Preserving ancient inscriptions

The Archaeological Survey of India is doing something unbelievable. It has embarked on a project to make normal junta aware of the history of religious places and explain the various inscriptions on temple walls

In Uthamallingeswarar temple, the inscriptions reveal that temples were used as a social centre such as bank, theatre and as Ian agricultural centre. But most of these inscriptions have been damaged.
Most of the stone inscriptions give the devotees an insight into the social structure during that period, especially, the agrarian and trade sectors.
“This temple was constructed during 12th century. Here we find large number of inscriptions in and around this temple revealing details of the ancient history, particularly in the field of agriculture and trade. We are maintaining this temple for the past three generation,” said Periyasamy, Trustee of the temple.
“I had been to many temples all over the country. During my visit to these temples I used to read all the stone inscriptions on the walls of the temples. From this Uthamallingeswarar temple, I found few inscriptions that give some details about the agricultural administration of the king in those days,” says Subramaniam, a devotee.
Most of the inscriptions found in South India particularly from Tamil Nadu are in Brahmi scripts, are also known as Tamil Brahmi. [Temples’ inscriptions a rich source of history]

If these inscriptions have to be read, the historic structures have to be well preserved. Considering the shoddy work the ASI is doing in that area, we may even lose what we have.

Book Review: Blink

Two decades back, an art dealer approached the Getty Museum in California and told that he possessed a Greek marble statue dating from the sixth century BC. A geologist from the University of California was asked to examine the statue and after about fourteen months of investigation, the museum agreed to buy the statue. A few months later the museum invited a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to take a look at the piece and the word that popped into the Director’s mind when he saw the statue was “fresh”. He was sure that something was not right. The Museum took the statue to Greece and the consensus among experts was that the statue was fake. The Director was able to make that call in a few seconds of seeing the statue, in the blink of an eye.
Whenever we meet someone new, in the first few seconds we form an opinion of that person and usually stick to it. Strangely that opinion is often consistent with an opinion formed after lot of thought. For verifying this psychologist Nalini Ambady gave showed some students video clips of teachers, lasting ten seconds with the sound turned off. The results were consistent with the opinion of students who took the course for a full term. This book by Malcolm Gladwell deals with thosesnap judgments and the process behind them.
We are able to form quick judgments due to a process called “Thin Slicing”, which is the ability of our subconscious mind to find patterns in situations and behavior based on narrow slices of experience. This is apowerful force within us and is behind many of our impulsive decisions. While this unconscious force is very powerful, it can make mistakes, especially while operating under pressure.
That is what happened during the shooting of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx by four police officers. Diallo was standing outside his apartment at midnight taking in air, when a patrol car got suspicious and pulled aside. Two officers wanted to speak with him, but Diallo got scared and started to run. At the same time, he wastrying to pull something from his pocket. One of the cops saw it in a flash as a gun and as trained shot Diallo. The other officers joined to protect their partner. Forty-onebullets and Diallo was dead. The object he was trying to pull from his pocket was his wallet and not a gun. All this happened in seven seconds.
Under pressure and fear, the snap judgment of the officers failed. The motor skills broke down and certain portions of the brain stopped functioning. Vision became restricted and behavior turned aggressive. Such temporary autistic situations that happen in life-threatening situations can cause lot of harm.
But with proper training, you can master the art of making correct snap judgments. One such person is psychologist John Gottman who canpredict with great accuracy if a marriage will last based on observing a video tape of a couple in conversation. He does this by assigning code numbers to each emotion the couple displays during the conversation; a code number for each second of the tape. Then based on the final number, he can make a successful prediction. Later he found that there are specific emotions (of which contempt is the top) that can give a good indication on the longevity of the marriage. Now Gottman can eavesdropa conversation and make his prediction by looking for those specific emotions.
Similarly when Brendan Reilley took over the Cook County Emergency Room in Chicago, the hospital was short on funds and had to treat a large number of patients with critical needs. Since there were only few beds, he had to decide fast if patient who came in with chest pain had to be admitted or not for hear attack. Analyzing apatient history took time. So Reilley turned his attention towards the work of a mathematician called Lee Goldman who devised a simple algorithm for taking the guessworkout of treating chest pain. By asking a few specific questions, doctors could make a quick call and make the correct decision. For making that decision, they did not need too much information, but less.
Combining various experiments in psychology and neuroscience, and combining evidence from fields as diverse as advertising to war games this book presents a fascinating view of how the brain works when it makes quick decisions. This science is presented with enough anecdotes that there is never a dull moment. Sometimes there are too many stories that you get caught up in them rather than the science behind it. But on the whole this is a very intriguing book and is worth reading.

Where was he born again?

Even though the popular version of history says that Siddhartha was born in Lumbini in present day Nepal, there are a bunch of folks from Orissa who want to prove that the Buddha was born in Kapileshwar village in Orissa. This version is not just a emotional outburst of some fanatics, but of some archaeological experts. These folks have found some artifacts like pottery dating to 6th B.C., but I have not figured out how pottery can help in establishing this theory. But now one historian has come forward suggesting that this is all nonsense.

He said, “The Buddha was neither born in Orissa nor visited the place during his lifetime.” Mr Behera said the claims made in this regard could go against the interests of the state.
The controversy began after it was projected sometime ago that the Buddha was born at Kapileswar, a village near here. Among others, an Ashokan inscription said to have been discovered from the place in 1928 was cited to prove the point. The inscription was similar to the one discovered in 1898 at Lumbini in Nepal, which has all through been acknowledged as the evidence to point that the Buddha was born there. The Lumbini inscription describes that Ashok visited the place because the Buddha was born there.
Mr Behera said the Kapileswar inscription had already been declared as bogus. “Eminent epigraphist D.C. Sircar, at the 1980 Indian History Congress in Mumbai, had described the Kapileswar inscription as a forged document,” he added. “Historical claims must be backed by evidence . But what some people are doing is far from the truth. There has been no serious research to disprove that the Buddha was born in Lumbini,” he said.
“Buddhist literature is silent about the Buddha being born anywhere in the Kalinga region, let alone Kapileswar village. The works of almost all noted scholars on Ashoka do not mention the Kapileswar inscription as believable evidence to change history,” he said. [New debate on birthplace of Buddha]

The Govt. of India did not have the habit of issuing birth certificates to people born before 1970, so this might be a bit hard to prove. One issue where we would like to challenge Mr. Behera is regarding Buddha’s visit to Orissa. When Huen Tsang visited India in 6th century A.D. he saw some stupas which mentioned Buddha’s visit to Kalinga. Those stupas were discovered last month in an excavation. We hope Mr. Behara is not andha to this fact.

600,000 year old skull

Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak and David Frawley have a book called In search of the cradle of civilization[2], which goes on to establish that the real cradle of civilization was India not Sumer. According to the findings of an Oxford University scholar Stephen Oppenheimer, India was the cradle for all non-African people. While Oppenheimer’s theory deals with human migration which happened about 85,000 years back, there is something exciting which could prove India’s connection with the homo erectus, homo sapiens, and evolution that happened 600,000 years ago.
In 1982 a skull, not belonging to a homo sapien was found in Narmada Valley. It was only recently that a CT scan was done.

Former GSI (Nagpur) director Arun Sonakia told TOI on Thursday that the scan report might reveal something extremely exciting. â??We need some time to interpret the results. However, what we can say now is that it can reveal something very exciting… It can prove that India was also a cradle of civilisation,â? Sonakia said. According to the modern theory of evolution, the evolutionary lines of apes and early humans diverged around seven million years ago.
Some two million years ago, Homo erectus expanded out of Africa into Europe and Asia. Over the next 1.5 million years the populations of these three continents followed different evolutionary courses and became distinct species. Europeâ??s became the Neanderthals, Asiaâ??s remained Homo erectus, but Africaâ??s evolved into Homo sapiens, from where it spread again to the rest of the world.
Sonakia said the skull was not of a Homo sapiens. Although a morphological study of the skull had been done soon after its discovery, there was no internal study. â??Any internal study needed a CTscan. There are some sedimentations inside the skull. Once we remove the skull, it will crumble,â? Sonakia said. The geologist added that a study of the skullâ??s lobe structure, as revealed by the scan, can show which faculty of man was more developed at the time. [India could have been cradle of civilisation]

Shekhar Kapur's Buddha movie

There have been movies on the Dalai Lama (Kundun, Seven Years in Tibet), but only documentaries about Buddha (Life of Buddha). The only movie in which I have seen Buddha is Siddhartha, but he had a cameo appearance.
Now Shekhar Kapur (who by the way has a blog) is planning a movie on the life of Buddha and it has controversy written all over it.

Shekhar Kapur’s much-hyped and yet-to-be-shot movie Buddha would not shy away from showing incidents from the life of the founder of Buddhism who also had his ‘fair share of pleasures’ before attaining enlightenment.
Producers of the movie MCorp Global have made it clear that like any other Shekhar Kapur movie, Buddha would be based on the real life story of Siddharth, the prince who bathed in all the pleasures that man could ever dream of and Buddha, the enlightened, who experienced pains that no one could ever dream of.
Asked if Buddhists would not be offended with the depiction, Modi said “Buddhism is the only religious philosophy not based on god. It is based on a level of spirituality not relating to god alone. Buddha was a prince enjoying the best of royal luxury, he was married and had a son. All these are established facts.”[Shekhar Kapur to portray the Buddha as human]

The producers expect that the movie might be banned in some countries for portraying the ‘fair share of pleasure’ scenes. Buddha was a human who preached a technique for achieving nirvana without divine intervention, but his disciples found it necessary to worship him as God. None of those people would like to see Siddhartha making love or enjoying a drink with some courtesans.
Buddha asked his disciples not to worship his image, but spend time practicing his teachings. Hence early disciples used to represent Buddha with icons like foot print, dharma wheel or the lotus flower. Later they started making statues and found that lighting agarbattis in front of it was easier than doing a ten day vipassana course. For those people, this movie might be offensive.
Since Buddhists are generally pacifists, we may not see any fatwas or heads literally rolling with the release of the movie sometime in 2007.

Buddhist residence in Bamiyan

Archaeology has returned to Afghanistan in a big way. First there was the announcement regarding the Bactrian Gold.. Then there was constant news about the search for a third reclining Buddha in Bamiyan by Zemaryali Tarzi based on a note written by Huen Tsang. Now a Japanese archaeologist team has found some new structures in Bamiyan.

A Buddhist residence and a religious meeting place have been discovered from under a huge amount of debris in the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan.
(…) Habibolah Takhari, Afghanistan cultural deputy in Iran, says that after one year of the Japanese archaeologists working in Bamiyan, at last two houses have been discovered near the destroyed Buddha statues. According to Takhari, archaeologists believe that these two buildings were Buddhist residences and a place for holding religious meetings.
(…) The statues were historically damaged a few times before, once early in the thirteenth century when the Bamiyan was attacked by Genghis Khan, by Orangzeb Khan in 1689, and by Abdol Rahman Khan in 1892 all of whom made a lot of efforts to damage the statues.[Buddhist Structures Dug up in Bamiyan]

karshapana


As the towns and cities of the Gangetic plain got established, coins were also introduced in trading activity. Silver punch-marked coins, copper punch-marked coins and cast copper coins were used as currency. These coins were called punch-marked, following the manufacturing technique, where the symbol was punched on the metal in a separate action[3].
Then there were coins that imitated the Greek, Roman and Iranian styles. Coins minted elsewhere such as the denarii of the Roman Empire, were also used in India. But the most commonly used coin was called the karshapana or pana. Kautilya uses pana in his Arthashastra quite a lot. He wrote that high officials were to be paid 48,000 panas every year, provincial and frontier governors 12,000 panas and Grade I courtesans 3,000 panas.
The reason we are talking about karshapana today is due to the the discovery that the Late Priyamvada Birla had some of these coins concealed in her library and since it was not declared to ASI, she would have been jailed if she were alive.

According to National Museumâ??s numismatist Rita Debi Sharma, who saw photographs of the treasure, the coins included the most rare karshapana belonging to the Gandhara Janapada, dating back between 5th and 6th century BC.
The treasure also included 5th century AD gold coins from the Gupta period and 16th century Mughal gold coins. The treasure trove was inside a secret room, whose door was concealed behind a wooden panel of Priyamvadaâ??s library. Three pistols, along with their licences, were also found. Another safe in the vault is yet to be opened.
According to Sharma, “The karshapana coin found in the vault is very rare. Generally such bent bar coins have two symbols engraved on them. Those which have been found to have a single symbol are even more rare. However, the gold coins from the Gupta and Mughal periods are comparatively younger in age.”
Director of National Museum Dr K K Chakroborty added, “I have not seen the coins found in the vault of Priyamvada Birla. But I know that some from Samudraguptas time are rare and aesthetically and artistically very valuable. Finding so many from one place is unbelievable.” [Birla gold: Coins other side ]

Food for thought: How does a Grade III courtesan become a Grade I courtesan?

Need more proof?

Pakistani ministers contantly say that there are no terrorist training camps and madrassas do not incite terrorism. The chorus for this song is sung by various Presidents, Prime Ministers, Newspapers and think-tanks. But here comes a party pooper from Pakistan itself.

The fact is that most top madrassas are directly or indirectly involved in breeding militant Islamists who are inclined to become terrorists. This has been proved beyond doubt, unless you want proof of nothing less than actual military training grounds on their premises. Pakistan’s most notorious terrorist wanted by India together with Ahmad Umar Sheikh, the murderer of Daniel Pearl in Karachi, is Maulana Masood Azhar, a graduate of the Banuri Town madrassa in Karachi. The director of the madrassa, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai — target-killed last year –arranged the first meeting between Osama bin Laden and Mullah Umar, the self-styled “caliph” of the Taliban. The South Waziristan terrorist still on the loose in his area, Abdullah Mehsud, went straight to Banuri Town madrassa after his release from Guantanamo Bay and declared war on the Americans and “their allies”. After his mentor Mufti Jamil of the madrassa was killed in Karachi, he struck in South Waziristan, kidnapping two Chinese engineers, with horrible consequences for Pakistan. On June 24, Mufti Rehman and Maulana Irshad, new heads of the Banuri Mosque madrassa in Karachi, were also target-killed.[EDITORIAL: Madrassas, Ijaz ul Haq and Musharraf]