Book Review: The Last Cato

The Last Cato : A Novel by Matilde Asensi , Rayo (April 4, 2006), 464 pages

Like the beginning of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and The Secret Supper, this religious mystery also starts with a death. This time the dead person is an Ethiopian who was implicated in a serious crime against the Catholic Church. When this person’s body was discovered, it had seven Greek characters distributed on the body. There was a large chrismon , the first two Greek letters of Christ’s name XP, chi and rho on his body and next to the body there was a silver ornate box containing some strange pieces of wood.

Puzzled, the Vatican requests the services of Dr. Ottavia Salina, a nun and paleographer working in the archives, a captain of the Pope’s Swiss Guard, Kaspar Glauser-Roïst, and an Egyptian archaeologist, Farag Boswell to investigate the death. The Pope too was highly interested in this investigation since the wooden pieces were not ordinary pieces, but pieces from the original cross on which Christ died.

According to history, Saint Helen (248 – 329 CE) went looking for the Holy Sepulchre (burial chamber) and discovered the True Cross of Christ in 326 CE during a trip to Jerusalem. Two hundred years before this, Emperor Adriano had built a temple dedicated to Venus over the location, which was demolished by Helen. During the excavation, they found the original cross and over centuries fragments of it were distributed all over the world. Now in the past twenty four hours, pieces of this Ligna Crucis had disappeared from various churches around the world and the assignment given to Dr. Salina, Captain Glauser-Roïst and Professor Boswell was to find who was behind this.

The symbols on the dead man’s body lead them to The Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai, which has the most valuable ancient codices in the world, second to Vatican. The location of the monastery is considered to be the place where Yaweh in the form of the burning bush gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. From a document which they stole from the monastery they find that a secret brotherhood called Staurofilakes was formed in 341 CE to guard the Cross and the leader of the group was called Cato.

Decoding the codices they also learn that over the years the Staurofilakes had set initiation tests for anyone wishing to join them. The tests were to be conducted in seven cities, Rome, Ravenna, Jerusalem, Athens, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch. The only problem was that they needed to find the details of the tests and they find it in hidden in Dante’s Divine Comedy and thankfully, not in any of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings.

According to Captain Glauser-Roïst, Dante was a member of Fidei d’Amore, a secret society interested in the spiritual renewal of Christianity. He also knew the Staurofilakes and belonged to the order, but he later betrayed them by revealing their secrets in The Divine Comedy, like how Mozart revealed the Mason’s initiation rituals in The Magic Flute. Armed with this knowledge, the three of them set off to take the tests for which they have to find the location of the test, details of the test and how to get over it all by reading The Divine Comedy.

These tests turn out to be brutal, physically intensive and mentally challenging and the seven tests occupy the major portion of the book. For one of the tests in Constantinople, they visit The Mosque of the Conquerer, spot the chrismon in the drain of the water fountain, turn on all the fountains and drop down a tunnel into a pool deep below. They spot Emperor Constantine’s tomb there and while walking through the tunnels are swept by gales of wind, generated by something. They almost lose their way, and face death, but thanks to a line in Divine Comedy, they find the right path and move to the next test, till they find if the Staurofilakes exist and if they are behind the murder of the Ethiopian and the stealing of the cross.

Unlike The Da Vinci Code, this book does not have a cliff hanger at the end of every third page. It moves a bit slower, but not so slow as to bore you. The story told in the first person by Dr. Salina, takes time to establish the personality of each of the characters, mainly the Professor and the Captain. We get to know a great deal about her, her family and her faith. While the mysteries are being solved, the secret codes in Divine Comedy are broken and ancient cities around the world are visited, personal transformations too happen. The nun falls for the Professor and is caught between the faith and love and has to decide. Similarly, the Captain who starts out as a serious task master undergoes a major transformation at the end, which was pleasant. In usual page turners, you barely get to know the characters, but this book is quite different.

Even though the build up was great and the travel and history very informative, the ending was a bit of a let down for me. Normally in such thrillers you expect a Hollywood like climax where the villain is holding everyone hostage and one man has to save the world. The ending of this book is quite the opposite. Even though the book starts with a death, that person is just discarded after a few pages and the story moves completely into the puzzles in Divine Comedy.

The Divine Comedy is analyzed in great depth and each Canto is memorized by the characters before the start of each test. If you are not interested in poetry like me, then you will find those sections tedious to read. Still the author has made sure that only the relevant lines are quoted and not the entire book. This book which was originally written in Spanish, was published much before the more popular The Da Vinci Code and is worth a read.

Tamil-Brahmi in Thailand

Even though the Harappas had a script it still remains undeciphered. Brāhmī, the script in which the Asokan edicts were written is considered to be one of the earliest known scripts in India. While some Indian authorities maintain that it was derived from the Harappan script [13], the popular notion is that it was derived from a Semitic script like the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. Indo-Greek bi-lingual coins usually had the name of the King in Greek on one side and in Brāhmī on the other side.

The script used in the earliest inscriptions in Tamil were in Tamil Brahmi or Tamili script and it varied from the Asokan Brahmi. The Brāhmī script, originally was believed to be bought to South India by Buddhist and Jain monks in the post-Asokan period. Tamil Brahmi scripts dating to 3rd century BCE have been found in the caves of Jain monks in Tamil Nadu. Last year, urns containing human skeletons were found in Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu and those urns dating to 500 BCE were found to have Tamil Brāhmī inscriptions which means that the script reached Tamil Nadu during the time of the Buddha. In fact, there has been evidence that the script reached Sri Lanka also around the same time.

Now in an exciting discovery, Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions dating to second century AD have been found in pottery in Thailand.

At the request of the archaeologists, Iravatham Mahadevan, an expert in Tamil Epigraphy, has examined the inscription. He has confirmed that the pottery inscription is in Tamil and written in Tamil-Brahmi characters of about the second century AD. Only three letters have survived on the pottery fragment. They read tu Ra o… , possibly part of the Tamil word turavon meaning `monk.’

The presence of the characteristic letter Ra confirms that the language is Tamil and the script is Tamil-Brahmi. It is possible that the inscription recorded the name of a Buddhist monk who travelled to Thailand from Tamil Nadu. This is the earliest Tamil inscription found so far in South East Asia and attests to the maritime contacts of the Tamils with the Far East even in the early centuries AD.

Prof. Richard Salomon of the University of Washington, U.S., an expert in Indian Epigraphy, has made the following comment on the inscription:

“I am happy to hear that the inscription in question is in fact Tamil-Brahmi, as I had suspected. This is important, among other reasons, because it presents a parallel with the situation with Indian inscriptions in Egypt and the Red Sea area. There we find both Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and standard-Brahmi insciptions; and we now see the same in Vietnam and South-East Asia. This indicates that the overseas trade between India to both the West and the East involved people from the Tamil country and also other regions.” [Tamil-Brahmi inscription on pottery found in Thailand]

World to India: Trust a terrorist nation

Immediately after condemning the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri suggested that the best way to deal with terrorism was to tackle the real issue of Jammu and Kashmir. What has a bomb blast in Mumbai got to do with Kashmir, you may wonder, but that seems to be the association in the Western World as well. When Michael Krasny made this association in Forum the Consul General of India, B.S. Prakash, asked him the same question.

Note that all this association was already made, very prematurely, even before the Police had clues connecting SIMI and LeT and before the congratulatory phone calls were traced. Even before this, suggestions came from various experts that the peace process should not suffer due to such terrorist activities and even thinking about reviewing the process would be falling into the terrorist trap.

Echoing the insensitive line by Khurshid Kasuri , Xenia Dormandy suggested that Kashmir is the problem and India needs to step up in offering something in Kashmir. To give her credit, and she said the right things on her interview with Neil Conan on Talk of the Nation, that the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan is a big problem. Now the Economist too has suggested that India and Pakistan should solve the Kashmir issue.

All this faith in the peace process is built on the assumption that once the Kashmir resolved, with major “compromises” (code word for land donation), there will be ever lasting peace process in the sub-continent. Israel has learned the hard way this week that making such compromises do not guarantee anything, other than an escalation in violence.

Last September Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip and Gaza became the first completely independent Palestinian territory. The Palestinians fired rockets from Gaza, and then later dug a tunnel from there and kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. United Nations verified the withdrawal and was satisfied with it. Now from Lebanon, Hezbollah entered Israel and kidnapped two soldiers. Now Israel is fighting a war on two fronts.

What is the guarantee that Gaza and Lebanon will not happen to India. How can you trust a nation which does not want to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and which was planning Kargil, while yet another peace process was going on?<

Mumbai Blasts: Hunting down the terrorists

After the Mumbai Bomb Blasts, which CNN calls Terror on Tracks, the authorities were not sure about the perpetrators. Initially it was said to be Dawood Ibrahim. Then the suspects were LeT and SIMI. Some suggested that it could be angry Muslims seeking revenge for the Gujarat riots. Most of these were speculation, based on common sense and pattern analysis.

Now based on investigations, the Anti-Terror Squad has released the photos of two suspects,Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz. There is no information about their nationalities or affiliation. The Home Ministry has concluded that SIMI has provided logical support for the blasts . According to Mulayam Singh Yadav, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh it would be improper to call SIMI a terrorist organization since his Muslim vote bank is more precious than the life of 200 people who died and hundreds of others who have been wounded. SIMI, though a banned organization has been flourishing without any issues under various secular Governments in Kerala too showing how much resolve the elected officials have in protecting the life of Indian Citizens.

In a news conference in Delhi, a Simi leader, Shahid Badr Falahi, described the attacks as deplorable and said his organisation had no part in them. If SIMI is a banned organization and if they have been found to provide support for the blasts, what is a SIMI leader doing in public, giving news conferences in Delhi?

Currently CCTVs have been installed in seven stations and a security agency has been hired to setup international standard security. Meanwhile Al-Qaeda has announced their office opening ceremony in India and have praised the murderers of innocent civilians.

Police rounded up 350 people for questioning in Mumbai. Meanwhile Zaibuddin Ansari, Lashkar-e-Toiba module leader, suspected to be the link between LeT and SIMI is being searched for by Anti-Terrorists Squad of Mumbai Police and central intelligence agencies. Police also suspect Rahil, a Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative who was behind the October 2005, pre-Diwali bomb blasts. Nepal Police has arrested two Pakistanis, Aftar Moiddin Siddiqui and Gulam Hussain Cheema in Kathmandu and are investigating if they have any connection to the Mumbai blasts. In India, a man on a train in Hyderabad – identified as Abdullah – was arrested in connection with the bombings.

Meanwhile Police from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan have reached Bangalore following reports that the terrorists behind the blasts could have reached the city to hide. When Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi was assassinated, his murderers also found it convenient to hide in Bangalore.

Preventing asphyxiation of artistic expressions

After Andhra Pradesh High Court, it is time for Madras High Court to lecture the Govt. on their “secular” decision to ban The Da Vinci Code

“It would be dangerous to allow the State to straightjacket the right to Freedom of Expression, as artistic expressions may be asphyxiated by law if a petulant group of self-appointed `censors’ prescribes the paradigms for suspending the screening of a film, which has got the approval of the Censor Board,” said Justice Prabha Sridevan.
Rejecting the submission that the State had material to show that there would be a “breach of peace” if the film was exhibited, the judge said, “the inability of the State to maintain law and order or to avert a violation of breach of peace can never be a ground to throttle the Fundamental Rights.”
She said the order did not satisfy the “compelling State interest test,” and added: “When highly respected members of the Christian community have seen the film and have not expressed any apprehension that it may result in breach of peace, and when the Censor Board has certified that the film is worthy of being exhibited, the compulsion that forced the State to pass the impugned order is inexplicable and does not justify the violation of the Fundamental Right of the petitioners.” [Madras High Court quashes ban on film via Reporter’s Diary]

Terrorists strike Mumbai Again (contd)

Continuing from where we left off yesterday, The Acorn points to a piece by Praveen Swamy

what evidence is available, though, suggests that the tactics and techniques used in the Mumbai bombings are similar to those deployed in the wave of strikes that have taken place across India since the end of 2005. Fabricated from easily-available chemicals such as potassium permanganate or aluminium chlorate, with small amounts of RDX to accelerate the detonation, the kinds of explosives that seem to have been used in Mumbai are easy to manufacture — and lethal when used in crowded locations.
If recent experience is a guide, investigators are likely to find that the real architects of the bombing are outside its reach: the Lashkar is headquartered at Muridke, near Lahore, while the HuJI operates out of bases in Dhaka and Chittagong. More likely than not, though, the operation will have been facilitated by local operatives of these terror groups — part of a subterranean but still enormously dangerous movement of small numbers of recruits into the ranks of Islamist terror groups.

CNN reports that timers were hidden in pencils
Update 1: According to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh (not Sonia Gandhi), India will win the war on terror. Terrorists must be surrendering in droves after hearing his pathetic speech.
Update 2: Mumbai Politician suspected?

He, however, dodged a query on a media report that claimed a south Mumbai politician, who has considerable clout in a minority community, was under the scanner of intelligence agencies for his suspected role in yesterday’s serial blasts in suburban trains.
The report quoted intelligence sources as saying that the politician could have instigated the blasts in retaliation for a recent strife in a minority-dominated area of Thane district.

Update 3: Premature to blame LeT

The director general of police in Maharashtra, the Indian state that includes Mumbai, said that officers had

Terrorists strike Mumbai Again

Terrorists (not militants as the MSM likes to call it), have struck Mumbai. Amit Varma has the updates and he points to Mumbai Help for getting additional help and information.
Update 1: Amit mentions an incident where a correspondent asks a victim if this was a terrorist attack and remarks how would he know in five minutes. B. Raman has guessed who is behind the blasts instantly.
Update 2: Indian Intelligence believes that Dawood Ibrahim was behind the serial attacks. (via Counter Terrorism Blog)

Indian intelligence believes the attacks on Mumbai

Reconstructing Nalanda

In Buddhism education was usually monastery based, as opposed to the home based education or gurukul in Hinduism. One monastery which evolved into a world famous university was Nalanda, which was founded during the times of the Guptas. Information about Nalanda comes from the writings of Huen Tsang or Xuanzang who visited the place in the 7th century.

According to his notes, the monastery was full of intellectual activity and it did not restrict the training to Buddhists. Vedas, Hindu philosophy, logic, grammar and medicine were also taught and students belonging to other faiths were also admitted, provided they passed an oral examination. Arjun Singh was not there to enforce reservation and it was purely merit based admission.

Nalanda was supported by the revenues of an estate of hundred villages and by patrons like Harsha. From Nalanda, the missionary monk Padmasambhava went to Tibet to convert them to Buddhism in the 8th century, while students came from China and South-East Asia to study there. Nalanda remained an important center of learning till it was destroyed by invading Turkish Muslims under the leadership of Bakhtiyar Khalji.

Now based on an idea by President A P J Abdul Kalam, the ruins of Nalanda will be developed and upgraded to international standard, whatever that means.

The ancient Nalanda University was spread over an area having a radius of about 16 km out of which an area of only 1.6 km radius has been excavated so far.

“A team of experts will soon conduct fresh survey and properly map some of the nearby mounds at Rukiministhan, Jwarfardih, Kool and Balaur villages within a radius of 16 km from the present excavated site of the university before initiating proper exploration work,” Vaidya said, adding that a systematic study of some of the adjoining villages will give an idea of the history of the settlement pattern of Nalanda.

Only recently, a Japanese delegation came to Patna after meeting Kalam in Delhi. The Bihar government has already identified 450 acres of land located between Rajgir and Nalanda for the proposed university that would impart quality teaching in philosophy and value education, among others. [ASI move to develop ancient Nalanda varsity site]

Reference: The Wonder That Was India by A. L. Basham

A new date for Exodus

According to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and received the Ten Commandments from God. There are sceptics who suggest that Moses never existed as a historical figure and that the Exodus too is mythical. Now in a new documentary titled The Exodus Decoded, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici suggests that the Exodus did happen, and it happened around 1500 BCE.

Jacobovici set out on his Exodus quest after doing a documentary in the 1990s on a group of people on the Indian-Burma border who claim to be the lost Israelite tribe of Menashe. That film was met with widespread criticism by people Jacobovici branded as “so-called experts.” Jacobovici said he himself was skeptical of the tribe’s Israelite claims until he researched the subject.

Similarly with the new Exodus documentary, he asserted that with his hefty $3.5 million budget, a lack of preconceptions, and none of the restrictions of conventional archeological wisdom, he was free to reach what he insists are credible conclusions about the Exodus. The 55-year-old director, whose original claim to fame was his first-ever documentary Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews, made two and half decades ago and which focused on Ethiopian Jewry, said his research for the lost tribes film spurred him to question the widely accepted assumptions about what he called “the founding story of Western civilization” – the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.

Six years later, mixing science, religion and a variety of archeological findings, Jacobovici is convinced that he has seen the light. Most of the archeological findings cited come from Egypt, with others from Greece. He said he researched in six countries, including Israel and the UK.

The 10 plagues that smote the Egyptians, according to the Bible, are explained in the documentary to be the result of a volcanic eruption on a Greek island that occurred 3,500 years ago. [Documentary sets new date for Exodus]

What was happening in the world at that time? In the middle of the second millennium BCE, Hittites , Egyptians and Mitannians were struggling for supremacy in the Levant. Myceneans of mainland Greece had taken control of Crete and the Aegean, and the Olmec of Mesoamerica had begun to build their massive ceremonial centers. In China, the Shang state had assumed control.

This time frame coincides with the time the Indus Valley civilization was on the decline probably due to the disappearance of the Ghaggar-Hakra river system, tectonic activity or a failure in monsoons. After the demise of the Indus civilization, the main cultural and political focus shifted to the east, to the Ganges valley. It was a thousand years before the Buddha was born.

This documentary also identifies an image of that time frame, 1500 BCE, of the Ark of the Covenant in an Egyptian museum, that according to film makers is proof of Exodus. The Ark of the Covenant, the sacred container which contains the stone tablets having the Ten Commandments is the same thing which the Nazis and Indiana Jones were searching for in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The documentary also identifies the real location in Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments. Currently, Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Mount Sinai, built around the Chapel of the Burning Bush is considered to be the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush. When the documentary is shown on The History Channel on August 20th, we might know more details.

Converting waste to fuel

There are many advantages of not having to depend on oil for fuel needs. For a nation like India, energy independence will remove the need to bow before the middle-east dictators and remove this competition with China to grab all oil wells in the world. With this freedom, United States could ignore the lunatic statements from Hugo Chavez and we all could live to see the day when Saudi Arabia’s major business is exporting camels. The problem though is in finding a cost effective alternative.

The market for alternative energies is huge and Venture Capitalists in the Bay Area like Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures have invested in biofuels companies like Altra and Cilion. With companies like VeraSun and Aventine going IPO, ethanol is getting focus as that major alternative. Using E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) could also revive the slumping American car industry and give a boost to farmers. Going by market trends, Ethanol seems to be the silver bullet as even Wal-Mart is planning to pump ethanol based fuel in gas stations around the country.

But corn based ethanol is not without problems. Ethanol is expensive to make. The fuel efficiency for E85 based vehicles are less compared to the ones running on gas. Besides this ethanol has to be carried in trucks or trains (as there are no pipelines) which requires more fuel to be spent.

In Back To The Future II or III, Dr. Emmet Brown comes back from the future , flying in his time machine and is seen scavenging the garbage carts for fuel. He find some soda cans and other pieces of garbage and stuffs it into the fuel tank. This future is near and soon we will all be doing the same , if we are going to use cellulosic ethanol as fuel.

In corn based ethanol, the corn is ground and mixed with water. The enzymes convert the starch to sugar and sugar eating micro-organisms excrete ethanol, which is distilled and used. With cellulosic ethanol, we don’t have to depend entirely on corn. Farm waste like corn kennel, wheat and barley straw, leaves and stalks of plants can also be used as the source of ethanol.

Finally the cost of cellulosic ethanol is expected to be $1.35/gallon compared to $3.20/gallon right now for regular gasoline. This should be a big boost to consumers who can then buy Ford Explorers and H3s without guilt. Since cellulosic ethanol depends on farm waste, these giant SUV owners can claim that they are clearing waste instead of creating it. In Kerala where we stay, throwing garbage over the wall to the road is considered good civic sense. If it turns out that this garbage can be used as fuel, then my neighborhood will be the cleanest place in India.