History hijacked by perverse politics of bogus secularism - Kanchan Gupta

From

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/history-hijacked-by-perverse-politics.html

History hijacked by perverse politics of bogus secularism --

by

Kanchan Gupta

What drove Muslim invaders to loot and destroy Hindu temples? Was it greed? Was it hatred of idol worship? Or was it contempt towards a conquered people? Ajmer offers possible answers

First, some trivia for history buffs. James Tod joined the Bengal Army as a cadet in 1799, presumably looking for a life of adventure in the heat and dust of India. He swiftly rose through the ranks and, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, the records of the times tell us, provided valuable service to the East India Company. His uncanny ability to gather information helped the early colonisers smash the Maratha Confederacy. Later, his assistance was sought during the Rajputana campaign.

Colonel Tod, as he was known, was a natural scholar with an eye for detail and a curious mind. He was fascinated by the history of Rajputana and its antiquities as much as by its palace intrigues and the shifting loyalties of its rulers and their factotums. That fascination led to his penning two books that are still considered mandatory reading for anybody interested in the history of the Rajputs, although latter-day scholars of the Marxist variety would disagree with both the contents and the style, neither leavened by ideological predilections. The first volume of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan was published in 1829 and the second in 1832, nearly a decade after he returned to Britain.

And now to present times. Thousands of people, Indians and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims, visit Ajmer every day to offer a chaadar at Dargah Sharif of Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, a shrine where all are welcome and every prayer is answered, or so the pious choose to believe. Many stay on to visit the other antiquities of Ajmer, among them a magnificent mosque complex which bears little or no resemblance to its name: Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra.

People gawk at the columns and the façade intricately carved with inscriptions from the Quran in Arabic. They pose for photographs or capture the mosque's 'beauty' on video cameras and carry back memories of Islam's munificence towards its followers. Don't forget to visit Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, they will later tell friends and relatives visiting Ajmer.

As for Indian Muslims who travel to Ajmer and see Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra, they would be tempted to wonder why similar mosques are no longer built, a wonderment that is only partially explained by the fact that sultans and badshahs no longer rule India. The crescent had begun to wane long before a derelict Bahadur Shah Zafar was propped up as Badshah of Hindoostan by the mutineers of 1857.

Such speculation as may flit through troubled minds need not detain us, nor is there any need to feel sorry for those who wallow in self-pity or are enraged by the realisation of permanent loss of power. A century and a half is long enough time to reconcile to the changed realities of today's Hindustan.

So, let us return to Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra in Ajmer. Few who have seen and admired this mosque complex would be aware of Colonel Tod's description of it in the first volume of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: "The entire façade of this noble entrance … is covered with Arabic inscriptions … but in a small frieze over the apex of the arch is contained an inscription in Sanskrit." And that oddity tells the real story of Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra.

This is no place of worship built over weeks and months for the faithful to congregate five times a day, it is a monument to honour Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghauri who travelled through Ajmer after defeating, and killing, Prithviraj Chauhan in the second battle of Tarain in 1192 AD. Stunned by the beauty of the temples of Ajmer and shocked by such idolatory, he ordered Qutbuddin Aibak to sack the city and build a mosque, a mission to be accomplished in two-and-a-half days, so that he could offer namaz on his way back.

Aibak fulfilled the task given to him: He used the structures of three temples to fashion what now stands as Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra. Mindful of sensitivities, his men used their swords to disfigure the faces of figures carved into the 70 pillars that still stand. It would seem India's invaders had a particular distaste for Indian noses portrayed in stone and plaster.

The story of Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra is not unique. Hindustan's landscape is dotted with mosques built on sites where temples stood, often crafted with material from the destroyed places of worship. Quwwat-ul Islam, the first mosque built in Delhi, bears testimony to the ruthless invader's smash-and-grab policy, as do the mosques Aurangzeb built in Kashi and Mathura, or the mosque Mir Baqi built at Ayodhya on the site Hindus believe to be, and revere as, Ram Janmasthan.

The pillars and inner walls of Babri Masjid, as the disputed structure was known till it came crashing down on December 6, 1992, were those of a temple that once stood there, a fact proven beyond doubt. Somnath was fortunate: It was sacked repeatedly, but no mosque came to occupy the land where it stood — and still stands — in Gujarat, a coastal sentinel guarding faith, culture, civilisation. The Vishwanath temple at Kashi was less fortunate as was Krishna Janamsthan in Mathura.

Strange as it may seem, such destruction, barring the illegitimate occupation by Muslims of Temple Mount revered by Jews in Jerusalem, never happened in the land considered holiest of all by followers of the three Abrahamic faiths. The Church of Nativity in Bethlehem commemorates (and preserves) the manger where Jesus Christ was born. In the walled city of Jerusalem stands the centuries old Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the spot where Jesus was crucified and the sepulchre where he was buried and from where he rose. These and many other Christian sites have remained untouched. As have Jewish sites.

What then explains the extraordinary destructive trait displayed by Muslim invaders who raided India again and again? It couldn't just have been the wealth of temples (as Marxist historians who grudgingly concede temples were indeed attacked would forcefully argue in justification of the destruction), there has to be something more. Was it polytheism that upset the early age Islamists? Was it idol worship that enraged them? Or was it simply hate and contempt towards the conquered that drove the destructive impulse of the conquering invader?

Ironically, to ask these questions would be considered as 'intolerance' today. Positing possible answers would be labelled as 'hate speech'. And those asking the questions and positing possible answers would be described as 'Islamophobes'. History has truly been hijacked by the perverse politics of our times.

(This appeared as Coffee Break in The Pioneer on October 20, 2012)

Visual: Courtesy subratneeraj.blogspot.com
http://www.niticentral.com/2012/10/history-hijacked-by-perverse-politics-of-bogus-secularism.html

On River Saraswati by Michel Danino

The Lost River

by

Michel Danino

The now dried up Saraswati river holds the key to many riddles of ancient Indian history — from the fate of the Harappans to the identity of the Vedic people. A convergence of archaeological, geological and climatic studies may soon provide us some answers.



The riddle of the Saraswati river never goes long out of public view. The fascination the lost river has exerted on Indian minds is understandable: Praised in the Rig Veda's hymns as a "mighty" river flowing "from the mountain to the sea" somewhere between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, it is reported a few centuries later by the Brahmanas (commentaries on the Vedas) as disappearing in the desert at a point called Vinashana, which was then a highly revered pilgrimage site. The Mahabharata, whose great war is waged in the region of Kurukshetra watered by the Saraswati and its tributaries, paints a similar picture, adding some details about the broken-up westward course of the river all the way to Prabhasa on the Arabian Sea. The river went on dwindling down, eventually becoming 'mythical', finally relocated at the confluence between Ganga and Yamuna as an 'invisible' river — a convenient device to remember it.

A modern myth is that satellite imagery 'rediscovered' the river in the 1970s. Actually, it only confirmed what had been known for over two centuries: As early as in 1760, a map from The Library Atlas published by Bryce, Collier & Schmitz showed the Saraswati (spelt 'Soorsuty') joining the Ghaggar ('Guggur') in Punjab; indeed, even today a small stream called 'Sarsuti' seasonally flows there. In 1778, James Rennell, a noted English geographer and cartographer, published a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire with similar details. In the early 19th century, several topographers surveyed the bed of the Ghaggar, a seasonal river that flows down from the Shivalik hills, and found it much too wide for the paltry waters it carried during monsoons; the first scholar to propose that the Ghaggar-Saraswati combine was the relic of the Vedic Saraswati was the French geographer Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin, who authored in 1855 a massive Geography of India's North-West According to the Vedic Hymns. Subsequently, nearly all Indologists, from Max Müller to Monier-Williams or Macdonell (and later Louis Renou) accepted this thesis. Geologists such as RD Oldham (1886) joined in, followed by geographers such as the Indian Shamsul Islam Siddiqi (1944) or the German Herbert Wilhelmy (1969).

 

The Indus Civilisation

The story of the Saraswati's rediscovery would thus have ended long ago if archaeology had not sprung a major surprise by redefining its role in antiquity. In the 1920s, cities of the Bronze Age like Mohenjodaro and Harappa came to light; initial findings were limited to the Indus Valley and Baluchistan, but in 1941, the intrepid explorer Sanskritist Marc Aurel Stein conducted an expedition in the then Bahawalpur State — today's Cholistan, a very arid region of Pakistan which is technically part of the Thar desert. The Ghaggar's dry bed continues there under the name of 'Hakra', and had long been known to be dotted with numerous ruined settlements. Stein's contribution, encapsulated in his paper titled 'A Survey of Ancient Sites along the Lost Saraswati River', was to show that some of those sites went back to Harappan times. So the Saraswati, too, had nurtured the 'Indus civilisation', which prompted a few archaeologists to propose the broader term of 'Indus-Saraswati civilisation'.

Indeed, decades of further explorations both in India and Pakistan have established that the Saraswati basin was home to about 360 sites of the Mature Harappan Phase (the urban phase that saw cities thrive, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE). This includes settlements such as Bhirrana, Rakhigarhi, Kunal or Banawali (all in Haryana), Kalibangan (Rajasthan) or Ganweriwala (Cholistan) — altogether, almost a third of all known urban Harappan sites. (Gujarat was also host to over 300 of them, another indication that the term 'Indus civilisation' is something of a misnomer.)

Again, that the Ghaggar-Hakra was the Saraswati's relic was accepted by most archaeologists, including Mortimer Wheeler, Raymond Allchin (both from Britain), Gregory Possehl, JM Kenoyer (both from the US), Jean-Marie Casal (France), AH Dani (Pakistan), BB Lal, SP Gupta, VN Misra or Dilip Chakrabarti (India).

 

The Aryan Issue

Despite the broad consensus, scholars such as Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib and the late RS Sharma started questioning this identification in the 1980s. What prompted this rather late reaction? It was a new development: A study of the evolution of the pattern of Harappan settlements in the Saraswati basin now revealed that in its central part — roughly southwest Haryana, southern Punjab and northern Rajasthan — most or all Harappan sites were abandoned sometime around 1900 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the urban phase of the Indus civilisation. Clearly, the river system collapsed — which archaeologists now saw as a factor contributing to the end of the brilliant Indus civilisation.

Why was this a problem? We must remember that the Saraswati is lavishly praised both as a river and a Goddess in the Rig Veda, a collection of hymns which mainstream Indology says was composed by Indo-Aryans shortly after their migration to India around 1500 BCE. However, by that time, the Saraswati had been reduced to a minor seasonal stream: How could the said Aryans praise it as a 'mighty river', the 'best of rivers', 'mother of waters', etc? There is a chronological impossibility. Hence, the objectors asserted, the Ghaggar-Hakra was not, after all, the Saraswati extolled in the Rig Veda. While some (Rajesh Kochhar) tried to relocate the river in Afghanistan, others (Irfan Habib) decided that the Saraswati was not a particular river but "the river in the abstract, the River Goddess"; but both theses ran against the Rig Veda's own testimony that the river flowed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej.

However, what should have remained a scholarly issue now turned into an ideological and often acrimonious battle: On the one hand, those who stuck to the identity between the Saraswati and the Ghaggar-Hakra concluded that the composers of the Rig Veda must have lived in the region during the third millennium BCE at the latest — but as the only settlements known of that period were Harappan ones, they often held that the Harappans were part of the Vedic people; cultural evidence such as a Harappan swastika, yogic postures, figurines in namaste and more was pressed into service to bridge the Harappan and the Vedic worlds. On the other hand, scholars who continued to swear by an Aryan immigration in the mid-second millennium BCE, and therefore a pre-Vedic Harappan civilisation, accused the former of 'chauvinism', 'jingoism' or worse, conveniently

forgetting that dozens of Western scholars had, for a century-and-a-half, accepted the same location for the Saraswati river.

 

New Research

Leaving aside the controversy, we now have scientific research combining geology and river studies. Satellite imagery is another useful tool, but cannot by itself date the numerous buried palaeo-channels (ancient waterways) it has brought to light; anyone can today access websites such as Google Earth and view the well-marked bed of the Ghaggar, but when did a perennial river last flow through it, and where did it draw its waters from?

Several recent studies have thrown new light on the ancient river, though sometimes with contradictory findings. Thus, in an article of April 2011 published in the noted magazine Science,

A Lawler claimed that "the Ghaggar-Hakra was at most a modest seasonal stream... from 2500 BCE to 1900 BCE", that is, at the height of the Harappan civilisation. This ran against the notion of a mighty, or simply perennial, Saraswati flowing during mature Harappan times. Lawler based himself on recent independent studies piloted by geologists Sanjeev Gupta, Peter Clift (both from the UK), and Hideaki Maemoku (Japan), which suggested that the river had largely dried up long before Harappan times.

But Clift had, in a paper of September 2009 in Geoscientist, found that "between 2000 and 3000 BCE, flow along a presently dried up course known as the Ghaggur-Hakkra river ceased, probably driven by the weakening monsoon and possibly also because of headwater capture into the adjacent Yamuna and Sutlej rivers".

Clift's multi-national team, using sophisticated methods to date zircon sand grains and identify their provenance, published in the journal Geology of 2012 a paper which showed that the Yamuna once flowed into the Ghaggar-Hakra, but switched eastward tens of thousands of years ago; the Sutlej also contributed to the Ghaggar system but abandoned it 10,000 years ago or earlier. But the paper remained non-committal as regards the precise time for the drying of the Ghaggar itself.

More recently, in March 2012, a similar team of geoscientists published in Proceedings of National Academy of Science a paper entitled 'Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilisation' (its lead author was Liviu Giosan, with Clift as second author). The team disagreed that "large glacier-fed Himalayan river watered the Harappan heartland on the interfluve between the Indus and Ganges basins"; rather, "only monsoonal-fed rivers were active there during the Holocene" (that is, the last 10,000 years or so). In particular, "rivers were undoubtedly active in this region during the Urban Harappan Phase". Indeed, the geoscientists found "sandy fluvial deposits approximately 5,400 (years) old at Fort Abbas in Pakistan,

and recent work on the upper Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve in India also documented Holocene channel sands that are approximately 4,300 (years) old". In other words, the Ghaggar-Hakra was active during the mature Harappan period, although not fed by glacial sources; it was a monsoon-fed river, like rivers of central or southern India: "Reliable monsoon rains were able to sustain perennial rivers earlier during the Holocene, (which) explains why Harappan settlements flourished along the entire Ghaggar-Hakra system without access to a glacier-fed river."

While this conclusion of a perennial but monsoon-fed Saraswati in Harappan times may be provisionally accepted, further studies surveying larger areas may slightly alter it, since we know from a 15th century Islamic chronicle that the Sutlej and Ghaggar systems were still connected in medieval times, and therefore sands of Himalayan provenance carried by the Sutlej should be identifiable in the Ghaggar's central and lower basin.

But that is, after all, a detail: What matters is the acknowledgement of a perennial Ghaggar's role in sustaining numerous Harappan urban settlements, and the coincidence between its dwindling down and the withdrawal of Harappan sites from its central basin. This is further supported by another 2012 study, directed by Indian geologist Rajiv Sinha and published in Quaternary International, which mapped palaeo-river sedimentary bodies in the subsurface by measuring their electrical resistivity (water-bearing sediments having a lower resistivity than dry ones). The study offered "the first stratigraphic evidence that a palaeochannel exists in the sub-surface alluvium in the Ghaggar valley. The fact that the major urban sites of Kalibangan and Kunal lie adjacent to the newly discovered subsurface fluvial channel body suggests that there may be a spatial relationship between the Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel and Harappan site distribution".

Such a conclusion had been reached by archaeologists long ago, since Kalibangan, for instance, shows no evidence of independent water supply; unlike Mohenjodaro, it had very few wells, and unlike Dholavira, no reservoirs, yet it was continually occupied for several centuries: For its water supply through the year, it must therefore have depended on the Ghaggar, on whose left bank it lay (with entries into its fortified areas facing the riverbed).

A convergence of archaeological, geological and climatic studies is thus on the horizon, and we may soon be in a position to better understand the reasons for the decline of the Indus civilisation. As regards the Saraswati river, allowing for some metaphorical inflation in the Vedic hymns, nothing in the recent research contradicts the river's break-up and gradual extinction as depicted in India's ancient literature. We are thus back to the original problem: If we accept the Vedic hymns' description of a river flowing from the mountain to the sea and located between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, the Ghaggar remains the sole candidate; but as we now know, this description can only apply to the third millennium BCE or earlier, an epoch that does not fit with the conventional scenario of a second millennium Aryan migration into India. We still have to wait for the last word on India's protohistory.

The writer is the author of The Lost River:

On the Trail of the Sarasvati (Penguin, 2010) and a long-time student of Indian protohistory; he is currently guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar and visiting professor at IIM Ranchi

Save the cow - stop Cattle Trafficking to Kerala.

Please read this message from Temple worshipers Society and help in saving the Cow.

*****

We, a team of committed individuals, formed Temple Worshippers Society with the twin objective of Temple Protection and Cattle Protection. In the last two years since its inception, Temple Worshippers Society has been focusing on the HR & CE Department's management of Temples and their properties, interference in worshipping patterns, total disregard to Gau Samrakshana, etc.

 

While the Right to Information Act is being utilized to further our cause with regards to Temple Protection on one hand, on the other hand, we have also been focusing on the depleting Cattle Wealth which deeply affects our agricultural progress. In course of our study and research, we found that, the regression of agriculture is directly proportional to the progression of meat industry, and that the successive governments have failed this nation on the issue of banning cattle slaughter. Shocking facts revealed by our research forced us to make this documentary.

 

We request you all to kindly spread this message far and wide in the interest of saving our cattle wealth. 

Thanks!

Temple Worshippers Society

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8-Hi2N8FcE

Their Last Journey - Cattle Trafficking to Kerala

'The untold story of caste as Social Capital' - by Prof R. Vaidyanathan

An article by Prof R. Vaidyanathan on how caste is a major social capital and has significantly contributed to India Growth story can be read here:-
http://prof-vaidyanathan.com/2012/10/18/india-growth-the-untold-story-caste-as-social-capital/

"Caste has played an important role in the consolidation of business and entrepreneurship in India particularly in the last fifty or so years. The economic development has taken place in the "India Uninc" or the partnership/proprietorship activities financed by domestic savings and facilitated by clusters and caste/community networks. Actually caste has been a major social capital in our growth process and it has not been adequately recognized. This paper explores the economic growth constituents and catalytic components. It also identifies the role of caste in the growth process among the emerging entrepreneurial groups...."

 

 

Related article:-

Caste is not a curse.

Bodh Gaya: A Hindu Response - by Romesh Jayaratnam

From
http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2012/10/bodh-gaya-hindu-response.html

Bodh Gaya: A Hindu Response

Sri Lanka Guardian, October 13, 2012 

by Romesh Jayaratnam

Buddhist petitioners have successfully filed a case at the Indian Supreme Court seeking to overturn the Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949. That legislation had enabled a shared Hindu and Buddhist management of Bodh Gaya. Nehru sponsored this consensus arrangement in order to roll back the Saivite Mahant's, until then, exclusive control over temple administration. The Buddhists are now keen to secure monopoly control over what they consider to be their sacred space. It is likely that the panel of two Supreme Court judges looking into the case will rule in their favor, unless checked.

Any change in the shared administrative arrangements of Bodh Gaya should be linked to a resolution of the long-standing dispute over who controls the entirety of the sacred space in Varanasi (Benares) and Mathura, not to mention how Hindu temples are administered in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Hindu activists should make the case for there to be a uniform policy framework that governs all religious institutions in India, be they Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist or Hindu. One can not have separate principles, differentiated by religion, to govern the administration of places of worship where Hindus alone lack say in the running of their own sacred sites.

A Supreme Court ruling that removes a centuries-old Hindu presence in the management of Bodh Gaya will reinvigorate neo-Buddhist radicalism in India. The Ambedkarites will proceed to launch similar litigation to retrieve other alleged Buddhist sites. The long-term goal is to secure international status for Bodh Gaya akin to what the Vatican enjoys and what is claimed for Jerusalem by the Roman Catholic church. The objective is to ensure that the Bodh Gaya enclave is an international entity insulated from Indian law.

The Buddhist petitioners at the Supreme Court include the Japanese-born Bhante Arya Nagarjun Shurai Sasai and ethnic Tibetan Wangdi Tshering of Darjeeling. Bhante Arya Nagarjun is linked to President Mahinda Rajapakse of Sri Lanka. He is a Buddhist radical who routinely attacks Hinduism. He should be extradited to his native Japan where he can preach to his own people whose adherance to Buddhism has been in terminal decline.

The Mauryas and the Guptas helped build and refurbish the temple at Bodh Gaya. The Guptas, while sponsors of the Hindu high tradition, protected Buddhism in the spirit of Hindu tolerance. The Delhi Sultanate sacked Bodh Gaya in the 13th century which was then abandoned and neglected for three hundred years until Ghamandi Giri, a Saivite Hindu Mahant moved into the premises in 1590 thereby preserving the structure. Had he not moved in, the temple would have collapsed due to neglect. The Hindu Mahants had maintained the temple for 300 years. Hinduism, after all, embraces all humanity and promotes religious pluralism.

Varanasi and Mathura

This brings us to the subject of Hindu control of their sacred space in Varanasi and Mathura. The Gyanvapi or Alamgiri Mosque dominates the Varanasi skyline and overshadows the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, Hinduism's most sacred place on earth. Hindus consider Varanasi to be the holiest city in the world. The 17th century mosque is situated on the original site of the Kashi Vishwanath temple that was demolished by Aurangzeb. The 71 meter high Islamic minarets are the most conspicuous feature in this epicenter of Hinduism. The mosque was recently expanded and towers above the Hindu sanctum sanctorum.

The Krishna janma bhoomi in Mathura is likewise a very sacred Hindu site. The Shah-i-Idgah mosque stands on the original site of the Krishna Temple demolished by Aurangzeb. The modern Kesava Deo Temple was only rebuilt in 1965 adjacent to the original site.

If the Supreme Court were to rule that Bodh Gaya be under the exclusive management of Buddhists, then the same should apply to the control of Hindu sacred space in Varanasi and Mathura. The immediate linking of the two separate issues will immediately give reason to the Supreme Court and to India's Attorney General to pause before making any hasty judgement on the Bodh Gaya issue.

Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments

The Buddhist petitioners demand exclusive Buddhist control over the management of Bodh Gaya. Yet the administration of centuries-old Hindu temples under the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of Tamil Nadu and the Hindu Religious Institutions Act of Kerala is often subject to ideological and political interference by ruling state governments where atheists with an ideological animus against Hinduism are placed in charge of Temple Management Boards or Devaswoms when ever the DMK and the CPI (M) are in power. Such individuals divert Hindu resources for non-Hindu activity. Hindus need to regain control over the administration and finances of their own temples in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Should the Supreme Court over rule the Bodh Gaya Temple Act, it should in similar fashion over turn the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act and the Hindu Religious Institutions Act.

Buddhist Belligerence

Many a Hindu activist would claim that Hinduism and Buddhism are one and the same. Buddhists do not make that claim or emphasize that affinity. They view themselves as a separate and distinct dispensation.

Buddhist exclusivism has impacted adversely on Hindu interests in Myanmar where one million Tamil, Bengali and Marwari Indians, many of whom were Hindu, were expelled in 1962. It impacted on Bhutan which evicted 107,000 Hindus of Nepalese antecedents between 1985 and 1991. These people had lived in Bhutan since the 1890s.

A Buddhist-sponsored intolerance impacted on Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka disenfranchised one million Tamil Hindu plantation workers of Indian antecedents in 1948 and proceeded to repatriate many of them to India in the 1960s and 1970s. I will omit reference to the subsequent civil war in Sri Lanka that pitted the Sinhalese and indigenous Tamils, 85% of whom are Hindu, with several tens of thousands killed in a 25 year period.

Buddhists have been intruding into Hindu space in Sri Lanka with Buddhist images placed this year within the precincts of the ancient Saivite Hindu temples of Tirukoneswaram (Trincomalee) and Tirukethiswaram (Mannar). Literary evidence indicates that Tirukoneswaram existed as a Hindu place of worship in the 4th century while Tirukethiswaram was already an established and revered Hindu temple in the 7th century.

Kathirkaamam, an old Hindu place of worship dedicated to Skanda or Kartikeya, that may likewise date back 700 years or more, is now exclusively managed by Buddhists. The medieval-era Vishnu Temple at Dondra has a similar Buddhist management. The objective is to erase the distinct Hindu character of these places and to Buddhicize them with a view to deny the Hindu presence in Sri Lankan history.

Nepalese Buddhists led the movement to dis-establish Hinduism as the official religion of Nepal in 2008. They successfully demanded that the 10 day national holiday of Dussehra or Dasain be pruned down to accommodate Buddhist holidays. In all four cases i.e. Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka, Hindu interests were impacted.

Buddhist monks have likewise intruded into the sacred space of the largest Hindu temple in the world - Angkor Wat dedicated to Vishnu in Cambodia.

The Ambedkarite Neo-Buddhist movement in India, inspired by rabid Sinhalese monks such as Saddhatissa Thera, is viciously anti-Hindu. Its denunciations of the Hindu religion are severe, harsh and continuous. They erroneously claim that India's scheduled castes were originally Buddhists and that the Devadasis were descendents of Buddhist nuns! The Ambedkarite neo-Buddhists reject the cardinal Hindu-Buddhist doctrine of rebirth and Samsara. They reject the veneration of the Hindu Gods, revered in traditional Theravada Buddhist societies. The latest litigation at Bodh Gaya is once again an example of the politics of hate. The neo-Buddhist edifice in India is a house of false cards and twisted logic.

Conclusion

It is important therefore to prevent any immediate change in the Bodh Gaya arrangement unless it is linked to a quid pro quo i.e. change in the current arrangements in Varanasi and Mathura, and a revamp in the administration of Hindu religious endowments and Devaswoms.

Further, a change in Bodh Gaya would mean that the Congress party-introduced Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act of 1991 that froze the religious affiliation of all places of worship as at 1947 would stand annulled. This would allow Hindu activists to reopen the issue of Varanasi and Mathura, not to mention ensure the institutional autonomy of the cash-rich Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The BJP, in particular, has an obligation to keep a close watch on developments in Bodh Gaya as it impacts on its core constituency in what is a caste-fractured swing state with disproportionate impact on a closely fought national election in the next year.

What are Vedic yajnas? (Guest post by R. Ramanathan)

 

I am pleased to post a series of articles on Vedic yajnas written by a regular reader of my blogs, Mr Ramanathan Ramakrishnan. He is what we may call 'an insider" into the Vedic system – one who has learnt the Vedas and continues to learn.  He has taken part in Soma yajnas and had tasted the Soma juice – the much mystified juice by modern researchers. I am happy that he has come forward to present the meaning and scope of yajnas in simple terms for everyone to understand. This series, I am sure adds to our understanding of Sanatana Dharma.

 

Though he is working in the IT sector, he has not lost the passion and dedication for Vedic learning. About himself in his own words:-

 

"Currently doing adhyayana of the Taittriya Yajur veda along with some of the angas like shisksha, vyakarana, praatishakya under Swamin  Ramanuja parankushachar director of the Indian heritage group CDAC Bangalore.  Interested in  shrauta yajnas and trying to learn them and I am a beginner. Though I started learning the vedas in Madurai at the  age of 10, but could not continue it because of the usual pressures of school, board exams etc and also the social stigmas associated with it. Though now I understand it is all rubbish. 

Insights: I feel we miss out a lot by not doing adhyayanam at the proper age and I feel sad at how this great system has been spoiled by western indologists and last not the least by us also in great measure.

 

Also as acknowledgments I would like to say that anything useful or good however insignificant in this article are due to the blessings of all my great Vedic teachers who taught me from the day I started till now. Any wrong fact or anything badly written is entirely is due to my deficient understanding, shortcomings and inefficiency."

 

***********

 

A detailed discussion of the vedic Yajna

By

R.Ramanathan.

Introduction

Yajna is a concept unique to the vedas alone. It has been discussed exhaustively in its manifold forms in all the 4 vedas. In fact the Purusha Sukta in the Taittriya Aranyaka(3.12.1) states that even creation is/was (As per Panini ashtadhyayi, Vedic statements are tense agnostic) done through Yajna.

यत्पुरुषेण हविषा । देवा यज्ञमतन्वत । वसन्तो अस्यासीदाज्यम् । ग्रीष्म इध्मश्शरद्धविः ।सप्तास्यासन्परिधयः । त्रिस्सप्त समिधः कृताः । देवा यद्यज्ञन्तन्वानाः । अबध्नन्पुरुषं पशुम् ।तं यज्ञं बर्हिषि प्रौक्षन्न् । पुरुषं जातमग्रतः(TA 3.12.3)

"With the Havish of the Purusha they performed the Yajna. The spring became the ghee for the sacrifice, summer became the Idma(samidh) and the sharad season became the cooked oblation. They (devas) used 21 samidhs and did the sacrifice. They tied the "purusha"pashu to the yupa. Then they sprinkled it (purusha pashu) with water to purify it for the sacrifice. The purusha was born first."

ऋचस्सामानि जज्ञिरे । छन्दासि जज्ञिरे तस्मात् ।यजुस्तस्मादजायत 3.12.4
"The Riks and samans were created from yajna. The metrical hymns and the yajus too came out of the sacrifice done with the purusha".

Here we see that even the gods performed the Yajna to do the sthoola shristi of the world. There are countless other incidents that are narrated like, the sacrificer through the nine day Satra can establish the worlds in him (Taittriya samhita 7.2.3) and so on.

So it is obvious that how important the Yajnas where considered in the Vedas.

General types of Yajnas and the type discussed in this article.

Yajnas can be done physically (external) or mentally (internal). Usually most of the Samhita and brahmana portions of the vedas discuss about the former type. The Aranyakas usually deal with the later type. This is just the general rule and it may differ. In the Taittriya shaka there is a discussion regarding the manasika type of Yajnas in the Kataka prashnas and the aranyaka also. It should be noted that, though manasika yajnas are good for chitta shudhi for an individual, the physical variety is also equally important because the Devas rely on the humans for oblations and thus when satisfied, they bless the world with rain and beneficial conditions. Thus these kinds of yajnas are for the general support of dharma and world welfare.

The mental yajna is enjoined mostly for a Vanaprasthin as he alone will have attained the requisite mental maturity for the same. The physical yajnas can be performed on entry into the Grihasta ashrama as performance of Yajnas require a dharma patni. In fact one of the reasons why Dvija men married many wives in the past was that in the event of death of the eldest wife the Agni kaaryas could continue un-hindered. Married vanaprasthins can also perform them, but there would be some changes in the mode of performance.  

 

This article deals with mainly the physical external Yajna as that would be relevant for most of us.

Types of physical yajnas.

1.      Paaka Yajnas

When a Brahmacharin enters grihastashrama through marriage, the first fire he has to maintain is the Smarta agni, which is lit during marriage in the ritual of Agni anusandhana. This is the basic Agni on which he has to perform what is called a series of Yajnas called Paaka Yajnas. The first of them is the Aupasana(Offering rice grains and samidh), that has to be performed daily in the morning(sunrise) and the evening(sunset) till death without allowing the fire to extinguish. In this karma, the role of the Patni is significant.  Before offering the oblations the Yajamana asks the permission of his wife and offers the oblations after she has agreed. Also whenever due to any emergency the Yajamana cannot perform it, then the patni can do it without mantras for 7 times (roughly 3 days).  If for some reason the fire is extinguished the Agni anusandhana has to be re-done again.

The next in the series of Paaka yajnas is the Darsha and purnamasa sthalipaaka. This consists of offering Charu(Boiled rice in a clay or bronze pot) and ghee to the devas during full and new moon. The next one is called Sarpa Bali. This is done during Shravana purnamasya(August) where bali is given for snakes using cooked rice and flowers of the Palasa tree. The next one is Agrayana sthalipaaka which is again similar to the Darsha and purnamasa sthalipaaka but done during purnima in sharad rithu(October time frame) with the freshly harvested rice grains. Then there is the Ishana Bali where offerings are offered to the devata Ishana. Also there is the Ashtaka shraddha, which as the name implies is done for the pitrus. The list is by no means exhaustive here. The householder has to perform this as a cycle at the appropriate seasons without fail.

One point to note is that Paaka yajnas are not described in detail in the vedas though there is a mention of them. The Taittriya samhita states that Manu himself was the seer of these Paaka yajnas. The details for their performance can be found in the Grihya sutras of the Kalpa(Examples are Apasthamba, Bodhayana etc). Also these yajnas can be done by the Yajaman and the Patni and no priest is required.

 

2.      Havir Yajnas

These Yajnas are the first kind of Shrauta sacrifices. Shruti is another name for the Vedas. So a shrauta sacrifice means the ones that are described in detail by the Vedas. After marriage and after establishing himself in the Smaarta Agni, to start performing these Yajnas, the householder has to perform the Agni-aadhana(Lighting of the fires). This is the first Havir yajna. The source of the fire is the smaarta agni. Three fires are established at the end of this yajna.

·         Garhapatya: The household fire. Daily agnihotra done in this.

·         Ahavaniya: The fire were offering for devas in yajnas are done

·         Dakshinagni: The fire where offering given for pitrus.

After this the yajamana starts the performance of the Agnihotra in the Garhapatya fire, till death. This involves offering of milk freshly milked from a cow, generally during sunrise and sunset. The vedas command one to do the Agnihotra till death.  If milk is not available the Vedas have given substitutes for the same. This has been discussed in detail in the Janaka & Yajnavalkya samvaada in the Shukla yajur Veda. Also in the Taittriya brahmana if one is not able to perform the Agnihotra for some reason, alternate prayashchitas like pouring ghee over a goat's ear etc have been mentioned.  The Garhpatya fire should not be extinguished. If it gets extinguished for some reason .The fire has to be re-lit with the Punar-aaadhana.

Like with Paaka yajnas there are a series of Havir Yajnas to be performed at each season. For example there are the Darsha & Purnamasa ishtis performed at full and new moons. Here purodasha(A rice cake) is offered to the devas. This is followed by the Chaturmaasya(four monthly), The Agrayana ishti, The pashu bandha. This is the first havir Yajna where an animal offering is given. Then there is the sautramani, which is again the offering of Sura for Indra.

In these havir Yajnas ritwiks(priests)  are needed, and these are slightly complex than paaka yajnas. For example for the Darsha purnamasa ishtis a Hota(One who recites the Rig veda) is needed. Other priests well versed with other veda may be needed as the case may be.

 

3.      Soma Yajnas

These are the most complex of the Yajnas described in the Shruti. All the 3 fires are used in these yajnas. The main feature of these yajnas is the offering of the soma juice 3 times a day. The number of days that soma is offered, vary based on the sacrifice. Also this Yajna requires 4 groups of 4 priests = 16 priests. Each group is responsible for each Veda. The hota group is responsible for chanting the rig veda to calls the gods to the sacrifice ("Hu" means call and thus hota). The Adhvaryu group is the one that offers the oblations reciting the Yajuses and also the overall coordination of sacrifice. That is why sometimes a sacrificial session is sometimes called an adhvaram. The udgata group is responsible for the saman singing in a sacrifice and the Brahma group is responsible for the overall welfare of the sacrifice- performance of Prayashchita wherever and whenever needed if a defect in performance arises.

Generally there are seven soma sacrifices they are Agnistoma, Atyagnistoma, Aptoryama, Atirātra ,uktya,  shodasi, Vājapeya.  Agnishtoma is considered to be a prakriti soma yajna(A template based on which others are done).  Here the main feature is offering of soma 3 times a day for one day. Also one pashu(goat) is offered during the soma offering, for the devas Agni and soma. The soma is a leafless plant whose stalks are immersed in water and pressed with stone to extract the soma juice and then strained and poured into various vessels made of wood. Each vessel is intended for one deva or a group of devas. For example, the Aindra-vayava cup is for Indra and vayu. This is then offered to the devas. This is accompanied by the singing of the Stotras(Samans) and recitations of shashtras(Riks). Then the soma is offered as oblation into fire.  Then the priests partake a little of this from various vessels. 

Please note, that soma is not intoxicating as misunderstood by many. This misunderstanding is because of the havoc created by western Indologists. The author has attended a couple of these yajnas and in one of them took a spoonful of soma.  A feeling of well-being and alertness of the senses was felt by the author. No intoxicating feeling was felt. It is Sura that is intoxicating and it is the drinking of Sura that has been strictly forbidden by Manu.

A person who performs regularly without fail the agnihotra, the havir and the soma yajnas are specially called Ahitaagnis.

The other yajnas following the agnishtoma, differ based on the stotras(Samans) and shashtras(Riks) and the number of days the soma is offered and the number of animals and purodasha offered.  The Vajapeya is the highest soma yajna. The performer of the Vajapeya has to be led into the country by the king himself and anna abhishekam has to be performed by the king for the performer of Vajapeya. Then the person who has performed this is given the title Vajapeyaji.

 Generally based on number of days performed, soma sacrifices are split into 1. Ekaha(one day) 2. Ahina(2-12 days) and 3. Satra(12 days till one year).  The agnishtoma is an example of a 1 day sacrifice. The Vajapaya is an example for Ahina and the Gavamayana is an example for a satra. Specifically it is a samvatsara satra meaning it lasts for one year. The entire 7^th kanda of the Taittriya samhita deals with satra type sacrifices.

In Kaliyuga the performance of both havir and soma yajnas is very very rare. Also the Diksha (initiation) for such sacrifices are very very tough. Some of them require that the yajamana should not bath and shave for prolonged periods before the sacrifice. Even some require that he should not brush his teeth also. The yajamana is required to wear a deer skin and insert a deer horn into waist.  From the time of his dhiksha till the time the soma is offered he is permitted to take one glass of milk 2 times a day, at the end of what is called the upasada ishti.  Also he has to keep his both fists closed and keep both fists together all day. He has to stay in a small hut. For the Gavamayana yajna all of this extends till one year.

One more misconception is that in these yajnas a lot of meat is consumed. This is not so. The priests (except the udgata group) eat a very little piece of (size of a chick pea as per the kalpa sutra) what's left after homa.  Also the vedas say that only a person who can confidently provide for his family for 3 years without difficulty can take this up. More over the dakshinas specified in this yajnas are very very high and unthinkable for an ordinary person .So in those days Brahmins wanting to perform them went to the king for help.

Also the priests officiating in these kind of Yajnas, should know all 3 vedas by heart, have a high level of proficiency in Grammar, Prosody, knowledge of vedic meters, astronomy (To determine time for the ritual), geometry (Example is the area calculations used in the Yajna vedi construction, found in the Apastamba shulba sutras), good knowledge of music, last not but least a strong powerful voice and a prodigious memory.

 

Other kinds of sacrifices/homams

There are other kinds of sacrifices that do not come strictly under above soma yajnas though one of the rituals involved are offering of soma. Many varna specific yajnas come under this category, for example, the Brihaspati Sava for Brahmins alone, the Ashvamedha and Rajasuya for a king and the Vyshyasthomam for the Vyshya.  The Ashwamedha is of particular interest here and will be discussed in depth in the next article. It involves 3 fires mentioned above. This can be performed by a Kshatriya alone. This sacrifice is discussed in detail in all yajur vedic samhitas and brahmanas.

There are minor homas like the kushmanda, that is a prayaschita homa, that is discussed in the Taittriya  Brahmana. Also there is a section called the Ekagni kanda in the Taittriya shaka. This deals with all homas performed with one agni alone. This deals with mantras pertaining to Marriage, upanayana, griha shanti, choula etc.

 

Achara
Achara is very important in performance of these yajnas and must be very strictly adhered to. The rules of the dharma shastra should be obeyed to the letter. Also important are the rules of aahara(food). Also the dvijas should regularly perform their nitya & naimitikka karmas without fail. Daksha says that "A non-performer of sandhyavandanam is unfit for any other karma".

Without all these the performance of these yajnas is likened to giving offerings intended for Agni over burnt ashes.

Conclusion
It requires strict discipline and high amounts of technical know-how to perform shrauta sacrifices. This surely will end up in chitta shudhi for the eligible performer and he will be elevated to a higher level spiritually. He then would be able to take up manasika yajnas.  Examples for such people are Rishabha deva and Jada bharata in the Bhagavata purana. They performed all sacrifices as householders and reached the highest stage of realization.