Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[Murugan]

People of Bharat are actually more obsessed with Itihaas, record keeping and geneology compared to any other people.

There are plenty of references pertaining to events associated with historical/aitihaasic significance in our epic, literature, festivals etc. Events like Birth of great people, avatars, battles etc.

Small or big donations made to various religious institutions are carved in stones - practices for millenniums. Kanheri cave complex has at least one hundred stone cut caves. many caves have record of donors, donors' place of origin, donors' father's names etc inscribed in Brahmi. Even water tanks have inscriptions.

Jains have largest repository of manuscripts, inscriptions, stone tablets etc. Most of them in private possessions of trusts and very well preserved. Many of the jain texts start with salutation to Brahmi - Namo Bambiye Liviye.

In small villages we find recognition of local heroes and their acts of bravery inscribed and sometimes very well sculpted in large stone tablets with details of time and dates, place etc.

Kshatraps were probably the first in the world to inscribe dates on coins with names of the ruler and his father with designations of both.

coinindia.com/galleries-rudrasena1.html

We still have traditional genealogists with surnames like barot, bardai, charan, gadhavi etc who maintain vanshavalis. Itihas forever lives in india.

Every dharmic marriage ceremony requires references of father, grandfather, gotra, ved, pravar, vaar, nakshatra, tithi etc. This is itihas in daily lives.

In bharat, Itihas lives in 'uneducated' people's daily lives while history is a pastime of rich people.

[Lalmohan]

rajeshji - you see CT, i see dismissive attitude. the europeans and their american successors (in the last 300 years) saw the mid east, india and china as spent powers, consigned to the dust of history. nothing they had could therefore be of value. their drive was to build an euro-centric identity to commend themselves on mastery over the world. in my opinion its less about actively conspiring to destroy these ancient civilisations but having already 'conquered' them to not see anything of value in them and so totally ignore and trivialise them. almost all of the foundations for modern interpretations of asian history comes from this mindset

indians ofcourse never really lost touch with their grand past, and yearn to return there. it hurts us that we are ignored, therefore i guess we assume that its a wilful act and not one of omission.

[RajeshA]

Lalmohan ji,

I'll try to give an analogy. Yesterday I read a children's story to the little kid of a friend, so I am sourcing the idea from there.

Let's say we have a corn field, which the Texas farmer is harvesting using one of their monster harvesters. Now the driver just sits in his seat and drives in straight lines. He can even sit back and have a smoke if he wants. All the work is getting done almost on its own. He knows that in the field there may be some animals, who may have made it home in the meantime - e.g. field mice.

Now these field mice would run helter skelter for their lives and their holes and the food herded and everything would be gone. The farmer knows that that would happen, but he does it nevertheless, because as you say, it is a dismissive attitude.

The West has started many processes now underway, be they economic, religious, cultural, informational, etc. and tried to attain a monopoly over these processes. They have even bought much of the big business in other countries and thus get rich not just from their territories but worldwide. They have bought into the media empires in other countries or set up their own. They have established such supremacy in the field of academics and research, that much of the education of the world and worldview is determined by how academicians in the West determine it. They have encouraged Christianity around the world, to get control over the reigns of civilizational evolution in other countries and to ensure that it remains compatible with their interests. Sometimes they are even willing to use other fires to burn down the forests standing, e.g. they will be willing to use Islam or even cultural Marxism in India to bring down Dharma, for both do not really pose a challenge to them. They are willing to buy over the 'natives' giving them a little stake in the world and make them part of their club as junior members.

Now that is how I see it. But I don't see that with any bitterness. Many Indians do. I am not bitter, because that is the natural drive of humans - the rajasic/tamasic engine. Most Dharmics are of the view that we should all hurry to put on sattvic robes and preach morality, but I think that is a cop out!

I think that that civilization should be put in the driver's seat which has a sattvic engine, but that is not the engine that would get us to overtake the West. The sattvic drive like the electric car engine is good for environment-friendly and morality-based consciousness, but it is not the engine that would give us the domination to use it. If we want to determine the course of India and the world, we would have fight it out with the current memes in the West using similar methods. Some people ask then, what differentiates us from them if we use similar means. To that I would say, it is our sattvic potential, something they cannot bring about in the same measure.

Coming back to the issue at hand, I think the West has put many processes in place to ensure their continued domination and they hold the reins but they too are aware that the throne is a slippery seat and you have to continue to fight for it, checkmating all other movements over which one cannot exert control. Kings need to be always on the lookout for potential usurpers, traitors, conspirers and enemies. But on the outside the King would always make a show that he is completely in control. He is so much in control that others need not even bother considering the notion of unseating him. He has to portray self-confidence. I think the whole dismissive attitude is more of a show and not real.

I think in the corn field too it is possible that a few field mice can get into the monster harvesters and chew away various cables and pipes, so that next time the harverster is used, the whole thing blows up.

Civilizational competition and control over levers of power are simply a fact of life. Nobody can be dismissive or nonchalant about that. When the West writes books like "the end of history" and stuff like that, than it is both wishful thinking and also putting up a confident face, because a convincing confident face is a job half done, a victory half won.

[Lalmohan]

so is it CT to destroy or just space denial?

[RajeshA]

It is a long process of threat reduction to levels which are not dangerous. Indics are still a threat to Western domination and the dismissive attitude is just a tactic of denial of legitimacy as an equally strong opponent.

Civilizational greatness means a long glorious past, a dominating present, and an inclusive and attractive vision for the future; and the social memes to keep it all together.

West (Anglo-Germans) has a very shallow past of a half a millennium bolstered with much fiction, a precarious present, but they have tried to project an inclusive and attractive vision for future, though one has only their word for it that it is inclusive. Also the social contract they project: peaceful world order, individual freedoms, open markets, scientific thinking, technological solutions, green planet, just law and order, Christianity, etc. still leave the human mind unsatisfied, the soul empty, and society degenerating.

Indics have a counter-proposal, a slightly different system - may be not perfect but one with potential to improve. This alternative model does pose a challenge to the West. And Indics are strong where the West is weak - in civilizational antiquity, in spiritual offerings, and basically traditions which allow just as solid pillars for social structuring as in the West.

As we notice, what the West still has been adamantly resisting is recognizing our traditions in mathematics, astronomy, and various other traditional scientific fields. This is one area, the West feels they deserve to have the sole recognized leadership. So they are willing to share their advances in Mathematics with either dead civilizations like Babylonians, Mayans and so on or even with Arabs because of the total bankruptcy of their social model with respect to science and technology; but they have a difficulty recognizing Indian genius. If they start doing that, they will be trading away their superiority in the field. To our philosophy, they say it is not really philosophy. They know India is a living civilization and thus still a threat.

Here is something to underline that.

These were two issues from a well-respected magazine 'Spektrum der Wissenschaft' from Germany on History of Mathematics.

1. SPEKTRUM DER WISSENSCHAFT SPEZIAL 2/2009: GESCHICHTEN AUS DER MATHEMATIK - ToC
2. SPEKTRUM DER WISSENSCHAFT SPEZIAL 3/2011: GESCHICHTEN AUS DER MATHEMATIK II - ToC

These were the list of Mathematicians they chose to focus on. From their Table of Contents.
A. History of Mathematics I

1. Thales von Milet (624–547 v. Chr.) 6
2. Pythagoras von Samos (570–500 v. Chr) 8
3. Archimedes von Syrakus (287–212 v. Chr.) 10
4. Liu Hui (220–280) 13
5. Zu Chongzhi (429–500) 15
6. Mohammed Ibn Musa Al-Kwharizmi (780–850) 17
7. Omar Khayyam (1048–1131) 19
8. Leonardo von Pisa (Fibonacci) (1170–1250) 22
9. Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi (1201–1274) 24
10. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) 27
11. Pedro Nunes (1502–1578) 30
12. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) 32
13. René Descartes (1596–1650) 34
14. Pierre de Fermat (1608–1665) 36
15. Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647) 38
16. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) 40
17. Seki Kowa (1642–1708) 42
18. Isaac Newton (1643–1727) 44
19. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) 48
20. Edmond Halley (1656–1742) 50
21. Charles Marie de la Condamine (1701–1774) und
22. Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759) 52
23. Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) 56
24. RuÐer Josip Boškovic´ (1711–1787) 61
25. Gaspard Monge (1746–1818) 63
26. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827) 65
27. Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) 67
28. Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) 72
29. Augustin Cauchy (1789–1857) 74
30. Évariste Galois (1811–1832) 76
31. John von Neumann (1903–1957) 78
32. Andrei N. Kolmogorow (1903–1987) 80

B. History of Mathematics II

1. Euklid von Alexandria (um 300 v. Chr.) 6
2. Abu Yusuf Al-Kindi (800 – 870) 10
3. Ibn Al-Haitham (965 – 1039) 12
4. Abu Arrayhan Al-Biruni (973 – 1048) 14
5. Abu Ali Al-Husain Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980 – 1037) 16
6. Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528) 20
7. Adam Ries (1492 – 1559) 22
8. Gerardus Mercator (1512 – 1594) 24
9. John Napier (1550 – 1617) 28
10. Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) 31
11. Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) 36
12. Christiaan Huygens (1629 – 1695) 40
13. Jakob Bernoulli (1655 – 1705) 43
14. Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707 – 1788) 46
15. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717 – 1783) 48
16. Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729 – 1811) 50
17. Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736 – 1813) 53
18. Jurij Vega (1754 – 1802) 56
19. Nikolai Lobatschewski (1792 – 1856) 58
20. Adolphe Quetelet (1796 – 1874) 61
21. Niels Henrik Abel (1802 – 1829) 63
22. William Rowan Hamilton (1805 – 1865) 65
23. Pafnuti Lwowitsch Tschebyschow (1821 – 1894) 67
24. Henri Poincaré (1854 – 1912) 70
25. David Hilbert (1862 – 1943) 73
26. Emanuel Lasker (1868 – 1941) 75
27. Constantin Carathéodory (1873 – 1950) 78
28. Wacław Sierpin´ski (1882 – 1969) 80

In the whole list there is not a single Mathematician from India. Now it is not that who ever was compiling this list would not be in the know. After all Wikipedia is today freely accessible, and Indian contribution would have been visible. I would say this omission is deliberate.

We Indians who basically invented Mathematics taught the world the Mathematics are completely excluded from the list. Should that make us angry? No! It is actually a recognition, a recognition that they fear us. But getting the names of our scientific accomplishments across is still a challenge we have to face.

Digestion of Buddhism, Gandhi, Bharatnatyam, Yoga, Ayurveda, Meditation techniques, etc. and over time selling everything Indian under their own Western label after doing their U-Turns is also part of their game. Rajiv Malhotra writes extensively about this phenomenon.

AIT and the whole effort to deny the Indian Civilization its due antiquity is also a game with heavy stakes.

So whether the West (Anglo-Germans mostly) act dismissively or racially does not change the fundamental outlines of this civilizational assault.

[Lalmohan]

i dont think its entirely deliberate. they have grown up with "arabs gave us numbers"
recently they have been discovering (interested to know the mechanism) that chinese had done clever things in the past
the matter of indics is still blurred - so i think they take the view of - who cares, we're superior now anyway, lets press ahead and ignore them
i am not sure that the premise of 'indics pose a civilisational threat' is entirely robust, and i dont think its central to the western mindset

[A_Gupta]

.....{excerpted for brevity}...
Every dharmic marriage ceremony requires references of father, grandfather, gotra, ved, pravar, vaar, nakshatra, tithi etc. This is itihas in daily lives.

In bharat, Itihas lives in 'uneducated' people's daily lives while history is a pastime of rich people.

Very different from the academic journals; and probably more relevant to the daily life of people. A living past, so to speak.

[RajeshA]

i dont think its entirely deliberate. they have grown up with "arabs gave us numbers"
recently they have been discovering (interested to know the mechanism) that chinese had done clever things in the past
the matter of indics is still blurred - so i think they take the view of - who cares, we're superior now anyway, lets press ahead and ignore them

I think, the premise "arabs gave us numbers" may have been an excuse 20 years ago. Not today! Secondly for a magazine of such repute, to sideline all Indian mathematicians, is really strange if it is simply out of ignorance. If some common man does that, it is something else.

i am not sure that the premise of 'indics pose a civilisational threat' is entirely robust, and i dont think its central to the western mindset

Those places are extremes - central or beyond peripheral. There is much space in between.

And as noted earlier: once the harvester is harvesting that corn field, the farmer can afford to have a smoke as well while driving. The carefree attitude is based on the assurance that the processes set in motion would continue to weaken the adversary. But should a wrench fall into the machinery in the process breaking it and thus disturbing the process, then one would notice anger and panic. Because then the threat removal is not on automatic.

AIT is basically pinning us down, while the non-state actors do their mischief. They don't know what would happen if they let go of the AIT-grip and allow us to stand up. AIT could be the first domino stone, whose tipping over could trigger the falling of a whole chain of domino stones in the world order.

When we speak of a "Civilizational Threat", we speak of a change in the driving philosophy of the world and most certainly about a change in the drivers - the people in power, the role models, models of governance! The reins of power can shift to a different set of people. The digestion of Indic memes is going on to prevent the urge manifesting among the Western people to turn to Dharmic/Indic leadership. The only set of people in the West who may be threatened are the Elite and their control over power.

But then again the model itself cannot pose any threat if the Indic elite who are the guardians of this model are themselves fragmented and corrupted. So the threat too is considered minimal but not because of any impotency of the model but rather its upholders.

West's technological edge may not last more than 50 years. Then the leadership would be up for grabs. Till then Indics would have to resist those processes initiated by the West, designed for our deracination.

[RajeshA]

A_Gupta ji,

if it is accepted that Indians did not use to write down the chronicles of our history, then according to you, what is then the corollary?

Is the corollary, that we should not try to reconstruct our past as history? Or is it something else?

[Murugan]

Academic journals are different. there are halfwitz journals, biased journals, politicised journals, cooked up journals. western or any other journals do not automatically become pramans or truth or established history.

Living itihaas is diiferent. Being Different is our identity.

[member_22872]

We don't need to prove anything to ourselves. We can live with just thinking that Rg Veda was composed in eternity, this very aspect of taking our history as given and granted landed us in trouble. The trouble is that our history is hijacked and now we are running pillar to post to just salvage it and call it our own. Different times have different perspectives. In those days Indians didn't feel the need to have a recorded history, perhaps they didn't foresee the coming of Witzel types. Now the time dictates that we learn our past and have a record of our history so that after 1000 years of present genetic admixture the proof is not lost, we shouldn't be told then that India always remained a cauldron of foreign races and that it doesn't have a history of its own from the start.

[Murugan]

What has landed us in trouble is our incapability to establish ourselves. And in our own way. We try hard to prove ourselves on their term. Not in recording history. Father of boson is already in history but see how higgs is the only historical person in lhc experiments. Are we able to claim our history?

When we will have our own genuine ways in academia and we are able to assert ourselves then only things will change. Forget AIT, can we get our mathematicians, scientists, astronomers, satyendranath the recognition they deserve at world stage?

[Murugan]

One day we will say this is our itihaas and we believe in it, take it or leave it. We have our own wherewithal to understand history, past, itihas etc... We do not necessarily need your model... Then we will be respected.

[RajeshA]

Murugan ji,

some pages ago shiv saar narrated how when he had proposed to his colleagues to bring out their own journal, they all hesitated and declined to take up the responsibility.

We need to understand what exactly are the issues involved among our academicians? Is there lack of resources? Are they timid? Are they too comfortable? Are there too few incentives? Do they require technical assistance? Is there no research? Are they content with just teaching? Do they fear external eyes? Is the problem with their language skills? Is the problem with their documentation skills?

We need to get at the bottom of this!

[Murugan]

Rajesh gaaru,

I strongly believe that disconnect with our own identity, asmita, vismruti of who we are/were has led to this situation. I agree with you rajesh gaaru, we need to dig it. We need to do lot of interrogation, swadhyay to deshackle ourselves from hin bhavna we carry.

Ramdev, rajivji, vivekanand etc all believed in them. Resources are secondary in their cases. It is just that connect with bhartiya asmita that did wonder. Veer bhogya vasundhara believers.

***
Also lack of perseverance in many cases. Pity that mammoth work done by adya shankara is nowhere seen carried on by modern mathadhipatis shankaracharyas.

People like ramdev who are not recognized by such people are actually instiling confidence in new generation but the penetration is still limited.

[Yagnasri]

On non avaliability of written material we need to understand that for almost 1000 years in many places of our nation, our records were destroyed compleately in Jihad. So we can not say there are no records in the first place. We can only so nothing big is avaliable at present. Kings list of Magada kings is avaliable and Kalhanas Rajatharangini is also there. As some people contend about 1200 years were cut from indian history by EJ historians and we are not stuct with that issue.

[Lalmohan]

indians did indeed write down history. reading a book about ashoka recently, we find several references to ancient texts about ashoka and other emperors, however it is clear that some of these works have been lost and only derivatives are found in sri lanka and elsewhere with strong buddhist roots. nalanda was only one of 10 or so great libraries that were burned down - do not underestimate the damage wreaked by the barbarians

[shiv]

As has been pointed out, the Puranas are history. India has along tradition of oral history. But the paradigm forced on us is written history. And thet despite the fact that Sanskrit texts are the world's finest example of accurate oral transmission of knowledge. We ignore that and hang on to all sorts of dubious characters because we have been taught to think "Indians didn't write. So they were bullshitting. The people who wrote always tell the truth"

[RajeshA]

Some resources in the AIT vs OIT debate compiled together

[RajeshA]

shiv saar,

the paradigm actually forced on us is "history with dates". An accurate astronomical dating would help.

[SaiK]

The people who lie but write it down remains for ever. People who tell the truth by word of mouth perish when the words stop telling the minds. Natural demise.

This problem can be solved if people understand that this is the truth. However, not just aams, even the well educated thinks inferior to western color based racism... more so, within country MGTGs (more gora than gora) are actually taking a step further to ensure, even the writings if any exists are burned/trashed.

Religious fanaticism is more now than it was before. I think the real trigger is coming from these Gorics and MGTGs who have vested interests. The same gorics are taking the core concepts like yoga, dharma, and ayurveda and commercializing it for the west... and soon, stories will be WRITTEN about its origins. Who actually commercialized, and trading that at NYSE.

[Murugan]

The oral tradition of veds and other texts is one of the biggest examples of preserving knowledge. We could have told the world that one can also continue preserving knowledge this way. But inferior minds prevailed and made us feel bad about ourselves that we do not have explicitly written past.

Ayurvedic texts, mathematical sutras, yog sutras etc can be recited and memorised as well as recalled very easily. This is no mean thing. Large mandalas and suktas have been preserved for millenniums just by oral tradition. But nobody can make you feel bad without your permission and we successfully felt bad that we do not have written records of veds etc. Achievement turned to shame.

[nakul]

the paradigm actually forced on us is "history with dates". An accurate astronomical dating would help.

Rajesh ji,

People with agendas will keep setting new criteria to reject our history. Earlier, it used to be no history. Now, since we claim that we have history in our oral traditions, the goalpost has shifted to written history. As evidence for written history is found, the criterion for acceptance becomes "history with dates."

As can be clearly seen, there is no end to this monkey business. We can't use their methods which are plainly biased to explain ourselves.

Even today, many people in India use the Krishna Sanvat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samvat#Date_conversion

We have kept historical records far better than others
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Time_Cycles

But they keep insisting that the scriptures are myth. If so, even the year 2012 is based on the myth that 2012 years have passed that Christ walked the earth.

[RamaY]

shiv saar,

the paradigm actually forced on us is "history with dates". An accurate astronomical dating would help.

This is because the underlying premise that the universe was "Created" sometime in 4000BC. By laying out our history in that structure, we are giving up on the validity of that premise.

[shiv]

shiv saar,

the paradigm actually forced on us is "history with dates". An accurate astronomical dating would help.

Actually its "dates that we accept". the bottom line is "We call the shots. You give us dates and we reject what we want"

[Murugan]

shiv saar,

the paradigm actually forced on us is "history with dates". An accurate astronomical dating would help.

Like untranslatable sanskrit words, some events, facts, past of bharat is undatable. We believe in this. If others dont believe they are free. If they want to find dates let them find. We have different pupose for preserving itihaas, very differnt from cooking history for dubious motives.

[SaiK]

AIT is school text books should go first!

[Dan Mazer]

We ignore that and hang on to all sorts of dubious characters because we have been taught to think "Indians didn't write. So they were bullshitting. The people who wrote always tell the truth"

The West can conceive of only these two ways representing the past - representing it accurately or taking liberties with the facts (i.e. bullshitting). So the two ways are representing the past with the Truth or with Falsity. Indians (and most non-religious cultures) have a third way. We represent the past with stories which are neither true or false. They are neither true or false because they don't claim to be a historical record of events. As Prof.Balu explained in the paper that A_Guptaji posted, the kind of relationship we have with Arjuna and Karna and Bhishma can never be engendered by a history.

There was an argument earlier in this thread that even if we didn't have history in the past we need one now because it was the lack of a history that made us vulnerable to the West's ability to create faultlines in our society. I'd disagree. It's not the ABSENCE of a history but the PRESENCE of the false ideas that 'history is crucial to a people' and that 'our puraanas and itihaasas were actually poor attempts at history' which we accepted from our colonial teachers that made us vulnerable. The task before us then is not to fashion an accurate history but to get back our pre-colonial indifference to history.

[A_Gupta]

A_Gupta ji,

if it is accepted that Indians did not use to write down the chronicles of our history, then according to you, what is then the corollary?

Is the corollary, that we should not try to reconstruct our past as history? Or is it something else?

We should try to construct our past without torturing the texts or forgetting what they really are for. E.g., If you turn Indra into some glorified memory of some chieftain of some long forgotten tribe, then the Rg Veda turns into nursery rhymes, and our ancestors into rather child-like imbeciles, who could not separate fact from fiction.

We should also understand how the past was viewed and used in our culture before we became Macaulayized, and that is much more important to preserving and growing the culture. Think of history as just one way of relating to the past. The main use of history appears to be for ideological purposes, and that false truism - that he who does not know history is doomed to repeat it (we repeat it anyway, with history you just are more aware of the repetition). Unless there is some find of documents that were hidden all along, it is clear that our ancestors didn't think either of those uses were of much value. Murugan offered a line of thought, where the way we related to the past was different from history, and more relevant to daily life also. IMO, we should understand that better.

Without that,
http://xyz4000.wordpress.com/2011/03/25 ... education/

[SaiK]

Q: Did AIT-Nazis used the same stories we tell about ourselves and converted/changed the interpretations that as history facts to write AIT in history text books? Then we can write on the same way, Ramayana and Mahabharata too.

[Murugan]

Dan Mazer
+ 101

[A_Gupta]

Another thing our ancestors were not interested in is large monumental structures, of which the Pyramids are the exemplar. Or Taj Mahal. They presumably had better things to do with whatever economic surplus was there than to squander it on such things (of course, such monuments are great for the historians). IMO, we have a still living culture, however threatened it may be, and most other cultures are dead and have their monuments. I prefer the former to the latter.

Anyway, I see that as another indication that our ancestors had a different way of relating to the past than monuments and histories.

PS: there were large buildings, e.g, temples or palaces or forts - but they were functional buildings, not meant to aggrandize some person or serve as a reminder of the past. Monuments - pyramid, Taj Mahal, other mausoleums - they did not do that.

[member_22872]

It's not the ABSENCE of a history but the PRESENCE of the false ideas that 'history is crucial to a people' and that 'our puraanas and itihaasas were actually poor attempts at history' which we accepted from our colonial teachers that made us vulnerable.

Dan Mazer ji, I mostly agree with what you say, but false ideas is a relative term, the AIT group will say the same thing about our concept of history, and that what they say is right, the truth becomes a casualty of the group which has clout (in this case AIT) and who can disprove the other, victorious will rewrite history, whether true or not.

[Prem]

Huge monuments are for personal glory,hence Asuric in nature. Forest dwelling Rishis were the most respected . Their need were few and limited and the Kings etc were restricted in accumulating unlimited wealth. I think Parag Tope has come up with his reasonable postulation on this lack of big ancient monuments.

[Lalmohan]

the great cities were built of mud brick and have washed away over time. some remain in desert regions. the great rock edicts remained until relatively recent times when they were vandalised. the great statue of mahavira still remains, ellora still remains
but these are functional things, not just for vainglory

[Murugan]

Distinct feature of our itihaas is: we dont have/dont keep/dont bother to observe death anniversaries.

We know that lord krishna was born on krishna paksha sharavan ashtami in rohini nakshatra. We celebrate birth of krishna but we have not really cared about death tithi of lord krishna or lord ram.

We observe guru nanak jayanti, shivaji jayanti or tilak jayanti but no death anniversaries. Death anniversaries and death/torture related events are observed by history centric religions. Itihas centric dharmic people celebrate birth and life. We cremate people who become itihas. They bury people who become history and keep visiting tombs and kabars thus keep visiting history.

Some festivals are observed as victory of good or evil. Some are remembered more for out of box thinking like narsimha avatar. But dont care about timeline of hiranyakashipu.

[member_22872]

I am not averse to taking puranas as proof of history. But people of book already do this, for them what is written in their books is take as word of the God, there is nothing you can do do disprove or question it. The downside of that is they become dogmatic, no element of truth that we come to know through other means of investigation can convince that some elements could be wrong. Do we want to follow that path?

[Murugan]

Another thing our ancestors were not interested in is large monumental structures, of which the Pyramids are the exemplar. Or Taj Mahal. They presumably had better things to do with whatever economic surplus was there than to squander it on such things (of course, such monuments are great for the historians). IMO, we have a still living culture, however threatened it may be, and most other cultures are dead and have their monuments. I prefer the former to the latter.

Anyway, I see that as another indication that our ancestors had a different way of relating to the past than monuments and histories.

PS: there were large buildings, e.g, temples or palaces or forts - but they were functional buildings, not meant to aggrandize some person or serve as a reminder of the past. Monuments - pyramid, Taj Mahal, other mausoleums - they did not do that.

A_Gupta ji,

I had earlier written in gd forum and enhancing water resources thread about this.

All great indic kings have constructed monuments for public welfare. we can give many examples. Sudarshan lake was constructed by maurya. Then again we have historical record of kshatrap repairing the lake few hundred years later, our kings built hospitals, dharmashalas, baolis, ponds, canals like grand anicut canals or universities like takshshila, nalanda, valabhi, vikramshila etc.

Different from incestuous perverts building mausoleums like taj mahal or mosques in the name of their biwis or dull useless structures built by brutish.

We go to rajasthan and find lakes, baavlis, water harvesting projects taken up by small and big raja maharajas. Some water harvesting monuments are still supplying water to large population after many hundred years. Its different.

[RajeshA]

RamaY ji,

Here is one way of seeing the issue:

I don't think cyclic time is really the big problem. We can claim any way to measure time. The point is that for every major event we need to have a time-stamp in whichever calendar. One can say well Rama was in a different manvantra or something. That too is okay. The calendar, cyclic or linear, should be mappable to the currently used international calendar and vice versa.

Many abroad would not recognize those ancient dates, but at least we would be having our own historical timeline, based on our own model of time. More importantly it should not be contested among us.

The second way is:

It doesn't matter when what happened. It doesn't have any effect on how one leads one's life. The past is important to learn lessons from it, but not record events over which one does not have any control as that has become past.

.............

The lesson however to take away is that today history has become important because based on that one makes claims, and dates and time-stamps help bolster the claims of one side. A statement on some past event having a fixed time-stamp and chronology has much more credibility than a story.

History is important to also understand human evolution. Human evolution takes place regardless of whether one understands it or not, but understanding of it helps us to understand patterns, even complicated patterns, and thus to devise strategies for the future.

I can understand the argument that too much history makes one attached to human existence and distracts one from both living in the present as well as from pursuit of moksha.

But as explained history also has its uses and relevance.

[Murugan]

I am not averse to taking puranas as proof of history. But people of book already do this, for them what is written in their books is take as word of the God, there is nothing you can do do disprove or question it. The downside of that is they become dogmatic, no element of truth that we come to know through other means of investigation can convince that some elements could be wrong. Do we want to follow that path?

History for history centric people.

Itihaas for dharmics. Itihaas cannot become dogmatic. It has not yet.

Mahabharat was aitihaasik event. Kaam ki cheez hai bhagvad gita. I dont recite or quote mahabharat.