Besides yoga, the actual classes were extremely well taught and a lot of fun! Having teachers only five or six years older than me made the classes more enjoyable, and they personally inspired me to speak in actual Samskritam. In just one week, I was able to speak basic sentences in Samskritam. It was also interesting to note that Samskritam had many similarities to Latin, which I study at school, like a third gender besides masculine and feminine.[Shraddhaa For Youth, Jaahnavii For The Entire Family (email Arun Sankar]

That's from the report by Swathi Krishnan, a 10th grader who attended a week long Sanskrit camp in the East Coast. Meanwhile the registration for jaahnavii2008, a residential Sanskrit Camp for the entire family in New Jersey, is open.

Also from Arun's e-mail.

Two year's before on a Gurupoornima day umd_samskritam launched the website http://www.speaksanskrit.org . Last year on Gurupoornima day, campus samskritam network (CSN) was officially launched and its online magazine - vishvavani. This year on the Gurupoornima day the 4th issue of vishvavani is being released

Founded in third century B.C.E by Ptolemy, the library was destroyed by Roman emperors and a Pope. The final destruction happened during the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 642 C.E. According to A Short Account of the History of Mathematics By Walter William Rouse Ball, the following happened:

To accept the story of the Arab destruction of the library of Alexandria, one must explain how it is that so dramatic an event was unmentioned and unnoticed not only in the rich historical literature of medieval Islam, but even in the literatures of the Coptic and other Christian churches, of the Byzantines, of the Jews, or anyone else who might have thought the destruction of a great library worthy of comment. That the story still survives, and is repeated, despite all these objections, is testimony to the enduring power of a myth.[The Vanished Library]

Back in the Kerala Assembly, the MLA apologized and reaffirmed that he intended the word Caliph to mean "a Caliph" and not Caliph Umar. He also stated that Caliph Umar was a book lover and would have never ordered the destruction of the library. Thus peace was restored to the galaxy.

People in other states might be wondering if Kerala is free of all problems that the Assembly debates historical events just to spend time. The answer is: yes, we have no other issues to debate. Kerala is God's own country and the honourable Amartya Sen wants this model, where a literate society would spend time reading Herodotus and Josephus, to spread all over the world.

Now that the Caliph's name has been cleared, next item on the agenda would be to make it official that St. Thomas actually arrived in Kerala in 52 C.E.

1. A recent paper from the Rockerfeller University dated an eclipse mentioned in Odyssey to April 16, 1178 B.C.E. A two part post (1,2) at varnam looks at similar dating of Mahābhārata

2. Fëanor, in Silk Road Stories, writes about various Indian artifacts that went north.

3. Vinayak writes about the Fables of Kashmiri Beauty as told by the 17th century French traveler,Francois Bernier.

4. Guru has a post about M N Srinivas’ Religion and society among the Coorgs of South India. One question the book answers is: How did Hinduism spread all over India without proselytization.?

5. As the city gets ready to celebrate Chennai day, to commemorate the day in 1639 when the British East India Company transacted the piece of land where Fort St. George stands, Lakshmi says, "what we decide as history is probably nothing compared to the cultural heritage of this city and its various settlements and hamlets put
   together."

6. FabbiGabby has pictures of India from a century ago.
   

7. Indian Constitution gives us the freedom of speech, but with some constraints. Using two reports from TIME magazine’s archives, Nitin shows why Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the first amendment.
   

8. One of Gandhiji's worldly posession was the Ingersoll ‘Turnip’ pocket watch. Maddy writes about the watch and the role it played in his life.
   

9. Kedar writes that Gandhiji’s non-violent struggle succeeded not because it was noble, but because it was a smart move for the time.

If you find any posts related to Indian history published in the past one month, please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form. Please send me links which are similar to the ones posted, in terms of content.The next carnival will be up on Aug 15th.

See Also: Previous Carnivals

A man identified only as Quan has died after a Liao Dynasty (907-1125 AD) tomb he was attempting to rob collapsed on him. Six people who were also involved in the attempted theft were still trying to extract him when police arrived.

Ironically, the tomb he was trying to raid had nothing in it - most likely because it was emptied by previous tomb robbers.[Tomb Raider Dies as Grave Collapses on Top of Him]

Only a limerick can do justice to this adventurer:

There lived a man in China called Quan.
He wanted a bag full of yuan
His role model was Indiana Jones
But all people heard were loud moans
When under a tomb, they found him withdrawn.

Some letters in the tablet are not clear and hence the translation is vague, but it seems to be written by someone named Gabriel in the style of prophecies. The first column is about the destruction of evil within three days, followed by a promise that God will soon appear. The tablet also mentions a war that led to bloodshed in Jerusalem.

This was the time when Jewish rebels were trying to overthrow the Roman monarchy following the death of Herod and there was an expectation that a messianic figure would restore the Davidic monarchy. One such messianic leader was Simon, who the first century historian Josephus wrote, burned the royal palace at Jericho and destroyed many other royal residences, till he was beheaded by Gratus, an officer of the royal troops.

Prof. Knohl reads line 80 of the tablet as, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you” and believes this to be a reference to Simon written by his followers.

The tablet is proof that Jewish people were familiar with the concept of a messiah who would be resurrected. This revelation is not new because there are such predictions by the Hebrew prophet Hosea and in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This tablet emphasizes two concepts. First, the traditional Jewish view was of a triumphant messiah who would be a descendent of David and not one who suffers. But the one mentioned in the tablet is that of a suffering messiah who resurrects after three days and this exact motif was chosen by later Christian writers. Second, the messiah mentioned in the tablet died for Israel and not for people's sins.

Several scholars have believed that this suffering messiah motif was not an original creation of the Christian communities.

Several scholars, myself included, along with Michael Wise, Michael Fishbane, and Israel Knohl, have argued for some years now that the“Suffering Messiah” ideas, reflected in our Synoptic Gospels, were not creations of the Christian communities after Jesus’ death, nor even unique to Jesus himself, but in fact were ideas current within messianic varieties of Judaism reaching back into the 2nd century BCE or earlier.[Knohl’s Gabriel Text Interpretation Makes the NYTimes]

These two concepts, Prof. Knohl says, change our view of Christianity.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”“

His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer sohis blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said.“This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view ofJesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.[Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection]

There are two possibilities on how Homer knew about the eclipse which happened five centuries ago.

1. The eclipse details was passed down through oral tradition to Homer.
   
2. If Homer knew about Metonic and Saros eclipse cycles, he could have estimated the eclipse.

Currently there is no evidence that Greeks were interested in such precise observation of astronomical events. Since the eclipse did not pass through other major civilizations of the time, the data could not have come from elsewhere. The authors believe both theories to be outlandish.

Irrespective of the astronomical data, there is general consensus on the date of the Battle of Troy since the date predicted by the classical writers have been validated by archaeology. Plato gave a date of 1193 B.C.E, Eratosthenes, 1184 B.C.E and Herodotus, 1250 B.C.E. for the fall of Troy; the destruction layer in Troy VII has been dated to 1190 B.C.E.

Even though they could find a date which matches data from other sources, the authors of the paper make it clear that it is no indication that the Odyssey really happened. The paper, they state, only makes the case that if certain astronomical events listed are correct, then they refer to a historical eclipse.

While the date for the Trojan war was validated with extensive archaeology, Mahābhārata archaeology has been minimal. The dates for the war have a spread of two millennia; the Trojan war has a spread of 135 years. This date of 3097 B.C.E does not become credible unless it synchronizes with archaeological data. For example, horses play an important part in the epic and no horse remains dating to that period has been found in India^[1].

While Odyssey has only few astronomical references, Mahābhārata has many. Does this mean the composers of Mahābhārata observed astronomical events with great accuracy or did they painstakingly retrofit a later day story with historical astronomical events?

Rajiv Malhotra meanwhile asks if it really matters how old Mahābhārata is?

At the same time, one comes across many Hindu scholars who are chasing useless and chauvinistic bandwagons that are disconnected from today's relevant issues. For instance, they seem to be obsessed with 'proving' the age of the Mahabharata or geographically locating the Vedas, as if any Hindus were converting because the Mahabharata is not proven to be old enough! They are like ostriches with their heads stuck inside the temple, ashrama and/or political arena, while the globalized world has already passed them by.[Myth of Hindu Sameness]

In fact does it really matter how old Odyssey is or if it really happened? For those interested only in the theology of Mahābhārata it does not matter if the epic was history or poetry from an imaginative mind. But let others who are curious investigate. That too is important.

It is also important to note that research based on astronomical data was carried out in a reputed American university and the results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. This is treated as scholarship and is neither frowned upon, not considered taboo. The observations in the paper was carried by all major news sources and none of them passed judgement on this type of research. While the world now knows about the work of Marcelo O. Magnasco and Constantino Baikouzis, the work of Narahari Achar largely remains unknown, even in India.

Notes:

[1] The Bhimbetka rock shelters of the Paleolithic age have horse images, but they have not been accurately dated.

Plutarch and Heraclitus thought this was a reference a solar eclipse and some scholars dated it to the eclipse on April 16, 1178 B.C.E.

Many scholars think that the lines refers to an allegorical eclipse, not a historical one. Since the above passage was suspect, Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina decided to ignore it. Instead they picked on non-allegorical astronomical references in Odyssey such as

1. Reference to Pleiades, Boötes and Ursa Major given by Calypso, a nymph.

2. Seeing Venus before arriving in Phorcy's Bay.

3. New Moon on the night before the massacre of the suitors.

Using these three references, they searched for a date between 1250 - 1115 B.C.E. where the astronomical references cohered. With off-the-shelf astronomical software like Starry Night Pro, they applied the constraints and only one date matched perfectly - April 16, 1178 B.C.E.

Now, wouldn't it be nice if someone analysed the astronomical references in Mahābhārata and used software to find the date?In fact it has already been done by B. N. Narahari Achar of the University of Memphis. Like the Odyssey analysis it was done solely on the basis of astronomical references listed in the epic. Unlike the Odyssey which has just three astronomical references, the MB has about 150 references with the major ones being mentioned in Udyogaparvan and Bhishmaparvan.

Mr. Achar took one important reference - the appearance of Saturn and Aldebaran near one another - and found 137 possible dates between 3500 B.C.E and 500 C.E. The next constraint that Mars executed a retrograde motion before reaching Antares was added and choices reduced to 17 dates. He applied two more astronomical references - a lunar eclipse near Pleiades and a solar eclipse near Antares - and intersecting the constraints, the unique year for the war was found to be 3067 B.C.E. and this was found to cohere with other references given in the epic.

Since astronomy has offered dates for Odyssey and Mahābhārata, the question to ponder is on how the authors of the two epics knew about the celestial events. This become interesting in the case of Homer^[1] because Vyasa^[2] was the author and a character in Mahabharata but Homer lived five centuries after the Trojan war. How did Homer know about it.?

(To be continued)

[1] Modern scholars believe that Homer was not a historical poet and his poems were the collective work of generations of poets. They believe that Homer was the name given to anonymous poets the way the Gospel writers were named Mark, Matthew etc.

[2] Mahābhārata, by tradition, acknowledges that it evolved over a period of time and had contributions from various authors.

References:

1. Constantino Baikouzis and Marcelo O. Magnasco, “Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?,” June 24, 2008.

2. B. N. Narahari Achar, Reclaiming the Chronology of Bharatam

Archaeologists are now using radar and satellite imagery to explore regions affected by violence and sites which are inaccessible.

Here in Cambodia, the new archaeology has changed the history of a civilization. The low-key Evans, a director of the University of Sydney’s Greater Angkor Project at just 32 years old, has already mapped northern Angkor, another heavily landmined area, from a computer screen in Australia. He has used radar and satellite images to chart its vast network of canals and reservoirs, proving that Angkor was once the largest city in the world, a metropolis consuming an area about the size of present-day Los Angeles. His work also underpins a radical new explanation of why, in the 15th century, the Angkor civilization died out, a finding that holds grave undertones for the megacities of the 21st century.[The Space Archaeologists | Popular Science]

The ancient Hindu temple at Katas Raj, some 40 kilometres from Chakwal, has been robbed of all its relics, save for a stone carving depicting a god and a goddess, who are sitting, and two female slaves standing on either side.Kumar accused the Punjab Archaeology Department (PAD) for lack of interest and not providing the temple enough security. He said the temple had been a continuous victim to smugglers of ancient sculptures. He said the surviving statue was priceless and was also in threat of being stolen.[Only one Hindu relic left at Katas Raj temple]

In Tamil Nadu

In the last one month, there have been at least three cases of idol thefts, the latest being Thursday, where a wooden elephant was found being smuggled to France.The exquisitely carved Natarajas, Alwars and Murugans, crafted prior to 12th century have been stolen from these poorly guarded temples and make their way to many foreign countries

Officials from the idol wing say that there are idol thieves active in every district of Tamil Nadu, constantly targeting temples in Tanjavur and Madurai belonging to the Chola period, temples in Kancheepuram and Vellore belonging to the the Pallava period and temples in Tirunelveli belonging to the Pandian period.[Idol thieves target Tamil Nadu temples]

In Balochistan

Lawmakers in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan assembly have demanded that the federal government drop plans to build a dam in the region as the structure will damage a historical Hindu temple visited by thousands of pilgrims every year.

In a joint resolution moved by several provincial ministers and backed by all lawmakers, except one, members of the assembly wanted the federal government to cancel plans for building the dam on Hangol river that would pass near the Makran coastal highway close to the Hinglaj Mata temple. [Balochistan lawmakers oppose dam construction near temple]

Early this year, film makers Simcha Jacobovici and James Cameron made the case in their documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, that a tomb found in Jerusalem belonged to Jesus. This claim was made based on the fact that the tomb contained ossuaries with inscriptions reading ""Jesus son of Joseph", "Miriam", and "Judah son of Jesus", among others. When the tomb was discovered in 1980, it had ten ossuaries; currently it has only nine.

The tenth ossuary, the documentary claimed, was the James ossuary which surfaced in Israel in 2002. This limestone box carried an inscription "James son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus" and if it was proved to be true, could be historical evidence for a man named Yeshua.

The American TV program 60 Minutes found the Israeli who possessed the ossuary. They also tracked down an Egyptian who had fabricated various artifacts for the Israeli. A committee of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared it a forgery. Most scholars believe it to be fake.

Now Hershel Shanks, the editor of Biblical Archaeological Review, who first published news of the ossuary has come out with a letter in which he alleges that most scholars claim the ossuary is a fake, based on a hunch and they have not been able to reason it properly. Some expert paleographers still believe the inscription to be authentic and it turns out no committee of the IAA has found it to be fake. Even the Egyptian shown on 60 minutes admitted that he had not seen the ossuary before.

Shanks letter which is similar in tone to B. B. Lal's lecture on the 19th century paradigms, finally says

Either I’m way off the mark or there has been a successful effort to “hustle” this inscription. Maybe it’s just a better story if the inscription is a forgery than if it’s authentic. Maybe the IAA hates the antiquities market enough to lump the ossuary inscription with other alleged forgeries where it has a better case. Or perhaps the strong suspicion that Oded Golan is a forger is enough. Perhaps he’s forged other stuff.[Help Me! I’m Desperate!]

This brings the ossuary back into news and if the inscriptions are found to be true, it could profoundly affect the historicity of the Jesus.

(via Niraj) ]]> http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/goodbye_sam.php http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/goodbye_sam.php India Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:28:39 -0800

"Death by Powerpoint", "Do Powerpoint presentations violate Geneva Convention?",and "Supreme Court rules against using Powerpoint in Guantanamo" - these are common headlines all the time. But if your job involves reading itemized lists from slides, then this lecture by Garr Reynolds is worth watching. It will change the way you think about presentations.

In a recent review of Frits Staal's Discovering the Vedas, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri writes

1. Even a non-history buff will find the role of the Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) and the Iranian Wedge in the evolution of Hinduism fascinating.

2. What led such primitives to dwell so much on infinity or develop numbers so large they “have nothing to do with the universe,” he wonders.

After the Aryan Invasion theory failed, some proponents moved to a convenient migration-of-cattle-breeders-looking-for-pastures theory and the BMAC was hailed as new Aryan homeland They found some evidence too; an antennae-hilted sword found in Bactria looked similar to one found in Fatehgarh. It was also claimed that BMAC people had fire-worship temples, supposed use of soma, a horse skeleton assumed to be used in ashvamedha and cult motifs on precious stones

On closer examination however it was found that most of these claims required imagination in liberal doses. Looking at the evidence of the sword, Dr. B. B. Lal, who was the Director General of the ASI said, "if I said that the occurrence of a cylinder seal at Kalibangan in Rajasthan entitles Rajasthan to be the ‘motherland’ of the Mesopotamian Culture, I am sure my learned colleagues present here would at once get me admitted to the nearest lunatic asylum." Analysis of other evidence found no use of soma, no proof of ashvamedha, and in case of fire worship, that the migration was from India to Central Asia.

Even if they had some connection, the BMAC people, who belonged to the Bronze age culture of Central Asia, were not primitives, for they had well planned structures, multi-roomed temples, pottery kilns, metal objects, and sculptural art. But as soon as they completed their journey from Bactria to India, they became primitives.

The usual view of Vedas, the composition of these neo-primitives, is that of semi-civilized people wondering about nature, creating anthropomorphic gods and goddesses, moving from polytheism to monotheism to monism. People like Staal condescendingly wonder how such people are able to produce great concepts? Maybe they were not culturally primitive. As Chandradhar Sharma notes, "the correct position seems to us to be that the Vedic sages were greatly intellectual and intensely spiritual personages who in their mystic moments came face to face with Reality and this mystic experience, this direct intuitive spiritual insight overflew in literature as Vedic hymns."

This attempt to cast people who wrote the Nasadiya Sukta as primitive comes from 19^th century models which portrayed the natives as semi-civilized. Pick up a book like Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation which is used as text book in graduate courses, and you will find that colonial politics is still alive. Even when one part of their theory contradicts the other, it is presented to us with a straight face and if you disagree you are labelled a Hindu nationalist.

Then the other day a television channel showed the image of a woman being groped by a Communist party district leader as the Chief Minister was inagurating a bridge. The abused woman, it turns out, was a Communist MLA and the image was shown on Kairali TV, a Communist TV channel, thus making the whole thing an in-house entertainment package.

"We did not know that the lady in it was an MLA. So we went ahead and included it in the episode. We thought if there was anything against any party member, the channel would cut it out during preview. But the pictures were broadcast with her face masked," said Leen.[MLA files complaint against TV channel (via Ranjith)]

Now according to an Indian Express report, there are other Hindu terrorist groups who are preparing to take arms.

While the SS and the HJS are both registered in Goa as charitable organisations, the Dharmashakti Sena was set up in 16 Maharashtra towns and cities on Gudi Padwa day this April. Its stated aim: establishing “Ramrajya” and to make Hindus “capable of action”.Publications linked to the three groups say the Dharmashakti Sena offers free training in self-defence and the training involves inculcating “mental courage”. It also reminds readers of the “armed battle of revolutionaries and saints”, RSS leader Golwalkar’s work on “protecting Hindus” and his teaching that “weapons should be countered with weapons”.[Those Hindu Terrorists]

This has to be nipped in the bud and such "leaders" should be stopped using strong anti-terror laws before these groups become deadly like SIMI or Naxalites. Now that the Hindu terrorists have arrived, the 'concerned citizens' should have less opposition for such laws.