varnam

While a lot Indian history was written in stone, copper plates and tree barks, the most popular medium for writing was the Palm Leaf. Words were written on to the dried leaves of palm with a stylus without splitting the leaf. Once the etching of the leaf was done, a black pigment of lampblack or turmeric was applied to enhance contrast. Being organic in nature, the palm leaf is susceptible to disintegration, especially in the humid conditions of India. The practice followed, in such circumstances was to copy the entire manuscript on to freshly treated palm leafs and destroy the old ones.

Recently scientists used Multispectral Imaging to read what is called the Archimedes Palimpsest. A medieval parchment containing 174 folios, with seven treatises by Archimedes, the book was completed by April 1229 in Constantinople. In Multispectral imaging, numerous photos of an area are taken using different wavelengths of light resulting in a digital stack of images. Various algorithms are then used to enhance particular characteristics of the imaged area, such as finding the text which was over written.

Now the scientists who worked on the Archimedes Palimpsest are using those imaging techniques to digitally restore the 700 year old Sarvamoola granthas attributed to scholar Shri Madvacharya (1238-1317). This collection of 36 works contains commentaries of Hindu scriptures and also conveys Madhavacharya's Dvaitha Philosophy.

Madhvacharya who taught in the 13th century broke with the Upanisadic doctrine of unity of God and human soul and taught Dvaitha or dualism. He explained as figurative all passages of scripture which maintained monism and declared that Vishnu, individual souls and matter were completely distinct. Vishnu has full power over both souls and matter and saves the souls which live pure and moral lives. The Wind-God Vayu is Vishnu's agent in the world and according to Madhva, evil souls are predestined to eternal damnation[13]

The document is difficult to handle and to read, the result of centuries of inappropriate storage techniques, botched preservation efforts and degradation due to improper handling. Each leaf of the manuscript measures 26 inches long and two inches wide, and is bound together with braided cord threaded through two holes. Heavy wooden covers sandwich the 340 palm leaves, cracked and chipped at the edges. Time and a misguided application of oil have aged the palm leaves dark brown, obscuring the Sanskrit writings.

Mukund first became involved with the project when his spiritual teacher in India brought the problem to his attention and urged him to find a solution. This became a personal goal for Mukund, who studies and teaches Hindu philosophy or “our way of life” and understood the importance of preserving the document for future scholars. The accuracy of existing printed copies of the Sarvamoola granthas is unknown

The scientists traveled to India in December 2005 to assess the document stored at a monastery-like mathas in Udupi, India. Sponsored by a grant from RIT, the team returned to the monastery in June and spent six days imaging the document using a scientific digital camera and an infrared filter to enhance the contrast between the ink and the palm leaf. Images of each palm leaf, back and front, were captured in eight to 10 sections, processed and digitally stitched together. The scientists ran the 7,900 total images through various image-processing algorithms using Adobe Photoshop and Knox’s own custom software.[Imaging Technology Restores 700-Year-Old Sacred Hindu Text via e-mail from Srijith]

Here is the picture of the original text and of the restored image.

Google purchased the two-car garage of the Menlo Park home in which they opened their first offices.

The two-car garage and a few rooms served as the company's headquarters for five months after the founders took leave of their graduate studies at Stanford University to focus on their search engine, now the most popular in the world.

Google bought the 1,900-square-foot home in September from Susan Wojcicki, a Google vice president, who had leased the garage to Brin and Page in 1998 for $1,700 per month to help pay her mortgage. The sales price wasn't disclosed, but similar home

Google's founders worked in the garage shoehorned between computers and boxes piled head high. In a list of corporate milestones, Google mentions its home in Menlo Park with its characteristic humor, saying "the office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub."[Google buys garage, search engine's home]

In the 70s, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started a company, their first offices were in the Jobs family garage. His father moved out his car restoration equipment and the garage served as Apple's first manufacturing base. In 1938, Dave Packard and his wife Lucile move into the first floor flat of a house in Palo Alto. Bill Hewlett, his friend rented a shed behind the house and began work in the garage with a working capital of $538. Their association resulted in Hewlett-Packard.

Even after living in the midst of all these famous garages, I made the mistake of keeping the computer in the office room. Tomorrow, first thing, I am moving it to the garage, so that when varnam.org becomes a multi-billion dollar business, I can also claim that it all started in a garage.

Buddha or Bust: In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness, and the Man Who Found Them All by Perry Garfinkel, Harmony (June 13, 2006), 336 pages

When Perry Garfinkel was granted an interview with the Dalai Lama in Dharmashala, he wanted an to start with an expensive ice-breaker. So Perry first went to Xining, the capital of the Chinese Province of Qinghai which was near to the village where the Dalai Lama was born. There he met Gongbu Tashi, the Dalai Lama's nephew and got a message recorded from him for his uncle. Later when Perry met Dalai Lama, he played the message for him.

The meeting with Dalai Lama was the final part of his 10 week journey to understand why Buddhism is growing in popularity around the world. Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in United States, after Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. He also wanted to understand why an idea 2500 years old is still relevant today and if Buddhism can help solve many of the world's problems. For this, he travels on assignment from National Geographic to the place where Buddhism originated and is still practiced like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Japan, France and  United States.

One reason why Buddhism has become relevant is because it is active in social causes. In Nagpur, India he meets Dalits who have been converted to Buddhism by Ambedkar. He cites this as an example of a new Buddhist movement based on social equality and as a rejection of the oppressive caste system. He also meets Dr. Narendra Jadhav, a Dalit convert and principal adviser in the Department of Economic Analysis and Policy for the Reserve Bank of India who says that one of the benefits of  the conversion is that now they can give their children names like Siddharth and Pradnya instead of Dagoo and Kacharu.

In Sri Lanka he meets Dr. A.T.Ariyaratne, the founder of Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, a political organization at a grassroots level that is Buddhist based. In Thailand he finds the group International Network of Engaged Buddhists and also monks involved in preventing illegal logging.  Like how water takes shape of the container, Garfinkel discovers that Buddhism fits into the cultural vessel of each country to which it has migrated. In Thailand he goes to Wat Bang Phra where he meets a monk who is into religious tattoos and various other people who are into Buddhist art. In the Shaolin Temple in China he meets monks who practice martial arts and in Japan he meets Buddhist calligraphers.

It is not just in social movements that Buddhism has made its mark. In Tihar jail he meets prisoners who have undergone transformation after practicing vipassana, a meditation technique practiced in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism.  In United States clinical patients have reported decreases in physical and psychological symptoms by practicing Buddhist meditation.

Buddhism has popularity among people of other religion as well. Garfinkel and his friends belong an American sect called Bu-Jews. They are Jews who practice Buddhism and about 30 percent of the American Buddhists are of Jewish Background. It is in San Francisco that Garfinkel meets Wes  Nisker, who claims that he is the world's first Buddhist stand-up. One of his lines is - "Before I became a Buddhist, I worried about my life". Pause. "Now I worry about my next life".

There have been valuable contributions from people belonging to other religions in making it popular. The meditation technique which the Buddha practiced, vipassana, was lost to the world, until it was bought back to India from Burma by S.N.Goenka, a Hindu. In Worcester in United States, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn adapted vipassana to help non spiritualists and called it Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) and now it is offered all around the country by various hospitals.

Though Buddhism originated in India and reached all around the world, Garfinkel now sees instances of cross pollination where Buddhism has benefited from ideas in the West. In Hong Kong, he meets a Chinese clinical psychologist named Helen Ma who took an eight-week intensive training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in Worcester and took it back to her country. In Thailand he meets monks who bought back contemplative education from Naropa University in Colorado to Bangkok and in India he meets Shantum Seth, Vikram Seth's brother who discovered Buddhism in California and now conducts Buddhist tours in India.

While Buddhism took roots easily in some countries, in countries like China there was a conscious effort to control and restrict Buddhist activities. With the Cultural revolution, violent suppression of Buddhism was one of the goals which resulted in the Dalai Lama taking refuge in India. Instead of Buddha's four noble truths, Chairman Mao offered his own truths in the Little Red Book called Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung which included gems like truth no (2) the minority is subordinate to the majority and (3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level. Probably under due to fear, the Chinese people whom Garfinkel meets say that there is religious harmony in China as if they have never heard of what is happening in Tibet.

He also notices various ironies within the movement. In Deeksha Bhoomi in Nagpur, while among the Dalit converts, he notices a woman squatting and cleaning the floor who is ignored by everyone. While the Dalit converts wish each other as Jai Bhim, the woman responds with Namaste for which she is chided as it is an address entrenched in Hindu values with which they don't want any ties. In Thailand he meets Sulak Sivaraksa, founder of International Network of Engaged Buddhists who goes on criticizing Goenka,  Thich Nhat Hanh and Hinduism. In Sri Lanka he meets Buddhists who are at war against the Tamil Tigers and learns that the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Solomon Bandaranaike, was assassinated by Talduwe Somarama, a Buddhist monk.

Perry Garfinkel has an good sense of humor. He is also very cynical. But for a person who has been involved with spiritual movements since the 70s he shows an utter lack of knowledge of Hinduism. In Mumbai he stays with two close disciples of S.N.Goenka who have been practitioners of vipassana. After their discussion of the practice, the husband Rohit shows Perry, idols of various Hindu gods to whom he prays. "Once a Hindu, always a Hindu", he generalizes as if it is a contradiction.

The book filled with interesting anecdotes is an easy read and gives a quick report on various Buddhist movements around the world. It also shows how Buddhism is adapting itself to be relevant in the 21st century, but still I could not figure why it was titled "Buddha or Bust".

Listen: Perry Garfinkel on KQED Forum

The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism by A.L.Basham, Oxford University Press, USA, 208 pages

Excluding the first chapter which contains the preliminary narrative, the Bhagavad Gītā contains 650 verses. A sloka takes at least twelve seconds to narrate which means that if Krishna spoke without a pause it would have taken him over two hours to complete his sermon to Arjuna. Considering the fact that a great war about to commence it seems unlikely that the entire Bhagavad Gītā as we know it today was delivered by Krishna on the battle field according to A.L.Basham.

Basham, known more popularly for his work, The Wonder That Was India was a  historian with the Australian National University in Canberra.  He was considered as an important scholar on ancient Indian culture and religion.

Coming back to the lack  of proportion in Gītā, Basham says that Arjuna's quandary is settled within the 38th verse of the second chapter, but still Krishna turns to other matters which are irrelevant to the main theme. The rest of the the Gita was added later, at least by two hands. One of them was a philosopher of the Upanisisadic type interested in the Brahman and the other was a theist, a devotee of Vishnu.

His theory comes by the analysis of a later interpolation into the Mahabharata known as Anugita which occurs in the seventeenth book, the Asvamedha Parvan. At that time the war is over and Arjuna reminds Krishna of what he taught him in the battle field and admits that he has forgotten Krishna's words. Krishna talks again about Brahman, early forms of Samkhya and Yoga philosophy, but there is no reference to bhakti or Krishna's divinity from which Basham concludes that the Anugita was inserted into the Mahabharata when Bhagavad Gītā was devoid of its theistic passages.

He has many other revelations as well. For him there was no trace of Hinduism in the Indus Valley Civilization which is where the book starts. The pashupathi seal  which shows a horned god sitting in a yogic posture known as utkatikasana, discovered in Mohenjo-daro according to many resemble a proto-Shiva, but not for Basham. The full face of the god is closer to a tiger than a man and it is not clear if the god is ithyphallic.  He also dismisses evidence for ritual temple prostitution and the inducements of calm or trance states called yoga as dubious. 

Instead the beginnings of religion for him started between 1500 and 900 B.C.E when the Rg-veda was composed - not by indigenous people, but by Aryans who entered India after the decline of the Indus cities. The authors of the hymns could not have been the residents of the Indus civilization for they do not make any mention of those cities. Also, the Vedic hymns mention horses which did not exist in Indus cities. He does not wonder why the authors of the Rg-veda mention life on the shore of sapta-sindhu rivers even though they arrived in the region after two of the rivers had dried up.

Unlike the Eminent Historians, Basham finds various admirable concepts in Hinduism. He notes various theories on the creation of evolution of the universe as wondered by Cyrus Spitama in Gore Vidal's Creation, like the Golden Embryo (Hiranyagarbha) from which the universe emanated according to the Rig-Veda. Basham is very impressed with the development of thought in Vedic literature and mentions Rg-Veda (10.129) for its picture of the universe evolving out of the primal condition that was neither being nor nonbeing, neither cosmos nor chaos. This hymn according to him is the oldest expression of philosophic doubt in the literature of the world and forms a landmark in the history of Indian thought.

Besides these he also notes the Purusasukta (Rg-veda 10.90) which is beautiful from a literary point of view as well as a verse found in Brhadaranya Upanishad (1.4) which informs us that the mating of Purusa and Viraj produced a second Purusa and then the Gods. In Brhadaranya Upanishad he also finds new accounts for the theory on creation which ascribes primacy to Death, Brahman and a personal self showing the richness and variety of Upanisadic literature. 

In Brhadaranya Upanishad (3.2) the sage Yajnavalkya comes to the court of King Janaka of Videha (northern Bihar) and he is questioned by another sage, Jaratkarava Artabhaga on what happens to a man after his death. Yajnavalkya does not answer it in public, but  they both walk alone and talk to each other and Jaratkarava becomes silent. What Yajnavalkya told him was the theory of transmigration of the soul which was held in secret initially, but later was made public.

This concept alongwith the ideas of samsara and karma were all products of great intellectual thought according to Basham. These concepts of transmigration and karma was adopted by heterodox leaders like the Buddha and Mahavira as well. Other concepts introduced by the ascetics include the atman and the Brahman and he is fascinated by a debate on if the absolute and ultimate entity is "without characteristics" (nirguna) or "with characteristics" (saguna).

Basham also questions the Marxist theories which connect the rise of heterodoxies such as Buddhism and Jainism as a revolt against the class system. According to him, Brahmins formed the largest group of both monks and lay supporters of Buddhism. In its early form Buddhism appealed mainly to intellectuals and rulers and very few members of the lower orders supported it.

Besides the Vedic literature, Basham is impressed with the two epics as well. He thinks that there was nothing religious in the Mahabharata originally, but religious content was added later by the Brahmins. Seeing the popularity of the original poem, the Brahmins took over the transmission of it from the royal bards and crudely sandwiched many doctrinal, mythological and theological passages into it. He blames the gotra of the Bhargavas for this crime. In fact the original poem did not even have Krishna according to him.

While most of us believe that Ramayana is older than Mahabharata since Rama is the seventh avatar and Krishna the eight, Basham says it need not be so. According to him the list of avatars was produced much later than either books. Also there is evidence that Mahabharata was finally edited in 500 C.E and by that time Ramayana was well known and was interpolated into Mahabharata. He also thinks that Mahabharata had a rugged beauty without high finish or intellectual style while Ramayana was the work in ornate and classical style of Sanskrit.

Basham traces the religious and philosophical life of India from the Indus Valley civilization to the crystallization of classical Hinduism in the first centuries. This book is short and on a flight from San Francisco to Washington D.C. this book can be completed in the time the flight goes over Denver. Basham's writing echoes the theories of the eminent historians and considering the fact that he was the the doctoral guide for the likes of Romila Thapar, it is not a surprise.

The book is available in the varnam book store

Apparently someone from Amazon is hand crafting each of those 100 DVD-R's in my order.

Three bronze idols of Lord Siva and Goddess Parvati were unearthed at Airavateeswara Temple, Darasuram, in Thanjavur district. The Siva idol, measuring two feet four inches x one ft five inches and Parvati measuring one ft three inches x two feet, were found in the north west corner of the cloister `Mandapa' at a depth of 2.5 ft during conservation work carried out by Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai circle.

According to Sathyabhama Badreenath, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI, Chennai circle, the idols are a part of the Somaskanda group though they are two separate pieces. Siva is seated in `Sukhasana' position with four arms, the upper arm carrying `mriga' and `mazhu' (battle axe) while the lower arms are in `abhaya' and `simhakarna' positions.

The idol is adorned with Jatamakuta, Udharabhanda, etc. Parvati is also in `Sukhasana' position and her right hand looks as if she is holding a lotus. [ Chola period bronze idols discovered]

Even though the Nobel Commitee gives awards to terrorists like Yasser Arafat, war criminals like Henry Kissinger and writers like Harold Pinter who is more famous for his anti-American rants, once in a while they give it to someone deserving like Mohammed Yunus.

"Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. "Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development."
"Eradication of poverty can give you real peace," the 66-year-old Mr. Yunus told reporters in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, according to Reuters. "Now the war against poverty will be further intensified across the world."

Mr. Yunus, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University, has said he was inspired to start Grameen by a chance meeting with a poor woman in 1974. She made bamboo stools for a living, but had to borrow money at rates as high as 10% a week to purchase materials. The exorbitant interest left her with the tiniest of profits.

Mr. Yunus, according to his autobiography, dipped into his own pocket and lent a group of 42 basket weavers the equivalent of $27. Even that small amount improved living standards. Equally importantly, he has said, the women repaid the loans.[Microloan' Father Yunus Is Awarded Nobel Peace Prize]

Bajaj Allianz, an Allianz Indian joint venture, offered its first microinsurance product in the subcontinent in 2003. In August Allianz said its Indonesian unit started a microinsurance pilot project. The aim is to design and sell a product that will cover the outstanding balance of a loan in the event that the person who took out the loan dies. The policy would also pay the loan taker's family double the loan amount.
..
Nonetheless, charitable groups such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation USA, the Munich Re Foundation, and ACCION International are also pushing microinsurance. They see it as a complement to microfinance loans, something that can increase financial sophistication in far-flung places, while protecting people who are vulnerable from ruin when breadwinners get sick or die.[Out of 'Microfinance' Work Springs Insuring Loans for Impoverished]

National Public Radio  and local affiliates like KQED in San Francisco and WHYY in Philadelphia bring some of the best interviews and discussions you can hear in American Media. Here are some interviews worth listening. (Click on the Listen button on the page)

• Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban on Fresh Air
• What Mathematicians do. If you want to understand Poincaré conjecture and the beauty of pi, then listen to this.
• Rajeev Chandrasekharan, on his new book about life in the Green Zone in Baghdad
  
• Nobel laureate Jospeh Stiglitz on Globalization.
• Historian  Niall Ferguson talks about the wars in the 20th century.
  

Once Buddhism spread from India to neighboring countries, Buddha's teachings were also preserved in Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Laos. In Burma, through a teacher-student relation, the practice of vipassana was also preserved for almost 2000 years. Sayagyi U Ba Khin (1899-1971), the first accountant general of independent Burma taught it to S N Goenka and ever since that Goenka has led the establishment of dhamma centers to teach vipassana free of cost around the world.

A golden pagoda, the world's largest stone monument and the first dome in human history of this size without any supporting pillars will be innagurated in Mumbai this week. This large meditation hall which can hold upto 8000 meditators will also be holding the authentic relics of the Buddha.

This pillarless 27-meter-high dome is attracting architectural wonder considering that thousands of stones, each weighing about 600-700 kilograms, are suspended without any external support. "These massive stones seemingly float over our heads, locked into place by the interlocking principle of one stone gripping and holding another. The more weight that is added to the stones, the more firmly the stones grip and hold each other," said M M Khandhar, a veteran construction engineer with experience of building projects in the US. When fully complete, the pagoda will be 100 meters high.

The biggest stone dome with a hollow interior built anywhere in the world before the Global Pagoda was the Gol Gumbaj Dome in Bijapur, southern India, which is 40 meters in diameter. The Global Pagoda is more than twice its size.

"We initially contemplated building the pagoda in reinforced concrete and steel. But the project aim is to build a structure to last for a thousand years, so we decided to use the basic building principles that have existed in ancient India for centuries, combined with latest construction technologies," explained the Mumbai-based Global Vipassana Foundation that is executing the project. "The construction plans were finalized following advice from consultants and research studies, including one by the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai."

When Goenkaji first expressed his wish to have such a dome built without any pillars in the meditation hall, to avoid inconvenience to meditators, almost all consultants and technical personnel expressed their doubts, saying this was almost impossible.

Chandubhai Sompura, an Indian architect, provided the breakthrough by demonstrating the idea of the locking system of stones using bars of soap cut into the same shape as the present stones are cut. A stone has grooves cut both horizontally and vertically, and is designed to interlock in both directions and hold the stones in place. [Asia's spectacular monument of gratitude]