakness, and urge of dominance happens to be its fountain. The concept of Allah as all- powerful, Absolute and totally independent is negated by the Quranic depiction of Allah as desperate for being loved and worshipped. He curses and swears at the unbelievers. He mocks and misleads them and threatens them with the most sadistic punishment of flaming hell, and also bribes them with paradise full of beautiful virgins. He repeatedly asserts that He is the most Terrible Avenger and His retributive punishment knows no bound. He hates those who do not prostrate before Him and recommends their slaughter until they are wiped out or submit to His will." The author asks, " Is it really the character of true God? He cannot be the Creator. If He were, He would have created the man to obey Him because praise, worship, and submission are his greatest desires, whose unfulfilment makes Him so unhappy and ruffled. If He cannot make Himself happy, how can He have the ability to make other people happy? Especially, when His happiness solely depends upon the deeds of man, He cannot be God." What is He then? The author claims that it is not Allah who created Muhammad, it is Muhammad who created Allah in the tradition of revelation discussed earlier. Allah is a factotum (handyman) of Muhammad and does whatever Muhammad wants from Him. Allah tells believers not to walk in front of the Prophet or raise voice above that of the Prophet. Allah tells the believers how to enter the house of the Prophet, how not to stay there, and not to indulge in idle talk when they are in his house. The Prophet was surely capable of giving such instructions. Even in such fundamental spiritual matter of Kibla, Muhammad wants it to be changed from Jerusalem to Kaaba, Allah does it. Muhammad says that the previous divine books Torah and Bible had been corrupted, but God has guaranteed the integrity of the Quran. Is it not amazing that God did not think it fit to protect His other books, only the Quran! Why? It is the same thing with the tradition of God to guide every generation through his prophets such as Adam, Noah, Joseph, Moses, etc. Now, suddenly Allah changed his mind. He made Muhammad the last prophet. No more prophets after him, only the impostors. Although Allah declares that no man can change the word of God (Cattle:30), Allah allows Muhammad to be above His laws. A Muslim is allowed four wives simultaneously, but Muhammad was allowed more wives (He had nine). A Muslim must be equitable to all his wives, but the Prophet can suspend any of them. Ayesha, one of the Prophet's wife was displeased when the Prophet was taking yet another wife (Khaula bint Halo). Then suddenly Allah revealed to Muhammad that " You may suspend any of your previous wives that you please". Poor Ayesha realized her predicament and capitulated saying "Allah hurries in pleasing you." Another wife Hafza found the Prophet in her bed with another woman (Marya). That was Hafza's day to be in bed with the Prophet according to the rotation system. She was mad, and the Prophet promises her not to transgress again. But immediately Allah sends revelation that the Prophet is absolved of any oath (66.1) so that he is free to break his promise. We see this again and again in the Quran that God makes or changes laws to suit the Prophet. The only function of Allah seems to be to secure the pleasure of Muhammad. The true Creator and all-powerful God will not dispense or bend his laws to please a man or legalize his actions. According to the author, this clearly shows that Allah is Mohammed's creation and Allah's duty is to give supernatural sanctity to Mohammed's words and deeds. Observe: Revelations are received by Muhammad for the benefit of Muhammad. Moreover, these revelations cannot be independently verified because only Muhammad (and nobody else) can receive them. If any one so claims, he is a heretic whose punishment is death. Thus, Muhammad is the Judge, the jury and the executioner. Even a banana republic has better checks and balances in its constitution. We all accept the cardinal principle of the modern science that a Truth must be independently verifiable by anyone who is willing to take the trouble. But Islam (indeed every revealed religion, including Judaism and Christianity) shuts its door to any verification of its claims. It is also clear that though the Quran in the beginning treats Muhammad as Human, eventually, like Moses, Mohammed appears as God's superior. A person does not rank as a believer until he loves the Prophet more than his father, his children and all mankind. Muhammad is as great as Allah because the former like the latter, has 99 attributes. Obedience to Muhammad becomes as compulsory as to Allah and gradually the Prophet shares authority with Allah. On the last day of judgment, the criterion of judgment shall not be the quality of deeds but who has loved the Prophet most. All unbelievers will go to hell with unspeakable torture for eternity even if they led virtuous life. But any murderer, rapist, thug, etc., who ever mentioned Mohammed's name affectionately even once in their life-time and believed in his Prophethood would go to paradise. This is in reality Shirk (worshipping others with Allah), which is unpardonable sin. According to the author, this exposes the true nature of revelation, that is, it serves the tool of dominance-seeker who wants to be loved and worshipped by his fellow men by projecting himself as God indirectly. Although idolatry deserves hell in Islam, Muslims vied with one another in gathering Prophet's (trimmed) hair, nails as divine objects. If this is not idolatry, what is? The author makes a convincing argument that the prophet was in reality an Arab national leader aiming at establishing a system of Arab imperialism. This he does by shifting the God's covenant from Isaac (Jews) to Ishmael (Arabs), by shifting the Kibla from Jerusalem to Kaaba, by making Quresh (Mohammed's tribe) as the God's chosen tribe (Moses had declared Jews as the chosen people). Moses created Jewish nation in the name of Yahweh. Muhammad created Muslim nation in the name of Allah. Sahih Al Bokhari volume 8 says " Even the most virtuous and capable non Arab Muslim cannot legitimately rule. This exposes the racial nature of Islam and the much-vaunted Islamic principles of equality and democracy a myth." The Arabs have acquired the status of a nucleus whereas the non-Arab Muslims have gladly become their satellites in the hope of gaining paradise. The Prophet says that he will not open the gates of paradise to those Muslims who are not friendly with the Arabs (Sahih Tirmizi, vol. 2, pp. 835,840). The author marvels at how Muslims of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and African origin deny nationality of their own.... They have no national histories... and cling to the Arab history, which they call the "Islamic history" for having some kind of identity, no matter how inferior. The author believes that to ensure victory of his nationalism, the Prophet used a two-pronged strategy of "stick and carrot". Stick (eternal torture of hell) for those who do not follow him and carrot (eternal pleasure of heaven with most beautiful virgins) for those who follow him. He also formulated the doctrine of Jihad (fighting against unbelievers) for taking over their country, personal possessions and women, and subjugating them to Arabian hegemony. The Quran says " God has bought from the believers their selves against the gift of paradise.... They kill and get killed." If a Muslim soldier wins, his life becomes paradise on this earth because of the booty and plunder he receives by way of wealth and women. If he is killed, he goes straight to the paradise. What a philosophical temptation to murder and pillage! Since Jihad is against the unbelievers, the Prophet created unlimited opportunities for holy wars by declaring all religions false and ungodly. The Quran says " And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted...." (3.85). the Prophet declared that he was commanded (by Allah) to fight against people ceaselessly until they confessed that their was no god but Allah and Muhammad was his messenger. Author further states that these holy wars were, in fact, the wars of national ambition and gives several examples of wanton cruelties of the Prophet, who also emphasizes that "war is deceit" (Sahih Al Bokhari, vol. 4). Thus, the author says "one can see Islam is not a message of mercy but a secular code like all other contemporary codes. To perpetuate opportunities for war to keep the Mujaheddin (warriors of Allah) on war footing, Islam is based on the hatred of non-Muslims." He then goes on to give many quotes from the Quran to buttress his argument about hate mongering such as "Muslims must wage a struggle against the non-Muslims and be harsh with them ... Slay the idolaters wherever you find them... God has cursed the unbelievers and prepared a blaze for them, and so on. One is amused at the description of heaven and hell. In heaven, a believer gets to enjoy 70 divinely beautiful virgins (Houris) with swelling breasts which are round and horizontal (not drooping). To enjoy these houries every faithful will be given the virility of 100 men. Moreover, this joy is for ever (eternity). The author reminds here that Jihad (the holy war) is a duty laid on the believers to destroy the unbelievers in return for paradise. This is what made people believe that the reward of Jihad , i.e., killing and robbing the non-Muslims in the name of Allah is paradise. Without the expectation of such a reward, Muslims would not have fought with half the zeal that they displayed in eradicating the non-Muslims. To highlight the effect of paradisiac delight, the Prophet narrates the doleful plight of hell in contradistinction. For instance, nonbelievers will be tortured by burning their skins, given new skins to burn again and again and again. They will have to drink boiling water, that tears their bowels asunder, etc. Author then dissects the political claims of Islam such as the Islam offers democracy. Not true! The first four rulers (Caliphs) were appointed. After the battle of Karbala, the Islamic Caliphate became a dynastic rule or kingship. Islamic claim that the rule of the first four Caliphs was a golden period of Islam is also not true. Of the four, only Abu Bakr died naturally. The other three were assassinated. The pillaged wealth and the abducted daughters and sisters of the foreign nations (Egypt and Iran were the earliest victims) lent the golden touch to this Arab era. They claim that Islam is a socialistic system. Nonsense. Islam openly declares that Allah makes king whom he likes, and gives wealth to a person he chooses. They say that Islam is a religion of brotherhood. Thousand times no! Islamic hatred for non-Muslims makes Islam the opponent of human rights. This is the reason that one cannot find many non-Muslims in Muslim countries. A Muslim cannot be executed for murdering a non-Muslim. Muslims can have a mosque in the holiest places of Hinduism, but nobody can build a temple, a church, or a synagogue in Mecca. Association of Muslim with a non-Muslim is forbidden by the Quran, and the membership of the United Nations by all Muslim nations is un-Islamic. What a model of international brotherhood it is!" They say that Islam is a religion of love and peace. A million times no! Islam glorifies violence and sanctifies murder and pillage of the non-Muslims and abduction of their women for spreading the name of Allah, who calls himself the Most Merciful, yet he sanctions the basest form of cruelties to those humans, who do not acknowledge Him as the Divine. Murder, rape, pillage, abduction, etc., are the worst form of moral vices, yet Allah adores them as virtues for the Crusaders (Mujaheddins) who subjugate the non- Muslims to the yoke of Islam. One is baffled by such a morality which has been invented to initiate aggression." So far the response of the Muslim world is hand-wringing, cursing, death threats, vituperation and a fatwa on the Shaikh. No refutation of his claims. They seem to have no arguments to refute Shaikh's impeccable scholarship. Islam: The Arab National Movement101 pp. Paperback Principality Publishers, Cardiff, Great Britain Distributor: A. Ghosh Publisher, 5740 W. Little York, Suite 216, Houston TX 77091, $ 7.50 Copyrights © 2000-2010 Anwar Shaikh. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the publisher.
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Aditi Chaturvedi
Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia - Part 1
Many centuries before prophet Muhammad and the destructive advent of Islam, Arabia or Arabistan was an extremely rich and glorious center of Vedic civilization. In this article, I will prove to you point by point that pre-Islamic Arabia was in fact a flourishing civilization which revered Vedic culture.
It is the prophet Muhammad and the followers of Islam who are fully responsible for the dissemination and destruction of this once glorious culture.
In learning about this most ancient heritage, let's begin with the word Arabistan itself. Arabistan is derived from the original Sanskrit term Arvasthan which means The Land of Horses. Since time immemorial proponents of the Vedic culture used to breed exceptional horses in this region. Thus eventually the land itself began to be called Arva (Horses) -Sthan (place). The people who lived in this land were called Semitic. Semitic comes from the Sanskrit word Smritic. Arabs followed the ancient Vedic Smritis such as Manu-Smriti as their revered religious guides and thus they were identified as Smritic which has been corrupted into Semitic.
At that time the Uttarapath (Northern Highway) was the international highway to the North of India. It was via Uttarapath that Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries drew their spiritual, educational and material sustenance from India. Besides, this Sea-links were formed with India at least 800 years before the advent of Islam. Basra was the ancient gateway to India because it was at this port that the Arab lands recieved Indian goods and visitors. At that time the spoken language was Sanskrit, which later dwindled into the local variation that we now call Arabic. The proof of this is that thousands of words that were derived from Sanskrit still survive in Arabic today. Here is a sampling of some:
Sanskrit Arabic English
Sagwan Saj Teakwood
Vish Besh Poison
Anusari Ansari Follower
Shishya Sheikh Disciple
Mrityu Mout Death
Pra-Ga-ambar Paigambar One from heaven
Maleen Malaun Dirty or soiled
Aapati Aafat Misfortune
Karpas Kaifas Cotton
Karpur Kafur Camphor
Pramukh Barmak Chief
Even various kinds of swords were referred to as Handuwani, Hindi, Saif-Ul-Hind, Muhannid and Hinduani. The Sanskrit Astronomical treatise Brahma-Sphuta-Siddhanta in Arabic translation is known as Sind-Hind, while another treatise Khanda-Khadyaka was called Arkand. Mathematics itself was called Hindisa .
The Arabs derived technical guidance in every branch of study such as astronomy, mathematics and physics from India. A noted scholar of history, W.H. Siddiqui notes:
"The Arab civilization grew up intensively
as well as extensively on the riches of
Indian trade and commerce. Nomadic Arab
tribes became partially settled communities
and some of them lived within walled towns practised agriculture and commerce, wroteon wood and stone, feared the gods and honored the kings."
Some people wrongly believe that Arabs used the word Hindu as a term of contemptuous abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people of pre-Islamic Arabia held Hinduism in great esteem as evidenced from the fact that they would endearingly call their most attractive and favourite daughters as Hinda and Saifi Hindi. The fact that Arabs regarded India as their spiritual and cultural motherland long before the damaging influence of Islam is corroborated by the following poem which mentions each one of the four Vedas by name: (The English translation is in black)
"Aya muwarekal araj yushaiya nohaminar HIND-eWa aradakallahamanyonaifail jikaratun"
"Oh the divine land of HIND (India)(how) very blessed art thou!Because thou art the chosenof God blessed with knowledge"
"Wahalatijali Yatun ainana sahabiakha-atun jikra Wahajayhi yonajjalur-rasu minal HINDATUN "
"That celestial knowledge which likefour lighthouses shone in suchbrilliance - through the (utterances of)Indian sages in fourfold abundance."
"Yakuloonallaha ya ahal araf alameenkullahumFattabe-u jikaratul VEDA bukkunmalam yonajjaylatun"
"God enjoins on all humans,follow with hands downThe path the Vedas with his divineprecept lay down."
"Wahowa alamus SAMA wal YAJURminallahay TanajeelanFa-e-noma ya akhigo mutiabay-anYobassheriyona jatun"
"Bursting with (Divine) knowledgeare SAM &YAJUR bestowed on creation,Hence brothers respect andfollow the Vedas, guides to salvation"
"Wa-isa nain huma RIG ATHAR nasayhinKa-a-KhuwatunWa asant Ala-udan wabowa masha -e-ratun"
"Two others, the Rig and Athar teach usfraternity, Sheltering under theirlustre dispels darkness till eternity"
This poem was written by Labi-Bin-E- Akhtab-Bin-E-Turfa who lived in Arabia around 1850 B.C. That was 2300 years before Mohammed!!! This verse can be found in Sair- Ul-Okul which is an anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. It was compiled in 1742 AD under order of the Turkish Sultan Salim.
That the Vedas were the religious scriptures to which the Arabs owed allegiance as early as 1800 B.C. proves not only the antiquity of the Vedas but also the existence of Indian rule over the entire region from the Indus to the Mediterranean, because it is a fact of history that the religion of the ruler is practised by his subjects.
Vedic culture was very much alive just before the birth of Muhammad. Again let's refer to the Sair-Ul-Okul. The following poem was written by Jirrham Bintoi who lived 165 years before the prophet Muhammed. It is in praise of India's great King Vikramaditya who had lived 500 years before Bintoi. (The English translation is in red).
"Itrasshaphai SantulBikramatul phehalameen KarimunBihillahaya SamiminelaMotakabbenaran BihillahaYubee qaid min howaYaphakharu phajgal asarinahans Osirim BayjayholeenYaha sabdunya Kanateph natephibijihalin Atadari Bilala masaurateenphakef Tasabahu. Kaunni eja majakaralhadawalhada Achimiman, burukan, Kad, Toluhowatastaru Bihillaha yakajibainanabaleykulle amarenaPhaheya jaunabil amaray Bikramatoon"- (Sair-ul-Okul, Page 315)
"Fortunate are those who were bornduring King Vikram's reign, he wasa noble generous, dutiful ruler devotedto the welfare of his subjects. But atthat time, We Arabs oblivious of divinitywere lost in sensual pleasures. Plotting& torture were rampant. The darkness ofignorance had enveloped our country.Like the lamb struggling for its lifein the cruel jaws of a wolf, we Arabswere gripped by ignorance. The wholecountry was enveloped in a darkness asintense as on a New moon night. But thepresent dawn & pleasant sunshine ofeducation is the result of the favor ofthat noble king Vikram whose benevolencedid not lose sight of us foreigners as wewere. He spread his sacred culture amongstus and sent scholars from his own landwhose brilliance shone like that of the sunin our country. These scholars & preceptorsthrough whose benevolence we were once againmade aware of the presence of god, introducedto his secret knowledge & put on the road totruth, had come to our country to initiate usin that culture & impart education."
Thus we can see that Vedic religion and culture were present in Pre-Islamic Arabia as early as 1850 B.C., and definitely present at the time of Mohammed's birth.
In his book Origines, Volumes 3 & 4", Sir W. Drummond adds:
"Tsabaism was the universal language of mankind when Abraham received his call, their doctrines were probably extended all over the civilized nations of Earth."
Tsabaism is merely the corruption of the word Shaivism which is Vedic religion. On page 439 of this book, Sir Drummond mentions some of gods of pre-Islamic Arabs, all of which were included in the 360 idols that were consecrated in the Kaba shrine before it was raided and destroyed by Muhammad and his followers. Here are some of the Vedic deities and their original Sanskrit names:
Arabic Sanskrit English
Al-Dsaizan Shani Saturn
Al-Ozi or Ozza Oorja Divine energy
Al-Sharak Shukra Venus
Auds Uddhav -
Bag Bhagwan God
Bajar Vajra Indra's thunderbolt
Kabar Kuber God of wealth
Dar Indra King of gods
Dua Shara Deveshwar Lord of the gods
Habal Bahubali Lord of strength
Madan Madan God of love
Manaph Manu First Man
Manat Somnath Lord Shiv
Obodes Bhoodev Earth
Razeah Rajesh King of kings
Saad Siddhi God of Luck
Sair Shree Goddess of wealth
Sakiah Shakrah Indra
Sawara Shiva-Eshwar God Shiva
Yauk Yaksha Divine being
Wad Budh Mercury
The Kaba temple which was misappropriated and captured by Muslims was originally an International Vedic Shrine. The ancient Vedic scripture Harihareswar Mahatmya mentions that Lord Vishnu's footprints are consecrated in Mecca. An important clue to this fact is that Muslims call this holy precint Haram which is a deviation of the Sanskrit term Hariyam, i.e. the precint of Lord Hari alias Lord Vishnu. The relevant stanza reads:
"Ekam Padam GayayantuMAKKAYAANTU DwitiyakamTritiyam SthapitamDivyam Muktyai Shuklasya Sannidhau"
The allusion is to the Vamana incarnation of Lord Vishnu whose blessed feet were consecrated at three holy sites, namely Gaya, Mecca and Shukla Teertha. Worshipping such carved, holy foot impressions is a holy Vedic custom which convert Muslims are inadvertently perpetuating. But in doing this they delude themselves and mislead others that these foot-impressions which are on reverential display in several mosques and tombs around the world are in fact Muhammad's own. There are several snags in this argument. Firstly worshipping a foot -impression amounts to idolatry and should therefore be taboo for a true Muslim. Secondly Muhhamad disclaimed having performed any miracles. Therefore there can be no foot-impression of his on stone. Thirdly foot-impressions must always be in pairs like shoes. Yet in most of these shrines, it is usually a single footprint which suggests that Muhammad walked on only one foot. Another question that crops up is whether the foot-impression is of the same size and foot in all the shrines. The fact appears to be that when the Vedic Kaba shrine in Mecca was invaded by Muhammad, the pairs of foot impressions of Vedic deities there were plundered and later traded to the gullible and devout as Muhammad's own footprints for some favour, reward or personal gain by unscrupulous muslims. That is why they are single and not in pairs.
Figure 1.
The Shiv Ling at The Kaba. It was broken in seven
places and now is held together by a silver band.
The Black Stone which is the Shiv Emblem (also known as Sange Aswad which is a corrupted form of the Sanskrit word Sanghey Ashweta--meaning non-white stone) still survives in the Kaba as the central object of Islamic veneration. All other Vedic Idols could be found buried in the precincts or trampled underfoot in labyrinthine subterranean corridors if archaeological excavations are undertaken. The Black Stone has been badly mutilated, its carved base has disappeared and the stone itself is broken at seven places. It's parts are now held together by a silver band studded with silver nails. It lies half buried in the South Eastern portion of the Kaba Wall (Refer to Figure 1). The term Kaba itself is a corruption of the Sanskrit word Gabha (Garbha + Graha) which means Sanctum.
In addition, in the inscriptions from Hajja and its neighborhood was found a votive vessel dedicated by members of two tribes called Rama and Somia. Rama and Soma are Vedic deities, Rama is of the Solar dynasty and Soma is of the Lunar Dynasty. The moon god was called by various names in pre-Islamic times , one of them was Allah. Allah had 3 children, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat. Al-Lat and Al-Uzza were both feminine deities. Alla is another name for the Hindu goddess Durga. It is obvious that the goddess Al-Lat was Alla (Durga) and Al-Uzza was Oorja (energy or life force also known as Shakti). Manat was none other than Somnath which is another name for Lord Shiva. One significant point to note that Soma in Sanskrit means Moon and Nath means Lord. Thus the Kaba itself was dedicated to the Moon God Somnath alias Shiv and the word Somnath was corrupted to Manat. The famous Black Stone is none other than the ShivLing of Makkeshwar alias Mecca. Lord Shiva is always shown with a crescent Moon on his head and every Shiva temple is supposed to have a sacred water spring representing the Ganges. The Crescent Moon pinnacle of the Kaba and the Zamzam spring (actually Zamza from Ganga) are irrefutable testaments to the Vedic origins of the Kaba.
Figure 2 below depicts the image of Maqam-E-Ibrahim in the Kaba.
Figure 2.
Maqam-E-Ibrahim or more appropriately the pedestal of Brahma.
Muslims from all over the world pay homage to this shrine. This shrine is actually the pedestal of Brahma. Notice that the word, Ibrahim is actually a corruption of the word, Brahma. The octogonal grill which is a Vedic design, protects the holy footprints which represent the start of the creation nearly 2000 million years ago. Before it was captured by the Muslims it was an international shrine of the Vedic trinity.
In fact the names of the holiest of Muslim cities Mecca and Medina come from the Sanskrit words Makha-Medini which means the land of Fire-Worship. Even the most ancient names of these 2 cities were Mahcorava- which came from Mahadeva (Lord Shiva) and Yathrabn - which came from Yatra-Sthan (place of pilgrimage).
Islam came into being about 1372 years ago. It is well known that over 7500 years ago, at the time of the Mahabharat War, Kurus ruled the world. The scions of that family administered the different regions. Prophet Muhammed himself and his family were adherents of Vedic culture. The Encyclopedia Islamia admits as much when it says: "Muhammed's grandfather and uncles were hereditary priests of the Kaba temple which housed 360 idols!"
According to Arab traditions, Muhammad is a title. We do not know what name his parents had given him. We do however know that the central object of worship which survives at the Kaba today is a Shivling. That was allowed to remain there because that was the faceless family deity of Muhammad's family. One of the original names of Lord Shiv is Mahadev (The Great God) therefore it is entirely possible Muhammad came from Mahadev. This appears fairly certain because the Arabs still have a Mahadevi sect. Moreover the title Mehdi of a Muslim chief is also a malpronounciation of the term Mahadeva. According to Sanskrit etymology the term Muhammad implies 'a person of great inspiration' - 'Mahan Madah yasya assau Muhammadah' In a hostile sense it also implies 'a person of a proud and haughty temperament'.
The Qurayshi tribe into which Mohammed was born was particularly devoted to Allah and and the three children of the Moon God. Therefore when Muhammad decided to create his own Divine religion, he took innumerable aspects of the daily Vedic culture that surrounded him and corrupted them to suit his needs. It was with the advent of the Prophet and Islam that the death-knell of the glorious Arab culture was sounded. With Islam came the flood of destruction, murder, plunder and crime that destroyed the great Vedic heritage of Arabs. The Prophet merely took some existing artefacts and terms and corrupted them so profoundly that no one would be able to discover their actual origins.
In my next article, I will elaborate further on the Vedic Heritage of Arabia.
Note: Works of P.N. Oak and Robert A. Morey have been used to compose this article.
Aditi Chaturvedi
Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia - Part 2
In 570 AD, the year of Muhammad's birth, Arabia was a thriving, rich and varied Vedic culture. Although monotheism in the forms of Christianity and Judaism were known to the people of Arvasthan, they were undeterred in their uncompromising faith to the religion of their ancestors: Hinduism . Every household had an idol of a Hindu god or goddess. There were hundreds of sacred groves, places of pilgrimage, and temples which were sanctuaries containing images of the entire range of Vedic gods. The temples in addition to being the religious focus of the Arabs, were also the cultural centres of learning. It was the temples that were the venues of literary and poetry competitions, of glorious festivals.
The virtues most highly prized by people of Arvasthan were bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, loyalty to one's tribe, and generosity to the needy and the poor. They proudly upheld the value of tolerance in matters of religious practice and belief. The respect they showed towards other people's religions was fully in keeping with their Vedic spiritual tradition.
The status of women was that of pride and equal respect. How could it be otherwise with a people whose chief deity was the goddess Durga (Alla). Women married men of their choice and were financially independent. They were entrepeneurs, artisans, poets and even warriors! Later on Muhammad would marry Khadija, who was not only a wealthy merchant but also in the position to choose her own husband. This clearly demonstrates the level of freedom women enjoyed in Vedic Arabia. Hind, who was the wife of Muhammad's chief enemy Abu Sufyan, herself participated in the battlefield.
Hind opposed Muhammad tooth and nail. She followed her husband to the battlefield and when Abu Sufyan surrendered Mecca to Muhammad without a fight she caught hold of him in the marketplace and cried:
"KILL this fat greasy bladder of lard! What a rotten protector of the people"
When Muhammad tried to baptise her & asked her not to commit adultery , She spat out the bitter words:
"A free woman does not commit adultery!"
How proud this woman was of the rights and privileges that her Vedic society had invested to her!
It was Islam that extinguished the light of knowledge in Vedic Arabia. It is ironic that the man who brought about such darkness himself belonged to the Qurayshi Tribe of Mecca. The Qurayshi were particularly devoted to Allah (Durga) and the famous Shivling of the Kaaba Temple. The fact that the Shivling remains to this day in the Kaaba is solely due to the fact that it happened to be the Qurayshi tribe's faceless Family Deity. As I mentioned before Muhammad's name itself came from Mahadeva, which is another cognate for Lord Shiva. Muhammad's own uncle, Umar-Bin-E-Hassham was a staunch Hindu and fervent devotee of Lord Shiva. He was a renowned poet and wrote many verses in praise of Shiva. One of these has survived on page 235 of Sair-Ul-Okul and reads as follows:
Kafavomal fikra min ulumin Tab asayru
Kaluwan amataul Hawa was Tajakhru
We Tajakhayroba udan Kalalwade-E Liboawa
Walukayanay jatally, hay Yauma Tab asayru
Wa Abalolha ajabu armeeman MAHADEVA
Manojail ilamuddin minhum wa sayattaru
Wa Sahabi Kay-yam feema-Kamil MINDAY Yauman
Wa Yakulum no latabahan foeennak Tawjjaru
Massayaray akhalakan hasanan Kullahum
Najumum aja- at Summa gabul HINDU
which translates as:
The man who may spend his life in sin
and irreligion or waste it in lechery and wrath
If at least he relent and return to
righteousness can he be saved?
If but once he worship Mahadeva with a pure
heart, he will attain the ultimate in spirituality.
Oh Lord Shiva exchange my entire life for but
a day's sojourn in India where one attains salvation.
But one pilgrimage there secures for one all
merit and company of the truly great.
Muhammad's uncle was one of the resident priests of the Shiv temple known as "Kaaba". This sacred sanctum was decorated in an extremely rich and beautiful fashion. The Kaaba was astronomically oriented to face the winds. The minor axis of the rectangular base of the Kaaba was solistically aligned towards summer sunrise and winter sunset. It contained 360 statues of Vedic deities and was a shrine primarily associated with sun worship. The temple was an architectural representation of an interlocking set of theories covering virtually all creation and comprehending chemistry, physics, cosmology, meteorology and medicine. Each wall or corner of the Kaaba was associated with a specific region of the world. Thus this glorious Hindu temple was made to symbolically represent a microcosm of the universe. The Arabs would face east when praying. This representation of a microcosm demonstrated by the eight directional structure was derived from the Tantric pattern (Refer to Figure 1) of Hinduism. Right at the centre of the Kaaba was the octogonal pedestal of Bramha the creator. Today this very pedestal is called Maqam-E-Ibrahim by the Muslims.
Figure 1.
A tantric pattern which defines the structure of Kaaba
However, more significant was the fact that the Kaaba was an extremely rich and ornate temple. On its walls hung innumerable gold plaques commemorating the winners of the annual poetry competition known as the Okaj fair. There were gold, silver and precious gems everywhere. It is no wonder that Muhammad armed with his facade of a new brand of religion set out to capture the immense wealth of the Vedic shrine of Mecca. After plundering the riches of the Kaaba, the wealth enabled him to systematically destroy all traces of the religion that threatened him so directly. It is an indisputable fact that money will make any low criminal devoutly religious in a hurry.
Despite the fact that Muhammad had to destroy all traces of Hinduism in order to make his "new religion" work, he knew that in order to fool people convincingly he would have to borrow from the Vedic culture that surrounded him. Being illiterate he picked out rituals and symbols that he didn't understand and distorted and falsified them for his own ends. Here is a list of these distortions:
1. Muhammad destroyed all 360 idols, but even he could not summon the courage to completely obliterate the Shivling in the Kaaba. He entered the temple and kissed the black stone. The Shivling was so sacred that the man who so detested idol- worship ended up kissing the largest idol in the Kaaba. Later his followers in a fit of piety broke the Shivling and then out of remorse repatched it together again. Today it lies broken at seven places and held together by a silver band studded with silver nails, bearing the name "Sangey Aswad" which came from the Sanskrit Ashwet meaning non-white or black stone.
2. He jumbled up the Sanskrit words Nama and Yaja (which meant "bowing and worshipping" respectively) into a combination word Namaz and used that to describe his prescribed method of prayer.
3. Because the Vedic custom was to pray facing the East, in his hatred for all things Hindu, he directed his followers to pray facing only the west.
4. The method of circling around a shrine seven times in a clockwise direction is an ancient Vedic custom. Muhammad with his lack of originality decided that the 7 ritual perambulations should be retained but again in his hatred of all things Vedic decided the direction of the perambulations should be anti-clockwise.
5. With his phobia of all things Vedic, Muhammad knew that the greatest reminder and threat to his forced brand of religion were the beautiful Vedic idols of Arabic temples. Thus he destroyed every idol he could find and made idol worship the greatest crime for a Muslim. Such a man could never have comprehended how an abstract concept can be conveyed through a symbolic representation in the form of an image. Thus he made all image representation a sin as well.
6. Vedic religion is known for its ancient oral tradition. It is well known that the Vedic culture emphasized oral debate and expression far more than the written word. In adition the oral recitation of Vedic scriptures was always done in a lyrical fashion, utilizing music and thus reaching a height of expression. In fear of this musical tradition Muhammad decided to forbid Music.
7. All Arabic copies of the Koran have the mysterious figure 786 imprinted on them . No Arabic scholar has been able to determine the choice of this particular number as divine. It is an established fact that Muhammad was illiterate therefore it is obvious that he would not be able to differentiate numbers from letters. This "magical" number is none other than the Vedic holy letter "OM" written in Sanskrit (Refer to figure 2). Anyone who knows Sanskrit can try reading the symbol for "OM" backwards in the Arabic way and magically the numbers 786 will appear! Muslims in their ignorance simply do not realise that this special number is nothing more than the holiest of Vedic symbols misread.
Figure 2.
Read from right to left this figure
of OM represents the numbers 786
There are many such instances where the symbols and rituals of Vedic culture were completely distorted and falsified by Muhammad in his bid to "create" his brand new religion. However in his haste to deceive and because of his ignorance and illiteracy, thousands of Vedic symbols still remain. Although they have been distorted beyond imagination, they still remain as solemn reminders of Arabia's glorious Vedic past. They can never be supressed.
In fact the rise of Islam put a full stop to all the previous knowledge of Arabia. The imperialistic message of Islam diverted all energies into raiding, looting and destruction. The incentive to learn and preserve the Vedic wisdom that had thrived in Arabia for so many centuries, was wiped out by the brutal pressure of Islam. Making easy money through loot and massacre was far more appealing than upholding the tenets of ancient knowledge. Gone were the schools, teachers, libraries, poets, artists, philosophers and scholars that had littered the Vedic landscape of Arabia like stars. Everyone had to become a raider if not from choice then for the sake of surviving the absolute intolerance of dissenters, that Islam preached. Thus was the light of learning extinguished in Arabia. All that remained was the Koran, the Kalma and the murderous hatred of anything Non-Muslim.
In my next article I will explore how the Arabs fought to keep the integrity and pride of their Vedic culture alive in the face of the violent, unjust and murderous destruction caused by the followers of Islam.
Note: Works of P.N. Oak, Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Jay Dubashi, Harsh Narain and Ram Swarup have been used to compose this article.
ca 590-671: Lifetime of Saiva saint Nayanar Tirunavukkarasu, born into a farmer family at Amur, now in South Arcot, Tamil Nadu. He writes 312 songs, totalling 3,066 Tirumurai verses. Cleaning the grounds of every temple he visits, he exemplifies truly humble service to Lord Siva. His contemporary, the child-saint Nayanar Sambandar, addresses him affectionately as Appar, "father."
ca 598-665: Lifetime of Brahmagupta, preeminent Indian astronomer, who writes on gravity and sets forth the Hindu astronomical system in his Brahma Sphuta Siddhanta. Two of 25 chapters are on sophisticated mathematics.
ca 600: Religiously tolerant Pallava King Narasinhavarman builds China Pagoda, a Buddhist temple, at the Nagapatam port for Chinese merchants and visiting monks.
ca 610: Muhammed begins prophecies, flees to Mecca in 622.
ca 600-900: Twelve Vaishnava Alvar saints of Tamil Nadu flourish, writing 4,000 songs and poems (assembled in their cannon Nalayira Divya Prabandham) praising Narayana, Rama and narrating the love of Krishna and the gopis.
ca 600: Life of Banabhatta, Shakta master of Sanskrit prose, author of Harshacharita (story of Harsha) and Kadambari.
606: Buddhist Harshavardhana, reigning 606-644, establishes first great kingdom after the Hephtalite invasions, eventually ruling all India to the Narmada River in the South.
(reference: Jihad the Islamic doctrine of permanent war by Suhas Majumdar)
624 Banu Kainuka (Jewish tribe) expelled from Medina
625 Banu Nazir (Jewish tribe) expelled from Medina
627 Banu Kuraizah (Jewish tribe) in Medina exterminated
628 non-Medinese Jewish tribes of Khaiber conquered & forced to pay Jizyah
ca 630: Vagbhata writes Ashtanga Sangraha on ayurveda.
630-34: Chalukya Pulakeshin II becomes Lord of South India by defeating Harshavardhana, Lord of the North.
630-44: Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang (Huan Zang) travels in India, recording voluminous observations. Population of Varanasi is 10,000, mostly Saiva. Nalanda Buddhist university (his biographer writes) has 10,000 residents, including 1,510 teachers, and thousands of manuscripts.
632: Muhammed dies
634-644: reign of Caliph Umar after Muhammed‘s death.
Arab invasion of Sindh started soon after their first two naval expeditions against Thana on the coast of Maharashtra and Broach on the coast of Gujarat repulsed. The expedition against Debal in Sind met the same fate. The leader of the Arab army Mughairah was defeated and killed.Umar decided to send another army by land against Makran which was at that time a part of the kingdom of Sindh, but he was advised by the governor of Iraq that he should think no more of Hind”. reference page 10 , Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders by Sita Ram Goel.
636: first Arab Muslim expedition against Thana near Bombay(after 570 years of trying established the Delhi Sultanate in ca 1206)
636-637: Arab Muslims conquer Byzantine provinces of Palestine and Syria after a six month campaign
637: Arab Muslims defeat the Sassanid empire of Persia which included Iraq, Iran, and Khorasan.
641-45: Arab Muslims conquer Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia.
646-656: reign of Caliph Usman
650: Turkish speaking territories of Inner Mongolia, Bukhara, Tashkand, and Samarkan etc annexed by Arab Muslims.
ca 650: Lifetime of Nayanar Saiva saint Tirujnana Sambandar. Born a brahmin in Tanjavur, he writes 384 songs totalling 4,158 verses that make up the first three books of Tirumurai. At 16, he disappears into the sanctum of Nallur temple, near Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu.
ca 650: More than 60 Chinese monks have traveled to India and her colonies. Four hundred Sanskrit works have been translated into Chinese, 380 survive to the present day.
656-661: reign of Caliph Ali
686-705: Reign of Pallava King Rajasinha. He inherits the stone-carving legacy of Emperor Mahendra and his son, Narasinha, who began the extensive sculptural art in the thriving sea-port of Mahabalipuram.
ca 700: Over the next 100 years the Indonesian island of Bali receives Hinduism from its neighbor, Java.
709: After having marched over North Africa and reached the Atlantic Arab armies cross over into Spain
712: Muslims conquer Sind region (Pakistan), providing base for pillaging expeditions that drain North India's wealth.
Reference: http://www.aryawat.com/heritage/firstmuslim.htm
The first Muslim Aggression in Sindh
When Harsha's rule ended with his death in 641 C.E., an event had taken place in far away Arabia which was to have a deep impact on India and its subsequent history. Needless to state that this was the rise of Islam and the beginning of the Jehad which was to bring Muslim invaders and rule to India from 1194. The very first Muslim attack on India had taken place nearly 500 years earlier in Sindh in the year 715 C.E. These Muslim invaders were Arabs led by Mohammad Bin Qasim. They had displaced Raja Dabir who ruled Sindh from his capital Deval (near modern Karachi).
The actual reason for this invasion was that Raja Dabir was aiding the Iranian (Zoroastrian) princes in trying to overthrow the Arab Rule in Persia. This seems to be a fact as many Sassanian nobles from Iran had taken refuge in Sindh and were plotting for the liberation of their country from the Arab yoke.
But the pretext given by Arab historians for the Arab invasion of Sindh is that Raja Dabir's navy had detained an Arab merchant ship.
To avenge this detention of a merchant ship, the Arabs overran the entire kingdom of Raja Dabir as also the neighbouring kingdom of Mulasthana (Multan). They even unsuccessfully tried to attack Malwa (Malibah in Arab records)!
After this invasion which was limited to Sindh, for a period of 300 years all further Muslim attacks were thwarted by Kings like Raja Bhoja and other Parmara and Gurjara Kings. So although the first Muslim invasion of India took place in Sindh in 715 C.E. the presence of strong Hindu Kingdoms in Central India ruled by Kings like Raja Bhoja in the 7th century C.E. and later the Gurjara Kingdoms, prevented the march of the Arabs into India.
It is not well known that in the period 750 to 850 C.E., the Arabs based in Sindh, had attacked Malwa (called Malibah by the Arabs), but were repulsed by Raja Bhoja and his successors. The later Arabs attacks were repulsed first by the Gurjara rulers and later on the Rajputs who play an important role in Indian history from the 9th century C.E. till the coming of the Muslims in the 12th century. But before we go to the Rajputs, let's look at the scene in Afghanistan in the period 950 C.E.
The Arabs had 300 years before that age, i.e. around 650 C.E., overthrown the Zoroastrian Sassanian rulers of Persia and had managed to wipe off Zoroastrianism as a religion in Iran and Western Afghanistan by converting the population to Islam. It was now the turn of the then frontier provinces of India to face the sword of the Islamic Jehad. In those days, Western Afghanistan comprising the provinces of Heart (whose name is derived from Hari-Rud which is said to be a derivation from the older term Hari-Rudra - two Hindu dieties), Kandahar (the ancient Gandhara of the Mahabharata) was ruled by Sabuktagin a Muslim ruler from a town named Ghazni. He was facing Raja Jaya Pala who ruled from Kubha (modern Kabul) in Eastern Afghanistan. His kingdom comprised the provinces of Kapisa on the western side of the Hindu Kush Ranges and Punjab on the Eastern side. (Incidentally, his kingdom was like that of Ambhi who ruled approximately the same provinces, when Alexander the Great had invaded the area in 330 B.C.E.)
The year 980C.E. marks the beginning of the Muslim invasion into India proper when Sabuktagin attacked Raja Jaya Pal in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is today a Muslim country separated from India by another Muslim country Pakistan. But in 980 C.E. Afghanistan was also a place where the people were Hindus and Buddhists. The name "Afghanistan" comes from "Upa-Gana-stan" which means in Sanskrit "The place inhabited by allied tribes". This was the place from where Gandhari of the Mahabharat came from Gandhar whose king was Shakuni. The Pakthoons are descendants of the Paktha tribe mentioned in Vedic literature. Till the year 980 C.E., this area was a Hindu majority area, till Sabuktagin from Ghazni invaded it and displaced the ruling Hindu king - Jaya Pal Shahi.
The place where Kabul's main mosque stands today was the site of an ancient Hindu temple and the story of its capture is kept alive in Islamic Afghan legend which describes the Islamic hero Sabuktagin who fought with a sword in every hand to defeat the Hindus and destroy their temple to put up a Mosque in its place. (This is not being mentioned here to reclaim the place as a temple. But to record a long forgotten fact that today's Islamic battlefield of the Taliban was once inhabited by Hindus.)
The victory of Sabuktagin pushed the frontiers of the Hindu kingdom of the Shahis from Kabul to behind the Hindu Kush mountains (Hindu Kush is literally "killer of Hindus" - a name given by Mahmud Ghazni to describe the number of Hindus who died on their way into Afghanistan to a life of captivity) . After this setback, the Shahis shifted their capital from Kubha (Kabul) to Udbhandapura (modern Und in NWFP). Sabuktagin's son Mahmud Ghazni, kept up the attacks on the Shahis and captured Und. Subsequently, the Shahis moved their capital to Lahore and later to Kangra in Himachal.
Tirlochan Pal Shahi - the Last Hindu Ruler of Punjab
Three generation of Shahi kings laid down their lives and their kingdom in battling the invaders. Raja Jaya Pal Shahi was followed by his son Anand Pal Shahi who fought a battle with Mahmud near Lahore, but lost as his elephant is said to have run amok within his own army. His son Tirlochan Pal Shahi continued his struggle with the Muslims from Kangra but he too went down fighting when he was treacherously killed when away from the battlefield.
The defeat of the Shahis opened up the Gangetic plains to the Muslims and Mahmud Ghazni repeatedly attacked the main Hindu kingdoms ruled by the Gurjara-Pratiharas and sacked Hindu temples. The main ruler in those days was Rajyapala Pratihara who resisted Mahmud Ghazni's raids, partly successfully. In his last attack on Somnath, Mahmud Ghazni successfully sacked the temple at Prabhasa Patan in Gujarat, but on his way back he was roundly defeated by the Gujar rulers of North Gujarat. Mahmud never came back to India after that. (Refer to the Glory that was Gujar Desha by K.M. Munshi) But these first Muslim raids into India proper had given an ominous indication of what was to come a couple of centuries later in the year 1194 C.E.
But for now, the Muslim rule of the Ghaznivids was established in Kabul, Paktoonistan and in the land of the five rivers - Punjab. Thus after Sindh in 715; Kabul Paktoonistan and Punjab became the next Indian provinces which went under Muslim domination in the period 980 C.E. to 1020 C.E.
Tirlochan Pal Shahi was the last Hindu ruler of Punjab and only after an intermission of 700 years of Muslim rule could the next Hindu ruler - Maharaja Ranjit Singh consolidate Hindu (Sikh) rule after the Moghul rule in Punjab had been weakened by the first blow given to it by the Marathas in 1756 C.E.
Reference: http://www.indialink.com/Forum/Arts-Culture/messages/686.html
The year 980C.E. marks the beginning of the Muslim invasion into India proper when Sabuktagin attacked Raja Jaya Pal in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is today a
Muslim country separated from India by another Muslim country Pakistan. But in 980 C.E. Afghanistan was also a place where the people were Hindus and
Buddhists. The name "Afghanistan" comes from "Upa-Gana-stan" which means in Sanskrit "The place inhabited by allied tribes". This was the place
from where Gandhari of the Mahabharat came from Gandhar whose king was Shakuni. The Pakthoons are descendants of the Paktha tribe mentioned in Vedic
literature. Till the year 980 C.E., this area was a Hindu majority area, till Sabuktagin from Ghazni invaded it and displaced the ruling Hindu king - Jaya Pal Shahi.
The place where Kabul's main mosque stands today was the site of an ancient Hindu temple and the story of its capture is kept alive in Islamic Afghan legend which
describes the Islamic hero Sabuktagin who fought with a sword in every hand to defeat the Hindus and destroy their temple to put up a Mosque in its place. (This is
not being mentioned here to reclaim the place as a temple. But to record a long forgotten fact that today's Islamic battlefield of the Taliban was once inhabited by
Hindus.)
The victory of Sabuktagin pushed the frontiers of the Hindu kingdom of the Shahis from Kabul to behind the Hindu Kush mountains (Hindu Kush is literally "killer of
Hindus" - a name given by Mahmud Ghazni to describe the number of Hindus who died on their way into Afghanistan to a life of captivity) . After this setback, the
Shahis shifted their capital from Kubha (Kabul) to Udbhandapura (modern Und in NWFP). Sabuktagin's son Mahmud Ghazni, kept up the attacks on the Shahis
and captured Und. Subsequently, the Shahis moved their capital to Lahore and later to Kangra in Himachal.
732: French prevent Muslim conquest of Europe, stopping Arabs at Poitiers, France, the NW limit of Arab penetration.
739: Chalukya armies beat back Arab Muslim invasions at Navasari in modern Maharashtra.
ca750-1159: Pala dynasty arises in Bihar and Bengal, last royal patrons of Buddhism, which they help establish in Tibet.
ca 750: Kailasa temple is carved out of a hill of rock at Ellora.
ca 750: Hindu astronomer and mathematician travels to Baghdad, with Brahmagupta's Brahma Siddhanta (treatise on astronomy) which he translates into Arabic, bestowing decimal notation and use of zero on Arab world.
ca 750: Lifetime of Bhavabhuti, Sanskrit dramatist, second only to Kalidasa. Writes Malati Madhava, a Shakta work.
ca 750: Valmiki writes 29,000-verse Yoga Vasishtha.
ca 750: A necklace timepiece, kadikaram in Tamil, is worn by an Emperor (according to scholar M. Arunachalam).
788: Adi Shankara (788-820) is born in Malabar, famous monk philosopher of Smarta tradition who writes mystic poems and scriptural commentaries including Viveka Chudamani, and regularizes ten monastic orders called Dashanami. Preaches Mayavada Advaita, emphasizing the world as illusion and God as the sole Reality.
ca 800: Bhakti revival curtails Buddhism in South India. In the North, Buddha is revered as Vishnu's 9th incarnation.
ca 800: Life of Nammalvar, greatest of Alvar saints. His poems shape the beliefs of Southern Vaishnavas to the present day.
ca 800: Lifetime of Vasugupta, modern founder of Kashmir Saivism, a monistic, meditative school.
ca 800: Lifetime of Auvaiyar, woman saint of Tamil Nadu, great devotee of Lord Ganesha and author of Auvai Kural. She is associated with the Lambika kundalini school. (A second date for Auvaiyar of 200 bce is from a story about Auvaiyar and Saint Tiruvalluvar as siblings. A third Auvaiyar reference is dated at approximately 1000. (Auvaiyar is a Tamil word meaning "old, learned woman;" some believe it may refer to three different persons.)
ca 800: Lifetime of Karaikkal Ammaiyar, one of the 63 Saiva saints of Tamil Nadu. Her mystical and yogic hymns, preserved in the Tirumurai, remain popular to the present day.
ca 825: Nayanar Tamil saint Sundarar is born into a family of Adishaiva temple priests in Tirunavalur in present-day South Arcot. His 100 songs in praise of Siva (the only ones surviving of his 38,000 songs) make up Tirumurai book 7. His Tiru Tondattohai poem, naming the Saiva saints, is the basis for Saint Sekkilar's Periyapuranam.
ca 800: Lifetime of Andal, woman saint of Tamil Nadu. Writes devotional poetry to Lord Krishna, disappears at age 16.
ca 825: Vasugupta discovers the rock-carved Siva Sutras.
846: Vijayalaya reestablishes his Chola dynasty, which over the next 100 years grows and strengthens into one of the greatest South Indian Empires ever known.
ca 850: Shri Vaishnava sect established in Tamil Nadu by Acharya Nathamuni, forerunner of great theologian Ramanuja.
ca 850: Life of Manikkavasagar, Saiva Samayacharya saint, born in Tiruvadavur, near Madurai, into a Tamil brahmin family. Writes famed Tiruvasagam, 51 poems of 656 verses in 3,394 lines, chronicling the soul's evolution to God Siva. Tirupalli-eluchi and Tiruvembavai are classic examples of his innovative style of devotional songs.
875: Muslim conquests extend from Spain to Indus Valley.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_kush.html
Hindu Kush means Hindu Slaughter
By Shrinandan Vyas
All the Encyclopedias and National Geographic agree that Hindu Kush region is a place of Hindu genocide (similar to Dakau and Auschwitz). All the references are given. Please feel free to verify them.
ABSTRACT
All Standard reference books agree that the name 'Hindu Kush' of the mountain range in Eastern Afganistan means 'Hindu Slaughter' or 'Hindu Killer'. History also reveals that until 1000 A.D. the area of Hindu Kush was a full part of Hindu cradle. More likely, the mountain range was deliberately named as 'Hindu Slaughter' by the Moslem conquerors, as a lesson to the future generations of Indians. However Indians in general, and Hindus in particular are completely oblivious to this tragic genocide. This article also looks into the reasons behind this ignorance.
21 References - (Mainly Encyclopedia Britannica & other reference books, National Geographic Magazines and standard history books).
INTRODUCTION
The Hindu Kush is a mountain system nearly 1000 miles long and 200 miles wide, running northeast to southwest, and dividing the Amu Darya River Valley and Indus River Valley. It stretches from the Pamir Plateau near Gilgit, to Iran. The Hindu Kush ranges mainly run thru Afganistan and Pakistan. It has over two dozen summits of more than 23,000 ft in height. Below the snowy peaks the mountains of Hindu Kush appear bare, stony and poor in vegetation. Historically, the passes across the Hindu Kush have been of great military significance, providing access to the northern plains of India. The Khyber Pass constitutes an important strategic gateway and offers a comparatively easy route to the plains of Punjab. Most foreign invaders, starting from Alexander the Great in 327 BC, to Timur Lane in 1398 AD, and from Mahmud of Ghazni, in 1001 AD, to Nader Shah in 1739 AD attacked Hindustan via the Khyber Pass and other passes in the Hindu Kush (1,2,3). The Greek chroniclers of Alexander the Great called Hindu Kush as Parapamisos or Paropanisos (4). The Hindu name of the Hindu Kush mountains was 'Paariyaatra Parvat'(5).
EARLY HISTORY OF HINDU KUSH REGION (UP TO 1000 AD)
History of Hindu Kush and Punjab shows that two major kingdoms of Gandhaar & Vaahic Pradesh (Balkh of Bactria) had their borders extending far beyond the Hindu Kush. Legend has it that the kingdom of Gandhaar was established by Taksha, grandson of Bharat of Ayodhya (6). Gandhaar's borders extended from Takshashila to Tashkent (corruption of 'Taksha Khand') in the present day Uzbekistan. In the later period, Mahabharat relates Gaandhaari as a princess of Gandhaar and her brother, Shakuni as a prince and later as Gandhaar's ruler.
In the well documented history, Emperor Chandragupt Maurya took charge of Vaahic Pradesh around 325 BC and then took over Magadh. Emperor Ashok's stone tablets with inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic are still found at Qandahar (corruption of Gandhaar?) and Laghman in eastern Afganistan(3). One such stone tablet, is shown in the PBS TV series 'Legacy with Mark Woods' in episode 3 titled 'India: The Spiritual Empire'. After the fall of Mauryan empire, Gandhaar was ruled by Greeks. However some of these Greek rulers had converted to Buddhism, such as Menander, known to Indian historians as Milinda, while some other Greeks became followers of Vishnav sects (Hinduism)(7). Recent excavations in Bactria have revealed a golden hoard which has among other things a figurine of a Greek goddess with a Hindu mark on its forehead (Bindi) showing the confluence of Hindu-Greek art (8). Later Shaka and KushaaN ruled Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh. KushaaN emperor Kanishka's empire stretched from Mathura to the Aral Sea (beyond the present day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Krygzystan)(9).
Kanishaka was a Buddhist and under KushaaN influence Buddhism flourished in Gandhaar. Two giant sandstone Buddhas carved into the cliffs of Bamian (west of Kabul) date from the Kushan period. The larger Buddha (although defaced in later centuries by Moslem invaders) is about 175 ft tall (10,11). The Kushan empire declined by 450 AD. The Chinese traveller Hsuan-Tsang (Xuan-zang) travelled thru the region in 7 th century AD and visited many Buddhist religious centers (3) including Hadda, Ghazni, Qonduz, Bamian (3,10,11), Shotorak and Bagram. From the 5 th thru 9 th cenury AD Persian Sasanians and Hepthalites ruled Gandhaar. During their rule Gandhaar region was again influenced by Hinduism. The Hindu kings (Shahiya) were concentrated in the Kabul and Ghazni areas. The last Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, Bhimapal was killed in 1026 AD. The heroic efforts of the Hindu Shahiya Kings to defend the northwestern gates of India against the invaders are described by even al-Biruni, the court historian of Mahmud of Ghazni (12). Some excavated sites of the period include a major Hindu Shahiya temple north of Kabul and a chapel that contains both Buddhist and Hindu images, indicating that there was a mingling of two religions (3).
Islamic invasions on Afganistan started in 642 AD, but over the next several centuries their effect was marginal and lasted only a short time after each raid. Cities surrendered only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their old religion (Hinduism or Buddhism) once the Moslem armies had passed (3).
THUS TILL THE YEAR 1000 AD AFGANISTAN WAS A FULL PART OF HINDU CRADLE.
HINDU KUSH AND THE HINDU GENOCIDE
Now Afganistan is a Moslem country. Logically, this means either one or more of the following must have happened:
a) original residents of Hindu Kush converted to Islam, or
b) they were slaughtered and the conquerors took over, or
c) they were driven out.
Encyclopedia Britannica (3) already informs us above about the resistance to conversion and frequent revolt against to the Moslem conqueror's rule from 8 th thru 11 th Century AD. The name 'Hindu Kush' itself tells us about the fate of the original residents of Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh during the later period of Moslem conquests, because HINDU KUSH in Persian MEANS HINDU SLAUGHTER (13) (as per Koenraad Elst in his book 'Ayodhya and After'). Let us look into what other standard references say about Hindu Kush.
Persian-English dictionary (14) indicates that the word 'Kush' is derived from the verb Kushtar - to slaughter or carnage. Kush is probably also related to the verb Koshtan meaning to kill. In Urdu, the word Khud-kushi means act of killing oneself (khud - self, Kushi- act of killing). Encyclopedia Americana comments on the Hindu Kush as follows: The name Hindu Kush means literally 'Kills the Hindu', a reminder of the days when (Hindu) SLAVES from Indian subcontinent died in harsh Afgan mountains while being transported to Moslem courts of Central Asia (15). The National Geographic Article 'West of Khyber Pass' informs that 'Generations of raiders brought captive Hindus past these peaks of perpetual snow. Such bitter journeys gave the range its name Hindu Kush - "Killer of Hindus"'(10). The World Book Encyclopedia informs that the name Kush, .. means Death ..(16). While Encyclopedia Britannica says 'The name Hindu Kush first appears in 1333 AD in the writings of Ibn Battutah, the medieval Berber traveller, who said the name meant 'Hindu Killer', a meaning still given by Afgan mountain dwellers who are traditional enemies of Indian plainsmen (i.e. Hindus)(2). However, later the Encyclopedia Britannica gives a negationist twist by adding that 'more likely the name is a corruption of Hindu-Koh meaning Hindu mountains'. This is unlikely, since the term Koh is used in its proper, uncorrupted form for the western portion of Hindu Kush, viz. Koh-i-Baba, for the region Swat Kohistan, and in the names of the three peaks of this range, viz. Koh-i-Langer, Koh-i-Bandakor, and Koh-i-Mondi. Thus to say that corruption of term Koh to Kush occurred only in case of Hindu Kush is merely an effort to fit in a deviant observation to a theory already proposed. In science, a theory is rejected if it does not agree with the observations, and not the other way around. Hence the latter negationist statement in the Encyclopedia Britannica must be rejected.
IT IS SIGNIFICANT THAT ONE OF THE FEW PLACE NAMES ON EARTH THAT REMINDS US NOT OF THE VICTORY OF THE WINNERS BUT RATHER THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LOSERS, CONCERNS A GENOCIDE OF HINDUS BY THE MOSLEMS (13).
Unlike the Jewish holocaust, the exact toll of the Hindu genocide suggested by the name Hindu Kush is not available. However the number is easily likely to be in millions. Few known historical figures can be used to justify this estimate. Encyclopedia Britannica informs that in December 1398 AD, Timur Lane ordered the execution of at least 50,000 captives before the battle for Delhi, .. and after the battle those inhabitants (of Delhi) not killed were removed (as slaves) (17), while other reference says that the number of captives butchered by Timur Lane's army was about 100,000 (18). Later on Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that the (secular?) Mughal emperor Akbar 'ordered the massacre of about 30,000 (captured) Rajput Hindus on February 24, 1568 AD, after the battle for Chitod' (19). Another reference indicates that this massacre of 30,000 Hindu peasants at Chitod is recorded by Abul Fazl, Akbar's court historian himself (20). These two 'one day' massacres are sufficient to provide a reference point for estimating the scale of Hindu genocide. The Afgan historian Khondamir records that during one of the many repeated invasions on the city of Herat in western Afganistan, 1,500,000 residents perished (11).
Since some of the Moslem conquerors took Indian plainsmen as slaves, a question comes : whatever happened to this slave population? The startling answer comes from New York Times (May-June 1993 issues). The Gypsies are wandering peoples in Europe. They have been persecuted in almost every country. Nazis killed 300,000 gypsies in the gas chambers. These Gypsies have been wandering around Central Asia and Europe since around the 12 th Century AD. Until now their country of origin could not be identified. Also their Language has had very little in common with the other European languages. Recent studies however show that their language is similar to Punjabi and to a lesser degree to Sanskrit. Thus the Gypsies most likely originated from the greater Punjab. The time frame of Gypsy wanderings also coincides early Islamic conquests hence most likely their ancestors were driven out of their homes in Punjab and taken as slaves over the Hindu Kush.
The theory of Gypsie origins in India was first proposed over two centuries ago. It is only recently theta linguistic and other proofs have been verified. Even the Gypsie leadership now accepts India as the country of their origin.
Thus it is evident that the mountain range was named as Hindu Kush as a reminder to the future Hindu generations of the slaughter and slavery of Hindus during the Moslem conquests.
DELIBERATE IGNORANCE ABOUT HINDU KUSH
If the name Hindu Kush relates such a horrible genocide of Hindus, why are Hindus ignorant about it? and why the Government of India does not teach them about Hindu Kush? The history and geography curriculums in Indian Schools barely even mention Hindu Kush. The horrors of the Jewish holocaust are taught not only in schools in Israel and USA, but also in Germany. Because both Germany and Israel consider the Jewish holocaust a 'dark chapter' in the history. The Indian Government instead of giving details of this 'dark chapter' in Indian history is busy in whitewash of Moslem atrocities and the Hindu holocaust. In 1982, the National Council of Educational Research and Training issued a directive for the rewriting of school texts. Among other things it stipulated that: 'Characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between Hindus and Moslems is forbidden'. Thus denial of history or Negationism has become India's official 'educational' policy (21).
Often the official governmental historians brush aside questions such as those that Hindu Kush raises. They argue that the British version is the product of their 'divide and rule' policy' hence their version is not necessarily true. However it must be remembered that the earliest reference of the name Hindu Kush and its literal meaning 'Hindu Killer' comes from Ibn Battutah in 1333 AD, and at that time British were nowhere on the Indian scene. Secondly, if the name indeed was a misnomer then the Afgans should have protested against such a barbaric name and the last 660 plus years should have been adequate for a change of name to a more 'civil' name. There has been no effort for such a change of name by the Afgans. On the contrary, when the Islamic fundamentalist regime of the Mujahadeens came to power in 1992, tens of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs from Kabul, became refugees, and had to pay steep ransom to enter into Pakistan without a visa.
In the last 46 years the Indian Government also has not even once demanded that the Afgan Government change such an insulting and barbaric name. But in July 1993, the Government of India asked the visiting Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra to change its name because the word Jerusalem in its name is offensive to Moslem Fundamentalists.
CONCLUSION
It is evident that Hindus from ancient India's (Hindustan's) border states such as Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh were massacred or taken as slaves by the Moslem invaders who named the region as Hindu Kush (or Hindu Slaughter,or Hindu Killer) to teach a lesson to the future Hindu generations of India. Unfortunately Hindus are not aware of this tragic history. The Indian government does not want the true history of Hindu Moslem conflicts during the medieval ages to be taught in schools. This policy of negationism is the cause behind the ignorance of Hindus about the Hindu Kush and the Hindu genocide.
COMMENTS & FUTURE WORK
Although in this article Hindu Kush has been referred to as Hindu slaughter, it is quite possible that it was really a Hindu and Buddhist slaughter. Since prior to Moslem invasions influence of Buddhism in Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh was considerable. Also as the huge 175 ft stone Buddhas of Bamian show, Buddhists were idol worshipers par excellence. Hence for Moslem invaders the Buddhists idol worshipers were equally deserving of punishment. It is also likely that Buddhism was considered an integral part of the Hindu pantheon and hence was not identified separately.
This article barely scratches the surface of the Hindu genocide, the true depth of which is as yet unknown. Readers are encouraged to find out the truth for themselves . Only when many readers search for the truth, the real magnitude of the Hindu genocide will be discovered.
REFERENCES
1. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.5, p.935, 1987
2. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.14, pp.238-240, 1987
3. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.13, pp.35-36, 1987
4. The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (as described by Arrian, Q.Curtius, Diodoros, Plutarch & Justin), By J.W.McCrindle, Methuen & Co., London, p.38, 1969
5. Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, by Veer Savarkar, Savarkar Prakashan, Bombay, 2nd Ed, p.206, 1985
6. Chanakya - a TV series by Doordarshan, India
7. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.21, pp.36-41, 1987
8. V.Sarianidi, National Geographic Magazine, Vol.177, No.3, p.57, March 1990
9. Hammond Historical Atlas of the World, pp. H4 & H10, 1993
10. W.O.Douglas, National Geographic Magazine, vol.114, No.1, pp.13-23, July 1958
11. T.J.Abercrombie, National Geographic Magazine, Vol.134, No.3, pp.318-325, Sept.1968
12. An Advanced History of India, by R.C.Majumdar, H.C.Raychaudhuri, K.Datta, 2nd Ed., MacMillan and Co, London, pp.182-83, 1965
13. Ayodhya and After, By Koenraad Elst, Voice of India Publication, p.278, 1991
14. A Practical Dictionary of the Persian Language, by J.A.Boyle, Luzac & Co., p.129, 1949
15. Encyclopedia Americana, Vol.14, p.206, 1993
16. The World Book Encyclopedia, Vol.19, p.237, 1990
17. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.21, pp. 54-55, 1987
18. An Advanced History of India, by R.C.Majumdar, H.C.Raychaudhuri, K.Datta, 2nd Ed., MacMillan and Co, London, pp.336-37, 1965
19. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.21, p.65, 1987
20. The Cambridge History of India, Vol.IV - The Mughul Period, by W.Haig & R.Burn, S.Chand & Co., New Delhi, pp. 98-99, 1963
21. Negationism in India, by Koenraad Elst, Voice of India Publ, 2nd Ed, pp.57-58, 1993
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885: Cholas kill Aparajita, king of the Pallavas, in battle.
ca 900: Lifetime of Matsyendranatha, exponent of the Natha sect emphasizing kundalini yoga practices.
ca 900: Under the Hindu Malla dynasty (ca 900-1700) of Nepal, legal and social codes influenced by Hinduism are introduced. Nepal is broken into several principalities.
ca 900-1001: Lifetime of Sembiyan Ma Devi, queen of Maharaja Gandaraditta Chola from 950-957 and loyal patron of Saivism, builds ten temples and inspires and molds her grand-nephew prince, son of Sundara Chola, into the great temple-builder, Emperor Rajaraja I.
900: Mataramas dynasty in Indonesia reverts to Saivism after a century of Buddhism, building 150 Saiva temples.
ca 950: Lifetime of Gorakshanatha, Natha yogi who founds the order of Kanphatha Yogis and Gorakshanatha Saivism, the philosophical school called Siddha Siddhanta.
ca 950-1015: Lifetime of Kashmir Saiva guru Abhinavagupta.
960: Chola King Vira, after having a vision of Siva Nataraja dancing, commences enlargement of the Siva temple at Chidambaram, including the construction of the gold-roofed shrine. The enlargement is completed in 1250 ce.
985: Rajaraja I (reign 985-1014) ascends the South Indian Chola throne and ushers in a new age of temple architecture exemplified at Tanjavur, Darasuram, Tirubhuvanam and Chidambaram. Pallava architectural influences (dominant vimanas, inconspicuous gopuras) fade.
ca 1000: Gorakshanatha writes Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati, "Tracks on the Doctrines of the Adepts." The nature of God and universe, structure of chakras, kundalini force and methods for realization are explained in 353 verses.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #3
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1000ce to 1500
1000: World population is 265 million. India population is 79 million, 29.8% of world.
ca 1000: A few Hindu communities from Rajasthan, Sindh and other areas, the ancestors of present-day Romani, or Gypsies, gradually move to Persia and on to Europe.
ca 1000: Vikings reach North America, landing in Nova Scotia.
ca 1000: Polynesians arrive in New Zealand, last stage in the greatest migration and navigational feat in history, making them the most widely-spread race on Earth.
1001: Turkish Muslims sweep through the Northwest under Mahmud of Ghazni, defeating Jayapala of Hindu Shahi Dynasty of S. Afghanisthan and Punjab at Peshawar. This is the first major Muslim conquest in India.
ca 1010: Tirumurai, Tamil devotional hymns of Saiva saints, is collected as an anthology by Nambiandar Nambi.
1017: Mahmud of Ghazni sacks Mathura, birthplace of Lord Krishna, and establishes a mosque on the site during one of his 17 Indian invasions for holy war and plunder.
1017-1137: Life of Ramanuja of Kanchipuram, Tamil philosopher-saint of Shri Vaishnava sect that continues bhakti tradition of S. Indian Alvar saints. His strongly theistic nondual Vishishtadvaita Vedanta philosophy restates Pancharatra tradition. Foremost opponent of Shankara's system, he dies at age 120 while head of Shrirangam monastery.
1018-1060: Lifetime of Bhojadeva Paramara, Gujarati king, poet, artist and monistic Saiva Siddhanta theologian.
1024: Mahmud of Ghazni plunders Somanath Siva temple, destroying the Linga and killing 50,000 Hindu defenders. He later builds a mosque on the remaining walls.
1025: Chola ruler Maharaja Rajendra I sends victorious naval expeditions to Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, initiating decline of Mahayana Buddhist empire of Shrivijaya.
ca 1040: Chinese invent the compass and moveable type and perfect the use of gunpowder, first invented and used in India as an explosive mixture of saltpetre, sulfur and charcoal to power guns, cannons and artillery.
ca 1050: Lifetime of Shrikantha, promulgator of Siva Advaita, a major philosophical school of Saivism.
ca 1130-1200: Lifetime of Nimbarka, Telegu founder of the Vaishnava Nimandi sect holding the philosophy of dvaitadvaita, dual-nondualism. He introduces the worship of Krishna together with consort Radha. (Present-day Nimavats revere Vishnu Himself, in the form of the Hamsa Avatara, as the originator of their sect.)
ca 1130: Lifetime of Sekkilar, Tamil chief minister under Chola Emperor Kulottunga II (reign 1133-1150) and author of Periyapuranam, 4,286-verse epic biography (hagiography) of the 63 Saiva saints and 12th book of Tirumurai.
ca 1150: Life of Basavanna, renaissance guru of the Vira Saiva sect, stressing free will, equality, service to humanity and worship of the Sivalinga worn around the neck.
ca 1150: Khmer ruler Suryavarman II completes Angkor Wat temple (in present-day Cambodia), where his body is later entombed and worshiped as an embodiment of Vishnu. This largest Hindu temple in Asia is 12 miles in circumference, with a 200-foot high central tower.
ca 1162: Mahadevi is born, female Saiva ascetic saint of Karnataka, writes 350 majestic and mystical poems.
1175: Toltec Empire of Mexico crumbles.
1185: Mohammed of Ghur conquers Punjab and Lahore.
1191: Eisai founds Rinzai Zen sect in Japan after study in China.
1193: Qutb ud-Din Aybak founds first Muslim Sultanate of Delhi, establishing the Mamluk Dynasty (1193-1290).
1197: Great Buddhist university of Nalanda is destroyed by Muslim Ikhtiyar ud-din.
1200: All of North India is under Muslim domination.
1200: India population reaches 80 million.
ca 1200: An unknown author writes Yoga Yajnavalkya.
1215: King John is forced to sign the Magna Carta, giving greater rights to citizens in England.
1227: Mongolian Emperor Genghis Khan, conqueror of a vast area from Beijing, China, to Iran and north of Tibet, the largest empire the world has yet seen, dies.
1230-60: Surya temple at Konarak, Orissa, India, is constructed.
1238-1317: Lifetime of Ananda Tirtha, Madhva, venerable Vaishnava dualist and opponent of Shankara's mayavadin advaita philosophy. He composes 37 works and founds Dvaita Vedanta school, the Brahma Vaishnava Sampradaya and its eight monasteries, ashtamatha, in Udupi.
ca 1250: Lifetime of Meykandar, Saiva saint who founds the Meykandar school of pluralistic Saiva Siddhanta, of which his 12-sutra Sivajnanabodham becomes its core scripture.
1260: Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, is born.
1268-1369: Lifetime of Vedanta Deshikar, gifted Tamil scholar and poet who founds sect of Vaishnavism called Vadakalai, headquartered at Kanchipuram.
1270-1350: Lifetime of Namadeva, foremost poet saint of Maharashtra's Varkari ("pilgrim") Vaishnava school, disciple of Jnanadeva. He and his family compose a million verses in praise of Lord Vithoba (Vishnu).
1272: Marco Polo visits India en route to China.
1274: Council of Lyons II declares that souls go immediately to heaven, purgatory or hell; interpreted by Catholic fathers as condemning the doctrine of reincarnation.
1275-96: Lifetime of Jnanadeva, Natha-trained Vaishnava saint, founder of the Varkari school, who writes Jnaneshvari, a Marathi verse commentary on Bhagavad Gita, which becomes Maharashtra's most popular book.
1279: Muktabai is born, Maharashtrian Varkari saint and Natha yogini, writes 100 sacred verses.
1280: Mongol (Yuen) dynasty (1280-1368) begins in China, under which occurs the last of much translation work into Chinese from Sanskrit.
1296: Ala-ud-din, second king of Khalji dynasty, rules most of India after his General Kafur conquers the South, extending Muslim dominion to Rameshwaram.
ca 1300: Lifetime of Janabai, Maharashtrian Varkari Vaishnava woman saint who writes a portion of Namadeva's million verses to Vithoba (Vishnu).
ca 1300: The Ananda Samucchaya is written, 277 stanzas on hatha yoga, with discussion of the chakras and the nadis.
1300: Muslim conquerors reach Cape Comorin at the southernmost tip of India and build a mosque there.
1317-72: Life of Lalla of Kashmir. Saiva renunciate, mystic poetess contributes significantly to the Kashmiri language.
1336: Vijayanagara Empire (1336-1565-1646) of South India is founded. European visitors are overwhelmed by the wealth and advancement of its 17-square-mile capital.
1345: Aztecs establish great civilization in Mexico.
1346-90: Life of Krittivasa, translator of Ramayana into Bengali.
1347: Plague called the Black Death spreads rapidly, killing 75 million worldwide before it recedes in 1351.
ca 1350: Svatmarama writes Hatha Yoga Pradipika.
ca 1350: Lifetime of Appaya Dikshita, South Indian philosoper saint whose writings reconcile Vaishnavism and Saivism. He advances Siva Advaita and other Saiva schools and compiles a temple priests' manual still used today.
1398: Tamerlane (Timur) invades India with 90,000 cavalry and sacks Delhi because its Muslim Sultanate is too tolerant of Hindu idolatry. A Mongolian follower of Sufism, he is one of the most ruthless of all conquerors.
1399: Hardwar, Ganga pilgrimage town, is sacked by Timur.
ca 1400: Goraksha Upanishad is written.
1414: Hindu prince Parameshvara of Malaysia converts to Islam.
1414-80: Life of Gujarati Vaishnava poet-saint Narasinha Mehta.
1415: Bengali poet-singer Baru Chandidas writes Shrikrishnakirtana, a collection of exquisite songs praising Krishna.
1429: Joan of Arc, age 17, leads the French to victory over the English.
ca 1433: China cloisters itself from outside world by banning further voyages to the West. (First bamboo curtain.)
1440-1518: Lifetime of Kabir, Vaishnava reformer with who has both Muslim and Hindu followers. (His Hindi songs remain immensely popular to the present day.)
ca 1440: Johannes Gutenberg (ca 1400-1468) invents the West's first moveable-type printing press in Germany.
1450?-1547: Lifetime of Mirabai, Vaishnava Rajput princess saint who, married at an early age to the Rana of Udaipur, devotes herself to Krishna and later renounces worldly life to wander India singing to Him beautiful mystic compositions that are sung to the present day.
1469-1538: Lifetime of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism, originally a reformist Hindu sect stressing devotion, faith in the guru, repetition of God's name and rejection of renunciation and caste. (Most Sikhs in the present day consider themselves members of a separate religion.)
1478: Spanish Inquisition begins. Over the next 20 years, Christians burn several thousand persons at the stake.
1479-1531: Lifetime of Vallabhacharya, a married Telegu brahmin saint who teaches pushtimarga, "path of love," and a lofty nondual philosophy, Shuddhadvaita Vedanta, in which souls are eternally one with Brahman. Vallabhacharya's Vaishnavism worships Krishna in the form of Shri Nathji.
1483-1563: Lifetime of Surdas, sightless Hindi bard of Agra, whose hymns to Krishna are compiled in the Sursagar.
1486-1543: Life of Chaitanya, Bengali founder of popular Vaishnava sect which proclaims Krishna Supreme God and emphasizes sankirtan, group chanting and dancing.
1492: Looking for India, Christopher Columbus lands on San Salvador island in the Caribbean, thus "discovering" the Americas and proving that the earth is round, not flat.
1498: Portugal's Vasco da Gama sails around Cape of Good Hope to Calicut, Kerala, first European to find sea route to India.
ca 1500: Life of Arunagirinathar, Tamil saint, author of Tiruppugal hymns; emphasizes feeding the hungry during a time of Muslim oppression and disrupted family life.
ca 1500: Buddhist and Saiva Hindu princes are forced off Java by invading Muslims. They resettle on neighboring Bali, with their overlapping priesthoods and vast royal courts: poets, dancers, musicians and artisans. Within 100 years they construct what many call a fairytale kingdom.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #4
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1500 to 1800ce
1500: World population 425 million; 105 million live in India.
1503-1566: Lifetime of Nostradamus, French physician and astrologer who wrote Centuries (1555), a book of prophecies.
1509-1529: Reign of Maharaja Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire in Andhra Pradesh.
1510: Portuguese Catholics conquer Goa to serve as capital of their Asian maritime empire, beginning conquest and exploitation of India by Europeans.
1517: Luther begins Protestant reformation in Europe.
ca 1520: Poet-saint Purandardas (1480-1564) of the Vijayanagara court systematizes Karnatak music.
1526: Mughal conqueror Babur (1483-1530) defeats the Sultan of Delhi and captures the Koh-i-noor diamond. Occupying Delhi, by 1529 he founds the Indian Mughal Empire (1526-1761), consolidated by his grandson Akbar.
1528: Emperor Babur destroys temple at Lord Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya, erects Muslim masjid, or monument.
1532-1623: Life of Monk-poet Tulasidasa. Writes Ramacharitamanasa (1574-77), greatest medieval Hindi literature (based on Ramayana). It advances Rama worship in the North.
1542: Portuguese Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506-1552), most successful Catholic missionary, lands in Goa. First to train and employ native clergy in conversion efforts, he brings Christianity to India, Malay Archipelago and Japan.
Reference: http://www.hinduunity.com/articles/christ/popeapologize.html
Why The Pope Should Apologize To India
Vishwas Varghese
Why The Pope Should Apologize To India
The VHP's protest march against the Pope's visit in India this week, has drawn quite a lot of attention and flak as a misguided attempt to "create disorder by fascist". The Indian media has been having a field day with mongering rumors that seek to undermine and defame the Hindutva oriented organizations. One has to look beyond all the politically motivated hype and hoopla and look analytically at what is the logic behind the demand for the Pope's apology. The rationale behind this demand is cited to be the Christian Inquisition which took place in Goa, for the purpose of forcefully converting the Hindus to Christianity. Let us take a look at some historical facts to see if the Hindutva minded organizations are truly justified in asking the pope as the representative of the Catholic church to apologize and atone for such crimes against Hindus in the past.
Alan Machado-Prabhu has recently written a book about the history of Goa starting from ancient times, titled Sarasvati's Children: A History of the Mangalorean Christians. The book describes in detail the origins of Goa's inhabitants. According to Machado's account and that of several established historians, some time around 1000 B.C. an immense number of Vedic people who originally lived on the banks of the river Sarasvati migrated to this coast. Their emigration was forced by the drying up of the Sarasvati River which was the basis for much of the so called Indus Valley civilization. This civilization has now been termed the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization in view of its indelible dependence on the Sarasvati and Sindhu rivers. Moreover the work of such accomplished scholars as N.S. Rajaram, David Frawley, N. Jha, S.R. Rao, etc. has proven that the Sarasvati Sindhu civilization was a Vedic one. As a consequence the people who were forced to seek fresh fields and pastures in view of the drying up of Sarasvati, were none other than Hindus. Large numbers of them followed the ancient Dakshinapatha, the southern route and came all the way to Gomantak and to what is now called Goa. Gomantak had no indigenous population and therefore made an ideal place to settle down for these scholars.
The new location was a highly successful one because of the fertile quality of the land. The majority of the emigrants were highly educated and well versed in the advanced scientific, artistic and literary traditions of Vedic civilization and therefore began to be called the Brahmins of the north (Gaud). Eventually they began to be referred to as the Gaud Sarasvat Brahmins. They were famous all over India and abroad for their immense scholarship and learning. Over the centuries Goa was comparatively undisturbed under the rule of the Mauryas, the Kadambas and the Chalukya dynasty. But around 1327 AD Goa was conquered by Mohammed Bin Tughlak and thousands of Hindus were massacred in cold blood. A number of murderous Muslim rulers such as Bahamani king Mohammed Shah, Yusuf Adil Shah, etc. held the state in the grip of terror until the Portugese Christians who came to foreign lands led by Vasco De Gama in the hope of converting millions of "Heathens" managed to overcome them. By the mid 1500s, the Portugese had established a strong hold on Indian ports and the terror of the Inquisition sanctioned by the Catholic Church was established and institutionalized in Goa. The main objective of the Inquisitors was to ensure that all natives be converted to Christianity whether by the sword, bribery or blackmail.
Around 1540 the Inquisition was at its peak, thousands of Hindus were dispossessed, massacred and mutilated if they refused to convert. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols went to the Church. According to Machado, "The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an impressive scale". An incredible amount of loot and plunder of the immense riches possessed by the Hindus was shipped off to the Church. Hindus were forbidden from performing any of their festivals openly. Hindu were amassed and deliberately forced to participate in grotesque public performances for the Christian feast days during the very same days that they used to celebrate Hindu festivals. To this day these macabre enactments still survive in Goa today as the Milagres feast dance, the Carnavalo and the Festa de Leques.
In 1542 the most barbaric of these oppressors in the form of Jesuit priest "Saint" Francis Xavier arrived on the scene. The incredible hatred and venom that this man nursed against the Hindus is obvious from his own writings and records. In 1543 , Xavier sent a Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome which outlined his perspective of the Indian people. The extremely racist and intolerant views of Christian proselytizers like Xavier pour out of every word in this letter:
"We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. These are the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made the others their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.
As there is so great a variety of color among men, and the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at."
Xavier would become an increasingly frustrated and embittered man as he discovered the obstinate stubbornness with which the Hindus refused to be forced to convert to Christianity. His frustration is evident in a Letter on the Missions sent in 1949 to St. Ignatius de Loyola, of the Catholic Church. In it as usual he displays his ample hatred for the "idolaters" as he calls the Hindus, but his most vitriolic animosity is reserved for the Brahmins who were the primary defenders of Hinduism. By this time Xavier has apparently become aware of the fact that it is the Brahmins who are the final line of defense in keeping the Hindu followers together. His inability to suppress them leads to his sweeping generalization that the entire race of Indians is "barbaric" in this letter:
"May the grace and charity of our Lord Christ always be with us! Amen.
My own and only Father in the Heart of Christ, I think that the many letters from this place which have lately been sent to Rome will inform you how prosperously the affairs of religion go on in these parts, through your prayers and the good bounty of God. But there seem to be certain things which I ought myself to speak about to you; so I will just touch on a few points relating to these parts of the world which are so distant from Rome. In the first place, the whole race of the Indians, as far as I have been able to see, is very barbarous; and it does not like to listen to anything that is not agreeable to its own manners and customs, which, as I say, are barbarous. It troubles itself very little to learn anything about divine things and things which concern salvation. Most of the Indians are of vicious disposition, and are adverse to virtue. Their instability, levity, and inconstancy of mind are incredible; they have hardly any honesty, so inveterate are their habits of sin and cheating. We have hard work here, both in keeping the Christians up to the mark and in converting the heathen. And, as we are your children, it is fair that on this account you should take great care of us and help us continually by your prayers to God.
You know very well what a hard business it is to teach people who neither have any knowledge of God nor follow reason, but think it a strange and intolerable thing to be told to give up their habits of sin, which have now gained all the force of nature by long possession. The experience which I have of these countries makes me think that I can affirm with truth, that there is no prospect of perpetuating our Society out here by means of the natives themselves, and that the Christian religion will hardly survive us who are now in the country; so that it is quite necessary that continual supplies of ours should be sent out from Europe."
One is amazed at Xavier's Christian definition of barbarism. Apparently anyone who does not recognize Jesus Christ as his savior qualifies for this title. It would have been fascinating to know what the victims of this undisguised genocidal aggression thought of their tormentors. Indeed "barbarism" is too mild a word to aptly describes the horrific aggression that was perpetrated on the Goans for the sake of Christ!
In Machado's book the chapter on the Inquisition is aptly headed: Horrendum Ac Tremendum Spectaculem. Machado relates how the historian Fryer describes one of the instances of the Christian aggression - "In the principal market was raised an Engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a Pulley for the Strapado which unhinges a Man's joints, a cruel Torture." Even Fryrer's (1675) brief reference to the Inquisition barely does justice to the fearful dread it brought to the people living in Portuguese territories. Of all the organizations the Portuguese took to her overseas territories it was the Inquisition that stalked the land, menacing and seeking all it might devour".
Portugese records themselves show that the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and 64 in effigy, 105 of them being men and 16 women. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046 of whom 3,034 were men. The people who were converted but still continued occasionally and secretly to perform Hindu rituals were treated even more harshly. Even this low number represented by the perpetrators themselves is enough to provide us a clue to how many were truly subjected to the horrors. There can be no doubt that thousands if not millions perished at the hands of the Christian Sword which would not tolerate non believers in the path of the Church.
Many of the orders dictated by the Portugese administration demonstrate the depth of oppression against their victims. Mr. Kanchan Gupta, the editor of BJP Today had researched and presented these records in his brilliant article on Rediff magazine, earlier this year. Some of the historical records that Mr. Gupta unearthed, clearly demonstrated the unabashedly oppressive nature of the Christian regime which had ruthlessly usurped Goa.
On April 2, 1560, Viceroy D Constantine de Braganca issued orders instructing that Brahmins should be thrown out of Goa and other areas under Portuguese control. They were given al of one month to dispose of all possessions. Anyone found violating the order would have their properties seized.
On February 7, 1575, Governor Antonio Morez Barreto declared that the estates of Brahmins whose "presence was prejudicial to Christianity" would be confiscated and used for "providing clothes to the New Christians".
In 1585, The Third Concilio Provincial which was a gathering of bishops and other Christian leaders adopted a resolution declaring, 'His Majesty the king has on occasion ordered the viceroys and governors of India that there should be no Brahmins in his lands, and that they should be banished therefrom together with the physicians and other infidels who are prejudicial to Christianity. As the orders of His Majesty in this regard have not been executed, great impediments in the way of conversion and the community of New Christians have followed and continue to follow. From now onwards at certain times in each year the archbishop should obtain information regarding Brahmins, physicians and any other infidels who might be prejudicial to conversion to Christianity, and in consultation with the Christian priests, prepare a roll of their names which should be signed by him. This should be presented to the viceroy or the governor in order that the latter might issue orders for banishing them from the lands of the king, as His Majesty has ordered...'
On January 31, 1620, the Portugese declared that '...no Hindu, of whatever nationality or status he may be, can or shall perform marriages in this city of Goa, nor in the islands or adjacent territories of His Majesty, under pain of a fine of 1000 Xerafins.'
The Third Concilio Provincial also demanded a ban on the traditional thread ceremony and the ban was imposed by the Sword. The Brahmins who tried to evade such prejudicial dictates by going outside Portuguese territory for the ceremony were prevented from doing so by the ominously threatening order that said 'I hereby order that no Hindu subject proceed beyond the borders of the state to celebrate the thread ceremony...' Orders prohibiting Hindu women from wearing Bindi on their foreheads along with an order allowing the Christian clergy the right to baptize all orphans are blatant proofs of the violent suppression of religious rights by the Christian Church in Goa.
Such then is the history of Christian persecution in Goa. And yet the cruelest of these proselytizers from the past are supposed to be treated as 'Saints" by the very nation that was victimized by them! Stating the facts about the past tyranny of the Church in India, quickly becomes an "earth shattering" conspiracy by the "fascist" Hindu extremists. The signs of India's humiliation and oppression at the hands of her Christian aggressors is present everywhere in the nomenclature of innumerable roads, buildings and educational institutions named after the very criminals who sought to annihilate all traces of India's vast and ancient repertoire of advanced knowledge.
Is asking the Pope to apologize for such a vast range of heinous crimes unjustified? Saint Francis Xavier, the missionary who was responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Hindus of Goa was canonized and is cited today as one of the foremost Saints of the Catholic Church. A quick search of the catholic Encyclopedia yields us this information about him.
"It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of ten years (6 May, 1542 - 2 December, 1552) could have visited so many countries, traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations, and converted so many infidels. The incomparable apostolic zeal which animated him, and the stupendous miracles which God wrought through him, explain this marvel, which has no equal elsewhere. St. Francis Xavier is considered the greatest missionary since the time of the Apostles, and the zeal he displayed, the wonderful miracles he performed, and the great number of souls he brought to the light of true Faith, entitle him to this distinction. He was canonized with St. Ignatius in 1622, although on account of the death of Gregory XV, the Bull of canonization was not published until the following year. The body of the saint is still enshrined at Goa in the church which formerly belonged to the Society. In 1614 by order of Claudius Acquaviva, General of the Society of Jesus, the right arm was severed at the elbow and conveyed to Rome, where the present altar was erected to receive it in the church of the Gesu. "
Even today the body of the "Saint" in Goa is said to be in a "marvelous" state of preservation as proof of his miraculous character.
With Saints like Francis Xavier epitomizing the nature of Christian kindness in India, is it any wonder that the proselytizing nature of the Church is increasingly condemned and denounced by civilized human beings all over the world? The souls of the thousands of Indians that suffered genocide at the hands of the religious fanaticism which was institutionalized by the Catholic Church, would hardly find succor in any apology by the Pope.
But at the very least it would have been a some small form of retribution for the sins committed by the forces he represents.
1544-1603: Life of Dadu, ascetic saint of Gujarat, founder of Dadupantha, which is guided by his Bani poems in Hindi.
1556: Akbar (1542-1605), grandson of Babur, becomes third Mughal Emperor at age 13. Disestablishes Islam as state religion and declares himself impartial ruler of Hindus and Muslims; encourages art, culture, religious tolerance.
1565: Muslim forces defeat and completely destroy the city of Vijayanagara. Empire's final collapse comes in 1646.
1565: Polish astronomer Copernicus' (1473-1543) Heliocentric system, in which the Earth orbits the sun, gains popularity in Europe among astronomers and mathematicians.
1569: Akbar captures fortress of Ranthambor, ending Rajput independence. Soon controls nearly all of Rajasthan.
ca 1570: Ekanatha (1533-99), Varkari Vaishnava saint and mystic composer, edits Jnanadeva's Jnaneshvari and translates Bhagavata Purana, advancing Marathi language.
1588: British ships defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Calais, France, to become rulers of the high seas.
1589: Akbar rules half of India, shows tolerance for all faiths.
1595: Construction is begun on Chidambaram Temple's Hall of a Thousand Pillars in South India, completed in 1685.
ca 1600: "Persian wheel" to lift water by oxen is adopted, one of few farming innovations since Indus Valley civilization.
1600: Royal Charter forms the East India Company, setting in motion a process that ultimately results in the subjugation of India under British rule.
1603-4: Guru Arjun compiles Adi Granth, Sikh scripture.
1605: Akbar the Great dies at age 63. His son Jahangir succeeds him as fourth Mughal Emperor.
1605: Sikh Golden Temple (Harimandir) at Amritsar, Punjab, is finished, completely covered with gold leaf.
1608-49: Lifetime of Tukaram, beloved Varkari sant famed for his abhangas, "unbroken hymns," to Krishna. Considered greatest Marathi spiritual composer.
1608-81: Lifetime of Ramdas, mystic poet, Sivaji's guru, Marathi saint, who gives Hindus the dhvaja, saffron flag.
1610: Galileo of Italy (1564-1642) perfects the telescope, with which he confirms the Copernican theory. Condemned a heretic by the Catholic Inquisition for his discoveries.
1613-14: British East India Company sets up trading post at Surat.
1615-18: Mughals grant Britain right to trade and establish factories in exchange for English navy's protection of the Mughal Empire, which faces Portuguese sea power.
1619: Jaffna kingdom is annexed and Sri Lanka's ruling dynasty deposed by Portuguese Catholics who, between 1505 and 1658, destroy most of the island's Hindu temples.
1619: First black slaves from Africa are sold in the USA.
1620: European pilgrims land and settle at Plymouth Rock, US.
1627-80: Life of Sivaji, valiant general and tolerant founder of Hindu Maratha Empire (1674-1818). Emancipates large areas confiscated by Muslims, returning them to Hindu control. First Indian ruler to build a major naval force.
ca 1628-88: Lifetime of Kumaraguruparar, prolific poet-saint of Tamil Nadu who founds monastery in Varanasi to propound Saiva Siddhanta philosophy.
1630: Over the next two years, millions starve to death as Shah Jahan (1592-1666), fifth Mughal Emperor, empties the royal treasury to buy jewels for his "Peacock Throne."
1647: Shah Jahan completes Taj Mahal in Agra beside Yamuna River. Its construction has taken 20,000 laborers 15 years, at a total cost equivalence of US$25 million.
1649: Red Fort is completed in Delhi by Shah Jahan.
ca 1650: Dharmapuram Aadheenam, Saiva monastery, founded near Mayuram, South India, by Guru Jnanasambandar.
ca 1650: Robert de Nobili (1577-1656), Portuguese Jesuit missionary noted for fervor and intolerance, arrives in Madurai, declares himself a brahmin, dresses like a Hindu monk and composes Veda-like scripture extolling Jesus.
ca 1650: Two yoga classics, Siva Samhita and Gheranda Samhita, are written.
1654: A Tamil karttanam is written and sung to celebrate recovery installation of Tiruchendur's Murugan murti.
1658: Zealous Muslim Aurangzeb (1618-1707) becomes Mughal Emperor. His discriminatory policies toward Hindus, Marathas and the Deccan kingdoms contribute to the dissolution of the Mughal Empire by 1750.
1660: Frenchman Francois Bernier reports India's peasantry is living in misery under Mughal rule.
1664: Great Plague of London kills 70,000, 15% of the population.
1675: Aurangzeb executes Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur, beginning the Sikh-Muslim feud that continues to this day.
1679: Aurangzeb levies Jizya tax on non-believers, Hindus.
1688: Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb demolishes all temples in Mathura, said to number 1,000. (During their reign, Muslim rulers destroy roughly 60,000 Hindu temples throughout India, constructing mosques on 3,000 sites.)
1700: World population is 610 million. India population is 165 million: 27% of world.
1705-42: Lifetime of Tayumanavar, Tamil Saiva poet saint and devotional yogic philosopher of Tiruchirappalli.
1708: Govind Singh, tenth and last Sikh guru, is assassinated.
1708-37: Jai Singh II builds astronomical observatories in Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Benares and Mathura.
1718-75: Lifetime of Ramprasad, Bengali Shakta poet-saint.
1722: Peter the Great rules in Russia.
ca 1725: Jesuit Father Hanxleden compiles first Sanskrit grammar in a European language.
ca 1750: Shakta songs of Bengali poets Ramprasad Sen and Kamalakanta Bhattacharya glorify Her as loving Mother and Daughter and stimulate a rise in devotional Shaktism.
1751: Robert Clive, age 26, seizes Arcot in modern Tamil Nadu as French and British fight for control of South India.
1760: Saiva sannyasis fight Vaishnava vairagis in tragic battle at Hardwar Kumbha Mela; 18,000 monks are killed.
1760: Eliezer (Besht), liberal founder of Hasidic Judaism, dies.
1761: Afghan army of Ahmad Shah Durrani routs Hindu Maratha forces at Panipat, ending Maratha hegemony in North India. As many as 200,000 Hindus are said to have died in the strategic eight-hour battle.
1764: British defeat the weak Mughal Emperor to become rulers of Bengal, richest province of India.
1769: Prithivi Narayan Shah, ruler of Gorkha principality, conquers Nepal Valley; moves capital to Kathmandu, establishing present-day Hindu nation of Nepal.
ca 1770-1840: Life of Rishi from the Himalayas, guru of Kadaitswami and first historically known satguru of the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara since Tirumular.
1773: British East India Company obtains monopoly on the production and sale of opium in Bengal.
ca 1780-1830: Golden era of Karnatik music. Composers include Tyagaraja, Dikshitar and Shastri.
1781: George Washington defeats British at Yorktown, US.
1781-1830: Lifetime of Sahajanandaswami, Gujarati founder of the Swaminarayan sect (with 1.5 million followers today).
1784: Judge and linguist Sir William Jones founds Calcutta's Royal Asiatic Society. First such scholastic institution.
1786: Sir William Jones uses the Rig Veda term Aryan ("noble") to name the parent language (now termed Indo-European) of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Germanic tongues.
1787-95: British Parliament impeaches Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal (1774-85) for misconduct.
1787: British Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is formed, marking the beginning of the end of slavery.
1789: French revolution begins with storming of the Bastille.
1792: Britain's Cornwallis defeats Tipu Sahib, Sultan of Mysore and most powerful ruler in South India, main bulwark of resistance to British expansion in India.
1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin in the US, greatly affecting the institution of slavery.
1796: Over two million worshipers compete for sacred Ganga bath at Kumbha Mela in Hardwar. Five thousand Saiva ascetics are killed in tragic clash with Sikh ascetics.
1799: Sultan Tipu is killed in battle against 5,000 British soldiers who storm and raze his capital, Srirangapattinam.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #5
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1800ce to the Present and Beyond!
1803: Second Anglo-Maratha war results in British Christian capture of Delhi and control of large parts of India.
1803: India's population is 200 million.
1803-82: Lifetime of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet who helps popularize Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads in US.
1807: Importation of slaves is banned in the US through an act of Congress motivated by Thomas Jefferson.
1809: British strike a bargain with Ranjit Singh for exclusive areas of influence.
ca 1810-75: Lifetime of renaissance guru Kadaitswami, born near Bangalore, sent to Sri Lanka by Rishi from the Himalayas to strengthen Saivism against Catholic incursion.
1812: Napoleon's army retreats from Moscow. Only 20,000 soldiers survive out of a 500,000-man invasion force.
1814: First practical steam locomotive is built.
1817-92: Lifetime of Bahaullah, Mirza Husayn 'Ali, founder of Baha'i faith (1863), a major off-shoot religion of Islam.
1818-78: Lifetime of Sivadayal, renaissance founder of the esoteric reformist Radhasoami Vaishnava sect in Agra.
1820: First Indian immigrants arrive in the US.
1822-79: Life of Arumuga Navalar of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, renaissance activist who propounds Advaita Siddhanta, writes first Hindu catechism and translates Bible into Tamil so it can be compared faithfully to the Vedas and Agamas.
1823-74: Life of Ramalingaswami, Tamil saint, renaissance founder of Vadalur's "Hall of Wisdom for Universal Worship."
1824-83: Lifetime of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati, renaissance founder of Arya Samaj (1875), Hindu reformist movement stressing a return to the values and practices of the Vedas. Author of Satya Prakash, "Light on Truth."
1825: First massive immigration of Indian workers from Madras is to Reunion and Mauritius. This immigrant Hindu community builds their first temple in 1854.
1828: Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) founds Adi Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, first movement to initiate religio-social reform. Influenced by Islam and Christianity, he denounces polytheism, idol worship; repudiates the Vedas, avataras, karma and reincarnation, caste and more.
1831-91: Lifetime of Russian mystic Madame H.P. Blavatsky, founder of Theosophical Society in 1875, bringing aspects of psychism, Buddhism and Hinduism to the West.
1831: British Christians defeat Ranjit Singh's forces at Balakot, in Sikh attempt to establish a homeland in N.W. India.
1833: Slavery is abolished in British Commonwealth countries, giving impetus to abolitionists in United States.
1835: Civil service jobs in India are opened to Indians.
1835: Macaulay's Minute furthers Western education in India. English is made official government and court language.
1835: Mauritius receives 19,000 immigrant indentured laborers from India. Last ship carrying workers arrives in 1922.
1836-86: Lifetime of Shri Ramakrishna, God-intoxicated Bengali Shakta saint, guru of Swami Vivekananda. He exemplifies the bhakti dimension of Shakta Universalism.
1837: Britain formalizes emigration of Indian indentured laborers to supply cheap labor under a system more morally acceptable to British Christian society than slavery, illegal in the British Empire since 1833.
1837: Kali-worshiping Thugees are suppressed by British.
1838: British Guyana receives its first 250 Indian laborers.
1838-84: Lifetime of Keshab Chandra Sen, Hindu reformer who founds Brahma Samaj of India, a radical offshoot of the Adi Brahmo Samaj of Ram Mohan Roy.
1840-1915: Lifetime of Satguru Chellappaswami of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, initiated at age 19 by Siddha Kadaitswami as next satguru in the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara.
1840: Joseph de Goubineau (1816-1882), French scholar, writes The Inequality of Human Races. Proclaims the "Aryan race" superior to other great strains and lays down the aristocratic class-doctrine of Aryanism that later provides the basis for Adolf Hitler's Aryan racism.
1842-1901: Life of Eknath Ranade, founder of Prarthana Samaj. His social-reform thinking inspires Gokhale and Gandhi.
1843: British conquer the Sind region (present-day Pakistan).
1845: Trinidad receives its first 197 Indian immigrant laborers.
1846: British forcibly separate Kashmir from the Sikhs and sell it to the Maharaja of Jammu for pounds1,000,000.
1849: Sikh army is defeated by the British at Amritsar.
1850: First English translation of the Rig Veda by H.H. Wilson, first holder of Oxford's Boden Chair, founded "to promote the translation of the Scriptures into English, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion."
1851: Sir M. Monier-Williams (1819-99) publishes English-Sanskrit Dictionary. His completed Sanskrit-English Dictionary is released in 1899 after three decades of work.
1853-1920: Lifetime of Shri Sharada Devi, wife of Shri Ramakrishna.
1853: Max Muller (1823-1900), German Christian philologist and Orientalist, advocates the term Aryan to name a hypothetical primitive people of Central Asia, the common ancestors of Hindus, Persians and Greeks. Muller speculates that this "Aryan race" divided and marched west to Europe and east to India and China around 1500 bce. Their language, Muller contends, developed into Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, etc., and all ancient civilizations descended from this Aryan race.
1856: Catholic missionary Bishop Caldwell coins the term Dravidian to refer to South Indian Caucasian peoples.
1857: First Indian Revolution, called the Sepoy Mutiny, ends in a few months with the fall of Delhi and Lucknow.
1858: India has 200 miles of railroad track. By 1869 5,000 miles of steel track have been completed by British railroad companies. In 1900, total track is 25,000 miles, and by World War I, 35,000 miles. By 1970, at 62,136 miles, it has become the world's greatest train system. Unfortunately, this development depletes India's forest lands.
1859: Charles Darwin, releases controversial book, The Origin of Species, propounding his "natural selection" theory of evolution, laying the foundations of modern biology.
1860: S.S. Truro and S.S. Belvedere dock in Durban, S. Africa, carrying first indentured servants (from Madras and Calcutta) to work sugar plantations. With contracts of five years and up, thousands emigrate over next 51 years.
1861: American Civil War begins in Charleston, S. Carolina.
1861-1941: Lifetime of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
1863-1902: Life of Swami Vivekananda, dynamic renaissance missionary to West and catalyst of Hindu revival in India.
1869-1948: Lifetime of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian nationalist and Hindu political activist who develops the strategy of nonviolent disobedience that forces Christian Great Britain to grant independence to India (1947).
1870: Papal doctrine of infallibility is asserted by the Vatican.
1872-1964: Lifetime of Satguru Yogaswami, Natha renaissance sage of Sri Lanka, Chellappaswami's successor in the Kailasa Parampara of the Nandinatha Sampradaya.
1872-1950: Life of Shri Aurobindo Ghosh, Bengali Indian nationalist and renaissance yoga philosopher. His 30-volume work discusses the "superman," the Divinely transformed individual soul. Withdraws from the world in 1910 and founds international ashram in Pondicherry.
Chronology
1872, Aug. 15 - Sri Aurobindo is born in Calcutta; he spends his first years at Rangpur (now in Bangladesh), and at the age of 5 is sent to Loreto Convent School, Darjeeling.
1878, Feb. 21 - Mother is born in Paris.
1879, June - Sri Aurobindo leaves India for England with his parents and his two elder brothers. He spends 5 years in Manchester, enters St. Paul's School, London, in 1884, and King's College, Cambridge, in 1890.
1885, Dec. - First session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay.
1886, Aug. 16 - Sri Ramakrishna passes away.
1892, August - Sri Aurobindo passes the I.C.S.; he does not appear at a riding test and is disqualified.
1893, Feb. 6 - Lands at Bombay and soon joins the State service of the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda. From August, 1893 to March, 1894, contributes to the Indu Prakash a series of articles, “New Lamps for Old.”
1893, May 31 - Swami Vivekananda sails for America.
1894, April 8 - Bankim Chandra Chatterji passes away. In July-August, Sri Aurobindo writes a series of articles on him in the Indu Prakash.
1897 - Sri Aurobindo teaches French, then English at the Baroda College; he will become its Vice-Principal in 1905.
1897, Jan. 15 - Swami Vivekananda lands at Colombo, and on his way north delivers many lectures throughout India.
c. 1900 - Sri Aurobindo takes first contacts with secret societies in Maharashtra and Bengal.
1901, April 30 - Sri Aurobindo marries Mrinalini Bose.
1902, July 4 - Swami Vivekananda passes away.
1905 - Sri Aurobindo writes Bhawani Mandir, a revolutionary pamphlet.
- Partition of Bengal, beginning of the Swadeshi movement.
1906, August - Bepin Chandra Pal launches the Bande Mataram (English daily); Sri Aurobindo joins it and soon becomes its editor.
- On August 15, the Bengal National College opens with Sri Aurobindo as its principal.
1906, Dec. - At its Calcutta session presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, the Congress declares Swaraj to be its goal.
1907, Aug. 16 - Sri Aurobindo is arrested for the publication of seditious writings in the Bande Mataram; released on bail. He resigns his post of principal of the Bengal National College, giving on August 23 a speech to the students and teachers. Acquitted a month later.
1907, Dec. - At the Surat session of the Congress, the Nationalist party with Sri Aurobindo presiding over its conference breaks away from the Moderates.
- First session of the Muslim League at Karachi.
1908, January - In Baroda, Sri Aurobindo meets Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi, and experiences the Brahman consciousness. Gives many speeches on his way back to Calcutta.
1907-1908 - Many Nationalist leaders, such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Ashwini Kumar Dutt, etc., are deported under various repressive laws. The Nationalist movement goes underground.
1908, May 2 - Sri Aurobindo is arrested in the Alipore Bomb Case; spends a year in jail and is acquitted on May 6, 1909.
1909 - The Morley-Minto reforms provide separate electorates for Indian Muslims.
1909, May 30 - Sri Aurobindo's famous Uttarpara speech.
1909, June 19 - First issue of the Karmayogin (English weekly).
1909, Aug. 23 - First issue of the Dharma (Bengali weekly).
1910, February - Sri Aurobindo abruptly leaves Calcutta for Chandernagore; on March 31, he will leave for Pondicherry.
1910, April 4 - Sri Aurobindo reaches Pondicherry.
- Charged with sedition for an article in the Karmayogin (the charge will be rejected in November).
1914, March 29 - First meeting with Mother.
1914, June - Tilak is released from a six-year-long deportation to Burma.
1914, Aug. 15 - First issue of the Arya (English monthly), which will appear until January, 1921.
1916, Dec. - “Lucknow Pact” between the Congress and the Muslim League.
1919-1920 - Beginning of the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements under the growing leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.
1920 - Sri Aurobindo turns down several offers to return to British India and to active politics.
1920, April 24 - Mother returns to Pondicherry from Japan.
1920, Aug. 1 - Lokmanya Tilak passes away.
1920, October - Dr. B. S. Munje pays a visit to Sri Aurobindo.
1920, Dec. - Nagpur session of the Congress; the goal of Swaraj is eclipsed by the Khilafat agitation.
1923, June 5 - Chittaranjan Das meets Sri Aurobindo.
1923, Sept. - Creation of the Swarajya Party.
1925, Jan. 5 - Lala Lajpat Rai and Purushottamdas Tandon meet Sri Aurobindo.
1925, June 16 - Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das passes away.
1926, Nov. 24 - Sri Aurobindo withdraws completely to concentrate on his work.
1928, Feb. 16 - Rabindranath Tagore meets Sri Aurobindo.
1928, Nov. 17 - Lala Lajpat Rai passes away a few weeks after having been assaulted by the police during a demonstration at Lahore.
1929, Dec. - The Lahore session of the Congress, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, adopts the goal of complete independence.
1930-1932 - Three Round Table Conferences with, in August 1932, the Communal Award which hardens divisions between Hindus and Muslims. Savage repression of the Civil Disobedience Movement by the British rulers.
1937 - Formation of Congress ministries in the Provinces.
1938, Nov. 24 - Sri Aurobindo breaks his leg while walking in concentration.
1939, Sept. - World War II breaks out; the Provincial ministries resign in October-November.
1940, March - The Muslim League, in session at Lahore, formally demands the creation of Pakistan.
1940, Sept. 19 - Sri Aurobindo's declaration in support of the Allies.
1941, March - Subhas Bose, having escaped from detention in Calcutta, arrives in Germany.
1941, Aug. 7 - Rabindranath Tagore passes away.
1942, March 31 - Sri Aurobindo publicly supports Cripps' proposals; the Congress turns them down.
1942, April - The Japanese overrun Burma and bomb cities on India's east coast.
1942, Aug. 9 - Start of the “Quit India” movement; Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders are arrested soon afterwards.
1944, July - Subhas Bose's Indian National Army and the Japanese are repulsed in Manipur.
1946, Aug. 16 - The Muslim League launches its “Direct Action” plan; bloody riots follow in Bengal and Bihar.
1946, Sept. 2 - Formation of the Interim Government, which the Muslim League joins a month later.
1947, March 24 - Lord Mountbatten is the new Viceroy.
1947, June - On the 3rd, Mountbatten announces the British government's final decision to grant India independence on the basis of partition; on the 14th, the Congress accepts the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.
1947, Aug. 15 - India's Independence; Sri Aurobindo's 75th birthday.
1947, October - Pakistan attacks Kashmir; the Indian army repels Pakistani troops, but Nehru calls a halt to the fighting and takes the dispute to the United Nations.
1948, Jan. 30 - Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.
1950, October - China invades Tibet; India remains a silent spectator.
1950, Dec. 5 - Sri Aurobindo leaves his body. Mother continues his work.
Part VI Front Page VOI Online Books References
1873-1906: Lifetime of Swami Rama Tirtha, who lectures throughout Japan and America spreading "practical Vedanta."
1875: Madame Blavatsky founds Theosophical Society in New York, later headquartered at Adyar, Madras, where Annie Besant, president (1907-1933), helps revitalize Hinduism with metaphysical defense of its principles.
1876: British Queen Victoria (1819-1901), head of Church of England, is proclaimed Empress of India (1876-1901).
1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1876-1990: Max Muller, pioneer of comparative religion as a scholarly discipline, publishes 50-volume Sacred Books of the East, English translations of Indian-Oriental scriptures.
1877-1947: Lifetime of Sri Lanka's Ananda Coomaraswamy, foremost interpreter of Indian art and culture to the West.
1879: Incandescent lamp is invented by Thomas Edison (1847-1931). The american inventor patents more than a thousand inventions, among them the microphone (1877) and the phonograph (1878). In New York (1881-82) he installs the world's first central electric power plant.
1879: The "Leonidas," first emigrant ship to Fiji, adds 498 Indian indentured laborers to the nearly 340,000 already working in other British Empire colonies.
1879-1966: Lifetime of Sadhu T.L. Vaswani, altruistic Sindhi poet and servant of God, founds several Hindu missions in India and seven Mira Educational Institutions.
1879-1950: Lifetime of Shri Ramana Maharshi, Hindu Advaita renunciate renaissance saint of Tiruvannamalai, South India.
1882-1927: Lifetime of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Indian-born Muslim mystic, instrumental in bringing Sufism to the West.
1884-1963: Lifetime of Swami Ramdas, known as "Papa," Indian saint and devotee of Lord Rama.
1885: A group of middle-class intellectuals in India, some of them British, found the Indian National Congress to be a voice of Indian opinion to the British government. This was the origin of the later Congress Party.
1885: First automobile powered by an internal combustion engine is produced by Karl Benz in Mannheim, Germany. Henry Ford makes his first car in 1893 in the US and later invents assembly line production.
1886: Rene Guenon is born, first European philosopher to become a Vedantin, says biographer Robin Waterfield.
1887-1963: Life of Swami Sivananda, Hindu universalist renaissance guru, author of 200 books, founder of Divine Life Society, with 400 branches worldwide in present day.
1888: Max Muller, revising his stance, writes, "Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. If I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who spoke the Aryan language."
1888-1975: Lifetime of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, renowned Tamil panentheist, renaissance philosopher, eminent writer; free India's first vice-president and second president.
1891: Maha Bodhi Society, an organization to encourage Buddhist studies in India and abroad, is founded in Sri Lanka by Buddhist monk Anagarika Dharmapala.
1893: Swami Vivekananda represents Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of the World's Religions, first ever interfaith gathering, dramatically enlightening Western opinion as to the profundity of Hindu philosophy and culture.
1893-1952: Life of Paramahamsa Yogananda, universalist Hindu, renaissance founder of Self Realization Fellowship (1925) in US, author of famed Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), popular book globalizing India's spiritual traditions.
1894: Gandhi drafts first petition protesting the indentured servant system. Less than six months later, British announce the halt of indentured emigration from India.
1894-1994: Lifetime of Swami Chandrashekarendra, venerated Shankaracharya saint of Kanchi monastery in South India.
1894-1969: Life of Meher Baba of Poona, silent sage whose mystical teachings stress love, self-inquiry and God consciousness.
1896-1982: Lifetime of Anandamayi Ma, God-intoxicated yogini and mystic Bengali saint. Her spirit lives on in devotees.
1896: Nationalist leader, Marathi scholar Bal Bangadhar Tilak (1857-1920) initiates Ganesha Visarjana and Sivaji festivals to fan Indian nationalism. He is first to demand complete independence, Purna Svaraj, from Britain.
1896-1977: Lifetime of Vaishnava Hindu renaissance activist Bhaktivedanta Swami Pradhupada. Founds Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in US in 1966. Dies 11 years later.
1896: American humorist Mark Twain writes Following the Equator, describing his three-month stay in India, during voyage to Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, South Africa and England. According to him and his critics, it is one of his finest works.
1897: Swami Vivekananda founds Ramakrishna Mission.
1898-1907: Cholera epidemic claims 370,000 lives in India.
1900: World population is 1.6 billion. India population is 290 million: 17.8% of world.
1900: India's tea exports to Britain reach 137 million pounds.
1900-77: Uday Shankar of Udaipur, dancer and choreographer, adapts Western theatrical techniques to Hindu dance, popularizing his ballet in India, Europe and the US.
1905: Lord Curzon, arrogant British Viceroy of India, resigns.
1905: Sage Yogaswami, age 33, is initiated by Chellappaswami at Nallur, Sri Lanka; later becomes the next preceptor in the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara.
1906: Muslim League political party is formed in India.
1906: Dutch Christians overtake Bali after Puputan massacres in which Hindu Balinese royal families are murdered.
1908-82: Lifetime of Swami Muktananda, global Kashmir Saiva renaissance satguru and founder of Siddha Yoga Dham.
1909-69: Lifetime of Dada Lekhraj (1909-1969), Hindu renaissance founder of Brahma Kumaris, Saivite social reform movement stressing meditation and world peace.
1909: Gandhi and assistant Maganlal agitate for better working conditions and abolition of indentured servitude in S. Africa. Maganlal continues Gandhi's work in Fiji.
1912: Anti-Indian racial riots on the US West Coast expel large Hindu immigrant population.
1913: New law prohibits Indian immigration to S. Africa, primarily in answer to white colonists' alarm at competition of Indian merchants and expired labor contracts.
1914: US government excludes Indian citizens from immigration. Restriction stands until 1965.
1914: Austria's Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated by Christian Serb nationalists. Chain reaction leads to W.W. I.
1914: Swami Satchidananda is born, founder of Integral Yoga Institute and Light of Truth Universal Shrine in the US.
1917: Communists under Lenin seize power in Russia, 1/6th of the Earth's land mass, following the Bolshevik Revolution.
1917: Last Hindu Indian indentured laborers are brought to British Christian colonies of Fiji and Trinidad.
1917-93: Life of Swami Chinmayananda, Vedantist writer, lecturer, Hindu renaissance founder of Chinmaya Mission and a co-founder of the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
1918: World War I ends. Death toll is estimated at ten million.
1918: Spanish Influenza epidemic kills 12.5 million in India, 21.6 million worldwide.
1918: Shirdi Sai Baba, saint to both Hindus and Muslims, dies at approximately age 70.
1919: Brigadier Dyer orders Gurkha troops to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, killing 379. Massacre convinces Gandhi that India must demand full independence from oppressive British Christian rule.
1920: Gandhi formulates the satyagraha, "firmness in truth," strategy of noncooperation and nonviolence against India's Christian British rulers. Later resolves to wear only dothi to preserve homespun cotton and simplicity.
1920: System of indentured servitude is abolished by India, following grassroots agitation by Mahatma Gandhi.
1920: Ravi Shankar is born in Varanasi, sitar master, composer and founder of National Orchestra of India, he inspires Western appreciation of Indian music.
1922: Pramukh Swami is born, renaissance traditionalist Hindu, head of Bochasanwasi Swaminarayan Sanstha Sangh.
1922: Tagore's school at Shantineketan (founded 1901) is made into Vishva Bharati Univ. Becomes national Univ., 1951.
1923: US law excludes citizens of India from naturalization.
1924: Sir John Marshall (1876-1958) discovers relics of the Indus Valley Hindu civilization. Begins large-scale excavations.
1925: K.V. Hedgewar (1890-1949) founds Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist movement.
1926: Satya Sai Baba is born, Hindu universalist renaissance charismatic guru, educationalist, worker of miracles.
1927: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami is born, present-day satguru in the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara.
1927: Maharashtra bars tradition of dedicating girls to temples as Devadasis, ritual dancers. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa soon follow suit; 20 years later, Tamil Nadu bans devotional dancing and singing by women in its thousands of temples and in all Hindu ceremonies.
1927 & 34: Indians permitted to sit as jurors and court magistrates.
1928: Hindu leader Jawaharlal Nehru drafts plan for a free India; becomes president of Congress Party in 1929.
1929: Chellachiamman, woman saint of Sri Lanka, dies. She was mentor to Sage Yogaswami and Kandiah Chettiar.
1931: Shri Chinmoy is born in Bengal, yogi, artist, self-transcendence master and United Nations peace ambassador.
1931: 2.5 million Indians reside overseas; largest communities are in Sri Lanka, Malaya, Mauritius and S. Africa.
1931: Dr. Karan Singh is born, son and heir apparent of Kashmir's last Maharaja; becomes parliamentarian, Indian ambassador to the US and global Hindu spokesman.
1934: Paul Brunton's instantly popular A Search in Secret India makes known to the West such illumined holy men as Shri Chandrashekharendra and Ramana Maharshi.
1936-1991: Lifetime of Shrimati Rukmini Devi, founder of Kalakshetra-a school of Hindu classical music, dance, theatrical arts, painting and handicrafts-in Madras.
1938: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is founded in Bombay by K.M. Munshi to conserve, develop and diffuse Indian culture.
1939: Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), manifesto of Nazism, published 1925, sells 5 million copies in 11 languages. It reveals his racist Aryan, anti-Semitic ideology, strategy of revenge and Socialist rise to power.
1939: World War II begins September 3, as France and Britain declare war on Germany after Germany invades Poland.
1939: Maria Montessori (1870-1952), first Italian female physician and "discoverer of the child," spends nine years in India teaching her kindergarten method and studying Hinduism through the Theosophical Society in Adyar.
1939: Mohammed Ali Jinnah calls for a separate Muslim state.
1941: First US chair of Sanskrit and Indology established at Yale Univ.; American Oriental Society founded in 1942.
1942: At sites along the lost Sarasvati River in Rajasthan, archeologist Sir Aurel Stein finds shards with incised characters identical to those on Indus Valley seals.
1945: Germany surrenders to Allied forces. Ghastly concentration camps that killed 6 million Jews are discovered.
1945: US drops atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, ending World War II. Total war dead is 60 million.
1945: United Nations founded by 4 Allied nations and China to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."
1947: India gains independence from Britain August 15. Pakistan emerges as a separate Islamic nation, and 600,000 die in clashes during subsequent population exchange of 14 million people between the two new countries.
1948: Britain grants colony of Sri Lanka Dominion status and self-government under Commonwealth jurisdiction.
1948: Establishment of Sarva Seva Sangh, Gandhian movement for new social order (Sarvodaya).
1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated January 30th by Nathuram Godse, 35, editor-publisher of a Hindu Mahasabha weekly in Poona, in retaliation for Gandhi's concessions to Muslim demands and agreeing to partition 27% of India to create the new Islamic nation of Pakistan.
1949: Sri Lanka's Sage Yogaswami initiates Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as his successor in Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara. Subramuniyaswami founds Saiva Siddhanta Church and Yoga Order the same year.
1949: India's new constitution, authored chiefly by B.R. Ambedkar, declares there shall be no "discrimination" against any citizen on the grounds of caste, jati, and that the practice of "untouchability" is abolished.
1950: Wartime jobs in West, taking women out of home, have led to weakened family, delinquency, cultural breakdown.
1950: India is declared a secular republic. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964) is determined to abolish casteism and industrialize the nation. Constitution makes Hindi official national language; English to continue for 15 years; 14 major state languages are recognized.
1951: India's Bharatiya Janata Sangh (BJP) party is founded.
VINDICATED BY TIMEThe Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities Introduction by Sita Ram Goel Voice of India, New Delhi Install Devnagari Font
ContentsPreface The Sunshine of ‘Secularism’ Rift in the Lute REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME IChristian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, Madhya Pradesh Part I Part II Part III Part IV Appendices REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME II Part ATour Programmes of the Committee Explanatory tour notes including important petitions received by the Committee on tour District Raigarh District Surguja District Raipur District Bilaspur District Amravati District Nimar District Yeotmal District Akola District Buldana District Mandla District Jabalpur District Chhindwara Questionnaire Replies to Questionnaire Replies submitted by Shri J. Lakra Replies to Questionnaire concerning the area covered by Jashpur, Khuria and Udaipur of the Raigarh district Replies submitted by the Catholic Sabha of the Raigarh district Replies Replies submitted by Shri Gurubachan Sing, Raipur Replies submitted by Chairman and Secretary of the General Conference, Mennonite Mission in India, Saraipali, Raipur district Replies submitted by Rev. Canon, R. A. Kurian, Nagpur Replies submitted by Rev. E. Raman, President, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Madhya Pradesh, Gopalganj, Sagar Replies submitted by Miss M. L. Merry, Khirkia R. S., Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri L. E. Hartman, Amravati Camp, Berar, Mission Bungalow, Amravati Camp, Berar Replies submitted by Umri Mission Hospital, Umri, via Yeotmal, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri F. B. Lucas, President, Independent Christian Association, Yeotmal Replies submitted by Shri R. W. Scott, Secretary, National Christian Council Replies submitted by Dr. E. Asirvatham, Nagpur Replies submitted by Shri P. S. Shekdar, Khamgaon, district Buldana Replies submitted by Shri Sohanlal Aggarwal, Secretary, Vedic Sanskriti Raksha Samiti. Replies submitted by Shri T. Y. Dehankar, President, Bar Association, and six others of Bilaspur Replies submitted by Shri M.N. Ghatate, Nagpur Sangh Chalak. Replies submitted by Shri R. K. Deshpande, Pleader, Jashpurnagar VOLUME II Part BCorrespondence of Roman Catholics with the Committee, the state government and the Central Government Extracts from Catholic Dharma ka Pracharak and other pamphlets showing the methods of propaganda Short History of Chhattisgarh Evangelical Mission Statement made before the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee. Camp: Raipur (22-7-1955) Camp Bilaspur (25-7-1955) Raigarh (28-7-1955) Jashpur (22-11-1955) Jabalpur (8-8-1955) Sagar (11-8-1955) Mandla (15-8-55) Khandwa (17-8-55) Yeotmal (10-8-55) Camp Amravati (13-8-1955) Washim (16-8-1955) Buldana 18-8-1955 Malkapur (20-8-1955) (22-8-1955) Nagpur (20-9-1955) Camp Ambikapur (19-11-1955) Activities of Christian Missions in the Eastern States and proselytism in the Udaipur State by the Jesuit Mission Back to Home Back to VOI Books Back to Top
1955-6: Indian government enacts social reforms on Hindu marriage, succession, guardianship, adoption, etc.
1950-60s Tours of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan lead to worldwide popularization of Indian music.
1955: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist formulator of the relativity theory dies. He declared Lord Siva Nataraja best metaphor for the workings of the universe.
1956: Indian government reorganizes states according to linguistic principles and inaugurates second Five-Year Plan.
1956: Swami Satchidananda makes first visit to America.
1957: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Himalayan Academy and opens US's first Hindu temple, in San Francisco.
1959: Dalai Lama flees Tibet and finds refuge in North India as China invades his Buddhist nation.
1959The transistor makes computers smaller and faster than prototypes like the 51-foot-long, 8-foot high Mark I, containing I-million parts and 500 miles of wire, invented for the US Navy in 1944 by IBM's Howard Aiken. From the 1960s onward, integrated circuitry and microprocessors will take computers-descendants of the 5,000-year-old Oriental abacus-to unimaginable levels to revolutionize Earth's technology and society.
1960: Since 1930, 5% of immigrants to US have been Asians, while European immigrants have constituted 58%.
1960: Border war with China shakes India's nonaligned policy.
1961: India forcibly reclaims Goa, Damao and Diu from the Portuguese. Goa became a state of India in 1987.
1963: US President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
1963: Hallucinogenic drug culture arises in US. Hindu gurus decry the false promise and predict "a chemical chaos."
1964: India's Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu religious nationalist movement, is founded to counter secularism.
1964: Rock group, the Beatles, practice Transcendental Meditation (TM), bringing fame to Maharshi Mahesh Yogi.
1965: US immigration cancels racial qualifications and restores naturalization rights. Welcomes 170,000 Asians yearly.
1966: J. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes Prime Minister of India, world's largest democracy, succeeding L. B. Shastri who took office after Nehru's death in 1964.
1968: US Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated.
1969: US astronaut Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon.
1970: Kauai Aadheenam, Hindu monastery, site of Kadavul Hindu Temple, Saiva Siddhanta Church headquarters, San Marga Sanctuary and editorial offices of Hinduism Today is founded February 5 on Hawaii's Garden Island.
1971: Rebellion in East Pakistan (formerly Bengal). Ten million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, flee to India. Indo-Pak border clashes escalate to war. India defeats West Pakistan. E. Pakistan becomes independent Bangladesh.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_bangla.html
Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan
By Shrinandan Vyas
This article deals with slaughter of about 2.5 million Hindus in East Pakistan in 1971.
This article refers to information provided by Dept. of Planning of Government of Bangla Desh, Encyclopedia Britannica, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee, Newsweek, New York Times,etc. This information and elementary math are used to show that indeed millions of Hindus were killed in East Pakistan in 1971.
ABSTRACT
It is well known that the 1971 army repression in Bangla Desh (former East Pakistan) resulted in an influx of 10 million refugees into India. Most world renowned relief and news agencies put the number of dead at 3 million. However the fact that is glossed over in these statistics is that THE ENTIRE HINDU POPULATION OF EAST PAKISTAN WAS THE PRIMARY TARGET OF PAKISTANI ARMY DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF REPRESSION IN 1971. Using the population statistics from Bangla Desh Government and US Government publications this article PROVES that 80 percent of the refugees from Bangla Desh were Hindus and that 80 percent of the 3 million killed were Hindus. THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM and IT WAS A HINDU GENOCIDE THAT TOOK PLACE IN EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971.
10 References - Encyclopedia Britannica, Bangla Desh Government - Ministry of Planning (for statistics), Newsweek, New York Times, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
INTRODUCTION
In the December 1970 general election in Pakistan, Awami League won 167 of 169 seats and over 80 % of popular votes in East Pakistan. Numerically Awami League had an absolute majority of seats in the Pakistan National Assembly (167 of the total 313 seats)(1). Historically, East Pakistan was allocated only 36 % of the total resources and East Pakistanis occupied only 20 % of the positions in the federal government in the United Pakistan (2). The Pakistani government's apathy towards East Pakistan after a terrible cyclone in November 1970 in which over 250,000 people died, had alienated East Pakistani people. The solid outcome of the 1970 elections for Awami League created an alternative power center for an already alienated people. The differences between the East and West Pakistani politicians snowballed into a major international crisis. On March 25, 1971 Pakistani army on President Yahya Khan's orders initiated a campaign of terror which was to last till its final surrender to the Indian army on December 17, 1971. This terror campaign by Pak army resulted in 10 million Bangla Deshi refugees crossing over to India (per Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (3)) and 3 million killed (4,5) based on reports from most relief agencies and official Bangla Desh government estimate. However the religious mix of both the refugees and the dead is nowhere emphasized anywhere. This significant information has particularly been absent in the reports from Indian News Media. This selective news dissemination has kept a more sinister truth of Hindu genocide in East Pakistan hidden from the world in general and Indians in particular.
HINDUS IN EAST PAKISTAN WERE SPECIAL TARGET OF PAK ARMY
In the summary of his report dated November 1, 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy writes (6):
'Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). HARDEST HIT HAVE BEEN MEMBERS OF THE HINDU COMMUNITY WHO HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED, AND IN SOME PLACES, PAINTED WITH YELLOW PATCHES MARKED "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..' (emphasis added by author of this article).
Sydney Schanberg, pulitzer prize winning journalist (of 'Killing Fields') was New York Times correspondent in Dhaka in 1971 at the time of army repression and during the 1971 Bangla Desh war. In his syndicated column 'The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored' Mr.Schanberg writes:
"I covered the war and witnessed first the population's joyous welcome of the Indian soldiers as liberators .. Later I toured the country by road to see the Pakistani legacy firsthand. In town after town there was an execution area where people had been killed by bayonet, bullet and bludgeon. In some towns, executions were held on a daily basis."
This was a month after the war's end (i.e. January 1972), ... human bones were still scattered along many roadsides. Blood stained clothing and tufts of human hair clung to the brush at these killing grounds. Children too young to understand were playing grotesque games with skulls. OTHER REMINDERS WERE THE YELLOW "H"s THE PAKISTANIS HAD PAINTED ON THE HOMES OF HINDUS, PARTICULAR TARGETS OF THE MUSLIM ARMY." (7) (emphasis added by the author of this article).
Thus two independent observations one dated prior to November 1, 1971 and other in January 1972 confirm that Hindu houses in East Pakistan were marked with yellow "H"s and that Hindus were particular targets of the Pakistani army. The situation thus bears an uncanny resemblance to the predicament of Jews targeted by Nazis from 1939 to 1944, with similar out come.
MOST OF THE REFUGEES FROM BANGLA DESH WERE HINDUS
Senator Edward Kennedy in his report gives following details about the the refugees from Bangla Desh in 1971. As of October 25, 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. The average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day (3). Hence the total refugee population at the start of Bangla Desh war on December 3, 1971 was about 10 million (5).
Sen. Kennedy further mentions that Government of India had set up separate refugee camps for Hindus and Muslims where possible, i.e. refugee camps of Hindus were located in Hindu majority areas and similarly Muslim camps were located in Muslim majority areas. THE COMMUNAL REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEES WAS 80 PERCENT HINDU, 15 PERCENT MUSLIM AND 5 PERCENT CHRISTIAN AND OTHER (8).
This means that 8 MILLION OF THE 10 MILLION REFUGEES WERE HINDUS (8). Other fact that corroborates this is that when Sen. Kennedy had asked several Chief Relief officers in charge of refugee camps what was needed most urgently, their reply was "crematoriums".
THE MISSING 2 .5 MILLION HINDUS
Several agencies indicate that the brutal Pakistani army repression killed 3 million Bengalis. This estimate is even given by the Government of Bangla Desh (5). However no religious mix of the dead is easily available.
Let us therefore look at the population demographics for Bangla Desh which is given in Table I.
TABLE I
Source : Based on Information from Bangladesh Ministry of planning, Bureau of Statistics (9)
YEAR Total Population in Millions Hindu Population as % of Total Hindu Population in Millions
1941 42.00 28.0 11.76
1961 50.84 18.5 9.41
1974 71.48 13.5* 9.655
1981 87.13 12.2 10.633
* Encyclopedia Britannica (10) gives 13.5% figure for 1974, where as Government of Bangla Desh gives 13.5% for 1971 and total population of 71.48 million for 1974 (9).
Since Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh have similar socio- economic and educational backgrounds, the birth and death rates for these two groups must be very similar. This means that the Hindu population must grow at the same pace as the total population growth rate. Hence any unusual drop must be accounted for by influx of Hindu refugees and mortality rate from non natural causes. The expected Hindu population, the emigration to India from E. Pakistan and actual populations are listed in Table II.
Table II
YEAR Hindu Population of East Pak/BD Actual (9)(millions) Expected Hindu Population in Absence of Strife(millions) Refugees from E. Pakistan to India(8)(millions) Hindus Missing(millions)
1941 11.766 - - -
1961 9.41 14.24 4.12(1947-58) 0.711
1974 9.65 13.23 1.11(1964-70) 2.477
Thus if 1947 partition had not resulted, the Hindu population of East Pakistan area should by 1961 have increased proportionally from 11.76 millions in 1941, to 14.24 millions (11.76 * 50.84 / 42 = 14.24). The official Indian Government records indicate that between 1947 and 1958, 4.12 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India from East Bengal(3). This means the Hindu population in East Pakistan in 1961 should have been 10.12 million (14.24 - 4.12) compared to the actual 9.41 million. The missing 0.7 million Hindu population can be accounted by several hundred thousands killed in the riots in 1947 on the Bengal border, plus the refugee influx from 1958 to 1961. 1961.
Let us now look at Hindu population in East pakistan from 1961 to 1974. With proportional increase the Hindu population of 9.41 million in 1961 should have increased to 13.23 million ( 9.41 * 71.48 / 50.84 = 13.23 ) by 1974. However the actual Hindu population as per Bangla Desh Census data for 1974 was 9.65 million. Of the 3.58 million shortfall only 1.11 million can be accounted for since Government of India's record indicate that 1.11 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India between 1964 and 1970 (3) i.e.PRIOR to the 1971 crisis.
THUS 2.47 MILLION (13.23 - 9.65 - 1.11 = 2.47) HINDUS FROM EAST PAKISTAN ARE UNACCOUNTED FOR FROM THE 1971 PAK ARMY REPRESSION.
OTHER PROOF FOR 2.4 MILLION HINDUS KILLED IN EAST PAKISTAN
Since the 80 percent of the refugees in 1971 were Hindus,a similar proportion of the dead are likely to be Hindus also. The official Bangla Desh government estimate puts the number of Bengalis killed at 3 million. 80 percent of 3 million put THE NUMBER OF HINDUS KILLED AT 2.4 MILLION which is close to the number of Hindus missing calculated comes above.
SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS
1. Independent accounts indicate that Hindus from East Pakistan were special target during the 1971 army repression. HINDU HOUSES WERE PAINTED WITH YELLOW "H"s, THEY WERE ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, AND THEY WERE SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED.
2. 80 percent of the refugees to India in 1971 were Hindus, THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM.
3. NEARLY 2.5 MILLION HINDUS WERE KILLED DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF PAKISTANI ARMY REPRESSION OF EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971. THUS IT WAS A HINDU SLAUGHTER IN 1971.
4. ALL THE ABOVE BEAR AN UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE TO THE PERSECUTION & HOLOCAUST OF JEWS BY THE NAZIS.
5. INDIAN GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED 'SECULAR' MEDIA DELIBERATELY HID THE SINISTER TRUTH OF HINDU GENOCIDE IN EAST PAKISTAN.
6. In any internal political problem of an Islamic country, Hindus (or minorities of other religions) become the scapegoats and will be liquidated at the first chance the Islamic Government gets.
7. WE HAVE LEARNT NOTHING FROM THE HISTORY AND WITH THE 'PSECULAR' MEDIA WE WILL LEARN NOTHING.
COMMENTS & FUTURE WORK
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangla Desh did not end in 1971. Since 1974 to 1981 the Hindu population as a percent of total Bangla Deshi population decreased from 13.5 % to 12.2 %. This slide has continued over the last decade. Same is true about Hindus in Pakistan and in Kashmir valley.
There is a genuine need for systematic record keeping and documentation of the history of Hindu genocides & Hindu ethnic cleansing, so that we don't repeat it again (and again and again..) There is also a need to build a memorial of this Hindu holocaust similar to the Jewish Holocaust memorial in Washington DC.
This topic is extensively dealt in a book 'Genocide in East Pakistan/ Bangla Desh' by S.K.Bhattacharya. However the present author has verified the findings of S.K. Bhattacharya based on completely independent sources. For detailed descriptions and news reports of 1971, reader should refer to the original book.
REFERENCES
1. Bangladesh: The Birth Of A Nation, A hand book of Background information and Documentary Sources Compiled by Univ. of Chicago Group of Scholars, by M.Nicholas, P.Oldensburg, Ed.W.Morehouse, M.Seshachalam & Co., India, 1972, p.7
2. Same as reference 1, p.73
3. Crisis in South Asia - A report by Senator Edward Kennedy to the Subcommittee investigating the Problem of Refugees and Their Settlement, Submitted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, November 1, 1971, U.S. Govt. Press, pp.6-7.
4. Newsweek, August 1, 1994, p.37
5. Same as reference 1, pp.44-45
6. Same as reference 3, p.66
7. The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored , Syndicated Column by Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 1994.
8. Same as reference 3, p. 19
9. Bangladesh A Country Study, Ed. J.Heitzman & R.L.Worden, 2nd Ed, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Publisher U.S. Army, 1989, pp.250,255
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Micropedia, Vol.1, p.789 Desh.
Back To Islamic Ages
Back To Modern Hindu History
Back To Library Of Hindu History
1972: A Historical Atlas of South Asia is produced by Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Siva G. Bajpai, Raj B. Mathur, et al.
1972: Muslim dictator Idi Amin expels Indians from Uganda.
1973: Neem Karoli Baba, Hindu mystic and siddha, dies.
1974: India detonates a "nuclear device."
1974: Watergate scandal. US President Nixon resigns.
1975: Netherlands gives independence to Dutch Guyana, which becomes Suriname; one third of Hindus (descendants of Indian plantation workers) emigrate to Netherlands for better social and economic conditions.
1977: One hundred thousand Tamil Hindu tea-pickers expatriated from Sri Lanka are shipped to Madras, South India.
1979: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Hinduism Today international newspaper to promote Hindu solidarity.
1980: Grand South Indian counterpart to Kumbha Mela of Prayag, the Mahamagham festival, held every 12 years in Kumbhakonam, on the river Kaveri, two million attend.
1981: India has one-half world's cattle: 8 cows for every 10 Indians.
1981: Deadly AIDS disease is conclusively identified.
1981: First bharata natyam dance in a temple since 1947 Christian-British ban on Devadasis is arranged by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami at Chidambaram; 100,000 attend.
1983: Violence between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Singhalese in Sri Lanka marks beginning of Tamil rebellion by Tiger freedom fighters demanding an independent nation called Eelam. Prolonged civil war results.
1984: Balasarasvati, eminent classical Karnatic singer and bharata natyam dancer of worldwide acclaim, dies.
1984: Since 1980, Asians have made up 48% of immigrants to the US, with the European portion shrinking to 12%.
1984: Indian soldiers under orders from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi storm Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to crush rebellion. She is assassinated this year by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation. Her son Rajiv takes office.
1986: Swami Satchidananda dedicates Light of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) at Yogaville in Virginia, USA.
1986: Jiddha Krishnamurti, anti-guru guru, semi-existentialist philosophical Indian lecturer and author, dies.
1986: World Religious Parliament in New Delhi bestows the title Jagadacharya, "world teacher," on five spiritual leaders outside India: Swami Chinmayananda of Chinmaya Mission (Bombay, India); Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami of Saiva Siddhanta Church and Himalayan Academy (Hawaii-California, USA); Yogiraj Amrit Desai of Kripalu Yoga Center (New York, USA); Pandit Tej Ramji Sharma of Nepali Baba (Kathmandu, Nepal); Swami Jagpurnadas Maharaj (Port Louis, Mauritius).
1987: Colonel S. Rabuka, a Methodist, leads coup deposing Fiji's Indian-dominated government and instituting military rule. July, 1990, constitution guarantees political majority to ethnic (mostly Christian) Fijians.
1988: General Ershad declares Islam state religion of Bangladesh, outraging 12-million (11%) Hindu population.
1988: US allows annual influx of 270,000 Asian immigrants.
1988: First Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival is held at Oxford University, England. Hindus discuss international cooperation with 100 religious leaders and 100 parliamentarians.
1989: Christian missionaries are spending US%165 million per year to convert Hindus.
Reference: http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/robertsn.html
Pat Robertson Opposes Religious Freedom, Denounces Hinduism
Using TV, Christian Pat Robertson Denounces Hinduism as "Demonic" -- Evangelist Opposes Freedom of Religion, Says It's Time To Convert India and Wants to Keep Hinduism Out of US
By Valli J. Rajan, Pennsylvania, USA
HINDUISM TODAY
July 1995 Copyright (C) Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reserved.
This is an authorized reproduction.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
Posted by the authority of the Himalayan Academy
Article from HINDUISM TODAY, July 1995
Copyright (C) 1995 Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reseved
The Hinduism Today Web site is located at:
http://www.HinduismToday.kauai.hi.us/ashram/welcome.html
Reference: http://www.vedanet.com/boutios.htm
THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
The Papal Excuses viewed by a Druid
by Ariaxs Druuis Boutios
In Antiquity, the Vedic Dharmas were professed from Mahàbhàrata and the Tocharian kingdoms in the East, all the way to Ireland via Scythia, Greece and Gaul in the West. Then came Avidya which we call Anuidiia in Celtica, the Sanskrit of the Druids. In those times after the taking of Gaul and Britain by the Roman forces, many great Druid teachers were forced into exile to Ireland and other far away places in the North Sea and to the East.
Under the Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantinius (306-337 CE), temples of Uidiia (Vidya) were destroyed to make way for the Christian faith. In 355, it was decreed that those participating in ‘pagan’ rituals be put to death. The Roman and Greek officials in the Celtic kingdoms devised to promote their new faith by the conversion of the Celtic aristocracy. The Roman officer Martinus of Pannonia lead a holy war against the Druids of Gaul who had found refuge in the countryside. Temples and idols were destroyed, temple offerings were confiscated, and priests put to the sword. Bishops, recruited in the Roman Patrician families, spread their terror to all the countries of Gaul and Britain. Few areas were spared but the resistance was great. Nevertheless, the many interdictions to practice posted by the conquering Roman Church failed to discourage regional devotion. In the country of Gaul, proselytising Christians were beaten and chased away.
How Patricius (Saint-Patrick) tricked the Irish into becoming Christians
Contrary to the legend, the youth was never taken as a hostage by pirates and sold as a slave to an Irish Druid. Druids, like their Brahman counterparts, took pupils, not slaves. Menial chores were of course asked in reparation for food and lodging. In fact, Patricius spent the early part of his life in Ireland where his parents had sent him to seek training under an eminent Druid. But when he returned to Britain from this training, he was swayed from Druidic practice and converted to Christianism.
So when the Romano-British Patricius returned to Ireland a second time, he returned there as bishop of the new Roman faith. Patricius had been in Gaul studying Christian theology and politics at Auxerre, a high place of learning. Then he met the followers of Martinus (Saint Martin) at de Marmoutier Abby where he learned proselytising techniques. And then, travelled to southern Gaul to the island monastery of Lerins, and in Italy where he was ordained by the Pope Caelestinus before he embarked for the North of Ireland in the year 432.
On an island off the Leinster coast now called Inis Padraig, he was greeted by others who were sent there to assist him in his mission. The mission was perilous, but Patricius who was expert in the arts of dissimulation, organised his monasteries as Druidic schools. For he had come to Ireland to seek out the Druids, banish the old gods out of Ireland and convert the Scots to Christianity. In hope of greater education promised by the Roman conversion centres, the Scots of aristocracy sent their children there for superior training. This is how he tricked king Coroticus and many other chieftains into accepting Christianism. For the saint acted more as a Druid than a Christian convert. Hence as Patricius boasted:
‘The sons of the Scots and the daughters of the chiefs have become monks and virgins of Christ in such great numbers that I would not know how to count them.’
And in his confessions Patricius shows only contempt for the Dharma of the Druids calling it impure and idol worshipping:
‘Hence, how did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?’
So when Patricius and his band came to coast, they were challenged by a formidable chieftain called Dichu who set his hounds on them. But when the dogs were to come on them, Patricius pronounced a spell. The master and his dogs paralysed with fear. But Patricius took pity and removed the spell. Dichu was so grateful for this that he became one of Patrisius’s followers. Dichu’s barn, was made into a place of worship called Stabulum Patricii, the stable of Patricius.
It came to pass that Patricius and his band of monks made way for the town of Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, where Laoghaire, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages now reigned. So when he arrived in Leinster it was the eve of Beltaine, May Day, but also of Easter. In honour of Lord Belios, all the fires were extinguished on the eve of the Giamonios Moon and it was decreed that no fire be lit until the Chief Druid, had lit the first fire of Tara. So that when the flames of the Knoll of Tara rose at dawn, fire after fire would be kindled on hilltop after hilltop until all the hills of Leinster were lit.
On the very morning of the Giamonios Moon, the High King and his following were assembled on the Hill of Tara. As the first rays of the glorious Sun slanted over the horizon, the Royal Druid moved forward to light the flower-strewn pyre. But before he set it alight, the watchers on the hill were astonished to see flames rising further to the East on the hill of Slane, the hill of well-being.
High King Laoghaire stared in dismay as the blaze on the neighbouring hill grew stronger and stronger.
‘Who dared light this fire’ He asked.
‘Much as we see the fire’, the Druids answered, ‘and though we ignore who lit it, we know that less it be extinguished at this moment, it will never be put out. For it will put out our own sacred fires and the manwho lit it will have power over us all, and over the High King himself.’
‘Put out the fire and take me to the man who lit it here to Tara,’ the king commanded. On hearing this, he and his messengers hurried to the hill of Slane. Hence the Druids’ warning to the king and his following: King , thou shalt not go to this place where the fire is, lest that thou fearest not worship he who has lit it, but better remain to the side at its exterior. He will be brought before thee so he may pay homage to thee, and thou will be master. We will speak, he and we, back and forth, in your presence, and thou will challenge thus’... And so they arrived at the given place. Once they descended from their chariots and horses, they penetrated not in the circle of the fire, but sat to the side. Patricius was then called before the king outside of the ring of fire. When Patricius came before the High King and when he saw the strange tonsures, the cowled robes, and curved crosier, he was struck with fear.
Laoghaire, remembered that his Druids had forewarned him of their coming years before:
‘Adze-heads will come across a furious headed sea hole-headed their cloak crook-headed their staff. They will sing maledictions their judgement-giving alters in the back (western) corner of the house, all the people answering ²amhàin, amhàin² Only one, only one (Punning with Amen)’.
By this time the sun was well over the horizon and the Beltaine were still not lit. The assembly became much worried at this but stood there speechless.
With his Druids and noblemen around him, Laoghaire, furious, pronounced a death sentence on Patricius which he could not, since a king never speaks before his Druid.
Seeing all rendered speechless, Patricius acting as High Priest, reproached the king:
‘The God I worship makes the sun rise each day for our benefit. But the sun above us will never reign over us nor will its splendour last for ever. Christ whom I worship, the true sun and he will never die and he will give eternal life to those who do his will. For this sun which we see rises daily for us because He commands so, but it will never reign, nor will its splendour last; what is more, those wretches who adore it will be miserably punished. Not so we, who believe in, and worship, the true sun, Christ, who will never perish, nor will he who doeth His will; but he will abide for ever as Christ abideth for ever, who reigns with God the Father Almighty and the Holy Spirit before time, and now, and in all eternity. Amen.’ (Ref. 1)
Many in the assembly understood what Patricius meant since knowing about the Spiritual Sun but Laoghaire was not converted and was forced to revoke the sentence.
But the True Sun and worldly Sun are both one and the same. All that is good is Light! One does not curse the Light of the World without consequence.
Thus Patricius’ confession: ²That same night, when I was asleep, Satan (this is how Patrick refers to Helios, the Sun God called Sauelios in Celtic) assailed me violently, a thing I shall remember as long as I shall be in this body. And he fell upon me like a huge rock, and I could not stir a limb. But whence came it into my mind, ignorant as I am, to call upon Helias? And meanwhile I saw the sun rise in the sky, and while I was shouting `Helias! Helias' with all my might, suddenly the splendour of that sun fell on me and immediately freed me of all misery. And I believe that I was sustained by Christ my Lord, and that His Spirit was even then crying out in my behalf, and I hope it will be so on the day of my tribulation, as is written in the Gospel: On that day, the Lord declares, it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.² (ref. 2)
The sun had dimmed, the Druids had lost the sacred fires, the right of pre-eminence, and were therefore forced into retirement. Following these events much happened to those professing Uidiia. Patricius himself destroyed one hundred and eighty holly records.
The Wise Ones debated much, but how could Uidiia remain in a world where fools are said wise, where children teach elders and elders fall into senility?
It was hence prophesied that wealth and prosperity would decrease until the world would be wholly depraved. For what is gained through connivery and treachery will be lost in shame and dishonour.
Thus the Gaulish pagan of Noyon declared these words to the proselytiser Saint Eloi (588-659 ce):
‘Roman that you are! - At us ,how much you utter the same words, never will you abolish our customs.We celebrate our ceremonies, as we have always done until now and there is no one in this world who can forbid our antique maintenances that are so dear to us.’ (ref. 3)
THE WOLF IN THE SHEEPFOLD
(A brief calendar of the Roman Christian repression of Druidism)
200: Beginning of the Christianisation of Britain.
250: Around 250 CE, begins the christianisation effort of Gaul. The church is organised around the city of Lyon used at a mission base. St. Ciprian sends missionaries from Africa: Paul to Narbonne, Trophime to Arles, Saturnine to Toulouse, Martial to Limoges, Denis to Lutèce (Paris), Austremoine to Clermont, and Gratian to Tours.
260: Christianisation of Britain.
324: Just before 324 CE, ban on domestic sacrifices. After 330, restriction of public devotion for the non-Christian state servants.
355: An imperial decree by Constantine orders the closure of all pagan temples, issuing a death sentence to all those caught practising a pagan cult.
355: Saint Martin creates a volunteer militia to enforce the Imperial decree.
380: Theodosius I (379-395) renews the interdiction. Gratian (367-383) confiscates the revenues of pagan temples and pagan priests. In 392, pagan devotion in any form is strictly forbidden.
410: Foundation of a Christian learning centre on the islands of Lérins of the coast of Cannes by St. Honoratus for the conversion of Celts. Pagan aristocracy mints coins representing pagan Emperors on New Year’sday as a sign of resistance and derision of the decadent Christian Emperor. Nevertheless, by the IVth century, the city populations of the Empire are of Christian majority, whence the pejorative term pagan for the country folk.
418: Honorius (395-423), with the approval of the Gallo-Roman bishops of Rennes and Nantes orders the destruction of all pagan sites and emblems. Valentinian reiterates the decree of the destruction of all pagan temples.
432: Christianisation of Northern Ireland by St Patrick. Creation of conversion centres in all parts of Ireland.
452: The Council of Arles (canon 23) declares guilty of sacrilege bishops tolerating in their diocese sacrificial fires and the devotion of nature deities.
461: Death of St Patrick and conversion of Ireland.
506: The Councils of Agde and Orléans criminalise the practice of pythoness. These are the first ‘witch hunts’.
515: By 515-520, Saint Césaire (470-543), the bishop of Arles in sermon # 129 fulminates against the cult of ancestors and other popular New Year’s practices.
516: Between 516 and 537, St Vigor, bishop of Bayeux, requests the service of the military to enforce the ban on druidic practices still celebrated on Mount Phaunus. The idols are destroyed and the shrine is confiscated by the Church.
520: Around 520-525, in the vicinities of Cologne, the Irish monk St. Gall sets fire to the temple and its statues where libations and offerings were still given.
524: At the council of Arles, rites observed during lunar eclipses on the feasts of Jupiter (Toutatis) and New Year’s day are condemned.
533: At the second council of Orléans, those returning to pagan practice are stigmatised.
541: At the fourth council of Orléans is reiterated the interdiction to practice a pagan cult as well as taking oaths to gods. Saint Paterne (dead in 560) is said to have stopped a pagan ceremony at Chaussey where he spilled over the contents of sacred cauldrons.
543: Condemnation of the pre-existence of the soul prior birth at the synod of Constantinople under pope Vigil. For the Catholic Church, a new soul comes with the new-born.
554: In 554, King Childebert I (511-558) of the Frankish occupation of Gaul, renews the order to destroy all pagan idols and megaliths (standing stones).
567: At the second council of Tours, all those caught in the forest and other wild places honouring pagan sites, stones, trees, and fountains are ordered to be chased out of church. Priests are encouraged to excommunicated all those suspected of giving themselves to pagan rites, that is, unknown ceremonies to the church at pagan sites.
573: Overwhelmed by the continuous resistance of Antique cults, Gregory the Great, Pope and prefect of Rome, suggests to the clergy that to: ‘Remove everything from these uneducated minds is an impossible task. Refrain from destroying their temples; destroy only the idols, and have them replaced by replicas.’
578: At the council of Auxerre is reiterated the interdiction to disguise oneself in cow and deer skins on the occasion of the New Year’s celebrations. Also forbidden are lustration rites, lighting candles before holy wells, trees, and stones; and bread divining and the consultation of seers or consultation of oracle sticks.
580: Around 575-580, in the Pagus Gabalitanus (actual Gévaudan, between Margeride and Aubrac France) there was a traditional lakeside gathering of peasants that lasted for three days. During the festival, libations and offerings of fleeces, cloths, cheese, wax cakes and bread were given to the lake’s titulary divinity. Feasting and fertility rites lasted all during the day, only to be interrupted by foul weather. Gregory of Tours reports that the\ superstition was only stopped after a ‘holy father’ put an end to it.
Strangely enough, the same rites were still reported in 1872 on the side of Lac de Saint Andéal but with the only difference that coins were used as offerings.
581: The synod of Auxerre forbids the laity to dance in churches, have girls sing, and hold feasts.
585: The council of Mâcon condemns those who do not work on Thurdays (in honour of the pagan God Jupiter/Thor) to be beaten with a rod.
590: St Walfroid has the colossal statue of the goddess Arduinna (Diana) of Yvois (Carigan, Meuse) destroyed.
597: Pope Gregory the Great’s (590-604) prescriptions to Queen Brunehaut on the interdiction of pagan rites (tree worship etc.).
600: The Bishop of Tour is shocked to find that on the 7th of July 600, ‘that there are still in the diocese and neighbouring dioceses a great number of pagans still attached to the heathen cult and its false divinities, mainly in the land south of the Loire’... and that he found it difficult to have the 22nd canon observed, mostly in those villages where the pagans had embraced christianism, thus making it very difficult to have the many pagan superstitions eradicated.
611: St Valery (562-622), bishop of Rouen, has an enormous tree worshipped by the peasants of the Bresle valley cut down.
626: Renewal of the interdictions of the second council of Orléans at the council of Clichy, in 626.
639: St Amand (584-679), bishop of Worms in 626, realises that pagan temples are still used in his diocese. He has king Dagobert I (626-639) deliver him an ordinance to have all children baptised.
640: St Omer, bishop of Thérouane, finds pagan temples intact upon his arrival in the diocese.
641: Famous sermon pronounced by St Eloi in 641 denouncing pagan practices.
658: At the second council of Nantes is ordered the destruction and burial of pagan stones so that its adorators may not find them.
698: At the council of Rouen in 698 are denounced those who make lustrations, vows and offerings before stones. Experts generally agree that by the end of the VIIth century, no more organised pagan cult remained in Gaul.
742: Nevertheless, a capitulary of Corloman in 742, renews the interdiction of pagan practice, and Charlemagne in turn in a capitulary pronounced on the 23rd of March 789, is very hard on the ‘fools’ who light torches and perform all sorts of superstitions by trees and wells.
769: Another capitulary dated from Aix-la-Chapelle, orders: ‘That he who is sufficiently informed, and who does not remove from his fields the stone mockeries standing there, will be treated as sacrilegious and declared anathema.
792 and after: Nevertheless, megaliths still continued to be re-erected when re-discovered by the peasants, votive offerings were still being made at wells, at the foot of trees and standing stones. And this despite the continuous harassment of the Church through the centuries.(ref. 3)
One would expect that after having destroyed the Dharmas of Europe, that the Church of Christ would show remorse for what it did. Much to the contrary, it continued relentlessly as it continues to this day in this denial.
Pope John Paul II, Synod of the Bishops of Europe, October 1999
When John Paul II opened the synod of the bishops of Europe in October 1999 in Rome, the main themes for the three following weeks were: ‘Neopaganism’, ‘Radical de-Christianisation’ and ‘Disintegration of the Conscience of Europe’.
Hipolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand and author of ‘Vers une France païenne’ (Towards a Pagan France) seized the opportunity to throw a violent attack against Druidism and the other old Dharmas of Europe. This attack Druidism was often equated with New Age, itself equated with laity and nihilistic consumerism. Bishop Simon, as do many other eminent Christian thinkers, wilfully confuses the resurgent lineages of Antique spirituality with the many modern spiritual and philosophical trends of the West such as the Neopagan and New Age movements. This is wrong because it perpetuates a false picture of Druidism. The Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel (World-wide Celtic Creed), deeply regrets that the Church continues in its libellous attitude against Europe’s native religions. What is even more disturbing is that the three Abrahamic religions, the three monotheisms, all agree that ‘Neopaganism’ as a whole (read Laity, New Age, the European Dharmas and Western Hinduism and Buddhism) is the major threat that organised Religion faces today.
The fact of the matter is that the Monotheist Faiths are exclusive and non-inclusive. The Roman Church has never allowed other faiths to coexist along its side. It has ruthlessly destroyed everything Europe had as Antique institutions. This is what was called as the ‘Dark Ages’. The Roman Church created a spiritual desert around it, and when the veil of Maya was lifted, the Church itself was deserted. The Church is well aware of this, and this is why it needs so badly to make amends. The only problem is that it is not making amends to those it continues to attack. Saint Thomas in his Treaty on theological problems, article 5, question 10, names three concrete modalities in the classification of infidelity:
1) refusal of Christian Faith that was never accepted: Paganism;
2) refusal of Christian Faith that was professed in figure: Judaism;
3) refusal of the Revelation that was accepted: Heresy.
The loss of faith by heresy is considered a worst heresy and injure to God than that committed by pagans. But from the material platform, paganism is considered worst than heresy because it is at a greater distance from the positions of the Church. In the eyes of the Church, of course, Druidism, like Hinduism, is paganism. (ref. 4)
THE WOLF IN GRANDMOTHER’S BED
Now that we have heard the papal excuses for the 2000 Jubilee, we can only be sure of just one thing, the Church has now launched its new evangelical mission. One thing sure, as usual, the Roman Church was very discrete and parsimonious on whatever it wanted to leek out. In fact, the bone of the mater is that the Church keeps many hidden agendas.
First and foremost is its interfaith dialogue. The main question in this case is, to what faiths was the pardon addressed. Certainly not to the New Age community. Even though the Church sees the New Age movement as its greatest opponent, it doesn’t even recognise the validity of such a faith. Druidry?, there are no more bones left in this closet, just dust. To Hinduism? no, India is the main target of its next great mission effort. In fact, the main reason to hold such a pardon came from the growing embarrassment the Church endures with the Jewish communities.
Some time ago, French prelates made public excuses to its Jewish compatriots for the horrors suffered under the Vichy regime. Then there was the difficult dialogue with the Moslems, not to mention the other Christians termed prosaically ‘the Division of Christians’. All this is very fine, but the nerve of it all is that the Catholic Church, not unlike the major multinational companies, is looking for a merger take over and non-encroachment agreement. First and foremost in this new deal is its effort to bring the Roman and Orthodox churches back together if not the Anglican Church. This is something we should be very worried about. Certainly the Pope did fly away to the Holy Land to make repairs with its ‘Older Brother of the Faith’, then try patching things with Little Brother. Imagine this, the Abrahamic faiths strike a non encroachment alliance in which each is the keeper of its brother! Who is targeted next? You guessed! This is why it is so important for us to maintain our own interfaith forum.
This forum of Pan-Vedic Dharmas could comprise of the Hinduist Vainavists, Shaivists, Shaktis, and reformed faiths such as Jains, Buddhists etc., with the European Dharmas, that are, the Celtic Druids, The Germanic Odinists, the Greek Hierophants, etc. From the sixties, Druid orders of Europe were engaged in inter-faith dialogue with Buddhists and Brahmans, but back then, they had very little reciprocal understanding. It is now accepted in a growing circle of Vedic scholars that Druidism was the Western form of Vedism. In order to harmonise our relations, much had, and still needs, to be discussed concerning standards of practice. This being, what makes a devotee of Vedic and Dru Vidic Dharmas? There is still much confusion due to divergent schools of thought and trends within Druidry and on issues of devotion, worship, diet and liturgy, let alone ritual purity.
Recently, we have been successful in establishing contact, trust, and strong friendship with Vaishnavas and Shaivites in the West. Special to us, is our hope to hold as a united front in areas of common interest. The Catholic Church has documentation centres informing the general public on new religions and sects, and this includes Druid orders as well as respectable institutions such as Iskon. While visiting one of these very well documented centres I was made aware of the ‘dangers of sectarianism’. I was told that Druidism was a fake religion invented by nostalgic Freemasons and that Christianity was plagued by an ever increasing number of Oriental sects. Nothing nice to say about gurus, a very pejorative name, and even less to say about the many pundits directing yoga and meditation centres.
The only nice thing I heard was that Zoroastrianism (an I.E. Dharma) was one of the inspirational sources of Christianism along with Judaism. This probably explains why our queries to the Zoroastrian community were never answered. Who would want to engage a discussion with a nostalgic mason? Its a pity because Druidism has more to share with the Farsis than Christians will ever want to admit. So no, the Pope will never admit to the persecution and destruction of the European Dharmas. India is high up on the agenda and it will look very embarrassing to admit that it partook in the destruction of its sister faiths in Europe.
What the bishops of India plan for India
«Pope John Paul II invites the entire Church to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit for a renewal of Christian life and mission in the world.»
Read between lines: 1- renewal of Christian life = Christians must be more assertive, solidarity of all Christian Churches; 2- renewal of mission = a new evangelical zeal inviting Christians to spread the good word, make more converts;
«We too, the Christian community in India, are challenged to give our specific response to the Spirit of Jesus during this period, so crucial to the nation and the Church in this country.»
Why is the Christian community so crucial to the Indian nation?
1- India is the last stronghold of ‘heathenism’.
2- the Caste system is judged offensive by Christian standards.
3- Hinduism is a growing menace to the Monotheistic bloc. Gurus are exporting their teachings all over the world.
4- New Age, also called neopaganism resulting from the teaching of gurus in the West, is the major threat of the Abrahamic monotheist religions.
In fact, India is religious and spiritual with or without Christianism!
«As the Third Millennium dawns on our country, where Christianity has been in existence practically from its very inception, we want to project a renewed face of the Church which will radiate Christ so that our brothers and sisters of India will be able to experience the loving kindness of the Saviour.»
If the Pope is calling for a reconciliation of the Churches and asking forgiveness for the faults of the past, why is he calling for a conversion of India?
It is easier to ask forgiveness for the destruction of Native American cultures when these have been massively Christianised. It is contradictory to ask pardon for faults of the past when destruction of native cultures is still called for.
«It is our goal to build up in our country a Catholic community that is intent on becoming a fully reconciled community, free from all discrimination, a Christian community that is healed of all its divisions, a religious community that lives in harmony and a human community that has discovered its true source of life in love and sharing.»
The goal is to establish a strong Christian community that will make more converts.
«If this is to be realised, we need to undergo a thorough conversion, for it is only through the body of the transformed Christian community, that Christ can shine in His radiance to the world around us. We shall then communicate the joy of the redeemed to all our brothers and sisters: the Good News of Jesus for the emerging India of 2000.» (ref.5)
Who is it that needs to undergo a thorough conversion, Christians or Hindus?
The Church is the body of Christ! This implies that the Church is to radiate from outside of its body into the local non-Christian communities. A call for the emergence of Christian India for the coming millennium.
TABLE OF COMPARED FAITHS
THE VEDIC AND DRU-VIDIC DHARMAS CHRISTIANISM:
Monist and Relativistic dualism,Polytheistic Monotheist and Dualistic (Good/Evil)
Cosmic Historical
Non-dogmatic Dogmatic
Tolerant Intolerant
Open tradition, oral and textual Revelation, closed Book
Many options Centralist
Non-proselytist Proselytist
Hedonist and Aesthetic Rejection of Pleasure and Beauty
Pre-existence of the soul New soul at birth
De-centralised Centralised
Knowledge and Understanding Blind Faith
Accent on human experience Accent on the after-life
Respect of Nature Exploitation of Nature
Sources:
1. Mac Neill,Eoin. Life of Saint Patrick.
2. The Confession of St. Patrick, translated from Latin by Ludwig Bieler, document from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, May 27, 1999.
3. Druid Catarnos, La résistence du paganisme en Gaule, in Ialon, clairière, revue d’étude druidique, no. 2.
4. From a Press Release of the Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel dated 1999.
5. Adressed by the Indian bishops for Jubilee 2000.
Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/1/#gen447
Ram Swarup's writings
By Tara Katir, Hawaii
It's the trend these days for ancient traditions to speak out against missionary aggression. It is into this emerging courageousness that the work of Ram Swarup (1920-1998) takes on singular significance, as he asserts the value of the Sanatana Dharma for mankind's future in two volumes of elegantly articulated essays, On Hinduism, Reviews and Reflections and Meditations, Yogas, Gods, Religions (Voice of India, 232 pages, Rs. 250, and 278 pages, Rs. 300 respectively). Published posthumously, these books contain material never before released. Some of the essays included are, "Cultural Self-Alienation Among the Hindus," "The Hindu View of Education," "India and Greece," "Patanjali Yoga," "Bhakti-Yoga," "Buddhist Yoga," "Love--Human and Divine" and "Semitic Religions Versus Hindu Dharma." These are but a few of Swarup's eloquent and forthright essays. In "One God of Theology," Swarup talks about this shifting trend: "The recognition and respect for Eastern wisdom and religions came from nominal Christians, from great humanists and universalists like Voltaire and from men of reason and science who form quite an influential section of the Western society today. An average, simple Westerner is also more open to the appeal of thoughts from different countries. There is even a wind of change amongst deeply religious Christians, particularly those who are not connected with the missionary activities. All this is a welcome development, and it is in keeping with the spirit of the age which demands universality and breaking down of the barriers of prejudice and insularity."
Meditations by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road,
New Delhi 110 002
On Hinduism by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India
Christian Conversion
Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, in his new book Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India (154 pages, First Public Protection Trust, Rs. 35, us$10) details accounts of Christian conversion tactics and practices against Hindus from the earliest Portuguese contact until today. Srinivasan explains that during the colonial period Christian scholars studied Hinduism, intending to use knowledge of its beliefs and practices for their own conversion procedures. In addition, by "creating a racial theory of Aryan migration into India, the Indologists also came up with a pseudo-history for use in the service of religion and politics." Simultaneously at Oxford University, the Boden Professorship was created with the objective "to promote Sanskrit learning among the English, ...to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion." Additionally, monetary prizes were awarded for literary works that undermined Indian tradition. "By these means, they financed and institutionalized hatred..." writes Srinivasan. Present-day missionaries, Srinivasan asserts, have created a cultural hybrid of Hindu and Christian symbols and practices, deliberately fostering confusion as to their true intentions. Places like Father Bede Griffith's ashram in Kerala, and Satchidananda Ashram in Kulithalai, Tamil Nadu, were founded by Christian priests. Inside the "missionaries adorn [sic] the Hindu garb, while the heart beneath was beating for Christianity, and fostered antagonism to Hinduism."
Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India by Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, First Public Protection Trust, PO. Box 5094, Chennai 600028 India
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1990: The Berlin Wall is taken down February 12. Germany is reunited over the next year. Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
1990: Under its new democratic constitution, Nepal remains the world's only Hindu country.
1990: Hindus flee Muslim persecution in Kashmir Valley.
1990: Foundation stones are laid in Ayodhya for new temple at the birthplace of Lord Rama, as Hindu nationalism rises.
1990: Vatican condemns Eastern mysticism as false doctrine in letter by Cardinal Ratzinger approved by Pope Paul II, to purge Catholic monasteries, convents and clergy of involvement in Eastern meditation, yoga and Zen.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11879&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The following article recently appeared in the European Business Review/New European, Volume 13, No. 6, 2001, along with an excellent Editorial introducing it (by Aidan Rankin, who recently wrote the forward to the book Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, by David Frawley, Voice of India 2001, from which this article is drawn).
The European Business Review is one of the most prestigious journals of its type, connected to important business and academic leaders throughout the world. It contains the New European which constitutes its central portion and offers new insights on global problems. It can be accessed on-line only by subscribers through www.emerald-library.com
For such an article to appear in this important publication indicates new inroads for Hindu thought into the western world and its intellectual elite.
The article is also on our web site at www.vedanet.com at www.vedanet.com/indic.htm and in the Naimisha Journal.
The need for a new Indic school of thought
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)
Keywords: India, Culture, History
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is a scholar and teacher of Vedic Science, Yoga and Vedantic philosophy in the USA, where he directs the Vedic Institute. In India, he is recognised as an authority on Hindu cultural issues. Dr Frawley is the author of more than 20 books and his Web site is www.vedanet.com
During the Eurocolonial period, Indian history and civilization were distorted to fit European perceptions. A new school of thought is needed that will see Asian history and tradition with Asian eyes and thought, beginning with India.
The "clash of civilizations"
A clash of civilizations is occurring throughout in the world today, a war of cultures at various levels in both our personal and public lives. This clash is partly because of rising historical and cultural awareness on the part of newly-independent countries, beginning with India. The Western-European/North American culture is currently predominant and is strongly, if not rudely, trying to eliminate or subordinate the rest. Yet Western civilization is spreading itself not so much by force, as in the colonial era, but by subtle new forms of social manipulation. These include control of the media and news information networks, control of the entertainment industry, domination of commercial markets, continued missionary aggressiveness by Western religions, and - as important but sometimes overlooked - control of educational institutions and curricula worldwide.
This control of education has resulted in a Western-European/North-American view of history and culture in textbooks and information sources in most countries, including India. Naturally, people educated according to Western values will function as part of Western culture, whatever may be the actual country of their birth. They will experience an alienation from their native culture in which they have not really been raised. They easily become a fifth column for the Westernisation of their culture, which also means its denigration or, at best, its commercialisation. An authentic Indian or Indic perspective, a worldview coming out of the culture of India and its particular values and perceptions, is hardly to be found, even in India. The Western school of thought is taught in India, not any Indic or Indian school of thought.
The Indic school of thought
What is the Indic school of thought, one might ask? It is not at all something new or unknown. It is the great spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural traditions of the subcontinent that are among the largest and oldest in the world. It is the emphasis on dharma, on karma, on pluralism and synthesis, on yoga sadhana and moksha. It is not only the tradition of ancient sages from the Vedas and Upanishads to Buddhist and Yoga traditions but also modern teachers like Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. It is not only the vast literature of Sanskrit but also that of the regional languages and dialects of the subcontinent, most of which have older literary traditions than the languages of Europe such as English.
All major cultural debates are now framed according to Western values and perceptions, and so they will naturally serve to uphold them. The important issues of Indic civilization today are framed according to the principles or biases of the Western school of thought. These include what Indian civilization is, when India as a nation first arose, what the real history of India is, how to reform Indian society, and how India should develop in order to have its rightful place in the future world. As the debate is defined according to the approach and values of Western civilization, India does not always fare well, and India as its own independent source of civilization is seldom acknowledged. India is judged as if it should be like another USA, UK or Germany, which it can never be, nor should be. This only makes Indians feel inferior or wrong.
The Western school of thought has denigrated or overlooked the Indic school, particularly in the Indian context. For example, the Indic school has its own history sources through the Vedas, Puranas and various historical texts (Itihasas) that are quite massive and detailed and have much internal consistency. However, in writing the history of India, the Western school does not give these any place. They are dismissed as, at best, mythology and, at worst, fraud. Instead, it defines the history of India according to outside influences, as a series of invasions and borrowings mainly from the west, from cultures the West knows better and has more affinity with, which makes India seem dependent upon the West in order to advance its civilization again today.
The Western school of thought negates the relevance of the traditions of India. This is not simply because the Indic tradition is wrong, unsophisticated or irrelevant. It is because Western civilization is hegemonic, if not predatory in nature, and such ideas help promote its spread. Its information about India contains a built-in poison. It is meant to undermine the culture of the region and subordinate it to the West, however objective, scientific or modern its approach may appear to be.
When India as a nation arose is defined by the Western school as 1947, the year of independence. It founders were Nehru and Gandhi, who inherited a united region from the British, before which India was just a confused mass of local kingdoms with no national consistency. On the other hand, according to the Indic school, India or Bharat as a country arose in the Vedic era as the type of dharmic/yogic culture that has been the main characteristic of Indian civilization through history. This spiritual or yogic orientation can be found in the cultures of all the regions of India from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas, pervading even in the folk art and folk songs of all regions, as well as "high" culture.
Western distortions and the Indian response
In the Western school of thought, an Aryan invasion or migration is used to describe the way in which ancient Vedic civilization took root in India, as if it were an alien force of intruding barbarians. In the Indic school of thought, the whole idea of an Aryan invasion/migration is a sign of ignorance. The Indic tradition arose from the rishi tradition of spiritual endeavour, characteristic of the Vedic-Sarasvati culture and related cultures, reflected in the continuity of Vedic literature from the Vedas to the Mahabharata, Buddhist and Jain literature and the Puranas, which all reflect the same principles, peoples and dynasties of kings.
In these current cultural debates, therefore, an overriding greater debate is ignored - that which takes place between the Western and the Indic schools of thought. The Western-style media and academia tries to see what is authentic in Indian civilization and finds it to be wanting, reducing it to little more than caste or superstition. This is not surprising as the Indic tradition has a different focus and values than does the Western tradition. Similarly, from the standpoint of the Indic tradition, we must question Western civilization itself. Is the Western school of thought enlightened? Is it appropriate for India? Can it understand the unique civilization of the subcontinent?
The Indic school itself is often highly critical of the Western school. For example, when asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied: "It would be a good idea." What he meant was that, from the standpoint of the spiritual traditions of India, Western civilization with its materialism, aggression and dogmatism was not highly evolved. Sri Aurobindo wrote on the limitations of Western civilization, while appreciating it in certain areas. <
Secular missionaries
The West similarly tries to control any debate on cultural ethics, using slogans of democracy and human rights, which are only used to intimidate weak nations and conveniently ignored relative to stronger or wealthier nations like China or Saudi Arabia. Organizations operating under the cover of human rights are among the most aggressively alienating influences today. They function like "secular missionaries", ignoring victims of terrorism like the Hindus, while defending the "rights" of terrorist organizations against security forces that are compelled to take action against them. Meanwhile, it is the West that is selling the weapons and profiting by terrorism and civil strife throughout the world. The West originally trained many terrorist groups, such as the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Such groups highlight social inequalities in India, but ignore a colonial history marked by attacks on indigenous Indic culture. The same charges of cultural backwardness have been used throughout the colonial era to undermine the native traditions of Africa, Asia and the USA, and to justify forced religious conversion and political domination, which is their real aim. Sometimes native intellectuals are taken in by these Western approaches to social issues, not realizing that they are just promoting the colonial agenda of world domination in a more covert form.
New rules of debate
Therefore, it is not enough simply to debate issues of culture, politics, or history in the existing forums in order to promote a more Indian or Hindu view. We must question the very process itself, its basis and the perspective or values behind the school of thought in which the debate occurs. What India needs is the creation of a new Indic school of thought that is dynamic and assertive in the modern global context - one that can challenge Western civilization not merely in regard to the details of history or culture, but also relative to fundamental principles of life, humanity and consciousness. This requires a revival or renaissance in the Indic tradition and its great spiritual systems of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jainism, and also in its political, artistic and scientific traditions. Modern science and technology can arguably be more humanely employed according to Indic or Dharmic values than according to Western religious exclusivity and commercial greed.
The world today needs a critique of "modern civilization" from an Indic or Dharmic perspective, an interpretation of capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity and Islam from a tradition that is much older, deeper and closer to the spirit in both man and nature. These Western ideologies are failing to address the spiritual needs of humanity and are incapable of creating a world order that transcends dogmatism or exclusivism. <
Those of us who are part of the Indic school of thought should emphasize such a greater debate and not get caught in the details of issues already formulated according to the biases of Western civilization. This debate should examine the right structure for society and the real forward direction for history and evolution. We must raise fundamental questions. Is the current Western materialistic view of history valid at all, or are there spiritual forces at work in the world that go beyond all these? Can we understand our history through outer approaches like archaeology, linguistics or genetics, or is a higher consciousness or more intuitive view required as well? Are the records of our ancient sages to be rejected so lightly, whenever we think they do not agree with our views?
The real issue of the Vedas, India's oldest tradition, is not how these texts might fit into the current model of history as promoted by the Western school of thought, tracing the development of civilization through outward material advances. It is how the existence of such an ancient tradition of rishis, knowers of cosmic consciousness, shows a higher spiritual humanity from which we have arisen and whose legacy we can reclaim.
Towards a new school of thought
India needs a different type of scholarship, an Indic school of thought that has its own values, traditions and methods of reaching conclusions. Those of us who follow the Indian civilization should develop this Indic school in its own right and not merely try to justify our views in terms of the Western or European school of thought, which is hostile and radically opposed to Indic cultural tradition.
I recently raised a call for an intellectual Kshatriya in India - a new class of warrior intellectuals to defend India and its great pluralistic traditions from the onslaught of Western exclusivist approaches, whether religious, economic or political. This call fundamentally requires the creation of such a new Indic school of thought. Such a new Indic school of thought concerns not only philosophies of liberation or yoga, but Indic, Hindu and Dharmic approaches to ecology, the global marketplace, health, science, the status of women, religious freedom, in short to all the main issues in society today - and it should also look beyond these issues, which are often the issues of the Western school, to yet broader concerns. How can we integrate humanity and nature, with its underlying cosmic intelligence? How can we reclaim our spiritual heritage, as a species, that the great yogis have pointed out for us?
Such a new Indic school of thought requires new institutions to promote and embody it, or new Vedic schools. This will arise not through Indology departments in Western-style universities but through a new type of institution with its own funding and curriculum, free from manipulation by the vested interested and ideologies of the Western school and its religious, commercial and political bias.
An intellectual renaissance
The problem is that the Western school created Indian academic institutions that reflect Western values. To try to gain credibility for Indic thought in the context of European institutions, as some well-meaning Hindus are attempting, may be a helpful strategy but misses this main point. Western universities have their own agendas that they will not readily give up. They will not change simply because a few well-intentioned people and groups give them money and sponsor positions to project a more "sympathetic" picture of India and her civilization. Like a sea that salts every river that flows into it, existing trends and interests will force the people coming into them to conform to the dominant Eurocentric values that pervade these institutions. Otherwise, they cannot survive academically.
It is not on single issues that we need to make headway but on promoting the Indic tradition as a complete school of thought in itself, rather than merely as a side subject of Indological study in Western-defined academia. We must look back to such Indic models as Naimisha, Takshashila, Nalanda or Mithila, not only to their institutions, but also to the Gurukula approach and its more intimate and spiritual form of learning.
I urge the young people and the scholars of India to take up this cause. Do not try to define India in the context of civilization as defined by the West. Instead look to the great traditions of India that have their own deeper roots and use it to critique Western civilization and discover its limitations. Rather than seeking to define and control India according to Western perspectives, the West should look to India for guidance on the deeper issues of culture and spirituality. Indians, in turn, should assert their own greater traditions and not simply imitate the West or seek to justify Indian civilization from a Western perspective. True scholars of the Indic tradition need not go to Harvard or Oxford to seek credibility, rather these institutions should come to them.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=2658&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Pope's Apology
- Dr. David Frawley
Pope John Paul II recently made an almost too well publicized apology for the wrongs and injustices, the sins committed by Catholics throughout the centuries. He mentioned the Crusades, Inquisition and the mistreatment of the Jews, among other actions that led to hatred, oppression and genocide. The event was more a great media show than a sincere and humble statement of the heart. The whole gesture was broadcast with great ceremony, almost as if it were a piece of propaganda.
The Pope's first concern was the Jews, who have been persecuted by the Christians during the last two thousand years, with the Nazis being perhaps the greatest of a long series of episodes of Anti-Semitism in Europe. There have been many criticisms of the Church for its role in tolerating, if not supporting the Nazis. The Pope's apology is also meant to counter criticism against his recent effort to get Pope Pius XII canonized as a saint. Pope Pius XII was the Pope during World War II who never tried to stop the Nazis.
Many Jews are critical of the effort to canonize Pope Pius XII and suspect him of collaborating with the Nazis. The Pope's seeking of forgiveness from the Jews is a way to redress that as well.
His second concern was the Muslims. The Pope wants recognition in the Islamic world. Today the great majority of devoted Catholics are in similar Third World circumstances and Catholic missionaries are competing with Islamic missionaries, particularly in Africa. The Pope made a very high profile visit to Israel recently, appeared arm and arm with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and made a public plea for a Palestinian State, almost as if he were more a political than a religious leader.
The place of Hindus and Buddhists in this mistreatment can be inferred but the silence about these religions is poignant. The Pope failed to mention these religions by name, as has been his general tendency not to want to recognize them as valid religions - a courtesy that he does yield to other Biblical beliefs. The Inquisition came to India, specifically to Goa. The Catholic Church has been quite active in Asia as well throughout the centuries and often using the same questionable tactics. The Pope also failed to specifically mention the pagans of Europe that were the object of much Christian hatred and violence from the destruction of pagan temples to the burning of witches in the Middle Ages. Even today pagan groups in Europe have to deal with strong opposition from the Church.
I don't mean to say that the Pope's gesture has no value or cannot be a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Protestant Christians and Muslims, whose history is just as bloody relative to other faiths, can follow suit. But the Pope's apology is perhaps more notable for what it did not say. We should not read into it more than what he indicated. Unless it is followed by more genuine actions, it may only be an effort to avoid real scrutiny.
According to Catholic doctrine, the Church is a heavenly body, the bride of Christ and can therefore suffer from no real deficiency. Hence, the Pope is not apologizing for any real mistakes done by the Church because, by definition in Catholicism, the Church is capable of no real wrong. He is apologizing for mistakes made by church members, which can include priests, bishops and even previous Popes, but which only occurred by their failure to live up to the heavenly status of the Church. So the Pope's apology is not really for the wrongs of the Catholic Church but only for the wrongs of individual Catholics. In this regard it is an attempt to maintain the purity of the Church and to uphold its power. It is the Church apologizing for the deficiencies of its members, not for its own mistakes.
Secondly, the Pope's statement does not contain a repudiation of any Catholic doctrines; particularly those that require that Catholics convert the world to their belief, which notion was responsible for most of the violence that he criticizes. The Pope's apology is not an acceptance of other religions or a statement that salvation is possible outside the Church or apart from Jesus. It is not a declaration of respect for the religions of the world. It is not a proclamation of religious pluralism. The Pope did not say that other religions are as good as Christianity or that Jesus is the only Son of God and the sole redeemer of humanity. In fact, his recent statements in Asia, his call to evangelize the region and convert Asia to Catholicism, proclaim the opposite.
His plea for forgiveness was to God, not to other people and certainly not to other religions. He was not apologizing to other religions for the Catholic Church failing to recognize their truth or their holiness in the eyes of God. He was not reaching out to other religions, so much as making an appeal to members of other religions in order to draw them closer to Christ and the Church in order to convert them. He preserved the exclusivism of Catholic belief in tact.
That this forgiveness coincides with a new church initiative to convert Asia to Christianity should not be forgotten. It is an attempt to give the Church a more liberal modern face to aid in its conversion efforts. It represents only a change of style. In the past conversion often occurred along with force and intimidation. This policy cannot work in the post-colonial era, when the Church does not have military support. So the Pope is trying a new, more friendly style. But the goal is the same - Christianity for all.
When a person confesses his sins to a Catholic priest he is always given some sort of penance. It is easy to ask for forgiveness but it should lead to some sort of action or it may be sincere. It is not enough to say you are sorry and ask for forgiveness if you have hurt others. You must stop the hurtful actions and make amends. The Pope should follow up his words with real efforts to rectify past wrongs, many of which are still continuing. If someone runs over you with a car, it is not enough to ask for forgiveness and walk away. The Catholic Church has ruined entire civilizations in its history, and has cast a pall over others.
Perhaps it should make a memorial to the victims of its Inquisitions. Above all, it must recognize that the religions that it has trampled over must be addressed as well.
The Pope should arrange meetings not only with Jews and Muslims, but with Hindus, Buddhists and Pagans, asking their forgiveness and seeking ways to address the wrongs that the Church has done to them and being open to real dialogue with them. Let the Pope ask forgiveness not simply of the people the Church may have harmed, let him ask forgiveness of their religions and religious leaders. Let him ask forgiveness of the Shankaracharyas or the Dalai Lama for denigrating their religions. Let him say that these other religions are as good and holy as Christianity. This he has not done and will not recommend. In fact, he has warned his priests and nuns against following yoga and other eastern practices, which he called selfish.
Many people were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Their native holy places were replaced by churches. Will the Pope tell such people to return to their original faith? Will he even tell them that their original faith was as good as Christianity? Will he work to restore at least a few native places of worship that the Church has stolen? If not, how can his apology be taken seriously?
Above all, the Pope should stop the policies that have led to such inequities. The entire Catholic process of proselytization has a sordid history. To ask for forgiveness for its excesses, but to continue with these conversion efforts is insincere.
The real question is whether the Catholic seeking to convert the world to its faith, based upon its declaration - recently affirmed by the Pope - that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity, is inherently a cause of intolerance, social disharmony and violence. When a missionary goes into a community and tells its members that salvation is only possible through Jesus and that their existing religion will not save them, that already is a form of intolerance and violence that must lead to disharmony and conflict.
The Pope has made great efforts to portray Catholicism as a force of social liberalism, allied with leftist causes as in the Liberation Theology, that is the defender of the poor and a force for social equality. At the same time he is asking for the canonization of Pope Pius XII who stood silent before Nazi and Fascist aggression and genocide. Mussolini was a good Catholic in frequent communication with the Church. Catholic priests and bishops are well known to have blessed Nazi and Italian Fascist troops.
Catholicism was long a natural ally of fascism. Theocracy, authoritarian and military rule are as old as Constantine, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. Spanish and Portuguese colonial rulers, who indulged in genocide of populations in America and Asia, acted with the sanction of the Church on their regimes. The military dictators of Central and South America in recent times, up to Pinochet were good Catholics and had Church leaders allied with them.
The Liberation Theology that arose in the Americas in recent years was a new phenomenon and often opposed by the Church. In fact, Pope John II has put an end to most of it in the Americas. He only promotes this Liberation Theology in India because of its conversion value.
The fact is that, historically, the Catholic Church has been allied with military dictatorships, theocracies, and colonial oppression. Jesuits functioned as spies to study and undermine countries for conversion purposes. The older history of popes, anti-popes is there for all to see. The actual Church is not the bride of Christ or purity but a house with many dark corners and many skeletons in its closets that have yet to be cleaned out.
If the Pope is a true social liberal let him work not just for the equality of people but for the equality of religions as well. Let him not just say that all human beings are equal; let him also honor other religions as great. Let him honor not just Biblical religions, but the dharmic traditions of Asia as valid ways to God or Truth.
The problems that the Pope has asked forgiveness for are inherent in the very nature and structure of the Church. When you create an exclusive organization to dispense salvation to the entire world, you endow it with a kind of absolute authority like that of a dictator that naturally leads to corruption. The future does not belong to the Catholic Church or to any institutionalized belief. No group can claim to own or represent God or dispense salvation by belief in its doctrines. Truth is universal and eternal and the time of exclusive beliefs, products of the Dark Ages of humanity, is long past.
It is clear that so far the Pope's apology is only meant to sidestep greater criticism. It is more of a whitewash than a sincere plea for forgiveness that a truly spiritual leader would ask for. Without bringing about an end to proselytization that has caused most of these problems it means little.
Reference:
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/holocaust/
http://www.nizkor.org/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/crusades/links.html
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu_home/
http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=1801&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Ethics of Conversion, Part I
By Vamadeva Shastri
Conversion has always been a topic that arouses, if not inflames our human emotions. After all, the missionary is trying to persuade a person to change his religious belief, which concerns the ultimate issues of life and death, the very meaning of our existence. And the missionary is usually denigrating the person's current belief, which may represent a strong personal commitment or a long family or cultural tradition, calling it inferior, wrong, sinful, or even perverse.
Such statements are hardly polite or courteous and are often insulting and derogatory. The missionary is not coming with an open mind for sincere discussion and give and take dialogue, but already has his mind made up and is seeking to impose his opinion on others, often even before he knows what they actually believe or do. It is difficult to imagine a more stressful human encounter short of actual physical violence. Missionary activity always holds an implicit psychological violence, however discretely it is conducted. It is aimed at turning the minds and hearts of people away from their native religion to one that is generally unsympathetic and hostile to it.
In this article I will address conversion and missionary activity mainly in regard to Christianity, which has so commonly employed and insisted upon the practice. Indeed it is difficult to imagine the Christian religion apart from missionary activity, which has been the backbone of the faith for most of its history. Christianity has mainly been an outward looking religion seeking to convert the world. In this process it has seldom been open to real dialogue with other religions. It has rarely examined its own motives or the harm that such missionary activity has caused, even though the history of its missionary activity has been tainted with intolerance, genocide and the destruction not only of individuals but of entire cultures.
But much of this discussion applies to Islam as well, which shares an agenda with Christianity to convert the world to its particular belief. As an American raised as a Catholic and who attended Catholic school and then later adapted Hindu-based spiritual teachings, I can perhaps provide another angle on this topic that hopefully will give ground for new thinking. I had to break through much religious intolerance and prejudice to make the changes that I did.
What is Conversion?
First let us define what we mean by conversion? Let us immediately clearly discriminate between conversion or change of beliefs that happens in free human interchange in open discussion as opposed to organized conversion efforts that employ financial, media or even armed persuasion.
That certain individuals may influence other individuals to adapt one religious belief or another has seldom been a problem. There should be open and friendly discussion and debate about religion just as there is about science. But when one religion creates an agenda of conversion and mobilizes massive resources to that end, targeting unsuspecting, poor or disorganized groups, it is no longer a free discussion. It is an ideological assault. It is a form of religious violence and intolerance.
Organized conversion efforts are quite another matter than the common dialogue and interchange between members of different religious communities in daily life, or even than organized discussions in forums or academic settings. Organized conversion activity is like a trained army invading a country from the outside. This missionary army often goes into communities where there is little organized resistance to it, or which may not even be aware of its power or its motives. It will even take advantage of communities that are tolerant and open minded about religion and use that to promote a missionary agenda that destroys this tolerance.
The missionary business remains one of the largest in the world and has enormous funding on many levels. It is like several multinational corporations with the different Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical groups involved. There are full time staffs and organizations allocating money, creating media hype, plotting strategies and seeking new ways to promote conversion.
The local native religion has about as much chance against such multinational incursions as a local food seller has if McDonald's moves into his neighborhood with a slick, well funded advertising campaign targeting his customers. Yet while many third world countries have government policies to protect local businesses, they usually don't have any safety mechanism to protect local religions.
In fact missionary activity is like an ideological war. It is quite systematic, motivated and directed. It can even resemble a blitzkrieg using media, money, people and public shows to appeal to the masses in an emotional way. Missionaries are not seeking to learn from other religious groups or even to find out what they are all about, but to promote their own views and with as much energy as possible, even if this requires denigrating other beliefs.
Therefore, with missionary activity we are not talking about unplanned, spontaneous or isolated events. We are talking about a religious effort towards world conquest that is quite happy to put an end to other religious traditions - that looks to establish one particular religion for all human beings, in which the diversity of human religions is discredited and forgotten. Regions where missionary activity has been successful have seen their older traditions demoted or destroyed, whether it is those of the pagan Europeans, the Native Americans, or the pre-Islamic Arabs. Hinduism would likely fall along the same wayside should lose the battle against missionary religions, just as Hinduism in Islamic Pakistan has all but disappeared.
Missionary activity and conversion is not about freedom of religion. The missionary wants to put an end to pluralism, choice and freedom of religion. He wants one religion, his own, for everyone and will sacrifice his life to that cause. True freedom of religion should involve freedom from conversion. The missionary is like a salesman targeting people in their homes or like an invader seeking to conquer. Such disruptive activity is not a right and it cannot promote social harmony or respect between different religious communities. In fact people should have the right not to be bothered by missionaries unless they seek them out. Those of us in the West are irritated by local missionaries like the Jehovah's Witnesses that often come soliciting at our doors. Can one imagine the distress or confusion they could cause to some poor person in Asia? Once let into the door, it is hard to get them out.
History of Conversion
Let us look at the history of conversion, how it arose and what it has become through time. Organized conversion on a mass scale hardly existed anywhere in the world before the advent of Christianity some two thousand years ago. It became particularly strong after the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century. This resulted in a Roman or imperial church that used the resources of the empire, including the army, to promote the religion, which was a state institution. Church and state become closely tied and one was used to uphold the other. This alliance of church and state occurred well into the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century throughout much of Europe.
In the seventh century Islam brought about a religion in which church and state, or religion and politics were not simply allied but became the same, with the Caliph functioning as both the religious and secular head of the empire. This non-division between religion and politics continues in most Islamic countries today, including Pakistan, which has gone so far recently to proclaim the Koran as the supreme law of the land, though it is not a secular law book or any kind of law book. Can one imagine a Western country proclaiming the Bible as the law of the land? Yet the church dominated the laws of Europe for centuries.
Prior to adapting Christianity Rome had its state religion but this existed largely as a show for political purposes - the worship of the emperor. Rome tolerated all other religions as long as they gave a nominal and political support to the state religion. The Romans persecuted Christians not because they were intolerant of religious differences but because they expected all religious groups to at least afford this nominal recognition for the state religion, which the Christians refused to do.
When Christianity became the state religion, because of the belief that it alone was the true religion, this tolerance of other religions came to an end in the Roman Empire. Pagan temples and schools were closed, if not replaced by churches or even destroyed, including the closing of the great Platonic academy in Athens in the sixth century. Paganism in all of its forms was eventually banned as not only false, but also as immoral and illegal. Pagan or even unorthodox groups continued to be oppressed in Europe up to the witches of the Middle Ages, which resulted in the deaths of millions in the name of religion and protecting the church.
In the colonial period Christian missionary activity spread throughout the world and brought with it a great violence and intolerance that continued the anti-pagan crusades as part of colonialism. Missionary efforts in the colonial period, with some exceptions, contributed to or even brought about the tremendous genocide of native populations not only in America but also in Africa and Asia. Native peoples had their religions banned, their holy places destroyed or taken over by the Christians. The history of the Spanish in Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century is comparable to the Nazis of this century, if not worse, pillaging and plundering a continent in the name of and with the blessings of the church. This process of missionary colonialism reached its zenith in the nineteenth century, in which Native Africans were the main group subject to genocide, and it is only now slowly declining. However missionary groups have done little to apologize much less to atone for the violence and hatred this five hundred years of colonialism created, and which destroyed many traditional religions and cultures.
In fact colonialism has not truly ended but has recently taken a more economic rather than military form, along with the Westernization along economic lines. As Christianity is the dominant Western religion, it continues use the current economic expansion of Western culture to promote its conversion agendas. The greater financial resources and media dominance of the West affords Christianity a great edge in religious and social encounters throughout the world. Even when it is a question of a Christian minority in a land dominated by a non-Christian religion, the non-Christians are often at a disadvantage in terms of money and media through the Western support that the Christian community has, particularly in regard to its conversion activities.
Though most countries in the world today are secular, this still has not created a level playing field in the field of religion. Western religions are still taking an aggressive, intolerant, if not predatory role toward non-Western beliefs. They are using financial and media advantages, including mass marketing, to promote their agenda of conversion. Though missionary activity became less overt after the end of the colonial era it still goes on. And we cannot forget the bloody history of missionary activity or its potential for disruption, violence and destruction should the circumstance again arise.
The Motivation Behind Conversion
What is the motivation behind conversion activities? Why should one person want to convert another to his or her religious belief? In a pluralistic world, such as we live in there are many different types of culture, art, language, business and religion that contribute much to the richness of society. Why should we demand that everyone be like us in terms of anything, including religion? Isn't this diversity the very beauty of culture and our greater human heritage?
Clearly the missionary seeking converts must believe that other people cannot find their goal of life by any other religion than the one that he is propagating. Otherwise there would be no need to convert anyone. And generally the missionary is not simply announcing that he has something good or better, like someone who has invented a better light bulb. He is usually claiming that his religion is the one true faith and that the others are either inferior, out of date, or simply false.
One could argue that the conversion mentality is inherently intolerant. If I recognize that many religions are good and religious belief should be arrived at freely and without interference, then I will not create a massive organization to covert other people to my belief and get them to renounce what they already have. Only an intolerant and exclusive religious ideology requires conversion or funds it on a massive scale.
In short conversion activity is anti-secular. It does not tolerate the religious differences that must exist in a truly secular society but aims at eliminating them. The irony is that secular law provides the religious freedom that allows conversion activity to go on. The very missionaries that once used colonial armies to promote their conversion agendas are now maintaining them in the post-colonial era under the guise of freedom of religion. The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom when they were in power in the colonial era, now use freedom of religion to keep those same missionary activities going! This is both ironical and hypocritical!
Generally missionary efforts are stronger to the degree that the missionary is opposed to the religions that people already follow. The old dominant Christian strategy, which many Protestant groups still promote, is to denigrate non-Biblical beliefs as heathen, or the work of the devil. Evangelical missionaries still identify Hinduism with devil worship. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two of the most influential American evangelical leaders say this repeatedly, as do their followers, and they are sponsoring missionary activity in India as well. Naturally this gives a missionary much zeal and intensity, saving souls from the clutches of evil and driving out demons.
Such a zealous missionary inevitably spreads misunderstanding, venom and hatred in society. If I am promoting the idea that your religion is a work of the devil can I be regarded as friend or well wisher to your community? Can such views help your community understand itself or reconcile community differences?
Today it is illegal in most countries to promote racial hatred, to call a person of any race inferior or the product of the devil (which white Christians used to call the blacks until recently). But Hindus can still be denigrated as polytheists, idolaters and devil-worshippers. This is tolerated under freedom of religion, though it obviously breeds distrust, if not hatred and itself is prejudicial. Prejudicial statements that are not allowed about race are allowed about religion and missionaries commonly employ these derogatory remarks.
In fact most Christians view Hinduism like the pagan religions that the early Christians had to overcome, the Roman, Greek, Celtic, Egyptians and Babylonian religions, which do have much in common with Hinduism. Equating Hindus with Biblical idolaters promotes the history of missionary aggression and religious conflict. Most such Christians have never seriously or open-mindedly studied Hinduism or other pagan beliefs. They know little of Yoga and Vedanta or the great traditions of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality. They prefer to highlight the Hindu worship of God even in animal images like Hanuman as a form of superstition or evil.
The Catholic Church is a bit more diplomatic these days. It is now telling Hindus that their religion may have some value but that Christianity is even better! Such a view is a bit more tolerant but cannot be called sincere either.
If Catholics no longer believe that Hinduism is a religion of the Devil as they were promoting until only recently, they ought to apologize to Hindus for their mistaken notions and the problems that these must have caused. Discriminating Hindus can only look upon this more tolerant Catholicism of the post-colonial era as an attempt to maintain the edge of the church in a less politically favorable era. The Catholics say they respect the spiritual philosophies of India, which they for centuries failed to note, but still feel it necessary to convert Hindus to their religion. What kind of respect is that?
The Ideology of Conversion
Conversion reflects a certain ideology. In fact it mainly involves getting people to change beliefs, ideas or ideology. Conversion demands that we follow a certain ideology and reject others. The dominant ideology behind organized conversion efforts is that of an exclusive monotheistic religion. There is only one God, one book, one savior, one final prophet and so on. Most Christian missionaries try to get people to accept Christ as their personal savior and Christianity in one form or another as the true faith for all humanity.
A religion that is pluralistic in nature like the Hindu cannot have such a conversion-based ideology. Hindus accept that there are many paths, so naturally they will not feel compelled to get everyone to abandon their own path and follow the Hindu path instead. In fact there is no one Hindu path but rather a variety of paths, with new paths coming into being every day.
It has long been the dominant belief of Christians and Muslims that only members of their religion go to heaven, while member of other religions go to hell, particularly idol-worshipping Hindus and other pagans. This promise of heaven and threat of hell has long been used for conversion purposes and is a prime part of the ideology and its propaganda. Christians have often been motivated by this medieval heaven-hell idea in their conversion efforts. The old nineteenth century idea was a Christian missionary going to Asia to save the pagan babies from the clutches of hell.
This eternal heaven-hell idea does arouse a certain passion as well as intolerance, but one can hardly call it enlightened. In fact it causes emotional imbalance in people, which many Christians, particularly Catholics, have sought psychological help to overcome.
A God who has created heaven for his believers and hell for those who follow other religious beliefs is a recipe not only for missionary activity but also for emotional turbulence and violence. In fact this promise of great rewards and threats of great punishment is the basis of most forms of conditioning, brain washing and hypnosis. It is the dominant strategy of all mind-control cults.
Conversion, Charity and Social Upliftment
Many missionaries claim today that they are not seeking converts but merely doing charity, trying to help the downtrodden in life. Given the mentality behind conversion efforts and its history, one can only greet that statement with skepticism, though in a few isolated instances it may be true. The very missionaries that only recently used colonial governments and armies to their advantage cannot be regarded as suddenly without any overt conversion motivations.
However, if missionaries simply want to bring about social upliftment, then why don't they just open up a hospital or school and give up all the religious trappings about it. As long as the religious ornaments are there in these charitable institutions they are still seeking converts. Once you give your charity or social work a religious guise, the conversion motivation must be there and communal disharmony is likely to be promoted even by your charities.
If missionaries want to uplift society they can do that through education or economic help on a secular level. There is no need to bring religion into it. That is how societies have uplifted themselves throughout the world, whether it is the United States or Japan. It was not religious charity that raised up these countries economically. In fact bringing religion into social upliftment confuses the issue. Converting people to an exclusive creed doesn't eradicate poverty or disease, much less promote the cause of religious harmony.
The Philippines, the most predominant and oldest Christian country in Asia, is one of the poorest countries in the region. Conversion to Christianity did not raise the country economically. Central and South America, which are much more staunchly Catholic and religious and North America, are also much poorer and have a lower level of education. In fact the more evangelic and orthodox forms of Christianity are more popular in poorer and less educated groups in the West. Fundamentalist Christianity is more common in America with farmers and those who didn't go to college. Educated people in the West are less likely to be staunch Christians, and many of them look to Eastern religions for spiritual guidance.
In India Christians claim that by eradicating the caste system they are helping people and raising them up socially. They could do this easier by helping reform Hindu society rather than by trying to destroy or change the religion. Clearly they are using, if not promoting caste-differences as a conversion strategy. Christian cultures still have their class and other social inequalities, particularly in Central and South America, but Christians don't see that the religion has to be changed in order to get rid of these.
The desire to help people in terms of social upliftment and the desire to change their religion are clearly not the same and can be contradictory. Changing a person's religion may not help them in terms of health, education, or economics.
A similar argument is that the conversion effort is part of service to humanity, that the missionary is motivated by love of humanity. This is also questionable. If you are motivated by love of humanity you will help people regardless of their religious background. You will try to help people in a practical way rather than aim at getting them to embrace your religious belief. You will also love their religion, even if it is an aborigine worshipping a stone. You will give unconditional love to people, which is not the love of Jesus or the church but universal love. You will not condemn any person to hell for not following your particular belief. You will not interfere with that person's religious motivation and seek to convert him to your belief. You will honor the Divine in that person and in his belief.
Such social work born of love is hardly to be found in missionary Christianity, though it likes to pretend that this is the motivation. If one were truly motivated by love of humanity and the need to serve humanity, one would not promote massive conversion agendas. In fact one would regard such practices as inhumane, which they are.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11886&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Missionary Activity & Secularism : Pope's Visit
- David Frawley
Secularism is based upon a separation of church and state, removing religious control over the government. It arose to counter the influence of the church on politics and the religious sanction given to kings and their armies during the Middle Ages. Secularism grants freedom of religion to all citizens. It recognizes that many different religions exist and that people should be free to follow any or none of these. It regards differences in religion like those of race, language or culture, as incidental more than fundamental, and as involving the private life rather than the political sphere.
Opposite to secularism, both in ideas and in practice, is missionary activity, which is the attempt to convert the world to a single religious belief. Starting from the Christian takeover of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, European governments have used their influence to promote the conversion process. In time this gave rise to the Inquisition and to colonial efforts to convert native peoples. It resulted in a history of violence and genocide on a global scale that literally devastated the populations of entire continents. Missionaries used the political and military might of Christian states to discredit other religious beliefs, conquer other religious groups and destroy their holy places.
While modern secular Western states have removed overt religious influences from their governments, they have not removed the influence of religion altogether. In a democratic society any group that can produce votes becomes valuable. Western political leaders cultivate good relations with Western religious leaders in order to access their political goodwill.
Western governments today favor their majority religions in foreign affairs. It is obvious to see how much more sensitive Western Christian countries are to the welfare of the Christian community overseas than they are to the welfare of the non-Christian community. Religious oppression of Christians is quickly highlighted in the Western media, while oppression of non-Christians is seldom regarded as newsworthy. The entire history of Christian conversion activity is forgotten, as if the missionaries were only charity workers with no overt religious agenda!
A good example is Robert A. Seiple, the American ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. Is the man a seasoned diplomat, sensitive to other cultures and religions, as would be expected for the post? No, he was for eleven years the head of World Vision, the largest privately funded relief and development organization in the world, which is a Christian charity and connected to various missionary activities.
Seiple was formerly President of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a Christian missionary, which on the Protestant side is dominated by the Baptists. A person with such a background is inappropriate for the role that he has been given, which would be like giving it to a Catholic priest. It reflects an American religious bias not a diplomatic sensitivity and objectivity. Not surprisingly, his report on religious freedom in the world highlights oppression of Christians but ignores oppression perpetrated by Christians, as if Christian groups were entirely innocent of any wrong doing anywhere!
Even the secular West will bow to religious influences when it deems necessary. The result is that missionary activity, which was the main arm of the religious state, is learning to hide itself under the guise of modern secularism, working to subvert it from behind the scenes now that its overt control is a thing of the past.
Let us not forget its history. Missionary activity first arose in a religious state as its main means of expansion. Missionary activity per se is the extension of a medieval state attitude - that there is only one true religion like only one true king. It has had a long alliance with colonialism and with racism, with colonial armies marching with priests and friars, denigrating non-White religions as pagan and barbaric.
Missionary activity, therefore, is the very denial of secularism, which it has regarded as its enemy. The missionary movement holds that only one religion is true for humanity. It creates funds and personnel to convert the world to the one true faith. It targets the poor and uneducated who are vulnerable to favors. It does not work through reason or through friendly debate but through every sort of persuasion and intimidation, friendly or unfriendly.
Secularism and Missionary Activity in the New World Order
The problem for new democracies of the post-colonial era like India is that foreign missionaries use the very freedom of a secular state to promote their anti-secular agendas. A free state means that missionary activity is allowed and that conversion is tolerated. In a colonial state, one religion, that of the foreign rulers was favored at the expense of the others. In a free state, Western missionary religions can use the greater wealth of Western countries, which perpetuates their advantage. They also manipulate the Western dominated world media for their cause. For this reason, a Hindu Swami in India is ill equipped in terms of money and media facing Christian missionary forces in his own country. He is dealing with the multi-national conversion business that has tremendous resources at its disposal, to use with little scrutiny or accountability.
The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom during their colonial rule now want to make sure that religious freedom is maintained in their former colonies, not because they honor diversity in religion, but to maintain their conversion efforts and to sustain the minorities that they carved out by their missionary activity. Such an action is hypocritical to say the least. It doesn't represent a change of heart by the missionaries. It is not a sign of their new secularism but merely a convenient way to keep their agendas going in the changing world order.
Christianity is today, and has historically been, an anti-secular religion. Christian churches may tolerate the laws of living in secular countries, but they have not yet adopted a secular acceptance that many religious and spiritual paths can be valid and that no one religion has the last word. One could argue that any religion based upon an exclusive belief, thinking that only its religion, bible, prophet or savior is true, is inherently anti-secular.
Islam is more obviously anti-secular than Christianity because it generally has no separation of church and state. Christianity was compromised by a resurgence of earlier Greco-Roman pagan ideas of pluralism and democracy, but though softened, has still not given up its goal of converting the world. Christianity needs to go forward with its reformation by giving up its exclusivism and apologizing for its history of intolerance. The Islamic world needs a similar reformation to begin as it stands much where Christianity was at the end of the Middle Ages, still harshly controlling the minds and lives of its people and preventing any religious diversity from arising.
The Pope's Visit
The Pope's upcoming visit to India is a product of the same old anti-secular and intolerant Christian conversion agenda, which has not fundamentally changed throughout the centuries. The Pope can be described, though perhaps unflatteringly, as a Christian chauvinist leader encouraging massive conversion efforts to eliminate non-Christian beliefs. He is not a bringer of peace but a destroyer of culture. The Pope has never stated that any other religion is as good as Christianity. He has never said that Jesus is not the only Son of God. He has never said that salvation can come from outside the church or apart from Jesus. He has made statements of brotherhood, peace and tolerance but has not removed the barrier of religious intolerance and exclusivity that upholds these.
All Hindus, including the so-called fundamentalists, have not made such chauvinistic statements as the Pope. They recognize the existence of many religions and of many paths. They are not promoting the idea that Hinduism alone is the true path and that non-Hindus must go to hell. They are not insisting that everyone in the world become a Hindu. They are not asking everyone to bow to Kailash or Kashi.
Recently Ashok Singhal, head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), asked the Pope to "announce that Christianity is one of the ways that can lead to salvation and not that Christianity is the only way to salvation." The newspapers called Singhal a "hardline" Hindu leader but did not accuse the Pope of being rigid in his views. Yet Singhal accepts a pluralism to religion and salvation but the Pope does not. In terms of ordinary religious discourse Singhal has more liberal views than the Pope does but he is called a hardliner because he is questioning the missionary process! A very statement asking the Pope to affirm religious tolerance is itself styled intolerant!
In other words, Hindus should tolerate the effort to convert them but it is intolerant for Hindus to question the motives or ideas of those who denigrate their religion. That such statements are accepted in the modern media shows how deep-seated the anti-Hindu and pro-missionary bias is.
Make no mistake about it. The Pope is not a friend of Hindus. His visit is organized to promote his evangelization activities, his targeting Hindu India for Christian conversion. The Pope wants to convert Hindu India to Christianity. He would be happy if all Hindu temples were abandoned in favor of churches. He would be happy if all the swamis, sadhus and yogis either became Christian priests or disappeared altogether. He has no praise for a Ramana Maharshi, a Sri Aurobindo, a Ramakrishna, or a Shankaracharya. He does not honor the Vedas and the Gita like the Bible. He does not allow pujas to the Gods or the chanting of Om in churches. He has nowhere apologized for the use of the Inquisition in India or elsewhere. He has nowhere said that Hindus won't go to hell. He may claim to honor India's spiritual traditions but not to the extent that it requires him giving up his efforts to convert Hindus.
Let all Hindus therefore ask the Pope to say that he respects Hinduism, that Hinduism can also lead people to the ultimate goal of life, and that Catholic efforts to convert Hindus are a mistake. Let the Pope repeat the mantra of samadharma samabhava, that all dharmic teachings are in accord, and ekamsad vipra bahudha vadanti, that the enlightened seers declare the One Truth in various ways.
Let the Pope have a conference in Rome and bring the main Hindu religious leaders to dialogue with Catholic leaders on the nature of God, consciousness, the universe and immortality. Let such dialogue occur above board, out in the open and with the educated people in the field, rather than a secretive Christian targeting of poor Hindus. This would be the correct procedure if discovery of truth was the goal of such encounters.
If the Pope will not do these things then let us call him an intolerant and chauvinistic religious fundamentalist, which is what such behavior would be called in a Hindu. And let Hindus stop bowing out of respect to the Pope, prostrating to a religious leader who does not respect their religion, who is in fact plotting its downfall.
It is time for Hindus to take the offensive on religious tolerance and freedom, even if it means confronting the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has been in India for centuries. There is no reason why Catholic leaders can't appreciate the Vedas, Upanishads or modern Hindu teachers as having insights as great as those of Jesus. And this should be done starting with the Pope, not with some Indian priest that has no real power in the church or influence outside of India.
Let the Christians in India not appeal to Hindu tolerance but show their own tolerance and acceptance of other faiths by saying that though we believe in Christ we also accept Rama, Krishna and Buddha as sons of God. Let them declare a unity of religions that includes Hinduism and Buddhism as true faiths and does not require placing Jesus at the top for everyone. While Christians in India are unlikely to do this, the challenge for them to do so is bound to impact on their community and cause a deeper introspection.
As long as we hold that only one religion is true, that it must convert the world, and that other religions must be false we are not good citizens with respect for all, much less secular people. We are promoting an agenda of intolerance and violence that must cause conflict and suffering, even if we are doing so in the name of God. If we truly honor the Divine, we will recognize the Divine Self in all and will afford each individual their own perspective on truth and their own search for enlightenment, not to be circumscribed according to a church or a creed. If the West is so modern and enlightened it should stop exporting its intolerant medieval religions and become open to the great wisdom of the yogis and sadhus of India. Then a real basis for religious tolerance and spiritual growth could occur without obstruction.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11893&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Vedacharya from the West (Interview)
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 30, 2000
David Frawley, a grand-disciple of Ramana Maharishi, is widely acknowledged as a Vedacharya. Also known as Vamadeva Shastri, he was conferred the title of `Pandit' for his pioneering research work in Vedic studies, yoga, ayurveda and jyotish in his institute in New Mexico, USA. Author of several books on Hinduism, his writings seek to contrast the generally flippant and dry academic presentations of western Indologists. During a recent lecture-tour of India, David Frawley spoke to Gaurav Raina:
Q: What do you find unique about India and Hinduism?
A: India is a greatly favoured land in terms of cosmic beneficence according to the Vaastu aspect of its geographical location. The Himalayas, or Meru Parvat, oversee the whole of India in the likeness of the prime sahasrara chakra in the human body. The tapas of so many yogis and mystics and the timely appearance of avataras and saints over thousands of years have greatly accentuated this spiritual potency. The Hindu religion is like a gigantic banyan tree with its refreshing, ever ramifying growth, change and variegation, which is a contrast to Western religion as a monolithic pillar.
In the Indian ethos the pursuit of consciousness has traditionally been given priority over the need to understand the visible material world. There are various yogic systems for realising this higher consciousness. There is also evidence of a yogic methodology in India's every sphere of learned activity such as in music, dance, poetry, architecture, astronomy and medicine.
Q: Hinduism comprises of a multiplicity of sects and philosophies. Do you think such diversity is a cause for confusion ?
A: The Indian tradition is pluralistic and has always offered freedom of worshipping the divine in the name and form of one's choice and according to one's individual samskaras. It is pluralistic both at the level of religious practices as well as philosophical teachings. For this reason we find more religions inside Hinduism than among all of the world's religions put together.
Pluralism means freedom. It means that we should accept religious differences as a fact of life, like other natural variations. We need freedom to arrive at the truth. The pursuit of dharma, the urge for self-realisation and desire for liberation are common to all paths. Rather than as a cause for confusion, I see Indian pluralism as constructively facilitating an individual's spiritual quest.
Q: Can one be rational and scientific and yet be religious and spiritual?
A: Unlike in the West, Indian sages never perceived science and religion as incompatible. Religion was viewed mainly as a way of knowledge -- vidya or veda, as a way of seeing, a philosophy. Knowledge is of two types. Apara vidya or lower knowledge is necessary for our practical functioning in life and deals with the outer world of name, form and causation. The second, para or higher knowledge is concerned with consciousness and the Absolute Reality.
Indian sages regarded higher knowledge as more important, but did not regard lower or outer knowledge as wrong or disharmonious. The science versus religion dichotomy that became dominant in Europe in the nineteenth century, never really existed in classical India. The Indian model therefore seeks to resolve rather than perpetuate the Western conflict between an immoral science versus an irrational religion. Even the different systems of philosophy in India were more like scientific theories meant to be debated rationally or explored and experienced through meditation. Religion can thus be seen as a higher form of science. Anyone who systematically practices prescribed ritual methods, meditation procedures and mantras, can experience higher states of consciousness and thereby validate his or her religious belief.
Q: Why are the ancient scriptures today seen by many as mythical and fantastic?
A: The Vedas are composed in an ancient language of mantra, myth and symbol and utilise a rich poetic and imagistic expression. The modern mind being conditioned by contemporary thought and language lacks the necessary empathy and insight into the ancient texts. What we tend to regard as mythological in the puranas and itihasas was never meant to portray the actual state of things in time and space. These texts include not just the visible world in their scope but also the invisible worlds belonging to subtle and astral dimensions of existence.
If there are some apparent chronological inaccuracies in the scriptures, it is because sacred history takes into account the relationship between the temporal and the eternal and is less concerned with the actual dates of various events. This is in sharp contrast to the linear view of time held by contemporary historians who are ignorant of the relationship of time with the eternal. We should not approach the scriptures from the primarily academic standpoint of a historian, archaeologist or linguist; we should exercise an intuitive and meditative insight.
Q: You are a former Catholic. What is your view of the recent incidents of violence against the Indian Christian community?
A: I do not consider the missionary form of Christianity an enlightened religion. Conversion activity is an assault on intellectual freedom and destroys native cultures as we have seen in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is more like a sales gimmick which targets the poor and uneducated. Then there is also the history of the missionaries having sub-served European colonisers by providing a justification for their brutalities. The Catholic Church chose to be silent on the excesses of the Nazis and its tacit understanding with Mussolini, and more recently with Chile's Pinochet, are no secret.
Violence against Christians has been exaggerated a great deal by the Western media. Such backlashes have occurred throughout history all over the world. Missionary zeal tends to offend the religious sensibilities of people by denouncing their native religions as false and pagan.
Q: To what extent are India and Indian culture misrepresented in the Western media?
A: Firstly India is greatly under represented in the Western media. Whatever little news we have emphasises poverty, social problems, human rights abuses and alarmist reports of military and nuclear policies. The entertainment and advertising aspect of the media is on the other extreme and treats everything Indian as ``exotic and erotic''.
Indians have failed to learn the lessons of effective media articulation. Hindu organisations have been labelled fundamentalist and often end up with a far worse image than they deserve. The Indian government too has failed to promote Indian culture and to lobby its case with the Western governments. In fact India's gurus have done much a better job than its politicians and diplomats, in projecting the country's image abroad.
I am concerned at the absence of a dharmic intelligentsia in this country. It is imperative that Indians free themselves from colonial, Marxist and missionary distortions of their culture. They need to stop playing apologist for the genuine cultural and spiritual aspirations of their people. They should reverse their blind and obsequious adulation of the West. The great spiritual traditions of India will be lost if its intellectual kshatriyas fail to wake up to the call of the information war and lay siege to the false apostles of religious freedom.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11894&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
An American discovers the Vedas
Author : David Frawley
Publication : First Jagtik Rhugved Parishad
Date : December 27, 1996
Why would an American dedicate his life to studying the ancient
Vedas of India? And how could an American, coming from such a
different background, find a deep affinity with the Vedic
teachings, which most Hindus today themselves don't even relate to?
How did such a person get started in studying the Vedas? In the
modern world everyone, including Hindus, appears to be trying to
adopt Western culture with its scientific and technological
advances and economic affluence. Why would a person go the other
direction and look to the East, particularly when it was not a
matter of academic study, nor does it promise any material reward?
As I have written many books and articles on the Vedas and
travelled through America and India over the past few years
promoting Vedic knowledge, I am often asked such questions,
particularly by Indo-Americans, who usually do not have the time
and are lacking in the motivation to examine their own tradition.
Confronted with an American dedicated to the Vedas, Hindus find me
not only an anomaly but also a question mark on what they
themselves may be doing. Sometimes they find it an inspiration to
re-examine their own roots.
This is a difficult query to try to answer. I will begin by
relating something of my life. There is really nothing in my
family or educational background that might explain my connection
with the Vedas or even India. I was the second of a family of ten
children, born in a small city in Wisconsin in the Midwest in 1950.
Both my parents came from strict Catholic backgrounds and were
raised on dairy farms. One of my uncles in fact was a priest and
missionary to South America (which example my mother wanted me
personally to follow).
My parents, education was minimal. My mother did not even go to
high school. My father went to college only briefly, and served in
the army for several years. Though they were both open minded
people they never oriented me in the direction of India or anything
mystical.
I myself went to Catholic school until the fifth grade (age ten).
We were taught to look on Protestants with suspicion. Asia was like
another world, a land of backward, primititive people needing
conversion. After much moving about, as my father was a realtor,
we finally settled down in Denver, Colorado. There, owing to the
financial burden of so many children, we switched to public school
which brought us out of the shell of Catholic beliefs. Yet public
schools had no real mention of India either, except as a big
country in Asia suffering from poverty and overpopulation.
I had an inquisitive mind as a child and began developing my own
studies outside of school, perhaps because my mother encouraged me
in such things. I had an interest in geography since seven or eight
years of age and became aware that there was much more to the world
than America. Foreign lands of all types fascinated me. I began
reading various books starting with science and history, which
broadened my view of life and caused me to question my Catholic
upbringing and its dogma. I found the ideas of modern astronomy
with the vastness of the universe and the relativity of time and
space to be much more intriguing than Catholic views of creation.
I left the Catholic church at the age of fourteen. This came not
only from the clash between the church and modem science, but from
having read history and discovered that the church often stood for
political oppression and social exploitation, not anything truly
holy I felt that if there was a God, it was an impersonal reality,
not a personal God with his own whims, judgements and partialities.
Yet though I left the church, I still felt that there was a
spiritual reality in life, which I found in nature, particularly in
the mountains which I loved, This spiritual reality was an inner
experience quite divorced from churches and creeds.
By the time of high school my own studies were of more interest
than classes in school. I had a kind of intellectual awakening when
about the age of sixteen which caused me to study European
literature and philosophy, particularly symbolic poets and
existential philosophers. I felt that American culture was very
superficial compared to the European. Yet examining the mystical
and poetic sides of the European mind, I also eventually found them
to be lacking. I saw that the great intellectuals and artists of
the West, the geniuses who were regarded as the highest human
types, were still plagued with doubt, depression and uncertainty.
They obviously had not found any lasting peace or ultimate truth.
About the same time, as a secondary interest I began examining the
Eastern spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Some
of this came as part of the sixties counterculture movement, which
included a fascination with Eastern gurus and teachings, but much
of it was the product of my own independent and generally more
philosophical search. Between these teachings I found a common
truth-consciousness as the supreme reality and meditation as the
way to realize that. Yet it was among the teachings of Yoga and
Vedanta that I found the views which most resonated with my inner
being, particular the sense of the supreme Self (Atman) and pure
Existence (Brahman) as the highest truth. For example, I remember
walking home from high school one day and looking up at the blue
sky and realizing that it was the presence of Krishna, who
represented the cosmic power of bliss. This was before
encountering the Hare Krishna movement and was not produced by any
outer influences.
After high school I attended a local college briefly, in which I
found little to interest me. I remember taking a class on
Cosmology and Metaphysics, which was actually in the graduate
studies department. I thought the class might have something
mystical in it. Instead it was mainly a science class, with a few
cosmological speculations thrown in, generally of a materialistic
nature. The teacher could not even decide whether there was any
spiritual reality or not. This caused me to feel that the academic
world had no capacity to answer the real questions of life. Hence
I abandoned college after less than a semester.
About this time I also came into contact with local spiritual
teachers and yoga groups in Denver, through which I learned of
various gurus and practices, including yoga and meditation, which I
began to do on a regular basis. A couple of years later I
travelled to California and visited many of the spiritual groups
based in America. I had more interest in India itself and teachings
that were more traditional. I had a serious bent of mind and did
not feel satisfied with these groups which were largely social
movements or cults centered around one person, in which one's
personal relationship with the teacher generally outweighed any
real interest in spiritual studies. I have always distrusted mass
movements and fads of all types, including the pop spirituality
that has developed in the West.
I came to learn of the teachings of great modem Hindu gurus of
India most notably Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and
Sri Aurobindo, Their I felt something truly solid and real. As
several of these figures had already passed away, I wrote to their
centres in India and developed contact with some of their living
disciples. Most notably I corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for
several years, who was still alive at the time. But more so than
any particular teacher the Vedantic teaching interested me,
particularly the Upanishads, which appeared as the ideal
combination of spiritual philosophy and poetry. I felt in them the
core teaching that I was looking for in all spiritual teachings.
This led me to the works of Shankaracharya, the great commentator
on the Upanishads according to the system of Advaita Vedanta. The
Advaitic view of the pure unity of truth and the illusory nature of
the world, agreed with my experience of life through the political
and social turbulence of the late sixties and early seventies. Yet
I was also drawn towards the earlier Vedas and their Mysterious
mantras, with which most Vedantic teachers have little concern. I
had a sense of things ancient and wanted to know the earliest
teachings of humanity. The idea of things ancient rishis and seers
appealed to me and I wanted to know who they were.
I also had a poetic bent of mind and wrote poetry of a mystical and
symbolic type since I was sixteen. I used images of the dawn and
the night, fire, the wind, and the sun, along with gods and
goddesses, with the forces of nature appearing as powers of both
the human and cosmic mind in their interplay. Later I found that
these same images predominated in the Vedas themselves.
Of the great modern yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the greatest poet, and
so naturally his work had a certain appeal to me on this level. The
beginning of the chapters in his book the Life Divine contained
various Vedic quotes, particularly from the Rig Veda, which I found
to be particularly inspiring. I noted in a list of his books that
he had several on the Vedas themselves. This aroused my interest
in the Vedas and I ordered these books and studied them with great
interest, meditating carefully upon them.
My encounters with the Vedas through these books were not mere
intellectual experiences. They represented a contact with the
Divine Word, Vak or the Divine Speech, the Goddess Sarasvati. I
felt the presence of the Vedic Dawn, like the Dawn of humanity, the
beginning. of creation, and the building of a new world for the
Divine. This began my study of the Vedas, which was rooted in
poetry with a background of Vedanta.
Yet I was not satisfied in simply following Sri Aurobindo's
interpretation. I wanted to know what the Vedic rishis themselves
saw and felt. A few years later when I was twenty-seven, having
gone through most of what was available in English on the Vedas, I
decided to look at the Vedas and Upanishads in the original
Sanskrit. As there were no teachers available to me, as I was then
living in a remote town in Northern California, I started with the
Sanskrit. texts and a Sanskrit grammar book and began trying to
figure out the language myself, starting with the oldest Rig Veda
itself. It was a rather unusual and haphazard way to learn
Sanskrit, starting with the most difficult and oldest part of the
language, but somehow it worked.
The Vedic language gradually unfolded its meaning through a study
of the images, sounds and roots upon which the language was based.
I felt an inner affinity with the teaching so that I did not find
the texts to be difficult, though the grammar was often cumbersome.
I soon discovered that the interpretations generally accepted for
the older Vedas-not only those done by modern Western scholars but
the traditional school of Sayana-as Aurobindo had noted, were
indeed erroneous. The result of this research was that I produced a
small volume on the Upanishads and the Vedas. It traced back the
Vendantic teaching of the universal Self found in the Upanishads to
an origin in an earlier and more powerful Vedic vision. This was
opposite the way it is usually explained, which is to view the
Upanishads as exalted philosophy developing from a crude Vedic
ritualistic base.
A friend of mine, who had recently become a disciple of M.P. Pandit
of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, recommended me to visit him during an
upcoming trip of his to America. I knew that if anyone would
understand what I was doing it would be him, as Pandit had done
many books on the Vedas and Upanishads, with similar ideas.
I explained my views to him that the Vedas contained a science of
Self realization hidden in their teaching, from their very first
mantra to the Divine Fire (Agni). He was happy to know of my work
and told me that he would help publish it in India. He encouraged
me to follow out my studies, which he explained was a kind of
Divine mission given to me.
I told him that I was not academically trained, nor had I yet
studied in India, and that my work was merely personal and never
intended for publication. I said that I did not feel qualified to
comment on the Vedas in a public way He replied that it was good
that I Wasn't academically trained, that it gave me a direct and
independent insight, so that I would not just merely repeat the
same errors as other scholars. He told me to trust my vision. If
I had such insights and had produced such work it was for a purpose
and should not be limited to my own private study
Naturally this moved me to continue my Vedic work with more effort
and dedication. I worked on the Rig Veda itself and in four months
had produced a five hundred page book on the Vedas, which I mailed
to Pandit and he began serializing in World Union and other
publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
I began sending articles out to other publications in India as
well, including to the ashram publications of Ramana Maharshi and
Anandamayi Ma, as well as to Motilal Banarsidass, the main
publisher of Indological books and these articles were almost
invariably published, which additionally encouraged me to go
further. Thus my Vedic work began spontaneously and independently I
sort of naturally fell into it. I never had a plan to do so. And
in retrospect it would appear to be a ludicrous thing to attempt,
particularly by someone at my age and background working largely on
his own.
After developing this foundation I gained many contacts and much
support for my work throughout the world, though it took over ten
years to get it recognized in a broader way. I have since taken
many trips to India and studied and discussed the Vedas with many
teachers, which would require separate stories to relate. I have
worked with Ayurveda and Vedic astrology as well, expanding the
range of my original Vedic research. But the basic core of my
Vedic views has not changed.
What was it that I discovered in the Vedas? What made the Vedas
more important to me than other spiritual or intellectual
teachings? It was not just philosophy or poetry of an exalted
nature. Nor was it the later portion of the Vedas alone, the
Upanishads that drew my interest. It was the most ancient Rig Veda
itself and its wealth of mantras and symbols. The Rig Veda for me
is the doorway to mind of the rishis, to the cosmic mind itself,
the heart of creation. The Vedic vision is a universal mantric
knowledge that integrates all aspects of human knowledge including
yoga, philosophy, poetry, psychology, mythology and ritual. The
Vedas are like an ongoing explosion of insights, with every sort of
color and form, merging ultimately into a pure lightning
illumination that has no end.
For me the Vedas are a living teaching and the Vedic rishis are
living teachers. There is no gap of time or culture between us and
the Vedas. The Vedas transcend time. Nor do I see the Vedas as
merely Indian; they are the heritage of the greater spiritual
humanity from which we have fallen and to which we must return.
The Vedas are part of us or, to be more accurate, we are part of
the Vedas. They are the very fabric of the cosmic intelligence
that works inside us and in all the universe upholding the great
beauty and harmony of life. The Vedas exist at the core of all
real seeking to connect with truth through the great forces of
nature and consciousness, whether it is in the form of Native
American, Ancient Creek, Egyptian, or even modem scientific
approaches. In that connecting to the universal being and its
powers lies the Vedas, and there the Vedas must eventually be
found. The Vedas are not merely particular books-though the Vedic
texts we do have are authentic-but are the very vibrations of the
Divine Word, the Primal Sound, the voice of original reality.
I don't find the Vedic mantras to be hard to understand. What
could be more obvious than the dawn and the sun that rises every
day? Yet the dawn and the sun are not outer realities, they are
outer symbols, intimations of an inner reality of enlightenment and
illumination that is our true home. The Vedas are the language of
nature not as outer phenomena but as a poetry of the spirit, which
is the real meaning and beauty of creation. To me what is hard to
understand is not the Vedas but the modern world with its
technology that alienates us from nature, its commercialism that
warps our minds, its endless desires and sensations, its artificial
dogmas and ideologies, compared to which the Vedic world is indeed
paradise.
The final answer as to my connection with the Vedas perhaps goes
back to the truth of karma and rebirth. There is really no reason
why someone of my background would take to this Vedic work and be
able to go anywhere with it. The only answer is the samskaras, the
impressions from previous births. This was a knowledge that came
with me, that I was born with, the result of a previous life which
I have since come to remember in various aspects. For example,
when I received my first copies the Vedas in Sanskrit it was not
something ancient or foreign that I saw but an old friend and
companion.
Nor do I approach the Vedas from an academic or even personal
perspective. To approach the Vedas I first put my mind into a
silent state and let the teaching unfold itself without the
interference's of my own though there is not done through a mental
effort, though there is the effort of concentration. It is like
opening an irrigation channel to great river.
It is the great beauty of the Hindu religion that the impressions
it creates in us remain with us life after life. It is not a
religion limited to one life only, and its benefit carries through
all of our lives to the final liberation. In this regard the
impressions of the Vedas can be found in each one of us, if we know
how to look deeply for them. While unusual, I don't think what I
have experienced with the Vedas is unique. I think that many more
people, East and West, will come to it in the future. The Vedas
are not only. our most ancient past but the key to our global
future as well.
The message of my encounter with the Vedas to modem Hindus is this:
Your spiritual tradition is perhaps the greatest treasure of all
humanity. Please cherish it, sustain it, practise it and share it
with all. Whatever deficiencies may be in India or Hindu culture
economically or politically, should not get a person to forget the
power of the Vedas. The Vedas are like the sun. In them is the
key to all light, life and love for all the world, through which
all problems, individual or collective, can be solved. Let us not
forget our Vedic heritage.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11888&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Encountering Hindu Dharma
- Dr. David Frawley
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is one of the most prominent Hindus of our times. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Vedas; he has also written on Ayurveda and other Vedic sciences. Most importantly, he has urged a return to the Vedas as a means to unlock the secrets of the scriptures that followed.
The present volume, his spiritual autobiography, is a fascinating narrative. He walks us through his own discovery of how the stereotype of Hinduism is false and provides us a portrait of living Hinduism as mirrored by his own life experience.
The following is excerpted from his latest publication "How I became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma".
Most of us are familiar with accounts of how a person has changed from one religion to another, becoming a Christian, Muslim or a Buddhist. In the modern world we are coming to recognize pluralism in religion just as in culture, ethnicity or language. There is no more only one true religion for everyone than there is only one true race, language or way of life.
However, going from Christianity to Hinduism is a rarer story, particularly for a Westerner, because Hinduism does not aim at conversion. Many people think that Hinduism does not take new members at all. It is also a more complex tale because Hinduism is not only a religion, but also a culture and, above all, a spiritual path. To enter into Hindu Dharma involves much more than a shift of belief or accepting a new prophet. To really understand Hindu Dharma requires taking on a new way of life, of which religion is only one aspect.
As a pluralistic system Hinduism does not require that we hold to a single belief or savior or give up an open pursuit of truth. This makes the change into Hinduism less dramatic, overt or disruptive to a person’s life and for that reason harder to trace. One does not need to make a statement of faith to become a Hindu but simply to recognize the importance of dharma.
In my case, it was not a question of a quick conversion like accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior or surrendering to Allah. Nor was it the result of a concerted effort to convert me by religious preachers speaking of sin or redemption, or of religious intellectuals trying to convince me of the ultimacy of their particular philosophy or theology. It was a personal decision that occurred as the result of a long quest, a finishing touch of an extensive inner search of many years.
The word ‘conversion’ is a misnomer and a term that I dislike. How can we be converted into anything? We can only be who we are. Understanding who we are is the Hindu and Vedic path. It is not about conversion but about self knowledge and about cosmic knowledge because who we are is linked to the entire universe. Hinduism is not about joining a church but about developing respect for all beings, not only humans but plants and animals as well. It is not about a particular holy book but about understanding our own minds and hearts. It is not about a savior but about discovering the Divine presence within us.
For most people in the West, becoming a Hindu resembles joining a tribal religion, a Native American or Native African belief with many gods and strange rituals, rather than converting to a creed or belief of an organized world religion. Discovering Hinduism is something primeval, a contacting of the deeper roots of nature, in which the spirit lies hidden not as an historical creed but as a mysterious and unnamable power. It is not about taking on another monotheistic belief but an entirely different connection with life and consciousness than our Western religions provide us.
The Hindu Tradition
Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world with a tradition going back to the very beginning of what we know of as history over five thousand years ago. It is the third largest of the world’s religions, with nearly a billion members or one sixth of humanity. It is the largest non-Biblical or, to use a pejorative term, Pagan tradition remaining today. As such it holds the keys to the pre-Christian beliefs that all cultures once had and many people still retain.
Hinduism is the world’s largest pluralistic tradition. It believes in many paths and recognizes many names and forms for God, both masculine and feminine. It contains many sages, many scriptures and many ways to know God. Its emphasis is not on mere belief as constituting salvation but on union with the Divine as the true goal of life.
Hinduism is a culture containing its own detailed traditions of philosophy, medicine, science, art, music and literature that are quite old, venerable and intricate. It is the foundation of Indian culture that is rooted in the Sanskrit language which first arose as Hinduism’s sacred language. Most importantly, Hinduism is a great spiritual path with Yogic traditions of meditation, devotion and insight, in which religion in the outer sense of ritual and prayer is only secondary. Its wealth of teachings on mantra, meditation, prana, kundalini, chakras and Self-realization is perhaps unparalleled in the world.
Because of its cultural and spiritual sides some people say that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Yet though it is a way of life Hinduism is also a religion in the sense that it teaches about God and the soul, karma and liberation, death and immortality. It has its holy books, temples, pilgrimage sites, and monastic orders like other major world religions.
Hindus have a deep faith in their religion and its traditions. Thousands if not millions of Hindus have died for their religion in the many holy wars that have targeted them over the last more than a thousand years. They refused to convert even when faced with threats of death and torture. Both Islam and Christianity found converting Hindus to be particularly difficult, not because Hindus responded to assaults on their religion with force, but because their faith in their own religion and its great yogis was unshakeable.
The Western mind characteristically downplays Hinduism's importance as a religion. In many contemporary studies of world religions Hinduism is left out altogether. Because it has no overriding one God, single historical founder, or set creed, Hinduism is looked upon as a disorganized collection of cults. Few Westerners know what Hinduism is, or what Hindus believe and practise. Most are content with negative stereotypes that make them feel comfortable about their own religions. If Hinduism is mentioned in the Western media it is relative to disasters, conflicts or backward social customs. It is the one religion that is still politically correct to denigrate, if not belittle.
There is also a general impression that Hinduism is a closed, ethnic or casteist creed and therefore not a true world religion. This is strange because historically Hinduism spread throughout South Asia and specific ways of becoming a Hindu are described in many Hindu teachings. Hinduism could not have spread so far if it was not expansive in bringing in new members.
Many Hindus seem to confirm these ideas. A number of Hindu teachers say that they will make a Christian a better Christian or a Muslim a better Muslim, as if Hinduism had nothing better or unique to offer. They often apologize about being Hindus when asked about their religion. They say, “Yes I am a Hindu, but I accept all other religions as well,’’ which includes religions that do not accept Hinduism!
Some Hindu temples, particularly in South India, will not allow Westerners, that is people of lighter skin color, to enter even if they have already formally become Hindus. Other Hindus simply don’t know how to communicate their tradition. The result is that the more universal or liberal aspects of Hinduism are forgotten. Or they go by another name in the West as Yoga, Vedanta or the teachings of a particular guru, in which case they can become popular all over the world as many modern spiritual movements have demonstrated.
Discovering Hinduism through the Vedas
In my case, I came to Hindu Dharma through the Vedas, the oldest tradition of Hinduism. This was an unusual way because the Vedas are so old that most Hindus know little about them, following instead more recent teachings. People in the West have no real idea what the Vedas are either. They see Hinduism through a few prominent images like Shiva, Krishna and the Goddess or a few famous modern gurus and are not aware of the older foundation of this multifarious tradition. Most Hindus know their particular sect or guru but have little recognition of their tradition and its long history.
Even Hindus who speak of the glory of the Vedas generally can’t explain Vedic teachings in detail. By the Vedas they usually mean the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita, not the older Vedic texts. Western academia believes that the Vedas are only primitive poetry, tribal rites, or some strange babbling that arose from shamanic intoxications. At best, for the more spiritually enlightened, the Vedas are regarded as the lesser growths from which the greater unfoldments of Yoga and Vedanta arose or diverged.
For me, however, the Vedas became revealed not only as the source of the Hindu tradition but as the core spiritual wisdom of humanity. I could say that I am more a Vedic person, a Vedicist if you will, than simply a Hindu in the ordinary sense. This might better describe what I think to the modern world. But I can’t draw a line between Hinduism and Vedic Dharma, though some people might try to.
Overcoming Anti-Hindu Stereotypes
Hinduism is a religion with many Gods and Goddesses, with strange images of many heads, many arms or animal features. It teems with magic and mysticism, with gurus and godmen and their miraculous powers and enlightened insight. Much of this appears erotic or even violent to us, accustomed as we are to no images in religious worship or to only a few holy images like Christ on the cross or the Madonna with her child. Hinduism appears like a form of brainwashing or mind control, a cultish religion with little to offer a rational and humane Western mind.
This negative idea of Hinduism is shaped by missionary and colonial propaganda that we have been bombarding India with for centuries. Hindus continue to be among the main targets of world missionary efforts. The missionaries highlight the poor, sick and outcasts of India as needing salvation - the victims of a backward religion that we must help them escape from. We focus on the poverty of India today as the measure of the Hindu culture and religion, emphasizing, if not promoting social problems in India as a means of encouraging conversion. Were we to be conquered by a foreign power in the future and become a poor country, I wonder how many of our poor people would convert to the conqueror’s religion for material benefit just as we have long encouraged others to do?
It is amazing how little credit we in the West give to other cultures and religions such as the Hindu. Is our denigration of such different and ancient practices a reflection of a real perception or the shadow of our own arrogance? Why do we see our religions as necessarily better, though religion is hardly a real concern for most of us, or if it is a concern, is little more than a missionary cult, not any profound mysticism or philosophy?
We haven’t looked at Hinduism directly but have blindly followed a jaded vision of it. Hinduism is a free and open culture encouraging self-realization. Its diversity is born of this creativity, not of mere superstition. It is much more like the global culture we aspire to in our spiritual moments, rather than what we would look back upon as the mud from which we came.
Encountering Hinduism, therefore, means questioning our very idea of what religion should be. Hinduism is overflowing with variety and even contradiction. One could say that there are more religions inside of Hinduism than outside of it. Everything that we find in human religious activity from aboriginal rites to insights of pure consciousness is already there in the great plethora of Hindu teachings and practices.
Hinduism is not only connected with many Gods but with the formless absolute - the mysterious immutable Brahman beyond not only the Gods and Goddesses, but even beyond the Creator. It has a place for monotheism but regards monotheism as only one aspect of human religious experience, not the measure of it all.
Hinduism accepts all human approaches to religion, including its rejection, being willing to accept atheists into its fold. It does not try to circumscribe the abundance of life in any formula. It can even accept Christianity as another line of religious experience but not as the only one or necessarily the best.
Hinduism is not passed on by memorizing a creed, though it does have clearly defined and highly articulate teachings and philosophies. It is intimately connected with the Earth, nature, society and our daily activities from eating and breathing to sleeping and dying. Hindu Dharma sees itself not as man-made but as part of cosmic creation, an emanation of the cosmic mind. It aligns us with the cosmic religion that exists in all worlds and at all times. It is a way to link with the cosmic life, not a belief that we can retreat into like a shell or like a fortress.
The Question of Becoming a Hindu
Why would anyone, particularly a modern and educated person born in the West, want to become a Hindu, much less feel proud in calling himself one? How could a person find value in the primitive Vedic roots of this ambiguous religion? After all, the term Hindu connotes an ethnic religion mired in caste, idolatry, and the oppression of women. It appears anti-modern, inhumane, if not embarrassing for those who would follow it.
A forward thinking person could not take on such an identity, or could he? Is it a mere seeking of emotional security? Indeed, many intellectuals out of their own doubts, perhaps an inherent emotional weakness of the intellectual mind, have embraced regressive creeds. Intellectual apologists can be found for every strange ideology. Even Hitler and Stalin had them. So praise for an ideology or religion even by an intelligent person cannot be taken without skepticism.
At the same time we cannot ignore the fact that there is much in the world that goes beyond our current cultural preconceptions. We are beginning to appreciate the deeper meaning of myths and symbols, which Hinduism abounds in. We are gaining a new respect for meditation and Yoga to reach a higher awareness beyond the pale of religious dogma. We are recognizing the distortions born of Eurocentrism and Western materialism and revising our estimate of native cultures. That we might have to revise our ideas of Hinduism from colonial, missionary or Marxist perceptions is without doubt.
Yet even those who have embraced Indic spiritual traditions like Yoga generally find the appellation of being a Hindu to be unappealing. Being a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muslim seems more universal, even recognizing that these traditions may lack the diversity and richness of Hinduism. The term 'Hinduism' has become quite tainted and seldom connotes anything high or noble to the mass mind.
In addition many enlightened thinkers, particularly from India, believe that we should go beyond all outer identities whether cultural, national or religious. After all, our true nature is not Hindu, Christian, American, Russian, or anything else. We are all human beings with the same basic urges and inclinations. So why have any religious identity at all? The age of religions is over and we should be entering an age of spiritual search without boundaries.
Such thinking misses the point that Hinduism is not a credal religion based upon a person, institution or dogma. Hindu Dharma welcomes the spiritual search without boundaries. In fact, its great variety of teachings and methods provides a good foundation for a free individual search, which otherwise as an isolated effort may not go far, just as free inquiry in science benefits from a broad and open tradition of science to draw from. Most people in the world are not at the level of high spiritual practices or ready to renounce the world. They need religious teachings, including prayers and rituals to shape their work, social and family lives on an ethical and devotional level. But such religious teachings should be broad-based, containing something for all aspects of society and connected to the highest truth as well. Hindu Dharma provides all this in a powerful way.
We should not forget the facts of our individual existence and the organic connections of our lives. Each one of us has a certain life span. We live in a certain place and partake of a certain culture. We have our particular temperament and individual inclinations. All this shapes who we are and how we approach the higher Self. Only a rare soul can transcend the influence of time and even he or she must consider the forces of time, just as one cannot avoid being affected by the food that one eats.
The Yoga tradition considers that unless a person has purity in body and mind he cannot transcend them. Similarly, unless we have harmony in our culture and lifestyle it is very difficult to go beyond them. Unless we have a culture that supports the spiritual life, few will be able to pursue it. Culture is the soil on which we grow like a plant to open out into the boundless sky. We cannot ignore nurturing the soil of culture in our seeking of the unlimited beyond. Hinduism with its broad spiritual culture offers this ground on which to grow. It contains the abundant creative forces and variety of nature itself.
Unfortunately, certain religions hold that they alone are true and that other religions are unholy or dangerous. This divisive and exclusive idea of religion is the real problem, not religion per se, which is a necessary part of human culture. Yet this narrow idea of religion has so dominated the Western world that most people take it for granted as representing what religion really is, which makes Hinduism with all of its diversity seem almost incomprehensible.
Religion, in the original meaning of the word, means to link together. It should provide us tools for self-realization, enabling us to unfold our full divine potential. In this process we will probably need to follow a certain teaching, with specific disciplines and practices. We cannot follow all religions any more than we can eat all food or perform all jobs. We will probably also become part of a spiritual group or family. We cannot have everyone as a mother or father. We usually have our lineage and our transmission in the spiritual life, just as in other aspects of life. Indeed such connections are more important in the spiritual life because spirituality is more intimate, more interior and less capable of being transmitted in an outer, mechanical or mass-produced way than other aspects of culture.
Some people argue that the name Hindu is inappropriate because it is not traditional. After all the great Rishis and Yogis didn’t call themselves Hindus but simply spoke of truth and dharma. The reason for this lack of definition is that Hinduism is an open tradition. It is not defined versus any other as are Biblical traditions that reflect a dichotomy of Christian-pagan or Muslim-kafir. Many Hindus have only become conscious of being Hindu because of the negativity they have encountered from Christians and Muslims trying to convert them.
Sanatana Dharma or the universal dharma is a more correct term and reflects the broader basis of the Hindu tradition. Unfortunately, it is cumbersome and unfamiliar. The terms “dharmic” and “native” traditions are also helpful because Hinduism grows out of the land and is connected with life itself. But Hinduism is the convenient term, whatever limitations may be associated with it. So we must define it in an appropriate manner. This is to face our own prejudices about Hinduism, which are probably more deep-seated than we would think. Why should we object to the term Hindu for such a broad tradition, while accepting the names for much narrower religions?
This prejudice against the Hindu religion reflects a built-in prejudice against non-Biblical beliefs. The Western pattern of religion as one true faith, along with a missionary effort, is used as the standard for all proper religion. Missionary aggression is associated with universality in belief, while tolerant religions that see no need to convert the world are condemned as merely ethnic or tribal beliefs.
Buddhism is more respected than Hinduism in the West because it at least has the one historical Buddha to relate to and a more homogenous and missionary type tradition. Buddhism can be placed in the Western model of religion, but without a Creator. Hinduism, on the other hand, calls up all our misconceptions about religion. For that reason it is a good place to enlarge our views and gain a greater understanding of our global religious heritage, most of which does not lie in Western monotheism.
In my case I came to Hindu Dharma after an earlier exploration of Western intellectual thought and world mystical traditions, a long practice of Yoga and Vedanta and a deep examination of the Vedas. In the process I came into contact with diverse aspects of Hindu society and with Hindu teachers that few Westerners have access to, taking me far beyond the range of the usual perceptions and misconceptions about the subject. Such direct experience, which was often quite different than what I had expected or was told would be the case, changed my views and brought me to my current position. Hopefully my story can help others change from taking Hinduism as something primitive to understanding the beauty of this great spiritual tradition that may best represent our spiritual heritage as a species.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11887&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
One truth, different paths
- Dr. David Frawley
India possesses a great indigenous civilization dating back to 7000 BC, such as recent archaeological discoveries at Mehrgarh clearly reveal. It had the most extensive urban culture in the world in the third millennium BCE with the many cities of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers.
When the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame dried up in the second millennium BCE, the culture shifted east to the more certain rivers of the Gangetic plain, which became the dominant region of the subcontinent. Gone is the old idea of the Aryan invasion and an outside basis for Indian culture. In its place is the continuity of a civilization and its literature going back to the earliest period of history. Based on this reclamation of its glorious past India can now look to the future as the broadest and most enduring culture on the planet.
The oldest Indian text and perhaps the oldest book in the world, the Rig Veda boldly proclaims: "That which is the One Truth the seers teach in many different ways" (Rig Veda I.164.46), and "May noble aspirations come to us from every side" (Rig Veda I.89.1). This bedrock of Indian or Bharatiya pluralism gave rise not only to the many different sects of Hinduism but also to Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh traditions, perhaps the largest diversity of spiritual teachings in the entire world. Though largely misunderstood in the West as polytheism or a worship of many Gods, this Bharatiya pluralism reflects an open quest for truth and a free flowering of all human potentials beyond any restriction to a particular name, form or institution. It embraced art and science as well as religion and metaphysics.
Unfortunately, over the first fifty years since Independence, India has not discovered its real roots. Its intellectuals have mimicked Western trends in thought. They have forgotten their own profound modern sages like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who projected modern and futuristic views of the Indian tradition. While Westerners come to India seeking spiritual knowledge, Indian intellectuals look to the West with an adulation that is often blind, if not obsequious.
The world is now entering into a global age in which pluralism must be the foundation of world culture. It is no longer a missionary, colonial or communist era in which one group can be allowed hegemony in the world. It is a new age of dialogue and respect in which we must learn to honour and cherish all the cultures of the world. This should start with tribal peoples who are the custodians of the Earth and of the wisdom of nature that we are so quickly losing to a destructive technology. It must include the great traditions of the East like Hinduism and Buddhism which have a firm foundation in tolerance and synthesis. We must learn to embrace all human beings and their cultures as part of one great family. Let our differences be a cause for admiration and celebration, not for mistrust or hatred.
It is time for India to once more be a leader and an innovator in world culture, rather than a follower and imitator as it is at present. Sri Aurobindo remarked that India's real role was to be the guru among the nations of the world. At present it can hardly keep order within its own frontiers. While we see Indians doing well outside of India as the elite of foreign lands, inside India they are still floundering. Why is it that India today cannot nourish or promote the remarkable capacities of its own people?
To change this situation a new vitality and creativity is necessary that honours the country's venerable traditions but does not restrict itself to past forms and conventions. Above all, it requires a new generation of thinkers who are global in outlook but grounded in the practical spirituality of Yoga and Vedanta. Indian thinkers must return to their cultural wellsprings, not to stop there, but to create a new vision for humanity. New rishis, yogis and bodhisattvas must arise to complement the old.
We can already see how such traditional Indian disciplines as Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedanta are gaining respect worldwide for their integral and holistic approach. Such an Indic or dharmic perspective should be added to enrich religion, philosophy, and science all over the world. The new generation of Indians should take up this task of world-making as their goal. The new world order of the computer and the information revolution offers the country a situation quite favourable to its unique spiritual and intellectual talents. But for this to occur, India must stand up and speak out, not merely to please everyone, but to blaze a new trail to the universe that dwells both inside and outside of ourselves.
Such a new India would combine science and spirituality in a global perspective, adding the intuitive insight of the ancient rishis to the critical acumen of modern scientists. If a unitary consciousness is indeed the basis of the universe, as quantum mechanics require, India's yogis have already shown the way to realize it. It would create a system of medicine that would combine the advances of biochemistry along with an understanding of the life-force and the soul which mirror the greater human being that is cosmic in nature. The new India would develop our material potentials but for the glory of the Spirit, the Self of all beings, just as classical India combined a vast flowering of art, architecture, music and dance along with numerous philosophies of the absolute and yogic paths. The new India would protect the earth while reaching out to the planets and stars, reclaiming the paradise that this tropical land of many rivers used to be. It would honour our spiritual ancestors and their legacy, fulfilling the deeper urges of our species and not merely accepting material affluence as enough. It would raise the poor and the downtrodden, not to convert people to a belief but to help all people become happy and free in both body and mind.
Such an awakened India is crucial for world culture, which presently remains trapped between a destructive consumerism on one side and a rigid religious exclusivism on the other.
Today the United States is the only superpower in the world. But it is a superpower in the outer world only. Its material wealth hides a spiritual poverty and growing psychological and social unrest. No technological superpower can properly guide the world. Only a spiritual superpower can do this, which India has the best potential to become. The question is whether the country and its leaders are willing to make the sacrifice that this must entail.
India holds the Shakti, the spiritual power and evolutionary force of humanity. It is the great World Mother in her manifestation. Let its yogic force come forth once again for the benefit of all!
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11884&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Himsa and Ahimsa: The Need for a New Policy of Protection
- Dr. David Frawley
In spite of modern Gandhian stereotypes, the classical Hindu way to deal with Rakshasas and Asuras (people of egoistic or violent temperament) was never simply ahimsa. It could in fact be quite aggressive. Ahimsa in the sense of absolute non-violence is a sattvic or deva dharma for people of devic or refined temperament. With gentle people you have no need or right to be unkind.
However, when dealing with hostile and violent opponents a completely different response is required. Asuras require the danda (punishment). Let us not forget the many epic and Puranic stories in which Gods, Goddesses or Avatars fought and defeated the Asuras or Asuric human beings. Whether it is the Goddess and Mahishasura, Rama and Ravana, or Skanda and Taraka, there is not a single instance in which the Asuras were simply forgiven and allowed to go their own way without punishment. Let us also not forget how the Mahabharata extols the use of the danda for social harmony and justice.
There is only one way to really deal with Asuric people, which is to make them feel pain. As Asuric types have a materialistic consciousness, this pain must be of a material type, pain to their bodies, to their homes and to their possessions. It must be a pain where they live. Asuric types are immune to platitudes or to any kind of moralistic guilt, hardened as they are by their own drives and compulsions.
Once Asuric types have committed a transgression they must be strongly punished or they will cause harm again. Merely to let them go or to have them say that they are sorry means nothing. Asuric types will take it as weakness and just plot a new attack. They are quite capable of deception or false sentiment to further their cause.
The main recent Hindu way has been to deal with hostile invaders by simply forgiving them and allowing them to go back home if they are defeated. Hindu enemies therefore don't have much to worry about. If they win, they get what they want and can ruthlessly promote their agenda. If they are defeated, they have nothing worse to fear than returning from whence they came without any real punishment. They can then regroup and attack again, having gained much experience by their previous incursions.
Such a prescription only encourages repeated attacks until the enemy finally wins. One is reminded of the example of Prithivi Raj Chauhan in the twelfth century who repeatedly defeated Mohammed Ghauri, who invaded India from Afghanistan. Each time he defeated Ghauri, he forgave him and sent him home. Yet when Ghauri finally won, he killed Prithivi Raj and started a reign of terror in India. One should consider how much respect and honor Ghauri offered to Prithivi Raj for being forgiven so chivalrously so often. All such forgiving souls will similarly become dead meat for such Asuric invaders, once they are able to win.
And if one allows them to attack again and again, they will eventually win, just by the law of chance. One victory is all they need. They will forgive no one and use all possible force and intimidation, including every sort of ethnic cleansing, to get their way - and all with no sympathy to the kind people who once defeated them and treated them with forgiveness.
Most modern Hindus, including prominent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, have failed to understand Asuric aggression, particularly if it takes a religious garb, which Islam and Christianity have often been the pretext for, in their military and missionary assaults to convert the world. Hindus have tried to compromise with such aggression, placate it or moralize it into peace. Not surprisingly their policy has failed, like letting a tumor spread to avoid the necessary violence required to cut it out. Eventually the patient himself dies.
Those Hindus like Sri Aurobindo who raised a contrary voice were ignored. Their prediction that such a policy would lead to partition, division and calamity for Hindus was similarly forgotten once it turned out to be true.
The Gandhian pity, not only for the victims of violence, but also for the perpetrators of violence must come to an end. Perpetrators of violence are not victims, nor should we classify them along with them. Such pity for the violent is one of the most debilitating and confusing of all emotions, and is the very sentiment that Krishna strove to uproot out of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Pity or compassion for the perpetrators of violence only sanctions that violence and causes further pain to the victims. It denies the responsibility that goes with the law of karma. Only when we make people responsible for their actions can they grow and become more humane. To excuse those who are violent under the pretext of non-violence is only to excuse violence. While compassion for the victims of violence is in order, the perpetrators of violence must be handled in a different way, so as to ensure that they don't strike again. Otherwise we are only abetting their crimes.
Perpetrators of violence always like to play the victim anyway, because it justifies their aggression. To treat them as if they were also victims only makes them feel right in the harm that they have already done and encourages them to do more. One who attacks other people in the name of religion is not a martyr but a criminal intruder, in spite of what some misguided religious leaders may say. A religious teaching that extols such violence is not something spiritual but an Asuric dharma. Many Hindus have been murdered by such so-called martyrs.
Terrorists who have indulged in killing innocent civilians, including torture and rape, have no real conscience anyway. They have already killed innocent victims who were offering them no violent resistance. Their action has already rejected ahimsa. Why should they honor the ahimsa of those who capture them? Political and religious terrorists are also warped by an ideology that says that it is right for them to attack and destroy those of different beliefs, even ruthlessly. Until that ideological belief is changed such terrorists will continue in their brutality, however many times you forgive them.
In addition, violent actions create powerful samskaras in the mind that are hard to overcome. Like a dog that first tastes blood, once that taste for violence occurs, the perpetrator will go after it again and again. While one can try to rehabilitate criminals, one must be realistic about how much success is really possible in this regard.
Obviously if one offers a criminal or a terrorist the choice of saying that they are sorry or of getting punished, they will choose to say that they are sorry in order to avoid the pain of punishment. Such apologies and promises of forgiveness mean nothing. The same thing occurs in dealing with terrorist countries.
While one could possibly argue the need for compassion for individual criminals who are victims of oppressive social orders and represent isolated cases, one cannot argue the same compassion for terrorist groups or for terrorist nations, which represent organized attacks. Compassion for inimical nations and the separatist movements that they incite will not do a national defense policy, unless a nation wants to self-destruct.
In this regard, we should remember Pakistan's recent signing of the Lahore Declaration proclaiming peace, while at the same time preparing for the massive attack on India via Kargil. This is how aggressive groups work when faced with what they perceive as a weak form of ahimsa: give lip service to peace to encourage their enemies to weaken their defenses, and then attack with impunity.
True ahimsa means reducing the amount of harm in the world. This may require violent action against the perpetrators of harm. One must not only defeat the enemy but also take away their weapons and ensure that they cannot attack again. Once must cut off the roots of violence where the enemy lives. One doesn't merely send a scorpion back to its nest after it bites you. One has to remove its stinger.
Modern Hindus must once again proudly honor himsa or a policy of harming the enemy, and the danda or a policy of strict punishment for those who use force to attack them. This is not to promote unnecessary violence but to prevent violence from spreading or being abetted. The same policy should extend to all spheres of current cultural encounters.
Those who use a verbal assault against Hindus, like the Christian missionaries, must similarly be dealt with through the weapon of speech. Vak is the Danda of the Brahmins, as the Mahabharata says. Hindus should challenge missionaries to debate and promote forums and publications to expose their intolerant agendas. Until they feel pain for their aggression against Hindus, the missionaries will not stop. You can be certain of that, all talk of religious tolerance to the contrary. This doesn't mean physically assaulting missionaries but it does mean subjecting them to scrutiny and criticism of a rigorous nature, exposing their dogmatism and exclusivism as much as possible.
Hindus must learn how to use the courts and bring legal suits against their denigrators, not only in India but also in the West. The legal danda is very important in the world today and has been the key to many social changes. Hindus must learn how to use the weapons of the media as well, presenting cases, information and programs that promote their point of view and strongly challenging media distortions.
They must attack their enemies on the level where their enemies really feel and with the weapons of the age. Some metaphysical moralistic high ground, such as many Hindus like to take, will not do but is only escapism, though Hindus should continue to practice rituals, prayers, mantras and meditations for peace but not to the exclusion of more direct forms of action in the material world.
The Gods always worked to drive the Asuras from this world and send them back to the netherworld. They never accepted a compromise in which the Asuras were given some portion of this world in exchange for a promise to live in peace.
It is time for the Devas to go on a new offense and to take up again their many weapons on all levels.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11890&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Christians Under Siege in India: A Missionary Ploy
- David Frawley
Christianity does not have a notable reputation for tolerance and respect for other religions. The Christian need to convert the entire world and the Christian failure to honour other religions, particularly non-biblical traditions, is well known. Christian missionaries have had a reputation for using methods to promote conversion that are not always honest, including employing military and political force during the colonial era. Yet Christians today conveniently like to ignore such facts. They are surprised if members of other religions are suspicious of them, even if they look at these religions as works of the devil.
Christians now promote conversion as a democratic freedom, even though their view of religion is authoritarian, not democratic, accepting only one way, and not honouring pluralism in approaching the Divine.
The Christians of India are continuing in attitudes hostile to the other religions of their country. They want a freedom to convert but they are not willing to accept the other religions of the land as valid. They highlight minor attacks on Christians done by unidentified groups as a concerted Hindu campaign against them, while they themselves are actively working to change Hindu India into a Christian nation. While Christians have a long history of aggression against other faiths that certainly has not come to an end, they are quite offended if their religion comes under even minor obstructions even by the groups they have long maligned and, not long ago, actively oppressed.
Recent arrests in India have shown that a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani national was behind most of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India. The Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not ruled by the so-called Hindu BJP party.
In fact Christians in India are defending the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency that has long tried to destabilise India, and absolving it of responsibility in the affair. This would be like an American religious minority defending the KGB during the Cold War. Whether the ISI is directly involved in such efforts to cause conflicts in India or not, we must recognize that it is a project they would certainly support and would be likely to promote.
To dismiss their involvement out of hand, as Christian leaders in India are doing, is highly suspicious. They are publicly blaming Hindu organizations for attacks that they have not been proven to have caused and which no court has found them guilty of.
Christians in India also exaggerate minor incidents into a national anti-Christian agenda. More churches have been burnt in America in recent years than in India. That a few priests or ministers have been harmed in a country of one billion over a period several years is not surprising even if we only consider ordinary crimes like robbery. That Christian missionaries have run into difficulties in sensitive tribal areas where there is not much government control is also not surprising, particularly given their hostility to tribal culture and to the tribal religions.
One even wonders if Christians are staging some of these attacks to gain sympathy, but certainly they are exaggerating them. Christianity has had a long history of using victimization in order to promote conversion. We know of the stories of Christians being fed to the lions in Rome. We are not told that many more pagans were killed by Christians and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe. The number of native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in the millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by the native Americans as being the real victims.
Mother Theresa's successor, Sister Nirmala, claims that Hindu fears that conversion is being done by force, deception or propaganda are not true and are ridiculous. But she should well know that such devices have long been used in Christianity. We can find native peoples all over the world whose cultures have been destroyed and even whose populations have been decimated by the missionaries and by the colonial armies that they supported. Even if the Hindu fear is exaggerated, it is certainly understandable. We should remember that the Pope in his recent visit to India himself threw down the gauntlet, stating a renewed church policy to convert Asia to Christianity in the coming years. To dismiss the Hindu fear as baseless only shows that it is not. If Christians were really sincere they would acknowledge that missionary activity has used such questionable methods in the past and work to insure that it does not do so in the future, not simply ignore the issue.
What is most surprising is that Christian missionaries have more freedom of operation in India than in the rest of Asia. They are banned in Islamic countries, including Pakistan, and strictly monitored in China, which has its own nationalist Catholic Church apart from Rome. Christians are under direct attack in Indonesia, where hundreds of Christians have been killed recently.
But it is India that is being called to task in the world forum for its oppression of Christians!
The reason is simple. India allows missionary activity and so is a soft target. Islamic countries and China are hard targets. The missionaries are targeting India because they feel they can make headway in India, not because India is a place where they are particularly under siege!
The hypocrisy of the whole thing is sad. It only shows that Christians are still promoting a medieval religion that will not honour other religions and is still seeking world domination by any convenient means.
If we count the victims of Christian aggression on one side and the Christians themselves who have been victimized we will find that the victims of Christianity are in the great majority. While some Christians have apologized to African and Native American groups for such missionary misdeeds, the Hindus have so far not received any such apology, though they have suffered from the same methods.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian colonial governments used their influence to promote conversion in the countries they ruled. Now Christians want to use freedom and democracy, which they didn't allow under their rulership, to continue the conversion process. And all without an apology.
If Christians want to be honoured and respected, let them first proclaim that Christianity is not the only true religion and Jesus is not the only son of God. Let them say that Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and the other Indian religions are as good as Christianity and that members of these religions will not go to hell but will gain immortality in the presence of God. They will certainly not do so. Their failure to do so shows the extent of their intolerance that naturally breeds conflict and leads to communal tension. Christians wouldn't even accept a Mahatma Gandhi and worked to convert him, while the Mahatma described missionary activity as a great danger and as ethically flawed.
As a former Catholic I know in what little esteem the church holds Hinduism and Buddhism with all their great sages and yogis. Were Christians to honour Hinduism as a valid religion all Hindu-Christian hostility could easily come to an end. As long as Christians hold that their's alone is the true faith and are working to convert the members of other religions in one way or another, they should not be surprised if members of other religions may not welcome their presence in the neighbourhood.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11892&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Is Islamic goodwill for Hindus possible?
ByDavid Frawley
14 October 1996
Author : David Frawley
Publication : The Organiser
Date : October 14, 1996
Hindus today are often asked to express goodwill for Islam and help minority Muslims in India, who often fell oppressed under the Hindu majority rule. However Hindus are also minorities in various Islamic countries. Therefore the complementary question must arise, is there any Islamic goodwill for Hindus, particularly in Islamic countries? To look at Hindu-Muslim relations only within the borders of India where Hindus are a majority can be misleading. The entire context of these relations throughout the world and historically must be examined.
Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees, like the Parsis, the Syrian Christians and the Jews. India is the only country that never oppressed the Jews. Even today there are a number of Islamicsects like the Ahmadiyas, the Bohras and the Sufis, and other religious movements originating from Islamic countries like the Bahais, which may not be tolerated in Islamic countries including Pakistan, and exist and flourish in India. In fact there is a greater diversity of Islamic sects in India than in any Islamic country today because of the religious toleance traditional to Hindu-majority India. When Muslims lived under Hindu rule in pre-Independence India they
were not obstructed frm practicing their religion, subject to forced conversion, religious taxes, or prevented from building mosques. The same is true of Muslims in India today. They are allowed to practice their religion without interference from Hindus.
Muslims, on the other hand, do not have such a history of
tolerance starting with the first chaliphs of Islam who set out organised armies to conquer the world and marched to the very borders of India. During the period of Islamic rule in India most Hindu temples in the country were destroyed, including many that were rebuilt during that period. Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions. The number of temples destroyed runs in thousands and it is difficult to find even a haldful of temples in India that were not either destroyed ro defaced by the Muslims. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Hindus were killed in wars and genocide or turned into slaves. this included many religious leaders like various Sikh and Hindu Gurus whom the Muslims executed. Hindus exdured forced conversion and a heavy
religious tax to convert them.
Yet this oppression for Hindus has not ended. Even after the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims, the Hindus left over in Pakistan and Bangladesh have suffered terribly. They have no real political or economical influence and the law seldom protects them. This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent. Strictly Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not allow any other religions to exist within their border. No Hindu temple
can be built in such Islamic countries by the Hindus who worl there. You will not find any Hindu temples in Mecca or other Islamic holy cities. Hindus who have gone to work in the Gulf countries are not allowed to practice their religion in public, or bring any of their Hindu holy books with them. Even in India today Muslims do not tolerate and often attack the Hindu religious processions that may go through or near their neighbourhood. This is a holdover right from the Islamic period in Indian when Hindus were prevented from publicly expressing their religion in Muslim predominant communities.
Saudi Arabia insists that India sends only a Muslim ambassador and the Government of India meekly complies, not even raising protest! How would Islamic countries, in which Hindus are a minority, respond if the Government of
India insisted that they sent only Hindu ambassadors? Certainly it would not be tolerated. Most instance of Muslim goodwill to Hindus occur in countries like Indonesia which were only recently and partially Islamized. It is not owing to Islam, which is intolerant in its hear land, but owing to the prior Hindu culture of the people. The more Islamic these countries become this tolerance is likely to decrease.
Today with growing global communication and the awakening of oppressed groups throughout the world, Hindu criticism of Islam is increasing. Hindu intellectuals are questioning Islam not only historically but also spiritually, particularly its actions in India relative to Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Hindu influenced political parties routinely complain against appeasement of the Muslim minority in India.
That Hindus may criticize other religions may be surprising to those who know the history of tolerance in Hinduism. It may cause them to think that Hindus are becoming intolerant. However, the other side of the issue must also be examined. That Hindus are becoming critical of Islam may not be so surprising to those who know of the ongoing oppression of Hindus by Muslims.
Hindus today are awakening to an understanding of the thousand years of oppression they underwent during nearly a thousand years of foreign rule by the Muslims and the Europeans. Their religion and culture was constantly under siege throughout the period. When Hindus today criticize the British rule of India and its efforts to Christinize India, it is generally regarded as understandable. However when Hindus criticize the Islamic period which was similarly a foreign rule and far more brutal than the British period, with a more determined attempt at conversion, it may be labelled as Hindu intoferance of Islam (suggesting that there is Islamic tolerance of Hinduism, which has yet to be demonstrat). But if British rule and Chritian intolerance of Hindus can be questioned, so can, similar action done by Muslims.
Just as blacks and women are, making an issue of their historical oppression, seeking an acknowledgment of it, and trying to correct it, so are Hindus. This is perfectly reasonable and modern, not fundamentalist and backward for them to do so. There is probably no other religious or political group in the world that has been slower to protest its historical mistreatment than have the Hindus. Hindus are the least organised socially and politically of all religious groups. The fact is that Musli8ms have routinely treated Hindus badly and this trend has continued. Not merely as Hindus but as human beings, Hindus have a right to draw the line.
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become exvessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong. Hindus now are no longer willing to meekly accept domination and abuse by
Muslims in the name of communal harmoney. This is just another human community no longer of its human rights. It
is about time that Hindus have taken this stance and it can only help other oppressed groups gain their legitimate rights as well.
The question is how will Muslims react to this trend? Will they recognize the legitimate anger of the Hindus against them, take some resposibility for the problem, and seek to correct it? Or will they rect with hostility and refuse to acknowledge the history of violence that Muslims have without doubt peroetrated against Hindus? Will they take the opportunity to create oeace or will they inflame Hindus further by ignoring the mistakes done in the name of their religion? Muslis throughout the world are quick to condemn any oppressionof Muslims which occurs in any part of the world. Should they be surprised or feel that it is wrong if Hindus begin to adopt such attitudes and start challenging the oppression of Hindus by Muslims?
In Hindu-Muslim dialogue since the time of Mahatma Gandhi has generally been a matter of Hindus trying to please or
accommodate Muslims. This led to the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims and the allowance of Muslim personal law for Muslims in India (but not, we might add, Hindu personal law for Hindus in Pakistan). The question is seldom asked what are Muslims willing to concede to Hindus in order to create peace with them? Perhaps because Muslims are a minority in India it is not considered what they should give but only what they should receive. However there must be reciprocity for there to be trust. And the Hindu-Muslim issue is not limityed to India but to all lands where these two faiths meet. If Muslims throughout the world are intolerance of Hinduism, how can Indian Muslims expect Hindus in India not to be suspricious of them?
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries. How many Hindu political leaders have there been in Pakistan and Bangladesh? I believe the answer is zero, even though, at least in Bangladesh the percentage of minority Hindus is on par with that of Muslims in India. There have, however, been Muslim President, Members of Parliament, chief ministers of State and cabinet minister of India has increased since Partition while the Hindu population of Pakistan and Bangladesh has dramatically decreased.
Clearly Muslims in India are treated much better than Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Gulf countries. There are no Hindu prayers or songs allowed on Pakistani prayers and songs which can be found on Indian television Pakistan history books still vaunt Islamic leaders like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples and killed Hindus on a grand scale, as great and pious Muslims and great Pakistanis.
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be devorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. if Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus. Muslims cannot rightfully expect better treatment from Hindus if they do not consider the plight of Hindus as will. There must be a concern for discrimination against all human beings, regardless of their religion, not looking out for Muslims and ignoring the plight of non-Muslims.
The further question arises, if Muslims want the goodwill of Hindus what are they willing to offer in order to receive it? Do Muslims think that they should have the goodwill of Hindus without offering anythink to the Hindus in return? Can they really think that their history merits the trust and affection of Hindus? While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out. It is they who have historically been aggressively attacking Hindus, not Hindus who have sent armies into their countries in order
to convert them.
Hindus do have an historical right to critize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion. Muslims routinely condemn Hindus as idol-worshippers, which is hardly an accurate, much less a sensitiverendeing of Hinduism, which is a vast religion containig all avenues of human spirituality from devotional worship of images to yogic meditation.
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of
Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
Many Muslims and other have argued that Hindu temples were not destroyed out of religious reasons but from political motivation. Therefore the blam for this destruction is not with the Islamic religion, which is one of peace, but with political leaders who are prone to violence in order to hold power whatever their religious background. If this is the case Muslims should be happy to return such Hindu sacred sites as Kashi and Mathura. Mosques on these two sites of well known Hindu temples were built only three centuries ago by the tyrant Aurangzeb, who killed his own brother, imprisoned his own father, and murdered Sufis as well as Hindu and Sikh leaders. If Islam as a religion is not responsible for the destruction of these Hindu temples but the arrogance of such as Aurangzeb, Muslims should not cling to such monuments as sacred. Otherwise Muslims are in fact saying that the destruction of temples and their replacement with mosques has a religions sanction, which is to equate their religion with such tyrants.
Yet this condition is hardly hopless. there is much that Muslims can do to gain the trust of Hindus, who are a peaceful and tolerant people. But this issue is mainly in
the hands of the Muslims. Hindus cannot make peace with Muslims who are unwilling to give up their oppression of Hindus or their targeting for conversion. Muslims should be willing to consider doing the following if they are sincere about peace with the Hindus.
(1) Muslim leaders should make an official apology for the massive destruction of temples and killing of Hindus that was common under their rule in India and by their invading armies. One can use the example of the Christians apologizing to the American Indians or the Blacks for similar discrimination and oppression.
(2) Muslims should give back to the Hindus Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura mosques that were built by Babur and Aurangazeb on Ramjanmabhoomi, the Kashi Vishwanath Shiva temple and Krishnajanmabhoomi, just as they didi not try to hold on the Somnath after Partition of India. This could be a peace offering for all the Hindu temples destroyed by Muslims through history.
(3) Muslims should invite Hindu swamis and religious leaders to speak at their mosques to explain to the Muslims masses what Hinduism really teaches. In the same way Hindus should invite Islamic leaders to speak at their temples. Muslim countries should allow Hindus to preach and build temples, particularly for Hindu workers in those countries. They should also invite Hindus to talk and preach their religion in orther to dispel Islamic misunderstandings about Hinduism.
(4) Muslims should be willing to accept Hindu names for God like ishvara as good as Allah. Hindus should also accpet Allah as a name of God as many of them already do.
(5) Muslims should be willing to accept the great teachers of India-based religions as divinely inspired, inluding those of recent centuries like Sikh Gurus or Ramakrishna, just as Hindus honour many Sufis and Islamic saints.
(6) Indian Muslims should complain to Muslim countries that discriminate against Hindus. They should criticize Pakistan and Bangladesh for the destruction of Hindu temples that has gone on there in recent times.
Of course it is doubtful whether this will occur any-time soon, even on one of these points. If this is the case, Muslims should ask themselves, if they are unwilling to make such gestures of goodwill to the Hindus why should they expect Hindus to respect and honour them in return? You cannot repeatedly trample on a person and his culture and then expect him to help you when you are in need.
Muslims, who claim to follow the will of God, think clearly on the history of Islam, and how members of your religion have mistreated Hindus and denigrated their religion. Think of how your religious leaders portray the Hindu religion even today. Would you be quick to embrace a group who treated you in the same way?
… Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees… Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions... This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent…
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become excessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong…
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries…
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be divorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. If Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus…
While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out… Hindus do have an historical right to criticize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion…
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
1990: Second Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival, in Moscow, cosponsored by Supreme Soviet, gives stage for Hindu thinking. Shringeri sannyasin Swami Paramananda Bharati concludes Forum with Vedic peace prayer in Kremlin Hall, leading 2,500 world leaders in chanting Aum three times.
1990: Communist leadership of USSR collapses, to be replaced by 12 independent democratic nations.
1991: Hindu Renaissance Award is founded by Hinduism Today and declares Swami Paramananda Bharati of Shringeri Matha "1990 Hindu of the Year."
1991: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated in Tamil Nadu in May. India blames Sri Lankan Tamil separatists.
1991: Indian tribals, adivasis, are 45 million strong.
1991: In Bangalore, India, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami authorizes renowned architect V. Ganapati Sthapati to begin carving the Chola-style, white-granite, moksha Iraivan Temple in a project guided by Shri Shri Trichy Swami, Shri Shri Balagangadaranathaswami and Shri Sivapuriswami. Shipped to Hawaii's Garden Island of Kauai and erected on San Marga, Iraivan will be the Western Hemisphere's first all-stone Agamic temple.The world's largest single-pointed, six-sided crystal (700 lbs.), known as the Earthkeeper, will be enshrined as its Sivalinga.
1992: Swami Chidananda Saraswati, spiritual head of Parmarth Niketan Trust, with 26 ashramas, is named Hinduism Today's 1991 Hindu of the Year for founding historic Encyclopedia of Hinduism Indian Heritage project.
1992: World population is 5.2 billion; 17% or 895 million, live in India. Of these, 85%, or 760 million, are Hindu.
1992: Third Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival meets in Rio de Janeiro in conjunction with Earth Summit (UNCED). Hindu views of nature, environment and traditional values help inform the 70,000 delegates planning global future.
1992: Hindu radicals demolish Babri Masjid built in 1548 on Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya by Muslim conqueror Babar after he destroyed a Hindu temple marking the site. The monument was a central icon of Hindu resentment toward Muslim destruction of 60,000 temples.
1993: Fourth Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival meets in Kyoto, Japan. Green Cross is founded for environmental protection.
1993: Swami Chinmayananda is named 1992 Hindu of the Year, for lifetime of dynamic service to Sanatana Dharma worldwide-attains mahasamadhi July 26, at age 77.
1993: Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati, renowned yoga scholar, and Swami Vishnu-devananda, author of world's most popular manual on hatha yoga, reach parinirvana.
1993: Chicago's historic centenary Parliament of the World's Religions convenes in September. Presidents' Assembly, a core group of 25 men and women representing the world's faiths, is formed to perpetuate Parliament goals.
1994: Harvard University research identifies over 800 Hindu temples open for worship in the United States.
1994: Mata Amritanandamayi (1953-) charismatic woman saint of Kerala, is named 1993 Hindu of the Year.
1994: All India pays homage to Kanchi's beloved peripatetic tapasvin sage, Shri la Shri Shankaracharya Chandrashekharendra, who passes away January 7, during his 100th year.
1994: Hindu Heritage Endowment, first Hindu international trust, founded by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.
2000: World population is 6.2 billion. India population is 1.2 billion: 20% of world (projection by World Watch).
2050: British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) predicted that at the close of the 20th century the world would still be dominated by the West, but during the 21st century India will conquer her conquerors, preempting the place formerly held by technology. Religion worldwide will be restored to its earlier importance, and the center of world happenings will wander back from the shores of the Atlantic to the East where civilization originated.
2094: Bharat (formerly India) is world's most populous nation. Sanatana Dharma, finding new expressions through interactive electronic tools, guides humankind's future. Time flows on. Live long and prosper.
Aum. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Aum.
2) Reference: http://www.timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=2140338028
City older than Mohenjodaro unearthed
REUTERS [ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2002 6:25:32 PM ]
EW DELHI: Indian scientists have made an archaeological find dating back to 7500 BC suggesting the world's oldest cities came up about 4,000 years earlier than is currently believed, a top government official said on Wednesday.The scientists found pieces of wood, remains of pots, fossil bones and what appeared like construction material just off the coast of Surat, Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a news conference."Some of these artefacts recovered by the NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) from the site such as the log of wood date back to 7500 BC, which is indicative of a very ancient culture in the present Gulf of Cambay, that got submerged subsequently," Joshi said.Current belief is that the first cities appeared around 3500 BC in the valley of Sumer, where Iraq now stands, a statement issued by the government said."We can safely say from the antiquities and the acoustic images of the geometric structures that there was human activity in the region more than 9,500 years ago (7500 BC)," S.N. Rajguru, an independent archaeologist, said.The findings, if confirmed, will dislodge the Harappan Civilisation dating back to 2500 BC as India's oldest civilisation.
3) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/7/56-57_dna.html
July/August, 2001 SCIENCEDNA Exposes India's Past New theory posits that today's Indians arrived over 50,000 years agoGenetic evidence isn't just about freeing the unjustly convicted these days or determining whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not have children by his black slave, Sally Hemmings. It's also casting new light on the mid-18th century theory of India's history called the "Aryan Invasion." This, as you may recall having read it in virtually every historical account of India is the pervasive notion that about 1800 bce, hordes of horseback-riding, chariot-driving, light-skinned invaders from the West stormed into India, laying waste the advanced Indus Valley cities, bringing with them Sanskrit, the Rig Veda, the brahmin priest system and every other good thing!According to one of the most widely-used history books on India, The Wonder that was India, by A.L. Basham, the invading Aryans were, "semi-nomadic barbarians, tall, who tamed the horse, were pastoral, and migrated in bands eastwards, conquering local populations and intermarrying with them to form a ruling class. They brought with them their patrilineal family system, their worship of the sky gods...." These same people, Basham states, also went westwards, "to become the ancestors of the Greeks, Latins, Celts and Teutons." Just about every aspect of modern Hinduism is attributed either directly to these invaders, or as a result of their interaction with the conquered, likely Dravidian-speaking, people.The Aryan Invasion theory has been under siege from many sides, especially in the last ten years. Literary, archeological and astronomical evidence simply fail to support it, and critics are quick to point out the very convenient purpose the theory served: to support the British take-over of India at the same time, who were the latest in a series of invaders. Even mainstream historians, some of them students of the renowned Professor Basham, have abandoned it. But many still hold to it, in part because so many aspects of Hinduism have traditionally been explained in the West by this invasion. For example, take this explanation from Basham on the origins of the sudras, or worker caste. "The sudra was in fact a second-class citizen, on the fringes of [the conquering] Aryan society." Such assertions exacerbate caste tension even today.Now, recent DNA research has a one-word answer for this invasion theory: "Not." With the theory's fall would go most of the scholarly explanations of the origins of Sanskrit, the Vedas, brahmins, sudras, etc., etc.That refutation is just one result of a broad re-evaluation of human history as a result of genetic research. The latest theory is called the "recent replacement model." It is based on analysis of "mitochondreal DNA," which is passed from generation to generation only through the mother. Such analysis allows geneticists to trace back a person's ancestry, and determine when one group of people separated from another. The startling conclusion of this model is that all modern humans can be traced back to migrations out of East Africa, possibly just 50,000 years ago, and certainly no more than 200,000 years ago. Spreading out from the area near modern Ethiopia, they went north to Europe and west to India, then on to China and Australia. For as-yet-unknown reasons, they completely replaced the existing archaic humans who themselves had previously spread out of Africa two million years before. It must be admitted that neither geneticists nor anyone else are especially clear about how this "replacement" of the earlier humans occurred, and further discoveries may disrupt current theories and conclusions.The science of all this is complex, but Professor Richard Villems of the Estonian Biocentre in Estonia explained some of the consequences to Hinduism Today in an e-mail interview. "I am aware of the problem of the Aryan Invasion, and although some of my colleagues still want to see its influence in the Indian maternal lineages, we are very skeptical about it." "It is not entirely correct," Villems went on, "to say that Indians and Europeans separated some 50,000 years ago. It is, however, appropriate to conclude from this evidence that the maternal lineages of the present-day Indian populations are largely autochthonous, that is, unique to India, and very, very old. Indians are readily distinguished from Europeans, Near-Middle East populations and those living north or east of India." "There are signs," he wrote, "of later admixtures, particularly along the border regions, but this has had only a limited impact."We asked him about language, specifically the common belief that the presence of languages derived from Indo-European, such as Sanskrit and Hindi, in the north, and the Dravidic languages of the south indicate a racial divide. "There is only a small difference between the pools of maternal lineages between Indians," replied Dr. Villems, "whether they speak Indo-European or Dravidic languages. Also, the maternal genetic lineages of the Indian tribal populations are the same as the rest of the population." This latter discovery contradicts the theory that "Indians" displaced "tribals" from the plains regions of India at some point in history, pushing them into the hill regions.What language, we asked, did the ancestors of today's Indians and Europeans speak when they left Africa? "The problem," Villems replied, "with historic linguistics is that their time horizon is at best 8,000 years maximum, because their methods don't yield positive information below this time depth. So you will hardly find anyone who wants to speak about Indo-European or whatever language before that time. A few are 'brave enough' to suggest the split between Dravidic and Indo-European was 16,000 to 19,000 years ago.""I think that the Aryan Invasion theory," concluded Villems, "in its classical form is dead already, and an attempt to overkill it would perhaps rather scatter our attention from a more complete understanding of the demographic history of India's people."It is now the job of historians, social anthropologists and Hindus in general to weed out the vast array of myths generated by the Aryan Invasion theory, beginning with the notion that the people of north and south India are of fundamentally different origin. Right today, there are heated debates over the use of Sanskrit in South Indian temples because it is regarded as an "imposition" of northern brahmins. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other baseless conclusions about India derived from this persistent but unfounded legend. Professor Richard Villems can be contacted at: Estonian Biocentre, 23 Riia Street, 51010, Tartu, EstoniaPh: 372.7.375.064. Fx: 420.194e-mail: rvillems@ebc.ee. .
4) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/3/
Pythagoras the Mystic
The Greek rishi who taught reincarnation, vegetarianism and more
Pythagoras is generally accepted to be one of the most significant fountainheads of Western thought. Of particular interest to Hindus is the fact that his teachings were in tune with the thinking of the far East--especially India. In this article, Peter Westbrook, a writer and lecturer on music and cosmology, amplifies these connections. He is co-author with John Strohmeter of "Divine Harmony," a book that recounts the fascinating story of the life and teachings of this legendary man.
Many centuries ago there lived a great teacher who was part of an ancient guru parampara‚ a tradition. For nearly forty years he traveled extensively and studied at the feet of many masters. Eventually he founded a community centered on an ashram where he recommended a contemplative, vegetarian lifestyle, taught the doctrine of reincarnation and trained his followers in sacred knowledge aimed at uniting the human soul with the Divine. His biographers attribute miraculous abilities to him, not the least of which was the ability to mentally perceive the deepest structures of cosmic life.
Hinduism Today readers might well assume that these events took place in India and describe the life of a Vedic rishi or Hindu sage. But, in fact, the man in question came from Greece and was one of the founders of the Western tradition. His name was Pythagoras of Samos.
A Man of Many Talents
In the modern world Pythagoras is best remembered for the mathematical theorem that he is said to have created--the one about the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. But Pythagoras was responsible for much more; he played a pivotal role in transmitting knowledge from the wisdom of ancient traditions into the modern world. At the same time, he stands at the fountainhead of our culture. The ideas he set in motion were, according to Daniel Boorstin, among the most potent in modern history. Mathematics, science, philosophy, music--none of these would have taken the shape they did in the Western world without Pythagoras' discoveries. And yet, of all the founders of the Western tradition, Pythagoras is, by far, the least known. This is unfortunate, for understanding Pythagoras and his thought is of much more than purely historical interest. Appreciating the influence of this first scientist and philosopher is essential if we are to get beyond a superficial understanding of history. This is particularly important when we consider the perceived gap between Hinduism and the thought of the West.
Personal Life
As with many figures from antiquity, facts about Pythagoras' life are sketchy. Like his contemporary, the Buddha, he is said to be one of those divine men of whom history knows least because their lives were at once transfigured into legend. Nevertheless, a number of early writers have left us biographical information about Pythagoras which we have used to reconstruct his story in our book Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras.
Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos around 569 bce. Miraculous events surrounded his life from the very beginning. Legend holds that he was the son of Apollo, the Hellenic god of music and learning, and his birth was foretold by the oracle at Delphi. His early years were spent studying at all the centers of scientific and sacred learning in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Eventually he made his way to Egypt, where he lived for over twenty years, absorbing Egyptian knowledge of mathematics, music, medicine and the mystical teachings regarding the soul and the stages of its evolution.
Pythagoras' time in Egypt ended when the country was overrun by the armies of the Persian empire and he was taken into captivity in Babylon. This proved to be a blessing in disguise. Recognizing his prodigious learning and receptivity to new ideas, the Persian magi took Pythagoras into their confidence and he became a student of their equally ancient mystery school. He was also subject to other influences during this time, and probably undertook further travels. Whether he actually went as far as India is not known. Some writers think that he did. Others accept that he studied and absorbed in some form the Vedic philosophy of ancient India; certainly it was known in Persia at this time. And there was probably direct contact between India and Greece before the time of Alexander. Vitsaxis G. Vassilis, in his book Plato and the Upanishads, argues that exponents of literature, science, philosophy and religion traveled regularly between the two countries. He points to accounts by Eusebius and Aristoxenes, of the visits of Indian sages to Athens and their meetings with Greek philosophers. And reference to the visit of Indians to Athens is found in the fragment of Aristotle preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius who was also one of Pytha-
goras' biographers.
The Teachings
The teachings that had the most influence on Pythagoras can best be discerned by what he himself taught. And his teaching began in earnest, when, at the age of 56, he returned from his travels and settled in the Greek world. Initially he returned to Samos and established a school there, but he found himself in great demand in the political arena, although he was more inclined to pursue scientific research, philosophical discussion and solitary contemplation. For this, he found the atmosphere more conducive in the city of Kroton, a Greek settlement in southern Italy. Here he established a philosophical community which was to become known as the Pythagorean brotherhood.
The essence of the doctrine that formed the basis for the Pythagorean community was conveyed, we are told, in the first lecture that Pythagoras gave to those who gathered there, attracted by the fame that now preceded him. He taught them that the soul is immortal and that after death it migrates into other animated bodies. He said that all living things are kin and should be considered as belonging to one great family. He introduced new explanations of gods and spirits, of the heavenly spheres, of all the natures contained in heaven and earth, and of all the natures in between the visible and invisible.
The Kosmos
From this comprehensive vision emerge all the details of Pythagorean philosophy. From the vision itself comes a central idea--Kosmos. The word was coined by Pythagoras, and its original meaning was more than merely everything that exists. The Greek root of the word also gives us the word cosmetic. It implies beauty, adornment, an aesthetic component that springs from an inherent order that Pythagoras described by the term Harmonia, the divine principle that brings order to chaos and discord. This order also expresses itself as philia, love or friendship. For Pythagoras, philia was a cosmic force that attracts all the elements of nature into harmonious relationships. It helps preserve the order of planets as they move across the sky, and encourages men and women, once their souls have been purified, to help one another. The greatest love, philia, for the Pythagoreans was wisdom, sophia. Thus Pythagoras was the first Western philosopher (philia + sophia).
Just as was thought in India, Pythagoras taught that, different songs and modes were appropriate to different hours and seasons. In the spring, for example, he would arrange a ritual in which a group of disciples would sit in a circle with a lyre player seated in the middle. As the instrumentalist produced a melody, the others would begin to sing together in a spontaneous fashion, from which would emerge a song in unison, creating a powerful sense of joy. This ritual was also modified for use as a medicine to treat diseases of the body. Many stories have been handed down that illustrate Pythagoras' influence through music.
The Community
For the members of his brotherhood, the first goal of wisdom was attaining to the divine. And for this, Pythagoras recommended a highly disciplined lifestyle in a loving community. But entry into this community, essentially an ashram, required a lengthy and rigorous examination, including five years of silence. Once admitted to the inner circle, the students were exposed to abstract realms of study designed to turn attention to inner, universal values of consciousness for soul purification.
Modern science traces its origins to Pythagoras, but in its development dropped off the mystical teachings. Perhaps science needs to re-embrace the inclusive vision of this Western rishi.
For extracts from "The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras," log on to www.harmoniainstitute.com/pythagoras.htm
5) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/as-nhild.htm
A Wonder of Ancient India: The Mahabharata
By Nhilde Davidson
Daunted by its size and a misconception that an intimate understanding of Hinduism was needed, I never considered taking the Mahabharata off the shelf. By accident I tuned into an episode of an Indian television production of the Mahabharata (subtitled in English) -- and I was hooked. Ninety-six one-hour episodes later (and many more hours of reading) I am still enthralled and continue delving into this fascinating epic. Its appeal is on many different levels and, through the ages, ascetics and scholars alike have dedicated their lives to studying, collating, and translating the varied and voluminous material. When the series aired on Indian television, railway schedules had to be adjusted as each week almost the entire country sat in front of a TV. Similarly, most things ground to a halt when the Ramayana was serialized. We all love a hero -- heroic action appeals to children and adults alike -- and these epics are heroic. On a deeper level it is the philosophical depth and the psychological profundity that endure, keeping the stories alive in the soul, drawing one back again and again.
The epic is about a Holy War fought on the fields of Kurukshetra at the junction between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron or Kali Age. The Kali Yuga is said to have begun with the death of Krishna on February 17, 3102 BC -- thus dating the war to 3138 BC (in the epic Krishna died 36 years after the Great War). However, dating the epic is an ongoing debate. The extant written versions can be traced to the period 400-100 BC when the present form was settled on. The Mahabharata has eighteen major chapters or parvas which are, in turn, subdivided into many smaller parvas or sections. There are hundreds of different versions, adjusted by various sects to include their own individual religious biases (for example there are 300 known versions of the Adi Parva).
Krishna-Dvaipayana (also known as Veda Vyasa for his work in synthesizing the Vedas in their present form) is said to be the author of the original 24,000 slokas (verses). Sloka meter is characterized by 32 syllables divided into 4 pada or quarter verses of 8 syllables each, written in either 2 or 4 lines. It is the metrical form commonly used in Sanskrit epics. (1) The present form of the epic contains around 100,000 slokas, though it has been estimated that it may include as many as 150,000. Critical editions intended to discover the pristine material are only a few decades old, the best work having been done by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona.
While the accrual of additional material is ongoing, the age of the texts and questions about the historical accuracy of accounts in the epic are hotly debated. Many believe that the Mahabharata and also the Puranas give the history of not only the peoples of India but of humanity. Scholars have established that the parvas were written at different times -- some being much older than others.
One of the parvas contains the Ramayana. According to Hindu tradition the Ramayana recounts the history of Rama and Sita, and is believed to have taken place at the beginning of the Treta or Silver Age, i.e., shortly after the end of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age) -- roughly two million years ago by Hindu reckoning -- thus potentially very old indeed. The current archaeological dating of the age of humanity prevents scholars from giving credence to the Hindu chronology.
The known history of India does not include verifiable records of a war where millions of soldiers fought and died, or the destruction of Dvaraka (the region governed by Krishna) by tidal waves and cataclysms of the proportions described in the Mahabharata. This leads some to believe that the epics may not be historical. However, corroborating evidence in texts from other sources and countries suggests that these writings are a blend of accurate history, myth, and soul memory, as well as ethical treatises.
The crux of the matter is that the entire Mahabharata has one obvious aim -- to awaken a love of truth and right action. The core story is the thread that ties together a profound philosophical content. Embellished by substories to clarify various ethical premises, the central theme always leads in one direction -- the ascendancy of right over wrong, justice over injustice, truth over untruth. In the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas it is made clear that the side of Truth (represented by the Pandavas) will ultimately win. The reasons for this war and the human aspects of the story are what make the epic ever fascinating -- its slokas are the mirror whereby we see into our own souls, and the consequences of actions, both gross and subtle, are laid bare for scrutiny.
The cast of characters is large, but one soon finds oneself relating to and caring about them: Draupadi, the virtuous, beautiful wife of the five Pandava brothers; Vidura, the wise younger brother of Pandu and Dhritarashtra; Kunti, the mother of the three eldest Pandava brothers -- Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna; Madri, the mother of the younger twin sons of Pandu -- Nakula and Sahadeva. As all the characters come alive, the strange names and customs become familiar and comfortable.
The wisdom of the Pandava and Kaurava princes' tutors -- Bhishma, Drona, and Kripacharya -- enrich the text at every turn. Bhishma, patriarch of the families on both sides of the conflict, has a magnificence and stature which make him beloved and respected by all the characters, while his all-encompassing wisdom and virtue still earn him the love and reverence of Hindus today.
The central story concerns the rivalry for the throne of Hastinapura, where the ancient dynasty of India has its domain. As jealousy goes unchecked the dynasty is finally destroyed. Pandu, the second son of Santanu, becomes king because his elder brother, Dhritarashtra, was born blind and thus considered unfit to rule. However, when Pandu dies Dhritarashtra, already an able administrator of the country during Pandu's many absences, proceeds to reign. It is the line of succession that is the bone of contention. Yudhishthira, virtuous son of Pandu and eldest of the Pandava brothers, is heir-apparent, but Duryodhana, eldest of Dhritarashtra's and Gandhari's one hundred sons, wishes to be king. Gandhari has a gambler brother, Sakuni, living at court who helps inflame Duryodhana's jealousy and envy of the five Pandava princes.
Known as the Kauravas, the family and supporters of Dhritarashtra are spearheaded by Duryodhana, his brother Dushasana, Sakuni, and Karna (a protege of Duryodhana whose lineage is mysterious and who, ironically, is finally shown to be linked to the Pandavas). These four try many ways to eliminate the five sons of Pandu. As Dhritarashtra and Gandhari fail to curb Duryodhana's hatred of the Pandavas -- and more especially of his birthday twin, Pandu's second son, Bhima -- the peoples of Hastinapura are inexorably propelled into war.
Through the popularity of the Bhagavad-Gita the third son of Pandu, Arjuna, is perhaps the best known of his five sons. This parva recounts the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna just prior to the Battle of Kurukshetra. Arjuna asks Krishna why he should fight. Krishna, having sworn not to fight himself but to steer Arjuna's chariot during the battle, explains to Arjuna his duty -- in reality the duties of all who seek for truth.
One may read the epic just as an excellent tale, for it has all the elements of good storytelling, yet it also includes the psychological dilemmas inherent in life, though the meaning behind some of the episodes is not always clear -- each reader must interpret the episodes according to his own insight and vision. Like a diamond sparkling in the sun, each time a passage or an episode is reread new illuminations and nuances come into focus.
The Mahabharata says that even before the Battle of Kurukshetra the caste system had effectively come to an end. No longer were people to be considered as being born in a particular class, miscegenation having broken the old ways and codes. With the advent of the Kali Age all reflect, by their own actions, what class each act belongs to -- the determining factor being whether the motive arises out of wisdom and truth, the passionate or emotional nature, or from ignorance and darkness (avidya or untruth).
The Kshatriya, or divine warrior class, as represented by Arjuna and his peers, died out in this Holy War on the fields of Kurukshetra and the unholy aspects of life during the Kali Age are prescient. It was incumbent upon these godlike men -- whose concentration was on dharma (duty), artha (right resolve or motive), karma (action), and vidya (wisdom/truth) -- to be just, benevolent, and charitable at all times -- always protecting and honoring truth. As the eighteen-day war drags on, all partake of unrighteous acts eroding the old codes of honor and ethics. Finally, at the end of the war, with the loss of the ancient value system and their loyalty solely to truth destroyed, the link with the past is broken. After Kurukshetra a limited age of justice was reestablished and the sun of truth shone briefly -- but the Kali Age had begun.
Fortunately for us the old truths remain accessible in this vast storehouse of wisdom from ancient India. The Bhagavad-Gita, the best loved of all Hindu writings, is a profound treatise on the causes and results of action and stands on its own, yet coupled with the entire epic, it acquires an additional lustre -- for the Mahabharata has much to say about the qualities and duties of every aspect of life. B.R. TV's Indian production of the Mahabharata shows the veneration that the Hindus have for this work and their understanding of its effect for good on individual lives.
Use this epic tale as an inspiration to solve your problems. The story is your armour and also your weapon . . . Be heir to Light, to Justice and to Truth. Turn the Kurukshetra of your heart into Holy Ground -- That is Salvation!
Whatever there is in the World / Whatever this World is -- / Sage Vyasa's epic tale narrates all that the World is! -- From B.R. TV English subtitles
· (From Sunrise magazine, February/March 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
FOOTNOTE:
1. Mahabharata, produced and directed by B. R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra. Marketing Agents for India, J. Electronics, 258 Palika Bazar, Cannaught Place, New Delhi - 110001. (return to text)
6) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/mis-jj00.htm
Letter: On Revising the History of Vedic Civilization
By Rithvik. S. Vinekar
Having read on the Internet an article in Sunrise on the Mahabharata, I would like to bring to your attention a book I just read which relates to ancient India: Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization by Dr. David Frawley. Although there are many books on this subject, this one was written with the international -- particularly American or European -- reader in mind, who has no previous knowledge of Hindu mythology or history.
In this work Dr. Frawley relates the history and mythology of almost all the ancient world to the Vedic culture which developed on the banks of the now dry Saraswati River. Geological, literary, and archeological data suggest that long ago this mighty river flowed from Lake Manasarowar in Tibet to the sea through present-day Rajasthan. Manasarowar is linked with Manu, the first man according to Vedic tradition. Leaving his golden ship on a high Himalayan peak after the great flood, he is said to have come down to the plains, carrying with him the seeds of life, in order to establish his kingdom on the fertile banks of the Saraswati. The author suggests there may be a linkage of this event with Plato's Atlantean deluge near the end of the ice age, while cautioning the reader that the boat or ark may be only a metaphor. Although this date may seem irrational from the viewpoint of accepted academic history, more and more archeological evidence from the Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization, geological evidence of the existence and fate of the Saraswati River, and astronomical dating of events recorded in the Vedas, show the antiquity of this ancient civilization. They also contradict the standard Western theory, formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, of Vedic civilization beginning with an Aryan invasion of northern India around 1500 bc.
The Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization is now found to be a collection of nearly 2,500 settlements of various periods along the Saraswati and other rivers, some of which date earlier than 6000 bc. These sites show sure signs of having cultural elements in common with later Vedic culture. The Indus script was first dismissed as imagistic, but has since been found to be very similar to the later Brahmi script, and is possibly related to early Semitic scripts from which the present-day alphabet developed.
The historicity of Vedic religion and its scriptures was once dismissed, in part because it praised very highly the supposedly mythical Saraswati River. Satellite and geological evidence show, however, that although the Saraswati changed its course many times over several thousand years before disappearing, long ago it was as described in the Vedas. Fortunately, some scholars are beginning to interpret history taking into account the geography of the region in the past. In light of new and growing evidence, an objective reexamination of existing data and reinterpretation of ancient history is necessary today.
(From Sunrise magazine, June/July 2000; copyright © 2000 Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
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7) reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bud_statwrld.htm 020320yd
While estimates vary between 200-500 million adherents, the generally agreed number of Buddhists is estimated at around 350 million (6% of the world's population). This makes Buddhism the world's fourth largest (in terms of number of adherents) religion.
World Religions Number of Adherents
Christianity 2 billion
Islam 1.2 billion
Hinduism 900 million
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 900 million
Buddhism 350 million
Chinese traditional religion 225 million
Primal-indigenous 190 million
Yoruba religion 20 million
Juche 19 million
Sikhism 18 million
Judaism 15 million
Spiritism 14 million
Babi and Bahai faiths 6 million
Jainism 4 million
Shinto 4 million
Cao Dai 3 million
Tenrikyo 2.4 million
Neo-Paganism 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism 800 thousand
Scientology 750 thousand
Rastafarianism 700 thousand
Zoroastrianism 150 thousand
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bstats_b.htm 020320yd Branch Percentage Number of Adherents
Mahayana 56% 185,000,000
Theravada 38% 124,000,000
Vajrayana (Tibetan) 6% 20,000,000
Branch Religion Number of Adherents
Catholic Christianity 1,030,000,000
Sunni Islam 940,000,000
Vaishnavites Hinduism 580,000,000
Liberal Protestant Christianity 240,000,000
Orthodox/Eastern Christian Christianity 240,000,000
Shaivites Hinduism 220,000,000
Conservative Protestant Christianity 200,000,000
Mahayana Buddhism 185,000,000
Theravada Buddhism 124,000,000
Shiite Islam 120,000,000
African indigenous sects Christianity 110,000,000
Pentecostal Christianity 105,000,000
Neo-Hindus and reform Hindus Hinduism 22,000,000
Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism 20,000,000
Sikhism Sikhism 18,000,000
Jehovah's Witnesses Christianity 12,000,000
Latter Day Saints Christianity 11,200,000
Ahmadiyya Islam 10,000,000
Veerashaivas (Lingayats) Hinduism 10,000,000
Baha'i World Faith Baha'i Faiths 6,500,000
Conservative Judaism 4,500,000
Unaffiliated and Secular Judaism 4,500,000
Shinto all branches Shinto 4,000,000
Svetambara Jainism 4,000,000
Reform Judaism 3,750,000
Seicho-No-Ie New Japanese 3,200,000
Tenrikyo New Japanese 2,800,000
PL Kyodan New Japanese 2,600,000
Orthodox Judaism 2,000,000
New Thought (Unity, Christian Science) Christianity 1,500,000
Sekai Kyuseikyo New Japanese 800,000
Sthanakavasis Jainism 750,000
Zenrinkai New Japanese 600,000
Druze Islam 450,000
Tensho Kotai Jingukyo New Japanese 400,000
Ennokyo New Japanese 300,000
Digambaras Jainism 155,000
Reconstructionist Judaism 150,000
Parsis Zoroastrianism 110,000
Gabars Zoroastrianism 20,000
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.asp?loc=ct&letter=A by country - stats
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introleastreached.html
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introcomplete.html world survey convert project design
http://www.joshuaproject.net/peoplenumbers.html operation world
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/cntryxx.htm worlwide
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/jpcxind.htm peoples in India
http://www.hindunet.org/conversions/conversion/ articles
Reference: The Detroit News
Racial,ethnic makeup of 10 largest Christian denominations in the U.S.
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
No figures available for racial/ethnic makeup for 4, 5, 7, 8, 9:
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
About 42% of the US Catholics are minorities
38% Hispanic, 3.8% African American, Vietnamese 0.33%, Korean 0.13%,
Chinese 0.06%
Hispanics are expected to become the majority in the U.S Roman Catholic Church
between 2010 and 2020.
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
85% White, 11% Ethnic (Asian, Hispanic, etc), 4% African American
About 15% of the congregations have predominantly minority memberships
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
About 5.6% of the members are minorities
4.2% African American, 0.67% Asian, 0.48% Hispanic, 0.19% American Indian
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
African American predominantly
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
African American predominantly
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
About 2% of the members are minorities
0.38% African American, 0.42% Asian, 0.57% Hispanic, 0.14% American Indian
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
White predominantly
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
African American predominantly
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
African American predominantly
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
About 6.8% of the members are minorities
2.6% African American, 1.8% Asian, 0.9% Hispanic, 0.4% American Indian, 1.1% other
---------------------------
Beyond Mind:
Beyond Mind
Learn Meditation and Gentle Breathing Techniques Books: Optional Reading Courses in meditation and gentle breathing techniques from the traditional ashtanga yoga system are taught by experienced certified instructor David Netzorg, M.S., serving Greater Detroit (Michigan) Windsor (Canada), and surrounding areas. These courses in meditation and breathing techniques don't require any reading, although reading is always encouraged. Each course participant is given a textbook (Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass), but reading it is optional. All of the essential knowledge in each course is transmitted in the traditional way, by word of mouth and repeated example. But, for those who prefer to do some reading, we offer the following list of standard books as a way to get started. Information on how to obtain the books (and others like them) is given the bottom of the list. For more information, contact David Netzorg, M.S. Phone: (248) 353-8777 E-mail: info@beyondmind.com Web site: http://www.beyondmind.com . Scriptures (listed in alphabetical order) The Bhagavad Gita The Bible (including The Torah, The Old Testament, The New Testament, etc.) The Dhammapada The Qur`an (The Koran) The Tao Te Ching The Upanishads Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Note: Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (Yoga Aphorisms) is the main traditional treatise on Ashtanga Yoga. Note: Raja Yoga is another name for Ashtanga Yoga. Science of Yoga, by I. K. Taimini; Theosophical Publishing House Textbook of Yoga Psychology, by Rammurti S. Mishra; Julian Press Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, by Swami Hariharananda Aranya Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Pandit Usharbudh Arya Aphorisms of Patanjali, ...; Vedanta Press Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda Books on Ashtanga Yoga by Baba Hari Dass All published by Sri Rama Publishing, PO Box 2550, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass Fire Without Fuel, by Baba Hari Dass Silence Speaks: From the Chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, by Baba Hari Dass A Child's Garden of Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Hariakhan Baba, Known and Unknown, by Baba Hari Dass The Path to Enlightenment is Not a Highway, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 1: Binding Thoughts and Liberation, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 2: Mind is Our World, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 3: Selfless Service, The Spirit of Karma Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Sweeper to Saint: Stories of Holy India, by Baba Hari Dass The Yellow Book, by Baba Hari Dass Cat and Sparrow, by Baba Hari Dass Fun with Fitness Asanas, by Baba Hari Dass The Magic Gem, by Baba Hari Dass Mystic Monkey, by Baba Hari Dass Other Books on Ashtanga Yoga Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda Be Here Now, by Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.) The Science of Being and Art of Living, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi The Seven States of Consciousness, by Anthony Campbell Books on Hatha Yoga Hathayoga Pradipika of Svatmarama, commentary of Bhramananda; Adyar Library and Research Center Note: "Hathayoga" is sometimes spelled as two words: "Hatha Yoga." Gherand Samhita, ...; Oriental Books Reprint Corp Shiva Samhita, translated by Rai Bahdur Srisa Chandra Vasu; Oriental Books Reprint Corp. Books on Gyan Yoga Note: The word "Gyan" is sometimes spelled "Jnana" Ashtavakra Samhita, by Swami Nityaswarupananda; Advaita Ashram Atma Bodha of Shankaracharya: Self Analysis and Self Knowledge, by Sri Rammurti Mishra Panchadashi, by Hari Prasad Shastri Viveka Chudamani of Sri Shankaracharya, by Swami Madhavananda; Advaita Ashram Books on Bhakti Yoga Narada's Bhakti Sutras, by Swami Tyagisananda; Sri Ramakrishna Math Srimad Bhagavatam (One translation and commentary is: "The Wisdom of God," by Swami Prabhavananda; Vedanta Press) Books on Gyan Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga Sri Ramacharita Manasa (The Ramayana), ...; Gita Press Srimad Bhagavadgita (The Bhagavad Gita), ...; Gita Press Other Books on Meditation and Breathing Techniques Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual of Meditation, by Thich Nhat Hanh Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by S. Suzuki Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn A Path With Heart : A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, by Jack Kornfield Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery, by Dean Ornish, M.D. Inner Silence: A Guide to Peace and Empowerment, by Andrew Da Passano with Judith Plowden The Art of Meditation, by Joel S. Goldsmith Return of the Rishi: A Doctor's Story of Spiritual Transformation and Ayurvedic Healing, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Perfect Health, The Mind/Body Guide, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Eight Weeks to Optimum Health : A Proven Program for Taking Full Advantage of Your Body's Natural Healing Power, by Andrew Weil, M.D. Powers of Mind, by Adam Smith Recent Books on How to Allow Positive Changes A Course in Miracles, by Helen Schucman Love is Letting Go of Fear, by Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D. Handbook to Higher Consciousness, by Ken Keyes, Jr. Conscious Contact: The Transpersonal Journey, by Jerry Williams The Twelve Steps for Everyone (Words to Live By), by Grateful Members Getting the Love You Want, by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. Feeling Good, by David D. Burns, M.D. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Hidden Guilt: How to Stop Punishing Yourself and Enjoy the Happiness You Deserve, by Lewis Engel, Ph.D. and Tom Ferguson, M.D. You Can Negotiate Anything, by Herb Cohen The Dance of Anger, by Harriet G. Lerner, Ph.D. Dr. Weisinger's Anger Work-Out Book, by Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D. The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D. Where to Get the Books Listed Above Libraries (including Inter-Library Loan) If your favorite library doesn't have the book you want, then walk over to the reference desk and ask the reference librarian to get you that book from the (free) inter-library loan system. Even the smallest public library can use the inter-library loan system to get you books from major libraries all over the country, at no cost to you. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to get the book you are looking for, but you may be surprised to discover the wealth of books that are available to you in this way. Local bookstores Look in the Yellow Pages under the two headings: "Book Dealers - Retail" and "Book Dealers - Used." Gateways Book & Gift Store 1018 Pacific Avenue Santa Cruz, California 95076 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 459-0055, Fax: 1(408) 429-1395 e-mail: orders@gatewaysbooks.com East West Bookshop 324 Castro Street Mountain View, California 94041-1297 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 909-6161 Phone: 1(650) 988-9800 Fax: 1(415) 988-9884 e-mail: info@eastwest.com web site: http://www.eastwest.com (East West Bookshop also has stores in Sacramento, California and Seattle, Washington) Bodhi Tree Bookstore 8585 Melrose Avenue West Hollywood, CA 90069-5199 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 825-9798 Phone: 1(310) 659-1733 Fax: 1(310) 659-0178 e-mail: bodhitree@bodhitree.com web site: http://www.bodhitree.com Bookfinder Internet web site. Helps you find book dealers who have the the specific book you are looking for. This web site is connected to several databases listing millions of books, both new and out-of-print. You can also browse through this site by entering a subject or key word in the search window. Web site at http://www.bookfinder.com Amazon.com books Internet web site of a major dealer in new and out-of-print books. Another good place to browse. Web site at http://www.amazon.com Internet Search Engines You can use internet search engines to find web sites and Usenet news groups that mention the book you are looking for. This can lead you to all sorts of useful information, such as on-line text of the book, sources for obtaining the book, reviews and discussions of the book, information on the same topic as the book, etc. Some major internet search engines are AltaVista http://altavista.digital.com Excite http://www.excite.com HotBot http://www.hotbot.com Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com For more information, contact David Netzorg, M.S. Phone: (248) 353-8777 E-mail: info@beyondmind.com Web site: http://www.beyondmind.com .
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #6
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1947 ce to the Present and Beyond!
1947: India gains independence from Britain August 15. Pakistan emerges as a separate Islamic nation, and 600,000 die in clashes during subsequent population exchange of 14 million people between the two new countries.
1948: Britain grants colony of Sri Lanka Dominion status and self-government under Commonwealth jurisdiction.
1948: Establishment of Sarva Seva Sangh, Gandhian movement for new social order (Sarvodaya).
1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated January 30th by Nathuram Godse, 35, editor-publisher of a Hindu Mahasabha weekly in Poona, in retaliation for Gandhi's concessions to Muslim demands and agreeing to partition 27% of India to create the new Islamic nation of Pakistan.
1949: Sri Lanka's Sage Yogaswami initiates Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as his successor in Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara. Subramuniyaswami founds Saiva Siddhanta Church and Yoga Order the same year.
1949: India's new constitution, authored chiefly by B.R. Ambedkar, declares there shall be no "discrimination" against any citizen on the grounds of caste, jati, and that the practice of "untouchability" is abolished.
1950: Wartime jobs in West, taking women out of home, have led to weakened family, delinquency, cultural breakdown.
1950: India is declared a secular republic. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964) is determined to abolish casteism and industrialize the nation. Constitution makes Hindi official national language; English to continue for 15 years; 14 major state languages are recognized.
1951: India's Bharatiya Janata Sangh (BJP) party is founded.
VINDICATED BY TIMEThe Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities Introduction by Sita Ram Goel Voice of India, New Delhi Install Devnagari Font
ContentsPreface The Sunshine of ‘Secularism’ Rift in the Lute REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME IChristian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, Madhya Pradesh Part I Part II Part III Part IV Appendices REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME II Part ATour Programmes of the Committee Explanatory tour notes including important petitions received by the Committee on tour District Raigarh District Surguja District Raipur District Bilaspur District Amravati District Nimar District Yeotmal District Akola District Buldana District Mandla District Jabalpur District Chhindwara Questionnaire Replies to Questionnaire Replies submitted by Shri J. Lakra Replies to Questionnaire concerning the area covered by Jashpur, Khuria and Udaipur of the Raigarh district Replies submitted by the Catholic Sabha of the Raigarh district Replies Replies submitted by Shri Gurubachan Sing, Raipur Replies submitted by Chairman and Secretary of the General Conference, Mennonite Mission in India, Saraipali, Raipur district Replies submitted by Rev. Canon, R. A. Kurian, Nagpur Replies submitted by Rev. E. Raman, President, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Madhya Pradesh, Gopalganj, Sagar Replies submitted by Miss M. L. Merry, Khirkia R. S., Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri L. E. Hartman, Amravati Camp, Berar, Mission Bungalow, Amravati Camp, Berar Replies submitted by Umri Mission Hospital, Umri, via Yeotmal, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri F. B. Lucas, President, Independent Christian Association, Yeotmal Replies submitted by Shri R. W. Scott, Secretary, National Christian Council Replies submitted by Dr. E. Asirvatham, Nagpur Replies submitted by Shri P. S. Shekdar, Khamgaon, district Buldana Replies submitted by Shri Sohanlal Aggarwal, Secretary, Vedic Sanskriti Raksha Samiti. Replies submitted by Shri T. Y. Dehankar, President, Bar Association, and six others of Bilaspur Replies submitted by Shri M.N. Ghatate, Nagpur Sangh Chalak. Replies submitted by Shri R. K. Deshpande, Pleader, Jashpurnagar VOLUME II Part BCorrespondence of Roman Catholics with the Committee, the state government and the Central Government Extracts from Catholic Dharma ka Pracharak and other pamphlets showing the methods of propaganda Short History of Chhattisgarh Evangelical Mission Statement made before the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee. Camp: Raipur (22-7-1955) Camp Bilaspur (25-7-1955) Raigarh (28-7-1955) Jashpur (22-11-1955) Jabalpur (8-8-1955) Sagar (11-8-1955) Mandla (15-8-55) Khandwa (17-8-55) Yeotmal (10-8-55) Camp Amravati (13-8-1955) Washim (16-8-1955) Buldana 18-8-1955 Malkapur (20-8-1955) (22-8-1955) Nagpur (20-9-1955) Camp Ambikapur (19-11-1955) Activities of Christian Missions in the Eastern States and proselytism in the Udaipur State by the Jesuit Mission Back to Home Back to VOI Books Back to Top
1955-6: Indian government enacts social reforms on Hindu marriage, succession, guardianship, adoption, etc.
1950-60s Tours of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan lead to worldwide popularization of Indian music.
1955: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist formulator of the relativity theory dies. He declared Lord Siva Nataraja best metaphor for the workings of the universe.
1956: Indian government reorganizes states according to linguistic principles and inaugurates second Five-Year Plan.
1956: Swami Satchidananda makes first visit to America.
1957: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Himalayan Academy and opens US's first Hindu temple, in San Francisco.
1959: Dalai Lama flees Tibet and finds refuge in North India as China invades his Buddhist nation.
1959The transistor makes computers smaller and faster than prototypes like the 51-foot-long, 8-foot high Mark I, containing I-million parts and 500 miles of wire, invented for the US Navy in 1944 by IBM's Howard Aiken. From the 1960s onward, integrated circuitry and microprocessors will take computers-descendants of the 5,000-year-old Oriental abacus-to unimaginable levels to revolutionize Earth's technology and society.
1960: Since 1930, 5% of immigrants to US have been Asians, while European immigrants have constituted 58%.
1960: Border war with China shakes India's nonaligned policy.
1961: India forcibly reclaims Goa, Damao and Diu from the Portuguese. Goa became a state of India in 1987.
1963: US President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
1963: Hallucinogenic drug culture arises in US. Hindu gurus decry the false promise and predict "a chemical chaos."
1964: India's Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu religious nationalist movement, is founded to counter secularism.
1964: Rock group, the Beatles, practice Transcendental Meditation (TM), bringing fame to Maharshi Mahesh Yogi.
1965: US immigration cancels racial qualifications and restores naturalization rights. Welcomes 170,000 Asians yearly.
1966: J. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes Prime Minister of India, world's largest democracy, succeeding L. B. Shastri who took office after Nehru's death in 1964.
1968: US Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated.
1969: US astronaut Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon.
1970: Kauai Aadheenam, Hindu monastery, site of Kadavul Hindu Temple, Saiva Siddhanta Church headquarters, San Marga Sanctuary and editorial offices of Hinduism Today is founded February 5 on Hawaii's Garden Island.
1971: Rebellion in East Pakistan (formerly Bengal). Ten million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, flee to India. Indo-Pak border clashes escalate to war. India defeats West Pakistan. E. Pakistan becomes independent Bangladesh.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_bangla.html
Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan
By Shrinandan Vyas
This article deals with slaughter of about 2.5 million Hindus in East Pakistan in 1971.
This article refers to information provided by Dept. of Planning of Government of Bangla Desh, Encyclopedia Britannica, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee, Newsweek, New York Times,etc. This information and elementary math are used to show that indeed millions of Hindus were killed in East Pakistan in 1971.
ABSTRACT
It is well known that the 1971 army repression in Bangla Desh (former East Pakistan) resulted in an influx of 10 million refugees into India. Most world renowned relief and news agencies put the number of dead at 3 million. However the fact that is glossed over in these statistics is that THE ENTIRE HINDU POPULATION OF EAST PAKISTAN WAS THE PRIMARY TARGET OF PAKISTANI ARMY DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF REPRESSION IN 1971. Using the population statistics from Bangla Desh Government and US Government publications this article PROVES that 80 percent of the refugees from Bangla Desh were Hindus and that 80 percent of the 3 million killed were Hindus. THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM and IT WAS A HINDU GENOCIDE THAT TOOK PLACE IN EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971.
10 References - Encyclopedia Britannica, Bangla Desh Government - Ministry of Planning (for statistics), Newsweek, New York Times, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
INTRODUCTION
In the December 1970 general election in Pakistan, Awami League won 167 of 169 seats and over 80 % of popular votes in East Pakistan. Numerically Awami League had an absolute majority of seats in the Pakistan National Assembly (167 of the total 313 seats)(1). Historically, East Pakistan was allocated only 36 % of the total resources and East Pakistanis occupied only 20 % of the positions in the federal government in the United Pakistan (2). The Pakistani government's apathy towards East Pakistan after a terrible cyclone in November 1970 in which over 250,000 people died, had alienated East Pakistani people. The solid outcome of the 1970 elections for Awami League created an alternative power center for an already alienated people. The differences between the East and West Pakistani politicians snowballed into a major international crisis. On March 25, 1971 Pakistani army on President Yahya Khan's orders initiated a campaign of terror which was to last till its final surrender to the Indian army on December 17, 1971. This terror campaign by Pak army resulted in 10 million Bangla Deshi refugees crossing over to India (per Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (3)) and 3 million killed (4,5) based on reports from most relief agencies and official Bangla Desh government estimate. However the religious mix of both the refugees and the dead is nowhere emphasized anywhere. This significant information has particularly been absent in the reports from Indian News Media. This selective news dissemination has kept a more sinister truth of Hindu genocide in East Pakistan hidden from the world in general and Indians in particular.
HINDUS IN EAST PAKISTAN WERE SPECIAL TARGET OF PAK ARMY
In the summary of his report dated November 1, 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy writes (6):
'Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). HARDEST HIT HAVE BEEN MEMBERS OF THE HINDU COMMUNITY WHO HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED, AND IN SOME PLACES, PAINTED WITH YELLOW PATCHES MARKED "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..' (emphasis added by author of this article).
Sydney Schanberg, pulitzer prize winning journalist (of 'Killing Fields') was New York Times correspondent in Dhaka in 1971 at the time of army repression and during the 1971 Bangla Desh war. In his syndicated column 'The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored' Mr.Schanberg writes:
"I covered the war and witnessed first the population's joyous welcome of the Indian soldiers as liberators .. Later I toured the country by road to see the Pakistani legacy firsthand. In town after town there was an execution area where people had been killed by bayonet, bullet and bludgeon. In some towns, executions were held on a daily basis."
This was a month after the war's end (i.e. January 1972), ... human bones were still scattered along many roadsides. Blood stained clothing and tufts of human hair clung to the brush at these killing grounds. Children too young to understand were playing grotesque games with skulls. OTHER REMINDERS WERE THE YELLOW "H"s THE PAKISTANIS HAD PAINTED ON THE HOMES OF HINDUS, PARTICULAR TARGETS OF THE MUSLIM ARMY." (7) (emphasis added by the author of this article).
Thus two independent observations one dated prior to November 1, 1971 and other in January 1972 confirm that Hindu houses in East Pakistan were marked with yellow "H"s and that Hindus were particular targets of the Pakistani army. The situation thus bears an uncanny resemblance to the predicament of Jews targeted by Nazis from 1939 to 1944, with similar out come.
MOST OF THE REFUGEES FROM BANGLA DESH WERE HINDUS
Senator Edward Kennedy in his report gives following details about the the refugees from Bangla Desh in 1971. As of October 25, 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. The average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day (3). Hence the total refugee population at the start of Bangla Desh war on December 3, 1971 was about 10 million (5).
Sen. Kennedy further mentions that Government of India had set up separate refugee camps for Hindus and Muslims where possible, i.e. refugee camps of Hindus were located in Hindu majority areas and similarly Muslim camps were located in Muslim majority areas. THE COMMUNAL REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEES WAS 80 PERCENT HINDU, 15 PERCENT MUSLIM AND 5 PERCENT CHRISTIAN AND OTHER (8).
This means that 8 MILLION OF THE 10 MILLION REFUGEES WERE HINDUS (8). Other fact that corroborates this is that when Sen. Kennedy had asked several Chief Relief officers in charge of refugee camps what was needed most urgently, their reply was "crematoriums".
THE MISSING 2 .5 MILLION HINDUS
Several agencies indicate that the brutal Pakistani army repression killed 3 million Bengalis. This estimate is even given by the Government of Bangla Desh (5). However no religious mix of the dead is easily available.
Let us therefore look at the population demographics for Bangla Desh which is given in Table I.
TABLE I
Source : Based on Information from Bangladesh Ministry of planning, Bureau of Statistics (9)
YEAR Total Population in Millions Hindu Population as % of Total Hindu Population in Millions
1941 42.00 28.0 11.76
1961 50.84 18.5 9.41
1974 71.48 13.5* 9.655
1981 87.13 12.2 10.633
* Encyclopedia Britannica (10) gives 13.5% figure for 1974, where as Government of Bangla Desh gives 13.5% for 1971 and total population of 71.48 million for 1974 (9).
Since Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh have similar socio- economic and educational backgrounds, the birth and death rates for these two groups must be very similar. This means that the Hindu population must grow at the same pace as the total population growth rate. Hence any unusual drop must be accounted for by influx of Hindu refugees and mortality rate from non natural causes. The expected Hindu population, the emigration to India from E. Pakistan and actual populations are listed in Table II.
Table II
YEAR Hindu Population of East Pak/BD Actual (9)(millions) Expected Hindu Population in Absence of Strife(millions) Refugees from E. Pakistan to India(8)(millions) Hindus Missing(millions)
1941 11.766 - - -
1961 9.41 14.24 4.12(1947-58) 0.711
1974 9.65 13.23 1.11(1964-70) 2.477
Thus if 1947 partition had not resulted, the Hindu population of East Pakistan area should by 1961 have increased proportionally from 11.76 millions in 1941, to 14.24 millions (11.76 * 50.84 / 42 = 14.24). The official Indian Government records indicate that between 1947 and 1958, 4.12 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India from East Bengal(3). This means the Hindu population in East Pakistan in 1961 should have been 10.12 million (14.24 - 4.12) compared to the actual 9.41 million. The missing 0.7 million Hindu population can be accounted by several hundred thousands killed in the riots in 1947 on the Bengal border, plus the refugee influx from 1958 to 1961. 1961.
Let us now look at Hindu population in East pakistan from 1961 to 1974. With proportional increase the Hindu population of 9.41 million in 1961 should have increased to 13.23 million ( 9.41 * 71.48 / 50.84 = 13.23 ) by 1974. However the actual Hindu population as per Bangla Desh Census data for 1974 was 9.65 million. Of the 3.58 million shortfall only 1.11 million can be accounted for since Government of India's record indicate that 1.11 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India between 1964 and 1970 (3) i.e.PRIOR to the 1971 crisis.
THUS 2.47 MILLION (13.23 - 9.65 - 1.11 = 2.47) HINDUS FROM EAST PAKISTAN ARE UNACCOUNTED FOR FROM THE 1971 PAK ARMY REPRESSION.
OTHER PROOF FOR 2.4 MILLION HINDUS KILLED IN EAST PAKISTAN
Since the 80 percent of the refugees in 1971 were Hindus,a similar proportion of the dead are likely to be Hindus also. The official Bangla Desh government estimate puts the number of Bengalis killed at 3 million. 80 percent of 3 million put THE NUMBER OF HINDUS KILLED AT 2.4 MILLION which is close to the number of Hindus missing calculated comes above.
SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS
1. Independent accounts indicate that Hindus from East Pakistan were special target during the 1971 army repression. HINDU HOUSES WERE PAINTED WITH YELLOW "H"s, THEY WERE ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, AND THEY WERE SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED.
2. 80 percent of the refugees to India in 1971 were Hindus, THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM.
3. NEARLY 2.5 MILLION HINDUS WERE KILLED DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF PAKISTANI ARMY REPRESSION OF EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971. THUS IT WAS A HINDU SLAUGHTER IN 1971.
4. ALL THE ABOVE BEAR AN UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE TO THE PERSECUTION & HOLOCAUST OF JEWS BY THE NAZIS.
5. INDIAN GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED 'SECULAR' MEDIA DELIBERATELY HID THE SINISTER TRUTH OF HINDU GENOCIDE IN EAST PAKISTAN.
6. In any internal political problem of an Islamic country, Hindus (or minorities of other religions) become the scapegoats and will be liquidated at the first chance the Islamic Government gets.
7. WE HAVE LEARNT NOTHING FROM THE HISTORY AND WITH THE 'PSECULAR' MEDIA WE WILL LEARN NOTHING.
COMMENTS & FUTURE WORK
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangla Desh did not end in 1971. Since 1974 to 1981 the Hindu population as a percent of total Bangla Deshi population decreased from 13.5 % to 12.2 %. This slide has continued over the last decade. Same is true about Hindus in Pakistan and in Kashmir valley.
There is a genuine need for systematic record keeping and documentation of the history of Hindu genocides & Hindu ethnic cleansing, so that we don't repeat it again (and again and again..) There is also a need to build a memorial of this Hindu holocaust similar to the Jewish Holocaust memorial in Washington DC.
This topic is extensively dealt in a book 'Genocide in East Pakistan/ Bangla Desh' by S.K.Bhattacharya. However the present author has verified the findings of S.K. Bhattacharya based on completely independent sources. For detailed descriptions and news reports of 1971, reader should refer to the original book.
REFERENCES
1. Bangladesh: The Birth Of A Nation, A hand book of Background information and Documentary Sources Compiled by Univ. of Chicago Group of Scholars, by M.Nicholas, P.Oldensburg, Ed.W.Morehouse, M.Seshachalam & Co., India, 1972, p.7
2. Same as reference 1, p.73
3. Crisis in South Asia - A report by Senator Edward Kennedy to the Subcommittee investigating the Problem of Refugees and Their Settlement, Submitted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, November 1, 1971, U.S. Govt. Press, pp.6-7.
4. Newsweek, August 1, 1994, p.37
5. Same as reference 1, pp.44-45
6. Same as reference 3, p.66
7. The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored , Syndicated Column by Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 1994.
8. Same as reference 3, p. 19
9. Bangladesh A Country Study, Ed. J.Heitzman & R.L.Worden, 2nd Ed, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Publisher U.S. Army, 1989, pp.250,255
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Micropedia, Vol.1, p.789 Desh.
Back To Islamic Ages
Back To Modern Hindu History
Back To Library Of Hindu History
1972: A Historical Atlas of South Asia is produced by Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Siva G. Bajpai, Raj B. Mathur, et al.
1972: Muslim dictator Idi Amin expels Indians from Uganda.
1973: Neem Karoli Baba, Hindu mystic and siddha, dies.
1974: India detonates a "nuclear device."
1974: Watergate scandal. US President Nixon resigns.
1975: Netherlands gives independence to Dutch Guyana, which becomes Suriname; one third of Hindus (descendants of Indian plantation workers) emigrate to Netherlands for better social and economic conditions.
1977: One hundred thousand Tamil Hindu tea-pickers expatriated from Sri Lanka are shipped to Madras, South India.
1979: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Hinduism Today international newspaper to promote Hindu solidarity.
1980: Grand South Indian counterpart to Kumbha Mela of Prayag, the Mahamagham festival, held every 12 years in Kumbhakonam, on the river Kaveri, two million attend.
1981: India has one-half world's cattle: 8 cows for every 10 Indians.
1981: Deadly AIDS disease is conclusively identified.
1981: First bharata natyam dance in a temple since 1947 Christian-British ban on Devadasis is arranged by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami at Chidambaram; 100,000 attend.
1983: Violence between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Singhalese in Sri Lanka marks beginning of Tamil rebellion by Tiger freedom fighters demanding an independent nation called Eelam. Prolonged civil war results.
1984: Balasarasvati, eminent classical Karnatic singer and bharata natyam dancer of worldwide acclaim, dies.
1984: Since 1980, Asians have made up 48% of immigrants to the US, with the European portion shrinking to 12%.
1984: Indian soldiers under orders from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi storm Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to crush rebellion. She is assassinated this year by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation. Her son Rajiv takes office.
1986: Swami Satchidananda dedicates Light of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) at Yogaville in Virginia, USA.
1986: Jiddha Krishnamurti, anti-guru guru, semi-existentialist philosophical Indian lecturer and author, dies.
1986: World Religious Parliament in New Delhi bestows the title Jagadacharya, "world teacher," on five spiritual leaders outside India: Swami Chinmayananda of Chinmaya Mission (Bombay, India); Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami of Saiva Siddhanta Church and Himalayan Academy (Hawaii-California, USA); Yogiraj Amrit Desai of Kripalu Yoga Center (New York, USA); Pandit Tej Ramji Sharma of Nepali Baba (Kathmandu, Nepal); Swami Jagpurnadas Maharaj (Port Louis, Mauritius).
1987: Colonel S. Rabuka, a Methodist, leads coup deposing Fiji's Indian-dominated government and instituting military rule. July, 1990, constitution guarantees political majority to ethnic (mostly Christian) Fijians.
1988: General Ershad declares Islam state religion of Bangladesh, outraging 12-million (11%) Hindu population.
1988: US allows annual influx of 270,000 Asian immigrants.
1988: First Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival is held at Oxford University, England. Hindus discuss international cooperation with 100 religious leaders and 100 parliamentarians.
1989: Christian missionaries are spending US%165 million per year to convert Hindus.
Reference: http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/robertsn.html
Pat Robertson Opposes Religious Freedom, Denounces Hinduism
Using TV, Christian Pat Robertson Denounces Hinduism as "Demonic" -- Evangelist Opposes Freedom of Religion, Says It's Time To Convert India and Wants to Keep Hinduism Out of US
By Valli J. Rajan, Pennsylvania, USA
HINDUISM TODAY
July 1995 Copyright (C) Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reserved.
This is an authorized reproduction.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
Posted by the authority of the Himalayan Academy
Article from HINDUISM TODAY, July 1995
Copyright (C) 1995 Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reseved
The Hinduism Today Web site is located at:
http://www.HinduismToday.kauai.hi.us/ashram/welcome.html
Reference: http://www.vedanet.com/boutios.htm
THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
The Papal Excuses viewed by a Druid
by Ariaxs Druuis Boutios
In Antiquity, the Vedic Dharmas were professed from Mahàbhàrata and the Tocharian kingdoms in the East, all the way to Ireland via Scythia, Greece and Gaul in the West. Then came Avidya which we call Anuidiia in Celtica, the Sanskrit of the Druids. In those times after the taking of Gaul and Britain by the Roman forces, many great Druid teachers were forced into exile to Ireland and other far away places in the North Sea and to the East.
Under the Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantinius (306-337 CE), temples of Uidiia (Vidya) were destroyed to make way for the Christian faith. In 355, it was decreed that those participating in ‘pagan’ rituals be put to death. The Roman and Greek officials in the Celtic kingdoms devised to promote their new faith by the conversion of the Celtic aristocracy. The Roman officer Martinus of Pannonia lead a holy war against the Druids of Gaul who had found refuge in the countryside. Temples and idols were destroyed, temple offerings were confiscated, and priests put to the sword. Bishops, recruited in the Roman Patrician families, spread their terror to all the countries of Gaul and Britain. Few areas were spared but the resistance was great. Nevertheless, the many interdictions to practice posted by the conquering Roman Church failed to discourage regional devotion. In the country of Gaul, proselytising Christians were beaten and chased away.
How Patricius (Saint-Patrick) tricked the Irish into becoming Christians
Contrary to the legend, the youth was never taken as a hostage by pirates and sold as a slave to an Irish Druid. Druids, like their Brahman counterparts, took pupils, not slaves. Menial chores were of course asked in reparation for food and lodging. In fact, Patricius spent the early part of his life in Ireland where his parents had sent him to seek training under an eminent Druid. But when he returned to Britain from this training, he was swayed from Druidic practice and converted to Christianism.
So when the Romano-British Patricius returned to Ireland a second time, he returned there as bishop of the new Roman faith. Patricius had been in Gaul studying Christian theology and politics at Auxerre, a high place of learning. Then he met the followers of Martinus (Saint Martin) at de Marmoutier Abby where he learned proselytising techniques. And then, travelled to southern Gaul to the island monastery of Lerins, and in Italy where he was ordained by the Pope Caelestinus before he embarked for the North of Ireland in the year 432.
On an island off the Leinster coast now called Inis Padraig, he was greeted by others who were sent there to assist him in his mission. The mission was perilous, but Patricius who was expert in the arts of dissimulation, organised his monasteries as Druidic schools. For he had come to Ireland to seek out the Druids, banish the old gods out of Ireland and convert the Scots to Christianity. In hope of greater education promised by the Roman conversion centres, the Scots of aristocracy sent their children there for superior training. This is how he tricked king Coroticus and many other chieftains into accepting Christianism. For the saint acted more as a Druid than a Christian convert. Hence as Patricius boasted:
‘The sons of the Scots and the daughters of the chiefs have become monks and virgins of Christ in such great numbers that I would not know how to count them.’
And in his confessions Patricius shows only contempt for the Dharma of the Druids calling it impure and idol worshipping:
‘Hence, how did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?’
So when Patricius and his band came to coast, they were challenged by a formidable chieftain called Dichu who set his hounds on them. But when the dogs were to come on them, Patricius pronounced a spell. The master and his dogs paralysed with fear. But Patricius took pity and removed the spell. Dichu was so grateful for this that he became one of Patrisius’s followers. Dichu’s barn, was made into a place of worship called Stabulum Patricii, the stable of Patricius.
It came to pass that Patricius and his band of monks made way for the town of Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, where Laoghaire, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages now reigned. So when he arrived in Leinster it was the eve of Beltaine, May Day, but also of Easter. In honour of Lord Belios, all the fires were extinguished on the eve of the Giamonios Moon and it was decreed that no fire be lit until the Chief Druid, had lit the first fire of Tara. So that when the flames of the Knoll of Tara rose at dawn, fire after fire would be kindled on hilltop after hilltop until all the hills of Leinster were lit.
On the very morning of the Giamonios Moon, the High King and his following were assembled on the Hill of Tara. As the first rays of the glorious Sun slanted over the horizon, the Royal Druid moved forward to light the flower-strewn pyre. But before he set it alight, the watchers on the hill were astonished to see flames rising further to the East on the hill of Slane, the hill of well-being.
High King Laoghaire stared in dismay as the blaze on the neighbouring hill grew stronger and stronger.
‘Who dared light this fire’ He asked.
‘Much as we see the fire’, the Druids answered, ‘and though we ignore who lit it, we know that less it be extinguished at this moment, it will never be put out. For it will put out our own sacred fires and the manwho lit it will have power over us all, and over the High King himself.’
‘Put out the fire and take me to the man who lit it here to Tara,’ the king commanded. On hearing this, he and his messengers hurried to the hill of Slane. Hence the Druids’ warning to the king and his following: King , thou shalt not go to this place where the fire is, lest that thou fearest not worship he who has lit it, but better remain to the side at its exterior. He will be brought before thee so he may pay homage to thee, and thou will be master. We will speak, he and we, back and forth, in your presence, and thou will challenge thus’... And so they arrived at the given place. Once they descended from their chariots and horses, they penetrated not in the circle of the fire, but sat to the side. Patricius was then called before the king outside of the ring of fire. When Patricius came before the High King and when he saw the strange tonsures, the cowled robes, and curved crosier, he was struck with fear.
Laoghaire, remembered that his Druids had forewarned him of their coming years before:
‘Adze-heads will come across a furious headed sea hole-headed their cloak crook-headed their staff. They will sing maledictions their judgement-giving alters in the back (western) corner of the house, all the people answering ²amhàin, amhàin² Only one, only one (Punning with Amen)’.
By this time the sun was well over the horizon and the Beltaine were still not lit. The assembly became much worried at this but stood there speechless.
With his Druids and noblemen around him, Laoghaire, furious, pronounced a death sentence on Patricius which he could not, since a king never speaks before his Druid.
Seeing all rendered speechless, Patricius acting as High Priest, reproached the king:
‘The God I worship makes the sun rise each day for our benefit. But the sun above us will never reign over us nor will its splendour last for ever. Christ whom I worship, the true sun and he will never die and he will give eternal life to those who do his will. For this sun which we see rises daily for us because He commands so, but it will never reign, nor will its splendour last; what is more, those wretches who adore it will be miserably punished. Not so we, who believe in, and worship, the true sun, Christ, who will never perish, nor will he who doeth His will; but he will abide for ever as Christ abideth for ever, who reigns with God the Father Almighty and the Holy Spirit before time, and now, and in all eternity. Amen.’ (Ref. 1)
Many in the assembly understood what Patricius meant since knowing about the Spiritual Sun but Laoghaire was not converted and was forced to revoke the sentence.
But the True Sun and worldly Sun are both one and the same. All that is good is Light! One does not curse the Light of the World without consequence.
Thus Patricius’ confession: ²That same night, when I was asleep, Satan (this is how Patrick refers to Helios, the Sun God called Sauelios in Celtic) assailed me violently, a thing I shall remember as long as I shall be in this body. And he fell upon me like a huge rock, and I could not stir a limb. But whence came it into my mind, ignorant as I am, to call upon Helias? And meanwhile I saw the sun rise in the sky, and while I was shouting `Helias! Helias' with all my might, suddenly the splendour of that sun fell on me and immediately freed me of all misery. And I believe that I was sustained by Christ my Lord, and that His Spirit was even then crying out in my behalf, and I hope it will be so on the day of my tribulation, as is written in the Gospel: On that day, the Lord declares, it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.² (ref. 2)
The sun had dimmed, the Druids had lost the sacred fires, the right of pre-eminence, and were therefore forced into retirement. Following these events much happened to those professing Uidiia. Patricius himself destroyed one hundred and eighty holly records.
The Wise Ones debated much, but how could Uidiia remain in a world where fools are said wise, where children teach elders and elders fall into senility?
It was hence prophesied that wealth and prosperity would decrease until the world would be wholly depraved. For what is gained through connivery and treachery will be lost in shame and dishonour.
Thus the Gaulish pagan of Noyon declared these words to the proselytiser Saint Eloi (588-659 ce):
‘Roman that you are! - At us ,how much you utter the same words, never will you abolish our customs.We celebrate our ceremonies, as we have always done until now and there is no one in this world who can forbid our antique maintenances that are so dear to us.’ (ref. 3)
THE WOLF IN THE SHEEPFOLD
(A brief calendar of the Roman Christian repression of Druidism)
200: Beginning of the Christianisation of Britain.
250: Around 250 CE, begins the christianisation effort of Gaul. The church is organised around the city of Lyon used at a mission base. St. Ciprian sends missionaries from Africa: Paul to Narbonne, Trophime to Arles, Saturnine to Toulouse, Martial to Limoges, Denis to Lutèce (Paris), Austremoine to Clermont, and Gratian to Tours.
260: Christianisation of Britain.
324: Just before 324 CE, ban on domestic sacrifices. After 330, restriction of public devotion for the non-Christian state servants.
355: An imperial decree by Constantine orders the closure of all pagan temples, issuing a death sentence to all those caught practising a pagan cult.
355: Saint Martin creates a volunteer militia to enforce the Imperial decree.
380: Theodosius I (379-395) renews the interdiction. Gratian (367-383) confiscates the revenues of pagan temples and pagan priests. In 392, pagan devotion in any form is strictly forbidden.
410: Foundation of a Christian learning centre on the islands of Lérins of the coast of Cannes by St. Honoratus for the conversion of Celts. Pagan aristocracy mints coins representing pagan Emperors on New Year’sday as a sign of resistance and derision of the decadent Christian Emperor. Nevertheless, by the IVth century, the city populations of the Empire are of Christian majority, whence the pejorative term pagan for the country folk.
418: Honorius (395-423), with the approval of the Gallo-Roman bishops of Rennes and Nantes orders the destruction of all pagan sites and emblems. Valentinian reiterates the decree of the destruction of all pagan temples.
432: Christianisation of Northern Ireland by St Patrick. Creation of conversion centres in all parts of Ireland.
452: The Council of Arles (canon 23) declares guilty of sacrilege bishops tolerating in their diocese sacrificial fires and the devotion of nature deities.
461: Death of St Patrick and conversion of Ireland.
506: The Councils of Agde and Orléans criminalise the practice of pythoness. These are the first ‘witch hunts’.
515: By 515-520, Saint Césaire (470-543), the bishop of Arles in sermon # 129 fulminates against the cult of ancestors and other popular New Year’s practices.
516: Between 516 and 537, St Vigor, bishop of Bayeux, requests the service of the military to enforce the ban on druidic practices still celebrated on Mount Phaunus. The idols are destroyed and the shrine is confiscated by the Church.
520: Around 520-525, in the vicinities of Cologne, the Irish monk St. Gall sets fire to the temple and its statues where libations and offerings were still given.
524: At the council of Arles, rites observed during lunar eclipses on the feasts of Jupiter (Toutatis) and New Year’s day are condemned.
533: At the second council of Orléans, those returning to pagan practice are stigmatised.
541: At the fourth council of Orléans is reiterated the interdiction to practice a pagan cult as well as taking oaths to gods. Saint Paterne (dead in 560) is said to have stopped a pagan ceremony at Chaussey where he spilled over the contents of sacred cauldrons.
543: Condemnation of the pre-existence of the soul prior birth at the synod of Constantinople under pope Vigil. For the Catholic Church, a new soul comes with the new-born.
554: In 554, King Childebert I (511-558) of the Frankish occupation of Gaul, renews the order to destroy all pagan idols and megaliths (standing stones).
567: At the second council of Tours, all those caught in the forest and other wild places honouring pagan sites, stones, trees, and fountains are ordered to be chased out of church. Priests are encouraged to excommunicated all those suspected of giving themselves to pagan rites, that is, unknown ceremonies to the church at pagan sites.
573: Overwhelmed by the continuous resistance of Antique cults, Gregory the Great, Pope and prefect of Rome, suggests to the clergy that to: ‘Remove everything from these uneducated minds is an impossible task. Refrain from destroying their temples; destroy only the idols, and have them replaced by replicas.’
578: At the council of Auxerre is reiterated the interdiction to disguise oneself in cow and deer skins on the occasion of the New Year’s celebrations. Also forbidden are lustration rites, lighting candles before holy wells, trees, and stones; and bread divining and the consultation of seers or consultation of oracle sticks.
580: Around 575-580, in the Pagus Gabalitanus (actual Gévaudan, between Margeride and Aubrac France) there was a traditional lakeside gathering of peasants that lasted for three days. During the festival, libations and offerings of fleeces, cloths, cheese, wax cakes and bread were given to the lake’s titulary divinity. Feasting and fertility rites lasted all during the day, only to be interrupted by foul weather. Gregory of Tours reports that the\ superstition was only stopped after a ‘holy father’ put an end to it.
Strangely enough, the same rites were still reported in 1872 on the side of Lac de Saint Andéal but with the only difference that coins were used as offerings.
581: The synod of Auxerre forbids the laity to dance in churches, have girls sing, and hold feasts.
585: The council of Mâcon condemns those who do not work on Thurdays (in honour of the pagan God Jupiter/Thor) to be beaten with a rod.
590: St Walfroid has the colossal statue of the goddess Arduinna (Diana) of Yvois (Carigan, Meuse) destroyed.
597: Pope Gregory the Great’s (590-604) prescriptions to Queen Brunehaut on the interdiction of pagan rites (tree worship etc.).
600: The Bishop of Tour is shocked to find that on the 7th of July 600, ‘that there are still in the diocese and neighbouring dioceses a great number of pagans still attached to the heathen cult and its false divinities, mainly in the land south of the Loire’... and that he found it difficult to have the 22nd canon observed, mostly in those villages where the pagans had embraced christianism, thus making it very difficult to have the many pagan superstitions eradicated.
611: St Valery (562-622), bishop of Rouen, has an enormous tree worshipped by the peasants of the Bresle valley cut down.
626: Renewal of the interdictions of the second council of Orléans at the council of Clichy, in 626.
639: St Amand (584-679), bishop of Worms in 626, realises that pagan temples are still used in his diocese. He has king Dagobert I (626-639) deliver him an ordinance to have all children baptised.
640: St Omer, bishop of Thérouane, finds pagan temples intact upon his arrival in the diocese.
641: Famous sermon pronounced by St Eloi in 641 denouncing pagan practices.
658: At the second council of Nantes is ordered the destruction and burial of pagan stones so that its adorators may not find them.
698: At the council of Rouen in 698 are denounced those who make lustrations, vows and offerings before stones. Experts generally agree that by the end of the VIIth century, no more organised pagan cult remained in Gaul.
742: Nevertheless, a capitulary of Corloman in 742, renews the interdiction of pagan practice, and Charlemagne in turn in a capitulary pronounced on the 23rd of March 789, is very hard on the ‘fools’ who light torches and perform all sorts of superstitions by trees and wells.
769: Another capitulary dated from Aix-la-Chapelle, orders: ‘That he who is sufficiently informed, and who does not remove from his fields the stone mockeries standing there, will be treated as sacrilegious and declared anathema.
792 and after: Nevertheless, megaliths still continued to be re-erected when re-discovered by the peasants, votive offerings were still being made at wells, at the foot of trees and standing stones. And this despite the continuous harassment of the Church through the centuries.(ref. 3)
One would expect that after having destroyed the Dharmas of Europe, that the Church of Christ would show remorse for what it did. Much to the contrary, it continued relentlessly as it continues to this day in this denial.
Pope John Paul II, Synod of the Bishops of Europe, October 1999
When John Paul II opened the synod of the bishops of Europe in October 1999 in Rome, the main themes for the three following weeks were: ‘Neopaganism’, ‘Radical de-Christianisation’ and ‘Disintegration of the Conscience of Europe’.
Hipolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand and author of ‘Vers une France païenne’ (Towards a Pagan France) seized the opportunity to throw a violent attack against Druidism and the other old Dharmas of Europe. This attack Druidism was often equated with New Age, itself equated with laity and nihilistic consumerism. Bishop Simon, as do many other eminent Christian thinkers, wilfully confuses the resurgent lineages of Antique spirituality with the many modern spiritual and philosophical trends of the West such as the Neopagan and New Age movements. This is wrong because it perpetuates a false picture of Druidism. The Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel (World-wide Celtic Creed), deeply regrets that the Church continues in its libellous attitude against Europe’s native religions. What is even more disturbing is that the three Abrahamic religions, the three monotheisms, all agree that ‘Neopaganism’ as a whole (read Laity, New Age, the European Dharmas and Western Hinduism and Buddhism) is the major threat that organised Religion faces today.
The fact of the matter is that the Monotheist Faiths are exclusive and non-inclusive. The Roman Church has never allowed other faiths to coexist along its side. It has ruthlessly destroyed everything Europe had as Antique institutions. This is what was called as the ‘Dark Ages’. The Roman Church created a spiritual desert around it, and when the veil of Maya was lifted, the Church itself was deserted. The Church is well aware of this, and this is why it needs so badly to make amends. The only problem is that it is not making amends to those it continues to attack. Saint Thomas in his Treaty on theological problems, article 5, question 10, names three concrete modalities in the classification of infidelity:
1) refusal of Christian Faith that was never accepted: Paganism;
2) refusal of Christian Faith that was professed in figure: Judaism;
3) refusal of the Revelation that was accepted: Heresy.
The loss of faith by heresy is considered a worst heresy and injure to God than that committed by pagans. But from the material platform, paganism is considered worst than heresy because it is at a greater distance from the positions of the Church. In the eyes of the Church, of course, Druidism, like Hinduism, is paganism. (ref. 4)
THE WOLF IN GRANDMOTHER’S BED
Now that we have heard the papal excuses for the 2000 Jubilee, we can only be sure of just one thing, the Church has now launched its new evangelical mission. One thing sure, as usual, the Roman Church was very discrete and parsimonious on whatever it wanted to leek out. In fact, the bone of the mater is that the Church keeps many hidden agendas.
First and foremost is its interfaith dialogue. The main question in this case is, to what faiths was the pardon addressed. Certainly not to the New Age community. Even though the Church sees the New Age movement as its greatest opponent, it doesn’t even recognise the validity of such a faith. Druidry?, there are no more bones left in this closet, just dust. To Hinduism? no, India is the main target of its next great mission effort. In fact, the main reason to hold such a pardon came from the growing embarrassment the Church endures with the Jewish communities.
Some time ago, French prelates made public excuses to its Jewish compatriots for the horrors suffered under the Vichy regime. Then there was the difficult dialogue with the Moslems, not to mention the other Christians termed prosaically ‘the Division of Christians’. All this is very fine, but the nerve of it all is that the Catholic Church, not unlike the major multinational companies, is looking for a merger take over and non-encroachment agreement. First and foremost in this new deal is its effort to bring the Roman and Orthodox churches back together if not the Anglican Church. This is something we should be very worried about. Certainly the Pope did fly away to the Holy Land to make repairs with its ‘Older Brother of the Faith’, then try patching things with Little Brother. Imagine this, the Abrahamic faiths strike a non encroachment alliance in which each is the keeper of its brother! Who is targeted next? You guessed! This is why it is so important for us to maintain our own interfaith forum.
This forum of Pan-Vedic Dharmas could comprise of the Hinduist Vainavists, Shaivists, Shaktis, and reformed faiths such as Jains, Buddhists etc., with the European Dharmas, that are, the Celtic Druids, The Germanic Odinists, the Greek Hierophants, etc. From the sixties, Druid orders of Europe were engaged in inter-faith dialogue with Buddhists and Brahmans, but back then, they had very little reciprocal understanding. It is now accepted in a growing circle of Vedic scholars that Druidism was the Western form of Vedism. In order to harmonise our relations, much had, and still needs, to be discussed concerning standards of practice. This being, what makes a devotee of Vedic and Dru Vidic Dharmas? There is still much confusion due to divergent schools of thought and trends within Druidry and on issues of devotion, worship, diet and liturgy, let alone ritual purity.
Recently, we have been successful in establishing contact, trust, and strong friendship with Vaishnavas and Shaivites in the West. Special to us, is our hope to hold as a united front in areas of common interest. The Catholic Church has documentation centres informing the general public on new religions and sects, and this includes Druid orders as well as respectable institutions such as Iskon. While visiting one of these very well documented centres I was made aware of the ‘dangers of sectarianism’. I was told that Druidism was a fake religion invented by nostalgic Freemasons and that Christianity was plagued by an ever increasing number of Oriental sects. Nothing nice to say about gurus, a very pejorative name, and even less to say about the many pundits directing yoga and meditation centres.
The only nice thing I heard was that Zoroastrianism (an I.E. Dharma) was one of the inspirational sources of Christianism along with Judaism. This probably explains why our queries to the Zoroastrian community were never answered. Who would want to engage a discussion with a nostalgic mason? Its a pity because Druidism has more to share with the Farsis than Christians will ever want to admit. So no, the Pope will never admit to the persecution and destruction of the European Dharmas. India is high up on the agenda and it will look very embarrassing to admit that it partook in the destruction of its sister faiths in Europe.
What the bishops of India plan for India
«Pope John Paul II invites the entire Church to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit for a renewal of Christian life and mission in the world.»
Read between lines: 1- renewal of Christian life = Christians must be more assertive, solidarity of all Christian Churches; 2- renewal of mission = a new evangelical zeal inviting Christians to spread the good word, make more converts;
«We too, the Christian community in India, are challenged to give our specific response to the Spirit of Jesus during this period, so crucial to the nation and the Church in this country.»
Why is the Christian community so crucial to the Indian nation?
1- India is the last stronghold of ‘heathenism’.
2- the Caste system is judged offensive by Christian standards.
3- Hinduism is a growing menace to the Monotheistic bloc. Gurus are exporting their teachings all over the world.
4- New Age, also called neopaganism resulting from the teaching of gurus in the West, is the major threat of the Abrahamic monotheist religions.
In fact, India is religious and spiritual with or without Christianism!
«As the Third Millennium dawns on our country, where Christianity has been in existence practically from its very inception, we want to project a renewed face of the Church which will radiate Christ so that our brothers and sisters of India will be able to experience the loving kindness of the Saviour.»
If the Pope is calling for a reconciliation of the Churches and asking forgiveness for the faults of the past, why is he calling for a conversion of India?
It is easier to ask forgiveness for the destruction of Native American cultures when these have been massively Christianised. It is contradictory to ask pardon for faults of the past when destruction of native cultures is still called for.
«It is our goal to build up in our country a Catholic community that is intent on becoming a fully reconciled community, free from all discrimination, a Christian community that is healed of all its divisions, a religious community that lives in harmony and a human community that has discovered its true source of life in love and sharing.»
The goal is to establish a strong Christian community that will make more converts.
«If this is to be realised, we need to undergo a thorough conversion, for it is only through the body of the transformed Christian community, that Christ can shine in His radiance to the world around us. We shall then communicate the joy of the redeemed to all our brothers and sisters: the Good News of Jesus for the emerging India of 2000.» (ref.5)
Who is it that needs to undergo a thorough conversion, Christians or Hindus?
The Church is the body of Christ! This implies that the Church is to radiate from outside of its body into the local non-Christian communities. A call for the emergence of Christian India for the coming millennium.
TABLE OF COMPARED FAITHS
THE VEDIC AND DRU-VIDIC DHARMAS CHRISTIANISM:
Monist and Relativistic dualism,Polytheistic Monotheist and Dualistic (Good/Evil)
Cosmic Historical
Non-dogmatic Dogmatic
Tolerant Intolerant
Open tradition, oral and textual Revelation, closed Book
Many options Centralist
Non-proselytist Proselytist
Hedonist and Aesthetic Rejection of Pleasure and Beauty
Pre-existence of the soul New soul at birth
De-centralised Centralised
Knowledge and Understanding Blind Faith
Accent on human experience Accent on the after-life
Respect of Nature Exploitation of Nature
Sources:
1. Mac Neill,Eoin. Life of Saint Patrick.
2. The Confession of St. Patrick, translated from Latin by Ludwig Bieler, document from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, May 27, 1999.
3. Druid Catarnos, La résistence du paganisme en Gaule, in Ialon, clairière, revue d’étude druidique, no. 2.
4. From a Press Release of the Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel dated 1999.
5. Adressed by the Indian bishops for Jubilee 2000.
Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/1/#gen447
Ram Swarup's writings
By Tara Katir, Hawaii
It's the trend these days for ancient traditions to speak out against missionary aggression. It is into this emerging courageousness that the work of Ram Swarup (1920-1998) takes on singular significance, as he asserts the value of the Sanatana Dharma for mankind's future in two volumes of elegantly articulated essays, On Hinduism, Reviews and Reflections and Meditations, Yogas, Gods, Religions (Voice of India, 232 pages, Rs. 250, and 278 pages, Rs. 300 respectively). Published posthumously, these books contain material never before released. Some of the essays included are, "Cultural Self-Alienation Among the Hindus," "The Hindu View of Education," "India and Greece," "Patanjali Yoga," "Bhakti-Yoga," "Buddhist Yoga," "Love--Human and Divine" and "Semitic Religions Versus Hindu Dharma." These are but a few of Swarup's eloquent and forthright essays. In "One God of Theology," Swarup talks about this shifting trend: "The recognition and respect for Eastern wisdom and religions came from nominal Christians, from great humanists and universalists like Voltaire and from men of reason and science who form quite an influential section of the Western society today. An average, simple Westerner is also more open to the appeal of thoughts from different countries. There is even a wind of change amongst deeply religious Christians, particularly those who are not connected with the missionary activities. All this is a welcome development, and it is in keeping with the spirit of the age which demands universality and breaking down of the barriers of prejudice and insularity."
Meditations by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road,
New Delhi 110 002
On Hinduism by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India
Christian Conversion
Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, in his new book Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India (154 pages, First Public Protection Trust, Rs. 35, us$10) details accounts of Christian conversion tactics and practices against Hindus from the earliest Portuguese contact until today. Srinivasan explains that during the colonial period Christian scholars studied Hinduism, intending to use knowledge of its beliefs and practices for their own conversion procedures. In addition, by "creating a racial theory of Aryan migration into India, the Indologists also came up with a pseudo-history for use in the service of religion and politics." Simultaneously at Oxford University, the Boden Professorship was created with the objective "to promote Sanskrit learning among the English, ...to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion." Additionally, monetary prizes were awarded for literary works that undermined Indian tradition. "By these means, they financed and institutionalized hatred..." writes Srinivasan. Present-day missionaries, Srinivasan asserts, have created a cultural hybrid of Hindu and Christian symbols and practices, deliberately fostering confusion as to their true intentions. Places like Father Bede Griffith's ashram in Kerala, and Satchidananda Ashram in Kulithalai, Tamil Nadu, were founded by Christian priests. Inside the "missionaries adorn [sic] the Hindu garb, while the heart beneath was beating for Christianity, and fostered antagonism to Hinduism."
Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India by Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, First Public Protection Trust, PO. Box 5094, Chennai 600028 India
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1990: The Berlin Wall is taken down February 12. Germany is reunited over the next year. Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
1990: Under its new democratic constitution, Nepal remains the world's only Hindu country.
1990: Hindus flee Muslim persecution in Kashmir Valley.
1990: Foundation stones are laid in Ayodhya for new temple at the birthplace of Lord Rama, as Hindu nationalism rises.
1990: Vatican condemns Eastern mysticism as false doctrine in letter by Cardinal Ratzinger approved by Pope Paul II, to purge Catholic monasteries, convents and clergy of involvement in Eastern meditation, yoga and Zen.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11879&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The following article recently appeared in the European Business Review/New European, Volume 13, No. 6, 2001, along with an excellent Editorial introducing it (by Aidan Rankin, who recently wrote the forward to the book Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, by David Frawley, Voice of India 2001, from which this article is drawn).
The European Business Review is one of the most prestigious journals of its type, connected to important business and academic leaders throughout the world. It contains the New European which constitutes its central portion and offers new insights on global problems. It can be accessed on-line only by subscribers through www.emerald-library.com
For such an article to appear in this important publication indicates new inroads for Hindu thought into the western world and its intellectual elite.
The article is also on our web site at www.vedanet.com at www.vedanet.com/indic.htm and in the Naimisha Journal.
The need for a new Indic school of thought
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)
Keywords: India, Culture, History
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is a scholar and teacher of Vedic Science, Yoga and Vedantic philosophy in the USA, where he directs the Vedic Institute. In India, he is recognised as an authority on Hindu cultural issues. Dr Frawley is the author of more than 20 books and his Web site is www.vedanet.com
During the Eurocolonial period, Indian history and civilization were distorted to fit European perceptions. A new school of thought is needed that will see Asian history and tradition with Asian eyes and thought, beginning with India.
The "clash of civilizations"
A clash of civilizations is occurring throughout in the world today, a war of cultures at various levels in both our personal and public lives. This clash is partly because of rising historical and cultural awareness on the part of newly-independent countries, beginning with India. The Western-European/North American culture is currently predominant and is strongly, if not rudely, trying to eliminate or subordinate the rest. Yet Western civilization is spreading itself not so much by force, as in the colonial era, but by subtle new forms of social manipulation. These include control of the media and news information networks, control of the entertainment industry, domination of commercial markets, continued missionary aggressiveness by Western religions, and - as important but sometimes overlooked - control of educational institutions and curricula worldwide.
This control of education has resulted in a Western-European/North-American view of history and culture in textbooks and information sources in most countries, including India. Naturally, people educated according to Western values will function as part of Western culture, whatever may be the actual country of their birth. They will experience an alienation from their native culture in which they have not really been raised. They easily become a fifth column for the Westernisation of their culture, which also means its denigration or, at best, its commercialisation. An authentic Indian or Indic perspective, a worldview coming out of the culture of India and its particular values and perceptions, is hardly to be found, even in India. The Western school of thought is taught in India, not any Indic or Indian school of thought.
The Indic school of thought
What is the Indic school of thought, one might ask? It is not at all something new or unknown. It is the great spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural traditions of the subcontinent that are among the largest and oldest in the world. It is the emphasis on dharma, on karma, on pluralism and synthesis, on yoga sadhana and moksha. It is not only the tradition of ancient sages from the Vedas and Upanishads to Buddhist and Yoga traditions but also modern teachers like Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. It is not only the vast literature of Sanskrit but also that of the regional languages and dialects of the subcontinent, most of which have older literary traditions than the languages of Europe such as English.
All major cultural debates are now framed according to Western values and perceptions, and so they will naturally serve to uphold them. The important issues of Indic civilization today are framed according to the principles or biases of the Western school of thought. These include what Indian civilization is, when India as a nation first arose, what the real history of India is, how to reform Indian society, and how India should develop in order to have its rightful place in the future world. As the debate is defined according to the approach and values of Western civilization, India does not always fare well, and India as its own independent source of civilization is seldom acknowledged. India is judged as if it should be like another USA, UK or Germany, which it can never be, nor should be. This only makes Indians feel inferior or wrong.
The Western school of thought has denigrated or overlooked the Indic school, particularly in the Indian context. For example, the Indic school has its own history sources through the Vedas, Puranas and various historical texts (Itihasas) that are quite massive and detailed and have much internal consistency. However, in writing the history of India, the Western school does not give these any place. They are dismissed as, at best, mythology and, at worst, fraud. Instead, it defines the history of India according to outside influences, as a series of invasions and borrowings mainly from the west, from cultures the West knows better and has more affinity with, which makes India seem dependent upon the West in order to advance its civilization again today.
The Western school of thought negates the relevance of the traditions of India. This is not simply because the Indic tradition is wrong, unsophisticated or irrelevant. It is because Western civilization is hegemonic, if not predatory in nature, and such ideas help promote its spread. Its information about India contains a built-in poison. It is meant to undermine the culture of the region and subordinate it to the West, however objective, scientific or modern its approach may appear to be.
When India as a nation arose is defined by the Western school as 1947, the year of independence. It founders were Nehru and Gandhi, who inherited a united region from the British, before which India was just a confused mass of local kingdoms with no national consistency. On the other hand, according to the Indic school, India or Bharat as a country arose in the Vedic era as the type of dharmic/yogic culture that has been the main characteristic of Indian civilization through history. This spiritual or yogic orientation can be found in the cultures of all the regions of India from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas, pervading even in the folk art and folk songs of all regions, as well as "high" culture.
Western distortions and the Indian response
In the Western school of thought, an Aryan invasion or migration is used to describe the way in which ancient Vedic civilization took root in India, as if it were an alien force of intruding barbarians. In the Indic school of thought, the whole idea of an Aryan invasion/migration is a sign of ignorance. The Indic tradition arose from the rishi tradition of spiritual endeavour, characteristic of the Vedic-Sarasvati culture and related cultures, reflected in the continuity of Vedic literature from the Vedas to the Mahabharata, Buddhist and Jain literature and the Puranas, which all reflect the same principles, peoples and dynasties of kings.
In these current cultural debates, therefore, an overriding greater debate is ignored - that which takes place between the Western and the Indic schools of thought. The Western-style media and academia tries to see what is authentic in Indian civilization and finds it to be wanting, reducing it to little more than caste or superstition. This is not surprising as the Indic tradition has a different focus and values than does the Western tradition. Similarly, from the standpoint of the Indic tradition, we must question Western civilization itself. Is the Western school of thought enlightened? Is it appropriate for India? Can it understand the unique civilization of the subcontinent?
The Indic school itself is often highly critical of the Western school. For example, when asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied: "It would be a good idea." What he meant was that, from the standpoint of the spiritual traditions of India, Western civilization with its materialism, aggression and dogmatism was not highly evolved. Sri Aurobindo wrote on the limitations of Western civilization, while appreciating it in certain areas. <
Secular missionaries
The West similarly tries to control any debate on cultural ethics, using slogans of democracy and human rights, which are only used to intimidate weak nations and conveniently ignored relative to stronger or wealthier nations like China or Saudi Arabia. Organizations operating under the cover of human rights are among the most aggressively alienating influences today. They function like "secular missionaries", ignoring victims of terrorism like the Hindus, while defending the "rights" of terrorist organizations against security forces that are compelled to take action against them. Meanwhile, it is the West that is selling the weapons and profiting by terrorism and civil strife throughout the world. The West originally trained many terrorist groups, such as the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Such groups highlight social inequalities in India, but ignore a colonial history marked by attacks on indigenous Indic culture. The same charges of cultural backwardness have been used throughout the colonial era to undermine the native traditions of Africa, Asia and the USA, and to justify forced religious conversion and political domination, which is their real aim. Sometimes native intellectuals are taken in by these Western approaches to social issues, not realizing that they are just promoting the colonial agenda of world domination in a more covert form.
New rules of debate
Therefore, it is not enough simply to debate issues of culture, politics, or history in the existing forums in order to promote a more Indian or Hindu view. We must question the very process itself, its basis and the perspective or values behind the school of thought in which the debate occurs. What India needs is the creation of a new Indic school of thought that is dynamic and assertive in the modern global context - one that can challenge Western civilization not merely in regard to the details of history or culture, but also relative to fundamental principles of life, humanity and consciousness. This requires a revival or renaissance in the Indic tradition and its great spiritual systems of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jainism, and also in its political, artistic and scientific traditions. Modern science and technology can arguably be more humanely employed according to Indic or Dharmic values than according to Western religious exclusivity and commercial greed.
The world today needs a critique of "modern civilization" from an Indic or Dharmic perspective, an interpretation of capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity and Islam from a tradition that is much older, deeper and closer to the spirit in both man and nature. These Western ideologies are failing to address the spiritual needs of humanity and are incapable of creating a world order that transcends dogmatism or exclusivism. <
Those of us who are part of the Indic school of thought should emphasize such a greater debate and not get caught in the details of issues already formulated according to the biases of Western civilization. This debate should examine the right structure for society and the real forward direction for history and evolution. We must raise fundamental questions. Is the current Western materialistic view of history valid at all, or are there spiritual forces at work in the world that go beyond all these? Can we understand our history through outer approaches like archaeology, linguistics or genetics, or is a higher consciousness or more intuitive view required as well? Are the records of our ancient sages to be rejected so lightly, whenever we think they do not agree with our views?
The real issue of the Vedas, India's oldest tradition, is not how these texts might fit into the current model of history as promoted by the Western school of thought, tracing the development of civilization through outward material advances. It is how the existence of such an ancient tradition of rishis, knowers of cosmic consciousness, shows a higher spiritual humanity from which we have arisen and whose legacy we can reclaim.
Towards a new school of thought
India needs a different type of scholarship, an Indic school of thought that has its own values, traditions and methods of reaching conclusions. Those of us who follow the Indian civilization should develop this Indic school in its own right and not merely try to justify our views in terms of the Western or European school of thought, which is hostile and radically opposed to Indic cultural tradition.
I recently raised a call for an intellectual Kshatriya in India - a new class of warrior intellectuals to defend India and its great pluralistic traditions from the onslaught of Western exclusivist approaches, whether religious, economic or political. This call fundamentally requires the creation of such a new Indic school of thought. Such a new Indic school of thought concerns not only philosophies of liberation or yoga, but Indic, Hindu and Dharmic approaches to ecology, the global marketplace, health, science, the status of women, religious freedom, in short to all the main issues in society today - and it should also look beyond these issues, which are often the issues of the Western school, to yet broader concerns. How can we integrate humanity and nature, with its underlying cosmic intelligence? How can we reclaim our spiritual heritage, as a species, that the great yogis have pointed out for us?
Such a new Indic school of thought requires new institutions to promote and embody it, or new Vedic schools. This will arise not through Indology departments in Western-style universities but through a new type of institution with its own funding and curriculum, free from manipulation by the vested interested and ideologies of the Western school and its religious, commercial and political bias.
An intellectual renaissance
The problem is that the Western school created Indian academic institutions that reflect Western values. To try to gain credibility for Indic thought in the context of European institutions, as some well-meaning Hindus are attempting, may be a helpful strategy but misses this main point. Western universities have their own agendas that they will not readily give up. They will not change simply because a few well-intentioned people and groups give them money and sponsor positions to project a more "sympathetic" picture of India and her civilization. Like a sea that salts every river that flows into it, existing trends and interests will force the people coming into them to conform to the dominant Eurocentric values that pervade these institutions. Otherwise, they cannot survive academically.
It is not on single issues that we need to make headway but on promoting the Indic tradition as a complete school of thought in itself, rather than merely as a side subject of Indological study in Western-defined academia. We must look back to such Indic models as Naimisha, Takshashila, Nalanda or Mithila, not only to their institutions, but also to the Gurukula approach and its more intimate and spiritual form of learning.
I urge the young people and the scholars of India to take up this cause. Do not try to define India in the context of civilization as defined by the West. Instead look to the great traditions of India that have their own deeper roots and use it to critique Western civilization and discover its limitations. Rather than seeking to define and control India according to Western perspectives, the West should look to India for guidance on the deeper issues of culture and spirituality. Indians, in turn, should assert their own greater traditions and not simply imitate the West or seek to justify Indian civilization from a Western perspective. True scholars of the Indic tradition need not go to Harvard or Oxford to seek credibility, rather these institutions should come to them.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=2658&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Pope's Apology
- Dr. David Frawley
Pope John Paul II recently made an almost too well publicized apology for the wrongs and injustices, the sins committed by Catholics throughout the centuries. He mentioned the Crusades, Inquisition and the mistreatment of the Jews, among other actions that led to hatred, oppression and genocide. The event was more a great media show than a sincere and humble statement of the heart. The whole gesture was broadcast with great ceremony, almost as if it were a piece of propaganda.
The Pope's first concern was the Jews, who have been persecuted by the Christians during the last two thousand years, with the Nazis being perhaps the greatest of a long series of episodes of Anti-Semitism in Europe. There have been many criticisms of the Church for its role in tolerating, if not supporting the Nazis. The Pope's apology is also meant to counter criticism against his recent effort to get Pope Pius XII canonized as a saint. Pope Pius XII was the Pope during World War II who never tried to stop the Nazis.
Many Jews are critical of the effort to canonize Pope Pius XII and suspect him of collaborating with the Nazis. The Pope's seeking of forgiveness from the Jews is a way to redress that as well.
His second concern was the Muslims. The Pope wants recognition in the Islamic world. Today the great majority of devoted Catholics are in similar Third World circumstances and Catholic missionaries are competing with Islamic missionaries, particularly in Africa. The Pope made a very high profile visit to Israel recently, appeared arm and arm with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and made a public plea for a Palestinian State, almost as if he were more a political than a religious leader.
The place of Hindus and Buddhists in this mistreatment can be inferred but the silence about these religions is poignant. The Pope failed to mention these religions by name, as has been his general tendency not to want to recognize them as valid religions - a courtesy that he does yield to other Biblical beliefs. The Inquisition came to India, specifically to Goa. The Catholic Church has been quite active in Asia as well throughout the centuries and often using the same questionable tactics. The Pope also failed to specifically mention the pagans of Europe that were the object of much Christian hatred and violence from the destruction of pagan temples to the burning of witches in the Middle Ages. Even today pagan groups in Europe have to deal with strong opposition from the Church.
I don't mean to say that the Pope's gesture has no value or cannot be a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Protestant Christians and Muslims, whose history is just as bloody relative to other faiths, can follow suit. But the Pope's apology is perhaps more notable for what it did not say. We should not read into it more than what he indicated. Unless it is followed by more genuine actions, it may only be an effort to avoid real scrutiny.
According to Catholic doctrine, the Church is a heavenly body, the bride of Christ and can therefore suffer from no real deficiency. Hence, the Pope is not apologizing for any real mistakes done by the Church because, by definition in Catholicism, the Church is capable of no real wrong. He is apologizing for mistakes made by church members, which can include priests, bishops and even previous Popes, but which only occurred by their failure to live up to the heavenly status of the Church. So the Pope's apology is not really for the wrongs of the Catholic Church but only for the wrongs of individual Catholics. In this regard it is an attempt to maintain the purity of the Church and to uphold its power. It is the Church apologizing for the deficiencies of its members, not for its own mistakes.
Secondly, the Pope's statement does not contain a repudiation of any Catholic doctrines; particularly those that require that Catholics convert the world to their belief, which notion was responsible for most of the violence that he criticizes. The Pope's apology is not an acceptance of other religions or a statement that salvation is possible outside the Church or apart from Jesus. It is not a declaration of respect for the religions of the world. It is not a proclamation of religious pluralism. The Pope did not say that other religions are as good as Christianity or that Jesus is the only Son of God and the sole redeemer of humanity. In fact, his recent statements in Asia, his call to evangelize the region and convert Asia to Catholicism, proclaim the opposite.
His plea for forgiveness was to God, not to other people and certainly not to other religions. He was not apologizing to other religions for the Catholic Church failing to recognize their truth or their holiness in the eyes of God. He was not reaching out to other religions, so much as making an appeal to members of other religions in order to draw them closer to Christ and the Church in order to convert them. He preserved the exclusivism of Catholic belief in tact.
That this forgiveness coincides with a new church initiative to convert Asia to Christianity should not be forgotten. It is an attempt to give the Church a more liberal modern face to aid in its conversion efforts. It represents only a change of style. In the past conversion often occurred along with force and intimidation. This policy cannot work in the post-colonial era, when the Church does not have military support. So the Pope is trying a new, more friendly style. But the goal is the same - Christianity for all.
When a person confesses his sins to a Catholic priest he is always given some sort of penance. It is easy to ask for forgiveness but it should lead to some sort of action or it may be sincere. It is not enough to say you are sorry and ask for forgiveness if you have hurt others. You must stop the hurtful actions and make amends. The Pope should follow up his words with real efforts to rectify past wrongs, many of which are still continuing. If someone runs over you with a car, it is not enough to ask for forgiveness and walk away. The Catholic Church has ruined entire civilizations in its history, and has cast a pall over others.
Perhaps it should make a memorial to the victims of its Inquisitions. Above all, it must recognize that the religions that it has trampled over must be addressed as well.
The Pope should arrange meetings not only with Jews and Muslims, but with Hindus, Buddhists and Pagans, asking their forgiveness and seeking ways to address the wrongs that the Church has done to them and being open to real dialogue with them. Let the Pope ask forgiveness not simply of the people the Church may have harmed, let him ask forgiveness of their religions and religious leaders. Let him ask forgiveness of the Shankaracharyas or the Dalai Lama for denigrating their religions. Let him say that these other religions are as good and holy as Christianity. This he has not done and will not recommend. In fact, he has warned his priests and nuns against following yoga and other eastern practices, which he called selfish.
Many people were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Their native holy places were replaced by churches. Will the Pope tell such people to return to their original faith? Will he even tell them that their original faith was as good as Christianity? Will he work to restore at least a few native places of worship that the Church has stolen? If not, how can his apology be taken seriously?
Above all, the Pope should stop the policies that have led to such inequities. The entire Catholic process of proselytization has a sordid history. To ask for forgiveness for its excesses, but to continue with these conversion efforts is insincere.
The real question is whether the Catholic seeking to convert the world to its faith, based upon its declaration - recently affirmed by the Pope - that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity, is inherently a cause of intolerance, social disharmony and violence. When a missionary goes into a community and tells its members that salvation is only possible through Jesus and that their existing religion will not save them, that already is a form of intolerance and violence that must lead to disharmony and conflict.
The Pope has made great efforts to portray Catholicism as a force of social liberalism, allied with leftist causes as in the Liberation Theology, that is the defender of the poor and a force for social equality. At the same time he is asking for the canonization of Pope Pius XII who stood silent before Nazi and Fascist aggression and genocide. Mussolini was a good Catholic in frequent communication with the Church. Catholic priests and bishops are well known to have blessed Nazi and Italian Fascist troops.
Catholicism was long a natural ally of fascism. Theocracy, authoritarian and military rule are as old as Constantine, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. Spanish and Portuguese colonial rulers, who indulged in genocide of populations in America and Asia, acted with the sanction of the Church on their regimes. The military dictators of Central and South America in recent times, up to Pinochet were good Catholics and had Church leaders allied with them.
The Liberation Theology that arose in the Americas in recent years was a new phenomenon and often opposed by the Church. In fact, Pope John II has put an end to most of it in the Americas. He only promotes this Liberation Theology in India because of its conversion value.
The fact is that, historically, the Catholic Church has been allied with military dictatorships, theocracies, and colonial oppression. Jesuits functioned as spies to study and undermine countries for conversion purposes. The older history of popes, anti-popes is there for all to see. The actual Church is not the bride of Christ or purity but a house with many dark corners and many skeletons in its closets that have yet to be cleaned out.
If the Pope is a true social liberal let him work not just for the equality of people but for the equality of religions as well. Let him not just say that all human beings are equal; let him also honor other religions as great. Let him honor not just Biblical religions, but the dharmic traditions of Asia as valid ways to God or Truth.
The problems that the Pope has asked forgiveness for are inherent in the very nature and structure of the Church. When you create an exclusive organization to dispense salvation to the entire world, you endow it with a kind of absolute authority like that of a dictator that naturally leads to corruption. The future does not belong to the Catholic Church or to any institutionalized belief. No group can claim to own or represent God or dispense salvation by belief in its doctrines. Truth is universal and eternal and the time of exclusive beliefs, products of the Dark Ages of humanity, is long past.
It is clear that so far the Pope's apology is only meant to sidestep greater criticism. It is more of a whitewash than a sincere plea for forgiveness that a truly spiritual leader would ask for. Without bringing about an end to proselytization that has caused most of these problems it means little.
Reference:
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/holocaust/
http://www.nizkor.org/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/crusades/links.html
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu_home/
http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=1801&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Ethics of Conversion, Part I
By Vamadeva Shastri
Conversion has always been a topic that arouses, if not inflames our human emotions. After all, the missionary is trying to persuade a person to change his religious belief, which concerns the ultimate issues of life and death, the very meaning of our existence. And the missionary is usually denigrating the person's current belief, which may represent a strong personal commitment or a long family or cultural tradition, calling it inferior, wrong, sinful, or even perverse.
Such statements are hardly polite or courteous and are often insulting and derogatory. The missionary is not coming with an open mind for sincere discussion and give and take dialogue, but already has his mind made up and is seeking to impose his opinion on others, often even before he knows what they actually believe or do. It is difficult to imagine a more stressful human encounter short of actual physical violence. Missionary activity always holds an implicit psychological violence, however discretely it is conducted. It is aimed at turning the minds and hearts of people away from their native religion to one that is generally unsympathetic and hostile to it.
In this article I will address conversion and missionary activity mainly in regard to Christianity, which has so commonly employed and insisted upon the practice. Indeed it is difficult to imagine the Christian religion apart from missionary activity, which has been the backbone of the faith for most of its history. Christianity has mainly been an outward looking religion seeking to convert the world. In this process it has seldom been open to real dialogue with other religions. It has rarely examined its own motives or the harm that such missionary activity has caused, even though the history of its missionary activity has been tainted with intolerance, genocide and the destruction not only of individuals but of entire cultures.
But much of this discussion applies to Islam as well, which shares an agenda with Christianity to convert the world to its particular belief. As an American raised as a Catholic and who attended Catholic school and then later adapted Hindu-based spiritual teachings, I can perhaps provide another angle on this topic that hopefully will give ground for new thinking. I had to break through much religious intolerance and prejudice to make the changes that I did.
What is Conversion?
First let us define what we mean by conversion? Let us immediately clearly discriminate between conversion or change of beliefs that happens in free human interchange in open discussion as opposed to organized conversion efforts that employ financial, media or even armed persuasion.
That certain individuals may influence other individuals to adapt one religious belief or another has seldom been a problem. There should be open and friendly discussion and debate about religion just as there is about science. But when one religion creates an agenda of conversion and mobilizes massive resources to that end, targeting unsuspecting, poor or disorganized groups, it is no longer a free discussion. It is an ideological assault. It is a form of religious violence and intolerance.
Organized conversion efforts are quite another matter than the common dialogue and interchange between members of different religious communities in daily life, or even than organized discussions in forums or academic settings. Organized conversion activity is like a trained army invading a country from the outside. This missionary army often goes into communities where there is little organized resistance to it, or which may not even be aware of its power or its motives. It will even take advantage of communities that are tolerant and open minded about religion and use that to promote a missionary agenda that destroys this tolerance.
The missionary business remains one of the largest in the world and has enormous funding on many levels. It is like several multinational corporations with the different Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical groups involved. There are full time staffs and organizations allocating money, creating media hype, plotting strategies and seeking new ways to promote conversion.
The local native religion has about as much chance against such multinational incursions as a local food seller has if McDonald's moves into his neighborhood with a slick, well funded advertising campaign targeting his customers. Yet while many third world countries have government policies to protect local businesses, they usually don't have any safety mechanism to protect local religions.
In fact missionary activity is like an ideological war. It is quite systematic, motivated and directed. It can even resemble a blitzkrieg using media, money, people and public shows to appeal to the masses in an emotional way. Missionaries are not seeking to learn from other religious groups or even to find out what they are all about, but to promote their own views and with as much energy as possible, even if this requires denigrating other beliefs.
Therefore, with missionary activity we are not talking about unplanned, spontaneous or isolated events. We are talking about a religious effort towards world conquest that is quite happy to put an end to other religious traditions - that looks to establish one particular religion for all human beings, in which the diversity of human religions is discredited and forgotten. Regions where missionary activity has been successful have seen their older traditions demoted or destroyed, whether it is those of the pagan Europeans, the Native Americans, or the pre-Islamic Arabs. Hinduism would likely fall along the same wayside should lose the battle against missionary religions, just as Hinduism in Islamic Pakistan has all but disappeared.
Missionary activity and conversion is not about freedom of religion. The missionary wants to put an end to pluralism, choice and freedom of religion. He wants one religion, his own, for everyone and will sacrifice his life to that cause. True freedom of religion should involve freedom from conversion. The missionary is like a salesman targeting people in their homes or like an invader seeking to conquer. Such disruptive activity is not a right and it cannot promote social harmony or respect between different religious communities. In fact people should have the right not to be bothered by missionaries unless they seek them out. Those of us in the West are irritated by local missionaries like the Jehovah's Witnesses that often come soliciting at our doors. Can one imagine the distress or confusion they could cause to some poor person in Asia? Once let into the door, it is hard to get them out.
History of Conversion
Let us look at the history of conversion, how it arose and what it has become through time. Organized conversion on a mass scale hardly existed anywhere in the world before the advent of Christianity some two thousand years ago. It became particularly strong after the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century. This resulted in a Roman or imperial church that used the resources of the empire, including the army, to promote the religion, which was a state institution. Church and state become closely tied and one was used to uphold the other. This alliance of church and state occurred well into the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century throughout much of Europe.
In the seventh century Islam brought about a religion in which church and state, or religion and politics were not simply allied but became the same, with the Caliph functioning as both the religious and secular head of the empire. This non-division between religion and politics continues in most Islamic countries today, including Pakistan, which has gone so far recently to proclaim the Koran as the supreme law of the land, though it is not a secular law book or any kind of law book. Can one imagine a Western country proclaiming the Bible as the law of the land? Yet the church dominated the laws of Europe for centuries.
Prior to adapting Christianity Rome had its state religion but this existed largely as a show for political purposes - the worship of the emperor. Rome tolerated all other religions as long as they gave a nominal and political support to the state religion. The Romans persecuted Christians not because they were intolerant of religious differences but because they expected all religious groups to at least afford this nominal recognition for the state religion, which the Christians refused to do.
When Christianity became the state religion, because of the belief that it alone was the true religion, this tolerance of other religions came to an end in the Roman Empire. Pagan temples and schools were closed, if not replaced by churches or even destroyed, including the closing of the great Platonic academy in Athens in the sixth century. Paganism in all of its forms was eventually banned as not only false, but also as immoral and illegal. Pagan or even unorthodox groups continued to be oppressed in Europe up to the witches of the Middle Ages, which resulted in the deaths of millions in the name of religion and protecting the church.
In the colonial period Christian missionary activity spread throughout the world and brought with it a great violence and intolerance that continued the anti-pagan crusades as part of colonialism. Missionary efforts in the colonial period, with some exceptions, contributed to or even brought about the tremendous genocide of native populations not only in America but also in Africa and Asia. Native peoples had their religions banned, their holy places destroyed or taken over by the Christians. The history of the Spanish in Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century is comparable to the Nazis of this century, if not worse, pillaging and plundering a continent in the name of and with the blessings of the church. This process of missionary colonialism reached its zenith in the nineteenth century, in which Native Africans were the main group subject to genocide, and it is only now slowly declining. However missionary groups have done little to apologize much less to atone for the violence and hatred this five hundred years of colonialism created, and which destroyed many traditional religions and cultures.
In fact colonialism has not truly ended but has recently taken a more economic rather than military form, along with the Westernization along economic lines. As Christianity is the dominant Western religion, it continues use the current economic expansion of Western culture to promote its conversion agendas. The greater financial resources and media dominance of the West affords Christianity a great edge in religious and social encounters throughout the world. Even when it is a question of a Christian minority in a land dominated by a non-Christian religion, the non-Christians are often at a disadvantage in terms of money and media through the Western support that the Christian community has, particularly in regard to its conversion activities.
Though most countries in the world today are secular, this still has not created a level playing field in the field of religion. Western religions are still taking an aggressive, intolerant, if not predatory role toward non-Western beliefs. They are using financial and media advantages, including mass marketing, to promote their agenda of conversion. Though missionary activity became less overt after the end of the colonial era it still goes on. And we cannot forget the bloody history of missionary activity or its potential for disruption, violence and destruction should the circumstance again arise.
The Motivation Behind Conversion
What is the motivation behind conversion activities? Why should one person want to convert another to his or her religious belief? In a pluralistic world, such as we live in there are many different types of culture, art, language, business and religion that contribute much to the richness of society. Why should we demand that everyone be like us in terms of anything, including religion? Isn't this diversity the very beauty of culture and our greater human heritage?
Clearly the missionary seeking converts must believe that other people cannot find their goal of life by any other religion than the one that he is propagating. Otherwise there would be no need to convert anyone. And generally the missionary is not simply announcing that he has something good or better, like someone who has invented a better light bulb. He is usually claiming that his religion is the one true faith and that the others are either inferior, out of date, or simply false.
One could argue that the conversion mentality is inherently intolerant. If I recognize that many religions are good and religious belief should be arrived at freely and without interference, then I will not create a massive organization to covert other people to my belief and get them to renounce what they already have. Only an intolerant and exclusive religious ideology requires conversion or funds it on a massive scale.
In short conversion activity is anti-secular. It does not tolerate the religious differences that must exist in a truly secular society but aims at eliminating them. The irony is that secular law provides the religious freedom that allows conversion activity to go on. The very missionaries that once used colonial armies to promote their conversion agendas are now maintaining them in the post-colonial era under the guise of freedom of religion. The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom when they were in power in the colonial era, now use freedom of religion to keep those same missionary activities going! This is both ironical and hypocritical!
Generally missionary efforts are stronger to the degree that the missionary is opposed to the religions that people already follow. The old dominant Christian strategy, which many Protestant groups still promote, is to denigrate non-Biblical beliefs as heathen, or the work of the devil. Evangelical missionaries still identify Hinduism with devil worship. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two of the most influential American evangelical leaders say this repeatedly, as do their followers, and they are sponsoring missionary activity in India as well. Naturally this gives a missionary much zeal and intensity, saving souls from the clutches of evil and driving out demons.
Such a zealous missionary inevitably spreads misunderstanding, venom and hatred in society. If I am promoting the idea that your religion is a work of the devil can I be regarded as friend or well wisher to your community? Can such views help your community understand itself or reconcile community differences?
Today it is illegal in most countries to promote racial hatred, to call a person of any race inferior or the product of the devil (which white Christians used to call the blacks until recently). But Hindus can still be denigrated as polytheists, idolaters and devil-worshippers. This is tolerated under freedom of religion, though it obviously breeds distrust, if not hatred and itself is prejudicial. Prejudicial statements that are not allowed about race are allowed about religion and missionaries commonly employ these derogatory remarks.
In fact most Christians view Hinduism like the pagan religions that the early Christians had to overcome, the Roman, Greek, Celtic, Egyptians and Babylonian religions, which do have much in common with Hinduism. Equating Hindus with Biblical idolaters promotes the history of missionary aggression and religious conflict. Most such Christians have never seriously or open-mindedly studied Hinduism or other pagan beliefs. They know little of Yoga and Vedanta or the great traditions of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality. They prefer to highlight the Hindu worship of God even in animal images like Hanuman as a form of superstition or evil.
The Catholic Church is a bit more diplomatic these days. It is now telling Hindus that their religion may have some value but that Christianity is even better! Such a view is a bit more tolerant but cannot be called sincere either.
If Catholics no longer believe that Hinduism is a religion of the Devil as they were promoting until only recently, they ought to apologize to Hindus for their mistaken notions and the problems that these must have caused. Discriminating Hindus can only look upon this more tolerant Catholicism of the post-colonial era as an attempt to maintain the edge of the church in a less politically favorable era. The Catholics say they respect the spiritual philosophies of India, which they for centuries failed to note, but still feel it necessary to convert Hindus to their religion. What kind of respect is that?
The Ideology of Conversion
Conversion reflects a certain ideology. In fact it mainly involves getting people to change beliefs, ideas or ideology. Conversion demands that we follow a certain ideology and reject others. The dominant ideology behind organized conversion efforts is that of an exclusive monotheistic religion. There is only one God, one book, one savior, one final prophet and so on. Most Christian missionaries try to get people to accept Christ as their personal savior and Christianity in one form or another as the true faith for all humanity.
A religion that is pluralistic in nature like the Hindu cannot have such a conversion-based ideology. Hindus accept that there are many paths, so naturally they will not feel compelled to get everyone to abandon their own path and follow the Hindu path instead. In fact there is no one Hindu path but rather a variety of paths, with new paths coming into being every day.
It has long been the dominant belief of Christians and Muslims that only members of their religion go to heaven, while member of other religions go to hell, particularly idol-worshipping Hindus and other pagans. This promise of heaven and threat of hell has long been used for conversion purposes and is a prime part of the ideology and its propaganda. Christians have often been motivated by this medieval heaven-hell idea in their conversion efforts. The old nineteenth century idea was a Christian missionary going to Asia to save the pagan babies from the clutches of hell.
This eternal heaven-hell idea does arouse a certain passion as well as intolerance, but one can hardly call it enlightened. In fact it causes emotional imbalance in people, which many Christians, particularly Catholics, have sought psychological help to overcome.
A God who has created heaven for his believers and hell for those who follow other religious beliefs is a recipe not only for missionary activity but also for emotional turbulence and violence. In fact this promise of great rewards and threats of great punishment is the basis of most forms of conditioning, brain washing and hypnosis. It is the dominant strategy of all mind-control cults.
Conversion, Charity and Social Upliftment
Many missionaries claim today that they are not seeking converts but merely doing charity, trying to help the downtrodden in life. Given the mentality behind conversion efforts and its history, one can only greet that statement with skepticism, though in a few isolated instances it may be true. The very missionaries that only recently used colonial governments and armies to their advantage cannot be regarded as suddenly without any overt conversion motivations.
However, if missionaries simply want to bring about social upliftment, then why don't they just open up a hospital or school and give up all the religious trappings about it. As long as the religious ornaments are there in these charitable institutions they are still seeking converts. Once you give your charity or social work a religious guise, the conversion motivation must be there and communal disharmony is likely to be promoted even by your charities.
If missionaries want to uplift society they can do that through education or economic help on a secular level. There is no need to bring religion into it. That is how societies have uplifted themselves throughout the world, whether it is the United States or Japan. It was not religious charity that raised up these countries economically. In fact bringing religion into social upliftment confuses the issue. Converting people to an exclusive creed doesn't eradicate poverty or disease, much less promote the cause of religious harmony.
The Philippines, the most predominant and oldest Christian country in Asia, is one of the poorest countries in the region. Conversion to Christianity did not raise the country economically. Central and South America, which are much more staunchly Catholic and religious and North America, are also much poorer and have a lower level of education. In fact the more evangelic and orthodox forms of Christianity are more popular in poorer and less educated groups in the West. Fundamentalist Christianity is more common in America with farmers and those who didn't go to college. Educated people in the West are less likely to be staunch Christians, and many of them look to Eastern religions for spiritual guidance.
In India Christians claim that by eradicating the caste system they are helping people and raising them up socially. They could do this easier by helping reform Hindu society rather than by trying to destroy or change the religion. Clearly they are using, if not promoting caste-differences as a conversion strategy. Christian cultures still have their class and other social inequalities, particularly in Central and South America, but Christians don't see that the religion has to be changed in order to get rid of these.
The desire to help people in terms of social upliftment and the desire to change their religion are clearly not the same and can be contradictory. Changing a person's religion may not help them in terms of health, education, or economics.
A similar argument is that the conversion effort is part of service to humanity, that the missionary is motivated by love of humanity. This is also questionable. If you are motivated by love of humanity you will help people regardless of their religious background. You will try to help people in a practical way rather than aim at getting them to embrace your religious belief. You will also love their religion, even if it is an aborigine worshipping a stone. You will give unconditional love to people, which is not the love of Jesus or the church but universal love. You will not condemn any person to hell for not following your particular belief. You will not interfere with that person's religious motivation and seek to convert him to your belief. You will honor the Divine in that person and in his belief.
Such social work born of love is hardly to be found in missionary Christianity, though it likes to pretend that this is the motivation. If one were truly motivated by love of humanity and the need to serve humanity, one would not promote massive conversion agendas. In fact one would regard such practices as inhumane, which they are.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11886&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Missionary Activity & Secularism : Pope's Visit
- David Frawley
Secularism is based upon a separation of church and state, removing religious control over the government. It arose to counter the influence of the church on politics and the religious sanction given to kings and their armies during the Middle Ages. Secularism grants freedom of religion to all citizens. It recognizes that many different religions exist and that people should be free to follow any or none of these. It regards differences in religion like those of race, language or culture, as incidental more than fundamental, and as involving the private life rather than the political sphere.
Opposite to secularism, both in ideas and in practice, is missionary activity, which is the attempt to convert the world to a single religious belief. Starting from the Christian takeover of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, European governments have used their influence to promote the conversion process. In time this gave rise to the Inquisition and to colonial efforts to convert native peoples. It resulted in a history of violence and genocide on a global scale that literally devastated the populations of entire continents. Missionaries used the political and military might of Christian states to discredit other religious beliefs, conquer other religious groups and destroy their holy places.
While modern secular Western states have removed overt religious influences from their governments, they have not removed the influence of religion altogether. In a democratic society any group that can produce votes becomes valuable. Western political leaders cultivate good relations with Western religious leaders in order to access their political goodwill.
Western governments today favor their majority religions in foreign affairs. It is obvious to see how much more sensitive Western Christian countries are to the welfare of the Christian community overseas than they are to the welfare of the non-Christian community. Religious oppression of Christians is quickly highlighted in the Western media, while oppression of non-Christians is seldom regarded as newsworthy. The entire history of Christian conversion activity is forgotten, as if the missionaries were only charity workers with no overt religious agenda!
A good example is Robert A. Seiple, the American ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. Is the man a seasoned diplomat, sensitive to other cultures and religions, as would be expected for the post? No, he was for eleven years the head of World Vision, the largest privately funded relief and development organization in the world, which is a Christian charity and connected to various missionary activities.
Seiple was formerly President of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a Christian missionary, which on the Protestant side is dominated by the Baptists. A person with such a background is inappropriate for the role that he has been given, which would be like giving it to a Catholic priest. It reflects an American religious bias not a diplomatic sensitivity and objectivity. Not surprisingly, his report on religious freedom in the world highlights oppression of Christians but ignores oppression perpetrated by Christians, as if Christian groups were entirely innocent of any wrong doing anywhere!
Even the secular West will bow to religious influences when it deems necessary. The result is that missionary activity, which was the main arm of the religious state, is learning to hide itself under the guise of modern secularism, working to subvert it from behind the scenes now that its overt control is a thing of the past.
Let us not forget its history. Missionary activity first arose in a religious state as its main means of expansion. Missionary activity per se is the extension of a medieval state attitude - that there is only one true religion like only one true king. It has had a long alliance with colonialism and with racism, with colonial armies marching with priests and friars, denigrating non-White religions as pagan and barbaric.
Missionary activity, therefore, is the very denial of secularism, which it has regarded as its enemy. The missionary movement holds that only one religion is true for humanity. It creates funds and personnel to convert the world to the one true faith. It targets the poor and uneducated who are vulnerable to favors. It does not work through reason or through friendly debate but through every sort of persuasion and intimidation, friendly or unfriendly.
Secularism and Missionary Activity in the New World Order
The problem for new democracies of the post-colonial era like India is that foreign missionaries use the very freedom of a secular state to promote their anti-secular agendas. A free state means that missionary activity is allowed and that conversion is tolerated. In a colonial state, one religion, that of the foreign rulers was favored at the expense of the others. In a free state, Western missionary religions can use the greater wealth of Western countries, which perpetuates their advantage. They also manipulate the Western dominated world media for their cause. For this reason, a Hindu Swami in India is ill equipped in terms of money and media facing Christian missionary forces in his own country. He is dealing with the multi-national conversion business that has tremendous resources at its disposal, to use with little scrutiny or accountability.
The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom during their colonial rule now want to make sure that religious freedom is maintained in their former colonies, not because they honor diversity in religion, but to maintain their conversion efforts and to sustain the minorities that they carved out by their missionary activity. Such an action is hypocritical to say the least. It doesn't represent a change of heart by the missionaries. It is not a sign of their new secularism but merely a convenient way to keep their agendas going in the changing world order.
Christianity is today, and has historically been, an anti-secular religion. Christian churches may tolerate the laws of living in secular countries, but they have not yet adopted a secular acceptance that many religious and spiritual paths can be valid and that no one religion has the last word. One could argue that any religion based upon an exclusive belief, thinking that only its religion, bible, prophet or savior is true, is inherently anti-secular.
Islam is more obviously anti-secular than Christianity because it generally has no separation of church and state. Christianity was compromised by a resurgence of earlier Greco-Roman pagan ideas of pluralism and democracy, but though softened, has still not given up its goal of converting the world. Christianity needs to go forward with its reformation by giving up its exclusivism and apologizing for its history of intolerance. The Islamic world needs a similar reformation to begin as it stands much where Christianity was at the end of the Middle Ages, still harshly controlling the minds and lives of its people and preventing any religious diversity from arising.
The Pope's Visit
The Pope's upcoming visit to India is a product of the same old anti-secular and intolerant Christian conversion agenda, which has not fundamentally changed throughout the centuries. The Pope can be described, though perhaps unflatteringly, as a Christian chauvinist leader encouraging massive conversion efforts to eliminate non-Christian beliefs. He is not a bringer of peace but a destroyer of culture. The Pope has never stated that any other religion is as good as Christianity. He has never said that Jesus is not the only Son of God. He has never said that salvation can come from outside the church or apart from Jesus. He has made statements of brotherhood, peace and tolerance but has not removed the barrier of religious intolerance and exclusivity that upholds these.
All Hindus, including the so-called fundamentalists, have not made such chauvinistic statements as the Pope. They recognize the existence of many religions and of many paths. They are not promoting the idea that Hinduism alone is the true path and that non-Hindus must go to hell. They are not insisting that everyone in the world become a Hindu. They are not asking everyone to bow to Kailash or Kashi.
Recently Ashok Singhal, head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), asked the Pope to "announce that Christianity is one of the ways that can lead to salvation and not that Christianity is the only way to salvation." The newspapers called Singhal a "hardline" Hindu leader but did not accuse the Pope of being rigid in his views. Yet Singhal accepts a pluralism to religion and salvation but the Pope does not. In terms of ordinary religious discourse Singhal has more liberal views than the Pope does but he is called a hardliner because he is questioning the missionary process! A very statement asking the Pope to affirm religious tolerance is itself styled intolerant!
In other words, Hindus should tolerate the effort to convert them but it is intolerant for Hindus to question the motives or ideas of those who denigrate their religion. That such statements are accepted in the modern media shows how deep-seated the anti-Hindu and pro-missionary bias is.
Make no mistake about it. The Pope is not a friend of Hindus. His visit is organized to promote his evangelization activities, his targeting Hindu India for Christian conversion. The Pope wants to convert Hindu India to Christianity. He would be happy if all Hindu temples were abandoned in favor of churches. He would be happy if all the swamis, sadhus and yogis either became Christian priests or disappeared altogether. He has no praise for a Ramana Maharshi, a Sri Aurobindo, a Ramakrishna, or a Shankaracharya. He does not honor the Vedas and the Gita like the Bible. He does not allow pujas to the Gods or the chanting of Om in churches. He has nowhere apologized for the use of the Inquisition in India or elsewhere. He has nowhere said that Hindus won't go to hell. He may claim to honor India's spiritual traditions but not to the extent that it requires him giving up his efforts to convert Hindus.
Let all Hindus therefore ask the Pope to say that he respects Hinduism, that Hinduism can also lead people to the ultimate goal of life, and that Catholic efforts to convert Hindus are a mistake. Let the Pope repeat the mantra of samadharma samabhava, that all dharmic teachings are in accord, and ekamsad vipra bahudha vadanti, that the enlightened seers declare the One Truth in various ways.
Let the Pope have a conference in Rome and bring the main Hindu religious leaders to dialogue with Catholic leaders on the nature of God, consciousness, the universe and immortality. Let such dialogue occur above board, out in the open and with the educated people in the field, rather than a secretive Christian targeting of poor Hindus. This would be the correct procedure if discovery of truth was the goal of such encounters.
If the Pope will not do these things then let us call him an intolerant and chauvinistic religious fundamentalist, which is what such behavior would be called in a Hindu. And let Hindus stop bowing out of respect to the Pope, prostrating to a religious leader who does not respect their religion, who is in fact plotting its downfall.
It is time for Hindus to take the offensive on religious tolerance and freedom, even if it means confronting the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has been in India for centuries. There is no reason why Catholic leaders can't appreciate the Vedas, Upanishads or modern Hindu teachers as having insights as great as those of Jesus. And this should be done starting with the Pope, not with some Indian priest that has no real power in the church or influence outside of India.
Let the Christians in India not appeal to Hindu tolerance but show their own tolerance and acceptance of other faiths by saying that though we believe in Christ we also accept Rama, Krishna and Buddha as sons of God. Let them declare a unity of religions that includes Hinduism and Buddhism as true faiths and does not require placing Jesus at the top for everyone. While Christians in India are unlikely to do this, the challenge for them to do so is bound to impact on their community and cause a deeper introspection.
As long as we hold that only one religion is true, that it must convert the world, and that other religions must be false we are not good citizens with respect for all, much less secular people. We are promoting an agenda of intolerance and violence that must cause conflict and suffering, even if we are doing so in the name of God. If we truly honor the Divine, we will recognize the Divine Self in all and will afford each individual their own perspective on truth and their own search for enlightenment, not to be circumscribed according to a church or a creed. If the West is so modern and enlightened it should stop exporting its intolerant medieval religions and become open to the great wisdom of the yogis and sadhus of India. Then a real basis for religious tolerance and spiritual growth could occur without obstruction.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11893&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Vedacharya from the West (Interview)
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 30, 2000
David Frawley, a grand-disciple of Ramana Maharishi, is widely acknowledged as a Vedacharya. Also known as Vamadeva Shastri, he was conferred the title of `Pandit' for his pioneering research work in Vedic studies, yoga, ayurveda and jyotish in his institute in New Mexico, USA. Author of several books on Hinduism, his writings seek to contrast the generally flippant and dry academic presentations of western Indologists. During a recent lecture-tour of India, David Frawley spoke to Gaurav Raina:
Q: What do you find unique about India and Hinduism?
A: India is a greatly favoured land in terms of cosmic beneficence according to the Vaastu aspect of its geographical location. The Himalayas, or Meru Parvat, oversee the whole of India in the likeness of the prime sahasrara chakra in the human body. The tapas of so many yogis and mystics and the timely appearance of avataras and saints over thousands of years have greatly accentuated this spiritual potency. The Hindu religion is like a gigantic banyan tree with its refreshing, ever ramifying growth, change and variegation, which is a contrast to Western religion as a monolithic pillar.
In the Indian ethos the pursuit of consciousness has traditionally been given priority over the need to understand the visible material world. There are various yogic systems for realising this higher consciousness. There is also evidence of a yogic methodology in India's every sphere of learned activity such as in music, dance, poetry, architecture, astronomy and medicine.
Q: Hinduism comprises of a multiplicity of sects and philosophies. Do you think such diversity is a cause for confusion ?
A: The Indian tradition is pluralistic and has always offered freedom of worshipping the divine in the name and form of one's choice and according to one's individual samskaras. It is pluralistic both at the level of religious practices as well as philosophical teachings. For this reason we find more religions inside Hinduism than among all of the world's religions put together.
Pluralism means freedom. It means that we should accept religious differences as a fact of life, like other natural variations. We need freedom to arrive at the truth. The pursuit of dharma, the urge for self-realisation and desire for liberation are common to all paths. Rather than as a cause for confusion, I see Indian pluralism as constructively facilitating an individual's spiritual quest.
Q: Can one be rational and scientific and yet be religious and spiritual?
A: Unlike in the West, Indian sages never perceived science and religion as incompatible. Religion was viewed mainly as a way of knowledge -- vidya or veda, as a way of seeing, a philosophy. Knowledge is of two types. Apara vidya or lower knowledge is necessary for our practical functioning in life and deals with the outer world of name, form and causation. The second, para or higher knowledge is concerned with consciousness and the Absolute Reality.
Indian sages regarded higher knowledge as more important, but did not regard lower or outer knowledge as wrong or disharmonious. The science versus religion dichotomy that became dominant in Europe in the nineteenth century, never really existed in classical India. The Indian model therefore seeks to resolve rather than perpetuate the Western conflict between an immoral science versus an irrational religion. Even the different systems of philosophy in India were more like scientific theories meant to be debated rationally or explored and experienced through meditation. Religion can thus be seen as a higher form of science. Anyone who systematically practices prescribed ritual methods, meditation procedures and mantras, can experience higher states of consciousness and thereby validate his or her religious belief.
Q: Why are the ancient scriptures today seen by many as mythical and fantastic?
A: The Vedas are composed in an ancient language of mantra, myth and symbol and utilise a rich poetic and imagistic expression. The modern mind being conditioned by contemporary thought and language lacks the necessary empathy and insight into the ancient texts. What we tend to regard as mythological in the puranas and itihasas was never meant to portray the actual state of things in time and space. These texts include not just the visible world in their scope but also the invisible worlds belonging to subtle and astral dimensions of existence.
If there are some apparent chronological inaccuracies in the scriptures, it is because sacred history takes into account the relationship between the temporal and the eternal and is less concerned with the actual dates of various events. This is in sharp contrast to the linear view of time held by contemporary historians who are ignorant of the relationship of time with the eternal. We should not approach the scriptures from the primarily academic standpoint of a historian, archaeologist or linguist; we should exercise an intuitive and meditative insight.
Q: You are a former Catholic. What is your view of the recent incidents of violence against the Indian Christian community?
A: I do not consider the missionary form of Christianity an enlightened religion. Conversion activity is an assault on intellectual freedom and destroys native cultures as we have seen in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is more like a sales gimmick which targets the poor and uneducated. Then there is also the history of the missionaries having sub-served European colonisers by providing a justification for their brutalities. The Catholic Church chose to be silent on the excesses of the Nazis and its tacit understanding with Mussolini, and more recently with Chile's Pinochet, are no secret.
Violence against Christians has been exaggerated a great deal by the Western media. Such backlashes have occurred throughout history all over the world. Missionary zeal tends to offend the religious sensibilities of people by denouncing their native religions as false and pagan.
Q: To what extent are India and Indian culture misrepresented in the Western media?
A: Firstly India is greatly under represented in the Western media. Whatever little news we have emphasises poverty, social problems, human rights abuses and alarmist reports of military and nuclear policies. The entertainment and advertising aspect of the media is on the other extreme and treats everything Indian as ``exotic and erotic''.
Indians have failed to learn the lessons of effective media articulation. Hindu organisations have been labelled fundamentalist and often end up with a far worse image than they deserve. The Indian government too has failed to promote Indian culture and to lobby its case with the Western governments. In fact India's gurus have done much a better job than its politicians and diplomats, in projecting the country's image abroad.
I am concerned at the absence of a dharmic intelligentsia in this country. It is imperative that Indians free themselves from colonial, Marxist and missionary distortions of their culture. They need to stop playing apologist for the genuine cultural and spiritual aspirations of their people. They should reverse their blind and obsequious adulation of the West. The great spiritual traditions of India will be lost if its intellectual kshatriyas fail to wake up to the call of the information war and lay siege to the false apostles of religious freedom.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11894&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
An American discovers the Vedas
Author : David Frawley
Publication : First Jagtik Rhugved Parishad
Date : December 27, 1996
Why would an American dedicate his life to studying the ancient
Vedas of India? And how could an American, coming from such a
different background, find a deep affinity with the Vedic
teachings, which most Hindus today themselves don't even relate to?
How did such a person get started in studying the Vedas? In the
modern world everyone, including Hindus, appears to be trying to
adopt Western culture with its scientific and technological
advances and economic affluence. Why would a person go the other
direction and look to the East, particularly when it was not a
matter of academic study, nor does it promise any material reward?
As I have written many books and articles on the Vedas and
travelled through America and India over the past few years
promoting Vedic knowledge, I am often asked such questions,
particularly by Indo-Americans, who usually do not have the time
and are lacking in the motivation to examine their own tradition.
Confronted with an American dedicated to the Vedas, Hindus find me
not only an anomaly but also a question mark on what they
themselves may be doing. Sometimes they find it an inspiration to
re-examine their own roots.
This is a difficult query to try to answer. I will begin by
relating something of my life. There is really nothing in my
family or educational background that might explain my connection
with the Vedas or even India. I was the second of a family of ten
children, born in a small city in Wisconsin in the Midwest in 1950.
Both my parents came from strict Catholic backgrounds and were
raised on dairy farms. One of my uncles in fact was a priest and
missionary to South America (which example my mother wanted me
personally to follow).
My parents, education was minimal. My mother did not even go to
high school. My father went to college only briefly, and served in
the army for several years. Though they were both open minded
people they never oriented me in the direction of India or anything
mystical.
I myself went to Catholic school until the fifth grade (age ten).
We were taught to look on Protestants with suspicion. Asia was like
another world, a land of backward, primititive people needing
conversion. After much moving about, as my father was a realtor,
we finally settled down in Denver, Colorado. There, owing to the
financial burden of so many children, we switched to public school
which brought us out of the shell of Catholic beliefs. Yet public
schools had no real mention of India either, except as a big
country in Asia suffering from poverty and overpopulation.
I had an inquisitive mind as a child and began developing my own
studies outside of school, perhaps because my mother encouraged me
in such things. I had an interest in geography since seven or eight
years of age and became aware that there was much more to the world
than America. Foreign lands of all types fascinated me. I began
reading various books starting with science and history, which
broadened my view of life and caused me to question my Catholic
upbringing and its dogma. I found the ideas of modern astronomy
with the vastness of the universe and the relativity of time and
space to be much more intriguing than Catholic views of creation.
I left the Catholic church at the age of fourteen. This came not
only from the clash between the church and modem science, but from
having read history and discovered that the church often stood for
political oppression and social exploitation, not anything truly
holy I felt that if there was a God, it was an impersonal reality,
not a personal God with his own whims, judgements and partialities.
Yet though I left the church, I still felt that there was a
spiritual reality in life, which I found in nature, particularly in
the mountains which I loved, This spiritual reality was an inner
experience quite divorced from churches and creeds.
By the time of high school my own studies were of more interest
than classes in school. I had a kind of intellectual awakening when
about the age of sixteen which caused me to study European
literature and philosophy, particularly symbolic poets and
existential philosophers. I felt that American culture was very
superficial compared to the European. Yet examining the mystical
and poetic sides of the European mind, I also eventually found them
to be lacking. I saw that the great intellectuals and artists of
the West, the geniuses who were regarded as the highest human
types, were still plagued with doubt, depression and uncertainty.
They obviously had not found any lasting peace or ultimate truth.
About the same time, as a secondary interest I began examining the
Eastern spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Some
of this came as part of the sixties counterculture movement, which
included a fascination with Eastern gurus and teachings, but much
of it was the product of my own independent and generally more
philosophical search. Between these teachings I found a common
truth-consciousness as the supreme reality and meditation as the
way to realize that. Yet it was among the teachings of Yoga and
Vedanta that I found the views which most resonated with my inner
being, particular the sense of the supreme Self (Atman) and pure
Existence (Brahman) as the highest truth. For example, I remember
walking home from high school one day and looking up at the blue
sky and realizing that it was the presence of Krishna, who
represented the cosmic power of bliss. This was before
encountering the Hare Krishna movement and was not produced by any
outer influences.
After high school I attended a local college briefly, in which I
found little to interest me. I remember taking a class on
Cosmology and Metaphysics, which was actually in the graduate
studies department. I thought the class might have something
mystical in it. Instead it was mainly a science class, with a few
cosmological speculations thrown in, generally of a materialistic
nature. The teacher could not even decide whether there was any
spiritual reality or not. This caused me to feel that the academic
world had no capacity to answer the real questions of life. Hence
I abandoned college after less than a semester.
About this time I also came into contact with local spiritual
teachers and yoga groups in Denver, through which I learned of
various gurus and practices, including yoga and meditation, which I
began to do on a regular basis. A couple of years later I
travelled to California and visited many of the spiritual groups
based in America. I had more interest in India itself and teachings
that were more traditional. I had a serious bent of mind and did
not feel satisfied with these groups which were largely social
movements or cults centered around one person, in which one's
personal relationship with the teacher generally outweighed any
real interest in spiritual studies. I have always distrusted mass
movements and fads of all types, including the pop spirituality
that has developed in the West.
I came to learn of the teachings of great modem Hindu gurus of
India most notably Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and
Sri Aurobindo, Their I felt something truly solid and real. As
several of these figures had already passed away, I wrote to their
centres in India and developed contact with some of their living
disciples. Most notably I corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for
several years, who was still alive at the time. But more so than
any particular teacher the Vedantic teaching interested me,
particularly the Upanishads, which appeared as the ideal
combination of spiritual philosophy and poetry. I felt in them the
core teaching that I was looking for in all spiritual teachings.
This led me to the works of Shankaracharya, the great commentator
on the Upanishads according to the system of Advaita Vedanta. The
Advaitic view of the pure unity of truth and the illusory nature of
the world, agreed with my experience of life through the political
and social turbulence of the late sixties and early seventies. Yet
I was also drawn towards the earlier Vedas and their Mysterious
mantras, with which most Vedantic teachers have little concern. I
had a sense of things ancient and wanted to know the earliest
teachings of humanity. The idea of things ancient rishis and seers
appealed to me and I wanted to know who they were.
I also had a poetic bent of mind and wrote poetry of a mystical and
symbolic type since I was sixteen. I used images of the dawn and
the night, fire, the wind, and the sun, along with gods and
goddesses, with the forces of nature appearing as powers of both
the human and cosmic mind in their interplay. Later I found that
these same images predominated in the Vedas themselves.
Of the great modern yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the greatest poet, and
so naturally his work had a certain appeal to me on this level. The
beginning of the chapters in his book the Life Divine contained
various Vedic quotes, particularly from the Rig Veda, which I found
to be particularly inspiring. I noted in a list of his books that
he had several on the Vedas themselves. This aroused my interest
in the Vedas and I ordered these books and studied them with great
interest, meditating carefully upon them.
My encounters with the Vedas through these books were not mere
intellectual experiences. They represented a contact with the
Divine Word, Vak or the Divine Speech, the Goddess Sarasvati. I
felt the presence of the Vedic Dawn, like the Dawn of humanity, the
beginning. of creation, and the building of a new world for the
Divine. This began my study of the Vedas, which was rooted in
poetry with a background of Vedanta.
Yet I was not satisfied in simply following Sri Aurobindo's
interpretation. I wanted to know what the Vedic rishis themselves
saw and felt. A few years later when I was twenty-seven, having
gone through most of what was available in English on the Vedas, I
decided to look at the Vedas and Upanishads in the original
Sanskrit. As there were no teachers available to me, as I was then
living in a remote town in Northern California, I started with the
Sanskrit. texts and a Sanskrit grammar book and began trying to
figure out the language myself, starting with the oldest Rig Veda
itself. It was a rather unusual and haphazard way to learn
Sanskrit, starting with the most difficult and oldest part of the
language, but somehow it worked.
The Vedic language gradually unfolded its meaning through a study
of the images, sounds and roots upon which the language was based.
I felt an inner affinity with the teaching so that I did not find
the texts to be difficult, though the grammar was often cumbersome.
I soon discovered that the interpretations generally accepted for
the older Vedas-not only those done by modern Western scholars but
the traditional school of Sayana-as Aurobindo had noted, were
indeed erroneous. The result of this research was that I produced a
small volume on the Upanishads and the Vedas. It traced back the
Vendantic teaching of the universal Self found in the Upanishads to
an origin in an earlier and more powerful Vedic vision. This was
opposite the way it is usually explained, which is to view the
Upanishads as exalted philosophy developing from a crude Vedic
ritualistic base.
A friend of mine, who had recently become a disciple of M.P. Pandit
of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, recommended me to visit him during an
upcoming trip of his to America. I knew that if anyone would
understand what I was doing it would be him, as Pandit had done
many books on the Vedas and Upanishads, with similar ideas.
I explained my views to him that the Vedas contained a science of
Self realization hidden in their teaching, from their very first
mantra to the Divine Fire (Agni). He was happy to know of my work
and told me that he would help publish it in India. He encouraged
me to follow out my studies, which he explained was a kind of
Divine mission given to me.
I told him that I was not academically trained, nor had I yet
studied in India, and that my work was merely personal and never
intended for publication. I said that I did not feel qualified to
comment on the Vedas in a public way He replied that it was good
that I Wasn't academically trained, that it gave me a direct and
independent insight, so that I would not just merely repeat the
same errors as other scholars. He told me to trust my vision. If
I had such insights and had produced such work it was for a purpose
and should not be limited to my own private study
Naturally this moved me to continue my Vedic work with more effort
and dedication. I worked on the Rig Veda itself and in four months
had produced a five hundred page book on the Vedas, which I mailed
to Pandit and he began serializing in World Union and other
publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
I began sending articles out to other publications in India as
well, including to the ashram publications of Ramana Maharshi and
Anandamayi Ma, as well as to Motilal Banarsidass, the main
publisher of Indological books and these articles were almost
invariably published, which additionally encouraged me to go
further. Thus my Vedic work began spontaneously and independently I
sort of naturally fell into it. I never had a plan to do so. And
in retrospect it would appear to be a ludicrous thing to attempt,
particularly by someone at my age and background working largely on
his own.
After developing this foundation I gained many contacts and much
support for my work throughout the world, though it took over ten
years to get it recognized in a broader way. I have since taken
many trips to India and studied and discussed the Vedas with many
teachers, which would require separate stories to relate. I have
worked with Ayurveda and Vedic astrology as well, expanding the
range of my original Vedic research. But the basic core of my
Vedic views has not changed.
What was it that I discovered in the Vedas? What made the Vedas
more important to me than other spiritual or intellectual
teachings? It was not just philosophy or poetry of an exalted
nature. Nor was it the later portion of the Vedas alone, the
Upanishads that drew my interest. It was the most ancient Rig Veda
itself and its wealth of mantras and symbols. The Rig Veda for me
is the doorway to mind of the rishis, to the cosmic mind itself,
the heart of creation. The Vedic vision is a universal mantric
knowledge that integrates all aspects of human knowledge including
yoga, philosophy, poetry, psychology, mythology and ritual. The
Vedas are like an ongoing explosion of insights, with every sort of
color and form, merging ultimately into a pure lightning
illumination that has no end.
For me the Vedas are a living teaching and the Vedic rishis are
living teachers. There is no gap of time or culture between us and
the Vedas. The Vedas transcend time. Nor do I see the Vedas as
merely Indian; they are the heritage of the greater spiritual
humanity from which we have fallen and to which we must return.
The Vedas are part of us or, to be more accurate, we are part of
the Vedas. They are the very fabric of the cosmic intelligence
that works inside us and in all the universe upholding the great
beauty and harmony of life. The Vedas exist at the core of all
real seeking to connect with truth through the great forces of
nature and consciousness, whether it is in the form of Native
American, Ancient Creek, Egyptian, or even modem scientific
approaches. In that connecting to the universal being and its
powers lies the Vedas, and there the Vedas must eventually be
found. The Vedas are not merely particular books-though the Vedic
texts we do have are authentic-but are the very vibrations of the
Divine Word, the Primal Sound, the voice of original reality.
I don't find the Vedic mantras to be hard to understand. What
could be more obvious than the dawn and the sun that rises every
day? Yet the dawn and the sun are not outer realities, they are
outer symbols, intimations of an inner reality of enlightenment and
illumination that is our true home. The Vedas are the language of
nature not as outer phenomena but as a poetry of the spirit, which
is the real meaning and beauty of creation. To me what is hard to
understand is not the Vedas but the modern world with its
technology that alienates us from nature, its commercialism that
warps our minds, its endless desires and sensations, its artificial
dogmas and ideologies, compared to which the Vedic world is indeed
paradise.
The final answer as to my connection with the Vedas perhaps goes
back to the truth of karma and rebirth. There is really no reason
why someone of my background would take to this Vedic work and be
able to go anywhere with it. The only answer is the samskaras, the
impressions from previous births. This was a knowledge that came
with me, that I was born with, the result of a previous life which
I have since come to remember in various aspects. For example,
when I received my first copies the Vedas in Sanskrit it was not
something ancient or foreign that I saw but an old friend and
companion.
Nor do I approach the Vedas from an academic or even personal
perspective. To approach the Vedas I first put my mind into a
silent state and let the teaching unfold itself without the
interference's of my own though there is not done through a mental
effort, though there is the effort of concentration. It is like
opening an irrigation channel to great river.
It is the great beauty of the Hindu religion that the impressions
it creates in us remain with us life after life. It is not a
religion limited to one life only, and its benefit carries through
all of our lives to the final liberation. In this regard the
impressions of the Vedas can be found in each one of us, if we know
how to look deeply for them. While unusual, I don't think what I
have experienced with the Vedas is unique. I think that many more
people, East and West, will come to it in the future. The Vedas
are not only. our most ancient past but the key to our global
future as well.
The message of my encounter with the Vedas to modem Hindus is this:
Your spiritual tradition is perhaps the greatest treasure of all
humanity. Please cherish it, sustain it, practise it and share it
with all. Whatever deficiencies may be in India or Hindu culture
economically or politically, should not get a person to forget the
power of the Vedas. The Vedas are like the sun. In them is the
key to all light, life and love for all the world, through which
all problems, individual or collective, can be solved. Let us not
forget our Vedic heritage.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11888&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Encountering Hindu Dharma
- Dr. David Frawley
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is one of the most prominent Hindus of our times. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Vedas; he has also written on Ayurveda and other Vedic sciences. Most importantly, he has urged a return to the Vedas as a means to unlock the secrets of the scriptures that followed.
The present volume, his spiritual autobiography, is a fascinating narrative. He walks us through his own discovery of how the stereotype of Hinduism is false and provides us a portrait of living Hinduism as mirrored by his own life experience.
The following is excerpted from his latest publication "How I became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma".
Most of us are familiar with accounts of how a person has changed from one religion to another, becoming a Christian, Muslim or a Buddhist. In the modern world we are coming to recognize pluralism in religion just as in culture, ethnicity or language. There is no more only one true religion for everyone than there is only one true race, language or way of life.
However, going from Christianity to Hinduism is a rarer story, particularly for a Westerner, because Hinduism does not aim at conversion. Many people think that Hinduism does not take new members at all. It is also a more complex tale because Hinduism is not only a religion, but also a culture and, above all, a spiritual path. To enter into Hindu Dharma involves much more than a shift of belief or accepting a new prophet. To really understand Hindu Dharma requires taking on a new way of life, of which religion is only one aspect.
As a pluralistic system Hinduism does not require that we hold to a single belief or savior or give up an open pursuit of truth. This makes the change into Hinduism less dramatic, overt or disruptive to a person’s life and for that reason harder to trace. One does not need to make a statement of faith to become a Hindu but simply to recognize the importance of dharma.
In my case, it was not a question of a quick conversion like accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior or surrendering to Allah. Nor was it the result of a concerted effort to convert me by religious preachers speaking of sin or redemption, or of religious intellectuals trying to convince me of the ultimacy of their particular philosophy or theology. It was a personal decision that occurred as the result of a long quest, a finishing touch of an extensive inner search of many years.
The word ‘conversion’ is a misnomer and a term that I dislike. How can we be converted into anything? We can only be who we are. Understanding who we are is the Hindu and Vedic path. It is not about conversion but about self knowledge and about cosmic knowledge because who we are is linked to the entire universe. Hinduism is not about joining a church but about developing respect for all beings, not only humans but plants and animals as well. It is not about a particular holy book but about understanding our own minds and hearts. It is not about a savior but about discovering the Divine presence within us.
For most people in the West, becoming a Hindu resembles joining a tribal religion, a Native American or Native African belief with many gods and strange rituals, rather than converting to a creed or belief of an organized world religion. Discovering Hinduism is something primeval, a contacting of the deeper roots of nature, in which the spirit lies hidden not as an historical creed but as a mysterious and unnamable power. It is not about taking on another monotheistic belief but an entirely different connection with life and consciousness than our Western religions provide us.
The Hindu Tradition
Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world with a tradition going back to the very beginning of what we know of as history over five thousand years ago. It is the third largest of the world’s religions, with nearly a billion members or one sixth of humanity. It is the largest non-Biblical or, to use a pejorative term, Pagan tradition remaining today. As such it holds the keys to the pre-Christian beliefs that all cultures once had and many people still retain.
Hinduism is the world’s largest pluralistic tradition. It believes in many paths and recognizes many names and forms for God, both masculine and feminine. It contains many sages, many scriptures and many ways to know God. Its emphasis is not on mere belief as constituting salvation but on union with the Divine as the true goal of life.
Hinduism is a culture containing its own detailed traditions of philosophy, medicine, science, art, music and literature that are quite old, venerable and intricate. It is the foundation of Indian culture that is rooted in the Sanskrit language which first arose as Hinduism’s sacred language. Most importantly, Hinduism is a great spiritual path with Yogic traditions of meditation, devotion and insight, in which religion in the outer sense of ritual and prayer is only secondary. Its wealth of teachings on mantra, meditation, prana, kundalini, chakras and Self-realization is perhaps unparalleled in the world.
Because of its cultural and spiritual sides some people say that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Yet though it is a way of life Hinduism is also a religion in the sense that it teaches about God and the soul, karma and liberation, death and immortality. It has its holy books, temples, pilgrimage sites, and monastic orders like other major world religions.
Hindus have a deep faith in their religion and its traditions. Thousands if not millions of Hindus have died for their religion in the many holy wars that have targeted them over the last more than a thousand years. They refused to convert even when faced with threats of death and torture. Both Islam and Christianity found converting Hindus to be particularly difficult, not because Hindus responded to assaults on their religion with force, but because their faith in their own religion and its great yogis was unshakeable.
The Western mind characteristically downplays Hinduism's importance as a religion. In many contemporary studies of world religions Hinduism is left out altogether. Because it has no overriding one God, single historical founder, or set creed, Hinduism is looked upon as a disorganized collection of cults. Few Westerners know what Hinduism is, or what Hindus believe and practise. Most are content with negative stereotypes that make them feel comfortable about their own religions. If Hinduism is mentioned in the Western media it is relative to disasters, conflicts or backward social customs. It is the one religion that is still politically correct to denigrate, if not belittle.
There is also a general impression that Hinduism is a closed, ethnic or casteist creed and therefore not a true world religion. This is strange because historically Hinduism spread throughout South Asia and specific ways of becoming a Hindu are described in many Hindu teachings. Hinduism could not have spread so far if it was not expansive in bringing in new members.
Many Hindus seem to confirm these ideas. A number of Hindu teachers say that they will make a Christian a better Christian or a Muslim a better Muslim, as if Hinduism had nothing better or unique to offer. They often apologize about being Hindus when asked about their religion. They say, “Yes I am a Hindu, but I accept all other religions as well,’’ which includes religions that do not accept Hinduism!
Some Hindu temples, particularly in South India, will not allow Westerners, that is people of lighter skin color, to enter even if they have already formally become Hindus. Other Hindus simply don’t know how to communicate their tradition. The result is that the more universal or liberal aspects of Hinduism are forgotten. Or they go by another name in the West as Yoga, Vedanta or the teachings of a particular guru, in which case they can become popular all over the world as many modern spiritual movements have demonstrated.
Discovering Hinduism through the Vedas
In my case, I came to Hindu Dharma through the Vedas, the oldest tradition of Hinduism. This was an unusual way because the Vedas are so old that most Hindus know little about them, following instead more recent teachings. People in the West have no real idea what the Vedas are either. They see Hinduism through a few prominent images like Shiva, Krishna and the Goddess or a few famous modern gurus and are not aware of the older foundation of this multifarious tradition. Most Hindus know their particular sect or guru but have little recognition of their tradition and its long history.
Even Hindus who speak of the glory of the Vedas generally can’t explain Vedic teachings in detail. By the Vedas they usually mean the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita, not the older Vedic texts. Western academia believes that the Vedas are only primitive poetry, tribal rites, or some strange babbling that arose from shamanic intoxications. At best, for the more spiritually enlightened, the Vedas are regarded as the lesser growths from which the greater unfoldments of Yoga and Vedanta arose or diverged.
For me, however, the Vedas became revealed not only as the source of the Hindu tradition but as the core spiritual wisdom of humanity. I could say that I am more a Vedic person, a Vedicist if you will, than simply a Hindu in the ordinary sense. This might better describe what I think to the modern world. But I can’t draw a line between Hinduism and Vedic Dharma, though some people might try to.
Overcoming Anti-Hindu Stereotypes
Hinduism is a religion with many Gods and Goddesses, with strange images of many heads, many arms or animal features. It teems with magic and mysticism, with gurus and godmen and their miraculous powers and enlightened insight. Much of this appears erotic or even violent to us, accustomed as we are to no images in religious worship or to only a few holy images like Christ on the cross or the Madonna with her child. Hinduism appears like a form of brainwashing or mind control, a cultish religion with little to offer a rational and humane Western mind.
This negative idea of Hinduism is shaped by missionary and colonial propaganda that we have been bombarding India with for centuries. Hindus continue to be among the main targets of world missionary efforts. The missionaries highlight the poor, sick and outcasts of India as needing salvation - the victims of a backward religion that we must help them escape from. We focus on the poverty of India today as the measure of the Hindu culture and religion, emphasizing, if not promoting social problems in India as a means of encouraging conversion. Were we to be conquered by a foreign power in the future and become a poor country, I wonder how many of our poor people would convert to the conqueror’s religion for material benefit just as we have long encouraged others to do?
It is amazing how little credit we in the West give to other cultures and religions such as the Hindu. Is our denigration of such different and ancient practices a reflection of a real perception or the shadow of our own arrogance? Why do we see our religions as necessarily better, though religion is hardly a real concern for most of us, or if it is a concern, is little more than a missionary cult, not any profound mysticism or philosophy?
We haven’t looked at Hinduism directly but have blindly followed a jaded vision of it. Hinduism is a free and open culture encouraging self-realization. Its diversity is born of this creativity, not of mere superstition. It is much more like the global culture we aspire to in our spiritual moments, rather than what we would look back upon as the mud from which we came.
Encountering Hinduism, therefore, means questioning our very idea of what religion should be. Hinduism is overflowing with variety and even contradiction. One could say that there are more religions inside of Hinduism than outside of it. Everything that we find in human religious activity from aboriginal rites to insights of pure consciousness is already there in the great plethora of Hindu teachings and practices.
Hinduism is not only connected with many Gods but with the formless absolute - the mysterious immutable Brahman beyond not only the Gods and Goddesses, but even beyond the Creator. It has a place for monotheism but regards monotheism as only one aspect of human religious experience, not the measure of it all.
Hinduism accepts all human approaches to religion, including its rejection, being willing to accept atheists into its fold. It does not try to circumscribe the abundance of life in any formula. It can even accept Christianity as another line of religious experience but not as the only one or necessarily the best.
Hinduism is not passed on by memorizing a creed, though it does have clearly defined and highly articulate teachings and philosophies. It is intimately connected with the Earth, nature, society and our daily activities from eating and breathing to sleeping and dying. Hindu Dharma sees itself not as man-made but as part of cosmic creation, an emanation of the cosmic mind. It aligns us with the cosmic religion that exists in all worlds and at all times. It is a way to link with the cosmic life, not a belief that we can retreat into like a shell or like a fortress.
The Question of Becoming a Hindu
Why would anyone, particularly a modern and educated person born in the West, want to become a Hindu, much less feel proud in calling himself one? How could a person find value in the primitive Vedic roots of this ambiguous religion? After all, the term Hindu connotes an ethnic religion mired in caste, idolatry, and the oppression of women. It appears anti-modern, inhumane, if not embarrassing for those who would follow it.
A forward thinking person could not take on such an identity, or could he? Is it a mere seeking of emotional security? Indeed, many intellectuals out of their own doubts, perhaps an inherent emotional weakness of the intellectual mind, have embraced regressive creeds. Intellectual apologists can be found for every strange ideology. Even Hitler and Stalin had them. So praise for an ideology or religion even by an intelligent person cannot be taken without skepticism.
At the same time we cannot ignore the fact that there is much in the world that goes beyond our current cultural preconceptions. We are beginning to appreciate the deeper meaning of myths and symbols, which Hinduism abounds in. We are gaining a new respect for meditation and Yoga to reach a higher awareness beyond the pale of religious dogma. We are recognizing the distortions born of Eurocentrism and Western materialism and revising our estimate of native cultures. That we might have to revise our ideas of Hinduism from colonial, missionary or Marxist perceptions is without doubt.
Yet even those who have embraced Indic spiritual traditions like Yoga generally find the appellation of being a Hindu to be unappealing. Being a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muslim seems more universal, even recognizing that these traditions may lack the diversity and richness of Hinduism. The term 'Hinduism' has become quite tainted and seldom connotes anything high or noble to the mass mind.
In addition many enlightened thinkers, particularly from India, believe that we should go beyond all outer identities whether cultural, national or religious. After all, our true nature is not Hindu, Christian, American, Russian, or anything else. We are all human beings with the same basic urges and inclinations. So why have any religious identity at all? The age of religions is over and we should be entering an age of spiritual search without boundaries.
Such thinking misses the point that Hinduism is not a credal religion based upon a person, institution or dogma. Hindu Dharma welcomes the spiritual search without boundaries. In fact, its great variety of teachings and methods provides a good foundation for a free individual search, which otherwise as an isolated effort may not go far, just as free inquiry in science benefits from a broad and open tradition of science to draw from. Most people in the world are not at the level of high spiritual practices or ready to renounce the world. They need religious teachings, including prayers and rituals to shape their work, social and family lives on an ethical and devotional level. But such religious teachings should be broad-based, containing something for all aspects of society and connected to the highest truth as well. Hindu Dharma provides all this in a powerful way.
We should not forget the facts of our individual existence and the organic connections of our lives. Each one of us has a certain life span. We live in a certain place and partake of a certain culture. We have our particular temperament and individual inclinations. All this shapes who we are and how we approach the higher Self. Only a rare soul can transcend the influence of time and even he or she must consider the forces of time, just as one cannot avoid being affected by the food that one eats.
The Yoga tradition considers that unless a person has purity in body and mind he cannot transcend them. Similarly, unless we have harmony in our culture and lifestyle it is very difficult to go beyond them. Unless we have a culture that supports the spiritual life, few will be able to pursue it. Culture is the soil on which we grow like a plant to open out into the boundless sky. We cannot ignore nurturing the soil of culture in our seeking of the unlimited beyond. Hinduism with its broad spiritual culture offers this ground on which to grow. It contains the abundant creative forces and variety of nature itself.
Unfortunately, certain religions hold that they alone are true and that other religions are unholy or dangerous. This divisive and exclusive idea of religion is the real problem, not religion per se, which is a necessary part of human culture. Yet this narrow idea of religion has so dominated the Western world that most people take it for granted as representing what religion really is, which makes Hinduism with all of its diversity seem almost incomprehensible.
Religion, in the original meaning of the word, means to link together. It should provide us tools for self-realization, enabling us to unfold our full divine potential. In this process we will probably need to follow a certain teaching, with specific disciplines and practices. We cannot follow all religions any more than we can eat all food or perform all jobs. We will probably also become part of a spiritual group or family. We cannot have everyone as a mother or father. We usually have our lineage and our transmission in the spiritual life, just as in other aspects of life. Indeed such connections are more important in the spiritual life because spirituality is more intimate, more interior and less capable of being transmitted in an outer, mechanical or mass-produced way than other aspects of culture.
Some people argue that the name Hindu is inappropriate because it is not traditional. After all the great Rishis and Yogis didn’t call themselves Hindus but simply spoke of truth and dharma. The reason for this lack of definition is that Hinduism is an open tradition. It is not defined versus any other as are Biblical traditions that reflect a dichotomy of Christian-pagan or Muslim-kafir. Many Hindus have only become conscious of being Hindu because of the negativity they have encountered from Christians and Muslims trying to convert them.
Sanatana Dharma or the universal dharma is a more correct term and reflects the broader basis of the Hindu tradition. Unfortunately, it is cumbersome and unfamiliar. The terms “dharmic” and “native” traditions are also helpful because Hinduism grows out of the land and is connected with life itself. But Hinduism is the convenient term, whatever limitations may be associated with it. So we must define it in an appropriate manner. This is to face our own prejudices about Hinduism, which are probably more deep-seated than we would think. Why should we object to the term Hindu for such a broad tradition, while accepting the names for much narrower religions?
This prejudice against the Hindu religion reflects a built-in prejudice against non-Biblical beliefs. The Western pattern of religion as one true faith, along with a missionary effort, is used as the standard for all proper religion. Missionary aggression is associated with universality in belief, while tolerant religions that see no need to convert the world are condemned as merely ethnic or tribal beliefs.
Buddhism is more respected than Hinduism in the West because it at least has the one historical Buddha to relate to and a more homogenous and missionary type tradition. Buddhism can be placed in the Western model of religion, but without a Creator. Hinduism, on the other hand, calls up all our misconceptions about religion. For that reason it is a good place to enlarge our views and gain a greater understanding of our global religious heritage, most of which does not lie in Western monotheism.
In my case I came to Hindu Dharma after an earlier exploration of Western intellectual thought and world mystical traditions, a long practice of Yoga and Vedanta and a deep examination of the Vedas. In the process I came into contact with diverse aspects of Hindu society and with Hindu teachers that few Westerners have access to, taking me far beyond the range of the usual perceptions and misconceptions about the subject. Such direct experience, which was often quite different than what I had expected or was told would be the case, changed my views and brought me to my current position. Hopefully my story can help others change from taking Hinduism as something primitive to understanding the beauty of this great spiritual tradition that may best represent our spiritual heritage as a species.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11887&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
One truth, different paths
- Dr. David Frawley
India possesses a great indigenous civilization dating back to 7000 BC, such as recent archaeological discoveries at Mehrgarh clearly reveal. It had the most extensive urban culture in the world in the third millennium BCE with the many cities of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers.
When the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame dried up in the second millennium BCE, the culture shifted east to the more certain rivers of the Gangetic plain, which became the dominant region of the subcontinent. Gone is the old idea of the Aryan invasion and an outside basis for Indian culture. In its place is the continuity of a civilization and its literature going back to the earliest period of history. Based on this reclamation of its glorious past India can now look to the future as the broadest and most enduring culture on the planet.
The oldest Indian text and perhaps the oldest book in the world, the Rig Veda boldly proclaims: "That which is the One Truth the seers teach in many different ways" (Rig Veda I.164.46), and "May noble aspirations come to us from every side" (Rig Veda I.89.1). This bedrock of Indian or Bharatiya pluralism gave rise not only to the many different sects of Hinduism but also to Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh traditions, perhaps the largest diversity of spiritual teachings in the entire world. Though largely misunderstood in the West as polytheism or a worship of many Gods, this Bharatiya pluralism reflects an open quest for truth and a free flowering of all human potentials beyond any restriction to a particular name, form or institution. It embraced art and science as well as religion and metaphysics.
Unfortunately, over the first fifty years since Independence, India has not discovered its real roots. Its intellectuals have mimicked Western trends in thought. They have forgotten their own profound modern sages like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who projected modern and futuristic views of the Indian tradition. While Westerners come to India seeking spiritual knowledge, Indian intellectuals look to the West with an adulation that is often blind, if not obsequious.
The world is now entering into a global age in which pluralism must be the foundation of world culture. It is no longer a missionary, colonial or communist era in which one group can be allowed hegemony in the world. It is a new age of dialogue and respect in which we must learn to honour and cherish all the cultures of the world. This should start with tribal peoples who are the custodians of the Earth and of the wisdom of nature that we are so quickly losing to a destructive technology. It must include the great traditions of the East like Hinduism and Buddhism which have a firm foundation in tolerance and synthesis. We must learn to embrace all human beings and their cultures as part of one great family. Let our differences be a cause for admiration and celebration, not for mistrust or hatred.
It is time for India to once more be a leader and an innovator in world culture, rather than a follower and imitator as it is at present. Sri Aurobindo remarked that India's real role was to be the guru among the nations of the world. At present it can hardly keep order within its own frontiers. While we see Indians doing well outside of India as the elite of foreign lands, inside India they are still floundering. Why is it that India today cannot nourish or promote the remarkable capacities of its own people?
To change this situation a new vitality and creativity is necessary that honours the country's venerable traditions but does not restrict itself to past forms and conventions. Above all, it requires a new generation of thinkers who are global in outlook but grounded in the practical spirituality of Yoga and Vedanta. Indian thinkers must return to their cultural wellsprings, not to stop there, but to create a new vision for humanity. New rishis, yogis and bodhisattvas must arise to complement the old.
We can already see how such traditional Indian disciplines as Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedanta are gaining respect worldwide for their integral and holistic approach. Such an Indic or dharmic perspective should be added to enrich religion, philosophy, and science all over the world. The new generation of Indians should take up this task of world-making as their goal. The new world order of the computer and the information revolution offers the country a situation quite favourable to its unique spiritual and intellectual talents. But for this to occur, India must stand up and speak out, not merely to please everyone, but to blaze a new trail to the universe that dwells both inside and outside of ourselves.
Such a new India would combine science and spirituality in a global perspective, adding the intuitive insight of the ancient rishis to the critical acumen of modern scientists. If a unitary consciousness is indeed the basis of the universe, as quantum mechanics require, India's yogis have already shown the way to realize it. It would create a system of medicine that would combine the advances of biochemistry along with an understanding of the life-force and the soul which mirror the greater human being that is cosmic in nature. The new India would develop our material potentials but for the glory of the Spirit, the Self of all beings, just as classical India combined a vast flowering of art, architecture, music and dance along with numerous philosophies of the absolute and yogic paths. The new India would protect the earth while reaching out to the planets and stars, reclaiming the paradise that this tropical land of many rivers used to be. It would honour our spiritual ancestors and their legacy, fulfilling the deeper urges of our species and not merely accepting material affluence as enough. It would raise the poor and the downtrodden, not to convert people to a belief but to help all people become happy and free in both body and mind.
Such an awakened India is crucial for world culture, which presently remains trapped between a destructive consumerism on one side and a rigid religious exclusivism on the other.
Today the United States is the only superpower in the world. But it is a superpower in the outer world only. Its material wealth hides a spiritual poverty and growing psychological and social unrest. No technological superpower can properly guide the world. Only a spiritual superpower can do this, which India has the best potential to become. The question is whether the country and its leaders are willing to make the sacrifice that this must entail.
India holds the Shakti, the spiritual power and evolutionary force of humanity. It is the great World Mother in her manifestation. Let its yogic force come forth once again for the benefit of all!
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11884&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Himsa and Ahimsa: The Need for a New Policy of Protection
- Dr. David Frawley
In spite of modern Gandhian stereotypes, the classical Hindu way to deal with Rakshasas and Asuras (people of egoistic or violent temperament) was never simply ahimsa. It could in fact be quite aggressive. Ahimsa in the sense of absolute non-violence is a sattvic or deva dharma for people of devic or refined temperament. With gentle people you have no need or right to be unkind.
However, when dealing with hostile and violent opponents a completely different response is required. Asuras require the danda (punishment). Let us not forget the many epic and Puranic stories in which Gods, Goddesses or Avatars fought and defeated the Asuras or Asuric human beings. Whether it is the Goddess and Mahishasura, Rama and Ravana, or Skanda and Taraka, there is not a single instance in which the Asuras were simply forgiven and allowed to go their own way without punishment. Let us also not forget how the Mahabharata extols the use of the danda for social harmony and justice.
There is only one way to really deal with Asuric people, which is to make them feel pain. As Asuric types have a materialistic consciousness, this pain must be of a material type, pain to their bodies, to their homes and to their possessions. It must be a pain where they live. Asuric types are immune to platitudes or to any kind of moralistic guilt, hardened as they are by their own drives and compulsions.
Once Asuric types have committed a transgression they must be strongly punished or they will cause harm again. Merely to let them go or to have them say that they are sorry means nothing. Asuric types will take it as weakness and just plot a new attack. They are quite capable of deception or false sentiment to further their cause.
The main recent Hindu way has been to deal with hostile invaders by simply forgiving them and allowing them to go back home if they are defeated. Hindu enemies therefore don't have much to worry about. If they win, they get what they want and can ruthlessly promote their agenda. If they are defeated, they have nothing worse to fear than returning from whence they came without any real punishment. They can then regroup and attack again, having gained much experience by their previous incursions.
Such a prescription only encourages repeated attacks until the enemy finally wins. One is reminded of the example of Prithivi Raj Chauhan in the twelfth century who repeatedly defeated Mohammed Ghauri, who invaded India from Afghanistan. Each time he defeated Ghauri, he forgave him and sent him home. Yet when Ghauri finally won, he killed Prithivi Raj and started a reign of terror in India. One should consider how much respect and honor Ghauri offered to Prithivi Raj for being forgiven so chivalrously so often. All such forgiving souls will similarly become dead meat for such Asuric invaders, once they are able to win.
And if one allows them to attack again and again, they will eventually win, just by the law of chance. One victory is all they need. They will forgive no one and use all possible force and intimidation, including every sort of ethnic cleansing, to get their way - and all with no sympathy to the kind people who once defeated them and treated them with forgiveness.
Most modern Hindus, including prominent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, have failed to understand Asuric aggression, particularly if it takes a religious garb, which Islam and Christianity have often been the pretext for, in their military and missionary assaults to convert the world. Hindus have tried to compromise with such aggression, placate it or moralize it into peace. Not surprisingly their policy has failed, like letting a tumor spread to avoid the necessary violence required to cut it out. Eventually the patient himself dies.
Those Hindus like Sri Aurobindo who raised a contrary voice were ignored. Their prediction that such a policy would lead to partition, division and calamity for Hindus was similarly forgotten once it turned out to be true.
The Gandhian pity, not only for the victims of violence, but also for the perpetrators of violence must come to an end. Perpetrators of violence are not victims, nor should we classify them along with them. Such pity for the violent is one of the most debilitating and confusing of all emotions, and is the very sentiment that Krishna strove to uproot out of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Pity or compassion for the perpetrators of violence only sanctions that violence and causes further pain to the victims. It denies the responsibility that goes with the law of karma. Only when we make people responsible for their actions can they grow and become more humane. To excuse those who are violent under the pretext of non-violence is only to excuse violence. While compassion for the victims of violence is in order, the perpetrators of violence must be handled in a different way, so as to ensure that they don't strike again. Otherwise we are only abetting their crimes.
Perpetrators of violence always like to play the victim anyway, because it justifies their aggression. To treat them as if they were also victims only makes them feel right in the harm that they have already done and encourages them to do more. One who attacks other people in the name of religion is not a martyr but a criminal intruder, in spite of what some misguided religious leaders may say. A religious teaching that extols such violence is not something spiritual but an Asuric dharma. Many Hindus have been murdered by such so-called martyrs.
Terrorists who have indulged in killing innocent civilians, including torture and rape, have no real conscience anyway. They have already killed innocent victims who were offering them no violent resistance. Their action has already rejected ahimsa. Why should they honor the ahimsa of those who capture them? Political and religious terrorists are also warped by an ideology that says that it is right for them to attack and destroy those of different beliefs, even ruthlessly. Until that ideological belief is changed such terrorists will continue in their brutality, however many times you forgive them.
In addition, violent actions create powerful samskaras in the mind that are hard to overcome. Like a dog that first tastes blood, once that taste for violence occurs, the perpetrator will go after it again and again. While one can try to rehabilitate criminals, one must be realistic about how much success is really possible in this regard.
Obviously if one offers a criminal or a terrorist the choice of saying that they are sorry or of getting punished, they will choose to say that they are sorry in order to avoid the pain of punishment. Such apologies and promises of forgiveness mean nothing. The same thing occurs in dealing with terrorist countries.
While one could possibly argue the need for compassion for individual criminals who are victims of oppressive social orders and represent isolated cases, one cannot argue the same compassion for terrorist groups or for terrorist nations, which represent organized attacks. Compassion for inimical nations and the separatist movements that they incite will not do a national defense policy, unless a nation wants to self-destruct.
In this regard, we should remember Pakistan's recent signing of the Lahore Declaration proclaiming peace, while at the same time preparing for the massive attack on India via Kargil. This is how aggressive groups work when faced with what they perceive as a weak form of ahimsa: give lip service to peace to encourage their enemies to weaken their defenses, and then attack with impunity.
True ahimsa means reducing the amount of harm in the world. This may require violent action against the perpetrators of harm. One must not only defeat the enemy but also take away their weapons and ensure that they cannot attack again. Once must cut off the roots of violence where the enemy lives. One doesn't merely send a scorpion back to its nest after it bites you. One has to remove its stinger.
Modern Hindus must once again proudly honor himsa or a policy of harming the enemy, and the danda or a policy of strict punishment for those who use force to attack them. This is not to promote unnecessary violence but to prevent violence from spreading or being abetted. The same policy should extend to all spheres of current cultural encounters.
Those who use a verbal assault against Hindus, like the Christian missionaries, must similarly be dealt with through the weapon of speech. Vak is the Danda of the Brahmins, as the Mahabharata says. Hindus should challenge missionaries to debate and promote forums and publications to expose their intolerant agendas. Until they feel pain for their aggression against Hindus, the missionaries will not stop. You can be certain of that, all talk of religious tolerance to the contrary. This doesn't mean physically assaulting missionaries but it does mean subjecting them to scrutiny and criticism of a rigorous nature, exposing their dogmatism and exclusivism as much as possible.
Hindus must learn how to use the courts and bring legal suits against their denigrators, not only in India but also in the West. The legal danda is very important in the world today and has been the key to many social changes. Hindus must learn how to use the weapons of the media as well, presenting cases, information and programs that promote their point of view and strongly challenging media distortions.
They must attack their enemies on the level where their enemies really feel and with the weapons of the age. Some metaphysical moralistic high ground, such as many Hindus like to take, will not do but is only escapism, though Hindus should continue to practice rituals, prayers, mantras and meditations for peace but not to the exclusion of more direct forms of action in the material world.
The Gods always worked to drive the Asuras from this world and send them back to the netherworld. They never accepted a compromise in which the Asuras were given some portion of this world in exchange for a promise to live in peace.
It is time for the Devas to go on a new offense and to take up again their many weapons on all levels.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11890&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Christians Under Siege in India: A Missionary Ploy
- David Frawley
Christianity does not have a notable reputation for tolerance and respect for other religions. The Christian need to convert the entire world and the Christian failure to honour other religions, particularly non-biblical traditions, is well known. Christian missionaries have had a reputation for using methods to promote conversion that are not always honest, including employing military and political force during the colonial era. Yet Christians today conveniently like to ignore such facts. They are surprised if members of other religions are suspicious of them, even if they look at these religions as works of the devil.
Christians now promote conversion as a democratic freedom, even though their view of religion is authoritarian, not democratic, accepting only one way, and not honouring pluralism in approaching the Divine.
The Christians of India are continuing in attitudes hostile to the other religions of their country. They want a freedom to convert but they are not willing to accept the other religions of the land as valid. They highlight minor attacks on Christians done by unidentified groups as a concerted Hindu campaign against them, while they themselves are actively working to change Hindu India into a Christian nation. While Christians have a long history of aggression against other faiths that certainly has not come to an end, they are quite offended if their religion comes under even minor obstructions even by the groups they have long maligned and, not long ago, actively oppressed.
Recent arrests in India have shown that a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani national was behind most of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India. The Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not ruled by the so-called Hindu BJP party.
In fact Christians in India are defending the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency that has long tried to destabilise India, and absolving it of responsibility in the affair. This would be like an American religious minority defending the KGB during the Cold War. Whether the ISI is directly involved in such efforts to cause conflicts in India or not, we must recognize that it is a project they would certainly support and would be likely to promote.
To dismiss their involvement out of hand, as Christian leaders in India are doing, is highly suspicious. They are publicly blaming Hindu organizations for attacks that they have not been proven to have caused and which no court has found them guilty of.
Christians in India also exaggerate minor incidents into a national anti-Christian agenda. More churches have been burnt in America in recent years than in India. That a few priests or ministers have been harmed in a country of one billion over a period several years is not surprising even if we only consider ordinary crimes like robbery. That Christian missionaries have run into difficulties in sensitive tribal areas where there is not much government control is also not surprising, particularly given their hostility to tribal culture and to the tribal religions.
One even wonders if Christians are staging some of these attacks to gain sympathy, but certainly they are exaggerating them. Christianity has had a long history of using victimization in order to promote conversion. We know of the stories of Christians being fed to the lions in Rome. We are not told that many more pagans were killed by Christians and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe. The number of native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in the millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by the native Americans as being the real victims.
Mother Theresa's successor, Sister Nirmala, claims that Hindu fears that conversion is being done by force, deception or propaganda are not true and are ridiculous. But she should well know that such devices have long been used in Christianity. We can find native peoples all over the world whose cultures have been destroyed and even whose populations have been decimated by the missionaries and by the colonial armies that they supported. Even if the Hindu fear is exaggerated, it is certainly understandable. We should remember that the Pope in his recent visit to India himself threw down the gauntlet, stating a renewed church policy to convert Asia to Christianity in the coming years. To dismiss the Hindu fear as baseless only shows that it is not. If Christians were really sincere they would acknowledge that missionary activity has used such questionable methods in the past and work to insure that it does not do so in the future, not simply ignore the issue.
What is most surprising is that Christian missionaries have more freedom of operation in India than in the rest of Asia. They are banned in Islamic countries, including Pakistan, and strictly monitored in China, which has its own nationalist Catholic Church apart from Rome. Christians are under direct attack in Indonesia, where hundreds of Christians have been killed recently.
But it is India that is being called to task in the world forum for its oppression of Christians!
The reason is simple. India allows missionary activity and so is a soft target. Islamic countries and China are hard targets. The missionaries are targeting India because they feel they can make headway in India, not because India is a place where they are particularly under siege!
The hypocrisy of the whole thing is sad. It only shows that Christians are still promoting a medieval religion that will not honour other religions and is still seeking world domination by any convenient means.
If we count the victims of Christian aggression on one side and the Christians themselves who have been victimized we will find that the victims of Christianity are in the great majority. While some Christians have apologized to African and Native American groups for such missionary misdeeds, the Hindus have so far not received any such apology, though they have suffered from the same methods.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian colonial governments used their influence to promote conversion in the countries they ruled. Now Christians want to use freedom and democracy, which they didn't allow under their rulership, to continue the conversion process. And all without an apology.
If Christians want to be honoured and respected, let them first proclaim that Christianity is not the only true religion and Jesus is not the only son of God. Let them say that Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and the other Indian religions are as good as Christianity and that members of these religions will not go to hell but will gain immortality in the presence of God. They will certainly not do so. Their failure to do so shows the extent of their intolerance that naturally breeds conflict and leads to communal tension. Christians wouldn't even accept a Mahatma Gandhi and worked to convert him, while the Mahatma described missionary activity as a great danger and as ethically flawed.
As a former Catholic I know in what little esteem the church holds Hinduism and Buddhism with all their great sages and yogis. Were Christians to honour Hinduism as a valid religion all Hindu-Christian hostility could easily come to an end. As long as Christians hold that their's alone is the true faith and are working to convert the members of other religions in one way or another, they should not be surprised if members of other religions may not welcome their presence in the neighbourhood.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11892&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Is Islamic goodwill for Hindus possible?
ByDavid Frawley
14 October 1996
Author : David Frawley
Publication : The Organiser
Date : October 14, 1996
Hindus today are often asked to express goodwill for Islam and help minority Muslims in India, who often fell oppressed under the Hindu majority rule. However Hindus are also minorities in various Islamic countries. Therefore the complementary question must arise, is there any Islamic goodwill for Hindus, particularly in Islamic countries? To look at Hindu-Muslim relations only within the borders of India where Hindus are a majority can be misleading. The entire context of these relations throughout the world and historically must be examined.
Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees, like the Parsis, the Syrian Christians and the Jews. India is the only country that never oppressed the Jews. Even today there are a number of Islamicsects like the Ahmadiyas, the Bohras and the Sufis, and other religious movements originating from Islamic countries like the Bahais, which may not be tolerated in Islamic countries including Pakistan, and exist and flourish in India. In fact there is a greater diversity of Islamic sects in India than in any Islamic country today because of the religious toleance traditional to Hindu-majority India. When Muslims lived under Hindu rule in pre-Independence India they
were not obstructed frm practicing their religion, subject to forced conversion, religious taxes, or prevented from building mosques. The same is true of Muslims in India today. They are allowed to practice their religion without interference from Hindus.
Muslims, on the other hand, do not have such a history of
tolerance starting with the first chaliphs of Islam who set out organised armies to conquer the world and marched to the very borders of India. During the period of Islamic rule in India most Hindu temples in the country were destroyed, including many that were rebuilt during that period. Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions. The number of temples destroyed runs in thousands and it is difficult to find even a haldful of temples in India that were not either destroyed ro defaced by the Muslims. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Hindus were killed in wars and genocide or turned into slaves. this included many religious leaders like various Sikh and Hindu Gurus whom the Muslims executed. Hindus exdured forced conversion and a heavy
religious tax to convert them.
Yet this oppression for Hindus has not ended. Even after the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims, the Hindus left over in Pakistan and Bangladesh have suffered terribly. They have no real political or economical influence and the law seldom protects them. This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent. Strictly Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not allow any other religions to exist within their border. No Hindu temple
can be built in such Islamic countries by the Hindus who worl there. You will not find any Hindu temples in Mecca or other Islamic holy cities. Hindus who have gone to work in the Gulf countries are not allowed to practice their religion in public, or bring any of their Hindu holy books with them. Even in India today Muslims do not tolerate and often attack the Hindu religious processions that may go through or near their neighbourhood. This is a holdover right from the Islamic period in Indian when Hindus were prevented from publicly expressing their religion in Muslim predominant communities.
Saudi Arabia insists that India sends only a Muslim ambassador and the Government of India meekly complies, not even raising protest! How would Islamic countries, in which Hindus are a minority, respond if the Government of
India insisted that they sent only Hindu ambassadors? Certainly it would not be tolerated. Most instance of Muslim goodwill to Hindus occur in countries like Indonesia which were only recently and partially Islamized. It is not owing to Islam, which is intolerant in its hear land, but owing to the prior Hindu culture of the people. The more Islamic these countries become this tolerance is likely to decrease.
Today with growing global communication and the awakening of oppressed groups throughout the world, Hindu criticism of Islam is increasing. Hindu intellectuals are questioning Islam not only historically but also spiritually, particularly its actions in India relative to Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Hindu influenced political parties routinely complain against appeasement of the Muslim minority in India.
That Hindus may criticize other religions may be surprising to those who know the history of tolerance in Hinduism. It may cause them to think that Hindus are becoming intolerant. However, the other side of the issue must also be examined. That Hindus are becoming critical of Islam may not be so surprising to those who know of the ongoing oppression of Hindus by Muslims.
Hindus today are awakening to an understanding of the thousand years of oppression they underwent during nearly a thousand years of foreign rule by the Muslims and the Europeans. Their religion and culture was constantly under siege throughout the period. When Hindus today criticize the British rule of India and its efforts to Christinize India, it is generally regarded as understandable. However when Hindus criticize the Islamic period which was similarly a foreign rule and far more brutal than the British period, with a more determined attempt at conversion, it may be labelled as Hindu intoferance of Islam (suggesting that there is Islamic tolerance of Hinduism, which has yet to be demonstrat). But if British rule and Chritian intolerance of Hindus can be questioned, so can, similar action done by Muslims.
Just as blacks and women are, making an issue of their historical oppression, seeking an acknowledgment of it, and trying to correct it, so are Hindus. This is perfectly reasonable and modern, not fundamentalist and backward for them to do so. There is probably no other religious or political group in the world that has been slower to protest its historical mistreatment than have the Hindus. Hindus are the least organised socially and politically of all religious groups. The fact is that Musli8ms have routinely treated Hindus badly and this trend has continued. Not merely as Hindus but as human beings, Hindus have a right to draw the line.
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become exvessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong. Hindus now are no longer willing to meekly accept domination and abuse by
Muslims in the name of communal harmoney. This is just another human community no longer of its human rights. It
is about time that Hindus have taken this stance and it can only help other oppressed groups gain their legitimate rights as well.
The question is how will Muslims react to this trend? Will they recognize the legitimate anger of the Hindus against them, take some resposibility for the problem, and seek to correct it? Or will they rect with hostility and refuse to acknowledge the history of violence that Muslims have without doubt peroetrated against Hindus? Will they take the opportunity to create oeace or will they inflame Hindus further by ignoring the mistakes done in the name of their religion? Muslis throughout the world are quick to condemn any oppressionof Muslims which occurs in any part of the world. Should they be surprised or feel that it is wrong if Hindus begin to adopt such attitudes and start challenging the oppression of Hindus by Muslims?
In Hindu-Muslim dialogue since the time of Mahatma Gandhi has generally been a matter of Hindus trying to please or
accommodate Muslims. This led to the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims and the allowance of Muslim personal law for Muslims in India (but not, we might add, Hindu personal law for Hindus in Pakistan). The question is seldom asked what are Muslims willing to concede to Hindus in order to create peace with them? Perhaps because Muslims are a minority in India it is not considered what they should give but only what they should receive. However there must be reciprocity for there to be trust. And the Hindu-Muslim issue is not limityed to India but to all lands where these two faiths meet. If Muslims throughout the world are intolerance of Hinduism, how can Indian Muslims expect Hindus in India not to be suspricious of them?
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries. How many Hindu political leaders have there been in Pakistan and Bangladesh? I believe the answer is zero, even though, at least in Bangladesh the percentage of minority Hindus is on par with that of Muslims in India. There have, however, been Muslim President, Members of Parliament, chief ministers of State and cabinet minister of India has increased since Partition while the Hindu population of Pakistan and Bangladesh has dramatically decreased.
Clearly Muslims in India are treated much better than Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Gulf countries. There are no Hindu prayers or songs allowed on Pakistani prayers and songs which can be found on Indian television Pakistan history books still vaunt Islamic leaders like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples and killed Hindus on a grand scale, as great and pious Muslims and great Pakistanis.
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be devorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. if Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus. Muslims cannot rightfully expect better treatment from Hindus if they do not consider the plight of Hindus as will. There must be a concern for discrimination against all human beings, regardless of their religion, not looking out for Muslims and ignoring the plight of non-Muslims.
The further question arises, if Muslims want the goodwill of Hindus what are they willing to offer in order to receive it? Do Muslims think that they should have the goodwill of Hindus without offering anythink to the Hindus in return? Can they really think that their history merits the trust and affection of Hindus? While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out. It is they who have historically been aggressively attacking Hindus, not Hindus who have sent armies into their countries in order
to convert them.
Hindus do have an historical right to critize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion. Muslims routinely condemn Hindus as idol-worshippers, which is hardly an accurate, much less a sensitiverendeing of Hinduism, which is a vast religion containig all avenues of human spirituality from devotional worship of images to yogic meditation.
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of
Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
Many Muslims and other have argued that Hindu temples were not destroyed out of religious reasons but from political motivation. Therefore the blam for this destruction is not with the Islamic religion, which is one of peace, but with political leaders who are prone to violence in order to hold power whatever their religious background. If this is the case Muslims should be happy to return such Hindu sacred sites as Kashi and Mathura. Mosques on these two sites of well known Hindu temples were built only three centuries ago by the tyrant Aurangzeb, who killed his own brother, imprisoned his own father, and murdered Sufis as well as Hindu and Sikh leaders. If Islam as a religion is not responsible for the destruction of these Hindu temples but the arrogance of such as Aurangzeb, Muslims should not cling to such monuments as sacred. Otherwise Muslims are in fact saying that the destruction of temples and their replacement with mosques has a religions sanction, which is to equate their religion with such tyrants.
Yet this condition is hardly hopless. there is much that Muslims can do to gain the trust of Hindus, who are a peaceful and tolerant people. But this issue is mainly in
the hands of the Muslims. Hindus cannot make peace with Muslims who are unwilling to give up their oppression of Hindus or their targeting for conversion. Muslims should be willing to consider doing the following if they are sincere about peace with the Hindus.
(1) Muslim leaders should make an official apology for the massive destruction of temples and killing of Hindus that was common under their rule in India and by their invading armies. One can use the example of the Christians apologizing to the American Indians or the Blacks for similar discrimination and oppression.
(2) Muslims should give back to the Hindus Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura mosques that were built by Babur and Aurangazeb on Ramjanmabhoomi, the Kashi Vishwanath Shiva temple and Krishnajanmabhoomi, just as they didi not try to hold on the Somnath after Partition of India. This could be a peace offering for all the Hindu temples destroyed by Muslims through history.
(3) Muslims should invite Hindu swamis and religious leaders to speak at their mosques to explain to the Muslims masses what Hinduism really teaches. In the same way Hindus should invite Islamic leaders to speak at their temples. Muslim countries should allow Hindus to preach and build temples, particularly for Hindu workers in those countries. They should also invite Hindus to talk and preach their religion in orther to dispel Islamic misunderstandings about Hinduism.
(4) Muslims should be willing to accept Hindu names for God like ishvara as good as Allah. Hindus should also accpet Allah as a name of God as many of them already do.
(5) Muslims should be willing to accept the great teachers of India-based religions as divinely inspired, inluding those of recent centuries like Sikh Gurus or Ramakrishna, just as Hindus honour many Sufis and Islamic saints.
(6) Indian Muslims should complain to Muslim countries that discriminate against Hindus. They should criticize Pakistan and Bangladesh for the destruction of Hindu temples that has gone on there in recent times.
Of course it is doubtful whether this will occur any-time soon, even on one of these points. If this is the case, Muslims should ask themselves, if they are unwilling to make such gestures of goodwill to the Hindus why should they expect Hindus to respect and honour them in return? You cannot repeatedly trample on a person and his culture and then expect him to help you when you are in need.
Muslims, who claim to follow the will of God, think clearly on the history of Islam, and how members of your religion have mistreated Hindus and denigrated their religion. Think of how your religious leaders portray the Hindu religion even today. Would you be quick to embrace a group who treated you in the same way?
… Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees… Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions... This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent…
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become excessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong…
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries…
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be divorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. If Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus…
While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out… Hindus do have an historical right to criticize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion…
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
1990: Second Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival, in Moscow, cosponsored by Supreme Soviet, gives stage for Hindu thinking. Shringeri sannyasin Swami Paramananda Bharati concludes Forum with Vedic peace prayer in Kremlin Hall, leading 2,500 world leaders in chanting Aum three times.
1990: Communist leadership of USSR collapses, to be replaced by 12 independent democratic nations.
1991: Hindu Renaissance Award is founded by Hinduism Today and declares Swami Paramananda Bharati of Shringeri Matha "1990 Hindu of the Year."
1991: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated in Tamil Nadu in May. India blames Sri Lankan Tamil separatists.
1991: Indian tribals, adivasis, are 45 million strong.
1991: In Bangalore, India, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami authorizes renowned architect V. Ganapati Sthapati to begin carving the Chola-style, white-granite, moksha Iraivan Temple in a project guided by Shri Shri Trichy Swami, Shri Shri Balagangadaranathaswami and Shri Sivapuriswami. Shipped to Hawaii's Garden Island of Kauai and erected on San Marga, Iraivan will be the Western Hemisphere's first all-stone Agamic temple.The world's largest single-pointed, six-sided crystal (700 lbs.), known as the Earthkeeper, will be enshrined as its Sivalinga.
1992: Swami Chidananda Saraswati, spiritual head of Parmarth Niketan Trust, with 26 ashramas, is named Hinduism Today's 1991 Hindu of the Year for founding historic Encyclopedia of Hinduism Indian Heritage project.
1992: World population is 5.2 billion; 17% or 895 million, live in India. Of these, 85%, or 760 million, are Hindu.
1992: Third Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival meets in Rio de Janeiro in conjunction with Earth Summit (UNCED). Hindu views of nature, environment and traditional values help inform the 70,000 delegates planning global future.
1992: Hindu radicals demolish Babri Masjid built in 1548 on Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya by Muslim conqueror Babar after he destroyed a Hindu temple marking the site. The monument was a central icon of Hindu resentment toward Muslim destruction of 60,000 temples.
1993: Fourth Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival meets in Kyoto, Japan. Green Cross is founded for environmental protection.
1993: Swami Chinmayananda is named 1992 Hindu of the Year, for lifetime of dynamic service to Sanatana Dharma worldwide-attains mahasamadhi July 26, at age 77.
1993: Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati, renowned yoga scholar, and Swami Vishnu-devananda, author of world's most popular manual on hatha yoga, reach parinirvana.
1993: Chicago's historic centenary Parliament of the World's Religions convenes in September. Presidents' Assembly, a core group of 25 men and women representing the world's faiths, is formed to perpetuate Parliament goals.
1994: Harvard University research identifies over 800 Hindu temples open for worship in the United States.
1994: Mata Amritanandamayi (1953-) charismatic woman saint of Kerala, is named 1993 Hindu of the Year.
1994: All India pays homage to Kanchi's beloved peripatetic tapasvin sage, Shri la Shri Shankaracharya Chandrashekharendra, who passes away January 7, during his 100th year.
1994: Hindu Heritage Endowment, first Hindu international trust, founded by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.
2000: World population is 6.2 billion. India population is 1.2 billion: 20% of world (projection by World Watch).
2050: British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) predicted that at the close of the 20th century the world would still be dominated by the West, but during the 21st century India will conquer her conquerors, preempting the place formerly held by technology. Religion worldwide will be restored to its earlier importance, and the center of world happenings will wander back from the shores of the Atlantic to the East where civilization originated.
2094: Bharat (formerly India) is world's most populous nation. Sanatana Dharma, finding new expressions through interactive electronic tools, guides humankind's future. Time flows on. Live long and prosper.
Aum. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Aum.
2) Reference: http://www.timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=2140338028
City older than Mohenjodaro unearthed
REUTERS [ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2002 6:25:32 PM ]
EW DELHI: Indian scientists have made an archaeological find dating back to 7500 BC suggesting the world's oldest cities came up about 4,000 years earlier than is currently believed, a top government official said on Wednesday.The scientists found pieces of wood, remains of pots, fossil bones and what appeared like construction material just off the coast of Surat, Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a news conference."Some of these artefacts recovered by the NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) from the site such as the log of wood date back to 7500 BC, which is indicative of a very ancient culture in the present Gulf of Cambay, that got submerged subsequently," Joshi said.Current belief is that the first cities appeared around 3500 BC in the valley of Sumer, where Iraq now stands, a statement issued by the government said."We can safely say from the antiquities and the acoustic images of the geometric structures that there was human activity in the region more than 9,500 years ago (7500 BC)," S.N. Rajguru, an independent archaeologist, said.The findings, if confirmed, will dislodge the Harappan Civilisation dating back to 2500 BC as India's oldest civilisation.
3) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/7/56-57_dna.html
July/August, 2001 SCIENCEDNA Exposes India's Past New theory posits that today's Indians arrived over 50,000 years agoGenetic evidence isn't just about freeing the unjustly convicted these days or determining whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not have children by his black slave, Sally Hemmings. It's also casting new light on the mid-18th century theory of India's history called the "Aryan Invasion." This, as you may recall having read it in virtually every historical account of India is the pervasive notion that about 1800 bce, hordes of horseback-riding, chariot-driving, light-skinned invaders from the West stormed into India, laying waste the advanced Indus Valley cities, bringing with them Sanskrit, the Rig Veda, the brahmin priest system and every other good thing!According to one of the most widely-used history books on India, The Wonder that was India, by A.L. Basham, the invading Aryans were, "semi-nomadic barbarians, tall, who tamed the horse, were pastoral, and migrated in bands eastwards, conquering local populations and intermarrying with them to form a ruling class. They brought with them their patrilineal family system, their worship of the sky gods...." These same people, Basham states, also went westwards, "to become the ancestors of the Greeks, Latins, Celts and Teutons." Just about every aspect of modern Hinduism is attributed either directly to these invaders, or as a result of their interaction with the conquered, likely Dravidian-speaking, people.The Aryan Invasion theory has been under siege from many sides, especially in the last ten years. Literary, archeological and astronomical evidence simply fail to support it, and critics are quick to point out the very convenient purpose the theory served: to support the British take-over of India at the same time, who were the latest in a series of invaders. Even mainstream historians, some of them students of the renowned Professor Basham, have abandoned it. But many still hold to it, in part because so many aspects of Hinduism have traditionally been explained in the West by this invasion. For example, take this explanation from Basham on the origins of the sudras, or worker caste. "The sudra was in fact a second-class citizen, on the fringes of [the conquering] Aryan society." Such assertions exacerbate caste tension even today.Now, recent DNA research has a one-word answer for this invasion theory: "Not." With the theory's fall would go most of the scholarly explanations of the origins of Sanskrit, the Vedas, brahmins, sudras, etc., etc.That refutation is just one result of a broad re-evaluation of human history as a result of genetic research. The latest theory is called the "recent replacement model." It is based on analysis of "mitochondreal DNA," which is passed from generation to generation only through the mother. Such analysis allows geneticists to trace back a person's ancestry, and determine when one group of people separated from another. The startling conclusion of this model is that all modern humans can be traced back to migrations out of East Africa, possibly just 50,000 years ago, and certainly no more than 200,000 years ago. Spreading out from the area near modern Ethiopia, they went north to Europe and west to India, then on to China and Australia. For as-yet-unknown reasons, they completely replaced the existing archaic humans who themselves had previously spread out of Africa two million years before. It must be admitted that neither geneticists nor anyone else are especially clear about how this "replacement" of the earlier humans occurred, and further discoveries may disrupt current theories and conclusions.The science of all this is complex, but Professor Richard Villems of the Estonian Biocentre in Estonia explained some of the consequences to Hinduism Today in an e-mail interview. "I am aware of the problem of the Aryan Invasion, and although some of my colleagues still want to see its influence in the Indian maternal lineages, we are very skeptical about it." "It is not entirely correct," Villems went on, "to say that Indians and Europeans separated some 50,000 years ago. It is, however, appropriate to conclude from this evidence that the maternal lineages of the present-day Indian populations are largely autochthonous, that is, unique to India, and very, very old. Indians are readily distinguished from Europeans, Near-Middle East populations and those living north or east of India." "There are signs," he wrote, "of later admixtures, particularly along the border regions, but this has had only a limited impact."We asked him about language, specifically the common belief that the presence of languages derived from Indo-European, such as Sanskrit and Hindi, in the north, and the Dravidic languages of the south indicate a racial divide. "There is only a small difference between the pools of maternal lineages between Indians," replied Dr. Villems, "whether they speak Indo-European or Dravidic languages. Also, the maternal genetic lineages of the Indian tribal populations are the same as the rest of the population." This latter discovery contradicts the theory that "Indians" displaced "tribals" from the plains regions of India at some point in history, pushing them into the hill regions.What language, we asked, did the ancestors of today's Indians and Europeans speak when they left Africa? "The problem," Villems replied, "with historic linguistics is that their time horizon is at best 8,000 years maximum, because their methods don't yield positive information below this time depth. So you will hardly find anyone who wants to speak about Indo-European or whatever language before that time. A few are 'brave enough' to suggest the split between Dravidic and Indo-European was 16,000 to 19,000 years ago.""I think that the Aryan Invasion theory," concluded Villems, "in its classical form is dead already, and an attempt to overkill it would perhaps rather scatter our attention from a more complete understanding of the demographic history of India's people."It is now the job of historians, social anthropologists and Hindus in general to weed out the vast array of myths generated by the Aryan Invasion theory, beginning with the notion that the people of north and south India are of fundamentally different origin. Right today, there are heated debates over the use of Sanskrit in South Indian temples because it is regarded as an "imposition" of northern brahmins. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other baseless conclusions about India derived from this persistent but unfounded legend. Professor Richard Villems can be contacted at: Estonian Biocentre, 23 Riia Street, 51010, Tartu, EstoniaPh: 372.7.375.064. Fx: 420.194e-mail: rvillems@ebc.ee. .
4) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/3/
Pythagoras the Mystic
The Greek rishi who taught reincarnation, vegetarianism and more
Pythagoras is generally accepted to be one of the most significant fountainheads of Western thought. Of particular interest to Hindus is the fact that his teachings were in tune with the thinking of the far East--especially India. In this article, Peter Westbrook, a writer and lecturer on music and cosmology, amplifies these connections. He is co-author with John Strohmeter of "Divine Harmony," a book that recounts the fascinating story of the life and teachings of this legendary man.
Many centuries ago there lived a great teacher who was part of an ancient guru parampara‚ a tradition. For nearly forty years he traveled extensively and studied at the feet of many masters. Eventually he founded a community centered on an ashram where he recommended a contemplative, vegetarian lifestyle, taught the doctrine of reincarnation and trained his followers in sacred knowledge aimed at uniting the human soul with the Divine. His biographers attribute miraculous abilities to him, not the least of which was the ability to mentally perceive the deepest structures of cosmic life.
Hinduism Today readers might well assume that these events took place in India and describe the life of a Vedic rishi or Hindu sage. But, in fact, the man in question came from Greece and was one of the founders of the Western tradition. His name was Pythagoras of Samos.
A Man of Many Talents
In the modern world Pythagoras is best remembered for the mathematical theorem that he is said to have created--the one about the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. But Pythagoras was responsible for much more; he played a pivotal role in transmitting knowledge from the wisdom of ancient traditions into the modern world. At the same time, he stands at the fountainhead of our culture. The ideas he set in motion were, according to Daniel Boorstin, among the most potent in modern history. Mathematics, science, philosophy, music--none of these would have taken the shape they did in the Western world without Pythagoras' discoveries. And yet, of all the founders of the Western tradition, Pythagoras is, by far, the least known. This is unfortunate, for understanding Pythagoras and his thought is of much more than purely historical interest. Appreciating the influence of this first scientist and philosopher is essential if we are to get beyond a superficial understanding of history. This is particularly important when we consider the perceived gap between Hinduism and the thought of the West.
Personal Life
As with many figures from antiquity, facts about Pythagoras' life are sketchy. Like his contemporary, the Buddha, he is said to be one of those divine men of whom history knows least because their lives were at once transfigured into legend. Nevertheless, a number of early writers have left us biographical information about Pythagoras which we have used to reconstruct his story in our book Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras.
Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos around 569 bce. Miraculous events surrounded his life from the very beginning. Legend holds that he was the son of Apollo, the Hellenic god of music and learning, and his birth was foretold by the oracle at Delphi. His early years were spent studying at all the centers of scientific and sacred learning in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Eventually he made his way to Egypt, where he lived for over twenty years, absorbing Egyptian knowledge of mathematics, music, medicine and the mystical teachings regarding the soul and the stages of its evolution.
Pythagoras' time in Egypt ended when the country was overrun by the armies of the Persian empire and he was taken into captivity in Babylon. This proved to be a blessing in disguise. Recognizing his prodigious learning and receptivity to new ideas, the Persian magi took Pythagoras into their confidence and he became a student of their equally ancient mystery school. He was also subject to other influences during this time, and probably undertook further travels. Whether he actually went as far as India is not known. Some writers think that he did. Others accept that he studied and absorbed in some form the Vedic philosophy of ancient India; certainly it was known in Persia at this time. And there was probably direct contact between India and Greece before the time of Alexander. Vitsaxis G. Vassilis, in his book Plato and the Upanishads, argues that exponents of literature, science, philosophy and religion traveled regularly between the two countries. He points to accounts by Eusebius and Aristoxenes, of the visits of Indian sages to Athens and their meetings with Greek philosophers. And reference to the visit of Indians to Athens is found in the fragment of Aristotle preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius who was also one of Pytha-
goras' biographers.
The Teachings
The teachings that had the most influence on Pythagoras can best be discerned by what he himself taught. And his teaching began in earnest, when, at the age of 56, he returned from his travels and settled in the Greek world. Initially he returned to Samos and established a school there, but he found himself in great demand in the political arena, although he was more inclined to pursue scientific research, philosophical discussion and solitary contemplation. For this, he found the atmosphere more conducive in the city of Kroton, a Greek settlement in southern Italy. Here he established a philosophical community which was to become known as the Pythagorean brotherhood.
The essence of the doctrine that formed the basis for the Pythagorean community was conveyed, we are told, in the first lecture that Pythagoras gave to those who gathered there, attracted by the fame that now preceded him. He taught them that the soul is immortal and that after death it migrates into other animated bodies. He said that all living things are kin and should be considered as belonging to one great family. He introduced new explanations of gods and spirits, of the heavenly spheres, of all the natures contained in heaven and earth, and of all the natures in between the visible and invisible.
The Kosmos
From this comprehensive vision emerge all the details of Pythagorean philosophy. From the vision itself comes a central idea--Kosmos. The word was coined by Pythagoras, and its original meaning was more than merely everything that exists. The Greek root of the word also gives us the word cosmetic. It implies beauty, adornment, an aesthetic component that springs from an inherent order that Pythagoras described by the term Harmonia, the divine principle that brings order to chaos and discord. This order also expresses itself as philia, love or friendship. For Pythagoras, philia was a cosmic force that attracts all the elements of nature into harmonious relationships. It helps preserve the order of planets as they move across the sky, and encourages men and women, once their souls have been purified, to help one another. The greatest love, philia, for the Pythagoreans was wisdom, sophia. Thus Pythagoras was the first Western philosopher (philia + sophia).
Just as was thought in India, Pythagoras taught that, different songs and modes were appropriate to different hours and seasons. In the spring, for example, he would arrange a ritual in which a group of disciples would sit in a circle with a lyre player seated in the middle. As the instrumentalist produced a melody, the others would begin to sing together in a spontaneous fashion, from which would emerge a song in unison, creating a powerful sense of joy. This ritual was also modified for use as a medicine to treat diseases of the body. Many stories have been handed down that illustrate Pythagoras' influence through music.
The Community
For the members of his brotherhood, the first goal of wisdom was attaining to the divine. And for this, Pythagoras recommended a highly disciplined lifestyle in a loving community. But entry into this community, essentially an ashram, required a lengthy and rigorous examination, including five years of silence. Once admitted to the inner circle, the students were exposed to abstract realms of study designed to turn attention to inner, universal values of consciousness for soul purification.
Modern science traces its origins to Pythagoras, but in its development dropped off the mystical teachings. Perhaps science needs to re-embrace the inclusive vision of this Western rishi.
For extracts from "The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras," log on to www.harmoniainstitute.com/pythagoras.htm
5) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/as-nhild.htm
A Wonder of Ancient India: The Mahabharata
By Nhilde Davidson
Daunted by its size and a misconception that an intimate understanding of Hinduism was needed, I never considered taking the Mahabharata off the shelf. By accident I tuned into an episode of an Indian television production of the Mahabharata (subtitled in English) -- and I was hooked. Ninety-six one-hour episodes later (and many more hours of reading) I am still enthralled and continue delving into this fascinating epic. Its appeal is on many different levels and, through the ages, ascetics and scholars alike have dedicated their lives to studying, collating, and translating the varied and voluminous material. When the series aired on Indian television, railway schedules had to be adjusted as each week almost the entire country sat in front of a TV. Similarly, most things ground to a halt when the Ramayana was serialized. We all love a hero -- heroic action appeals to children and adults alike -- and these epics are heroic. On a deeper level it is the philosophical depth and the psychological profundity that endure, keeping the stories alive in the soul, drawing one back again and again.
The epic is about a Holy War fought on the fields of Kurukshetra at the junction between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron or Kali Age. The Kali Yuga is said to have begun with the death of Krishna on February 17, 3102 BC -- thus dating the war to 3138 BC (in the epic Krishna died 36 years after the Great War). However, dating the epic is an ongoing debate. The extant written versions can be traced to the period 400-100 BC when the present form was settled on. The Mahabharata has eighteen major chapters or parvas which are, in turn, subdivided into many smaller parvas or sections. There are hundreds of different versions, adjusted by various sects to include their own individual religious biases (for example there are 300 known versions of the Adi Parva).
Krishna-Dvaipayana (also known as Veda Vyasa for his work in synthesizing the Vedas in their present form) is said to be the author of the original 24,000 slokas (verses). Sloka meter is characterized by 32 syllables divided into 4 pada or quarter verses of 8 syllables each, written in either 2 or 4 lines. It is the metrical form commonly used in Sanskrit epics. (1) The present form of the epic contains around 100,000 slokas, though it has been estimated that it may include as many as 150,000. Critical editions intended to discover the pristine material are only a few decades old, the best work having been done by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona.
While the accrual of additional material is ongoing, the age of the texts and questions about the historical accuracy of accounts in the epic are hotly debated. Many believe that the Mahabharata and also the Puranas give the history of not only the peoples of India but of humanity. Scholars have established that the parvas were written at different times -- some being much older than others.
One of the parvas contains the Ramayana. According to Hindu tradition the Ramayana recounts the history of Rama and Sita, and is believed to have taken place at the beginning of the Treta or Silver Age, i.e., shortly after the end of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age) -- roughly two million years ago by Hindu reckoning -- thus potentially very old indeed. The current archaeological dating of the age of humanity prevents scholars from giving credence to the Hindu chronology.
The known history of India does not include verifiable records of a war where millions of soldiers fought and died, or the destruction of Dvaraka (the region governed by Krishna) by tidal waves and cataclysms of the proportions described in the Mahabharata. This leads some to believe that the epics may not be historical. However, corroborating evidence in texts from other sources and countries suggests that these writings are a blend of accurate history, myth, and soul memory, as well as ethical treatises.
The crux of the matter is that the entire Mahabharata has one obvious aim -- to awaken a love of truth and right action. The core story is the thread that ties together a profound philosophical content. Embellished by substories to clarify various ethical premises, the central theme always leads in one direction -- the ascendancy of right over wrong, justice over injustice, truth over untruth. In the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas it is made clear that the side of Truth (represented by the Pandavas) will ultimately win. The reasons for this war and the human aspects of the story are what make the epic ever fascinating -- its slokas are the mirror whereby we see into our own souls, and the consequences of actions, both gross and subtle, are laid bare for scrutiny.
The cast of characters is large, but one soon finds oneself relating to and caring about them: Draupadi, the virtuous, beautiful wife of the five Pandava brothers; Vidura, the wise younger brother of Pandu and Dhritarashtra; Kunti, the mother of the three eldest Pandava brothers -- Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna; Madri, the mother of the younger twin sons of Pandu -- Nakula and Sahadeva. As all the characters come alive, the strange names and customs become familiar and comfortable.
The wisdom of the Pandava and Kaurava princes' tutors -- Bhishma, Drona, and Kripacharya -- enrich the text at every turn. Bhishma, patriarch of the families on both sides of the conflict, has a magnificence and stature which make him beloved and respected by all the characters, while his all-encompassing wisdom and virtue still earn him the love and reverence of Hindus today.
The central story concerns the rivalry for the throne of Hastinapura, where the ancient dynasty of India has its domain. As jealousy goes unchecked the dynasty is finally destroyed. Pandu, the second son of Santanu, becomes king because his elder brother, Dhritarashtra, was born blind and thus considered unfit to rule. However, when Pandu dies Dhritarashtra, already an able administrator of the country during Pandu's many absences, proceeds to reign. It is the line of succession that is the bone of contention. Yudhishthira, virtuous son of Pandu and eldest of the Pandava brothers, is heir-apparent, but Duryodhana, eldest of Dhritarashtra's and Gandhari's one hundred sons, wishes to be king. Gandhari has a gambler brother, Sakuni, living at court who helps inflame Duryodhana's jealousy and envy of the five Pandava princes.
Known as the Kauravas, the family and supporters of Dhritarashtra are spearheaded by Duryodhana, his brother Dushasana, Sakuni, and Karna (a protege of Duryodhana whose lineage is mysterious and who, ironically, is finally shown to be linked to the Pandavas). These four try many ways to eliminate the five sons of Pandu. As Dhritarashtra and Gandhari fail to curb Duryodhana's hatred of the Pandavas -- and more especially of his birthday twin, Pandu's second son, Bhima -- the peoples of Hastinapura are inexorably propelled into war.
Through the popularity of the Bhagavad-Gita the third son of Pandu, Arjuna, is perhaps the best known of his five sons. This parva recounts the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna just prior to the Battle of Kurukshetra. Arjuna asks Krishna why he should fight. Krishna, having sworn not to fight himself but to steer Arjuna's chariot during the battle, explains to Arjuna his duty -- in reality the duties of all who seek for truth.
One may read the epic just as an excellent tale, for it has all the elements of good storytelling, yet it also includes the psychological dilemmas inherent in life, though the meaning behind some of the episodes is not always clear -- each reader must interpret the episodes according to his own insight and vision. Like a diamond sparkling in the sun, each time a passage or an episode is reread new illuminations and nuances come into focus.
The Mahabharata says that even before the Battle of Kurukshetra the caste system had effectively come to an end. No longer were people to be considered as being born in a particular class, miscegenation having broken the old ways and codes. With the advent of the Kali Age all reflect, by their own actions, what class each act belongs to -- the determining factor being whether the motive arises out of wisdom and truth, the passionate or emotional nature, or from ignorance and darkness (avidya or untruth).
The Kshatriya, or divine warrior class, as represented by Arjuna and his peers, died out in this Holy War on the fields of Kurukshetra and the unholy aspects of life during the Kali Age are prescient. It was incumbent upon these godlike men -- whose concentration was on dharma (duty), artha (right resolve or motive), karma (action), and vidya (wisdom/truth) -- to be just, benevolent, and charitable at all times -- always protecting and honoring truth. As the eighteen-day war drags on, all partake of unrighteous acts eroding the old codes of honor and ethics. Finally, at the end of the war, with the loss of the ancient value system and their loyalty solely to truth destroyed, the link with the past is broken. After Kurukshetra a limited age of justice was reestablished and the sun of truth shone briefly -- but the Kali Age had begun.
Fortunately for us the old truths remain accessible in this vast storehouse of wisdom from ancient India. The Bhagavad-Gita, the best loved of all Hindu writings, is a profound treatise on the causes and results of action and stands on its own, yet coupled with the entire epic, it acquires an additional lustre -- for the Mahabharata has much to say about the qualities and duties of every aspect of life. B.R. TV's Indian production of the Mahabharata shows the veneration that the Hindus have for this work and their understanding of its effect for good on individual lives.
Use this epic tale as an inspiration to solve your problems. The story is your armour and also your weapon . . . Be heir to Light, to Justice and to Truth. Turn the Kurukshetra of your heart into Holy Ground -- That is Salvation!
Whatever there is in the World / Whatever this World is -- / Sage Vyasa's epic tale narrates all that the World is! -- From B.R. TV English subtitles
· (From Sunrise magazine, February/March 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
FOOTNOTE:
1. Mahabharata, produced and directed by B. R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra. Marketing Agents for India, J. Electronics, 258 Palika Bazar, Cannaught Place, New Delhi - 110001. (return to text)
6) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/mis-jj00.htm
Letter: On Revising the History of Vedic Civilization
By Rithvik. S. Vinekar
Having read on the Internet an article in Sunrise on the Mahabharata, I would like to bring to your attention a book I just read which relates to ancient India: Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization by Dr. David Frawley. Although there are many books on this subject, this one was written with the international -- particularly American or European -- reader in mind, who has no previous knowledge of Hindu mythology or history.
In this work Dr. Frawley relates the history and mythology of almost all the ancient world to the Vedic culture which developed on the banks of the now dry Saraswati River. Geological, literary, and archeological data suggest that long ago this mighty river flowed from Lake Manasarowar in Tibet to the sea through present-day Rajasthan. Manasarowar is linked with Manu, the first man according to Vedic tradition. Leaving his golden ship on a high Himalayan peak after the great flood, he is said to have come down to the plains, carrying with him the seeds of life, in order to establish his kingdom on the fertile banks of the Saraswati. The author suggests there may be a linkage of this event with Plato's Atlantean deluge near the end of the ice age, while cautioning the reader that the boat or ark may be only a metaphor. Although this date may seem irrational from the viewpoint of accepted academic history, more and more archeological evidence from the Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization, geological evidence of the existence and fate of the Saraswati River, and astronomical dating of events recorded in the Vedas, show the antiquity of this ancient civilization. They also contradict the standard Western theory, formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, of Vedic civilization beginning with an Aryan invasion of northern India around 1500 bc.
The Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization is now found to be a collection of nearly 2,500 settlements of various periods along the Saraswati and other rivers, some of which date earlier than 6000 bc. These sites show sure signs of having cultural elements in common with later Vedic culture. The Indus script was first dismissed as imagistic, but has since been found to be very similar to the later Brahmi script, and is possibly related to early Semitic scripts from which the present-day alphabet developed.
The historicity of Vedic religion and its scriptures was once dismissed, in part because it praised very highly the supposedly mythical Saraswati River. Satellite and geological evidence show, however, that although the Saraswati changed its course many times over several thousand years before disappearing, long ago it was as described in the Vedas. Fortunately, some scholars are beginning to interpret history taking into account the geography of the region in the past. In light of new and growing evidence, an objective reexamination of existing data and reinterpretation of ancient history is necessary today.
(From Sunrise magazine, June/July 2000; copyright © 2000 Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
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7) reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bud_statwrld.htm 020320yd
While estimates vary between 200-500 million adherents, the generally agreed number of Buddhists is estimated at around 350 million (6% of the world's population). This makes Buddhism the world's fourth largest (in terms of number of adherents) religion.
World Religions Number of Adherents
Christianity 2 billion
Islam 1.2 billion
Hinduism 900 million
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 900 million
Buddhism 350 million
Chinese traditional religion 225 million
Primal-indigenous 190 million
Yoruba religion 20 million
Juche 19 million
Sikhism 18 million
Judaism 15 million
Spiritism 14 million
Babi and Bahai faiths 6 million
Jainism 4 million
Shinto 4 million
Cao Dai 3 million
Tenrikyo 2.4 million
Neo-Paganism 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism 800 thousand
Scientology 750 thousand
Rastafarianism 700 thousand
Zoroastrianism 150 thousand
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bstats_b.htm 020320yd Branch Percentage Number of Adherents
Mahayana 56% 185,000,000
Theravada 38% 124,000,000
Vajrayana (Tibetan) 6% 20,000,000
Branch Religion Number of Adherents
Catholic Christianity 1,030,000,000
Sunni Islam 940,000,000
Vaishnavites Hinduism 580,000,000
Liberal Protestant Christianity 240,000,000
Orthodox/Eastern Christian Christianity 240,000,000
Shaivites Hinduism 220,000,000
Conservative Protestant Christianity 200,000,000
Mahayana Buddhism 185,000,000
Theravada Buddhism 124,000,000
Shiite Islam 120,000,000
African indigenous sects Christianity 110,000,000
Pentecostal Christianity 105,000,000
Neo-Hindus and reform Hindus Hinduism 22,000,000
Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism 20,000,000
Sikhism Sikhism 18,000,000
Jehovah's Witnesses Christianity 12,000,000
Latter Day Saints Christianity 11,200,000
Ahmadiyya Islam 10,000,000
Veerashaivas (Lingayats) Hinduism 10,000,000
Baha'i World Faith Baha'i Faiths 6,500,000
Conservative Judaism 4,500,000
Unaffiliated and Secular Judaism 4,500,000
Shinto all branches Shinto 4,000,000
Svetambara Jainism 4,000,000
Reform Judaism 3,750,000
Seicho-No-Ie New Japanese 3,200,000
Tenrikyo New Japanese 2,800,000
PL Kyodan New Japanese 2,600,000
Orthodox Judaism 2,000,000
New Thought (Unity, Christian Science) Christianity 1,500,000
Sekai Kyuseikyo New Japanese 800,000
Sthanakavasis Jainism 750,000
Zenrinkai New Japanese 600,000
Druze Islam 450,000
Tensho Kotai Jingukyo New Japanese 400,000
Ennokyo New Japanese 300,000
Digambaras Jainism 155,000
Reconstructionist Judaism 150,000
Parsis Zoroastrianism 110,000
Gabars Zoroastrianism 20,000
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.asp?loc=ct&letter=A by country - stats
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introleastreached.html
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introcomplete.html world survey convert project design
http://www.joshuaproject.net/peoplenumbers.html operation world
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/cntryxx.htm worlwide
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/jpcxind.htm peoples in India
http://www.hindunet.org/conversions/conversion/ articles
Reference: The Detroit News
Racial,ethnic makeup of 10 largest Christian denominations in the U.S.
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
No figures available for racial/ethnic makeup for 4, 5, 7, 8, 9:
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
About 42% of the US Catholics are minorities
38% Hispanic, 3.8% African American, Vietnamese 0.33%, Korean 0.13%,
Chinese 0.06%
Hispanics are expected to become the majority in the U.S Roman Catholic Church
between 2010 and 2020.
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
85% White, 11% Ethnic (Asian, Hispanic, etc), 4% African American
About 15% of the congregations have predominantly minority memberships
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
About 5.6% of the members are minorities
4.2% African American, 0.67% Asian, 0.48% Hispanic, 0.19% American Indian
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
African American predominantly
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
African American predominantly
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
About 2% of the members are minorities
0.38% African American, 0.42% Asian, 0.57% Hispanic, 0.14% American Indian
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
White predominantly
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
African American predominantly
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
African American predominantly
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
About 6.8% of the members are minorities
2.6% African American, 1.8% Asian, 0.9% Hispanic, 0.4% American Indian, 1.1% other
---------------------------
Beyond Mind:
Beyond Mind
Learn Meditation and Gentle Breathing Techniques Books: Optional Reading Courses in meditation and gentle breathing techniques from the traditional ashtanga yoga system are taught by experienced certified instructor David Netzorg, M.S., serving Greater Detroit (Michigan) Windsor (Canada), and surrounding areas. These courses in meditation and breathing techniques don't require any reading, although reading is always encouraged. Each course participant is given a textbook (Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass), but reading it is optional. All of the essential knowledge in each course is transmitted in the traditional way, by word of mouth and repeated example. But, for those who prefer to do some reading, we offer the following list of standard books as a way to get started. Information on how to obtain the books (and others like them) is given the bottom of the list. For more information, contact David Netzorg, M.S. Phone: (248) 353-8777 E-mail: info@beyondmind.com Web site: http://www.beyondmind.com . Scriptures (listed in alphabetical order) The Bhagavad Gita The Bible (including The Torah, The Old Testament, The New Testament, etc.) The Dhammapada The Qur`an (The Koran) The Tao Te Ching The Upanishads Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Note: Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (Yoga Aphorisms) is the main traditional treatise on Ashtanga Yoga. Note: Raja Yoga is another name for Ashtanga Yoga. Science of Yoga, by I. K. Taimini; Theosophical Publishing House Textbook of Yoga Psychology, by Rammurti S. Mishra; Julian Press Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, by Swami Hariharananda Aranya Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Pandit Usharbudh Arya Aphorisms of Patanjali, ...; Vedanta Press Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda Books on Ashtanga Yoga by Baba Hari Dass All published by Sri Rama Publishing, PO Box 2550, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass Fire Without Fuel, by Baba Hari Dass Silence Speaks: From the Chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, by Baba Hari Dass A Child's Garden of Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Hariakhan Baba, Known and Unknown, by Baba Hari Dass The Path to Enlightenment is Not a Highway, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 1: Binding Thoughts and Liberation, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 2: Mind is Our World, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 3: Selfless Service, The Spirit of Karma Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Sweeper to Saint: Stories of Holy India, by Baba Hari Dass The Yellow Book, by Baba Hari Dass Cat and Sparrow, by Baba Hari Dass Fun with Fitness Asanas, by Baba Hari Dass The Magic Gem, by Baba Hari Dass Mystic Monkey, by Baba Hari Dass Other Books on Ashtanga Yoga Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda Be Here Now, by Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.) The Science of Being and Art of Living, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi The Seven States of Consciousness, by Anthony Campbell Books on Hatha Yoga Hathayoga Pradipika of Svatmarama, commentary of Bhramananda; Adyar Library and Research Center Note: "Hathayoga" is sometimes spelled as two words: "Hatha Yoga." Gherand Samhita, ...; Oriental Books Reprint Corp Shiva Samhita, translated by Rai Bahdur Srisa Chandra Vasu; Oriental Books Reprint Corp. Books on Gyan Yoga Note: The word "Gyan" is sometimes spelled "Jnana" Ashtavakra Samhita, by Swami Nityaswarupananda; Advaita Ashram Atma Bodha of Shankaracharya: Self Analysis and Self Knowledge, by Sri Rammurti Mishra Panchadashi, by Hari Prasad Shastri Viveka Chudamani of Sri Shankaracharya, by Swami Madhavananda; Advaita Ashram Books on Bhakti Yoga Narada's Bhakti Sutras, by Swami Tyagisananda; Sri Ramakrishna Math Srimad Bhagavatam (One translation and commentary is: "The Wisdom of God," by Swami Prabhavananda; Vedanta Press) Books on Gyan Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga Sri Ramacharita Manasa (The Ramayana), ...; Gita Press Srimad Bhagavadgita (The Bhagavad Gita), ...; Gita Press Other Books on Meditation and Breathing Techniques Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual of Meditation, by Thich Nhat Hanh Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by S. Suzuki Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn A Path With Heart : A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, by Jack Kornfield Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery, by Dean Ornish, M.D. Inner Silence: A Guide to Peace and Empowerment, by Andrew Da Passano with Judith Plowden The Art of Meditation, by Joel S. Goldsmith Return of the Rishi: A Doctor's Story of Spiritual Transformation and Ayurvedic Healing, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Perfect Health, The Mind/Body Guide, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Eight Weeks to Optimum Health : A Proven Program for Taking Full Advantage of Your Body's Natural Healing Power, by Andrew Weil, M.D. Powers of Mind, by Adam Smith Recent Books on How to Allow Positive Changes A Course in Miracles, by Helen Schucman Love is Letting Go of Fear, by Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D. Handbook to Higher Consciousness, by Ken Keyes, Jr. Conscious Contact: The Transpersonal Journey, by Jerry Williams The Twelve Steps for Everyone (Words to Live By), by Grateful Members Getting the Love You Want, by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. Feeling Good, by David D. Burns, M.D. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Hidden Guilt: How to Stop Punishing Yourself and Enjoy the Happiness You Deserve, by Lewis Engel, Ph.D. and Tom Ferguson, M.D. You Can Negotiate Anything, by Herb Cohen The Dance of Anger, by Harriet G. Lerner, Ph.D. Dr. Weisinger's Anger Work-Out Book, by Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D. The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D. Where to Get the Books Listed Above Libraries (including Inter-Library Loan) If your favorite library doesn't have the book you want, then walk over to the reference desk and ask the reference librarian to get you that book from the (free) inter-library loan system. Even the smallest public library can use the inter-library loan system to get you books from major libraries all over the country, at no cost to you. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to get the book you are looking for, but you may be surprised to discover the wealth of books that are available to you in this way. Local bookstores Look in the Yellow Pages under the two headings: "Book Dealers - Retail" and "Book Dealers - Used." Gateways Book & Gift Store 1018 Pacific Avenue Santa Cruz, California 95076 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 459-0055, Fax: 1(408) 429-1395 e-mail: orders@gatewaysbooks.com East West Bookshop 324 Castro Street Mountain View, California 94041-1297 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 909-6161 Phone: 1(650) 988-9800 Fax: 1(415) 988-9884 e-mail: info@eastwest.com web site: http://www.eastwest.com (East West Bookshop also has stores in Sacramento, California and Seattle, Washington) Bodhi Tree Bookstore 8585 Melrose Avenue West Hollywood, CA 90069-5199 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 825-9798 Phone: 1(310) 659-1733 Fax: 1(310) 659-0178 e-mail: bodhitree@bodhitree.com web site: http://www.bodhitree.com Bookfinder Internet web site. Helps you find book dealers who have the the specific book you are looking for. This web site is connected to several databases listing millions of books, both new and out-of-print. You can also browse through this site by entering a subject or key word in the search window. Web site at http://www.bookfinder.com Amazon.com books Internet web site of a major dealer in new and out-of-print books. Another good place to browse. Web site at http://www.amazon.com Internet Search Engines You can use internet search engines to find web sites and Usenet news groups that mention the book you are looking for. This can lead you to all sorts of useful information, such as on-line text of the book, sources for obtaining the book, reviews and discussions of the book, information on the same topic as the book, etc. Some major internet search engines are AltaVista http://altavista.digital.com Excite http://www.excite.com HotBot http://www.hotbot.com Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com For more information, contact David Netzorg, M.S. Phone: (248) 353-8777 E-mail: info@beyondmind.com Web site: http://www.beyondmind.com .
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
http://shikshanic.nic.in/cd50years/u/45/3Z/453Z0703.htm other research bodies survey
http://shikshanic.nic.in/cd50years/u/45/3Z/Toc.htm sanskrit related
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ online books
http://www.bharatvani.org/michel_danino/ links
http://www.amiahindu.com/
http://www.adherants.com statistics related
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust/
http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/archives/byauthor/aghosh/articles.html
http://i.webring.com/webring?ring=hinduring;list url list
http://www.urday.com scriptures etc
http://www.iskcon.org/main/twohk/philo/roots/systems.htm 6 schools of philosophy
1 existence (sat) 2 consciousness (chit/sri) 3 joy (anand/akaal) 4 being 5 becoming: (1,2,3/1,3,2/2,3,1/2,1,3/3,2,1/3,1,2) (???)
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP) wondering/wandering….
200 B.C.E: Patanjali – YogaSutra 1.1: “ Yogasch Chit Vriti Nirodh.. “ (Yoga is Control over Movements of the Mind ..)
Reference:
http://hrih.hypermart.net/patanjali/download/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6709/page6.html
"Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali"
- by Samkhya-Yogacharya Swami Hariharananda Aranya -
Published by Calcutta University Press
APPENDIX F
COLLECTION OF YOGA APHORISMS
BOOK I
ON CONCENTRATION
1. Now then Yoga is being explained.
2. Yoga is the suppression of the modifications of the mind.
3 Then the Seer abides in Itself.
4. At other times the Seer appears to assume the form of the modification of the mind.
5. They (modifications) fall into five varieties, of which some are 'Klista' and the rest 'Aklista'.
6. (They are) Pram®na, Viparyaya, Vikalpa, (dreamless) sleep and recollection.
7. (Of these) Perception, inference and testimony (verbal communication) constitute the Pramanas.
8. Viparyaya or illusion is false knowledge formed of a thing as other than what it is.
9. The modification called 'Vikalpa' is based on verbal cognition in regard to a thingwhich does not exist. (It is a kind of useful knowledge arising out of the meaning of a word but having no corresponding reality. )
10. Dreamless sleep is the mental modification produced by the condition of inertia as the state of vacuity or negation (of waking and dreaming).
11. Recollection is mental modification caused by reproduction of the previous impression of an object without adding anything from other sources.
12. By practice and detachment these can be stopped.
13. Exertion to acquire Sthiti or a tranquil state of mind devoid of fluctuations is called practice.
14. That practice when continued for a long time without break and with devotion becomes firm in foundation.
15. When the mind loses all desire for objects seen or described in the scriptures it acquires a state of utter desirelessness which is called detachment.
16. Indifference to the Gunas or the constituent principles, achieved through a knowledge of the nature of Purusha, is called Paravairagya (supreme detachment).
17. When concentration is reached with the help of Vitarka, Vichara, Ananda and Asmita, it is called Samprajnata-sam®dhi.
18. Asamprajnata-Samadhi is the other kind of Samadhi which arises through constant practice of Paravairagya which brings about the disappearance of all fluctuations of the mind, wherein only the latent impressions remain.
19. While in the case of the Videhas or the discarnates and of the Prakrtilayas or those subsisting in their elemental constituents, it is caused by nescience which results in objective existence.
20. Others (who follow the path of the prescribed effort) adopt the means of reverential faith, energy, repeated recollection, concentration and real knowledge (and thus attain Asamprajnata-samadhi).
21. Yogins with intense ardour achieve concentration and the result thereof quickly.
22. On account of the methods being slow, medium and speedy, even among those Yogins who have intense ardour, there are differences.
23. From special devotion to isvara also (concentration becomes imminent).
24. Isvara is a particular Purusha unaffected by affliction, deed, result of action or the latent impressions thereof.
25. In Him the seed of omniscience has reached its utmost development which cannot be exceeded.
26. (He is) The teacher of former teachers because with Him there is no limitation by time (to His omnipotence). '
27. The sacred word designating Him is Pranava or the mystic syllable OM.
28. (Yogins) Repeat it and contemplate upon its meaning.
29. From that comes realisation of the individual self and the obstacles are resolved.
30. Sickness, incompetence, doubt, delusion, sloth, non-abstention, erroneous conception, non-attainment of any Yogic stage, and instability to stay in a Yogic state-these distractions of the mind are the impediments.
31. Sorrow, dejection, restlessness of body, inhalation and exhalation arise from (previous) distractions.
32. For their stoppage (i.e. of distractions) practice (of concentration) on a single principle should be made.
33. The mind becomes purified by the cultivation of feelings of amity, compassion, goodwill and indifference respectively towards happy, miserable, virtuous and sinful creatures.
34. By exhaling and restraining the breath also (the mind is calmed).
35. The development of higher objective perceptions called Visayavati also brings about tranquillity of mind.
36. Or by perception which is free from sorrow and is radiant (stability of mind can also be produced).
37. Or (contemplating) on a mind which is free from desires (the devotee's mind gets stabilised).
38. Or by taking as the object of meditation the images of dreams or the state of dreamless sleep (the mind of the Yogin gets stabilised).
39. Or by contemplating on whatsoever thing one may like (the mind becomes stable ).
40. When the mind develops the power of stabilising on the smallest size as well as on the greatest one, then the mind comes under control.
41. When the fluctuations of the mind are weakened, the mind appears to take on the features of the object of meditation-whether it be the cogniser (Grahita), the instrument of cognition (Grahana) or the object cognised (Grahya)-as does a transparent jewel, and this identification is called Samapatti or engrossment.
42. The engrossment, in which there is the mixture of word, its meaning(i.e. the object) and its knowledge, is known as Savitarka Samapatti. .
43. When the memory is purified, the mind appears to be devoid of its own nature (i.e. of reflective consciousness) and only the object (on which it is contemplating) remains illuminated. This kind of engrossment is called Nirvitarka Samapatti.
44. By this (foregoing) the Savichara and Nirvichara engrossments, whose objects are subtle, are also explained.
45. Subtlety pertaining to objects culminates in A-linga or the unmanifest.
46. These are the only kinds of objective concentrations. .
47. On gaining proficiency in Nirvichara, purity in the inner instruments of cognition is developed. .
48. The knowledge that is gained in that state is called Rtambhara (filled with truth).
49. (That knowledge) Is different from that derived from testimony or through inference, because it relates to particulars (of objects).
50. The latent impression born of such knowledge is opposed to the formation of other latent impressions.
51. By the stoppage of that too (on account of the elimination of the latent impressions of Samprajnana) objectless concentration takes place through suppression of all modifications.
BOOK II
ON PRACTICE
1. Tapas (austerity or sturdy self-discipline -mental, moral and physical), Svadhyaya (repetition of sacred Mantras or study of sacred literature) and Isvara-pranidhana (complete surrender to God) are Kriya-yoga (Yoga in the form of action).
2. That Kriya-yoga (should be practised) for bringing about Samadhi and minimising the Klesas.
3. Avidya (misapprehension about the real nature of things), Asmita (egoism), Raga (attachment), Dvesa (aversion) and Abhinivesa (fear of death) are the five Klesas (afflictions).
4. Avidya is the breeding ground for the others whether they be dormant, attenuated, interrupted or active.
5. Avidya consists in regarding a transient object as everlasting, an impure object as pure, misery as happiness and the non-self as self.
6. Asmita is tantamount to the identification of Purusha or pure Consciousness with Buddhi.
7. Attachment is that (modification) which follows remembrance of pleasure.
8. Aversion is that (modification) which results from misery.
9. As in the ignorant so in the learned, the firmly established inborn fear of annihilation is the affliction called Abhinivesa.
10. The subtle Klesas are forsaken (i.e. destroyed) by the cessation of productivity (i.e. disappearance) of the mind.
11. Their means of subsistence or their gross states are avoidable by meditation.
12. Karmasaya or latent impression of action based on afflictions, becomes active in this life or in a life to come.
13. As long as Klesa remains at the root, Karmsaya produces three consequences in the form of birth, span of life and experience.
14. Because of virtue and vice these (birth, span and experience) produce pleasurable and painful experiences.
15. The discriminating persons apprehend (by analysis and anticipation) all worldly objects as sorrowful because they cause suffering in consequence, in their afflictive experiences and in their latencies and also because of the contrary nature of the Gunas (which produces changes all the time).
16. (That is why) Pain which is yet to come is to be discarded.
17. Uniting the Seer or the subject with the seen or the object, is the cause of that which has to be avoided.
18. The object or knowable is by nature sentient, mutable and inert. It exists in the form of the elements and the organs, and serves the purpose of experience and emancipation.
19. Diversified (Visesa), undiversified (Avisesa), indicator-only (Lingamatra), and that which is without any indicator (Alinga) are the states of the' Gunas.
20. The Seer is absolute Knower. Although pure, modifications (of Buddhi) are witnessed by Him as an onlooker.
21. To serve as objective field to Purusha, is the essence or nature of the knowable.
22. Although ceasing to exist in relation to him whose purpose is fulfilled, the knowable does not cease to exist on account of being of use to others.
23. Alliance is the means of realising the true nature of the object of the Knower and of the owner, the Knower (i.e. the sort of alliance which contributes to the realisation of the Seer and the seen is this relationship).
24. (The alliance has) Avidya or nescience as its cause.
25. The absence of alliance that arises from lack of it (Avidya) is the freedom and that is the state of liberation of the Seer.
26. Clear and distinct (unimpaired) discriminative knowledge is the means of liberation.
27. Seven kinds of ultimate insight come to him (the Yogin who has acquired discriminative enlightenment).
28. Through the practice of the different accessories to Yoga, when impurities are destroyed, there arises enlightenment culminating in discriminative enlightenment.
29. Yama (restraint), Niyama (observance), Asana (posture), Pranayama (regulation of breath), Pratyahara (withholding of senses), Dharana (fixity), Dhyana (meditation) and Samidha (perfect concentration) are the eight means of attaining Yoga.
30. Ahimsa (non-injury), Satya (truth), Asteya (abstention from stealing), Brahmacharya (continence) and Aparigraha (abstinence from avariciousness) are the five Yamas (forms of restraint).
31. These (the restraints), however, become a great vow when they become universal, being unrestricted by any consideration of class, place, time or concept of duty.
32. Cleanliness, contentment, austerity (mental and physical discipline), Svadhyaya (study of scriptures and chanting of Mantras) and devotion to God are the Niyamas (observances).
33. When these restraints and observances are inhibited by perverse thoughts, the opposites should be thought of.
34. Actions arising out of perverse thoughts like injury etc. are either performed by oneself, got done by another or approved ; performed either through anger, greed or delusion; and can be mild, moderate or intense. That they are the causes of infinite misery and unending ignorance is the contrary thought.
35. As the Yogin becomes established in non-injury, all beings coming near him (the Yogin) cease to be hostile.
36. When truthfulness is achieved, the words (of the Yogin) acquire the power of making them fruitful.
37. When non-stealing is established, all jewels present themselves (to the Yogin).
38. When continence is established, Virya is acquired.
39. On attaining perfection in non-acceptance, knowledge of past and future existences arises.
40. From the practice of purification, aversion towards one's own body is developed and thus aversion extends to contact with other bodies.
41. Purification of the mind, pleasantness of feeling, one-pointedness, subjugation of the senses and ability for self-realisation are acquired.
42. From contentment unsurpassed happiness is gained.
43. Through destruction of impurities, practice of austerities brings about perfection of the body and the organs.
44. From study and repetition of the Mantras, communion with the desired deity is established.
45. From devotion to God, Samadhi is attained.
46. Motionless and agreeable form (of staying) is Asana (Yogic posture).
47. By relaxation of effort and meditation on the infinite (,sanas are perfected).
48. From that arises immunity from Dvandvas or opposite conditions.
49. That (Asana) having been perfected, regulation of the flow of inhalation and exhalation is Pranayama (breath control).
50. That (Pranayama) has external operation (Vahya-vrtti), internal operation (Abhyantara-vrtti) and suppression (Stambha-vrtti). These, again, when observed according to space, time and number become long and subtle.
51. The fourth Pranayama transcends external and internal operations.
52. By that the veil over manifestation (of knowledge) is thinned.
53. (Moreover) The mind acquires fitness for Dharana.
54. When separated from their corresponding objects, the organs follow, as it were, the nature of the mind, that is called Pratyahara (restraining of the organs).
55. That brings supreme control of the organs.
BOOK III
SUPERNORMAL POWERS
1. Dharana is the mind's (Chitta's) fixation on a particular point in space.
2. In that (Dharana) the continuous flow of similar mental modifications is called Dhyana or meditation. .
3. When the object of meditation only shines forth in the mind, as though devoid of the thought of even the self (who is meditating), then that state is called Samadha or concentration.
4. The three together on the same object is called Samyama.
5. By mastering that (Samyama), the light of knowledge (Prajna) dawns.
6. It (Samyama) is to be applied to the stages (of practice).
7. These three are more intimate practices than the previously mentioned ones.
8. That also is (to be regarded as) external in respect of Nirvija or seedless concentration.
9. Suppression of the latencies of fluctuation and appearance of the latencies of arrested state, taking place at every moment of blankness of the arrested state in the same mind, is the mutation of the arrested state of the mind.
10. Continuity of the tranquil mind (in an arrested state) is ensured by its latent impressions.
11. Diminution of attention to all and sundry and development of onepointedness is called Samadhi-parinama or mutation of the concentrative mind.
12. There (in Samadhi) again (in the state of concentration) the past and the present modifications being similar, it is Ekagrata-parinama, or mutation of the stabilised state of the mind.
13. By these are explained the three changes, viz, of essential attributes or characteristics, of temporal characters, and of states of the Bhutas and the Indriyas (i.e. all the knowable phenomena).
14. That which continues its existence all through the varying characteristics, namely, the quiescent, i e. past, the uprisen, i.e. present, or unmanifest (but remaining as potent force), i.e. future, is the substratum (or object chracterised).
15. Change of sequence (of characteristics) is the cause of mutative differences.
16. Knowledge of the past and the future can be derived through Samyama on the three Parinamas (changes).
17. Word, object implied, and the idea thereof overlapping, produce one unified impression. If Samyama is practised on each separately, knowledge of the meaning of the sounds produced by all beings can be acquired.
18. By the realisation of latent impressions, knowledge of previous birth is acquired.
19. (By practising Samyama) On notions, knowledge of other minds is developed.
20. The prop (or basis) of the notion does not get known because that is not the object
of (the Yogin's) observation.
21. When perceptibility of the body is suppressed by practising Samyama on its visual character, disappearance of the body is effected through its getting beyond the sphere of perception of the eye.
22. Karma is either fast or slow in fructifying. By practising Samyama on Karma or on portents, fore-knowledge of death can be acquired.
23. Through Samyama on friendliness (amity) and other similar virtues, strength is obtained therein.
24. (By practising Samyama) On (physical) strength, the strength of elephants etc, can be acquired.
25. By applying the effulgent light of the higher sense-perception (Jyotismati), knowledge of subtle objects, or things obstructed from view, or placed at a great distance, can be acquired.
26. (By practising Samyama) On the sun (the point in the body known as the solar entrance) the knowledge of the cosmic regions is acquired.
27. (By practising Samyama) On the moon (the lunar entrance) knowledge of the arrangements of stars is acquired.
28. (By practising Samyama) On the pole-star, motion of the stars is known.
29. (By practising Samyama) On the navel plexus, knowledge ofthe composition of the body is derived.
30. (By practising Samyama) On the trachea, hunger and thirst can be subdued.
31. Calmness is attained by Samyama on the bronchial tube.
32. (By practising Samyama) On the coronal light, Siddhas can be seen.
33. From knowledge known as Pratibha (intuition), everything becomes known.
34. (By practising Samyama) On the heart, knowledge of the mind is acquired.
35. Experience (of pleasure or pain) arises from a conception which does not distinguish between the two extremely different entities, viz. Buddhisattva and Purusha. Such experience exists for another (i.e. Purusha). That is why through Samyama on Purusha (who oversees all experiences and also their complete cessation), a knowledge regarding Purusha is acquired.
36. Thence (from the knowledge of Purusha) arise Pratibha (prescience), Sravana (supernormal power of hearing), Vedana (supernormal power of touch), Adarsa (supernormal power of sight), Asvada (supernormal poker of taste) and Varta (supernormal power of smell).
37. They (these powers) are impediments to Samadhi, but are (regarded as) acquisitions in a normal fluctuating state of the mind.
38. When the cause of bondage gets weakened and the movements of the mind are known, the mind can get into another body.
39. By conquering the vital force (of life) called Udana, the chance of immersion in water or mud, or entanglement in the thorns, is avoided and exit from the body at will is assured.
40. By conquering the vital force called Samana, effulgence is acquired.
41. By Samyama on the relationship between akasa and the power of hearing, divine sense of hearing is gained.
42. By practising Samyama on the relationship between the body and akasa and by concentrating on the lightness of cotton wool, passage through the sky can be secured.
43. When the unimagined conception can be held outside, i.e. unconnected with the body, it is called Mahavideha or the great discarnate. By Samyama on that, the veil over illumination (of Buddhisattva) is removed.
44. By Samyama on the grossness, the essential character, the subtlety, the inherence and the objectiveness, which are the five forms of. the Bhotas or elements, mastery over Bhutas is obtained.
45. Thence develop the power of minification and other bodily acquisitions. There is also no resistance by its characteristics.
46. Perfection of body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.
47. By Samyama on the receptivity, essential character, I-sense, inherent quality and objectiveness of the five organs, mastery over them can be acquired.
48. Thence come powers of rapid movement as of the mind, action of organs independent of the body and mastery over Pradhana, the primordial cause.
49. To one established in the discernment between Buddhi and Purusha come supremacy over all beings and omniscience.
50. By renunciation of that (Visoka attainment) even, comes liberation on account of the destruction of the seeds of evil.
51. When invited by the celestial beings, that invitation should not be accepted nor should it cause vanity because it involves possibility of undesirable consequences.
52. Differentiating knowledge of the self and the non-self comes from practising Samyama on moment and its sequence.
53. When species, temporal character and position of two different things being indiscernible they look alike, they can be differentiated thereby (by this knowledge).
54. Knowledge of discernment is Taraka or intuitional, is comprehensive of all things and of all times, and has no sequence.
55. (Whether secondary discriminative discernment is acquired or not) When equality is established between Buddhisattva and Purusha in their purity, liberation takes place.
BOOK IV
ON THE SELF-IN-ITSELF OR LIBERATION
1. Supernormal powers come with birth or are attained through herbs, incantations, austerities or concentration.
2. (The mutation of body and organs into those of one born in a different species) Takes place through the filling in of their innate nature.
3. Causes do not put the nature into motion, only the removal of obstacles takes place through them. This is like a farmer breaking down the barrier to let the water flow. (The hindrances being removed by the causes, the nature impenetrates by itself).
4. All created minds are constructed from pure I-sense.
5. One (principal) mind directs the many created minds in the variety of their activities.
6. Of these (minds with supernormal powers) those obtained through meditation are without any subliminal imprints.
7. The actions of Yogins are neither white nor black, whereas the actions of others are of three kinds.
8. Thence (from the other three varieties of Karma) are manifested the subconscious impressions appropriate to their consequences.
9. On account of similarity between memory and corresponding latent impressions, the subconscious impressions of feelings appear simultaneously even when they are separated by birth, space and time.
10. Desire for self-welfare being everlasting, it follows that the subconscious impression from which it arises must be beginningless.
11. On account of being held together by cause, result, refuge and supporting object, Vasana disappears when they are absent.
12. The past and the future are in reality present in their fundamental forms, there being only difference in the characteristics of the forms taken at different times.
13. Characteristics, which are present at all times, are manifest and subtle, and are composed of the three Gunas.
14. On account of the co-ordinated mutation ofthe three Gunas, an object appears as a unit.
15. In spite of sameness of objects, on account of there being separate minds they (the object and its knowledge) follow different paths, that is why they are entirely different.
16. Object is not dependent on one mind, because if it were so, then what will happen when it is not cognised by that mind ?
17. External objects are known or unknown to the mind according as they colour the mind.
18. On account of the immutability of Purusha who is master of the mind, the modifications of the mind are always known or manifest.
19. It (the mind) is not self-illuminating being an object (knowable).
20. Besides, both (the mind and its objects) cannot be cognised simul taneously.
21. If the mind were to be illumined by another mind then there will be repetition ad infinitum of illumining minds and intermixture of memory.
22. (Though) Untransmissible, the metempiric Consciousness getting the likeness of Buddhi becomes the cause of the consciousness of Buddhi.
23.The mind-stuff being affected by the Seer and the seen, is all-comprehensive.
24. That (the mind) though variegated by innumerable subconscious impressions, exists for another, since it acts conjointly.
25. For one who has realised the distinctive entity, I-e. Purusha, inquiries about the nature of his self cease.
26. (Then) The mind inclines towards discriminative knowledge and naturally gravitates towards the state of liberation.
27. Through its breaches (i.e. breaks in discriminative knowledge) arise other fluctuations of the mind due to (residual) latent impressions.
28. It has been said that their removal (i.e. of fluctuations) follows the same process as the removal of afflictions.
29. When one becomes disinterested even in omniscience one attains perpetual discriminative enlightenment from which ensues the concentration known as Dharmamegha (virtue-pouring cloud).
30. From that, afflictions and actions cease.
31.Then on account of the infinitude of knowledge, freed from the cover of all impurities, the knowables appear as few.
32. After the emergence of that (virtue-pouring cloud) the Gunas having fulfilled their purpose, the sequence of their mutation ceases.
33. What belongs to the moments and is indicated by the completion of a particular mutation is sequence.
34. The state of the Self-in-Itself or liberation is realised when the Gunas (having provided for the experience and liberation of Purusha) are without any purpose to fulfil and disappear into their causal substance. In other words, it is absolute Consciousness established in Its own Self.
Reference: http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/patanjal/patanyog.htm
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali interpreted by William Q. Judge
Theosophical University Press Edition
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Book 1: Concentration
Book 2: Means of Concentration
Book 3
Book 4: The Essential Nature of Isolation
BOOK 1. -- CONCENTRATION
1. Assuredly, the exposition of Yoga, or Concentration, is now to be made.
The Sanskrit particle atha, which is translated "assuredly," intimates to the disciple that a distinct topic is to be expounded, demands his attention, and also serves as a benediction. Monier Williams says it is "an auspicious and inceptive participle often not easily expressed in English."
2. Concentration, or Yoga, is the hindering of the modifications of the thinking principle.
In other words, the want of concentration of thought is due to the fact that the mind -- here called "the thinking principle" -- is subject to constant modifications by reason of its being diffused over a multiplicity of subjects. So "concentration" is equivalent to the correction of a tendency top, diffuseness, and to the obtaining of what the Hindus call "one-pointedness," or the power to apply the mind, at any moment, to the consideration of a single point of thought, to the exclusion of all else.
Upon this Aphorism the method of the system hinges. The reason for the absence of concentration at any time is, that the mind is modified by every subject and object that comes before it; it is, as it were, transformed into that subject or object. The mind, therefore, is not the supreme or highest power; it is only a function, an instrument with which the soul works, feels sublunary things, and experiences. The brain, however, must not be confounded with the mind, for the brain is in its turn but an instrument for the mind. It therefore follows that the mind has a plane of its own, distinct from the soul and the brain, and what is to be learned is, to use the will, which is also a distinct power from the mind and brain, in such a way that instead of permitting the mind to turn from one subject or object to another just as they may move it, we shall apply it as a servant at any time and for as long a period as we wish, to the consideration of whatever we have decided upon.
3. At the time of concentration the soul abides in the state of a spectator without a spectacle.
This has reference to the perfection of concentration, and is that condition in which, by the hindering of the modifications referred to in Aphorism 2, the soul is brought to a state of being wholly devoid of taint of, or impression by, any subject. The "soul" here referred to is not Atma, which is spirit.
4. At other times than that of concentration, the soul is in the same form as the modification of the mind.
This has reference to the condition of the soul in ordinary life, when concentration is not practised, and means that, when the internal organ, the mind, is through the senses affected or modified by the form of some object, the soul also -- viewing the object through its organ, the mind -- is, as it were, altered into that form; as a marble statue of snowy whiteness, if seen under a crimson light will seem to the beholder crimson and so is, to the visual organs, so long as that colored light shines upon it.
5. The modifications of the mind are of five kinds, and they are either painful or not painful;
6. They are, Correct Cognition, Misconception, Fancy, Sleep, and Memory.
7. Correct Cognition results from Perception, Inference, and Testimony.
8. Misconception is Erroneous Notion arising from lack of Correct Cognition.
9. Fancy is a notion devoid of any real basis and following upon knowledge conveyed by words.
For instance, the terms "a hare's horns" and "the head of Rahu," neither of which has anything in nature corresponding to the notion. A person hearing the expression "the head of Rahu" naturally fancies that there is a Rahu who owns the head, whereas Rahu -- a mythical monster who is said to cause eclipses by swallowing the sun -- is all head and has no body; and, although the expression "a hare's horns" is frequently used, it is well known that there is no such thing in nature. Much in the same way people continue to speak of the sun's "rising" and "setting," although they hold to the opposite theory.
10. Sleep is that modification of the mind which ensues upon the quitting of all objects by the mind, by reason of all the waking senses and faculties sinking into abeyance.
11. Memory is the not letting go of an object that one has been aware of.
12. The hindering of the modifications of the mind already referred to, is to be effected by means of Exercise and Dispassion.
13. Exercise is the uninterrupted, or repeated, effort that the mind shall remain in its unmoved state.
This is to say that in order to acquire concentration we must, again and again, make efforts to obtain such control over the mind that we can, at any time when it seems necessary, so reduce it to an unmoved condition or apply it to any one point to the exclusion of all others.
14. This exercise is a firm position observed out of regard for the end in view, and perseveringly adhered to for a long time without intermission.
The student must not conclude from this that he can never acquire concentration unless he devotes every moment of his life to it, for the words "without intermission" apply but to the length of time that has been set apart for the practice.
15. Dispassion is the having overcome one's desires.
That is -- the attainment of a state of being in which the consciousness is unaffected by passions, desires, and ambitions, which aid in causing modifications of the mind.
16. Dispassion, carried to the utmost, is indifference regarding all else than soul, and this indifference arises from a knowledge of soul as distinguished from all else.
17. There is a meditation of the kind called "that in which there is distinct cognition," and which is of a four-fold character because of Argumentation, Deliberation, Beatitude, Egoism.
The sort of meditation referred to is a pondering wherein the nature of that which is to be pondered upon is well known, without doubt or error, and it is a distinct cognition which excludes every other modification of the mind than that which is to be pondered upon.
1. The Argumentative division of this meditation is a pondering upon a subject with argument as to its nature in comparison with something else; as, for instance, the question whether mind is the product of matter or precedes matter.
2. The Deliberative division is a pondering in regard to whence have come, and where is the field of action, of the subtler senses and the mind.
3. The Beatific condition is that in which the higher powers of the mind, together with truth in the abstract, are pondered upon.
4. The Egoistic division is one in which the meditation has proceeded to such a height that all lower subjects and objects are lost sight of, and nothing remains but the cognition of the self, which then becomes a stepping-stone to higher degrees of meditation.
The result of reaching the fourth degree, called Egoism, is that a distinct recognition of the object or subject with which the meditation began is lost, and self-consciousness alone results; but this self-consciousness does not include the consciousness of the Absolute or Supreme Soul.
18. The meditation just described is preceded by the exercise of thought without argumentation. Another sort of meditation is in the shape of the self-reproduction of thought after the departure of all objects from the field of the mind.
19. The meditative state attained by those whose discrimination does not extend to pure spirit, depends upon the phenomenal world.
20. In the practice of those who are, or may be, able to discriminate as to pure spirit, their meditation is preceded by Faith, Energy, Intentness (upon a single point), and Discernment, or thorough discrimination of that which is to be known.
It is remarked here by the commentator, that "in him who has Faith there arises Energy, or perseverance in meditation, and, thus persevering, the memory of past subjects springs up, and his mind becomes absorbed in Intentness, in consequence of the recollection of the subject, and he whose mind is absorbed in meditation arrives at a thorough discernment of the matter pondered upon."
21. The attainment of the state of abstract meditation is speedy, in the case of the hotly impetuous.
22. Because of the mild, the medium, and the transcendent nature of the methods adopted, there is a distinction to be made among those who practise Yoga.
23. The state of abstract meditation may be attained by profound devotedness toward the Supreme Spirit considered in its comprehensible manifestation as I's'wara.
It is said that this profound devotedness is a preeminent means of attaining abstract meditation and its fruits. "I's'wara" is the Spirit in the body.
24. I's'wara is a spirit, untouched by troubles, works, fruits of works, or desires.
25. In I's'wara becomes infinite that omniscience which in man exists but as a germ.
26. I's'wara is the preceptor of all, even of the earliest of created beings, for He is not limited by time.
27. His name is OM.
28. The repetition of this name should be made with reflection upon its signification.
The utterance of OM involves three sounds, those of long au, short u, and the "stoppage" or labial consonant m. To this tripartiteness is attached deep mystical symbolic meaning. It denotes, as distinct yet in union, Brahma, Vishnu, and S'iva, or Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. As a whole, it implies "the Universe." In its application to man, au refers to the spark of Divine Spirit that is in humanity; u, to the body through which the Spirit manifests itself; and m, to the death of the body, or its resolvement to its material elements. With regard to the cycles affecting any planetary system, it implies the Spirit, represented by au as the basis of the manifested worlds; the body or manifested matter, represented by u, through which the spirit works; and represented by m, "the stoppage or return of sound to its source," the Pralaya or Dissolution of the worlds. In practical occultism, through this word reference is made to Sound, or Vibration, in all its properties and effects, this being one of the greatest powers of nature. In the use of this word as a practice, by means of the lungs and throat, a distinct effect is produced upon the human body. In Aphorism 28 the name is used in its highest sense, which will necessarily include all the lower. All utterance of the word OM, as a practice, has a potential reference to the conscious separation of the soul from the body.
29. From this repetition and reflection on its significance, there come a knowledge of the Spirit and the absence of obstacles to the attainment of the end in view.
30. The obstacles in the way of him who desires to attain concentration are Sickness, Languor, Doubt, Carelessness, Laziness, Addiction to objects of sense, Erroneous Perception, Failure to attain any stage of abstraction, and Instability in any stage when attained.
31. These obstacles are accompanied by grief, distress, trembling, and sighing.
32. For the prevention of these, one truth should be dwelt upon.
Any accepted truth which one approves is here meant.
33. Through the practising of Benevolence, Tenderness, Complacency, and Disregard for objects of happiness, grief, virtue, and vice, the mind becomes purified.
The chief occasions for distraction of the mind are Covetousness and Aversion, and what the aphorism means is, not that virtue and vice should be viewed with indifference by the student, but that he should not fix his mind with pleasure upon happiness or virtue, nor with aversion upon grief or vice, in others, but should regard all with an equal mind; and the practice of Benevolence, Tenderness, and Complacency brings about cheerfulness of the mind, which tends to strength and steadiness.
34. Distractions may be combated by a regulated control or management of the breath in inspiration, retention, and exhalation.
35. A means of procurement of steadiness of the mind may be found in an immediate sensuous cognition;
36. Or, an immediate cognition of a spiritual subject being produced, this may also serve to the same end;
37. Or, the thought taking as its object some one devoid of passion -- as, for instance, an ideally pure character -- may find what will serve as a means;
38. Or, by dwelling on knowledge that presents itself in a dream, steadiness of mind may be procured;
39. Or, it may be effected by pondering upon anything that one approves.
40. The student whose mind is thus steadied obtains a mastery which extends from the Atomic to the Infinite.
41. The mind that has been so trained that the ordinary modifications of its action are not present, but only those which occur upon the conscious taking up of an object for contemplation, is changed into the likeness of that which is pondered upon, and enters into full comprehension of the being thereof.
42. This change of the mind into the likeness of what is pondered upon, is technically called the Argumentative condition, when there is any mixing-up of the title of the thing, the significance and application of that title, and the abstract knowledge of the qualities and elements of the thing per se.
43. On the disappearance, from the plane of contemplation, of the title and significance of the object selected for meditation; when the abstract thing itself, free from distinction by designation, is presented to the mind only as an entity, that is what is called the Non-Argumentative condition of meditation.
These two aphorisms (42-43) describe the first and second stages of meditation, in the mind properly intent upon objects of a gross or material nature. The next aphorism has reference to the state when subtile, or higher, objects are selected for contemplative meditation.
44. The Argumentative and Non-Argumentative conditions of the mind, described in the preceding two aphorisms, also obtain when the object selected for meditation is subtile, or of a higher nature than sensuous objects.
45. That meditation which has a subtile object in view ends with the indissoluble element called primordial matter.
46. The mental changes described in the foregoing, constitute "meditation with its seed."
"Meditation with its seed" is that kind of meditation in which there is still present before the mind a distinct object to be meditated upon.
47. When Wisdom has been reached, through acquirement of the non-deliberative mental state, there is spiritual clearness.
48. In that case, then, there is that Knowledge which is absolutely free from Error.
49. This kind of knowledge differs from the knowledge due to testimony and inference; because, in the pursuit of knowledge based upon those, the mind has to consider many particulars and is not engaged with the general field of knowledge itself.
50. The train of self-reproductive thought resulting from this puts a stop to all other trains of thought.
It is held that there are two main trains of thought; (a) that which depends upon suggestion made either by the words of another, or by impression upon the senses or mind, or upon association; (b) that which depends altogether upon itself, and reproduces from itself the same thought as before. And when the second sort is attained, its effect is to act as an obstacle to all other trains of thought, for it is of such a nature that it repels or expels from the mind any other kind of thought. As shown in Aphorism 48, the mental state called "non-argumentative" is absolutely free from error, since it has nothing to do with testimony or inference, but is knowledge itself, and therefore from its inherent nature it puts a stop to all other trains of thought.
51. This train of thought itself, with but one object, may also be stopped, in which case "meditation without a seed" is attained.
"Meditation without a seed" is that in which the brooding of the mind has been pushed to such a point that the object selected for meditation has disappeared from the mental plane, and there is no longer any recognition of it, but consequent progressive thought upon a higher plane.
END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
BOOK 2. -- MEANS OF CONCENTRATION
1. The practical part of Concentration is, Mortification, Muttering, and Resignation to the Supreme Soul.
What is here meant by "mortification" is the practice laid down in other books, such as the Dharma S'astra, which includes penances and fastings; "muttering" is the semi-audible repetition of formulae also laid down, preceded by the mystic name of the Supreme Being given in Aphorism 27, Book I; "resignation to the Supreme Soul," is the consigning to the Divine, or the Supreme Soul, all one's works, without interest in their results.
2. This practical part of concentration is for the purpose of establishing meditation and eliminating afflictions.
3. The afflictions which arise in the disciple are Ignorance, Egoism, Desire, Aversion, and a tenacious wish for existence upon the earth.
4. Ignorance is the field of origin of the others named, whether they be dormant, extenuated, intercepted, or simple.
5. Ignorance is the notion that the non-eternal, the impure, the evil, and that which is not soul are, severally, eternal, pure, good, and soul.
6. Egoism is the identifying of the power that sees with the power of seeing.
I.e. it is the confounding of the soul, which really sees, with the tool it uses to enable it to see, viz. the mind, or -- to a still greater degree of error -- with those organs of sense which are in turn the tools of the mind; as, for instance, when an uncultured person thinks that it is his eye which sees, when in fact it is his mind that uses the eye as a tool for seeing.
7. Desire is the dwelling upon pleasure.
8. Aversion is the dwelling upon pain.
9. The tenacious wish for existence upon earth is inherent in all sentient beings, and continues through all incarnations, because it has self-reproductive power. It is felt as well by the wise as the unwise.
There is in the spirit a natural tendency, throughout a Manvantara, to manifestation on the material plane, on and through which only, the spiritual monads can attain their development; and this tendency, acting through the physical basis common to all sentient beings, is extremely powerful and continues through all incarnations, helping to cause them, in fact, and re-producing itself in each incarnation.
10. The foregoing five afflictions, when subtile, are to be evaded by the production of an antagonistic mental state.
11. When these afflictions modify the mind by pressing themselves upon the attention, they are to be got rid of by meditation.
12. Such afflictions are the root of, and produce, results in both physical and mental actions or works, and they, being our merits or demerits, have their fruitage either in the visible state or in that which is unseen.
13. While that root of merit and demerit exists, there is a fructification during each succeeding life upon earth in rank, years, pleasure, or pain.
14. Happiness or suffering results, as the fruit of merit and demerit, accordingly as the cause is virtue or vice.
15. But to that man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation, all mundane things are alike vexatious, since the modifications of the mind due to the natural qualities are adverse to the attainment of the highest condition; because, until that is reached, the occupation of any form of body is a hindrance, and anxiety and impressions of various kinds ceaselessly continue.
16. That which is to be shunned by the disciple is pain not yet come.
The past cannot be changed or amended; that which belongs to the experiences of the present cannot, and should not, be shunned; but alike to be shunned are disturbing anticipations or fears of the future, and every act or impulse that may cause present or future pain to ourselves or others.
17. From the fact that the soul is conjoined in the body with the organ of thought, and thus with the whole of nature, lack of discrimination follows, producing misconceptions of duties and responsibilities. This misconception leads to wrongful acts, which will inevitably bring about pain in the future.
A. The Universe, including the visible and the invisible, the essential nature of which is compounded of purity, action, and rest, and which consists of the elements and the organs of action, exists for the sake of the soul's experience and emancipation.
19. The divisions of the qualities are the diverse, the non-diverse, those which may be resolved once but no farther, and the irresolvable.
The "diverse " are such as the gross elements and the organs of sense; the "non-diverse," the subtile elements and the mind; the "once resolvable," the intellect, which can be resolved into undifferentiated matter but no farther; and the "irresolvable," indiscrete matter.
20. The soul is the Perceiver; is assuredly vision itself pure and simple; unmodified; and looks directly upon ideas.
21. For the sake of the soul alone, the Universe exists.
The commentator adds: "Nature in energizing does not do so with a view to any purpose of her own, but with the design, as it were, expressed in the words 'let me bring about the soul's experience.'"
22. Although the Universe in its objective state has ceased to be, in respect to that man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation, it has not ceased in respect to all others, because it is common to others besides him.
23. The conjuncture of the soul with the organ of thought, and thus with nature, is the cause of its apprehension of the actual condition of the nature of the Universe and of the soul itself.
24. The cause of this conjuncture is what is to be quitted, and that cause is ignorance.
25. The quitting consists in the ceasing of the conjuncture, upon which ignorance disappears, and this is the Isolation of the soul.
That which is meant in this and in the preceding two aphorisms is that the conjuncture of soul and body, through repeated reincarnations, is due to its absence of discriminative knowledge of the nature of the soul and its environment, and when this discriminative knowledge has been attained, the conjuncture, which was due to the absence of discrimination, ceases of its own accord.
26. The means of quitting the state of bondage to matter is perfect discriminative knowledge, continuously maintained.
The import of this -- among other things -- is that the man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation maintains his consciousness, alike while in the body, at the moment of quitting it, and when he has passed into higher spheres; and likewise when returning continues it unbroken while quitting higher spheres, when re-entering his body, and in resuming action on the material plane.
27. This perfect discriminative knowledge possessed by the man who has attained to the perfection of spiritual cultivation, is of seven kinds, up to the limit of meditation.
28. Until this perfect discriminative knowledge is attained, there results from those practices which are conducive to concentration, an illumination more or less brilliant which is effective for the removal of impurity.
29. The practices which are conducive to concentration are eight in number: Forbearance, Religious Observances, Postures, Suppression of the breath, Restraint, Attention, Contemplation, and Meditation.
30. Forbearance consists in not killing, veracity, not stealing, continence, and not coveting.
31. These, without respect to rank, place, time, or compact, are the universal great duties.
32. Religious Observances are purification of both mind and body, contentment, austerity, inaudible mutterings, and persevering devotion to the Supreme Soul.
33. In order to exclude from the mind questionable things, the mental calling up of those things that are opposite is efficacious for their removal.
34. Questionable things, whether done, caused to be done, or approved of; whether resulting from covetousness, anger, or delusion; whether slight, or of intermediate character, or beyond measure; are productive of very many fruits in the shape of pain and ignorance; hence, the "calling up of those things that are opposite" is in every way advisable.
35. When harmlessness and kindness are fully developed in the Yogi [he who has attained to cultivated enlightenment of the soul], there is a complete absence of enmity, both in men and animals, among all that are near to him.
36. When veracity is complete, the Yogi becomes the focus for the Karma resulting from all works good or bad.
37. When abstinence from theft, in mind and act, is complete in the Yogi, he has the power to obtain all material wealth.
38. When continence is complete, there is a gain of strength, in body and mind.
It is not meant here that a student practising continence solely, and neglecting the other practices enjoined, will gain strength. All parts of the system must be pursued concurrently, on the mental, moral, and physical planes.
39. When covetousness is eliminated, there comes to the Yogi a knowledge of everything relating to, or which has taken place in, former states of existence.
"Covetousness" here applies not only to coveting any object, but also to the desire for enjoyable conditions of mundane existence, or even for mundane existence itself.
40. From purification of the mind and body there arises in the Yogi a thorough discernment of the cause and nature of the body, whereupon he loses that regard which others have for the bodily form; and he also ceases to feel the desire of, or necessity for, association with his fellow-beings that is common among other men.
41. From purification of the mind and body also ensure to the Yogi a complete predominance of the quality of goodness, complacency, intentness, subjugation of the senses, and fitness for contemplation and comprehension of the soul as distinct from nature.
42. From contentment in its perfection the Yogi acquires superlative felicity.
43. When austerity is thoroughly practised by the Yogi, the result thereof is a perfecting and heightening of the bodily senses by the removal of impurity.
44. Through inaudible muttering there is a meeting with one's favorite Deity.
By properly uttered invocations -- here referred to in the significant phrase "inaudible mutterings," the higher powers in nature, ordinarily unseen by man, are caused to reveal themselves to the sight of the Yogi; and inasmuch as all the powers in nature cannot be evoked at once, the mind must be directed to some particular force, or power in nature -- hence the use of the term "with one's favorite Deity."
45. Perfection in meditation comes from persevering devotion to the Supreme Soul.
46. A posture assumed by a Yogi must be steady and pleasant.
For the clearing up of the mind of the student it is to be observed that the "postures" laid down in various systems of "Yoga" are not absolutely essential to the successful pursuit of the practice of concentration and attainment of its ultimate fruits. All such "postures," as prescribed by Hindu writers, are based upon an accurate knowledge of the physiological effects produced by them, but at the present day they are only possible for Hindus, who from their earliest years are accustomed to assuming them.
47. When command over the postures has been thoroughly attained, the effort to assume them is easy; and when the mind has become thoroughly identified with the boundlessness of space, the posture becomes steady and pleasant.
48. When this condition has been attained, the Yogi feels no assaults from the pairs of opposites.
By "pairs of opposites" reference is made to the conjoined classification, all through the Hindu philosophical and metaphysical systems, of the opposed qualities, conditions, and states of being, which are eternal sources of pleasure or pain in mundane existence, such as cold and heat, hunger and satiety, day and night, poverty and riches, liberty and despotism.
49. Also, when this condition has been attained, there should succeed regulation of the breath, in exhalation, inhalation, and retention.
50. This regulation of the breath, which is in exhalation, inhalation, and retention, is further restricted by conditions of time, place, and number, each of which may be long or short.
51. There is a special variety of breath regulation which has reference to both that described in the last preceding aphorism and the inner sphere of breathing.
Aphorisms 49, 50, 51 allude to regulation of the breath as a portion of the physical exercises referred to in the note upon Aphorism 46, acquaintance with the rules and prescriptions for which, on the part of the student, is inferred by Patanjali. Aphorism 50 refers merely to the regulation of the several periods, degrees of force; and number of alternating recurrences of the three divisions of breathing -- exhalation, inhalation, and retention of the breath. But Aphorism 51 alludes to another regulation of the breath, which is its governance by the mind so as to control its direction to and consequent influence upon certain centers of nerve perception within the human body for the production of physiological, followed by psychic effects.
52. By means of this regulation of the breath, the obscuration of the mind resulting from the influence of the body is removed.
53. And thus the mind becomes prepared for acts of attention.
54. Restraint is the accommodation of the senses to the nature of the mind, with an absence on the part of the senses of their sensibility to direct impression from objects.
55. Therefrom results a complete subjugation of the senses.
END OF THE SECOND BOOK.
BOOK 3
1. Fixing the mind on a place, object, or subject is attention.
This is called Dharana.
2. The continuance of this attention is contemplation.
This is called Dhyana.
3. This contemplation, when it is practised only in respect to a material subject or object of sense, is meditation.
This is called Samadhi.
4. When this fixedness of attention, contemplation, and meditation are practised with respect to one object, they together constitute what is called Sanyama.
We have no word in English corresponding to Sanyama. The translators have used the word restraint, but this is inadequate and misleading, although it is a correct translation. When a Hindu says that an ascetic is practising restraint according to this system in respect to any object, he means that he is performing Sanyama, while in English it may indicate that he is restraining himself from some particular thing or act, and this is not the meaning of Sanyama. We have used the language of the text, but the idea may perhaps be better conveyed by "perfect concentration."
5. By rendering Sanyama -- or the operation of fixed attention, contemplation, and meditation -- natural and easy, an accurate discerning power is developed.
This "discerning power" is a distinct faculty which this practice alone develops, and is not possessed by ordinary persons who have not pursued concentration.
6. Sanyama is to be used in proceeding step by step in overcoming all modifications of the mind, from the more apparent to those the most subtle.
[See note to Aphorism 2, Book I.] The student is to know that after he has overcome the afflictions and obstructions described in the preceding books, there are other modifications of a recondite character suffered by the mind, which are to be got rid of by means of Sanyama. When he has reached that stage the difficulties will reveal themselves to him.
7. The three practices -- attention, contemplation, and meditation -- are more efficacious for the attainment of that kind of meditation called, "that in which there is distinct cognition," than the first five means heretofore described as "not killing, veracity, not stealing, continence, and not coveting."
See Aphorism 17, Book I.
8. Attention, contemplation, and meditation are anterior to and not immediately productive of that kind of meditation in which the distinct cognition of the object is lost, which is called meditation without a seed.
9. There are two trains of self-reproductive thought, the first of which results from the mind being modified and shifted by the object or subject contemplated; the second, when it is passing from that modification and is becoming engaged only with the truth itself; at the moment when the first is subdued and the mind is just becoming intent, it. is concerned in both of those two trains of self-reproductive thought, and this state is technically called Nirodha.
10. In that state of meditation which has been called Nirodha, the mind has an uniform flow.
11. When the mind has overcome and fully controlled its natural inclination to consider diverse objects, and begins to become intent upon a single one, meditation is said to be reached.
12. When the mind, after becoming fixed upon a single object, has ceased to be concerned in any thought about the condition, qualities, or relations of the thing thought of, but is absolutely fastened upon the object itself, it is then said to be intent upon a single point -- a state technically called Ekagrata.
13. The three major classes of perception regarding the characteristic property, distinctive mark or use, and possible changes of use or relation, of any object or organ of the body contemplated by the mind, have been sufficiently explained by the foregoing exposition of the manner in which the mind is modified.
It is very difficult to put this aphorism into English. The three words translated as "characteristic property, distinctive mark or use, and possible change of use" are Dharma, Lakshana, and Avastha, and may be thus illustrated: Dharma, as, say, the clay of which a jar is composed, Lakshana, the idea of a jar thus constituted, and Avastha, the consideration that the jar alters every moment, in that it becomes old, or is otherwise affected.
14. The properties of an object presented to the mind are: first, those which have been considered and dismissed from view; second, those under consideration; and third, that which is incapable of denomination because it is not special, but common to all matter.
The third class above spoken of has reference to a tenet of the philosophy which holds that all objects may and will be finally "resolved into nature" or one basic substance; hence gold may be considered as mere matter, and therefore not different -- not to be separately denominated in final analysis -- from earth.
15. The alterations in the order of the three-fold mental modifications before described, indicate to the ascetic the variety of changes which a characteristic property is to undergo when contemplated.
16. A knowledge of past and future events comes to an ascetic from his performing Sanyama in respect to the three-fold mental modifications just explained.
See Aphorism 4, where "Sanyama" is explained as the use or operation of attention, contemplation, and meditation in respect to a single object.
I7. In the minds of those who have not attained to concentration, there is a confusion as to uttered sounds, terms, and knowledge, which results from comprehending these three indiscriminately; but when an ascetic views these separately, by performing "Sanyama" respecting them, he attains the power of understanding the meaning of any sound uttered by any sentient being.
18. A knowledge of the occurrences experienced in former incarnations arises in the ascetic from holding before his mind the trains of self-reproductive thought and concentrating himself upon them.
19. The nature of the mind of another person becomes known to the ascetic when he concentrates his own mind upon that other person.
20. Such concentration will not, however, reveal to the ascetic the fundamental basis of the other person's mind, because he does not "perform Sanyama" with that object before him.
21. By performing concentration in regard to the properties and essential nature of form, especially that of the human body, the ascetic acquires the power of causing the disappearance of his corporeal frame from the sight of others, because thereby its property of being apprehended by the eye is checked, and that property of Sattwa which exhibits itself as luminousness is disconnected from the spectator's organ of sight.
Another great difference between this philosophy and modern science is here indicated. The schools of today lay down the rule that if there is a healthy eye in line with the rays of light reflected from an object -- such as a human body -- the latter will be seen, and that no action of the mind of the person looked at can inhibit the functions of the optic nerves and retina of the onlooker. But the ancient Hindus held that all things are seen by reason of that differentiation of Sattwa -- one of the three great qualities composing all things -- which is manifested as luminousness, operating in conjunction with the eye, which is also a manifestation of Sattwa in another aspect. The two must conjoin; the absence of luminousness or its being disconnected from the seer's eye will cause a disappearance. And as the quality of luminousness is completely under the control of the ascetic, he can, by the process laid down, check it, and thus cut off from the eye of the other an essential element in the seeing of any object.
22. In the same manner, by performing Sanyama in regard to any particular organ of sense -- such as that of hearing, or of feeling, or of tasting, or of smelling -- the ascetic acquires the power to cause cessation of the functions of any of the organs of another or of himself, at will.
The ancient commentator differs from others with regard to this aphorism, in that he asserts that it is a portion of the original text, while they affirm that it is not, but an interpolation.
23. Action is of two kinds; first, that accompanied by anticipation of consequences; second, that which is without any anticipation of consequences. By performing concentration with regard to these kinds of action, a knowledge arises in the ascetic as to the time of his death.
Karma, resultant from actions of both kinds in present and in previous incarnations, produces and affects our present bodies, in which we are performing similar actions. The ascetic, by steadfastly contemplating all his actions in this and in previous incarnations (see Aphorism 18), is able to know absolutely the consequences resultant from actions he has performed, and hence has the power to calculate correctly the exact length of his life.
24. By performing concentration in regard to benevolence, tenderness, complacency, and disinterestedness, the ascetic is able to acquire the friendship of whomsoever he may desire.
25. By performing concentration with regard to the powers of the elements, or of the animal kingdom, the ascetic is able to manifest those in himself.
26. By concentrating his mind upon minute, concealed or distant objects, in every department of nature, the ascetic acquires thorough knowledge concerning them.
27. By concentrating his mind upon the sun, a knowledge arises in the ascetic concerning all spheres between the earth and the sun.
28. By concentrating his mind upon the moon, there arises in the ascetic a knowledge of the fixed stars.
29. By concentrating his mind upon the polar star, the ascetic is able to know the fixed time and motion of every star in the Brahmanda of which this earth is a part.
"Brahmanda" here means the great system, called by some "universe," in which this world is.
30. By concentrating his mind upon the solar plexus, the ascetic acquires a knowledge of the structure of the material body.
31. By concentrating his mind upon the nerve center in the pit of the throat, the ascetic is able to overcome hunger and thirst.
32. By concentrating his mind upon the nerve center below the pit of the throat, the ascetic is able to prevent his body being moved, without any resistant exertion of his muscles.
33. By concentrating his mind upon the light in the head the ascetic acquires the power of seeing divine beings.
There are two inferences here which have nothing to correspond to them in modern thought. One is, that there is a light in the head; and the other, that there are divine beings who may be seen by those who thus concentrate upon the "light in the head." It is held that a certain nerve, or psychic current, called Brahmarandhra-nadi, passes out through the brain near the top of the head. In this there collects more of the luminous principle in nature than elsewhere in the body and it is called jyotis -- the light in the head. And, as every result is to be brought about by the use of appropriate means, the seeing of divine beings can be accomplished by concentration upon that part of the body more nearly connected with them. This point -- the end of Brahmarandhra-nadi -- is also the place where the connexion is made between man and the solar forces.
34. The ascetic can, after long practice, disregard the various aids to concentration hereinbefore recommended for the easier acquirement of knowledge, and will be able to possess any knowledge simply through the desire therefor.
35. By concentrating his mind upon the Hridaya, the ascetic acquires penetration and knowledge of the mental conditions, purposes, and thoughts of others, as well as an accurate comprehension of his own.
Hridaya is the heart. There is some disagreement among mystics as to whether the muscular heart is meant, or some nervous center to which it leads, as in the case of a similar direction for concentrating on the umbilicus, when, in fact, the field of nerves called the solar plexus is intended.
36. By concentrating his mind upon the true nature of the soul as being entirely distinct from any experiences, and disconnected from all material things, and dissociated from the understanding, a knowledge of the true nature of the soul itself arises in the ascetic.
37. From the particular kind of concentration last described, there arises in the ascetic, and remains with him at all times, a knowledge concerning all things, whether they be those apprehended through the organs of the body or otherwise presented to his contemplation.
38. The powers hereinbefore described are liable to become obstacles in the way of perfect concentration, because of the possibility of wonder and pleasure flowing from their exercise, but are not obstacles for the ascetic who is perfect in the practice enjoined.
"Practice enjoined," see Aphorisms 36, 37.
39. The inner self of the ascetic may be transferred to any other body and there have complete control, because he has ceased to be mentally attached to objects of sense, and through his acquisition of the knowledge of the manner in and means by which the mind and body are connected.
As this philosophy holds that the mind, not being the result of brain, enters the body by a certain road and is connected with it in a particular manner, this aphorism declares that, when the ascetic acquires a knowledge of the exact process of connecting mind and body, he can connect his mind with any other body, and thus transfer the power to use the organs of the occupied frame in experiencing effects from the operations of the senses.
40. By concentrating his mind upon, and becoming master of, that vital energy called Udana, the ascetic acquires the power of arising from beneath water, earth, or other superincumbent matter.
Udana is the name given to one of the so-called "vital airs." These, in fact, are certain nervous functions for which our physiology has no name, and each one of which has its own office. It may be said that by knowing them, and how to govern them, one can alter his bodily polarity at will. The same remarks apply to the next aphorism.
41. By concentrating his mind upon the vital energy called Samana, the ascetic acquires the power to appear as if blazing with light.
[This effect has been seen by the interpreter on several occasions when in company with one who had acquired the power. The effect was as if the person had a luminousness under the skin. -- W. Q. J.]
42. By concentrating his mind upon the relations between the ear and A'kas'a, the ascetic acquires the power of hearing all sounds, whether upon the earth or in the aether, and whether far or near.
The word A'kas'a has been translated both as "aether" and "astral light." In this aphorism it is employed in the former sense. Sound, it will remembered, is the distinctive property of this element.
43. By concentrating his mind upon the human body, in its relations to air and space, the ascetic is able to change at will the polarity of his body, and consequently acquires the power of freeing it from the control of the laws of gravitation.
44. When the ascetic has completely mastered all the influences which the body has upon the inner man, and has laid aside all concern in regard to it, and in no respect is affected by it, the consequence is a removal of all obscurations of the intellect.
45. The ascetic acquires complete control over the elements by concentrating his mind upon the five classes of properties in the manifested universe; as, first, those of gross or phenomenal character; second, those of form; third, those of subtle quality; fourth, those susceptible of distinction as to light, action, and inertia; fifth, those having influence in their various degrees for the production of fruits through their effects upon the mind.
46. From the acquirement of such power over the elements there results to the ascetic various perfections, to wit, the power to project his inner-self into the smallest atom, to expand his inner-self to the size of the largest body, to render his material body light or heavy at will, to give indefinite extension to his astral body or its separate members, to exercise an irresistible will upon the minds of others, to obtain the highest excellence of the material body, and the ability to preserve such excellence when obtained.
47. Excellence of the material body consists in color, loveliness of form, strength, and density.
48. The ascetic acquires complete control over the organs of sense from having performed Sanyama (concentration) in regard to perception, the nature of the organs, egoism, the quality of the organs as being in action or at rest, and their power to produce merit or demerit from the connexion of the mind with them.
49. Therefrom spring up in the ascetic the powers; to move his body from one place to another with the quickness of thought, to extend the operations of his senses beyond the trammels of place or the obstructions of matter, and to alter any natural object from one form to another.
50. In the ascetic who has acquired the accurate discriminative knowledge of the truth and of the nature of the soul, there arises a knowledge of all existences in their essential natures and a mastery over them.
51. In the ascetic who acquires an indifference even to the last mentioned perfection, through having destroyed the last germs of desire, there comes a state of the soul that is called Isolation.
[See note on Isolation in Book IV.]
52. The ascetic ought not to form association with celestial beings who may appear before him, nor exhibit wonderment at their appearance, since the result would be a renewal of afflictions of the mind.
53. A great and most subtile knowledge springs from the discrimination that follows upon concentration of the mind performed with regard to the relation between moments and their order.
In this Patanjali speaks of ultimate divisions of time which cannot be further divided, and of the order in which they precede and succeed each other. It is asserted that a perception of these minute periods can be acquired, and the result will be that he who discriminates thus goes on to greater and wider perception of principles in nature which are so recondite that modern philosophy does not even know of their existence. We know that we can all distinguish such periods as days or hours, and there are many persons, born mathematicians, who are able to perceive the succession of minutes and can tell exactly without a watch how many have elapsed between any two given points in time. The minutes, so perceived by these mathematical wonders, are, however, not the ultimate divisions of time referred to in the Aphorism, but are themselves composed of such ultimates. No rules can be given for such concentration as this, as it is so far on the road of progress that the ascetic finds the rules himself, after having mastered all the anterior processes.
54. Therefrom results in the ascetic a power to discern subtile differences impossible to be known by other means.
55. The knowledge that springs from this perfection of discriminative power is called "knowledge that saves from rebirth." It has all things and the nature of all things for its objects, and perceives all that hath been and that is, without limitations of time, place, or circumstance, as if all were in the present and the presence of the contemplator.
Such an ascetic as is referred to in this and the next aphorism, is a Jivanmukta and is not subject to reincarnation. He, however, may live yet upon earth but is not in any way subject to his body, the soul being perfectly free at every moment. And such is held to be the state of those beings called, in theosophical literature, Adepts, Mahatmas, Masters.
56. When the mind no longer conceives itself to be the knower, or experiencer, and has become one with the soul -- the real knower and experiencer -- Isolation takes place and the soul is emancipated.
END OF THE THIRD BOOK.
BOOK 4. -- THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF ISOLATION
1. Perfections of body, or superhuman powers are produced by birth, or by powerful herbs, or by incantations, penances, or meditations.
The sole cause of permanent perfections is meditation performed in incarnations prior to that in which the perfection appears, for perfection by birth, such as the power of birds to fly, is impermanent, as also are those following upon incantations, elixirs and the like. But as meditation reaches within, it affects each incarnation. It must also follow that evil meditation will have the result of begetting perfection in evil.
2. The change of a man into another class of being -- such as that of a celestial being -- is effected by the transfusion of natures.
This alludes to the possibility -- admitted by the Hindus -- of a man's being altered into one of the Devas, or celestial beings, through the force of penances and meditation.
3. Certain merits, works, and practices are called "occasional" because they do not produce essential modification of nature; but they are effective for the removal of obstructions in the way of former merit, as in the case of the husbandman who removes impediments in the course of the irrigating stream, which then flows forward.
This is intended to further explain Aphorism 2 by showing, that in any incarnation certain practices [e.g. those previously laid down] will clear away the obscurations of a man's past Karma, upon which that Karma will manifest itself; whereas, if the practices were not pursued, the result of past meditation might be delayed until yet another life.
4. The minds acting in the various bodies which the ascetic voluntarily assumes are the production of his egoism alone.
5. And for the different activities of those various minds, the ascetic's mind is the moving cause.
6. Among the minds differently constituted by reason of birth, herbs, incantations, penances, and meditation, that one alone which is due to meditation is destitute of the basis of mental deposits from works.
The aphorism applies to all classes of men, and not to bodies assumed by the ascetic; and there must always be kept in view the doctrine of the philosophy that each life leaves in the Ego mental deposits which form the basis upon which subsequent vicissitudes follow in other lives.
7. The work of the ascetic is neither pure nor dark, but is peculiar to itself, while that of others is of three kinds.
The three kinds of work alluded to are (1) pure in action and motive; (2) dark, such as that of infernal beings; (3) that of the general run of men, pure-dark. The 4th is that of the ascetic.
8. From these works there results, in every incarnation, a manifestation of only those mental deposits which can come to fructification in the environment provided.
9. Although. the manifestation of mental deposits may be intercepted by unsuitable environments, differing as to class, place, and time, there is an immediate relation between them, because the memory and the train of self-reproductive thought are identical.
This is to remove a doubt caused by Aphorism 8, and is intended to show that memory is not due to mere brain matter, but is possessed by the incarnating ego, which holds all the mental deposits in a latent state, each one becoming manifest whenever the suitable bodily constitution and environment are provided for it.
10. The mental deposits are eternal because of the force of the desire which produced them.
In the Indian edition this reads that the deposits remain because of the "benediction." And as that word is used in a special sense, we do not give it here. All mental deposits result from a desire for enjoyment, whether it be from a wish to avoid in the next life certain pain suffered in this, or from the positive feeling expressed in the desire, "may such and such pleasure always be mine." This is called a "benediction." And the word "eternal" has also a special signification, meaning only that period embraced by a "day of Brahma," which lasts for a thousand ages.
11. As they are collected by cause, effect, substratum, and support, when those are removed, the result is that there is a non-existence of the mental deposits.
This aphorism supplements the preceding one, and intends to show that, although the deposits will remain during "eternity" if left to themselves -- being always added to by new experiences and similar desires -- yet they may be removed by removing producing causes.
12. That which is past and that which is to come, are not reduced to non-existence, for the relations of the properties differ one from the other.
13. Objects, whether subtile or not, are made up of the three qualities.
The "three qualities" are Sattwa, Rajas, Tamas, or Truth, Activity, and Darkness: Truth corresponding to light and joy; Activity to passion; and Darkness to evil, rest, indifference, sloth, death. All manifested objects are compounded of these three.
14. Unity of things results from unity of modification.
15. Cognition is distinct from the object, for there is diversity of thoughts among observers of one object.
16. An object is cognized or not cognized by the mind accordingly as the mind is or is not tinted or affected by the object.
17. The modifications of the mind are always known to the presiding spirit, because it is not subject to modification.
Hence, through all the changes to which the mind and soul are subject, the spiritual soul, I's'wara, remains unmoved, "the witness and spectator."
18. The mind is not self-illuminative, because it is an instrument of the soul, is colored and modified by experiences and objects, and is cognized by the soul.
19. Concentrated attention to two objects cannot take place simultaneously.
20. If one perception be cognizable by another, then there would be the further necessity for cognition of cognition, and from that a confusion of recollection would take place.
21. When the understanding and the soul are united, then self-knowledge results.
The self-knowledge spoken of here is that interior illumination desired by all mystics, and is not merely a knowledge of self in the ordinary sense.
22. The mind, when united with the soul and fully conversant with knowledge, embraces
universally all objects.
23. The mind, though assuming various forms by reason of innumerable mental deposits, exists for the purpose of the soul's emancipation and operates in co-operation therewith.
24. In him who knows the difference between the nature of soul and mind, the false notion regarding the soul comes to an end.
The mind is merely a tool, instrument, or means, by which the soul acquires experiences and knowledge. In each incarnation the mind is, as it were, new. It is a portion of the apparatus furnished to the soul through innumerable lives for obtaining experience and reaping the fruit of works performed. The notion that the mind is either knower or experiencer is a false one, which is to be removed before emancipation can be reached by soul. It was therefore said that the mind operates or exists for the carrying out of the soul's salvation, and not the soul for the mind's sake. When this is fully understood, the permanency of soul is seen, and all the evils flowing from false ideas begin to disappear.
25. Then the mind becomes deflected toward discrimination and bowed down before Isolation.
26. But in the intervals of meditation other thoughts arise, in consequence of the continuance of old impressions not yet expunged.
27. The means to be adopted for the avoidance and elimination of these are the same as before given for obviating the afflictions.
28. If the ascetic is not desirous of the fruits, even when perfect knowledge has been attained, and is not inactive, the meditation technically called Dharma Megha -- cloud of virtue -- takes place from his absolutely perfect discriminative knowledge.
The commentator explains that, when the ascetic has reached the point described in Aphorism 25, if he bends his concentration toward the prevention of all other thoughts, and is not desirous of attaining the powers resulting just at his wish, a further state of meditation is reached which is called "cloud of virtue," because it is such as will, as it were, furnish the spiritual rain for the bringing about of the chief end of the soul -- entire emancipation. And it contains a warning that, until that chief end is obtained, the desire for fruits is an obstacle.
29. Therefrom results the removal of the afflictions and all works.
30. Then, from infinity of knowledge absolutely free from obscuration and impurity, that which is knowable appears small and easy to grasp.
31. Thereupon, the alternation in the modifications of the qualities, having accomplished the soul's aim -- experience and emancipation -- comes to an end.
32. It is then perceived that the moments and their order of precedence and succession are the same.
This is a step further than Aphorism 53, Book III, where it is stated that from discrimination of ultimates of time a perception of the very subtle and recondite principles of the universe results. Here, having arrived at Isolation, the ascetic sees beyond even the ultimates, and they, although capable of affecting the man who has not reached this stage, are for the ascetic identical, because he is a master of them. It is extremely difficult to interpret this aphorism; and in the original it reads that "the order is counterpart of the moment." To express it in another way, it may be said that in the species of meditation adverted to in Aphorism 53, Book III, a calculative cognition goes forward in the mind, during which, the contemplator not yet being thoroughly master of these divisions of time, is compelled to observe them as they pass before him.
33. The reabsorption of the qualities which have consummated the aim of the soul or the abiding of the soul united with understanding in its own nature, is Isolation.
This is a general statement of the nature of Isolation, sometimes called Emancipation. The qualities before spoken of, found in all objects and which had hitherto affected and delayed the soul, have ceased to be mistaken by it for realities, and the consequence is that the soul abides in its own nature unaffected by the great "pairs of opposites" -- pleasure and pain, good and evil, cold and heat, and so forth.
Yet it must not be deduced that the philosophy results in a negation, or in a coldness, such as our English word "Isolation" would seem to imply. The contrary is the case. Until this state is reached, the soul, continually affected and deflected by objects, senses, suffering, and pleasure, is unable to consciously partake universally of the great life of the universe. To do so, it must stand firmly "in its own nature"; and then it proceeds further -- as is admitted by the philosophy -- to bring about the aim of all other souls still struggling on the road. But manifestly further aphorisms upon that would be out of place, as well as being such as could not be understood, to say nothing of the uselessness of giving them.
END OF THE FOURTH BOOK
May I's'wara be near and help those who read this book.
OM
How to Read the Timeline
-2.5m to -1000
The thick line represents the flow of time from the date on the top to dates on the bottom. The thinner lines to the left indicate the duration of major ruling dynasties. Not all are included, for at times India was divided into dozens of small independent kingdoms. Approximate dates are preceded by the letter "ca," an abbreviation of the word "circa," which denotes "about," "around" or "in approximately." all dates prior to Buddha (624 bce) are considered estimates.
bce: Abbreviation for "before common era," referring to dating prior to the year zero in the Western, or Gregorian calendar, system.
ce: Abbreviation for "common era." Equivalent to the abbreviation ad. Following a date, it indicates that the year in question comes after the year zero in the Western, or Gregorian calendar, system.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/himalaya.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/earth/birth.html
1 -2.5 m: Genus Homo originates in Africa, cradle of humanity. http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/links/evolinks.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
http://www.asu.edu/clas/iho/
2 2 -2 m: Stone artifacts are made and used by hominids in North India, an area rich in animal species, including the elephant.
3 -500,000: Stone hand axes and other tools are used in N. India.
4 -470,000: India's hominids are active in Tamil Nadu and Punjab.
5 -400,000: Soan culture in India is using primitive chopping tools.
6 -360,000: Fire is first controlled by homo erectus in China.
7 -300,000: Homo sapiens roams the earth, from Africa to Asia.
8 -100,000: Homo sapiens sapiens (humans) with 20th-century man's brain size (1,450 cc) live in East Africa. Populations separate. Migrations proceed to Asia via the Isthmus of Suez.
9 -75,000: Last ice age begins. Human population is 1.7 million. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html
10 -45,000: After mastery of marine navigation, migrations from Southeast Asia settle Australia and the Pacific islands.
11 -40,000: Groups of hunter-gatherers in Central India are living in painted rock shelters. Similar groups in Northern Punjab work at open sites protected by windbreaks.
12 -35,000: Migrations of separated Asian populations settle Europe.
13 -30,000: American Indians spread throughout the Americas.
14 -10,000: Last ice age ends after 65,000 years; earliest signs of agriculture. World population 4 million; India is 100,000.
15 -10,000: Taittiriya Brahmana 3.1.2 refers to Purvabhadrapada nakshatra's rising due east, a phenomenon occurring at this date (Dr. B.G. Siddharth of Birla Science Institute), indicating the earliest known dating of the sacred Veda.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/3588/hinduism.htm
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501d.txt
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ electronic jnl of vedic studies
http://www1.shore.net/~india/
16 -10,000: Vedic culture, the essence of humanity's eternal wisdom, Sanatana Dharma, lives in the Himalayas at end of Ice Age.
Reference: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2003/01/21/stories/2003012100110200.htm
An ecological view of ancient India
We need to look at the civilisation of India according to geographical and ecological imperatives that are far more certain than historical speculation conditioned by simplistic ideas of ethnicity, linguistics or migrations.
Ecology is beginning to define how we look at the world and how we look at ourselves. Each geographical region in the world constitutes a special ecosystem — an interrelated habitat for plants and animals shaped by climate and terrain. These ecological factors have a strong effect upon culture as well.
As part of nature ourselves, society arises out of an ecological basis that we cannot ignore. Most civilisations, both in their advance and decline, reflect how people manage the ecosystems in which they live along with their natural resources. Human culture derives largely from its first culture, which is agriculture, our ability to work the land. This depends largely on water, particularly fresh water that is found in rivers, and flat land that can be easily irrigated.
However, so far we have looked at history mainly in a non-ecological way, mainly trying to define it according to political, economic or racial concerns. Our account of ancient history — particularly that of India — has not given adequate regard to ecological factors. It has put too much weight on migration, as if culture came from the outside, rather than on the characteristics and necessities of the ecosystems in which people live and must rely upon for developing a sustainable way of life.
The Aryan invasion theory is such a product of the pre-ecological age of historical theory that emphasised the movements of peoples over the natural development of culture within well-defined geographical regions. Nineteenth century thought — the product of a colonial age — found it easy to see culture as something brought in by intruders, rather than as something developed by the inhabitants of a region who had to develop suitable methods to harness their natural resources as shaped by the ecology around them.
River systems
It is a well known fact that the main civilisations of the ancient world of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India (Indus Valley), and China were possible only because of the great river systems around which they grew up. The rivers made these civilisations possible, not simply human invention or any special ethnic type that migrated there. If we examine these four great river centres of early civilisation it is clear that the largest and most ideal river region in the world for developing civilisation is India. Egypt grew up around one great river, the Nile that flowed through what was otherwise a dry, rainless desert. Mesopotamia had two rivers but only of moderate size, the Tigris and the Euphrates, flowing through a large desert as well. Both Egypt and Mesopotamia were located in subtropical regions that provided abundant warmth and sunshine for crops, but otherwise suffered from the limited size of their river banks that were their sole steady water supply. China had a large but unpredictable river system, the Yellow River, which frequently overflowed its banks in various floods. It also received abundant rain. But it was centred in a cold northern region, with a limited growing season.
Ancient India, on the other hand, had a massive nexus of numerous great rivers from the Indus in the west to the swamplands of the Gangetic delta in the east. It had both a warm subtropical climate and seasonal abundant rains. This river region included relatively dry regions of the west to the very wet regions of eastern India affording an abundance of crops both in type and quantity. The Indian river system was much larger in size and in arable land, and better in climate than perhaps all the other three river regions put together. No other ecosystem in the world could so easily serve to create an agricultural diversity or the cultural richness that would go with it. Ecologically speaking, north India was the ideal place in the world for the development of a riverine civilisation via agriculture. Bounded by the Himalayas in the north, and lower mountains on the west, east and south, this north Indian river plain is a specific geographical region and ecosystem, whose natural boundaries could easily serve to create and hold together a great civilisation. It was also ideal for producing large populations that depend upon agriculture for their sustenance.
This same network of rivers was ideal for communication and trade. Not surprisingly, the Rigveda, the oldest book of the region, is full of praise for the numerous great rivers of the region, the foremost of which in early ancient times was the Sarasvati, which flowed east of the Yamuna into the Rann of Kachchh, creating an unbroken set of fertile rivers from Punjab to Bengal. This Vedic goddess of speech was a river goddess. The Vedic idea of One Truth but many paths (Rigveda I.164.46) probably reflects this experience of life of many rivers linked to the one sea.
The main point of this article is that if we really want to understand the development of civilisation in ancient India we cannot ignore such ecological and geographical factors. Ancient India was the ideal ecological region for the development of civilisation in the ancient world. Therefore, we should look to an indigenous development of civilisation in the region. We need not import its people, animals, plants, culture or civilisation from the outside, particularly from barren and inhospitable Central Asia, for example, which would not have been suitable to India and which is separated from it geographically by very hard to cross mountain and desert barriers.
New approach
It is time to take a new ecological look at the Vedas, which so far have not been examined adequately ecologically but have been approached mainly according to linguistic, Marxist or Freudian concerns that easily miss the obvious geography or ecology of the text. If we do this, we will discover that even the oldest Vedic text, the Rigveda, clearly describes a region of many vast rivers flowing to the sea, the most important of which was the Sarasvati. The climate that it describes of great rains and monsoons, the symbolism of the great God Indra, is also clearly that of India. The flora and fauna mentioned including the Brahma bull, water buffalo and elephant and its sacred trees of the Pipal, Ashvatta and Shamali is also that of India.
The fall of the Indus or Harappan culture, just as was the case for many in the ancient world, was owing to ecological factors, something that Nineteenth and early Twentieth century migrationist views of history completely missed. It occurred not because of the destruction wrought by the proposed Aryan invaders but by ecological changes brought about by the drying up of the Sarasvati River around 1900 BCE. This did not end civilisation in the region but caused its relocation mainly to the more certain waters of the Ganga to the east. Such a movement is reflected in the shift from Vedic literature that is centred on the Sarasvati to the Puranic literature that is centred on the Ganga.
The great north Indian river system from Punjab to Bihar is perhaps the greatest breadbasket or agricultural centre in the world. Any humans in the region would have been aided by the land, the waters and the climate, affording them a great advantage in the development of language and culture as well. The natural resources provided by the riverine ecosystem of north India could uphold great civilisations over the centuries. From it the peoples and literature of the region had adequate support from nature to sustain their cultural traditions.
Southern river regions
The type of civilisation developed on the rivers of north India could easily connect with the cultures developing on the rivers in the south of the country that shared a common climate and geographical ties. The other main great river region for India is the basins of the Krishna and Godavari rivers in the southeast of India, mainly Andhra Pradesh. This provides another important agricultural centre in the ancient world, which has also not been examined properly. Another important river area is the Narmada and Tapti rivers in Gujarat and Maharashtra. As these were nearby the delta of the Sarasvati, they could have been an extension of it (which is perhaps why the Bhrigu Rishis of this region are so important in Vedic literature).
That the civilisation of north India could have had connections with these southern cultures is also ecologically based. For this we must consider the ecological factors that existed when agriculture began to arise in the world around 10,000 BCE. Before the end of the Ice Age north India was much drier and cooler in climate. This means that if there was any pre-Ice Age basis for agriculture in north India it would have more likely come from these more suitable southern river regions which had better rainfall at that time.
We need to look at the civilisation of India according to geographical and ecological imperatives that are far more certain than historical speculation conditioned by simplistic ideas of ethnicity, linguistics or migrations. In this regard the study of the Sarasvati river system by the geologists of India and linking it to the Sarasvati river as lauded in Vedic literature is probably the key. Civilisation is like a plant that owes its existence to the land on which it grows. We cannot ignore this important fact either for our past or for our future. The current Government of India plan to link all the great rivers of the country represents such a responsible ecological approach which, including reconstituting the old Sarasvati river channel, links the great future of the country with its great past.
DAVID FRAWLEY
17 -9000: Old Europe, Anatolia and Minoan Crete display a Goddess-centered culture reflecting a matriarchial order.
18 -8500: Taittiriya Samhita 6.5.3 places Pleiades asterism at winter solstice, suggesting the antiquity of this Veda.
19 -7500: Excavations at Neveli Cori in Turkey reveal advanced civilization with meticulous architecture and planning. Dr. Sri B.G. Siddharth believes this was a Vedic culture.
20 -7000: Proto-Vedic period ends. Early Vedic period begins.
21 -7000: Time of Manu Vaivasvata, "father of mankind," of Sarasvati-Drishadvati area (also said to be a South Indian Maharaja who sailed to the Himalayas during a great flood).
22 -7000: Early evidence of horses in the Ganga region (Frawley).
23 -7000: Indus-Sarasvati area residents of Mehrgarh grow barley, raise sheep and goats. They store grain, entomb their dead and construct buildings of sun-baked mud bricks.
24 -6776: Start of Hindu lists of kings according to ancient Greek references that give Hindus 150 kings and a history of 6,400 years before 300bce; agrees with next entry.
25 -6500: Rig Veda verses (e.g., 1.117.22, 1.116.12, 1.84.13.5) say winter solstice begins in Aries (according to Dr. D. Frawley), indicating the antiquity of this section of the Vedas.
http://www.san.beck.org/EC7-Vedas.html
http://www.san.beck.org/index.html
-6000: Early sites on the Sarasvati River, then India's largest, flowing west of Delhi into the Rann of Kutch; Rajasthan is a fertile region with much grassland, as described in the Rig Veda. The culture, based upon barley (yava), copper (ayas) and cattle, also reflects that of the Rig Veda.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/members/indus.html
-5500: Mehrgarh villagers are making baked pottery and thousands of small, clay of female figurines (interpreted to be earliest signs of Shakti worship), and are involved in long-distance trade in precious stones and sea shells.
-5500: Date of astrological observations associated with ancient events later mentioned in the Puranas (Alain Danielou).
-5000: World population, 5 million, doubles every 1,000 years.
-5000: Beginnings of Indus-Sarasvati civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Date derived by considering archeological sites, reached after excavating 45 feet. Brick fire altars exist in many houses, suggesting Vedic fire rites, yajna. Earliest signs of worship of Lord Siva. This mature culture will last 3,000 years, ending around -1700.
-5000: Rice is harvested in China, with grains found in baked bricks. But its cultivation originated in Eastern India.
-4300: Traditional dating for Lord Rama's time.
-4000: Excavations from this period at Sumerian sites of Kish and Susa reveal existence of Indian trade products.
-4000: India's population is 1 million.
-4000: Date of world's creation (Christian genealogies).
-3928: July 25th, the earliest eclipse mentioned in the Rig Veda (according to Indian researcher Dr. Shri P.C. Sengupta).
-3200: Hindu astronomers called nakshatra darshas record in Vedic texts their observations of full moon and new moon at the winter and summer solstices and spring and fall equinoxes with reference to 27 fixed stars (nakshatras) spaced nearly equally on the moon's ecliptic or apparent path across the sky. The precession of the equinoxes (caused by the wobbling of the Earth's axis of rotation) causes the nakshatras to appear to drift at a constant rate along a predictable course over a 25,000-year cycle. From these observations historians are able to calculate backwards and determine the date when the indicated position of moon, sun and nakshatra occurred.
-3102: Kali Era Hindu calendar starts. Kali Yuga begins.
-3100: Reference to vernal equinox in Rohini (middle of Taurus) from some Brahmanas, as noted by B.G. Tilak, Indian scholar and patriot. Traditional date of the Mahabharata war and lifetime of Lord Krishna.
-3100: Early Vedic period ends, late Vedic period begins.
-3100: India includes Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia.
-3100: Aryan people inhabit Iran, Iraq and Western Indus-Sarasvati Valley frontier. Frawley describes Aryans as "a culture of spiritual knowledge." He and others believe 1) the Land of Seven Rivers (Sapta Sindhu) mentioned in the Rig Veda refers to India only, 2) that the people of Indus-Sarasvati Valleys and those of Rig Veda are the same, and 3) there was no Aryan invasion. This view is now prevailing over the West's historical concept of the Aryans as a separate ethnic or linguistic group. Still others claim the Indus-Sarasvati people were Dravidians who moved out or were displaced by incoming Aryans.
-3000: Weaving in Europe, Near East and Indus-Sarasvati Valley is primarily coiled basketry, either spiraled or sewn.
-3000: Evidence of horses in South India.
-3000: People of Tehuacan, Mexico, are cultivating corn.
-3000: Saiva Agamas are recorded in the time of the earliest Tamil Sangam. (A traditional date.)
-2700: Seals of Indus-Sarasvati Valley indicate Siva worship, in depictions of Siva as Pashupati, Lord of Animals.
-2600: Indus-Sarasvati civilization reaches a height it sustains until 1700 bce. Spreading from Pakistan to Gujarat, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, it is the largest of the world's three oldest civilizations with links to Mesopotamia (possibly Crete), Afghanisthan, Central Asia and Karnataka. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro have populations of 100,000.
-2600: Major portions of the Veda hymns are composed during the reign of Vishvamitra I (Dating by Dr. S.B. Roy).
-2600: Drying up of Drishadvati River of Vedic fame, along with possible shifting of the Yamuna to flow into the Ganga.
-2600: First Egyptian pyramid is under construction.
-2500: Main period of Indus-Sarasvati cities. Culture relies heavily on rice and cotton, as mentioned in Atharva Veda, which were first developed in India. Ninety percent of sites are along the Sarasvati, the region's agricultural bread basket. Mohenjo-daro is a large peripheral trading center. Rakhigari and Ganweriwala (not yet excavated in 1994) on the Sarasvati are as big as Mohenjo-daro. So is Dholarvira in Kutch. Indus-Sarasvati sites have been found as far south as Karnataka's Godavari River and north into Afghanistan on the Amu Darya River.
-2500: Reference to vernal equinox in Krittika (Pleiades or early Taurus) from Yajur and Atharva Veda hymns and Brahmanas. This corresponds to Harappan seals that show seven women (the Krittikas) tending a fire.
-2300: Sargon founds Mesopotamian kingdom of Akkad, trades with Indus-Sarasvati Valley cities.
-2300: Indo-Europeans in Russia's Ural steppelands develop efficient spoked-wheel chariot technology, using 1,000-year-old horse husbandry and freight-cart technology.
-2050: Vedic people are living in Persia and Afghanistan.
-2051: Divodasa reigns to -1961, has contact with Babylon's King Indatu (Babylonian chronology). Dating by S.B. Roy.
ca -2040: Prince Rama is born at Ayodhya, site of future Rama temple. (This and next two datings by S.B. Roy.)
http://www.hanumanchalis.com
-2033: Reign of Dasharatha, father of Lord Rama. King Ravana, villain of the Ramayana, reigns in Sri Lanka.
-2000: Indo-Europeans (Celts, Slavs, Lithuanians, Ukranians) follow cosmology, theology, astronomy, ritual, society and marriage that parallel early Vedic patterns.
-2000: Probable date of first written Saiva Agamas.
-2000: World population: 27 million. India: 5 million or 22%. India has roughly G of human race throughout history.
http://www.bible.ca/maps/maps-near-east-abrahams-journey.htm (2000 bc ?)
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/abraham.html
The Story of Abraham, from the Hebrew Bible
(Genesis 16:1-3, 15-16, 17, 21:1-2)
When the Jews tried to explain that the Land of Israel was theirs by divine right though they acknowledged that their ancestors had not originated there, they pointed to the promise made to Abraham (originally from the Neobabylonian city of Ur). Although the modern Zionist movement was largely non-religious, the idea of the "promised land" has had a powerful influence in creating and maintaining the modern state of Israel. Ironically, this same story also tells of the origin of another people, the offspring of Ishmael, whom Muslims identify as the Arabs. Both religions therefore trace their origins back to Abraham, and both hold the land of Israel sacred, though neither accepts the other's claims. Like Isaac, several major figures in Jewish tradition are younger brothers or outsiders who eventually triumph through virtue, wit, or skill--Jacob, Joseph, and David, for instance. This pattern reflects the self-image of a people who view themselves as survivors who needed the special intervention of God to triumph. Note the emphasis on a high reproduction rate, desirable in most ancient cultures, for only a minority of children survived infancy.
What effect on the story does the extreme age of Sarai and Abram have?
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, "You see that the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her. "And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. . . .
Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty;" walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous." Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God."
God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." (1)
God said to Abraham, "As for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her." Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, "Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?" And Abraham said to God, "O that Ishmael might live in your sight!" God said, "No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year." And when he had finished talking with him, God went up from Abraham.
Then Abraham took his son Ishmael and all the slaves born in his house or bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskins that very day, as God had said to him. Abraham was ninety-nine years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. That very day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised; and all the men of his house, slaves born in the house and those bought with money from a foreigner, were circumcised with him. . . .
The LORD dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Now Sarah said, "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me. " And she said, "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age."
The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac." The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring." So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, "Do not let me look on the death of the child." And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand for I will make a great nation of him." Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. . . .
New Revised Standard Version
(1) Circumcision was widely practiced in the ancient Middle East and in Egypt, but contact with people who did not follow the custom in later times made the Jews highly self-conscious of their distinctiveness. Note that in Jewish tradition the covenant (agreement) is "everlasting," not superseded by a "new covenant" as in Christianity. The whole body of the Jewish law comes to be incorporated into this covenant.
-1915: All Madurai Tamil Sangam is held at Thiruparankundram (according to traditional Tamil chronology).
-1900: Late Vedic period ends, post Vedic period begins.
-1900: Drying up of Sarasvati River, end of Indus-Sarasvati culture, end of the Vedic age. After this, the center of civilization in ancient India relocates from the Sarasvati to the Ganga, along with possible migration of Vedic peoples out of India to the Near East (perhaps giving rise to the Mittani and Kassites, who worship Vedic Gods). The redirection of the Sutlej into the Indus causes the Indus area to flood. Climate changes make the Sarasvati region too dry for habitation. (Thought lost, its river bed is finally photographed from satellite in the 1990s.)
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/members/indus.html
-1500: Egyptians bury their royalty in the Valley of the Kings.
-1500: Polynesians migrate throughout Pacific islands.
-1500: Submergence of the stone port city of Dwarka near Gujarat, where early Brahmi script, India's ancient alphabet, is used. Recent excavation by Dr. S.R. Rao. Larger than Mohenjo-daro, many identify it with the Dwarka of Krishna. Possible date of Lord Krishna. Indicates second urbanization phase of India between Indus-Sarasvati sites like Harappa and later cities on the Ganga.
-1500: Indigenous iron technology in Dwarka and Kashmir.
-1500: Cinnamon is exported from Kerala to Middle East.
-1472: Reign of Dhritarashtra, father of the Kauravas. Reign of Yudhisthira, king of the Pandavas. Life of Sage Yajnavalkya. Date based on Mahabharata's citation of winter solstice at Dhanishtha, which occurs around this time.
-1450: End of Rig Veda Samhita narration.
-1450: Early Upanishads are composed during the next few hundred years, also Vedangas and Sutra literature.
-1424: Bharata battle is fought, as related in the Mahabharata. (Professor Subash Kak places the battle at -2449. Other authors give lower dates, up to 9th century bce)
-1424: Birth of Parikshit, grandson of Arjuna, and next king.
-1350: At Boghaz Koi in Turkey, stone inscription of the Mitanni treaty lists as divine witnesses the Vedic Deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas (Ashvins).
-1316: Mahabharata epic poem is composed by Sage Vyasa.
-1300: Panini composes Ashtadhyayi, systematizing Sanskrit grammar in 4,000 terse rules. (Date according to Roy.)
-1300: Changes are made in the Mahabharata and Ramayana through 200 bce. Puranas are edited up until 400 ce. Early smriti literature is composed over next 400 years.
-1255: King Shuchi of Magadha writes Jyotisha Vedanga, including astronomical observations which date this scripture-that summer solstice occurs in Ashlesha Nakshatra.
-1250: Moses leads 600,000 Jews out of Egypt.
-1200: Probable time of the legendary Greek Trojan War celebrated in Homer's epic poems, Iliad and Odyssey (ca -750).
-1124: Elamite Dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar (-1124-1103) moves capital to Babylon, world's largest city, covering 10,000 hectares, slightly larger than present-day San Francisco.
-1000: Late Vedic period ends. Post-Vedic period begins.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #2 -1000 to 1000
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
-1000: World population is 50 million, doubling every 500 years.
-975: King Hiram of Phoenicia, for the sake of King Solomon of Israel, trades with the port of Ophir (Sanskrit: Supara) near modern Bombay, showing the trade between Israel and India. Same trade goes back to Harappan era.
-950: Jewish people arrive in India in King Solomon's merchant fleet. Later Jewish colonies find India a tolerant home.
-950: Gradual breakdown of Sanskrit as a spoken language occurs over the next 200 years.
-925: Jewish King David forms an empire in what is present-day Israel and Lebanon.
-900: Iron Age in India. Early use dates to at least -1500.
ca -900: Earliest records of the holy city of Varanasi (one of the world's oldest living cities) on the sacred river Ganga.
-900: Use of iron supplements bronze in Greece.
-850: The Chinese are using the 28-nakshatra zodiac called Shiu, adapted from the Hindu jyotisha system.
ca -800: Later Upanishads are recorded.
-800: Later smriti, secondary Hindu scripture, is composed, elaborated and developed during next 1,000 years.
-776: First Olympic Games are held in Greece.
Third Intermediate Period (1070 B.C.– 747 B.C.)
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_7.html
The Dynasty 20 pharaohs, with their capital at Pi Ramesses in the Delta, were not able to maintain control over the High Priests of Amen in Thebes. At the end of Dynasty 20, the Viceroy of Kush, Panehsy, began a civil war with Rameses XI, which was put down by his General Herihor. After the war, Herihor took control of Thebes as the High Priest of Amen and depicted himself as a pharaoh and inclosing his name in a cartouche at Karnak [17450]. At the same time, Smendes, the new pharaoh in Lower Egypt, moved the capital to Tanis in t http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_7.htmlhe Delta. The new Temple of Amen at Tanis was modeled after the Temple of Amen at Karnak. The dynastic rivalry was subdued when the High Priest of Amen, Pinedjem I, married into the royal family at Tanis.
The local populace had been robbing the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings since Dynasty 20. This prompted the High Priests of Amen to rebury many of the royal mummies in a hidden location above Dayr al Bahri (TT 320) [13615]. Pharaohs of Dynasty 21 to 24 were buried within the walls of Temple of Amen at Tanis, thus adding a level of security, perhaps due to the tomb robberies of the Valley of the Kings. Likewise, the High Priest of Amen and other local clerics were buried within the enclosure wall of Madinat Habu.
The beginning of Dynasties 22 and 23 witnessed political stability, during which Libyan pharaohs ruled from the Delta, first in Tanis and then Bubastis. The Libyan kings were able to maintain control from the Delta over the High Priests of Amen by placing their children in high positions in the clerical hierarchy. They carried out various building works at Karnak and throughout Egypt [17430].
The reunification of Egypt under Libyan rule did not endure. Centralized authority declined further and further until three dynasties were ruling simultaneously from three cities in the Delta (Tanis, Bubastis and Sais), along with smaller chiefdoms, toward the end of the Third Intermediate Period.
-750: Prakrits, vernacular or "natural" languages, develop among India's common peoples. Already flourishing in 500 bce , Pali and other Prakrits are chiefly known from Buddhist and Jain works composed at this time.
-750: Priestly Sanskrit is gradually refined over next 500 years, taking on its classical form.
-700: Life of Zoroaster of Persia, founder of Zoroastrianism. His holy book, Zend Avesta, contains many verses from the Rig and Atharva Veda. His strong distinctions between good and evil set the dualistic tone of God and devil which distinguishes all later Western religions.
http://www.avesta.org/other/qsanjan.htm
http://www.avesta.org/avesta.html
http://www.avesta.org/
Avesta -- Zoroastrian Archives Contents Prev qsanjan.htm Next Glossary
The Qissa-i Sanjan
Translated by Shahpurshah Hormasji Hodivala, M. A., from Studies in Parsi History (Bombay, 1920, pp. 94-117.)
This text is an account of the emigration of Zoroastrians from Iran to India. It was written in 1600 A.C. The settlement at Sanjan appears to have occurred in 936 A.C. The Muslim sacking of Sanjan probably occurred in 1465 A.C. The sacred fire Iranshah was moved from Navsari to Udwada in the eighteenth century.
Electronic edition prepared by Joseph H. Peterson, copyright 2000. Spelling has been normalized to conform with other texts in this series.
In praise of the unity of the Creator exalted. NOTES:
In the name of the Wise and Most Holy Lord, whose praises I sing with all my soul every moment. Him I thank profusely night and day, for my spirit rejoices only when grateful to Him. In season and out of season, I do nothing but repeat His name, for He is of the Universe Eternal King. He only is puissant and mighty everlastingly and the eyes of His slaves have the gift of vision (lit. are seeing) only through Him. He is in all places our refuge and our protector, the forgiver of our transgressions and the acceptor of our apologies. He has always hearkened to our grievances and it is He who has given us wisdom and shown unto us [the path of] Faith. Cherisher of the stranger and Sovereign of the Universe, pardoner of the sins and overlooker of the backslidings of mankind, He is our Eternal Guide, the companion of our private hours and the resolver of our difficulties. Thou hast, [O Lord], perfect power over creation, Thou only art Ruler Absolute and thy Kingdom only is never-fading. Thou art the Lord of Lords, marvelous, peerless, and without a second. By Thy might, thou fashionest out of clay the figure of a man and then instillest into it the joyous and gladsome soul. Thou conveyest the seed from the spinal column unto the matrix and it is Thou who delineatest upon the [seminal] fluid the picture [of humanity].
It is Thou who hast given body and form to the germ and implanted therein the Macrocosm (lit. the World) itself. Thou hast given unto man not only a tongue for outward [expression], but an inner sense likewise. Two eyes hast Thou bestowed upon him for seeing, two ears for hearing, and a tongue for speech, which may revolve in Thy praise like a wheel. A nose Thou hast endowed him with for appreciate pleasant odours, and feet for standing [erect] in prayer. Thirty-two pearls hast Thou linked together in a row and imparted the sense of taste also to our mouths. So perfectly does Thy Creation coincide with the first design on Thy Tablets-----1 that one would stake (lit. give) life itself on the perfection of Thy art. It is Thou who hast instilled sorrow into the hearts of lovers and the joy and luxury of grief are also Thy gift. Thou hast built up both worlds out of Nothing and it was Thou who madest Man superior to the Angels.-----2 Deity Supreme is befitting without question only to Thee, and of all things Wisdom has borne witness to Thee only. Whenever I give Thee boundless thanks, it is my tongue that is honoured thereby. Love of Thee hath thrown its halter (lit. cord) around my neck and I must perforce run wherever I am dragged in its train (lit. noose). Nor can I help obeying the behests of the Lord who has cast us hither and thither according to His will. Of Everlasting Existence no one is worthy except God, for He only is without His like. The entire Creation has proceeded from Thee to the cosmos hast Thou given this form out of Wisdom. Thou madest Adam out of clay and inscribed [upon his forehead] the name of Thy Vicegerent.-----3 Thou only dost not admit of change; Thou art also He who taketh us by the hand. No one else is like Thee, nor dost Thou resemble any one. All that exists has proceeded out of Thee. Earth and Sky are Thy handiwork, and the children of Adam Thou hast made the Glory (lit. ornament) of creation. 1. The 'doxology' is a stereotyped feature of all lengthy poetical compositions among the Arabs and Persians and Bahman while imitating those models, employs here, as in some other places, phraseology which a Moslem, not Zoroastrian. cf. Quran, Koran. VI. 38. "There is no kind of beast on earth, nor fowl which flieth with its wings, but the same is a people like unto you: we have not omitted anything in the book of our decreed." that is, "the Preserved Table, wherein God's decrees are written and all things which come to pass in the world, as well the most minute as the more momentous are exactly registered." Sale, Koran, 10-1-2 note. 2. cf. "And when we said to the angels, 'Bow down and worship Adam,' then worshipped they all save Iblis." Koran, Sura II. 32. Rodwell, 345. 3. cf. Koran, Sura II. 28. "When Thy Lord said to the angels, 'Verily I am about to place one in my stead on earth,' they said, 'Wilt thou place there one who will do ill therein and shed blood, when we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness'? God said, 'Verily, I know what you know not.' Rodwell, 340.
Bahman has set his face towards Thy presence-gates; keep Thou his heart enlightened in this world. Replenish it with the Good Religion and release him (lit. his head) from the bonds of sorrow. Keep him ever abounding in faith and render out of Thy bounty his soul full of the light [of the spirit]. Save Thou, I possess no patron and in both worlds my hopes are all in Thee, O Master loving-kind, Thou hast pardoned my faults and my tongue is for ever weighing epithets [in Thy praise]. Thou hast succoured my worthless soul and graciously shown favour unto Thy slave. To whom shall I turn if Thou cast'st me off, to whom shall I flee, for Thou hast no compeer. [Lord], I am ashamed of the imperfection of my words [in Thy praise], for this sort of learning [i.e. poetry] has not fallen to my lot. I have come before Thee apologising [for my shortcomings] for Thine is the Kingdom for ever. O Thou who upholdest the Universe, lift me up [also], for I am thy thrall, humble as the dust of the earth. Never shall I make aught but Thy doorway my Kibla (i.e. address my prayers to anyone but Thee). Tell me only what I shall choose that it may be good in Thy sight (lit. to Thee), and which may bestead (lit. go with) me in the Life [Beyond], for this yokefellow of mine (i.e. the physical body), I know, will not wend with me there. In the end, the rolling spheres will turn me to dust [like everything else]; why then should I have any dread or fear of Death? Give me but to utter with my tongue the Ashem Vohu-----4 at the moment when my soul is about to take its way to Paradise and whenever my Spirit departs from its body, do Thou show unto me an angel and make one of the Holy Guardian Spirits-----5 befriend my soul, so that it may be glorified (lit. receive light). 4. cf. "A time may be when the merit of one Ashem Vohu is as much as the value (qimat) of this world and that other world," and "that [Ashem Vohu] whose nature is as much as this world and the other world is when they recite it at the time of the dissolution or life, for if he be not able to recite it himself, friends and relations give it into his mouth. If he be fit for hell, he becomes fit for the Ever-Stationary, and if he be fit for the Ever-Stationary {hamistagan, i.e. purgatory}, he becomes fit for Heaven and if he be fit for Heaven he becomes fit for the Supreme Heaven". Saddar, 80.5, 10-11. West, Sacred Books of the East, XXIV. 344. See also M. R. Unvala's Lithographed edition of Darab Hormazdyar's Rivayat, I. 18. 5. Farohar (Av. Fravashi). "Embryonic or immaterial existences, the prototypes, spiritual counterparts or guardian angels of the spiritual or material creatures afterwards produced." West, Note on Bundahishn 1.8: Sacred Books of the East. V. 5.
Gracious Lord, forgive for Thy Mercy's sake, any sins that may have been by me committed unwittingly (lit. secretly). Indeed, what excuses can old Bahman urge before Thy tribunal, for [he knows] he has been very remiss in Thy service. Forgive his offences notwithstanding and exonerate his soul from its secret lapses. Accept, O Lord, these utterances and fervent prayers, for I have beheld Thy wondrous works of every sort. Lord, Thou knowest my [most] secret thoughts, why then dost Thou toss me thus about on fruitless errands? [I know that) in this world our salvation can come from Thee only; wherefore then should I look for my redemption from others? My youth hath departed and old age arrived and my straight cypress (i.e. erect stature) is lifting its head heavenwards. Old Bahman is the humblest of the humble; be Thou his friend and take him by the hand on all occasions. Thou only art my Judge in both worlds, Thou only my help in feebleness and old age. Wash off from my eyes the sleep of ignorance, O Lord, and turn Thou my face towards knowledge (lit. wakefulness). Do not, O beneficent Sovereign, take me away in the state [of sin] in which I am. Nothing save transgression can come out of man; lead Thou me towards Thyself along [the path of] Faith. I have been groaning thus piteously at Thy gate only that Thou mayest not reckon my name among the sinners. Wert Thou but to show Thy slave any favour, his head would be exalted in both worlds. I have set my heart (lit. face) on meditation of Thee and repeatedly turned my thoughts towards Thee. I now beseech Thee, who art the Judge of our needs and our prayers that Thy Mercies (lit. wonders) may be made manifest to me. NARRATIVE OF THE COMING OF THE MEN OF THE GOOD FAITH FROM KHORASAN TO INDIA.
Hearken now to a wondrous tale (lit. a wonder among tales) recounted by Mobeds and ancients. Were I to tell it [at length], no description would be adequate, and no paper sufficient for the writing thereof. Therefore will I select but a portion and say but one word out of a hundred. I have heard it from a wise Dastur who was ever renowned for goodness. May the Dastur whose name is Hoshang and whose wisdom had always great excellence live long.-----6 The Zend and the Avesta likewise he had studied and driven away all Evil Spirits from himself. He was manifestly the Dastur (ayyán, evidently, plainly) of the city and from him the Faith had always become full of lustre. In those times, his authority was exercised over all (i.e. his commands were obeyed by all) and he managed many spiritual affairs. Every one who took counsel with him on the mysteries of the Faith acted according to his advice in matters of religion. In the town in which he was the preceptor, the hearts and souls of his disciples were delighted with him.-----7 He repeated to me this tale in the words of the ancients and discovered to me the hidden secrets of the Righteous. He narrated this story to us one day and strung the pearls of history with skill. May the Dastur who told me this tale have virtue everlastingly for his fellow. I repeat the story as he told it and relate the [hitherto] unknown deeds of the People of the Good Faith.-----8 6. This couplet is left out in some copies, but I have found it in at least three old and good Manuscripts and M. Huart of the Bibliotheque National has borne witness to its occurrence in Anquetil du Perron's copy of the KissehLV, Suppl. Persan. 200). There can be no doubt, therefore, of its genuineness. See Mody, A Few Events in the Early History of the Parsis 4 note. Anquetil, Le Zend Avesta, Tome I, Pte. ii. xxxiv. 7. or "he cordially delighted in teaching his pupils." 8. I have discussed the significance of this passage in a foregoing paper, "Jadi Rana and the Kisseh-i Sanjan."
The saintly Zartosht-----9 showed us the true path in Religion in the days when king Vishtasp lived. He had described in the Avesta all the stages (lit. states) through which his Faith would pass and said: "A Tyrant will appear; three times will the Good Creed be shattered and the People of the Faith ruined and worsted. That conqueror will be named Sitamgar-----10 [the Tyrant] and by him will the Religion of Virtue be reduced to despair. Give heed then unto what I now say of the Faith's doings." Everything happened as he had spoken and the People of the Good Faith groaned and made moan. Sikandar (Alexander the Great), came at last upon them and publicly burnt the scriptures of the Creed,-----11 which was despised for three hundred years-----12 and the Faithful were oppressed. Then after a time-----13, a Defender of the Faith appeared and Ardeshir seized the kingdom. Then once more the Good Religion revived and in the world became of good report. He got Arda Viraf sent to the Presence Divine for [securing] a description of the World of Spirits. But after a time, the Evil Spirit again wrecked this [right] road and once more brought disruption into the Faith, of which evil reports arrived from all sides. When after a while-----14 king Shahpur appeared, he once more made it illustrious and Adarbad Mahraspandan the Devout girded up his loins in its service. Seven kinds of metal (lit. brass) were molten together and poured upon his body [without doing him harm]. Thus did he resolve all the doubts of the Faithful and the Creed once more acquired lustre. From the times of Shahpur to those of Yazdagar it continued to receive honour and worship. Then the days [assigned] to Zartosht by Time (Fate) came to an end and not a vestige of the Good Religion remained, [so that] when the Millennium of Zartosht was over, the [happy days of] the Good Creed also reached their limit.-----15 9. The writer here follows pretty closely the Pahlavi Vohuman Yasht, II 15-22. West, Sacred Books of the East V. 198-201. See the Persian translation of the same in M. R. Unvala's lithographed text of Darab Hormazdyar's Rivayat, II. 86-88. 10. Alexander the Great is supposed by some to be referred to in the Pahlavi Vohuman Yasht (II. 19) as Akandgar-i-Kilisiyakih. Darmesteter suggested that "'Skandger' (Av. Skendo-Kara, Pers. Sikandgar) 'causer of destruction' would be an appropriate punning title for Alexander from the Persian point of view." West, on the other band, thinks that Akandgar is probably a miswriting of Alaksandar or Sikandar. Sacred Books of the East, V. 200 note. Others, again, are of opinion that there is no reference whatever to Alexander in the above passage. However that may be, Bahman Kaikobed's "Sitamgar" (oppressor) can be nothing else than "a punning title" for the great Macedonian. 11. See a brilliant note vindicating this statement of the Parsi books in Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Arda Viraf, 142-3. 12. Alexander the Great defeated Darius at Arbela in 331 B.C. and Ardeshir Papak's accession cannot be placed earlier than 226 A.C. There was therefore an interval of 557 years and not 300 between Alexander and the Sasanian. See Alberun's remarks on this confusion in the Persian Chronology in the Athar-al-Bakya, tr. Sachau. 116-121. West, S.B.E. XLVII. Introduction, xxxii 13. Pas az wai Muddati -- Muddat is here employed to signify a period of three hundred years. 14. Here also the phrase is "Pas az Muddat." Ardeshir died in 241 A.C. Shahpuhr III reigned from 309 A.C. to 379 A.C. See, West, S.B.E. XLVII. xxxv. 15. The Millennium of Zartosht and its termination are distinctly mentioned in the Pahlavi Vohuman Yasht, II. 23. West Sacred Books of the East. V. 201.
When the sovereignty departed from Yazdagar, the Unbelievers-----16 came and seized his throne. From that period-----17 Iran was shattered. Alas for the land of the Faith which was rendered desolate. During those days-----18 all were dispersed, all (lit. everyone) whose hearts were attached to the Zand and Pazand. When all the laymen and Dasturs suddenly went into hiding for the sake of the Faith, they left their homes, dwellings, gardens, palaces, and halls and abandoned them all for their Religion. In Kohistan, they abode for a hundred years. When they were in this plight, a virtuous sage once bethought him seriously [of their state] and said to his companions, "It will be difficult [for us] to remain here [much longer] for fear of the Unbelievers." So the Dasturs and laymen incomparable departed for the city of Hormuz.-----19 When fifteen years were spent in that clime, every one of them had endured much trouble from the Miscreants.-----20 The sage Dastur who was with them there was a mighty astrologer. He looked into his ancient Tables [and said,] "The period during which we were [permitted by Fate] to eat and drink [in this land] has come to an end. It will be well if we leave this country. We must go out of this region forthwith, [otherwise] we shall all fall into a snare and prudence will then be useless and our business spoilt. It will be better therefore for us to fly from these fiends and Miscreants to Hindustan, and run away towards Ind for fear of life and religion's sake." Then a ship was made ready for the sea. Instantly they hoisted sail, placed the women and children in the vessel and rowed hard for Hind. When the ship came in sight of land, the anchor fell at Div. There they went down, took up their abode and their feet stuck fast in the soil of that spot. The People of the Good Faith stayed there for nineteen years, at the end of which the Stargazer once more [sought to] divine the future. The aged Dastur having looked into his Tables, said: "O my enlightened friends, hence also must we hie to another spot in which will be our second home." All of them were delighted by his words and they set sail quickly towards Gujarat. When the vessel had made some way into the sea, a disastrous storm approached. All the Dasturs of the Faith were thrown into consternation and their heads turned as in a whirlpool.-----21 They rubbed their faces before the Presence Divine and stood up and made loud laments, [saying], "O Thou Wise One, come to our aid on this occasion (lit. business) and for once deliver us from this distress. [And] Thou, All conquering Warharan, befriend us and bring us out triumphant from this trouble. [If we possess] Thy favour, we shall not care for the tempest and give no place to fear in our hearts. Hearken then to the complaints of the helpless and show Thou the way to us who are lost [in this waste of waters]. If we escape from this dreadful storm, (lit. whirlpool), if disaster does not confront us and if we reach the realm of Hind with cheerful hearts and merry, we shall kindle a great fire to Warharan. Deliver us then from this strait and keep us sound (stong). We are resigned to everything [that comes] from the Lord, for save Him we possess no other [friend]." By the blessing of the Fire of the Glorious Warharan, all of them luckily got over that trouble; their supplications were instantly heard and the Lord came to the rescue. A prosperous gale began to blow, the light of Heaven [to shine) and the contrary wind ceased. When the Captain with (lit. opened his tongue to utter) the Holy name of God upon his lips steered the ship with vigour, and all the Dasturs and laymen also made Kusti,-----22 the vessel drove instantly into the sea. Then Providence so ordered it that all those people arrived near Sanjan. 16. Juddin. lit. People of another faith. The Arabs are meant. 17. Here again the phrase is az-an-muddat, an exceedingly vague expression which seems to be applied to a period of almost any length. 18. Badàngàhi. See the paper on the Traditional Dates of Parsi history, ante 8-9, for my view of the real signification of the whole passage. 19. This is not the famous island of Hormuz, but the old city on the main land. "It was on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf, about 30 miles east of the site of Bunder Abbas or Gombroon. Sir Louis Pelly has traced the extensive ruins of the old city, which stand in the present district of Minao, about 6 or 7 miles from the fort of that name. 'Hormuz', says the Geographer Abul Fela, 'is the port of Kerman, a city rich in palms and very hot. One who has visited it in our days tells me that the ancient Hormuz was devastated by the incursions of the Tartars and that its people transferred their abode to an island in the sea called Zarun, near the Continent and lying west of the old city. At Hormuz no inhabitants remain, but some of the lowest order (in Busching, IV. 261-2).'" Ibn Batuta also discriminates between Hormuz or Moghistan on the main land and New Hormuz on the island of Jerun. Yule, Marco Polo. ed. Cordier, I. 110-111. The name [Moghistan -- the land of the Moghs -- Fire-worshippers -- is most instructive and significant. 20. Darwand, Av. Dregwant; The Darwand, 'wicked', is the infidel who does not keep the Zoroastrian law. Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Ardaviraf, 178, note. 21. Or "they felt giddy in (or were stunned by) that calamity." 22. The "Kusti is tied round the waist in a peculiar manner during the recital of a particular formula in which Ohrmazd is blessed and Ahriman and the demons are cursed." West's Note on Bundahishn, XXX. 30, S.B.E. V. 129.
In that region was a virtuous Raja who had opened his heart (lit. head) to holiness. His name was Jádi Rana; he was liberal, sagacious, and wise. A Dastur renowned for learning and prudence went to him with gifts and invoked blessings upon him and said: "O Raja of Rajas, give us a place in this city: we are strangers seeking protection who have arrived in thy town and place of residence. We have come here only for the sake of our Religion, for we heard that there was in this place a Raja descended from the beneficent Shillahras,-----23 ever renowned throughout Hindustan, who gave people shelter in his town and kingdom and regarded them with the eye of compassion. We were cheered by these tidings (lit. thoughts) and have approached thee under favourable auspices. We have now reached thy city in the hope of escaping from the Miscreants." The hearts of all the followers (lit. men) of the virtuous Raja were gladdened and their souls charmed by these words. But when that prince beheld them-----24, a terror suddenly fell upon his heart. Fears for his crown entered his mind and [he thought] that they might lay waste his kingdom. Frightened by their dress and accoutrements, he questioned the Dastur about their religious mysteries (lit. inner secrets). "O thou devout Dastur", he at last said, "Tell us, first of all, the gist of the matter (lit. the secret of the business). What are the customs of your Creed, which of them are open and which concealed-----25? Let me first of all see what your beliefs are and we will then arrange for your residence here. Secondly, if we give you shelter, you must abandon the language of your country, disuse (lit. cast aside) the tongue of Iran and adopt the speech of the realm of Hind. Thirdly, as to the dress of your women, they should wear garments like those of our females. Fourthly, you must put off all your arms and simitars and cease to wear them anywhere. Fifthly, when your children are wedded, the marriage knot must be tied at evening time. If you first give a solemn promise to observe all this, you will be given places and abodes in my city." When the Dastur heard all this from the Raja, he could not help agreeing to all his demands.-----26 23. I read Shillahràyán, not Sháhràyàn, for the reasons stated in the paper on Jadi Rana and the Kisseh-i-Sanjan. 24. Shan, 'them', but it may also mean "dignity, stature." 25. i.e. outward professions as well as the really secret doctrines. Persecuted sects were often under the necessity of having two sets of opinions, one for home and the other "for foreign consumption." 26. There is evidently something wrong here. The Raja first says that he would not give them permission to reside in his territory, until he was satisfied of the unobjectionable character of their rites and doctrines. But without waiting to hear a word of explanation, he forthwith proceeds to dictate four conditions, the last of which -- that relating to their marriage ceremonies -- discovers an unexpected familiarity with their usages. If they were such utter strangers to him, how could he know such a minor matter as that their marriages were celebrated in the morning and not in the evening as with the Hindus? Can it be that the lines relating to the conditions have by some accident been misplaced and that they should come after the Dastur's harangue? It is perhaps also worthy of note that Bahman Kaikobad repeatedly avers that the first emigrants brought the women of their own race with them.
Then the old Mobed addressed him thus, "O sagacious king, hearken now to what I say of our Creed. Do not be heavy-hearted on our account, for never shall any evil [deed] proceed from us in this land. We shall be the friends of all Hindustan and everywhere scatter the heads of thy foes. Know then for certain that we are the worshippers of Yazdan (One God) and have fled from the Miscreants only for our religion's sake. We have abandoned all we possessed and borne many hardships on the road. Houses and mansions and goods and chattels we have all forsaken, O auspicious prince. We strangers are of the seed of Jamshed and reverence the Sun and the Moon. Three other things also out of Creation-----27, we hold in honour, viz. the Cow, Fire, and Water. Thus we adore the Fire, Water, Cows, and the Sun and the Moon likewise. It is the Lord who has created all those things that are on earth and we pray to them, because He Himself has preferred (lit. chosen) them.-----28 Our sacred girdle (Kusti) is made of seventy-two threads and we repeat (lit. make) when we tie it on, solemn professions of Faith. Our women when in their manner behold not either the sun or the sky or the moon, because they are the sources of light in excelsis; nor do they touch fire or water. They stand strictly aloof from everything, whether during the radiant day or the darksome night and sit apart, until the catamenia have ceased. They look at the fire and the sun only when they have washed from head [to foot]. So also, the female who gives birth to an infant must live apart for forty days. She ought to keep aloof [all the while] just as if she were in her manner and if this rule is not observed, it is vile. [Similarly], when a child is born of a woman before its time (lit. in a few months only) or when the babe is still-born, the mother (lit. she) does not [among us] go or run about hither and thither, nay does not even hold converse with any one. A female in that state also must keep severely aloof for forty-one days." All their other rites and customs also he described one by one to the Raja. When the mysteries of the Good Faith were thus expounded and the pearls of discourse strung in this most elegant manner, and when the Hindu Raja heard the oration, his mind regained perfect ease. 27. I read Káinàtash. All the Mss have Jáinátash or Jàinànash, which is unintelligible to me. 28. or 'We pray to him who is Self-chosen or Self-Existent.'
That good king forthwith commanded that they should reside in his dominions. Then some persons who were intelligent, good-natured and resourceful surveyed the land, discovered a spacious plain and informed the Mobed. A spot in this wilderness was chosen, of which the soil was excellent and there they made their abode. The people also liked the place and a city appeared where there had formerly been a jungle, desolate and uncultivated, but there they all descended, old as well as young. When the Dastur beheld that fine spot, he chose a site for their dwellings. The Dastur gave it the name of Sanjan and it was soon flourishing even as the realm of Iran. From that day the surname Sanjana came into vogue; know that the town is named after them.-----29 There they remained in joy and comfort and every one prospered in the end according to his wish. 29. Strangely inconsistent not only with the statement in the first hemistich of the same couplet but also with fact.
One day,-----30 they happened to have some business with the Raja, and all of them went with cheerful hearts (lit. thoughts) to him. The Dastur then addressed him thus: "O Prince, you have given us a dwelling spot in this land. We now wish to install in the Indian clime the Fire of Bahram [Warharan]. [But] the land must be cleared for three farsangs,-----31 so that the ceremonies [connected with the consecration] of the Nirang-----32 may be duly performed. No alien should be there present, save and except the Wise Men of the Good Faith. No person belonging to another creed might be there. Then only will the Fire be consecrated. If any strange person make a noise there, the religious rites will doubtless, be all of a sudden interrupted." Quoth the Raja then, "I have given you the permission. I am disposed to be very liberal in this matter. I rejoice (lit. prefer, choose) with all my soul that such a Prince (shâh) should be installed in my time. Indeed O sage, than this [act] what can be better? Go then speedily after his business, and gird up thy loins." That very instant, the Prince issued his commands and gave the Dastur a pleasant site. The Hindu Rana Jadi had the land at once cleared on every side. All the Unbelievers within three Farsangs were removed and no one remained there except the People of the Good Faith. No one dwelt around within three Farsangs of it, and no one stayed there save Zoroastrians (lit. men) of knowledge. Round the Aurvisgâh,-----33 on all sides [stood] Dasturs, every one of whom shone, in virtue of his sanctity, like the sun himself. They watched there day and night, for to do so was the command of the Lord. In those days, they were all men full of knowledge and capable in matters relating to the Faith. For several days and months they recited Yazashnes [Yasnas] and Yashts and worked with great energy. The laymen also were preoccupied in the business and provided, out of [their zeal for] the Faith, all various things necessary. The Prince Jádi Rana also sent offerings of every sort. In those days, all the arts and industries (lit. workshops) were in the hands of the People of the Good Faith. Things were everywhere easy for them for they had brought along with them all the tools (or means) from Khorasan. With all those resources derived from Khorasan, they were able to accomplish their task without any trouble. The reason was that several parties of Dasturs and Laymen of holy lives had also arrived at that spot. In their company were several alchemists also and the favor of the Lord thus made things easy for them. They had brought along with them ample resources and they thus consecrated the Fire according to the dictates of religion. The aged Dasturs thus installed the Iranshah-----34 beaming with light, in conformity wit the rites [prescribed] in our creed. In those times, men were [deeply] versed in spiritual matters and were able to observe religious precepts on account of their wisdom. In our own age, the Lord only knows what True Religion is; [men do not], and [all religious] action is, [after all], only a matter of personal satisfaction.-----35 30. Note that there is nothing here which can support Dr. Mody's assumption as to five years having elapsed between the landing and the consecration of the Fire temple. All that Bahman says is that they went to the Raja one day after they were settled in the town. 31. Farsang. A measure of length which varies considerably according to different authorities. It is sometimes said to be equivalent to a league, sometimes to 12000 cubits -- or 18000 feet. For the different estimates, see Alberuni, India, W. Sachau, II. 67-68; Elliot and Dowson, History of India, I. 24, Ain-i-Akbari, tr. Jarrett. II. 415-6 note. Pietro Della Valle says a Cos is half a Ferseng or league of Persia and that a Cos will answer to a little less than two Italian [English] miles. Vorsages, ed. Grey, I. 23. 32. Nirang, "The ceremony relating to the preparation of the gomez, Cow's urine, which is used as the most efficacious means of purification." Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Arda Viraf 147 note. 33. Arvisgah or Aurvisgah. "The consecrated space within which the Yazashna [Yasna] ceremony is performed." West supposes the word to be derived from the Av. Uvesa, goal. Note on Dadestan-i Denig XLVIII. 13. Sacred Books of the East, XVIII. 163. 34. "The Prince or Lord of Iran" [Persia]. The ancient Fire now lodge at Udwada is still known by this name. 35. The whole passage is most significant and throws, when read side by side with the Persian Rivayats, considerable light on the history of the Indian Atash Warharans.
All the laymen and Dasturs then celebrated in that land an extraordinary festival with entertainments. In this way, three hundred years, more or less, passed away and the people in small numbers or large, left the place. They dispersed in the land of Hind in all directions, and selected places to their minds. Some turned their faces toward Bânkâner, others fell off towards Broach, a few went away in the direction of Bariâv. All hastened towards different spots. Some reached the town of Anklesar or walked away proudly to the city of Cambay. Others dragged all their goods and chattels to Navsari, with pleasure and good luck. Wherever anyone felt [himself] comfortable, there he made his home. In this manner were spent two hundred years in joy, prosperity, and quiet. In those times, several Dasturs' houses were left in Sanjan town. One of God's Judgments then came down upon them, but I do not know what became of all those Dasturs, (or where all of them went). There dwelt one virtuous Dastur, young, well-intentioned and fluent of speech. The name of that Dastur was Khushmast and his aspirations were always towards virtue. A son [he had], who bore the name of Khujastah and whose [sole] delight was the performance of the ceremonies of the Baj-----36 and the Barsom.-----37 His perpetual avocation was the celebration of the Yazashne [Yasna], and the Baj and the Barsom were his constant companions. He was so deeply versed in the Yazashne that he has still left his mark in the Aurvisgâh (i.e. he is still remembered there). That saintly person lived in good repute [on earth]; may he possess joy and bliss in Paradise [also].*-----38 In this manner, seven hundred years went by and many of their descendants had lived in that town. When several years passed over, the heavens became untoward, the world suddenly became strait unto them and Time (Destiny) resolved to take their lives. 36. Baj. "This kind of prayer, Av. Vâk, a word or phrase, Pah. Vâj, Pers. Bâz, is a short formula, the beginning of which is to be muttered in a kind of whisper, or (according to the Pahlavi idiom) 'is to be taken' and 'retained' inwardly (as a protection while eating, praying, or performing other necessary acts) by strictly abstaining from all conversation until the completion of the act, when the prayer or Vâj is to be spoken out, that is, the conclusion of the formula is to be uttered aloud, and the person is then free to speak as he likes." West, Note on Shayast-Na Shayast III. 6, Sacred Books of the East, V. 278. 37. The Barsom, "Av. Baresma, or bundle of sacred twigs is an indispensable part of the ceremonial apparatus; it is held in the hand of the officiating priest while reciting many parts of the liturgy and is frequently washed with water and sprinkled with milk. It consists of a number of slender rods varying with the nature of the ceremony, but usually from five to thirty-three. These rods were formerly twigs cut from some particular trees but now thin metal wires are generally used." West's note on Dadestan-i Denig, XLIII, 15. S. B. E. XVIII. 142. 38. Eastwick says with some reason of the lines placed between asterisks, that they are very obscure and appear entirely unconnected. J. B. B. R. A. S. I. 181. But see the paper on the Traditional Dates of Parsi History, 12-14 ante.
SHAH MAHMUD SENDS AN ARMY AGAINST THE RAJA OF SANJAN, WHO HEARS OF THE SAME.
When some years had passed by in the revolution of the spheres, the Shah came to know of the Raja in Sanjan.* Islam reached Chapaner some time after five hundred years had expired in India. A good and fortunate Shah appeared and sat on the throne in that city. They used to call him Sultan Mahmud and his subjects spoke of him as the Shadow of the Glorious Lord. When he was informed some years afterwards, (i.e. after his accession to the throne) that there was in Hindustan a Raja somewhere near (lit. in the direction of) Sanjan, one of the Vazirs spoke thus to Alf Khan;-----39 "The victorious king commands that you should speedily set out with an army for Sanjan and wrest the country from the Raja." At the command of the Sultan Mahmud, Alf Khan rushed forth like smoke, got all his soldiers instantly ready and let his eagle [standard] fly in the air. Then, he led forth his troops and arrived at the prosperous town of Sanjan. When the Hindu Raja heard of his troops, and learnt that he had brought together from all quarters a host of thirty thousand chosen horsemen,-----40 each of whom had two mounts,-----41 and who were all heroes in battle and [cavaliers] of renown, he was terror-stricken by the tidings. But he regained his senses in an hour and immediately summoned all the Mobeds, Ervads and laymen.-----42 The virtuous Raja then said to them, "What do you now propose to do, O my faithful friends? My ancestors have patronised you and always been good to you. Gird up your loins, all of you, then, in my service (lit. business) and take you the lead in the battle. If you acknowledge the obligations you owe to my forbears, do not forget the duty (lit. bring your head out) of gratitude." Then the ancient Mobed made answer, "Do not, O Raja, be heavy-hearted on account of this host. So long as even one of us is alive, the heads of a hundred thousand (of the foes will we scatter. Verily, such is our wont in battle and so long as we are in life, such is our worth. Not a single individual from among us will turn back even were a millstone to whirl upon his head." The Prince on hearing this speech, bestowed upon him a suit of honour of every sort-----43. In those days, there were several warlike (lit. worthy, fit to fight) males of the Good Faith, old as well as young. When they were all reckoned, fourteen hundred were entered on the rolls. Forthwith they saddled their steeds, the drums were beaten and the horsemen stood up. Then all the men of the Good Faith drew themselves up in line with the Raja's forces in the battle field. 39. The name can be read Alaf Khan as well as Ulugh Khan. 40. Eastwick has two thousand in his translation. Journal B. B. R. A. S. I. 182. Anquetil puts the number at Soixante mille. Le Zend Avesta, Tom. I i. 321. Si-hazar (thirty thousand) is so likely to be mistaken in Persian for Sih-hazar (three thousand) that the latter is, as likely as not, to have been what Bahman himself wrote. Bahmanji Patell also understood the words to mean three thousand. Parsi Prakash, 4. 41. 'Duaspah.' "A trooper is called 'Duaspah' if he has two horses and Sihaspah, if three, in order to change horses during elghars or forced marches." Blochmann, Ain-i-Akbari. (Tr.). I. 241. See also Irvine, Army of the Moguls, 23. 42. Dasturs, Mobeds and Hirbads are the three classes of Zoroastrian priests, the first being the highest. 43. I take this to mean a complete suit, i.e. of seven pieces. "There were," says Irvine, "five degrees of khilat", those of three, five, six, or seven pieces. * *A three piece khila't given from the Khila't-khanah consisted of a turban (dastar), a long coat with very full skirts (Jamah) and a scarf for the waist (kamarband). A five piece robe came from the Toshah khanah (storehouse for presents), the extra pieces being a turban ornament (Sarpech) and a band for laying across the turban (Balaband). For the next grade, a tight fitting jacket with short sleeves called a Half-sleeve (Nimah-astin) was added. A European writer, Tavernier, (Ball, I, 163) thus details the seven-piece Khilat; (1) cap, (2) a long gown (Kabah) (3) a close-fitting coat (arkalon) which I take to be alkhaliq, a light coat, (4) two pairs of trousers, (5) two shirts, (6) two girdles. (7) a scarf for the head or neck." Army of the Moguls. 29. See also Yule and Burnell, Hobson Jobson. ed. Crooke, S. V. Killut.
ALF KHAN FIGHTS WITH THE HINDU RAJA AND FLIES BEFORE ARDESHIR.
When the first white [streak of] light emerged (lit. showed) from the sable night and the sheen of the stars descended into the bottom of the abyss (lit. cave), Alf Khan and his horsemen put on their armour and approached the field. Embroidered (lit. jewelled, inlaid) saddles were placed on the chargers and banners on the backs of the elephants. The horses were harnessed for fight and the battle-field was crowded by the elephants.-----44 The captains marshalled their troops in battle array and the fighting gear was everywhere held ready. When that great host was drawn up in the plain, the brazen bugles were at once blown. Thus was arrayed a host on either side, one [belonging to] the Moslems and the other to the Hindu Raja. Day and night were astounded at the sight, and even the horses were exhausted by over-much galloping. The leaders on the two sides were as two water-dragons struggling with each other with the fury of tigers. The earth grew dark as pitch with the clouds from which rained swords and spears and darts. So many were slain of both ranks in that strife that there were everywhere heaps of slain. There was no one to hearken to their moans nor any one to help them, for such was the Eternal Judge's doom against them. Not a man could be seen from among that host; all appeared to have fallen without discrimination in the action. Suddenly, there was a rout in the Hindu ranks, so that no one could recognise another in the encampment. Then a devout Layman of the Good Faith said to his comrades: "I do not behold, either in front or rear, so much as one of our Indian allies. The Hindus have fled from the field. No one save ourselves of the Good Faith remains on the battleground. Now is the hour of combat, O my dear friends, now does it behove us to march in line of battle like lions. If we all rush upon them in a body, we shall surely pour out the blood of the foe with sword and arrow." The Layman who was the first to enter the field was one who bore among them the name of Ardeshir. That very moment, the renowned Ardeshir spurred his swift courser into the field. Springing all of a sudden, he came up to the [Moslem] ranks clutching an iron spear. Then he stood up in the arena, javelin in hand, clad in armour and girding a sword. And first, the arrows rained everywhere, the corslets of the warriors were pierced and the world-illuminating sun was so hidden from view that no one could tell (lit. know) if it was day or night. The eyes of the luminary were blinded (lit. covered) by the dust, and everywhere man fell upon man; you might say that the earth had a coat of pitch out of which the arrow heads glistened like diamonds. At last, of the throwers of spears and wielders of maces, but few remained [alive] out of thousands, and though land and sky grew black and gloomy, the soil was, by the blood of the chiefs, dyed red like the tulip. [Indeed], the blood gushed out of their bodies as from fountains and their bucklers were, by the blades, shivered into fragments. Men's armours then became the calamities of their lives. Every minute, men were becoming the guests of Death (lit. Time)-----45 and the [dead] warriors buried from head to foot in iron [mail] were blazing like the shining sun. Shafts kept flying on both sides and blood was flowing along the black soil. Javelins penetrated (lit. dug into) breasts and bosoms and blood oozed out from coats of mail. But no one turned his face away from the blow of an adversary and every weapon was crying for blood.-----46 The soil itself looked as if [it were made] of iron on account of the horseshoes [with which it was bestrewn]. Men were wading in blood upto their knees (lit. calves of the legs). The struggle lasted in this wise for three days and nights until men's hands and feet were aweary. The sabres flashed like lightning on all sides and heads were scattered by the trenchant blades. The [might of] Islam was at last overthrown and destroyed in that engagement with the Hindu prince. Alf Khan ran away in the darksome night, forgetting his baggage and losing also the (right) road. Before Ardeshir, his entire army fled, now stumbling now picking themselves up. Many of the enemy fell into his grasp and he stood triumphant at the close. All the tents, baggage and furniture [also] came at once into the possession of Ardeshir. 44. Or 'The field seemed too narrow on account of the fighting of the elephants.' 45. This obscure line may also mean 'Time (Death) became the guest of mankind every moment.' 46. Or, 'All the instruments of bloodshed were in requisition.'
ALF KHAN FIGHTS AGAIN WITH ARDASHIR AND IS VICTORIOUS.When the sun rose from above the hills on another day, and the earth became once more resplendent with light, a great shout arose on either side of the two hosts. Once again the land was in commotion and many were the heads which turned stupid on account of the noise of the bells and the Hindi trumpets. Once more Alf Khan was ready for fight and the drums resounded when the famous Ardeshir beheld that host, he strode up swiftly and said forthwith to the well-advised Hindu Prince, "We are only one to their hundred. What do you think it [lit. see] good for us to do, now that a still larger force has arrived. [As for ourselves] we will either give up our own lives or take theirs, and stand [firm] on the battle field with that determination and the Lord will stand our friend, for He has always been the resolver of our difficulties." All of them were cheered by this speech and many hearts were thus delivered from sorrow. That instant, Ardeshir donned his coat of mail and once more came out to do battle with the Khan. Then Ardeshir the renowned rushed like a lion upon the ranks of the foe, with a lasso hanging by his saddle as on a squire errant's, a sabre of Indian [steel] at his girdle [lit. waist] and a javelin in his grasp. Then he proudly shouted aloud, "O lions! why were you so confounded [the other day] in the [hour of] fighting? Who now is your commander, what may be his name and what does he wish to have?" A champion advanced and said, "Here am I who can pour out the blood of [many] men at a [single] blow." Under him was a spirited (lit. bounding) charger and he came up at a gallop (lit. run) to do battle with Ardeshir, with a javelin in his hand and glaring on all sides like a drunken man. He hailed Ardeshir and said, "Now be on thy guard, O thou of stainless birth, for an adversary is before thee. Show then thy own skill or mastery." Ardeshir called out in reply, "Here is thy antagonist quite ready." Then the two fought like lions in the arena and as if they were weary of their own lives. In the end, Ardeshir vanquished him and hurled him down from the back of his steed. Then flinging the lasso and dragging him towards himself, he dismounted and struck off his head. When Alf Khan saw him slain, his heart was filled with woe. That instant, he gave orders that all the Parsis as well as the Raja should be slaughtered and that not one of them should be left alive. Longing for vengeance, he rushed to support his men-at-arms and the din of battle (lit. the cry of "Give, Give") arose. Swords clashed and blood flowed in rivers on land. When the troops on both sides joined battle, blood gushed from their bodies in torrents. It was as if a wave had rushed in from an ocean of gore. Everywhere men were [lying] exhausted. There was not room enough for even an ant to creep in. But what [avails it] if man proposes, unless God disposes [likewise]. Then Ardeshir dashed into the thick [of the fight] and his days came to an end. An arrow pierced his middle and came out on the other side. His body was enfeebled by wounds, for every one of his limbs was a fountain of blood. Then he tumbled down headlong from the saddle and his troops were thrown into disorder and confusion (lit. without feather or wing). Alas for that courageous chief, whom Time at last gave to the winds. When the Fates are angry, the hard stone becomes [soft] like wax. Though he fought and strove [with all his might], of what avail was it since Fortune had turned its face away from the man? On both sides, many warriors were slain, leaders and men of renown and worth. Then also was the Raja killed and a loud wail arose on the battlefield. Alas for that Hindu prince who fell and whose city became on all sides a desert.FLIGHT OF THE MEN OF THE GOOD FAITH TO THE HILL OF BAHROT AND THEIR GOING TO BANSDAH.
The People of the Good Faith also were dispersed. There is in Hindustan a hill named Bahrot. Many crept into it to save their lives. Man has no resource against God's decrees. Twelve years thus passed and they had carried the Iranshah along with them. After a time, by the Lord's command, they forgathered again with their relatives and kindred. Taking the Fire of Warharan also with themselves, all of them arrived at Bânsdâh. When the tidings reached that town, every one came out with loving kindness and three hundred horsemen with several persons of note went forward to escort them. They brought the Fire into the town with a hundred [marks] of reverence. It was as if a sick man had secured a panacea.-----47 Thence forward, Bânsdâh flourished as if it was perpetual spring there. Time passed in this wise and persons of Behdin lineage, old men as well as women, came to adore the Iranshah from every district in which there were [People of] that pure Creed. Just as, in earlier times, men used to go on a pilgrimage extraordinary (lit. unparalleled) to the far-famed Sanjan, so the Parsis now came to Bânsdâh from various places with numerous offerings. Afterward, when fourteen years had elapsed,-----48 the spheres [again] revolved [in a manner] favourable to their affairs. 47. Pazahr Padzahr., protecting from poison, an antidote, in which sense it is used habitually by Avicenna. Bezoars are hard concretions formed in the bodies of animals, to which antidotal virtue, were ascribed, and especially to one obtained from the stomach of a wild goat in the Persian province of Lar. Ibn Baithar says that Bezoars were laid upon the bites of venomous creatures and were believed to extract the poison. Yule and Burnell, Hobson Jobson, ed. Crooke, S. V. Bezoar. 48. These lines have been by some taken to mean that twelve years were spent at Bahrot and fourteen others in Bansdah, making in all twenty-six. Others have understood Bahman to say that the fourteen years last spoken of include the preceding twelve, and that fourteen years express the extreme length of the period which intervened between the Sack of Sanjan and the establishment of the Fire temple at Navsari. See ante, p. 8.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CONVEYANCE OF THE FIRE OF WARHARAN TO NAVSARI BY CHANGASHAH.
A layman then appeared who had not his peer at the time. He came forward in those days to preserve the religion and many notab1e things (lit. signs, marks) proceeded from him. He was the Dahyovad;-----49 his name was Changa, son of Asa and he solaced the hearts of the People of the Good Creed. That good-natured man would not suffer the Faith to fall into neglect in those latter days. He gave money (lit. purse) out of his own wealth to those who had no Sudra and Kusti (the sacred shirt and girdle). Many [excellent] provisions that man made for the creed. No afflicted person [ever] went to him for whom, poor man, he did not provide some relief or whose heart he did not cordially set at ease. In those times, several Behdin people came into the Faith under his auspices (lit. by his good fortune.) Indeed, my tongue cannot fully (lit. plainly) praise this layman who managed the affairs of the creed so well. One Year, that man of stainless birth went to the Fire-temple in pursuance of a vow. It was the time of the Jashan-i Sadeh, and the Fire-temple was then at Bansdah. O brother, the Jashan-i Sadeh fell on Roz Adar, Mah Adar.-----50 That devout and enlightened Dawar-----51 carried along with him several laymen and Dasturs. All of them prostrated themselves at the sight of the Fire and offered it worship. Every one then took once more the road [homewards] from the House of Prayer with pleasure and pride. Starting thence, the men returned to their homes; full of gladness and joy. When two or three months of that year-----52 had elapsed, an idea occurred to (lit. he brought the idea into his heart) that benevolent person and he called a meeting of the whole community (anjoman) and led the discourse on to the Fire-Temple. "I desire, O my well-wishers," he said, "to bring that Prince of Princes here. If we behold the face of that Lord every day, our religious merit will be exceeding great. Moreover, we have to endure great hardships every year on the journey, for there is heavy rain during that month,-----53 [Adar], and it is difficult for us to go there then. What can be better, O friends, than that we should proceed to Bansdah with some men of discernment, and bring here the Fire of the glorious Warharan, so that we can view it every day. Our means of livelihood [are sure] by its blessing to grow much more abundant and the hearts also of the People of the Good Faith will be filled with light." All were delighted by this speech because they would be longer dependent (lit. free from, i.e. rid of the trouble of going to) Bansdah. With a hundred marks of reverence they brought the Fire away and gave it a fine house. It had three attendants of the Good Faith, who accompanied it. Night and day, the worship was celebrated by that one associate [of the three] whose appointed [duty] it was. Of one of them the name was Nàgan Râm,-----54 and his desires were always turned towards the observance of [the precepts] of the Religion. The second Dastur's name was Khurshed and his father was Kiâm-ud-din who was in Eternity. The third Dastur, Chàyyàn the son of Sâer, also was always to be seen in its service. They had their families and kindred also with them and all of them accompanied the Iranshah. They were received with great respect and pomp and were treated honourably, The three Dasturs thus reached Navsari with their relatives after a long journey. In those days, that pious Dawar befriended these priests of the Iranshah. May this slave's homage reach him from this world. May he have a place among the Celestial Spirits. 49. Pahl. Dahyopat, Av. Danghu-paiti, chief ruler. Changa Asa's son Manak also is styled Dahyovad (Desai) in the Rivayat of Shapur Asa or Kama Asa of 896 A.Y., (1527 A.C.) 50. Bahman seems to have thought that the Jashn-i Sadah of the ancient Iranians was identical with what is now called Adar Jashn, but Alberuni declares that the former fell, not on the ninth day of Adar, but on the tenth of Vohuman. Athar-ul-Bakyah, Chronology of Ancient Nations, tr. Sachau. 213 and 424. The Burhan-i-Kataa says the same. S. V. Sadah. 51. The Dawar. "Pahl. Datobar, upholder of Justice or Judge was, like the Dastur, a ratu, head or chief in the old Zoroastrian community. He appears to have held a high rank which was probably hereditary, as it is still claimed by a Parsi family at Surat, though not acknowledged by the majority." Haug and Hoshangji, Book of Arda Viraf. 143 note. Sea also Parsi Prakash, 15, 70. 52. Bahman declares here that the Iranshah was brought to Navsari two or three months after the Adar Jashn, that is, the event must have taken place, making allowance for the days passed in negotiations and the journey from Bansdah, in the month of Frawardin. This will be a hard nut to crack for those who pin their faith in Bahman's chronology and at the same time uphold the reliability of the traditional date, Roz Mahrespand, Mah Shahrewar, Samvat 1475. The truth is that the two are absolutely irreconcilable. 53. It has been urged against Bahman that Adar mah must, in Changa Asa's time have fallen in September, and that September is not at all a rainy month in Gujarat, but both these assertions can be easily proved to be of very doubtful accuracy. 54. Bahman himself was a lineal descendant of this Nagan Ram, the pedigree being Bahman, Kaikobad, Hamjiar, Padam, Kaman, Narsang, Nagan, Ram. See ante. p. 87.
CONCLUSION OF THE NARRATIVE.Thanksgivings infinite and praises boundless, to the Creator of the World and the Cherisher of his slaves, who set my tongue going on this subject and graciously revealed unto me this door out of the Unknown. Lord, make the Dastur who revealed this tale to me happy in both worlds. I am the humble person hight Bahman who has his home and household goods in Navsari. Know further that my father is Kaikobad whose heart is delighted [only] when calling the Iranshah to mind. His sire was the Dastur Hormazdyar. May his place be in the resplendent Abode of the Blest, Know, O friend, that his surname was Sanjana, for by all kinds of wisdom was he fitted (Sanjideh, lit. weighed,) for affairs. This surname of Sanjana was given him on account of the wisdom which he showed [to exist] in our religious practices. They gave him the title of 'Dastur of the Faith' also, and the road of piety was everywhere kept open through him, (i.e. he solved all religious difficulties). He had been settled in Navsari, you may reckon, (i.e. approximately), for two hundred years. A hundred thousand blessings upon him and also upon the souls of all the other Pillars of the Faith.
Thus have I, by the will of the Lord, successfully indited the story of our People, [in the hope] that when a devout person reads it, he may pronounce a blessing on me at the end. Many many thousand blessings from me on that virtuous character and man of those times. May He of the Immortal Soul [Zartosht] send his Spirit to God and secure his pardon from the Supreme. May his Spirit always receive praise and his soul be perpetually at peace (lit. freedom from want). It was in the nine hundred and sixty-ninth year of the Era of Yazdegird that this tale was completed by my pen. On the day Hordad of the month Frawardin, were these verses finished correctly (lit. according to rule). I have written this narrative and brought it to a conclusion, and I expect for it a reward from no one save the Lord, and I desire from my readers nothing but benedictions, for thus will my honour and fame grow. May that soul abide with Him of the Immortal Soul (Zartosht), who reads me with a pleased heart. I have related in this narrative what I have seen and what I have heard from the conversation of the old. My preceptor-----55 has, moreover, corrected it and thus have many flowers sprung up in this pleasance. May the Lord bestow upon him the full period of natural life (i.e. may he live for a hundred years,) and may all the years of that life be like the spring time. In telling this tale, I have ever observed the ways of the truthful. Pronounce then befitting blessings upon me, whenever you peruse (lit. see) this delectable narrative of mine. Laudations infinite and praises countless on the pious Zartosht. May you [reader] have given you the Grace Divine to invoke blessings upon my soul. 55. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that Dastur Hoshang [Asa] from whom Bahman declares he heard the whole story was this teacher as well as the corrector of these verses.
Author: Hodivala, Shahpurshah Hormasji.
Title: Studies in Parsi history. -- Bombay [Shahpurshah Hormasji Hodivala] 1920.
(APW3764UW)
Location: University of Wisconsin, Madison, Memorial Library Stacks
Call Number: DS432 P3 H6
Format: [4], 2, 349 p. fold. facsims.
Avesta -- Zoroastrian Archives Contents Prev qsanjan.htm Next Glossary
-700: Early Smartism emerges from the syncretic Vedic brahminical (priestly caste) tradition. It flourishes today as a liberal sect alongside Saiva, Vaishnava and Shakta sects.
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_8.html
Late Period (747 B.C.–332 B.C.)
Piankhi, the ruler of a Nubian kingdom centered at Napata in the area of the Fourth Cataract, took advantage of the disunity in Egypt at the beginning of Dynasty 25 to conquer Egypt. He met little resistance. After his victory, Piankhi returned to his capital, leaving his sister, Amenirdis, as the God's Wife of Amen at Thebes, a position that allowed her to maintain control of Egypt in the absence of her brother.
In this way, Nubian pharaohs maintained control over virtually all of Egypt during the dynasty. They carried out many building projects throughout Egypt and Nubia [17446]. They adopted Egyptian customs, beliefs, religion, and kingship in their own culture, and this influence continued long after the end of Dynasty 25. They made Amen the state god of Nubia, were buried under pyramids in Nubia [17425], and adapted the hieroglyphic script for writing their own language.
The Nubians and Assyrians fought several campaigns for control of Egypt. Eventually the Assyrians were successful in ousting the Nubians from power, but soon an Egyptian, Psamtik I, took control of Egypt, beginning Dynasty 26. He arranged for his daughter, Nitocris, to be adopted by the Kushite God's Wife of Amen at Thebes, thus assuring that she would be the next God's Wife of Amen. This position gave Nitocris extraordinary power over the region and significant land endowments throughout Egypt. Psamtik I also allied himself with Mentuemhat [17447], the powerful mayor of Thebes who owned the largest and most complex private tomb in Thebes (TT 34), effectively gaining control over the whole of Egypt.
During this period there was a large influx of foreigners into Egypt. Phoenicians came as traders; Greeks and Carians came as mercenaries. Immigrants from the Near East, Libya, the Aegean, Nubia, and elsewhere settled in Egypt. A new, simplified script, called demotic, was introduced mainly for written documents. On the other hand, monumental architecture, language, and art styles harkened back to the Old Kingdom. These archaizing tendencies also led to the copying of numerous works from the Old Kingdom, most of which are the only surviving copies today.
In 525 B.C., the Persian army under Cambyses conquered Egypt and its kings ruled the country as Dynasty 27 through local representatives based at Memphis. They established juridical guides for Egypt published in both in the demotic Egyptian script and Aramaic, the lingua franca of the age. Like many of their foreign predecessors, the Persian kings built temples in Egypt, and achieved a new technological level by digging a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea.
During Dynasties 28 to 30, Delta princes gained independence from Persian rule. These dynasties were weak and the Persians eventually reconquered Egypt in 341 B.C., but were able to maintain control for less than a decade.
-623-543: Life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, born in Uttar Pradesh in a princely Shakya Saivite family. (Date by Sri Lankan Buddhists. Indian scholars say -563-483. Mahayanists of China and Japan prefer -566-486 or later.)
http://www.theindiatravel.com/cityguide/state/up/kapil.html 020602yd
Identified today with ancient Kapilvastu, modem Piprahwa lies at a distance of 20 km from Siddharthnagar. Kapilvastu was the ancient capital of the Sakya clan whose ruler was the father of the Buddha, for which reason the Buddha is also referred to as the Sakyamuni. The Sakya domain was one of the sixteen independent principalities of the 6th century BC.
Prince Gautam, as the Buddha was then known, left his palace in Kapilvastu at the age of 29, and revisited it 12 years later, long after he had attained enlightenment.
Today, Kapilvastu Comprises of Several villages, chief among them being Piprahwa and Ganvaria. A large stupa stands at the ancient site which is said to have housed the bone relics of the Buddha. The presence of these relics are testified by an ancient Brahmi inscription discovered at Piprahwa. The ruins of the palace are spread over a large area.
Stupa ComplexThis is the main archaeological site which was discovered during excavations in 1973-74. The seals and inscriptions over the lid of the pot discovered read "Om Deoputra Vihare Kapilvastu Bhikschu Mahasanghasa" and "Om Deoputra Vihare Kapilvastu Bhikschu Sanghasa". The title Deoputra refers to Kanishka, a great patron of Buddhism who built the biggest Vihara at Kapilvastu and renovated the main stupa here.Palace SiteExcavations carried out by Dr. K.M. Srivastava indicated the ruins of the palace of King Shuddhodhan, the father of Prince Gautam (Lord Buddha). It is said to be the place where Lord Buddha spent the first 29 years of his life.
Lumbini86 km., situated across the border in Nepal, Lumbini is the birthplace of Lord Buddha.
http://www.fwbo.org/map/index.html 020420yd
www.dharmanet.org 020420yd
www.buddhanet.net 020420yd
Shambala Sun Magazine 020420yd
www.stupas.org 020420yd
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/dhamma/dham-hp.htm#palm
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/index.htm 020320yd http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/b_chron.htm 020320yd
Buddhist Western Calendar Major Events Significant World Events
- 120* 6th Century B.C.E. * Life of Siddhartha Guatama, the historical Buddha: conventional dates: 566-486 B.C.E. (According to more recent research: 490-410 B.C.E.). Zarathustra, 630-553 B.C.E.Birth of Mahavira, 550 B.C.E.Pythagoras, 582-507 B.C.E.
- 20 5th Century B.C.E. • First Buddhist Council at Rajagaha (486 B.C.E.) after the Parinirvana. Socrates, 469-399 B.C.E.Plato, 427-347 B.C.E.
144 4th Century B.C.E. • Second Buddhist Council at Vesali (386 B.C.E.) about 100 year after the Parinirvana.First schism of the Sangha occurs in which the Mahasanghika school parts ways with the traditional Sthaviravadins or the Theravada.Non-canonical Buddhist Council at Pataliputra (367 B.C.E.). Beginning of Buddhist sectarianism. Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.E. Alexander the Great, 356-323 B.C.E.
244 3rd Century B.C.E. Reign of Indian Emperor Asoka (272-231 B.C.E.) who converts and establishes the Buddha's Dharma on a national level for the first time.• Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra (modern Patna) (250 BCE). under the patronage of Emperor Asoka about 200 years after the Parinirvana. The modern Pali Tipitaka now essentially complete.Asoka's son and missionary Mahinda converts Sri Lanka (247 B.C.E.) Euclid, 300 B.C.E.
344 2nd Century B.C.E. The beginnings of Mahayana Buddhism (20O B.C.E.).Composition of Prajnaparamita literature.Historical record has it that two Buddhist missionaries from India in 68 AD, arrived at the court of Emperor Ming (58-75) of the Han Dynasty They enjoyed imperial favour and stayed on to translate various Buddhist Texts, one of which, The 'Sutra of Forty-two Sections' continues to be popular even today. Han Dynasty in China, 206 BCE - 220 C.E.
444 1st Century B.C.E. The entire scriptural canon of the Theravada School was committed to writing on palm leaves in Pali at the Aloka Cave, near Matale, Sri Lanka (35-32 B.C.E.) Julius Caesar, 100-44 B.C.E.
544 1st Century C.E.* Reign of King Kaniska in India.• Fourth Buddhist Council at Jalandhar or in Kashmir around 100 AD. (This is not recognized by the Theravadins).Composition of Lotus Sutra and other Buddhist texts.Buddhism enters Central Asia and China. Jesus of Nazareth, 0-33 C.E.
644 2nd Century C.E. Age of Indian Buddhist philosopher Nargarjuna, (150 AD) founder of the school of Madhyamika ('the Middle Way'). Roman Empire reaches the height of its power.
744 3rd Century C.E Expansion of Buddhism to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity, 312 C.E.
844 4th Century C.E. Asanga (310-390) founds the Yogacara school of Buddhism.Development of Vajrayana Buddhism in India.Translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese by Kumarajiva (344-413), Hui-yüan (334-416). Buddhism enters Korea in 372. Gupta Empire (India), 320-490 C.E. Augustine, 354-430 C.E.
944 5th Century C.E. Buddhist monastic university founded at Nalanda, India.Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) in Sri Lanka.Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien visits India (399-414).Amitabha (Amida) Pure Land sect emerges in China.Sri lankan Theravadin nuns introduce full ordination lineage into China (433 CE). Earliest hospital in Sri Lanka, 437 C.E.Fall of the Western Roman Empire, 476 C.E.
1044 6th Century C.E. Bodhidharma arrives in China from India (520).Sui Dynasty in Chinese History (589-617) beginning of Golden Age of Chinese Buddhism.Development of T'ien-tai, Hua-yen, Pure Land, and Ch'an Schools of Chinese Buddhism.Buddhism enters Japan (538) becomes state religion (594).Buddhism flourishing in Indonesia. Mohammed, 570-632 C.E.The Age of Islamic Expansion, 630-725 C.E.
1144 7th Century C.E. Buddhism established in Tibet (650).Chinese pilgrim Hsuan-tsang (602-664) visits India. Tang Dynasty in Chinese history, 618-906 C.E.
1244 8th Century C.E. Academic schools (Jöjitsu, Kusha, Sanron, Hossö, Ritsu, and Kegon) proliferate in Japan.First Tibetan monastery at Sam-yas.Great debate between Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist schools.Ch'an declared heretical in Tibet.Nyingma School of Tibet Buddhism established. Nara Period in Japanese history, 710-784 C.E.
1344 9th Century C.E. Khmer kings build Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious monument.Tendai School (founded by Saichö 767-822) and Shingon School (founded by Kukai: 774-835) appear in Japan.Great Buddhist persecution in China (845) Heian Period in Japanese history,794-1185 First printed book, 868 C.E.Diamond Sutra, China
1444 10th Century C.E. First complete printing of Chinese Buddhist Canon (983), known as the Szechuan edition. Sung Dynasty in Chinese History, 960-1279
1544 11th Century C.E. Conversion of King Anawrahta of Pagan (1044-77) by Shin Arahan.Atisha (982-1054) arrives in Tibet from India (1042). Marpa (1012-1097) begins Kargyu School of Tibetan Buddhism.Milarepa (1040-1123) becomes greatest poet and most popular saint in Tibetan Buddhism.The bhikkhu and bhikkhuni (monk and nun) communities at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, die out following invasions from South India.Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism established.Revival of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Burma.Decline of Buddhism in India. Great Schism between Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, 1054 C.E.1st Crusades, 1096-1099 C.E.
1644 12th Century CE. Theravada Buddhism established in Burma.Hönen (1133-1212) founded the Pure Land School of Japanese Buddhism.Eisai (1141-1215) founds the Rinzai Zen School of Japanese Buddhism. In 1193 the Moslems attacked and conquered Magadha, the heartland of Buddhism in India, and with the destruction of the Buddhist Monasteries in that area Buddhism was wiped out. Buddhism in Korea flourishes under the Koryo dynasty (1140-1390). Kamakura Period in Japanese history, 1192-1338 C.E.
1744 13th Century C.E. Nalanda Buddhist University destroyed in India (1200).Shinran (1173-1263 ) founds True Pure Land School of Japanese Buddhism.Dogen (1200-1253) founds Soto Zen School of Japanese Buddhism.Nichiren (1222-1282) founds school of Japanese Buddhism named after him.Mongols converted to Vajrayana Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism spreads to Laos. Magna Carta, 1215 C.E. Genghis Khan invades China, 1215 C.E.Thomas Aquinas, 1225-1274 C.E.Clement of Alexandria, ?-1227 C.E.Mongol conquest of China complete, 1279
1844 14th Century C.E. Bu-ston collects and edits Tibetan Buddhist Canon.Rulers of the north (Ching Mai) and northeast (Sukhothai) Thailand adopt Theravada Buddhism (becomes state religion in 1360). Theravada Buddhism adopted in Cambodia and Laos.Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419) Tibetan Buddhist reformer and founder of Dge-lugs-pa (or Gelug-pa, or 'Yellow Hat') order. China regains its independence from the Mongols under the Ming dynasty. 1368
1944 15th Century C.E. Beginning of Dalai Lama lineage in Tibetan Buddhism.In Cambodia, the Vishnuite temple, Angkor Wat, founded in the 12th century, becomes a Buddhist centre. Development of printing in EuropeLeonardo DaVinci, 1452-1519 Columbus "finds" the new world,1492
2044 16th Century C.E. 1578: Tibet's Gelug-pa leader receives the title of Dalai from Altan Khan. "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama meets Qing Emperor Shunzhi near Beijing. Martin Luther, 1483-1546Protestant ReformationShakespeare, 1564-1616 Galileo, 1564-1642
2144 17th Century C.E. Control of Japanese Buddhism by Tokugawa Shögunate (the ruling feudal government) (I603-1867)Hakuin (1686-1769) Priest, writer and artist who helped revive the Rinzai Zen Sect in Japanese Buddhism. Establishment of Tokugawa Shogunate (Japan) 1603-1867Japan closes the door to foreigners, 1639 Pilgrims reach America, 1620 Galileo recants, 1633
2244 18th Century C.E. Colonial occupation of Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.King Kirti Sri Rajasinha obtains bhikkhus from the Thai court to reinstate the bhikkhu ordination line which has died out in Sri Lanka. American independence, 1776 French revolution, 1789-1802 Burmese destroy Ayudhaya(Thai capital), 1768
2344 19th Century C.E. New sects begin to emerge in Japanese Buddhism.Sri Lankan forest monks go to Burma for reordination (1862).First Western translation of the Dhammapada. (German-1862).• 5th Buddhist Council in Mandalay, Burma (1868-1871) where the text of the Pali Canon was revised and inscribed on 729 marble slabs. Meiji Restoration in Japanese history 1868, marking end of military ruleAmerican Civil War, 1861-1865
2444-2544 20th Century C.E. Buddhist Society of Great Britan Founded (1907).Taishö Shinshü Daizokyö edition of Chinese Buddhist Canon printed in Tokyo (1924-1929).Communist persecution and then control of Tibetan Buddhism (1950-).Founding of World Fellowship of Buddhists (1952).Buddha Jayanti Year, commemorating 2,500 years of Buddhism (1956). • 6th Buddhist Council held at Rangoon, Myanmar (Burma) (1954-1956 CE).Dalai Lama flees Tibet to India (1959)Buddhism spreads to western countries.H.H. Dalai Lama receives Nobel Peace Prize. WW I, 1914-1918 Russian revolution, 1917-1922WW II, 1939-1945Cultural Revolution (China) 1966The Pope, John Paul II, pardons Galileo, 1995. The Fall of the Berlin Wall; The Cold War ends, 1989.
* The Buddhist calendar starts (year 1) from the Buddha's Parinirvana (death and final release) which occured in his eightieth year.* B.C.E. = Before Common Era (Equivalent to B.C.) * C.E. = Common Era (Equivalent to A.D.)
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Year Major Events in Theravada Buddhism
383 B.C.E. The Second Council convenes in Vesali to discuss controversial points of Vinaya. The first schism of the Sangha occurs, in which the Mahasanghika school parts ways with the traditionalist Sthaviravadins. At issue is the Mahasanghika's reluctance to accept the Suttas and the Vinaya as the final authority on the Buddha's teachings. This schism marks the first beginnings of what would later evolve into Mahayana Buddhism.
250 B.C.E. Third Council is convened by King Asoka at Pataliputra (India). Disputes on points of doctrine lead to further schisms, spawning the Sarvastivadin and Vibhajjavadin sects. The Abhidhamma Pitaka is recited at the Council, along with additional sections of the Khuddaka Nikaya. The modern Pali Tipitaka is now essentially completed.
247 B.C.E. King Asoka sends his son, Ven. Mahinda, on a mission to bring Buddhism to Sri Lanka. King Devanampiya Tissa of Sri Lanka is converted.
240 B.C.E. Ven. Mahinda establishes the Mahavihara (Great Monastery) of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The Vibhajjavadin community living there becomes known as the Theravadins. Mahinda's sister, Ven. Sanghamitta, arrives in Sri Lanka with a cutting from the original Bodhi tree, and establishes the bhikkhuni-sangha (nuns) in Sri Lanka.
100 C.E. Famine and schisms in Sri Lanka point out the need for a written record of the Tipitaka to preserve the Buddhist religion. King Vattagamani convenes a Fourth Council, in which 500 reciters and scribes from the Mahavihara write down the Pali Tipitaka for the first time, on palm leaves. Theravada Buddhism first appears in Burma and Central Thailand.
200 C.E. Buddhist monastic university at Nalanda, India flourishes; remains a world centre of Buddhist study for over 1,000 years.
425 C.E. Ven. Buddhaghosa collates the various Sinhalese commentaries on the Canon - drawing primarily on the Maha Atthakatha (Great Commentary) preserved at the Mahavihara - and translates his work into Pali. This makes Sinhalese Buddhist scholarship available to the entire Theravadin world. As a cornerstone to his work, Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purity) which eventually becomes the classic Sri Lankan textbook on the Buddha's teachings.
Dhammapala composes commentaries on parts of the Canon missed by Buddhaghosa (such as the Udana, Itivuttaka, Theragatha, and Therigatha), along with extensive sub-commentaries on Buddhaghosa's work.
1050 The bhikkhu and bhikkhuni communities at Anuradhapura die out following invasions from South India.
1070 Bhikkhus from Pagan arrive in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka to reinstate the Theravada ordination line in Sri Lanka.
1164 Polonnaruwa destroyed by foreign invasion. With the guidance of two monks from a forest branch of the Mahavihara sect - Vens. Mahakassapa and Sariputta - King Parakramabahu reunites all bhikkhus in Sri Lanka into the Mahavihara sect.
1236 Bhikkhus from Kañcipuram, India, arrive in Sri Lanka to revive the Theravada ordination line.
1279 Last inscriptional evidence of a Theravada Bhikkhuni nunnery (in Burma).
1287 Pagan (Burma) looted by Mongol invaders; its decline begins.
13th cen. A forest-based Sri Lankan ordination line arrives in Burma and Thailand. Theravada spreads to Laos. Thai Theravada monasteries first appear in Cambodia shortly before the Thais win their independence from the Khmers.
1753 King Kirti Sri Rajasinha obtains bhikkhus from the Thai court to reinstate the bhikkhu ordination line, which had died out in Sri Lanka. This is the origin of the Siam Nikaya.
1777 King Rama I, founder of the current dynasty in Thailand, obtains copies of the Tipitaka from Sri Lanka and sponsors a Council to standardize the Thai version of the Tipitaka, copies of which are then donated to temples throughout the country.
1803 Sri Lankans ordained in the Burmese city of Amarapura found the Amarapura Nikaya in Sri Lanka to supplement the Siam Nikaya, which admitted only brahmins from the Up Country highlands around Kandy.
1828 Thailand's Prince Mongkut (later King Rama IV) founds the Dhammayut Sect.
1862 Forest monks headed by Ven. Paññananda go to Burma for reordination, returning to Sri Lanka the following year to found the Ramañña Nikaya. First translation of the Dhammapada into a Western language (German).
1868 Fifth Council is held at Mandalay, Burma; Pali Canon is inscribed on 729 marble slabs.
1873 Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda defeats Christian missionaries in a public debate, sparking a nationwide revival of Sri Lankan pride in its Buddhist traditions.
1879 Sir Edwin Arnold publishes his epic narrative poem Light of Asia, stimulating popular Western interest in Buddhism.
1880 Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, founders of the Theosophical Society, arrive in Sri Lanka from the USA, embrace Buddhism, and begin a campaign to restore Buddhism on the island by encouraging the establishment of Buddhist schools.
1881 Pali Text Society is founded in England by T.W. Rhys Davids; most of the Tipitaka is published in roman script and, over the next 100 years, in English translation.
1891 Maha Bodhi Society founded in India by the Sri Lankan lay follower Anagarika Dharmapala, in an effort to reintroduce Buddhism to India.
1899 First Western Theravada monk (Gordon Douglas) ordains, in Burma.
1900 Ven. Ajaan Mun and Ven. Ajaan Sao revive the forest meditation tradition in Thailand.
1902 King Rama V of Thailand institutes a Sangha Act that formally marks the beginnings of the Mahanikaya and Dhammayut sects. Sangha government, which up to that time had been in the hands of a lay official appointed by the king, is handed over to the bhikkhus themselves.
1949 Mahasi Sayadaw becomes head teacher at a government-sponsored meditation center in Rangoon, Burma.
1954 Burmese government sponsors a Sixth Council in Rangoon.
1956 Buddha Jayanti Year, commemorating 2,500 years of Buddhism.
1958 Ven. Nyanaponika Thera establishes the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka to publish English-language books on Theravada Buddhism. Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is founded in Sri Lanka to bring Buddhist ideals to bear in solving pressing social problems. Two Germans ordain at the Royal Thai Embassy in London, becoming the first to take full Theravada ordination in the West.
1970's Refugees from war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos settle in North America, Australia and Europe, establishing many Buddhist communities in the West. Ven. Taungpulu Sayadaw and Dr. Rina Sircar, from Burma, establish the Taungpulu Kaba-Aye Monastery in Northern California, USA. Ven. Ajaan Chah establishes Wat Pah Nanachat, a forest monastery in Thailand for training Western monks. Insight Meditation Society, a lay meditation center, is founded in Massachusetts, USA. Ven. Ajaan Chah travels to England to establish a small community of monks at the Hamsptead Vihara, which later moves to Sussex, England, now known as Chithurst Forest Monastery.
1980's Lay meditation centers grow in popularity in North America, Australia and Europe. First Theravada forest monastery in the USA (Bhavana Society) is established in West Virginia. Amaravati Buddhist Monastery established in England by Ven. Ajaan Sumedho.
1990's Continued western expansion of the Theravada Sangha: monasteries from the Thai forest traditions established in California, USA (Metta Forest Monastery, founded by Ven. Ajaan Suwat; Abhayagiri Monastery, founded by Ven. Ajaans Amaro and Pasanno). Buddhism meets cyberspace: Buddhist computer networks emerge; several editions of the Pali Tipitaka become available online.
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Year Major Events in Tibetan Buddhism
c200 C.E. Buddhism begins to percolate into Tibetan region and teachings affect Bon religion in kingdom of Shang-Shung (South Tibet).
3rd cen. Buddhist scriptures begin to reach early Tibetan Kingdoms (North Tibet) during reign of King Lhatotori Nyentsen
641 King Songtsen Gampo unifies Tibet and marries Chinese princess Wen Cheng and Nepalese Princess Bhrkuti who bring Buddha images
641-650 Construction of Potala Palace, and Jokang and Ramoche temples to house Buddha images
773? King Trisong Detsen (r.755-797) invites Shantarakshita to Tibet.
774 King Trisong Detsen invites Padmasambhava, yogin of Swat, to Tibet, and construction of Samye begins (775).
c785 Samye, Tibet's 1st monastery, built by Trisong Detsen and Padmasambhava. Great Convocation, 3000 monks ordained. Translating begins.
792 Exponents of Indian Buddhism prevail in debate with Chinese at Samye.
840 Persecution of Tibetan Buddhism under King Lang Darma. period of conflict and civil strife begins
877 Destruction of Tibetan Dynasties. Buddhism almost completely wiped out in Tibet.
978 Commencement of second Buddhist period in Tibet
1038 Atisha comes to Tibet and founds the Kadampa school (which later becomes the Gelugpa order)
c1039 Marpa the translator (1012-1099) founder of the Kargyu school, travels to India, studies under Naropa
1040 Birth of Milarepa, 2nd hierarch of Kagyu order and a renowned poet.
1055 Birth of Marchik Labdron (1055-1153) founder of the Chod lineage, the main lineage founded by a woman.
1073 Founding of Sakya, the first monastery of the Sakya monastic order.
1247 Sakya Pandita submits to Godan Khan; beginning of the first priest/patron relationship between a Tibetan Lama and a Mongol Khan.
1261 Tibet is reunited with Sakya Pandita, Grand Lama of Sakya, as king.
1350 King Changchub Gyaltsen defeats Sakya and founds a secular dynasty.
1409 Ganden, 1st Gelug monastery, built by monastic reformer Tsongkhapa.
1435-81 In prolonged warfare, Karmapa supporters gain control of royal court.
1578 Gelug-pa leader gets the title of Dalai ("Ocean") from Altan Khan.
1642 Gushri Khan enthrones the 5th Dalai Lama as temporal ruler of Tibet.
1653 "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama meets Qing Emperor Shunzhi near Beijing.
1682 Fifth Dalai Lama dies; regent conceals death for the next 14 years.
1716-21 Italian Jesuit priest, Ippolito Desideri studies and teaches in Lhasa.
1717 Dzungar Mongols invade Tibet and sack Lhasa; Fifth DL's tomb looted.
1720 Dzungars driven out; Qing (Chinese) forces install Kesang Gyatso as the 7th Dalai Lama.
1721 The position of Amban is created by a 13-point Qing decree on Tibet. 29-point Qing decree prescribes "golden urn" lottery for picking DL and PL, bans visits by non-Chinese, and increases Amban's powers.
1904 British troops under Colonel Younghusband enter Tibet and occupy Lhasa.
1910-12 Chinese troops occupy Tibet, shoot at unarmed crowds on entering Lhasa.
1911 Bogh Haan, the Urga "Living Buddha," proclaims Mongolia independent.
1913 13th Dalai Lama proclaims Tibet a "religious and independent nation".
1924-25 Pressure from monks causes Dalai Lama to dismiss his British-trained officers.
1933 Truce ends China/Tibet fighting; the 13th Dalai Lama dies at age 58.
1934 Reting Rimpoche named regent. China permitted to open Lhasa mission.
1940 The five-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama.
1941 Unable to keep celibacy vow, Reting is replaced as regent by Taktra.
1945 Newly opened English-language school is closed after monks protest.
1950 Red China invades Tibet; Tibetan army destroyed in battle at Chamdo.
1951 17-point agreement between China and Tibet; Chinese occupy Lhasa.
1956 Tibetans in Kham and Amdo (Qinghai) begin revolt against Chinese ruler. Dalai Lama visits India for 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's birth.
1959 Dalai Lama flees to India; 87,000 Tibetans die in anti-Chinese revolt.
1960 International Commission of Jurists: "acts of genocide [have] been committed... to destroy the Tibetans as a religious group."
1963 Dalai Lama approves a democratic constitution for the Tibetan exile community.
1964 The Panchen Lama is arrested after calling for Tibetan independence.
1978 Visitors find 8 temples left in TAR, down from 2,700 in 1959.
1979-80 China allows a series of three delegations from Dalai Lama to visit Tibet.
1989 Dalai Lama receives the Nobel Peace Prize.
1995 Dalai Lama recognizes six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as 11th Panchen Lama. China denounces the Dalai Lama's choice.
1999 The Karmapa (Urgyen Trinley Dorje) flees Tibet to join the Dalai Lama in exile.
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Year Major Events in Chinese Buddhism
1st century CE Historical record has it that two Buddhist missionaries from India in 68 AD, arrived at the court of Emperor Ming (58-75) of the Han Dynasty (25-220 AD). They enjoyed imperial favour and stayed on to translate various Buddhist Texts, one of which, The 'Sutra of Forty-two Sections' continues to be popular even today.
4th century CE Translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese by Kumarajiva (344-413) and Hui-yüan (344-416).
5th century CE Chinese pilgrim scholar Fa-hsien visits India (399-414).Amitabha (Amida) the Pure Land School (Ching t'u) emerges in China (402).Persecution of Buddhism under Emperor Wu or Shih-tusu (424-451).Restoration under the new Emperor, Wen-ch'eng-ti (454).
6th century CE Bodhidharma, First Patriarch of the Ch'an School arrives in China from India in 520 (variant 526).The T'ang dynasty (618-907) was the Golden Age of Chinese Buddhism.The T'ien-tai School was established by Chih-i (538-597), Hua-yen School establish by Fa-shun (557-640) Dhyana School (Ch'an; Jap.Zen) Schools of Chinese Buddhism.
7th century CE The Southern School of Ch'an or new Ch'an begins in earnest with Hui-neng (638-713) the Sixth Patriarch.The Persecution in 845. During the reign of Emperor Wu-tsung (841-7) an order came to the effect that all Buddhist establishments should be destroyed, initiating a decline in Chinese Buddhism. The invention of block printing by Chinese Buddhists. The oldest extant book printed is the Tun-hung book of 868 it contained excerpts from the Diamond Sutra .
10th century CE In 972, the first emperor of the Sung Dynasty ordered the complete printing of the Chinese Tripitaka. This was achieved in 983, known as the Shu-pen (Szechuan edition). Two classic collections appeared, the 'Blue Cliff Record', (Pi-yen-lu; Jap. Hekiganroku) compiled by Hsueh Tou Ch'ung Hsien (980-1152) and the 'Gateless Gate' (Wu-men-kuan; Jap. Mumonkan) compiled by Wu-men Hui kai (1184-1260).
12th to 15th century CE China during the Yuan Dynasty was under Mongolian rule and the influences of Tibetan Lamaism. It was during the Mogol Dynasty that the Buddhist-Taoist controversy was brought before Mangu Khan in 1255. The acrimonious debate, which had started over a 1000 years before was finally concluded in the Buddhist's favour by an edict of Kublai Khan in 1281.Movement toward unity among the schools developed under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)Master Chu-hung, (born 1535) united in his person the two leading trends in Ming Buddhism - harmonization of the different schools (specifically Cha'n, Pureland) and the inauguration of a lay Buddhist movement.
The Modern Era The revolution of 1911 that toppled the Manchu Dynasty and established the Republic of China brought problems for the Buddhist Sangha. To combat these trends arose a remarkable monk, T'ai-hsu (1898-1947) who was able to rally his fellow religionists and to initiate a program of reform. On the national scale he organised a Chinese Buddhist Society in 1929.A revival of the Idealistic School was initiated by the publication in 1901of the Ch'eng-wei-shih-lun (Notes on the Completion of the Idealistic Doctrine) of K'uei-chi, long lost in China but brought back from Japan. The leader of this revival was the layman Ou-yang Chien, and the Institute of Inner Learning, which he organised in Naking (Nanjing) in 1922.Hsu Yun, Ch'an Master (1840-1959) 'Universally regarded as the most outstanding Buddhist of the Chinese Sangha in the modern era' (Richard Hunn). Dharma successor of all five Ch'an schools; main reformer in Chinese Buddhism revival (1900-50). Wong Mou-Lam translated the The Platform Sutra into English and founded the journal Chinese Buddhism (1930).(1898-1978) Upasaka Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk) Translator and Writer on Ch'an. Born in Canton. Lived in exile in Hong Kong.The official formation of the Chinese Buddhist Association by the government of the People's Republic of China on May 30th, 1953.The Cultural Revolution (1965-75) Buddhist temples and monasteries were sacked and the already weakened Sangha was further depleted. The excesses of this time have since been regretted, however, and a more liberal policy introduced.
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Year Major Events in Japanese Buddhism
538 or 552 Buddhism introduced into Japan.
594 C.E. Imperial Decree Encouraging Buddhism promulgated.
607 Horyu-ji Temple built, completed in 615 C.E.
621 or 622 "Commentaries on the Three Scriptures", by Prince Shotoku.
752 The Huge Statue of the Vairocana Buddha of the Todai-ji Temple of Nara completed.
770 One Million Miniature Stupas (Pagodas) built in 794 C.E. Capital moved from Nara to Kyoto.
805 Saicho (767-822) established Tendai Buddhism.
806 Kukai (774-835) established Shingon Buddhism.
822 The Establishment of the Mahayana Disiplines.
972 Kuya (903-972), an advocator of the Pure Land Faith, died.
985 Genshin (944-1017) wrote the 0-jo-yo-shu (Collection of Essential Documents to Attain the Birth in the Pure Land)
1124 Ryonin (1072-1132) founded the Yuzu- gatari) written Nembutsu Sect.
1175 Honen (1133-1212) founded the Jodo Sect.
1191 Eisai (1141-1215) founded the Rinzai Sect of Zen Buddhism.
1224 Shinran (1173-1262) founded the Jodo-Shin Sect.
1227 Dogen (1200-1253) founded the Soto Zen Sect.
1252 The Huge Image of Amida Buddha at Kamakura cast.
1253 Nichiren (1222-1282) founded the Nichiren Sect of Buddhism.
1275 Ippen (1239-1289) founded the Ji Sect.
1339 The Moss-garden of the Saiho-ji Temple in Kyoto built.
1397 The Kinkaku-ji Temple or the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto built.
1499 The Rock-garden of the Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto built. Rennyo (1415-1499), restorer of the Jodo-Shin Sect, died.
1602 The Jodo-Shin Sect Split into the Higashi (East) and the Nishi (West) Hongan-ji Schools.
1613 The Danka System or the Family-temple system formed.
1654 Ingen or Yin-yuan (1592-1673) introduced the Obaku Sect of Zen Buddhism.
1681 Buddhist Scriptures in Chinese Version published by Tetsugen.
1868 Buddhism suppressed by the Shintoists. The Meiji Restoration.
1872 Celibacy and vegetarianism allowed by governmental permission. Ban on Christianity cancelled. Women admitted to Buddhist temple.
1873 Religions in Japan put under government control.
1934 Taisho Edition of the Buddhist Scriptures in Chinese Version completed in 100 volumes.
1951 The Religious Juridical Persons Law Japan's Peace Treaty enforced signed.
1952 The Second World Buddhists Conference held in Tokyo.
1959 Buddha Jayanti, commemorating 2,500 years of Buddhism is held in Japan.
1968 International Buddhist Exchange Centre incorporated.
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Year Major Events in Sri Lankan Buddhism
247 B.C.E. King Asoka sends his son, Ven. Mahinda, on a mission to bring Buddhism to Sri Lanka. King Devanampiya Tissa of Sri Lanka is converted.
240 B.C.E. Ven. Mahinda establishes the Mahavihara (Great Monastery) of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The Vibhajjavadin community living there becomes known as the Theravadins. Mahinda's sister, Ven. Sanghamitta, arrives in Sri Lanka with a cutting from the original Bodhi tree, and establishes the bhikkhuni-sangha (nuns) in Sri Lanka.
100 C.E. Famine and schisms in Sri Lanka point out the need for a written record of the Tipitaka to preserve the Buddhist religion. King Vattagamani convenes a Fourth Council, in which 500 reciters and scribes from the Mahavihara write down the Pali Tipitaka for the first time, on palm leaves. Theravada Buddhism first appears in Burma and Central Thailand.
425 C.E. Ven. Buddhaghosa collates the various Sinhalese commentaries on the Canon - drawing primarily on the Maha Atthakatha (Great Commentary) preserved at the Mahavihara - and translates his work into Pali. This makes Sinhalese Buddhist scholarship available to the entire Theravadin world. As a cornerstone to his work, Buddhaghosa composes the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification) which eventually becomes the classic Sri Lankan textbook on the Buddha's teachings.
Dhammapala composes commentaries on parts of the Canon missed by Buddhaghosa (such as the Udana, Itivuttaka, Theragatha, and Therigatha), along with extensive sub-commentaries on Buddhaghosa's work.
1050 The bhikkhu and bhikkhuni communities at Anuradhapura die out following invasions from South India.
1070 Bhikkhus from Pagan arrive in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka to reinstate the Theravada ordination line in Sri Lanka.
1164 Polonnaruwa destroyed by foreign invasion. With the guidance of two monks from a forest branch of the Mahavihara sect - Vens. Mahakassapa and Sariputta - King Parakramabahu reunites all bhikkhus in Sri Lanka into the Mahavihara sect.
1236 Bhikkhus from Kañcipuram, India, arrive in Sri Lanka to revive the Theravada ordination line.
1279 Last inscriptional evidence of a Theravada Bhikkhuni nunnery (in Burma).
13th century A forest-based Sri Lankan ordination line arrives in Burma and Thailand. Theravada spreads to Laos. Thai Theravada monasteries first appear in Cambodia shortly before the Thais win their independence from the Khmers.
1753 King Kirti Sri Rajasinha obtains bhikkhus from the Thai court to reinstate the bhikkhu ordination line, which had died out in Sri Lanka. This is the origin of the Siam Nikaya of Buddhist monks.
1803 Sri Lankans ordained in the Burmese city of Amarapura found the Amarapura Nikaya in Sri Lanka to supplement the Siam Nikaya, which admitted only brahmins from the Up Country highlands around Kandy.
1862 Forest monks headed by Ven. Paññananda go to Burma for reordination, returning to Sri Lanka the following year to found the Ramañña Nikaya. First translation of the Dhammapada into a Western language (German).
1873 The revival of Buddhism got fully under way in Sri Lanka when Ven. Sri Sumangala and Ven Dharmanada established two Buddhist monastic colleges, the Vidyodaya and the Vidyolanka Pirivenas (monastic colleges), in 1873 and 1875 respectively. At about the same time a brilliant young monk, Ven. Mohottivatte Gunananda defeats Christian missionaries in a public debate, sparking a nationwide revival of Sri Lankan pride in its Buddhist traditions.
1880 Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, founders of the Theosophical Society, arrive in Sri Lanka from the USA, embrace Buddhism, and begin a campaign to restore Buddhism on the island by encouraging the establishment of Buddhist schools.
1891 Maha Bodhi Society founded in India by the Sri Lankan lay follower Anagarika Dharmapala, in an effort to reintroduce Buddhism to India.
1958 Ven. Nyanaponika Thera establishes the Buddhist Publication Society in Sri Lanka to publish English-language books on Theravada Buddhism. Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is founded in Sri Lanka to bring Buddhist ideals to bear in solving pressing social problems. Two Germans ordain at the Royal Thai Embassy in London, becoming the first to take full Theravada ordination in the West.
ca -600: Life of Sushruta, of Varanasi, the father of surgery. His ayurvedic treatises cover pulse diagnosis, hernia, cataract, cosmetic surgery, medical ethics, 121 surgical implements, antiseptics, use of drugs to control bleeding, toxicology, psychiatry, classification of burns, midwifery, surgical anesthesia and therapeutics of garlic.
ca -600: The Ajivika sect, an ascetic, atheistic group of naked sadhus reputated for fierce curses, is at its height, continuing in Mysore until the 14th century. Adversaries of both Buddha and Mahavira, their philosophy is deterministic, holding that everything is inevitable.
ca -600: Lifetime of Lao-tzu, founder of Taoism in China, author of Tao-te Ching. Its esoteric teachings of simplicity and selflessness shape Chinese life for 2,000 years and permeate the religions of Vietnam, Japan and Korea.
-599-527: Lifetime of Mahavira Vardhamana, 24th Tirthankara and revered renaissance Jain master. His teachings stress strict codes of vegetarianism, asceticism and nonviolence. (Some date his life 40 years later. )
-560: In Greece, Pythagoras teaches math, music, vegetarianism and yoga-drawing from India's wisdom ways.
-551-478: Lifetime of Confucius, founder of Confucianist faith. His teachings on social ethics are the basis of Chinese education, ruling-class ideology and religion.
-518: Darius I of Persia (present Iran) invades Indus Valley. This Zoroastrian king shows tolerance for local religions.
ca -500: Lifetime of Kapila, founder of Sankhya Darshana, one of six classical systems of Hindu philosophy.
“ What is Truth ?” “What’s the path to it ? “
1 500 bce Sankhya - Kapila - analyse/understand (chit) existence/nature (sat) in term of 25 tattvas/elements: purush, prakriti, guna, sattva, rajas, tamas, bhog, dharma, artha, kaam, moksh, 4 purushartha;
526 sutras in 6 chapters (164, 47, 84, 32, 129, 70)
2 200 bce Yoga - Patanjali - control movements (sat) of consciousness (chit)
195 verses in 4 chapters (1: samadhi 55;2: sadhna 51;3:vibhuti 55 ;4:kaivalya 34)
3 400 bce Vedanta - Badarayana – understand (chit) what’s in Upanishads and Aranyakas at “end”, anta, of the Vedas rather than the hymns and ritual portions of the Vedas
555 verses in 4 chapters (1.1 31,1.2 32,1.3 43,1.4 29;2.1 37,2.2 45,2.3 53,2.4 22;
3.1 27,3.2 41,3.3 66,3.4 52;4.1 19,4.2 21,4.3 15,4.4 22)
4 300 bce Nyaya - Gautama - use logic and reasoning (chit) correctly
5 300 bce Vaiseshika – Kanada – analyse/understand (chit) existence/nature (sat) in term of 9 parts/elements (dravyas) earth, water, light, air, ether, time, space, soul and mind
393 verses in 10 chapters (1.1 31,1.2 17;2.1 31,2.2 37;3.1 20,3.2 21;4.1 13,4.2 12;
5.1 18,5.2 26,6.1 16,6.2 17;7.1 25,7.2 27;8.1 11,8.2 6;9.1 15,9.2 13;10.1 7,10.2 10)
6 200 bce Mimasa - Jaimini - perform rites in the Vedas correctly
in 12 chapters (1.1 32, 1.2 53, 1.3 35, 1.4 30; 2.1 49, 2.2 29, 2.3 29,2.4 32; 3.1 27, 3.2 43, 3.3 46, 3.4 51,3.5 53, 3.6 47, 3.7 51, 3.8 44; 4.1 48, 4.2 20, 4.3 41 4.4 11 4.5 41; 5.1 35,
5.2 23, 5.3 44,5.4 26;6.1 52, 6.2 32,6.3 41,6.4 47,6.5 56,6.6 39
ca -500: Dams to store water are constructed in India.
-500: World population is 100 million. India population is 25 million (15 million of whom live in the Ganga basin).
ca -500: Over the next 300 years (according to the later dating of Muller) numerous secondary Hindu scriptures (smriti) are composed: Shrauta Sutras, Grihya Sutras, Dharma Sutras, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas, etc.
ca -500: Tamil Sangam age (500 bce-500 ce) begins. Sage Agastya writes Agattiyam, first known Tamil grammar. Tolkappiyar writes Tolkappiyam Purananuru, also on grammar, stating that he is recording thoughts on poetry, rhetoric, etc., of earlier grammarians, pointing to high development of Tamil language prior to his day. He gives rules for absorbing Sanskrit words into Tamil. Other famous works from the Sangam age are the poetical collections Paripadal, Pattuppattu, Ettuthokai Purananuru, Akananuru, Aingurunuru, Padinenkilkanakku. Some refer to worship of Vishnu, Indra, Murugan and Supreme Siva.
ca -486: Ajatashatru (reign -486-458) ascends Magadha throne.
-480: Ajita, a nastika (atheist) who teaches a purely material explanation of life and that death is final, dies.
-478: Prince Vijaya, exiled by his father, King Sinhabahu, sails from Gujarat with 700 followers. Founds Singhalese kingdom in Sri Lanka. (Mahavamsa chronicle, ca 500.)
-450: Athenian philosopher Socrates flourishes (ca -470-400).
-428-348: Lifetime of Plato, Athenian disciple of Socrates. This great philosopher founds Athens Academy in -387.
ca -400: Panini composes his Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi. (Date accepted among most Western scholars.)
ca -400: Lifetime of Hippocrates, Greek physician and "father of medicine," formulates Hippocratic oath, code of medical ethics still pledged by present-day Western doctors.
ca -350: Rainfall is measured by Indian scientists.
-326: Alexander the Great of Greece invades, but fails to conquer, Northern India. His soldiers mutiny. He leaves India the same year. Greeks who remain in India intermarry with Indians. Interchanges of philosophy influence both civilizations. Greek sculpture impacts Hindu styles. Bactria kingdoms later enhance Greek influence.
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_9.html
\Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., thus ending unwanted Persian rule. The Egyptians willfully accepted him as pharaoh because he adopted the Egyptian kingship and religion. Among other building projects, Alexander laid the foundations of a new city called Alexandria on the Mediterranean Coast, which became the new capital of Egypt. Upon Alexander's death, control of Egypt fell to one of his generals, Ptolemy I Soter, who began a line of monarchs who ruled Egypt for the next 275 years.
Greek became the official language of the government. Demotic, however, was still used by the majority of the Egyptians and used in lesser administrative offices. Likewise, high officials were Greek, while local administration remained in Egyptian hands. Throughout most of Ptolemaic rule, the Egyptians were unsettled with Greek rule and often revolted.
Religiously, the Ptolemies combined Egyptian and Greek religion. They established the national cults of Serapis, of Arsinoe II, and of the Ptolemies themselves. They continued to build many traditional temples all over Egypt, including Philae, Dandarah, and Idfu, as did their successors, the Roman emperors [10250]. The Greeks blended the traditional Egyptian styles with contemporary Hellenistic styles in these edifices, and in other artwork.
The well-known Cleopatra VII was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers and the only Ptolemy to know how to speak Egyptian. After her lover Mark Antony lost the battle of Actium to Octavian, Cleopatra committed suicide and Egypt became simply another province of the Roman Empire.
While Romans filled the upper levels of the administration in Egypt, most power fell into the hands of the Egyptians. City councils were in charge of local administration. The use of the demotic script dwindled, as Coptic began to replace it. But more importantly, Greek continued to be used for administrative purposes; Latin was hardly used at all.
The Ptolemies had exploited the Fayyum for food, heavily increasing its yield and establishing many towns in that region. The Romans took advantage of this, turning Egypt into the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, by exacting heavy taxes from the people mainly in the form of grain. Meanwhile, Egypt was at the center of a vast network of international trade that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to India.
Egyptian temples continued to be decorated in the traditional Egyptian style throughout the Roman period [10246]. There was, however, a steady decline of Egyptian cults as more and more Egyptians accepted Christianity.
indica by Arrian:____________
http://www.und.ac.za/und/classics/india/arrian.htm
Reference: http://www.pothos.co.uk/alexander.asp?ParaID=7
359 BC
Death of Perdiccas III, King of Macedonia: Perdiccas leaves infant heir Amyntas; Philip II elected King of Macedonia
358 BC
Philip subdues Paeonians and Agrians
357 BC
Marriage of Philip II and Olympias, mother of Alexander
Philip captures the cities of Amphipolis and Pydna
356 BC
July 20 - Birth of Alexander III at Pella, Macedon
August - Philip captures city of Potidaea
355 BC
Birth of Cassander, son of Antipater, ruler of Macedonia after Alexander
354 BC
Philip captures city of Methone: Philip loses one eye
353 BC
Philip defeats Greek state of Phokis
352 BC
Persian noble Artabazus receives asylum at Philip's court
348 BC
Philip captures city of Olynthus (Chalcidice peninsula)
343 BC
Aristotle appointed as tutor of Alexander
342 BC
Philip's conquests in Thrace
Alexander gets Bucephalas, his personal horse
340 BC
Alexander regent in Macedonia during campaign of Philip against Byzantium; Alexander defeats Thracian tribe
Persia aids city of Perinthus against Philip
Probable end of the tutorship of Aristotle
338 BC
August 2 - Battle of Chaeronea: King Philip defeats Greeks, Alexander commands cavalry
Autumn - Establishment and first meeting of the Corinthian League: Philip confirmed as hegemon of Greece
337 BC
Spring - Second meeting of the Corinthian League: Philip reveals plans for invasion of Persia
Marriage of Philip and Cleopatra; Alexander and Olympias leave for exile
Autumn - Alexander returns from his exile in Illyria
336 BC
Spring - Officers Parmenion and Attalus take advance force into Persia
October [June] - Murder of King Philip; Alexander ascends throne of Macedonia
Autumn - Execution of Amyntas, son of Perdiccas III and heir to the throne; Execution of Cleopatra, widow of Philip, and her newborn son; Third meeting of Corinthian League at Corinth: Alexander confirmed as hegemon of Greece; Possible legendary meeting with philosopher Diogenes
Other events - King Darius III ascends the throne of Persia; Marriage of Alexander of Epirus and Cleopatra, sister of Alexander
335 BC
Spring - Campaign to the Danube; Battle of the Lyginus: Alexander defeats Triballians
May - Alexander crosses river Danube: establishment of northern frontiers
Summer - Attack on Pelium: Alexander defeats Illyrians
September - Alexander ends revolt at Thebes
Other events - Persian commander Memnon stops advance force of Parmenion and Attalus
334 BC
May - Alexander crosses Hellespont into Persia
May/June - Battle of the Granicus: Alexander defeats Persian defense force
Summer - Alexander captures Milete
Autumn - Alexander captures Halicarnassus, Persian stronghold; Alexander grants winter leave to newly wedded soldiers
Other events - Antigonus the One-Eyed appointed as satrap of Phrygia; Queen Ada re-instated as ruler of Caria
333 BC
Winter - Alleged conspiracy: arrest of Alexander of Lyncestis; Legendary miraculous passing of Mount Climax; Campaign against Pisidians
March - Alexander solves riddle of the 'Gordian Knot', Gordium
May - Alexander of Epirus invades Italy (defeated and killed around 331 BC)
May [July] - Alexander leaves Gordium
June/July [Spring] - Memnon dies of illness
Summer - King Darius III and Persian army leave Babylon
September [July] - Alexander falls ill at river Cydnus
September - Alexander arrives at Tarsus, Cilicia
September/October - King Darius III and Persian army arrive at Sochi, base camp near Mediterranean
November - Battle of Issus: Alexander defeats Persian King Darius III; Alexander captures Persian Royal family
Autumn - Parmenion captures Damascus: capture of Barsine, widow of Memnon and future mistress of Alexander and possibly mother of his first child, Heracles
Other events - Idarnes (or Hydarnes) re-captures Milete; Balacrus defeats Idarnes in 332 BC
332 BC
January-July [August] - Siege of Tyre
Spring [Summer 331 BC] - Statira, wife of Darius III, dies in childbirth
Summer - First peace offer of King Darius
July 29 [August] - Fall of Tyre
September-October - Siege of Gaza
November 14 - Alexander crowned Pharaoh in Memphis, Egypt
331 BC
Winter - Oracle of Siwa allegedly confirms divinity of Alexander
April 7 [Winter] - Foundation of Alexandria, Egypt
Spring - Return to Phoenicia
Summer - Second peace offer of King Darius
September 20 - Army witnesses total eclipse of the moon in northern Mesopotamia: single 100% sure dating of the Alexander period
October 1 - Battle of Gaugamela (Arbela): final defeat of Persian King Darius III
October 21 - Alexander enters Babylon
November 25 - Alexander leaves Babylon
December 15 - Alexander enters Susa
December - Campaign against the Uxians
330 BC
January - Alexander forces his way through Persian Gates: defeat of last Persian defence troops
Winter/Spring - Five months stay in Persepolis, ceremonial Persian capital
April - Campaign against the Mardians
May [Summer/Autumn 331 BC] - Battle of Megalopolis: Alexander's Macedonian regent Antipater defeats King Agis III of Sparta
May - Alexander burns Persepolis
July - Persian King Darius III murdered by his kinsmen
Summer - Alexander dismisses allied troops
Autumn [Summer 329 BC] - Alleged but unlikely legendary meeting with the Queen of the Amazons
Autumn - Revolt of Satibarzanes, satrap of Aria; Satibarzanes killed by officer Erigiyus
October - Alleged conspiracy: execution of officers Philotas and his father Parmenion; Craterus becomes second in command; execution of Alexander of Lyncestis
329 BC
Spring - Alexander crosses Hindu Kush into Central Asia
May - Arrest of Bessus, usurper of Persian throne
Summer - Alleged massacre of the Branchidae; Founding of Alexandria-the-Furthest; Battle of the Iaxartes: Alexander defeats Scythians; Rebel leader Spitamenes annihilates Macedonian forces at Maracanda
328 BC
Spring - Submission of Pharasmenes, ruler of the Chorasmians
Spring/Summer/Autumn - Army split in five divisions against rebellions in Central Asia
Autumn - Defeat of rebel leader Spitamenes; Alexander kills officer Cleitus the Black during brawl
327 BC
Winter - Attempt to introduce 'proskynesis'; Alleged conspiracy: execution of court historian Callisthenes
Spring - Alexander captures 'Sogdian Rock', rebel stronghold; Surrender of rebel Chorienes; Defeat of rebels Catanes and Austanes
Spring [August] - Marriage to Roxane, daughter of Bactrian noble Oxyartes
Summer - Invasion of India
326 BC
Winter - Siege of Massaga: Massaga's Queen Cleophis allegedly concieves a son of Alexander (named Alexander)
April - Alexander captures 'Rock of Aornus', Indian stronghold
May [July] - Battle of the Hydaspes: Alexander defeats King Porus; Death of Bucephalas
September - Army refuses further advance at river Hyphasis; Alexander orders retreat
Autumn - Death of officer Coenus; Roxane's first child dies at birth at the river Acesines
November - Start of voyage down the Indus
December - Campaign against the Mallians: Alexander's lung pierced by an arrow
325 BC
June - Craterus leads part of the army through Arachosia towards Carmania
July - Alexander reaches Indian Ocean
August - Alexander starts march through Gedrosian desert
September 20/21 - Fleet under command of Nearchos sets sail for Persian Gulf
October/November - Alexander reaches Pura, capital of Gedrosia
December - Reunion of Alexander and Craterus in Carmania
Other events - Mercenary revolts in Bactria; Desertion of Harpalus
324 BC
Winter [December 325 BC]- First reunion between Alexander and Nearchos near Salmus, Carmania
Winter/Spring - 'Reign of Fear': Alexander punishes and executes Persian satraps who abused power in his absence
January - Restoration of tomb of Cyrus the Great
February - Alexander orders mass wedding at Susa, Persia: marriage to Statira, daughter of Darius III, and to Parysatis, daughter of Artaxerxes III
Spring - Second reunion between Alexander and Nearchos near mouth of the Tigris
April/May - Alexander founds last Alexandria (Charax) at the mouth of river Tigris
July - Mutiny (or strike) of the army at Opis, Mesopotamia
August 4 [September 3] - Alexander issues Exiles' Decree
Summer - Craterus leaves with veterans for Macedonia
October - Death of Hephaestion, Alexander's lifelong friend and lover, in Ecbatana
323 BC
Winter - Campaign against Cossaeans
April - Alexander returns in Babylon
May - Funeral of Hephaestion
June 10 - Alexander dies after ten days of illness
321 BC
Ptolemy hi-jacks Alexander's sarcophagus and brings Alexander's body to Egypt
Winter - December-February; Spring - March-May; Summer - June-August; Autumn - September-November; [ ] - alternative dating
Timeline compiled according to accounts of Arrian, Curtius Rufus, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Justin and especially the footnotes and comments of their translators and editors. All dates mentioned are subject to debate. For corrections or suggestions please e-mail me: dhulqarnain@hotmail.com
305: Chandragupta Maurya, founder of first pan-Indian empire (-324-184), defeats Greek garrisons of Seleucus, founder of Seleucan Empire in Persia and Syria. At its height under Emperor Ashoka (reign -273-232), the Mauryan Empire includes all India except the far South.
--
reference: http://www.apnapunjab.com/history/index.htm
History Of Punjab Ancient Times Aryan Migrations Alexander's invasion Muslim Invasions Rise Of Sikh Power Punjab Before Partition Archeologists have traced the signs of human habitation to times long before that of Mughals arrival . The upper basin of Indus and Baluchistan plateau hosted one of the earliest human civilizations known as the Indus Valley civilization . The earliest signs of life human activity date as far back as 7000 BC . The Indus Valley civilization grew from small settlements to highly refined urban life . At its height , around 3000 BC , it boasted the splendid of Harrapa ( Near present day Sahiwal in West Punjab ) and Mohen- jo –daro in the lower Indus Valley . The story of the decline , whose reasons are still not completely explained , of civilizations is also told through the remains of the these cities . Aryan MigrationsAmong other reasons like the change in the weather patterns , urbanization without any rural agricultural production base one factor is reported to be the series of raids or small scale migrations by the Aryans from the north – west ( 1500-100 BC ) . The next thousand year history of Punjab ( or Arya – Varta , the land of Aryans ,a s Aryas called it ) is dominated by the Aryans and their interactions with the natives of the Indus basin . Easternmost Satrapy of the PersiansPunjab lied at the outskirts of the great Persian empires and came under their control from time to time . The Persian King Darius the great is reported to have attacked Punjab and occupied some parts . But for the first time the occupation of Punjab was completed by the Persian King Gustasp in 516 BC . Punjab became the wealthiest Satrapy i.e., the province in the Persian kingdom .Greeks , the rival empire of the Persians , also had some knowledge of the area . The great Persian Emperor Darius 1( 521- 486 BC ) appointed Skylax the Greek to explore the area around Indus river for commercial expeditions who provided an account of his voyage in his book “periplus” . Alexander’s expeditions were documented in the works of Strabo , Ptolemy , Pliny , Arrian and others . They described a region that had plenty of mighty rivers and was divided into four kingdoms .In Greek maps we find the mention of the mightiest of river of all the world called the Indos ( Indus ) and its tributaries of Hydaspes ( Jhelum ) , Akesines ( Chenab ) , Hydroatis (Ravi), Hyphasis( Satluj) and Hesidros(Beas). Alexander’s InvasionIn 321 BC Alexander the great after breaking the might of the Persians entered their final Satrapy of Punjab . He invited all the cheiftans of this satrapy to come to him and submit to his authority , which is exactly what the ruler of the northwest most ( west of Hydases kingdom of Gandhara with its capital at Taxila . But the ruler of the Kingdom Beteen refused to submit to Alexander’s authority and the two armies fought the historical battle on the bank of Akesines outside the town of Nikia ( somewhere around modern city of Jhelum).Porus put up a tough fight but his army was no match for Alexander's army .Alexander as with his other occupied areas established two cities in the area of Punjab , where he settled people from his multi – national armies which included a majority of Greeks and Macedonians . These cities along with the rule of the Indo – Greek thrived long after Alexander’s departure .Alexander’s eastern empire ( from Syria to Punjab ) was inherited by Selecus Nicator , the founder of the Seleucid dynasty . However the Greek empire in the east was disrupted by the ascendcy of the Bacterians . The Bacterian King Demetrius I added Punjab to his Kingdom in the second century BC . The best known of the Indo – Greek kings was meander who established his independent Kingdom centered at Taxila in 170 BC . He later moved his capital to Sagala ( the modern Ssialkot ) . Meander soon captured territories east of his kingdom and grew to rival the power of Bacterians .Meander’s successors maintained their rule on Punjab till 55 BC when the whole area was disrupted by the events happening in greater Euro- Asia . In the middle of the second century BC . YuI Chi tribe of modern China to move westward which caused in turn to Sakas or Scythians to move . Northern Sakas successfully wrestled the power of the areas from the Indo – Greeks . Another Central Asiatic people to make Punjab their home were the white Huns who made continuous campaigns towards this part of the world . Finally establishing their rule in the later 3rd century AD. Muslim InvasionsFollowing the birth of Islam in Arabia in 6th century AD , Arabs rose to power and replaced the Persians as the major power in the area . In 711- 13 AD , Arabs advanced to the land of five rivers , occupying Multan . Further north the area that survived the Arab attack was divided into small kingdoms .Meanwhile in Ghazni after the death of Subuktgin ,, the Turk , his son Mahmud assumed power in 997 AD . He was to expand his fathers kingdom far to the west and east of Ghazni through his military conquest . he was to attack Punjab 17 times during his reign . The Ghaznavids were uprooted by the Ghauris who extended their rule as far as Delhi . Shahabuddin Ghauri annexed Lahore to his kingdom in 1186 . After Ghauris death his governor Outubdin Aibak became an independent ruler of Punjab and funded the Mamluk sultanate . Khiljis replaced the Mamluks in 1290 . The rule of Khiljis was briefly disrupted by the two successful raids by the Mongols who marched their way to Delhi twice during Allaudin Khilji rule . Tuglaks succeeded Khiljis in 1320 AD . Tuglak rule was replaced by the Sayyids in 1414 AD . Lodhis gained control of Delhi in 1479 AD . The Rise of Sikh powerPunjab presented a picture of chaos and confusion when Ranjit Singh took reins of Sukerchikas misal . The edifice of Ahmad Shah Abdalis empire in India and crumbled . Afganistan was dismembered . Peshawar and Kashmir though under the Suzerainty of Afganistan had attained de facto independence .Barakzais were the masters of these places . Attock was ruled by Wazirkels and Jhang lay at the feet of Sials . Pathans were ruling kasur . Multan had thrown yoke and Nawab Muzaffar Khan had taken its charge . Both Punjab and Sind were under Afghan rule since 1757 after Ahmed Shah Abdali was granted suzerainty over these two provinces . They were confronted with the rising power of Sikhism in Punjab . Taimur Khan , a local governor was able to turn away Sikhs from Amritsar . He razed to the ground the fort of Ram Rauni . But this state of affairs did not last long and the Sikh misl joined hands and defeated Taimur Shah and his Chief Minister Jalal Khan . The Afghans were forced to retreat and Lahore was occupied by the Sikhs in 1758 , Jassa Singh Ahluwalia proclaimed Sikhs sovereignty and became its head . He struck coins to commemorate his victory .When Ahmad Shah Abdali was engaged in his campaign against the Marathas at Panipat in 1761 . Jassa Singh fled to Kangra hills after Sikhs forces were totally routed after the departure of Ahmad Shah abdali , Jassa Singh Ahluwalia attacked Sirhind , it was razed to ground and the Afghan Governor Zen Khan was killed . This was a great victory to Sikhs who were rulers of all area around the Sirhind . Jassa Singh hastitily paid visitto Hari Mandir at Amritsar , and he made amends and restored it to original shape as it was defiled by Ahmad Shah slaughtering cows in its precincts .Ahmad Shah died in June 1773 . After his death power of Afghans declined in Punjab . taimur shah ascended the throne at Kabul . By then misls had established themselves in Punjab . They had under their control the area as far as Saharnpur in east , Atock in west , kangra , Jammu in North and Multan in south . Efforts were made by Afghan rulers to dislodge Sikhs from the citadels . Taimur Shah attacked Multan and defeated the Bhangis . The Bhangi Sardar , Lehna Singh , and , Sobha Singh were driven out of Lahore in 1767 by the Abdali but soon reoccupied it . They remained in power in Lahore till 1793 – the year when Shah Zaman succeeded to the throne of Kabul .The first attempt by Shah Zaman was made in 17093 . He came upto Hassan Abdal rom where he sent an army of 7000 strong cavalry under Ahmad Shah Shahnachi but the Sikhs totally routed them . It was a great set back to Shah Zaman but again in 1795 he reorganized forces and attacked Hassan Abdal , snatched Rohtas from Sukerchikas , whom leader was Ranjit Singh who suffered at Shah zaman hands but did not lose courage . however , shah had to be back in Kabul as an invasion was apprehended on his own country from the west . after he went back , Ranjit dislodged the afghans from Rohtas .Shah Zaman could not sit idle. In 1796 he moved , crossed Indus for the third time and dreamt of capturing Delhi.Shah Zaman could not sit idle . In 1796 he moved , crossed Indus for the third time and dreamt of capturing delhi . His ambition knew no bounds . By now he had collected 3000 strong afghan army . he was confident a large number of Indians will join with him. Nawab of Kasur had already assured him help. Sahib singh of Patiala betrayed his countrymen and declared his intentions of helping Shah Zaman was also assured help by the Rohillas , Wazir of Oudh , and Tipu sultan of Mysore . The news of Shah Zaman invasion spread like wild fire , people started fleeing to hills for safety . Heads of Misls , though bound to give protection to the people as they were collecting Rakhi tax from them were the first to leave the people in lurch . By December Shah occupied territory upto Jhelum . when he reached Gujrat sahib Singh Bhangi panicked and left the place .Next was the territory of Ranjit Singh . He was alert and raised an army of 5000 horsemen . But they were inadequately armed with only spears and muskets . The afghans were equipped with heavy artillery . Ranjit Singh thought of a stiff united fight against the invaders . He came to Amritsar . A congregation of Sarbat Khalsa was called and many Sikh Sardars answered the call . An almost unanimous opinion prevailed that Shah Zaman ‘s army should be allowed to enter the Punjab , and they all should retire to hills .Forces were reorganized under the command of Ranjit Singh and they marched towards Lahore . They were able to give Afghans a crushing defeat in several villages and ultimately surrounded the city of Lahore . Sorties were made in night in which they would kill a few Afghan soldiers and then leave the city in the thick of darkness. Following this tactic they were able to dislodge Afghans at several places .In 1797 , Shah Zaman , suddenly left for Afghanistan as his brother Mahmud had revolted . Shahanchi Khan with considerable force was left at Lahore . The Sikhs however followed Shah upto jhelum and snatched many goods from him . The Sikhs returned and in the way were attached by the army of Shahnanchi Khan near Ram Nagar . The Sikhs routed his army . It was the first major achievement of Ranjit Singh . He became the hero of the land of five rivers and his reputation spread far and wide .Again in 1798 , Shah Zaman ,suddenly left for Afghanistan as his brother Mahmud had revolted . Shahanchi Khan with considerable force was left at Lahore . The Sikhs however Shah upto Jhelum and snatched many goods from him . The Sikhs returned and in the way were attached by the army of Shahnachi Khan near Ram Nagar . The Sikhs routed his army . It was the first major achievement of Ranjit Singh . He became the hero of the land of Five rivers and his reputation spread far and wide .The Afghans struggled hard to dislodge Sikhs but in vain .Sikh cordon was so strong that they made impossible for the Afghans to break it and proceed towards Delhi . Ranjit Singh became terror to them . The moment Zaman Shah left , Ranjit Singh pursued his forces and caught them unawares near Gujranwala . They were chased further up to Jhelum . many Afghan were put to death and their war equipment was taken into possession and they were made to run their lives . Shah Zaman was overthrown by his brother and was blinded . he became a helpless creature and 12 years later came to Punjab to seek refuge in Ranjit Singh’s darbar , who was now the ruler of land . Destiny wished it like that .Ranjit Singh combined with Sahib Singh of Gujrat ( Punjab ) and Milkha Singh of Pindiwala and a large Sikh force , fell upon the Afghan garrison while Shah Zaman was still in the vicinity of Khyber Pass . The Afghan forces fled towards north after having been routed by the Sikhs leaving behind at Gujrat their dead including the Afghan deputy .By this time the people of the country had become aware of the rising strength of Ranjit Singh , the rising star on the horizon . He was the most popular leader of the Punjab and was already yearning to enter Lahore . The people of Lahore being extremely oppressed raised their voices of wailing to the skies and were looking towards their liberator . Muslims joined Hindus and Sikhs residents of Lahore in making an appeal to Ranjit Singh to free them from the tyrannical rule .A petition was written and was signed by Mian Ashak Mohammed , Mian Mukkam Din , Mohd. Tahir , Mohd. Bakar , Hakim Rai , and Bhai Gurbaksh Singh . It was addressed to Ranjit Singh to free them from Bhangi sardars . Ranjit Singh was invited to liberate Lahore as early as possible . He mobilized a 25000 Army and marched Lahore on July 6 , 1799.It was a last day of Muharram when a big procession was to be taken out in the town in the memory of the two grandsons of Prophet Mohammad who were martyred in the battlefield without having a drop of water . It was expected that Bhangi sardars will also participate in procession and mourn with their Shia brethren . By the time procession was over Ranjit Singh reached outskirts of city .Early morning on July 7 , 1799, Ranjit Singh’s men had taken their positions. Guns glistened and the bugles were sounded . Rani Sada Kaur stood outside Delhi gate and Ranjit singh proceeded towards Anarkali . Ranjit Singh rode along the walls of the city and got the wall mined . A breach was blown . It was created panic and confusion . Mukkam Din , who was one of the signatories to the petition made a proclamation with the beat of drum that town had been taken over by him and he was now head . He ordered all the city gates to be opened . Ranjit Singh entered the city with his troops through the Lahore gate. Sada Kaur with a detachment of cavalry entered through Delhi Gate . Before Bhangi Sardars had any inkling of it , a part of the citadel was occupied without any resistance . Sahib Singh and Mohar Singh left the city and sought shelter at some safer place . Chet Singh was left either to fight ,defend the town or flee as he like . He shut himself in Hazuri bagh and Chet Singh surrendered and he was given permission to leave the city along with his family .Ranjit Singh was well entrenched in the town now . Immediately after taking possession of the city , he paid visit to Badashahi mosque . This gesture increased his prestige and his status was in the eyes of people . He won the hearts of the subjects , Hindus , Muslims and Sikhs alike . It was July 7 , 1799 when victorious Ranjit Singh entered Lahore .
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ca -302: Kautilya (Chanakya), minister to Chandragupta Maurya, writes Arthashastra, a compendium of laws, administrative procedures and political advice for running a kingdom.
-302: In Indica, Megasthenes, envoy to King Seleucus, reveals to Europe in colorful detail the wonders of Mauryan India: an opulent society with abundant agriculture, engineered irrigation and 7 castes: philosophers, farmers, soldiers, herdsmen, artisans, magistrates and counselors.
http://www1.fhw.gr/chronos/06/en/politics/left.html post Alexander
ca -300: Chinese discover cast iron, known in Europe by 1300 ce.
ca -300: Pancharatra Vaishnava sect is prominent. All later Vaishnava sects are based on the Pancharatra beliefs (formalized by Shandilya around 100 ce).
ca -300: Pandya kingdom (-300-1700 ce) of S. India is founded, constructs magnificent Minakshi temple at its capital, Madurai. Builds temples of Shrirangam and Rameshvaram, with its thousand-pillared hall (ca 1600 ce).
-297: Emperor Chandragupta abdicates to become a Jain monk.
-273: Ashoka (-273-232 reign), greatest Mauryan Emperor, grandson of Chandragupta, is coronated. Repudiating conquest through violence after his brutal invasion of Kalinga, 260 bce, he converts to Buddhism. Excels at public works and sends diplomatic peace missions to Persia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Crete, and Buddhist missions to Sri Lanka, China and other Southeast Asian countries. Under his influence, Buddhism becomes a world power. His work and teachings are preserved in Rock and Pillar Edicts (e.g., lion capital of the pillar at Sarnath, present-day India's national emblem).
-251: Emperor Ashoka sends his son Mahendra (-270-204) to spread Buddhism in Sri Lanka, where he is to this day revered as the national faith's founding missionary.
ca -250: Lifetime of Maharishi Nandinatha, first known satguru in the Kailasa Parampara of the Nandinatha Sampradaya. His eight disciples are Sanatkumar, Shanakar, Sanadanar, Sananthanar, Sivayogamuni, Patanjali, Vyaghrapada and Tirumular (Sundaranatha).
ca -221: Great Wall of China is built, ultimately 2,600 miles long, the only man-made object visible from the moon.
ca -200: Lifetime of Rishi Tirumular, shishya of Maharishi Nandinatha and author of the 3,047-verse Tirumantiram, a summation of Saiva Agamas and Vedas, and concise articulation of the Nandinatha Sampradaya teachings, founding South India's monistic Saiva Siddhanta school.
ca -200: Lifetime of Patanjali, shishya of Nandinatha and gurubhai (brother monk) of Rishi Tirumular. He writes the Yoga Sutras at Chidambaram, in South India.
ca -200: Lifetime of Bhogar Rishi, one of eighteen Tamil siddhas. This mystic shapes from nine poisons the Palaniswami murti enshrined in present-day Palani Hills temple in South India. Bhogar is either from China or visits there.
ca -200: Lifetime of Saint Tiruvalluvar, poet-weaver who lived near present-day Madras, author of Tirukural, "Holy Couplets," the classic Tamil work on ethics and statecraft (sworn on in today's South Indian law courts).
ca -200: Jaimini writes the Mimamsa Sutras.
ca -150: Ajanta Buddhist Caves are begun near present-day Hyderabad. Construction of the 29 monasteries and galleries continues until approximately 650 ce. The famous murals are painted between 600 bce and 650 ce.
-145: Chola Empire (-145-1300 ce) of Tamil Nadu is founded, rising from modest beginnings to a height of government organization and artistic accomplishment, including the development of enormous irrigation works.
-140: Emperor Wu begins three-year reign of China; worship of the Mother Goddess, Earth, attains importance.
-130: Reign ends of Menander (Milinda), Indo-Greek king who converts to Buddhism.
Reference: http://www.miami.edu/phi/bio/Buddha/Milinda.htm 020320yd
As a consequence of the conquest of the Persian empire, the Greeks gained control of Bactria, modern Afghanistan, together with northern India. The local Greek rulers managed to establish their independence from the Seleucid empire which first held control over the area. Greek rule of Bactria continued until about 165 BC when the Shakas destroyed the Bactrian kingdom. Greeks continued to rule, however, in southern Afghanistan and northwestern India for another 150 years. The most important of these kings was Menander, known as Milinda in Buddhist sources, who ruled about 115-90 BC. Buddhism had reached the area as a consequence of the missionaries which the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka had sent more than a century earlier.
Reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd65.htm 020320yd
Dharma Data: Milinda, King
Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BC and after his death the territories he had conquered in what today is Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India were ruled by his heirs. The greatest of the Greek Indian Kings was Milinda, known in Greek sources as Menander, who ruled from about 163 to 150 BC. Menander was both an effective statesman and fine soldier and he greatly extended his empire into India. he also converted to Buddhism. Greeks living in India had probably adopted Buddhism before Milinda but he is the first western Buddhist about which we have definite information. See Milindapanha
Reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd66.htm 020320yd
Dharma Data: Milindapanha
A work composed in Pali that proports to be the record of a dialogue between the Buddhist monk Nagasena and the Greek King Milinda. Milinda asks a series of questions highlighting what seem to be anomalies and contradictions in Buddhist doctrine, to each of which Nagasena gives clear, even ingenious answers. The effectiveness of these answers is enhanced by the numerous similes and analogies that are included within them. Although there is no doubt that the two protagonists of the Milindapanha really existed and that they held discussions with each other, it is not a verbatim record of the discussions as such but a work of literature. Despite this, it may well have captured something of the personalities of the two men. Nagasena comes across as dignified but accessible, confident of his abilities to convince, intellectually alert, learned and witty. Milinda on the other hand, appears to be appears to be interested in Buddhism but by no means prepared to accept its tenets without good reasons. The Milindapanha is the most important book of Theravada Buddhist doctrine outside the Pali Tipitaka and is still widely studied. A translation of it is also included in the Chinese Tipitaka.
-58: Vikrama Samvat Era Hindu calendar begins.
-50: Kushana Empire begins (-50-220 ce). This Mongolian Buddhist dynasty rules most of the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia.
ca -10: Ilangovadikal, son of King Cheralathan of the Tamil Sangam age, writes the outstanding epic Silappathikaram, classical Tamil treatise on music and dance.
Western Calendar Begins. C.E. - Common Era
-4: Jesus of Nazareth (-4-30 ce), founder of Christianity, is born in Bethlehem (current Biblical scholarship).
10: World population is 170 million. India population is 35 million: 20.5% of world.
ca 50: South Indians occupy Funan, Indochina. Kaundinya, an Indian brahmin, is first king. Shaivism is the state religion.
53: Legend records Saint Thomas' death in Madras, one of the twelve Apostles of Christ and founder of the Church of the Syrian Malabar Christians (Syrian Rite) in Goa.
ca 60: Buddhism is introduced in China by Emperor Ming Di (reign: 58-76) after he converts to the faith. Brings two monks from India who erect temple at modern Honan.
ca 75: A Gujarat prince named Ajishaka invades Java.
78: Shaka Hindu calendar begins.
ca 80: Jains divide, on points of rules for monks, into the Shvetambara, "white-clad," and the Digambara, "sky-clad."
ca 80-180: Lifetime of Charaka. Court physician of the Kushan king, he formulates a code of conduct for doctors of ayurveda and writes Charaka Samhita, a manual of medicine.
ca 100: Lifetime of Shandilya, first systematic promulgator of the ancient Pancharatra doctrines, whose Bhakti Sutras, devotional aphorisms on Vishnu, inspire a Vaishnava renaissance. The Samhita of Shandilya and his followers, the Pancharatra Agama, embody the chief doctrines of present-day Vaishnavas. By the 10th century the popular sect leaves permanent mark on many Hindu schools.
100: Zhang Qian of China establishes trade routes to India and as far west as Rome, later known as the "Silk Roads."
105: Paper is invented in China.
117: The Roman Empire reaches its greatest extent.
125: Shatakarni (ca 106-130 reign) of Andhra's Satavahana
(-70-225) dynasty destroys Shaka kingdom of Gujarat.
ca 175: Greek astronomer Ptolemy, known as Asura Maya in India, explains solar astronomy, Surya Siddhanta, to Indian students of the science of the stars.
180: Mexican city of Teotihuacan has 100,000 population and covers 11 square miles. Grows to 250,000 by 500 ce.
ca 200: Lifetime of Lakulisha, famed guru who leads a reformist movement within Pashupata Saivism.
ca 200: Hindu kingdoms established in Cambodia and Malaysia.
205-270: Lifetime of Plotinus, Egyptian-born monistic Greek philosopher and religious genius who transforms a revival of Platonism in the Roman Empire into what present-day scholars call Neoplatonism, which greatly influences Islamic and European thought. He teaches ahimsa, vegetarianism, karma, reincarnation and belief in a Supreme Being, both immanent and transcendent.
ca 250: Pallava dynasty (ca 250-885) is established in Tamil Nadu, responsible for building Kailasa Kamakshi Temple complex at their capital of Kanchi and the great 7th-century stone monuments at Mahabalipuram.
ca 275: Buddhist monastery Mahavihara is founded in Anuradhapura, capital of Sri Lanka.
337 – Helena mother of Constantine travels to Jerusalem. Inspires building of Holy Cross Church at Jerusalem after demolishing a temple dedicated to Venus there because in a dream she saw that as the place of Jesus’s crucufixion. (ref : voi-srg-jc p 18).
350: Imperial Gupta dynasty (320-540) flourishes. During this "Classical Age" norms of literature, art, architecture and philosophy are established. This North Indian empire promotes Vaishnavism and Saivism and, at its height, rules or receives tribute from nearly all India. Buddhism also thrives under tolerant Gupta rule.
ca 350: Lifetime of Kalidasa, the great Sanskrit poet and dramatist, author of Shakuntala and Meghaduta. (The traditional date, offered by Prof. Subash Kak, is 50 bce.)
ca 350: Licchavi dynasty (ca 350-900) establishes Hindu rule in Nepal. Small kingdom becomes the major intellectual and commercial center between South and Central Asia.
358: Huns, excellent archers and horsemen possibly of Turkish origin, invade Europe from the East.
375: Maharaja Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, greatest Hindu monarch, reigns to 413, expanding the prosperous Gupta empire northward beyond the Indus River.
391: Roman Emperor Theodosius destroys Greek Hellenistic temples in favor of Christianity.
392: Christianity was made the state religion, and pagan temples were closed in Egypt. Ref: http://www.ewtn.com/new_evangelization/africa/history/countries1.htm#Egypt
ca 400: Laws of Manu (Manu Dharma Shastras) written. Its 2,685 verses codify cosmogony, four ashramas, government, domestic affairs, caste and morality (others date at -600).
ca 400: Polynesians sailing in open outrigger canoes reach as far as Hawaii and Easter Island.
ca 400: Shaturanga, Indian forerunner of chess, has evolved from Ashtapada, a board-based race game, into a four-handed war game played with a die. Later, in deference to the Laws of Manu, which forbid gambling, players discard the die and create Shatranj, a two-sided strategy game.
ca 400: Vatsyayana writes Kamasutra, famous text on erotics.
416: St Cyril is bishop in Alexandria, Egypt (now Coptic Church) when Christians kill non-Christian (pagan) mathematician Hypatia.
Reference: http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/Mangasarian.html
The Martyrdom of Hypatia (or The Death of the Classical World)
by Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
A speech given before the Independent Religious Society at the Majestic Theater in Chicago
Our subject this morning takes us to the city of Alexandria, one of the greatest intellectual centers in the days when Athens and Rome still ruled the world. The capital of Egypt received its name from the man who conceived and executed its design -- Alexander the Great. Under the Ptolemies, a line of Greek kings, Alexandria soon sprang into eminence, and, accumulating culture and wealth, became the most powerful metropolis of the Orient. Serving as the port of Europe, it attracted the lucrative trade of India and Arabia. Its markets were enriched with the gorgeous silks and fabrics from the bazaars of the Orient. Wealth brought leisure, and it, in turn, the arts. It became, in time, the home of a wonderful library and schools of philosophy, representing all the phases and the most delicate shades of thought. At one time it was the general belief that the mantle of Athens had fallen upon the shoulders of Alexandria.
But there was a stubborn and superstitious Oriental constituency in the city which would not blend with the foreign element -- namely, the Greeks and the Romans. This antagonism between the Egyptian born and the children of Hellas and Rome, who were Alexandrians only by adoption, was frequently the occasion of street riots, feuds, massacres, and civil wars.
In or about the year 400 A.D., Alexandria, which is today a third-rate Mohammedan town, enjoyed a population of 600,000 inhabitants. The city proper comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles. It enjoyed the distinction of being quite free from the curse of poverty. No beggars could be seen loitering in its streets. No one was idle, and work brought good wages. Such was the demand for labor that even the lame and the blind found suitable occupation. The Alexandrians understood the manufacture of papyrus, a kind of vegetable paper used extensively by the authors, and they knew how to blow glass and weave linen.
After its magnificent library, whose shelves supported a freight more precious than beaten gold, perhaps the most stupendous edifice in the town was the temple of Serapis. It is said that the builders of the famous temple of Eddessa boasted that they had succeeded in creating something which future generations would compare with the temple of Serapis in Alexandria. This ought to suggest an idea of the vastness and beauty of the Alexandrian Serapis, and the high esteem in which it was held. Historians and connoisseurs claim it was one of the grandest monuments of Pagan civilization, second only to the temple of Jupiter in Rome, and the inimitable Parthenon in Athens, which latter is certainly the best gem earth ever wore upon her zone.
The Serapis temple was built upon an artificial hill, the ascent to which was by a hundred steps. It was not one building, but a vast body of buildings, all grouped about a central one of vaster dimensions, rising on pillars of huge magnitude and graceful proportions. Some critics have advanced the idea that the builders of this masterpiece intended to make it a composite structure, combining the diverse elements of Egyptian and Greek art into a harmonious whole. The Serapion was regarded by the ancients as marking the reconciliation between the architects of the pyramids and the creators of the Athenian Acropolis. It represented to their minds the blending of the massive in Egyptian art with the grace and the loveliness of the Hellenic.
But the greatest attraction of this temple was the god Serapis himself, within the vaulted building. It is difficult for us to form an idea of his enormous proportions. He filled the house with his presence. He stretched his arms and took hold of the two walls, the one on his right and the other on his left. The artist had conceived, also, the idea of making the body of the god as all-embracing as his arms. He fused together all the then known metals -- gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead -- to create a substance fit to represent a god. He inlaid this multifarious composition with the rarest gems -- the most costly stones which the markets of the world offered. He polished them all until the colossal statue shone like a huge sapphire. Its exquisite tints and shades are said to have provoked the jealousy of the azure skies. For a crown, the god wore on his head a bushel, symbol of plentiful harvests. At his side, in silence, stood a three-headed animal with the forepart of a lion, a wolf, and a dog. The lion was meant to represent the present; the rapacious wolf symbolized the past -- the devoured past; while the dog, the faithful, friendly animal, stood for the future. Wound around the body of the god was a mammoth serpent, which, after its many turns and twists, returned to rest his head on the hand of the god. The sinuous serpent was meant to personate Time, whose mysterious birthplace, or birthday, has yet to be discovered.
Serapis, whose statue adorned the temple, was once the most popular god in the Orient. He was believed to be the source of the Nile, whose breasts he swelled until they poured their wealth upon the surrounding soil. As long as his eye remained open, the sun would shine, and the land would produce, and women would give birth. But if he should close his eye, life would became as a sere and sapless leaf. But Serapis was a stranger in Egypt. He was not an African by birth, but was imported from Sinope, on the Euxine. When he first made his appearance in the land of the Nile, the people -- the Alexandrians, especially -- rose up en masse and protested vehemently against the introduction of a foreign deity. Did they not have Osiris, the great god of their ancestors, and Isis, his consort -- the divine woman with her infant, Horus, sitting upon her knees? Why, then should a strange god be admitted to the throne or to the bed of Osiris and Isis? Did they not have their holy trinity, Osiris, Isis, and Horus -- father, mother, and child -- the best trinity ever conceived? But Ptolemy was king, and his will prevailed. He told them that Osiris had, in a dream, commanded him to accept Serapis as a new and well-beloved god, and he did not wish to do anything contrary to his dream.
In all this do we not see a similarity to the story about Jesus, and how his friends compelled solitary Jehovah to accept him as his son, and share with him the honors of divinity? We know how the people objected at first to Jesus, precisely as the Alexandrians did to Serapis, and how, finally, through dreams and miracles, Jesus, the new God, grew to be even more popular than the old one.
When Christianity gained the upper hand in Alexandria, it set its mind from the start upon destroying two of the principal monuments of its powerful rival, Paganism -- the library and the temple of Serapis. Let me at this juncture remind you that Alexandria, at a very early period, became one of the foremost strongholds of the Christian religion. Of the five capitols of the new faith -- Jerusalem, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria, Rome -- Alexandria at one time led Constantinople, and was not second even to Rome. What was said about Christianity being essentially an Asiatic philosophy is confirmed, it seems to me, by this additional fact; that out of five of its greatest centres four were in the Orient. It felt more at home in Asia and Africa than in Europe. A still stronger confirmation of the affinity between Asia and Christianity is the fact that as soon as the Roman Empire became Christian it shifted its capital from Europe to Asia, from Rome to Constantinople. The first Christian emperor, Constantine, impelled, as it were, by the logic of his new religion, left Rome to take up his residence on the Bosphorus, which washed the shores of the continent that had cradled Christianity. For a ruler who coveted absolute power, who feared democracy, who hated liberty and who preferred stagnation of thought to the movement of ideas, who desired slaves for subjects, Asia was the more suitable place. Without wishing to offend anyone, I must say that Christianity was more Asiatic than Paganism, and the Orient was better fitted to be the home of political and religious absolutism than the occident. Christianity, as the religion of meekness and obedience, had irresistible attractions for Constantine. He not only embraced it, but he went to dwell as close to where its cradle had swung as he could.
It is not the fault of Christianity that the Asiatic is servile, but the fault of the Asiatic that Christianity is so supple and submissive. It is not so much religion that makes the character of a people, as it is the people who determine the character of their religion. Religion is only the resume of the national ideas, thoughts, and character. Religion is nothing but an expression. It is not, for instance, the word or the language which creates the idea, but the idea which provokes the word into existence. In the same way religion is only the expression of a people's mentality. And yet a man's religion or philosophy, while it is but the product of his own mind, exerts a reflex influence upon his character. The child influences the parent, of whom it is the offspring; language affects thought, of which, originally, it was but the tool. So it is with religion. The Christian religion, as soon as it got into power, turned the world about. It struck at the Roman Empire, and grabbing everything it could lay its hands on -- the sceptre, the sword, the imperial diadem, the throne -- it walked away with them to Asia. We could never ask for a more eloquent defense of the position that Christianity is Asiatic than is found in this historic transfer of the seat of power from Europe to Asia, from Rome to Constantinople.
Now, naturally enough, a religion which combats the culture and traditions of European life in Europe, will not tolerate them in Asia. Do we understand this point? If it seeks to down European thought in Europe, how much more will it seek to expel it from Asia? If it persecutes Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and Seneca in Europe, it cannot, of course, tolerate them in Asia. Christianity tried to destroy all the monuments of Paganism in Rome, in free and proud Rome; could it, then, leave them standing in Alexandria, in Constantinople, or in Antioch? On the contrary, in Asia, which is her proper home, the seat of her power, and with the Emperor transferred to Constantinople, Christianity became more aggressive against Paganism and civilization than even in Europe. Religion, like everything else, is consistent as long as it is young and virile, and Christianity in the early centuries was both young and virile, and therefore logical. Changing slightly the great words of Shakespeare, we might say:
There is a logic which shapes our ends
Rough hew them as we may.
We wonder sometimes that a Japanese gentleman or an Arab, or a Siamese, who has never mingled with Europeans or Americans, should think as we do, or exhibit the polite manners of occidental races. There are those who refuse to believe that a Pagan, living three thousand years ago, could possess the very virtues which we prize today. The sectarian who believes that only people of the size and calibre of his creed can be good, is at a loss to explain the universality of culture and virtue. This is explained by his inability to perceive that there is a logic in the development of the human being which brings about the same results the world over -- before Christ, and after. Let us appreciate this truth. How can a Moslem or a Jew or a Pagan be as good as a Christian? By a law of nature and evolution the ripened human fruit is the same the world over. If only Mohammedanism or Christianity or Judaism possessed the power to make men good, then there would be no morality outside these religions. But history contradicts so sweeping a conclusion. There is a logic, we repeat, in the culture of the mind which makes a Trajan, who was a Pagan, as sweet and sane as a Washington, who was born in a Christian era, or the Chinese Confucius, as noble and independent as the French Voltaire. I say there is a universality in the evolution of man, before which all sectarian pretenses and conceits are like chaff for the wind to sport with. And we cannot be really large-minded, nor can we read history and philosophy aright, until we appreciate the power of the logic which shapes our ends "rough hew them as we may."
The transference of the capital of the world and the seat of authority from Europe to Asia was not an accident. It was a logical step. Christianity, to be consistent, had to break up housekeeping in Europe and move its menage from Rome to Constantinople. She was homesick for the climate, the atmosphere, the peoples, the traditions, the spirit, the institutions -- the milieu in which she was born. Unable to assimilate western ideas, she pined for Asia. By the same logic, she wished to wipe out in Asia every trace of European thought and culture. When, therefore, we read of the destruction of Pagan schools, libraries, and monuments, let us not look upon such acts as accidents in the history of Christianity, but as the logical unfolding of its genius. Why, you may ask, does it no longer pursue the policy of extermination? For the best of reasons; it is no longer virile enough to be logical. It has stumbled into the ways of inconsistency by reason of old age. Fifteen hundred years ago, in Alexandria, when our religion was both young and lusty, it attempted to, and succeeded in, destroying everything that reminded the world of the glory and liberty of ancient Rome and Greece.
Theodosius was at the time, of which we will now speak, the Christian ruler of the Empire. In reply to a request by the Archbishop of Alexandria, he sent a sentence of destruction against the ancient religion of Egypt. Both the Pagans and the Christians had assembled in the public square to hear the reading of the Emperor's letter, and when the Christians learned that they may destroy the gods of the Pagans, a wild shout of joy rent the air. The disappointed Pagans, on the other hand, realizing the danger of their position, silently slipped into their homes through dark alleys and hidden passage-ways. Yet they did not stand aside and see the temples of their gods razed to the ground without first offering a desperate resistance. Under the leadership of a zealot, Olympus, the Pagans fell upon the Christians, maddened with the cry in their ears of their leader, "Let us die with our gods!" Then came the turn of the Christians. Theophilius, the Archbishop of Alexandria, with a cross in his hand, and followed by his monks, marched upon the temple of Serapis, and proceeded to pull its pillars down. When they came to strike at the colossal statue of the god, for centuries worshiped as a deity, even the Christians turned pale with superstitious awe, and held their breath. A soldier armed with a heavy axe, was hesitating to strike the first blow. Will the god tolerate the insult? Will he not crash the roof upon the heads of the sacrilegious vandals? But the soldier struck the thundering blow right in the cheeks of Serapis, who offered no remonstrance whatever. The sun shone as usual, and the laws of nature maintained their even pace. Encouraged by this indifference of the god to defend himself, the Christian rabble rushed upon the statue, and pulling Serapis off his seat, dragged him in pieces through the streets of Alexandria that the Pagans might behold the disgrace into which their great god had fallen. Thousands of Pagans, seeing how helpless their gods were to avenge this insult, deserted Paganism and joined the Christians. As soon as the ground of the temple was sufficiently cleared, a church was erected on the ancient site. The Alexandrian library was the next point of attack. Its shelves were soon cleared, and you and I, and twenty centuries, were most lamentably deprived of the intellectual treasures which our Greek and Roman forefathers had bequeathed unto us.
When the archbishop under whose influence the monuments and libraries of Pagan civilization were pillaged and pulled down died, he was succeeded by his nephew, St. Cyril, who was even more Asiatic in his sympathies and more hostile to European thought than his uncle, Theophilius. The new archbishop directed his efforts against the living monuments of Paganism -- the scholars, the poets, the philosophers -- the men and women who still cherished a passionate regard for the culture and civilization of the Pagan world. The most illustrious representative of Greco-Roman culture in Alexandria about this time was Hypatia, the gifted daughter of Theon, a mathematician and a philosopher of considerable renown. It is said that Theon would have come down to us as a great man had not his daughter's fame eclipsed his.
Hypatia was a remarkably gifted woman. Her example demonstrates how all difficulties yield to a strong will. Being a girl, and excluded by the conventions of the time from intellectual pursuits, she could have given many reasons why she should leave philosophy to stronger and freer minds. But she had an all-compelling passion for the life of the mind, which overcame every obstacle that interfered with her purpose. The example of a young woman conquering tremendous difficulties, and becoming the undisputed queen of an intellectual empire, ought to be a great inspiration to us faint hearts. She won the prize which was denied her sex, and became "the glory of her age and the wonder of ours."
To pursue her studies, she persuaded her father to send her to Athens, where her earnest work, her devotion to philosophy, the readiness with which she sacrificed all her other interests to the cultivation of her mind, earned for herself the laurel wreath which the university of Athens conferred only upon the foremost of its pupils. Hypatia wore this wreath whenever she appeared in public, as her best ornament. Upon her return to Alexandria, she was elected president of the Academy, which at this period was the rendezvous of the leading minds of the East and West. In fact, it was in this academy that the effort of the advanced thinkers to bring about a pacification between the culture of Europe and that of Asia originated. They wished to make Alexandria, situated midway between the occident and the orient, the point of confluence of the two streams of civilization. They wished to celebrate the marriage of the East as bride to the West as bridegroom. It was their plan to make Alexandria a sort of intellectual distillery, refining and fusing the two civilizations into one. But this amalgamation -- this assimilation -- Christianity, alas, helped to prevent by bringing into still bolder relief the Asiatic habits of mind, and by refusing to concede an inch to the larger spirit of the West. Christianity is responsible for the miscarriage which has ever since left Asia a widow, or, to change the simile, a withered branch upon the tree of civilization. Christianity broke the link which scholarship and humanity were trying to forge between Europe and Asia. The world has never since been one as it came near being under the Roman Empire.
Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, persuaded himself that Hypatia's good name and talents were giving the cause of Paganism a dangerous prestige, and thereby preventing the progress of the new faith. Hypatia was indeed a great power in Alexandria. She was the most popular personage in the city. When she appeared in her chariot on the streets people threw flowers at her, applauded her gifts, and cried, "Long live the daughter of Theon." Poets called her the "Virgin of Heaven," "the spotless star," "of highest speech the flower." Judging by the chronicles of the times, it appears that her beauty, which would have made even a Cleopatra jealous, was as great as her modesty, and both were matched by her eloquence, and all three surpassed by her learning.
Her beauty did astonish the survey of eyes,
Her words all ears took captive.
Her renown as a lecturer on philosophy brought students from Rome and Athens, and all the great cities of the empire, to Alexandria. It was one of the great events of each day to flock to the hall in the academy where Hypatia explained Plato and Aristotle. Cyril, the Asiatic archbishop, passing frequently the house of Hypatia, and seeing the long train of horses, litters, and chariots which had brought a host of admirers to the female philosopher's shrine, conceived a terrible hatred for this Pagan girl. He did not relish her popularity. Her learning was rubbish to him. Her charms, temptations for the ruin of man. He hated her because she, a frail woman, dared to be free and to think for herself. He argued in his mind that she was competing with Christianity, taking away from Christ the homage which belonged to him. With Hypatia out of the way the people would turn to God, and give him the love and honor which they were wasting upon her. She was robbing God of his rights, and she must fall; for He is a jealous God. Such was the reasoning of Cyril, whom the Church has canonized.
Moreover, Orestes, the Prefect of Alexandria, respected Hypatia, and was a constant attendant at her lectures. Cyril believed that she influenced the Prefect and tainted him with her Paganism. With Hypatia crushed, Orestes would be more responsive to Christian influences. Ah, it is a cruel story which I am about to unfold. Generally speaking, if a man is jealous and small, no religion can make him sweet; and if he is generous and pure-minded, no superstition can altogether poison the springs of his love. Religion is strong, but nature is stronger. Unfortunately Cyril was a barbarian, and the doctrines of his religion only sharpened his claws and whipped his passion into a rage.
If we were living in those days we would have witnessed at the close of each day, when both sea and sky blush with the departing kiss of the sun, Hypatia mounting her chariot to ride to the academy, where she is announced to speak on some philosophical subject. She is followed by many enthusiastic and devoted admirers impatient to catch her eye. She is nodding to her friends on her right and on her left. She, who refused lovers that she may love philosophy, is not insensible to the appreciation of her pupils. Approaching the academy, she dismounts, ascends the white marble steps and enters by the door, on either side of which sit two silent sphinxes. As we follow her into the hall, we see that it is lighted by numerous swinging lamps filled with perfumed oil; the rotunda of the ceiling has been embellished by a Greek artist, with figures of Jupiter and his divine companions, who appear to be rapt in the words which fall from his lips. The walls have been decorated by Egyptian artists, with pictures of the sacred animals, the crocodile, the cat, the cow, and the dog; and with sacred vegetables, the onion, the lotus, and the laurel. Besides these there is a scene on the walls representing the marriage of Osiris and Isis. On an elevated platform is a divan in purple velvet, and upon a little table is placed the silver statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom and patron of Hypatia. Behind the table sits the philosophic young woman dressed in a robe of white, fastened about her throat and waist by a band of pearls, and carrying upon her brow the laurel crown which Athens had decreed to her. A musical murmur sweeps over the audience as she rises to her feet. But in a moment all is silent again save the throbbing and trembling of Hypatia's silvery voice. She speaks in Greek, the language of thought and beauty, of the ancient world. Alas! this is her last appearance at the academy. Tomorrow that hall will be a tomb. Tomorrow Minerva will be childless. When Hypatia's listeners bade her farewell on that evening they did not know that within a few hours they would all become orphans.
The next morning, when Hypatia appeared in her chariot in front of her residence, suddenly five hundred men, all dressed in black and cowled, five hundred half-starved monks from the sands of the Egyptian desert -- five hundred monks, soldiers of the cross -- like a black hurricane, swooped down the street, boarded her chariot, and, pulling her off her seat, dragged her by the hair of her head into a -- how shall I say the word? -- into a church! Some historians intimate that the monks asked her to kiss the cross, to become a Christian and join the nunnery, if she wished her life spared. At any rate, these monks, under the leadership of St. Cyril's right-hand man, Peter the Reader, shamefully stripped her naked, and there, close to the alter and the cross, scraped her quivering flesh from her bones with oystershells. The marble floor of the church was sprinkled with her warm blood. The alter, the cross, too, were bespattered, owing to the violence with which her limbs were torn, while the hands of the monks presented a sight too revolting to describe. The mutilated body, upon which the murderers feasted their fanatic hate, was then flung into the flames.
Oh! is there a blacker deed in human annals? When has another man or woman been so inhumanly murdered? Has politics, has commerce, has cannibalism even committed a more cruel crime? The cannibal pleads hunger to cover his cruelty -- what excuse had Hypatia's murderers? Even Joan of Arc was more fortunate in her death than this daughter of Paganism! Beautiful woman! murdered by men who were not worthy to touch the hem of thy garment! And to think that this happened in a church -- a Christian church!
I have seen the frost bite the flower; I have watched the spider trap the fly; I have seen the serpent spring upon the bird! And yet I love nature! But I will never enter a church nor profess a religion which can commit such a deed against so lovable a woman. No, not even if I were offered as a bribe eternal life! If, O priests and preachers! instead of one hell, there were a thousand, and each hell more infernal than your creeds describe, yet I would sooner they would all swallow me up, and feast their insatiable lust upon my poor bones for ever and ever, than lend countenance or support to an institution upon which history has fastened the indelible stigma of Hypatia's murder!
I wish I could live a thousand years to admire the noble spirit and delight in the courage and beauty of this brave martyr of Philosophy, Hypatia! O that my voice were strong enough to reach the ends of the world! I would then summon all independent minds to join with me in a hymn of praise to that incomparable woman, who has joined the choir invisible and
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
Honor and love to beautiful Hypatia! Pity to the monks who killed her! A delicious feeling of satisfaction, like a warm sunshine on a wintry day, spreads over me as I contemplate the privilege I am enjoying of vindicating her memory against her assassins. Fortune has smiled upon me in selecting me as one of her defenders. I congratulate myself on having both the heart and the head to weep over her sad fate. And I tremble and shrink, as from a paralyzing nightmare, when I think that, under different circumstances, I might still have a minister of the Church whose hands are, after fifteen hundred years, still unwashed of her innocent blood. The thought overpowers me; I labor for breath. But I am free. O joy, O rapture! I am free to speak the truth about Hypatia. Let the clergy praise Peter and Paul, St. Cyril and St. Theophilius. I give my heart to thee, thou glorious victim of superstition!
If we, of this present generation, are responsible for Adam's sin, and deserve the penalties of his disobedience, as the clergy say we do, then the Church of today is responsible for Hypatia's fate. How will they take this practical application of their own dogma? It will not do for them to say: "We wash our hands clean of St. Cyril's sin"; for if Adam can, by his remote act, expose us all to damnation, so shall Bishop Cyril's dark deed cleave for ever unto the religion which his followers profess. Yet, let the Church people apologize, and we shall forgive them; but no apology short of discarding this Asiatic slave-creed, which in the Old Testament stoned the free thinker to death, and in the New pronounces him a "heathen and a publican," will satisfy the ends of justice.
I have intimated, by the wording of my subject, that it was a classic world which was murdered in the person of one of its last and noblest representatives, Hypatia. Hypatia embodied in her life and teaching, the proud spirit, the beauty, the culture, and the sanity of Greece. With her, fell Greece; fell the intellectual world from her eminence.
Then followed the nearly ten centuries of Egyptian darkness, which settling over Europe, paralyzed all initiative. During the thousand years in which the spirit of St. Cyril and his Church managed, with undisputed sway, the affairs of religion and the State, night folded to its sterile bosom our orphaned humanity, and the chains of slavery were upon every mind. A cloud of dust rising heaven-high choked the flow and dried up the fountains which had, in the days of Pericles and Antoninus, poured forth a world of living waters. The barren and lumbering theology of the Church crowded out the Muses from their earthly walks, and the world became a prison after having been the home of man. One by one the great lights went out; Athens was no more, Rome was dead. The bloom had vanished from the face of the earth, and in its place there fell upon it the awful shadow of a future hell.
Symonds, in his "The Greek Poets," says that while Cyril's mobs were dismembering Hypatia, the Greek authors went on creating, "Musaeus sang the lamentable death of Leander, and Nonnus was perfecting a new and more polished form of the hexameter." These authors, ignorant that the Asiatic superstition had destroyed their world, or that they had themselves been stabbed to death -- like one who has been shot, but whose wound is still warm, and who does not know that he has but a few more breaths to draw -- kept on singing their song. But their song was, indeed, the "very swan's notes" of the classical world. "With the story of Hero and Leander, that immortal love poem, the Muse," says the same author, "took her final farewell of her beloved Hellas."
After a thousand years of night, when the world awoke from her sleep, the first song it sang was the last long of the dying Pagan world. This is wonderfully strange. In the year 1493, when the Renaissance ushered in a new era, the first book brought out in Europe was the last book written in Alexandria by a Pagan. It was the poem of Hero and Leander. The new world resumed the golden thread where the old world had lost it. The severed streams of thought and beauty met again into one current, and began to sing and shine as it rushed forth once more, as in the days of old. A Greek poem was the last product of the Pagan world; the same Greek poem was the first product of the new and renascent world.
Between the dying and reviving Pagan world was the Christian Church -- that is to say, ten dark centuries.
If Greece and Rome made art, poetry, philosophy, sculpture, the drama, oratory, beauty, (and) liberty classical, (then) Christianity the Syrian, Asiatic cult made for nearly fifteen hundred years persecution, religious wars, massacres, theological feuds and bloodshed, heresy huntings and heretic burnings, prisons, dungeons, anathemas, curses, opposition to science, hatred of liberty, spiritual bondage, the life without love or laughter, a classic!
But the dawn is in the sky, and it is daybreak everywhere!
We are reasonably confident that never again will this religion, born and bred in Asia, command sufficient influence over the minds of modern men to burn or murder the intellectual aristocrats, the daily beauty of whose lives makes the ugliness of superstition so very noticeable. What a difference there would have been in our attitude toward the Christian Church, if, instead of fearing the thinker and the inquirer, and persecuting him with a hatred too awful to contemplate, it had opened both its arms to welcome him with affection and gratitude! But the "divine" is always jealous of the human. Hypatia eclipsed the glory of God. She was murdered because only "the poor in spirit" -- the intellectual babes, are the elect of Heaven.
It is good news, however, that while the Church may still exclude the mental giants from the world to come, it can no longer exclude them from the world that now is!
Bibliographic information:
· Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, Mangasarian's lectures Chicago : s.n., 1912-1919 (v. ; 22 cm) Series: Rationalist (Independent Religious Society of Chicago), v. 1-4
· Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, "The martyrdom of Hypatia, or, The death of the classical world.", The Rationalist, May 1915
Text entry by someone who wishes to remain anonymous, from The Rationalist. HTML conversion by Howard A. Landman.
Howard A. Landman / howard@polyamory.org
Created 1996 April 10
Last updated 1999 April 29
http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/
o The Life of Hypatia from The Suda. This is the first ever English translation of this important source.
o The Life of Hypatia by Socrates Scholasticus. This biography tells the story of her murder.
o The Life of Hypatia by John, Bishop of Nikiu. This Christian writer spoke with approval of the murder of Hypatia because "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music."
o http://www.polyamory.org/~howard/Hypatia/primary-sources.html
1) Treasures of the Alexandrian Library - By John P. Mater
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/rel-jvm.htm
2) Revival of the Alexandrian Library - By Paul Johnson
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-pjoh.htm
3) Alexandrias's Beacon against the Dark - By I. M. Oderberg
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-imo3.htm
Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/rel-jvm.htm
Treasures of the Alexandrian Library
By John P. Mater
The concert of reincarnation enhances our understanding of history. Like pictures viewed through a stereoscope we suddenly see them in spectacular new depths. In a similar fashion reincarnation helps us comprehend the nature of civilizations, the stages of their development, and the causes of their decline.
For any age is the souls that are incarnated in it and the karma they are working out. The golden age of Greece in the time of Pericles was magnificent because of the great men and women then living. Without these creative individuals there would not have been an Age of Pericles. Similarly, when a nation, empire, or city becomes wealthy and powerful and its citizens no longer have to strive for their liberties or even for their livelihood, other souls begin to incarnate, softer, more effete. In time the civilization loses its virility and sinks into obscurity, or it may be overrun by a race or nation often less civilized than itself, whose cycle or karma is on its rise to power -- generally at the expense of its contemporaries. In such times the wide avenues and halls of learning and art ring with the hoarse cries of the destroyers, and the accumulated wisdom of centuries is burned. Yet, in the throes of its decline the Alexandrian flowering achieved a new birth, like Phoenix rising from the ashes.
The collection of manuscripts at Alexandria was probably the largest in the western world until the invention of printing, though there may have been even larger libraries in India and China during the many flowerings that marked their long and glorious civilizations. As for the New World, Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatan, speaks of the Mayan manuscripts he burned as creations of the devil, thus rendering voiceless the true genius of this great people at the height of their accomplishments.
The story of Alexandria should properly begin with Philip of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great. In a series of campaigns Philip unified for the first time in history the various Greek city-states, which for centuries had warred continuously with one another. After creating the Hellenic League he turned his eyes towards Persia, the Greeks' traditional enemy. Xerxes had burned Athens in 480 B.C. and stolen its library. But Philip was unable to fulfill his desire to conquer Persia, for he was assassinated by one of his own courtiers. When Alexander at 20 years of age succeeded to the throne in 336 B.C., he defeated the Persians, first at the Dardenelles not far from legendary Troy, and later at Issus in Asia Minor. He then liberated the Greek kingdoms along the coast of the Mediterranean and, continuing southward, subjugated Egypt. Working his way eastward, he again defeated the Persians at Arbella. Then he took Babylon, Susa, and finally Persepolis, capital of the Persian empire, burning the marvelous palaces surrounding the city. Such was the revenge of the Greeks.
Continuing eastward toward India, Alexander made war against Chandragupta, founder of the Maurya dynasty, whose empire was even larger than his own. After occupying a portion of India bordering the Indus River, he turned back, reaching Babylon in 323 B.C. Soon after, in the midst of plans to conquer Arabia, he died of the fever.
Upon the death of Alexander three dynasties emerged, descending from three of his generals. The Antigonids, who ruled over Macedonia and Greece, was the most short-lived and soon became attached to the expanding Roman empire. Seleucus, the youngest and strongest of the generals, became ruler of the largest part of Alexander's empire, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to India. Seleucus built many cities, among them what was perhaps the most beautiful in the ancient world -- Antioch. Founded in 300 B.C., it endured for over a thousand years. The Seleucid dynasty can be dated from 312 to 65 B.C., when it was annexed by Pompey, the Roman general. Five months after Alexander's death, his childhood friend, General Ptolemy took over the province of Egypt.
The Nile River as it flows through the enormous Delta seeks several channels leading to the Mediterranean Sea. Alexandria is located on the westernmost of these. Alexander had personally chosen the site for the city which bears his name, traced the boundaries and pointed out where temples and public works should be located; but he did not live to see a single structure rise, for when he resumed his conquests he never returned. He had charged Dinocrates with building a magnificent city and improving the harbor. From the outset Alexandria was a city of stone and marble. Underneath were cisterns connecting with the Nile, which provided water for domestic use. Eventually there were enormous docks and warehouses along the harbor; boulevards 100 feet wide intersected one another, with side streets wide enough for chariots. A good deal of work must have been accomplished even during the short interval before Alexander's death.
Ptolemy I was an able general, diplomat, and ruler, yet his other claims to fame are even more significant. Between 300 and 290 B.C. he founded the Museum and the great Library. In this he was advised by the erudite and gifted Demetrios of Phaleron, who had come to Ptolemy seeking asylum, was made welcome and later put in charge of the Library. He was devoted to Athens and his influence no doubt strengthened in Ptolemy a desire to make of Alexandria a second Athens (The early rulers of Egypt were called Pharaoh -- ruler or king. The name Ptolemy supplanted the title pharaoh, as a succession of Ptolemies became kings of Egypt. There were in all 14 Ptolemies, the last being the son of Caesar and Cleopatra, Caesarion, murdered at age 17 by order of Augustus in 30 B.C. Thereafter Egypt became a Roman province.).
Ptolemy brought the body of Alexander to Egypt and housed it in a magnificent tomb which appears to have been on display throughout the kingships of the Ptolemies. But when the forces of destruction ran rampant through the streets, it was somehow dismantled, removed, hidden, or perhaps destroyed so that its whereabouts are still a mystery. Possibly the renovation of Alexandria* will help fill in some of the gaps in history. (*Cf. Paul Johnson, "Revival of the Alexandrian Library," SUNRISE, April/May 1989).
Ptolemy II called Philadelphus, who reigned from 283 to 246 B.C., is considered the most gifted of the Ptolemies. Off the shores of Alexandria was an island called Pharos, mentioned centuries before by Homer in his Odyssey (IV: 355). A spit of land had been laid down linking Pharos with Alexandria and creating an outer and an inner harbor. Philadelphus decided to build a lighthouse on Pharos, and about 270 B.C. a splendid one was constructed 140 meters (460 ft) in height. This mighty structure remained until the 13th century A.D., a span of some 1,600 years, when it was destroyed by an earthquake (The word pharos eventually acquired the meaning "lighthouse," French phare, Italian and Spanish fero; sometimes pharos is used in English to designate a ship's lantern).
Another achievement of Philadelphus was the sending of an embassy to Jerusalem, to the high priest Eleazar, asking if he would lend to Alexandria the manuscript of the Old Testament, and to send six scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. In due course, according to the story, the 72 scholars arrived and were given quarters on Pharos. In 72 days they produced a Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was called Septuagint -- 70 in round numbers -- in memory of the 72 scholars and the 72-day task they had accomplished.
An interesting custom adopted by the early Ptolemies was to search ships that entered the harbor. If manuscripts were found that were not in the library collection, the vessel would be held in port until a copy could be made -- a form of highway robbery!
As time went by, Alexandria divided into ethnic sections. The native Egyptian quarter housed the Serapeum, one of the most majestic buildings of the ancient world. There Greek and Egyptian devotees met in common worship. A second part of the city was called the Brucheion, the Greek-Macedonian quarter, which included the offices of government and the mausoleum of Alexander. Above all, it contained the great Museum and Library. There were other adjuncts to this huge complex, such as the theater for lectures and performances, and the palaces of the Ptolemaic kings. The third section of Alexandria consisted of the large Jewish quarter, which had its Sanhedrin (council).
The city was pictured by a classic writer in the 3rd century as "a universal nurse; every race of men did settle there"; Greeks from every part of the Mediterranean, Syrians, Arabs, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians. There also were Carthaginians, Romans, Gauls, and Iberians. The intellectual life was similarly diversified: scholars, priests, and philosophers of every conceivable affiliation. Merchants, tradesmen from throughout the known world came and went. There were also workmen, laborers, and a horde of governmental and private slaves. By the beginning of the 1st century A.D. the population of Alexandria is estimated at one million.
The late George Sarton, professor of history at Harvard University, described the Museum as occupying several large buildings equipped for various scientific purposes, much like a research institute today, with an astronomical observatory, and rooms for physiological and medical experiments. There were also botanical gardens and a zoological collection. The members lived together like the tutors or Fellows of a medieval college.
Some of the greatest figures in Greek science at one time or another visited or worked in the Museum and Library. Eratosthenes was chief librarian from 228-196 B.C. under Ptolemy III. He was an omnivorous scholar and scientist, delving into mathematics, astronomy, geography, philosophy, and also literature. Among other accomplishments, he calculated the circumference of the earth. Contrary to popular opinion, he and many of his colleagues recognized that the earth and the other planets traveled around the sun. In the same century the great geometrician Euclid brought his genius to the Museum as did Aristarchus of Samos who wrote upon the sizes and distances of the sun and moon, while Aratos of Soloi (Soli) named the constellations. The famous Archimedes, although a resident of Syracuse, discussed physics, geometry, and mathematics with the savants of the Museum. Apollonius of Perga was sent to Alexandria; and there he wrote his Elements and his 8-volume work on conic sections; also his theory of epicycles to account for the motions of the planets which appear at times to move retrograde. Specialists in all these fields and many more frequented the Museum in the course of its long and brilliant history.
The chief activity of the Library, aside from preserving, copying, repairing, and cataloguing the scrolls, was to compare the texts of the great works on drama, history, fiction, poetry, etc., from most ancient times; also more recent works by contemporary poets, dramatists, and philosophers of Greece and elsewhere. These were in many languages, but an effort was made to render them into Alexandrian Greek. Meticulous scholarship characterized the Alexandrian Library. There were also lectures on a wide variety of topics, for the librarians were not merely cataloguers and custodians, but full-fledged philologists, and the manuscripts that have survived show their erudition. Aristophanes of Byzantium, one of the most distinguished critics and grammarians, formulated rules for punctuation and capitalization, which up to that time had been hit or miss. He became head of the Library upon the death of Eratosthenes in 195 B.C.
Over the centuries Alexandria became the crossroads of the world. Scriptures from many lands found their way into the Library, while Egyptian or Pharaonic beliefs remained influential. Zoroastrian texts were there, for Egypt had been a Persian satrapy from 525-332 B.C., and many Persian ideas must have taken root. Undoubtedly there were texts from as far away as the Orient, with which there were trade relations. There was a commingling of cultures. Gymnosophists, the "naked philosophers" of India, were also present, as were Jewish beliefs and the ideas of the Babylonian Magi.
Among the Greeks and perhaps other nations as well, science and the arts were part of the Lesser Mysteries, which included teaching and discipline. The science of architecture was well understood, and in the Museum and Library of Alexandria this and other subjects were discussed openly, though the details were not broadcast, nor are they found in the literature of the times. The same secrecy was undoubtedly enforced elsewhere in both Occident and Orient, yet the high level of expertise in applied science, architecture, and art supports the view that there existed among the ancients hidden sources of knowledge. In the Greater Mysteries, according to tradition, the candidate who was considered ready by the hierophants, was led stage by stage, first to an awareness of his higher self or inner god, and finally through his own strength and perception to bring to birth the god within him.
There were a number of secret and semi-secret organizations in Egypt and the Near East, such as the Essene communities and the early Gnostics. One can only speculate to what extent the Mysteries were active in the Library and Museum; most certainly they were an important although esoteric aspect of the Alexandrian experience. H. P. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine refers to the initiates at Alexandria (II:574), and to Gnostics "divulging the secret of initiations" at that center (I: 416).
With the decline of the Mysteries the vitality of the Library and Museum diminished, and the Roman civilization soon swept over the Mediterranean world and most of Asia Minor. The Christian movement was also in the offing, and the Roman republic was about to give way to the rule of the Caesars. In 48 B.C. Julius Caesar visited Egypt where he met Cleopatra. During his stay there was an uprising among the Macedonian troops and others protesting his presence. Caesar retaliated by burning the Egyptian fleet in the harbor. Unfortunately the fire spread to the docks and warehouses, and thousands of manuscripts were accidentally burned. He returned to Rome where he was assassinated in 44 B.C.
Later Antony came to Egypt. Since Pergamon had been incorporated into the Roman empire, its library of some 200,000 scrolls was given by Antony to Alexandria to compensate for the accidental burning by Caesar. In 37 B.C. Antony joined Cleopatra in Alexandria. A split developed between Antony and Octavian resulting in a sea battle in 31 B.C. in which Antony was defeated, whereupon he returned to Egypt where he and Cleopatra took their own lives (Cleopatra had a son by Julius Caesar, and two sons and a daughter by Antony. The tragic fate of these offspring illustrates graphically the cruelty that invariably accompanies the surge of empire). Now Octavian, taking the name Augustus, became the first of a long line of Roman emperors called Caesars.
The activities at Alexandria continued for some centuries, but on a declining scale. The dawning Christian movement became organized: several churches sprang up in the city, which eventually became the diocese of Christian bishops. The new religion did not look kindly upon so-called pagan activities. Under the Emperor Aurelian in the 3rd century A.D. the greater part of the Museum and Library were destroyed. Books were packed into the Serapeum for safe keeping, but eventually (400 A.D.) these too suffered a similar fate by order of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria. There were riots and in 415 A.D. the brilliant Hypatia, last head of the Library-Museum complex, was brutally murdered. The treasures of the Library, Museum, and Serapeum were open to pillage. The final destruction took place in 642 A.D. when the Arabs conquered Egypt and eventually, it is reported, used what was left of the Library to heat the baths.
Meanwhile, about the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. a remarkable man, Ammonius Saccas, founder of Neoplatonism, began to teach. His best known and perhaps greatest pupil was Plotinus, who was in Alexandria in 205 A.D. Plotinus wrote some powerful treatises based upon the precepts of his teacher. He gained wide popularity and in his later years taught at Rome. Following Plotinus came others, such as Porphyry, Amelius, Synesius, and Iamblichus. Neoplatonism had a broadening influence on some of the fathers of the Church, such as Origen who, according to Porphyry, had attended the classes of Ammonius Saccas. The last great Neoplatonist was Proclus, who taught at Athens and headed the Academy until his death in 485 A.D.
Neoplatonism was indeed a Platonic philosophy in that it researched into first principles. But it contained another element: it sought not merely to give man clear knowledge, but encouraged him to enter into a loftier state of consciousness, which Plotinus termed ecstasy, defining it as "the flight of the soul towards God, on whom it gazes face to face and alone" (Dictionary of Christian Biography, IV, "Neoplatonism," an excellent article on Plotinus by J. R. Mozeley. See also Plotinus, Enneads VI. 9. 11).
Like Phoenix rising from the ashes, Neoplatonism had a profound influence, coming as it did near the end of the Alexandrian cycle and amid sometimes violent chaos. Three centuries later Proclus expounded this doctrine to quite a following at the Academy in Athens, the home of philosophy, founded by Plato nearly a thousand years earlier. It was like a sunset, however, for not more than forty years after the death of Proclus, the Emperor Justinian in 529 A.D. suppressed the philosophical schools and closed the Academy. But by that time the Phoenix bird had risen and flown away.
One might suppose that all the treasures of the Alexandrian Library were destroyed, yet there are traditions, echoed by H. P. Blavatsky in her monumental The Secret Doctrine (I:xxiii-ix; II:692, 763), that the most valuable and irreplaceable volumes were rescued and housed secretly, to be revealed at times and in places where they will most profitably serve the welfare of humanity.
All this is particularly reassuring when we deplore the destruction of the Alexandrian treasures. Yet from the viewpoint of reincarnation, the real treasures of the Alexandrian School were the grand souls who created and composed it. From life to life these remarkable individuals will bring religion, philosophy, science, and art to flower wherever they may incarnate. The Phoenix bird never really dies but is perpetually reborn.
It is fitting to close with a few words about Alexander the Great. In spite of the brutality of his conquests, Alexander was not a crude and vulgar person. He envisioned the establishment of a world polis, a world civilization, where all men would be brothers, and the sciences, religions, and arts could flower side by side in peace and cooperation. This dream was in part achieved at Alexandria. In this spirit it is exciting to follow the present efforts by UNESCO, the Egyptian government, and other nations to rebuild the Alexandrian Library.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
· Blavatsky, H. P., The Secret Doctrine, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, 1988.
· Desmond, Alice D., Cleopatra's Children, Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1972.
· Heur, Kenneth, City of the Star Gazers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1972.
· Mackenna, Stephen, Plotinus V, Sixth Ennead, The Medici Society, London, 1930.
· Mozeley, J. R., "Neoplatonism," A Dictionary of Christian Biography, TV: 18-23, edited by Wm. Smith and Henry Wace, John Murray, London, 1877.
· Parsons, Edward A., The Alexandrian Library, Cleaver Hume Press, London, 1952.
· Sarton, George, "Hellenism," History of Science, II, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1959.
(Reprinted from Sunrise magazine, February/March 1990. Copyright © 1990 by Theosophical University Press)
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2) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-pjoh.htm
Revival of the Alexandrian Library
By Paul Johnson
The future relevance of the theosophical heritage is confirmed by a plan recently announced for the rebuilding of the Alexandrian Library. Library Journal for February 1, 1988 reported:
The rebuilding will take place close to what archaeologists believe is the original site; the complex will include a conference center, a research library, a school of information studies, and housing for visiting scholars. The project, constructed on 48,000 acres with an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean Sea, is expected to be completed in 1995.
An international appeal for funds similar to those made for the preservation of the Acropolis and the treasures of Venice has been launched by UNESCO. The American Library Association passed a resolution of support of the revival of the Alexandrian library at Council in San Francisco last summer. -- 113:2:13
What relevance does this have to the future of theosophical values and teachings? Alexandria can be regarded as a precursor of the modem theosophical movement, as indicated by H. P. Blavatsky in her discussion of Ammonias Saccas and his eclectic theosophical system. Alexandria is one likely source of the basic synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom which is the foundation of all HPB's teaching. The Library at Alexandria was the most celebrated library of the ancient world, and its repeated destruction the greatest blow to preservation of the ancient wisdom which could possibly have been dealt.
The Library, which flourished between 300 B.C. and 400 A.D., is believed to have been founded by Ptolemy I Soter (reigned 323-285 B.C.) in conjunction with a Museum which served as an international academy. The Library's collection included Greek works as well as works translated from other languages. Under Ptolemies II and III the Library was expanded and a subsidiary library added. The total collection exceeded 500,000 papyrus rolls before it was damaged by fire during the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C. In a civil war during the late third century A.D., the main library was ravaged, but the auxiliary collection at Serapeum lasted until 391 A.D. "when Christians, following the edict of Emperor Theodosius, destroyed the temple and its literary treasures" (Encyclopedia Americana 1:544). Whatever was left was finally destroyed when the Muslims sacked Alexandria in the year 645 A.D.
In both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, HPB asserts that this was a temporary setback, rather than a permanent defeat, for those who valued the wisdom of the ancients:
There are strange traditions current in various parts of the East -- on Mount Athos and in the Desert of Nitria, for instance -- among certain monks, and with learned Rabbis in Palestine.... that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by Caesar, by the Christian mob in 389, and by the Arab general Amru, perished as is commonly believed; . . .
No more do sundry very learned Copts scattered all over the East in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine believe in the total destruction of the subsequent libraries. -- Isis II:27-28
In her Introductory to The Secret Doctrine, HPB elaborates:
It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, every work of a character that might have led the profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the members of the Brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed. In India, the last of the precious manuscripts were secured and hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of that kind, whose text was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any direct references to the ancient mysteries, after having been carefully copied in cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and cleverest palaeographer, was also destroyed to the last copy. -- SD I:xxiii-xxiv
Perhaps it is naive to regard the project of the Egyptian government as much more than a symbolic gesture. All the king's horses and men cannot restore what was lost in the destruction of the Alexandrian Library. Yet, as HPB insists, evolution proceeds from within outward. Was not the entirety of her lifework a rebuilding of the purpose and spirit of the Alexandrian Library? The modern theosophical movement was intended in large part to reimbody the Alexandrian synthesis. If we dismiss the rebuilding of the Library on the physical plane as an intellectual achievement alone, we are denying ourselves the joy of celebrating a symbolic fulfillment of our deepest yearnings as theosophists. HPB clearly states that the destruction of the Alexandrian Library marked the beginning of an era when the "mysteries of the secret science" were deliberately hidden from unworthy humanity. Her work, then, was the partial unveiling of long-hidden truths. Can we see the rebuilding of the Library through international cooperation as a powerful statement that humanity is once more ready to accept and appreciate the ancient wisdom we call theosophy?
Even in the century cycle of modern theosophical history, we can discern a pattern of destruction and rebuilding. HPB's unique role in history has been misinterpreted through reductionism on the one hand and mythmaking on the other. The world at large has dismissed her as unworthy of serious interest, while theosophists have not yet convinced it otherwise. But as we approach the end of the century, there is a rising tide of interest in HPB and theosophy. Could the revival of the Library at Alexandria be inspired by the same inner current? The centrality of Egypt in HPB's association with these "very learned Copts" in her early years would make it an apt setting for an event of such theosophical
significance.
(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1989; copyright © 1989 Theosophical University Press)
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Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/me-imo3.htm
Alexandrias's Beacon against the Dark
By I. M. Oderberg
One of the 'Seven Wonders' of the ancient world was the Pharos of Alexandria, the remarkable lighthouse of many stories built in 279 B.C. on a foundation of solid blocks of glass, on Pharos Island at the harbor entrance. Its ingenuity embodied scientific purpose and architectural beauty. The architect Sostratus chose glass above all other materials because tests indicated that the sea did not corrode it. The Pharos was planned to endure, warning and guiding ships far into the future; also providing a fort and accommodation for garrisons to protect the city. What the natural elements did not destroy, man's greed and rapacity succeeded in accomplishing. In 700 A.D. the threat of war and a zealous search for Alexander's treasure rumored beneath the Pharos, led to the demolition of the upper stories which fell into the sea, together with the scientific instruments kept there. The truncated remains now house what is called the Castle, and a mosque. However, the real beacon of Alexandria was not the Pharos, sending its beam far out to sea, but rather the great library which shed a pervading light over Europe for more than eight centuries.
In the latter part of the fourth century B.C. the Athenian culture seemed to be in decay, when Alexander of Macedon propelled himself like a meteor across Greece and into Asia. After numerous victories in war he became known as Alexander the Great, but his most magnificent work was not the conquest, it was the reopening of the traffic of ideas from the orient to the west, and the creation of a new city destined to play an important role in this process. Alexandria was built upon a sandbank in the Nile, and lifted high the Hellenic glory achieved in science, art, speculative thought; enduring through the Roman occupation of Egypt, it influenced the civilizations of Europe and Asia Minor.
When Alexander died in 323 B.C., his battle-won empire was divided among his generals as satraps. Ptolemy, his close friend and possibly half-brother, received Egypt and Libya over which he ruled more like a king than a governor. He assumed the royal title in 305 B.C. and began the Macedonian or XXXIst Dynasty, the last to reign over an independent Egypt. He was a successful general in subsequent campaigns in Syria and Cyrenaica, and for preserving the nation from invaders he was surnamed Soter. But he is entitled to our respect for more than his prowess in war and astuteness as an administrator. We remember him for raising Alexandria into pre-eminence as Europe's center of learning, through the library and museum he founded.
Ptolemy I Soter invited leading Hellenic philosophers, scientists and literary figures of the day to come to his city. Among them was Demetrios of Phaleron, a famous Greek statesman and litterateur who suggested the establishment of the library and himself assembled the first collection for it, donating many of the scrolls he possessed. Ptolemy took personal interest in the enterprise, which soon grew into a vast treasurehouse of the Greek inheritance. In the process it also became a center of the inherited knowledge and wisdom in general, responsible for translating into the Greek tongue many important writings of other peoples, especially of India. However, it was more than a mere repository of learning, for it not only attracted scholars and editors of texts capable of deciding upon the authenticity of received versions of Homer, Hesiod and other authors, but it also provided laboratories, gardens and a small zoo for research. Beyond this, it became the living heart from which flowed an influence such as that of Eleusis and Samothrace in earlier times, and we may assume it had connections with similar centers located in Egypt from time immemorial.
The post of chief librarian carried court dignity and the prestige of association with a number of very distinguished scholars, such as Eratosthenes, the mathematician and astronomer who was also eminent in other fields. Aristarchos of Samothrace, believed to be the first archaeologist of language, Apollonius of Rhodes, whose Argonautica with its Orphic overtones still survives, and Theocritus the poet, are a few of them. The library and museum established by Ptolemy I Soter and by Demetrios were housed in a complex of buildings modeled on the Museion of Athens and given the same name, but it was very much more extensive in scope and size. The prototype in Athens once held the considerable library of Aristotle that passed to his pupil and heir Theophrastus, and a large portion of this collection was purchased by Soter's son Ptolemy II Philadelphus and located in Alexandria.
Ptolemy's Museion included museums, lecture theaters, astronomical and other laboratories, study rooms and dining halls; the buildings of white marble and stone were reported as being of harmonious design, and liberally ornamented with sculptures and artifacts of various kinds. We do not know how the library was classified, but many passages that have come down to us state that the Greek section was paramount and disposed through ten large halls, containing all the extant works the Greeks had produced, each hall being devoted to a separate department in accordance with the ten divisions of Hellenic knowledge set out in Callimachus' Catalogue, the famous Pinakes. From scattered references, we are led to believe that the contributions of other peoples radiated out from the Greek theme, so the whole collection might well have been arranged according to countries of origin.
Each faculty was superintended by a priest-president responsible to the king and to the chief librarian who was the foremost official of the entire Museion. At its peak the library housed over 500,000 books and a catalogue of 120. We should remember that all of these were in the form of scrolls, requiring specialized care different from our own books. Each scroll, written by hand, had to be checked with master texts and classified according to source and subject. So the various librarians had to be philologists and editors, as well as skilled in performing the duties usual in our own libraries.
The project grew so rapidly that an annex was established in the temple compound dedicated to Serapis, a somewhat benign Zeus, Egyptian in name (derived from the fusion of Osiris with Apis) but purely Greek in character. These buildings were called the Serapeum.
Not all the rulers between the first Ptolemy and the last were committed to the library; Ptolemies VI, VII and VIII could not have cared less what happened to it. After 150 B.C. it fell into serious neglect. But it was revived during the time of Cleopatra, after the disastrous fire for which Julius Caesar has been unjustly blamed. Plutarch says that Cleopatra was very distressed and ordered the immediate restoration of the library and its satellite institutions in the Serapeum. Mark Anthony endeavored to repair the loss by transferring 100,000 scrolls from the famous Pergamum library. To distinguish between the two Alexandrian institutions, the first library (Soter's) is known as the 'Mother' and the second (Cleopatra's) as the 'Daughter.' The latter is supposed to have been the larger because it contained over 700,000 manuscripts (some authorities say 800,000 and others more: even a million, but the evidence is inconclusive). There must have been a continuity in spirit between the two, as suggested by the fact that Gnosticism was connected with the first library, and both the Christian form of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism with the second.
After the Church was granted official recognition and power, and its teachings made compulsory, the monks thought they were free to attack the worship of Serapis. The library in the Serapeum was particularly detested, because it was the home of philosophy, 'magic,' and learning of various kinds and therefore considered "a citadel of disbelief and immorality." As the power of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and the associated bishops grew, the derided paganism ebbed away, making the library and its museums the last publicly known refuges of the ancient wisdom in Europe.
The monks under the extremely hate-ridden Patriarch Theophilus attacked it in 391, destroying the library and installing a monastery on the ruins. The persecution of the non-Christians continued under the Patriarch's equally fanatic nephew and successor Cyril, who in 415 aroused a mob of monks and sent them on a rampage. The Imperial Prefect was murdered and, as E. M. Forster writes: "Cyril's wild black army filled the streets, human only in their faces, and anxious to perform some act of piety before they retired to their monasteries. In this mood they came upon Hypatia who was driving from a lecture . . . dragged her from the carriage to the Caesareum, and there tore her to pieces with tiles . . . with her the Greece that is a spirit expired -- the Greece that tried to discover truth and create beauty and that had created beauty." Even Socrates, the Church historian, said Hypatia surpassed all contemporary philosophers in character as in learning.
Somehow manuscripts were regathered and the library continued, though much reduced in size and effectiveness, until the seventh century when the Arab Muslims are said to have razed to the ground all that remained of the Serapeum. But the story of this destruction in 645 has never been proved; indeed, it has been questioned, for the Muslims had nothing to fear from the library -- they did not read Greek nor did the rolls have value for them. The late historian, Dr. George Sarton, viewed the collection as having been far more dangerous for the overzealous, bigoted Christians of the day.
There is reason to assume that not all the scrolls were destroyed, not even after the first fire in Cleopatra's time. The staff was large, numbering possibly as many as 160 experts with assistants of various grades, and an indefinite number of unskilled help. It was the custom for the librarians to take to their quarters rolls for checking, repairs or even reading. (In Isis Unveiled, H. P. Blavatsky relates that a monk in a Greek convent had shown her a scroll attributed to Theodas, a scribe employed in the Museum during Cleopatra's reign.) A major part of the building was undergoing repairs at the time and those manuscripts possessed only in single copies were temporarily stored in the home of one of the senior librarians. When Caesar ordered the firing of the rebel Egyptian fleet, the flames spread inadvertently to the neighboring wharf and from there to the city. The flames and smoke would surely have warned the library staff long before the fire reached the Museion, affording them plenty of time to rescue at least the most treasured material. It is as likely that books were hidden away at the first signs of violence and persecution in the latter half of the fourth century A.D. -- the trend of events had already been evident for some time.
This possibility might explain how a Turkish portolano map of 1513 could have contained parts of a more ancient map, drawn with great skill and knowledge of cartography, evidently projected from a center close by Alexandria. This map was found in dusty archives in Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, the last stronghold of the Hellenic culture. It would have been natural for scholars to have fled there from Alexandria carrying precious manuscripts. Just as greed and hatred destroyed the main part of the Pharos, so fanaticism and hatred despoiled a spiritual center of the ancient wisdom. The latter was not destroyed; through the centuries afterwards there appeared flickers of light as dedicated individuals or groups here and there in Europe seem to show connections with an unseen stream of culture stretching back to an earlier age.
What did the library contain? Of course we can only hazard guesses. We know that Eratosthenes' important researches were carried out in the laboratories of the Museion, and that other scientists also worked there. Astronomers may have had their tables of observations, botanists and zoologists their classifications. But the humanities were richest, especially in literature, for the very masterpieces themselves were there in accredited texts.
All of this pertains to the library's aspect as a university. Beyond this function extended its inner range. In its early days, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, himself a fine scholar, asked for a translation into Greek of the Old Testament, and the chief librarian convened the group of 72 Hebrew specialists who worked independently of each other to produce what is called the Septuagint, or LXX as it is designated in its Latin translation, the Roman Vulgate. Much later, Philo attempted to fuse Greek philosophy with Hebraic theology, and he would surely have worked in the Serapeum consulting its vast resources with its many texts of Plato and other philosophers. Where else in Alexandria could he have had access to these and so much besides, but in the library?
In any event, his efforts flowed into the stream that later took the form of Neoplatonism, leading exponents of which were Ammonius Saccas, who is reputed to have frequented the library, and his greatest pupil, Plotinus. There are many parallels between the text of Plotinus and the Hermetica, and while it has been assumed that this proves the latter are younger than Neoplatonism and so incorporate its concepts, it can also mean that both derive from the same source: that hidden wisdom which was for a time focalized through the inner resources of the Alexandrian institutions in the Serapeum.
We should not, however, think that only Greek and Egyptian systems were studied in the library. The wise men of India were students there under the Hellenic name 'Gymnosophists' -- not merely students but sharing the treasures of their homeland. We know also that many manuscripts were copied from the oldest parchments in the Chaldean, Phoenician, Persian and other languages, including the ancient hieratic script of the Egyptians. The earliest Fathers of the Church, such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria, were students at the Museion, and despite the later proscription against their teachings, not a few of their central ideas, sometimes under other terms, seem to have crept into aspects of Christian mysticism.
Persecution may appear to drive the light and fire of the ancient wisdom-religion out of existence, but it is really only a case of temporary eclipse. The expression of the innermost soul of man cannot be annihilated, although at times its voice may be repressed. So days return when the stream rises to the surface once more and all may drink of its life-giving waters. The Alexandrian library had its day, but the sun will never set upon what it represented. Or we may say that there will be no end to the dawns, for others will come again and again, far into the future.
(From Sunrise magazine, August-September 1972; copyright © 1972 Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
419: Moche people of Peru build a Sun temple 150 feet high using 50 million bricks.
438-45: Council of Ferrara-Florence, Italy, strengthens Roman Catholic stance against doctrine of reincarnation.
ca 440: Ajanta cave frescoes (long before Islam) depict Buddha as Prince Siddhartha, wearing "chudidara pyjama" and a prototype of the present-day "Nehru shirt."
450-535: Life of Bodhidharma of South India, 28th patriarch of India's Dhyana Buddhist sect, founder of Ch'an Buddhism in China (520), known as Zen in Japan.
ca 450: Hephtalite invasions (ca 450-565) take a great toll in North India. These "white Huns" (or Hunas) from China are probably not related to Europe's Hun invaders.
ca 450: As the Gupta Empire declines, Indian sculptural style evolves and continues until the 16th century. The trend is away from the swelling modeled forms of the Gupta period toward increasing flatness and linearity.
453: Attila the Hun dies after lifetime of plundering Europe.
499: Aryabhata I (476-ca 550), Indian astronomer and mathematician, using Hindu (aka Arabic) numerals accurately calculates pi () to 3.1416, and the solar year to 365.3586805 days. A thousand years before Copernicus, Aryabhata propounds a heliocentric universe with elliptically orbiting planets and a spherical Earth spinning on its axis, explaining the apparent rotation of the heavens. Writes Aryabhatiya, history's first exposition on plane and spherical trigonometry, algebra and arithmetic.
ca 500: Mahavamsa, chronicling Sri Lankan history from -500 is written in Pali, probably by Buddhist monk Mahanama. A sequel, Chulavamsha, continues the history to 1500.
ca 500: Sectarian folk traditions are revised, elaborated and reduced to writing as the Puranas, Hinduism's encyclopedic compendium of culture and mythology.
500: World population is 190 million. India population is 50 million: 26.3% of world.
510: Hephtalite Mihirakula from beyond Oxus River crushes imperial Gupta power. Soon controls much of N.C. India.
ca 533: Yashovarman of Malva and Ishanavarman of Kanauj defeat and expel the Hephtalites from North India.
ca 543: Pulakeshin I founds Chalukya Dynasty (ca 543-757; 975-1189) in Gujarat and later in larger areas of West India.
548: Emperor Kimmei officially recognizes Buddhism in Japan by accepting a gift image of Buddha from Korea.
553: Council of Constantinople II denies doctrine of soul's existence before conception, implying reincarnation is incompatible with Christian belief.
565: The Turks and Persians defeat the Hephtalites.
Reference: http://thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline_10.html
In A.D. 395, a separation occurred between the western and eastern parts of the Roman Empire, leaving Constantinople with the supremacy of the East. Egypt maintained its role as grain provider for the Empire, but Alexandria lost its predominant position to Constantinople. As a consequence, Egypt was left out of the conflicts created by the imperial successions and international politics.
During the fourth and the fifth centuries A.D., as Egyptians converted to Christianity, they were able to access important functions first in religious life and then in public life. The increasing power of the clergy of Alexandria eventually posed a threat to the clergy of Constantinople. At the Council of Chalcedon, in A.D. 451, their differences resulted in a break between the Church of Alexandria and the Church of Constantinople. The emperors, unwilling to let Egypt slip from their influence, tried to reinstate the authority of Constantinople by persuasion and persecution, without any real success. In A.D. 619, the Persians managed to invade the Eastern Empire and Egypt, ruling over the country for a decade. The emperor managed to expel the Persians, but the resulting weakness of the Empire's borders paved the way for the Arab conquest and the beginning of the Islamic period in A.D. 641.
Christian monasticism originated in Egypt during this period. In Thebes several churches and monasteries were set up in the ruins of temples at Karnak and Luxor [13511]. On the West Bank, Madinat Habu became the Coptic village of Djeme. Monasteries were built at the site of the Hathor temple of Dayr al Madinah and on the ruins of the Hatshepsut's Memorial Temple at Dayr al Bahri. Other monasteries were constructed on hilltops such as Qurnat Mura'i and Dayr al Bakhit above Dira' Abu al Naja. Many tombs in Shaykh Abd al Qurna were used by monks as dwellings, while in the Valley of the Kings, several of the Dynasty 19 and Dynasty 20 tombs (KV 1, KV 2, KV 3, KV 4, KV 8, KV 9) were used as dwellings or chapels [10514].
Reference: http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaabaa.htm
Note: A recent archeological find in Kuwait unearthed a gold-plated statue of the Hindu deity Ganesh. A Muslim resident of Kuwait requested historical research material that can help explain the connection between Hindu civilisation and Arabia.]
Was the Kaaba Originally a Hindu Temple?
By P.N. Oak (Historian)
Glancing through some research material recently, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a reference to a king Vikramaditya inscription found in the Kaaba in Mecca proving beyond doubt that the Arabian Peninsula formed a part of his Indian Empire.
The text of the crucial Vikramaditya inscription, found inscribed on a gold dish hung inside the Kaaba shrine in Mecca, is found recorded on page 315 of a volume known as ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ treasured in the Makhtab-e-Sultania library in Istanbul, Turkey. Rendered in free English the inscription says:
"Fortunate are those who were born (and lived) during king Vikram’s reign. He was a noble, generous dutiful ruler, devoted to the welfare of his subjects. But at that time we Arabs, oblivious of God, were lost in sensual pleasures. Plotting and torture were rampant. The darkness of ignorance had enveloped our country. Like the lamb struggling for her life in the cruel paws of a wolf we Arabs were caught up in ignorance. The entire country was enveloped in a darkness so intense as on a new moon night. But the present dawn and pleasant sunshine of education is the result of the favour of the noble king Vikramaditya whose benevolent supervision did not lose sight of us- foreigners as we were. He spread his sacred religion amongst us and sent scholars whose brilliance shone like that of the sun from his country to ours. These scholars and preceptors through whose benevolence we were once again made cognisant of the presence of God, introduced to His sacred existence and put on the road of Truth, had come to our country to preach their religion and impart education at king Vikramaditya’s behest."
For those who would like to read the Arabic wording I reproduce it hereunder in Roman script:
"Itrashaphai Santu Ibikramatul Phahalameen Karimun Yartapheeha Wayosassaru Bihillahaya Samaini Ela Motakabberen Sihillaha Yuhee Quid min howa Yapakhara phajjal asari nahone osirom bayjayhalem. Yundan blabin Kajan blnaya khtoryaha sadunya kanateph netephi bejehalin Atadari bilamasa- rateen phakef tasabuhu kaunnieja majekaralhada walador. As hmiman burukankad toluho watastaru hihila Yakajibaymana balay kulk amarena phaneya jaunabilamary Bikramatum".
(Page 315 Sayar-ul-okul).
[Note: The title ‘Saya-ul-okul’ signifies memorable words.]
A careful analysis of the above inscription enables us to draw the following conclusions:
1. That the ancient Indian empires may have extended up to the eastern boundaries of Arabia until Vikramaditya and that it was he who for the first time conquered Arabia. Because the inscription says that king Vikram who dispelled the darkness of ignorance from Arabia.
2. That, whatever their earlier faith, King Vikrama’s preachers had succeeded in spreading the Vedic (based on the Vedas, the Hindu sacred scriptures)) way of life in Arabia.
3. That the knowledge of Indian arts and sciences was imparted by Indians to the Arabs directly by founding schools, academies and cultural centres. The belief, therefore, that visiting Arabs conveyed that knowledge to their own lands through their own indefatigable efforts and scholarship is unfounded.
An ancillary conclusion could be that the so-called Kutub Minar (in Delhi, India) could well be king Vikramadiya’s tower commemorating his conquest of Arabia. This conclusion is strengthened by two pointers. Firstly, the inscription on the iron pillar near the so-called Kutub Minar refers to the marriage of the victorious king Vikramaditya to the princess of Balhika. This Balhika is none other than the Balkh region in West Asia. It could be that Arabia was wrestled by king Vikramaditya from the ruler of Balkh who concluded a treaty by giving his daughter in marriage to the victor. Secondly, the township adjoining the so called Kutub Minar is named Mehrauli after Mihira who was the renowned astronomer-mathematician of king Vikram’s court. Mehrauli is the corrupt form of Sanskrit ‘Mihira-Awali’ signifying a row of houses raised for Mihira and his helpers and assistants working on astronomical observations made from the tower.
Having seen the far reaching and history shaking implications of the Arabic inscription concerning king Vikrama, we shall now piece together the story of its find. How it came to be recorded and hung in the Kaaba in Mecca. What are the other proofs reinforcing the belief that Arabs were once followers of the Indian Vedic way of life and that tranquillity and education were ushered into Arabia by king Vikramaditya’s scholars, educationists from an uneasy period of "ignorance and turmoil" mentioned in the inscription.
In Istanbul, Turkey, there is a famous library called Makhatab-e-Sultania, which is reputed to have the largest collection of ancient West Asian literature. In the Arabic section of that library is an anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. That anthology was compiled from an earlier work in A.D. 1742 under the orders of the Turkish ruler Sultan Salim.
The pages of that volume are of Hareer – a kind of silk used for writing on. Each page has a decorative gilded border. That anthology is known as Sayar-ul-Okul. It is divided into three parts. The first part contains biographic details and the poetic compositions of pre-Islamic Arabian poets. The second part embodies accounts and verses of poets of the period beginning just after prophet Mohammad’s times, up to the end of the Banee-Um-Mayya dynasty. The third part deals with later poets up to the end of Khalif Harun-al-Rashid’s times.
Abu Amir Asamai, an Arabian bard who was the poet Laureate of Harun-al-Rashid’s court, has compiled and edited the anthology.
The first modern edition of ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ was printed and published in Berlin in 1864. A subsequent edition is the one published in Beirut in 1932.
The collection is regarded as the most important and authoritative anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. It throws considerable light on the social life, customs, manners and entertainment modes of ancient Arabia. The book also contains an elaborate description of the ancient shrine of Mecca, the town and the annual fair known as OKAJ which used to be held every year around the Kaaba temple in Mecca. This should convince readers that the annual haj of the Muslims to the Kaaba is of earlier pre-Islamic congregation.
But the OKAJ fair was far from a carnival. It provided a forum for the elite and the learned to discuss the social, religious, political, literary and other aspects of the Vedic culture then pervading Arabia. ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ asserts that the conclusion reached at those discussions were widely respected throughout Arabia. Mecca, therefore, followed the Varanasi tradition (of India) of providing a venue for important discussions among the learned while the masses congregated there for spiritual bliss. The principal shrines at both Varanasi in India and at Mecca in Arvasthan (Arabia) were Siva temples. Even to this day ancient Mahadev (Siva) emblems can be seen. It is the Shankara (Siva) stone that Muslim pilgrims reverently touch and kiss in the Kaaba.
Arabic tradition has lost trace of the founding of the Kaaba temple. The discovery of the Vikramaditya inscription affords a clue. King Vikramaditya is known for his great devotion to Lord Mahadev (Siva). At Ujjain (India), the capital of Vikramaditya, exists the famous shrine of Mahankal, i.e., of Lord Shankara (Siva) associated with Vikramaditya. Since according to the Vikramaditya inscription he spread the Vedic religion, who else but he could have founded the Kaaba temple in Mecca?
A few miles away from Mecca is a big signboard which bars the entry of any non-Muslim into the area. This is a reminder of the days when the Kaaba was stormed and captured solely for the newly established faith of Islam. The object in barring entry of non-Muslims was obviously to prevent its recapture.
As the pilgrim proceeds towards Mecca he is asked to shave his head and beard and to don special sacred attire that consists of two seamless sheets of white cloth. One is to be worn round the waist and the other over the shoulders. Both these rites are remnants of the old Vedic practice of entering Hindu temples clean- and with holy seamless white sheets.
The main shrine in Mecca, which houses the Siva emblem, is known as the Kaaba. It is clothed in a black shroud. That custom also originates from the days when it was thought necessary to discourage its recapture by camouflaging it.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Kaaba has 360 images. Traditional accounts mention that one of the deities among the 360 destroyed when the place was stormed, was that of Saturn; another was of the Moon and yet another was one called Allah. That shows that in the Kaaba the Arabs worshipped the nine planets in pre-Islamic days. In India the practice of ‘Navagraha’ puja, that is worship of the nine planets, is still in vogue. Two of these nine are Saturn and Moon.
In India the crescent moon is always painted across the forehead of the Siva symbol. Since that symbol was associated with the Siva emblem in Kaaba it came to be grafted on the flag of Islam.
Another Hindu tradition associated with the Kaaba is that of the sacred stream Ganga (sacred waters of the Ganges river). According to the Hindu tradition Ganga is also inseparable from the Shiva emblem as the crescent moon. Wherever there is a Siva emblem, Ganga must co-exist. True to that association a sacred fount exists near the Kaaba. Its water is held sacred because it has been traditionally regarded as Ganga since pre-Islamic times (Zam-Zam water).
[Note: Even today, Muslim pilgrims who go to the Kaaba for Haj regard this Zam-Zam water with reverence and take some bottled water with them as sacred water.]
Muslim pilgrims visiting the Kaaba temple go around it seven times. In no other mosque does the circumambulation prevail. Hindus invariably circumambulate around their deities. This is yet another proof that the Kaaba shrine is a pre-Islamic Indian Shiva temple where the Hindu practice of circumambulation is still meticulously observed.
The practice of taking seven steps- known as Saptapadi in Sanskrit- is associated with Hindu marriage ceremony and fire worship. The culminating rite in a Hindu marriage enjoins upon the bride and groom to go round the sacred fire four times (but misunderstood by many as seven times). Since "Makha" means fire, the seven circumambulations also prove that Mecca was the seat of Indian fire-worship in the West Asia.
It might come as a stunning revelation to many that the word ‘ALLAH’ itself is Sanskrit. In Sanskrit language Allah, Akka and Amba are synonyms. They signify a goddess or mother. The term ‘ALLAH’ forms part of Sanskrit chants invoking goddess Durga, also known as Bhavani, Chandi and Mahishasurmardini. The Islamic word for God is., therefore, not an innovation but the ancient Sanskrit appellation retained and continued by Islam. Allah means mother or goddess and mother goddess.
One Koranic verse is an exact translation of a stanza in the Yajurveda. This was pointed out by the great research scholar Pandit Satavlekar of Pardi in one of his articles.
[Note: Another scholar points out that the following teaching from the Koran is exactly similar to the teaching of the Kena Upanishad (1.7).
The Koran:
"Sight perceives Him not. But He perceives men's sights; for He is the knower of secrets , the Aware."
Kena Upanishad:
"That which cannot be seen by the eye but through which the eye itself sees, know That to be Brahman (God) and not what people worship here (in the manifested world)."
A simplified meaning of both the above verses reads:
God is one and that He is beyond man's sensory experience.]
The identity of Unani and Ayurvedic systems shows that Unani is just the Arabic term for the Ayurvedic system of healing taught to them and administered in Arabia when Arabia formed part of the Indian empire.
It will now be easy to comprehend the various Hindu customs still prevailing in West Asian countries even after the existence of Islam during the last 1300 years. Let us review some Hindu traditions which exist as the core of Islamic practice.
The Hindus have a pantheon of 33 gods. People in Asia Minor too worshipped 33 gods before the spread of Islam. The lunar calendar was introduced in West Asia during the Indian rule. The Muslim month ‘Safar’ signifying the ‘extra’ month (Adhik Maas) in the Hindu calendar. The Muslim month Rabi is the corrupt form of Ravi meaning the sun because Sanskrit ‘V’ changes into Prakrit ‘B’ (Prakrit being the popular version of Sanskrit language). The Muslim sanctity for Gyrahwi Sharif is nothing but the Hindu Ekadashi (Gyrah = elevan or Gyaarah). Both are identical in meaning.
The Islamic practice of Bakari Eed derives from the Go-Medh and Ashva-Medh Yagnas or sacrifices of Vedic times. Eed in Sanskrit means worship. The Islamic word Eed for festive days, signifying days of worship, is therefore a pure Sanskrit word. The word MESH in the Hindu zodiac signifies a lamb. Since in ancient times the year used to begin with the entry of the sun in Aries, the occasion was celebrated with mutton feasting. That is the origin of the Bakari Eed festival.
[Note: The word Bakari is an Indian language word for a goat.]
Since Eed means worship and Griha means ‘house’, the Islamic word Idgah signifies a ‘House of worship’ which is the exact Sanskrit connotation of the term. Similarly the word ‘Namaz’ derives from two Sanskrit roots ‘Nama’ and ‘Yajna’ (NAMa yAJna) meaning bowing and worshipping.
Vedic descriptions about the moon, the different stellar constellations and the creation of the universe have been incorporated from the Vedas in Koran part 1 chapter 2, stanza 113, 114, 115, and 158, 189, chapter 9, stanza 37 and chapter 10, stanzas 4 to 7.
Recital of the Namaz five times a day owes its origin to the Vedic injunction of Panchmahayagna (five daily worship- Panch-Maha-Yagna) which is part of the daily Vedic ritual prescribed for all individuals.
Muslims are enjoined cleanliness of five parts of the body before commencing prayers. This derives from the Vedic injuction ‘Shareer Shydhyartham Panchanga Nyasah’.
Four months of the year are regarded as very sacred in Islamic custom. The devout are enjoined to abstain from plunder and other evil deeds during that period. This originates in the Chaturmasa i.e., the four-month period of special vows and austerities in Hindu tradition. Shabibarat is the corrupt form of Shiva Vrat and Shiva Ratra. Since the Kaaba has been an important centre of Shiva (Siva) worship from times immemorial, the Shivaratri festival used to be celebrated there with great gusto. It is that festival which is signified by the Islamic word Shabibarat.
Encyclopaedias tell us that there are inscriptions on the side of the Kaaba walls. What they are, no body has been allowed to study, according to the correspondence I had with an American scholar of Arabic. But according to hearsay at least some of those inscriptions are in Sanskrit, and some of them are stanzas from the Bhagavad Gita.
According to extant Islamic records, Indian merchants had settled in Arabia, particularly in Yemen, and their life and manners deeply influenced those who came in touch with them. At Ubla there was a large number of Indian settlements. This shows that Indians were in Arabia and Yemen in sufficient strength and commanding position to be able to influence the local people. This could not be possible unless they belonged to the ruling class.
It is mentioned in the Abadis i.e., the authentic traditions of Prophet Mohammad compiled by Imam Bukhari that the Indian tribe of Jats had settled in Arabia before Prophet Mohammad’s times. Once when Hazrat Ayesha, wife of the Prophet, was taken ill, her nephew sent for a Jat physician for her treatment. This proves that Indians enjoyed a high and esteemed status in Arabia. Such a status could not be theirs unless they were the rulers. Bukhari also tells us that an Indian Raja (king) sent a jar of ginger pickles to the Prophet. This shows that the Indian Jat Raja ruled an adjacent area so as to be in a position to send such an insignificant present as ginger pickles. The Prophet is said to have so highly relished it as to have told his colleagues also to partake of it. These references show that even during Prophet Mohammad’s times Indians retained their influential role in Arabia, which was a dwindling legacy from Vikramaditya’s times.
The Islamic term ‘Eed-ul-Fitr’ derives from the ‘Eed of Piters’ that is worship of forefathers in Sanskrit tradition. In India, Hindus commemorate their ancestors during the Pitr-Paksha that is the fortnight reserved for their remembrance. The very same is the significance of ‘Eed-ul-Fitr’ (worship of forefathers).
The Islamic practice of observing the moon rise before deciding on celebrating the occasion derives from the Hindu custom of breaking fast on Sankranti and Vinayaki Chaturthi only after sighting the moon.
Barah Vafat, the Muslim festival for commemorating those dead in battle or by weapons, derives from a similar Sanskrit tradition because in Sanskrit ‘Phiphaut’ is ‘death’. Hindus observe Chayal Chaturdashi in memory of those who have died in battle.
The word Arabia is itself the abbreviation of a Sanskrit word. The original word is ‘Arabasthan’. Since Prakrit ‘B’ is Sanskrit ‘V’ the original Sanskrit name of the land is ‘Arvasthan’. ‘Arva’ in Sanskrit means a horse. Arvasthan signifies a land of horses., and as well all know, Arabia is famous for its horses.
This discovery changes the entire complexion of the history of ancient India. Firstly we may have to revise our concepts about the king who had the largest empire in history. It could be that the expanse of king Vikramaditya’s empire was greater than that of all others. Secondly, the idea that the Indian empire spread only to the east and not in the west beyond say, Afghanisthan may have to be abandoned. Thirdly the effeminate and pathetic belief that India, unlike any other country in the world could by some age spread her benign and beatific cultural influence, language, customs, manners and education over distant lands without militarily conquering them is baseless. India did conquer all those countries physically wherever traces of its culture and language are still extant and the region extended from Bali island in the south Pacific to the Baltic in Northern Europe and from Korea to Kaaba. The only difference was that while Indian rulers identified themselves with the local population and established welfare states, Moghuls and others who ruled conquered lands perpetuated untold atrocities over the vanquished.
‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ tells us that a pan-Arabic poetic symposium used to be held in Mecca at the annual Okaj fair in pre-Islamic times. All leading poets used to participate in it.
Poems considered best were awarded prizes. The best-engraved on gold plate were hung inside the temple. Others etched on camel or goatskin were hung outside. Thus for thousands of years the Kaaba was the treasure house of the best Arabian poetic thought inspired by the Indian Vedic tradition.
That tradition being of immemorial antiquity many poetic compositions were engraved and hung inside and outside on the walls of the Kaaba. But most of the poems got lost and destroyed during the storming of the Kaaba by Prophet Mohammad’s troops. The Prophet’s court poet, Hassan-bin-Sawik, who was among the invaders, captured some of the treasured poems and dumped the gold plate on which they were inscribed in his own home. Sawik’s grandson, hoping to earn a reward carried those gold plates to Khalif’s court where he met the well-known Arab scholar Abu Amir Asamai. The latter received from the bearer five gold plates and 16 leather sheets with the prize-winning poems engraved on them. The bearer was sent away happy bestowed with a good reward.
On the five gold plates were inscribed verses by ancient Arab poets like Labi Baynay, Akhatab-bin-Turfa and Jarrham Bintoi. That discovery made Harun-al-Rashid order Abu Amir to compile a collection of all earlier compositions. One of the compositions in the collection is a tribute in verse paid by Jarrham Bintoi, a renowned Arab poet, to king Vikramaditya. Bintoi who lived 165 years before Prophet Mohammad had received the highest award for the best poetic compositions for three years in succession in the pan-Arabic symposiums held in Mecca every year. All those three poems of Bintoi adjudged best were hung inside the Kaaba temple, inscribed on gold plates. One of these constituted an unreserved tribute to King Vikramaditya for his paternal and filial rule over Arabia. That has already been quoted above.
Pre-Islamic Arabian poet Bintoi’s tribute to king Vikramaditya is a decisive evidence that it was king Vikramaditya who first conquered the Arabian Peninsula and made it a part of the Indian Empire. This explains why starting from India towards the west we have all Sanskrit names like Afghanisthan (now Afghanistan), Baluchisthan, Kurdisthan, Tajikiathan, Uzbekisthan, Iran, Sivisthan, Iraq, Arvasthan, Turkesthan (Turkmenisthan) etc.
Historians have blundered in not giving due weight to the evidence provided by Sanskrit names pervading over the entire west Asian region. Let us take a contemporary instance. Why did a part of India get named Nagaland even after the end of British rule over India? After all historical traces are wiped out of human memory, will a future age historian be wrong if he concludes from the name Nagaland that the British or some English speaking power must have ruled over India? Why is Portuguese spoken in Goa (part of India), and French in Pondichery (part of India), and both French and English in Canada? Is it not because those people ruled over the territories where their languages are spoken? Can we not then justly conclude that wherever traces of Sanskrit names and traditions exist Indians once held sway? It is unfortunate that this important piece of decisive evidence has been ignored all these centuries.
Another question which should have presented itself to historians for consideration is how could it be that Indian empires could extend in the east as far as Korea and Japan, while not being able to make headway beyond Afghanisthan? In fact land campaigns are much easier to conduct than by sea. It was the Indians who ruled the entire West Asian region from Karachi to Hedjaz and who gave Sanskrit names to those lands and the towns therein, introduce their pantheon of the fire-worship, imparted education and established law and order.
It may be that Arabia itself was not part of the Indian empire until king Vikrama , since Bintoi says that it was king Vikrama who for the first time brought about a radical change in the social, cultural and political life of Arabia. It may be that the whole of West Asia except Arabia was under Indian rule before Vikrama. The latter added Arabia too to the Indian Empire. Or as a remote possibility it could be that king Vikramaditya himself conducted a series of brilliant campaigns annexing to his empire the vast region between Afghanisthan and Hedjaz.
Incidentally this also explains why king Vikramaditya is so famous in history. Apart from the nobility and truthfulness of heart and his impartial filial affection for all his subjects, whether Indian or Arab, as testified by Bintoi, king Vikramaditya has been permanently enshrined in the pages of history because he was the world’s greatest ruler having the largest empire. It should be remembered that only a monarch with a vast empire gets famous in world history. Vikram Samvat (calendar still widely in use in India today) which he initiated over 2000 years ago may well mark his victory over Arabia, and the so called Kutub Minar (Kutub Tower in Delhi), a pillar commemorating that victory and the consequential marriage with the Vaihika (Balkh) princess as testified by the nearby iron pillar inscription.
A great many puzzles of ancient world history get automatically solved by a proper understanding of these great conquests of king Vikramaditya. As recorded by the Arab poet Bintoi, Indian scholars, preachers and social workers spread the fire-worship ceremony, preached the Vedic way of life, manned schools, set up Ayurvedic (healing) centres, trained the local people in irrigation and agriculture and established in those regions a democratic, orderly, peaceful, enlightened and religious way of life. That was of course, a Vedic Hindu way of life.
It is from such ancient times that Indian Kshtriya royal families, like the Pahalvis and Barmaks, have held sway over Iran and Iraq. It is those conquests, which made the Parsees Agnihotris i.e., fire-worshippers. It is therefore that we find the Kurds of Kurdisthan speaking a Sanskritised dialect, fire temples existing thousands of miles away from India, and scores of sites of ancient Indian cultural centres like Navbahar in West Asia and the numerous viharas in Soviet Russia spread throughout the world. Ever since so many viharas are often dug up in Soviet Russia, ancient Indian sculptures are also found in excavations in Central Asia. The same goes for West Asia.
[Note: Ancient Indian sculptures include metal statues of the Hindu deity Ganesh (the elephant headed god); the most recent find being in Kuwait].
Unfortunately these chapters of world history have been almost obliterated from public memory. They need to be carefully deciphered and rewritten. When these chapters are rewritten they might change the entire concept and orientation of ancient history.
In view of the overwhelming evidence led above, historians, scholars, students of history and lay men alike should take note that they had better revise their text books of ancient world history. The existence of Hindu customs, shrines, Sanskrit names of whole regions, countries and towns and the Vikramaditya inscriptions reproduced at the beginning are a thumping proof that Indian Kshatriyas once ruled over the vast region from Bali to Baltic and Korea to Kaaba in Mecca, Arabia at the very least.
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570-632: Lifetime of Mohammed, preacher of the Quraysh Bedoin tribe, founder of Islam. Begins to preach in Mecca, calling for an end to the "demons and idols" of Arab religion and conversion to the ways of the one God, Allah.
Reference:
http://www.hindutva.org/AnwarShaikh/Reviews/ISLAM.html
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[GuestBook by TheGuestBook.com] Review on Anwar Shaikh's ISLAM: The Arab National MovementBy Bhagawandas P. LathiFrom: India Post
AN INSIDER'S VIEW OF ISLAMThis scholarly critique of Islam, written by Anwar Shaikh, an Urdu poet and an Islamic theologian from Pakistan, now residing in Great Britain, is the most riveting book on Islam that I ever read. Generally speaking, critical books exposing the truth about Islam are not easy to find because the author immediately earns a fatwa on his life. Anwar Shaikh, who was once a pious Muslim, has a dubious honor of being a fatwaee (who is under a fatwa). Shaikh was trained to be an Islamic cleric (Mullah), but along the way he discovered the sad truth about Islam, which greatly disillusioned him. Ever since, he has been writing about Islam for his co-religionists to awake them to the truth about Islam. This book will shock many, who have been brought up on the constant Mantra of Hindu Gurus that all religions teach the same (nice) things, etc. It will force them to have a first-hand look at the primary Islamic sources. Hindus (and Muslims too) would do well to look at the Quran (and the Hadis) to discover the truth about Islam for themselves. This book demonstrates the awesome power of brainwashing which can easily overpower natural human decency, compassion, and reasoning ability. It explains how decent people can do horrible things to other innocent humans without any remorse and feel it as a duty commanded by God. It helps in understanding the blood-soaked Islamic history and the puzzling behavior of Muslims all over the world in general, and on Indian subcontinent in particular. It explains what makes Islam tick. The main thesis of Shaikh in his own words is "Islam has caused more damage to the national dignity and honor of Non-Arab Muslims than any other calamity, yet they believe that this faith is the ambassador of equality and human love. This is a fiction which has been presented as a fact with an unparalleled skill. The Islamic love of mankind is a myth of even greater proportion. Hatred of non-Muslims is the pivot of the Islamic existence. It not only declares all dissidents as the denizens of hell but also seeks to ignite a permanent fire of tension between Muslims and non- Muslims; it is far more lethal than Karl Marx's idea of social conflict." He further states that "Islam does not qualify as a religion. It is an instrument for Arabs to colonize the world in the name of Islam. Moreover, it has succeeded remarkably well in brainwashing non-Arab Muslims, who have divested themselves of all pride for their own heritage, ancestry, language, dress and customs. They have no loyalty to their motherland for being devoid of national honor. Indeed, Muslims take pride in vandalizing their ancient heritage from the pagan era to adore the Arab sanctity, superiority and supremacy. Its spring is the mythical intercessory Power of the Prophet Muhammad. This psychological paralysis caused the decline of great Asian nations such as India, Egypt and Iran, which once constituted as the great gushers of civilization but now rank as members of the "Third World" for losing their national identity and zest under the influence of Islam." The book opens with a perceptive statement "Islam is an offshoot of the Semitic culture, which is an expression of man's aggressive behavior." All the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have conducted repeated genocide in the name of their revealed religions. In revealed religions, God reveals His will and the only Truth to mankind through his agent, the Prophet, or the Son. There is no scope for dissent because the final word is contained in the revelation. Hence, official dogmas, blasphemy, heretics and massacres are inevitable. The author believes the concept of revelation is the pivot of Semitic culture. The tradition of Semitic chiefs to claim as God's representative, viceroy goes back to mythical times well before 3000 years. This tradition was maintained masterfully by assigning to the deity incredible powers and attributes to frighten people into submission. Thus, the king could do anything in the name of revelation without much danger of rebellion. God's messenger is God's servant in name only. In practice, he is God's superior. Basically, revelation is nothing but a tool of dominance. The two Prophets, Moses and Muhammad used this device of revelation with great skill to their advantage. A prophet desperately wants to be loved and adored as God but without being called so. A prophet's urge of dominance is much stronger than that of a secular suzerain; a prophet wants to become immortal and wants to command people from the grave and desires to be worshipped exclusively. Muhammad even warns people that he was the last prophet, and any prophet after him would be an impostor. However, to be remembered and loved after his death, he must have a devoted band of followers. This is why a prophet also has to be a national leader, openly or discretely. Every person who seeks dominance as a prophet through the device of revelation creates a god of his own, and when another person aspires to be a prophet he has to demolish the god of his competitor and erect the image of new god to establish his Prophethood to operate the device of revelation. This truth is well illustrated by the examples of Assur (of Shalmanester III), Marduk (national god of Babylonia), Yahweh (of Moses) and Allah (of Muhammad). The Author then analyzes Moses' prophethood to show how it follows exactly this pattern. Then he analyzes Mohammed's claim in details. Mohammed's religion was named Islam and his God was Allah. Muhammad claimed that all earlier prophets (Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus) were Muslims, whose teachings were corrupted by their followers. So he adopted most of the Jewish principles and practices with a view to renovating the old religion of God. He made great effort to convert Jews. In earlier part of the Quran, Jews are eulogized and treated with lavish praise, even making Jerusalem, the KIBLA. Mohammed adored Abraham, the common ancestor of the Jews and the Arabs. When the Jews ignored his loving approach, they were damned (in later part of the Quran) with the apostolic wrath: "God has cursed them for their unbelief." Jerusalem was demoted as the Kibla of the believers and Kaaba, the Arab sanctuary, was bestowed this honor. The policy of ethnic cleansing (of banishing and slaughtering Jews) was adopted. Now the Prophet consciously started elevating Islam above Judaism and Arabs above Jews. Bible declares (Genesis 17-18) that God made an everlasting covenant with Isaac (the Jewish patriarch), but now the Quran says (Cow:115) that the God made covenant with Abraham and Ishmael (the Arab patriarch). So, earlier Jews were the God's chosen people, now the Arabs are the chosen people. Thus, among all people of the world, God chose two Semitic tribes, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael (the two sons of Abraham) as the best. Among these two tribes He chose the descendants of Ishmael (the Arabs) as the best. Among Arabs, God chose Quresh (Mohammed's tribe) as the best people, and from this clan He chose Muhammad as the best of all men. On the day of judgment, Muhammad (and nobody else) would occupy the right-hand side of God's throne with a power of intercession ( Waseela) to forgive sins and act as a medium to paradise (Christians make the same claim for Jesus). The portrait of Allah as seen from the Quran is not a pretty one. He resembles more a Mafia don than a loving and caring father. Allah says that He has created man for no purpose but worship and adore Him (The Scatterers:55). Every possible sin can be pardoned, but Shirk (worshipping anything besides Allah) is the only unpardonable sin in the eyes of Allah. Allah sings His own glory that there is no God but He, He is the King, all-holy, all- peaceable, all-faithful, all-preserver, all-mighty, all-compeller, all-sublime, all-wise, all-forgiving, all-merciful, and so on. The unbelievers in general, and idolaters in particular, are the filth of the earth, and must be destroyed by whatever means, fair or foul. God says in the Quran "Then when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them, and prepare an ambush for each of them,.... Those who disbelieve our revelations, We (God) shall expose them to the fire.... As often as their skins are consumed, We shall exchange them for fresh skins (and burn again and again) that they may taste the torment.... Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a fierce slaughter.... Idolaters and their gods are fuel of hell.... The fire is the reward of Allah's enemy, payment for denying Our revelation.... Disbelievers are an open enemy to you,.... Murder those disbelievers.... and let them find harshness in you,... The idolaters only are unclean,... Those who won't accept Islam are to be killed. When you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until you have made a great slaughter among them.... How many populations have we destroyed.... Humiliate the non-Muslims.... These are just samples of the Allah's threats to his children for disobeying and disbelieving Him. But are the unbelievers (kafirs) so vile as to deserve the Allah's wrath. No! Allah preordains who shall be a believer and who shall not. He says so in many places (none can be believer except by the will of Allah....). Allah says that He has Himself led unbelievers astray. He has deliberately put them---complete with their obstinate unbelief, their scheming and treachery---in the way of believers so as to test the believers. In other words, the believers will have to fight them, they must fight them---till the unbelievers submit (accept Islam) or they are exterminated. How interesting! Allah creates unbelievers (kafirs) by his will and then visits them with the most terrible vengeance for disbelieving Him. Poor kafirs! While on this earth the believers humiliate, torment, and then slaughter them. When they are dead, Allah tortures them for eternity. And all this, not because kafirs want to disbelieve Allah, but because Allah wants them to disbelieve Him and wants then as targets for practice by His believers. Surely, this no-win situation of kafirs must have caused many people to become Muslims. Of course, the Muslims fully believe all this to be the word of God. This is why the author observes "Revelation is the greatest medium of brainwashing because this is the agent of faith, which shuts down all doors of reasoning. The Author wonders about such a jealous, vengeful, cruel, unstable, and unjust God who desires constant worship from man. "Is worship really noblest desire? In fact it is the lowest wish a being can have because it is the worst form of flattery. Someone who wants to be praised all the time is a maniac who has lost all sense of decency. He is a danger to his own dignity as well as to the self-respect of those who are required to creep, crawl, and cry before him. Desire for praise is a human weakness, and urge of dominance happens to be its fountain. The concept of Allah as all- powerful, Absolute and totally independent is negated by the Quranic depiction of Allah as desperate for being loved and worshipped. He curses and swears at the unbelievers. He mocks and misleads them and threatens them with the most sadistic punishment of flaming hell, and also bribes them with paradise full of beautiful virgins. He repeatedly asserts that He is the most Terrible Avenger and His retributive punishment knows no bound. He hates those who do not prostrate before Him and recommends their slaughter until they are wiped out or submit to His will." The author asks, " Is it really the character of true God? He cannot be the Creator. If He were, He would have created the man to obey Him because praise, worship, and submission are his greatest desires, whose unfulfilment makes Him so unhappy and ruffled. If He cannot make Himself happy, how can He have the ability to make other people happy? Especially, when His happiness solely depends upon the deeds of man, He cannot be God." What is He then? The author claims that it is not Allah who created Muhammad, it is Muhammad who created Allah in the tradition of revelation discussed earlier. Allah is a factotum (handyman) of Muhammad and does whatever Muhammad wants from Him. Allah tells believers not to walk in front of the Prophet or raise voice above that of the Prophet. Allah tells the believers how to enter the house of the Prophet, how not to stay there, and not to indulge in idle talk when they are in his house. The Prophet was surely capable of giving such instructions. Even in such fundamental spiritual matter of Kibla, Muhammad wants it to be changed from Jerusalem to Kaaba, Allah does it. Muhammad says that the previous divine books Torah and Bible had been corrupted, but God has guaranteed the integrity of the Quran. Is it not amazing that God did not think it fit to protect His other books, only the Quran! Why? It is the same thing with the tradition of God to guide every generation through his prophets such as Adam, Noah, Joseph, Moses, etc. Now, suddenly Allah changed his mind. He made Muhammad the last prophet. No more prophets after him, only the impostors. Although Allah declares that no man can change the word of God (Cattle:30), Allah allows Muhammad to be above His laws. A Muslim is allowed four wives simultaneously, but Muhammad was allowed more wives (He had nine). A Muslim must be equitable to all his wives, but the Prophet can suspend any of them. Ayesha, one of the Prophet's wife was displeased when the Prophet was taking yet another wife (Khaula bint Halo). Then suddenly Allah revealed to Muhammad that " You may suspend any of your previous wives that you please". Poor Ayesha realized her predicament and capitulated saying "Allah hurries in pleasing you." Another wife Hafza found the Prophet in her bed with another woman (Marya). That was Hafza's day to be in bed with the Prophet according to the rotation system. She was mad, and the Prophet promises her not to transgress again. But immediately Allah sends revelation that the Prophet is absolved of any oath (66.1) so that he is free to break his promise. We see this again and again in the Quran that God makes or changes laws to suit the Prophet. The only function of Allah seems to be to secure the pleasure of Muhammad. The true Creator and all-powerful God will not dispense or bend his laws to please a man or legalize his actions. According to the author, this clearly shows that Allah is Mohammed's creation and Allah's duty is to give supernatural sanctity to Mohammed's words and deeds. Observe: Revelations are received by Muhammad for the benefit of Muhammad. Moreover, these revelations cannot be independently verified because only Muhammad (and nobody else) can receive them. If any one so claims, he is a heretic whose punishment is death. Thus, Muhammad is the Judge, the jury and the executioner. Even a banana republic has better checks and balances in its constitution. We all accept the cardinal principle of the modern science that a Truth must be independently verifiable by anyone who is willing to take the trouble. But Islam (indeed every revealed religion, including Judaism and Christianity) shuts its door to any verification of its claims. It is also clear that though the Quran in the beginning treats Muhammad as Human, eventually, like Moses, Mohammed appears as God's superior. A person does not rank as a believer until he loves the Prophet more than his father, his children and all mankind. Muhammad is as great as Allah because the former like the latter, has 99 attributes. Obedience to Muhammad becomes as compulsory as to Allah and gradually the Prophet shares authority with Allah. On the last day of judgment, the criterion of judgment shall not be the quality of deeds but who has loved the Prophet most. All unbelievers will go to hell with unspeakable torture for eternity even if they led virtuous life. But any murderer, rapist, thug, etc., who ever mentioned Mohammed's name affectionately even once in their life-time and believed in his Prophethood would go to paradise. This is in reality Shirk (worshipping others with Allah), which is unpardonable sin. According to the author, this exposes the true nature of revelation, that is, it serves the tool of dominance-seeker who wants to be loved and worshipped by his fellow men by projecting himself as God indirectly. Although idolatry deserves hell in Islam, Muslims vied with one another in gathering Prophet's (trimmed) hair, nails as divine objects. If this is not idolatry, what is? The author makes a convincing argument that the prophet was in reality an Arab national leader aiming at establishing a system of Arab imperialism. This he does by shifting the God's covenant from Isaac (Jews) to Ishmael (Arabs), by shifting the Kibla from Jerusalem to Kaaba, by making Quresh (Mohammed's tribe) as the God's chosen tribe (Moses had declared Jews as the chosen people). Moses created Jewish nation in the name of Yahweh. Muhammad created Muslim nation in the name of Allah. Sahih Al Bokhari volume 8 says " Even the most virtuous and capable non Arab Muslim cannot legitimately rule. This exposes the racial nature of Islam and the much-vaunted Islamic principles of equality and democracy a myth." The Arabs have acquired the status of a nucleus whereas the non-Arab Muslims have gladly become their satellites in the hope of gaining paradise. The Prophet says that he will not open the gates of paradise to those Muslims who are not friendly with the Arabs (Sahih Tirmizi, vol. 2, pp. 835,840). The author marvels at how Muslims of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and African origin deny nationality of their own.... They have no national histories... and cling to the Arab history, which they call the "Islamic history" for having some kind of identity, no matter how inferior. The author believes that to ensure victory of his nationalism, the Prophet used a two-pronged strategy of "stick and carrot". Stick (eternal torture of hell) for those who do not follow him and carrot (eternal pleasure of heaven with most beautiful virgins) for those who follow him. He also formulated the doctrine of Jihad (fighting against unbelievers) for taking over their country, personal possessions and women, and subjugating them to Arabian hegemony. The Quran says " God has bought from the believers their selves against the gift of paradise.... They kill and get killed." If a Muslim soldier wins, his life becomes paradise on this earth because of the booty and plunder he receives by way of wealth and women. If he is killed, he goes straight to the paradise. What a philosophical temptation to murder and pillage! Since Jihad is against the unbelievers, the Prophet created unlimited opportunities for holy wars by declaring all religions false and ungodly. The Quran says " And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted...." (3.85). the Prophet declared that he was commanded (by Allah) to fight against people ceaselessly until they confessed that their was no god but Allah and Muhammad was his messenger. Author further states that these holy wars were, in fact, the wars of national ambition and gives several examples of wanton cruelties of the Prophet, who also emphasizes that "war is deceit" (Sahih Al Bokhari, vol. 4). Thus, the author says "one can see Islam is not a message of mercy but a secular code like all other contemporary codes. To perpetuate opportunities for war to keep the Mujaheddin (warriors of Allah) on war footing, Islam is based on the hatred of non-Muslims." He then goes on to give many quotes from the Quran to buttress his argument about hate mongering such as "Muslims must wage a struggle against the non-Muslims and be harsh with them ... Slay the idolaters wherever you find them... God has cursed the unbelievers and prepared a blaze for them, and so on. One is amused at the description of heaven and hell. In heaven, a believer gets to enjoy 70 divinely beautiful virgins (Houris) with swelling breasts which are round and horizontal (not drooping). To enjoy these houries every faithful will be given the virility of 100 men. Moreover, this joy is for ever (eternity). The author reminds here that Jihad (the holy war) is a duty laid on the believers to destroy the unbelievers in return for paradise. This is what made people believe that the reward of Jihad , i.e., killing and robbing the non-Muslims in the name of Allah is paradise. Without the expectation of such a reward, Muslims would not have fought with half the zeal that they displayed in eradicating the non-Muslims. To highlight the effect of paradisiac delight, the Prophet narrates the doleful plight of hell in contradistinction. For instance, nonbelievers will be tortured by burning their skins, given new skins to burn again and again and again. They will have to drink boiling water, that tears their bowels asunder, etc. Author then dissects the political claims of Islam such as the Islam offers democracy. Not true! The first four rulers (Caliphs) were appointed. After the battle of Karbala, the Islamic Caliphate became a dynastic rule or kingship. Islamic claim that the rule of the first four Caliphs was a golden period of Islam is also not true. Of the four, only Abu Bakr died naturally. The other three were assassinated. The pillaged wealth and the abducted daughters and sisters of the foreign nations (Egypt and Iran were the earliest victims) lent the golden touch to this Arab era. They claim that Islam is a socialistic system. Nonsense. Islam openly declares that Allah makes king whom he likes, and gives wealth to a person he chooses. They say that Islam is a religion of brotherhood. Thousand times no! Islamic hatred for non-Muslims makes Islam the opponent of human rights. This is the reason that one cannot find many non-Muslims in Muslim countries. A Muslim cannot be executed for murdering a non-Muslim. Muslims can have a mosque in the holiest places of Hinduism, but nobody can build a temple, a church, or a synagogue in Mecca. Association of Muslim with a non-Muslim is forbidden by the Quran, and the membership of the United Nations by all Muslim nations is un-Islamic. What a model of international brotherhood it is!" They say that Islam is a religion of love and peace. A million times no! Islam glorifies violence and sanctifies murder and pillage of the non-Muslims and abduction of their women for spreading the name of Allah, who calls himself the Most Merciful, yet he sanctions the basest form of cruelties to those humans, who do not acknowledge Him as the Divine. Murder, rape, pillage, abduction, etc., are the worst form of moral vices, yet Allah adores them as virtues for the Crusaders (Mujaheddins) who subjugate the non- Muslims to the yoke of Islam. One is baffled by such a morality which has been invented to initiate aggression." So far the response of the Muslim world is hand-wringing, cursing, death threats, vituperation and a fatwa on the Shaikh. No refutation of his claims. They seem to have no arguments to refute Shaikh's impeccable scholarship. Islam: The Arab National Movement101 pp. Paperback Principality Publishers, Cardiff, Great Britain Distributor: A. Ghosh Publisher, 5740 W. Little York, Suite 216, Houston TX 77091, $ 7.50 Copyrights © 2000-2010 Anwar Shaikh. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the publisher.
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Aditi Chaturvedi
Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia - Part 1
Many centuries before prophet Muhammad and the destructive advent of Islam, Arabia or Arabistan was an extremely rich and glorious center of Vedic civilization. In this article, I will prove to you point by point that pre-Islamic Arabia was in fact a flourishing civilization which revered Vedic culture.
It is the prophet Muhammad and the followers of Islam who are fully responsible for the dissemination and destruction of this once glorious culture.
In learning about this most ancient heritage, let's begin with the word Arabistan itself. Arabistan is derived from the original Sanskrit term Arvasthan which means The Land of Horses. Since time immemorial proponents of the Vedic culture used to breed exceptional horses in this region. Thus eventually the land itself began to be called Arva (Horses) -Sthan (place). The people who lived in this land were called Semitic. Semitic comes from the Sanskrit word Smritic. Arabs followed the ancient Vedic Smritis such as Manu-Smriti as their revered religious guides and thus they were identified as Smritic which has been corrupted into Semitic.
At that time the Uttarapath (Northern Highway) was the international highway to the North of India. It was via Uttarapath that Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries drew their spiritual, educational and material sustenance from India. Besides, this Sea-links were formed with India at least 800 years before the advent of Islam. Basra was the ancient gateway to India because it was at this port that the Arab lands recieved Indian goods and visitors. At that time the spoken language was Sanskrit, which later dwindled into the local variation that we now call Arabic. The proof of this is that thousands of words that were derived from Sanskrit still survive in Arabic today. Here is a sampling of some:
Sanskrit Arabic English
Sagwan Saj Teakwood
Vish Besh Poison
Anusari Ansari Follower
Shishya Sheikh Disciple
Mrityu Mout Death
Pra-Ga-ambar Paigambar One from heaven
Maleen Malaun Dirty or soiled
Aapati Aafat Misfortune
Karpas Kaifas Cotton
Karpur Kafur Camphor
Pramukh Barmak Chief
Even various kinds of swords were referred to as Handuwani, Hindi, Saif-Ul-Hind, Muhannid and Hinduani. The Sanskrit Astronomical treatise Brahma-Sphuta-Siddhanta in Arabic translation is known as Sind-Hind, while another treatise Khanda-Khadyaka was called Arkand. Mathematics itself was called Hindisa .
The Arabs derived technical guidance in every branch of study such as astronomy, mathematics and physics from India. A noted scholar of history, W.H. Siddiqui notes:
"The Arab civilization grew up intensively
as well as extensively on the riches of
Indian trade and commerce. Nomadic Arab
tribes became partially settled communities
and some of them lived within walled towns practised agriculture and commerce, wroteon wood and stone, feared the gods and honored the kings."
Some people wrongly believe that Arabs used the word Hindu as a term of contemptuous abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people of pre-Islamic Arabia held Hinduism in great esteem as evidenced from the fact that they would endearingly call their most attractive and favourite daughters as Hinda and Saifi Hindi. The fact that Arabs regarded India as their spiritual and cultural motherland long before the damaging influence of Islam is corroborated by the following poem which mentions each one of the four Vedas by name: (The English translation is in black)
"Aya muwarekal araj yushaiya nohaminar HIND-eWa aradakallahamanyonaifail jikaratun"
"Oh the divine land of HIND (India)(how) very blessed art thou!Because thou art the chosenof God blessed with knowledge"
"Wahalatijali Yatun ainana sahabiakha-atun jikra Wahajayhi yonajjalur-rasu minal HINDATUN "
"That celestial knowledge which likefour lighthouses shone in suchbrilliance - through the (utterances of)Indian sages in fourfold abundance."
"Yakuloonallaha ya ahal araf alameenkullahumFattabe-u jikaratul VEDA bukkunmalam yonajjaylatun"
"God enjoins on all humans,follow with hands downThe path the Vedas with his divineprecept lay down."
"Wahowa alamus SAMA wal YAJURminallahay TanajeelanFa-e-noma ya akhigo mutiabay-anYobassheriyona jatun"
"Bursting with (Divine) knowledgeare SAM &YAJUR bestowed on creation,Hence brothers respect andfollow the Vedas, guides to salvation"
"Wa-isa nain huma RIG ATHAR nasayhinKa-a-KhuwatunWa asant Ala-udan wabowa masha -e-ratun"
"Two others, the Rig and Athar teach usfraternity, Sheltering under theirlustre dispels darkness till eternity"
This poem was written by Labi-Bin-E- Akhtab-Bin-E-Turfa who lived in Arabia around 1850 B.C. That was 2300 years before Mohammed!!! This verse can be found in Sair- Ul-Okul which is an anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. It was compiled in 1742 AD under order of the Turkish Sultan Salim.
That the Vedas were the religious scriptures to which the Arabs owed allegiance as early as 1800 B.C. proves not only the antiquity of the Vedas but also the existence of Indian rule over the entire region from the Indus to the Mediterranean, because it is a fact of history that the religion of the ruler is practised by his subjects.
Vedic culture was very much alive just before the birth of Muhammad. Again let's refer to the Sair-Ul-Okul. The following poem was written by Jirrham Bintoi who lived 165 years before the prophet Muhammed. It is in praise of India's great King Vikramaditya who had lived 500 years before Bintoi. (The English translation is in red).
"Itrasshaphai SantulBikramatul phehalameen KarimunBihillahaya SamiminelaMotakabbenaran BihillahaYubee qaid min howaYaphakharu phajgal asarinahans Osirim BayjayholeenYaha sabdunya Kanateph natephibijihalin Atadari Bilala masaurateenphakef Tasabahu. Kaunni eja majakaralhadawalhada Achimiman, burukan, Kad, Toluhowatastaru Bihillaha yakajibainanabaleykulle amarenaPhaheya jaunabil amaray Bikramatoon"- (Sair-ul-Okul, Page 315)
"Fortunate are those who were bornduring King Vikram's reign, he wasa noble generous, dutiful ruler devotedto the welfare of his subjects. But atthat time, We Arabs oblivious of divinitywere lost in sensual pleasures. Plotting& torture were rampant. The darkness ofignorance had enveloped our country.Like the lamb struggling for its lifein the cruel jaws of a wolf, we Arabswere gripped by ignorance. The wholecountry was enveloped in a darkness asintense as on a New moon night. But thepresent dawn & pleasant sunshine ofeducation is the result of the favor ofthat noble king Vikram whose benevolencedid not lose sight of us foreigners as wewere. He spread his sacred culture amongstus and sent scholars from his own landwhose brilliance shone like that of the sunin our country. These scholars & preceptorsthrough whose benevolence we were once againmade aware of the presence of god, introducedto his secret knowledge & put on the road totruth, had come to our country to initiate usin that culture & impart education."
Thus we can see that Vedic religion and culture were present in Pre-Islamic Arabia as early as 1850 B.C., and definitely present at the time of Mohammed's birth.
In his book Origines, Volumes 3 & 4", Sir W. Drummond adds:
"Tsabaism was the universal language of mankind when Abraham received his call, their doctrines were probably extended all over the civilized nations of Earth."
Tsabaism is merely the corruption of the word Shaivism which is Vedic religion. On page 439 of this book, Sir Drummond mentions some of gods of pre-Islamic Arabs, all of which were included in the 360 idols that were consecrated in the Kaba shrine before it was raided and destroyed by Muhammad and his followers. Here are some of the Vedic deities and their original Sanskrit names:
Arabic Sanskrit English
Al-Dsaizan Shani Saturn
Al-Ozi or Ozza Oorja Divine energy
Al-Sharak Shukra Venus
Auds Uddhav -
Bag Bhagwan God
Bajar Vajra Indra's thunderbolt
Kabar Kuber God of wealth
Dar Indra King of gods
Dua Shara Deveshwar Lord of the gods
Habal Bahubali Lord of strength
Madan Madan God of love
Manaph Manu First Man
Manat Somnath Lord Shiv
Obodes Bhoodev Earth
Razeah Rajesh King of kings
Saad Siddhi God of Luck
Sair Shree Goddess of wealth
Sakiah Shakrah Indra
Sawara Shiva-Eshwar God Shiva
Yauk Yaksha Divine being
Wad Budh Mercury
The Kaba temple which was misappropriated and captured by Muslims was originally an International Vedic Shrine. The ancient Vedic scripture Harihareswar Mahatmya mentions that Lord Vishnu's footprints are consecrated in Mecca. An important clue to this fact is that Muslims call this holy precint Haram which is a deviation of the Sanskrit term Hariyam, i.e. the precint of Lord Hari alias Lord Vishnu. The relevant stanza reads:
"Ekam Padam GayayantuMAKKAYAANTU DwitiyakamTritiyam SthapitamDivyam Muktyai Shuklasya Sannidhau"
The allusion is to the Vamana incarnation of Lord Vishnu whose blessed feet were consecrated at three holy sites, namely Gaya, Mecca and Shukla Teertha. Worshipping such carved, holy foot impressions is a holy Vedic custom which convert Muslims are inadvertently perpetuating. But in doing this they delude themselves and mislead others that these foot-impressions which are on reverential display in several mosques and tombs around the world are in fact Muhammad's own. There are several snags in this argument. Firstly worshipping a foot -impression amounts to idolatry and should therefore be taboo for a true Muslim. Secondly Muhhamad disclaimed having performed any miracles. Therefore there can be no foot-impression of his on stone. Thirdly foot-impressions must always be in pairs like shoes. Yet in most of these shrines, it is usually a single footprint which suggests that Muhammad walked on only one foot. Another question that crops up is whether the foot-impression is of the same size and foot in all the shrines. The fact appears to be that when the Vedic Kaba shrine in Mecca was invaded by Muhammad, the pairs of foot impressions of Vedic deities there were plundered and later traded to the gullible and devout as Muhammad's own footprints for some favour, reward or personal gain by unscrupulous muslims. That is why they are single and not in pairs.
Figure 1.
The Shiv Ling at The Kaba. It was broken in seven
places and now is held together by a silver band.
The Black Stone which is the Shiv Emblem (also known as Sange Aswad which is a corrupted form of the Sanskrit word Sanghey Ashweta--meaning non-white stone) still survives in the Kaba as the central object of Islamic veneration. All other Vedic Idols could be found buried in the precincts or trampled underfoot in labyrinthine subterranean corridors if archaeological excavations are undertaken. The Black Stone has been badly mutilated, its carved base has disappeared and the stone itself is broken at seven places. It's parts are now held together by a silver band studded with silver nails. It lies half buried in the South Eastern portion of the Kaba Wall (Refer to Figure 1). The term Kaba itself is a corruption of the Sanskrit word Gabha (Garbha + Graha) which means Sanctum.
In addition, in the inscriptions from Hajja and its neighborhood was found a votive vessel dedicated by members of two tribes called Rama and Somia. Rama and Soma are Vedic deities, Rama is of the Solar dynasty and Soma is of the Lunar Dynasty. The moon god was called by various names in pre-Islamic times , one of them was Allah. Allah had 3 children, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat. Al-Lat and Al-Uzza were both feminine deities. Alla is another name for the Hindu goddess Durga. It is obvious that the goddess Al-Lat was Alla (Durga) and Al-Uzza was Oorja (energy or life force also known as Shakti). Manat was none other than Somnath which is another name for Lord Shiva. One significant point to note that Soma in Sanskrit means Moon and Nath means Lord. Thus the Kaba itself was dedicated to the Moon God Somnath alias Shiv and the word Somnath was corrupted to Manat. The famous Black Stone is none other than the ShivLing of Makkeshwar alias Mecca. Lord Shiva is always shown with a crescent Moon on his head and every Shiva temple is supposed to have a sacred water spring representing the Ganges. The Crescent Moon pinnacle of the Kaba and the Zamzam spring (actually Zamza from Ganga) are irrefutable testaments to the Vedic origins of the Kaba.
Figure 2 below depicts the image of Maqam-E-Ibrahim in the Kaba.
Figure 2.
Maqam-E-Ibrahim or more appropriately the pedestal of Brahma.
Muslims from all over the world pay homage to this shrine. This shrine is actually the pedestal of Brahma. Notice that the word, Ibrahim is actually a corruption of the word, Brahma. The octogonal grill which is a Vedic design, protects the holy footprints which represent the start of the creation nearly 2000 million years ago. Before it was captured by the Muslims it was an international shrine of the Vedic trinity.
In fact the names of the holiest of Muslim cities Mecca and Medina come from the Sanskrit words Makha-Medini which means the land of Fire-Worship. Even the most ancient names of these 2 cities were Mahcorava- which came from Mahadeva (Lord Shiva) and Yathrabn - which came from Yatra-Sthan (place of pilgrimage).
Islam came into being about 1372 years ago. It is well known that over 7500 years ago, at the time of the Mahabharat War, Kurus ruled the world. The scions of that family administered the different regions. Prophet Muhammed himself and his family were adherents of Vedic culture. The Encyclopedia Islamia admits as much when it says: "Muhammed's grandfather and uncles were hereditary priests of the Kaba temple which housed 360 idols!"
According to Arab traditions, Muhammad is a title. We do not know what name his parents had given him. We do however know that the central object of worship which survives at the Kaba today is a Shivling. That was allowed to remain there because that was the faceless family deity of Muhammad's family. One of the original names of Lord Shiv is Mahadev (The Great God) therefore it is entirely possible Muhammad came from Mahadev. This appears fairly certain because the Arabs still have a Mahadevi sect. Moreover the title Mehdi of a Muslim chief is also a malpronounciation of the term Mahadeva. According to Sanskrit etymology the term Muhammad implies 'a person of great inspiration' - 'Mahan Madah yasya assau Muhammadah' In a hostile sense it also implies 'a person of a proud and haughty temperament'.
The Qurayshi tribe into which Mohammed was born was particularly devoted to Allah and and the three children of the Moon God. Therefore when Muhammad decided to create his own Divine religion, he took innumerable aspects of the daily Vedic culture that surrounded him and corrupted them to suit his needs. It was with the advent of the Prophet and Islam that the death-knell of the glorious Arab culture was sounded. With Islam came the flood of destruction, murder, plunder and crime that destroyed the great Vedic heritage of Arabs. The Prophet merely took some existing artefacts and terms and corrupted them so profoundly that no one would be able to discover their actual origins.
In my next article, I will elaborate further on the Vedic Heritage of Arabia.
Note: Works of P.N. Oak and Robert A. Morey have been used to compose this article.
Aditi Chaturvedi
Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia - Part 2
In 570 AD, the year of Muhammad's birth, Arabia was a thriving, rich and varied Vedic culture. Although monotheism in the forms of Christianity and Judaism were known to the people of Arvasthan, they were undeterred in their uncompromising faith to the religion of their ancestors: Hinduism . Every household had an idol of a Hindu god or goddess. There were hundreds of sacred groves, places of pilgrimage, and temples which were sanctuaries containing images of the entire range of Vedic gods. The temples in addition to being the religious focus of the Arabs, were also the cultural centres of learning. It was the temples that were the venues of literary and poetry competitions, of glorious festivals.
The virtues most highly prized by people of Arvasthan were bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, loyalty to one's tribe, and generosity to the needy and the poor. They proudly upheld the value of tolerance in matters of religious practice and belief. The respect they showed towards other people's religions was fully in keeping with their Vedic spiritual tradition.
The status of women was that of pride and equal respect. How could it be otherwise with a people whose chief deity was the goddess Durga (Alla). Women married men of their choice and were financially independent. They were entrepeneurs, artisans, poets and even warriors! Later on Muhammad would marry Khadija, who was not only a wealthy merchant but also in the position to choose her own husband. This clearly demonstrates the level of freedom women enjoyed in Vedic Arabia. Hind, who was the wife of Muhammad's chief enemy Abu Sufyan, herself participated in the battlefield.
Hind opposed Muhammad tooth and nail. She followed her husband to the battlefield and when Abu Sufyan surrendered Mecca to Muhammad without a fight she caught hold of him in the marketplace and cried:
"KILL this fat greasy bladder of lard! What a rotten protector of the people"
When Muhammad tried to baptise her & asked her not to commit adultery , She spat out the bitter words:
"A free woman does not commit adultery!"
How proud this woman was of the rights and privileges that her Vedic society had invested to her!
It was Islam that extinguished the light of knowledge in Vedic Arabia. It is ironic that the man who brought about such darkness himself belonged to the Qurayshi Tribe of Mecca. The Qurayshi were particularly devoted to Allah (Durga) and the famous Shivling of the Kaaba Temple. The fact that the Shivling remains to this day in the Kaaba is solely due to the fact that it happened to be the Qurayshi tribe's faceless Family Deity. As I mentioned before Muhammad's name itself came from Mahadeva, which is another cognate for Lord Shiva. Muhammad's own uncle, Umar-Bin-E-Hassham was a staunch Hindu and fervent devotee of Lord Shiva. He was a renowned poet and wrote many verses in praise of Shiva. One of these has survived on page 235 of Sair-Ul-Okul and reads as follows:
Kafavomal fikra min ulumin Tab asayru
Kaluwan amataul Hawa was Tajakhru
We Tajakhayroba udan Kalalwade-E Liboawa
Walukayanay jatally, hay Yauma Tab asayru
Wa Abalolha ajabu armeeman MAHADEVA
Manojail ilamuddin minhum wa sayattaru
Wa Sahabi Kay-yam feema-Kamil MINDAY Yauman
Wa Yakulum no latabahan foeennak Tawjjaru
Massayaray akhalakan hasanan Kullahum
Najumum aja- at Summa gabul HINDU
which translates as:
The man who may spend his life in sin
and irreligion or waste it in lechery and wrath
If at least he relent and return to
righteousness can he be saved?
If but once he worship Mahadeva with a pure
heart, he will attain the ultimate in spirituality.
Oh Lord Shiva exchange my entire life for but
a day's sojourn in India where one attains salvation.
But one pilgrimage there secures for one all
merit and company of the truly great.
Muhammad's uncle was one of the resident priests of the Shiv temple known as "Kaaba". This sacred sanctum was decorated in an extremely rich and beautiful fashion. The Kaaba was astronomically oriented to face the winds. The minor axis of the rectangular base of the Kaaba was solistically aligned towards summer sunrise and winter sunset. It contained 360 statues of Vedic deities and was a shrine primarily associated with sun worship. The temple was an architectural representation of an interlocking set of theories covering virtually all creation and comprehending chemistry, physics, cosmology, meteorology and medicine. Each wall or corner of the Kaaba was associated with a specific region of the world. Thus this glorious Hindu temple was made to symbolically represent a microcosm of the universe. The Arabs would face east when praying. This representation of a microcosm demonstrated by the eight directional structure was derived from the Tantric pattern (Refer to Figure 1) of Hinduism. Right at the centre of the Kaaba was the octogonal pedestal of Bramha the creator. Today this very pedestal is called Maqam-E-Ibrahim by the Muslims.
Figure 1.
A tantric pattern which defines the structure of Kaaba
However, more significant was the fact that the Kaaba was an extremely rich and ornate temple. On its walls hung innumerable gold plaques commemorating the winners of the annual poetry competition known as the Okaj fair. There were gold, silver and precious gems everywhere. It is no wonder that Muhammad armed with his facade of a new brand of religion set out to capture the immense wealth of the Vedic shrine of Mecca. After plundering the riches of the Kaaba, the wealth enabled him to systematically destroy all traces of the religion that threatened him so directly. It is an indisputable fact that money will make any low criminal devoutly religious in a hurry.
Despite the fact that Muhammad had to destroy all traces of Hinduism in order to make his "new religion" work, he knew that in order to fool people convincingly he would have to borrow from the Vedic culture that surrounded him. Being illiterate he picked out rituals and symbols that he didn't understand and distorted and falsified them for his own ends. Here is a list of these distortions:
1. Muhammad destroyed all 360 idols, but even he could not summon the courage to completely obliterate the Shivling in the Kaaba. He entered the temple and kissed the black stone. The Shivling was so sacred that the man who so detested idol- worship ended up kissing the largest idol in the Kaaba. Later his followers in a fit of piety broke the Shivling and then out of remorse repatched it together again. Today it lies broken at seven places and held together by a silver band studded with silver nails, bearing the name "Sangey Aswad" which came from the Sanskrit Ashwet meaning non-white or black stone.
2. He jumbled up the Sanskrit words Nama and Yaja (which meant "bowing and worshipping" respectively) into a combination word Namaz and used that to describe his prescribed method of prayer.
3. Because the Vedic custom was to pray facing the East, in his hatred for all things Hindu, he directed his followers to pray facing only the west.
4. The method of circling around a shrine seven times in a clockwise direction is an ancient Vedic custom. Muhammad with his lack of originality decided that the 7 ritual perambulations should be retained but again in his hatred of all things Vedic decided the direction of the perambulations should be anti-clockwise.
5. With his phobia of all things Vedic, Muhammad knew that the greatest reminder and threat to his forced brand of religion were the beautiful Vedic idols of Arabic temples. Thus he destroyed every idol he could find and made idol worship the greatest crime for a Muslim. Such a man could never have comprehended how an abstract concept can be conveyed through a symbolic representation in the form of an image. Thus he made all image representation a sin as well.
6. Vedic religion is known for its ancient oral tradition. It is well known that the Vedic culture emphasized oral debate and expression far more than the written word. In adition the oral recitation of Vedic scriptures was always done in a lyrical fashion, utilizing music and thus reaching a height of expression. In fear of this musical tradition Muhammad decided to forbid Music.
7. All Arabic copies of the Koran have the mysterious figure 786 imprinted on them . No Arabic scholar has been able to determine the choice of this particular number as divine. It is an established fact that Muhammad was illiterate therefore it is obvious that he would not be able to differentiate numbers from letters. This "magical" number is none other than the Vedic holy letter "OM" written in Sanskrit (Refer to figure 2). Anyone who knows Sanskrit can try reading the symbol for "OM" backwards in the Arabic way and magically the numbers 786 will appear! Muslims in their ignorance simply do not realise that this special number is nothing more than the holiest of Vedic symbols misread.
Figure 2.
Read from right to left this figure
of OM represents the numbers 786
There are many such instances where the symbols and rituals of Vedic culture were completely distorted and falsified by Muhammad in his bid to "create" his brand new religion. However in his haste to deceive and because of his ignorance and illiteracy, thousands of Vedic symbols still remain. Although they have been distorted beyond imagination, they still remain as solemn reminders of Arabia's glorious Vedic past. They can never be supressed.
In fact the rise of Islam put a full stop to all the previous knowledge of Arabia. The imperialistic message of Islam diverted all energies into raiding, looting and destruction. The incentive to learn and preserve the Vedic wisdom that had thrived in Arabia for so many centuries, was wiped out by the brutal pressure of Islam. Making easy money through loot and massacre was far more appealing than upholding the tenets of ancient knowledge. Gone were the schools, teachers, libraries, poets, artists, philosophers and scholars that had littered the Vedic landscape of Arabia like stars. Everyone had to become a raider if not from choice then for the sake of surviving the absolute intolerance of dissenters, that Islam preached. Thus was the light of learning extinguished in Arabia. All that remained was the Koran, the Kalma and the murderous hatred of anything Non-Muslim.
In my next article I will explore how the Arabs fought to keep the integrity and pride of their Vedic culture alive in the face of the violent, unjust and murderous destruction caused by the followers of Islam.
Note: Works of P.N. Oak, Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Jay Dubashi, Harsh Narain and Ram Swarup have been used to compose this article.
ca 590-671: Lifetime of Saiva saint Nayanar Tirunavukkarasu, born into a farmer family at Amur, now in South Arcot, Tamil Nadu. He writes 312 songs, totalling 3,066 Tirumurai verses. Cleaning the grounds of every temple he visits, he exemplifies truly humble service to Lord Siva. His contemporary, the child-saint Nayanar Sambandar, addresses him affectionately as Appar, "father."
ca 598-665: Lifetime of Brahmagupta, preeminent Indian astronomer, who writes on gravity and sets forth the Hindu astronomical system in his Brahma Sphuta Siddhanta. Two of 25 chapters are on sophisticated mathematics.
ca 600: Religiously tolerant Pallava King Narasinhavarman builds China Pagoda, a Buddhist temple, at the Nagapatam port for Chinese merchants and visiting monks.
ca 610: Muhammed begins prophecies, flees to Mecca in 622.
ca 600-900: Twelve Vaishnava Alvar saints of Tamil Nadu flourish, writing 4,000 songs and poems (assembled in their cannon Nalayira Divya Prabandham) praising Narayana, Rama and narrating the love of Krishna and the gopis.
ca 600: Life of Banabhatta, Shakta master of Sanskrit prose, author of Harshacharita (story of Harsha) and Kadambari.
606: Buddhist Harshavardhana, reigning 606-644, establishes first great kingdom after the Hephtalite invasions, eventually ruling all India to the Narmada River in the South.
(reference: Jihad the Islamic doctrine of permanent war by Suhas Majumdar)
624 Banu Kainuka (Jewish tribe) expelled from Medina
625 Banu Nazir (Jewish tribe) expelled from Medina
627 Banu Kuraizah (Jewish tribe) in Medina exterminated
628 non-Medinese Jewish tribes of Khaiber conquered & forced to pay Jizyah
ca 630: Vagbhata writes Ashtanga Sangraha on ayurveda.
630-34: Chalukya Pulakeshin II becomes Lord of South India by defeating Harshavardhana, Lord of the North.
630-44: Chinese pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang (Huan Zang) travels in India, recording voluminous observations. Population of Varanasi is 10,000, mostly Saiva. Nalanda Buddhist university (his biographer writes) has 10,000 residents, including 1,510 teachers, and thousands of manuscripts.
632: Muhammed dies
634-644: reign of Caliph Umar after Muhammed‘s death.
Arab invasion of Sindh started soon after their first two naval expeditions against Thana on the coast of Maharashtra and Broach on the coast of Gujarat repulsed. The expedition against Debal in Sind met the same fate. The leader of the Arab army Mughairah was defeated and killed.Umar decided to send another army by land against Makran which was at that time a part of the kingdom of Sindh, but he was advised by the governor of Iraq that he should think no more of Hind”. reference page 10 , Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders by Sita Ram Goel.
636: first Arab Muslim expedition against Thana near Bombay(after 570 years of trying established the Delhi Sultanate in ca 1206)
636-637: Arab Muslims conquer Byzantine provinces of Palestine and Syria after a six month campaign
637: Arab Muslims defeat the Sassanid empire of Persia which included Iraq, Iran, and Khorasan.
641-45: Arab Muslims conquer Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia.
646-656: reign of Caliph Usman
650: Turkish speaking territories of Inner Mongolia, Bukhara, Tashkand, and Samarkan etc annexed by Arab Muslims.
ca 650: Lifetime of Nayanar Saiva saint Tirujnana Sambandar. Born a brahmin in Tanjavur, he writes 384 songs totalling 4,158 verses that make up the first three books of Tirumurai. At 16, he disappears into the sanctum of Nallur temple, near Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu.
ca 650: More than 60 Chinese monks have traveled to India and her colonies. Four hundred Sanskrit works have been translated into Chinese, 380 survive to the present day.
656-661: reign of Caliph Ali
686-705: Reign of Pallava King Rajasinha. He inherits the stone-carving legacy of Emperor Mahendra and his son, Narasinha, who began the extensive sculptural art in the thriving sea-port of Mahabalipuram.
ca 700: Over the next 100 years the Indonesian island of Bali receives Hinduism from its neighbor, Java.
709: After having marched over North Africa and reached the Atlantic Arab armies cross over into Spain
712: Muslims conquer Sind region (Pakistan), providing base for pillaging expeditions that drain North India's wealth.
Reference: http://www.aryawat.com/heritage/firstmuslim.htm
The first Muslim Aggression in Sindh
When Harsha's rule ended with his death in 641 C.E., an event had taken place in far away Arabia which was to have a deep impact on India and its subsequent history. Needless to state that this was the rise of Islam and the beginning of the Jehad which was to bring Muslim invaders and rule to India from 1194. The very first Muslim attack on India had taken place nearly 500 years earlier in Sindh in the year 715 C.E. These Muslim invaders were Arabs led by Mohammad Bin Qasim. They had displaced Raja Dabir who ruled Sindh from his capital Deval (near modern Karachi).
The actual reason for this invasion was that Raja Dabir was aiding the Iranian (Zoroastrian) princes in trying to overthrow the Arab Rule in Persia. This seems to be a fact as many Sassanian nobles from Iran had taken refuge in Sindh and were plotting for the liberation of their country from the Arab yoke.
But the pretext given by Arab historians for the Arab invasion of Sindh is that Raja Dabir's navy had detained an Arab merchant ship.
To avenge this detention of a merchant ship, the Arabs overran the entire kingdom of Raja Dabir as also the neighbouring kingdom of Mulasthana (Multan). They even unsuccessfully tried to attack Malwa (Malibah in Arab records)!
After this invasion which was limited to Sindh, for a period of 300 years all further Muslim attacks were thwarted by Kings like Raja Bhoja and other Parmara and Gurjara Kings. So although the first Muslim invasion of India took place in Sindh in 715 C.E. the presence of strong Hindu Kingdoms in Central India ruled by Kings like Raja Bhoja in the 7th century C.E. and later the Gurjara Kingdoms, prevented the march of the Arabs into India.
It is not well known that in the period 750 to 850 C.E., the Arabs based in Sindh, had attacked Malwa (called Malibah by the Arabs), but were repulsed by Raja Bhoja and his successors. The later Arabs attacks were repulsed first by the Gurjara rulers and later on the Rajputs who play an important role in Indian history from the 9th century C.E. till the coming of the Muslims in the 12th century. But before we go to the Rajputs, let's look at the scene in Afghanistan in the period 950 C.E.
The Arabs had 300 years before that age, i.e. around 650 C.E., overthrown the Zoroastrian Sassanian rulers of Persia and had managed to wipe off Zoroastrianism as a religion in Iran and Western Afghanistan by converting the population to Islam. It was now the turn of the then frontier provinces of India to face the sword of the Islamic Jehad. In those days, Western Afghanistan comprising the provinces of Heart (whose name is derived from Hari-Rud which is said to be a derivation from the older term Hari-Rudra - two Hindu dieties), Kandahar (the ancient Gandhara of the Mahabharata) was ruled by Sabuktagin a Muslim ruler from a town named Ghazni. He was facing Raja Jaya Pala who ruled from Kubha (modern Kabul) in Eastern Afghanistan. His kingdom comprised the provinces of Kapisa on the western side of the Hindu Kush Ranges and Punjab on the Eastern side. (Incidentally, his kingdom was like that of Ambhi who ruled approximately the same provinces, when Alexander the Great had invaded the area in 330 B.C.E.)
The year 980C.E. marks the beginning of the Muslim invasion into India proper when Sabuktagin attacked Raja Jaya Pal in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is today a Muslim country separated from India by another Muslim country Pakistan. But in 980 C.E. Afghanistan was also a place where the people were Hindus and Buddhists. The name "Afghanistan" comes from "Upa-Gana-stan" which means in Sanskrit "The place inhabited by allied tribes". This was the place from where Gandhari of the Mahabharat came from Gandhar whose king was Shakuni. The Pakthoons are descendants of the Paktha tribe mentioned in Vedic literature. Till the year 980 C.E., this area was a Hindu majority area, till Sabuktagin from Ghazni invaded it and displaced the ruling Hindu king - Jaya Pal Shahi.
The place where Kabul's main mosque stands today was the site of an ancient Hindu temple and the story of its capture is kept alive in Islamic Afghan legend which describes the Islamic hero Sabuktagin who fought with a sword in every hand to defeat the Hindus and destroy their temple to put up a Mosque in its place. (This is not being mentioned here to reclaim the place as a temple. But to record a long forgotten fact that today's Islamic battlefield of the Taliban was once inhabited by Hindus.)
The victory of Sabuktagin pushed the frontiers of the Hindu kingdom of the Shahis from Kabul to behind the Hindu Kush mountains (Hindu Kush is literally "killer of Hindus" - a name given by Mahmud Ghazni to describe the number of Hindus who died on their way into Afghanistan to a life of captivity) . After this setback, the Shahis shifted their capital from Kubha (Kabul) to Udbhandapura (modern Und in NWFP). Sabuktagin's son Mahmud Ghazni, kept up the attacks on the Shahis and captured Und. Subsequently, the Shahis moved their capital to Lahore and later to Kangra in Himachal.
Tirlochan Pal Shahi - the Last Hindu Ruler of Punjab
Three generation of Shahi kings laid down their lives and their kingdom in battling the invaders. Raja Jaya Pal Shahi was followed by his son Anand Pal Shahi who fought a battle with Mahmud near Lahore, but lost as his elephant is said to have run amok within his own army. His son Tirlochan Pal Shahi continued his struggle with the Muslims from Kangra but he too went down fighting when he was treacherously killed when away from the battlefield.
The defeat of the Shahis opened up the Gangetic plains to the Muslims and Mahmud Ghazni repeatedly attacked the main Hindu kingdoms ruled by the Gurjara-Pratiharas and sacked Hindu temples. The main ruler in those days was Rajyapala Pratihara who resisted Mahmud Ghazni's raids, partly successfully. In his last attack on Somnath, Mahmud Ghazni successfully sacked the temple at Prabhasa Patan in Gujarat, but on his way back he was roundly defeated by the Gujar rulers of North Gujarat. Mahmud never came back to India after that. (Refer to the Glory that was Gujar Desha by K.M. Munshi) But these first Muslim raids into India proper had given an ominous indication of what was to come a couple of centuries later in the year 1194 C.E.
But for now, the Muslim rule of the Ghaznivids was established in Kabul, Paktoonistan and in the land of the five rivers - Punjab. Thus after Sindh in 715; Kabul Paktoonistan and Punjab became the next Indian provinces which went under Muslim domination in the period 980 C.E. to 1020 C.E.
Tirlochan Pal Shahi was the last Hindu ruler of Punjab and only after an intermission of 700 years of Muslim rule could the next Hindu ruler - Maharaja Ranjit Singh consolidate Hindu (Sikh) rule after the Moghul rule in Punjab had been weakened by the first blow given to it by the Marathas in 1756 C.E.
Reference: http://www.indialink.com/Forum/Arts-Culture/messages/686.html
The year 980C.E. marks the beginning of the Muslim invasion into India proper when Sabuktagin attacked Raja Jaya Pal in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is today a
Muslim country separated from India by another Muslim country Pakistan. But in 980 C.E. Afghanistan was also a place where the people were Hindus and
Buddhists. The name "Afghanistan" comes from "Upa-Gana-stan" which means in Sanskrit "The place inhabited by allied tribes". This was the place
from where Gandhari of the Mahabharat came from Gandhar whose king was Shakuni. The Pakthoons are descendants of the Paktha tribe mentioned in Vedic
literature. Till the year 980 C.E., this area was a Hindu majority area, till Sabuktagin from Ghazni invaded it and displaced the ruling Hindu king - Jaya Pal Shahi.
The place where Kabul's main mosque stands today was the site of an ancient Hindu temple and the story of its capture is kept alive in Islamic Afghan legend which
describes the Islamic hero Sabuktagin who fought with a sword in every hand to defeat the Hindus and destroy their temple to put up a Mosque in its place. (This is
not being mentioned here to reclaim the place as a temple. But to record a long forgotten fact that today's Islamic battlefield of the Taliban was once inhabited by
Hindus.)
The victory of Sabuktagin pushed the frontiers of the Hindu kingdom of the Shahis from Kabul to behind the Hindu Kush mountains (Hindu Kush is literally "killer of
Hindus" - a name given by Mahmud Ghazni to describe the number of Hindus who died on their way into Afghanistan to a life of captivity) . After this setback, the
Shahis shifted their capital from Kubha (Kabul) to Udbhandapura (modern Und in NWFP). Sabuktagin's son Mahmud Ghazni, kept up the attacks on the Shahis
and captured Und. Subsequently, the Shahis moved their capital to Lahore and later to Kangra in Himachal.
732: French prevent Muslim conquest of Europe, stopping Arabs at Poitiers, France, the NW limit of Arab penetration.
739: Chalukya armies beat back Arab Muslim invasions at Navasari in modern Maharashtra.
ca750-1159: Pala dynasty arises in Bihar and Bengal, last royal patrons of Buddhism, which they help establish in Tibet.
ca 750: Kailasa temple is carved out of a hill of rock at Ellora.
ca 750: Hindu astronomer and mathematician travels to Baghdad, with Brahmagupta's Brahma Siddhanta (treatise on astronomy) which he translates into Arabic, bestowing decimal notation and use of zero on Arab world.
ca 750: Lifetime of Bhavabhuti, Sanskrit dramatist, second only to Kalidasa. Writes Malati Madhava, a Shakta work.
ca 750: Valmiki writes 29,000-verse Yoga Vasishtha.
ca 750: A necklace timepiece, kadikaram in Tamil, is worn by an Emperor (according to scholar M. Arunachalam).
788: Adi Shankara (788-820) is born in Malabar, famous monk philosopher of Smarta tradition who writes mystic poems and scriptural commentaries including Viveka Chudamani, and regularizes ten monastic orders called Dashanami. Preaches Mayavada Advaita, emphasizing the world as illusion and God as the sole Reality.
ca 800: Bhakti revival curtails Buddhism in South India. In the North, Buddha is revered as Vishnu's 9th incarnation.
ca 800: Life of Nammalvar, greatest of Alvar saints. His poems shape the beliefs of Southern Vaishnavas to the present day.
ca 800: Lifetime of Vasugupta, modern founder of Kashmir Saivism, a monistic, meditative school.
ca 800: Lifetime of Auvaiyar, woman saint of Tamil Nadu, great devotee of Lord Ganesha and author of Auvai Kural. She is associated with the Lambika kundalini school. (A second date for Auvaiyar of 200 bce is from a story about Auvaiyar and Saint Tiruvalluvar as siblings. A third Auvaiyar reference is dated at approximately 1000. (Auvaiyar is a Tamil word meaning "old, learned woman;" some believe it may refer to three different persons.)
ca 800: Lifetime of Karaikkal Ammaiyar, one of the 63 Saiva saints of Tamil Nadu. Her mystical and yogic hymns, preserved in the Tirumurai, remain popular to the present day.
ca 825: Nayanar Tamil saint Sundarar is born into a family of Adishaiva temple priests in Tirunavalur in present-day South Arcot. His 100 songs in praise of Siva (the only ones surviving of his 38,000 songs) make up Tirumurai book 7. His Tiru Tondattohai poem, naming the Saiva saints, is the basis for Saint Sekkilar's Periyapuranam.
ca 800: Lifetime of Andal, woman saint of Tamil Nadu. Writes devotional poetry to Lord Krishna, disappears at age 16.
ca 825: Vasugupta discovers the rock-carved Siva Sutras.
846: Vijayalaya reestablishes his Chola dynasty, which over the next 100 years grows and strengthens into one of the greatest South Indian Empires ever known.
ca 850: Shri Vaishnava sect established in Tamil Nadu by Acharya Nathamuni, forerunner of great theologian Ramanuja.
ca 850: Life of Manikkavasagar, Saiva Samayacharya saint, born in Tiruvadavur, near Madurai, into a Tamil brahmin family. Writes famed Tiruvasagam, 51 poems of 656 verses in 3,394 lines, chronicling the soul's evolution to God Siva. Tirupalli-eluchi and Tiruvembavai are classic examples of his innovative style of devotional songs.
875: Muslim conquests extend from Spain to Indus Valley.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_kush.html
Hindu Kush means Hindu Slaughter
By Shrinandan Vyas
All the Encyclopedias and National Geographic agree that Hindu Kush region is a place of Hindu genocide (similar to Dakau and Auschwitz). All the references are given. Please feel free to verify them.
ABSTRACT
All Standard reference books agree that the name 'Hindu Kush' of the mountain range in Eastern Afganistan means 'Hindu Slaughter' or 'Hindu Killer'. History also reveals that until 1000 A.D. the area of Hindu Kush was a full part of Hindu cradle. More likely, the mountain range was deliberately named as 'Hindu Slaughter' by the Moslem conquerors, as a lesson to the future generations of Indians. However Indians in general, and Hindus in particular are completely oblivious to this tragic genocide. This article also looks into the reasons behind this ignorance.
21 References - (Mainly Encyclopedia Britannica & other reference books, National Geographic Magazines and standard history books).
INTRODUCTION
The Hindu Kush is a mountain system nearly 1000 miles long and 200 miles wide, running northeast to southwest, and dividing the Amu Darya River Valley and Indus River Valley. It stretches from the Pamir Plateau near Gilgit, to Iran. The Hindu Kush ranges mainly run thru Afganistan and Pakistan. It has over two dozen summits of more than 23,000 ft in height. Below the snowy peaks the mountains of Hindu Kush appear bare, stony and poor in vegetation. Historically, the passes across the Hindu Kush have been of great military significance, providing access to the northern plains of India. The Khyber Pass constitutes an important strategic gateway and offers a comparatively easy route to the plains of Punjab. Most foreign invaders, starting from Alexander the Great in 327 BC, to Timur Lane in 1398 AD, and from Mahmud of Ghazni, in 1001 AD, to Nader Shah in 1739 AD attacked Hindustan via the Khyber Pass and other passes in the Hindu Kush (1,2,3). The Greek chroniclers of Alexander the Great called Hindu Kush as Parapamisos or Paropanisos (4). The Hindu name of the Hindu Kush mountains was 'Paariyaatra Parvat'(5).
EARLY HISTORY OF HINDU KUSH REGION (UP TO 1000 AD)
History of Hindu Kush and Punjab shows that two major kingdoms of Gandhaar & Vaahic Pradesh (Balkh of Bactria) had their borders extending far beyond the Hindu Kush. Legend has it that the kingdom of Gandhaar was established by Taksha, grandson of Bharat of Ayodhya (6). Gandhaar's borders extended from Takshashila to Tashkent (corruption of 'Taksha Khand') in the present day Uzbekistan. In the later period, Mahabharat relates Gaandhaari as a princess of Gandhaar and her brother, Shakuni as a prince and later as Gandhaar's ruler.
In the well documented history, Emperor Chandragupt Maurya took charge of Vaahic Pradesh around 325 BC and then took over Magadh. Emperor Ashok's stone tablets with inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic are still found at Qandahar (corruption of Gandhaar?) and Laghman in eastern Afganistan(3). One such stone tablet, is shown in the PBS TV series 'Legacy with Mark Woods' in episode 3 titled 'India: The Spiritual Empire'. After the fall of Mauryan empire, Gandhaar was ruled by Greeks. However some of these Greek rulers had converted to Buddhism, such as Menander, known to Indian historians as Milinda, while some other Greeks became followers of Vishnav sects (Hinduism)(7). Recent excavations in Bactria have revealed a golden hoard which has among other things a figurine of a Greek goddess with a Hindu mark on its forehead (Bindi) showing the confluence of Hindu-Greek art (8). Later Shaka and KushaaN ruled Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh. KushaaN emperor Kanishka's empire stretched from Mathura to the Aral Sea (beyond the present day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Krygzystan)(9).
Kanishaka was a Buddhist and under KushaaN influence Buddhism flourished in Gandhaar. Two giant sandstone Buddhas carved into the cliffs of Bamian (west of Kabul) date from the Kushan period. The larger Buddha (although defaced in later centuries by Moslem invaders) is about 175 ft tall (10,11). The Kushan empire declined by 450 AD. The Chinese traveller Hsuan-Tsang (Xuan-zang) travelled thru the region in 7 th century AD and visited many Buddhist religious centers (3) including Hadda, Ghazni, Qonduz, Bamian (3,10,11), Shotorak and Bagram. From the 5 th thru 9 th cenury AD Persian Sasanians and Hepthalites ruled Gandhaar. During their rule Gandhaar region was again influenced by Hinduism. The Hindu kings (Shahiya) were concentrated in the Kabul and Ghazni areas. The last Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, Bhimapal was killed in 1026 AD. The heroic efforts of the Hindu Shahiya Kings to defend the northwestern gates of India against the invaders are described by even al-Biruni, the court historian of Mahmud of Ghazni (12). Some excavated sites of the period include a major Hindu Shahiya temple north of Kabul and a chapel that contains both Buddhist and Hindu images, indicating that there was a mingling of two religions (3).
Islamic invasions on Afganistan started in 642 AD, but over the next several centuries their effect was marginal and lasted only a short time after each raid. Cities surrendered only to rise in revolt and the hastily converted returned to their old religion (Hinduism or Buddhism) once the Moslem armies had passed (3).
THUS TILL THE YEAR 1000 AD AFGANISTAN WAS A FULL PART OF HINDU CRADLE.
HINDU KUSH AND THE HINDU GENOCIDE
Now Afganistan is a Moslem country. Logically, this means either one or more of the following must have happened:
a) original residents of Hindu Kush converted to Islam, or
b) they were slaughtered and the conquerors took over, or
c) they were driven out.
Encyclopedia Britannica (3) already informs us above about the resistance to conversion and frequent revolt against to the Moslem conqueror's rule from 8 th thru 11 th Century AD. The name 'Hindu Kush' itself tells us about the fate of the original residents of Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh during the later period of Moslem conquests, because HINDU KUSH in Persian MEANS HINDU SLAUGHTER (13) (as per Koenraad Elst in his book 'Ayodhya and After'). Let us look into what other standard references say about Hindu Kush.
Persian-English dictionary (14) indicates that the word 'Kush' is derived from the verb Kushtar - to slaughter or carnage. Kush is probably also related to the verb Koshtan meaning to kill. In Urdu, the word Khud-kushi means act of killing oneself (khud - self, Kushi- act of killing). Encyclopedia Americana comments on the Hindu Kush as follows: The name Hindu Kush means literally 'Kills the Hindu', a reminder of the days when (Hindu) SLAVES from Indian subcontinent died in harsh Afgan mountains while being transported to Moslem courts of Central Asia (15). The National Geographic Article 'West of Khyber Pass' informs that 'Generations of raiders brought captive Hindus past these peaks of perpetual snow. Such bitter journeys gave the range its name Hindu Kush - "Killer of Hindus"'(10). The World Book Encyclopedia informs that the name Kush, .. means Death ..(16). While Encyclopedia Britannica says 'The name Hindu Kush first appears in 1333 AD in the writings of Ibn Battutah, the medieval Berber traveller, who said the name meant 'Hindu Killer', a meaning still given by Afgan mountain dwellers who are traditional enemies of Indian plainsmen (i.e. Hindus)(2). However, later the Encyclopedia Britannica gives a negationist twist by adding that 'more likely the name is a corruption of Hindu-Koh meaning Hindu mountains'. This is unlikely, since the term Koh is used in its proper, uncorrupted form for the western portion of Hindu Kush, viz. Koh-i-Baba, for the region Swat Kohistan, and in the names of the three peaks of this range, viz. Koh-i-Langer, Koh-i-Bandakor, and Koh-i-Mondi. Thus to say that corruption of term Koh to Kush occurred only in case of Hindu Kush is merely an effort to fit in a deviant observation to a theory already proposed. In science, a theory is rejected if it does not agree with the observations, and not the other way around. Hence the latter negationist statement in the Encyclopedia Britannica must be rejected.
IT IS SIGNIFICANT THAT ONE OF THE FEW PLACE NAMES ON EARTH THAT REMINDS US NOT OF THE VICTORY OF THE WINNERS BUT RATHER THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LOSERS, CONCERNS A GENOCIDE OF HINDUS BY THE MOSLEMS (13).
Unlike the Jewish holocaust, the exact toll of the Hindu genocide suggested by the name Hindu Kush is not available. However the number is easily likely to be in millions. Few known historical figures can be used to justify this estimate. Encyclopedia Britannica informs that in December 1398 AD, Timur Lane ordered the execution of at least 50,000 captives before the battle for Delhi, .. and after the battle those inhabitants (of Delhi) not killed were removed (as slaves) (17), while other reference says that the number of captives butchered by Timur Lane's army was about 100,000 (18). Later on Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that the (secular?) Mughal emperor Akbar 'ordered the massacre of about 30,000 (captured) Rajput Hindus on February 24, 1568 AD, after the battle for Chitod' (19). Another reference indicates that this massacre of 30,000 Hindu peasants at Chitod is recorded by Abul Fazl, Akbar's court historian himself (20). These two 'one day' massacres are sufficient to provide a reference point for estimating the scale of Hindu genocide. The Afgan historian Khondamir records that during one of the many repeated invasions on the city of Herat in western Afganistan, 1,500,000 residents perished (11).
Since some of the Moslem conquerors took Indian plainsmen as slaves, a question comes : whatever happened to this slave population? The startling answer comes from New York Times (May-June 1993 issues). The Gypsies are wandering peoples in Europe. They have been persecuted in almost every country. Nazis killed 300,000 gypsies in the gas chambers. These Gypsies have been wandering around Central Asia and Europe since around the 12 th Century AD. Until now their country of origin could not be identified. Also their Language has had very little in common with the other European languages. Recent studies however show that their language is similar to Punjabi and to a lesser degree to Sanskrit. Thus the Gypsies most likely originated from the greater Punjab. The time frame of Gypsy wanderings also coincides early Islamic conquests hence most likely their ancestors were driven out of their homes in Punjab and taken as slaves over the Hindu Kush.
The theory of Gypsie origins in India was first proposed over two centuries ago. It is only recently theta linguistic and other proofs have been verified. Even the Gypsie leadership now accepts India as the country of their origin.
Thus it is evident that the mountain range was named as Hindu Kush as a reminder to the future Hindu generations of the slaughter and slavery of Hindus during the Moslem conquests.
DELIBERATE IGNORANCE ABOUT HINDU KUSH
If the name Hindu Kush relates such a horrible genocide of Hindus, why are Hindus ignorant about it? and why the Government of India does not teach them about Hindu Kush? The history and geography curriculums in Indian Schools barely even mention Hindu Kush. The horrors of the Jewish holocaust are taught not only in schools in Israel and USA, but also in Germany. Because both Germany and Israel consider the Jewish holocaust a 'dark chapter' in the history. The Indian Government instead of giving details of this 'dark chapter' in Indian history is busy in whitewash of Moslem atrocities and the Hindu holocaust. In 1982, the National Council of Educational Research and Training issued a directive for the rewriting of school texts. Among other things it stipulated that: 'Characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between Hindus and Moslems is forbidden'. Thus denial of history or Negationism has become India's official 'educational' policy (21).
Often the official governmental historians brush aside questions such as those that Hindu Kush raises. They argue that the British version is the product of their 'divide and rule' policy' hence their version is not necessarily true. However it must be remembered that the earliest reference of the name Hindu Kush and its literal meaning 'Hindu Killer' comes from Ibn Battutah in 1333 AD, and at that time British were nowhere on the Indian scene. Secondly, if the name indeed was a misnomer then the Afgans should have protested against such a barbaric name and the last 660 plus years should have been adequate for a change of name to a more 'civil' name. There has been no effort for such a change of name by the Afgans. On the contrary, when the Islamic fundamentalist regime of the Mujahadeens came to power in 1992, tens of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs from Kabul, became refugees, and had to pay steep ransom to enter into Pakistan without a visa.
In the last 46 years the Indian Government also has not even once demanded that the Afgan Government change such an insulting and barbaric name. But in July 1993, the Government of India asked the visiting Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra to change its name because the word Jerusalem in its name is offensive to Moslem Fundamentalists.
CONCLUSION
It is evident that Hindus from ancient India's (Hindustan's) border states such as Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh were massacred or taken as slaves by the Moslem invaders who named the region as Hindu Kush (or Hindu Slaughter,or Hindu Killer) to teach a lesson to the future Hindu generations of India. Unfortunately Hindus are not aware of this tragic history. The Indian government does not want the true history of Hindu Moslem conflicts during the medieval ages to be taught in schools. This policy of negationism is the cause behind the ignorance of Hindus about the Hindu Kush and the Hindu genocide.
COMMENTS & FUTURE WORK
Although in this article Hindu Kush has been referred to as Hindu slaughter, it is quite possible that it was really a Hindu and Buddhist slaughter. Since prior to Moslem invasions influence of Buddhism in Gandhaar and Vaahic Pradesh was considerable. Also as the huge 175 ft stone Buddhas of Bamian show, Buddhists were idol worshipers par excellence. Hence for Moslem invaders the Buddhists idol worshipers were equally deserving of punishment. It is also likely that Buddhism was considered an integral part of the Hindu pantheon and hence was not identified separately.
This article barely scratches the surface of the Hindu genocide, the true depth of which is as yet unknown. Readers are encouraged to find out the truth for themselves . Only when many readers search for the truth, the real magnitude of the Hindu genocide will be discovered.
REFERENCES
1. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.5, p.935, 1987
2. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.14, pp.238-240, 1987
3. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.13, pp.35-36, 1987
4. The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great (as described by Arrian, Q.Curtius, Diodoros, Plutarch & Justin), By J.W.McCrindle, Methuen & Co., London, p.38, 1969
5. Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, by Veer Savarkar, Savarkar Prakashan, Bombay, 2nd Ed, p.206, 1985
6. Chanakya - a TV series by Doordarshan, India
7. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.21, pp.36-41, 1987
8. V.Sarianidi, National Geographic Magazine, Vol.177, No.3, p.57, March 1990
9. Hammond Historical Atlas of the World, pp. H4 & H10, 1993
10. W.O.Douglas, National Geographic Magazine, vol.114, No.1, pp.13-23, July 1958
11. T.J.Abercrombie, National Geographic Magazine, Vol.134, No.3, pp.318-325, Sept.1968
12. An Advanced History of India, by R.C.Majumdar, H.C.Raychaudhuri, K.Datta, 2nd Ed., MacMillan and Co, London, pp.182-83, 1965
13. Ayodhya and After, By Koenraad Elst, Voice of India Publication, p.278, 1991
14. A Practical Dictionary of the Persian Language, by J.A.Boyle, Luzac & Co., p.129, 1949
15. Encyclopedia Americana, Vol.14, p.206, 1993
16. The World Book Encyclopedia, Vol.19, p.237, 1990
17. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.21, pp. 54-55, 1987
18. An Advanced History of India, by R.C.Majumdar, H.C.Raychaudhuri, K.Datta, 2nd Ed., MacMillan and Co, London, pp.336-37, 1965
19. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Vol.21, p.65, 1987
20. The Cambridge History of India, Vol.IV - The Mughul Period, by W.Haig & R.Burn, S.Chand & Co., New Delhi, pp. 98-99, 1963
21. Negationism in India, by Koenraad Elst, Voice of India Publ, 2nd Ed, pp.57-58, 1993
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885: Cholas kill Aparajita, king of the Pallavas, in battle.
ca 900: Lifetime of Matsyendranatha, exponent of the Natha sect emphasizing kundalini yoga practices.
ca 900: Under the Hindu Malla dynasty (ca 900-1700) of Nepal, legal and social codes influenced by Hinduism are introduced. Nepal is broken into several principalities.
ca 900-1001: Lifetime of Sembiyan Ma Devi, queen of Maharaja Gandaraditta Chola from 950-957 and loyal patron of Saivism, builds ten temples and inspires and molds her grand-nephew prince, son of Sundara Chola, into the great temple-builder, Emperor Rajaraja I.
900: Mataramas dynasty in Indonesia reverts to Saivism after a century of Buddhism, building 150 Saiva temples.
ca 950: Lifetime of Gorakshanatha, Natha yogi who founds the order of Kanphatha Yogis and Gorakshanatha Saivism, the philosophical school called Siddha Siddhanta.
ca 950-1015: Lifetime of Kashmir Saiva guru Abhinavagupta.
960: Chola King Vira, after having a vision of Siva Nataraja dancing, commences enlargement of the Siva temple at Chidambaram, including the construction of the gold-roofed shrine. The enlargement is completed in 1250 ce.
985: Rajaraja I (reign 985-1014) ascends the South Indian Chola throne and ushers in a new age of temple architecture exemplified at Tanjavur, Darasuram, Tirubhuvanam and Chidambaram. Pallava architectural influences (dominant vimanas, inconspicuous gopuras) fade.
ca 1000: Gorakshanatha writes Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati, "Tracks on the Doctrines of the Adepts." The nature of God and universe, structure of chakras, kundalini force and methods for realization are explained in 353 verses.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #3
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1000ce to 1500
1000: World population is 265 million. India population is 79 million, 29.8% of world.
ca 1000: A few Hindu communities from Rajasthan, Sindh and other areas, the ancestors of present-day Romani, or Gypsies, gradually move to Persia and on to Europe.
ca 1000: Vikings reach North America, landing in Nova Scotia.
ca 1000: Polynesians arrive in New Zealand, last stage in the greatest migration and navigational feat in history, making them the most widely-spread race on Earth.
1001: Turkish Muslims sweep through the Northwest under Mahmud of Ghazni, defeating Jayapala of Hindu Shahi Dynasty of S. Afghanisthan and Punjab at Peshawar. This is the first major Muslim conquest in India.
ca 1010: Tirumurai, Tamil devotional hymns of Saiva saints, is collected as an anthology by Nambiandar Nambi.
1017: Mahmud of Ghazni sacks Mathura, birthplace of Lord Krishna, and establishes a mosque on the site during one of his 17 Indian invasions for holy war and plunder.
1017-1137: Life of Ramanuja of Kanchipuram, Tamil philosopher-saint of Shri Vaishnava sect that continues bhakti tradition of S. Indian Alvar saints. His strongly theistic nondual Vishishtadvaita Vedanta philosophy restates Pancharatra tradition. Foremost opponent of Shankara's system, he dies at age 120 while head of Shrirangam monastery.
1018-1060: Lifetime of Bhojadeva Paramara, Gujarati king, poet, artist and monistic Saiva Siddhanta theologian.
1024: Mahmud of Ghazni plunders Somanath Siva temple, destroying the Linga and killing 50,000 Hindu defenders. He later builds a mosque on the remaining walls.
1025: Chola ruler Maharaja Rajendra I sends victorious naval expeditions to Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia, initiating decline of Mahayana Buddhist empire of Shrivijaya.
ca 1040: Chinese invent the compass and moveable type and perfect the use of gunpowder, first invented and used in India as an explosive mixture of saltpetre, sulfur and charcoal to power guns, cannons and artillery.
ca 1050: Lifetime of Shrikantha, promulgator of Siva Advaita, a major philosophical school of Saivism.
ca 1130-1200: Lifetime of Nimbarka, Telegu founder of the Vaishnava Nimandi sect holding the philosophy of dvaitadvaita, dual-nondualism. He introduces the worship of Krishna together with consort Radha. (Present-day Nimavats revere Vishnu Himself, in the form of the Hamsa Avatara, as the originator of their sect.)
ca 1130: Lifetime of Sekkilar, Tamil chief minister under Chola Emperor Kulottunga II (reign 1133-1150) and author of Periyapuranam, 4,286-verse epic biography (hagiography) of the 63 Saiva saints and 12th book of Tirumurai.
ca 1150: Life of Basavanna, renaissance guru of the Vira Saiva sect, stressing free will, equality, service to humanity and worship of the Sivalinga worn around the neck.
ca 1150: Khmer ruler Suryavarman II completes Angkor Wat temple (in present-day Cambodia), where his body is later entombed and worshiped as an embodiment of Vishnu. This largest Hindu temple in Asia is 12 miles in circumference, with a 200-foot high central tower.
ca 1162: Mahadevi is born, female Saiva ascetic saint of Karnataka, writes 350 majestic and mystical poems.
1175: Toltec Empire of Mexico crumbles.
1185: Mohammed of Ghur conquers Punjab and Lahore.
1191: Eisai founds Rinzai Zen sect in Japan after study in China.
1193: Qutb ud-Din Aybak founds first Muslim Sultanate of Delhi, establishing the Mamluk Dynasty (1193-1290).
1197: Great Buddhist university of Nalanda is destroyed by Muslim Ikhtiyar ud-din.
1200: All of North India is under Muslim domination.
1200: India population reaches 80 million.
ca 1200: An unknown author writes Yoga Yajnavalkya.
1215: King John is forced to sign the Magna Carta, giving greater rights to citizens in England.
1227: Mongolian Emperor Genghis Khan, conqueror of a vast area from Beijing, China, to Iran and north of Tibet, the largest empire the world has yet seen, dies.
1230-60: Surya temple at Konarak, Orissa, India, is constructed.
1238-1317: Lifetime of Ananda Tirtha, Madhva, venerable Vaishnava dualist and opponent of Shankara's mayavadin advaita philosophy. He composes 37 works and founds Dvaita Vedanta school, the Brahma Vaishnava Sampradaya and its eight monasteries, ashtamatha, in Udupi.
ca 1250: Lifetime of Meykandar, Saiva saint who founds the Meykandar school of pluralistic Saiva Siddhanta, of which his 12-sutra Sivajnanabodham becomes its core scripture.
1260: Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, is born.
1268-1369: Lifetime of Vedanta Deshikar, gifted Tamil scholar and poet who founds sect of Vaishnavism called Vadakalai, headquartered at Kanchipuram.
1270-1350: Lifetime of Namadeva, foremost poet saint of Maharashtra's Varkari ("pilgrim") Vaishnava school, disciple of Jnanadeva. He and his family compose a million verses in praise of Lord Vithoba (Vishnu).
1272: Marco Polo visits India en route to China.
1274: Council of Lyons II declares that souls go immediately to heaven, purgatory or hell; interpreted by Catholic fathers as condemning the doctrine of reincarnation.
1275-96: Lifetime of Jnanadeva, Natha-trained Vaishnava saint, founder of the Varkari school, who writes Jnaneshvari, a Marathi verse commentary on Bhagavad Gita, which becomes Maharashtra's most popular book.
1279: Muktabai is born, Maharashtrian Varkari saint and Natha yogini, writes 100 sacred verses.
1280: Mongol (Yuen) dynasty (1280-1368) begins in China, under which occurs the last of much translation work into Chinese from Sanskrit.
1296: Ala-ud-din, second king of Khalji dynasty, rules most of India after his General Kafur conquers the South, extending Muslim dominion to Rameshwaram.
ca 1300: Lifetime of Janabai, Maharashtrian Varkari Vaishnava woman saint who writes a portion of Namadeva's million verses to Vithoba (Vishnu).
ca 1300: The Ananda Samucchaya is written, 277 stanzas on hatha yoga, with discussion of the chakras and the nadis.
1300: Muslim conquerors reach Cape Comorin at the southernmost tip of India and build a mosque there.
1317-72: Life of Lalla of Kashmir. Saiva renunciate, mystic poetess contributes significantly to the Kashmiri language.
1336: Vijayanagara Empire (1336-1565-1646) of South India is founded. European visitors are overwhelmed by the wealth and advancement of its 17-square-mile capital.
1345: Aztecs establish great civilization in Mexico.
1346-90: Life of Krittivasa, translator of Ramayana into Bengali.
1347: Plague called the Black Death spreads rapidly, killing 75 million worldwide before it recedes in 1351.
ca 1350: Svatmarama writes Hatha Yoga Pradipika.
ca 1350: Lifetime of Appaya Dikshita, South Indian philosoper saint whose writings reconcile Vaishnavism and Saivism. He advances Siva Advaita and other Saiva schools and compiles a temple priests' manual still used today.
1398: Tamerlane (Timur) invades India with 90,000 cavalry and sacks Delhi because its Muslim Sultanate is too tolerant of Hindu idolatry. A Mongolian follower of Sufism, he is one of the most ruthless of all conquerors.
1399: Hardwar, Ganga pilgrimage town, is sacked by Timur.
ca 1400: Goraksha Upanishad is written.
1414: Hindu prince Parameshvara of Malaysia converts to Islam.
1414-80: Life of Gujarati Vaishnava poet-saint Narasinha Mehta.
1415: Bengali poet-singer Baru Chandidas writes Shrikrishnakirtana, a collection of exquisite songs praising Krishna.
1429: Joan of Arc, age 17, leads the French to victory over the English.
ca 1433: China cloisters itself from outside world by banning further voyages to the West. (First bamboo curtain.)
1440-1518: Lifetime of Kabir, Vaishnava reformer with who has both Muslim and Hindu followers. (His Hindi songs remain immensely popular to the present day.)
ca 1440: Johannes Gutenberg (ca 1400-1468) invents the West's first moveable-type printing press in Germany.
1450?-1547: Lifetime of Mirabai, Vaishnava Rajput princess saint who, married at an early age to the Rana of Udaipur, devotes herself to Krishna and later renounces worldly life to wander India singing to Him beautiful mystic compositions that are sung to the present day.
1469-1538: Lifetime of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism, originally a reformist Hindu sect stressing devotion, faith in the guru, repetition of God's name and rejection of renunciation and caste. (Most Sikhs in the present day consider themselves members of a separate religion.)
1478: Spanish Inquisition begins. Over the next 20 years, Christians burn several thousand persons at the stake.
1479-1531: Lifetime of Vallabhacharya, a married Telegu brahmin saint who teaches pushtimarga, "path of love," and a lofty nondual philosophy, Shuddhadvaita Vedanta, in which souls are eternally one with Brahman. Vallabhacharya's Vaishnavism worships Krishna in the form of Shri Nathji.
1483-1563: Lifetime of Surdas, sightless Hindi bard of Agra, whose hymns to Krishna are compiled in the Sursagar.
1486-1543: Life of Chaitanya, Bengali founder of popular Vaishnava sect which proclaims Krishna Supreme God and emphasizes sankirtan, group chanting and dancing.
1492: Looking for India, Christopher Columbus lands on San Salvador island in the Caribbean, thus "discovering" the Americas and proving that the earth is round, not flat.
1498: Portugal's Vasco da Gama sails around Cape of Good Hope to Calicut, Kerala, first European to find sea route to India.
ca 1500: Life of Arunagirinathar, Tamil saint, author of Tiruppugal hymns; emphasizes feeding the hungry during a time of Muslim oppression and disrupted family life.
ca 1500: Buddhist and Saiva Hindu princes are forced off Java by invading Muslims. They resettle on neighboring Bali, with their overlapping priesthoods and vast royal courts: poets, dancers, musicians and artisans. Within 100 years they construct what many call a fairytale kingdom.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #4
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1500 to 1800ce
1500: World population 425 million; 105 million live in India.
1503-1566: Lifetime of Nostradamus, French physician and astrologer who wrote Centuries (1555), a book of prophecies.
1509-1529: Reign of Maharaja Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire in Andhra Pradesh.
1510: Portuguese Catholics conquer Goa to serve as capital of their Asian maritime empire, beginning conquest and exploitation of India by Europeans.
1517: Luther begins Protestant reformation in Europe.
ca 1520: Poet-saint Purandardas (1480-1564) of the Vijayanagara court systematizes Karnatak music.
1526: Mughal conqueror Babur (1483-1530) defeats the Sultan of Delhi and captures the Koh-i-noor diamond. Occupying Delhi, by 1529 he founds the Indian Mughal Empire (1526-1761), consolidated by his grandson Akbar.
1528: Emperor Babur destroys temple at Lord Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya, erects Muslim masjid, or monument.
1532-1623: Life of Monk-poet Tulasidasa. Writes Ramacharitamanasa (1574-77), greatest medieval Hindi literature (based on Ramayana). It advances Rama worship in the North.
1542: Portuguese Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506-1552), most successful Catholic missionary, lands in Goa. First to train and employ native clergy in conversion efforts, he brings Christianity to India, Malay Archipelago and Japan.
Reference: http://www.hinduunity.com/articles/christ/popeapologize.html
Why The Pope Should Apologize To India
Vishwas Varghese
Why The Pope Should Apologize To India
The VHP's protest march against the Pope's visit in India this week, has drawn quite a lot of attention and flak as a misguided attempt to "create disorder by fascist". The Indian media has been having a field day with mongering rumors that seek to undermine and defame the Hindutva oriented organizations. One has to look beyond all the politically motivated hype and hoopla and look analytically at what is the logic behind the demand for the Pope's apology. The rationale behind this demand is cited to be the Christian Inquisition which took place in Goa, for the purpose of forcefully converting the Hindus to Christianity. Let us take a look at some historical facts to see if the Hindutva minded organizations are truly justified in asking the pope as the representative of the Catholic church to apologize and atone for such crimes against Hindus in the past.
Alan Machado-Prabhu has recently written a book about the history of Goa starting from ancient times, titled Sarasvati's Children: A History of the Mangalorean Christians. The book describes in detail the origins of Goa's inhabitants. According to Machado's account and that of several established historians, some time around 1000 B.C. an immense number of Vedic people who originally lived on the banks of the river Sarasvati migrated to this coast. Their emigration was forced by the drying up of the Sarasvati River which was the basis for much of the so called Indus Valley civilization. This civilization has now been termed the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization in view of its indelible dependence on the Sarasvati and Sindhu rivers. Moreover the work of such accomplished scholars as N.S. Rajaram, David Frawley, N. Jha, S.R. Rao, etc. has proven that the Sarasvati Sindhu civilization was a Vedic one. As a consequence the people who were forced to seek fresh fields and pastures in view of the drying up of Sarasvati, were none other than Hindus. Large numbers of them followed the ancient Dakshinapatha, the southern route and came all the way to Gomantak and to what is now called Goa. Gomantak had no indigenous population and therefore made an ideal place to settle down for these scholars.
The new location was a highly successful one because of the fertile quality of the land. The majority of the emigrants were highly educated and well versed in the advanced scientific, artistic and literary traditions of Vedic civilization and therefore began to be called the Brahmins of the north (Gaud). Eventually they began to be referred to as the Gaud Sarasvat Brahmins. They were famous all over India and abroad for their immense scholarship and learning. Over the centuries Goa was comparatively undisturbed under the rule of the Mauryas, the Kadambas and the Chalukya dynasty. But around 1327 AD Goa was conquered by Mohammed Bin Tughlak and thousands of Hindus were massacred in cold blood. A number of murderous Muslim rulers such as Bahamani king Mohammed Shah, Yusuf Adil Shah, etc. held the state in the grip of terror until the Portugese Christians who came to foreign lands led by Vasco De Gama in the hope of converting millions of "Heathens" managed to overcome them. By the mid 1500s, the Portugese had established a strong hold on Indian ports and the terror of the Inquisition sanctioned by the Catholic Church was established and institutionalized in Goa. The main objective of the Inquisitors was to ensure that all natives be converted to Christianity whether by the sword, bribery or blackmail.
Around 1540 the Inquisition was at its peak, thousands of Hindus were dispossessed, massacred and mutilated if they refused to convert. Half the property of a person found in possession of idols went to the Church. According to Machado, "The Church acquired urban and rural properties on an impressive scale". An incredible amount of loot and plunder of the immense riches possessed by the Hindus was shipped off to the Church. Hindus were forbidden from performing any of their festivals openly. Hindu were amassed and deliberately forced to participate in grotesque public performances for the Christian feast days during the very same days that they used to celebrate Hindu festivals. To this day these macabre enactments still survive in Goa today as the Milagres feast dance, the Carnavalo and the Festa de Leques.
In 1542 the most barbaric of these oppressors in the form of Jesuit priest "Saint" Francis Xavier arrived on the scene. The incredible hatred and venom that this man nursed against the Hindus is obvious from his own writings and records. In 1543 , Xavier sent a Letter from India, to the Society of Jesus at Rome which outlined his perspective of the Indian people. The extremely racist and intolerant views of Christian proselytizers like Xavier pour out of every word in this letter:
"We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. These are the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made the others their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.
As there is so great a variety of color among men, and the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at."
Xavier would become an increasingly frustrated and embittered man as he discovered the obstinate stubbornness with which the Hindus refused to be forced to convert to Christianity. His frustration is evident in a Letter on the Missions sent in 1949 to St. Ignatius de Loyola, of the Catholic Church. In it as usual he displays his ample hatred for the "idolaters" as he calls the Hindus, but his most vitriolic animosity is reserved for the Brahmins who were the primary defenders of Hinduism. By this time Xavier has apparently become aware of the fact that it is the Brahmins who are the final line of defense in keeping the Hindu followers together. His inability to suppress them leads to his sweeping generalization that the entire race of Indians is "barbaric" in this letter:
"May the grace and charity of our Lord Christ always be with us! Amen.
My own and only Father in the Heart of Christ, I think that the many letters from this place which have lately been sent to Rome will inform you how prosperously the affairs of religion go on in these parts, through your prayers and the good bounty of God. But there seem to be certain things which I ought myself to speak about to you; so I will just touch on a few points relating to these parts of the world which are so distant from Rome. In the first place, the whole race of the Indians, as far as I have been able to see, is very barbarous; and it does not like to listen to anything that is not agreeable to its own manners and customs, which, as I say, are barbarous. It troubles itself very little to learn anything about divine things and things which concern salvation. Most of the Indians are of vicious disposition, and are adverse to virtue. Their instability, levity, and inconstancy of mind are incredible; they have hardly any honesty, so inveterate are their habits of sin and cheating. We have hard work here, both in keeping the Christians up to the mark and in converting the heathen. And, as we are your children, it is fair that on this account you should take great care of us and help us continually by your prayers to God.
You know very well what a hard business it is to teach people who neither have any knowledge of God nor follow reason, but think it a strange and intolerable thing to be told to give up their habits of sin, which have now gained all the force of nature by long possession. The experience which I have of these countries makes me think that I can affirm with truth, that there is no prospect of perpetuating our Society out here by means of the natives themselves, and that the Christian religion will hardly survive us who are now in the country; so that it is quite necessary that continual supplies of ours should be sent out from Europe."
One is amazed at Xavier's Christian definition of barbarism. Apparently anyone who does not recognize Jesus Christ as his savior qualifies for this title. It would have been fascinating to know what the victims of this undisguised genocidal aggression thought of their tormentors. Indeed "barbarism" is too mild a word to aptly describes the horrific aggression that was perpetrated on the Goans for the sake of Christ!
In Machado's book the chapter on the Inquisition is aptly headed: Horrendum Ac Tremendum Spectaculem. Machado relates how the historian Fryer describes one of the instances of the Christian aggression - "In the principal market was raised an Engine of great height, at top like a Gibbet, with a Pulley for the Strapado which unhinges a Man's joints, a cruel Torture." Even Fryrer's (1675) brief reference to the Inquisition barely does justice to the fearful dread it brought to the people living in Portuguese territories. Of all the organizations the Portuguese took to her overseas territories it was the Inquisition that stalked the land, menacing and seeking all it might devour".
Portugese records themselves show that the Inquisition burned at the stake 57 alive and 64 in effigy, 105 of them being men and 16 women. Others sentenced to various cruel punishments totaled 4,046 of whom 3,034 were men. The people who were converted but still continued occasionally and secretly to perform Hindu rituals were treated even more harshly. Even this low number represented by the perpetrators themselves is enough to provide us a clue to how many were truly subjected to the horrors. There can be no doubt that thousands if not millions perished at the hands of the Christian Sword which would not tolerate non believers in the path of the Church.
Many of the orders dictated by the Portugese administration demonstrate the depth of oppression against their victims. Mr. Kanchan Gupta, the editor of BJP Today had researched and presented these records in his brilliant article on Rediff magazine, earlier this year. Some of the historical records that Mr. Gupta unearthed, clearly demonstrated the unabashedly oppressive nature of the Christian regime which had ruthlessly usurped Goa.
On April 2, 1560, Viceroy D Constantine de Braganca issued orders instructing that Brahmins should be thrown out of Goa and other areas under Portuguese control. They were given al of one month to dispose of all possessions. Anyone found violating the order would have their properties seized.
On February 7, 1575, Governor Antonio Morez Barreto declared that the estates of Brahmins whose "presence was prejudicial to Christianity" would be confiscated and used for "providing clothes to the New Christians".
In 1585, The Third Concilio Provincial which was a gathering of bishops and other Christian leaders adopted a resolution declaring, 'His Majesty the king has on occasion ordered the viceroys and governors of India that there should be no Brahmins in his lands, and that they should be banished therefrom together with the physicians and other infidels who are prejudicial to Christianity. As the orders of His Majesty in this regard have not been executed, great impediments in the way of conversion and the community of New Christians have followed and continue to follow. From now onwards at certain times in each year the archbishop should obtain information regarding Brahmins, physicians and any other infidels who might be prejudicial to conversion to Christianity, and in consultation with the Christian priests, prepare a roll of their names which should be signed by him. This should be presented to the viceroy or the governor in order that the latter might issue orders for banishing them from the lands of the king, as His Majesty has ordered...'
On January 31, 1620, the Portugese declared that '...no Hindu, of whatever nationality or status he may be, can or shall perform marriages in this city of Goa, nor in the islands or adjacent territories of His Majesty, under pain of a fine of 1000 Xerafins.'
The Third Concilio Provincial also demanded a ban on the traditional thread ceremony and the ban was imposed by the Sword. The Brahmins who tried to evade such prejudicial dictates by going outside Portuguese territory for the ceremony were prevented from doing so by the ominously threatening order that said 'I hereby order that no Hindu subject proceed beyond the borders of the state to celebrate the thread ceremony...' Orders prohibiting Hindu women from wearing Bindi on their foreheads along with an order allowing the Christian clergy the right to baptize all orphans are blatant proofs of the violent suppression of religious rights by the Christian Church in Goa.
Such then is the history of Christian persecution in Goa. And yet the cruelest of these proselytizers from the past are supposed to be treated as 'Saints" by the very nation that was victimized by them! Stating the facts about the past tyranny of the Church in India, quickly becomes an "earth shattering" conspiracy by the "fascist" Hindu extremists. The signs of India's humiliation and oppression at the hands of her Christian aggressors is present everywhere in the nomenclature of innumerable roads, buildings and educational institutions named after the very criminals who sought to annihilate all traces of India's vast and ancient repertoire of advanced knowledge.
Is asking the Pope to apologize for such a vast range of heinous crimes unjustified? Saint Francis Xavier, the missionary who was responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Hindus of Goa was canonized and is cited today as one of the foremost Saints of the Catholic Church. A quick search of the catholic Encyclopedia yields us this information about him.
"It is truly a matter of wonder that one man in the short space of ten years (6 May, 1542 - 2 December, 1552) could have visited so many countries, traversed so many seas, preached the Gospel to so many nations, and converted so many infidels. The incomparable apostolic zeal which animated him, and the stupendous miracles which God wrought through him, explain this marvel, which has no equal elsewhere. St. Francis Xavier is considered the greatest missionary since the time of the Apostles, and the zeal he displayed, the wonderful miracles he performed, and the great number of souls he brought to the light of true Faith, entitle him to this distinction. He was canonized with St. Ignatius in 1622, although on account of the death of Gregory XV, the Bull of canonization was not published until the following year. The body of the saint is still enshrined at Goa in the church which formerly belonged to the Society. In 1614 by order of Claudius Acquaviva, General of the Society of Jesus, the right arm was severed at the elbow and conveyed to Rome, where the present altar was erected to receive it in the church of the Gesu. "
Even today the body of the "Saint" in Goa is said to be in a "marvelous" state of preservation as proof of his miraculous character.
With Saints like Francis Xavier epitomizing the nature of Christian kindness in India, is it any wonder that the proselytizing nature of the Church is increasingly condemned and denounced by civilized human beings all over the world? The souls of the thousands of Indians that suffered genocide at the hands of the religious fanaticism which was institutionalized by the Catholic Church, would hardly find succor in any apology by the Pope.
But at the very least it would have been a some small form of retribution for the sins committed by the forces he represents.
1544-1603: Life of Dadu, ascetic saint of Gujarat, founder of Dadupantha, which is guided by his Bani poems in Hindi.
1556: Akbar (1542-1605), grandson of Babur, becomes third Mughal Emperor at age 13. Disestablishes Islam as state religion and declares himself impartial ruler of Hindus and Muslims; encourages art, culture, religious tolerance.
1565: Muslim forces defeat and completely destroy the city of Vijayanagara. Empire's final collapse comes in 1646.
1565: Polish astronomer Copernicus' (1473-1543) Heliocentric system, in which the Earth orbits the sun, gains popularity in Europe among astronomers and mathematicians.
1569: Akbar captures fortress of Ranthambor, ending Rajput independence. Soon controls nearly all of Rajasthan.
ca 1570: Ekanatha (1533-99), Varkari Vaishnava saint and mystic composer, edits Jnanadeva's Jnaneshvari and translates Bhagavata Purana, advancing Marathi language.
1588: British ships defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Calais, France, to become rulers of the high seas.
1589: Akbar rules half of India, shows tolerance for all faiths.
1595: Construction is begun on Chidambaram Temple's Hall of a Thousand Pillars in South India, completed in 1685.
ca 1600: "Persian wheel" to lift water by oxen is adopted, one of few farming innovations since Indus Valley civilization.
1600: Royal Charter forms the East India Company, setting in motion a process that ultimately results in the subjugation of India under British rule.
1603-4: Guru Arjun compiles Adi Granth, Sikh scripture.
1605: Akbar the Great dies at age 63. His son Jahangir succeeds him as fourth Mughal Emperor.
1605: Sikh Golden Temple (Harimandir) at Amritsar, Punjab, is finished, completely covered with gold leaf.
1608-49: Lifetime of Tukaram, beloved Varkari sant famed for his abhangas, "unbroken hymns," to Krishna. Considered greatest Marathi spiritual composer.
1608-81: Lifetime of Ramdas, mystic poet, Sivaji's guru, Marathi saint, who gives Hindus the dhvaja, saffron flag.
1610: Galileo of Italy (1564-1642) perfects the telescope, with which he confirms the Copernican theory. Condemned a heretic by the Catholic Inquisition for his discoveries.
1613-14: British East India Company sets up trading post at Surat.
1615-18: Mughals grant Britain right to trade and establish factories in exchange for English navy's protection of the Mughal Empire, which faces Portuguese sea power.
1619: Jaffna kingdom is annexed and Sri Lanka's ruling dynasty deposed by Portuguese Catholics who, between 1505 and 1658, destroy most of the island's Hindu temples.
1619: First black slaves from Africa are sold in the USA.
1620: European pilgrims land and settle at Plymouth Rock, US.
1627-80: Life of Sivaji, valiant general and tolerant founder of Hindu Maratha Empire (1674-1818). Emancipates large areas confiscated by Muslims, returning them to Hindu control. First Indian ruler to build a major naval force.
ca 1628-88: Lifetime of Kumaraguruparar, prolific poet-saint of Tamil Nadu who founds monastery in Varanasi to propound Saiva Siddhanta philosophy.
1630: Over the next two years, millions starve to death as Shah Jahan (1592-1666), fifth Mughal Emperor, empties the royal treasury to buy jewels for his "Peacock Throne."
1647: Shah Jahan completes Taj Mahal in Agra beside Yamuna River. Its construction has taken 20,000 laborers 15 years, at a total cost equivalence of US$25 million.
1649: Red Fort is completed in Delhi by Shah Jahan.
ca 1650: Dharmapuram Aadheenam, Saiva monastery, founded near Mayuram, South India, by Guru Jnanasambandar.
ca 1650: Robert de Nobili (1577-1656), Portuguese Jesuit missionary noted for fervor and intolerance, arrives in Madurai, declares himself a brahmin, dresses like a Hindu monk and composes Veda-like scripture extolling Jesus.
ca 1650: Two yoga classics, Siva Samhita and Gheranda Samhita, are written.
1654: A Tamil karttanam is written and sung to celebrate recovery installation of Tiruchendur's Murugan murti.
1658: Zealous Muslim Aurangzeb (1618-1707) becomes Mughal Emperor. His discriminatory policies toward Hindus, Marathas and the Deccan kingdoms contribute to the dissolution of the Mughal Empire by 1750.
1660: Frenchman Francois Bernier reports India's peasantry is living in misery under Mughal rule.
1664: Great Plague of London kills 70,000, 15% of the population.
1675: Aurangzeb executes Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur, beginning the Sikh-Muslim feud that continues to this day.
1679: Aurangzeb levies Jizya tax on non-believers, Hindus.
1688: Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb demolishes all temples in Mathura, said to number 1,000. (During their reign, Muslim rulers destroy roughly 60,000 Hindu temples throughout India, constructing mosques on 3,000 sites.)
1700: World population is 610 million. India population is 165 million: 27% of world.
1705-42: Lifetime of Tayumanavar, Tamil Saiva poet saint and devotional yogic philosopher of Tiruchirappalli.
1708: Govind Singh, tenth and last Sikh guru, is assassinated.
1708-37: Jai Singh II builds astronomical observatories in Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Benares and Mathura.
1718-75: Lifetime of Ramprasad, Bengali Shakta poet-saint.
1722: Peter the Great rules in Russia.
ca 1725: Jesuit Father Hanxleden compiles first Sanskrit grammar in a European language.
ca 1750: Shakta songs of Bengali poets Ramprasad Sen and Kamalakanta Bhattacharya glorify Her as loving Mother and Daughter and stimulate a rise in devotional Shaktism.
1751: Robert Clive, age 26, seizes Arcot in modern Tamil Nadu as French and British fight for control of South India.
1760: Saiva sannyasis fight Vaishnava vairagis in tragic battle at Hardwar Kumbha Mela; 18,000 monks are killed.
1760: Eliezer (Besht), liberal founder of Hasidic Judaism, dies.
1761: Afghan army of Ahmad Shah Durrani routs Hindu Maratha forces at Panipat, ending Maratha hegemony in North India. As many as 200,000 Hindus are said to have died in the strategic eight-hour battle.
1764: British defeat the weak Mughal Emperor to become rulers of Bengal, richest province of India.
1769: Prithivi Narayan Shah, ruler of Gorkha principality, conquers Nepal Valley; moves capital to Kathmandu, establishing present-day Hindu nation of Nepal.
ca 1770-1840: Life of Rishi from the Himalayas, guru of Kadaitswami and first historically known satguru of the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara since Tirumular.
1773: British East India Company obtains monopoly on the production and sale of opium in Bengal.
ca 1780-1830: Golden era of Karnatik music. Composers include Tyagaraja, Dikshitar and Shastri.
1781: George Washington defeats British at Yorktown, US.
1781-1830: Lifetime of Sahajanandaswami, Gujarati founder of the Swaminarayan sect (with 1.5 million followers today).
1784: Judge and linguist Sir William Jones founds Calcutta's Royal Asiatic Society. First such scholastic institution.
1786: Sir William Jones uses the Rig Veda term Aryan ("noble") to name the parent language (now termed Indo-European) of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Germanic tongues.
1787-95: British Parliament impeaches Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal (1774-85) for misconduct.
1787: British Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is formed, marking the beginning of the end of slavery.
1789: French revolution begins with storming of the Bastille.
1792: Britain's Cornwallis defeats Tipu Sahib, Sultan of Mysore and most powerful ruler in South India, main bulwark of resistance to British expansion in India.
1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin in the US, greatly affecting the institution of slavery.
1796: Over two million worshipers compete for sacred Ganga bath at Kumbha Mela in Hardwar. Five thousand Saiva ascetics are killed in tragic clash with Sikh ascetics.
1799: Sultan Tipu is killed in battle against 5,000 British soldiers who storm and raze his capital, Srirangapattinam.
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #5
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1800ce to the Present and Beyond!
1803: Second Anglo-Maratha war results in British Christian capture of Delhi and control of large parts of India.
1803: India's population is 200 million.
1803-82: Lifetime of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet who helps popularize Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads in US.
1807: Importation of slaves is banned in the US through an act of Congress motivated by Thomas Jefferson.
1809: British strike a bargain with Ranjit Singh for exclusive areas of influence.
ca 1810-75: Lifetime of renaissance guru Kadaitswami, born near Bangalore, sent to Sri Lanka by Rishi from the Himalayas to strengthen Saivism against Catholic incursion.
1812: Napoleon's army retreats from Moscow. Only 20,000 soldiers survive out of a 500,000-man invasion force.
1814: First practical steam locomotive is built.
1817-92: Lifetime of Bahaullah, Mirza Husayn 'Ali, founder of Baha'i faith (1863), a major off-shoot religion of Islam.
1818-78: Lifetime of Sivadayal, renaissance founder of the esoteric reformist Radhasoami Vaishnava sect in Agra.
1820: First Indian immigrants arrive in the US.
1822-79: Life of Arumuga Navalar of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, renaissance activist who propounds Advaita Siddhanta, writes first Hindu catechism and translates Bible into Tamil so it can be compared faithfully to the Vedas and Agamas.
1823-74: Life of Ramalingaswami, Tamil saint, renaissance founder of Vadalur's "Hall of Wisdom for Universal Worship."
1824-83: Lifetime of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati, renaissance founder of Arya Samaj (1875), Hindu reformist movement stressing a return to the values and practices of the Vedas. Author of Satya Prakash, "Light on Truth."
1825: First massive immigration of Indian workers from Madras is to Reunion and Mauritius. This immigrant Hindu community builds their first temple in 1854.
1828: Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) founds Adi Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, first movement to initiate religio-social reform. Influenced by Islam and Christianity, he denounces polytheism, idol worship; repudiates the Vedas, avataras, karma and reincarnation, caste and more.
1831-91: Lifetime of Russian mystic Madame H.P. Blavatsky, founder of Theosophical Society in 1875, bringing aspects of psychism, Buddhism and Hinduism to the West.
1831: British Christians defeat Ranjit Singh's forces at Balakot, in Sikh attempt to establish a homeland in N.W. India.
1833: Slavery is abolished in British Commonwealth countries, giving impetus to abolitionists in United States.
1835: Civil service jobs in India are opened to Indians.
1835: Macaulay's Minute furthers Western education in India. English is made official government and court language.
1835: Mauritius receives 19,000 immigrant indentured laborers from India. Last ship carrying workers arrives in 1922.
1836-86: Lifetime of Shri Ramakrishna, God-intoxicated Bengali Shakta saint, guru of Swami Vivekananda. He exemplifies the bhakti dimension of Shakta Universalism.
1837: Britain formalizes emigration of Indian indentured laborers to supply cheap labor under a system more morally acceptable to British Christian society than slavery, illegal in the British Empire since 1833.
1837: Kali-worshiping Thugees are suppressed by British.
1838: British Guyana receives its first 250 Indian laborers.
1838-84: Lifetime of Keshab Chandra Sen, Hindu reformer who founds Brahma Samaj of India, a radical offshoot of the Adi Brahmo Samaj of Ram Mohan Roy.
1840-1915: Lifetime of Satguru Chellappaswami of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, initiated at age 19 by Siddha Kadaitswami as next satguru in the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara.
1840: Joseph de Goubineau (1816-1882), French scholar, writes The Inequality of Human Races. Proclaims the "Aryan race" superior to other great strains and lays down the aristocratic class-doctrine of Aryanism that later provides the basis for Adolf Hitler's Aryan racism.
1842-1901: Life of Eknath Ranade, founder of Prarthana Samaj. His social-reform thinking inspires Gokhale and Gandhi.
1843: British conquer the Sind region (present-day Pakistan).
1845: Trinidad receives its first 197 Indian immigrant laborers.
1846: British forcibly separate Kashmir from the Sikhs and sell it to the Maharaja of Jammu for pounds1,000,000.
1849: Sikh army is defeated by the British at Amritsar.
1850: First English translation of the Rig Veda by H.H. Wilson, first holder of Oxford's Boden Chair, founded "to promote the translation of the Scriptures into English, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion."
1851: Sir M. Monier-Williams (1819-99) publishes English-Sanskrit Dictionary. His completed Sanskrit-English Dictionary is released in 1899 after three decades of work.
1853-1920: Lifetime of Shri Sharada Devi, wife of Shri Ramakrishna.
1853: Max Muller (1823-1900), German Christian philologist and Orientalist, advocates the term Aryan to name a hypothetical primitive people of Central Asia, the common ancestors of Hindus, Persians and Greeks. Muller speculates that this "Aryan race" divided and marched west to Europe and east to India and China around 1500 bce. Their language, Muller contends, developed into Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, etc., and all ancient civilizations descended from this Aryan race.
1856: Catholic missionary Bishop Caldwell coins the term Dravidian to refer to South Indian Caucasian peoples.
1857: First Indian Revolution, called the Sepoy Mutiny, ends in a few months with the fall of Delhi and Lucknow.
1858: India has 200 miles of railroad track. By 1869 5,000 miles of steel track have been completed by British railroad companies. In 1900, total track is 25,000 miles, and by World War I, 35,000 miles. By 1970, at 62,136 miles, it has become the world's greatest train system. Unfortunately, this development depletes India's forest lands.
1859: Charles Darwin, releases controversial book, The Origin of Species, propounding his "natural selection" theory of evolution, laying the foundations of modern biology.
1860: S.S. Truro and S.S. Belvedere dock in Durban, S. Africa, carrying first indentured servants (from Madras and Calcutta) to work sugar plantations. With contracts of five years and up, thousands emigrate over next 51 years.
1861: American Civil War begins in Charleston, S. Carolina.
1861-1941: Lifetime of Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
1863-1902: Life of Swami Vivekananda, dynamic renaissance missionary to West and catalyst of Hindu revival in India.
1869-1948: Lifetime of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian nationalist and Hindu political activist who develops the strategy of nonviolent disobedience that forces Christian Great Britain to grant independence to India (1947).
1870: Papal doctrine of infallibility is asserted by the Vatican.
1872-1964: Lifetime of Satguru Yogaswami, Natha renaissance sage of Sri Lanka, Chellappaswami's successor in the Kailasa Parampara of the Nandinatha Sampradaya.
1872-1950: Life of Shri Aurobindo Ghosh, Bengali Indian nationalist and renaissance yoga philosopher. His 30-volume work discusses the "superman," the Divinely transformed individual soul. Withdraws from the world in 1910 and founds international ashram in Pondicherry.
Chronology
1872, Aug. 15 - Sri Aurobindo is born in Calcutta; he spends his first years at Rangpur (now in Bangladesh), and at the age of 5 is sent to Loreto Convent School, Darjeeling.
1878, Feb. 21 - Mother is born in Paris.
1879, June - Sri Aurobindo leaves India for England with his parents and his two elder brothers. He spends 5 years in Manchester, enters St. Paul's School, London, in 1884, and King's College, Cambridge, in 1890.
1885, Dec. - First session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay.
1886, Aug. 16 - Sri Ramakrishna passes away.
1892, August - Sri Aurobindo passes the I.C.S.; he does not appear at a riding test and is disqualified.
1893, Feb. 6 - Lands at Bombay and soon joins the State service of the Maharaja Gaekwar of Baroda. From August, 1893 to March, 1894, contributes to the Indu Prakash a series of articles, “New Lamps for Old.”
1893, May 31 - Swami Vivekananda sails for America.
1894, April 8 - Bankim Chandra Chatterji passes away. In July-August, Sri Aurobindo writes a series of articles on him in the Indu Prakash.
1897 - Sri Aurobindo teaches French, then English at the Baroda College; he will become its Vice-Principal in 1905.
1897, Jan. 15 - Swami Vivekananda lands at Colombo, and on his way north delivers many lectures throughout India.
c. 1900 - Sri Aurobindo takes first contacts with secret societies in Maharashtra and Bengal.
1901, April 30 - Sri Aurobindo marries Mrinalini Bose.
1902, July 4 - Swami Vivekananda passes away.
1905 - Sri Aurobindo writes Bhawani Mandir, a revolutionary pamphlet.
- Partition of Bengal, beginning of the Swadeshi movement.
1906, August - Bepin Chandra Pal launches the Bande Mataram (English daily); Sri Aurobindo joins it and soon becomes its editor.
- On August 15, the Bengal National College opens with Sri Aurobindo as its principal.
1906, Dec. - At its Calcutta session presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, the Congress declares Swaraj to be its goal.
1907, Aug. 16 - Sri Aurobindo is arrested for the publication of seditious writings in the Bande Mataram; released on bail. He resigns his post of principal of the Bengal National College, giving on August 23 a speech to the students and teachers. Acquitted a month later.
1907, Dec. - At the Surat session of the Congress, the Nationalist party with Sri Aurobindo presiding over its conference breaks away from the Moderates.
- First session of the Muslim League at Karachi.
1908, January - In Baroda, Sri Aurobindo meets Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, a Maharashtrian yogi, and experiences the Brahman consciousness. Gives many speeches on his way back to Calcutta.
1907-1908 - Many Nationalist leaders, such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Ashwini Kumar Dutt, etc., are deported under various repressive laws. The Nationalist movement goes underground.
1908, May 2 - Sri Aurobindo is arrested in the Alipore Bomb Case; spends a year in jail and is acquitted on May 6, 1909.
1909 - The Morley-Minto reforms provide separate electorates for Indian Muslims.
1909, May 30 - Sri Aurobindo's famous Uttarpara speech.
1909, June 19 - First issue of the Karmayogin (English weekly).
1909, Aug. 23 - First issue of the Dharma (Bengali weekly).
1910, February - Sri Aurobindo abruptly leaves Calcutta for Chandernagore; on March 31, he will leave for Pondicherry.
1910, April 4 - Sri Aurobindo reaches Pondicherry.
- Charged with sedition for an article in the Karmayogin (the charge will be rejected in November).
1914, March 29 - First meeting with Mother.
1914, June - Tilak is released from a six-year-long deportation to Burma.
1914, Aug. 15 - First issue of the Arya (English monthly), which will appear until January, 1921.
1916, Dec. - “Lucknow Pact” between the Congress and the Muslim League.
1919-1920 - Beginning of the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements under the growing leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.
1920 - Sri Aurobindo turns down several offers to return to British India and to active politics.
1920, April 24 - Mother returns to Pondicherry from Japan.
1920, Aug. 1 - Lokmanya Tilak passes away.
1920, October - Dr. B. S. Munje pays a visit to Sri Aurobindo.
1920, Dec. - Nagpur session of the Congress; the goal of Swaraj is eclipsed by the Khilafat agitation.
1923, June 5 - Chittaranjan Das meets Sri Aurobindo.
1923, Sept. - Creation of the Swarajya Party.
1925, Jan. 5 - Lala Lajpat Rai and Purushottamdas Tandon meet Sri Aurobindo.
1925, June 16 - Deshbandu Chittaranjan Das passes away.
1926, Nov. 24 - Sri Aurobindo withdraws completely to concentrate on his work.
1928, Feb. 16 - Rabindranath Tagore meets Sri Aurobindo.
1928, Nov. 17 - Lala Lajpat Rai passes away a few weeks after having been assaulted by the police during a demonstration at Lahore.
1929, Dec. - The Lahore session of the Congress, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, adopts the goal of complete independence.
1930-1932 - Three Round Table Conferences with, in August 1932, the Communal Award which hardens divisions between Hindus and Muslims. Savage repression of the Civil Disobedience Movement by the British rulers.
1937 - Formation of Congress ministries in the Provinces.
1938, Nov. 24 - Sri Aurobindo breaks his leg while walking in concentration.
1939, Sept. - World War II breaks out; the Provincial ministries resign in October-November.
1940, March - The Muslim League, in session at Lahore, formally demands the creation of Pakistan.
1940, Sept. 19 - Sri Aurobindo's declaration in support of the Allies.
1941, March - Subhas Bose, having escaped from detention in Calcutta, arrives in Germany.
1941, Aug. 7 - Rabindranath Tagore passes away.
1942, March 31 - Sri Aurobindo publicly supports Cripps' proposals; the Congress turns them down.
1942, April - The Japanese overrun Burma and bomb cities on India's east coast.
1942, Aug. 9 - Start of the “Quit India” movement; Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders are arrested soon afterwards.
1944, July - Subhas Bose's Indian National Army and the Japanese are repulsed in Manipur.
1946, Aug. 16 - The Muslim League launches its “Direct Action” plan; bloody riots follow in Bengal and Bihar.
1946, Sept. 2 - Formation of the Interim Government, which the Muslim League joins a month later.
1947, March 24 - Lord Mountbatten is the new Viceroy.
1947, June - On the 3rd, Mountbatten announces the British government's final decision to grant India independence on the basis of partition; on the 14th, the Congress accepts the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.
1947, Aug. 15 - India's Independence; Sri Aurobindo's 75th birthday.
1947, October - Pakistan attacks Kashmir; the Indian army repels Pakistani troops, but Nehru calls a halt to the fighting and takes the dispute to the United Nations.
1948, Jan. 30 - Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.
1950, October - China invades Tibet; India remains a silent spectator.
1950, Dec. 5 - Sri Aurobindo leaves his body. Mother continues his work.
Part VI Front Page VOI Online Books References
1873-1906: Lifetime of Swami Rama Tirtha, who lectures throughout Japan and America spreading "practical Vedanta."
1875: Madame Blavatsky founds Theosophical Society in New York, later headquartered at Adyar, Madras, where Annie Besant, president (1907-1933), helps revitalize Hinduism with metaphysical defense of its principles.
1876: British Queen Victoria (1819-1901), head of Church of England, is proclaimed Empress of India (1876-1901).
1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1876-1990: Max Muller, pioneer of comparative religion as a scholarly discipline, publishes 50-volume Sacred Books of the East, English translations of Indian-Oriental scriptures.
1877-1947: Lifetime of Sri Lanka's Ananda Coomaraswamy, foremost interpreter of Indian art and culture to the West.
1879: Incandescent lamp is invented by Thomas Edison (1847-1931). The american inventor patents more than a thousand inventions, among them the microphone (1877) and the phonograph (1878). In New York (1881-82) he installs the world's first central electric power plant.
1879: The "Leonidas," first emigrant ship to Fiji, adds 498 Indian indentured laborers to the nearly 340,000 already working in other British Empire colonies.
1879-1966: Lifetime of Sadhu T.L. Vaswani, altruistic Sindhi poet and servant of God, founds several Hindu missions in India and seven Mira Educational Institutions.
1879-1950: Lifetime of Shri Ramana Maharshi, Hindu Advaita renunciate renaissance saint of Tiruvannamalai, South India.
1882-1927: Lifetime of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Indian-born Muslim mystic, instrumental in bringing Sufism to the West.
1884-1963: Lifetime of Swami Ramdas, known as "Papa," Indian saint and devotee of Lord Rama.
1885: A group of middle-class intellectuals in India, some of them British, found the Indian National Congress to be a voice of Indian opinion to the British government. This was the origin of the later Congress Party.
1885: First automobile powered by an internal combustion engine is produced by Karl Benz in Mannheim, Germany. Henry Ford makes his first car in 1893 in the US and later invents assembly line production.
1886: Rene Guenon is born, first European philosopher to become a Vedantin, says biographer Robin Waterfield.
1887-1963: Life of Swami Sivananda, Hindu universalist renaissance guru, author of 200 books, founder of Divine Life Society, with 400 branches worldwide in present day.
1888: Max Muller, revising his stance, writes, "Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. If I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who spoke the Aryan language."
1888-1975: Lifetime of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, renowned Tamil panentheist, renaissance philosopher, eminent writer; free India's first vice-president and second president.
1891: Maha Bodhi Society, an organization to encourage Buddhist studies in India and abroad, is founded in Sri Lanka by Buddhist monk Anagarika Dharmapala.
1893: Swami Vivekananda represents Hinduism at Chicago's Parliament of the World's Religions, first ever interfaith gathering, dramatically enlightening Western opinion as to the profundity of Hindu philosophy and culture.
1893-1952: Life of Paramahamsa Yogananda, universalist Hindu, renaissance founder of Self Realization Fellowship (1925) in US, author of famed Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), popular book globalizing India's spiritual traditions.
1894: Gandhi drafts first petition protesting the indentured servant system. Less than six months later, British announce the halt of indentured emigration from India.
1894-1994: Lifetime of Swami Chandrashekarendra, venerated Shankaracharya saint of Kanchi monastery in South India.
1894-1969: Life of Meher Baba of Poona, silent sage whose mystical teachings stress love, self-inquiry and God consciousness.
1896-1982: Lifetime of Anandamayi Ma, God-intoxicated yogini and mystic Bengali saint. Her spirit lives on in devotees.
1896: Nationalist leader, Marathi scholar Bal Bangadhar Tilak (1857-1920) initiates Ganesha Visarjana and Sivaji festivals to fan Indian nationalism. He is first to demand complete independence, Purna Svaraj, from Britain.
1896-1977: Lifetime of Vaishnava Hindu renaissance activist Bhaktivedanta Swami Pradhupada. Founds Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in US in 1966. Dies 11 years later.
1896: American humorist Mark Twain writes Following the Equator, describing his three-month stay in India, during voyage to Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, South Africa and England. According to him and his critics, it is one of his finest works.
1897: Swami Vivekananda founds Ramakrishna Mission.
1898-1907: Cholera epidemic claims 370,000 lives in India.
1900: World population is 1.6 billion. India population is 290 million: 17.8% of world.
1900: India's tea exports to Britain reach 137 million pounds.
1900-77: Uday Shankar of Udaipur, dancer and choreographer, adapts Western theatrical techniques to Hindu dance, popularizing his ballet in India, Europe and the US.
1905: Lord Curzon, arrogant British Viceroy of India, resigns.
1905: Sage Yogaswami, age 33, is initiated by Chellappaswami at Nallur, Sri Lanka; later becomes the next preceptor in the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara.
1906: Muslim League political party is formed in India.
1906: Dutch Christians overtake Bali after Puputan massacres in which Hindu Balinese royal families are murdered.
1908-82: Lifetime of Swami Muktananda, global Kashmir Saiva renaissance satguru and founder of Siddha Yoga Dham.
1909-69: Lifetime of Dada Lekhraj (1909-1969), Hindu renaissance founder of Brahma Kumaris, Saivite social reform movement stressing meditation and world peace.
1909: Gandhi and assistant Maganlal agitate for better working conditions and abolition of indentured servitude in S. Africa. Maganlal continues Gandhi's work in Fiji.
1912: Anti-Indian racial riots on the US West Coast expel large Hindu immigrant population.
1913: New law prohibits Indian immigration to S. Africa, primarily in answer to white colonists' alarm at competition of Indian merchants and expired labor contracts.
1914: US government excludes Indian citizens from immigration. Restriction stands until 1965.
1914: Austria's Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated by Christian Serb nationalists. Chain reaction leads to W.W. I.
1914: Swami Satchidananda is born, founder of Integral Yoga Institute and Light of Truth Universal Shrine in the US.
1917: Communists under Lenin seize power in Russia, 1/6th of the Earth's land mass, following the Bolshevik Revolution.
1917: Last Hindu Indian indentured laborers are brought to British Christian colonies of Fiji and Trinidad.
1917-93: Life of Swami Chinmayananda, Vedantist writer, lecturer, Hindu renaissance founder of Chinmaya Mission and a co-founder of the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
1918: World War I ends. Death toll is estimated at ten million.
1918: Spanish Influenza epidemic kills 12.5 million in India, 21.6 million worldwide.
1918: Shirdi Sai Baba, saint to both Hindus and Muslims, dies at approximately age 70.
1919: Brigadier Dyer orders Gurkha troops to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, killing 379. Massacre convinces Gandhi that India must demand full independence from oppressive British Christian rule.
1920: Gandhi formulates the satyagraha, "firmness in truth," strategy of noncooperation and nonviolence against India's Christian British rulers. Later resolves to wear only dothi to preserve homespun cotton and simplicity.
1920: System of indentured servitude is abolished by India, following grassroots agitation by Mahatma Gandhi.
1920: Ravi Shankar is born in Varanasi, sitar master, composer and founder of National Orchestra of India, he inspires Western appreciation of Indian music.
1922: Pramukh Swami is born, renaissance traditionalist Hindu, head of Bochasanwasi Swaminarayan Sanstha Sangh.
1922: Tagore's school at Shantineketan (founded 1901) is made into Vishva Bharati Univ. Becomes national Univ., 1951.
1923: US law excludes citizens of India from naturalization.
1924: Sir John Marshall (1876-1958) discovers relics of the Indus Valley Hindu civilization. Begins large-scale excavations.
1925: K.V. Hedgewar (1890-1949) founds Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist movement.
1926: Satya Sai Baba is born, Hindu universalist renaissance charismatic guru, educationalist, worker of miracles.
1927: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami is born, present-day satguru in the Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara.
1927: Maharashtra bars tradition of dedicating girls to temples as Devadasis, ritual dancers. Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa soon follow suit; 20 years later, Tamil Nadu bans devotional dancing and singing by women in its thousands of temples and in all Hindu ceremonies.
1927 & 34: Indians permitted to sit as jurors and court magistrates.
1928: Hindu leader Jawaharlal Nehru drafts plan for a free India; becomes president of Congress Party in 1929.
1929: Chellachiamman, woman saint of Sri Lanka, dies. She was mentor to Sage Yogaswami and Kandiah Chettiar.
1931: Shri Chinmoy is born in Bengal, yogi, artist, self-transcendence master and United Nations peace ambassador.
1931: 2.5 million Indians reside overseas; largest communities are in Sri Lanka, Malaya, Mauritius and S. Africa.
1931: Dr. Karan Singh is born, son and heir apparent of Kashmir's last Maharaja; becomes parliamentarian, Indian ambassador to the US and global Hindu spokesman.
1934: Paul Brunton's instantly popular A Search in Secret India makes known to the West such illumined holy men as Shri Chandrashekharendra and Ramana Maharshi.
1936-1991: Lifetime of Shrimati Rukmini Devi, founder of Kalakshetra-a school of Hindu classical music, dance, theatrical arts, painting and handicrafts-in Madras.
1938: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is founded in Bombay by K.M. Munshi to conserve, develop and diffuse Indian culture.
1939: Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), manifesto of Nazism, published 1925, sells 5 million copies in 11 languages. It reveals his racist Aryan, anti-Semitic ideology, strategy of revenge and Socialist rise to power.
1939: World War II begins September 3, as France and Britain declare war on Germany after Germany invades Poland.
1939: Maria Montessori (1870-1952), first Italian female physician and "discoverer of the child," spends nine years in India teaching her kindergarten method and studying Hinduism through the Theosophical Society in Adyar.
1939: Mohammed Ali Jinnah calls for a separate Muslim state.
1941: First US chair of Sanskrit and Indology established at Yale Univ.; American Oriental Society founded in 1942.
1942: At sites along the lost Sarasvati River in Rajasthan, archeologist Sir Aurel Stein finds shards with incised characters identical to those on Indus Valley seals.
1945: Germany surrenders to Allied forces. Ghastly concentration camps that killed 6 million Jews are discovered.
1945: US drops atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, ending World War II. Total war dead is 60 million.
1945: United Nations founded by 4 Allied nations and China to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."
1947: India gains independence from Britain August 15. Pakistan emerges as a separate Islamic nation, and 600,000 die in clashes during subsequent population exchange of 14 million people between the two new countries.
1948: Britain grants colony of Sri Lanka Dominion status and self-government under Commonwealth jurisdiction.
1948: Establishment of Sarva Seva Sangh, Gandhian movement for new social order (Sarvodaya).
1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated January 30th by Nathuram Godse, 35, editor-publisher of a Hindu Mahasabha weekly in Poona, in retaliation for Gandhi's concessions to Muslim demands and agreeing to partition 27% of India to create the new Islamic nation of Pakistan.
1949: Sri Lanka's Sage Yogaswami initiates Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as his successor in Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara. Subramuniyaswami founds Saiva Siddhanta Church and Yoga Order the same year.
1949: India's new constitution, authored chiefly by B.R. Ambedkar, declares there shall be no "discrimination" against any citizen on the grounds of caste, jati, and that the practice of "untouchability" is abolished.
1950: Wartime jobs in West, taking women out of home, have led to weakened family, delinquency, cultural breakdown.
1950: India is declared a secular republic. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964) is determined to abolish casteism and industrialize the nation. Constitution makes Hindi official national language; English to continue for 15 years; 14 major state languages are recognized.
1951: India's Bharatiya Janata Sangh (BJP) party is founded.
VINDICATED BY TIMEThe Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities Introduction by Sita Ram Goel Voice of India, New Delhi Install Devnagari Font
ContentsPreface The Sunshine of ‘Secularism’ Rift in the Lute REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME IChristian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, Madhya Pradesh Part I Part II Part III Part IV Appendices REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME II Part ATour Programmes of the Committee Explanatory tour notes including important petitions received by the Committee on tour District Raigarh District Surguja District Raipur District Bilaspur District Amravati District Nimar District Yeotmal District Akola District Buldana District Mandla District Jabalpur District Chhindwara Questionnaire Replies to Questionnaire Replies submitted by Shri J. Lakra Replies to Questionnaire concerning the area covered by Jashpur, Khuria and Udaipur of the Raigarh district Replies submitted by the Catholic Sabha of the Raigarh district Replies Replies submitted by Shri Gurubachan Sing, Raipur Replies submitted by Chairman and Secretary of the General Conference, Mennonite Mission in India, Saraipali, Raipur district Replies submitted by Rev. Canon, R. A. Kurian, Nagpur Replies submitted by Rev. E. Raman, President, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Madhya Pradesh, Gopalganj, Sagar Replies submitted by Miss M. L. Merry, Khirkia R. S., Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri L. E. Hartman, Amravati Camp, Berar, Mission Bungalow, Amravati Camp, Berar Replies submitted by Umri Mission Hospital, Umri, via Yeotmal, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri F. B. Lucas, President, Independent Christian Association, Yeotmal Replies submitted by Shri R. W. Scott, Secretary, National Christian Council Replies submitted by Dr. E. Asirvatham, Nagpur Replies submitted by Shri P. S. Shekdar, Khamgaon, district Buldana Replies submitted by Shri Sohanlal Aggarwal, Secretary, Vedic Sanskriti Raksha Samiti. Replies submitted by Shri T. Y. Dehankar, President, Bar Association, and six others of Bilaspur Replies submitted by Shri M.N. Ghatate, Nagpur Sangh Chalak. Replies submitted by Shri R. K. Deshpande, Pleader, Jashpurnagar VOLUME II Part BCorrespondence of Roman Catholics with the Committee, the state government and the Central Government Extracts from Catholic Dharma ka Pracharak and other pamphlets showing the methods of propaganda Short History of Chhattisgarh Evangelical Mission Statement made before the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee. Camp: Raipur (22-7-1955) Camp Bilaspur (25-7-1955) Raigarh (28-7-1955) Jashpur (22-11-1955) Jabalpur (8-8-1955) Sagar (11-8-1955) Mandla (15-8-55) Khandwa (17-8-55) Yeotmal (10-8-55) Camp Amravati (13-8-1955) Washim (16-8-1955) Buldana 18-8-1955 Malkapur (20-8-1955) (22-8-1955) Nagpur (20-9-1955) Camp Ambikapur (19-11-1955) Activities of Christian Missions in the Eastern States and proselytism in the Udaipur State by the Jesuit Mission Back to Home Back to VOI Books Back to Top
1955-6: Indian government enacts social reforms on Hindu marriage, succession, guardianship, adoption, etc.
1950-60s Tours of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan lead to worldwide popularization of Indian music.
1955: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist formulator of the relativity theory dies. He declared Lord Siva Nataraja best metaphor for the workings of the universe.
1956: Indian government reorganizes states according to linguistic principles and inaugurates second Five-Year Plan.
1956: Swami Satchidananda makes first visit to America.
1957: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Himalayan Academy and opens US's first Hindu temple, in San Francisco.
1959: Dalai Lama flees Tibet and finds refuge in North India as China invades his Buddhist nation.
1959The transistor makes computers smaller and faster than prototypes like the 51-foot-long, 8-foot high Mark I, containing I-million parts and 500 miles of wire, invented for the US Navy in 1944 by IBM's Howard Aiken. From the 1960s onward, integrated circuitry and microprocessors will take computers-descendants of the 5,000-year-old Oriental abacus-to unimaginable levels to revolutionize Earth's technology and society.
1960: Since 1930, 5% of immigrants to US have been Asians, while European immigrants have constituted 58%.
1960: Border war with China shakes India's nonaligned policy.
1961: India forcibly reclaims Goa, Damao and Diu from the Portuguese. Goa became a state of India in 1987.
1963: US President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
1963: Hallucinogenic drug culture arises in US. Hindu gurus decry the false promise and predict "a chemical chaos."
1964: India's Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu religious nationalist movement, is founded to counter secularism.
1964: Rock group, the Beatles, practice Transcendental Meditation (TM), bringing fame to Maharshi Mahesh Yogi.
1965: US immigration cancels racial qualifications and restores naturalization rights. Welcomes 170,000 Asians yearly.
1966: J. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes Prime Minister of India, world's largest democracy, succeeding L. B. Shastri who took office after Nehru's death in 1964.
1968: US Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated.
1969: US astronaut Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon.
1970: Kauai Aadheenam, Hindu monastery, site of Kadavul Hindu Temple, Saiva Siddhanta Church headquarters, San Marga Sanctuary and editorial offices of Hinduism Today is founded February 5 on Hawaii's Garden Island.
1971: Rebellion in East Pakistan (formerly Bengal). Ten million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, flee to India. Indo-Pak border clashes escalate to war. India defeats West Pakistan. E. Pakistan becomes independent Bangladesh.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_bangla.html
Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan
By Shrinandan Vyas
This article deals with slaughter of about 2.5 million Hindus in East Pakistan in 1971.
This article refers to information provided by Dept. of Planning of Government of Bangla Desh, Encyclopedia Britannica, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee, Newsweek, New York Times,etc. This information and elementary math are used to show that indeed millions of Hindus were killed in East Pakistan in 1971.
ABSTRACT
It is well known that the 1971 army repression in Bangla Desh (former East Pakistan) resulted in an influx of 10 million refugees into India. Most world renowned relief and news agencies put the number of dead at 3 million. However the fact that is glossed over in these statistics is that THE ENTIRE HINDU POPULATION OF EAST PAKISTAN WAS THE PRIMARY TARGET OF PAKISTANI ARMY DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF REPRESSION IN 1971. Using the population statistics from Bangla Desh Government and US Government publications this article PROVES that 80 percent of the refugees from Bangla Desh were Hindus and that 80 percent of the 3 million killed were Hindus. THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM and IT WAS A HINDU GENOCIDE THAT TOOK PLACE IN EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971.
10 References - Encyclopedia Britannica, Bangla Desh Government - Ministry of Planning (for statistics), Newsweek, New York Times, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
INTRODUCTION
In the December 1970 general election in Pakistan, Awami League won 167 of 169 seats and over 80 % of popular votes in East Pakistan. Numerically Awami League had an absolute majority of seats in the Pakistan National Assembly (167 of the total 313 seats)(1). Historically, East Pakistan was allocated only 36 % of the total resources and East Pakistanis occupied only 20 % of the positions in the federal government in the United Pakistan (2). The Pakistani government's apathy towards East Pakistan after a terrible cyclone in November 1970 in which over 250,000 people died, had alienated East Pakistani people. The solid outcome of the 1970 elections for Awami League created an alternative power center for an already alienated people. The differences between the East and West Pakistani politicians snowballed into a major international crisis. On March 25, 1971 Pakistani army on President Yahya Khan's orders initiated a campaign of terror which was to last till its final surrender to the Indian army on December 17, 1971. This terror campaign by Pak army resulted in 10 million Bangla Deshi refugees crossing over to India (per Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (3)) and 3 million killed (4,5) based on reports from most relief agencies and official Bangla Desh government estimate. However the religious mix of both the refugees and the dead is nowhere emphasized anywhere. This significant information has particularly been absent in the reports from Indian News Media. This selective news dissemination has kept a more sinister truth of Hindu genocide in East Pakistan hidden from the world in general and Indians in particular.
HINDUS IN EAST PAKISTAN WERE SPECIAL TARGET OF PAK ARMY
In the summary of his report dated November 1, 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy writes (6):
'Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). HARDEST HIT HAVE BEEN MEMBERS OF THE HINDU COMMUNITY WHO HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED, AND IN SOME PLACES, PAINTED WITH YELLOW PATCHES MARKED "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..' (emphasis added by author of this article).
Sydney Schanberg, pulitzer prize winning journalist (of 'Killing Fields') was New York Times correspondent in Dhaka in 1971 at the time of army repression and during the 1971 Bangla Desh war. In his syndicated column 'The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored' Mr.Schanberg writes:
"I covered the war and witnessed first the population's joyous welcome of the Indian soldiers as liberators .. Later I toured the country by road to see the Pakistani legacy firsthand. In town after town there was an execution area where people had been killed by bayonet, bullet and bludgeon. In some towns, executions were held on a daily basis."
This was a month after the war's end (i.e. January 1972), ... human bones were still scattered along many roadsides. Blood stained clothing and tufts of human hair clung to the brush at these killing grounds. Children too young to understand were playing grotesque games with skulls. OTHER REMINDERS WERE THE YELLOW "H"s THE PAKISTANIS HAD PAINTED ON THE HOMES OF HINDUS, PARTICULAR TARGETS OF THE MUSLIM ARMY." (7) (emphasis added by the author of this article).
Thus two independent observations one dated prior to November 1, 1971 and other in January 1972 confirm that Hindu houses in East Pakistan were marked with yellow "H"s and that Hindus were particular targets of the Pakistani army. The situation thus bears an uncanny resemblance to the predicament of Jews targeted by Nazis from 1939 to 1944, with similar out come.
MOST OF THE REFUGEES FROM BANGLA DESH WERE HINDUS
Senator Edward Kennedy in his report gives following details about the the refugees from Bangla Desh in 1971. As of October 25, 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. The average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day (3). Hence the total refugee population at the start of Bangla Desh war on December 3, 1971 was about 10 million (5).
Sen. Kennedy further mentions that Government of India had set up separate refugee camps for Hindus and Muslims where possible, i.e. refugee camps of Hindus were located in Hindu majority areas and similarly Muslim camps were located in Muslim majority areas. THE COMMUNAL REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEES WAS 80 PERCENT HINDU, 15 PERCENT MUSLIM AND 5 PERCENT CHRISTIAN AND OTHER (8).
This means that 8 MILLION OF THE 10 MILLION REFUGEES WERE HINDUS (8). Other fact that corroborates this is that when Sen. Kennedy had asked several Chief Relief officers in charge of refugee camps what was needed most urgently, their reply was "crematoriums".
THE MISSING 2 .5 MILLION HINDUS
Several agencies indicate that the brutal Pakistani army repression killed 3 million Bengalis. This estimate is even given by the Government of Bangla Desh (5). However no religious mix of the dead is easily available.
Let us therefore look at the population demographics for Bangla Desh which is given in Table I.
TABLE I
Source : Based on Information from Bangladesh Ministry of planning, Bureau of Statistics (9)
YEAR Total Population in Millions Hindu Population as % of Total Hindu Population in Millions
1941 42.00 28.0 11.76
1961 50.84 18.5 9.41
1974 71.48 13.5* 9.655
1981 87.13 12.2 10.633
* Encyclopedia Britannica (10) gives 13.5% figure for 1974, where as Government of Bangla Desh gives 13.5% for 1971 and total population of 71.48 million for 1974 (9).
Since Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh have similar socio- economic and educational backgrounds, the birth and death rates for these two groups must be very similar. This means that the Hindu population must grow at the same pace as the total population growth rate. Hence any unusual drop must be accounted for by influx of Hindu refugees and mortality rate from non natural causes. The expected Hindu population, the emigration to India from E. Pakistan and actual populations are listed in Table II.
Table II
YEAR Hindu Population of East Pak/BD Actual (9)(millions) Expected Hindu Population in Absence of Strife(millions) Refugees from E. Pakistan to India(8)(millions) Hindus Missing(millions)
1941 11.766 - - -
1961 9.41 14.24 4.12(1947-58) 0.711
1974 9.65 13.23 1.11(1964-70) 2.477
Thus if 1947 partition had not resulted, the Hindu population of East Pakistan area should by 1961 have increased proportionally from 11.76 millions in 1941, to 14.24 millions (11.76 * 50.84 / 42 = 14.24). The official Indian Government records indicate that between 1947 and 1958, 4.12 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India from East Bengal(3). This means the Hindu population in East Pakistan in 1961 should have been 10.12 million (14.24 - 4.12) compared to the actual 9.41 million. The missing 0.7 million Hindu population can be accounted by several hundred thousands killed in the riots in 1947 on the Bengal border, plus the refugee influx from 1958 to 1961. 1961.
Let us now look at Hindu population in East pakistan from 1961 to 1974. With proportional increase the Hindu population of 9.41 million in 1961 should have increased to 13.23 million ( 9.41 * 71.48 / 50.84 = 13.23 ) by 1974. However the actual Hindu population as per Bangla Desh Census data for 1974 was 9.65 million. Of the 3.58 million shortfall only 1.11 million can be accounted for since Government of India's record indicate that 1.11 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India between 1964 and 1970 (3) i.e.PRIOR to the 1971 crisis.
THUS 2.47 MILLION (13.23 - 9.65 - 1.11 = 2.47) HINDUS FROM EAST PAKISTAN ARE UNACCOUNTED FOR FROM THE 1971 PAK ARMY REPRESSION.
OTHER PROOF FOR 2.4 MILLION HINDUS KILLED IN EAST PAKISTAN
Since the 80 percent of the refugees in 1971 were Hindus,a similar proportion of the dead are likely to be Hindus also. The official Bangla Desh government estimate puts the number of Bengalis killed at 3 million. 80 percent of 3 million put THE NUMBER OF HINDUS KILLED AT 2.4 MILLION which is close to the number of Hindus missing calculated comes above.
SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS
1. Independent accounts indicate that Hindus from East Pakistan were special target during the 1971 army repression. HINDU HOUSES WERE PAINTED WITH YELLOW "H"s, THEY WERE ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, AND THEY WERE SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED.
2. 80 percent of the refugees to India in 1971 were Hindus, THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM.
3. NEARLY 2.5 MILLION HINDUS WERE KILLED DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF PAKISTANI ARMY REPRESSION OF EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971. THUS IT WAS A HINDU SLAUGHTER IN 1971.
4. ALL THE ABOVE BEAR AN UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE TO THE PERSECUTION & HOLOCAUST OF JEWS BY THE NAZIS.
5. INDIAN GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED 'SECULAR' MEDIA DELIBERATELY HID THE SINISTER TRUTH OF HINDU GENOCIDE IN EAST PAKISTAN.
6. In any internal political problem of an Islamic country, Hindus (or minorities of other religions) become the scapegoats and will be liquidated at the first chance the Islamic Government gets.
7. WE HAVE LEARNT NOTHING FROM THE HISTORY AND WITH THE 'PSECULAR' MEDIA WE WILL LEARN NOTHING.
COMMENTS & FUTURE WORK
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangla Desh did not end in 1971. Since 1974 to 1981 the Hindu population as a percent of total Bangla Deshi population decreased from 13.5 % to 12.2 %. This slide has continued over the last decade. Same is true about Hindus in Pakistan and in Kashmir valley.
There is a genuine need for systematic record keeping and documentation of the history of Hindu genocides & Hindu ethnic cleansing, so that we don't repeat it again (and again and again..) There is also a need to build a memorial of this Hindu holocaust similar to the Jewish Holocaust memorial in Washington DC.
This topic is extensively dealt in a book 'Genocide in East Pakistan/ Bangla Desh' by S.K.Bhattacharya. However the present author has verified the findings of S.K. Bhattacharya based on completely independent sources. For detailed descriptions and news reports of 1971, reader should refer to the original book.
REFERENCES
1. Bangladesh: The Birth Of A Nation, A hand book of Background information and Documentary Sources Compiled by Univ. of Chicago Group of Scholars, by M.Nicholas, P.Oldensburg, Ed.W.Morehouse, M.Seshachalam & Co., India, 1972, p.7
2. Same as reference 1, p.73
3. Crisis in South Asia - A report by Senator Edward Kennedy to the Subcommittee investigating the Problem of Refugees and Their Settlement, Submitted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, November 1, 1971, U.S. Govt. Press, pp.6-7.
4. Newsweek, August 1, 1994, p.37
5. Same as reference 1, pp.44-45
6. Same as reference 3, p.66
7. The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored , Syndicated Column by Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 1994.
8. Same as reference 3, p. 19
9. Bangladesh A Country Study, Ed. J.Heitzman & R.L.Worden, 2nd Ed, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Publisher U.S. Army, 1989, pp.250,255
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Micropedia, Vol.1, p.789 Desh.
Back To Islamic Ages
Back To Modern Hindu History
Back To Library Of Hindu History
1972: A Historical Atlas of South Asia is produced by Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Siva G. Bajpai, Raj B. Mathur, et al.
1972: Muslim dictator Idi Amin expels Indians from Uganda.
1973: Neem Karoli Baba, Hindu mystic and siddha, dies.
1974: India detonates a "nuclear device."
1974: Watergate scandal. US President Nixon resigns.
1975: Netherlands gives independence to Dutch Guyana, which becomes Suriname; one third of Hindus (descendants of Indian plantation workers) emigrate to Netherlands for better social and economic conditions.
1977: One hundred thousand Tamil Hindu tea-pickers expatriated from Sri Lanka are shipped to Madras, South India.
1979: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Hinduism Today international newspaper to promote Hindu solidarity.
1980: Grand South Indian counterpart to Kumbha Mela of Prayag, the Mahamagham festival, held every 12 years in Kumbhakonam, on the river Kaveri, two million attend.
1981: India has one-half world's cattle: 8 cows for every 10 Indians.
1981: Deadly AIDS disease is conclusively identified.
1981: First bharata natyam dance in a temple since 1947 Christian-British ban on Devadasis is arranged by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami at Chidambaram; 100,000 attend.
1983: Violence between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Singhalese in Sri Lanka marks beginning of Tamil rebellion by Tiger freedom fighters demanding an independent nation called Eelam. Prolonged civil war results.
1984: Balasarasvati, eminent classical Karnatic singer and bharata natyam dancer of worldwide acclaim, dies.
1984: Since 1980, Asians have made up 48% of immigrants to the US, with the European portion shrinking to 12%.
1984: Indian soldiers under orders from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi storm Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to crush rebellion. She is assassinated this year by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation. Her son Rajiv takes office.
1986: Swami Satchidananda dedicates Light of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) at Yogaville in Virginia, USA.
1986: Jiddha Krishnamurti, anti-guru guru, semi-existentialist philosophical Indian lecturer and author, dies.
1986: World Religious Parliament in New Delhi bestows the title Jagadacharya, "world teacher," on five spiritual leaders outside India: Swami Chinmayananda of Chinmaya Mission (Bombay, India); Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami of Saiva Siddhanta Church and Himalayan Academy (Hawaii-California, USA); Yogiraj Amrit Desai of Kripalu Yoga Center (New York, USA); Pandit Tej Ramji Sharma of Nepali Baba (Kathmandu, Nepal); Swami Jagpurnadas Maharaj (Port Louis, Mauritius).
1987: Colonel S. Rabuka, a Methodist, leads coup deposing Fiji's Indian-dominated government and instituting military rule. July, 1990, constitution guarantees political majority to ethnic (mostly Christian) Fijians.
1988: General Ershad declares Islam state religion of Bangladesh, outraging 12-million (11%) Hindu population.
1988: US allows annual influx of 270,000 Asian immigrants.
1988: First Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival is held at Oxford University, England. Hindus discuss international cooperation with 100 religious leaders and 100 parliamentarians.
1989: Christian missionaries are spending US%165 million per year to convert Hindus.
Reference: http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/robertsn.html
Pat Robertson Opposes Religious Freedom, Denounces Hinduism
Using TV, Christian Pat Robertson Denounces Hinduism as "Demonic" -- Evangelist Opposes Freedom of Religion, Says It's Time To Convert India and Wants to Keep Hinduism Out of US
By Valli J. Rajan, Pennsylvania, USA
HINDUISM TODAY
July 1995 Copyright (C) Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reserved.
This is an authorized reproduction.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
Posted by the authority of the Himalayan Academy
Article from HINDUISM TODAY, July 1995
Copyright (C) 1995 Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reseved
The Hinduism Today Web site is located at:
http://www.HinduismToday.kauai.hi.us/ashram/welcome.html
Reference: http://www.vedanet.com/boutios.htm
THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
The Papal Excuses viewed by a Druid
by Ariaxs Druuis Boutios
In Antiquity, the Vedic Dharmas were professed from Mahàbhàrata and the Tocharian kingdoms in the East, all the way to Ireland via Scythia, Greece and Gaul in the West. Then came Avidya which we call Anuidiia in Celtica, the Sanskrit of the Druids. In those times after the taking of Gaul and Britain by the Roman forces, many great Druid teachers were forced into exile to Ireland and other far away places in the North Sea and to the East.
Under the Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantinius (306-337 CE), temples of Uidiia (Vidya) were destroyed to make way for the Christian faith. In 355, it was decreed that those participating in ‘pagan’ rituals be put to death. The Roman and Greek officials in the Celtic kingdoms devised to promote their new faith by the conversion of the Celtic aristocracy. The Roman officer Martinus of Pannonia lead a holy war against the Druids of Gaul who had found refuge in the countryside. Temples and idols were destroyed, temple offerings were confiscated, and priests put to the sword. Bishops, recruited in the Roman Patrician families, spread their terror to all the countries of Gaul and Britain. Few areas were spared but the resistance was great. Nevertheless, the many interdictions to practice posted by the conquering Roman Church failed to discourage regional devotion. In the country of Gaul, proselytising Christians were beaten and chased away.
How Patricius (Saint-Patrick) tricked the Irish into becoming Christians
Contrary to the legend, the youth was never taken as a hostage by pirates and sold as a slave to an Irish Druid. Druids, like their Brahman counterparts, took pupils, not slaves. Menial chores were of course asked in reparation for food and lodging. In fact, Patricius spent the early part of his life in Ireland where his parents had sent him to seek training under an eminent Druid. But when he returned to Britain from this training, he was swayed from Druidic practice and converted to Christianism.
So when the Romano-British Patricius returned to Ireland a second time, he returned there as bishop of the new Roman faith. Patricius had been in Gaul studying Christian theology and politics at Auxerre, a high place of learning. Then he met the followers of Martinus (Saint Martin) at de Marmoutier Abby where he learned proselytising techniques. And then, travelled to southern Gaul to the island monastery of Lerins, and in Italy where he was ordained by the Pope Caelestinus before he embarked for the North of Ireland in the year 432.
On an island off the Leinster coast now called Inis Padraig, he was greeted by others who were sent there to assist him in his mission. The mission was perilous, but Patricius who was expert in the arts of dissimulation, organised his monasteries as Druidic schools. For he had come to Ireland to seek out the Druids, banish the old gods out of Ireland and convert the Scots to Christianity. In hope of greater education promised by the Roman conversion centres, the Scots of aristocracy sent their children there for superior training. This is how he tricked king Coroticus and many other chieftains into accepting Christianism. For the saint acted more as a Druid than a Christian convert. Hence as Patricius boasted:
‘The sons of the Scots and the daughters of the chiefs have become monks and virgins of Christ in such great numbers that I would not know how to count them.’
And in his confessions Patricius shows only contempt for the Dharma of the Druids calling it impure and idol worshipping:
‘Hence, how did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?’
So when Patricius and his band came to coast, they were challenged by a formidable chieftain called Dichu who set his hounds on them. But when the dogs were to come on them, Patricius pronounced a spell. The master and his dogs paralysed with fear. But Patricius took pity and removed the spell. Dichu was so grateful for this that he became one of Patrisius’s followers. Dichu’s barn, was made into a place of worship called Stabulum Patricii, the stable of Patricius.
It came to pass that Patricius and his band of monks made way for the town of Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, where Laoghaire, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages now reigned. So when he arrived in Leinster it was the eve of Beltaine, May Day, but also of Easter. In honour of Lord Belios, all the fires were extinguished on the eve of the Giamonios Moon and it was decreed that no fire be lit until the Chief Druid, had lit the first fire of Tara. So that when the flames of the Knoll of Tara rose at dawn, fire after fire would be kindled on hilltop after hilltop until all the hills of Leinster were lit.
On the very morning of the Giamonios Moon, the High King and his following were assembled on the Hill of Tara. As the first rays of the glorious Sun slanted over the horizon, the Royal Druid moved forward to light the flower-strewn pyre. But before he set it alight, the watchers on the hill were astonished to see flames rising further to the East on the hill of Slane, the hill of well-being.
High King Laoghaire stared in dismay as the blaze on the neighbouring hill grew stronger and stronger.
‘Who dared light this fire’ He asked.
‘Much as we see the fire’, the Druids answered, ‘and though we ignore who lit it, we know that less it be extinguished at this moment, it will never be put out. For it will put out our own sacred fires and the manwho lit it will have power over us all, and over the High King himself.’
‘Put out the fire and take me to the man who lit it here to Tara,’ the king commanded. On hearing this, he and his messengers hurried to the hill of Slane. Hence the Druids’ warning to the king and his following: King , thou shalt not go to this place where the fire is, lest that thou fearest not worship he who has lit it, but better remain to the side at its exterior. He will be brought before thee so he may pay homage to thee, and thou will be master. We will speak, he and we, back and forth, in your presence, and thou will challenge thus’... And so they arrived at the given place. Once they descended from their chariots and horses, they penetrated not in the circle of the fire, but sat to the side. Patricius was then called before the king outside of the ring of fire. When Patricius came before the High King and when he saw the strange tonsures, the cowled robes, and curved crosier, he was struck with fear.
Laoghaire, remembered that his Druids had forewarned him of their coming years before:
‘Adze-heads will come across a furious headed sea hole-headed their cloak crook-headed their staff. They will sing maledictions their judgement-giving alters in the back (western) corner of the house, all the people answering ²amhàin, amhàin² Only one, only one (Punning with Amen)’.
By this time the sun was well over the horizon and the Beltaine were still not lit. The assembly became much worried at this but stood there speechless.
With his Druids and noblemen around him, Laoghaire, furious, pronounced a death sentence on Patricius which he could not, since a king never speaks before his Druid.
Seeing all rendered speechless, Patricius acting as High Priest, reproached the king:
‘The God I worship makes the sun rise each day for our benefit. But the sun above us will never reign over us nor will its splendour last for ever. Christ whom I worship, the true sun and he will never die and he will give eternal life to those who do his will. For this sun which we see rises daily for us because He commands so, but it will never reign, nor will its splendour last; what is more, those wretches who adore it will be miserably punished. Not so we, who believe in, and worship, the true sun, Christ, who will never perish, nor will he who doeth His will; but he will abide for ever as Christ abideth for ever, who reigns with God the Father Almighty and the Holy Spirit before time, and now, and in all eternity. Amen.’ (Ref. 1)
Many in the assembly understood what Patricius meant since knowing about the Spiritual Sun but Laoghaire was not converted and was forced to revoke the sentence.
But the True Sun and worldly Sun are both one and the same. All that is good is Light! One does not curse the Light of the World without consequence.
Thus Patricius’ confession: ²That same night, when I was asleep, Satan (this is how Patrick refers to Helios, the Sun God called Sauelios in Celtic) assailed me violently, a thing I shall remember as long as I shall be in this body. And he fell upon me like a huge rock, and I could not stir a limb. But whence came it into my mind, ignorant as I am, to call upon Helias? And meanwhile I saw the sun rise in the sky, and while I was shouting `Helias! Helias' with all my might, suddenly the splendour of that sun fell on me and immediately freed me of all misery. And I believe that I was sustained by Christ my Lord, and that His Spirit was even then crying out in my behalf, and I hope it will be so on the day of my tribulation, as is written in the Gospel: On that day, the Lord declares, it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.² (ref. 2)
The sun had dimmed, the Druids had lost the sacred fires, the right of pre-eminence, and were therefore forced into retirement. Following these events much happened to those professing Uidiia. Patricius himself destroyed one hundred and eighty holly records.
The Wise Ones debated much, but how could Uidiia remain in a world where fools are said wise, where children teach elders and elders fall into senility?
It was hence prophesied that wealth and prosperity would decrease until the world would be wholly depraved. For what is gained through connivery and treachery will be lost in shame and dishonour.
Thus the Gaulish pagan of Noyon declared these words to the proselytiser Saint Eloi (588-659 ce):
‘Roman that you are! - At us ,how much you utter the same words, never will you abolish our customs.We celebrate our ceremonies, as we have always done until now and there is no one in this world who can forbid our antique maintenances that are so dear to us.’ (ref. 3)
THE WOLF IN THE SHEEPFOLD
(A brief calendar of the Roman Christian repression of Druidism)
200: Beginning of the Christianisation of Britain.
250: Around 250 CE, begins the christianisation effort of Gaul. The church is organised around the city of Lyon used at a mission base. St. Ciprian sends missionaries from Africa: Paul to Narbonne, Trophime to Arles, Saturnine to Toulouse, Martial to Limoges, Denis to Lutèce (Paris), Austremoine to Clermont, and Gratian to Tours.
260: Christianisation of Britain.
324: Just before 324 CE, ban on domestic sacrifices. After 330, restriction of public devotion for the non-Christian state servants.
355: An imperial decree by Constantine orders the closure of all pagan temples, issuing a death sentence to all those caught practising a pagan cult.
355: Saint Martin creates a volunteer militia to enforce the Imperial decree.
380: Theodosius I (379-395) renews the interdiction. Gratian (367-383) confiscates the revenues of pagan temples and pagan priests. In 392, pagan devotion in any form is strictly forbidden.
410: Foundation of a Christian learning centre on the islands of Lérins of the coast of Cannes by St. Honoratus for the conversion of Celts. Pagan aristocracy mints coins representing pagan Emperors on New Year’sday as a sign of resistance and derision of the decadent Christian Emperor. Nevertheless, by the IVth century, the city populations of the Empire are of Christian majority, whence the pejorative term pagan for the country folk.
418: Honorius (395-423), with the approval of the Gallo-Roman bishops of Rennes and Nantes orders the destruction of all pagan sites and emblems. Valentinian reiterates the decree of the destruction of all pagan temples.
432: Christianisation of Northern Ireland by St Patrick. Creation of conversion centres in all parts of Ireland.
452: The Council of Arles (canon 23) declares guilty of sacrilege bishops tolerating in their diocese sacrificial fires and the devotion of nature deities.
461: Death of St Patrick and conversion of Ireland.
506: The Councils of Agde and Orléans criminalise the practice of pythoness. These are the first ‘witch hunts’.
515: By 515-520, Saint Césaire (470-543), the bishop of Arles in sermon # 129 fulminates against the cult of ancestors and other popular New Year’s practices.
516: Between 516 and 537, St Vigor, bishop of Bayeux, requests the service of the military to enforce the ban on druidic practices still celebrated on Mount Phaunus. The idols are destroyed and the shrine is confiscated by the Church.
520: Around 520-525, in the vicinities of Cologne, the Irish monk St. Gall sets fire to the temple and its statues where libations and offerings were still given.
524: At the council of Arles, rites observed during lunar eclipses on the feasts of Jupiter (Toutatis) and New Year’s day are condemned.
533: At the second council of Orléans, those returning to pagan practice are stigmatised.
541: At the fourth council of Orléans is reiterated the interdiction to practice a pagan cult as well as taking oaths to gods. Saint Paterne (dead in 560) is said to have stopped a pagan ceremony at Chaussey where he spilled over the contents of sacred cauldrons.
543: Condemnation of the pre-existence of the soul prior birth at the synod of Constantinople under pope Vigil. For the Catholic Church, a new soul comes with the new-born.
554: In 554, King Childebert I (511-558) of the Frankish occupation of Gaul, renews the order to destroy all pagan idols and megaliths (standing stones).
567: At the second council of Tours, all those caught in the forest and other wild places honouring pagan sites, stones, trees, and fountains are ordered to be chased out of church. Priests are encouraged to excommunicated all those suspected of giving themselves to pagan rites, that is, unknown ceremonies to the church at pagan sites.
573: Overwhelmed by the continuous resistance of Antique cults, Gregory the Great, Pope and prefect of Rome, suggests to the clergy that to: ‘Remove everything from these uneducated minds is an impossible task. Refrain from destroying their temples; destroy only the idols, and have them replaced by replicas.’
578: At the council of Auxerre is reiterated the interdiction to disguise oneself in cow and deer skins on the occasion of the New Year’s celebrations. Also forbidden are lustration rites, lighting candles before holy wells, trees, and stones; and bread divining and the consultation of seers or consultation of oracle sticks.
580: Around 575-580, in the Pagus Gabalitanus (actual Gévaudan, between Margeride and Aubrac France) there was a traditional lakeside gathering of peasants that lasted for three days. During the festival, libations and offerings of fleeces, cloths, cheese, wax cakes and bread were given to the lake’s titulary divinity. Feasting and fertility rites lasted all during the day, only to be interrupted by foul weather. Gregory of Tours reports that the\ superstition was only stopped after a ‘holy father’ put an end to it.
Strangely enough, the same rites were still reported in 1872 on the side of Lac de Saint Andéal but with the only difference that coins were used as offerings.
581: The synod of Auxerre forbids the laity to dance in churches, have girls sing, and hold feasts.
585: The council of Mâcon condemns those who do not work on Thurdays (in honour of the pagan God Jupiter/Thor) to be beaten with a rod.
590: St Walfroid has the colossal statue of the goddess Arduinna (Diana) of Yvois (Carigan, Meuse) destroyed.
597: Pope Gregory the Great’s (590-604) prescriptions to Queen Brunehaut on the interdiction of pagan rites (tree worship etc.).
600: The Bishop of Tour is shocked to find that on the 7th of July 600, ‘that there are still in the diocese and neighbouring dioceses a great number of pagans still attached to the heathen cult and its false divinities, mainly in the land south of the Loire’... and that he found it difficult to have the 22nd canon observed, mostly in those villages where the pagans had embraced christianism, thus making it very difficult to have the many pagan superstitions eradicated.
611: St Valery (562-622), bishop of Rouen, has an enormous tree worshipped by the peasants of the Bresle valley cut down.
626: Renewal of the interdictions of the second council of Orléans at the council of Clichy, in 626.
639: St Amand (584-679), bishop of Worms in 626, realises that pagan temples are still used in his diocese. He has king Dagobert I (626-639) deliver him an ordinance to have all children baptised.
640: St Omer, bishop of Thérouane, finds pagan temples intact upon his arrival in the diocese.
641: Famous sermon pronounced by St Eloi in 641 denouncing pagan practices.
658: At the second council of Nantes is ordered the destruction and burial of pagan stones so that its adorators may not find them.
698: At the council of Rouen in 698 are denounced those who make lustrations, vows and offerings before stones. Experts generally agree that by the end of the VIIth century, no more organised pagan cult remained in Gaul.
742: Nevertheless, a capitulary of Corloman in 742, renews the interdiction of pagan practice, and Charlemagne in turn in a capitulary pronounced on the 23rd of March 789, is very hard on the ‘fools’ who light torches and perform all sorts of superstitions by trees and wells.
769: Another capitulary dated from Aix-la-Chapelle, orders: ‘That he who is sufficiently informed, and who does not remove from his fields the stone mockeries standing there, will be treated as sacrilegious and declared anathema.
792 and after: Nevertheless, megaliths still continued to be re-erected when re-discovered by the peasants, votive offerings were still being made at wells, at the foot of trees and standing stones. And this despite the continuous harassment of the Church through the centuries.(ref. 3)
One would expect that after having destroyed the Dharmas of Europe, that the Church of Christ would show remorse for what it did. Much to the contrary, it continued relentlessly as it continues to this day in this denial.
Pope John Paul II, Synod of the Bishops of Europe, October 1999
When John Paul II opened the synod of the bishops of Europe in October 1999 in Rome, the main themes for the three following weeks were: ‘Neopaganism’, ‘Radical de-Christianisation’ and ‘Disintegration of the Conscience of Europe’.
Hipolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand and author of ‘Vers une France païenne’ (Towards a Pagan France) seized the opportunity to throw a violent attack against Druidism and the other old Dharmas of Europe. This attack Druidism was often equated with New Age, itself equated with laity and nihilistic consumerism. Bishop Simon, as do many other eminent Christian thinkers, wilfully confuses the resurgent lineages of Antique spirituality with the many modern spiritual and philosophical trends of the West such as the Neopagan and New Age movements. This is wrong because it perpetuates a false picture of Druidism. The Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel (World-wide Celtic Creed), deeply regrets that the Church continues in its libellous attitude against Europe’s native religions. What is even more disturbing is that the three Abrahamic religions, the three monotheisms, all agree that ‘Neopaganism’ as a whole (read Laity, New Age, the European Dharmas and Western Hinduism and Buddhism) is the major threat that organised Religion faces today.
The fact of the matter is that the Monotheist Faiths are exclusive and non-inclusive. The Roman Church has never allowed other faiths to coexist along its side. It has ruthlessly destroyed everything Europe had as Antique institutions. This is what was called as the ‘Dark Ages’. The Roman Church created a spiritual desert around it, and when the veil of Maya was lifted, the Church itself was deserted. The Church is well aware of this, and this is why it needs so badly to make amends. The only problem is that it is not making amends to those it continues to attack. Saint Thomas in his Treaty on theological problems, article 5, question 10, names three concrete modalities in the classification of infidelity:
1) refusal of Christian Faith that was never accepted: Paganism;
2) refusal of Christian Faith that was professed in figure: Judaism;
3) refusal of the Revelation that was accepted: Heresy.
The loss of faith by heresy is considered a worst heresy and injure to God than that committed by pagans. But from the material platform, paganism is considered worst than heresy because it is at a greater distance from the positions of the Church. In the eyes of the Church, of course, Druidism, like Hinduism, is paganism. (ref. 4)
THE WOLF IN GRANDMOTHER’S BED
Now that we have heard the papal excuses for the 2000 Jubilee, we can only be sure of just one thing, the Church has now launched its new evangelical mission. One thing sure, as usual, the Roman Church was very discrete and parsimonious on whatever it wanted to leek out. In fact, the bone of the mater is that the Church keeps many hidden agendas.
First and foremost is its interfaith dialogue. The main question in this case is, to what faiths was the pardon addressed. Certainly not to the New Age community. Even though the Church sees the New Age movement as its greatest opponent, it doesn’t even recognise the validity of such a faith. Druidry?, there are no more bones left in this closet, just dust. To Hinduism? no, India is the main target of its next great mission effort. In fact, the main reason to hold such a pardon came from the growing embarrassment the Church endures with the Jewish communities.
Some time ago, French prelates made public excuses to its Jewish compatriots for the horrors suffered under the Vichy regime. Then there was the difficult dialogue with the Moslems, not to mention the other Christians termed prosaically ‘the Division of Christians’. All this is very fine, but the nerve of it all is that the Catholic Church, not unlike the major multinational companies, is looking for a merger take over and non-encroachment agreement. First and foremost in this new deal is its effort to bring the Roman and Orthodox churches back together if not the Anglican Church. This is something we should be very worried about. Certainly the Pope did fly away to the Holy Land to make repairs with its ‘Older Brother of the Faith’, then try patching things with Little Brother. Imagine this, the Abrahamic faiths strike a non encroachment alliance in which each is the keeper of its brother! Who is targeted next? You guessed! This is why it is so important for us to maintain our own interfaith forum.
This forum of Pan-Vedic Dharmas could comprise of the Hinduist Vainavists, Shaivists, Shaktis, and reformed faiths such as Jains, Buddhists etc., with the European Dharmas, that are, the Celtic Druids, The Germanic Odinists, the Greek Hierophants, etc. From the sixties, Druid orders of Europe were engaged in inter-faith dialogue with Buddhists and Brahmans, but back then, they had very little reciprocal understanding. It is now accepted in a growing circle of Vedic scholars that Druidism was the Western form of Vedism. In order to harmonise our relations, much had, and still needs, to be discussed concerning standards of practice. This being, what makes a devotee of Vedic and Dru Vidic Dharmas? There is still much confusion due to divergent schools of thought and trends within Druidry and on issues of devotion, worship, diet and liturgy, let alone ritual purity.
Recently, we have been successful in establishing contact, trust, and strong friendship with Vaishnavas and Shaivites in the West. Special to us, is our hope to hold as a united front in areas of common interest. The Catholic Church has documentation centres informing the general public on new religions and sects, and this includes Druid orders as well as respectable institutions such as Iskon. While visiting one of these very well documented centres I was made aware of the ‘dangers of sectarianism’. I was told that Druidism was a fake religion invented by nostalgic Freemasons and that Christianity was plagued by an ever increasing number of Oriental sects. Nothing nice to say about gurus, a very pejorative name, and even less to say about the many pundits directing yoga and meditation centres.
The only nice thing I heard was that Zoroastrianism (an I.E. Dharma) was one of the inspirational sources of Christianism along with Judaism. This probably explains why our queries to the Zoroastrian community were never answered. Who would want to engage a discussion with a nostalgic mason? Its a pity because Druidism has more to share with the Farsis than Christians will ever want to admit. So no, the Pope will never admit to the persecution and destruction of the European Dharmas. India is high up on the agenda and it will look very embarrassing to admit that it partook in the destruction of its sister faiths in Europe.
What the bishops of India plan for India
«Pope John Paul II invites the entire Church to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit for a renewal of Christian life and mission in the world.»
Read between lines: 1- renewal of Christian life = Christians must be more assertive, solidarity of all Christian Churches; 2- renewal of mission = a new evangelical zeal inviting Christians to spread the good word, make more converts;
«We too, the Christian community in India, are challenged to give our specific response to the Spirit of Jesus during this period, so crucial to the nation and the Church in this country.»
Why is the Christian community so crucial to the Indian nation?
1- India is the last stronghold of ‘heathenism’.
2- the Caste system is judged offensive by Christian standards.
3- Hinduism is a growing menace to the Monotheistic bloc. Gurus are exporting their teachings all over the world.
4- New Age, also called neopaganism resulting from the teaching of gurus in the West, is the major threat of the Abrahamic monotheist religions.
In fact, India is religious and spiritual with or without Christianism!
«As the Third Millennium dawns on our country, where Christianity has been in existence practically from its very inception, we want to project a renewed face of the Church which will radiate Christ so that our brothers and sisters of India will be able to experience the loving kindness of the Saviour.»
If the Pope is calling for a reconciliation of the Churches and asking forgiveness for the faults of the past, why is he calling for a conversion of India?
It is easier to ask forgiveness for the destruction of Native American cultures when these have been massively Christianised. It is contradictory to ask pardon for faults of the past when destruction of native cultures is still called for.
«It is our goal to build up in our country a Catholic community that is intent on becoming a fully reconciled community, free from all discrimination, a Christian community that is healed of all its divisions, a religious community that lives in harmony and a human community that has discovered its true source of life in love and sharing.»
The goal is to establish a strong Christian community that will make more converts.
«If this is to be realised, we need to undergo a thorough conversion, for it is only through the body of the transformed Christian community, that Christ can shine in His radiance to the world around us. We shall then communicate the joy of the redeemed to all our brothers and sisters: the Good News of Jesus for the emerging India of 2000.» (ref.5)
Who is it that needs to undergo a thorough conversion, Christians or Hindus?
The Church is the body of Christ! This implies that the Church is to radiate from outside of its body into the local non-Christian communities. A call for the emergence of Christian India for the coming millennium.
TABLE OF COMPARED FAITHS
THE VEDIC AND DRU-VIDIC DHARMAS CHRISTIANISM:
Monist and Relativistic dualism,Polytheistic Monotheist and Dualistic (Good/Evil)
Cosmic Historical
Non-dogmatic Dogmatic
Tolerant Intolerant
Open tradition, oral and textual Revelation, closed Book
Many options Centralist
Non-proselytist Proselytist
Hedonist and Aesthetic Rejection of Pleasure and Beauty
Pre-existence of the soul New soul at birth
De-centralised Centralised
Knowledge and Understanding Blind Faith
Accent on human experience Accent on the after-life
Respect of Nature Exploitation of Nature
Sources:
1. Mac Neill,Eoin. Life of Saint Patrick.
2. The Confession of St. Patrick, translated from Latin by Ludwig Bieler, document from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, May 27, 1999.
3. Druid Catarnos, La résistence du paganisme en Gaule, in Ialon, clairière, revue d’étude druidique, no. 2.
4. From a Press Release of the Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel dated 1999.
5. Adressed by the Indian bishops for Jubilee 2000.
Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/1/#gen447
Ram Swarup's writings
By Tara Katir, Hawaii
It's the trend these days for ancient traditions to speak out against missionary aggression. It is into this emerging courageousness that the work of Ram Swarup (1920-1998) takes on singular significance, as he asserts the value of the Sanatana Dharma for mankind's future in two volumes of elegantly articulated essays, On Hinduism, Reviews and Reflections and Meditations, Yogas, Gods, Religions (Voice of India, 232 pages, Rs. 250, and 278 pages, Rs. 300 respectively). Published posthumously, these books contain material never before released. Some of the essays included are, "Cultural Self-Alienation Among the Hindus," "The Hindu View of Education," "India and Greece," "Patanjali Yoga," "Bhakti-Yoga," "Buddhist Yoga," "Love--Human and Divine" and "Semitic Religions Versus Hindu Dharma." These are but a few of Swarup's eloquent and forthright essays. In "One God of Theology," Swarup talks about this shifting trend: "The recognition and respect for Eastern wisdom and religions came from nominal Christians, from great humanists and universalists like Voltaire and from men of reason and science who form quite an influential section of the Western society today. An average, simple Westerner is also more open to the appeal of thoughts from different countries. There is even a wind of change amongst deeply religious Christians, particularly those who are not connected with the missionary activities. All this is a welcome development, and it is in keeping with the spirit of the age which demands universality and breaking down of the barriers of prejudice and insularity."
Meditations by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road,
New Delhi 110 002
On Hinduism by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India
Christian Conversion
Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, in his new book Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India (154 pages, First Public Protection Trust, Rs. 35, us$10) details accounts of Christian conversion tactics and practices against Hindus from the earliest Portuguese contact until today. Srinivasan explains that during the colonial period Christian scholars studied Hinduism, intending to use knowledge of its beliefs and practices for their own conversion procedures. In addition, by "creating a racial theory of Aryan migration into India, the Indologists also came up with a pseudo-history for use in the service of religion and politics." Simultaneously at Oxford University, the Boden Professorship was created with the objective "to promote Sanskrit learning among the English, ...to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion." Additionally, monetary prizes were awarded for literary works that undermined Indian tradition. "By these means, they financed and institutionalized hatred..." writes Srinivasan. Present-day missionaries, Srinivasan asserts, have created a cultural hybrid of Hindu and Christian symbols and practices, deliberately fostering confusion as to their true intentions. Places like Father Bede Griffith's ashram in Kerala, and Satchidananda Ashram in Kulithalai, Tamil Nadu, were founded by Christian priests. Inside the "missionaries adorn [sic] the Hindu garb, while the heart beneath was beating for Christianity, and fostered antagonism to Hinduism."
Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India by Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, First Public Protection Trust, PO. Box 5094, Chennai 600028 India
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1990: The Berlin Wall is taken down February 12. Germany is reunited over the next year. Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
1990: Under its new democratic constitution, Nepal remains the world's only Hindu country.
1990: Hindus flee Muslim persecution in Kashmir Valley.
1990: Foundation stones are laid in Ayodhya for new temple at the birthplace of Lord Rama, as Hindu nationalism rises.
1990: Vatican condemns Eastern mysticism as false doctrine in letter by Cardinal Ratzinger approved by Pope Paul II, to purge Catholic monasteries, convents and clergy of involvement in Eastern meditation, yoga and Zen.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11879&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The following article recently appeared in the European Business Review/New European, Volume 13, No. 6, 2001, along with an excellent Editorial introducing it (by Aidan Rankin, who recently wrote the forward to the book Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, by David Frawley, Voice of India 2001, from which this article is drawn).
The European Business Review is one of the most prestigious journals of its type, connected to important business and academic leaders throughout the world. It contains the New European which constitutes its central portion and offers new insights on global problems. It can be accessed on-line only by subscribers through www.emerald-library.com
For such an article to appear in this important publication indicates new inroads for Hindu thought into the western world and its intellectual elite.
The article is also on our web site at www.vedanet.com at www.vedanet.com/indic.htm and in the Naimisha Journal.
The need for a new Indic school of thought
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)
Keywords: India, Culture, History
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is a scholar and teacher of Vedic Science, Yoga and Vedantic philosophy in the USA, where he directs the Vedic Institute. In India, he is recognised as an authority on Hindu cultural issues. Dr Frawley is the author of more than 20 books and his Web site is www.vedanet.com
During the Eurocolonial period, Indian history and civilization were distorted to fit European perceptions. A new school of thought is needed that will see Asian history and tradition with Asian eyes and thought, beginning with India.
The "clash of civilizations"
A clash of civilizations is occurring throughout in the world today, a war of cultures at various levels in both our personal and public lives. This clash is partly because of rising historical and cultural awareness on the part of newly-independent countries, beginning with India. The Western-European/North American culture is currently predominant and is strongly, if not rudely, trying to eliminate or subordinate the rest. Yet Western civilization is spreading itself not so much by force, as in the colonial era, but by subtle new forms of social manipulation. These include control of the media and news information networks, control of the entertainment industry, domination of commercial markets, continued missionary aggressiveness by Western religions, and - as important but sometimes overlooked - control of educational institutions and curricula worldwide.
This control of education has resulted in a Western-European/North-American view of history and culture in textbooks and information sources in most countries, including India. Naturally, people educated according to Western values will function as part of Western culture, whatever may be the actual country of their birth. They will experience an alienation from their native culture in which they have not really been raised. They easily become a fifth column for the Westernisation of their culture, which also means its denigration or, at best, its commercialisation. An authentic Indian or Indic perspective, a worldview coming out of the culture of India and its particular values and perceptions, is hardly to be found, even in India. The Western school of thought is taught in India, not any Indic or Indian school of thought.
The Indic school of thought
What is the Indic school of thought, one might ask? It is not at all something new or unknown. It is the great spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural traditions of the subcontinent that are among the largest and oldest in the world. It is the emphasis on dharma, on karma, on pluralism and synthesis, on yoga sadhana and moksha. It is not only the tradition of ancient sages from the Vedas and Upanishads to Buddhist and Yoga traditions but also modern teachers like Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. It is not only the vast literature of Sanskrit but also that of the regional languages and dialects of the subcontinent, most of which have older literary traditions than the languages of Europe such as English.
All major cultural debates are now framed according to Western values and perceptions, and so they will naturally serve to uphold them. The important issues of Indic civilization today are framed according to the principles or biases of the Western school of thought. These include what Indian civilization is, when India as a nation first arose, what the real history of India is, how to reform Indian society, and how India should develop in order to have its rightful place in the future world. As the debate is defined according to the approach and values of Western civilization, India does not always fare well, and India as its own independent source of civilization is seldom acknowledged. India is judged as if it should be like another USA, UK or Germany, which it can never be, nor should be. This only makes Indians feel inferior or wrong.
The Western school of thought has denigrated or overlooked the Indic school, particularly in the Indian context. For example, the Indic school has its own history sources through the Vedas, Puranas and various historical texts (Itihasas) that are quite massive and detailed and have much internal consistency. However, in writing the history of India, the Western school does not give these any place. They are dismissed as, at best, mythology and, at worst, fraud. Instead, it defines the history of India according to outside influences, as a series of invasions and borrowings mainly from the west, from cultures the West knows better and has more affinity with, which makes India seem dependent upon the West in order to advance its civilization again today.
The Western school of thought negates the relevance of the traditions of India. This is not simply because the Indic tradition is wrong, unsophisticated or irrelevant. It is because Western civilization is hegemonic, if not predatory in nature, and such ideas help promote its spread. Its information about India contains a built-in poison. It is meant to undermine the culture of the region and subordinate it to the West, however objective, scientific or modern its approach may appear to be.
When India as a nation arose is defined by the Western school as 1947, the year of independence. It founders were Nehru and Gandhi, who inherited a united region from the British, before which India was just a confused mass of local kingdoms with no national consistency. On the other hand, according to the Indic school, India or Bharat as a country arose in the Vedic era as the type of dharmic/yogic culture that has been the main characteristic of Indian civilization through history. This spiritual or yogic orientation can be found in the cultures of all the regions of India from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas, pervading even in the folk art and folk songs of all regions, as well as "high" culture.
Western distortions and the Indian response
In the Western school of thought, an Aryan invasion or migration is used to describe the way in which ancient Vedic civilization took root in India, as if it were an alien force of intruding barbarians. In the Indic school of thought, the whole idea of an Aryan invasion/migration is a sign of ignorance. The Indic tradition arose from the rishi tradition of spiritual endeavour, characteristic of the Vedic-Sarasvati culture and related cultures, reflected in the continuity of Vedic literature from the Vedas to the Mahabharata, Buddhist and Jain literature and the Puranas, which all reflect the same principles, peoples and dynasties of kings.
In these current cultural debates, therefore, an overriding greater debate is ignored - that which takes place between the Western and the Indic schools of thought. The Western-style media and academia tries to see what is authentic in Indian civilization and finds it to be wanting, reducing it to little more than caste or superstition. This is not surprising as the Indic tradition has a different focus and values than does the Western tradition. Similarly, from the standpoint of the Indic tradition, we must question Western civilization itself. Is the Western school of thought enlightened? Is it appropriate for India? Can it understand the unique civilization of the subcontinent?
The Indic school itself is often highly critical of the Western school. For example, when asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied: "It would be a good idea." What he meant was that, from the standpoint of the spiritual traditions of India, Western civilization with its materialism, aggression and dogmatism was not highly evolved. Sri Aurobindo wrote on the limitations of Western civilization, while appreciating it in certain areas. <
Secular missionaries
The West similarly tries to control any debate on cultural ethics, using slogans of democracy and human rights, which are only used to intimidate weak nations and conveniently ignored relative to stronger or wealthier nations like China or Saudi Arabia. Organizations operating under the cover of human rights are among the most aggressively alienating influences today. They function like "secular missionaries", ignoring victims of terrorism like the Hindus, while defending the "rights" of terrorist organizations against security forces that are compelled to take action against them. Meanwhile, it is the West that is selling the weapons and profiting by terrorism and civil strife throughout the world. The West originally trained many terrorist groups, such as the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Such groups highlight social inequalities in India, but ignore a colonial history marked by attacks on indigenous Indic culture. The same charges of cultural backwardness have been used throughout the colonial era to undermine the native traditions of Africa, Asia and the USA, and to justify forced religious conversion and political domination, which is their real aim. Sometimes native intellectuals are taken in by these Western approaches to social issues, not realizing that they are just promoting the colonial agenda of world domination in a more covert form.
New rules of debate
Therefore, it is not enough simply to debate issues of culture, politics, or history in the existing forums in order to promote a more Indian or Hindu view. We must question the very process itself, its basis and the perspective or values behind the school of thought in which the debate occurs. What India needs is the creation of a new Indic school of thought that is dynamic and assertive in the modern global context - one that can challenge Western civilization not merely in regard to the details of history or culture, but also relative to fundamental principles of life, humanity and consciousness. This requires a revival or renaissance in the Indic tradition and its great spiritual systems of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jainism, and also in its political, artistic and scientific traditions. Modern science and technology can arguably be more humanely employed according to Indic or Dharmic values than according to Western religious exclusivity and commercial greed.
The world today needs a critique of "modern civilization" from an Indic or Dharmic perspective, an interpretation of capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity and Islam from a tradition that is much older, deeper and closer to the spirit in both man and nature. These Western ideologies are failing to address the spiritual needs of humanity and are incapable of creating a world order that transcends dogmatism or exclusivism. <
Those of us who are part of the Indic school of thought should emphasize such a greater debate and not get caught in the details of issues already formulated according to the biases of Western civilization. This debate should examine the right structure for society and the real forward direction for history and evolution. We must raise fundamental questions. Is the current Western materialistic view of history valid at all, or are there spiritual forces at work in the world that go beyond all these? Can we understand our history through outer approaches like archaeology, linguistics or genetics, or is a higher consciousness or more intuitive view required as well? Are the records of our ancient sages to be rejected so lightly, whenever we think they do not agree with our views?
The real issue of the Vedas, India's oldest tradition, is not how these texts might fit into the current model of history as promoted by the Western school of thought, tracing the development of civilization through outward material advances. It is how the existence of such an ancient tradition of rishis, knowers of cosmic consciousness, shows a higher spiritual humanity from which we have arisen and whose legacy we can reclaim.
Towards a new school of thought
India needs a different type of scholarship, an Indic school of thought that has its own values, traditions and methods of reaching conclusions. Those of us who follow the Indian civilization should develop this Indic school in its own right and not merely try to justify our views in terms of the Western or European school of thought, which is hostile and radically opposed to Indic cultural tradition.
I recently raised a call for an intellectual Kshatriya in India - a new class of warrior intellectuals to defend India and its great pluralistic traditions from the onslaught of Western exclusivist approaches, whether religious, economic or political. This call fundamentally requires the creation of such a new Indic school of thought. Such a new Indic school of thought concerns not only philosophies of liberation or yoga, but Indic, Hindu and Dharmic approaches to ecology, the global marketplace, health, science, the status of women, religious freedom, in short to all the main issues in society today - and it should also look beyond these issues, which are often the issues of the Western school, to yet broader concerns. How can we integrate humanity and nature, with its underlying cosmic intelligence? How can we reclaim our spiritual heritage, as a species, that the great yogis have pointed out for us?
Such a new Indic school of thought requires new institutions to promote and embody it, or new Vedic schools. This will arise not through Indology departments in Western-style universities but through a new type of institution with its own funding and curriculum, free from manipulation by the vested interested and ideologies of the Western school and its religious, commercial and political bias.
An intellectual renaissance
The problem is that the Western school created Indian academic institutions that reflect Western values. To try to gain credibility for Indic thought in the context of European institutions, as some well-meaning Hindus are attempting, may be a helpful strategy but misses this main point. Western universities have their own agendas that they will not readily give up. They will not change simply because a few well-intentioned people and groups give them money and sponsor positions to project a more "sympathetic" picture of India and her civilization. Like a sea that salts every river that flows into it, existing trends and interests will force the people coming into them to conform to the dominant Eurocentric values that pervade these institutions. Otherwise, they cannot survive academically.
It is not on single issues that we need to make headway but on promoting the Indic tradition as a complete school of thought in itself, rather than merely as a side subject of Indological study in Western-defined academia. We must look back to such Indic models as Naimisha, Takshashila, Nalanda or Mithila, not only to their institutions, but also to the Gurukula approach and its more intimate and spiritual form of learning.
I urge the young people and the scholars of India to take up this cause. Do not try to define India in the context of civilization as defined by the West. Instead look to the great traditions of India that have their own deeper roots and use it to critique Western civilization and discover its limitations. Rather than seeking to define and control India according to Western perspectives, the West should look to India for guidance on the deeper issues of culture and spirituality. Indians, in turn, should assert their own greater traditions and not simply imitate the West or seek to justify Indian civilization from a Western perspective. True scholars of the Indic tradition need not go to Harvard or Oxford to seek credibility, rather these institutions should come to them.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=2658&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Pope's Apology
- Dr. David Frawley
Pope John Paul II recently made an almost too well publicized apology for the wrongs and injustices, the sins committed by Catholics throughout the centuries. He mentioned the Crusades, Inquisition and the mistreatment of the Jews, among other actions that led to hatred, oppression and genocide. The event was more a great media show than a sincere and humble statement of the heart. The whole gesture was broadcast with great ceremony, almost as if it were a piece of propaganda.
The Pope's first concern was the Jews, who have been persecuted by the Christians during the last two thousand years, with the Nazis being perhaps the greatest of a long series of episodes of Anti-Semitism in Europe. There have been many criticisms of the Church for its role in tolerating, if not supporting the Nazis. The Pope's apology is also meant to counter criticism against his recent effort to get Pope Pius XII canonized as a saint. Pope Pius XII was the Pope during World War II who never tried to stop the Nazis.
Many Jews are critical of the effort to canonize Pope Pius XII and suspect him of collaborating with the Nazis. The Pope's seeking of forgiveness from the Jews is a way to redress that as well.
His second concern was the Muslims. The Pope wants recognition in the Islamic world. Today the great majority of devoted Catholics are in similar Third World circumstances and Catholic missionaries are competing with Islamic missionaries, particularly in Africa. The Pope made a very high profile visit to Israel recently, appeared arm and arm with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and made a public plea for a Palestinian State, almost as if he were more a political than a religious leader.
The place of Hindus and Buddhists in this mistreatment can be inferred but the silence about these religions is poignant. The Pope failed to mention these religions by name, as has been his general tendency not to want to recognize them as valid religions - a courtesy that he does yield to other Biblical beliefs. The Inquisition came to India, specifically to Goa. The Catholic Church has been quite active in Asia as well throughout the centuries and often using the same questionable tactics. The Pope also failed to specifically mention the pagans of Europe that were the object of much Christian hatred and violence from the destruction of pagan temples to the burning of witches in the Middle Ages. Even today pagan groups in Europe have to deal with strong opposition from the Church.
I don't mean to say that the Pope's gesture has no value or cannot be a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Protestant Christians and Muslims, whose history is just as bloody relative to other faiths, can follow suit. But the Pope's apology is perhaps more notable for what it did not say. We should not read into it more than what he indicated. Unless it is followed by more genuine actions, it may only be an effort to avoid real scrutiny.
According to Catholic doctrine, the Church is a heavenly body, the bride of Christ and can therefore suffer from no real deficiency. Hence, the Pope is not apologizing for any real mistakes done by the Church because, by definition in Catholicism, the Church is capable of no real wrong. He is apologizing for mistakes made by church members, which can include priests, bishops and even previous Popes, but which only occurred by their failure to live up to the heavenly status of the Church. So the Pope's apology is not really for the wrongs of the Catholic Church but only for the wrongs of individual Catholics. In this regard it is an attempt to maintain the purity of the Church and to uphold its power. It is the Church apologizing for the deficiencies of its members, not for its own mistakes.
Secondly, the Pope's statement does not contain a repudiation of any Catholic doctrines; particularly those that require that Catholics convert the world to their belief, which notion was responsible for most of the violence that he criticizes. The Pope's apology is not an acceptance of other religions or a statement that salvation is possible outside the Church or apart from Jesus. It is not a declaration of respect for the religions of the world. It is not a proclamation of religious pluralism. The Pope did not say that other religions are as good as Christianity or that Jesus is the only Son of God and the sole redeemer of humanity. In fact, his recent statements in Asia, his call to evangelize the region and convert Asia to Catholicism, proclaim the opposite.
His plea for forgiveness was to God, not to other people and certainly not to other religions. He was not apologizing to other religions for the Catholic Church failing to recognize their truth or their holiness in the eyes of God. He was not reaching out to other religions, so much as making an appeal to members of other religions in order to draw them closer to Christ and the Church in order to convert them. He preserved the exclusivism of Catholic belief in tact.
That this forgiveness coincides with a new church initiative to convert Asia to Christianity should not be forgotten. It is an attempt to give the Church a more liberal modern face to aid in its conversion efforts. It represents only a change of style. In the past conversion often occurred along with force and intimidation. This policy cannot work in the post-colonial era, when the Church does not have military support. So the Pope is trying a new, more friendly style. But the goal is the same - Christianity for all.
When a person confesses his sins to a Catholic priest he is always given some sort of penance. It is easy to ask for forgiveness but it should lead to some sort of action or it may be sincere. It is not enough to say you are sorry and ask for forgiveness if you have hurt others. You must stop the hurtful actions and make amends. The Pope should follow up his words with real efforts to rectify past wrongs, many of which are still continuing. If someone runs over you with a car, it is not enough to ask for forgiveness and walk away. The Catholic Church has ruined entire civilizations in its history, and has cast a pall over others.
Perhaps it should make a memorial to the victims of its Inquisitions. Above all, it must recognize that the religions that it has trampled over must be addressed as well.
The Pope should arrange meetings not only with Jews and Muslims, but with Hindus, Buddhists and Pagans, asking their forgiveness and seeking ways to address the wrongs that the Church has done to them and being open to real dialogue with them. Let the Pope ask forgiveness not simply of the people the Church may have harmed, let him ask forgiveness of their religions and religious leaders. Let him ask forgiveness of the Shankaracharyas or the Dalai Lama for denigrating their religions. Let him say that these other religions are as good and holy as Christianity. This he has not done and will not recommend. In fact, he has warned his priests and nuns against following yoga and other eastern practices, which he called selfish.
Many people were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Their native holy places were replaced by churches. Will the Pope tell such people to return to their original faith? Will he even tell them that their original faith was as good as Christianity? Will he work to restore at least a few native places of worship that the Church has stolen? If not, how can his apology be taken seriously?
Above all, the Pope should stop the policies that have led to such inequities. The entire Catholic process of proselytization has a sordid history. To ask for forgiveness for its excesses, but to continue with these conversion efforts is insincere.
The real question is whether the Catholic seeking to convert the world to its faith, based upon its declaration - recently affirmed by the Pope - that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity, is inherently a cause of intolerance, social disharmony and violence. When a missionary goes into a community and tells its members that salvation is only possible through Jesus and that their existing religion will not save them, that already is a form of intolerance and violence that must lead to disharmony and conflict.
The Pope has made great efforts to portray Catholicism as a force of social liberalism, allied with leftist causes as in the Liberation Theology, that is the defender of the poor and a force for social equality. At the same time he is asking for the canonization of Pope Pius XII who stood silent before Nazi and Fascist aggression and genocide. Mussolini was a good Catholic in frequent communication with the Church. Catholic priests and bishops are well known to have blessed Nazi and Italian Fascist troops.
Catholicism was long a natural ally of fascism. Theocracy, authoritarian and military rule are as old as Constantine, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. Spanish and Portuguese colonial rulers, who indulged in genocide of populations in America and Asia, acted with the sanction of the Church on their regimes. The military dictators of Central and South America in recent times, up to Pinochet were good Catholics and had Church leaders allied with them.
The Liberation Theology that arose in the Americas in recent years was a new phenomenon and often opposed by the Church. In fact, Pope John II has put an end to most of it in the Americas. He only promotes this Liberation Theology in India because of its conversion value.
The fact is that, historically, the Catholic Church has been allied with military dictatorships, theocracies, and colonial oppression. Jesuits functioned as spies to study and undermine countries for conversion purposes. The older history of popes, anti-popes is there for all to see. The actual Church is not the bride of Christ or purity but a house with many dark corners and many skeletons in its closets that have yet to be cleaned out.
If the Pope is a true social liberal let him work not just for the equality of people but for the equality of religions as well. Let him not just say that all human beings are equal; let him also honor other religions as great. Let him honor not just Biblical religions, but the dharmic traditions of Asia as valid ways to God or Truth.
The problems that the Pope has asked forgiveness for are inherent in the very nature and structure of the Church. When you create an exclusive organization to dispense salvation to the entire world, you endow it with a kind of absolute authority like that of a dictator that naturally leads to corruption. The future does not belong to the Catholic Church or to any institutionalized belief. No group can claim to own or represent God or dispense salvation by belief in its doctrines. Truth is universal and eternal and the time of exclusive beliefs, products of the Dark Ages of humanity, is long past.
It is clear that so far the Pope's apology is only meant to sidestep greater criticism. It is more of a whitewash than a sincere plea for forgiveness that a truly spiritual leader would ask for. Without bringing about an end to proselytization that has caused most of these problems it means little.
Reference:
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/holocaust/
http://www.nizkor.org/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/crusades/links.html
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu_home/
http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=1801&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Ethics of Conversion, Part I
By Vamadeva Shastri
Conversion has always been a topic that arouses, if not inflames our human emotions. After all, the missionary is trying to persuade a person to change his religious belief, which concerns the ultimate issues of life and death, the very meaning of our existence. And the missionary is usually denigrating the person's current belief, which may represent a strong personal commitment or a long family or cultural tradition, calling it inferior, wrong, sinful, or even perverse.
Such statements are hardly polite or courteous and are often insulting and derogatory. The missionary is not coming with an open mind for sincere discussion and give and take dialogue, but already has his mind made up and is seeking to impose his opinion on others, often even before he knows what they actually believe or do. It is difficult to imagine a more stressful human encounter short of actual physical violence. Missionary activity always holds an implicit psychological violence, however discretely it is conducted. It is aimed at turning the minds and hearts of people away from their native religion to one that is generally unsympathetic and hostile to it.
In this article I will address conversion and missionary activity mainly in regard to Christianity, which has so commonly employed and insisted upon the practice. Indeed it is difficult to imagine the Christian religion apart from missionary activity, which has been the backbone of the faith for most of its history. Christianity has mainly been an outward looking religion seeking to convert the world. In this process it has seldom been open to real dialogue with other religions. It has rarely examined its own motives or the harm that such missionary activity has caused, even though the history of its missionary activity has been tainted with intolerance, genocide and the destruction not only of individuals but of entire cultures.
But much of this discussion applies to Islam as well, which shares an agenda with Christianity to convert the world to its particular belief. As an American raised as a Catholic and who attended Catholic school and then later adapted Hindu-based spiritual teachings, I can perhaps provide another angle on this topic that hopefully will give ground for new thinking. I had to break through much religious intolerance and prejudice to make the changes that I did.
What is Conversion?
First let us define what we mean by conversion? Let us immediately clearly discriminate between conversion or change of beliefs that happens in free human interchange in open discussion as opposed to organized conversion efforts that employ financial, media or even armed persuasion.
That certain individuals may influence other individuals to adapt one religious belief or another has seldom been a problem. There should be open and friendly discussion and debate about religion just as there is about science. But when one religion creates an agenda of conversion and mobilizes massive resources to that end, targeting unsuspecting, poor or disorganized groups, it is no longer a free discussion. It is an ideological assault. It is a form of religious violence and intolerance.
Organized conversion efforts are quite another matter than the common dialogue and interchange between members of different religious communities in daily life, or even than organized discussions in forums or academic settings. Organized conversion activity is like a trained army invading a country from the outside. This missionary army often goes into communities where there is little organized resistance to it, or which may not even be aware of its power or its motives. It will even take advantage of communities that are tolerant and open minded about religion and use that to promote a missionary agenda that destroys this tolerance.
The missionary business remains one of the largest in the world and has enormous funding on many levels. It is like several multinational corporations with the different Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical groups involved. There are full time staffs and organizations allocating money, creating media hype, plotting strategies and seeking new ways to promote conversion.
The local native religion has about as much chance against such multinational incursions as a local food seller has if McDonald's moves into his neighborhood with a slick, well funded advertising campaign targeting his customers. Yet while many third world countries have government policies to protect local businesses, they usually don't have any safety mechanism to protect local religions.
In fact missionary activity is like an ideological war. It is quite systematic, motivated and directed. It can even resemble a blitzkrieg using media, money, people and public shows to appeal to the masses in an emotional way. Missionaries are not seeking to learn from other religious groups or even to find out what they are all about, but to promote their own views and with as much energy as possible, even if this requires denigrating other beliefs.
Therefore, with missionary activity we are not talking about unplanned, spontaneous or isolated events. We are talking about a religious effort towards world conquest that is quite happy to put an end to other religious traditions - that looks to establish one particular religion for all human beings, in which the diversity of human religions is discredited and forgotten. Regions where missionary activity has been successful have seen their older traditions demoted or destroyed, whether it is those of the pagan Europeans, the Native Americans, or the pre-Islamic Arabs. Hinduism would likely fall along the same wayside should lose the battle against missionary religions, just as Hinduism in Islamic Pakistan has all but disappeared.
Missionary activity and conversion is not about freedom of religion. The missionary wants to put an end to pluralism, choice and freedom of religion. He wants one religion, his own, for everyone and will sacrifice his life to that cause. True freedom of religion should involve freedom from conversion. The missionary is like a salesman targeting people in their homes or like an invader seeking to conquer. Such disruptive activity is not a right and it cannot promote social harmony or respect between different religious communities. In fact people should have the right not to be bothered by missionaries unless they seek them out. Those of us in the West are irritated by local missionaries like the Jehovah's Witnesses that often come soliciting at our doors. Can one imagine the distress or confusion they could cause to some poor person in Asia? Once let into the door, it is hard to get them out.
History of Conversion
Let us look at the history of conversion, how it arose and what it has become through time. Organized conversion on a mass scale hardly existed anywhere in the world before the advent of Christianity some two thousand years ago. It became particularly strong after the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century. This resulted in a Roman or imperial church that used the resources of the empire, including the army, to promote the religion, which was a state institution. Church and state become closely tied and one was used to uphold the other. This alliance of church and state occurred well into the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century throughout much of Europe.
In the seventh century Islam brought about a religion in which church and state, or religion and politics were not simply allied but became the same, with the Caliph functioning as both the religious and secular head of the empire. This non-division between religion and politics continues in most Islamic countries today, including Pakistan, which has gone so far recently to proclaim the Koran as the supreme law of the land, though it is not a secular law book or any kind of law book. Can one imagine a Western country proclaiming the Bible as the law of the land? Yet the church dominated the laws of Europe for centuries.
Prior to adapting Christianity Rome had its state religion but this existed largely as a show for political purposes - the worship of the emperor. Rome tolerated all other religions as long as they gave a nominal and political support to the state religion. The Romans persecuted Christians not because they were intolerant of religious differences but because they expected all religious groups to at least afford this nominal recognition for the state religion, which the Christians refused to do.
When Christianity became the state religion, because of the belief that it alone was the true religion, this tolerance of other religions came to an end in the Roman Empire. Pagan temples and schools were closed, if not replaced by churches or even destroyed, including the closing of the great Platonic academy in Athens in the sixth century. Paganism in all of its forms was eventually banned as not only false, but also as immoral and illegal. Pagan or even unorthodox groups continued to be oppressed in Europe up to the witches of the Middle Ages, which resulted in the deaths of millions in the name of religion and protecting the church.
In the colonial period Christian missionary activity spread throughout the world and brought with it a great violence and intolerance that continued the anti-pagan crusades as part of colonialism. Missionary efforts in the colonial period, with some exceptions, contributed to or even brought about the tremendous genocide of native populations not only in America but also in Africa and Asia. Native peoples had their religions banned, their holy places destroyed or taken over by the Christians. The history of the Spanish in Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century is comparable to the Nazis of this century, if not worse, pillaging and plundering a continent in the name of and with the blessings of the church. This process of missionary colonialism reached its zenith in the nineteenth century, in which Native Africans were the main group subject to genocide, and it is only now slowly declining. However missionary groups have done little to apologize much less to atone for the violence and hatred this five hundred years of colonialism created, and which destroyed many traditional religions and cultures.
In fact colonialism has not truly ended but has recently taken a more economic rather than military form, along with the Westernization along economic lines. As Christianity is the dominant Western religion, it continues use the current economic expansion of Western culture to promote its conversion agendas. The greater financial resources and media dominance of the West affords Christianity a great edge in religious and social encounters throughout the world. Even when it is a question of a Christian minority in a land dominated by a non-Christian religion, the non-Christians are often at a disadvantage in terms of money and media through the Western support that the Christian community has, particularly in regard to its conversion activities.
Though most countries in the world today are secular, this still has not created a level playing field in the field of religion. Western religions are still taking an aggressive, intolerant, if not predatory role toward non-Western beliefs. They are using financial and media advantages, including mass marketing, to promote their agenda of conversion. Though missionary activity became less overt after the end of the colonial era it still goes on. And we cannot forget the bloody history of missionary activity or its potential for disruption, violence and destruction should the circumstance again arise.
The Motivation Behind Conversion
What is the motivation behind conversion activities? Why should one person want to convert another to his or her religious belief? In a pluralistic world, such as we live in there are many different types of culture, art, language, business and religion that contribute much to the richness of society. Why should we demand that everyone be like us in terms of anything, including religion? Isn't this diversity the very beauty of culture and our greater human heritage?
Clearly the missionary seeking converts must believe that other people cannot find their goal of life by any other religion than the one that he is propagating. Otherwise there would be no need to convert anyone. And generally the missionary is not simply announcing that he has something good or better, like someone who has invented a better light bulb. He is usually claiming that his religion is the one true faith and that the others are either inferior, out of date, or simply false.
One could argue that the conversion mentality is inherently intolerant. If I recognize that many religions are good and religious belief should be arrived at freely and without interference, then I will not create a massive organization to covert other people to my belief and get them to renounce what they already have. Only an intolerant and exclusive religious ideology requires conversion or funds it on a massive scale.
In short conversion activity is anti-secular. It does not tolerate the religious differences that must exist in a truly secular society but aims at eliminating them. The irony is that secular law provides the religious freedom that allows conversion activity to go on. The very missionaries that once used colonial armies to promote their conversion agendas are now maintaining them in the post-colonial era under the guise of freedom of religion. The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom when they were in power in the colonial era, now use freedom of religion to keep those same missionary activities going! This is both ironical and hypocritical!
Generally missionary efforts are stronger to the degree that the missionary is opposed to the religions that people already follow. The old dominant Christian strategy, which many Protestant groups still promote, is to denigrate non-Biblical beliefs as heathen, or the work of the devil. Evangelical missionaries still identify Hinduism with devil worship. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two of the most influential American evangelical leaders say this repeatedly, as do their followers, and they are sponsoring missionary activity in India as well. Naturally this gives a missionary much zeal and intensity, saving souls from the clutches of evil and driving out demons.
Such a zealous missionary inevitably spreads misunderstanding, venom and hatred in society. If I am promoting the idea that your religion is a work of the devil can I be regarded as friend or well wisher to your community? Can such views help your community understand itself or reconcile community differences?
Today it is illegal in most countries to promote racial hatred, to call a person of any race inferior or the product of the devil (which white Christians used to call the blacks until recently). But Hindus can still be denigrated as polytheists, idolaters and devil-worshippers. This is tolerated under freedom of religion, though it obviously breeds distrust, if not hatred and itself is prejudicial. Prejudicial statements that are not allowed about race are allowed about religion and missionaries commonly employ these derogatory remarks.
In fact most Christians view Hinduism like the pagan religions that the early Christians had to overcome, the Roman, Greek, Celtic, Egyptians and Babylonian religions, which do have much in common with Hinduism. Equating Hindus with Biblical idolaters promotes the history of missionary aggression and religious conflict. Most such Christians have never seriously or open-mindedly studied Hinduism or other pagan beliefs. They know little of Yoga and Vedanta or the great traditions of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality. They prefer to highlight the Hindu worship of God even in animal images like Hanuman as a form of superstition or evil.
The Catholic Church is a bit more diplomatic these days. It is now telling Hindus that their religion may have some value but that Christianity is even better! Such a view is a bit more tolerant but cannot be called sincere either.
If Catholics no longer believe that Hinduism is a religion of the Devil as they were promoting until only recently, they ought to apologize to Hindus for their mistaken notions and the problems that these must have caused. Discriminating Hindus can only look upon this more tolerant Catholicism of the post-colonial era as an attempt to maintain the edge of the church in a less politically favorable era. The Catholics say they respect the spiritual philosophies of India, which they for centuries failed to note, but still feel it necessary to convert Hindus to their religion. What kind of respect is that?
The Ideology of Conversion
Conversion reflects a certain ideology. In fact it mainly involves getting people to change beliefs, ideas or ideology. Conversion demands that we follow a certain ideology and reject others. The dominant ideology behind organized conversion efforts is that of an exclusive monotheistic religion. There is only one God, one book, one savior, one final prophet and so on. Most Christian missionaries try to get people to accept Christ as their personal savior and Christianity in one form or another as the true faith for all humanity.
A religion that is pluralistic in nature like the Hindu cannot have such a conversion-based ideology. Hindus accept that there are many paths, so naturally they will not feel compelled to get everyone to abandon their own path and follow the Hindu path instead. In fact there is no one Hindu path but rather a variety of paths, with new paths coming into being every day.
It has long been the dominant belief of Christians and Muslims that only members of their religion go to heaven, while member of other religions go to hell, particularly idol-worshipping Hindus and other pagans. This promise of heaven and threat of hell has long been used for conversion purposes and is a prime part of the ideology and its propaganda. Christians have often been motivated by this medieval heaven-hell idea in their conversion efforts. The old nineteenth century idea was a Christian missionary going to Asia to save the pagan babies from the clutches of hell.
This eternal heaven-hell idea does arouse a certain passion as well as intolerance, but one can hardly call it enlightened. In fact it causes emotional imbalance in people, which many Christians, particularly Catholics, have sought psychological help to overcome.
A God who has created heaven for his believers and hell for those who follow other religious beliefs is a recipe not only for missionary activity but also for emotional turbulence and violence. In fact this promise of great rewards and threats of great punishment is the basis of most forms of conditioning, brain washing and hypnosis. It is the dominant strategy of all mind-control cults.
Conversion, Charity and Social Upliftment
Many missionaries claim today that they are not seeking converts but merely doing charity, trying to help the downtrodden in life. Given the mentality behind conversion efforts and its history, one can only greet that statement with skepticism, though in a few isolated instances it may be true. The very missionaries that only recently used colonial governments and armies to their advantage cannot be regarded as suddenly without any overt conversion motivations.
However, if missionaries simply want to bring about social upliftment, then why don't they just open up a hospital or school and give up all the religious trappings about it. As long as the religious ornaments are there in these charitable institutions they are still seeking converts. Once you give your charity or social work a religious guise, the conversion motivation must be there and communal disharmony is likely to be promoted even by your charities.
If missionaries want to uplift society they can do that through education or economic help on a secular level. There is no need to bring religion into it. That is how societies have uplifted themselves throughout the world, whether it is the United States or Japan. It was not religious charity that raised up these countries economically. In fact bringing religion into social upliftment confuses the issue. Converting people to an exclusive creed doesn't eradicate poverty or disease, much less promote the cause of religious harmony.
The Philippines, the most predominant and oldest Christian country in Asia, is one of the poorest countries in the region. Conversion to Christianity did not raise the country economically. Central and South America, which are much more staunchly Catholic and religious and North America, are also much poorer and have a lower level of education. In fact the more evangelic and orthodox forms of Christianity are more popular in poorer and less educated groups in the West. Fundamentalist Christianity is more common in America with farmers and those who didn't go to college. Educated people in the West are less likely to be staunch Christians, and many of them look to Eastern religions for spiritual guidance.
In India Christians claim that by eradicating the caste system they are helping people and raising them up socially. They could do this easier by helping reform Hindu society rather than by trying to destroy or change the religion. Clearly they are using, if not promoting caste-differences as a conversion strategy. Christian cultures still have their class and other social inequalities, particularly in Central and South America, but Christians don't see that the religion has to be changed in order to get rid of these.
The desire to help people in terms of social upliftment and the desire to change their religion are clearly not the same and can be contradictory. Changing a person's religion may not help them in terms of health, education, or economics.
A similar argument is that the conversion effort is part of service to humanity, that the missionary is motivated by love of humanity. This is also questionable. If you are motivated by love of humanity you will help people regardless of their religious background. You will try to help people in a practical way rather than aim at getting them to embrace your religious belief. You will also love their religion, even if it is an aborigine worshipping a stone. You will give unconditional love to people, which is not the love of Jesus or the church but universal love. You will not condemn any person to hell for not following your particular belief. You will not interfere with that person's religious motivation and seek to convert him to your belief. You will honor the Divine in that person and in his belief.
Such social work born of love is hardly to be found in missionary Christianity, though it likes to pretend that this is the motivation. If one were truly motivated by love of humanity and the need to serve humanity, one would not promote massive conversion agendas. In fact one would regard such practices as inhumane, which they are.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11886&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Missionary Activity & Secularism : Pope's Visit
- David Frawley
Secularism is based upon a separation of church and state, removing religious control over the government. It arose to counter the influence of the church on politics and the religious sanction given to kings and their armies during the Middle Ages. Secularism grants freedom of religion to all citizens. It recognizes that many different religions exist and that people should be free to follow any or none of these. It regards differences in religion like those of race, language or culture, as incidental more than fundamental, and as involving the private life rather than the political sphere.
Opposite to secularism, both in ideas and in practice, is missionary activity, which is the attempt to convert the world to a single religious belief. Starting from the Christian takeover of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, European governments have used their influence to promote the conversion process. In time this gave rise to the Inquisition and to colonial efforts to convert native peoples. It resulted in a history of violence and genocide on a global scale that literally devastated the populations of entire continents. Missionaries used the political and military might of Christian states to discredit other religious beliefs, conquer other religious groups and destroy their holy places.
While modern secular Western states have removed overt religious influences from their governments, they have not removed the influence of religion altogether. In a democratic society any group that can produce votes becomes valuable. Western political leaders cultivate good relations with Western religious leaders in order to access their political goodwill.
Western governments today favor their majority religions in foreign affairs. It is obvious to see how much more sensitive Western Christian countries are to the welfare of the Christian community overseas than they are to the welfare of the non-Christian community. Religious oppression of Christians is quickly highlighted in the Western media, while oppression of non-Christians is seldom regarded as newsworthy. The entire history of Christian conversion activity is forgotten, as if the missionaries were only charity workers with no overt religious agenda!
A good example is Robert A. Seiple, the American ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. Is the man a seasoned diplomat, sensitive to other cultures and religions, as would be expected for the post? No, he was for eleven years the head of World Vision, the largest privately funded relief and development organization in the world, which is a Christian charity and connected to various missionary activities.
Seiple was formerly President of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a Christian missionary, which on the Protestant side is dominated by the Baptists. A person with such a background is inappropriate for the role that he has been given, which would be like giving it to a Catholic priest. It reflects an American religious bias not a diplomatic sensitivity and objectivity. Not surprisingly, his report on religious freedom in the world highlights oppression of Christians but ignores oppression perpetrated by Christians, as if Christian groups were entirely innocent of any wrong doing anywhere!
Even the secular West will bow to religious influences when it deems necessary. The result is that missionary activity, which was the main arm of the religious state, is learning to hide itself under the guise of modern secularism, working to subvert it from behind the scenes now that its overt control is a thing of the past.
Let us not forget its history. Missionary activity first arose in a religious state as its main means of expansion. Missionary activity per se is the extension of a medieval state attitude - that there is only one true religion like only one true king. It has had a long alliance with colonialism and with racism, with colonial armies marching with priests and friars, denigrating non-White religions as pagan and barbaric.
Missionary activity, therefore, is the very denial of secularism, which it has regarded as its enemy. The missionary movement holds that only one religion is true for humanity. It creates funds and personnel to convert the world to the one true faith. It targets the poor and uneducated who are vulnerable to favors. It does not work through reason or through friendly debate but through every sort of persuasion and intimidation, friendly or unfriendly.
Secularism and Missionary Activity in the New World Order
The problem for new democracies of the post-colonial era like India is that foreign missionaries use the very freedom of a secular state to promote their anti-secular agendas. A free state means that missionary activity is allowed and that conversion is tolerated. In a colonial state, one religion, that of the foreign rulers was favored at the expense of the others. In a free state, Western missionary religions can use the greater wealth of Western countries, which perpetuates their advantage. They also manipulate the Western dominated world media for their cause. For this reason, a Hindu Swami in India is ill equipped in terms of money and media facing Christian missionary forces in his own country. He is dealing with the multi-national conversion business that has tremendous resources at its disposal, to use with little scrutiny or accountability.
The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom during their colonial rule now want to make sure that religious freedom is maintained in their former colonies, not because they honor diversity in religion, but to maintain their conversion efforts and to sustain the minorities that they carved out by their missionary activity. Such an action is hypocritical to say the least. It doesn't represent a change of heart by the missionaries. It is not a sign of their new secularism but merely a convenient way to keep their agendas going in the changing world order.
Christianity is today, and has historically been, an anti-secular religion. Christian churches may tolerate the laws of living in secular countries, but they have not yet adopted a secular acceptance that many religious and spiritual paths can be valid and that no one religion has the last word. One could argue that any religion based upon an exclusive belief, thinking that only its religion, bible, prophet or savior is true, is inherently anti-secular.
Islam is more obviously anti-secular than Christianity because it generally has no separation of church and state. Christianity was compromised by a resurgence of earlier Greco-Roman pagan ideas of pluralism and democracy, but though softened, has still not given up its goal of converting the world. Christianity needs to go forward with its reformation by giving up its exclusivism and apologizing for its history of intolerance. The Islamic world needs a similar reformation to begin as it stands much where Christianity was at the end of the Middle Ages, still harshly controlling the minds and lives of its people and preventing any religious diversity from arising.
The Pope's Visit
The Pope's upcoming visit to India is a product of the same old anti-secular and intolerant Christian conversion agenda, which has not fundamentally changed throughout the centuries. The Pope can be described, though perhaps unflatteringly, as a Christian chauvinist leader encouraging massive conversion efforts to eliminate non-Christian beliefs. He is not a bringer of peace but a destroyer of culture. The Pope has never stated that any other religion is as good as Christianity. He has never said that Jesus is not the only Son of God. He has never said that salvation can come from outside the church or apart from Jesus. He has made statements of brotherhood, peace and tolerance but has not removed the barrier of religious intolerance and exclusivity that upholds these.
All Hindus, including the so-called fundamentalists, have not made such chauvinistic statements as the Pope. They recognize the existence of many religions and of many paths. They are not promoting the idea that Hinduism alone is the true path and that non-Hindus must go to hell. They are not insisting that everyone in the world become a Hindu. They are not asking everyone to bow to Kailash or Kashi.
Recently Ashok Singhal, head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), asked the Pope to "announce that Christianity is one of the ways that can lead to salvation and not that Christianity is the only way to salvation." The newspapers called Singhal a "hardline" Hindu leader but did not accuse the Pope of being rigid in his views. Yet Singhal accepts a pluralism to religion and salvation but the Pope does not. In terms of ordinary religious discourse Singhal has more liberal views than the Pope does but he is called a hardliner because he is questioning the missionary process! A very statement asking the Pope to affirm religious tolerance is itself styled intolerant!
In other words, Hindus should tolerate the effort to convert them but it is intolerant for Hindus to question the motives or ideas of those who denigrate their religion. That such statements are accepted in the modern media shows how deep-seated the anti-Hindu and pro-missionary bias is.
Make no mistake about it. The Pope is not a friend of Hindus. His visit is organized to promote his evangelization activities, his targeting Hindu India for Christian conversion. The Pope wants to convert Hindu India to Christianity. He would be happy if all Hindu temples were abandoned in favor of churches. He would be happy if all the swamis, sadhus and yogis either became Christian priests or disappeared altogether. He has no praise for a Ramana Maharshi, a Sri Aurobindo, a Ramakrishna, or a Shankaracharya. He does not honor the Vedas and the Gita like the Bible. He does not allow pujas to the Gods or the chanting of Om in churches. He has nowhere apologized for the use of the Inquisition in India or elsewhere. He has nowhere said that Hindus won't go to hell. He may claim to honor India's spiritual traditions but not to the extent that it requires him giving up his efforts to convert Hindus.
Let all Hindus therefore ask the Pope to say that he respects Hinduism, that Hinduism can also lead people to the ultimate goal of life, and that Catholic efforts to convert Hindus are a mistake. Let the Pope repeat the mantra of samadharma samabhava, that all dharmic teachings are in accord, and ekamsad vipra bahudha vadanti, that the enlightened seers declare the One Truth in various ways.
Let the Pope have a conference in Rome and bring the main Hindu religious leaders to dialogue with Catholic leaders on the nature of God, consciousness, the universe and immortality. Let such dialogue occur above board, out in the open and with the educated people in the field, rather than a secretive Christian targeting of poor Hindus. This would be the correct procedure if discovery of truth was the goal of such encounters.
If the Pope will not do these things then let us call him an intolerant and chauvinistic religious fundamentalist, which is what such behavior would be called in a Hindu. And let Hindus stop bowing out of respect to the Pope, prostrating to a religious leader who does not respect their religion, who is in fact plotting its downfall.
It is time for Hindus to take the offensive on religious tolerance and freedom, even if it means confronting the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has been in India for centuries. There is no reason why Catholic leaders can't appreciate the Vedas, Upanishads or modern Hindu teachers as having insights as great as those of Jesus. And this should be done starting with the Pope, not with some Indian priest that has no real power in the church or influence outside of India.
Let the Christians in India not appeal to Hindu tolerance but show their own tolerance and acceptance of other faiths by saying that though we believe in Christ we also accept Rama, Krishna and Buddha as sons of God. Let them declare a unity of religions that includes Hinduism and Buddhism as true faiths and does not require placing Jesus at the top for everyone. While Christians in India are unlikely to do this, the challenge for them to do so is bound to impact on their community and cause a deeper introspection.
As long as we hold that only one religion is true, that it must convert the world, and that other religions must be false we are not good citizens with respect for all, much less secular people. We are promoting an agenda of intolerance and violence that must cause conflict and suffering, even if we are doing so in the name of God. If we truly honor the Divine, we will recognize the Divine Self in all and will afford each individual their own perspective on truth and their own search for enlightenment, not to be circumscribed according to a church or a creed. If the West is so modern and enlightened it should stop exporting its intolerant medieval religions and become open to the great wisdom of the yogis and sadhus of India. Then a real basis for religious tolerance and spiritual growth could occur without obstruction.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11893&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Vedacharya from the West (Interview)
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 30, 2000
David Frawley, a grand-disciple of Ramana Maharishi, is widely acknowledged as a Vedacharya. Also known as Vamadeva Shastri, he was conferred the title of `Pandit' for his pioneering research work in Vedic studies, yoga, ayurveda and jyotish in his institute in New Mexico, USA. Author of several books on Hinduism, his writings seek to contrast the generally flippant and dry academic presentations of western Indologists. During a recent lecture-tour of India, David Frawley spoke to Gaurav Raina:
Q: What do you find unique about India and Hinduism?
A: India is a greatly favoured land in terms of cosmic beneficence according to the Vaastu aspect of its geographical location. The Himalayas, or Meru Parvat, oversee the whole of India in the likeness of the prime sahasrara chakra in the human body. The tapas of so many yogis and mystics and the timely appearance of avataras and saints over thousands of years have greatly accentuated this spiritual potency. The Hindu religion is like a gigantic banyan tree with its refreshing, ever ramifying growth, change and variegation, which is a contrast to Western religion as a monolithic pillar.
In the Indian ethos the pursuit of consciousness has traditionally been given priority over the need to understand the visible material world. There are various yogic systems for realising this higher consciousness. There is also evidence of a yogic methodology in India's every sphere of learned activity such as in music, dance, poetry, architecture, astronomy and medicine.
Q: Hinduism comprises of a multiplicity of sects and philosophies. Do you think such diversity is a cause for confusion ?
A: The Indian tradition is pluralistic and has always offered freedom of worshipping the divine in the name and form of one's choice and according to one's individual samskaras. It is pluralistic both at the level of religious practices as well as philosophical teachings. For this reason we find more religions inside Hinduism than among all of the world's religions put together.
Pluralism means freedom. It means that we should accept religious differences as a fact of life, like other natural variations. We need freedom to arrive at the truth. The pursuit of dharma, the urge for self-realisation and desire for liberation are common to all paths. Rather than as a cause for confusion, I see Indian pluralism as constructively facilitating an individual's spiritual quest.
Q: Can one be rational and scientific and yet be religious and spiritual?
A: Unlike in the West, Indian sages never perceived science and religion as incompatible. Religion was viewed mainly as a way of knowledge -- vidya or veda, as a way of seeing, a philosophy. Knowledge is of two types. Apara vidya or lower knowledge is necessary for our practical functioning in life and deals with the outer world of name, form and causation. The second, para or higher knowledge is concerned with consciousness and the Absolute Reality.
Indian sages regarded higher knowledge as more important, but did not regard lower or outer knowledge as wrong or disharmonious. The science versus religion dichotomy that became dominant in Europe in the nineteenth century, never really existed in classical India. The Indian model therefore seeks to resolve rather than perpetuate the Western conflict between an immoral science versus an irrational religion. Even the different systems of philosophy in India were more like scientific theories meant to be debated rationally or explored and experienced through meditation. Religion can thus be seen as a higher form of science. Anyone who systematically practices prescribed ritual methods, meditation procedures and mantras, can experience higher states of consciousness and thereby validate his or her religious belief.
Q: Why are the ancient scriptures today seen by many as mythical and fantastic?
A: The Vedas are composed in an ancient language of mantra, myth and symbol and utilise a rich poetic and imagistic expression. The modern mind being conditioned by contemporary thought and language lacks the necessary empathy and insight into the ancient texts. What we tend to regard as mythological in the puranas and itihasas was never meant to portray the actual state of things in time and space. These texts include not just the visible world in their scope but also the invisible worlds belonging to subtle and astral dimensions of existence.
If there are some apparent chronological inaccuracies in the scriptures, it is because sacred history takes into account the relationship between the temporal and the eternal and is less concerned with the actual dates of various events. This is in sharp contrast to the linear view of time held by contemporary historians who are ignorant of the relationship of time with the eternal. We should not approach the scriptures from the primarily academic standpoint of a historian, archaeologist or linguist; we should exercise an intuitive and meditative insight.
Q: You are a former Catholic. What is your view of the recent incidents of violence against the Indian Christian community?
A: I do not consider the missionary form of Christianity an enlightened religion. Conversion activity is an assault on intellectual freedom and destroys native cultures as we have seen in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is more like a sales gimmick which targets the poor and uneducated. Then there is also the history of the missionaries having sub-served European colonisers by providing a justification for their brutalities. The Catholic Church chose to be silent on the excesses of the Nazis and its tacit understanding with Mussolini, and more recently with Chile's Pinochet, are no secret.
Violence against Christians has been exaggerated a great deal by the Western media. Such backlashes have occurred throughout history all over the world. Missionary zeal tends to offend the religious sensibilities of people by denouncing their native religions as false and pagan.
Q: To what extent are India and Indian culture misrepresented in the Western media?
A: Firstly India is greatly under represented in the Western media. Whatever little news we have emphasises poverty, social problems, human rights abuses and alarmist reports of military and nuclear policies. The entertainment and advertising aspect of the media is on the other extreme and treats everything Indian as ``exotic and erotic''.
Indians have failed to learn the lessons of effective media articulation. Hindu organisations have been labelled fundamentalist and often end up with a far worse image than they deserve. The Indian government too has failed to promote Indian culture and to lobby its case with the Western governments. In fact India's gurus have done much a better job than its politicians and diplomats, in projecting the country's image abroad.
I am concerned at the absence of a dharmic intelligentsia in this country. It is imperative that Indians free themselves from colonial, Marxist and missionary distortions of their culture. They need to stop playing apologist for the genuine cultural and spiritual aspirations of their people. They should reverse their blind and obsequious adulation of the West. The great spiritual traditions of India will be lost if its intellectual kshatriyas fail to wake up to the call of the information war and lay siege to the false apostles of religious freedom.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11894&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
An American discovers the Vedas
Author : David Frawley
Publication : First Jagtik Rhugved Parishad
Date : December 27, 1996
Why would an American dedicate his life to studying the ancient
Vedas of India? And how could an American, coming from such a
different background, find a deep affinity with the Vedic
teachings, which most Hindus today themselves don't even relate to?
How did such a person get started in studying the Vedas? In the
modern world everyone, including Hindus, appears to be trying to
adopt Western culture with its scientific and technological
advances and economic affluence. Why would a person go the other
direction and look to the East, particularly when it was not a
matter of academic study, nor does it promise any material reward?
As I have written many books and articles on the Vedas and
travelled through America and India over the past few years
promoting Vedic knowledge, I am often asked such questions,
particularly by Indo-Americans, who usually do not have the time
and are lacking in the motivation to examine their own tradition.
Confronted with an American dedicated to the Vedas, Hindus find me
not only an anomaly but also a question mark on what they
themselves may be doing. Sometimes they find it an inspiration to
re-examine their own roots.
This is a difficult query to try to answer. I will begin by
relating something of my life. There is really nothing in my
family or educational background that might explain my connection
with the Vedas or even India. I was the second of a family of ten
children, born in a small city in Wisconsin in the Midwest in 1950.
Both my parents came from strict Catholic backgrounds and were
raised on dairy farms. One of my uncles in fact was a priest and
missionary to South America (which example my mother wanted me
personally to follow).
My parents, education was minimal. My mother did not even go to
high school. My father went to college only briefly, and served in
the army for several years. Though they were both open minded
people they never oriented me in the direction of India or anything
mystical.
I myself went to Catholic school until the fifth grade (age ten).
We were taught to look on Protestants with suspicion. Asia was like
another world, a land of backward, primititive people needing
conversion. After much moving about, as my father was a realtor,
we finally settled down in Denver, Colorado. There, owing to the
financial burden of so many children, we switched to public school
which brought us out of the shell of Catholic beliefs. Yet public
schools had no real mention of India either, except as a big
country in Asia suffering from poverty and overpopulation.
I had an inquisitive mind as a child and began developing my own
studies outside of school, perhaps because my mother encouraged me
in such things. I had an interest in geography since seven or eight
years of age and became aware that there was much more to the world
than America. Foreign lands of all types fascinated me. I began
reading various books starting with science and history, which
broadened my view of life and caused me to question my Catholic
upbringing and its dogma. I found the ideas of modern astronomy
with the vastness of the universe and the relativity of time and
space to be much more intriguing than Catholic views of creation.
I left the Catholic church at the age of fourteen. This came not
only from the clash between the church and modem science, but from
having read history and discovered that the church often stood for
political oppression and social exploitation, not anything truly
holy I felt that if there was a God, it was an impersonal reality,
not a personal God with his own whims, judgements and partialities.
Yet though I left the church, I still felt that there was a
spiritual reality in life, which I found in nature, particularly in
the mountains which I loved, This spiritual reality was an inner
experience quite divorced from churches and creeds.
By the time of high school my own studies were of more interest
than classes in school. I had a kind of intellectual awakening when
about the age of sixteen which caused me to study European
literature and philosophy, particularly symbolic poets and
existential philosophers. I felt that American culture was very
superficial compared to the European. Yet examining the mystical
and poetic sides of the European mind, I also eventually found them
to be lacking. I saw that the great intellectuals and artists of
the West, the geniuses who were regarded as the highest human
types, were still plagued with doubt, depression and uncertainty.
They obviously had not found any lasting peace or ultimate truth.
About the same time, as a secondary interest I began examining the
Eastern spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Some
of this came as part of the sixties counterculture movement, which
included a fascination with Eastern gurus and teachings, but much
of it was the product of my own independent and generally more
philosophical search. Between these teachings I found a common
truth-consciousness as the supreme reality and meditation as the
way to realize that. Yet it was among the teachings of Yoga and
Vedanta that I found the views which most resonated with my inner
being, particular the sense of the supreme Self (Atman) and pure
Existence (Brahman) as the highest truth. For example, I remember
walking home from high school one day and looking up at the blue
sky and realizing that it was the presence of Krishna, who
represented the cosmic power of bliss. This was before
encountering the Hare Krishna movement and was not produced by any
outer influences.
After high school I attended a local college briefly, in which I
found little to interest me. I remember taking a class on
Cosmology and Metaphysics, which was actually in the graduate
studies department. I thought the class might have something
mystical in it. Instead it was mainly a science class, with a few
cosmological speculations thrown in, generally of a materialistic
nature. The teacher could not even decide whether there was any
spiritual reality or not. This caused me to feel that the academic
world had no capacity to answer the real questions of life. Hence
I abandoned college after less than a semester.
About this time I also came into contact with local spiritual
teachers and yoga groups in Denver, through which I learned of
various gurus and practices, including yoga and meditation, which I
began to do on a regular basis. A couple of years later I
travelled to California and visited many of the spiritual groups
based in America. I had more interest in India itself and teachings
that were more traditional. I had a serious bent of mind and did
not feel satisfied with these groups which were largely social
movements or cults centered around one person, in which one's
personal relationship with the teacher generally outweighed any
real interest in spiritual studies. I have always distrusted mass
movements and fads of all types, including the pop spirituality
that has developed in the West.
I came to learn of the teachings of great modem Hindu gurus of
India most notably Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and
Sri Aurobindo, Their I felt something truly solid and real. As
several of these figures had already passed away, I wrote to their
centres in India and developed contact with some of their living
disciples. Most notably I corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for
several years, who was still alive at the time. But more so than
any particular teacher the Vedantic teaching interested me,
particularly the Upanishads, which appeared as the ideal
combination of spiritual philosophy and poetry. I felt in them the
core teaching that I was looking for in all spiritual teachings.
This led me to the works of Shankaracharya, the great commentator
on the Upanishads according to the system of Advaita Vedanta. The
Advaitic view of the pure unity of truth and the illusory nature of
the world, agreed with my experience of life through the political
and social turbulence of the late sixties and early seventies. Yet
I was also drawn towards the earlier Vedas and their Mysterious
mantras, with which most Vedantic teachers have little concern. I
had a sense of things ancient and wanted to know the earliest
teachings of humanity. The idea of things ancient rishis and seers
appealed to me and I wanted to know who they were.
I also had a poetic bent of mind and wrote poetry of a mystical and
symbolic type since I was sixteen. I used images of the dawn and
the night, fire, the wind, and the sun, along with gods and
goddesses, with the forces of nature appearing as powers of both
the human and cosmic mind in their interplay. Later I found that
these same images predominated in the Vedas themselves.
Of the great modern yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the greatest poet, and
so naturally his work had a certain appeal to me on this level. The
beginning of the chapters in his book the Life Divine contained
various Vedic quotes, particularly from the Rig Veda, which I found
to be particularly inspiring. I noted in a list of his books that
he had several on the Vedas themselves. This aroused my interest
in the Vedas and I ordered these books and studied them with great
interest, meditating carefully upon them.
My encounters with the Vedas through these books were not mere
intellectual experiences. They represented a contact with the
Divine Word, Vak or the Divine Speech, the Goddess Sarasvati. I
felt the presence of the Vedic Dawn, like the Dawn of humanity, the
beginning. of creation, and the building of a new world for the
Divine. This began my study of the Vedas, which was rooted in
poetry with a background of Vedanta.
Yet I was not satisfied in simply following Sri Aurobindo's
interpretation. I wanted to know what the Vedic rishis themselves
saw and felt. A few years later when I was twenty-seven, having
gone through most of what was available in English on the Vedas, I
decided to look at the Vedas and Upanishads in the original
Sanskrit. As there were no teachers available to me, as I was then
living in a remote town in Northern California, I started with the
Sanskrit. texts and a Sanskrit grammar book and began trying to
figure out the language myself, starting with the oldest Rig Veda
itself. It was a rather unusual and haphazard way to learn
Sanskrit, starting with the most difficult and oldest part of the
language, but somehow it worked.
The Vedic language gradually unfolded its meaning through a study
of the images, sounds and roots upon which the language was based.
I felt an inner affinity with the teaching so that I did not find
the texts to be difficult, though the grammar was often cumbersome.
I soon discovered that the interpretations generally accepted for
the older Vedas-not only those done by modern Western scholars but
the traditional school of Sayana-as Aurobindo had noted, were
indeed erroneous. The result of this research was that I produced a
small volume on the Upanishads and the Vedas. It traced back the
Vendantic teaching of the universal Self found in the Upanishads to
an origin in an earlier and more powerful Vedic vision. This was
opposite the way it is usually explained, which is to view the
Upanishads as exalted philosophy developing from a crude Vedic
ritualistic base.
A friend of mine, who had recently become a disciple of M.P. Pandit
of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, recommended me to visit him during an
upcoming trip of his to America. I knew that if anyone would
understand what I was doing it would be him, as Pandit had done
many books on the Vedas and Upanishads, with similar ideas.
I explained my views to him that the Vedas contained a science of
Self realization hidden in their teaching, from their very first
mantra to the Divine Fire (Agni). He was happy to know of my work
and told me that he would help publish it in India. He encouraged
me to follow out my studies, which he explained was a kind of
Divine mission given to me.
I told him that I was not academically trained, nor had I yet
studied in India, and that my work was merely personal and never
intended for publication. I said that I did not feel qualified to
comment on the Vedas in a public way He replied that it was good
that I Wasn't academically trained, that it gave me a direct and
independent insight, so that I would not just merely repeat the
same errors as other scholars. He told me to trust my vision. If
I had such insights and had produced such work it was for a purpose
and should not be limited to my own private study
Naturally this moved me to continue my Vedic work with more effort
and dedication. I worked on the Rig Veda itself and in four months
had produced a five hundred page book on the Vedas, which I mailed
to Pandit and he began serializing in World Union and other
publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
I began sending articles out to other publications in India as
well, including to the ashram publications of Ramana Maharshi and
Anandamayi Ma, as well as to Motilal Banarsidass, the main
publisher of Indological books and these articles were almost
invariably published, which additionally encouraged me to go
further. Thus my Vedic work began spontaneously and independently I
sort of naturally fell into it. I never had a plan to do so. And
in retrospect it would appear to be a ludicrous thing to attempt,
particularly by someone at my age and background working largely on
his own.
After developing this foundation I gained many contacts and much
support for my work throughout the world, though it took over ten
years to get it recognized in a broader way. I have since taken
many trips to India and studied and discussed the Vedas with many
teachers, which would require separate stories to relate. I have
worked with Ayurveda and Vedic astrology as well, expanding the
range of my original Vedic research. But the basic core of my
Vedic views has not changed.
What was it that I discovered in the Vedas? What made the Vedas
more important to me than other spiritual or intellectual
teachings? It was not just philosophy or poetry of an exalted
nature. Nor was it the later portion of the Vedas alone, the
Upanishads that drew my interest. It was the most ancient Rig Veda
itself and its wealth of mantras and symbols. The Rig Veda for me
is the doorway to mind of the rishis, to the cosmic mind itself,
the heart of creation. The Vedic vision is a universal mantric
knowledge that integrates all aspects of human knowledge including
yoga, philosophy, poetry, psychology, mythology and ritual. The
Vedas are like an ongoing explosion of insights, with every sort of
color and form, merging ultimately into a pure lightning
illumination that has no end.
For me the Vedas are a living teaching and the Vedic rishis are
living teachers. There is no gap of time or culture between us and
the Vedas. The Vedas transcend time. Nor do I see the Vedas as
merely Indian; they are the heritage of the greater spiritual
humanity from which we have fallen and to which we must return.
The Vedas are part of us or, to be more accurate, we are part of
the Vedas. They are the very fabric of the cosmic intelligence
that works inside us and in all the universe upholding the great
beauty and harmony of life. The Vedas exist at the core of all
real seeking to connect with truth through the great forces of
nature and consciousness, whether it is in the form of Native
American, Ancient Creek, Egyptian, or even modem scientific
approaches. In that connecting to the universal being and its
powers lies the Vedas, and there the Vedas must eventually be
found. The Vedas are not merely particular books-though the Vedic
texts we do have are authentic-but are the very vibrations of the
Divine Word, the Primal Sound, the voice of original reality.
I don't find the Vedic mantras to be hard to understand. What
could be more obvious than the dawn and the sun that rises every
day? Yet the dawn and the sun are not outer realities, they are
outer symbols, intimations of an inner reality of enlightenment and
illumination that is our true home. The Vedas are the language of
nature not as outer phenomena but as a poetry of the spirit, which
is the real meaning and beauty of creation. To me what is hard to
understand is not the Vedas but the modern world with its
technology that alienates us from nature, its commercialism that
warps our minds, its endless desires and sensations, its artificial
dogmas and ideologies, compared to which the Vedic world is indeed
paradise.
The final answer as to my connection with the Vedas perhaps goes
back to the truth of karma and rebirth. There is really no reason
why someone of my background would take to this Vedic work and be
able to go anywhere with it. The only answer is the samskaras, the
impressions from previous births. This was a knowledge that came
with me, that I was born with, the result of a previous life which
I have since come to remember in various aspects. For example,
when I received my first copies the Vedas in Sanskrit it was not
something ancient or foreign that I saw but an old friend and
companion.
Nor do I approach the Vedas from an academic or even personal
perspective. To approach the Vedas I first put my mind into a
silent state and let the teaching unfold itself without the
interference's of my own though there is not done through a mental
effort, though there is the effort of concentration. It is like
opening an irrigation channel to great river.
It is the great beauty of the Hindu religion that the impressions
it creates in us remain with us life after life. It is not a
religion limited to one life only, and its benefit carries through
all of our lives to the final liberation. In this regard the
impressions of the Vedas can be found in each one of us, if we know
how to look deeply for them. While unusual, I don't think what I
have experienced with the Vedas is unique. I think that many more
people, East and West, will come to it in the future. The Vedas
are not only. our most ancient past but the key to our global
future as well.
The message of my encounter with the Vedas to modem Hindus is this:
Your spiritual tradition is perhaps the greatest treasure of all
humanity. Please cherish it, sustain it, practise it and share it
with all. Whatever deficiencies may be in India or Hindu culture
economically or politically, should not get a person to forget the
power of the Vedas. The Vedas are like the sun. In them is the
key to all light, life and love for all the world, through which
all problems, individual or collective, can be solved. Let us not
forget our Vedic heritage.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11888&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Encountering Hindu Dharma
- Dr. David Frawley
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is one of the most prominent Hindus of our times. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Vedas; he has also written on Ayurveda and other Vedic sciences. Most importantly, he has urged a return to the Vedas as a means to unlock the secrets of the scriptures that followed.
The present volume, his spiritual autobiography, is a fascinating narrative. He walks us through his own discovery of how the stereotype of Hinduism is false and provides us a portrait of living Hinduism as mirrored by his own life experience.
The following is excerpted from his latest publication "How I became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma".
Most of us are familiar with accounts of how a person has changed from one religion to another, becoming a Christian, Muslim or a Buddhist. In the modern world we are coming to recognize pluralism in religion just as in culture, ethnicity or language. There is no more only one true religion for everyone than there is only one true race, language or way of life.
However, going from Christianity to Hinduism is a rarer story, particularly for a Westerner, because Hinduism does not aim at conversion. Many people think that Hinduism does not take new members at all. It is also a more complex tale because Hinduism is not only a religion, but also a culture and, above all, a spiritual path. To enter into Hindu Dharma involves much more than a shift of belief or accepting a new prophet. To really understand Hindu Dharma requires taking on a new way of life, of which religion is only one aspect.
As a pluralistic system Hinduism does not require that we hold to a single belief or savior or give up an open pursuit of truth. This makes the change into Hinduism less dramatic, overt or disruptive to a person’s life and for that reason harder to trace. One does not need to make a statement of faith to become a Hindu but simply to recognize the importance of dharma.
In my case, it was not a question of a quick conversion like accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior or surrendering to Allah. Nor was it the result of a concerted effort to convert me by religious preachers speaking of sin or redemption, or of religious intellectuals trying to convince me of the ultimacy of their particular philosophy or theology. It was a personal decision that occurred as the result of a long quest, a finishing touch of an extensive inner search of many years.
The word ‘conversion’ is a misnomer and a term that I dislike. How can we be converted into anything? We can only be who we are. Understanding who we are is the Hindu and Vedic path. It is not about conversion but about self knowledge and about cosmic knowledge because who we are is linked to the entire universe. Hinduism is not about joining a church but about developing respect for all beings, not only humans but plants and animals as well. It is not about a particular holy book but about understanding our own minds and hearts. It is not about a savior but about discovering the Divine presence within us.
For most people in the West, becoming a Hindu resembles joining a tribal religion, a Native American or Native African belief with many gods and strange rituals, rather than converting to a creed or belief of an organized world religion. Discovering Hinduism is something primeval, a contacting of the deeper roots of nature, in which the spirit lies hidden not as an historical creed but as a mysterious and unnamable power. It is not about taking on another monotheistic belief but an entirely different connection with life and consciousness than our Western religions provide us.
The Hindu Tradition
Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world with a tradition going back to the very beginning of what we know of as history over five thousand years ago. It is the third largest of the world’s religions, with nearly a billion members or one sixth of humanity. It is the largest non-Biblical or, to use a pejorative term, Pagan tradition remaining today. As such it holds the keys to the pre-Christian beliefs that all cultures once had and many people still retain.
Hinduism is the world’s largest pluralistic tradition. It believes in many paths and recognizes many names and forms for God, both masculine and feminine. It contains many sages, many scriptures and many ways to know God. Its emphasis is not on mere belief as constituting salvation but on union with the Divine as the true goal of life.
Hinduism is a culture containing its own detailed traditions of philosophy, medicine, science, art, music and literature that are quite old, venerable and intricate. It is the foundation of Indian culture that is rooted in the Sanskrit language which first arose as Hinduism’s sacred language. Most importantly, Hinduism is a great spiritual path with Yogic traditions of meditation, devotion and insight, in which religion in the outer sense of ritual and prayer is only secondary. Its wealth of teachings on mantra, meditation, prana, kundalini, chakras and Self-realization is perhaps unparalleled in the world.
Because of its cultural and spiritual sides some people say that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Yet though it is a way of life Hinduism is also a religion in the sense that it teaches about God and the soul, karma and liberation, death and immortality. It has its holy books, temples, pilgrimage sites, and monastic orders like other major world religions.
Hindus have a deep faith in their religion and its traditions. Thousands if not millions of Hindus have died for their religion in the many holy wars that have targeted them over the last more than a thousand years. They refused to convert even when faced with threats of death and torture. Both Islam and Christianity found converting Hindus to be particularly difficult, not because Hindus responded to assaults on their religion with force, but because their faith in their own religion and its great yogis was unshakeable.
The Western mind characteristically downplays Hinduism's importance as a religion. In many contemporary studies of world religions Hinduism is left out altogether. Because it has no overriding one God, single historical founder, or set creed, Hinduism is looked upon as a disorganized collection of cults. Few Westerners know what Hinduism is, or what Hindus believe and practise. Most are content with negative stereotypes that make them feel comfortable about their own religions. If Hinduism is mentioned in the Western media it is relative to disasters, conflicts or backward social customs. It is the one religion that is still politically correct to denigrate, if not belittle.
There is also a general impression that Hinduism is a closed, ethnic or casteist creed and therefore not a true world religion. This is strange because historically Hinduism spread throughout South Asia and specific ways of becoming a Hindu are described in many Hindu teachings. Hinduism could not have spread so far if it was not expansive in bringing in new members.
Many Hindus seem to confirm these ideas. A number of Hindu teachers say that they will make a Christian a better Christian or a Muslim a better Muslim, as if Hinduism had nothing better or unique to offer. They often apologize about being Hindus when asked about their religion. They say, “Yes I am a Hindu, but I accept all other religions as well,’’ which includes religions that do not accept Hinduism!
Some Hindu temples, particularly in South India, will not allow Westerners, that is people of lighter skin color, to enter even if they have already formally become Hindus. Other Hindus simply don’t know how to communicate their tradition. The result is that the more universal or liberal aspects of Hinduism are forgotten. Or they go by another name in the West as Yoga, Vedanta or the teachings of a particular guru, in which case they can become popular all over the world as many modern spiritual movements have demonstrated.
Discovering Hinduism through the Vedas
In my case, I came to Hindu Dharma through the Vedas, the oldest tradition of Hinduism. This was an unusual way because the Vedas are so old that most Hindus know little about them, following instead more recent teachings. People in the West have no real idea what the Vedas are either. They see Hinduism through a few prominent images like Shiva, Krishna and the Goddess or a few famous modern gurus and are not aware of the older foundation of this multifarious tradition. Most Hindus know their particular sect or guru but have little recognition of their tradition and its long history.
Even Hindus who speak of the glory of the Vedas generally can’t explain Vedic teachings in detail. By the Vedas they usually mean the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita, not the older Vedic texts. Western academia believes that the Vedas are only primitive poetry, tribal rites, or some strange babbling that arose from shamanic intoxications. At best, for the more spiritually enlightened, the Vedas are regarded as the lesser growths from which the greater unfoldments of Yoga and Vedanta arose or diverged.
For me, however, the Vedas became revealed not only as the source of the Hindu tradition but as the core spiritual wisdom of humanity. I could say that I am more a Vedic person, a Vedicist if you will, than simply a Hindu in the ordinary sense. This might better describe what I think to the modern world. But I can’t draw a line between Hinduism and Vedic Dharma, though some people might try to.
Overcoming Anti-Hindu Stereotypes
Hinduism is a religion with many Gods and Goddesses, with strange images of many heads, many arms or animal features. It teems with magic and mysticism, with gurus and godmen and their miraculous powers and enlightened insight. Much of this appears erotic or even violent to us, accustomed as we are to no images in religious worship or to only a few holy images like Christ on the cross or the Madonna with her child. Hinduism appears like a form of brainwashing or mind control, a cultish religion with little to offer a rational and humane Western mind.
This negative idea of Hinduism is shaped by missionary and colonial propaganda that we have been bombarding India with for centuries. Hindus continue to be among the main targets of world missionary efforts. The missionaries highlight the poor, sick and outcasts of India as needing salvation - the victims of a backward religion that we must help them escape from. We focus on the poverty of India today as the measure of the Hindu culture and religion, emphasizing, if not promoting social problems in India as a means of encouraging conversion. Were we to be conquered by a foreign power in the future and become a poor country, I wonder how many of our poor people would convert to the conqueror’s religion for material benefit just as we have long encouraged others to do?
It is amazing how little credit we in the West give to other cultures and religions such as the Hindu. Is our denigration of such different and ancient practices a reflection of a real perception or the shadow of our own arrogance? Why do we see our religions as necessarily better, though religion is hardly a real concern for most of us, or if it is a concern, is little more than a missionary cult, not any profound mysticism or philosophy?
We haven’t looked at Hinduism directly but have blindly followed a jaded vision of it. Hinduism is a free and open culture encouraging self-realization. Its diversity is born of this creativity, not of mere superstition. It is much more like the global culture we aspire to in our spiritual moments, rather than what we would look back upon as the mud from which we came.
Encountering Hinduism, therefore, means questioning our very idea of what religion should be. Hinduism is overflowing with variety and even contradiction. One could say that there are more religions inside of Hinduism than outside of it. Everything that we find in human religious activity from aboriginal rites to insights of pure consciousness is already there in the great plethora of Hindu teachings and practices.
Hinduism is not only connected with many Gods but with the formless absolute - the mysterious immutable Brahman beyond not only the Gods and Goddesses, but even beyond the Creator. It has a place for monotheism but regards monotheism as only one aspect of human religious experience, not the measure of it all.
Hinduism accepts all human approaches to religion, including its rejection, being willing to accept atheists into its fold. It does not try to circumscribe the abundance of life in any formula. It can even accept Christianity as another line of religious experience but not as the only one or necessarily the best.
Hinduism is not passed on by memorizing a creed, though it does have clearly defined and highly articulate teachings and philosophies. It is intimately connected with the Earth, nature, society and our daily activities from eating and breathing to sleeping and dying. Hindu Dharma sees itself not as man-made but as part of cosmic creation, an emanation of the cosmic mind. It aligns us with the cosmic religion that exists in all worlds and at all times. It is a way to link with the cosmic life, not a belief that we can retreat into like a shell or like a fortress.
The Question of Becoming a Hindu
Why would anyone, particularly a modern and educated person born in the West, want to become a Hindu, much less feel proud in calling himself one? How could a person find value in the primitive Vedic roots of this ambiguous religion? After all, the term Hindu connotes an ethnic religion mired in caste, idolatry, and the oppression of women. It appears anti-modern, inhumane, if not embarrassing for those who would follow it.
A forward thinking person could not take on such an identity, or could he? Is it a mere seeking of emotional security? Indeed, many intellectuals out of their own doubts, perhaps an inherent emotional weakness of the intellectual mind, have embraced regressive creeds. Intellectual apologists can be found for every strange ideology. Even Hitler and Stalin had them. So praise for an ideology or religion even by an intelligent person cannot be taken without skepticism.
At the same time we cannot ignore the fact that there is much in the world that goes beyond our current cultural preconceptions. We are beginning to appreciate the deeper meaning of myths and symbols, which Hinduism abounds in. We are gaining a new respect for meditation and Yoga to reach a higher awareness beyond the pale of religious dogma. We are recognizing the distortions born of Eurocentrism and Western materialism and revising our estimate of native cultures. That we might have to revise our ideas of Hinduism from colonial, missionary or Marxist perceptions is without doubt.
Yet even those who have embraced Indic spiritual traditions like Yoga generally find the appellation of being a Hindu to be unappealing. Being a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muslim seems more universal, even recognizing that these traditions may lack the diversity and richness of Hinduism. The term 'Hinduism' has become quite tainted and seldom connotes anything high or noble to the mass mind.
In addition many enlightened thinkers, particularly from India, believe that we should go beyond all outer identities whether cultural, national or religious. After all, our true nature is not Hindu, Christian, American, Russian, or anything else. We are all human beings with the same basic urges and inclinations. So why have any religious identity at all? The age of religions is over and we should be entering an age of spiritual search without boundaries.
Such thinking misses the point that Hinduism is not a credal religion based upon a person, institution or dogma. Hindu Dharma welcomes the spiritual search without boundaries. In fact, its great variety of teachings and methods provides a good foundation for a free individual search, which otherwise as an isolated effort may not go far, just as free inquiry in science benefits from a broad and open tradition of science to draw from. Most people in the world are not at the level of high spiritual practices or ready to renounce the world. They need religious teachings, including prayers and rituals to shape their work, social and family lives on an ethical and devotional level. But such religious teachings should be broad-based, containing something for all aspects of society and connected to the highest truth as well. Hindu Dharma provides all this in a powerful way.
We should not forget the facts of our individual existence and the organic connections of our lives. Each one of us has a certain life span. We live in a certain place and partake of a certain culture. We have our particular temperament and individual inclinations. All this shapes who we are and how we approach the higher Self. Only a rare soul can transcend the influence of time and even he or she must consider the forces of time, just as one cannot avoid being affected by the food that one eats.
The Yoga tradition considers that unless a person has purity in body and mind he cannot transcend them. Similarly, unless we have harmony in our culture and lifestyle it is very difficult to go beyond them. Unless we have a culture that supports the spiritual life, few will be able to pursue it. Culture is the soil on which we grow like a plant to open out into the boundless sky. We cannot ignore nurturing the soil of culture in our seeking of the unlimited beyond. Hinduism with its broad spiritual culture offers this ground on which to grow. It contains the abundant creative forces and variety of nature itself.
Unfortunately, certain religions hold that they alone are true and that other religions are unholy or dangerous. This divisive and exclusive idea of religion is the real problem, not religion per se, which is a necessary part of human culture. Yet this narrow idea of religion has so dominated the Western world that most people take it for granted as representing what religion really is, which makes Hinduism with all of its diversity seem almost incomprehensible.
Religion, in the original meaning of the word, means to link together. It should provide us tools for self-realization, enabling us to unfold our full divine potential. In this process we will probably need to follow a certain teaching, with specific disciplines and practices. We cannot follow all religions any more than we can eat all food or perform all jobs. We will probably also become part of a spiritual group or family. We cannot have everyone as a mother or father. We usually have our lineage and our transmission in the spiritual life, just as in other aspects of life. Indeed such connections are more important in the spiritual life because spirituality is more intimate, more interior and less capable of being transmitted in an outer, mechanical or mass-produced way than other aspects of culture.
Some people argue that the name Hindu is inappropriate because it is not traditional. After all the great Rishis and Yogis didn’t call themselves Hindus but simply spoke of truth and dharma. The reason for this lack of definition is that Hinduism is an open tradition. It is not defined versus any other as are Biblical traditions that reflect a dichotomy of Christian-pagan or Muslim-kafir. Many Hindus have only become conscious of being Hindu because of the negativity they have encountered from Christians and Muslims trying to convert them.
Sanatana Dharma or the universal dharma is a more correct term and reflects the broader basis of the Hindu tradition. Unfortunately, it is cumbersome and unfamiliar. The terms “dharmic” and “native” traditions are also helpful because Hinduism grows out of the land and is connected with life itself. But Hinduism is the convenient term, whatever limitations may be associated with it. So we must define it in an appropriate manner. This is to face our own prejudices about Hinduism, which are probably more deep-seated than we would think. Why should we object to the term Hindu for such a broad tradition, while accepting the names for much narrower religions?
This prejudice against the Hindu religion reflects a built-in prejudice against non-Biblical beliefs. The Western pattern of religion as one true faith, along with a missionary effort, is used as the standard for all proper religion. Missionary aggression is associated with universality in belief, while tolerant religions that see no need to convert the world are condemned as merely ethnic or tribal beliefs.
Buddhism is more respected than Hinduism in the West because it at least has the one historical Buddha to relate to and a more homogenous and missionary type tradition. Buddhism can be placed in the Western model of religion, but without a Creator. Hinduism, on the other hand, calls up all our misconceptions about religion. For that reason it is a good place to enlarge our views and gain a greater understanding of our global religious heritage, most of which does not lie in Western monotheism.
In my case I came to Hindu Dharma after an earlier exploration of Western intellectual thought and world mystical traditions, a long practice of Yoga and Vedanta and a deep examination of the Vedas. In the process I came into contact with diverse aspects of Hindu society and with Hindu teachers that few Westerners have access to, taking me far beyond the range of the usual perceptions and misconceptions about the subject. Such direct experience, which was often quite different than what I had expected or was told would be the case, changed my views and brought me to my current position. Hopefully my story can help others change from taking Hinduism as something primitive to understanding the beauty of this great spiritual tradition that may best represent our spiritual heritage as a species.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11887&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
One truth, different paths
- Dr. David Frawley
India possesses a great indigenous civilization dating back to 7000 BC, such as recent archaeological discoveries at Mehrgarh clearly reveal. It had the most extensive urban culture in the world in the third millennium BCE with the many cities of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers.
When the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame dried up in the second millennium BCE, the culture shifted east to the more certain rivers of the Gangetic plain, which became the dominant region of the subcontinent. Gone is the old idea of the Aryan invasion and an outside basis for Indian culture. In its place is the continuity of a civilization and its literature going back to the earliest period of history. Based on this reclamation of its glorious past India can now look to the future as the broadest and most enduring culture on the planet.
The oldest Indian text and perhaps the oldest book in the world, the Rig Veda boldly proclaims: "That which is the One Truth the seers teach in many different ways" (Rig Veda I.164.46), and "May noble aspirations come to us from every side" (Rig Veda I.89.1). This bedrock of Indian or Bharatiya pluralism gave rise not only to the many different sects of Hinduism but also to Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh traditions, perhaps the largest diversity of spiritual teachings in the entire world. Though largely misunderstood in the West as polytheism or a worship of many Gods, this Bharatiya pluralism reflects an open quest for truth and a free flowering of all human potentials beyond any restriction to a particular name, form or institution. It embraced art and science as well as religion and metaphysics.
Unfortunately, over the first fifty years since Independence, India has not discovered its real roots. Its intellectuals have mimicked Western trends in thought. They have forgotten their own profound modern sages like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who projected modern and futuristic views of the Indian tradition. While Westerners come to India seeking spiritual knowledge, Indian intellectuals look to the West with an adulation that is often blind, if not obsequious.
The world is now entering into a global age in which pluralism must be the foundation of world culture. It is no longer a missionary, colonial or communist era in which one group can be allowed hegemony in the world. It is a new age of dialogue and respect in which we must learn to honour and cherish all the cultures of the world. This should start with tribal peoples who are the custodians of the Earth and of the wisdom of nature that we are so quickly losing to a destructive technology. It must include the great traditions of the East like Hinduism and Buddhism which have a firm foundation in tolerance and synthesis. We must learn to embrace all human beings and their cultures as part of one great family. Let our differences be a cause for admiration and celebration, not for mistrust or hatred.
It is time for India to once more be a leader and an innovator in world culture, rather than a follower and imitator as it is at present. Sri Aurobindo remarked that India's real role was to be the guru among the nations of the world. At present it can hardly keep order within its own frontiers. While we see Indians doing well outside of India as the elite of foreign lands, inside India they are still floundering. Why is it that India today cannot nourish or promote the remarkable capacities of its own people?
To change this situation a new vitality and creativity is necessary that honours the country's venerable traditions but does not restrict itself to past forms and conventions. Above all, it requires a new generation of thinkers who are global in outlook but grounded in the practical spirituality of Yoga and Vedanta. Indian thinkers must return to their cultural wellsprings, not to stop there, but to create a new vision for humanity. New rishis, yogis and bodhisattvas must arise to complement the old.
We can already see how such traditional Indian disciplines as Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedanta are gaining respect worldwide for their integral and holistic approach. Such an Indic or dharmic perspective should be added to enrich religion, philosophy, and science all over the world. The new generation of Indians should take up this task of world-making as their goal. The new world order of the computer and the information revolution offers the country a situation quite favourable to its unique spiritual and intellectual talents. But for this to occur, India must stand up and speak out, not merely to please everyone, but to blaze a new trail to the universe that dwells both inside and outside of ourselves.
Such a new India would combine science and spirituality in a global perspective, adding the intuitive insight of the ancient rishis to the critical acumen of modern scientists. If a unitary consciousness is indeed the basis of the universe, as quantum mechanics require, India's yogis have already shown the way to realize it. It would create a system of medicine that would combine the advances of biochemistry along with an understanding of the life-force and the soul which mirror the greater human being that is cosmic in nature. The new India would develop our material potentials but for the glory of the Spirit, the Self of all beings, just as classical India combined a vast flowering of art, architecture, music and dance along with numerous philosophies of the absolute and yogic paths. The new India would protect the earth while reaching out to the planets and stars, reclaiming the paradise that this tropical land of many rivers used to be. It would honour our spiritual ancestors and their legacy, fulfilling the deeper urges of our species and not merely accepting material affluence as enough. It would raise the poor and the downtrodden, not to convert people to a belief but to help all people become happy and free in both body and mind.
Such an awakened India is crucial for world culture, which presently remains trapped between a destructive consumerism on one side and a rigid religious exclusivism on the other.
Today the United States is the only superpower in the world. But it is a superpower in the outer world only. Its material wealth hides a spiritual poverty and growing psychological and social unrest. No technological superpower can properly guide the world. Only a spiritual superpower can do this, which India has the best potential to become. The question is whether the country and its leaders are willing to make the sacrifice that this must entail.
India holds the Shakti, the spiritual power and evolutionary force of humanity. It is the great World Mother in her manifestation. Let its yogic force come forth once again for the benefit of all!
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11884&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Himsa and Ahimsa: The Need for a New Policy of Protection
- Dr. David Frawley
In spite of modern Gandhian stereotypes, the classical Hindu way to deal with Rakshasas and Asuras (people of egoistic or violent temperament) was never simply ahimsa. It could in fact be quite aggressive. Ahimsa in the sense of absolute non-violence is a sattvic or deva dharma for people of devic or refined temperament. With gentle people you have no need or right to be unkind.
However, when dealing with hostile and violent opponents a completely different response is required. Asuras require the danda (punishment). Let us not forget the many epic and Puranic stories in which Gods, Goddesses or Avatars fought and defeated the Asuras or Asuric human beings. Whether it is the Goddess and Mahishasura, Rama and Ravana, or Skanda and Taraka, there is not a single instance in which the Asuras were simply forgiven and allowed to go their own way without punishment. Let us also not forget how the Mahabharata extols the use of the danda for social harmony and justice.
There is only one way to really deal with Asuric people, which is to make them feel pain. As Asuric types have a materialistic consciousness, this pain must be of a material type, pain to their bodies, to their homes and to their possessions. It must be a pain where they live. Asuric types are immune to platitudes or to any kind of moralistic guilt, hardened as they are by their own drives and compulsions.
Once Asuric types have committed a transgression they must be strongly punished or they will cause harm again. Merely to let them go or to have them say that they are sorry means nothing. Asuric types will take it as weakness and just plot a new attack. They are quite capable of deception or false sentiment to further their cause.
The main recent Hindu way has been to deal with hostile invaders by simply forgiving them and allowing them to go back home if they are defeated. Hindu enemies therefore don't have much to worry about. If they win, they get what they want and can ruthlessly promote their agenda. If they are defeated, they have nothing worse to fear than returning from whence they came without any real punishment. They can then regroup and attack again, having gained much experience by their previous incursions.
Such a prescription only encourages repeated attacks until the enemy finally wins. One is reminded of the example of Prithivi Raj Chauhan in the twelfth century who repeatedly defeated Mohammed Ghauri, who invaded India from Afghanistan. Each time he defeated Ghauri, he forgave him and sent him home. Yet when Ghauri finally won, he killed Prithivi Raj and started a reign of terror in India. One should consider how much respect and honor Ghauri offered to Prithivi Raj for being forgiven so chivalrously so often. All such forgiving souls will similarly become dead meat for such Asuric invaders, once they are able to win.
And if one allows them to attack again and again, they will eventually win, just by the law of chance. One victory is all they need. They will forgive no one and use all possible force and intimidation, including every sort of ethnic cleansing, to get their way - and all with no sympathy to the kind people who once defeated them and treated them with forgiveness.
Most modern Hindus, including prominent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, have failed to understand Asuric aggression, particularly if it takes a religious garb, which Islam and Christianity have often been the pretext for, in their military and missionary assaults to convert the world. Hindus have tried to compromise with such aggression, placate it or moralize it into peace. Not surprisingly their policy has failed, like letting a tumor spread to avoid the necessary violence required to cut it out. Eventually the patient himself dies.
Those Hindus like Sri Aurobindo who raised a contrary voice were ignored. Their prediction that such a policy would lead to partition, division and calamity for Hindus was similarly forgotten once it turned out to be true.
The Gandhian pity, not only for the victims of violence, but also for the perpetrators of violence must come to an end. Perpetrators of violence are not victims, nor should we classify them along with them. Such pity for the violent is one of the most debilitating and confusing of all emotions, and is the very sentiment that Krishna strove to uproot out of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Pity or compassion for the perpetrators of violence only sanctions that violence and causes further pain to the victims. It denies the responsibility that goes with the law of karma. Only when we make people responsible for their actions can they grow and become more humane. To excuse those who are violent under the pretext of non-violence is only to excuse violence. While compassion for the victims of violence is in order, the perpetrators of violence must be handled in a different way, so as to ensure that they don't strike again. Otherwise we are only abetting their crimes.
Perpetrators of violence always like to play the victim anyway, because it justifies their aggression. To treat them as if they were also victims only makes them feel right in the harm that they have already done and encourages them to do more. One who attacks other people in the name of religion is not a martyr but a criminal intruder, in spite of what some misguided religious leaders may say. A religious teaching that extols such violence is not something spiritual but an Asuric dharma. Many Hindus have been murdered by such so-called martyrs.
Terrorists who have indulged in killing innocent civilians, including torture and rape, have no real conscience anyway. They have already killed innocent victims who were offering them no violent resistance. Their action has already rejected ahimsa. Why should they honor the ahimsa of those who capture them? Political and religious terrorists are also warped by an ideology that says that it is right for them to attack and destroy those of different beliefs, even ruthlessly. Until that ideological belief is changed such terrorists will continue in their brutality, however many times you forgive them.
In addition, violent actions create powerful samskaras in the mind that are hard to overcome. Like a dog that first tastes blood, once that taste for violence occurs, the perpetrator will go after it again and again. While one can try to rehabilitate criminals, one must be realistic about how much success is really possible in this regard.
Obviously if one offers a criminal or a terrorist the choice of saying that they are sorry or of getting punished, they will choose to say that they are sorry in order to avoid the pain of punishment. Such apologies and promises of forgiveness mean nothing. The same thing occurs in dealing with terrorist countries.
While one could possibly argue the need for compassion for individual criminals who are victims of oppressive social orders and represent isolated cases, one cannot argue the same compassion for terrorist groups or for terrorist nations, which represent organized attacks. Compassion for inimical nations and the separatist movements that they incite will not do a national defense policy, unless a nation wants to self-destruct.
In this regard, we should remember Pakistan's recent signing of the Lahore Declaration proclaiming peace, while at the same time preparing for the massive attack on India via Kargil. This is how aggressive groups work when faced with what they perceive as a weak form of ahimsa: give lip service to peace to encourage their enemies to weaken their defenses, and then attack with impunity.
True ahimsa means reducing the amount of harm in the world. This may require violent action against the perpetrators of harm. One must not only defeat the enemy but also take away their weapons and ensure that they cannot attack again. Once must cut off the roots of violence where the enemy lives. One doesn't merely send a scorpion back to its nest after it bites you. One has to remove its stinger.
Modern Hindus must once again proudly honor himsa or a policy of harming the enemy, and the danda or a policy of strict punishment for those who use force to attack them. This is not to promote unnecessary violence but to prevent violence from spreading or being abetted. The same policy should extend to all spheres of current cultural encounters.
Those who use a verbal assault against Hindus, like the Christian missionaries, must similarly be dealt with through the weapon of speech. Vak is the Danda of the Brahmins, as the Mahabharata says. Hindus should challenge missionaries to debate and promote forums and publications to expose their intolerant agendas. Until they feel pain for their aggression against Hindus, the missionaries will not stop. You can be certain of that, all talk of religious tolerance to the contrary. This doesn't mean physically assaulting missionaries but it does mean subjecting them to scrutiny and criticism of a rigorous nature, exposing their dogmatism and exclusivism as much as possible.
Hindus must learn how to use the courts and bring legal suits against their denigrators, not only in India but also in the West. The legal danda is very important in the world today and has been the key to many social changes. Hindus must learn how to use the weapons of the media as well, presenting cases, information and programs that promote their point of view and strongly challenging media distortions.
They must attack their enemies on the level where their enemies really feel and with the weapons of the age. Some metaphysical moralistic high ground, such as many Hindus like to take, will not do but is only escapism, though Hindus should continue to practice rituals, prayers, mantras and meditations for peace but not to the exclusion of more direct forms of action in the material world.
The Gods always worked to drive the Asuras from this world and send them back to the netherworld. They never accepted a compromise in which the Asuras were given some portion of this world in exchange for a promise to live in peace.
It is time for the Devas to go on a new offense and to take up again their many weapons on all levels.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11890&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Christians Under Siege in India: A Missionary Ploy
- David Frawley
Christianity does not have a notable reputation for tolerance and respect for other religions. The Christian need to convert the entire world and the Christian failure to honour other religions, particularly non-biblical traditions, is well known. Christian missionaries have had a reputation for using methods to promote conversion that are not always honest, including employing military and political force during the colonial era. Yet Christians today conveniently like to ignore such facts. They are surprised if members of other religions are suspicious of them, even if they look at these religions as works of the devil.
Christians now promote conversion as a democratic freedom, even though their view of religion is authoritarian, not democratic, accepting only one way, and not honouring pluralism in approaching the Divine.
The Christians of India are continuing in attitudes hostile to the other religions of their country. They want a freedom to convert but they are not willing to accept the other religions of the land as valid. They highlight minor attacks on Christians done by unidentified groups as a concerted Hindu campaign against them, while they themselves are actively working to change Hindu India into a Christian nation. While Christians have a long history of aggression against other faiths that certainly has not come to an end, they are quite offended if their religion comes under even minor obstructions even by the groups they have long maligned and, not long ago, actively oppressed.
Recent arrests in India have shown that a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani national was behind most of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India. The Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not ruled by the so-called Hindu BJP party.
In fact Christians in India are defending the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency that has long tried to destabilise India, and absolving it of responsibility in the affair. This would be like an American religious minority defending the KGB during the Cold War. Whether the ISI is directly involved in such efforts to cause conflicts in India or not, we must recognize that it is a project they would certainly support and would be likely to promote.
To dismiss their involvement out of hand, as Christian leaders in India are doing, is highly suspicious. They are publicly blaming Hindu organizations for attacks that they have not been proven to have caused and which no court has found them guilty of.
Christians in India also exaggerate minor incidents into a national anti-Christian agenda. More churches have been burnt in America in recent years than in India. That a few priests or ministers have been harmed in a country of one billion over a period several years is not surprising even if we only consider ordinary crimes like robbery. That Christian missionaries have run into difficulties in sensitive tribal areas where there is not much government control is also not surprising, particularly given their hostility to tribal culture and to the tribal religions.
One even wonders if Christians are staging some of these attacks to gain sympathy, but certainly they are exaggerating them. Christianity has had a long history of using victimization in order to promote conversion. We know of the stories of Christians being fed to the lions in Rome. We are not told that many more pagans were killed by Christians and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe. The number of native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in the millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by the native Americans as being the real victims.
Mother Theresa's successor, Sister Nirmala, claims that Hindu fears that conversion is being done by force, deception or propaganda are not true and are ridiculous. But she should well know that such devices have long been used in Christianity. We can find native peoples all over the world whose cultures have been destroyed and even whose populations have been decimated by the missionaries and by the colonial armies that they supported. Even if the Hindu fear is exaggerated, it is certainly understandable. We should remember that the Pope in his recent visit to India himself threw down the gauntlet, stating a renewed church policy to convert Asia to Christianity in the coming years. To dismiss the Hindu fear as baseless only shows that it is not. If Christians were really sincere they would acknowledge that missionary activity has used such questionable methods in the past and work to insure that it does not do so in the future, not simply ignore the issue.
What is most surprising is that Christian missionaries have more freedom of operation in India than in the rest of Asia. They are banned in Islamic countries, including Pakistan, and strictly monitored in China, which has its own nationalist Catholic Church apart from Rome. Christians are under direct attack in Indonesia, where hundreds of Christians have been killed recently.
But it is India that is being called to task in the world forum for its oppression of Christians!
The reason is simple. India allows missionary activity and so is a soft target. Islamic countries and China are hard targets. The missionaries are targeting India because they feel they can make headway in India, not because India is a place where they are particularly under siege!
The hypocrisy of the whole thing is sad. It only shows that Christians are still promoting a medieval religion that will not honour other religions and is still seeking world domination by any convenient means.
If we count the victims of Christian aggression on one side and the Christians themselves who have been victimized we will find that the victims of Christianity are in the great majority. While some Christians have apologized to African and Native American groups for such missionary misdeeds, the Hindus have so far not received any such apology, though they have suffered from the same methods.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian colonial governments used their influence to promote conversion in the countries they ruled. Now Christians want to use freedom and democracy, which they didn't allow under their rulership, to continue the conversion process. And all without an apology.
If Christians want to be honoured and respected, let them first proclaim that Christianity is not the only true religion and Jesus is not the only son of God. Let them say that Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and the other Indian religions are as good as Christianity and that members of these religions will not go to hell but will gain immortality in the presence of God. They will certainly not do so. Their failure to do so shows the extent of their intolerance that naturally breeds conflict and leads to communal tension. Christians wouldn't even accept a Mahatma Gandhi and worked to convert him, while the Mahatma described missionary activity as a great danger and as ethically flawed.
As a former Catholic I know in what little esteem the church holds Hinduism and Buddhism with all their great sages and yogis. Were Christians to honour Hinduism as a valid religion all Hindu-Christian hostility could easily come to an end. As long as Christians hold that their's alone is the true faith and are working to convert the members of other religions in one way or another, they should not be surprised if members of other religions may not welcome their presence in the neighbourhood.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11892&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Is Islamic goodwill for Hindus possible?
ByDavid Frawley
14 October 1996
Author : David Frawley
Publication : The Organiser
Date : October 14, 1996
Hindus today are often asked to express goodwill for Islam and help minority Muslims in India, who often fell oppressed under the Hindu majority rule. However Hindus are also minorities in various Islamic countries. Therefore the complementary question must arise, is there any Islamic goodwill for Hindus, particularly in Islamic countries? To look at Hindu-Muslim relations only within the borders of India where Hindus are a majority can be misleading. The entire context of these relations throughout the world and historically must be examined.
Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees, like the Parsis, the Syrian Christians and the Jews. India is the only country that never oppressed the Jews. Even today there are a number of Islamicsects like the Ahmadiyas, the Bohras and the Sufis, and other religious movements originating from Islamic countries like the Bahais, which may not be tolerated in Islamic countries including Pakistan, and exist and flourish in India. In fact there is a greater diversity of Islamic sects in India than in any Islamic country today because of the religious toleance traditional to Hindu-majority India. When Muslims lived under Hindu rule in pre-Independence India they
were not obstructed frm practicing their religion, subject to forced conversion, religious taxes, or prevented from building mosques. The same is true of Muslims in India today. They are allowed to practice their religion without interference from Hindus.
Muslims, on the other hand, do not have such a history of
tolerance starting with the first chaliphs of Islam who set out organised armies to conquer the world and marched to the very borders of India. During the period of Islamic rule in India most Hindu temples in the country were destroyed, including many that were rebuilt during that period. Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions. The number of temples destroyed runs in thousands and it is difficult to find even a haldful of temples in India that were not either destroyed ro defaced by the Muslims. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Hindus were killed in wars and genocide or turned into slaves. this included many religious leaders like various Sikh and Hindu Gurus whom the Muslims executed. Hindus exdured forced conversion and a heavy
religious tax to convert them.
Yet this oppression for Hindus has not ended. Even after the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims, the Hindus left over in Pakistan and Bangladesh have suffered terribly. They have no real political or economical influence and the law seldom protects them. This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent. Strictly Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not allow any other religions to exist within their border. No Hindu temple
can be built in such Islamic countries by the Hindus who worl there. You will not find any Hindu temples in Mecca or other Islamic holy cities. Hindus who have gone to work in the Gulf countries are not allowed to practice their religion in public, or bring any of their Hindu holy books with them. Even in India today Muslims do not tolerate and often attack the Hindu religious processions that may go through or near their neighbourhood. This is a holdover right from the Islamic period in Indian when Hindus were prevented from publicly expressing their religion in Muslim predominant communities.
Saudi Arabia insists that India sends only a Muslim ambassador and the Government of India meekly complies, not even raising protest! How would Islamic countries, in which Hindus are a minority, respond if the Government of
India insisted that they sent only Hindu ambassadors? Certainly it would not be tolerated. Most instance of Muslim goodwill to Hindus occur in countries like Indonesia which were only recently and partially Islamized. It is not owing to Islam, which is intolerant in its hear land, but owing to the prior Hindu culture of the people. The more Islamic these countries become this tolerance is likely to decrease.
Today with growing global communication and the awakening of oppressed groups throughout the world, Hindu criticism of Islam is increasing. Hindu intellectuals are questioning Islam not only historically but also spiritually, particularly its actions in India relative to Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Hindu influenced political parties routinely complain against appeasement of the Muslim minority in India.
That Hindus may criticize other religions may be surprising to those who know the history of tolerance in Hinduism. It may cause them to think that Hindus are becoming intolerant. However, the other side of the issue must also be examined. That Hindus are becoming critical of Islam may not be so surprising to those who know of the ongoing oppression of Hindus by Muslims.
Hindus today are awakening to an understanding of the thousand years of oppression they underwent during nearly a thousand years of foreign rule by the Muslims and the Europeans. Their religion and culture was constantly under siege throughout the period. When Hindus today criticize the British rule of India and its efforts to Christinize India, it is generally regarded as understandable. However when Hindus criticize the Islamic period which was similarly a foreign rule and far more brutal than the British period, with a more determined attempt at conversion, it may be labelled as Hindu intoferance of Islam (suggesting that there is Islamic tolerance of Hinduism, which has yet to be demonstrat). But if British rule and Chritian intolerance of Hindus can be questioned, so can, similar action done by Muslims.
Just as blacks and women are, making an issue of their historical oppression, seeking an acknowledgment of it, and trying to correct it, so are Hindus. This is perfectly reasonable and modern, not fundamentalist and backward for them to do so. There is probably no other religious or political group in the world that has been slower to protest its historical mistreatment than have the Hindus. Hindus are the least organised socially and politically of all religious groups. The fact is that Musli8ms have routinely treated Hindus badly and this trend has continued. Not merely as Hindus but as human beings, Hindus have a right to draw the line.
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become exvessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong. Hindus now are no longer willing to meekly accept domination and abuse by
Muslims in the name of communal harmoney. This is just another human community no longer of its human rights. It
is about time that Hindus have taken this stance and it can only help other oppressed groups gain their legitimate rights as well.
The question is how will Muslims react to this trend? Will they recognize the legitimate anger of the Hindus against them, take some resposibility for the problem, and seek to correct it? Or will they rect with hostility and refuse to acknowledge the history of violence that Muslims have without doubt peroetrated against Hindus? Will they take the opportunity to create oeace or will they inflame Hindus further by ignoring the mistakes done in the name of their religion? Muslis throughout the world are quick to condemn any oppressionof Muslims which occurs in any part of the world. Should they be surprised or feel that it is wrong if Hindus begin to adopt such attitudes and start challenging the oppression of Hindus by Muslims?
In Hindu-Muslim dialogue since the time of Mahatma Gandhi has generally been a matter of Hindus trying to please or
accommodate Muslims. This led to the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims and the allowance of Muslim personal law for Muslims in India (but not, we might add, Hindu personal law for Hindus in Pakistan). The question is seldom asked what are Muslims willing to concede to Hindus in order to create peace with them? Perhaps because Muslims are a minority in India it is not considered what they should give but only what they should receive. However there must be reciprocity for there to be trust. And the Hindu-Muslim issue is not limityed to India but to all lands where these two faiths meet. If Muslims throughout the world are intolerance of Hinduism, how can Indian Muslims expect Hindus in India not to be suspricious of them?
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries. How many Hindu political leaders have there been in Pakistan and Bangladesh? I believe the answer is zero, even though, at least in Bangladesh the percentage of minority Hindus is on par with that of Muslims in India. There have, however, been Muslim President, Members of Parliament, chief ministers of State and cabinet minister of India has increased since Partition while the Hindu population of Pakistan and Bangladesh has dramatically decreased.
Clearly Muslims in India are treated much better than Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Gulf countries. There are no Hindu prayers or songs allowed on Pakistani prayers and songs which can be found on Indian television Pakistan history books still vaunt Islamic leaders like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples and killed Hindus on a grand scale, as great and pious Muslims and great Pakistanis.
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be devorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. if Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus. Muslims cannot rightfully expect better treatment from Hindus if they do not consider the plight of Hindus as will. There must be a concern for discrimination against all human beings, regardless of their religion, not looking out for Muslims and ignoring the plight of non-Muslims.
The further question arises, if Muslims want the goodwill of Hindus what are they willing to offer in order to receive it? Do Muslims think that they should have the goodwill of Hindus without offering anythink to the Hindus in return? Can they really think that their history merits the trust and affection of Hindus? While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out. It is they who have historically been aggressively attacking Hindus, not Hindus who have sent armies into their countries in order
to convert them.
Hindus do have an historical right to critize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion. Muslims routinely condemn Hindus as idol-worshippers, which is hardly an accurate, much less a sensitiverendeing of Hinduism, which is a vast religion containig all avenues of human spirituality from devotional worship of images to yogic meditation.
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of
Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
Many Muslims and other have argued that Hindu temples were not destroyed out of religious reasons but from political motivation. Therefore the blam for this destruction is not with the Islamic religion, which is one of peace, but with political leaders who are prone to violence in order to hold power whatever their religious background. If this is the case Muslims should be happy to return such Hindu sacred sites as Kashi and Mathura. Mosques on these two sites of well known Hindu temples were built only three centuries ago by the tyrant Aurangzeb, who killed his own brother, imprisoned his own father, and murdered Sufis as well as Hindu and Sikh leaders. If Islam as a religion is not responsible for the destruction of these Hindu temples but the arrogance of such as Aurangzeb, Muslims should not cling to such monuments as sacred. Otherwise Muslims are in fact saying that the destruction of temples and their replacement with mosques has a religions sanction, which is to equate their religion with such tyrants.
Yet this condition is hardly hopless. there is much that Muslims can do to gain the trust of Hindus, who are a peaceful and tolerant people. But this issue is mainly in
the hands of the Muslims. Hindus cannot make peace with Muslims who are unwilling to give up their oppression of Hindus or their targeting for conversion. Muslims should be willing to consider doing the following if they are sincere about peace with the Hindus.
(1) Muslim leaders should make an official apology for the massive destruction of temples and killing of Hindus that was common under their rule in India and by their invading armies. One can use the example of the Christians apologizing to the American Indians or the Blacks for similar discrimination and oppression.
(2) Muslims should give back to the Hindus Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura mosques that were built by Babur and Aurangazeb on Ramjanmabhoomi, the Kashi Vishwanath Shiva temple and Krishnajanmabhoomi, just as they didi not try to hold on the Somnath after Partition of India. This could be a peace offering for all the Hindu temples destroyed by Muslims through history.
(3) Muslims should invite Hindu swamis and religious leaders to speak at their mosques to explain to the Muslims masses what Hinduism really teaches. In the same way Hindus should invite Islamic leaders to speak at their temples. Muslim countries should allow Hindus to preach and build temples, particularly for Hindu workers in those countries. They should also invite Hindus to talk and preach their religion in orther to dispel Islamic misunderstandings about Hinduism.
(4) Muslims should be willing to accept Hindu names for God like ishvara as good as Allah. Hindus should also accpet Allah as a name of God as many of them already do.
(5) Muslims should be willing to accept the great teachers of India-based religions as divinely inspired, inluding those of recent centuries like Sikh Gurus or Ramakrishna, just as Hindus honour many Sufis and Islamic saints.
(6) Indian Muslims should complain to Muslim countries that discriminate against Hindus. They should criticize Pakistan and Bangladesh for the destruction of Hindu temples that has gone on there in recent times.
Of course it is doubtful whether this will occur any-time soon, even on one of these points. If this is the case, Muslims should ask themselves, if they are unwilling to make such gestures of goodwill to the Hindus why should they expect Hindus to respect and honour them in return? You cannot repeatedly trample on a person and his culture and then expect him to help you when you are in need.
Muslims, who claim to follow the will of God, think clearly on the history of Islam, and how members of your religion have mistreated Hindus and denigrated their religion. Think of how your religious leaders portray the Hindu religion even today. Would you be quick to embrace a group who treated you in the same way?
… Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees… Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions... This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent…
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become excessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong…
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries…
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be divorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. If Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus…
While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out… Hindus do have an historical right to criticize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion…
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
1990: Second Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival, in Moscow, cosponsored by Supreme Soviet, gives stage for Hindu thinking. Shringeri sannyasin Swami Paramananda Bharati concludes Forum with Vedic peace prayer in Kremlin Hall, leading 2,500 world leaders in chanting Aum three times.
1990: Communist leadership of USSR collapses, to be replaced by 12 independent democratic nations.
1991: Hindu Renaissance Award is founded by Hinduism Today and declares Swami Paramananda Bharati of Shringeri Matha "1990 Hindu of the Year."
1991: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated in Tamil Nadu in May. India blames Sri Lankan Tamil separatists.
1991: Indian tribals, adivasis, are 45 million strong.
1991: In Bangalore, India, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami authorizes renowned architect V. Ganapati Sthapati to begin carving the Chola-style, white-granite, moksha Iraivan Temple in a project guided by Shri Shri Trichy Swami, Shri Shri Balagangadaranathaswami and Shri Sivapuriswami. Shipped to Hawaii's Garden Island of Kauai and erected on San Marga, Iraivan will be the Western Hemisphere's first all-stone Agamic temple.The world's largest single-pointed, six-sided crystal (700 lbs.), known as the Earthkeeper, will be enshrined as its Sivalinga.
1992: Swami Chidananda Saraswati, spiritual head of Parmarth Niketan Trust, with 26 ashramas, is named Hinduism Today's 1991 Hindu of the Year for founding historic Encyclopedia of Hinduism Indian Heritage project.
1992: World population is 5.2 billion; 17% or 895 million, live in India. Of these, 85%, or 760 million, are Hindu.
1992: Third Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival meets in Rio de Janeiro in conjunction with Earth Summit (UNCED). Hindu views of nature, environment and traditional values help inform the 70,000 delegates planning global future.
1992: Hindu radicals demolish Babri Masjid built in 1548 on Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya by Muslim conqueror Babar after he destroyed a Hindu temple marking the site. The monument was a central icon of Hindu resentment toward Muslim destruction of 60,000 temples.
1993: Fourth Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival meets in Kyoto, Japan. Green Cross is founded for environmental protection.
1993: Swami Chinmayananda is named 1992 Hindu of the Year, for lifetime of dynamic service to Sanatana Dharma worldwide-attains mahasamadhi July 26, at age 77.
1993: Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati, renowned yoga scholar, and Swami Vishnu-devananda, author of world's most popular manual on hatha yoga, reach parinirvana.
1993: Chicago's historic centenary Parliament of the World's Religions convenes in September. Presidents' Assembly, a core group of 25 men and women representing the world's faiths, is formed to perpetuate Parliament goals.
1994: Harvard University research identifies over 800 Hindu temples open for worship in the United States.
1994: Mata Amritanandamayi (1953-) charismatic woman saint of Kerala, is named 1993 Hindu of the Year.
1994: All India pays homage to Kanchi's beloved peripatetic tapasvin sage, Shri la Shri Shankaracharya Chandrashekharendra, who passes away January 7, during his 100th year.
1994: Hindu Heritage Endowment, first Hindu international trust, founded by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.
2000: World population is 6.2 billion. India population is 1.2 billion: 20% of world (projection by World Watch).
2050: British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) predicted that at the close of the 20th century the world would still be dominated by the West, but during the 21st century India will conquer her conquerors, preempting the place formerly held by technology. Religion worldwide will be restored to its earlier importance, and the center of world happenings will wander back from the shores of the Atlantic to the East where civilization originated.
2094: Bharat (formerly India) is world's most populous nation. Sanatana Dharma, finding new expressions through interactive electronic tools, guides humankind's future. Time flows on. Live long and prosper.
Aum. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Aum.
2) Reference: http://www.timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=2140338028
City older than Mohenjodaro unearthed
REUTERS [ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2002 6:25:32 PM ]
EW DELHI: Indian scientists have made an archaeological find dating back to 7500 BC suggesting the world's oldest cities came up about 4,000 years earlier than is currently believed, a top government official said on Wednesday.The scientists found pieces of wood, remains of pots, fossil bones and what appeared like construction material just off the coast of Surat, Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a news conference."Some of these artefacts recovered by the NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) from the site such as the log of wood date back to 7500 BC, which is indicative of a very ancient culture in the present Gulf of Cambay, that got submerged subsequently," Joshi said.Current belief is that the first cities appeared around 3500 BC in the valley of Sumer, where Iraq now stands, a statement issued by the government said."We can safely say from the antiquities and the acoustic images of the geometric structures that there was human activity in the region more than 9,500 years ago (7500 BC)," S.N. Rajguru, an independent archaeologist, said.The findings, if confirmed, will dislodge the Harappan Civilisation dating back to 2500 BC as India's oldest civilisation.
3) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/7/56-57_dna.html
July/August, 2001 SCIENCEDNA Exposes India's Past New theory posits that today's Indians arrived over 50,000 years agoGenetic evidence isn't just about freeing the unjustly convicted these days or determining whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not have children by his black slave, Sally Hemmings. It's also casting new light on the mid-18th century theory of India's history called the "Aryan Invasion." This, as you may recall having read it in virtually every historical account of India is the pervasive notion that about 1800 bce, hordes of horseback-riding, chariot-driving, light-skinned invaders from the West stormed into India, laying waste the advanced Indus Valley cities, bringing with them Sanskrit, the Rig Veda, the brahmin priest system and every other good thing!According to one of the most widely-used history books on India, The Wonder that was India, by A.L. Basham, the invading Aryans were, "semi-nomadic barbarians, tall, who tamed the horse, were pastoral, and migrated in bands eastwards, conquering local populations and intermarrying with them to form a ruling class. They brought with them their patrilineal family system, their worship of the sky gods...." These same people, Basham states, also went westwards, "to become the ancestors of the Greeks, Latins, Celts and Teutons." Just about every aspect of modern Hinduism is attributed either directly to these invaders, or as a result of their interaction with the conquered, likely Dravidian-speaking, people.The Aryan Invasion theory has been under siege from many sides, especially in the last ten years. Literary, archeological and astronomical evidence simply fail to support it, and critics are quick to point out the very convenient purpose the theory served: to support the British take-over of India at the same time, who were the latest in a series of invaders. Even mainstream historians, some of them students of the renowned Professor Basham, have abandoned it. But many still hold to it, in part because so many aspects of Hinduism have traditionally been explained in the West by this invasion. For example, take this explanation from Basham on the origins of the sudras, or worker caste. "The sudra was in fact a second-class citizen, on the fringes of [the conquering] Aryan society." Such assertions exacerbate caste tension even today.Now, recent DNA research has a one-word answer for this invasion theory: "Not." With the theory's fall would go most of the scholarly explanations of the origins of Sanskrit, the Vedas, brahmins, sudras, etc., etc.That refutation is just one result of a broad re-evaluation of human history as a result of genetic research. The latest theory is called the "recent replacement model." It is based on analysis of "mitochondreal DNA," which is passed from generation to generation only through the mother. Such analysis allows geneticists to trace back a person's ancestry, and determine when one group of people separated from another. The startling conclusion of this model is that all modern humans can be traced back to migrations out of East Africa, possibly just 50,000 years ago, and certainly no more than 200,000 years ago. Spreading out from the area near modern Ethiopia, they went north to Europe and west to India, then on to China and Australia. For as-yet-unknown reasons, they completely replaced the existing archaic humans who themselves had previously spread out of Africa two million years before. It must be admitted that neither geneticists nor anyone else are especially clear about how this "replacement" of the earlier humans occurred, and further discoveries may disrupt current theories and conclusions.The science of all this is complex, but Professor Richard Villems of the Estonian Biocentre in Estonia explained some of the consequences to Hinduism Today in an e-mail interview. "I am aware of the problem of the Aryan Invasion, and although some of my colleagues still want to see its influence in the Indian maternal lineages, we are very skeptical about it." "It is not entirely correct," Villems went on, "to say that Indians and Europeans separated some 50,000 years ago. It is, however, appropriate to conclude from this evidence that the maternal lineages of the present-day Indian populations are largely autochthonous, that is, unique to India, and very, very old. Indians are readily distinguished from Europeans, Near-Middle East populations and those living north or east of India." "There are signs," he wrote, "of later admixtures, particularly along the border regions, but this has had only a limited impact."We asked him about language, specifically the common belief that the presence of languages derived from Indo-European, such as Sanskrit and Hindi, in the north, and the Dravidic languages of the south indicate a racial divide. "There is only a small difference between the pools of maternal lineages between Indians," replied Dr. Villems, "whether they speak Indo-European or Dravidic languages. Also, the maternal genetic lineages of the Indian tribal populations are the same as the rest of the population." This latter discovery contradicts the theory that "Indians" displaced "tribals" from the plains regions of India at some point in history, pushing them into the hill regions.What language, we asked, did the ancestors of today's Indians and Europeans speak when they left Africa? "The problem," Villems replied, "with historic linguistics is that their time horizon is at best 8,000 years maximum, because their methods don't yield positive information below this time depth. So you will hardly find anyone who wants to speak about Indo-European or whatever language before that time. A few are 'brave enough' to suggest the split between Dravidic and Indo-European was 16,000 to 19,000 years ago.""I think that the Aryan Invasion theory," concluded Villems, "in its classical form is dead already, and an attempt to overkill it would perhaps rather scatter our attention from a more complete understanding of the demographic history of India's people."It is now the job of historians, social anthropologists and Hindus in general to weed out the vast array of myths generated by the Aryan Invasion theory, beginning with the notion that the people of north and south India are of fundamentally different origin. Right today, there are heated debates over the use of Sanskrit in South Indian temples because it is regarded as an "imposition" of northern brahmins. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other baseless conclusions about India derived from this persistent but unfounded legend. Professor Richard Villems can be contacted at: Estonian Biocentre, 23 Riia Street, 51010, Tartu, EstoniaPh: 372.7.375.064. Fx: 420.194e-mail: rvillems@ebc.ee. .
4) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/3/
Pythagoras the Mystic
The Greek rishi who taught reincarnation, vegetarianism and more
Pythagoras is generally accepted to be one of the most significant fountainheads of Western thought. Of particular interest to Hindus is the fact that his teachings were in tune with the thinking of the far East--especially India. In this article, Peter Westbrook, a writer and lecturer on music and cosmology, amplifies these connections. He is co-author with John Strohmeter of "Divine Harmony," a book that recounts the fascinating story of the life and teachings of this legendary man.
Many centuries ago there lived a great teacher who was part of an ancient guru parampara‚ a tradition. For nearly forty years he traveled extensively and studied at the feet of many masters. Eventually he founded a community centered on an ashram where he recommended a contemplative, vegetarian lifestyle, taught the doctrine of reincarnation and trained his followers in sacred knowledge aimed at uniting the human soul with the Divine. His biographers attribute miraculous abilities to him, not the least of which was the ability to mentally perceive the deepest structures of cosmic life.
Hinduism Today readers might well assume that these events took place in India and describe the life of a Vedic rishi or Hindu sage. But, in fact, the man in question came from Greece and was one of the founders of the Western tradition. His name was Pythagoras of Samos.
A Man of Many Talents
In the modern world Pythagoras is best remembered for the mathematical theorem that he is said to have created--the one about the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. But Pythagoras was responsible for much more; he played a pivotal role in transmitting knowledge from the wisdom of ancient traditions into the modern world. At the same time, he stands at the fountainhead of our culture. The ideas he set in motion were, according to Daniel Boorstin, among the most potent in modern history. Mathematics, science, philosophy, music--none of these would have taken the shape they did in the Western world without Pythagoras' discoveries. And yet, of all the founders of the Western tradition, Pythagoras is, by far, the least known. This is unfortunate, for understanding Pythagoras and his thought is of much more than purely historical interest. Appreciating the influence of this first scientist and philosopher is essential if we are to get beyond a superficial understanding of history. This is particularly important when we consider the perceived gap between Hinduism and the thought of the West.
Personal Life
As with many figures from antiquity, facts about Pythagoras' life are sketchy. Like his contemporary, the Buddha, he is said to be one of those divine men of whom history knows least because their lives were at once transfigured into legend. Nevertheless, a number of early writers have left us biographical information about Pythagoras which we have used to reconstruct his story in our book Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras.
Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos around 569 bce. Miraculous events surrounded his life from the very beginning. Legend holds that he was the son of Apollo, the Hellenic god of music and learning, and his birth was foretold by the oracle at Delphi. His early years were spent studying at all the centers of scientific and sacred learning in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Eventually he made his way to Egypt, where he lived for over twenty years, absorbing Egyptian knowledge of mathematics, music, medicine and the mystical teachings regarding the soul and the stages of its evolution.
Pythagoras' time in Egypt ended when the country was overrun by the armies of the Persian empire and he was taken into captivity in Babylon. This proved to be a blessing in disguise. Recognizing his prodigious learning and receptivity to new ideas, the Persian magi took Pythagoras into their confidence and he became a student of their equally ancient mystery school. He was also subject to other influences during this time, and probably undertook further travels. Whether he actually went as far as India is not known. Some writers think that he did. Others accept that he studied and absorbed in some form the Vedic philosophy of ancient India; certainly it was known in Persia at this time. And there was probably direct contact between India and Greece before the time of Alexander. Vitsaxis G. Vassilis, in his book Plato and the Upanishads, argues that exponents of literature, science, philosophy and religion traveled regularly between the two countries. He points to accounts by Eusebius and Aristoxenes, of the visits of Indian sages to Athens and their meetings with Greek philosophers. And reference to the visit of Indians to Athens is found in the fragment of Aristotle preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius who was also one of Pytha-
goras' biographers.
The Teachings
The teachings that had the most influence on Pythagoras can best be discerned by what he himself taught. And his teaching began in earnest, when, at the age of 56, he returned from his travels and settled in the Greek world. Initially he returned to Samos and established a school there, but he found himself in great demand in the political arena, although he was more inclined to pursue scientific research, philosophical discussion and solitary contemplation. For this, he found the atmosphere more conducive in the city of Kroton, a Greek settlement in southern Italy. Here he established a philosophical community which was to become known as the Pythagorean brotherhood.
The essence of the doctrine that formed the basis for the Pythagorean community was conveyed, we are told, in the first lecture that Pythagoras gave to those who gathered there, attracted by the fame that now preceded him. He taught them that the soul is immortal and that after death it migrates into other animated bodies. He said that all living things are kin and should be considered as belonging to one great family. He introduced new explanations of gods and spirits, of the heavenly spheres, of all the natures contained in heaven and earth, and of all the natures in between the visible and invisible.
The Kosmos
From this comprehensive vision emerge all the details of Pythagorean philosophy. From the vision itself comes a central idea--Kosmos. The word was coined by Pythagoras, and its original meaning was more than merely everything that exists. The Greek root of the word also gives us the word cosmetic. It implies beauty, adornment, an aesthetic component that springs from an inherent order that Pythagoras described by the term Harmonia, the divine principle that brings order to chaos and discord. This order also expresses itself as philia, love or friendship. For Pythagoras, philia was a cosmic force that attracts all the elements of nature into harmonious relationships. It helps preserve the order of planets as they move across the sky, and encourages men and women, once their souls have been purified, to help one another. The greatest love, philia, for the Pythagoreans was wisdom, sophia. Thus Pythagoras was the first Western philosopher (philia + sophia).
Just as was thought in India, Pythagoras taught that, different songs and modes were appropriate to different hours and seasons. In the spring, for example, he would arrange a ritual in which a group of disciples would sit in a circle with a lyre player seated in the middle. As the instrumentalist produced a melody, the others would begin to sing together in a spontaneous fashion, from which would emerge a song in unison, creating a powerful sense of joy. This ritual was also modified for use as a medicine to treat diseases of the body. Many stories have been handed down that illustrate Pythagoras' influence through music.
The Community
For the members of his brotherhood, the first goal of wisdom was attaining to the divine. And for this, Pythagoras recommended a highly disciplined lifestyle in a loving community. But entry into this community, essentially an ashram, required a lengthy and rigorous examination, including five years of silence. Once admitted to the inner circle, the students were exposed to abstract realms of study designed to turn attention to inner, universal values of consciousness for soul purification.
Modern science traces its origins to Pythagoras, but in its development dropped off the mystical teachings. Perhaps science needs to re-embrace the inclusive vision of this Western rishi.
For extracts from "The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras," log on to www.harmoniainstitute.com/pythagoras.htm
5) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/as-nhild.htm
A Wonder of Ancient India: The Mahabharata
By Nhilde Davidson
Daunted by its size and a misconception that an intimate understanding of Hinduism was needed, I never considered taking the Mahabharata off the shelf. By accident I tuned into an episode of an Indian television production of the Mahabharata (subtitled in English) -- and I was hooked. Ninety-six one-hour episodes later (and many more hours of reading) I am still enthralled and continue delving into this fascinating epic. Its appeal is on many different levels and, through the ages, ascetics and scholars alike have dedicated their lives to studying, collating, and translating the varied and voluminous material. When the series aired on Indian television, railway schedules had to be adjusted as each week almost the entire country sat in front of a TV. Similarly, most things ground to a halt when the Ramayana was serialized. We all love a hero -- heroic action appeals to children and adults alike -- and these epics are heroic. On a deeper level it is the philosophical depth and the psychological profundity that endure, keeping the stories alive in the soul, drawing one back again and again.
The epic is about a Holy War fought on the fields of Kurukshetra at the junction between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron or Kali Age. The Kali Yuga is said to have begun with the death of Krishna on February 17, 3102 BC -- thus dating the war to 3138 BC (in the epic Krishna died 36 years after the Great War). However, dating the epic is an ongoing debate. The extant written versions can be traced to the period 400-100 BC when the present form was settled on. The Mahabharata has eighteen major chapters or parvas which are, in turn, subdivided into many smaller parvas or sections. There are hundreds of different versions, adjusted by various sects to include their own individual religious biases (for example there are 300 known versions of the Adi Parva).
Krishna-Dvaipayana (also known as Veda Vyasa for his work in synthesizing the Vedas in their present form) is said to be the author of the original 24,000 slokas (verses). Sloka meter is characterized by 32 syllables divided into 4 pada or quarter verses of 8 syllables each, written in either 2 or 4 lines. It is the metrical form commonly used in Sanskrit epics. (1) The present form of the epic contains around 100,000 slokas, though it has been estimated that it may include as many as 150,000. Critical editions intended to discover the pristine material are only a few decades old, the best work having been done by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona.
While the accrual of additional material is ongoing, the age of the texts and questions about the historical accuracy of accounts in the epic are hotly debated. Many believe that the Mahabharata and also the Puranas give the history of not only the peoples of India but of humanity. Scholars have established that the parvas were written at different times -- some being much older than others.
One of the parvas contains the Ramayana. According to Hindu tradition the Ramayana recounts the history of Rama and Sita, and is believed to have taken place at the beginning of the Treta or Silver Age, i.e., shortly after the end of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age) -- roughly two million years ago by Hindu reckoning -- thus potentially very old indeed. The current archaeological dating of the age of humanity prevents scholars from giving credence to the Hindu chronology.
The known history of India does not include verifiable records of a war where millions of soldiers fought and died, or the destruction of Dvaraka (the region governed by Krishna) by tidal waves and cataclysms of the proportions described in the Mahabharata. This leads some to believe that the epics may not be historical. However, corroborating evidence in texts from other sources and countries suggests that these writings are a blend of accurate history, myth, and soul memory, as well as ethical treatises.
The crux of the matter is that the entire Mahabharata has one obvious aim -- to awaken a love of truth and right action. The core story is the thread that ties together a profound philosophical content. Embellished by substories to clarify various ethical premises, the central theme always leads in one direction -- the ascendancy of right over wrong, justice over injustice, truth over untruth. In the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas it is made clear that the side of Truth (represented by the Pandavas) will ultimately win. The reasons for this war and the human aspects of the story are what make the epic ever fascinating -- its slokas are the mirror whereby we see into our own souls, and the consequences of actions, both gross and subtle, are laid bare for scrutiny.
The cast of characters is large, but one soon finds oneself relating to and caring about them: Draupadi, the virtuous, beautiful wife of the five Pandava brothers; Vidura, the wise younger brother of Pandu and Dhritarashtra; Kunti, the mother of the three eldest Pandava brothers -- Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna; Madri, the mother of the younger twin sons of Pandu -- Nakula and Sahadeva. As all the characters come alive, the strange names and customs become familiar and comfortable.
The wisdom of the Pandava and Kaurava princes' tutors -- Bhishma, Drona, and Kripacharya -- enrich the text at every turn. Bhishma, patriarch of the families on both sides of the conflict, has a magnificence and stature which make him beloved and respected by all the characters, while his all-encompassing wisdom and virtue still earn him the love and reverence of Hindus today.
The central story concerns the rivalry for the throne of Hastinapura, where the ancient dynasty of India has its domain. As jealousy goes unchecked the dynasty is finally destroyed. Pandu, the second son of Santanu, becomes king because his elder brother, Dhritarashtra, was born blind and thus considered unfit to rule. However, when Pandu dies Dhritarashtra, already an able administrator of the country during Pandu's many absences, proceeds to reign. It is the line of succession that is the bone of contention. Yudhishthira, virtuous son of Pandu and eldest of the Pandava brothers, is heir-apparent, but Duryodhana, eldest of Dhritarashtra's and Gandhari's one hundred sons, wishes to be king. Gandhari has a gambler brother, Sakuni, living at court who helps inflame Duryodhana's jealousy and envy of the five Pandava princes.
Known as the Kauravas, the family and supporters of Dhritarashtra are spearheaded by Duryodhana, his brother Dushasana, Sakuni, and Karna (a protege of Duryodhana whose lineage is mysterious and who, ironically, is finally shown to be linked to the Pandavas). These four try many ways to eliminate the five sons of Pandu. As Dhritarashtra and Gandhari fail to curb Duryodhana's hatred of the Pandavas -- and more especially of his birthday twin, Pandu's second son, Bhima -- the peoples of Hastinapura are inexorably propelled into war.
Through the popularity of the Bhagavad-Gita the third son of Pandu, Arjuna, is perhaps the best known of his five sons. This parva recounts the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna just prior to the Battle of Kurukshetra. Arjuna asks Krishna why he should fight. Krishna, having sworn not to fight himself but to steer Arjuna's chariot during the battle, explains to Arjuna his duty -- in reality the duties of all who seek for truth.
One may read the epic just as an excellent tale, for it has all the elements of good storytelling, yet it also includes the psychological dilemmas inherent in life, though the meaning behind some of the episodes is not always clear -- each reader must interpret the episodes according to his own insight and vision. Like a diamond sparkling in the sun, each time a passage or an episode is reread new illuminations and nuances come into focus.
The Mahabharata says that even before the Battle of Kurukshetra the caste system had effectively come to an end. No longer were people to be considered as being born in a particular class, miscegenation having broken the old ways and codes. With the advent of the Kali Age all reflect, by their own actions, what class each act belongs to -- the determining factor being whether the motive arises out of wisdom and truth, the passionate or emotional nature, or from ignorance and darkness (avidya or untruth).
The Kshatriya, or divine warrior class, as represented by Arjuna and his peers, died out in this Holy War on the fields of Kurukshetra and the unholy aspects of life during the Kali Age are prescient. It was incumbent upon these godlike men -- whose concentration was on dharma (duty), artha (right resolve or motive), karma (action), and vidya (wisdom/truth) -- to be just, benevolent, and charitable at all times -- always protecting and honoring truth. As the eighteen-day war drags on, all partake of unrighteous acts eroding the old codes of honor and ethics. Finally, at the end of the war, with the loss of the ancient value system and their loyalty solely to truth destroyed, the link with the past is broken. After Kurukshetra a limited age of justice was reestablished and the sun of truth shone briefly -- but the Kali Age had begun.
Fortunately for us the old truths remain accessible in this vast storehouse of wisdom from ancient India. The Bhagavad-Gita, the best loved of all Hindu writings, is a profound treatise on the causes and results of action and stands on its own, yet coupled with the entire epic, it acquires an additional lustre -- for the Mahabharata has much to say about the qualities and duties of every aspect of life. B.R. TV's Indian production of the Mahabharata shows the veneration that the Hindus have for this work and their understanding of its effect for good on individual lives.
Use this epic tale as an inspiration to solve your problems. The story is your armour and also your weapon . . . Be heir to Light, to Justice and to Truth. Turn the Kurukshetra of your heart into Holy Ground -- That is Salvation!
Whatever there is in the World / Whatever this World is -- / Sage Vyasa's epic tale narrates all that the World is! -- From B.R. TV English subtitles
· (From Sunrise magazine, February/March 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
FOOTNOTE:
1. Mahabharata, produced and directed by B. R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra. Marketing Agents for India, J. Electronics, 258 Palika Bazar, Cannaught Place, New Delhi - 110001. (return to text)
6) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/mis-jj00.htm
Letter: On Revising the History of Vedic Civilization
By Rithvik. S. Vinekar
Having read on the Internet an article in Sunrise on the Mahabharata, I would like to bring to your attention a book I just read which relates to ancient India: Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization by Dr. David Frawley. Although there are many books on this subject, this one was written with the international -- particularly American or European -- reader in mind, who has no previous knowledge of Hindu mythology or history.
In this work Dr. Frawley relates the history and mythology of almost all the ancient world to the Vedic culture which developed on the banks of the now dry Saraswati River. Geological, literary, and archeological data suggest that long ago this mighty river flowed from Lake Manasarowar in Tibet to the sea through present-day Rajasthan. Manasarowar is linked with Manu, the first man according to Vedic tradition. Leaving his golden ship on a high Himalayan peak after the great flood, he is said to have come down to the plains, carrying with him the seeds of life, in order to establish his kingdom on the fertile banks of the Saraswati. The author suggests there may be a linkage of this event with Plato's Atlantean deluge near the end of the ice age, while cautioning the reader that the boat or ark may be only a metaphor. Although this date may seem irrational from the viewpoint of accepted academic history, more and more archeological evidence from the Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization, geological evidence of the existence and fate of the Saraswati River, and astronomical dating of events recorded in the Vedas, show the antiquity of this ancient civilization. They also contradict the standard Western theory, formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, of Vedic civilization beginning with an Aryan invasion of northern India around 1500 bc.
The Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization is now found to be a collection of nearly 2,500 settlements of various periods along the Saraswati and other rivers, some of which date earlier than 6000 bc. These sites show sure signs of having cultural elements in common with later Vedic culture. The Indus script was first dismissed as imagistic, but has since been found to be very similar to the later Brahmi script, and is possibly related to early Semitic scripts from which the present-day alphabet developed.
The historicity of Vedic religion and its scriptures was once dismissed, in part because it praised very highly the supposedly mythical Saraswati River. Satellite and geological evidence show, however, that although the Saraswati changed its course many times over several thousand years before disappearing, long ago it was as described in the Vedas. Fortunately, some scholars are beginning to interpret history taking into account the geography of the region in the past. In light of new and growing evidence, an objective reexamination of existing data and reinterpretation of ancient history is necessary today.
(From Sunrise magazine, June/July 2000; copyright © 2000 Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
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7) reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bud_statwrld.htm 020320yd
While estimates vary between 200-500 million adherents, the generally agreed number of Buddhists is estimated at around 350 million (6% of the world's population). This makes Buddhism the world's fourth largest (in terms of number of adherents) religion.
World Religions Number of Adherents
Christianity 2 billion
Islam 1.2 billion
Hinduism 900 million
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 900 million
Buddhism 350 million
Chinese traditional religion 225 million
Primal-indigenous 190 million
Yoruba religion 20 million
Juche 19 million
Sikhism 18 million
Judaism 15 million
Spiritism 14 million
Babi and Bahai faiths 6 million
Jainism 4 million
Shinto 4 million
Cao Dai 3 million
Tenrikyo 2.4 million
Neo-Paganism 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism 800 thousand
Scientology 750 thousand
Rastafarianism 700 thousand
Zoroastrianism 150 thousand
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bstats_b.htm 020320yd Branch Percentage Number of Adherents
Mahayana 56% 185,000,000
Theravada 38% 124,000,000
Vajrayana (Tibetan) 6% 20,000,000
Branch Religion Number of Adherents
Catholic Christianity 1,030,000,000
Sunni Islam 940,000,000
Vaishnavites Hinduism 580,000,000
Liberal Protestant Christianity 240,000,000
Orthodox/Eastern Christian Christianity 240,000,000
Shaivites Hinduism 220,000,000
Conservative Protestant Christianity 200,000,000
Mahayana Buddhism 185,000,000
Theravada Buddhism 124,000,000
Shiite Islam 120,000,000
African indigenous sects Christianity 110,000,000
Pentecostal Christianity 105,000,000
Neo-Hindus and reform Hindus Hinduism 22,000,000
Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism 20,000,000
Sikhism Sikhism 18,000,000
Jehovah's Witnesses Christianity 12,000,000
Latter Day Saints Christianity 11,200,000
Ahmadiyya Islam 10,000,000
Veerashaivas (Lingayats) Hinduism 10,000,000
Baha'i World Faith Baha'i Faiths 6,500,000
Conservative Judaism 4,500,000
Unaffiliated and Secular Judaism 4,500,000
Shinto all branches Shinto 4,000,000
Svetambara Jainism 4,000,000
Reform Judaism 3,750,000
Seicho-No-Ie New Japanese 3,200,000
Tenrikyo New Japanese 2,800,000
PL Kyodan New Japanese 2,600,000
Orthodox Judaism 2,000,000
New Thought (Unity, Christian Science) Christianity 1,500,000
Sekai Kyuseikyo New Japanese 800,000
Sthanakavasis Jainism 750,000
Zenrinkai New Japanese 600,000
Druze Islam 450,000
Tensho Kotai Jingukyo New Japanese 400,000
Ennokyo New Japanese 300,000
Digambaras Jainism 155,000
Reconstructionist Judaism 150,000
Parsis Zoroastrianism 110,000
Gabars Zoroastrianism 20,000
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.asp?loc=ct&letter=A by country - stats
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introleastreached.html
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introcomplete.html world survey convert project design
http://www.joshuaproject.net/peoplenumbers.html operation world
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/cntryxx.htm worlwide
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/jpcxind.htm peoples in India
http://www.hindunet.org/conversions/conversion/ articles
Reference: The Detroit News
Racial,ethnic makeup of 10 largest Christian denominations in the U.S.
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
No figures available for racial/ethnic makeup for 4, 5, 7, 8, 9:
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
About 42% of the US Catholics are minorities
38% Hispanic, 3.8% African American, Vietnamese 0.33%, Korean 0.13%,
Chinese 0.06%
Hispanics are expected to become the majority in the U.S Roman Catholic Church
between 2010 and 2020.
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
85% White, 11% Ethnic (Asian, Hispanic, etc), 4% African American
About 15% of the congregations have predominantly minority memberships
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
About 5.6% of the members are minorities
4.2% African American, 0.67% Asian, 0.48% Hispanic, 0.19% American Indian
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
African American predominantly
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
African American predominantly
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
About 2% of the members are minorities
0.38% African American, 0.42% Asian, 0.57% Hispanic, 0.14% American Indian
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
White predominantly
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
African American predominantly
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
African American predominantly
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
About 6.8% of the members are minorities
2.6% African American, 1.8% Asian, 0.9% Hispanic, 0.4% American Indian, 1.1% other
---------------------------
Beyond Mind:
Beyond Mind
Learn Meditation and Gentle Breathing Techniques Books: Optional Reading Courses in meditation and gentle breathing techniques from the traditional ashtanga yoga system are taught by experienced certified instructor David Netzorg, M.S., serving Greater Detroit (Michigan) Windsor (Canada), and surrounding areas. These courses in meditation and breathing techniques don't require any reading, although reading is always encouraged. Each course participant is given a textbook (Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass), but reading it is optional. All of the essential knowledge in each course is transmitted in the traditional way, by word of mouth and repeated example. But, for those who prefer to do some reading, we offer the following list of standard books as a way to get started. Information on how to obtain the books (and others like them) is given the bottom of the list. For more information, contact David Netzorg, M.S. Phone: (248) 353-8777 E-mail: info@beyondmind.com Web site: http://www.beyondmind.com . Scriptures (listed in alphabetical order) The Bhagavad Gita The Bible (including The Torah, The Old Testament, The New Testament, etc.) The Dhammapada The Qur`an (The Koran) The Tao Te Ching The Upanishads Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Note: Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (Yoga Aphorisms) is the main traditional treatise on Ashtanga Yoga. Note: Raja Yoga is another name for Ashtanga Yoga. Science of Yoga, by I. K. Taimini; Theosophical Publishing House Textbook of Yoga Psychology, by Rammurti S. Mishra; Julian Press Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, by Swami Hariharananda Aranya Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Pandit Usharbudh Arya Aphorisms of Patanjali, ...; Vedanta Press Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda Books on Ashtanga Yoga by Baba Hari Dass All published by Sri Rama Publishing, PO Box 2550, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass Fire Without Fuel, by Baba Hari Dass Silence Speaks: From the Chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, by Baba Hari Dass A Child's Garden of Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Hariakhan Baba, Known and Unknown, by Baba Hari Dass The Path to Enlightenment is Not a Highway, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 1: Binding Thoughts and Liberation, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 2: Mind is Our World, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 3: Selfless Service, The Spirit of Karma Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Sweeper to Saint: Stories of Holy India, by Baba Hari Dass The Yellow Book, by Baba Hari Dass Cat and Sparrow, by Baba Hari Dass Fun with Fitness Asanas, by Baba Hari Dass The Magic Gem, by Baba Hari Dass Mystic Monkey, by Baba Hari Dass Other Books on Ashtanga Yoga Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda Be Here Now, by Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.) The Science of Being and Art of Living, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi The Seven States of Consciousness, by Anthony Campbell Books on Hatha Yoga Hathayoga Pradipika of Svatmarama, commentary of Bhramananda; Adyar Library and Research Center Note: "Hathayoga" is sometimes spelled as two words: "Hatha Yoga." Gherand Samhita, ...; Oriental Books Reprint Corp Shiva Samhita, translated by Rai Bahdur Srisa Chandra Vasu; Oriental Books Reprint Corp. Books on Gyan Yoga Note: The word "Gyan" is sometimes spelled "Jnana" Ashtavakra Samhita, by Swami Nityaswarupananda; Advaita Ashram Atma Bodha of Shankaracharya: Self Analysis and Self Knowledge, by Sri Rammurti Mishra Panchadashi, by Hari Prasad Shastri Viveka Chudamani of Sri Shankaracharya, by Swami Madhavananda; Advaita Ashram Books on Bhakti Yoga Narada's Bhakti Sutras, by Swami Tyagisananda; Sri Ramakrishna Math Srimad Bhagavatam (One translation and commentary is: "The Wisdom of God," by Swami Prabhavananda; Vedanta Press) Books on Gyan Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga Sri Ramacharita Manasa (The Ramayana), ...; Gita Press Srimad Bhagavadgita (The Bhagavad Gita), ...; Gita Press Other Books on Meditation and Breathing Techniques Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual of Meditation, by Thich Nhat Hanh Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by S. Suzuki Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn A Path With Heart : A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, by Jack Kornfield Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery, by Dean Ornish, M.D. Inner Silence: A Guide to Peace and Empowerment, by Andrew Da Passano with Judith Plowden The Art of Meditation, by Joel S. Goldsmith Return of the Rishi: A Doctor's Story of Spiritual Transformation and Ayurvedic Healing, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Perfect Health, The Mind/Body Guide, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Eight Weeks to Optimum Health : A Proven Program for Taking Full Advantage of Your Body's Natural Healing Power, by Andrew Weil, M.D. Powers of Mind, by Adam Smith Recent Books on How to Allow Positive Changes A Course in Miracles, by Helen Schucman Love is Letting Go of Fear, by Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D. Handbook to Higher Consciousness, by Ken Keyes, Jr. Conscious Contact: The Transpersonal Journey, by Jerry Williams The Twelve Steps for Everyone (Words to Live By), by Grateful Members Getting the Love You Want, by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. Feeling Good, by David D. Burns, M.D. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra, M.D. Hidden Guilt: How to Stop Punishing Yourself and Enjoy the Happiness You Deserve, by Lewis Engel, Ph.D. and Tom Ferguson, M.D. You Can Negotiate Anything, by Herb Cohen The Dance of Anger, by Harriet G. Lerner, Ph.D. Dr. Weisinger's Anger Work-Out Book, by Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D. The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D. Where to Get the Books Listed Above Libraries (including Inter-Library Loan) If your favorite library doesn't have the book you want, then walk over to the reference desk and ask the reference librarian to get you that book from the (free) inter-library loan system. Even the smallest public library can use the inter-library loan system to get you books from major libraries all over the country, at no cost to you. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks to get the book you are looking for, but you may be surprised to discover the wealth of books that are available to you in this way. Local bookstores Look in the Yellow Pages under the two headings: "Book Dealers - Retail" and "Book Dealers - Used." Gateways Book & Gift Store 1018 Pacific Avenue Santa Cruz, California 95076 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 459-0055, Fax: 1(408) 429-1395 e-mail: orders@gatewaysbooks.com East West Bookshop 324 Castro Street Mountain View, California 94041-1297 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 909-6161 Phone: 1(650) 988-9800 Fax: 1(415) 988-9884 e-mail: info@eastwest.com web site: http://www.eastwest.com (East West Bookshop also has stores in Sacramento, California and Seattle, Washington) Bodhi Tree Bookstore 8585 Melrose Avenue West Hollywood, CA 90069-5199 Toll-free phone: 1(800) 825-9798 Phone: 1(310) 659-1733 Fax: 1(310) 659-0178 e-mail: bodhitree@bodhitree.com web site: http://www.bodhitree.com Bookfinder Internet web site. Helps you find book dealers who have the the specific book you are looking for. This web site is connected to several databases listing millions of books, both new and out-of-print. You can also browse through this site by entering a subject or key word in the search window. Web site at http://www.bookfinder.com Amazon.com books Internet web site of a major dealer in new and out-of-print books. Another good place to browse. Web site at http://www.amazon.com Internet Search Engines You can use internet search engines to find web sites and Usenet news groups that mention the book you are looking for. This can lead you to all sorts of useful information, such as on-line text of the book, sources for obtaining the book, reviews and discussions of the book, information on the same topic as the book, etc. Some major internet search engines are AltaVista http://altavista.digital.com Excite http://www.excite.com HotBot http://www.hotbot.com Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com For more information, contact David Netzorg, M.S. Phone: (248) 353-8777 E-mail: info@beyondmind.com Web site: http://www.beyondmind.com .
911 => 9 are the doors to the body, 11 are the senses ( 1 Mind, 5 Action, 5 Perception = MAP)
existence (sat) consciousness (chit/sri) joy (anand/akaal) being becoming:
addons/takeoffs inputs please email to: oyash@msn.com
Hindu Timeline #6
Reference:http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/timeline/HinduHistory.html
1947 ce to the Present and Beyond!
1947: India gains independence from Britain August 15. Pakistan emerges as a separate Islamic nation, and 600,000 die in clashes during subsequent population exchange of 14 million people between the two new countries.
1948: Britain grants colony of Sri Lanka Dominion status and self-government under Commonwealth jurisdiction.
1948: Establishment of Sarva Seva Sangh, Gandhian movement for new social order (Sarvodaya).
1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated January 30th by Nathuram Godse, 35, editor-publisher of a Hindu Mahasabha weekly in Poona, in retaliation for Gandhi's concessions to Muslim demands and agreeing to partition 27% of India to create the new Islamic nation of Pakistan.
1949: Sri Lanka's Sage Yogaswami initiates Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as his successor in Nandinatha Sampradaya's Kailasa Parampara. Subramuniyaswami founds Saiva Siddhanta Church and Yoga Order the same year.
1949: India's new constitution, authored chiefly by B.R. Ambedkar, declares there shall be no "discrimination" against any citizen on the grounds of caste, jati, and that the practice of "untouchability" is abolished.
1950: Wartime jobs in West, taking women out of home, have led to weakened family, delinquency, cultural breakdown.
1950: India is declared a secular republic. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964) is determined to abolish casteism and industrialize the nation. Constitution makes Hindi official national language; English to continue for 15 years; 14 major state languages are recognized.
1951: India's Bharatiya Janata Sangh (BJP) party is founded.
VINDICATED BY TIMEThe Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities Introduction by Sita Ram Goel Voice of India, New Delhi Install Devnagari Font
ContentsPreface The Sunshine of ‘Secularism’ Rift in the Lute REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME IChristian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, Madhya Pradesh Part I Part II Part III Part IV Appendices REPORT OF THE Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 VOLUME II Part ATour Programmes of the Committee Explanatory tour notes including important petitions received by the Committee on tour District Raigarh District Surguja District Raipur District Bilaspur District Amravati District Nimar District Yeotmal District Akola District Buldana District Mandla District Jabalpur District Chhindwara Questionnaire Replies to Questionnaire Replies submitted by Shri J. Lakra Replies to Questionnaire concerning the area covered by Jashpur, Khuria and Udaipur of the Raigarh district Replies submitted by the Catholic Sabha of the Raigarh district Replies Replies submitted by Shri Gurubachan Sing, Raipur Replies submitted by Chairman and Secretary of the General Conference, Mennonite Mission in India, Saraipali, Raipur district Replies submitted by Rev. Canon, R. A. Kurian, Nagpur Replies submitted by Rev. E. Raman, President, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Madhya Pradesh, Gopalganj, Sagar Replies submitted by Miss M. L. Merry, Khirkia R. S., Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri L. E. Hartman, Amravati Camp, Berar, Mission Bungalow, Amravati Camp, Berar Replies submitted by Umri Mission Hospital, Umri, via Yeotmal, Madhya Pradesh Replies submitted by Shri F. B. Lucas, President, Independent Christian Association, Yeotmal Replies submitted by Shri R. W. Scott, Secretary, National Christian Council Replies submitted by Dr. E. Asirvatham, Nagpur Replies submitted by Shri P. S. Shekdar, Khamgaon, district Buldana Replies submitted by Shri Sohanlal Aggarwal, Secretary, Vedic Sanskriti Raksha Samiti. Replies submitted by Shri T. Y. Dehankar, President, Bar Association, and six others of Bilaspur Replies submitted by Shri M.N. Ghatate, Nagpur Sangh Chalak. Replies submitted by Shri R. K. Deshpande, Pleader, Jashpurnagar VOLUME II Part BCorrespondence of Roman Catholics with the Committee, the state government and the Central Government Extracts from Catholic Dharma ka Pracharak and other pamphlets showing the methods of propaganda Short History of Chhattisgarh Evangelical Mission Statement made before the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee. Camp: Raipur (22-7-1955) Camp Bilaspur (25-7-1955) Raigarh (28-7-1955) Jashpur (22-11-1955) Jabalpur (8-8-1955) Sagar (11-8-1955) Mandla (15-8-55) Khandwa (17-8-55) Yeotmal (10-8-55) Camp Amravati (13-8-1955) Washim (16-8-1955) Buldana 18-8-1955 Malkapur (20-8-1955) (22-8-1955) Nagpur (20-9-1955) Camp Ambikapur (19-11-1955) Activities of Christian Missions in the Eastern States and proselytism in the Udaipur State by the Jesuit Mission Back to Home Back to VOI Books Back to Top
1955-6: Indian government enacts social reforms on Hindu marriage, succession, guardianship, adoption, etc.
1950-60s Tours of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan lead to worldwide popularization of Indian music.
1955: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist formulator of the relativity theory dies. He declared Lord Siva Nataraja best metaphor for the workings of the universe.
1956: Indian government reorganizes states according to linguistic principles and inaugurates second Five-Year Plan.
1956: Swami Satchidananda makes first visit to America.
1957: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Himalayan Academy and opens US's first Hindu temple, in San Francisco.
1959: Dalai Lama flees Tibet and finds refuge in North India as China invades his Buddhist nation.
1959The transistor makes computers smaller and faster than prototypes like the 51-foot-long, 8-foot high Mark I, containing I-million parts and 500 miles of wire, invented for the US Navy in 1944 by IBM's Howard Aiken. From the 1960s onward, integrated circuitry and microprocessors will take computers-descendants of the 5,000-year-old Oriental abacus-to unimaginable levels to revolutionize Earth's technology and society.
1960: Since 1930, 5% of immigrants to US have been Asians, while European immigrants have constituted 58%.
1960: Border war with China shakes India's nonaligned policy.
1961: India forcibly reclaims Goa, Damao and Diu from the Portuguese. Goa became a state of India in 1987.
1963: US President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
1963: Hallucinogenic drug culture arises in US. Hindu gurus decry the false promise and predict "a chemical chaos."
1964: India's Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu religious nationalist movement, is founded to counter secularism.
1964: Rock group, the Beatles, practice Transcendental Meditation (TM), bringing fame to Maharshi Mahesh Yogi.
1965: US immigration cancels racial qualifications and restores naturalization rights. Welcomes 170,000 Asians yearly.
1966: J. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes Prime Minister of India, world's largest democracy, succeeding L. B. Shastri who took office after Nehru's death in 1964.
1968: US Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is assassinated.
1969: US astronaut Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon.
1970: Kauai Aadheenam, Hindu monastery, site of Kadavul Hindu Temple, Saiva Siddhanta Church headquarters, San Marga Sanctuary and editorial offices of Hinduism Today is founded February 5 on Hawaii's Garden Island.
1971: Rebellion in East Pakistan (formerly Bengal). Ten million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, flee to India. Indo-Pak border clashes escalate to war. India defeats West Pakistan. E. Pakistan becomes independent Bangladesh.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_bangla.html
Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan
By Shrinandan Vyas
This article deals with slaughter of about 2.5 million Hindus in East Pakistan in 1971.
This article refers to information provided by Dept. of Planning of Government of Bangla Desh, Encyclopedia Britannica, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S.Senate Judiciary Committee, Newsweek, New York Times,etc. This information and elementary math are used to show that indeed millions of Hindus were killed in East Pakistan in 1971.
ABSTRACT
It is well known that the 1971 army repression in Bangla Desh (former East Pakistan) resulted in an influx of 10 million refugees into India. Most world renowned relief and news agencies put the number of dead at 3 million. However the fact that is glossed over in these statistics is that THE ENTIRE HINDU POPULATION OF EAST PAKISTAN WAS THE PRIMARY TARGET OF PAKISTANI ARMY DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF REPRESSION IN 1971. Using the population statistics from Bangla Desh Government and US Government publications this article PROVES that 80 percent of the refugees from Bangla Desh were Hindus and that 80 percent of the 3 million killed were Hindus. THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM and IT WAS A HINDU GENOCIDE THAT TOOK PLACE IN EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971.
10 References - Encyclopedia Britannica, Bangla Desh Government - Ministry of Planning (for statistics), Newsweek, New York Times, Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
INTRODUCTION
In the December 1970 general election in Pakistan, Awami League won 167 of 169 seats and over 80 % of popular votes in East Pakistan. Numerically Awami League had an absolute majority of seats in the Pakistan National Assembly (167 of the total 313 seats)(1). Historically, East Pakistan was allocated only 36 % of the total resources and East Pakistanis occupied only 20 % of the positions in the federal government in the United Pakistan (2). The Pakistani government's apathy towards East Pakistan after a terrible cyclone in November 1970 in which over 250,000 people died, had alienated East Pakistani people. The solid outcome of the 1970 elections for Awami League created an alternative power center for an already alienated people. The differences between the East and West Pakistani politicians snowballed into a major international crisis. On March 25, 1971 Pakistani army on President Yahya Khan's orders initiated a campaign of terror which was to last till its final surrender to the Indian army on December 17, 1971. This terror campaign by Pak army resulted in 10 million Bangla Deshi refugees crossing over to India (per Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee (3)) and 3 million killed (4,5) based on reports from most relief agencies and official Bangla Desh government estimate. However the religious mix of both the refugees and the dead is nowhere emphasized anywhere. This significant information has particularly been absent in the reports from Indian News Media. This selective news dissemination has kept a more sinister truth of Hindu genocide in East Pakistan hidden from the world in general and Indians in particular.
HINDUS IN EAST PAKISTAN WERE SPECIAL TARGET OF PAK ARMY
In the summary of his report dated November 1, 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy writes (6):
'Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of International agencies such as World Bank and additional information available to the subcommittee document the reign of terror which grips East Bengal (East Pakistan). HARDEST HIT HAVE BEEN MEMBERS OF THE HINDU COMMUNITY WHO HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED, AND IN SOME PLACES, PAINTED WITH YELLOW PATCHES MARKED "H". All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. ..' (emphasis added by author of this article).
Sydney Schanberg, pulitzer prize winning journalist (of 'Killing Fields') was New York Times correspondent in Dhaka in 1971 at the time of army repression and during the 1971 Bangla Desh war. In his syndicated column 'The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored' Mr.Schanberg writes:
"I covered the war and witnessed first the population's joyous welcome of the Indian soldiers as liberators .. Later I toured the country by road to see the Pakistani legacy firsthand. In town after town there was an execution area where people had been killed by bayonet, bullet and bludgeon. In some towns, executions were held on a daily basis."
This was a month after the war's end (i.e. January 1972), ... human bones were still scattered along many roadsides. Blood stained clothing and tufts of human hair clung to the brush at these killing grounds. Children too young to understand were playing grotesque games with skulls. OTHER REMINDERS WERE THE YELLOW "H"s THE PAKISTANIS HAD PAINTED ON THE HOMES OF HINDUS, PARTICULAR TARGETS OF THE MUSLIM ARMY." (7) (emphasis added by the author of this article).
Thus two independent observations one dated prior to November 1, 1971 and other in January 1972 confirm that Hindu houses in East Pakistan were marked with yellow "H"s and that Hindus were particular targets of the Pakistani army. The situation thus bears an uncanny resemblance to the predicament of Jews targeted by Nazis from 1939 to 1944, with similar out come.
MOST OF THE REFUGEES FROM BANGLA DESH WERE HINDUS
Senator Edward Kennedy in his report gives following details about the the refugees from Bangla Desh in 1971. As of October 25, 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. The average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day (3). Hence the total refugee population at the start of Bangla Desh war on December 3, 1971 was about 10 million (5).
Sen. Kennedy further mentions that Government of India had set up separate refugee camps for Hindus and Muslims where possible, i.e. refugee camps of Hindus were located in Hindu majority areas and similarly Muslim camps were located in Muslim majority areas. THE COMMUNAL REPRESENTATION OF REFUGEES WAS 80 PERCENT HINDU, 15 PERCENT MUSLIM AND 5 PERCENT CHRISTIAN AND OTHER (8).
This means that 8 MILLION OF THE 10 MILLION REFUGEES WERE HINDUS (8). Other fact that corroborates this is that when Sen. Kennedy had asked several Chief Relief officers in charge of refugee camps what was needed most urgently, their reply was "crematoriums".
THE MISSING 2 .5 MILLION HINDUS
Several agencies indicate that the brutal Pakistani army repression killed 3 million Bengalis. This estimate is even given by the Government of Bangla Desh (5). However no religious mix of the dead is easily available.
Let us therefore look at the population demographics for Bangla Desh which is given in Table I.
TABLE I
Source : Based on Information from Bangladesh Ministry of planning, Bureau of Statistics (9)
YEAR Total Population in Millions Hindu Population as % of Total Hindu Population in Millions
1941 42.00 28.0 11.76
1961 50.84 18.5 9.41
1974 71.48 13.5* 9.655
1981 87.13 12.2 10.633
* Encyclopedia Britannica (10) gives 13.5% figure for 1974, where as Government of Bangla Desh gives 13.5% for 1971 and total population of 71.48 million for 1974 (9).
Since Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh have similar socio- economic and educational backgrounds, the birth and death rates for these two groups must be very similar. This means that the Hindu population must grow at the same pace as the total population growth rate. Hence any unusual drop must be accounted for by influx of Hindu refugees and mortality rate from non natural causes. The expected Hindu population, the emigration to India from E. Pakistan and actual populations are listed in Table II.
Table II
YEAR Hindu Population of East Pak/BD Actual (9)(millions) Expected Hindu Population in Absence of Strife(millions) Refugees from E. Pakistan to India(8)(millions) Hindus Missing(millions)
1941 11.766 - - -
1961 9.41 14.24 4.12(1947-58) 0.711
1974 9.65 13.23 1.11(1964-70) 2.477
Thus if 1947 partition had not resulted, the Hindu population of East Pakistan area should by 1961 have increased proportionally from 11.76 millions in 1941, to 14.24 millions (11.76 * 50.84 / 42 = 14.24). The official Indian Government records indicate that between 1947 and 1958, 4.12 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India from East Bengal(3). This means the Hindu population in East Pakistan in 1961 should have been 10.12 million (14.24 - 4.12) compared to the actual 9.41 million. The missing 0.7 million Hindu population can be accounted by several hundred thousands killed in the riots in 1947 on the Bengal border, plus the refugee influx from 1958 to 1961. 1961.
Let us now look at Hindu population in East pakistan from 1961 to 1974. With proportional increase the Hindu population of 9.41 million in 1961 should have increased to 13.23 million ( 9.41 * 71.48 / 50.84 = 13.23 ) by 1974. However the actual Hindu population as per Bangla Desh Census data for 1974 was 9.65 million. Of the 3.58 million shortfall only 1.11 million can be accounted for since Government of India's record indicate that 1.11 million (Hindu) refugees crossed into India between 1964 and 1970 (3) i.e.PRIOR to the 1971 crisis.
THUS 2.47 MILLION (13.23 - 9.65 - 1.11 = 2.47) HINDUS FROM EAST PAKISTAN ARE UNACCOUNTED FOR FROM THE 1971 PAK ARMY REPRESSION.
OTHER PROOF FOR 2.4 MILLION HINDUS KILLED IN EAST PAKISTAN
Since the 80 percent of the refugees in 1971 were Hindus,a similar proportion of the dead are likely to be Hindus also. The official Bangla Desh government estimate puts the number of Bengalis killed at 3 million. 80 percent of 3 million put THE NUMBER OF HINDUS KILLED AT 2.4 MILLION which is close to the number of Hindus missing calculated comes above.
SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS
1. Independent accounts indicate that Hindus from East Pakistan were special target during the 1971 army repression. HINDU HOUSES WERE PAINTED WITH YELLOW "H"s, THEY WERE ROBBED OF THEIR LANDS AND SHOPS, AND THEY WERE SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERED.
2. 80 percent of the refugees to India in 1971 were Hindus, THUS IT WAS A HINDU REFUGEE PROBLEM.
3. NEARLY 2.5 MILLION HINDUS WERE KILLED DURING THE 9 MONTHS OF PAKISTANI ARMY REPRESSION OF EAST PAKISTAN IN 1971. THUS IT WAS A HINDU SLAUGHTER IN 1971.
4. ALL THE ABOVE BEAR AN UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE TO THE PERSECUTION & HOLOCAUST OF JEWS BY THE NAZIS.
5. INDIAN GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED 'SECULAR' MEDIA DELIBERATELY HID THE SINISTER TRUTH OF HINDU GENOCIDE IN EAST PAKISTAN.
6. In any internal political problem of an Islamic country, Hindus (or minorities of other religions) become the scapegoats and will be liquidated at the first chance the Islamic Government gets.
7. WE HAVE LEARNT NOTHING FROM THE HISTORY AND WITH THE 'PSECULAR' MEDIA WE WILL LEARN NOTHING.
COMMENTS & FUTURE WORK
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Bangla Desh did not end in 1971. Since 1974 to 1981 the Hindu population as a percent of total Bangla Deshi population decreased from 13.5 % to 12.2 %. This slide has continued over the last decade. Same is true about Hindus in Pakistan and in Kashmir valley.
There is a genuine need for systematic record keeping and documentation of the history of Hindu genocides & Hindu ethnic cleansing, so that we don't repeat it again (and again and again..) There is also a need to build a memorial of this Hindu holocaust similar to the Jewish Holocaust memorial in Washington DC.
This topic is extensively dealt in a book 'Genocide in East Pakistan/ Bangla Desh' by S.K.Bhattacharya. However the present author has verified the findings of S.K. Bhattacharya based on completely independent sources. For detailed descriptions and news reports of 1971, reader should refer to the original book.
REFERENCES
1. Bangladesh: The Birth Of A Nation, A hand book of Background information and Documentary Sources Compiled by Univ. of Chicago Group of Scholars, by M.Nicholas, P.Oldensburg, Ed.W.Morehouse, M.Seshachalam & Co., India, 1972, p.7
2. Same as reference 1, p.73
3. Crisis in South Asia - A report by Senator Edward Kennedy to the Subcommittee investigating the Problem of Refugees and Their Settlement, Submitted to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, November 1, 1971, U.S. Govt. Press, pp.6-7.
4. Newsweek, August 1, 1994, p.37
5. Same as reference 1, pp.44-45
6. Same as reference 3, p.66
7. The Pakistani Slaughter That Nixon Ignored , Syndicated Column by Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 1994.
8. Same as reference 3, p. 19
9. Bangladesh A Country Study, Ed. J.Heitzman & R.L.Worden, 2nd Ed, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, Publisher U.S. Army, 1989, pp.250,255
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 th Ed, Micropedia, Vol.1, p.789 Desh.
Back To Islamic Ages
Back To Modern Hindu History
Back To Library Of Hindu History
1972: A Historical Atlas of South Asia is produced by Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Siva G. Bajpai, Raj B. Mathur, et al.
1972: Muslim dictator Idi Amin expels Indians from Uganda.
1973: Neem Karoli Baba, Hindu mystic and siddha, dies.
1974: India detonates a "nuclear device."
1974: Watergate scandal. US President Nixon resigns.
1975: Netherlands gives independence to Dutch Guyana, which becomes Suriname; one third of Hindus (descendants of Indian plantation workers) emigrate to Netherlands for better social and economic conditions.
1977: One hundred thousand Tamil Hindu tea-pickers expatriated from Sri Lanka are shipped to Madras, South India.
1979: Sivaya Subramuniyaswami founds Hinduism Today international newspaper to promote Hindu solidarity.
1980: Grand South Indian counterpart to Kumbha Mela of Prayag, the Mahamagham festival, held every 12 years in Kumbhakonam, on the river Kaveri, two million attend.
1981: India has one-half world's cattle: 8 cows for every 10 Indians.
1981: Deadly AIDS disease is conclusively identified.
1981: First bharata natyam dance in a temple since 1947 Christian-British ban on Devadasis is arranged by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami at Chidambaram; 100,000 attend.
1983: Violence between Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Singhalese in Sri Lanka marks beginning of Tamil rebellion by Tiger freedom fighters demanding an independent nation called Eelam. Prolonged civil war results.
1984: Balasarasvati, eminent classical Karnatic singer and bharata natyam dancer of worldwide acclaim, dies.
1984: Since 1980, Asians have made up 48% of immigrants to the US, with the European portion shrinking to 12%.
1984: Indian soldiers under orders from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi storm Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to crush rebellion. She is assassinated this year by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation. Her son Rajiv takes office.
1986: Swami Satchidananda dedicates Light of Truth Universal Shrine (LOTUS) at Yogaville in Virginia, USA.
1986: Jiddha Krishnamurti, anti-guru guru, semi-existentialist philosophical Indian lecturer and author, dies.
1986: World Religious Parliament in New Delhi bestows the title Jagadacharya, "world teacher," on five spiritual leaders outside India: Swami Chinmayananda of Chinmaya Mission (Bombay, India); Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami of Saiva Siddhanta Church and Himalayan Academy (Hawaii-California, USA); Yogiraj Amrit Desai of Kripalu Yoga Center (New York, USA); Pandit Tej Ramji Sharma of Nepali Baba (Kathmandu, Nepal); Swami Jagpurnadas Maharaj (Port Louis, Mauritius).
1987: Colonel S. Rabuka, a Methodist, leads coup deposing Fiji's Indian-dominated government and instituting military rule. July, 1990, constitution guarantees political majority to ethnic (mostly Christian) Fijians.
1988: General Ershad declares Islam state religion of Bangladesh, outraging 12-million (11%) Hindu population.
1988: US allows annual influx of 270,000 Asian immigrants.
1988: First Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival is held at Oxford University, England. Hindus discuss international cooperation with 100 religious leaders and 100 parliamentarians.
1989: Christian missionaries are spending US%165 million per year to convert Hindus.
Reference: http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/robertsn.html
Pat Robertson Opposes Religious Freedom, Denounces Hinduism
Using TV, Christian Pat Robertson Denounces Hinduism as "Demonic" -- Evangelist Opposes Freedom of Religion, Says It's Time To Convert India and Wants to Keep Hinduism Out of US
By Valli J. Rajan, Pennsylvania, USA
HINDUISM TODAY
July 1995 Copyright (C) Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reserved.
This is an authorized reproduction.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
It's not that unusual for Pat Robertson's daily Christian TV show, the "700 Club," to portray other religions in less than a complimentary light. Jews, Muslims and occasionally Hindus are singled out for a scathing recounting of their spiritual errors. Still, I was shocked to see Robertson on his March 23rd show label Hinduism as "demonic" and advocate keeping Hindus out of America. My concerns intensified when President Clinton later implicated hateful talk in the fatal Oklahoma City bombing.
Robertson was already a well-known figure in the conservative Christian community when his 1988 bid for the US presidency shot him into national attention and effectively anointed him leader of the Christian right wing. Talented and industrious, he is head or founder of numerous organizations, including a 1,400 student university. His political action group, the 1.4-million-member Christian Coalition, has decided influence in a new Republican-controlled Congress.
Christian evangelists regularly slander Hinduism with little impact beyond their own flock [see Hinduism Today, February, 1989]. But when a national figure like Robertson does it on a widely-watched TV program, that's different.
The March 23rd episode details Robertson's conversion of some Hindu people of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, India, to the Christian religion. In the course of the show, Robertson makes shameful, unChristian accusations against the Hindu faith, the world's oldest religion. When contacted, Mr. Robertson's office told us he was "unavailable for comment."
To begin, Robertson's experiences in Rajahmundry are described by a narrator. The scene is of a poverty-stricken people, bathing in the river at the head of which rests a statue of Lord Siva. Water is pouring out of Siva's head and a snake is wrapped around his head as well. Robertson and his son are found in the midst of the scene, observing and mocking the early morning prayers of Hindus. As they witness the scene, they make incorrect reference to the river as "Siva's sperm," and claim that the people "were supposed to wash away their sins in the sperm of the God."
Robertson goes on to characterize Hinduism as having evil tendencies toward random spiritual worship and polytheism. Mr. Robertson's son and fellow evangelist, Gordon, stated disparagingly, "Whenever [Hindus] feel any sort of inspiration, whether it's by a river or under a tree, on top of a hill, they figure that some God or spirit is responsible for that. And so they'll worship that tree, they'll worship that hill or they'll worship anything." What was even more regrettable was Robertson's assertion of some connection between idol worship and the poverty in India. Robertson does not deny his son's claim that "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed."
But if the argument of poverty as the curse of India is not enough for the American audience of "The 700 Club," they next hear Hinduism boldly labeled "demonic." Robertson says, "Siva [is] the God of Destruction, and his consort, the Goddess of death [Kali]-that black, ugly statue there with all those fierce eyes." He then suggests that the evil tendencies of death and destruction can be found in those who worship the deities: "I mean these people are out to kill other human beings in the name of their God." They mention in support of this conclusion the Aum Shinrikyo sect in Japan. This eccentric Buddhist-based organization was likely responsible for subway gas attacks in Tokyo earlier this year. Their icons, unfortunately, included Siva-sure proof, goes the Robertson thinking, of demons at work.
"Although Hinduism admits that different beings and entities can perform what we might consider evil acts," corrects Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University, Toronto, "there does not seem to be a single entity such as the Christian devil in Hinduism." And since there is no practice of evil or concept of the devil in Hinduism, "To call Hinduism demonic," concludes Dr. Sharma, "is really demonic."
By accusing Hinduism of being demonic, Robertson is merely reinforcing the age-old stereotype that has been placed on the Indian culture by the West. "That's been standard operating procedure missionaries have used ever since they invaded India in the 19th century," explains Dr. Gordon Melton, Director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions. "In approaching Eastern religions and African religions, it has been the stance of most conservative Christians that the deities of those religions are, in fact, personified demons. And that perspective goes back to the Jewish encounter with the Caananite culture a millennia ago as described in the Bible."
Dr. Kusumita Pedersen, Director for the Project on Human Rights and Religion, similarly observes that Robertson has employed "almost every negative image and cliché that has been used about Hinduism since the 18th century."
As the show unfolds, we finally we arrive at the real intention of Robertson's missionary trip to India: to convert Hindus to the Christian faith. A narrator describes the scene of the conversion in which thousands of Hindus were "set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression. The scene was overwhelming." Actually, the scene is oddly over dramatic. Why would thousands of people in a split second throw away their entire way of life that has been passed down over the centuries, because of a brief speech given by a stranger from another country? Although Robertson mentions the naturally deep devotion of the Hindus, he apparently fails to appreciate that any religious preacher in India gets the same reception, whether Christian, Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist-though it does help to be white, American, famous and rich.
It is also apparent he was frustrated with the Hindu ability to just absorb one more God. "I preached to them the second commandment about idolatry. You know, `They shall hold no other Gods before me,' and number two, `You shall not fall down or make any idols of anything.' Many people accept Christ, but they still go with those processions down to those riverbanks. We followed along with the crowd and I said, `You've got to give that up.'"
Political Agenda
The program used common stereotypes of Hinduism (as well of as other prominent non-Christian religions in America) to create fear among the American people of non-Christian religions. What is the purpose behind those tactics?
Judging from Michael Little's, President of the Christian Broadcasting Network comments on the show -- "There are so many opportunities for us to take programs which will reach the people of India," and "Help us carry the light to a nation in darkness"-it is obvious that one strategy of "The 700 Club" is to gain support and money. "Give us a hand on this [India]," pleads Robertson at one point, "because it's a big one." But that is just part of the plan.
Robertson's true thinking is revealed in his 1991 book The New World Order. That novel discloses a secret plan being followed by the present political leaders of the world. Robertson labels that plan the "New World Order," which he sees as the formation of a one world government, one police force, one judicial system, and one economic market. Robertson claims that in this "new world government no one could speak out against the beliefs of a Muslim, a Hindu, or an animist. What we know as the freedom of religion would be taken away, and Christians would be muzzled."
But Robertson has a vision of another future, one is which "God sweeps away the pretense of the satanic and man-made counterfeits and announces His New World Order, and His anointed leader, Jesus the Messiah."
Robertson stated in The New World Order: "The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"
Mr. David Cantor, Senior Research Analyst of the Anti-Defamation League, points out that such "religious tests for office are unconstitutional. It's not just a purely a religious statement. It's a political statement."
The Human Rights Issue
"In the discussion of human rights, there are different positions on the right to free speech or freedom of expression. The extreme position, that is sometimes called the `American position,' is total freedom of speech," explains Dr. Pedersen. "As Americans, we believe that even the most offensive and the most incendiary statements should be allowed in the name of freedom of expression, because once you start to legally restrict the freedom of speech, you are on a slippery slope of restricting all kinds of speech on different political or ideological ground."
Dr. Pedersen feels that such anti-Hindu statements may refer back to the 1920s, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian white-supremacist group advocating violence against Black Americans) was on the rise, and the national belief was that all Americans must be Christians. During the 1920s, immigration laws prevented European immigrants from entering the United States. Eventually Europeans were allowed to immigrate and by 1965 Hindus were included in immigrant quotas.
However, in the 1990s, some feel that the multicultural immigration has caused a backlash in American society in the form of racial discrimination between various cultural groups. In the wake of such discontent, Peter Brimelow has recently written a book called Alien Nation which attacks multiculturalism and its negative effects on American society. Something must be done, Brimelow advocates, to prevent white people from becoming a minority in America.
"What Robertson is really saying is that Hindus shouldn't be allowed to come to the United States," evaluates Dr. Pedersen. "All of the Hindu engineers, doctors and computer experts who are living here should go home. This is a very big statement that he has made."
Even Christians are concerned with Robertson's manner of preaching Christianity. Sister Mary Elizabeth Moore, a Professor at Claremount's School of Theology, feels that Robertson may be overstepping his boundaries as a Christian. "I have been very distressed that Pat Robertson and others like him have used the gospel to preach condemnation of others, to judge harshly, to demonize people in other faiths and to demonize some Christians with whom they don't just happen to agree," expresses Sister Moore. "I think that's absolutely counter to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Hinduism is not the only religion under Robertson's extremist attack; The New World Order is filled with anti-Semitism. However, Ms. Nancy Israel of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Robertson is slowly transforming. "He's being very careful now," observes Ms. Israel, who is from the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee. "Up until now he's been able to say what he wanted to say, and I think that those people who don't watch `The 700 Club' and don't read his materials have no idea what he's saying. He's been forced to back off because of this public spotlight and because he's decided to make the Christian Coalition a more mainstream organization."
Sri Anutama Das, Director of Communications at ISKCON feels that Robertson's actions should send a message to devotees of Hinduism. "It's unfortunate that such an influential religious and Christian leader as Pat Robertson demonstrates disdain for the world's oldest religious culture. As a Vaishnava, I see his emphasis in trying to spread Christianity in India, specifically among Hindus, as a reminder of the need for all of us to delve deeply into our own faith's traditions," notes Anutama, who is from ISKCON's branch in Rockland, Maryland. "As Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, `Raja Vija, Raja Guyam.' This knowledge of the soul, of Sanatana Dharma, is the highest spiritual knowledge. However, if we do not educate ourselves and our children and abide by the teachings, materialists will find us easy targets for conversion."
What Should We Do?
It is true that if our Hindu faith is challenged, perhaps we will become more aware of its teachings, as suggested by Anutama. If that is so, we can view the "700 Club" attack on Hinduism as a blessing in disguise. "I would say that anytime we see the extreme of a religious community, we see warning signals that need to be taken seriously," agrees Sister Moore. "Those signals usually reveal something of the larger religion, something of the possibility of distortions that people need to worry about. These distortions can stir other people who have more whole views of the religion to express and live their faith more fully."
We should use this opportunity to profess and understand our Hindu faith more fully. We as Hindus need to respond to and erase Western stereotypes and hate speeches against our religion. There are many ways to accomplish that.
We can articulate our complaints through letters, phone calls and petitions to the government offices, such as the Justice Department Hate Crimes Division. The Indian government could express its concern, as it did for Hindus in South Africa for years. And we can bring such statements into the light of public discussion by filing complaints with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League was established in 1913 by B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization. The League and its parent organization defend human rights, promote intercultural relations, provide for the religious and cultural needs of Jewish college students, sponsor Jewish education among adults and youth groups and carry on a broad program of community service and welfare. They confer with governments and the UN on civil rights, immigration, abuses of freedom by totalitarian states, the position of Israel and problems affecting Jews throughout the world.
Dr. Pedersen feels that perhaps we can form our own protection league: "I recommend the formation of a Hindu anti-defamation program which will monitor these kinds of statements in the press and the media, and will gather accurate information and will speak out when something should be protested." In that way, perhaps the entire Hindu public will be constantly made aware of any false allegations made against our religion, and efforts to respond can be coordinated.
Dr. Jayaraman, executive director of Bharat Vidya Bhavan in New York, feels that the way to dispel Hindu stereotypes is to teach the common American man about our religion. "Indian philosophy should be taught methodically, either in the school system or by speakers prepared to go around the country to talk just like these missionaries," suggests Dr. Jayaraman. "In every city, in every state they should have such speakers, powerful speakers who can say with authority, `This is Hinduism. What you are saying is wrong.'" Dr. Jayaraman also suggests that small books discussing true Hindu philosophy be freely distributed to the public.
But the main way to break down anti-Hindu sentiments is by educating our children and ourselves more about Hinduism. Such understanding will place us in a better position to combat ignorant statements.
"Because Hindus take a generous view of other religions, they think that others will take a generous view of theirs," observes Dr. Sharma. "And even when others attack them, because of their basic nature, they don't take it to heart."
According to Dr. Pedersen, comments such as Robertson's, should be taken seriously. During the annual dinner given by Human Rights Watch, an international panel monitored by Peter Jennings discussed whether hate speech should be restricted or banned. "The next step after this truly disgusting defamation [of Robertson's] is what these human right activists on the panel call `the speech of instigation,'" recounted Dr. Pedersen. The `speech of instigation' is a build-up for murder and genocide. It happened in Rwanda. The press and media started to build up a rhetoric that so and so should be killed. After that went on for some months, so and so started getting killed. There is a line to be drawn somewhere on free speech, but we as Americans just don't know quite where yet."
Keeping that in mind, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. After the bombing, President Clinton spoke out against hate speeches, making a clear connection between hate speeches, propaganda and the bombing. The seeds of hate may blossom into the weeds of violence. Therefore, it is important that we take early and strong action against ignorant and hateful comments such as those made by Robertson. If we don't, we will one day face more than Mr. Robertson's hateful words.
Complaints may be made directly to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hate Crimes Division, Tenth and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., 20530. Fax: 202-514-4371.
Letters can also be directed to Mr. Pat Robertson, CBN, 977 Centerville Turnpike, Virginia Beach, Virginia, 23463-0001.
Of Indian ancestry, correspondent Valli Guruswamy Julie Rajan is a prolific freelance writer living in Pennsylvania with her husband. She is writing a non-fiction book on gender-based double standards in Hindu society and is interested in the betterment of women and minorities.
Sidebar - What He Said About Hindus
Excerpts from the March 23rd broadcast of the 700 Club:
Robertson: "India is not what you normally think of anymore. In the last five years, it's burst into the 20th century with modern technology, capitalism and, especially, television. They're breaking free from the old, and they're moving into the Western culture. But what that leaves is a spiritual vacuum. And yet there seems, finally in India, an opening to the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout this whole land. There is a huge population of teen-agers. These people are not locked into the old ways. They're looking for something new and better."
Cohost: "You know, Pat, we've seen in other countries where there's a certain period of vulnerability, or spiritual vulnerability. Now's the time to use the media to talk to them about what their future could really be like."
Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years."
Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill, you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence."
CBN Reporter: "[At the religious services Robertson conducted in India] they came, by the hundreds, even thousands, to a makeshift altar to confess their faith in Christ and receive a touch from heaven, and be set free from a lifetime of fear and demonic oppression.
Robertson: "I [told] them to renounce idolatry, but many people accept Christ and still go with those processions [of Hindu deities]."
Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism."
Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense."
Sidebar - The Robertson Empire
The promotional literature provided Hinduism Today by the Robertson ministries details the extensive empire Pat Robertson has developed over 25 years of ministry. It is really an admirable accomplishment, tarnished only by the kind of religious bigotry demonstrated in the March 23rd program [see sidebar left]. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the world's largest television ministry, with programs airing across the United States and in 70 countries. He also has interests in non-religious family-oriented television, specifically the cable Family Channel. In 1978 he founded the Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation which since 1978 has distributed aid worth US$440 million to 114 million people in 72 countries. He's written nine books, one of which was a best seller and number one religious book in America in 1984. In 1992 Robertson was selected by Newsweek magazine as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite." Robertson also founded the American Center for Law and Justice to pursue a Christian agenda in the courts by providing free legal advice and representation in important precedent-setting cases. His Regent University [photo above] is an accredited graduate school offering degrees in communication, education, counseling, business, divinity, public policy and law.
Robertson ventured out of the strictly religious field in 1987 when he resigned his ordination as a Southern Baptist minister to run for president of the United States. As part of this effort, the Christian Coalition was formed, a "national grassroots citizen action organization" to work for "pro-family legislation and family-friendly public policy on national, state and local levels." Both are represented on the World Wide Web: Robertson at http://the700 club.org//cbn/cbn.html and The Coalition at http://cc.org . Robertson and the Coalition are probably the single most effective Christian voice in American politics today, as demonstrated by their recent demands to Congress for a "Contract with the American Family," including "voluntary [ie, Christian] prayer in public schools" -- something presently forbidden by law. One reaction to this contract came from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's a sad day in American politics when a TV preacher's political front group dictates the agenda for the United States Congress," said Barry Lynn, the organization's executive director.
Posted by the authority of the Himalayan Academy
Article from HINDUISM TODAY, July 1995
Copyright (C) 1995 Himalayan Academy - All Rights Reseved
The Hinduism Today Web site is located at:
http://www.HinduismToday.kauai.hi.us/ashram/welcome.html
Reference: http://www.vedanet.com/boutios.htm
THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
The Papal Excuses viewed by a Druid
by Ariaxs Druuis Boutios
In Antiquity, the Vedic Dharmas were professed from Mahàbhàrata and the Tocharian kingdoms in the East, all the way to Ireland via Scythia, Greece and Gaul in the West. Then came Avidya which we call Anuidiia in Celtica, the Sanskrit of the Druids. In those times after the taking of Gaul and Britain by the Roman forces, many great Druid teachers were forced into exile to Ireland and other far away places in the North Sea and to the East.
Under the Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantinius (306-337 CE), temples of Uidiia (Vidya) were destroyed to make way for the Christian faith. In 355, it was decreed that those participating in ‘pagan’ rituals be put to death. The Roman and Greek officials in the Celtic kingdoms devised to promote their new faith by the conversion of the Celtic aristocracy. The Roman officer Martinus of Pannonia lead a holy war against the Druids of Gaul who had found refuge in the countryside. Temples and idols were destroyed, temple offerings were confiscated, and priests put to the sword. Bishops, recruited in the Roman Patrician families, spread their terror to all the countries of Gaul and Britain. Few areas were spared but the resistance was great. Nevertheless, the many interdictions to practice posted by the conquering Roman Church failed to discourage regional devotion. In the country of Gaul, proselytising Christians were beaten and chased away.
How Patricius (Saint-Patrick) tricked the Irish into becoming Christians
Contrary to the legend, the youth was never taken as a hostage by pirates and sold as a slave to an Irish Druid. Druids, like their Brahman counterparts, took pupils, not slaves. Menial chores were of course asked in reparation for food and lodging. In fact, Patricius spent the early part of his life in Ireland where his parents had sent him to seek training under an eminent Druid. But when he returned to Britain from this training, he was swayed from Druidic practice and converted to Christianism.
So when the Romano-British Patricius returned to Ireland a second time, he returned there as bishop of the new Roman faith. Patricius had been in Gaul studying Christian theology and politics at Auxerre, a high place of learning. Then he met the followers of Martinus (Saint Martin) at de Marmoutier Abby where he learned proselytising techniques. And then, travelled to southern Gaul to the island monastery of Lerins, and in Italy where he was ordained by the Pope Caelestinus before he embarked for the North of Ireland in the year 432.
On an island off the Leinster coast now called Inis Padraig, he was greeted by others who were sent there to assist him in his mission. The mission was perilous, but Patricius who was expert in the arts of dissimulation, organised his monasteries as Druidic schools. For he had come to Ireland to seek out the Druids, banish the old gods out of Ireland and convert the Scots to Christianity. In hope of greater education promised by the Roman conversion centres, the Scots of aristocracy sent their children there for superior training. This is how he tricked king Coroticus and many other chieftains into accepting Christianism. For the saint acted more as a Druid than a Christian convert. Hence as Patricius boasted:
‘The sons of the Scots and the daughters of the chiefs have become monks and virgins of Christ in such great numbers that I would not know how to count them.’
And in his confessions Patricius shows only contempt for the Dharma of the Druids calling it impure and idol worshipping:
‘Hence, how did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?’
So when Patricius and his band came to coast, they were challenged by a formidable chieftain called Dichu who set his hounds on them. But when the dogs were to come on them, Patricius pronounced a spell. The master and his dogs paralysed with fear. But Patricius took pity and removed the spell. Dichu was so grateful for this that he became one of Patrisius’s followers. Dichu’s barn, was made into a place of worship called Stabulum Patricii, the stable of Patricius.
It came to pass that Patricius and his band of monks made way for the town of Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland, where Laoghaire, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages now reigned. So when he arrived in Leinster it was the eve of Beltaine, May Day, but also of Easter. In honour of Lord Belios, all the fires were extinguished on the eve of the Giamonios Moon and it was decreed that no fire be lit until the Chief Druid, had lit the first fire of Tara. So that when the flames of the Knoll of Tara rose at dawn, fire after fire would be kindled on hilltop after hilltop until all the hills of Leinster were lit.
On the very morning of the Giamonios Moon, the High King and his following were assembled on the Hill of Tara. As the first rays of the glorious Sun slanted over the horizon, the Royal Druid moved forward to light the flower-strewn pyre. But before he set it alight, the watchers on the hill were astonished to see flames rising further to the East on the hill of Slane, the hill of well-being.
High King Laoghaire stared in dismay as the blaze on the neighbouring hill grew stronger and stronger.
‘Who dared light this fire’ He asked.
‘Much as we see the fire’, the Druids answered, ‘and though we ignore who lit it, we know that less it be extinguished at this moment, it will never be put out. For it will put out our own sacred fires and the manwho lit it will have power over us all, and over the High King himself.’
‘Put out the fire and take me to the man who lit it here to Tara,’ the king commanded. On hearing this, he and his messengers hurried to the hill of Slane. Hence the Druids’ warning to the king and his following: King , thou shalt not go to this place where the fire is, lest that thou fearest not worship he who has lit it, but better remain to the side at its exterior. He will be brought before thee so he may pay homage to thee, and thou will be master. We will speak, he and we, back and forth, in your presence, and thou will challenge thus’... And so they arrived at the given place. Once they descended from their chariots and horses, they penetrated not in the circle of the fire, but sat to the side. Patricius was then called before the king outside of the ring of fire. When Patricius came before the High King and when he saw the strange tonsures, the cowled robes, and curved crosier, he was struck with fear.
Laoghaire, remembered that his Druids had forewarned him of their coming years before:
‘Adze-heads will come across a furious headed sea hole-headed their cloak crook-headed their staff. They will sing maledictions their judgement-giving alters in the back (western) corner of the house, all the people answering ²amhàin, amhàin² Only one, only one (Punning with Amen)’.
By this time the sun was well over the horizon and the Beltaine were still not lit. The assembly became much worried at this but stood there speechless.
With his Druids and noblemen around him, Laoghaire, furious, pronounced a death sentence on Patricius which he could not, since a king never speaks before his Druid.
Seeing all rendered speechless, Patricius acting as High Priest, reproached the king:
‘The God I worship makes the sun rise each day for our benefit. But the sun above us will never reign over us nor will its splendour last for ever. Christ whom I worship, the true sun and he will never die and he will give eternal life to those who do his will. For this sun which we see rises daily for us because He commands so, but it will never reign, nor will its splendour last; what is more, those wretches who adore it will be miserably punished. Not so we, who believe in, and worship, the true sun, Christ, who will never perish, nor will he who doeth His will; but he will abide for ever as Christ abideth for ever, who reigns with God the Father Almighty and the Holy Spirit before time, and now, and in all eternity. Amen.’ (Ref. 1)
Many in the assembly understood what Patricius meant since knowing about the Spiritual Sun but Laoghaire was not converted and was forced to revoke the sentence.
But the True Sun and worldly Sun are both one and the same. All that is good is Light! One does not curse the Light of the World without consequence.
Thus Patricius’ confession: ²That same night, when I was asleep, Satan (this is how Patrick refers to Helios, the Sun God called Sauelios in Celtic) assailed me violently, a thing I shall remember as long as I shall be in this body. And he fell upon me like a huge rock, and I could not stir a limb. But whence came it into my mind, ignorant as I am, to call upon Helias? And meanwhile I saw the sun rise in the sky, and while I was shouting `Helias! Helias' with all my might, suddenly the splendour of that sun fell on me and immediately freed me of all misery. And I believe that I was sustained by Christ my Lord, and that His Spirit was even then crying out in my behalf, and I hope it will be so on the day of my tribulation, as is written in the Gospel: On that day, the Lord declares, it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.² (ref. 2)
The sun had dimmed, the Druids had lost the sacred fires, the right of pre-eminence, and were therefore forced into retirement. Following these events much happened to those professing Uidiia. Patricius himself destroyed one hundred and eighty holly records.
The Wise Ones debated much, but how could Uidiia remain in a world where fools are said wise, where children teach elders and elders fall into senility?
It was hence prophesied that wealth and prosperity would decrease until the world would be wholly depraved. For what is gained through connivery and treachery will be lost in shame and dishonour.
Thus the Gaulish pagan of Noyon declared these words to the proselytiser Saint Eloi (588-659 ce):
‘Roman that you are! - At us ,how much you utter the same words, never will you abolish our customs.We celebrate our ceremonies, as we have always done until now and there is no one in this world who can forbid our antique maintenances that are so dear to us.’ (ref. 3)
THE WOLF IN THE SHEEPFOLD
(A brief calendar of the Roman Christian repression of Druidism)
200: Beginning of the Christianisation of Britain.
250: Around 250 CE, begins the christianisation effort of Gaul. The church is organised around the city of Lyon used at a mission base. St. Ciprian sends missionaries from Africa: Paul to Narbonne, Trophime to Arles, Saturnine to Toulouse, Martial to Limoges, Denis to Lutèce (Paris), Austremoine to Clermont, and Gratian to Tours.
260: Christianisation of Britain.
324: Just before 324 CE, ban on domestic sacrifices. After 330, restriction of public devotion for the non-Christian state servants.
355: An imperial decree by Constantine orders the closure of all pagan temples, issuing a death sentence to all those caught practising a pagan cult.
355: Saint Martin creates a volunteer militia to enforce the Imperial decree.
380: Theodosius I (379-395) renews the interdiction. Gratian (367-383) confiscates the revenues of pagan temples and pagan priests. In 392, pagan devotion in any form is strictly forbidden.
410: Foundation of a Christian learning centre on the islands of Lérins of the coast of Cannes by St. Honoratus for the conversion of Celts. Pagan aristocracy mints coins representing pagan Emperors on New Year’sday as a sign of resistance and derision of the decadent Christian Emperor. Nevertheless, by the IVth century, the city populations of the Empire are of Christian majority, whence the pejorative term pagan for the country folk.
418: Honorius (395-423), with the approval of the Gallo-Roman bishops of Rennes and Nantes orders the destruction of all pagan sites and emblems. Valentinian reiterates the decree of the destruction of all pagan temples.
432: Christianisation of Northern Ireland by St Patrick. Creation of conversion centres in all parts of Ireland.
452: The Council of Arles (canon 23) declares guilty of sacrilege bishops tolerating in their diocese sacrificial fires and the devotion of nature deities.
461: Death of St Patrick and conversion of Ireland.
506: The Councils of Agde and Orléans criminalise the practice of pythoness. These are the first ‘witch hunts’.
515: By 515-520, Saint Césaire (470-543), the bishop of Arles in sermon # 129 fulminates against the cult of ancestors and other popular New Year’s practices.
516: Between 516 and 537, St Vigor, bishop of Bayeux, requests the service of the military to enforce the ban on druidic practices still celebrated on Mount Phaunus. The idols are destroyed and the shrine is confiscated by the Church.
520: Around 520-525, in the vicinities of Cologne, the Irish monk St. Gall sets fire to the temple and its statues where libations and offerings were still given.
524: At the council of Arles, rites observed during lunar eclipses on the feasts of Jupiter (Toutatis) and New Year’s day are condemned.
533: At the second council of Orléans, those returning to pagan practice are stigmatised.
541: At the fourth council of Orléans is reiterated the interdiction to practice a pagan cult as well as taking oaths to gods. Saint Paterne (dead in 560) is said to have stopped a pagan ceremony at Chaussey where he spilled over the contents of sacred cauldrons.
543: Condemnation of the pre-existence of the soul prior birth at the synod of Constantinople under pope Vigil. For the Catholic Church, a new soul comes with the new-born.
554: In 554, King Childebert I (511-558) of the Frankish occupation of Gaul, renews the order to destroy all pagan idols and megaliths (standing stones).
567: At the second council of Tours, all those caught in the forest and other wild places honouring pagan sites, stones, trees, and fountains are ordered to be chased out of church. Priests are encouraged to excommunicated all those suspected of giving themselves to pagan rites, that is, unknown ceremonies to the church at pagan sites.
573: Overwhelmed by the continuous resistance of Antique cults, Gregory the Great, Pope and prefect of Rome, suggests to the clergy that to: ‘Remove everything from these uneducated minds is an impossible task. Refrain from destroying their temples; destroy only the idols, and have them replaced by replicas.’
578: At the council of Auxerre is reiterated the interdiction to disguise oneself in cow and deer skins on the occasion of the New Year’s celebrations. Also forbidden are lustration rites, lighting candles before holy wells, trees, and stones; and bread divining and the consultation of seers or consultation of oracle sticks.
580: Around 575-580, in the Pagus Gabalitanus (actual Gévaudan, between Margeride and Aubrac France) there was a traditional lakeside gathering of peasants that lasted for three days. During the festival, libations and offerings of fleeces, cloths, cheese, wax cakes and bread were given to the lake’s titulary divinity. Feasting and fertility rites lasted all during the day, only to be interrupted by foul weather. Gregory of Tours reports that the\ superstition was only stopped after a ‘holy father’ put an end to it.
Strangely enough, the same rites were still reported in 1872 on the side of Lac de Saint Andéal but with the only difference that coins were used as offerings.
581: The synod of Auxerre forbids the laity to dance in churches, have girls sing, and hold feasts.
585: The council of Mâcon condemns those who do not work on Thurdays (in honour of the pagan God Jupiter/Thor) to be beaten with a rod.
590: St Walfroid has the colossal statue of the goddess Arduinna (Diana) of Yvois (Carigan, Meuse) destroyed.
597: Pope Gregory the Great’s (590-604) prescriptions to Queen Brunehaut on the interdiction of pagan rites (tree worship etc.).
600: The Bishop of Tour is shocked to find that on the 7th of July 600, ‘that there are still in the diocese and neighbouring dioceses a great number of pagans still attached to the heathen cult and its false divinities, mainly in the land south of the Loire’... and that he found it difficult to have the 22nd canon observed, mostly in those villages where the pagans had embraced christianism, thus making it very difficult to have the many pagan superstitions eradicated.
611: St Valery (562-622), bishop of Rouen, has an enormous tree worshipped by the peasants of the Bresle valley cut down.
626: Renewal of the interdictions of the second council of Orléans at the council of Clichy, in 626.
639: St Amand (584-679), bishop of Worms in 626, realises that pagan temples are still used in his diocese. He has king Dagobert I (626-639) deliver him an ordinance to have all children baptised.
640: St Omer, bishop of Thérouane, finds pagan temples intact upon his arrival in the diocese.
641: Famous sermon pronounced by St Eloi in 641 denouncing pagan practices.
658: At the second council of Nantes is ordered the destruction and burial of pagan stones so that its adorators may not find them.
698: At the council of Rouen in 698 are denounced those who make lustrations, vows and offerings before stones. Experts generally agree that by the end of the VIIth century, no more organised pagan cult remained in Gaul.
742: Nevertheless, a capitulary of Corloman in 742, renews the interdiction of pagan practice, and Charlemagne in turn in a capitulary pronounced on the 23rd of March 789, is very hard on the ‘fools’ who light torches and perform all sorts of superstitions by trees and wells.
769: Another capitulary dated from Aix-la-Chapelle, orders: ‘That he who is sufficiently informed, and who does not remove from his fields the stone mockeries standing there, will be treated as sacrilegious and declared anathema.
792 and after: Nevertheless, megaliths still continued to be re-erected when re-discovered by the peasants, votive offerings were still being made at wells, at the foot of trees and standing stones. And this despite the continuous harassment of the Church through the centuries.(ref. 3)
One would expect that after having destroyed the Dharmas of Europe, that the Church of Christ would show remorse for what it did. Much to the contrary, it continued relentlessly as it continues to this day in this denial.
Pope John Paul II, Synod of the Bishops of Europe, October 1999
When John Paul II opened the synod of the bishops of Europe in October 1999 in Rome, the main themes for the three following weeks were: ‘Neopaganism’, ‘Radical de-Christianisation’ and ‘Disintegration of the Conscience of Europe’.
Hipolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand and author of ‘Vers une France païenne’ (Towards a Pagan France) seized the opportunity to throw a violent attack against Druidism and the other old Dharmas of Europe. This attack Druidism was often equated with New Age, itself equated with laity and nihilistic consumerism. Bishop Simon, as do many other eminent Christian thinkers, wilfully confuses the resurgent lineages of Antique spirituality with the many modern spiritual and philosophical trends of the West such as the Neopagan and New Age movements. This is wrong because it perpetuates a false picture of Druidism. The Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel (World-wide Celtic Creed), deeply regrets that the Church continues in its libellous attitude against Europe’s native religions. What is even more disturbing is that the three Abrahamic religions, the three monotheisms, all agree that ‘Neopaganism’ as a whole (read Laity, New Age, the European Dharmas and Western Hinduism and Buddhism) is the major threat that organised Religion faces today.
The fact of the matter is that the Monotheist Faiths are exclusive and non-inclusive. The Roman Church has never allowed other faiths to coexist along its side. It has ruthlessly destroyed everything Europe had as Antique institutions. This is what was called as the ‘Dark Ages’. The Roman Church created a spiritual desert around it, and when the veil of Maya was lifted, the Church itself was deserted. The Church is well aware of this, and this is why it needs so badly to make amends. The only problem is that it is not making amends to those it continues to attack. Saint Thomas in his Treaty on theological problems, article 5, question 10, names three concrete modalities in the classification of infidelity:
1) refusal of Christian Faith that was never accepted: Paganism;
2) refusal of Christian Faith that was professed in figure: Judaism;
3) refusal of the Revelation that was accepted: Heresy.
The loss of faith by heresy is considered a worst heresy and injure to God than that committed by pagans. But from the material platform, paganism is considered worst than heresy because it is at a greater distance from the positions of the Church. In the eyes of the Church, of course, Druidism, like Hinduism, is paganism. (ref. 4)
THE WOLF IN GRANDMOTHER’S BED
Now that we have heard the papal excuses for the 2000 Jubilee, we can only be sure of just one thing, the Church has now launched its new evangelical mission. One thing sure, as usual, the Roman Church was very discrete and parsimonious on whatever it wanted to leek out. In fact, the bone of the mater is that the Church keeps many hidden agendas.
First and foremost is its interfaith dialogue. The main question in this case is, to what faiths was the pardon addressed. Certainly not to the New Age community. Even though the Church sees the New Age movement as its greatest opponent, it doesn’t even recognise the validity of such a faith. Druidry?, there are no more bones left in this closet, just dust. To Hinduism? no, India is the main target of its next great mission effort. In fact, the main reason to hold such a pardon came from the growing embarrassment the Church endures with the Jewish communities.
Some time ago, French prelates made public excuses to its Jewish compatriots for the horrors suffered under the Vichy regime. Then there was the difficult dialogue with the Moslems, not to mention the other Christians termed prosaically ‘the Division of Christians’. All this is very fine, but the nerve of it all is that the Catholic Church, not unlike the major multinational companies, is looking for a merger take over and non-encroachment agreement. First and foremost in this new deal is its effort to bring the Roman and Orthodox churches back together if not the Anglican Church. This is something we should be very worried about. Certainly the Pope did fly away to the Holy Land to make repairs with its ‘Older Brother of the Faith’, then try patching things with Little Brother. Imagine this, the Abrahamic faiths strike a non encroachment alliance in which each is the keeper of its brother! Who is targeted next? You guessed! This is why it is so important for us to maintain our own interfaith forum.
This forum of Pan-Vedic Dharmas could comprise of the Hinduist Vainavists, Shaivists, Shaktis, and reformed faiths such as Jains, Buddhists etc., with the European Dharmas, that are, the Celtic Druids, The Germanic Odinists, the Greek Hierophants, etc. From the sixties, Druid orders of Europe were engaged in inter-faith dialogue with Buddhists and Brahmans, but back then, they had very little reciprocal understanding. It is now accepted in a growing circle of Vedic scholars that Druidism was the Western form of Vedism. In order to harmonise our relations, much had, and still needs, to be discussed concerning standards of practice. This being, what makes a devotee of Vedic and Dru Vidic Dharmas? There is still much confusion due to divergent schools of thought and trends within Druidry and on issues of devotion, worship, diet and liturgy, let alone ritual purity.
Recently, we have been successful in establishing contact, trust, and strong friendship with Vaishnavas and Shaivites in the West. Special to us, is our hope to hold as a united front in areas of common interest. The Catholic Church has documentation centres informing the general public on new religions and sects, and this includes Druid orders as well as respectable institutions such as Iskon. While visiting one of these very well documented centres I was made aware of the ‘dangers of sectarianism’. I was told that Druidism was a fake religion invented by nostalgic Freemasons and that Christianity was plagued by an ever increasing number of Oriental sects. Nothing nice to say about gurus, a very pejorative name, and even less to say about the many pundits directing yoga and meditation centres.
The only nice thing I heard was that Zoroastrianism (an I.E. Dharma) was one of the inspirational sources of Christianism along with Judaism. This probably explains why our queries to the Zoroastrian community were never answered. Who would want to engage a discussion with a nostalgic mason? Its a pity because Druidism has more to share with the Farsis than Christians will ever want to admit. So no, the Pope will never admit to the persecution and destruction of the European Dharmas. India is high up on the agenda and it will look very embarrassing to admit that it partook in the destruction of its sister faiths in Europe.
What the bishops of India plan for India
«Pope John Paul II invites the entire Church to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit for a renewal of Christian life and mission in the world.»
Read between lines: 1- renewal of Christian life = Christians must be more assertive, solidarity of all Christian Churches; 2- renewal of mission = a new evangelical zeal inviting Christians to spread the good word, make more converts;
«We too, the Christian community in India, are challenged to give our specific response to the Spirit of Jesus during this period, so crucial to the nation and the Church in this country.»
Why is the Christian community so crucial to the Indian nation?
1- India is the last stronghold of ‘heathenism’.
2- the Caste system is judged offensive by Christian standards.
3- Hinduism is a growing menace to the Monotheistic bloc. Gurus are exporting their teachings all over the world.
4- New Age, also called neopaganism resulting from the teaching of gurus in the West, is the major threat of the Abrahamic monotheist religions.
In fact, India is religious and spiritual with or without Christianism!
«As the Third Millennium dawns on our country, where Christianity has been in existence practically from its very inception, we want to project a renewed face of the Church which will radiate Christ so that our brothers and sisters of India will be able to experience the loving kindness of the Saviour.»
If the Pope is calling for a reconciliation of the Churches and asking forgiveness for the faults of the past, why is he calling for a conversion of India?
It is easier to ask forgiveness for the destruction of Native American cultures when these have been massively Christianised. It is contradictory to ask pardon for faults of the past when destruction of native cultures is still called for.
«It is our goal to build up in our country a Catholic community that is intent on becoming a fully reconciled community, free from all discrimination, a Christian community that is healed of all its divisions, a religious community that lives in harmony and a human community that has discovered its true source of life in love and sharing.»
The goal is to establish a strong Christian community that will make more converts.
«If this is to be realised, we need to undergo a thorough conversion, for it is only through the body of the transformed Christian community, that Christ can shine in His radiance to the world around us. We shall then communicate the joy of the redeemed to all our brothers and sisters: the Good News of Jesus for the emerging India of 2000.» (ref.5)
Who is it that needs to undergo a thorough conversion, Christians or Hindus?
The Church is the body of Christ! This implies that the Church is to radiate from outside of its body into the local non-Christian communities. A call for the emergence of Christian India for the coming millennium.
TABLE OF COMPARED FAITHS
THE VEDIC AND DRU-VIDIC DHARMAS CHRISTIANISM:
Monist and Relativistic dualism,Polytheistic Monotheist and Dualistic (Good/Evil)
Cosmic Historical
Non-dogmatic Dogmatic
Tolerant Intolerant
Open tradition, oral and textual Revelation, closed Book
Many options Centralist
Non-proselytist Proselytist
Hedonist and Aesthetic Rejection of Pleasure and Beauty
Pre-existence of the soul New soul at birth
De-centralised Centralised
Knowledge and Understanding Blind Faith
Accent on human experience Accent on the after-life
Respect of Nature Exploitation of Nature
Sources:
1. Mac Neill,Eoin. Life of Saint Patrick.
2. The Confession of St. Patrick, translated from Latin by Ludwig Bieler, document from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, May 27, 1999.
3. Druid Catarnos, La résistence du paganisme en Gaule, in Ialon, clairière, revue d’étude druidique, no. 2.
4. From a Press Release of the Kredenn Geltiek Hollvedel dated 1999.
5. Adressed by the Indian bishops for Jubilee 2000.
Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/1/#gen447
Ram Swarup's writings
By Tara Katir, Hawaii
It's the trend these days for ancient traditions to speak out against missionary aggression. It is into this emerging courageousness that the work of Ram Swarup (1920-1998) takes on singular significance, as he asserts the value of the Sanatana Dharma for mankind's future in two volumes of elegantly articulated essays, On Hinduism, Reviews and Reflections and Meditations, Yogas, Gods, Religions (Voice of India, 232 pages, Rs. 250, and 278 pages, Rs. 300 respectively). Published posthumously, these books contain material never before released. Some of the essays included are, "Cultural Self-Alienation Among the Hindus," "The Hindu View of Education," "India and Greece," "Patanjali Yoga," "Bhakti-Yoga," "Buddhist Yoga," "Love--Human and Divine" and "Semitic Religions Versus Hindu Dharma." These are but a few of Swarup's eloquent and forthright essays. In "One God of Theology," Swarup talks about this shifting trend: "The recognition and respect for Eastern wisdom and religions came from nominal Christians, from great humanists and universalists like Voltaire and from men of reason and science who form quite an influential section of the Western society today. An average, simple Westerner is also more open to the appeal of thoughts from different countries. There is even a wind of change amongst deeply religious Christians, particularly those who are not connected with the missionary activities. All this is a welcome development, and it is in keeping with the spirit of the age which demands universality and breaking down of the barriers of prejudice and insularity."
Meditations by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India, 2/18 Ansari Road,
New Delhi 110 002
On Hinduism by Ram Swarup,
Voice of India
Christian Conversion
Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, in his new book Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India (154 pages, First Public Protection Trust, Rs. 35, us$10) details accounts of Christian conversion tactics and practices against Hindus from the earliest Portuguese contact until today. Srinivasan explains that during the colonial period Christian scholars studied Hinduism, intending to use knowledge of its beliefs and practices for their own conversion procedures. In addition, by "creating a racial theory of Aryan migration into India, the Indologists also came up with a pseudo-history for use in the service of religion and politics." Simultaneously at Oxford University, the Boden Professorship was created with the objective "to promote Sanskrit learning among the English, ...to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion." Additionally, monetary prizes were awarded for literary works that undermined Indian tradition. "By these means, they financed and institutionalized hatred..." writes Srinivasan. Present-day missionaries, Srinivasan asserts, have created a cultural hybrid of Hindu and Christian symbols and practices, deliberately fostering confusion as to their true intentions. Places like Father Bede Griffith's ashram in Kerala, and Satchidananda Ashram in Kulithalai, Tamil Nadu, were founded by Christian priests. Inside the "missionaries adorn [sic] the Hindu garb, while the heart beneath was beating for Christianity, and fostered antagonism to Hinduism."
Conversion to Christianity, Aggression in India by Dr. M.S. Srinivasan, First Public Protection Trust, PO. Box 5094, Chennai 600028 India
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1990: The Berlin Wall is taken down February 12. Germany is reunited over the next year. Warsaw Pact is dissolved.
1990: Under its new democratic constitution, Nepal remains the world's only Hindu country.
1990: Hindus flee Muslim persecution in Kashmir Valley.
1990: Foundation stones are laid in Ayodhya for new temple at the birthplace of Lord Rama, as Hindu nationalism rises.
1990: Vatican condemns Eastern mysticism as false doctrine in letter by Cardinal Ratzinger approved by Pope Paul II, to purge Catholic monasteries, convents and clergy of involvement in Eastern meditation, yoga and Zen.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11879&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The following article recently appeared in the European Business Review/New European, Volume 13, No. 6, 2001, along with an excellent Editorial introducing it (by Aidan Rankin, who recently wrote the forward to the book Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations, by David Frawley, Voice of India 2001, from which this article is drawn).
The European Business Review is one of the most prestigious journals of its type, connected to important business and academic leaders throughout the world. It contains the New European which constitutes its central portion and offers new insights on global problems. It can be accessed on-line only by subscribers through www.emerald-library.com
For such an article to appear in this important publication indicates new inroads for Hindu thought into the western world and its intellectual elite.
The article is also on our web site at www.vedanet.com at www.vedanet.com/indic.htm and in the Naimisha Journal.
The need for a new Indic school of thought
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri)
Keywords: India, Culture, History
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is a scholar and teacher of Vedic Science, Yoga and Vedantic philosophy in the USA, where he directs the Vedic Institute. In India, he is recognised as an authority on Hindu cultural issues. Dr Frawley is the author of more than 20 books and his Web site is www.vedanet.com
During the Eurocolonial period, Indian history and civilization were distorted to fit European perceptions. A new school of thought is needed that will see Asian history and tradition with Asian eyes and thought, beginning with India.
The "clash of civilizations"
A clash of civilizations is occurring throughout in the world today, a war of cultures at various levels in both our personal and public lives. This clash is partly because of rising historical and cultural awareness on the part of newly-independent countries, beginning with India. The Western-European/North American culture is currently predominant and is strongly, if not rudely, trying to eliminate or subordinate the rest. Yet Western civilization is spreading itself not so much by force, as in the colonial era, but by subtle new forms of social manipulation. These include control of the media and news information networks, control of the entertainment industry, domination of commercial markets, continued missionary aggressiveness by Western religions, and - as important but sometimes overlooked - control of educational institutions and curricula worldwide.
This control of education has resulted in a Western-European/North-American view of history and culture in textbooks and information sources in most countries, including India. Naturally, people educated according to Western values will function as part of Western culture, whatever may be the actual country of their birth. They will experience an alienation from their native culture in which they have not really been raised. They easily become a fifth column for the Westernisation of their culture, which also means its denigration or, at best, its commercialisation. An authentic Indian or Indic perspective, a worldview coming out of the culture of India and its particular values and perceptions, is hardly to be found, even in India. The Western school of thought is taught in India, not any Indic or Indian school of thought.
The Indic school of thought
What is the Indic school of thought, one might ask? It is not at all something new or unknown. It is the great spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural traditions of the subcontinent that are among the largest and oldest in the world. It is the emphasis on dharma, on karma, on pluralism and synthesis, on yoga sadhana and moksha. It is not only the tradition of ancient sages from the Vedas and Upanishads to Buddhist and Yoga traditions but also modern teachers like Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. It is not only the vast literature of Sanskrit but also that of the regional languages and dialects of the subcontinent, most of which have older literary traditions than the languages of Europe such as English.
All major cultural debates are now framed according to Western values and perceptions, and so they will naturally serve to uphold them. The important issues of Indic civilization today are framed according to the principles or biases of the Western school of thought. These include what Indian civilization is, when India as a nation first arose, what the real history of India is, how to reform Indian society, and how India should develop in order to have its rightful place in the future world. As the debate is defined according to the approach and values of Western civilization, India does not always fare well, and India as its own independent source of civilization is seldom acknowledged. India is judged as if it should be like another USA, UK or Germany, which it can never be, nor should be. This only makes Indians feel inferior or wrong.
The Western school of thought has denigrated or overlooked the Indic school, particularly in the Indian context. For example, the Indic school has its own history sources through the Vedas, Puranas and various historical texts (Itihasas) that are quite massive and detailed and have much internal consistency. However, in writing the history of India, the Western school does not give these any place. They are dismissed as, at best, mythology and, at worst, fraud. Instead, it defines the history of India according to outside influences, as a series of invasions and borrowings mainly from the west, from cultures the West knows better and has more affinity with, which makes India seem dependent upon the West in order to advance its civilization again today.
The Western school of thought negates the relevance of the traditions of India. This is not simply because the Indic tradition is wrong, unsophisticated or irrelevant. It is because Western civilization is hegemonic, if not predatory in nature, and such ideas help promote its spread. Its information about India contains a built-in poison. It is meant to undermine the culture of the region and subordinate it to the West, however objective, scientific or modern its approach may appear to be.
When India as a nation arose is defined by the Western school as 1947, the year of independence. It founders were Nehru and Gandhi, who inherited a united region from the British, before which India was just a confused mass of local kingdoms with no national consistency. On the other hand, according to the Indic school, India or Bharat as a country arose in the Vedic era as the type of dharmic/yogic culture that has been the main characteristic of Indian civilization through history. This spiritual or yogic orientation can be found in the cultures of all the regions of India from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas, pervading even in the folk art and folk songs of all regions, as well as "high" culture.
Western distortions and the Indian response
In the Western school of thought, an Aryan invasion or migration is used to describe the way in which ancient Vedic civilization took root in India, as if it were an alien force of intruding barbarians. In the Indic school of thought, the whole idea of an Aryan invasion/migration is a sign of ignorance. The Indic tradition arose from the rishi tradition of spiritual endeavour, characteristic of the Vedic-Sarasvati culture and related cultures, reflected in the continuity of Vedic literature from the Vedas to the Mahabharata, Buddhist and Jain literature and the Puranas, which all reflect the same principles, peoples and dynasties of kings.
In these current cultural debates, therefore, an overriding greater debate is ignored - that which takes place between the Western and the Indic schools of thought. The Western-style media and academia tries to see what is authentic in Indian civilization and finds it to be wanting, reducing it to little more than caste or superstition. This is not surprising as the Indic tradition has a different focus and values than does the Western tradition. Similarly, from the standpoint of the Indic tradition, we must question Western civilization itself. Is the Western school of thought enlightened? Is it appropriate for India? Can it understand the unique civilization of the subcontinent?
The Indic school itself is often highly critical of the Western school. For example, when asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied: "It would be a good idea." What he meant was that, from the standpoint of the spiritual traditions of India, Western civilization with its materialism, aggression and dogmatism was not highly evolved. Sri Aurobindo wrote on the limitations of Western civilization, while appreciating it in certain areas. <
Secular missionaries
The West similarly tries to control any debate on cultural ethics, using slogans of democracy and human rights, which are only used to intimidate weak nations and conveniently ignored relative to stronger or wealthier nations like China or Saudi Arabia. Organizations operating under the cover of human rights are among the most aggressively alienating influences today. They function like "secular missionaries", ignoring victims of terrorism like the Hindus, while defending the "rights" of terrorist organizations against security forces that are compelled to take action against them. Meanwhile, it is the West that is selling the weapons and profiting by terrorism and civil strife throughout the world. The West originally trained many terrorist groups, such as the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Such groups highlight social inequalities in India, but ignore a colonial history marked by attacks on indigenous Indic culture. The same charges of cultural backwardness have been used throughout the colonial era to undermine the native traditions of Africa, Asia and the USA, and to justify forced religious conversion and political domination, which is their real aim. Sometimes native intellectuals are taken in by these Western approaches to social issues, not realizing that they are just promoting the colonial agenda of world domination in a more covert form.
New rules of debate
Therefore, it is not enough simply to debate issues of culture, politics, or history in the existing forums in order to promote a more Indian or Hindu view. We must question the very process itself, its basis and the perspective or values behind the school of thought in which the debate occurs. What India needs is the creation of a new Indic school of thought that is dynamic and assertive in the modern global context - one that can challenge Western civilization not merely in regard to the details of history or culture, but also relative to fundamental principles of life, humanity and consciousness. This requires a revival or renaissance in the Indic tradition and its great spiritual systems of Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jainism, and also in its political, artistic and scientific traditions. Modern science and technology can arguably be more humanely employed according to Indic or Dharmic values than according to Western religious exclusivity and commercial greed.
The world today needs a critique of "modern civilization" from an Indic or Dharmic perspective, an interpretation of capitalism, socialism, communism, Christianity and Islam from a tradition that is much older, deeper and closer to the spirit in both man and nature. These Western ideologies are failing to address the spiritual needs of humanity and are incapable of creating a world order that transcends dogmatism or exclusivism. <
Those of us who are part of the Indic school of thought should emphasize such a greater debate and not get caught in the details of issues already formulated according to the biases of Western civilization. This debate should examine the right structure for society and the real forward direction for history and evolution. We must raise fundamental questions. Is the current Western materialistic view of history valid at all, or are there spiritual forces at work in the world that go beyond all these? Can we understand our history through outer approaches like archaeology, linguistics or genetics, or is a higher consciousness or more intuitive view required as well? Are the records of our ancient sages to be rejected so lightly, whenever we think they do not agree with our views?
The real issue of the Vedas, India's oldest tradition, is not how these texts might fit into the current model of history as promoted by the Western school of thought, tracing the development of civilization through outward material advances. It is how the existence of such an ancient tradition of rishis, knowers of cosmic consciousness, shows a higher spiritual humanity from which we have arisen and whose legacy we can reclaim.
Towards a new school of thought
India needs a different type of scholarship, an Indic school of thought that has its own values, traditions and methods of reaching conclusions. Those of us who follow the Indian civilization should develop this Indic school in its own right and not merely try to justify our views in terms of the Western or European school of thought, which is hostile and radically opposed to Indic cultural tradition.
I recently raised a call for an intellectual Kshatriya in India - a new class of warrior intellectuals to defend India and its great pluralistic traditions from the onslaught of Western exclusivist approaches, whether religious, economic or political. This call fundamentally requires the creation of such a new Indic school of thought. Such a new Indic school of thought concerns not only philosophies of liberation or yoga, but Indic, Hindu and Dharmic approaches to ecology, the global marketplace, health, science, the status of women, religious freedom, in short to all the main issues in society today - and it should also look beyond these issues, which are often the issues of the Western school, to yet broader concerns. How can we integrate humanity and nature, with its underlying cosmic intelligence? How can we reclaim our spiritual heritage, as a species, that the great yogis have pointed out for us?
Such a new Indic school of thought requires new institutions to promote and embody it, or new Vedic schools. This will arise not through Indology departments in Western-style universities but through a new type of institution with its own funding and curriculum, free from manipulation by the vested interested and ideologies of the Western school and its religious, commercial and political bias.
An intellectual renaissance
The problem is that the Western school created Indian academic institutions that reflect Western values. To try to gain credibility for Indic thought in the context of European institutions, as some well-meaning Hindus are attempting, may be a helpful strategy but misses this main point. Western universities have their own agendas that they will not readily give up. They will not change simply because a few well-intentioned people and groups give them money and sponsor positions to project a more "sympathetic" picture of India and her civilization. Like a sea that salts every river that flows into it, existing trends and interests will force the people coming into them to conform to the dominant Eurocentric values that pervade these institutions. Otherwise, they cannot survive academically.
It is not on single issues that we need to make headway but on promoting the Indic tradition as a complete school of thought in itself, rather than merely as a side subject of Indological study in Western-defined academia. We must look back to such Indic models as Naimisha, Takshashila, Nalanda or Mithila, not only to their institutions, but also to the Gurukula approach and its more intimate and spiritual form of learning.
I urge the young people and the scholars of India to take up this cause. Do not try to define India in the context of civilization as defined by the West. Instead look to the great traditions of India that have their own deeper roots and use it to critique Western civilization and discover its limitations. Rather than seeking to define and control India according to Western perspectives, the West should look to India for guidance on the deeper issues of culture and spirituality. Indians, in turn, should assert their own greater traditions and not simply imitate the West or seek to justify Indian civilization from a Western perspective. True scholars of the Indic tradition need not go to Harvard or Oxford to seek credibility, rather these institutions should come to them.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=2658&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Pope's Apology
- Dr. David Frawley
Pope John Paul II recently made an almost too well publicized apology for the wrongs and injustices, the sins committed by Catholics throughout the centuries. He mentioned the Crusades, Inquisition and the mistreatment of the Jews, among other actions that led to hatred, oppression and genocide. The event was more a great media show than a sincere and humble statement of the heart. The whole gesture was broadcast with great ceremony, almost as if it were a piece of propaganda.
The Pope's first concern was the Jews, who have been persecuted by the Christians during the last two thousand years, with the Nazis being perhaps the greatest of a long series of episodes of Anti-Semitism in Europe. There have been many criticisms of the Church for its role in tolerating, if not supporting the Nazis. The Pope's apology is also meant to counter criticism against his recent effort to get Pope Pius XII canonized as a saint. Pope Pius XII was the Pope during World War II who never tried to stop the Nazis.
Many Jews are critical of the effort to canonize Pope Pius XII and suspect him of collaborating with the Nazis. The Pope's seeking of forgiveness from the Jews is a way to redress that as well.
His second concern was the Muslims. The Pope wants recognition in the Islamic world. Today the great majority of devoted Catholics are in similar Third World circumstances and Catholic missionaries are competing with Islamic missionaries, particularly in Africa. The Pope made a very high profile visit to Israel recently, appeared arm and arm with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and made a public plea for a Palestinian State, almost as if he were more a political than a religious leader.
The place of Hindus and Buddhists in this mistreatment can be inferred but the silence about these religions is poignant. The Pope failed to mention these religions by name, as has been his general tendency not to want to recognize them as valid religions - a courtesy that he does yield to other Biblical beliefs. The Inquisition came to India, specifically to Goa. The Catholic Church has been quite active in Asia as well throughout the centuries and often using the same questionable tactics. The Pope also failed to specifically mention the pagans of Europe that were the object of much Christian hatred and violence from the destruction of pagan temples to the burning of witches in the Middle Ages. Even today pagan groups in Europe have to deal with strong opposition from the Church.
I don't mean to say that the Pope's gesture has no value or cannot be a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Protestant Christians and Muslims, whose history is just as bloody relative to other faiths, can follow suit. But the Pope's apology is perhaps more notable for what it did not say. We should not read into it more than what he indicated. Unless it is followed by more genuine actions, it may only be an effort to avoid real scrutiny.
According to Catholic doctrine, the Church is a heavenly body, the bride of Christ and can therefore suffer from no real deficiency. Hence, the Pope is not apologizing for any real mistakes done by the Church because, by definition in Catholicism, the Church is capable of no real wrong. He is apologizing for mistakes made by church members, which can include priests, bishops and even previous Popes, but which only occurred by their failure to live up to the heavenly status of the Church. So the Pope's apology is not really for the wrongs of the Catholic Church but only for the wrongs of individual Catholics. In this regard it is an attempt to maintain the purity of the Church and to uphold its power. It is the Church apologizing for the deficiencies of its members, not for its own mistakes.
Secondly, the Pope's statement does not contain a repudiation of any Catholic doctrines; particularly those that require that Catholics convert the world to their belief, which notion was responsible for most of the violence that he criticizes. The Pope's apology is not an acceptance of other religions or a statement that salvation is possible outside the Church or apart from Jesus. It is not a declaration of respect for the religions of the world. It is not a proclamation of religious pluralism. The Pope did not say that other religions are as good as Christianity or that Jesus is the only Son of God and the sole redeemer of humanity. In fact, his recent statements in Asia, his call to evangelize the region and convert Asia to Catholicism, proclaim the opposite.
His plea for forgiveness was to God, not to other people and certainly not to other religions. He was not apologizing to other religions for the Catholic Church failing to recognize their truth or their holiness in the eyes of God. He was not reaching out to other religions, so much as making an appeal to members of other religions in order to draw them closer to Christ and the Church in order to convert them. He preserved the exclusivism of Catholic belief in tact.
That this forgiveness coincides with a new church initiative to convert Asia to Christianity should not be forgotten. It is an attempt to give the Church a more liberal modern face to aid in its conversion efforts. It represents only a change of style. In the past conversion often occurred along with force and intimidation. This policy cannot work in the post-colonial era, when the Church does not have military support. So the Pope is trying a new, more friendly style. But the goal is the same - Christianity for all.
When a person confesses his sins to a Catholic priest he is always given some sort of penance. It is easy to ask for forgiveness but it should lead to some sort of action or it may be sincere. It is not enough to say you are sorry and ask for forgiveness if you have hurt others. You must stop the hurtful actions and make amends. The Pope should follow up his words with real efforts to rectify past wrongs, many of which are still continuing. If someone runs over you with a car, it is not enough to ask for forgiveness and walk away. The Catholic Church has ruined entire civilizations in its history, and has cast a pall over others.
Perhaps it should make a memorial to the victims of its Inquisitions. Above all, it must recognize that the religions that it has trampled over must be addressed as well.
The Pope should arrange meetings not only with Jews and Muslims, but with Hindus, Buddhists and Pagans, asking their forgiveness and seeking ways to address the wrongs that the Church has done to them and being open to real dialogue with them. Let the Pope ask forgiveness not simply of the people the Church may have harmed, let him ask forgiveness of their religions and religious leaders. Let him ask forgiveness of the Shankaracharyas or the Dalai Lama for denigrating their religions. Let him say that these other religions are as good and holy as Christianity. This he has not done and will not recommend. In fact, he has warned his priests and nuns against following yoga and other eastern practices, which he called selfish.
Many people were forcibly converted to Catholicism. Their native holy places were replaced by churches. Will the Pope tell such people to return to their original faith? Will he even tell them that their original faith was as good as Christianity? Will he work to restore at least a few native places of worship that the Church has stolen? If not, how can his apology be taken seriously?
Above all, the Pope should stop the policies that have led to such inequities. The entire Catholic process of proselytization has a sordid history. To ask for forgiveness for its excesses, but to continue with these conversion efforts is insincere.
The real question is whether the Catholic seeking to convert the world to its faith, based upon its declaration - recently affirmed by the Pope - that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity, is inherently a cause of intolerance, social disharmony and violence. When a missionary goes into a community and tells its members that salvation is only possible through Jesus and that their existing religion will not save them, that already is a form of intolerance and violence that must lead to disharmony and conflict.
The Pope has made great efforts to portray Catholicism as a force of social liberalism, allied with leftist causes as in the Liberation Theology, that is the defender of the poor and a force for social equality. At the same time he is asking for the canonization of Pope Pius XII who stood silent before Nazi and Fascist aggression and genocide. Mussolini was a good Catholic in frequent communication with the Church. Catholic priests and bishops are well known to have blessed Nazi and Italian Fascist troops.
Catholicism was long a natural ally of fascism. Theocracy, authoritarian and military rule are as old as Constantine, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. Spanish and Portuguese colonial rulers, who indulged in genocide of populations in America and Asia, acted with the sanction of the Church on their regimes. The military dictators of Central and South America in recent times, up to Pinochet were good Catholics and had Church leaders allied with them.
The Liberation Theology that arose in the Americas in recent years was a new phenomenon and often opposed by the Church. In fact, Pope John II has put an end to most of it in the Americas. He only promotes this Liberation Theology in India because of its conversion value.
The fact is that, historically, the Catholic Church has been allied with military dictatorships, theocracies, and colonial oppression. Jesuits functioned as spies to study and undermine countries for conversion purposes. The older history of popes, anti-popes is there for all to see. The actual Church is not the bride of Christ or purity but a house with many dark corners and many skeletons in its closets that have yet to be cleaned out.
If the Pope is a true social liberal let him work not just for the equality of people but for the equality of religions as well. Let him not just say that all human beings are equal; let him also honor other religions as great. Let him honor not just Biblical religions, but the dharmic traditions of Asia as valid ways to God or Truth.
The problems that the Pope has asked forgiveness for are inherent in the very nature and structure of the Church. When you create an exclusive organization to dispense salvation to the entire world, you endow it with a kind of absolute authority like that of a dictator that naturally leads to corruption. The future does not belong to the Catholic Church or to any institutionalized belief. No group can claim to own or represent God or dispense salvation by belief in its doctrines. Truth is universal and eternal and the time of exclusive beliefs, products of the Dark Ages of humanity, is long past.
It is clear that so far the Pope's apology is only meant to sidestep greater criticism. It is more of a whitewash than a sincere plea for forgiveness that a truly spiritual leader would ask for. Without bringing about an end to proselytization that has caused most of these problems it means little.
Reference:
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/holocaust/
http://www.nizkor.org/
http://www.geocities.com/hindu-rashtra/crusades/links.html
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu_home/
http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=1801&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
The Ethics of Conversion, Part I
By Vamadeva Shastri
Conversion has always been a topic that arouses, if not inflames our human emotions. After all, the missionary is trying to persuade a person to change his religious belief, which concerns the ultimate issues of life and death, the very meaning of our existence. And the missionary is usually denigrating the person's current belief, which may represent a strong personal commitment or a long family or cultural tradition, calling it inferior, wrong, sinful, or even perverse.
Such statements are hardly polite or courteous and are often insulting and derogatory. The missionary is not coming with an open mind for sincere discussion and give and take dialogue, but already has his mind made up and is seeking to impose his opinion on others, often even before he knows what they actually believe or do. It is difficult to imagine a more stressful human encounter short of actual physical violence. Missionary activity always holds an implicit psychological violence, however discretely it is conducted. It is aimed at turning the minds and hearts of people away from their native religion to one that is generally unsympathetic and hostile to it.
In this article I will address conversion and missionary activity mainly in regard to Christianity, which has so commonly employed and insisted upon the practice. Indeed it is difficult to imagine the Christian religion apart from missionary activity, which has been the backbone of the faith for most of its history. Christianity has mainly been an outward looking religion seeking to convert the world. In this process it has seldom been open to real dialogue with other religions. It has rarely examined its own motives or the harm that such missionary activity has caused, even though the history of its missionary activity has been tainted with intolerance, genocide and the destruction not only of individuals but of entire cultures.
But much of this discussion applies to Islam as well, which shares an agenda with Christianity to convert the world to its particular belief. As an American raised as a Catholic and who attended Catholic school and then later adapted Hindu-based spiritual teachings, I can perhaps provide another angle on this topic that hopefully will give ground for new thinking. I had to break through much religious intolerance and prejudice to make the changes that I did.
What is Conversion?
First let us define what we mean by conversion? Let us immediately clearly discriminate between conversion or change of beliefs that happens in free human interchange in open discussion as opposed to organized conversion efforts that employ financial, media or even armed persuasion.
That certain individuals may influence other individuals to adapt one religious belief or another has seldom been a problem. There should be open and friendly discussion and debate about religion just as there is about science. But when one religion creates an agenda of conversion and mobilizes massive resources to that end, targeting unsuspecting, poor or disorganized groups, it is no longer a free discussion. It is an ideological assault. It is a form of religious violence and intolerance.
Organized conversion efforts are quite another matter than the common dialogue and interchange between members of different religious communities in daily life, or even than organized discussions in forums or academic settings. Organized conversion activity is like a trained army invading a country from the outside. This missionary army often goes into communities where there is little organized resistance to it, or which may not even be aware of its power or its motives. It will even take advantage of communities that are tolerant and open minded about religion and use that to promote a missionary agenda that destroys this tolerance.
The missionary business remains one of the largest in the world and has enormous funding on many levels. It is like several multinational corporations with the different Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical groups involved. There are full time staffs and organizations allocating money, creating media hype, plotting strategies and seeking new ways to promote conversion.
The local native religion has about as much chance against such multinational incursions as a local food seller has if McDonald's moves into his neighborhood with a slick, well funded advertising campaign targeting his customers. Yet while many third world countries have government policies to protect local businesses, they usually don't have any safety mechanism to protect local religions.
In fact missionary activity is like an ideological war. It is quite systematic, motivated and directed. It can even resemble a blitzkrieg using media, money, people and public shows to appeal to the masses in an emotional way. Missionaries are not seeking to learn from other religious groups or even to find out what they are all about, but to promote their own views and with as much energy as possible, even if this requires denigrating other beliefs.
Therefore, with missionary activity we are not talking about unplanned, spontaneous or isolated events. We are talking about a religious effort towards world conquest that is quite happy to put an end to other religious traditions - that looks to establish one particular religion for all human beings, in which the diversity of human religions is discredited and forgotten. Regions where missionary activity has been successful have seen their older traditions demoted or destroyed, whether it is those of the pagan Europeans, the Native Americans, or the pre-Islamic Arabs. Hinduism would likely fall along the same wayside should lose the battle against missionary religions, just as Hinduism in Islamic Pakistan has all but disappeared.
Missionary activity and conversion is not about freedom of religion. The missionary wants to put an end to pluralism, choice and freedom of religion. He wants one religion, his own, for everyone and will sacrifice his life to that cause. True freedom of religion should involve freedom from conversion. The missionary is like a salesman targeting people in their homes or like an invader seeking to conquer. Such disruptive activity is not a right and it cannot promote social harmony or respect between different religious communities. In fact people should have the right not to be bothered by missionaries unless they seek them out. Those of us in the West are irritated by local missionaries like the Jehovah's Witnesses that often come soliciting at our doors. Can one imagine the distress or confusion they could cause to some poor person in Asia? Once let into the door, it is hard to get them out.
History of Conversion
Let us look at the history of conversion, how it arose and what it has become through time. Organized conversion on a mass scale hardly existed anywhere in the world before the advent of Christianity some two thousand years ago. It became particularly strong after the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century. This resulted in a Roman or imperial church that used the resources of the empire, including the army, to promote the religion, which was a state institution. Church and state become closely tied and one was used to uphold the other. This alliance of church and state occurred well into the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century throughout much of Europe.
In the seventh century Islam brought about a religion in which church and state, or religion and politics were not simply allied but became the same, with the Caliph functioning as both the religious and secular head of the empire. This non-division between religion and politics continues in most Islamic countries today, including Pakistan, which has gone so far recently to proclaim the Koran as the supreme law of the land, though it is not a secular law book or any kind of law book. Can one imagine a Western country proclaiming the Bible as the law of the land? Yet the church dominated the laws of Europe for centuries.
Prior to adapting Christianity Rome had its state religion but this existed largely as a show for political purposes - the worship of the emperor. Rome tolerated all other religions as long as they gave a nominal and political support to the state religion. The Romans persecuted Christians not because they were intolerant of religious differences but because they expected all religious groups to at least afford this nominal recognition for the state religion, which the Christians refused to do.
When Christianity became the state religion, because of the belief that it alone was the true religion, this tolerance of other religions came to an end in the Roman Empire. Pagan temples and schools were closed, if not replaced by churches or even destroyed, including the closing of the great Platonic academy in Athens in the sixth century. Paganism in all of its forms was eventually banned as not only false, but also as immoral and illegal. Pagan or even unorthodox groups continued to be oppressed in Europe up to the witches of the Middle Ages, which resulted in the deaths of millions in the name of religion and protecting the church.
In the colonial period Christian missionary activity spread throughout the world and brought with it a great violence and intolerance that continued the anti-pagan crusades as part of colonialism. Missionary efforts in the colonial period, with some exceptions, contributed to or even brought about the tremendous genocide of native populations not only in America but also in Africa and Asia. Native peoples had their religions banned, their holy places destroyed or taken over by the Christians. The history of the Spanish in Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century is comparable to the Nazis of this century, if not worse, pillaging and plundering a continent in the name of and with the blessings of the church. This process of missionary colonialism reached its zenith in the nineteenth century, in which Native Africans were the main group subject to genocide, and it is only now slowly declining. However missionary groups have done little to apologize much less to atone for the violence and hatred this five hundred years of colonialism created, and which destroyed many traditional religions and cultures.
In fact colonialism has not truly ended but has recently taken a more economic rather than military form, along with the Westernization along economic lines. As Christianity is the dominant Western religion, it continues use the current economic expansion of Western culture to promote its conversion agendas. The greater financial resources and media dominance of the West affords Christianity a great edge in religious and social encounters throughout the world. Even when it is a question of a Christian minority in a land dominated by a non-Christian religion, the non-Christians are often at a disadvantage in terms of money and media through the Western support that the Christian community has, particularly in regard to its conversion activities.
Though most countries in the world today are secular, this still has not created a level playing field in the field of religion. Western religions are still taking an aggressive, intolerant, if not predatory role toward non-Western beliefs. They are using financial and media advantages, including mass marketing, to promote their agenda of conversion. Though missionary activity became less overt after the end of the colonial era it still goes on. And we cannot forget the bloody history of missionary activity or its potential for disruption, violence and destruction should the circumstance again arise.
The Motivation Behind Conversion
What is the motivation behind conversion activities? Why should one person want to convert another to his or her religious belief? In a pluralistic world, such as we live in there are many different types of culture, art, language, business and religion that contribute much to the richness of society. Why should we demand that everyone be like us in terms of anything, including religion? Isn't this diversity the very beauty of culture and our greater human heritage?
Clearly the missionary seeking converts must believe that other people cannot find their goal of life by any other religion than the one that he is propagating. Otherwise there would be no need to convert anyone. And generally the missionary is not simply announcing that he has something good or better, like someone who has invented a better light bulb. He is usually claiming that his religion is the one true faith and that the others are either inferior, out of date, or simply false.
One could argue that the conversion mentality is inherently intolerant. If I recognize that many religions are good and religious belief should be arrived at freely and without interference, then I will not create a massive organization to covert other people to my belief and get them to renounce what they already have. Only an intolerant and exclusive religious ideology requires conversion or funds it on a massive scale.
In short conversion activity is anti-secular. It does not tolerate the religious differences that must exist in a truly secular society but aims at eliminating them. The irony is that secular law provides the religious freedom that allows conversion activity to go on. The very missionaries that once used colonial armies to promote their conversion agendas are now maintaining them in the post-colonial era under the guise of freedom of religion. The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom when they were in power in the colonial era, now use freedom of religion to keep those same missionary activities going! This is both ironical and hypocritical!
Generally missionary efforts are stronger to the degree that the missionary is opposed to the religions that people already follow. The old dominant Christian strategy, which many Protestant groups still promote, is to denigrate non-Biblical beliefs as heathen, or the work of the devil. Evangelical missionaries still identify Hinduism with devil worship. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two of the most influential American evangelical leaders say this repeatedly, as do their followers, and they are sponsoring missionary activity in India as well. Naturally this gives a missionary much zeal and intensity, saving souls from the clutches of evil and driving out demons.
Such a zealous missionary inevitably spreads misunderstanding, venom and hatred in society. If I am promoting the idea that your religion is a work of the devil can I be regarded as friend or well wisher to your community? Can such views help your community understand itself or reconcile community differences?
Today it is illegal in most countries to promote racial hatred, to call a person of any race inferior or the product of the devil (which white Christians used to call the blacks until recently). But Hindus can still be denigrated as polytheists, idolaters and devil-worshippers. This is tolerated under freedom of religion, though it obviously breeds distrust, if not hatred and itself is prejudicial. Prejudicial statements that are not allowed about race are allowed about religion and missionaries commonly employ these derogatory remarks.
In fact most Christians view Hinduism like the pagan religions that the early Christians had to overcome, the Roman, Greek, Celtic, Egyptians and Babylonian religions, which do have much in common with Hinduism. Equating Hindus with Biblical idolaters promotes the history of missionary aggression and religious conflict. Most such Christians have never seriously or open-mindedly studied Hinduism or other pagan beliefs. They know little of Yoga and Vedanta or the great traditions of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality. They prefer to highlight the Hindu worship of God even in animal images like Hanuman as a form of superstition or evil.
The Catholic Church is a bit more diplomatic these days. It is now telling Hindus that their religion may have some value but that Christianity is even better! Such a view is a bit more tolerant but cannot be called sincere either.
If Catholics no longer believe that Hinduism is a religion of the Devil as they were promoting until only recently, they ought to apologize to Hindus for their mistaken notions and the problems that these must have caused. Discriminating Hindus can only look upon this more tolerant Catholicism of the post-colonial era as an attempt to maintain the edge of the church in a less politically favorable era. The Catholics say they respect the spiritual philosophies of India, which they for centuries failed to note, but still feel it necessary to convert Hindus to their religion. What kind of respect is that?
The Ideology of Conversion
Conversion reflects a certain ideology. In fact it mainly involves getting people to change beliefs, ideas or ideology. Conversion demands that we follow a certain ideology and reject others. The dominant ideology behind organized conversion efforts is that of an exclusive monotheistic religion. There is only one God, one book, one savior, one final prophet and so on. Most Christian missionaries try to get people to accept Christ as their personal savior and Christianity in one form or another as the true faith for all humanity.
A religion that is pluralistic in nature like the Hindu cannot have such a conversion-based ideology. Hindus accept that there are many paths, so naturally they will not feel compelled to get everyone to abandon their own path and follow the Hindu path instead. In fact there is no one Hindu path but rather a variety of paths, with new paths coming into being every day.
It has long been the dominant belief of Christians and Muslims that only members of their religion go to heaven, while member of other religions go to hell, particularly idol-worshipping Hindus and other pagans. This promise of heaven and threat of hell has long been used for conversion purposes and is a prime part of the ideology and its propaganda. Christians have often been motivated by this medieval heaven-hell idea in their conversion efforts. The old nineteenth century idea was a Christian missionary going to Asia to save the pagan babies from the clutches of hell.
This eternal heaven-hell idea does arouse a certain passion as well as intolerance, but one can hardly call it enlightened. In fact it causes emotional imbalance in people, which many Christians, particularly Catholics, have sought psychological help to overcome.
A God who has created heaven for his believers and hell for those who follow other religious beliefs is a recipe not only for missionary activity but also for emotional turbulence and violence. In fact this promise of great rewards and threats of great punishment is the basis of most forms of conditioning, brain washing and hypnosis. It is the dominant strategy of all mind-control cults.
Conversion, Charity and Social Upliftment
Many missionaries claim today that they are not seeking converts but merely doing charity, trying to help the downtrodden in life. Given the mentality behind conversion efforts and its history, one can only greet that statement with skepticism, though in a few isolated instances it may be true. The very missionaries that only recently used colonial governments and armies to their advantage cannot be regarded as suddenly without any overt conversion motivations.
However, if missionaries simply want to bring about social upliftment, then why don't they just open up a hospital or school and give up all the religious trappings about it. As long as the religious ornaments are there in these charitable institutions they are still seeking converts. Once you give your charity or social work a religious guise, the conversion motivation must be there and communal disharmony is likely to be promoted even by your charities.
If missionaries want to uplift society they can do that through education or economic help on a secular level. There is no need to bring religion into it. That is how societies have uplifted themselves throughout the world, whether it is the United States or Japan. It was not religious charity that raised up these countries economically. In fact bringing religion into social upliftment confuses the issue. Converting people to an exclusive creed doesn't eradicate poverty or disease, much less promote the cause of religious harmony.
The Philippines, the most predominant and oldest Christian country in Asia, is one of the poorest countries in the region. Conversion to Christianity did not raise the country economically. Central and South America, which are much more staunchly Catholic and religious and North America, are also much poorer and have a lower level of education. In fact the more evangelic and orthodox forms of Christianity are more popular in poorer and less educated groups in the West. Fundamentalist Christianity is more common in America with farmers and those who didn't go to college. Educated people in the West are less likely to be staunch Christians, and many of them look to Eastern religions for spiritual guidance.
In India Christians claim that by eradicating the caste system they are helping people and raising them up socially. They could do this easier by helping reform Hindu society rather than by trying to destroy or change the religion. Clearly they are using, if not promoting caste-differences as a conversion strategy. Christian cultures still have their class and other social inequalities, particularly in Central and South America, but Christians don't see that the religion has to be changed in order to get rid of these.
The desire to help people in terms of social upliftment and the desire to change their religion are clearly not the same and can be contradictory. Changing a person's religion may not help them in terms of health, education, or economics.
A similar argument is that the conversion effort is part of service to humanity, that the missionary is motivated by love of humanity. This is also questionable. If you are motivated by love of humanity you will help people regardless of their religious background. You will try to help people in a practical way rather than aim at getting them to embrace your religious belief. You will also love their religion, even if it is an aborigine worshipping a stone. You will give unconditional love to people, which is not the love of Jesus or the church but universal love. You will not condemn any person to hell for not following your particular belief. You will not interfere with that person's religious motivation and seek to convert him to your belief. You will honor the Divine in that person and in his belief.
Such social work born of love is hardly to be found in missionary Christianity, though it likes to pretend that this is the motivation. If one were truly motivated by love of humanity and the need to serve humanity, one would not promote massive conversion agendas. In fact one would regard such practices as inhumane, which they are.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11886&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Missionary Activity & Secularism : Pope's Visit
- David Frawley
Secularism is based upon a separation of church and state, removing religious control over the government. It arose to counter the influence of the church on politics and the religious sanction given to kings and their armies during the Middle Ages. Secularism grants freedom of religion to all citizens. It recognizes that many different religions exist and that people should be free to follow any or none of these. It regards differences in religion like those of race, language or culture, as incidental more than fundamental, and as involving the private life rather than the political sphere.
Opposite to secularism, both in ideas and in practice, is missionary activity, which is the attempt to convert the world to a single religious belief. Starting from the Christian takeover of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, European governments have used their influence to promote the conversion process. In time this gave rise to the Inquisition and to colonial efforts to convert native peoples. It resulted in a history of violence and genocide on a global scale that literally devastated the populations of entire continents. Missionaries used the political and military might of Christian states to discredit other religious beliefs, conquer other religious groups and destroy their holy places.
While modern secular Western states have removed overt religious influences from their governments, they have not removed the influence of religion altogether. In a democratic society any group that can produce votes becomes valuable. Western political leaders cultivate good relations with Western religious leaders in order to access their political goodwill.
Western governments today favor their majority religions in foreign affairs. It is obvious to see how much more sensitive Western Christian countries are to the welfare of the Christian community overseas than they are to the welfare of the non-Christian community. Religious oppression of Christians is quickly highlighted in the Western media, while oppression of non-Christians is seldom regarded as newsworthy. The entire history of Christian conversion activity is forgotten, as if the missionaries were only charity workers with no overt religious agenda!
A good example is Robert A. Seiple, the American ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom. Is the man a seasoned diplomat, sensitive to other cultures and religions, as would be expected for the post? No, he was for eleven years the head of World Vision, the largest privately funded relief and development organization in the world, which is a Christian charity and connected to various missionary activities.
Seiple was formerly President of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a Christian missionary, which on the Protestant side is dominated by the Baptists. A person with such a background is inappropriate for the role that he has been given, which would be like giving it to a Catholic priest. It reflects an American religious bias not a diplomatic sensitivity and objectivity. Not surprisingly, his report on religious freedom in the world highlights oppression of Christians but ignores oppression perpetrated by Christians, as if Christian groups were entirely innocent of any wrong doing anywhere!
Even the secular West will bow to religious influences when it deems necessary. The result is that missionary activity, which was the main arm of the religious state, is learning to hide itself under the guise of modern secularism, working to subvert it from behind the scenes now that its overt control is a thing of the past.
Let us not forget its history. Missionary activity first arose in a religious state as its main means of expansion. Missionary activity per se is the extension of a medieval state attitude - that there is only one true religion like only one true king. It has had a long alliance with colonialism and with racism, with colonial armies marching with priests and friars, denigrating non-White religions as pagan and barbaric.
Missionary activity, therefore, is the very denial of secularism, which it has regarded as its enemy. The missionary movement holds that only one religion is true for humanity. It creates funds and personnel to convert the world to the one true faith. It targets the poor and uneducated who are vulnerable to favors. It does not work through reason or through friendly debate but through every sort of persuasion and intimidation, friendly or unfriendly.
Secularism and Missionary Activity in the New World Order
The problem for new democracies of the post-colonial era like India is that foreign missionaries use the very freedom of a secular state to promote their anti-secular agendas. A free state means that missionary activity is allowed and that conversion is tolerated. In a colonial state, one religion, that of the foreign rulers was favored at the expense of the others. In a free state, Western missionary religions can use the greater wealth of Western countries, which perpetuates their advantage. They also manipulate the Western dominated world media for their cause. For this reason, a Hindu Swami in India is ill equipped in terms of money and media facing Christian missionary forces in his own country. He is dealing with the multi-national conversion business that has tremendous resources at its disposal, to use with little scrutiny or accountability.
The very groups that denied or limited religious freedom during their colonial rule now want to make sure that religious freedom is maintained in their former colonies, not because they honor diversity in religion, but to maintain their conversion efforts and to sustain the minorities that they carved out by their missionary activity. Such an action is hypocritical to say the least. It doesn't represent a change of heart by the missionaries. It is not a sign of their new secularism but merely a convenient way to keep their agendas going in the changing world order.
Christianity is today, and has historically been, an anti-secular religion. Christian churches may tolerate the laws of living in secular countries, but they have not yet adopted a secular acceptance that many religious and spiritual paths can be valid and that no one religion has the last word. One could argue that any religion based upon an exclusive belief, thinking that only its religion, bible, prophet or savior is true, is inherently anti-secular.
Islam is more obviously anti-secular than Christianity because it generally has no separation of church and state. Christianity was compromised by a resurgence of earlier Greco-Roman pagan ideas of pluralism and democracy, but though softened, has still not given up its goal of converting the world. Christianity needs to go forward with its reformation by giving up its exclusivism and apologizing for its history of intolerance. The Islamic world needs a similar reformation to begin as it stands much where Christianity was at the end of the Middle Ages, still harshly controlling the minds and lives of its people and preventing any religious diversity from arising.
The Pope's Visit
The Pope's upcoming visit to India is a product of the same old anti-secular and intolerant Christian conversion agenda, which has not fundamentally changed throughout the centuries. The Pope can be described, though perhaps unflatteringly, as a Christian chauvinist leader encouraging massive conversion efforts to eliminate non-Christian beliefs. He is not a bringer of peace but a destroyer of culture. The Pope has never stated that any other religion is as good as Christianity. He has never said that Jesus is not the only Son of God. He has never said that salvation can come from outside the church or apart from Jesus. He has made statements of brotherhood, peace and tolerance but has not removed the barrier of religious intolerance and exclusivity that upholds these.
All Hindus, including the so-called fundamentalists, have not made such chauvinistic statements as the Pope. They recognize the existence of many religions and of many paths. They are not promoting the idea that Hinduism alone is the true path and that non-Hindus must go to hell. They are not insisting that everyone in the world become a Hindu. They are not asking everyone to bow to Kailash or Kashi.
Recently Ashok Singhal, head of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), asked the Pope to "announce that Christianity is one of the ways that can lead to salvation and not that Christianity is the only way to salvation." The newspapers called Singhal a "hardline" Hindu leader but did not accuse the Pope of being rigid in his views. Yet Singhal accepts a pluralism to religion and salvation but the Pope does not. In terms of ordinary religious discourse Singhal has more liberal views than the Pope does but he is called a hardliner because he is questioning the missionary process! A very statement asking the Pope to affirm religious tolerance is itself styled intolerant!
In other words, Hindus should tolerate the effort to convert them but it is intolerant for Hindus to question the motives or ideas of those who denigrate their religion. That such statements are accepted in the modern media shows how deep-seated the anti-Hindu and pro-missionary bias is.
Make no mistake about it. The Pope is not a friend of Hindus. His visit is organized to promote his evangelization activities, his targeting Hindu India for Christian conversion. The Pope wants to convert Hindu India to Christianity. He would be happy if all Hindu temples were abandoned in favor of churches. He would be happy if all the swamis, sadhus and yogis either became Christian priests or disappeared altogether. He has no praise for a Ramana Maharshi, a Sri Aurobindo, a Ramakrishna, or a Shankaracharya. He does not honor the Vedas and the Gita like the Bible. He does not allow pujas to the Gods or the chanting of Om in churches. He has nowhere apologized for the use of the Inquisition in India or elsewhere. He has nowhere said that Hindus won't go to hell. He may claim to honor India's spiritual traditions but not to the extent that it requires him giving up his efforts to convert Hindus.
Let all Hindus therefore ask the Pope to say that he respects Hinduism, that Hinduism can also lead people to the ultimate goal of life, and that Catholic efforts to convert Hindus are a mistake. Let the Pope repeat the mantra of samadharma samabhava, that all dharmic teachings are in accord, and ekamsad vipra bahudha vadanti, that the enlightened seers declare the One Truth in various ways.
Let the Pope have a conference in Rome and bring the main Hindu religious leaders to dialogue with Catholic leaders on the nature of God, consciousness, the universe and immortality. Let such dialogue occur above board, out in the open and with the educated people in the field, rather than a secretive Christian targeting of poor Hindus. This would be the correct procedure if discovery of truth was the goal of such encounters.
If the Pope will not do these things then let us call him an intolerant and chauvinistic religious fundamentalist, which is what such behavior would be called in a Hindu. And let Hindus stop bowing out of respect to the Pope, prostrating to a religious leader who does not respect their religion, who is in fact plotting its downfall.
It is time for Hindus to take the offensive on religious tolerance and freedom, even if it means confronting the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has been in India for centuries. There is no reason why Catholic leaders can't appreciate the Vedas, Upanishads or modern Hindu teachers as having insights as great as those of Jesus. And this should be done starting with the Pope, not with some Indian priest that has no real power in the church or influence outside of India.
Let the Christians in India not appeal to Hindu tolerance but show their own tolerance and acceptance of other faiths by saying that though we believe in Christ we also accept Rama, Krishna and Buddha as sons of God. Let them declare a unity of religions that includes Hinduism and Buddhism as true faiths and does not require placing Jesus at the top for everyone. While Christians in India are unlikely to do this, the challenge for them to do so is bound to impact on their community and cause a deeper introspection.
As long as we hold that only one religion is true, that it must convert the world, and that other religions must be false we are not good citizens with respect for all, much less secular people. We are promoting an agenda of intolerance and violence that must cause conflict and suffering, even if we are doing so in the name of God. If we truly honor the Divine, we will recognize the Divine Self in all and will afford each individual their own perspective on truth and their own search for enlightenment, not to be circumscribed according to a church or a creed. If the West is so modern and enlightened it should stop exporting its intolerant medieval religions and become open to the great wisdom of the yogis and sadhus of India. Then a real basis for religious tolerance and spiritual growth could occur without obstruction.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11893&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1
Vedacharya from the West (Interview)
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 30, 2000
David Frawley, a grand-disciple of Ramana Maharishi, is widely acknowledged as a Vedacharya. Also known as Vamadeva Shastri, he was conferred the title of `Pandit' for his pioneering research work in Vedic studies, yoga, ayurveda and jyotish in his institute in New Mexico, USA. Author of several books on Hinduism, his writings seek to contrast the generally flippant and dry academic presentations of western Indologists. During a recent lecture-tour of India, David Frawley spoke to Gaurav Raina:
Q: What do you find unique about India and Hinduism?
A: India is a greatly favoured land in terms of cosmic beneficence according to the Vaastu aspect of its geographical location. The Himalayas, or Meru Parvat, oversee the whole of India in the likeness of the prime sahasrara chakra in the human body. The tapas of so many yogis and mystics and the timely appearance of avataras and saints over thousands of years have greatly accentuated this spiritual potency. The Hindu religion is like a gigantic banyan tree with its refreshing, ever ramifying growth, change and variegation, which is a contrast to Western religion as a monolithic pillar.
In the Indian ethos the pursuit of consciousness has traditionally been given priority over the need to understand the visible material world. There are various yogic systems for realising this higher consciousness. There is also evidence of a yogic methodology in India's every sphere of learned activity such as in music, dance, poetry, architecture, astronomy and medicine.
Q: Hinduism comprises of a multiplicity of sects and philosophies. Do you think such diversity is a cause for confusion ?
A: The Indian tradition is pluralistic and has always offered freedom of worshipping the divine in the name and form of one's choice and according to one's individual samskaras. It is pluralistic both at the level of religious practices as well as philosophical teachings. For this reason we find more religions inside Hinduism than among all of the world's religions put together.
Pluralism means freedom. It means that we should accept religious differences as a fact of life, like other natural variations. We need freedom to arrive at the truth. The pursuit of dharma, the urge for self-realisation and desire for liberation are common to all paths. Rather than as a cause for confusion, I see Indian pluralism as constructively facilitating an individual's spiritual quest.
Q: Can one be rational and scientific and yet be religious and spiritual?
A: Unlike in the West, Indian sages never perceived science and religion as incompatible. Religion was viewed mainly as a way of knowledge -- vidya or veda, as a way of seeing, a philosophy. Knowledge is of two types. Apara vidya or lower knowledge is necessary for our practical functioning in life and deals with the outer world of name, form and causation. The second, para or higher knowledge is concerned with consciousness and the Absolute Reality.
Indian sages regarded higher knowledge as more important, but did not regard lower or outer knowledge as wrong or disharmonious. The science versus religion dichotomy that became dominant in Europe in the nineteenth century, never really existed in classical India. The Indian model therefore seeks to resolve rather than perpetuate the Western conflict between an immoral science versus an irrational religion. Even the different systems of philosophy in India were more like scientific theories meant to be debated rationally or explored and experienced through meditation. Religion can thus be seen as a higher form of science. Anyone who systematically practices prescribed ritual methods, meditation procedures and mantras, can experience higher states of consciousness and thereby validate his or her religious belief.
Q: Why are the ancient scriptures today seen by many as mythical and fantastic?
A: The Vedas are composed in an ancient language of mantra, myth and symbol and utilise a rich poetic and imagistic expression. The modern mind being conditioned by contemporary thought and language lacks the necessary empathy and insight into the ancient texts. What we tend to regard as mythological in the puranas and itihasas was never meant to portray the actual state of things in time and space. These texts include not just the visible world in their scope but also the invisible worlds belonging to subtle and astral dimensions of existence.
If there are some apparent chronological inaccuracies in the scriptures, it is because sacred history takes into account the relationship between the temporal and the eternal and is less concerned with the actual dates of various events. This is in sharp contrast to the linear view of time held by contemporary historians who are ignorant of the relationship of time with the eternal. We should not approach the scriptures from the primarily academic standpoint of a historian, archaeologist or linguist; we should exercise an intuitive and meditative insight.
Q: You are a former Catholic. What is your view of the recent incidents of violence against the Indian Christian community?
A: I do not consider the missionary form of Christianity an enlightened religion. Conversion activity is an assault on intellectual freedom and destroys native cultures as we have seen in Asia, Africa and the Americas. It is more like a sales gimmick which targets the poor and uneducated. Then there is also the history of the missionaries having sub-served European colonisers by providing a justification for their brutalities. The Catholic Church chose to be silent on the excesses of the Nazis and its tacit understanding with Mussolini, and more recently with Chile's Pinochet, are no secret.
Violence against Christians has been exaggerated a great deal by the Western media. Such backlashes have occurred throughout history all over the world. Missionary zeal tends to offend the religious sensibilities of people by denouncing their native religions as false and pagan.
Q: To what extent are India and Indian culture misrepresented in the Western media?
A: Firstly India is greatly under represented in the Western media. Whatever little news we have emphasises poverty, social problems, human rights abuses and alarmist reports of military and nuclear policies. The entertainment and advertising aspect of the media is on the other extreme and treats everything Indian as ``exotic and erotic''.
Indians have failed to learn the lessons of effective media articulation. Hindu organisations have been labelled fundamentalist and often end up with a far worse image than they deserve. The Indian government too has failed to promote Indian culture and to lobby its case with the Western governments. In fact India's gurus have done much a better job than its politicians and diplomats, in projecting the country's image abroad.
I am concerned at the absence of a dharmic intelligentsia in this country. It is imperative that Indians free themselves from colonial, Marxist and missionary distortions of their culture. They need to stop playing apologist for the genuine cultural and spiritual aspirations of their people. They should reverse their blind and obsequious adulation of the West. The great spiritual traditions of India will be lost if its intellectual kshatriyas fail to wake up to the call of the information war and lay siege to the false apostles of religious freedom.
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Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11894&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
An American discovers the Vedas
Author : David Frawley
Publication : First Jagtik Rhugved Parishad
Date : December 27, 1996
Why would an American dedicate his life to studying the ancient
Vedas of India? And how could an American, coming from such a
different background, find a deep affinity with the Vedic
teachings, which most Hindus today themselves don't even relate to?
How did such a person get started in studying the Vedas? In the
modern world everyone, including Hindus, appears to be trying to
adopt Western culture with its scientific and technological
advances and economic affluence. Why would a person go the other
direction and look to the East, particularly when it was not a
matter of academic study, nor does it promise any material reward?
As I have written many books and articles on the Vedas and
travelled through America and India over the past few years
promoting Vedic knowledge, I am often asked such questions,
particularly by Indo-Americans, who usually do not have the time
and are lacking in the motivation to examine their own tradition.
Confronted with an American dedicated to the Vedas, Hindus find me
not only an anomaly but also a question mark on what they
themselves may be doing. Sometimes they find it an inspiration to
re-examine their own roots.
This is a difficult query to try to answer. I will begin by
relating something of my life. There is really nothing in my
family or educational background that might explain my connection
with the Vedas or even India. I was the second of a family of ten
children, born in a small city in Wisconsin in the Midwest in 1950.
Both my parents came from strict Catholic backgrounds and were
raised on dairy farms. One of my uncles in fact was a priest and
missionary to South America (which example my mother wanted me
personally to follow).
My parents, education was minimal. My mother did not even go to
high school. My father went to college only briefly, and served in
the army for several years. Though they were both open minded
people they never oriented me in the direction of India or anything
mystical.
I myself went to Catholic school until the fifth grade (age ten).
We were taught to look on Protestants with suspicion. Asia was like
another world, a land of backward, primititive people needing
conversion. After much moving about, as my father was a realtor,
we finally settled down in Denver, Colorado. There, owing to the
financial burden of so many children, we switched to public school
which brought us out of the shell of Catholic beliefs. Yet public
schools had no real mention of India either, except as a big
country in Asia suffering from poverty and overpopulation.
I had an inquisitive mind as a child and began developing my own
studies outside of school, perhaps because my mother encouraged me
in such things. I had an interest in geography since seven or eight
years of age and became aware that there was much more to the world
than America. Foreign lands of all types fascinated me. I began
reading various books starting with science and history, which
broadened my view of life and caused me to question my Catholic
upbringing and its dogma. I found the ideas of modern astronomy
with the vastness of the universe and the relativity of time and
space to be much more intriguing than Catholic views of creation.
I left the Catholic church at the age of fourteen. This came not
only from the clash between the church and modem science, but from
having read history and discovered that the church often stood for
political oppression and social exploitation, not anything truly
holy I felt that if there was a God, it was an impersonal reality,
not a personal God with his own whims, judgements and partialities.
Yet though I left the church, I still felt that there was a
spiritual reality in life, which I found in nature, particularly in
the mountains which I loved, This spiritual reality was an inner
experience quite divorced from churches and creeds.
By the time of high school my own studies were of more interest
than classes in school. I had a kind of intellectual awakening when
about the age of sixteen which caused me to study European
literature and philosophy, particularly symbolic poets and
existential philosophers. I felt that American culture was very
superficial compared to the European. Yet examining the mystical
and poetic sides of the European mind, I also eventually found them
to be lacking. I saw that the great intellectuals and artists of
the West, the geniuses who were regarded as the highest human
types, were still plagued with doubt, depression and uncertainty.
They obviously had not found any lasting peace or ultimate truth.
About the same time, as a secondary interest I began examining the
Eastern spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Some
of this came as part of the sixties counterculture movement, which
included a fascination with Eastern gurus and teachings, but much
of it was the product of my own independent and generally more
philosophical search. Between these teachings I found a common
truth-consciousness as the supreme reality and meditation as the
way to realize that. Yet it was among the teachings of Yoga and
Vedanta that I found the views which most resonated with my inner
being, particular the sense of the supreme Self (Atman) and pure
Existence (Brahman) as the highest truth. For example, I remember
walking home from high school one day and looking up at the blue
sky and realizing that it was the presence of Krishna, who
represented the cosmic power of bliss. This was before
encountering the Hare Krishna movement and was not produced by any
outer influences.
After high school I attended a local college briefly, in which I
found little to interest me. I remember taking a class on
Cosmology and Metaphysics, which was actually in the graduate
studies department. I thought the class might have something
mystical in it. Instead it was mainly a science class, with a few
cosmological speculations thrown in, generally of a materialistic
nature. The teacher could not even decide whether there was any
spiritual reality or not. This caused me to feel that the academic
world had no capacity to answer the real questions of life. Hence
I abandoned college after less than a semester.
About this time I also came into contact with local spiritual
teachers and yoga groups in Denver, through which I learned of
various gurus and practices, including yoga and meditation, which I
began to do on a regular basis. A couple of years later I
travelled to California and visited many of the spiritual groups
based in America. I had more interest in India itself and teachings
that were more traditional. I had a serious bent of mind and did
not feel satisfied with these groups which were largely social
movements or cults centered around one person, in which one's
personal relationship with the teacher generally outweighed any
real interest in spiritual studies. I have always distrusted mass
movements and fads of all types, including the pop spirituality
that has developed in the West.
I came to learn of the teachings of great modem Hindu gurus of
India most notably Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Anandamayi Ma, and
Sri Aurobindo, Their I felt something truly solid and real. As
several of these figures had already passed away, I wrote to their
centres in India and developed contact with some of their living
disciples. Most notably I corresponded with Anandamayi Ma for
several years, who was still alive at the time. But more so than
any particular teacher the Vedantic teaching interested me,
particularly the Upanishads, which appeared as the ideal
combination of spiritual philosophy and poetry. I felt in them the
core teaching that I was looking for in all spiritual teachings.
This led me to the works of Shankaracharya, the great commentator
on the Upanishads according to the system of Advaita Vedanta. The
Advaitic view of the pure unity of truth and the illusory nature of
the world, agreed with my experience of life through the political
and social turbulence of the late sixties and early seventies. Yet
I was also drawn towards the earlier Vedas and their Mysterious
mantras, with which most Vedantic teachers have little concern. I
had a sense of things ancient and wanted to know the earliest
teachings of humanity. The idea of things ancient rishis and seers
appealed to me and I wanted to know who they were.
I also had a poetic bent of mind and wrote poetry of a mystical and
symbolic type since I was sixteen. I used images of the dawn and
the night, fire, the wind, and the sun, along with gods and
goddesses, with the forces of nature appearing as powers of both
the human and cosmic mind in their interplay. Later I found that
these same images predominated in the Vedas themselves.
Of the great modern yogis, Sri Aurobindo was the greatest poet, and
so naturally his work had a certain appeal to me on this level. The
beginning of the chapters in his book the Life Divine contained
various Vedic quotes, particularly from the Rig Veda, which I found
to be particularly inspiring. I noted in a list of his books that
he had several on the Vedas themselves. This aroused my interest
in the Vedas and I ordered these books and studied them with great
interest, meditating carefully upon them.
My encounters with the Vedas through these books were not mere
intellectual experiences. They represented a contact with the
Divine Word, Vak or the Divine Speech, the Goddess Sarasvati. I
felt the presence of the Vedic Dawn, like the Dawn of humanity, the
beginning. of creation, and the building of a new world for the
Divine. This began my study of the Vedas, which was rooted in
poetry with a background of Vedanta.
Yet I was not satisfied in simply following Sri Aurobindo's
interpretation. I wanted to know what the Vedic rishis themselves
saw and felt. A few years later when I was twenty-seven, having
gone through most of what was available in English on the Vedas, I
decided to look at the Vedas and Upanishads in the original
Sanskrit. As there were no teachers available to me, as I was then
living in a remote town in Northern California, I started with the
Sanskrit. texts and a Sanskrit grammar book and began trying to
figure out the language myself, starting with the oldest Rig Veda
itself. It was a rather unusual and haphazard way to learn
Sanskrit, starting with the most difficult and oldest part of the
language, but somehow it worked.
The Vedic language gradually unfolded its meaning through a study
of the images, sounds and roots upon which the language was based.
I felt an inner affinity with the teaching so that I did not find
the texts to be difficult, though the grammar was often cumbersome.
I soon discovered that the interpretations generally accepted for
the older Vedas-not only those done by modern Western scholars but
the traditional school of Sayana-as Aurobindo had noted, were
indeed erroneous. The result of this research was that I produced a
small volume on the Upanishads and the Vedas. It traced back the
Vendantic teaching of the universal Self found in the Upanishads to
an origin in an earlier and more powerful Vedic vision. This was
opposite the way it is usually explained, which is to view the
Upanishads as exalted philosophy developing from a crude Vedic
ritualistic base.
A friend of mine, who had recently become a disciple of M.P. Pandit
of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, recommended me to visit him during an
upcoming trip of his to America. I knew that if anyone would
understand what I was doing it would be him, as Pandit had done
many books on the Vedas and Upanishads, with similar ideas.
I explained my views to him that the Vedas contained a science of
Self realization hidden in their teaching, from their very first
mantra to the Divine Fire (Agni). He was happy to know of my work
and told me that he would help publish it in India. He encouraged
me to follow out my studies, which he explained was a kind of
Divine mission given to me.
I told him that I was not academically trained, nor had I yet
studied in India, and that my work was merely personal and never
intended for publication. I said that I did not feel qualified to
comment on the Vedas in a public way He replied that it was good
that I Wasn't academically trained, that it gave me a direct and
independent insight, so that I would not just merely repeat the
same errors as other scholars. He told me to trust my vision. If
I had such insights and had produced such work it was for a purpose
and should not be limited to my own private study
Naturally this moved me to continue my Vedic work with more effort
and dedication. I worked on the Rig Veda itself and in four months
had produced a five hundred page book on the Vedas, which I mailed
to Pandit and he began serializing in World Union and other
publications of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
I began sending articles out to other publications in India as
well, including to the ashram publications of Ramana Maharshi and
Anandamayi Ma, as well as to Motilal Banarsidass, the main
publisher of Indological books and these articles were almost
invariably published, which additionally encouraged me to go
further. Thus my Vedic work began spontaneously and independently I
sort of naturally fell into it. I never had a plan to do so. And
in retrospect it would appear to be a ludicrous thing to attempt,
particularly by someone at my age and background working largely on
his own.
After developing this foundation I gained many contacts and much
support for my work throughout the world, though it took over ten
years to get it recognized in a broader way. I have since taken
many trips to India and studied and discussed the Vedas with many
teachers, which would require separate stories to relate. I have
worked with Ayurveda and Vedic astrology as well, expanding the
range of my original Vedic research. But the basic core of my
Vedic views has not changed.
What was it that I discovered in the Vedas? What made the Vedas
more important to me than other spiritual or intellectual
teachings? It was not just philosophy or poetry of an exalted
nature. Nor was it the later portion of the Vedas alone, the
Upanishads that drew my interest. It was the most ancient Rig Veda
itself and its wealth of mantras and symbols. The Rig Veda for me
is the doorway to mind of the rishis, to the cosmic mind itself,
the heart of creation. The Vedic vision is a universal mantric
knowledge that integrates all aspects of human knowledge including
yoga, philosophy, poetry, psychology, mythology and ritual. The
Vedas are like an ongoing explosion of insights, with every sort of
color and form, merging ultimately into a pure lightning
illumination that has no end.
For me the Vedas are a living teaching and the Vedic rishis are
living teachers. There is no gap of time or culture between us and
the Vedas. The Vedas transcend time. Nor do I see the Vedas as
merely Indian; they are the heritage of the greater spiritual
humanity from which we have fallen and to which we must return.
The Vedas are part of us or, to be more accurate, we are part of
the Vedas. They are the very fabric of the cosmic intelligence
that works inside us and in all the universe upholding the great
beauty and harmony of life. The Vedas exist at the core of all
real seeking to connect with truth through the great forces of
nature and consciousness, whether it is in the form of Native
American, Ancient Creek, Egyptian, or even modem scientific
approaches. In that connecting to the universal being and its
powers lies the Vedas, and there the Vedas must eventually be
found. The Vedas are not merely particular books-though the Vedic
texts we do have are authentic-but are the very vibrations of the
Divine Word, the Primal Sound, the voice of original reality.
I don't find the Vedic mantras to be hard to understand. What
could be more obvious than the dawn and the sun that rises every
day? Yet the dawn and the sun are not outer realities, they are
outer symbols, intimations of an inner reality of enlightenment and
illumination that is our true home. The Vedas are the language of
nature not as outer phenomena but as a poetry of the spirit, which
is the real meaning and beauty of creation. To me what is hard to
understand is not the Vedas but the modern world with its
technology that alienates us from nature, its commercialism that
warps our minds, its endless desires and sensations, its artificial
dogmas and ideologies, compared to which the Vedic world is indeed
paradise.
The final answer as to my connection with the Vedas perhaps goes
back to the truth of karma and rebirth. There is really no reason
why someone of my background would take to this Vedic work and be
able to go anywhere with it. The only answer is the samskaras, the
impressions from previous births. This was a knowledge that came
with me, that I was born with, the result of a previous life which
I have since come to remember in various aspects. For example,
when I received my first copies the Vedas in Sanskrit it was not
something ancient or foreign that I saw but an old friend and
companion.
Nor do I approach the Vedas from an academic or even personal
perspective. To approach the Vedas I first put my mind into a
silent state and let the teaching unfold itself without the
interference's of my own though there is not done through a mental
effort, though there is the effort of concentration. It is like
opening an irrigation channel to great river.
It is the great beauty of the Hindu religion that the impressions
it creates in us remain with us life after life. It is not a
religion limited to one life only, and its benefit carries through
all of our lives to the final liberation. In this regard the
impressions of the Vedas can be found in each one of us, if we know
how to look deeply for them. While unusual, I don't think what I
have experienced with the Vedas is unique. I think that many more
people, East and West, will come to it in the future. The Vedas
are not only. our most ancient past but the key to our global
future as well.
The message of my encounter with the Vedas to modem Hindus is this:
Your spiritual tradition is perhaps the greatest treasure of all
humanity. Please cherish it, sustain it, practise it and share it
with all. Whatever deficiencies may be in India or Hindu culture
economically or politically, should not get a person to forget the
power of the Vedas. The Vedas are like the sun. In them is the
key to all light, life and love for all the world, through which
all problems, individual or collective, can be solved. Let us not
forget our Vedic heritage.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11888&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Encountering Hindu Dharma
- Dr. David Frawley
David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is one of the most prominent Hindus of our times. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Vedas; he has also written on Ayurveda and other Vedic sciences. Most importantly, he has urged a return to the Vedas as a means to unlock the secrets of the scriptures that followed.
The present volume, his spiritual autobiography, is a fascinating narrative. He walks us through his own discovery of how the stereotype of Hinduism is false and provides us a portrait of living Hinduism as mirrored by his own life experience.
The following is excerpted from his latest publication "How I became a Hindu: My Discovery of Vedic Dharma".
Most of us are familiar with accounts of how a person has changed from one religion to another, becoming a Christian, Muslim or a Buddhist. In the modern world we are coming to recognize pluralism in religion just as in culture, ethnicity or language. There is no more only one true religion for everyone than there is only one true race, language or way of life.
However, going from Christianity to Hinduism is a rarer story, particularly for a Westerner, because Hinduism does not aim at conversion. Many people think that Hinduism does not take new members at all. It is also a more complex tale because Hinduism is not only a religion, but also a culture and, above all, a spiritual path. To enter into Hindu Dharma involves much more than a shift of belief or accepting a new prophet. To really understand Hindu Dharma requires taking on a new way of life, of which religion is only one aspect.
As a pluralistic system Hinduism does not require that we hold to a single belief or savior or give up an open pursuit of truth. This makes the change into Hinduism less dramatic, overt or disruptive to a person’s life and for that reason harder to trace. One does not need to make a statement of faith to become a Hindu but simply to recognize the importance of dharma.
In my case, it was not a question of a quick conversion like accepting Jesus as one’s personal savior or surrendering to Allah. Nor was it the result of a concerted effort to convert me by religious preachers speaking of sin or redemption, or of religious intellectuals trying to convince me of the ultimacy of their particular philosophy or theology. It was a personal decision that occurred as the result of a long quest, a finishing touch of an extensive inner search of many years.
The word ‘conversion’ is a misnomer and a term that I dislike. How can we be converted into anything? We can only be who we are. Understanding who we are is the Hindu and Vedic path. It is not about conversion but about self knowledge and about cosmic knowledge because who we are is linked to the entire universe. Hinduism is not about joining a church but about developing respect for all beings, not only humans but plants and animals as well. It is not about a particular holy book but about understanding our own minds and hearts. It is not about a savior but about discovering the Divine presence within us.
For most people in the West, becoming a Hindu resembles joining a tribal religion, a Native American or Native African belief with many gods and strange rituals, rather than converting to a creed or belief of an organized world religion. Discovering Hinduism is something primeval, a contacting of the deeper roots of nature, in which the spirit lies hidden not as an historical creed but as a mysterious and unnamable power. It is not about taking on another monotheistic belief but an entirely different connection with life and consciousness than our Western religions provide us.
The Hindu Tradition
Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world with a tradition going back to the very beginning of what we know of as history over five thousand years ago. It is the third largest of the world’s religions, with nearly a billion members or one sixth of humanity. It is the largest non-Biblical or, to use a pejorative term, Pagan tradition remaining today. As such it holds the keys to the pre-Christian beliefs that all cultures once had and many people still retain.
Hinduism is the world’s largest pluralistic tradition. It believes in many paths and recognizes many names and forms for God, both masculine and feminine. It contains many sages, many scriptures and many ways to know God. Its emphasis is not on mere belief as constituting salvation but on union with the Divine as the true goal of life.
Hinduism is a culture containing its own detailed traditions of philosophy, medicine, science, art, music and literature that are quite old, venerable and intricate. It is the foundation of Indian culture that is rooted in the Sanskrit language which first arose as Hinduism’s sacred language. Most importantly, Hinduism is a great spiritual path with Yogic traditions of meditation, devotion and insight, in which religion in the outer sense of ritual and prayer is only secondary. Its wealth of teachings on mantra, meditation, prana, kundalini, chakras and Self-realization is perhaps unparalleled in the world.
Because of its cultural and spiritual sides some people say that Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. Yet though it is a way of life Hinduism is also a religion in the sense that it teaches about God and the soul, karma and liberation, death and immortality. It has its holy books, temples, pilgrimage sites, and monastic orders like other major world religions.
Hindus have a deep faith in their religion and its traditions. Thousands if not millions of Hindus have died for their religion in the many holy wars that have targeted them over the last more than a thousand years. They refused to convert even when faced with threats of death and torture. Both Islam and Christianity found converting Hindus to be particularly difficult, not because Hindus responded to assaults on their religion with force, but because their faith in their own religion and its great yogis was unshakeable.
The Western mind characteristically downplays Hinduism's importance as a religion. In many contemporary studies of world religions Hinduism is left out altogether. Because it has no overriding one God, single historical founder, or set creed, Hinduism is looked upon as a disorganized collection of cults. Few Westerners know what Hinduism is, or what Hindus believe and practise. Most are content with negative stereotypes that make them feel comfortable about their own religions. If Hinduism is mentioned in the Western media it is relative to disasters, conflicts or backward social customs. It is the one religion that is still politically correct to denigrate, if not belittle.
There is also a general impression that Hinduism is a closed, ethnic or casteist creed and therefore not a true world religion. This is strange because historically Hinduism spread throughout South Asia and specific ways of becoming a Hindu are described in many Hindu teachings. Hinduism could not have spread so far if it was not expansive in bringing in new members.
Many Hindus seem to confirm these ideas. A number of Hindu teachers say that they will make a Christian a better Christian or a Muslim a better Muslim, as if Hinduism had nothing better or unique to offer. They often apologize about being Hindus when asked about their religion. They say, “Yes I am a Hindu, but I accept all other religions as well,’’ which includes religions that do not accept Hinduism!
Some Hindu temples, particularly in South India, will not allow Westerners, that is people of lighter skin color, to enter even if they have already formally become Hindus. Other Hindus simply don’t know how to communicate their tradition. The result is that the more universal or liberal aspects of Hinduism are forgotten. Or they go by another name in the West as Yoga, Vedanta or the teachings of a particular guru, in which case they can become popular all over the world as many modern spiritual movements have demonstrated.
Discovering Hinduism through the Vedas
In my case, I came to Hindu Dharma through the Vedas, the oldest tradition of Hinduism. This was an unusual way because the Vedas are so old that most Hindus know little about them, following instead more recent teachings. People in the West have no real idea what the Vedas are either. They see Hinduism through a few prominent images like Shiva, Krishna and the Goddess or a few famous modern gurus and are not aware of the older foundation of this multifarious tradition. Most Hindus know their particular sect or guru but have little recognition of their tradition and its long history.
Even Hindus who speak of the glory of the Vedas generally can’t explain Vedic teachings in detail. By the Vedas they usually mean the Upanishads or the Bhagavadgita, not the older Vedic texts. Western academia believes that the Vedas are only primitive poetry, tribal rites, or some strange babbling that arose from shamanic intoxications. At best, for the more spiritually enlightened, the Vedas are regarded as the lesser growths from which the greater unfoldments of Yoga and Vedanta arose or diverged.
For me, however, the Vedas became revealed not only as the source of the Hindu tradition but as the core spiritual wisdom of humanity. I could say that I am more a Vedic person, a Vedicist if you will, than simply a Hindu in the ordinary sense. This might better describe what I think to the modern world. But I can’t draw a line between Hinduism and Vedic Dharma, though some people might try to.
Overcoming Anti-Hindu Stereotypes
Hinduism is a religion with many Gods and Goddesses, with strange images of many heads, many arms or animal features. It teems with magic and mysticism, with gurus and godmen and their miraculous powers and enlightened insight. Much of this appears erotic or even violent to us, accustomed as we are to no images in religious worship or to only a few holy images like Christ on the cross or the Madonna with her child. Hinduism appears like a form of brainwashing or mind control, a cultish religion with little to offer a rational and humane Western mind.
This negative idea of Hinduism is shaped by missionary and colonial propaganda that we have been bombarding India with for centuries. Hindus continue to be among the main targets of world missionary efforts. The missionaries highlight the poor, sick and outcasts of India as needing salvation - the victims of a backward religion that we must help them escape from. We focus on the poverty of India today as the measure of the Hindu culture and religion, emphasizing, if not promoting social problems in India as a means of encouraging conversion. Were we to be conquered by a foreign power in the future and become a poor country, I wonder how many of our poor people would convert to the conqueror’s religion for material benefit just as we have long encouraged others to do?
It is amazing how little credit we in the West give to other cultures and religions such as the Hindu. Is our denigration of such different and ancient practices a reflection of a real perception or the shadow of our own arrogance? Why do we see our religions as necessarily better, though religion is hardly a real concern for most of us, or if it is a concern, is little more than a missionary cult, not any profound mysticism or philosophy?
We haven’t looked at Hinduism directly but have blindly followed a jaded vision of it. Hinduism is a free and open culture encouraging self-realization. Its diversity is born of this creativity, not of mere superstition. It is much more like the global culture we aspire to in our spiritual moments, rather than what we would look back upon as the mud from which we came.
Encountering Hinduism, therefore, means questioning our very idea of what religion should be. Hinduism is overflowing with variety and even contradiction. One could say that there are more religions inside of Hinduism than outside of it. Everything that we find in human religious activity from aboriginal rites to insights of pure consciousness is already there in the great plethora of Hindu teachings and practices.
Hinduism is not only connected with many Gods but with the formless absolute - the mysterious immutable Brahman beyond not only the Gods and Goddesses, but even beyond the Creator. It has a place for monotheism but regards monotheism as only one aspect of human religious experience, not the measure of it all.
Hinduism accepts all human approaches to religion, including its rejection, being willing to accept atheists into its fold. It does not try to circumscribe the abundance of life in any formula. It can even accept Christianity as another line of religious experience but not as the only one or necessarily the best.
Hinduism is not passed on by memorizing a creed, though it does have clearly defined and highly articulate teachings and philosophies. It is intimately connected with the Earth, nature, society and our daily activities from eating and breathing to sleeping and dying. Hindu Dharma sees itself not as man-made but as part of cosmic creation, an emanation of the cosmic mind. It aligns us with the cosmic religion that exists in all worlds and at all times. It is a way to link with the cosmic life, not a belief that we can retreat into like a shell or like a fortress.
The Question of Becoming a Hindu
Why would anyone, particularly a modern and educated person born in the West, want to become a Hindu, much less feel proud in calling himself one? How could a person find value in the primitive Vedic roots of this ambiguous religion? After all, the term Hindu connotes an ethnic religion mired in caste, idolatry, and the oppression of women. It appears anti-modern, inhumane, if not embarrassing for those who would follow it.
A forward thinking person could not take on such an identity, or could he? Is it a mere seeking of emotional security? Indeed, many intellectuals out of their own doubts, perhaps an inherent emotional weakness of the intellectual mind, have embraced regressive creeds. Intellectual apologists can be found for every strange ideology. Even Hitler and Stalin had them. So praise for an ideology or religion even by an intelligent person cannot be taken without skepticism.
At the same time we cannot ignore the fact that there is much in the world that goes beyond our current cultural preconceptions. We are beginning to appreciate the deeper meaning of myths and symbols, which Hinduism abounds in. We are gaining a new respect for meditation and Yoga to reach a higher awareness beyond the pale of religious dogma. We are recognizing the distortions born of Eurocentrism and Western materialism and revising our estimate of native cultures. That we might have to revise our ideas of Hinduism from colonial, missionary or Marxist perceptions is without doubt.
Yet even those who have embraced Indic spiritual traditions like Yoga generally find the appellation of being a Hindu to be unappealing. Being a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muslim seems more universal, even recognizing that these traditions may lack the diversity and richness of Hinduism. The term 'Hinduism' has become quite tainted and seldom connotes anything high or noble to the mass mind.
In addition many enlightened thinkers, particularly from India, believe that we should go beyond all outer identities whether cultural, national or religious. After all, our true nature is not Hindu, Christian, American, Russian, or anything else. We are all human beings with the same basic urges and inclinations. So why have any religious identity at all? The age of religions is over and we should be entering an age of spiritual search without boundaries.
Such thinking misses the point that Hinduism is not a credal religion based upon a person, institution or dogma. Hindu Dharma welcomes the spiritual search without boundaries. In fact, its great variety of teachings and methods provides a good foundation for a free individual search, which otherwise as an isolated effort may not go far, just as free inquiry in science benefits from a broad and open tradition of science to draw from. Most people in the world are not at the level of high spiritual practices or ready to renounce the world. They need religious teachings, including prayers and rituals to shape their work, social and family lives on an ethical and devotional level. But such religious teachings should be broad-based, containing something for all aspects of society and connected to the highest truth as well. Hindu Dharma provides all this in a powerful way.
We should not forget the facts of our individual existence and the organic connections of our lives. Each one of us has a certain life span. We live in a certain place and partake of a certain culture. We have our particular temperament and individual inclinations. All this shapes who we are and how we approach the higher Self. Only a rare soul can transcend the influence of time and even he or she must consider the forces of time, just as one cannot avoid being affected by the food that one eats.
The Yoga tradition considers that unless a person has purity in body and mind he cannot transcend them. Similarly, unless we have harmony in our culture and lifestyle it is very difficult to go beyond them. Unless we have a culture that supports the spiritual life, few will be able to pursue it. Culture is the soil on which we grow like a plant to open out into the boundless sky. We cannot ignore nurturing the soil of culture in our seeking of the unlimited beyond. Hinduism with its broad spiritual culture offers this ground on which to grow. It contains the abundant creative forces and variety of nature itself.
Unfortunately, certain religions hold that they alone are true and that other religions are unholy or dangerous. This divisive and exclusive idea of religion is the real problem, not religion per se, which is a necessary part of human culture. Yet this narrow idea of religion has so dominated the Western world that most people take it for granted as representing what religion really is, which makes Hinduism with all of its diversity seem almost incomprehensible.
Religion, in the original meaning of the word, means to link together. It should provide us tools for self-realization, enabling us to unfold our full divine potential. In this process we will probably need to follow a certain teaching, with specific disciplines and practices. We cannot follow all religions any more than we can eat all food or perform all jobs. We will probably also become part of a spiritual group or family. We cannot have everyone as a mother or father. We usually have our lineage and our transmission in the spiritual life, just as in other aspects of life. Indeed such connections are more important in the spiritual life because spirituality is more intimate, more interior and less capable of being transmitted in an outer, mechanical or mass-produced way than other aspects of culture.
Some people argue that the name Hindu is inappropriate because it is not traditional. After all the great Rishis and Yogis didn’t call themselves Hindus but simply spoke of truth and dharma. The reason for this lack of definition is that Hinduism is an open tradition. It is not defined versus any other as are Biblical traditions that reflect a dichotomy of Christian-pagan or Muslim-kafir. Many Hindus have only become conscious of being Hindu because of the negativity they have encountered from Christians and Muslims trying to convert them.
Sanatana Dharma or the universal dharma is a more correct term and reflects the broader basis of the Hindu tradition. Unfortunately, it is cumbersome and unfamiliar. The terms “dharmic” and “native” traditions are also helpful because Hinduism grows out of the land and is connected with life itself. But Hinduism is the convenient term, whatever limitations may be associated with it. So we must define it in an appropriate manner. This is to face our own prejudices about Hinduism, which are probably more deep-seated than we would think. Why should we object to the term Hindu for such a broad tradition, while accepting the names for much narrower religions?
This prejudice against the Hindu religion reflects a built-in prejudice against non-Biblical beliefs. The Western pattern of religion as one true faith, along with a missionary effort, is used as the standard for all proper religion. Missionary aggression is associated with universality in belief, while tolerant religions that see no need to convert the world are condemned as merely ethnic or tribal beliefs.
Buddhism is more respected than Hinduism in the West because it at least has the one historical Buddha to relate to and a more homogenous and missionary type tradition. Buddhism can be placed in the Western model of religion, but without a Creator. Hinduism, on the other hand, calls up all our misconceptions about religion. For that reason it is a good place to enlarge our views and gain a greater understanding of our global religious heritage, most of which does not lie in Western monotheism.
In my case I came to Hindu Dharma after an earlier exploration of Western intellectual thought and world mystical traditions, a long practice of Yoga and Vedanta and a deep examination of the Vedas. In the process I came into contact with diverse aspects of Hindu society and with Hindu teachers that few Westerners have access to, taking me far beyond the range of the usual perceptions and misconceptions about the subject. Such direct experience, which was often quite different than what I had expected or was told would be the case, changed my views and brought me to my current position. Hopefully my story can help others change from taking Hinduism as something primitive to understanding the beauty of this great spiritual tradition that may best represent our spiritual heritage as a species.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11887&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
One truth, different paths
- Dr. David Frawley
India possesses a great indigenous civilization dating back to 7000 BC, such as recent archaeological discoveries at Mehrgarh clearly reveal. It had the most extensive urban culture in the world in the third millennium BCE with the many cities of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers.
When the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame dried up in the second millennium BCE, the culture shifted east to the more certain rivers of the Gangetic plain, which became the dominant region of the subcontinent. Gone is the old idea of the Aryan invasion and an outside basis for Indian culture. In its place is the continuity of a civilization and its literature going back to the earliest period of history. Based on this reclamation of its glorious past India can now look to the future as the broadest and most enduring culture on the planet.
The oldest Indian text and perhaps the oldest book in the world, the Rig Veda boldly proclaims: "That which is the One Truth the seers teach in many different ways" (Rig Veda I.164.46), and "May noble aspirations come to us from every side" (Rig Veda I.89.1). This bedrock of Indian or Bharatiya pluralism gave rise not only to the many different sects of Hinduism but also to Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh traditions, perhaps the largest diversity of spiritual teachings in the entire world. Though largely misunderstood in the West as polytheism or a worship of many Gods, this Bharatiya pluralism reflects an open quest for truth and a free flowering of all human potentials beyond any restriction to a particular name, form or institution. It embraced art and science as well as religion and metaphysics.
Unfortunately, over the first fifty years since Independence, India has not discovered its real roots. Its intellectuals have mimicked Western trends in thought. They have forgotten their own profound modern sages like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who projected modern and futuristic views of the Indian tradition. While Westerners come to India seeking spiritual knowledge, Indian intellectuals look to the West with an adulation that is often blind, if not obsequious.
The world is now entering into a global age in which pluralism must be the foundation of world culture. It is no longer a missionary, colonial or communist era in which one group can be allowed hegemony in the world. It is a new age of dialogue and respect in which we must learn to honour and cherish all the cultures of the world. This should start with tribal peoples who are the custodians of the Earth and of the wisdom of nature that we are so quickly losing to a destructive technology. It must include the great traditions of the East like Hinduism and Buddhism which have a firm foundation in tolerance and synthesis. We must learn to embrace all human beings and their cultures as part of one great family. Let our differences be a cause for admiration and celebration, not for mistrust or hatred.
It is time for India to once more be a leader and an innovator in world culture, rather than a follower and imitator as it is at present. Sri Aurobindo remarked that India's real role was to be the guru among the nations of the world. At present it can hardly keep order within its own frontiers. While we see Indians doing well outside of India as the elite of foreign lands, inside India they are still floundering. Why is it that India today cannot nourish or promote the remarkable capacities of its own people?
To change this situation a new vitality and creativity is necessary that honours the country's venerable traditions but does not restrict itself to past forms and conventions. Above all, it requires a new generation of thinkers who are global in outlook but grounded in the practical spirituality of Yoga and Vedanta. Indian thinkers must return to their cultural wellsprings, not to stop there, but to create a new vision for humanity. New rishis, yogis and bodhisattvas must arise to complement the old.
We can already see how such traditional Indian disciplines as Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedanta are gaining respect worldwide for their integral and holistic approach. Such an Indic or dharmic perspective should be added to enrich religion, philosophy, and science all over the world. The new generation of Indians should take up this task of world-making as their goal. The new world order of the computer and the information revolution offers the country a situation quite favourable to its unique spiritual and intellectual talents. But for this to occur, India must stand up and speak out, not merely to please everyone, but to blaze a new trail to the universe that dwells both inside and outside of ourselves.
Such a new India would combine science and spirituality in a global perspective, adding the intuitive insight of the ancient rishis to the critical acumen of modern scientists. If a unitary consciousness is indeed the basis of the universe, as quantum mechanics require, India's yogis have already shown the way to realize it. It would create a system of medicine that would combine the advances of biochemistry along with an understanding of the life-force and the soul which mirror the greater human being that is cosmic in nature. The new India would develop our material potentials but for the glory of the Spirit, the Self of all beings, just as classical India combined a vast flowering of art, architecture, music and dance along with numerous philosophies of the absolute and yogic paths. The new India would protect the earth while reaching out to the planets and stars, reclaiming the paradise that this tropical land of many rivers used to be. It would honour our spiritual ancestors and their legacy, fulfilling the deeper urges of our species and not merely accepting material affluence as enough. It would raise the poor and the downtrodden, not to convert people to a belief but to help all people become happy and free in both body and mind.
Such an awakened India is crucial for world culture, which presently remains trapped between a destructive consumerism on one side and a rigid religious exclusivism on the other.
Today the United States is the only superpower in the world. But it is a superpower in the outer world only. Its material wealth hides a spiritual poverty and growing psychological and social unrest. No technological superpower can properly guide the world. Only a spiritual superpower can do this, which India has the best potential to become. The question is whether the country and its leaders are willing to make the sacrifice that this must entail.
India holds the Shakti, the spiritual power and evolutionary force of humanity. It is the great World Mother in her manifestation. Let its yogic force come forth once again for the benefit of all!
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11884&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Himsa and Ahimsa: The Need for a New Policy of Protection
- Dr. David Frawley
In spite of modern Gandhian stereotypes, the classical Hindu way to deal with Rakshasas and Asuras (people of egoistic or violent temperament) was never simply ahimsa. It could in fact be quite aggressive. Ahimsa in the sense of absolute non-violence is a sattvic or deva dharma for people of devic or refined temperament. With gentle people you have no need or right to be unkind.
However, when dealing with hostile and violent opponents a completely different response is required. Asuras require the danda (punishment). Let us not forget the many epic and Puranic stories in which Gods, Goddesses or Avatars fought and defeated the Asuras or Asuric human beings. Whether it is the Goddess and Mahishasura, Rama and Ravana, or Skanda and Taraka, there is not a single instance in which the Asuras were simply forgiven and allowed to go their own way without punishment. Let us also not forget how the Mahabharata extols the use of the danda for social harmony and justice.
There is only one way to really deal with Asuric people, which is to make them feel pain. As Asuric types have a materialistic consciousness, this pain must be of a material type, pain to their bodies, to their homes and to their possessions. It must be a pain where they live. Asuric types are immune to platitudes or to any kind of moralistic guilt, hardened as they are by their own drives and compulsions.
Once Asuric types have committed a transgression they must be strongly punished or they will cause harm again. Merely to let them go or to have them say that they are sorry means nothing. Asuric types will take it as weakness and just plot a new attack. They are quite capable of deception or false sentiment to further their cause.
The main recent Hindu way has been to deal with hostile invaders by simply forgiving them and allowing them to go back home if they are defeated. Hindu enemies therefore don't have much to worry about. If they win, they get what they want and can ruthlessly promote their agenda. If they are defeated, they have nothing worse to fear than returning from whence they came without any real punishment. They can then regroup and attack again, having gained much experience by their previous incursions.
Such a prescription only encourages repeated attacks until the enemy finally wins. One is reminded of the example of Prithivi Raj Chauhan in the twelfth century who repeatedly defeated Mohammed Ghauri, who invaded India from Afghanistan. Each time he defeated Ghauri, he forgave him and sent him home. Yet when Ghauri finally won, he killed Prithivi Raj and started a reign of terror in India. One should consider how much respect and honor Ghauri offered to Prithivi Raj for being forgiven so chivalrously so often. All such forgiving souls will similarly become dead meat for such Asuric invaders, once they are able to win.
And if one allows them to attack again and again, they will eventually win, just by the law of chance. One victory is all they need. They will forgive no one and use all possible force and intimidation, including every sort of ethnic cleansing, to get their way - and all with no sympathy to the kind people who once defeated them and treated them with forgiveness.
Most modern Hindus, including prominent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, have failed to understand Asuric aggression, particularly if it takes a religious garb, which Islam and Christianity have often been the pretext for, in their military and missionary assaults to convert the world. Hindus have tried to compromise with such aggression, placate it or moralize it into peace. Not surprisingly their policy has failed, like letting a tumor spread to avoid the necessary violence required to cut it out. Eventually the patient himself dies.
Those Hindus like Sri Aurobindo who raised a contrary voice were ignored. Their prediction that such a policy would lead to partition, division and calamity for Hindus was similarly forgotten once it turned out to be true.
The Gandhian pity, not only for the victims of violence, but also for the perpetrators of violence must come to an end. Perpetrators of violence are not victims, nor should we classify them along with them. Such pity for the violent is one of the most debilitating and confusing of all emotions, and is the very sentiment that Krishna strove to uproot out of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Pity or compassion for the perpetrators of violence only sanctions that violence and causes further pain to the victims. It denies the responsibility that goes with the law of karma. Only when we make people responsible for their actions can they grow and become more humane. To excuse those who are violent under the pretext of non-violence is only to excuse violence. While compassion for the victims of violence is in order, the perpetrators of violence must be handled in a different way, so as to ensure that they don't strike again. Otherwise we are only abetting their crimes.
Perpetrators of violence always like to play the victim anyway, because it justifies their aggression. To treat them as if they were also victims only makes them feel right in the harm that they have already done and encourages them to do more. One who attacks other people in the name of religion is not a martyr but a criminal intruder, in spite of what some misguided religious leaders may say. A religious teaching that extols such violence is not something spiritual but an Asuric dharma. Many Hindus have been murdered by such so-called martyrs.
Terrorists who have indulged in killing innocent civilians, including torture and rape, have no real conscience anyway. They have already killed innocent victims who were offering them no violent resistance. Their action has already rejected ahimsa. Why should they honor the ahimsa of those who capture them? Political and religious terrorists are also warped by an ideology that says that it is right for them to attack and destroy those of different beliefs, even ruthlessly. Until that ideological belief is changed such terrorists will continue in their brutality, however many times you forgive them.
In addition, violent actions create powerful samskaras in the mind that are hard to overcome. Like a dog that first tastes blood, once that taste for violence occurs, the perpetrator will go after it again and again. While one can try to rehabilitate criminals, one must be realistic about how much success is really possible in this regard.
Obviously if one offers a criminal or a terrorist the choice of saying that they are sorry or of getting punished, they will choose to say that they are sorry in order to avoid the pain of punishment. Such apologies and promises of forgiveness mean nothing. The same thing occurs in dealing with terrorist countries.
While one could possibly argue the need for compassion for individual criminals who are victims of oppressive social orders and represent isolated cases, one cannot argue the same compassion for terrorist groups or for terrorist nations, which represent organized attacks. Compassion for inimical nations and the separatist movements that they incite will not do a national defense policy, unless a nation wants to self-destruct.
In this regard, we should remember Pakistan's recent signing of the Lahore Declaration proclaiming peace, while at the same time preparing for the massive attack on India via Kargil. This is how aggressive groups work when faced with what they perceive as a weak form of ahimsa: give lip service to peace to encourage their enemies to weaken their defenses, and then attack with impunity.
True ahimsa means reducing the amount of harm in the world. This may require violent action against the perpetrators of harm. One must not only defeat the enemy but also take away their weapons and ensure that they cannot attack again. Once must cut off the roots of violence where the enemy lives. One doesn't merely send a scorpion back to its nest after it bites you. One has to remove its stinger.
Modern Hindus must once again proudly honor himsa or a policy of harming the enemy, and the danda or a policy of strict punishment for those who use force to attack them. This is not to promote unnecessary violence but to prevent violence from spreading or being abetted. The same policy should extend to all spheres of current cultural encounters.
Those who use a verbal assault against Hindus, like the Christian missionaries, must similarly be dealt with through the weapon of speech. Vak is the Danda of the Brahmins, as the Mahabharata says. Hindus should challenge missionaries to debate and promote forums and publications to expose their intolerant agendas. Until they feel pain for their aggression against Hindus, the missionaries will not stop. You can be certain of that, all talk of religious tolerance to the contrary. This doesn't mean physically assaulting missionaries but it does mean subjecting them to scrutiny and criticism of a rigorous nature, exposing their dogmatism and exclusivism as much as possible.
Hindus must learn how to use the courts and bring legal suits against their denigrators, not only in India but also in the West. The legal danda is very important in the world today and has been the key to many social changes. Hindus must learn how to use the weapons of the media as well, presenting cases, information and programs that promote their point of view and strongly challenging media distortions.
They must attack their enemies on the level where their enemies really feel and with the weapons of the age. Some metaphysical moralistic high ground, such as many Hindus like to take, will not do but is only escapism, though Hindus should continue to practice rituals, prayers, mantras and meditations for peace but not to the exclusion of more direct forms of action in the material world.
The Gods always worked to drive the Asuras from this world and send them back to the netherworld. They never accepted a compromise in which the Asuras were given some portion of this world in exchange for a promise to live in peace.
It is time for the Devas to go on a new offense and to take up again their many weapons on all levels.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11890&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Christians Under Siege in India: A Missionary Ploy
- David Frawley
Christianity does not have a notable reputation for tolerance and respect for other religions. The Christian need to convert the entire world and the Christian failure to honour other religions, particularly non-biblical traditions, is well known. Christian missionaries have had a reputation for using methods to promote conversion that are not always honest, including employing military and political force during the colonial era. Yet Christians today conveniently like to ignore such facts. They are surprised if members of other religions are suspicious of them, even if they look at these religions as works of the devil.
Christians now promote conversion as a democratic freedom, even though their view of religion is authoritarian, not democratic, accepting only one way, and not honouring pluralism in approaching the Divine.
The Christians of India are continuing in attitudes hostile to the other religions of their country. They want a freedom to convert but they are not willing to accept the other religions of the land as valid. They highlight minor attacks on Christians done by unidentified groups as a concerted Hindu campaign against them, while they themselves are actively working to change Hindu India into a Christian nation. While Christians have a long history of aggression against other faiths that certainly has not come to an end, they are quite offended if their religion comes under even minor obstructions even by the groups they have long maligned and, not long ago, actively oppressed.
Recent arrests in India have shown that a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani national was behind most of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India. The Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not ruled by the so-called Hindu BJP party.
In fact Christians in India are defending the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency that has long tried to destabilise India, and absolving it of responsibility in the affair. This would be like an American religious minority defending the KGB during the Cold War. Whether the ISI is directly involved in such efforts to cause conflicts in India or not, we must recognize that it is a project they would certainly support and would be likely to promote.
To dismiss their involvement out of hand, as Christian leaders in India are doing, is highly suspicious. They are publicly blaming Hindu organizations for attacks that they have not been proven to have caused and which no court has found them guilty of.
Christians in India also exaggerate minor incidents into a national anti-Christian agenda. More churches have been burnt in America in recent years than in India. That a few priests or ministers have been harmed in a country of one billion over a period several years is not surprising even if we only consider ordinary crimes like robbery. That Christian missionaries have run into difficulties in sensitive tribal areas where there is not much government control is also not surprising, particularly given their hostility to tribal culture and to the tribal religions.
One even wonders if Christians are staging some of these attacks to gain sympathy, but certainly they are exaggerating them. Christianity has had a long history of using victimization in order to promote conversion. We know of the stories of Christians being fed to the lions in Rome. We are not told that many more pagans were killed by Christians and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe. The number of native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in the millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by the native Americans as being the real victims.
Mother Theresa's successor, Sister Nirmala, claims that Hindu fears that conversion is being done by force, deception or propaganda are not true and are ridiculous. But she should well know that such devices have long been used in Christianity. We can find native peoples all over the world whose cultures have been destroyed and even whose populations have been decimated by the missionaries and by the colonial armies that they supported. Even if the Hindu fear is exaggerated, it is certainly understandable. We should remember that the Pope in his recent visit to India himself threw down the gauntlet, stating a renewed church policy to convert Asia to Christianity in the coming years. To dismiss the Hindu fear as baseless only shows that it is not. If Christians were really sincere they would acknowledge that missionary activity has used such questionable methods in the past and work to insure that it does not do so in the future, not simply ignore the issue.
What is most surprising is that Christian missionaries have more freedom of operation in India than in the rest of Asia. They are banned in Islamic countries, including Pakistan, and strictly monitored in China, which has its own nationalist Catholic Church apart from Rome. Christians are under direct attack in Indonesia, where hundreds of Christians have been killed recently.
But it is India that is being called to task in the world forum for its oppression of Christians!
The reason is simple. India allows missionary activity and so is a soft target. Islamic countries and China are hard targets. The missionaries are targeting India because they feel they can make headway in India, not because India is a place where they are particularly under siege!
The hypocrisy of the whole thing is sad. It only shows that Christians are still promoting a medieval religion that will not honour other religions and is still seeking world domination by any convenient means.
If we count the victims of Christian aggression on one side and the Christians themselves who have been victimized we will find that the victims of Christianity are in the great majority. While some Christians have apologized to African and Native American groups for such missionary misdeeds, the Hindus have so far not received any such apology, though they have suffered from the same methods.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian colonial governments used their influence to promote conversion in the countries they ruled. Now Christians want to use freedom and democracy, which they didn't allow under their rulership, to continue the conversion process. And all without an apology.
If Christians want to be honoured and respected, let them first proclaim that Christianity is not the only true religion and Jesus is not the only son of God. Let them say that Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism and the other Indian religions are as good as Christianity and that members of these religions will not go to hell but will gain immortality in the presence of God. They will certainly not do so. Their failure to do so shows the extent of their intolerance that naturally breeds conflict and leads to communal tension. Christians wouldn't even accept a Mahatma Gandhi and worked to convert him, while the Mahatma described missionary activity as a great danger and as ethically flawed.
As a former Catholic I know in what little esteem the church holds Hinduism and Buddhism with all their great sages and yogis. Were Christians to honour Hinduism as a valid religion all Hindu-Christian hostility could easily come to an end. As long as Christians hold that their's alone is the true faith and are working to convert the members of other religions in one way or another, they should not be surprised if members of other religions may not welcome their presence in the neighbourhood.
Reference: http://www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=15,44&Board=davidfrawley&Number=11892&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=
Is Islamic goodwill for Hindus possible?
ByDavid Frawley
14 October 1996
Author : David Frawley
Publication : The Organiser
Date : October 14, 1996
Hindus today are often asked to express goodwill for Islam and help minority Muslims in India, who often fell oppressed under the Hindu majority rule. However Hindus are also minorities in various Islamic countries. Therefore the complementary question must arise, is there any Islamic goodwill for Hindus, particularly in Islamic countries? To look at Hindu-Muslim relations only within the borders of India where Hindus are a majority can be misleading. The entire context of these relations throughout the world and historically must be examined.
Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees, like the Parsis, the Syrian Christians and the Jews. India is the only country that never oppressed the Jews. Even today there are a number of Islamicsects like the Ahmadiyas, the Bohras and the Sufis, and other religious movements originating from Islamic countries like the Bahais, which may not be tolerated in Islamic countries including Pakistan, and exist and flourish in India. In fact there is a greater diversity of Islamic sects in India than in any Islamic country today because of the religious toleance traditional to Hindu-majority India. When Muslims lived under Hindu rule in pre-Independence India they
were not obstructed frm practicing their religion, subject to forced conversion, religious taxes, or prevented from building mosques. The same is true of Muslims in India today. They are allowed to practice their religion without interference from Hindus.
Muslims, on the other hand, do not have such a history of
tolerance starting with the first chaliphs of Islam who set out organised armies to conquer the world and marched to the very borders of India. During the period of Islamic rule in India most Hindu temples in the country were destroyed, including many that were rebuilt during that period. Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions. The number of temples destroyed runs in thousands and it is difficult to find even a haldful of temples in India that were not either destroyed ro defaced by the Muslims. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Hindus were killed in wars and genocide or turned into slaves. this included many religious leaders like various Sikh and Hindu Gurus whom the Muslims executed. Hindus exdured forced conversion and a heavy
religious tax to convert them.
Yet this oppression for Hindus has not ended. Even after the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims, the Hindus left over in Pakistan and Bangladesh have suffered terribly. They have no real political or economical influence and the law seldom protects them. This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent. Strictly Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not allow any other religions to exist within their border. No Hindu temple
can be built in such Islamic countries by the Hindus who worl there. You will not find any Hindu temples in Mecca or other Islamic holy cities. Hindus who have gone to work in the Gulf countries are not allowed to practice their religion in public, or bring any of their Hindu holy books with them. Even in India today Muslims do not tolerate and often attack the Hindu religious processions that may go through or near their neighbourhood. This is a holdover right from the Islamic period in Indian when Hindus were prevented from publicly expressing their religion in Muslim predominant communities.
Saudi Arabia insists that India sends only a Muslim ambassador and the Government of India meekly complies, not even raising protest! How would Islamic countries, in which Hindus are a minority, respond if the Government of
India insisted that they sent only Hindu ambassadors? Certainly it would not be tolerated. Most instance of Muslim goodwill to Hindus occur in countries like Indonesia which were only recently and partially Islamized. It is not owing to Islam, which is intolerant in its hear land, but owing to the prior Hindu culture of the people. The more Islamic these countries become this tolerance is likely to decrease.
Today with growing global communication and the awakening of oppressed groups throughout the world, Hindu criticism of Islam is increasing. Hindu intellectuals are questioning Islam not only historically but also spiritually, particularly its actions in India relative to Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Hindu influenced political parties routinely complain against appeasement of the Muslim minority in India.
That Hindus may criticize other religions may be surprising to those who know the history of tolerance in Hinduism. It may cause them to think that Hindus are becoming intolerant. However, the other side of the issue must also be examined. That Hindus are becoming critical of Islam may not be so surprising to those who know of the ongoing oppression of Hindus by Muslims.
Hindus today are awakening to an understanding of the thousand years of oppression they underwent during nearly a thousand years of foreign rule by the Muslims and the Europeans. Their religion and culture was constantly under siege throughout the period. When Hindus today criticize the British rule of India and its efforts to Christinize India, it is generally regarded as understandable. However when Hindus criticize the Islamic period which was similarly a foreign rule and far more brutal than the British period, with a more determined attempt at conversion, it may be labelled as Hindu intoferance of Islam (suggesting that there is Islamic tolerance of Hinduism, which has yet to be demonstrat). But if British rule and Chritian intolerance of Hindus can be questioned, so can, similar action done by Muslims.
Just as blacks and women are, making an issue of their historical oppression, seeking an acknowledgment of it, and trying to correct it, so are Hindus. This is perfectly reasonable and modern, not fundamentalist and backward for them to do so. There is probably no other religious or political group in the world that has been slower to protest its historical mistreatment than have the Hindus. Hindus are the least organised socially and politically of all religious groups. The fact is that Musli8ms have routinely treated Hindus badly and this trend has continued. Not merely as Hindus but as human beings, Hindus have a right to draw the line.
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become exvessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong. Hindus now are no longer willing to meekly accept domination and abuse by
Muslims in the name of communal harmoney. This is just another human community no longer of its human rights. It
is about time that Hindus have taken this stance and it can only help other oppressed groups gain their legitimate rights as well.
The question is how will Muslims react to this trend? Will they recognize the legitimate anger of the Hindus against them, take some resposibility for the problem, and seek to correct it? Or will they rect with hostility and refuse to acknowledge the history of violence that Muslims have without doubt peroetrated against Hindus? Will they take the opportunity to create oeace or will they inflame Hindus further by ignoring the mistakes done in the name of their religion? Muslis throughout the world are quick to condemn any oppressionof Muslims which occurs in any part of the world. Should they be surprised or feel that it is wrong if Hindus begin to adopt such attitudes and start challenging the oppression of Hindus by Muslims?
In Hindu-Muslim dialogue since the time of Mahatma Gandhi has generally been a matter of Hindus trying to please or
accommodate Muslims. This led to the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims and the allowance of Muslim personal law for Muslims in India (but not, we might add, Hindu personal law for Hindus in Pakistan). The question is seldom asked what are Muslims willing to concede to Hindus in order to create peace with them? Perhaps because Muslims are a minority in India it is not considered what they should give but only what they should receive. However there must be reciprocity for there to be trust. And the Hindu-Muslim issue is not limityed to India but to all lands where these two faiths meet. If Muslims throughout the world are intolerance of Hinduism, how can Indian Muslims expect Hindus in India not to be suspricious of them?
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries. How many Hindu political leaders have there been in Pakistan and Bangladesh? I believe the answer is zero, even though, at least in Bangladesh the percentage of minority Hindus is on par with that of Muslims in India. There have, however, been Muslim President, Members of Parliament, chief ministers of State and cabinet minister of India has increased since Partition while the Hindu population of Pakistan and Bangladesh has dramatically decreased.
Clearly Muslims in India are treated much better than Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Gulf countries. There are no Hindu prayers or songs allowed on Pakistani prayers and songs which can be found on Indian television Pakistan history books still vaunt Islamic leaders like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples and killed Hindus on a grand scale, as great and pious Muslims and great Pakistanis.
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be devorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. if Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus. Muslims cannot rightfully expect better treatment from Hindus if they do not consider the plight of Hindus as will. There must be a concern for discrimination against all human beings, regardless of their religion, not looking out for Muslims and ignoring the plight of non-Muslims.
The further question arises, if Muslims want the goodwill of Hindus what are they willing to offer in order to receive it? Do Muslims think that they should have the goodwill of Hindus without offering anythink to the Hindus in return? Can they really think that their history merits the trust and affection of Hindus? While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out. It is they who have historically been aggressively attacking Hindus, not Hindus who have sent armies into their countries in order
to convert them.
Hindus do have an historical right to critize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion. Muslims routinely condemn Hindus as idol-worshippers, which is hardly an accurate, much less a sensitiverendeing of Hinduism, which is a vast religion containig all avenues of human spirituality from devotional worship of images to yogic meditation.
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of
Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
Many Muslims and other have argued that Hindu temples were not destroyed out of religious reasons but from political motivation. Therefore the blam for this destruction is not with the Islamic religion, which is one of peace, but with political leaders who are prone to violence in order to hold power whatever their religious background. If this is the case Muslims should be happy to return such Hindu sacred sites as Kashi and Mathura. Mosques on these two sites of well known Hindu temples were built only three centuries ago by the tyrant Aurangzeb, who killed his own brother, imprisoned his own father, and murdered Sufis as well as Hindu and Sikh leaders. If Islam as a religion is not responsible for the destruction of these Hindu temples but the arrogance of such as Aurangzeb, Muslims should not cling to such monuments as sacred. Otherwise Muslims are in fact saying that the destruction of temples and their replacement with mosques has a religions sanction, which is to equate their religion with such tyrants.
Yet this condition is hardly hopless. there is much that Muslims can do to gain the trust of Hindus, who are a peaceful and tolerant people. But this issue is mainly in
the hands of the Muslims. Hindus cannot make peace with Muslims who are unwilling to give up their oppression of Hindus or their targeting for conversion. Muslims should be willing to consider doing the following if they are sincere about peace with the Hindus.
(1) Muslim leaders should make an official apology for the massive destruction of temples and killing of Hindus that was common under their rule in India and by their invading armies. One can use the example of the Christians apologizing to the American Indians or the Blacks for similar discrimination and oppression.
(2) Muslims should give back to the Hindus Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura mosques that were built by Babur and Aurangazeb on Ramjanmabhoomi, the Kashi Vishwanath Shiva temple and Krishnajanmabhoomi, just as they didi not try to hold on the Somnath after Partition of India. This could be a peace offering for all the Hindu temples destroyed by Muslims through history.
(3) Muslims should invite Hindu swamis and religious leaders to speak at their mosques to explain to the Muslims masses what Hinduism really teaches. In the same way Hindus should invite Islamic leaders to speak at their temples. Muslim countries should allow Hindus to preach and build temples, particularly for Hindu workers in those countries. They should also invite Hindus to talk and preach their religion in orther to dispel Islamic misunderstandings about Hinduism.
(4) Muslims should be willing to accept Hindu names for God like ishvara as good as Allah. Hindus should also accpet Allah as a name of God as many of them already do.
(5) Muslims should be willing to accept the great teachers of India-based religions as divinely inspired, inluding those of recent centuries like Sikh Gurus or Ramakrishna, just as Hindus honour many Sufis and Islamic saints.
(6) Indian Muslims should complain to Muslim countries that discriminate against Hindus. They should criticize Pakistan and Bangladesh for the destruction of Hindu temples that has gone on there in recent times.
Of course it is doubtful whether this will occur any-time soon, even on one of these points. If this is the case, Muslims should ask themselves, if they are unwilling to make such gestures of goodwill to the Hindus why should they expect Hindus to respect and honour them in return? You cannot repeatedly trample on a person and his culture and then expect him to help you when you are in need.
Muslims, who claim to follow the will of God, think clearly on the history of Islam, and how members of your religion have mistreated Hindus and denigrated their religion. Think of how your religious leaders portray the Hindu religion even today. Would you be quick to embrace a group who treated you in the same way?
… Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provided a refuge for many religious refugees… Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions... This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent…
Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become excessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong…
Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries…
The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be divorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. If Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus…
While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out… Hindus do have an historical right to criticize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion…
Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.
1990: Second Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival, in Moscow, cosponsored by Supreme Soviet, gives stage for Hindu thinking. Shringeri sannyasin Swami Paramananda Bharati concludes Forum with Vedic peace prayer in Kremlin Hall, leading 2,500 world leaders in chanting Aum three times.
1990: Communist leadership of USSR collapses, to be replaced by 12 independent democratic nations.
1991: Hindu Renaissance Award is founded by Hinduism Today and declares Swami Paramananda Bharati of Shringeri Matha "1990 Hindu of the Year."
1991: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated in Tamil Nadu in May. India blames Sri Lankan Tamil separatists.
1991: Indian tribals, adivasis, are 45 million strong.
1991: In Bangalore, India, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami authorizes renowned architect V. Ganapati Sthapati to begin carving the Chola-style, white-granite, moksha Iraivan Temple in a project guided by Shri Shri Trichy Swami, Shri Shri Balagangadaranathaswami and Shri Sivapuriswami. Shipped to Hawaii's Garden Island of Kauai and erected on San Marga, Iraivan will be the Western Hemisphere's first all-stone Agamic temple.The world's largest single-pointed, six-sided crystal (700 lbs.), known as the Earthkeeper, will be enshrined as its Sivalinga.
1992: Swami Chidananda Saraswati, spiritual head of Parmarth Niketan Trust, with 26 ashramas, is named Hinduism Today's 1991 Hindu of the Year for founding historic Encyclopedia of Hinduism Indian Heritage project.
1992: World population is 5.2 billion; 17% or 895 million, live in India. Of these, 85%, or 760 million, are Hindu.
1992: Third Global Forum of Spiritual Leaders and Parliamentarians for Human Survival meets in Rio de Janeiro in conjunction with Earth Summit (UNCED). Hindu views of nature, environment and traditional values help inform the 70,000 delegates planning global future.
1992: Hindu radicals demolish Babri Masjid built in 1548 on Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya by Muslim conqueror Babar after he destroyed a Hindu temple marking the site. The monument was a central icon of Hindu resentment toward Muslim destruction of 60,000 temples.
1993: Fourth Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival meets in Kyoto, Japan. Green Cross is founded for environmental protection.
1993: Swami Chinmayananda is named 1992 Hindu of the Year, for lifetime of dynamic service to Sanatana Dharma worldwide-attains mahasamadhi July 26, at age 77.
1993: Swami Brahmananda Sarasvati, renowned yoga scholar, and Swami Vishnu-devananda, author of world's most popular manual on hatha yoga, reach parinirvana.
1993: Chicago's historic centenary Parliament of the World's Religions convenes in September. Presidents' Assembly, a core group of 25 men and women representing the world's faiths, is formed to perpetuate Parliament goals.
1994: Harvard University research identifies over 800 Hindu temples open for worship in the United States.
1994: Mata Amritanandamayi (1953-) charismatic woman saint of Kerala, is named 1993 Hindu of the Year.
1994: All India pays homage to Kanchi's beloved peripatetic tapasvin sage, Shri la Shri Shankaracharya Chandrashekharendra, who passes away January 7, during his 100th year.
1994: Hindu Heritage Endowment, first Hindu international trust, founded by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami.
2000: World population is 6.2 billion. India population is 1.2 billion: 20% of world (projection by World Watch).
2050: British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) predicted that at the close of the 20th century the world would still be dominated by the West, but during the 21st century India will conquer her conquerors, preempting the place formerly held by technology. Religion worldwide will be restored to its earlier importance, and the center of world happenings will wander back from the shores of the Atlantic to the East where civilization originated.
2094: Bharat (formerly India) is world's most populous nation. Sanatana Dharma, finding new expressions through interactive electronic tools, guides humankind's future. Time flows on. Live long and prosper.
Aum. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Aum.
2) Reference: http://www.timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=2140338028
City older than Mohenjodaro unearthed
REUTERS [ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2002 6:25:32 PM ]
EW DELHI: Indian scientists have made an archaeological find dating back to 7500 BC suggesting the world's oldest cities came up about 4,000 years earlier than is currently believed, a top government official said on Wednesday.The scientists found pieces of wood, remains of pots, fossil bones and what appeared like construction material just off the coast of Surat, Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told a news conference."Some of these artefacts recovered by the NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) from the site such as the log of wood date back to 7500 BC, which is indicative of a very ancient culture in the present Gulf of Cambay, that got submerged subsequently," Joshi said.Current belief is that the first cities appeared around 3500 BC in the valley of Sumer, where Iraq now stands, a statement issued by the government said."We can safely say from the antiquities and the acoustic images of the geometric structures that there was human activity in the region more than 9,500 years ago (7500 BC)," S.N. Rajguru, an independent archaeologist, said.The findings, if confirmed, will dislodge the Harappan Civilisation dating back to 2500 BC as India's oldest civilisation.
3) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/7/56-57_dna.html
July/August, 2001 SCIENCEDNA Exposes India's Past New theory posits that today's Indians arrived over 50,000 years agoGenetic evidence isn't just about freeing the unjustly convicted these days or determining whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not have children by his black slave, Sally Hemmings. It's also casting new light on the mid-18th century theory of India's history called the "Aryan Invasion." This, as you may recall having read it in virtually every historical account of India is the pervasive notion that about 1800 bce, hordes of horseback-riding, chariot-driving, light-skinned invaders from the West stormed into India, laying waste the advanced Indus Valley cities, bringing with them Sanskrit, the Rig Veda, the brahmin priest system and every other good thing!According to one of the most widely-used history books on India, The Wonder that was India, by A.L. Basham, the invading Aryans were, "semi-nomadic barbarians, tall, who tamed the horse, were pastoral, and migrated in bands eastwards, conquering local populations and intermarrying with them to form a ruling class. They brought with them their patrilineal family system, their worship of the sky gods...." These same people, Basham states, also went westwards, "to become the ancestors of the Greeks, Latins, Celts and Teutons." Just about every aspect of modern Hinduism is attributed either directly to these invaders, or as a result of their interaction with the conquered, likely Dravidian-speaking, people.The Aryan Invasion theory has been under siege from many sides, especially in the last ten years. Literary, archeological and astronomical evidence simply fail to support it, and critics are quick to point out the very convenient purpose the theory served: to support the British take-over of India at the same time, who were the latest in a series of invaders. Even mainstream historians, some of them students of the renowned Professor Basham, have abandoned it. But many still hold to it, in part because so many aspects of Hinduism have traditionally been explained in the West by this invasion. For example, take this explanation from Basham on the origins of the sudras, or worker caste. "The sudra was in fact a second-class citizen, on the fringes of [the conquering] Aryan society." Such assertions exacerbate caste tension even today.Now, recent DNA research has a one-word answer for this invasion theory: "Not." With the theory's fall would go most of the scholarly explanations of the origins of Sanskrit, the Vedas, brahmins, sudras, etc., etc.That refutation is just one result of a broad re-evaluation of human history as a result of genetic research. The latest theory is called the "recent replacement model." It is based on analysis of "mitochondreal DNA," which is passed from generation to generation only through the mother. Such analysis allows geneticists to trace back a person's ancestry, and determine when one group of people separated from another. The startling conclusion of this model is that all modern humans can be traced back to migrations out of East Africa, possibly just 50,000 years ago, and certainly no more than 200,000 years ago. Spreading out from the area near modern Ethiopia, they went north to Europe and west to India, then on to China and Australia. For as-yet-unknown reasons, they completely replaced the existing archaic humans who themselves had previously spread out of Africa two million years before. It must be admitted that neither geneticists nor anyone else are especially clear about how this "replacement" of the earlier humans occurred, and further discoveries may disrupt current theories and conclusions.The science of all this is complex, but Professor Richard Villems of the Estonian Biocentre in Estonia explained some of the consequences to Hinduism Today in an e-mail interview. "I am aware of the problem of the Aryan Invasion, and although some of my colleagues still want to see its influence in the Indian maternal lineages, we are very skeptical about it." "It is not entirely correct," Villems went on, "to say that Indians and Europeans separated some 50,000 years ago. It is, however, appropriate to conclude from this evidence that the maternal lineages of the present-day Indian populations are largely autochthonous, that is, unique to India, and very, very old. Indians are readily distinguished from Europeans, Near-Middle East populations and those living north or east of India." "There are signs," he wrote, "of later admixtures, particularly along the border regions, but this has had only a limited impact."We asked him about language, specifically the common belief that the presence of languages derived from Indo-European, such as Sanskrit and Hindi, in the north, and the Dravidic languages of the south indicate a racial divide. "There is only a small difference between the pools of maternal lineages between Indians," replied Dr. Villems, "whether they speak Indo-European or Dravidic languages. Also, the maternal genetic lineages of the Indian tribal populations are the same as the rest of the population." This latter discovery contradicts the theory that "Indians" displaced "tribals" from the plains regions of India at some point in history, pushing them into the hill regions.What language, we asked, did the ancestors of today's Indians and Europeans speak when they left Africa? "The problem," Villems replied, "with historic linguistics is that their time horizon is at best 8,000 years maximum, because their methods don't yield positive information below this time depth. So you will hardly find anyone who wants to speak about Indo-European or whatever language before that time. A few are 'brave enough' to suggest the split between Dravidic and Indo-European was 16,000 to 19,000 years ago.""I think that the Aryan Invasion theory," concluded Villems, "in its classical form is dead already, and an attempt to overkill it would perhaps rather scatter our attention from a more complete understanding of the demographic history of India's people."It is now the job of historians, social anthropologists and Hindus in general to weed out the vast array of myths generated by the Aryan Invasion theory, beginning with the notion that the people of north and south India are of fundamentally different origin. Right today, there are heated debates over the use of Sanskrit in South Indian temples because it is regarded as an "imposition" of northern brahmins. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other baseless conclusions about India derived from this persistent but unfounded legend. Professor Richard Villems can be contacted at: Estonian Biocentre, 23 Riia Street, 51010, Tartu, EstoniaPh: 372.7.375.064. Fx: 420.194e-mail: rvillems@ebc.ee. .
4) Reference: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/2001/3/
Pythagoras the Mystic
The Greek rishi who taught reincarnation, vegetarianism and more
Pythagoras is generally accepted to be one of the most significant fountainheads of Western thought. Of particular interest to Hindus is the fact that his teachings were in tune with the thinking of the far East--especially India. In this article, Peter Westbrook, a writer and lecturer on music and cosmology, amplifies these connections. He is co-author with John Strohmeter of "Divine Harmony," a book that recounts the fascinating story of the life and teachings of this legendary man.
Many centuries ago there lived a great teacher who was part of an ancient guru parampara‚ a tradition. For nearly forty years he traveled extensively and studied at the feet of many masters. Eventually he founded a community centered on an ashram where he recommended a contemplative, vegetarian lifestyle, taught the doctrine of reincarnation and trained his followers in sacred knowledge aimed at uniting the human soul with the Divine. His biographers attribute miraculous abilities to him, not the least of which was the ability to mentally perceive the deepest structures of cosmic life.
Hinduism Today readers might well assume that these events took place in India and describe the life of a Vedic rishi or Hindu sage. But, in fact, the man in question came from Greece and was one of the founders of the Western tradition. His name was Pythagoras of Samos.
A Man of Many Talents
In the modern world Pythagoras is best remembered for the mathematical theorem that he is said to have created--the one about the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. But Pythagoras was responsible for much more; he played a pivotal role in transmitting knowledge from the wisdom of ancient traditions into the modern world. At the same time, he stands at the fountainhead of our culture. The ideas he set in motion were, according to Daniel Boorstin, among the most potent in modern history. Mathematics, science, philosophy, music--none of these would have taken the shape they did in the Western world without Pythagoras' discoveries. And yet, of all the founders of the Western tradition, Pythagoras is, by far, the least known. This is unfortunate, for understanding Pythagoras and his thought is of much more than purely historical interest. Appreciating the influence of this first scientist and philosopher is essential if we are to get beyond a superficial understanding of history. This is particularly important when we consider the perceived gap between Hinduism and the thought of the West.
Personal Life
As with many figures from antiquity, facts about Pythagoras' life are sketchy. Like his contemporary, the Buddha, he is said to be one of those divine men of whom history knows least because their lives were at once transfigured into legend. Nevertheless, a number of early writers have left us biographical information about Pythagoras which we have used to reconstruct his story in our book Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras.
Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos around 569 bce. Miraculous events surrounded his life from the very beginning. Legend holds that he was the son of Apollo, the Hellenic god of music and learning, and his birth was foretold by the oracle at Delphi. His early years were spent studying at all the centers of scientific and sacred learning in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Eventually he made his way to Egypt, where he lived for over twenty years, absorbing Egyptian knowledge of mathematics, music, medicine and the mystical teachings regarding the soul and the stages of its evolution.
Pythagoras' time in Egypt ended when the country was overrun by the armies of the Persian empire and he was taken into captivity in Babylon. This proved to be a blessing in disguise. Recognizing his prodigious learning and receptivity to new ideas, the Persian magi took Pythagoras into their confidence and he became a student of their equally ancient mystery school. He was also subject to other influences during this time, and probably undertook further travels. Whether he actually went as far as India is not known. Some writers think that he did. Others accept that he studied and absorbed in some form the Vedic philosophy of ancient India; certainly it was known in Persia at this time. And there was probably direct contact between India and Greece before the time of Alexander. Vitsaxis G. Vassilis, in his book Plato and the Upanishads, argues that exponents of literature, science, philosophy and religion traveled regularly between the two countries. He points to accounts by Eusebius and Aristoxenes, of the visits of Indian sages to Athens and their meetings with Greek philosophers. And reference to the visit of Indians to Athens is found in the fragment of Aristotle preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius who was also one of Pytha-
goras' biographers.
The Teachings
The teachings that had the most influence on Pythagoras can best be discerned by what he himself taught. And his teaching began in earnest, when, at the age of 56, he returned from his travels and settled in the Greek world. Initially he returned to Samos and established a school there, but he found himself in great demand in the political arena, although he was more inclined to pursue scientific research, philosophical discussion and solitary contemplation. For this, he found the atmosphere more conducive in the city of Kroton, a Greek settlement in southern Italy. Here he established a philosophical community which was to become known as the Pythagorean brotherhood.
The essence of the doctrine that formed the basis for the Pythagorean community was conveyed, we are told, in the first lecture that Pythagoras gave to those who gathered there, attracted by the fame that now preceded him. He taught them that the soul is immortal and that after death it migrates into other animated bodies. He said that all living things are kin and should be considered as belonging to one great family. He introduced new explanations of gods and spirits, of the heavenly spheres, of all the natures contained in heaven and earth, and of all the natures in between the visible and invisible.
The Kosmos
From this comprehensive vision emerge all the details of Pythagorean philosophy. From the vision itself comes a central idea--Kosmos. The word was coined by Pythagoras, and its original meaning was more than merely everything that exists. The Greek root of the word also gives us the word cosmetic. It implies beauty, adornment, an aesthetic component that springs from an inherent order that Pythagoras described by the term Harmonia, the divine principle that brings order to chaos and discord. This order also expresses itself as philia, love or friendship. For Pythagoras, philia was a cosmic force that attracts all the elements of nature into harmonious relationships. It helps preserve the order of planets as they move across the sky, and encourages men and women, once their souls have been purified, to help one another. The greatest love, philia, for the Pythagoreans was wisdom, sophia. Thus Pythagoras was the first Western philosopher (philia + sophia).
Just as was thought in India, Pythagoras taught that, different songs and modes were appropriate to different hours and seasons. In the spring, for example, he would arrange a ritual in which a group of disciples would sit in a circle with a lyre player seated in the middle. As the instrumentalist produced a melody, the others would begin to sing together in a spontaneous fashion, from which would emerge a song in unison, creating a powerful sense of joy. This ritual was also modified for use as a medicine to treat diseases of the body. Many stories have been handed down that illustrate Pythagoras' influence through music.
The Community
For the members of his brotherhood, the first goal of wisdom was attaining to the divine. And for this, Pythagoras recommended a highly disciplined lifestyle in a loving community. But entry into this community, essentially an ashram, required a lengthy and rigorous examination, including five years of silence. Once admitted to the inner circle, the students were exposed to abstract realms of study designed to turn attention to inner, universal values of consciousness for soul purification.
Modern science traces its origins to Pythagoras, but in its development dropped off the mystical teachings. Perhaps science needs to re-embrace the inclusive vision of this Western rishi.
For extracts from "The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras," log on to www.harmoniainstitute.com/pythagoras.htm
5) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/as-nhild.htm
A Wonder of Ancient India: The Mahabharata
By Nhilde Davidson
Daunted by its size and a misconception that an intimate understanding of Hinduism was needed, I never considered taking the Mahabharata off the shelf. By accident I tuned into an episode of an Indian television production of the Mahabharata (subtitled in English) -- and I was hooked. Ninety-six one-hour episodes later (and many more hours of reading) I am still enthralled and continue delving into this fascinating epic. Its appeal is on many different levels and, through the ages, ascetics and scholars alike have dedicated their lives to studying, collating, and translating the varied and voluminous material. When the series aired on Indian television, railway schedules had to be adjusted as each week almost the entire country sat in front of a TV. Similarly, most things ground to a halt when the Ramayana was serialized. We all love a hero -- heroic action appeals to children and adults alike -- and these epics are heroic. On a deeper level it is the philosophical depth and the psychological profundity that endure, keeping the stories alive in the soul, drawing one back again and again.
The epic is about a Holy War fought on the fields of Kurukshetra at the junction between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron or Kali Age. The Kali Yuga is said to have begun with the death of Krishna on February 17, 3102 BC -- thus dating the war to 3138 BC (in the epic Krishna died 36 years after the Great War). However, dating the epic is an ongoing debate. The extant written versions can be traced to the period 400-100 BC when the present form was settled on. The Mahabharata has eighteen major chapters or parvas which are, in turn, subdivided into many smaller parvas or sections. There are hundreds of different versions, adjusted by various sects to include their own individual religious biases (for example there are 300 known versions of the Adi Parva).
Krishna-Dvaipayana (also known as Veda Vyasa for his work in synthesizing the Vedas in their present form) is said to be the author of the original 24,000 slokas (verses). Sloka meter is characterized by 32 syllables divided into 4 pada or quarter verses of 8 syllables each, written in either 2 or 4 lines. It is the metrical form commonly used in Sanskrit epics. (1) The present form of the epic contains around 100,000 slokas, though it has been estimated that it may include as many as 150,000. Critical editions intended to discover the pristine material are only a few decades old, the best work having been done by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona.
While the accrual of additional material is ongoing, the age of the texts and questions about the historical accuracy of accounts in the epic are hotly debated. Many believe that the Mahabharata and also the Puranas give the history of not only the peoples of India but of humanity. Scholars have established that the parvas were written at different times -- some being much older than others.
One of the parvas contains the Ramayana. According to Hindu tradition the Ramayana recounts the history of Rama and Sita, and is believed to have taken place at the beginning of the Treta or Silver Age, i.e., shortly after the end of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age) -- roughly two million years ago by Hindu reckoning -- thus potentially very old indeed. The current archaeological dating of the age of humanity prevents scholars from giving credence to the Hindu chronology.
The known history of India does not include verifiable records of a war where millions of soldiers fought and died, or the destruction of Dvaraka (the region governed by Krishna) by tidal waves and cataclysms of the proportions described in the Mahabharata. This leads some to believe that the epics may not be historical. However, corroborating evidence in texts from other sources and countries suggests that these writings are a blend of accurate history, myth, and soul memory, as well as ethical treatises.
The crux of the matter is that the entire Mahabharata has one obvious aim -- to awaken a love of truth and right action. The core story is the thread that ties together a profound philosophical content. Embellished by substories to clarify various ethical premises, the central theme always leads in one direction -- the ascendancy of right over wrong, justice over injustice, truth over untruth. In the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas it is made clear that the side of Truth (represented by the Pandavas) will ultimately win. The reasons for this war and the human aspects of the story are what make the epic ever fascinating -- its slokas are the mirror whereby we see into our own souls, and the consequences of actions, both gross and subtle, are laid bare for scrutiny.
The cast of characters is large, but one soon finds oneself relating to and caring about them: Draupadi, the virtuous, beautiful wife of the five Pandava brothers; Vidura, the wise younger brother of Pandu and Dhritarashtra; Kunti, the mother of the three eldest Pandava brothers -- Yudhishthira, Bhima and Arjuna; Madri, the mother of the younger twin sons of Pandu -- Nakula and Sahadeva. As all the characters come alive, the strange names and customs become familiar and comfortable.
The wisdom of the Pandava and Kaurava princes' tutors -- Bhishma, Drona, and Kripacharya -- enrich the text at every turn. Bhishma, patriarch of the families on both sides of the conflict, has a magnificence and stature which make him beloved and respected by all the characters, while his all-encompassing wisdom and virtue still earn him the love and reverence of Hindus today.
The central story concerns the rivalry for the throne of Hastinapura, where the ancient dynasty of India has its domain. As jealousy goes unchecked the dynasty is finally destroyed. Pandu, the second son of Santanu, becomes king because his elder brother, Dhritarashtra, was born blind and thus considered unfit to rule. However, when Pandu dies Dhritarashtra, already an able administrator of the country during Pandu's many absences, proceeds to reign. It is the line of succession that is the bone of contention. Yudhishthira, virtuous son of Pandu and eldest of the Pandava brothers, is heir-apparent, but Duryodhana, eldest of Dhritarashtra's and Gandhari's one hundred sons, wishes to be king. Gandhari has a gambler brother, Sakuni, living at court who helps inflame Duryodhana's jealousy and envy of the five Pandava princes.
Known as the Kauravas, the family and supporters of Dhritarashtra are spearheaded by Duryodhana, his brother Dushasana, Sakuni, and Karna (a protege of Duryodhana whose lineage is mysterious and who, ironically, is finally shown to be linked to the Pandavas). These four try many ways to eliminate the five sons of Pandu. As Dhritarashtra and Gandhari fail to curb Duryodhana's hatred of the Pandavas -- and more especially of his birthday twin, Pandu's second son, Bhima -- the peoples of Hastinapura are inexorably propelled into war.
Through the popularity of the Bhagavad-Gita the third son of Pandu, Arjuna, is perhaps the best known of his five sons. This parva recounts the discussion between Arjuna and Krishna just prior to the Battle of Kurukshetra. Arjuna asks Krishna why he should fight. Krishna, having sworn not to fight himself but to steer Arjuna's chariot during the battle, explains to Arjuna his duty -- in reality the duties of all who seek for truth.
One may read the epic just as an excellent tale, for it has all the elements of good storytelling, yet it also includes the psychological dilemmas inherent in life, though the meaning behind some of the episodes is not always clear -- each reader must interpret the episodes according to his own insight and vision. Like a diamond sparkling in the sun, each time a passage or an episode is reread new illuminations and nuances come into focus.
The Mahabharata says that even before the Battle of Kurukshetra the caste system had effectively come to an end. No longer were people to be considered as being born in a particular class, miscegenation having broken the old ways and codes. With the advent of the Kali Age all reflect, by their own actions, what class each act belongs to -- the determining factor being whether the motive arises out of wisdom and truth, the passionate or emotional nature, or from ignorance and darkness (avidya or untruth).
The Kshatriya, or divine warrior class, as represented by Arjuna and his peers, died out in this Holy War on the fields of Kurukshetra and the unholy aspects of life during the Kali Age are prescient. It was incumbent upon these godlike men -- whose concentration was on dharma (duty), artha (right resolve or motive), karma (action), and vidya (wisdom/truth) -- to be just, benevolent, and charitable at all times -- always protecting and honoring truth. As the eighteen-day war drags on, all partake of unrighteous acts eroding the old codes of honor and ethics. Finally, at the end of the war, with the loss of the ancient value system and their loyalty solely to truth destroyed, the link with the past is broken. After Kurukshetra a limited age of justice was reestablished and the sun of truth shone briefly -- but the Kali Age had begun.
Fortunately for us the old truths remain accessible in this vast storehouse of wisdom from ancient India. The Bhagavad-Gita, the best loved of all Hindu writings, is a profound treatise on the causes and results of action and stands on its own, yet coupled with the entire epic, it acquires an additional lustre -- for the Mahabharata has much to say about the qualities and duties of every aspect of life. B.R. TV's Indian production of the Mahabharata shows the veneration that the Hindus have for this work and their understanding of its effect for good on individual lives.
Use this epic tale as an inspiration to solve your problems. The story is your armour and also your weapon . . . Be heir to Light, to Justice and to Truth. Turn the Kurukshetra of your heart into Holy Ground -- That is Salvation!
Whatever there is in the World / Whatever this World is -- / Sage Vyasa's epic tale narrates all that the World is! -- From B.R. TV English subtitles
· (From Sunrise magazine, February/March 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
FOOTNOTE:
1. Mahabharata, produced and directed by B. R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra. Marketing Agents for India, J. Electronics, 258 Palika Bazar, Cannaught Place, New Delhi - 110001. (return to text)
6) Reference: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/asia/mis-jj00.htm
Letter: On Revising the History of Vedic Civilization
By Rithvik. S. Vinekar
Having read on the Internet an article in Sunrise on the Mahabharata, I would like to bring to your attention a book I just read which relates to ancient India: Gods, Sages, and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization by Dr. David Frawley. Although there are many books on this subject, this one was written with the international -- particularly American or European -- reader in mind, who has no previous knowledge of Hindu mythology or history.
In this work Dr. Frawley relates the history and mythology of almost all the ancient world to the Vedic culture which developed on the banks of the now dry Saraswati River. Geological, literary, and archeological data suggest that long ago this mighty river flowed from Lake Manasarowar in Tibet to the sea through present-day Rajasthan. Manasarowar is linked with Manu, the first man according to Vedic tradition. Leaving his golden ship on a high Himalayan peak after the great flood, he is said to have come down to the plains, carrying with him the seeds of life, in order to establish his kingdom on the fertile banks of the Saraswati. The author suggests there may be a linkage of this event with Plato's Atlantean deluge near the end of the ice age, while cautioning the reader that the boat or ark may be only a metaphor. Although this date may seem irrational from the viewpoint of accepted academic history, more and more archeological evidence from the Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization, geological evidence of the existence and fate of the Saraswati River, and astronomical dating of events recorded in the Vedas, show the antiquity of this ancient civilization. They also contradict the standard Western theory, formed in the 18th and 19th centuries, of Vedic civilization beginning with an Aryan invasion of northern India around 1500 bc.
The Indus-Saraswati Valley civilization is now found to be a collection of nearly 2,500 settlements of various periods along the Saraswati and other rivers, some of which date earlier than 6000 bc. These sites show sure signs of having cultural elements in common with later Vedic culture. The Indus script was first dismissed as imagistic, but has since been found to be very similar to the later Brahmi script, and is possibly related to early Semitic scripts from which the present-day alphabet developed.
The historicity of Vedic religion and its scriptures was once dismissed, in part because it praised very highly the supposedly mythical Saraswati River. Satellite and geological evidence show, however, that although the Saraswati changed its course many times over several thousand years before disappearing, long ago it was as described in the Vedas. Fortunately, some scholars are beginning to interpret history taking into account the geography of the region in the past. In light of new and growing evidence, an objective reexamination of existing data and reinterpretation of ancient history is necessary today.
(From Sunrise magazine, June/July 2000; copyright © 2000 Theosophical University Press)
World Spiritual Traditions Menu
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7) reference: http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bud_statwrld.htm 020320yd
While estimates vary between 200-500 million adherents, the generally agreed number of Buddhists is estimated at around 350 million (6% of the world's population). This makes Buddhism the world's fourth largest (in terms of number of adherents) religion.
World Religions Number of Adherents
Christianity 2 billion
Islam 1.2 billion
Hinduism 900 million
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 900 million
Buddhism 350 million
Chinese traditional religion 225 million
Primal-indigenous 190 million
Yoruba religion 20 million
Juche 19 million
Sikhism 18 million
Judaism 15 million
Spiritism 14 million
Babi and Bahai faiths 6 million
Jainism 4 million
Shinto 4 million
Cao Dai 3 million
Tenrikyo 2.4 million
Neo-Paganism 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism 800 thousand
Scientology 750 thousand
Rastafarianism 700 thousand
Zoroastrianism 150 thousand
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bstats_b.htm 020320yd Branch Percentage Number of Adherents
Mahayana 56% 185,000,000
Theravada 38% 124,000,000
Vajrayana (Tibetan) 6% 20,000,000
Branch Religion Number of Adherents
Catholic Christianity 1,030,000,000
Sunni Islam 940,000,000
Vaishnavites Hinduism 580,000,000
Liberal Protestant Christianity 240,000,000
Orthodox/Eastern Christian Christianity 240,000,000
Shaivites Hinduism 220,000,000
Conservative Protestant Christianity 200,000,000
Mahayana Buddhism 185,000,000
Theravada Buddhism 124,000,000
Shiite Islam 120,000,000
African indigenous sects Christianity 110,000,000
Pentecostal Christianity 105,000,000
Neo-Hindus and reform Hindus Hinduism 22,000,000
Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism 20,000,000
Sikhism Sikhism 18,000,000
Jehovah's Witnesses Christianity 12,000,000
Latter Day Saints Christianity 11,200,000
Ahmadiyya Islam 10,000,000
Veerashaivas (Lingayats) Hinduism 10,000,000
Baha'i World Faith Baha'i Faiths 6,500,000
Conservative Judaism 4,500,000
Unaffiliated and Secular Judaism 4,500,000
Shinto all branches Shinto 4,000,000
Svetambara Jainism 4,000,000
Reform Judaism 3,750,000
Seicho-No-Ie New Japanese 3,200,000
Tenrikyo New Japanese 2,800,000
PL Kyodan New Japanese 2,600,000
Orthodox Judaism 2,000,000
New Thought (Unity, Christian Science) Christianity 1,500,000
Sekai Kyuseikyo New Japanese 800,000
Sthanakavasis Jainism 750,000
Zenrinkai New Japanese 600,000
Druze Islam 450,000
Tensho Kotai Jingukyo New Japanese 400,000
Ennokyo New Japanese 300,000
Digambaras Jainism 155,000
Reconstructionist Judaism 150,000
Parsis Zoroastrianism 110,000
Gabars Zoroastrianism 20,000
(Statistics sourced from www.adherents.com)
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.asp?loc=ct&letter=A by country - stats
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introleastreached.html
http://www.joshuaproject.net/introcomplete.html world survey convert project design
http://www.joshuaproject.net/peoplenumbers.html operation world
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/cntryxx.htm worlwide
http://www.joshuaproject.net/Assets/Profiles/jpcxind.htm peoples in India
http://www.hindunet.org/conversions/conversion/ articles
Reference: The Detroit News
Racial,ethnic makeup of 10 largest Christian denominations in the U.S.
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
No figures available for racial/ethnic makeup for 4, 5, 7, 8, 9:
1 Roman Catholic 61,200,000
About 42% of the US Catholics are minorities
38% Hispanic, 3.8% African American, Vietnamese 0.33%, Korean 0.13%,
Chinese 0.06%
Hispanics are expected to become the majority in the U.S Roman Catholic Church
between 2010 and 2020.
2 Southern Baptist Convention 15,663,296
85% White, 11% Ethnic (Asian, Hispanic, etc), 4% African American
About 15% of the congregations have predominantly minority memberships
3 United Methodist 8,800,000
About 5.6% of the members are minorities
4.2% African American, 0.67% Asian, 0.48% Hispanic, 0.19% American Indian
4 National Baptist Convention USA Inc. 8,500,000
African American predominantly
5 Church of God in Christ (Pentecostal) 5,499,875
African American predominantly
6 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,180,910
About 2% of the members are minorities
0.38% African American, 0.42% Asian, 0.57% Hispanic, 0.14% American Indian
7 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 5,180,910
White predominantly
8 National Baptist Convention America Inc 4,500,000
African American predominantly
9 African Methodist Episcopal 3,500,000
African American predominantly
10 Presbyterian Church USA 2,631,466
About 6.8% of the members are minorities
2.6% African American, 1.8% Asian, 0.9% Hispanic, 0.4% American Indian, 1.1% other
---------------------------
Beyond Mind:
Beyond Mind
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Mishra; Julian Press Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, by Swami Hariharananda Aranya Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Pandit Usharbudh Arya Aphorisms of Patanjali, ...; Vedanta Press Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda Books on Ashtanga Yoga by Baba Hari Dass All published by Sri Rama Publishing, PO Box 2550, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 Ashtanga Yoga Primer, by Baba Hari Dass Fire Without Fuel, by Baba Hari Dass Silence Speaks: From the Chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, by Baba Hari Dass A Child's Garden of Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Hariakhan Baba, Known and Unknown, by Baba Hari Dass The Path to Enlightenment is Not a Highway, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 1: Binding Thoughts and Liberation, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 2: Mind is Our World, by Baba Hari Dass Essay 3: Selfless Service, The Spirit of Karma Yoga, by Baba Hari Dass Sweeper to Saint: Stories of Holy India, by Baba Hari Dass The Yellow Book, by Baba Hari Dass Cat and Sparrow, by Baba Hari Dass Fun with Fitness Asanas, by Baba Hari Dass The Magic Gem, by Baba Hari Dass Mystic Monkey, by Baba Hari Dass Other Books on Ashtanga Yoga Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda Be Here Now, by Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.) The Science of Being and Art of Living, by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi The Seven States of Consciousness, by Anthony Campbell Books on Hatha Yoga Hathayoga Pradipika of Svatmarama, commentary of Bhramananda; Adyar Library and Research Center Note: "Hathayoga" is sometimes spelled as two words: "Hatha Yoga." Gherand Samhita, ...; Oriental Books Reprint Corp Shiva Samhita, translated by Rai Bahdur Srisa Chandra Vasu; Oriental Books Reprint Corp. Books on Gyan Yoga Note: The word "Gyan" is sometimes spelled "Jnana" Ashtavakra Samhita, by Swami Nityaswarupananda; Advaita Ashram Atma Bodha of Shankaracharya: Self Analysis and Self Knowledge, by Sri Rammurti Mishra Panchadashi, by Hari Prasad Shastri Viveka Chudamani of Sri Shankaracharya, by Swami Madhavananda; Advaita Ashram Books on Bhakti Yoga Narada's Bhakti Sutras, by Swami Tyagisananda; Sri Ramakrishna Math Srimad Bhagavatam (One translation and commentary is: "The Wisdom of God," by Swami Prabhavananda; Vedanta Press) Books on Gyan Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga Sri Ramacharita Manasa (The Ramayana), ...; Gita Press Srimad Bhagavadgita (The Bhagavad Gita), ...; Gita Press Other Books on Meditation and Breathing Techniques Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual of Meditation, by Thich Nhat Hanh Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by S. 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