Beneath Alexandria

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Seven rod shaped samples of dirt gathered from the sea floor of Alexandria
harbor suggests that there was a thriving urban center there,  known
as Rhakotis, or Râ-Kedet,
around 1000 BCE. The city that was built over
this ancient fishing village by Alexander of Macedonia, in 332 BCE, became
famous for the light house built on the island of Pharos and library.

“Alexandria was built on top of an existing, and perhaps quite important,
settlement, maybe one that was minimized in importance because we can’t see it
now,” Stanley told LiveScience. “Nothing really concrete about Rhakotis has
been discovered until now.”

Alexander the Great likely chose this area for Alexandria since it had a bay
to protect a harbor against fierce winter storms in the Mediterranean.

“There are very few places in the Egyptian Mediterranean coast where the
coastline is not smooth,” Stanley said. “This would have been the best place
to establish a harbor.”

Stanley added this bay was even noted in Homer’s epic Odyssey: “Now in the
surging sea an island lies, Pharos they call it. By it there lies a bay with a
good anchorage, from which they send the trim ships off to sea.”

This area might have been a haven throughout ancient times for the Greeks,
Minoans, Phoenicians and others. Future research could shed light on the life
of mariners at this settlement before Alexander came.

“Virtually nothing is known of the people who would have lived there,” Stanley
said.[Hidden
Egyptian City Found Beneath Alexandria
]

This is similar to how underwater archaeology
in the coast of Gujarat revealed the existence of the
remains
of an ancient city
near present day Dwaraka.

The discovery of ancient cities beneath the present day ones also reveal a great
deal about the continuity of cultures and how conservative they were.
Archaeological excavations in Mohenjo-daro reveal intense conservatism. Among
the nine strata of buildings that have been revealed, new houses that were built
over the previous ones were found to have almost the same floor plan for nearly
a millennia. This conservatism was seen even in the script which remained
unchanged even though they had contacts with other civilizations like
Mesopotamia.

The Posture of Proto-Siva

shivaimgThe proto-Siva seal found in Harappa (shown on the left) was treated as one of the proofs that Hinduism had its roots in Indus Valley. Analysis of the seal has led to various contradictory theories about the origins of religion, but a 1987 paper says that the posture of the depicted character has been overlooked and new analysis reveals something interesting.

The body of the figure shown in the seal is naked, except for many bangles and what appear to be necklaces. He wears a peculiar headdress consisting of horns and a plant like object between them. This pattern was found in five seals and in one of them he is surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros and a buffalo while beneath his stool are two deer’s which is also found in the representations of Buddha teaching his first sermon in the Deer Park in Varanasi.

The name proto-Siva was given by Sir John Marshall who led excavations that led to the discovery of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in 1920s. Marshall thought that the protuberances on the sides were the second and third faces and  Siva is often depicted with three faces and is also known as Pasupati (The Lord of Beasts). From this Marshall concluded that Saivism has a history of five thousand years making it the longest living faith in the world.

While Marshall identified the image as Siva, others have suggested that it is Agni. This was countered by others who thought that the the horns on the head-dress are suggestive of the trident and fertility aspect of Siva. Other interpretations include

  • figure depicted on the seal is neither three faced, nor human but is a combination of various animals 
  • since the Indus religion was centered around the Mother Goddess cult, the figure on the seal is female.
  • the figure is not Siva, but divine bull-man

While the head-dress, animals and other symbols depicted on the seal have been interpreted in various ways, Yan Dhyansky of University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the posture, which Marshall and few others called “yogic posture” has never been carefully examined. In his paper, The Indus Valley Origin of Yoga Practice, he suggests that Yoga was known and practiced by the people of Indus Valley civilization.

The person on the seal is seated with his legs drawn close to the body with two heels touching, which A L Basham calls, “a posture quite impossible for the average westerner”. This posture, has been identified by Yan as Mulabandhasana, which is difficult even for people who practice Yoga. (See this video and try it).  The same posture has been depicted on all five proto-Siva seals found disproving the theory that it was the work of an imaginative artist. Besides this other seals have been found with figures in other yoga postures suggesting that people in the Indus valley were the practitioners of Yoga.

Invading the Sacred

The Lost Gospel According some experts of Hinduism in American academia, Ganesha’s trunk is a “limp phallus”, Devi is classified as the “mother with a penis”, Shiva is “a notorious womanizer” who incites violence in India,  Sri Ramakrishna is a pedophile who sexually molested the young Swami Vivekananda, bindi is a drop of menstrual fluid and the “ha” in sacred mantras is a woman’s sound during orgasm. These scholarly works, peddled by powerful academic cartels who make our own eminent historians look like Winnie the Pooh, have been passed on as interpretations of Hinduism in schools and colleges, thus brainwashing future generations of students. Some of these scholars are also on the editorial committees of encyclopedias and thus misinformation is easily passed around without much dissent.

William Wilberforce, the 18th century British politician in a speech in the House of Commons talks about an incident in which some abusive pamphlets against various religions were released by missionaries in India, but found that the natives were tolerant and “even the grossest imprudence could not rouse them to anger”. When something you hold sacred is denigrated with an agenda, there has to be reaction against it, not the Iranian way of dealing with Salman Rushdie or Sambhaji Brigade’s way of dealing with the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, but by exposing faulty works through research.

That is what Rajiv Malhotra has been doing all these years through his writings on Sulekha. Rajiv Malhotra’s articles on the RISA Lila sparked off many articles which exposed the prejudice behind Hinduism studies. Many Hindu parents who were shocked to read misinterpretations of their religion became activists and the work of this grassroots movement has resulted in the articles compiled in this new book Invading The Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America , edited by Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee. The book, as Sankrant Sanu writes in his review, is also a testimony to rising economic affluence of India and Indians who are now able to use the Internet to challenge established thinking and get books published bypassing the guardians of the establishment.

See Also:Invading the Sacred

Toba Survivors in Andhra Pradesh

toba

The journey of man animation on the Bradshaw foundation site shows how man reached various continents moving out of Africa starting around 150,000 years back. According to the journey, humans reached India around 85,000 years back and went to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Then, around 74,000 years back, there was an eruption in Toba in Sumatra called the Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT) which resulted in an ice age and volcanic ash covering India. It is believed that the volcanic ash flung into the atmosphere blocked sunlight resulting in a nuclear winter. There was also a population reduction and according to one model, present day humans are descendants of few survivors of the Toba catastrophe.
Investigation of the Toba ash deposited in an Andhra Pradesh village called Jwalapuram in Kurnool district has revealed thatthe blast was not that catastrophic and that some of the hunter gatherers of India survived.  Stone blades and other tools  as well red ochre used in cave paintings were found both above and below the ash layer indicating that whoever lived at that time survived and there was technological continuity.

These tools were also similar to the ones used to the ones found in Africa around the same time indicating that Indians had closer affinities to African stone age traditions than European ones. It also validates the theory that humans took the route from Africa, through Arabia into India and that India was populated much before Europe. The best evidence to seal the argument would be the discovery of fossil evidence, either human or Neanderthal, but none has been found.

The Virtual Qumran

The History Channel documentary on the Lost Years of Jesus mentioned a possibility that the concept of baptism came to Jesus when he and John the Baptist lived among the Essenes  and that later the Essenes moved to Qumran in the West Bank from Jerusalem due to the fear of Romans. The documentary also suggested a theory that Jesus was a revolutionary fighting the Romans and those activities have been left out of the Bible since it would be difficult to circulate such a document while being governed by the Romans due to which there is no mention of what he did between the ages of 12 and 30.

We know that the Essenes consisting of about 75 men, moved to Qumran,  a desolate desert site, sometime between 130 and 100 B.C to escape Roman persecution. It is believed that they lived in a monastery, whose ruins are present even now, and wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, the only surviving texts of the Hebrew Bible written before 100 AD.

For years archaeologists have argued about the ruins which indicate an assortment of buildings and spaces over a 20,000 square foot area. Now a virtual 3-D reconstruction of the site has revealed that the building was a fortress once occupied by warriors called called the Hasmoneans  and others before the Essenes converted into a monastery. The original structure was built around 160 BCE and consisted of a two-story building and four-story tower.

 In 183 BCE, in India, the last Mauryan emperor Brhadratha  was assassinated by his general Pusyamitra Sunga. By that time the empire built by Chanakya, Chandragupta Maurya and Asoka were disintegrating with Afghanistan, Gandhara, Kashmir, Punjab and Malwa all breaking away. While the Roman-Essenes fights were going on in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Sunga dynasty, established by Pusyamitra was ruling a large portion of India from Vidisha. (Pusyamitra’s son Agnimitra is one of the principal characters in Kalidasa’s Mālavikāgnimitram).

Around 70 CE, the monastery was destroyed by the Romans but  now you can take a virtual tour of the monastery/fortress through the following YouTube video.

See Also: Virtual Qumran Blog, Virtual Qumran Visualization Project

A Calligraphed Urdu Newspaper

Calligraphy, considered to be one of the highest art forms in Islamic world resulted in  beautiful writings in mosques and various calligraphed Qurans. The practitioners of that art form are getting killed or not finding people to carry it forward.

In India, there is still one calligraphed Urdu daily newspaper, The Musalman, but it too faces an uncertain future.

Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs — writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art.

In the meantime, the office is a center for the South Indian Muslim community and hosts a stream of renowned poets, religious leaders and royalty who contribute to the pages, or just hang out, drink chai and recite their most recent works to the staff. The Musalman publishes Urdu poetry and messages on devotion to God and communal harmony daily.

But the Musalman has survived and operates much as it has since it was founded in 1927. The biggest change came in the 1950s when Fazlulla unloaded a massive offset printer from a cargo ship. He salvaged the machine from a defunct American newspaper, and the paper has used it ever since.

Each katib is responsible for one page. If someone is sick, the others pull double shifts — there are no replacements anywhere in the city. When calligraphers make mistakes they rewrite everything from scratch. They earn 60 rupees (about $1.50) per page.

The final proofs are transferred onto a black and white negative, then pressed onto printing plates. The paper is sold for one cent on the streets of Chennai. [A Handwritten Daily Paper in India Faces the Digital Future]

Intolerant Leader and Followers

In 1864, a group of sailors were castaway in Auckland Islands, some 300 miles
south of New Zealand. Very few had survived shipwrecks in that area and one such
group was led by
Capt.
Thomas Musgrave of Britain
. Eight days after surviving the wreck  the
sailors came out of the tent on seeing the sun and when the captain read a
passage from the Bible in which Christ asks his disciples to love one another,
the group consisting of a French gold miner, a leprosy-deformed Portuguese cook,
a  Norwegian and an Englishman burst into tears. Some modern days followers
of Jesus have forgotten or have chosen to ignore this message.

All you need is ask Rajan Zed,
director of interfaith relations at
a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., who recently gave the brief prayer that opens each
day’s Senate session. His prayer
was
disrupted
by some anti-abortion activists
who shouted
No
Lord but Jesus Christ
“, “There’s only one true God,” and
this
is an abomination
”. While the Indian Parliament does not open with a
prayer, legislative assemblies in United States have opened with prayers since
the early sessions of Congress, but so far the prayers had been only of the
monotheistic religions.

Christian historian David Barton said that the prayer was unconstitutional since
Hindus worship multiple Gods and it violates the motto, One Nation under God.
Mr. Barton would have to spend a lifetime to understand the concept of
Brahman to realize the shallowness of his
statement, but much simpler for him would be to read
Ann
Althouse’s explanation
that the motto isn’t in the constitution and by
protesting Mr. Barton is foolishly asking the motto to be declared
unconstitutional.

While  intolerance for other faiths has been accepted without any
introspection by some of the foot soldiers, it is also worth looking at the
leadership of some of these sects as well. A 16-page document prepared by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pope Benedict XVI headed when
he was a cardinal has declared that Christian denominations outside the Roman
Catholic Church are not full churches of Jesus Christ. The document also claims
that Roman Catholic Church
alone
is the mediator of salvation
while other defective Christian faiths, like
the Protestants, can be just instruments.

The Pope is also planning to
issue
a decree allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass
, the Latin rite which was
codified in 1570 and and used till the 1960s when the  second Vatican
council reformed it. The Tridentine mass is supposed to be more beautiful with
Gregorian chants and a much dignified service than the present day mass.
The
Jews are not very happy
about it since there are prayers in the Mass which
calls for their conversion and the
Pope’s
explanation
is that whatever was held sacred by ancient generations remain
sacred to us too and cannot be forbidden. Imagine for a moment what would have
happened in India if such argument was used for reviving the caste system.

When the leadership lacks sensitivity to other monotheistic religions and even
members praying to the same God, it is too much to ask for some of their brain
washed followers to respect a religion which they don’t even understand.
Fortunately a vast majority of the people think the ant-abortion protesters are
idiots
and stupid
jerks

Sacred Chants by Stephen Devassy

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Stephen Devassy, the 24 year old keyboard player from Palakkad was unknown to me, till I head his version of Mahishasuramardini Stotram (link has a sample) at the Melody Corner Music Store in Trichur last month. He was the music director of the album which  mixed traditional devotional songs with non-traditional music along and vocals from Saindhavi, Uma Mohan and Ghayatri Devi. A student of Chetana Music Academy, he has played along with Hariharan and L. Subramaniyam as well as composed music for a bad Mohanlal movie called Hariharan Pilla Happy Aanu.

His music which has elements of gospel music  is not intrusive, but gives importance to the vocals. While the music is soothing and uplifting, the vocals too are clear and perfect with their pronunciation. The store had only the above two CDs, but like others I too would buy any of his Sacred/Holy Chants series in a heartbeat.

See Also: Video Interview with Stephen (Malayalam/English),  stage performance, The right keys to successVillage boy from Palakkad climbs the music ladder

Communist Comedy in Kerala

Just when you thought that  theatrics has reduced in politics, there is a revival of that art form thanks to the octogenarian Communist chief minister of Kerala. Achyutanandan is riding a popularity tsunami wave unseen in Kerala politics due to a demolition drive he has triggered all over Kerala. A special task force  assigned by him has been camping in the hill resort of Munnar demolishing any building constructed over encroached land,  mostly holiday resorts. The task force did not even spare one of the offices of CPI, a coalition partner, resulting in an increased sales of heart burn medicine in the capital.

The demolition drives were not just restricted to Munnar but also in towns all around Kerala. While driving into Kottayam last month we were held up for an hour because a bull dozer was pulling down a building right in the town and while driving from Thrissur town to Thalikkulam, a beach town, we saw that even church walls were not spared. Achyutanandan became the fearless Robinhood receiving support from everyone for taking such bold steps and Sugatha Kumari, the poetess, went on to write an op-ed piece in Mathrubhoomi praising him.

That’s when Achyutanandan decided to move it up a notch. He drove to Munnar in heavy downpour on a day in which his coalition members had decided to investigate the excesses done in Munnar and personally threw away a board from land which he said belonged to the Tatas. He touted that no one had the courage to touch the Tatas till then. He also warned the Tatas not to approach the judiciary and threatened that if they did so they would be left with no land at all.

The last statement sounded like it came  from a kidnapper who after saying, Tumhari maa hamare kabze mein hai, warns the victim not to go to the police than a person who has sworn to uphold the follow the laws of India. Then what can you expect from a Communist whose only claim to fame is destroying crops planted by farmers.

Events took a comic turn when Achyutanandan’s Revenue Minister stated in the Assembly that the land which the Chief Minister claimed belonged to the Tatas actually belonged to the Forest Department and the nearest Tata plantation was 2 KM away. In fact the land had been under the Government control since 1971. Instead of following the law Achyutanandan thought he was Suresh Gopi in his old age, decided to take the law into his own hands,  and ended up with coconut tree manure on his face. Thanks to the excellent  media coverage, Achyutanandan’s stupidity was telecast to a wide audience.

You would think Communists would learn from such embarrassments. Instead they have decided to threaten major newspapers for exposing corruption within the party.