Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 05 Jul 2012 22:42

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.

Lalmohanji, RajeshA ji has already explained his view. I also agree with him.

Oiropeans prospered by killing off its competitors by various means. mainly slavery and rape of other cultures. the bedrock of that was christianism. It was imperative that they study Indian culture/history. this was done mainly by christian missionaries. They called the shots. It was an opportunity to degrade the largest pre christian culture which was and is still surviving. The early missionaries found that Indians were highly resistant to christian virus for conversion. The only way to defang Indians was by falsifying the history(roots).By doing this we are vulnerable to conversion/attacks of all kinds. Create and sow seeds of confusion.
(ex- getting into an a computer OS by becoming a superuser you can create havoc with it)

This has been on going for decades. Now this has become mainstream that it is "sort of accepted truth" by many. This is buttressed by the fact of white civilisation being "dominant and modern" plays on the individuals.
Hence many sdres readily accept the horse shit of white AIT nazis without any critique.

when questioned they clamp down on its critiques by various means-- this is wilful act to purposely deny the truth.

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 05 Jul 2012 22:49

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 6#p1303826

For people who think that "whites" are nice should read this article I posted in gdf.
They can wilfully suppress the information after using it, make u turns and trivilaise the non whites findings.

Sushupti · Post by **Sushupti** » 05 Jul 2012 22:51

NEW EVIDENCE FOR EARLY SILK IN THE INDUS CIVILIZATION

Silk is an important economic fibre, and is generally considered to have been the exclusive
cultural heritage of China. Silk weaving is evident from the Shang period c. 1600–1045 BC ,
though the earliest evidence for silk textiles in ancient China may date to as much as a
millennium earlier. Recent microscopic analysis of archaeological thread fragments found
inside copper-alloy ornaments from Harappa and steatite beads from Chanhu-daro, two
important Indus sites, have yielded silk fibres, dating to c.2450–2000BC This study offers
the earliest evidence in the world for any silk outside China, and is roughly contemporaneous with the earliest Chinese evidence for silk. This important new finding brings into question the traditional historical notion of sericulture as being an exclusively
Chinese invention.

http://a.harappa.com/sites/harappa.drup ... 20Silk.pdf

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 05 Jul 2012 22:51

A_Gupta wrote: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.

This I doubt. I will give just a couple of examples and leave it at that.

Please read Ramayana and the assembly of Janaka when Shiva Dhanus was brought in for Sita Swayamvara.
Please read Mahabharata and the size and structure of Maya Sabha.

More recently we have the Raja Raja Chola's great temple structures in the south. Pls check this out

We are paying too much attention to Ganga-Sindhu area, which went thru severe destruction under Islamic rule. If you have any doubts on the extent of Islamic destruction capability, just remember Hampi-Vijayanagara.

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 05 Jul 2012 22:58

RajeshAji,

The date reference is available for a reader who is willing to look at them. If you take the Kalpa, manvantara, yuga, pada, year, month and date structure, everything is dated.

It is just that people don't know and cant comprehend it.

If you tell your AIT opponent that Rama was born in so and so Manvantara, Treta Yuga etc., and it is around 19 million years ago, then he will say no humans existed at that time. Then you are forced to prove that humans did exist before 6000 or 10000 or 30000 or 65000 years ago based on which ideology your friend belongs to...

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 05 Jul 2012 23:05

Rajesh gaaru,

History has its uses and relevance only for historysheeters

We dont have any use of our own history. In our own country we cant say J c bose inventor of wireless tech, brahmagupta for gravity, sulvasutras instead of pythagoras theorem, s n bose for LHC, aryabhat for many astronomical things, bhaskar for maths. History makers are political and history is misguiding. Only useful for oppressors and tomb worshippers, tomb raiders and most of the time for barbarians like hitlers.

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 05 Jul 2012 23:07

Ramay ji,

Maya sabha was a public place.

Chola temples and many other south indian temples were also functioning as social and cultural centres

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 05 Jul 2012 23:19

RajeshA wrote: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.

see my above article also posted in gdf.

wrt mayans i came across this similarities between India/Bali and mayans.
please also look at the photographs.

http://indiansrgr8.blogspot.com/2011/05 ... l?spref=tw
http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogsp ... india.html
http://viewzone2.com/ancientturksx.html

some of the above still believe in ait by the way. aryans came from artic/russia etc bs.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Jul 2012 23:29

Is it not "Saint" < Sant < Sat < Swami of the hindusim guru world concept? religious practice and custom are OiT too.

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 05 Jul 2012 23:29

Sarasvati Sindhu (Indus Civilization) Site Map

https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/ ... c-doctrine

hope this is not posted already.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 06 Jul 2012 01:01

RamaY wrote:
This I doubt. I will give just a couple of examples and leave it at that.

Please read Ramayana and the assembly of Janaka when Shiva Dhanus was brought in for Sita Swayamvara.
Please read Mahabharata and the size and structure of Maya Sabha.

More recently we have the Raja Raja Chola's great temple structures in the south. Pls check this out

We are paying too much attention to Ganga-Sindhu area, which went thru severe destruction under Islamic rule. If you have any doubts on the extent of Islamic destruction capability, just remember Hampi-Vijayanagara.

From the dictionary: the very first meaning of monument is "something erected in memory of a person, event, etc., as a building, pillar, or statue". Monument now has additional meanings, but the primary meaning is as above. Thus Monument is a way of relating to the past.

So mosques or churches are not monuments either, in this primary sense. Every building you mentioned above, from the Ramayana or from Raja Raja Chola or from Hampi-Vijayanagara is not "something erected in memory of a person, event, etc.".

Point to some large Hindu structure "erected in memory of a person, event, etc", I don't think there are or were any. This pattern is seen right from the Harappan days, where they have a large granary and what appears to be an assembly hall and so on, but no **monumental** architecture.

If you don't see the point, we'll have to agree to disagree.

PS: when monument is used as a verb, it means to commemorate.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 01:07

RamaY ji,

We have three options
a) Bring science to Hindu scriptures
b ) Bring Hindu scriptures to science
c) Leave both separate

a) One would first need to bring the Indian Time Reckoning under the scope of science. Now the current dominant theory is the theory of evolution. If one wants to contest that humans came into existence a million or so years ago, then one would have to provide some evidence. Some evidence for all the manvantaras would have to be found. Once it is there, Indian time-lines would be recognized and it would be justified to propose these in the academic field.

Until then these time-lines would remain faith-based, which is also okay! But that would not solve the issue of the need for a historic time-line for India.

BTW, I had posted in the "Distortion of History" Thread a post relevant to Vedic Time Reckoning.

I presume that as India becomes rich some centers would open up in India with sufficient resources to pursue archaeology, etc. with a different mindset - an Indic mindset. So we will see what they come up with.

-----------------

b) I personally think somewhere in Indian Time Reckoning we have made some mistake, and once that mistake is found out, then all the dates given in our scriptures would be far more compatible with the generally accepted scales of human evolution. There would still be the antiquity there but not in millions of years, but rather in thousands of years.

I think we should be doing some serious coordinated research in archaeoastronomy and mining our scriptures for astronomical data. There have already been various efforts in the field. Subhash Kak has written about it. Koshala Vespa too has written on it. But it needs to be done in a much more coordinate fashion.

I don't think we need to afraid about scrutinizing our scriptures for such information.

-----------------

c) We keep both separate. It is okay that our Itihaas remains only as a matter of faith. But then it does not ease our need for historical anchoring of our itihaas, and those among us, who are believers in science would have trouble reconciling the two. Here I am thinking that our children would really have a problem reading on the one hand about theory of evolution and time scales of human evolution and on the other Hindu time reckoning, and I am afraid that the former would appeal more to their sense of rationality, and thus they may develop a disbelief towards our scriptures.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 06 Jul 2012 01:08

As an example:
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifa ... odaro.html

Ever since the discovery of Harappa, archaeologists have been trying to identify the rulers of this city. What has been found is very surprising because it isn't like the general pattern followed by other early urban societies. It appears that the Harappan and other Indus rulers governed their cities through the control of trade and religion, not by military might. It is an interesting aspect of Harappa as well as the other Indus cities that in the entire body of Indus art and sculpture there are no monuments erected to glorify, and no depictions of warfare or conquered enemies.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 01:16

I have mentioned it before. I think there would have to be a split within the Indic society - between the Historicists and the Itihaasists.

I think this split is healthy in order to cater to the various needs of Indics.

The a) above in the earlier post corresponds to Itihaasists.
The b) above in the earlier post corresponds to Historicists.

For the moment there would be a real difference in the position of both sides. Some time in future, may be we will be able to bridge the gap but for the time being the difference is healthy.

I think we should tag our opinions with the relevant framework - Itihaasism or Historicism.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 01:20

krisna wrote:wrt mayans i came across this similarities between India/Bali and mayans.
please also look at the photographs.

krishna ji,

thanks for sharing. I'll be reading the articles. I have often come across a connection between India and Mayans before.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 06 Jul 2012 01:25

Alberuni remarks on two things - the very large numbers Hindus deal with and that they do not deal with fractions of an year in their dating of things.

Where will you find large integers? Well, when you're trying to write down a very precise rational number approximation to something.

Elsewhere I have seen modern speculation which (to my eye almost but not quite) showed that important astronomical constants are encoded in the ratios of these integers. I've lost the link unfortunately and haven't been able to find it again, but it was almost convincing. Perhaps more work can be done.

The other thing we know is that our ancients liked to write up important information into difficult -almost cryptic- text, which might even seem like nonsense if you don't understand the code. (No, they did not use cryptography, I'm using it as a metaphor).

So I think that trying to interpret the numbers at face-value (they say it is a date, so it must be a date, and it is 121,356,478,999 years ago) is perhaps a mistake.

Alberuni remarks on that too, that the learned Hindus know certain things, but are content to let others have their mistaken notions as well.

PS: as an example of the kind of speculation I was mentioning, I don't remember the details, so just take this as telling you about the kind of thing, one of the numbers that you might get out of the yuga/kalpa/etc. hierarchy is like the number of sidereal days in the roughly 26,000 year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 06 Jul 2012 01:29

Intriguing part of the current Mayan "Calandar" is, it started near 3108Bcee, coinciding with the end of Mahabharta/ beginning of Kalyug. May be one of Arjun's
wife returned home and told the Panda Patriwala to record and start the new calender.
Is the new age approaching with the lightning of Prithvi from Mlecchic burden ?

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Jul 2012 01:53

I think during some eons back, ocean depth was so shallow, and not much of water especially during ice ages... people could be easily be migrating on sea, with few 100ft depth meaning more connectivity by way of ridges and continent shelves connectivity. We also have huge stories of floods etc. including Noah's. The flooding periods itself should have lasted 1000s of years... allowing people to scoot to safety slowly and steadily..

churning of the oceans story could be valid too in certain context of mountains and ridges filled with snakes would have been running havoc.. thus creating exotic stories that we hear.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 06 Jul 2012 02:30

Since this is the OIT thread : while I would like to complete my linguistics absorption programme, people can explore in depth the so-called Pythagoreans.

Note that a lot of what is ascribed to him directly, need not be actually invented, or practised by Pythagoras the man himself. Even within western classics scholarship, there is grave doubt about almost everything attributed to him being really connected to him or attributed later on by followers/cults/hagiographers.

When I first studied him, or rather what is attributed to Pythagoreans themselves - I remembered Lalitavistara Sutra of Mahayanis. The ten-disciple thing [taken up more seriously in Zen], possible complete vegetarianism [and according to some special ban on bovines + "beans" in particular], organized exclusive orders of brotherhood organized into inner -outer circles, involvement in public life, ascetism, importance of numbers in connection to religious rituals significance.

If Buddha was actually earlier than the period now ascribed [there is now anothera ttempt to push him down the time line further from this "accepted" date], or that Buddha follows on from a proto-Buddhist tradition in India - there is a potential route to see how ideas appear in the west, or in the ME onlee after similar ideas appear in India.

No one questions as to why Al Beruni should be taken as the gospel of those times in everything concerning India! How do we know that he is "unbiased"? Do we have contemporary records? From the "other side"? At the time he was a camp-follower of Mahmud- and hence by Thaparite reasoning, on the "victorious" side. We need contemporary verification and confirmation from the "Hindu" side.

Why should Al Beruni be trusted with all the knowledge of Indians? Knowing his associations, what makes this ludicrous claim believable that everything he was told or given to study was part of the inner core of knowledge? Effectively, Al Beruni seems to have been given glimpses of an encrypted body of knowledge while the decryption key was withheld.

There must have been sufficient percolation of Indian knowledge through Buddhist sanghas into Persia and CA [think of Gundishapur uni all whose material was confiscated by the Muslim rulers] before for the Indian pundits to lie directly and successfully. Al Beruni types would have already had gone through this looted knowledge, and hence they would have to be given genuine bits to make it all believable. So the very large number things are told - abstract stuff, or stuff that Indians knew Al Beruni would already have heard of, - but when it comes down to concrete details that would explain the inner workings of the Indian mind as regards politics, nothing given.

Recent dates, are part of details that helps to complete the picture to understand a society - because dates are tied to events, and would bring out contextual connected information.

He learned the language, and could therefore interpret the simplistic texts given to him. He was either given rudimentary texts describing "caste system" or he deliberately chose to select those passages or texts that would comparatively show the "negatives" in comparison to his own faith [there is some reason to believe that such an attempt was going on even with the earliest Arab geographers].

Interestingly - that whole region was dominated by Buddhism and Jainism. By Thaparite claims it was the dissatisfied majority aam Buddhists who looked at the Islamics as traanakartas. How come AlBeruni finds mostly generic "Hindoos"!

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 06 Jul 2012 02:35

Manthaana is multifaced encryption. At one level, it is coding potential effects of irregular movements in the migration of earth's rotational axis. Has to do possibly with precession. Rotation of the earth, possibly contributed to early progress of life through tidal forces [with a much nearer moon] in the so-called primordial soup, and hence could be significant in a certain way of thinking as making life persistent or "immortal".

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 06 Jul 2012 02:44

Alberuni is just another "western" view of India. He too was looking for history, monotheistic religion, etc., etc., just like centuries later, the British were.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Jul 2012 03:50

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/scienc ... 602909.ece
there must be something about how we live and relate here.. need research.

however, I find this interesting where we can define countries and their languages that are not phonetic as almost all desi languages are phonetic.. write the same way as we speak or speak the same way as we write. one of the skills is enough to say big story.

does any of the European or linking PIE phonetic enough?

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Jul 2012 04:01

Just behind the main temple is another intriguing structure which looks like a high and elaborate grave but when one walks around the other side of it, the first thing to be seen is a figure of Nandi, the bull! To find a Shiva temple in a Jain Basadi, is overwhelming. Next to the Shiva temple is another structure that has a small entrance and gives you a peek into the temple interiors. At the sides of the window are figures of the rajpals , complete with shankha, chakra and gada that indicate that it could have been a Vishnu temple.

All this is reminiscent of a past where secularism was an inherent part of the culture of Tulunadu.

http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/ ... 605969.ece
Archaeologists say that they were built between the 8th and 12th Century A.D. Built by the Alupa rulers, the Jain Basadi, unlike most South Indian temples built in the Dravidian style, does not have a gopuram

perhaps we need to find how various temple architectures differ?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 06 Jul 2012 07:08

venug wrote: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?

Venug this is an interesting and valid observation, but "dogma" is also the vehement opposition to all other information. If "science" and "history" become dogma they fall prey to the same malady that religious books are accused of fostering.

No one is asking that the puranas (or the bible) be considered a record of history as demanded by the standards of modern university history departments. But it would be good science to look at them impartially and see what histoorical information can be gleaned without dismissing them as worthless.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 06 Jul 2012 07:11

A_Gupta wrote:Alberuni is just another "western" view of India. He too was looking for history, monotheistic religion, etc., etc., just like centuries later, the British were.

Absolutely true. The irony is that Indians absorb both the sources you mention as "knowledge" because the education system guides the Indian in that way by teaching him English as the primary language of knowledge, Sanskrit having been discarded from that role about 150 years ago.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 06 Jul 2012 07:53

Shiv wrote:

No one is asking that the puranas (or the bible) be considered a record of history as demanded by the standards of modern university history departments. But it would be good science to look at them impartially and see what histoorical information can be gleaned without dismissing them as worthless

There are two ways of going about it.

The first to assume the Puranas, etc., are an attempt at history by a cretin. Therefore Indra, Agni, etc. were actual people who were later mythologized, etc. I can actually dig out writings of the crudest form of this type of reasoning.

The second is - even the researcher doesn't understand the reason behind the Puranic story or Vedic hymn and the deeper meaning, whatever the idea is being expressed can at best reflect (incompletely) the idioms available to the author at that time. If there was only bronze at that time and no iron, that **might** become evident from the text. Or bows-and-arrows but no swords. etc. etc.

Also see this:
http://xyz4000.wordpress.com/2011/03/01 ... lem-derde/

Trying to explain a practice by referring to a theory or belief, is the ‘only’ way for us (the Westerners) to make the others plausible, i.e. to make sense of them. In other words, for us Westerners, for some actions to be coherent, a story, a belief, a theory, or worldview is needed which lends coherence to the actions. That actions can derive their consistency from actions themselves is an option which is clouded by the constraints of the Western culture.

What if there are cultures where beliefs have nothing do to with how people go about in the world (i.e., they are not constitutive of this going about in the world)? If they do exist, it must be obvious that they must possess other kinds of knowledge, i.e. kinds of knowledge that differ from what we are familiar with. Does it make sense to think so? I believe it does. Balu has offered an intriguing and convincing beginning in his book, where he explores and makes sense of this idea. The gist of his arguments cannot be summarized here.

and
http://xyz4000.wordpress.com/2011/02/28 ... -children/

http://xyz4000.wordpress.com/2011/02/28 ... angadhara/

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 06 Jul 2012 09:24

Discovery channel once broadcast a program about similarities in orientation of temples with respect to Orion constellation.

The temples which are thus aligned are Angkorwat, Tanjavur temple and Mayan Temples

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 06 Jul 2012 09:44

History Todata Hai | (European nations fighting with one another, History centric Abrahmic religions also )

Itihaas Jodata Hai || (Indic states/provinces/kingdoms culturally aitihasik-ally linked for long time. Linking Bharat with SE Asian nations aitihasik-ally)

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 06 Jul 2012 09:49

History - Penile complex. says Mine is bigger (older) than yours. so I am superior to all others.

Itihaas - Ours are different because of karmic reasons. Lets respect each other's differences.

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 06 Jul 2012 09:58

History centrics fight on issues like where sermons were preached and who preached it. Who had the revelation. Who built the place where X or Y had revelation. It is historically important. We will fight out to determine that. e.g., Temple of David controversy.

We say, lets concentrate on what was preached, what was revealed. Though we will also keep in mind who preached it, when/where it was preached (we have nakshatra/celestial references for determining dates) and what were the circumstances, but that part is less important.

Arjun · Post by **Arjun** » 06 Jul 2012 12:46

Murugan wrote:History Todata Hai | (European nations fighting with one another, History centric Abrahmic religions also )

Itihaas Jodata Hai || (Indic states/provinces/kingdoms culturally aitihasik-ally linked for long time. Linking Bharat with SE Asian nations aitihasik-ally)

True. I had stated this earlier as well - Europe remains divided due to its emphasis on historicity. India remains united due its emphasis on Itihaas.

Its important to appreciate that the stress on history in Europe arose from their thinking that to discover the 'truth' of what really happened is a way of understanding 'God's will' for Earth. Hence the army of record-keepers that arose in Europe to dutifully record every small aspect of every king's reign. Ultimately it was a religious imperative. Hindus likely had a more practical and less 'clerkish' approach - historicity is good as long as there is a clear societal benefit that can be argued for it, else there were more intellectual pursuits to spend one's time on.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 13:28

A_Gupta wrote:The first to assume the Puranas, etc., are an attempt at history by a cretin. Therefore Indra, Agni, etc. were actual people who were later mythologized, etc. I can actually dig out writings of the crudest form of this type of reasoning.

The second is - even the researcher doesn't understand the reason behind the Puranic story or Vedic hymn and the deeper meaning, whatever the idea is being expressed can at best reflect (incompletely) the idioms available to the author at that time. If there was only bronze at that time and no iron, that **might** become evident from the text. Or bows-and-arrows but no swords. etc. etc.

A_Gupta ji,

as the Indians would grow in stature economically, militarily and politically, we would start attracting a 100 times more interest, much of it negative, from other civilizations - Western, Islamic, may be even Sinic. And from various ideological points - post-modernist, Darwinist, Freudian, racist, Christianist, Marxist, Western atheist, etc., many groups would start attacking Indian heritage in the most vulgar of ways. Unlike in Islam, where people come out with daggers and any blasphemer in East or West becomes wajib-ul-qatl, Dharmic traditions basically allow people freedom of interpretation of the scriptures as and how they please. That is a freedom that will get increasingly abused. That is the storm that awaits us. If they think it hurts us, they will pinch again. There is no way, we can stop this storm of abuse. All we can do is prepare for it.

The way to prepare is create take ownership of this process of deconstruction in our own hands.

I'll give a very vulgar analogy to this situation, and I am sorry for it, but it is apt. Either we deflower the girl tenderly, or the others will rape her brutally!

We need to establish our own academic field of "Secular Research into Hindu Scriptures", where we decide which perspectives to use for analysis, basing it on extrapolated thought processes of ancient Indians, and with due respect to various sets of sensitivities. For this it is important that we use no model from the Occident. It is also important that from the outset we strongly and vocally discourage the use of Marxist models.

If we do not bring this field under professional academic umbrella, we will also be seeing amateur and often irreverent interpretations of Hindu scriptures, even from Indians, and there will be no standard against which the public could compare it and thus could accept it as also possible.

So it is better to be prepared for the onslaught, than later on be grinding our teeth in anger and frustration. Otherwise many of us would always be asking, "Why do they do this to us?", "Why do they hate us?".

I am not saying most of Indians would like this process of over-analytic parsing and deconstruction of the scriptures. I expect there to be a certain friction between these two groups. But this friction would be healthier than all Indians being witness to the constant rape of our scriptures and we not knowing how to react.

In the West, the Christians have adjusted to some extent to this process of secular scrutiny. In India too one would find some level of peaceful cohabitation. Considering our traditions of scrutiny and debate, perhaps the cohabitation would be even easier.

For the Itihaasists, the literalists, the main advantage of this arrangement with the Indic Historicists would be that they would not have to do the initial defense of the content of scriptures against attacks from various groups - Christians, Muslims, post-modernists, cultural Marxists, etc.. That would be the job of the academic Indic Historicists for they would be better acquainted with the language and rhetoric of such opponents. The latter would be the first line of defense, and they would be effective.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 13:33

Murugan wrote:History - Penile complex. says Mine is bigger (older) than yours. so I am superior to all others.

That is indeed the essence of civilizational competition.

member_20317 · Post by **member_20317** » 06 Jul 2012 15:19

Murugan ji, you are right our Itihaas has a way of binding the Karm of various people at various times. Itihaas is the field that binds Dharm and Karm. That is why our Itihaas has a functional requirement for us in as much as it is the basic tool that is needed to ensure that our people carry out their Dharmic duties in future too. That is living history.

Which is also why we need to take the Itihaas to our people before we take the Historic aspects of it all. X Indic in history used Y mathematics on N date has no meaning for the continuity of our people. What is needed is to help people realise that Y mathematics can only be created in a 'living sanskaar of mathematics' and not in a 'desire for a historic mathematical pe_is'. The two being entirely different and only one acting in a manner as to ensure the other. Then off course what is applicable to Mathematics as a discipline is also applicable to other disciplines. Basically a sick mind will try to twist every rational thought and every methodology of arriving at it. Better sanskaars on the other hand will help build up a valid all round history. An understanding of the historic point when the stone hit the water will not be of any help in controlling the ripples. Let the west do that. You want to control the ripples you have to control the manner in which the stone hits the water. Let us focus there. On the creation of Sanskaars by creating interlinkages amongst various disciplines, as these various disciplines understand themselves and not as these disciplines are understood by Historians. It is these interlinkages of knowledge silos that will help build up a proper Sanskaar. Even in the case of drafting our native narrative we need to focus on the interlinkages of the various historic disciplines.

Say for example, every liberal will tell us about how the Babylonians did all the early Moon observations. But then they should be asked what good is such observation, what field of study or what practice of life requires these observations. And if they are able to tell us some xyz reason then we need to go ahead and see if the propensity of direct and indirect evidence supports such a claim. If we are told that moon affects the tides and that is important for navigation, then we need to see who is going where to trade. What kind of difficulties are encountered to trade. What kind of evidence is available where in respect of that trade. Say for example if we find more of Melluha in Mesopotamia then the other way round then we can form a reasonable guess as to who would be more in need of navigational understanding. If on the other hand we are told that Moon has religious/ritualistic reasons for begins so tracked then we should see which ritual is more in need of such levels of accuracy. If the tracking of moon has to do with fixing of a calendar then we need to find for ourselves where a calendar finds its best use. If the tracking of moon has to do with tracking in general of certain kinds of heavenly bodies then we need to find for ourselves where such propensity of tracking of certain kinds of heavenly bodies could have existed. Such an open ended enquiry will require our people to take up study of:
1) Navigation in the light of the ancient astronomy,
2) Astrology say in the light of rituals,
3) Rituals in the light of ancient Philosophy and social organization,
4) Ancient astronomy in the light of ancient agricultural practices,
5) Ancient mathematics in the light of ancient philosophy,
6) Ancient philosophy in the light of ancient science, so on and so forth.
All this should also be packaged and served to our people in rather digestible forms. And I believe Internet is going to be BIG in demolishing these pretentious eggheads. Already you can see how the P-Sec and their foreign sponsors get all riled up when they are questioned by lay Indics on the net, in a manner that the challenge is perceptible to all. In fact the reason why OIT seems more and more plausible compared to AIT/AMT/PIE is because of these very reasons. To my view what we need to do is to counter the Government of India on streets if needed when they reduce the funding for the say the Saraswati Project from 35 Cr to 5 Cr. We have to roll back such Adharmic projects, if need be on the streets and if need be lead by the Saffron.

Bhai log when one sits on as high a horse as is created by our Poorvaj then the Vanshaj has to ensure an equally big a conquest to justify his existence. That is Dharm as I understood it. If the Uropains require a big baad history and a wine tasting sensibility to justify their present good fortune, which in fact was facilitated by a loot-khasot, then that is their problem but that has no bearing on what I should be taking to my people. We can certainly live to be different and reap our respective rewards. Our focus should not be on trying to checkmate the West. Ours should be to give a valid alternative to the West. People are not dumb. They can decide to lie to the master just as much as they can decide to follow their master truthfully. The master only thinks he controls. He may or may not be in control.

One strange thing I have noticed is that there is no French amongst the AIT/AMT/PIE purveyors. Or is it a spurious observation? Are there some that I do not know of? The French too are a bunch of proud Christians. Why did they come in with Spot. Were the Spot imagery a joint venture between the Indians and French or was it something else?

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 15:46

ravi_g wrote:One strange thing I have noticed is that there is no French amongst the AIT/AMT/PIE purveyors. Or is it a spurious observation? Are there some that I do not know of? The French too are a bunch of proud Christians.

Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois is one of the more famous French guys who tried to look for the weak spots of Indians.

Here is an entry I made earlier w.r.t. his work in India.

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 06 Jul 2012 16:21

No one is asking that the puranas (or the bible) be considered a record of history as demanded by the standards of modern university history departments. But it would be good science to look at them impartially and see what histoorical information can be gleaned without dismissing them as worthless.

I see the difference shiv garu. Thanks.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Jul 2012 16:28

if one looks at science to view history, many things beyond a certain scope of time will be tainted and not history [identifiers are lost]... just because the facts disappear in words.. so, it is no more history [or it is history

].

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 06 Jul 2012 16:39

The first to assume the Puranas, etc., are an attempt at history by a cretin. Therefore Indra, Agni, etc. were actual people who were later mythologized, etc. I can actually dig out writings of the crudest form of this type of reasoning.

Gupta ji, what you say is like the depiction of Mahabharata to be a war between two warring tribes like in this movie:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maha ... #section_5

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 06 Jul 2012 17:19

A_Gupta wrote:Shiv wrote:
No one is asking that the puranas (or the bible) be considered a record of history as demanded by the standards of modern university history departments. But it would be good science to look at them impartially and see what histoorical information can be gleaned without dismissing them as worthless
There are two ways of going about it.

The first to assume the Puranas, etc., are an attempt at history by a cretin. Therefore Indra, Agni, etc. were actual people who were later mythologized, etc. I can actually dig out writings of the crudest form of this type of reasoning.

The second is - even the researcher doesn't understand the reason behind the Puranic story or Vedic hymn and the deeper meaning, whatever the idea is being expressed can at best reflect (incompletely) the idioms available to the author at that time. If there was only bronze at that time and no iron, that **might** become evident from the text. Or bows-and-arrows but no swords. etc. etc.

Arun the problem you have raised is an interesting one and it has an almost exact analogy in medicine where Ayurveda gets translated into mmumbo-jumbo by imbecilic translations that ultimately have no meaning in allopathic ("modern") medical terms.

There is almost no medical practitioner (Ayurveda or Allopathy) I know who can accurately transmit Ayurvedic terminology and theory into a language that a modern medical practitioner can understand and use in a fashion that is acceptable to the standards of modern medical practice. The approach is totally different and Ayurveda is not based on the physics and chemistry of the type that you and I have been taught - which is what modern medical practice revolves around. But yet Ayurveda has some uncanny insights into disease processes and human reactions to disease that are unknown to medicine and some appear "unknowable" because science does not accept that mode of thought.

As I see it the fundamental difference stem from the starting point, or the basic assumptions of modern medicine versus Ayurveda.

In Indian sciences, Ayurveda included, human life and indeed all life are seen as mart of a greater whole that is connected up with the earth, the weather , the environment, the sun and moon and the universe beyond. Humans are seen as one part of that whole. Western "modern" science sees humans as separate from the rest as discrete entities that can be totally isolated from the environment. Neither approach is totally wrong, but they meet at some point. Defining that meeting point is impossible given the stringent demands of modern science. For Ayurveda, it is not necessary to prove that such a meeting point exists where the individual human joins up with his environment and the "outside". The "proofs" accepted in Indian sciences are not the proofs accepted as proof in western science. They would be called working hypotheses that seem to be rules for which no final proof has been obtained. But obtaining such proof in most cases in impossible. Indian sciences are a bit like the study of the distant universe and sub atomic particles. Proofs of many things do not exist in the way proof is demanded - they are beliefs or theories that explain known phenomena. People such as Einstein were "seers" in the mould of Rishis in that they did not wait for proof to build models, and were able to build rock solid models that work even in the absence of proof.

Some of the discoveries of Ayurveda are astounding given that the same things discovered and used millennia ago but were "rediscovered" by modern science in the last couple of centuries. Sadly, other then me personally, I have not even found other doctors writing or talking about some of these things. It is up to Indian researchers to open their eyes and lay the links open for the general scientific community, but Indian science is still under Macaulay's shadow. Only Indians who are approaching retirement now - who were born in the 1940s or 50s and have lived full lives in the shadow of western science are beginning to open their eyes to what exists in india.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 06 Jul 2012 17:36

Wendy Doniger is one of those who have made lots of money by denigrating the heritage of the Hindus

Publication Date: November 30, 2010
By Wendy Doniger
The Hindus: An Alternative History

The following is a chapter-wise review by Vishal Agarwal

Here is another review by Sandeep @SandeepWeb

Today it is left to amateurs, to bloggers, to Internet citizens to criticize the work of this sick woman. The reason is at the moment there is no academic field in India, manned by non-Marxist Indics, which can take ownership of "Secular Research into Hindu Scriptures", with professors and others with doctor titles willing to rip apart the writings of such mischief-makers who go by the name of Indologists and Sanskritists.

We can take recourse only to cursing on the Internet, even as Wendy Doniger makes her merry money while pissing on Indics and their civilizational heritage.