The Greater Indic Civilization

[Guest]

Please read this

http://www.colorq.org/MeltingPot/Asia/indiachina.htm


http://www.friesian.com/sangoku.htm


http://www.imperialtours.net/comparative_history.htm

[acharya]

Emperors of the Sangoku,
the "Three Kingdoms,"
of India, China, & Japan


India and China are the sources of the greatest civilizations in Eastern and Southern Asia. Their rulers saw themselves as universal monarchs, thereby matching the pretentions of the Roman Emperors in the West. <span style='color:red'>The only drawbacks to their priority are that India suffered a setback, when the Indus Valley Civilization collapsed (for disputed reasons), and China got started later than the Middle Eastern civilizations. By the time India recovered, it was a contemporary of Greece, rather than Sumeria, with many parallel cultural developments, like philosophy. And, curiously, China reached a philosophical stage of development in the same era, the "axial age," 800 to 400 BC. Later, when the West, India, and China, all had contact with each other, it was at first India that had the most influence on China, through the introduction of Buddhism. Indian influence on the West, though likely through the skepticism of Pyrrho, and possibly evident in the halos of Christian saints (borrowed from Buddhist iconography), did not extend to anything more substantial. While China then made Buddhism its own, India later endured the advent of Islâm, which introduced deep cultural and then political divisions into the Subcontinent. The only comparable development in China was the application of Marxism by the Communist government that came to power in 1949. </span>

[Hauma Hamiddha]

Acharya for you
Brief overview of Indian colonization of the far East:
-By the time of the first 5 centuries of the common era Indian traders actively participated in trade with the far east and established trading colonies in the Siam, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malay peninsula. They were accompanied by several kshatriya and brAhmaNa immigrants who started establishing Indian-styled monarchies in the region. Most of the early brahminical colonies were localized to Takua Pa, Nakhon Sri and Dhammarat in the peninsula
-Before 400 AD the shrivijaya Kingdom was founded in the Island of Sumatra by kshatriyas.
-Before 500 AD the kshatriya pUrNavarman founded a kingdom in Western Java.
-By around 600-700AD kshatriya sanjaya founded a mighty kingdom in Central Java with matarAm.
-By around mid 700s the shailendra empire arose in Java who started one of the most remarkable series of conquests of the Eastern Indic potentates. They annexed all the pre-existing Indic states in Malayasia, Java, Sumatra, Bali, Borneo and further islands of modern Indonesia. Subsequently they raided Vietnam and Cambodia and established control over these regions for some time. Their empire known as suvarNadvipa established diplomatic relationships with the cholas and pAlas in India and with the emperor of China. They also built a university modeled after nAlandA and kanchi in Java. The great tantric dipAmkarashriGYAna from Bengal studied there at some point.

-The shailendra emperor mAravijayottungavarman, was a great ally of chola emperor rAjarAja, who helped him the construction of vihAra in jAva.
-The shailendras fell out with the cholas after an apparent dispute over trade with China. This resulted in rAjendra launching a massive amphibious assault on the shailendras. It resulted in a total route of the shailendras with the cholas seizing the Malay peninsula, Java and Sumatra.

[Hauma Hamiddha]

sanskrit inscription of Indic king pUrNavarman on a rock in western Java ~390 AD

shrimAn dAtA kR^itaGYo narapatirasamaH yaH purA tArumAyAM nAMnA shripUrNavarmA prachura ripusharAbhedyavikhyAtavarmA |

tasyedaM pAdabimbadvayamarinagarotsAdane nityadakShaM bhaktAnAM yannR^ipANAM bhavati sukhakaraM shalyabhutaM ripUNAM ||

[Hauma Hamiddha]

The Indo-Mongolian Relationship: A Retrospective
Outlook On Buddhism
Prof. Sh. Bira (Mongolia)

Despite the expectation of some people, Mongolia has not ever been completely isolated from the outside world, being sandwiched – to use the jargon of modern journalism – between two giants – Russia and China. On the contrary it has always been in close contact with great civilizations – the Indo-Iranian, the Sino-Tibetan, the Eurasian in old pre-modern times and even the Euro-American in our days. I share the opinion of scholars who assert that the nomadic world of the Mongols always needed relations with the outside world and the external factor has played a great role in their history.

The geographical and geopolitical situation of Mongolia always favored the mutual relationship between nomadic and sedentary civilizations – the two main components of human civilization. The grand territory of Mongolia has always been a bridge between various civilizations. To be more concrete the great highways have since long ago linked the east and the west, namely the great Silk Road and the Eurasian steppe corridor, sometimes called the Silk Road of the steppes, stretching from the Mediterranean and the Danube river up to the Great Wall of China. Being the most mobile forces, the nomadic peoples played an active role in the mutual contacts of peoples and cultures of the different regions of the world. I would say that they had been played no less a role in their own time then, as in today’s world with it’s sophisticated means of communication. Along the above mentioned roads there had been taking place the free flow of cultures, ideas, and information.

Coming over to our topic, long before the appearance of the Mongols into the historical arena India had become well known through its civilization. Buddhism was first spread among the ancient tribes who inhabited Mongolia – Hsiung-nu, Sien-pi, Toba, Turks and Uighurs.In earlier periods Buddhism came to the Mongolian steppes through Central Asian countries.

The Sogdians, the Khotanese and the Uighurs played an active intermediary role in introducing Buddhism to the Eastern part of Central Asia. Most of the Sanskrit loan words in Mongolian were taken mainly from Khotanese and Sogdian forms through Uighur writing:

The Uighurs, one of the most advanced nomadic peoples, created their own powerful kingdom in Mongolia in YIII – IX centuries. It was after the collapse of their kingdom in Mongolia that they moved to Eastern Turkestan. Even then they continued keeping close relations with the Mongols. It was the Sogdians and the Uighurs from whom the Mongols borrowed their script which originated from the Phoenician – Aramaic system of writing.

The Sogdian – Uighur script, after having been adapted to the Mongolian language, had been serving as a flexible instrument of learning and literature for many centuries. All the Buddhist sutras were translated into Mongolian and written in the Uighur script.

Although we can speak about the Indo-Mongolian interaction since a long time ago, it’s tangible results are translated to the later period which lasted from the XIII century to the modern period. The Mongolian state founded in 1206 by Chinggis Khan had become during his successors reign the world’s largest empire that has ever existed in history. It stretched from the Far East to Eastern Europe, including most of Asia as well as a good deal of Europe. India was not conquered by the Mongols, although Mongol troops from Central Asia invaded the frontier regions of India several times in the 1220’s – 1230’s. Instead Indian civilization continued it’s invasion into the Mongolian steppes.

Two powerful streams of Buddhism can be observed that penetrated Mongolia from two different sides – Central Asia and Tibet and China. It does not exclude the possibility of direct contacts of Mongolia with the northern parts of India, especially Kashmir while Buddhism flourished there. From Chinese sources we know that in the reign of Ögedie Khan the Kashmiri monk Namu and his brother came to the Mongolian court. He stayed during the reigns of Ögedie Khan’s successors - Güyük and Mönke Khan. The latter appointed him as Guo-shi, the State preceptor. He was given a jade seal to administer Buddhist affairs. He was much honored at the Mongolian court. He was assigned to the head of ten thousand Kashmiri households.


Namu was also on good relations with Khubilai Khan, the youngest brother of Monke Khan. During the debates between Buddhists and the Taoists of China, Namu together

with ’Phags-pa Lama from Tibet strongly supported the Buddhists, thus securing the prevailing position of Buddhism in the empire.

I must say that in the earlier period of the Mongolian empire Buddhism held a much more influential position at the Mongolian court than we can expect. According to a stone inscription of 1346 in Ögedei Khan’s reign, there a huge Buddhist edifice was founded, a stupa covered with a pavilion five stories tall with statues of various Buddhas. It seems to me that in Kararkorum we had something similar to the famous stupa Borobudur in Indonesia. Several Buddhist temples are known to have been built in Karakorum. Buddhist books were studied and translated , and great discussions on religion were held at the Mongolian court. I have to say that not only Buddhism was popular in Karakorum but other religions – Nestorianism, Christianity and Islam were known as well. Mongolian Khans were surprisingly strong adherents of the policy of religious tolerance. As witnessed by William of Rubuck, a Fransiscan Friar, who met Möngke Khan, The Mongolian Khan said as follows:

“We Mongols believe that there is but one God, by Whom we live, and by Whom we die, and towards Him we have an upright heart…But just as god gives different fingers to the hand, so has He given different ways to men.”

These words of Monke Khan sound very modern and very instructive to those who in present day Mongolia are intolerant towards other religions which are now penetrating Mongolia.

If you take the Yuan period of the Mongolian empire when Khubilai Khan and his successors ruled over China, you will find a new period that opened in the history of Indo-Mongolian contacts.

There were two varieties of Indian Buddhism accessible to the Mongols in China. These were the Chinese and Tibetan varieties of Buddhism. The Mongolian Khan preferred to choose the latter one, that is the Tibetan variety of Buddhism or Tantric Buddhism which was most popular in Tibet thanks to the efforts of the Sa-skya sect. Mongolian Khans attached a special significance to Tibet because it was a center of Buddhism which they wished to use as a powerful counterbalance to Confucianism and to secure their domination in China. Tibet was not conquered by the Mongolian troops, and enjoyed the status of being a vassalage. Mongol Khans wanted to have Buddhism and Buddhist culture prevail in the empire as they preferred to have non-Chinese, mostly Central Asians serving in the bureaucracy and administration in China. During that period Tibet had actually become some kind of a midway-house between India and Mongolia, transmitting to Mongolia all of what they had borrowed from Buddhist India since a long time ago. Khubilai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty in China, not only converted to Buddhism himself, but officially declared Buddhism the state religion within his cosmopolitan empire. He invited from Tibet, the famous lama `Phagspa Lama lodoi-Tsaltsan, the abbot of the Saskya sect, and put him at the head of the Buddhist church. He granted him the title of the Imperial Preceptor (Ti-shih). Khubilai Khan skillfully exploited the authority and knowledge of `Phags-pa Lama in his policies of ruling his vast empire. And `Phags-pa Lama was the right man for this purpose. He was not only a great lama, but he was also a very learned in Buddhist literature, especially in the so called epistolary writings or letters composed in short verses by ancient Indian sages – Nagarjuna, Matrceta, Cabdragoming and others with the purpose of expounding the main postulates of Buddhism and the political concepts of universal monarchies and sacred laws. In his numerous works written after the pattern of works by the just mentioned authors, `Phags-pa Lama did his best to glorify Khubilai Khan by prescribing to him the attributes of universal rulers – Chakaravardins as Indian sages did the same regarding their great patrons – Ashoka, Kanishka and others. The Tibetan teacher urged Khubilai Khan to rule by peaceful means according to the non-violence teachings of Buddhism, asserting that peace can be obtained by peace only, just as fire can be put out by water, but not by fire itself. `Phags-pa Lama could be considered to have founded the fundamental philosophy of Khubilai Khan’s policy. According to this philosophy, the khan’s power and Buddhist religion (Dharma) constitute the two main principles of imperial policy. This policy was adhered to by his successors in one way or the other. I must say that Khubilai Khan’s policy of the two principles had far-reaching consequences and terms so that even after the collapse of the Mongolian empire the Mongol khans persistently followed this policy.

Buddhism as the Indo-Tibetan factor in the Mongolian policy could not naturally secure Mongol domination of China as well as elsewhere, but it did greatly help them to rule over the sedentary society for nearly a century and to withstand the danger of assimilation within the far more numerous population of the conquered country. Unlike the other nomads who conquered China, the Mongols were remarkably successful in maintaining many features of their lifestyle – from culinary and dress customs to language, military and political institutions throughout the entire period of their domination. With the takeover of power by the Chinese the Mongols retreated to their homeland, and even then attempted to restore their rule in China, but without any success.

The most important point is not so much what I have just told you, but it is rather the after affects that the Indo-Mongolian intercourse has left in the history of the Mongols.

Although the Indo-Mongolian contacts were mostly indirect and had occurred much later than when Buddhism had been flourishing in India itself, the cultural and spiritual consequences of these contacts have been surprisingly great and have lasted for many centuries until the recent period.

It is true that after the disintegration of the Mongolian empire in the end of the XIY century, Buddhism went into decay and Shamanism regained its position in Mongolia. But the linkage of the Mongols with Buddhism via Tibet had not ever been completely interrupted. Source materials provide us with historical data which testify to the contacts of different parts of Mongolia with the various sects in Tibetan Sa-Skya-pa, Karma-pa and Gelup-pa Lamaism. Moreover the second half of the XYI century was a turning point of the Buddhist revival in Mongolia. The most powerful rulers of the Mongols vigorously contested with each other to adopt Buddhism in its varieties from Tibet.

In the end of the XYI century most of the Mongols were converted to Lamaism, which by that time had become the strongest sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Monasteries were built in different parts of Mongolia, and Buddhist learning and literary activities developed further, and interrelations between Mongolia and Tibet intensified more than ever before since the period of the Mongol empire.

One can say that in those days there emerged some kind of a religious and military alliance between the two countries. Altan Khan, the ruler of the northern Mongols, and the third Dalai Lama of Tibet, at their historical meeting in 1586, decided to establish the so called Patron and Preceptor relationship. After the previously mentioned policy of the two principles initiated by Khubilai Khan, the Dalai Lama and Mongolian rulers did their best to implement this policy for strengthening their power. Meanwhile, a new power had been emerging in Central Asia, that is the Manchu empire in the Northeast of China. The Manchus started to manipulate Tibetan Buddhism in their empire building policy toward their neighboring countries, first of all, in Mongolia. Thus Tibetan Buddhism became a powerful religious and political factor in the whole of Inner Asia, and all the rivaling forces tried to use it for the realization of their political ambitions. In their struggle for the favor of Tibet Buddhism the Manchus were more successful than anyone else. Manchu rulers, since the beginning of their expansionism against Mongolia skillfully manipulated the Tibetan factor. In this respect Mongolian rulers turned out to have been less powerful and skillful in the final analysis, they could not get united in their efforts to consolidate their power against the Manchus. The Manchus proficiently played on the nationalistic and religious feelings of the Mongols. First of all, taking advantage of their ethnic and cultural affinity, the Manchus declared themselves the rightful inheritors of the Chinggisids, and launched a propaganda campaign that they wished to restore the great empire of the Chinggisids. They claimed to have received the state seal of the great Mongolian khans.


Secondly Manchu rulers also declared they were real patrons of Buddhism, and established a close contact with the religious authorities of Tibet, including the Dalai

lamas. The Manchu emperor Abakhai even built a huge temple dedicated to Mahakala, the main guardian of Buddhism, highly worshipped both by Tibetan and the Mongols. He wished to make this temple a State sanctuary for all Buddhists in his domain. It is not difficult to understand that all these maneuvers of the Manchus greatly helped them to gain the sympathy and support of the Mongols. Prominently, the First Bogdo Gegen of Mongolia when he decided to acquire the protection of the Manchus in the struggle with the Western Mongols is said to have declared that the Manchus were closer to the Mongols in customs and religion.

The Manchus persistently continued to patronize Tibetan Buddhism in every possible way after their conquests of the lands of Mongolia. it was during the period of the Manchu domination that Buddhism in fact became the main religion of the Mongols. Moreover under the conditions of the isolation and backwardness of the country Buddhism had eventually become the sole driving force in the life of Mongols. By the beginning of the XX century about 750 monasteries were functioning in Khalkha Mongolia and the lamas constituted on fifth of the country’s population. Incidentally, Sherbatskoi, the famous Russian Indologist who visited Mongolia in the early XX century compared Mongolia of those days with Medieval India when Buddhism flourished there.

I would say that the Buddhist influence on Mongolia was so great that Mongolia had eventually become a part of the Indo-Tibetan world. It is interesting to note that under the rule of the Manchus and despite the fact that their emperors claimed to be the lawful khans of the Mongols, Mongolian chroniclers persistently propagated the legend about their genealogical affinity of the family of Chinggisids with the long line of pedigrees of legendary and semi legendary kings of India. They forged an extraordinary fabulous common genealogy on Indian, Tibetan, and Mongolian kings, and according to this genealogy the Golden clan of the Chinggisids could be traced back to as far as the legendry king Mahasammata. Mahasammata was believed to be the forefather of the kings of the Buddhist world. Mongolian chroniclers tried in every possible way to link Mongolia with Buddhist India. They elaborated a special scheme of writing history, that’s the scheme of the so called three Buddhist monarchies – India, Tibet and Mongolia. If you read old Mongolian chronicles you will see with what pietism this scheme was followed by their authors until recent times. Great Mongolian khans were declared to be reincarnations of various Buddhist Gods – Chinggis Khan being the reincarnation of Vajrapani, and Khubilai Khan that of Manjushri.

The legendary genealogy of Mongolian Khans, together with a devout faith in Buddhism, helped the Mongols to keep alive their memory of their glorious history and it was obviously the vivid expression of the reaction of the Mongols to the foreign

domination. Mongolian khans were famous not only for their real historical kinship, but also for their spiritual relationship with the sacred kings of Buddhist India.

If you take the intellectual and artistic activities of the Mongols during the Manchu period, you can discover an interesting phenomenon in Mongolian history. Most of the Mongolian translations of Buddhist sutras and works of Mongolian learned lamas belonged to the Manchu period. It is sufficient to mention the two great famous collections Mahayana literature – the Ganjur and the Tanjur were fully translated into Mongolian and published by means of wood block printing in Beijing. The Ganjur (108 vols.) contains the commandments of Buddha and it is divided into three broad selections – Vinaya, Sutra and Tantra. the other collections Tanjur (225 vols.) comprises numerous commentaries and independent philosophical and secular scientific works of ancient Indian authors. The Ganjur and the Tanjur have been highly esteemed by the Mongols as a great treasure house of Indian wisdom, knowledge, and are worshipped everywhere in Mongolia. From the academic point of view, the Tanjur represents a special interest. It contains numerous works on different branches of knowledge – philosophy, logic, grammar, poetics, prosody, medicine, astrology, art, etc. For instance one can find more than forty Sanskrit grammatical works including the famous Panini’s grammar, the earliest known grammar in the history of linguistics. Of great interest are the works on ancient Indian medicine composed after the pattern of Ayurveda, Sushrutasamhita and Čarakasamhita, the so called three pillars of Indian medicine.

The Mongols not only translated a great deal of Buddhist literature, but wrote many works on various subjects of Buddhism and Buddhist knowledge including those on poetics, literature, medicine, etc., not to mention religious works. The Mongols wrote not only in their native tongue, but also in the Tibetan language which was the language of the church and learning in Mongolia. The writings of Mongolian authors were rather prodigious and had been highly praised in Tibet itself. They are of prime importance for those who study Buddhism. From these works one can see how the spiritual traditions of Buddhist India had been transmitted through the mediation of Tibet and how it was fruitfully continued by the Mongols until the modern era. The Indian influence on Mongolia was not limited to religion and culture only, but embraced the other spheres of life, from political philosophy to language and folklore. Allow me to present some examples. The old Indian language Sanskrit was popular in Mongolia, because it was the language of Buddhism. It was believed to have been the language of Buddha and therefore studied alongside Tibetan. The admiration of the Mongols for Sanskrit was so great that many Sanskrit words have been borrowed and incorporated into Mongolian.


Even now Sanskrit words are used not only in literary but also in colloquial Mongolian. It is interesting to note that in Mongolia when the need arises for new scientific terms it is often preferred to have them adopted from Sanskrit, rather than from Latin or any other languages. Sanskrit terms relating to diverse branches of science and philosophy, from cosmonautics to medicine and botanics have been adopted in modern Mongolian terminological lexicon. The names of planets and stars, including the cosmos, in modern Mongolian are named in Sanskrit:
It is worthwhile to mention that some Sanskrit words have been Mongolized to such an extent that the Mongols do not event suspect their foreign origin:

The Manchu domination in Mongolia lasted more than two hundred years in the Northern part and nearly three hundred years in the Southern part of Mongolia. In the final analysis the religious policy of the Manchus that encouraged Buddhism in Mongolia gave such a paradoxical result that even the Manchus could not foresee it. It is really paradoxical that the more the Manchus tried to consolidate their power in Mongolia with the assistance of Buddhism, the more the Mongols eventually became spiritually and culturally alien to their Manchu rulers. Buddhism had after all become the national religion of the Mongols. On the other hand, the Manchus themselves had bgun to acculturate and were finally assimilated amongst the Confucian Chinese. Buddhism had gained a strong foothold in even in the political sphere of Mongolian life. The more the Manchus encouraged the Buddhist church in Mongolia, the more it became an influential power in politics as well. There has emerged a powerful ecclesiastical elite group that came to play a greater and greater role in the country’s life. The ecclesiastical leaders consisting of numerous so-called Khutugus and Khubilgads, the great sacred lamas and reincarnations, overshadowed even the secular authorities, the real inheritors of the Golden clan of Chingissids. They mastered not only the minds of the Mongols, but owned enormous material resources of the country including cattle. They had their own leader in the person of the YIII Bogdo Gegen Jebtsundamba Khutugtu who was almost the only authority in Mongolia when several khans who had claims to power were rivaling each other. As a result the ecclesiastical leaders headed by the Bogdo Gegen supported by a wider circle of Mongols succeeded in taking power when the Manchu empire was about to collapse. Thus in 1911 the YIII Bogdo Gegen declared the independence of Mongolia and announced his wish to establish friendly relations with other countries including the U.S.A., Japan and others. Bogdo Gegen was proclaimed Bogdo Khan with the titled “Elevated by the Many”/Oлноо θpгдcθн/ is the Sanskrit loan word that means Mahasammatsa, the name of the legendary Indian Buddhist king. It is also a prominent fact that in the political life of the Mongols for the last two centuries that the institution of the Bogdo Gengens played a decisive role. The first Bogdo Gegen Zanabazar who was proclaimed head of the Buddhist church in Mongolia belonged to the Golden clan of the Chingissids, and it was he who, under the threat of mutual annihilation of the Mongols during the struggle between the Eastern and Western Mongols, decided to


submit to the Manchu’s. And it is characteristic that two hundred after this event the last Bogdo Gegen restored the independence of Mongolia. I must say that under the impact of the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation that the traditional concepts of the continuity of the khans power amongst the Mongols had undergone a great change. They believed that the Bogdo Gegens through a lineage of a series of reincarnations had the right to claim not only the sacred genealogy of reincarnations of the Buddha’s learned disciples that originated in India, but also of the Golden clan of the Chinggisids in their own country. That was the reason why the Mongols so enthusiastically supported the Bogdo Gegen as a khan of the Mongols, and this event once again shows that the spiritual influence of ancient India was very strong indeed.

After all, Buddhism in its Indo-Tibetan variety has eventually become an important component of Mongolian nationalism. Mongolian nationalists of different periods tried to use it as their ideology. The leaders of the so-called People’s revolution in 1921 supported by communist Russia put forward a slogan to restore State and Religion in Mongolia. Even the totalitarian regime that existed during the last seventy years occasionally tried to exploit the Indian factor and Buddhism in their own way. India was the first non-communist country with whom Mongolia established diplomatic relations since 1955.

With the democratic reforms that started in 1990 in Mongolia there has begun a new period of a Buddhist revival. This unique historical process of re-Buddhaisation is taking place alongside the modernization of Mongolia along the road of democracy and the market economy. Buddhism that was known to have to been greatly suppressed during the last seven decades is now emerging once again from the ashes of destruction. And no matter whatever steps the Mongolian Buddhist revival goes through, it has to meet, in one way or the other, the requirements of the county’s development, and in this process the Indian Buddhist factor that has a long tradition in Mongolia might remain still furthermore in the years to come. At present it should be properly understood that the former Tibetan variety of Buddhism, that’s Lamaism, cannot be dogmatically restored as it had been before under the rule of the Manchus who encouraged it specially for the purpose of consolidating their domination both in Mongolia and Tibet. The present-day Mongolia needs more radical reforms in the field of religion as well as in all the spheres of life. It is difficult to think that under the present conditions Lamaism can regain is predominant position in the spiritual life of the Mongols and become a guarantee of national and cultural identity as some people believe these days. Today’s Tibet cannot claim any more to be a religious center for the Mongols.

The question of how the Buddhist revival is really going on at present and what we can expect in the future in another topic to be dealt with separately by a more competent speaker.

[Guest]

http://www.tol.cz/look/TOLnew/article.tpl?...NrArticle=11650

Equal but Still Separate

Week in Review: 24 February - 1 March 2004

When the uproar has died down in eastern Slovakia, Roma looking for a way forward could find inspiration in a 50-year-old U.S. court case.

As of 1 March, the standoff between Roma and the authorities in several Slovak towns seems to be quieting down. There have been no reports of looting or rioting in several days, and on 29 February President Rudolf Schuster met with Roma leaders, saying he supported their demands for the withdrawal of more than 2,000 police and soldiers deployed in the eastern and central towns and settlements most affected by the disruption that broke out 10 days earlier.

When pressed to explain why hundreds of poor Roma rampaged through shops, stripping the shelves bare of goods, many local Roma blamed the Bratislava government's welfare cutbacks. On 1 February, new welfare rules went into effect that will shrink the payments to most recipients, with large families hit especially hard because most child-support payments now stop with the fourth child. One of the most active Romani advocacy groups, the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC), charges that this provision was designed specifically to cut the number of Roma on the welfare rolls.

Others both within and outside the Romani community charge that the rioters were urged on by loan sharks who prey on those dependent on state support, lending money at usurious rates to tide them over until the next welfare payment.

Different though the circumstances are, some aspects of the predicament of Slovak Roma (and Central and Eastern European Roma in general) are remarkably similar to the situation in the poorest black neighborhoods of American cities: unemployment, lack of access to good schools, and reliance on state support, to name a few.

AS IT WAS THEN, SO IT IS NOW

There is a good case to be made, however, that today's Roma should more accurately be compared to American blacks a half-century ago. The analogy is more than just academic, because the struggle for civil rights in America at that time can offer valuable insights and tactical experience to those working for Romani rights.

Above all, Roma and North American blacks represent "nonterritorial nations." Their people share cultural, social, and genetic traits, yet they cannot with any certainty point to a spot on the map and declare, "This was our home."

In the case of America's blacks, their forebears from western and central Africa were thrown into the maelstrom of slavery on another continent, where in the interests of increasing labor productivity and preventing unrest, their masters suppressed their African languages, religions, and customs.
<b>
In the case of the Roma, it is generally agreed that their forebears originated in northern India, from where, during the medieval era, they migrated westward--experts differ as to whether willingly or unwillingly, as slaves or as soldiers, en masse or in many waves.</b> Although many Roma, unlike the vast majority of North American black people, retain a linguistic link with their Asian homeland, in neither case will you find nationalism of the chauvinist or even fanatical type perfected by some Western and Central Europeans.

Many other resemblances can be found--notably, the sorrowful fact that many Roma, and most American blacks, had ancestors who were slaves. The devastating psychosocial impact of this has been amply demonstrated in the American case and can only be assumed to be enormous in the European one.

The two peoples are alike in another way. Looking at American blacks some 50 or 60 years ago and at Roma today, we see people who by and large are the victims of violence at the hands of the majority, rather than people who commit violent acts against the majority. We do not see the desire for justice transformed into a campaign of violence against the establishment. In the American case, a few groups of armed radicals did emerge in the late 1960s and early '70s, but they failed to win anything like the popularity of, for instance, the Irish Republican Army at the same time (whereas the IRA could draw on generous Irish-American sources of guns and money, only a tiny number of blacks sought or obtained such support from abroad).

RIGHTS ARE NOT ENOUGH

In one vital area, European Roma of today might seem well ahead of American blacks of a half-century ago. On paper, they possess equality before the law: equal access to education, jobs, housing, and political life. True, they are often barred from equal opportunity in jobs or education, or subject to blatant racial violence, by local authorities' refusal to enforce the law. But at least they are not prevented by law from attending the same schools as the majority, as was the case in many Southern states two generations ago, or from sitting in the front of a public bus or taking a drink at a "whites only" water fountain.

And citizens of European states who believe their human rights have been violated have a legal recourse of last resort in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. On 26 February, the court awarded monetary damages to the families of two Bulgarian Roma shot dead in 1996 by a military police major. Although at the time of the shooting the men were on the run from a punishment stint in an army construction detail, the court ruled unanimously that, in firing on nonviolent criminals, the officer violated the men's right to life as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. The judges also found that Bulgarian authorities had failed to conduct an effective investigation into the men's deaths and had violated Article 14 of the convention, which broadly prohibits discriminatory practices.

But while in this respect Central Europe's Roma are ahead of America's blacks at the middle of the 20th century, in another they share the dilemma of blacks of a full century ago. In both times we can see that deprivation and discrimination rendered the people themselves unable to put their case for justice. The level of political and cultural discourse in the Romani communities today, or such discourse as appears in English, is inadequate to the gravity of their cause. Roma-run media typically tend to emphasize brief news items, often reports of crimes against Roma. Of course, these reports serve a vital need and should be more widely circulated, unbalanced though they too often are. But cries for help alone will not do the job.

THE GREATEST EVIL

Fifty years ago this May, the United States Supreme Court handed down a ruling that quickly became a touchstone of the American civil rights movement. In the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, the court struck down its own "separate but equal" decision of 1896. In that now-infamous judgment, the court found that the constitutionally mandated right to equal education could be carried out in segregated schools--that black children had no constitutional right to sit among white children. Over the intervening decades the absurdity of this argument became more and more apparent to the black community, and to growing numbers of whites. Black lawyers and activists, aided by a small group of dedicated white lawyers, began to seek legal means to overturn "separate but equal" legislation in the 1930s and finally made the breakthrough when the parents of a schoolgirl named Linda Brown and other black parents brought their case to the Supreme Court in 1954. Yet they still had to wait many years to see serious moves to desegregate schools in many parts of the country.

Is the Brown case an apt model for the Romani rights movement? True, it makes a sobering illustration of how long it can take for justice to become law, for law to become practice, for practice to become normality.

Yet Brown could be a model for the Roma because--let us assume--just about everyone of good will would agree that all children should have equal access to educational services.

In spite of that, local and national authorities across this region continue to deliberately and cynically deny Romani children equal access to schooling. The scandal of the "special schools" is well known. Schools ostensibly set up to give a modicum of education to children with mental or developmental handicaps have become dumping grounds for Romani children who, even if they complete their schooling, are often permanently disadvantaged by the stigma of "specialness." What is not often mentioned is that this practice of separate and unequal primary education is no holdover from the totalitarian era. Under the previous regimes in Central Europe, Romani children were in general not heavily over-represented in special schools, although this began to change in the 1980s. From 1990, according to a study conducted by the ERRC, the fraction of Romani children shot up to the point that in 2003, over 40 percent of Romani children were attending special schools, and, incredibly, they comprised 98 percent of the special school population.

Why would newly democratic states enthusiastically begin channeling Romani kids into substandard schools? The ERRC and other Romani activists charge that national and local school authorities willfully exaggerate the "specialness" of Roma children in order to take advantage of Western-funded programs not available to ordinary schools. And the amounts of money available are eye-opening. According to the study, from 1989 to 2003, 2.3 billion euros was transferred to local authorities in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia for the supposed benefit of special schools. And yet, the study says, "special schools were and remain extremely ill-equipped, there is effectively no useful instruction and children languish and essentially lose interest and finally, and understandably, drop out."

The distinguished American civil rights lawyer Jack Greenberg has commented on the similarities between the black and Romani movements on several occasions, including last year at Central European University in Budapest. Greenberg helped argue the case of Brown vs. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court. As he noted at a discussion in New York several years ago, the breakthrough of Brown capped a long effort to persuade the American public that "the greatest evil that black people faced at that time, among a great many evils, was segregation and discrimination in education."

The Romani cause may never find its Martin Luther King Jr. or even its Muhammad Ali. But if Romani activists, human rights defenders, and European institutions will get to work to identify winnable cases, prepare evidence, train lawyers, and if need be spend years looking for the "silver bullet case," as Greenberg put it--then maybe the Roma will find a Linda Brown of their own. And the images of trashed stores and screaming protestors will fade from memory.


====
http://www.tol.cz/look/CER/article.tpl?IdL...NrArticle=11362

[Guest]

Isabel Fonseca's

Bury Me Standing--
The Gypsies and Their Journey


http://www.indiastar.com/wallia2.htm

Has anybody read this book? Any comments?

Bury Me Standing -- the title comes from the Gypsy saying, <b>"Bury me standing, I've been on my knees all my life"</b> -- is a compassionate book about a marginalized and much-maligned people. Nonetheless, over the past seven centuries, the Gypsies have made many contributions to European folk music, dance, and lore. An outstanding example of these contribitions --Flameno-- highlights the Cannes award-winning Latcho Drom

When Isabel Fonseca, an American journalist and former assistant editor of the Times Literary Supplement, set out to write this book in 1991, she "had in mind that the Gypsies were 'the New Jews of Eastern Europe.'" After four years of field work that included living with Gypsy families in many European countries and researching library documents, she concluded that the Gypsies "alongside with the Jews are ancient scapegoats."

Traditionally, Gypsies never kept any written records nor sustained an oral history.<b> The research on their origin began with a systematic philological analysis of their language, Romani, which has been firmly established as a Sanskritic language. Words like dand, (tooth), mun, (mouth), lon, (salt), akha (eyes), khel (play) are identical with those in Punjabi spoken in northwest India. Fonseca does not comment on the obvious resemblance with Punjabi, presumably because of her unfamiliarity with it or any other modern Indian language. She is also puzzled by the Gypsy habit of shaking head side-to-side to signify yes. This distinctive gesture alone suffices to pinpoint their India origin -- rendering all linguistic evidence redundant! If confirmation were needed, it would be readily provided by the Gypsy music's use of the Indian ragas such as Bairavi, Mulkausa, and Kalyani as well as the bol (the rhythmic syllables -- tak, dhin, dha -- imitating drum beats).

Fonseca seems to think that the current scholarly consensus is that the Gypsies are from the Dom group of tribes, still extant in India, making their living as wandering musicians, smiths, metalworkers, scavengers, and basketmakers. They migrated first from northwest India to Persia in 950 A.D. at the invitation of Shah Behram Gur. As recorded by the contemporary Persian historian Hamza, the Shah "out of solicitude for his subjects, imported 12,000 musicians for their listening pleasure."

Fonseca errs in stating that the Gypsy designation for themsleves as Roma is derived from Dom, one of the outcaste tirbes in India. Roma is a variation of "ramante," a Punjabi word meaning moving, wandering. This etymology is cogently discussed in W.R. Rishi's book "ROMA: The Panjabi Emigrants in Europe, second edition" published in 1996 by Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab, India. Rishi traces the origin of the Roma to the 500, 000 prisoners of war taken by Muhamad Ghaznvi in 1001 from the Punjab to Afghanistan and subjected to Islamic conversion by the sword. Many of them resisted by escaping westward to the Christian lands of Armenia and Greece. To this day, the Roma use the word Gajo, derived from Ghazi-- the Koranic title of infidel-killing Muslims-- as a disparaging term. The Roma are from the warrior castes of the Punjab.
</b>
The Roma appeared in Europe first in 1300 A.D., fleeing from forcible Islamic conversions by the Turks. In Europe, ironically, they were accused of being advance spies for the Turks, and persecuted again. They were also mistaken as Egyptians, whence the folklore origin of the term Gypsy. Fonseca apparently is unaware of yet another etymology: Punjab-say -- from Punjab, which was what the earliest immigrants to Persia replied when asked where they have come from. By the time, they reached Byzantium, the locals heard Punjab-say as Jabsay, Gypsy. The locals took Gypsy to mean from Egypt, a country they had heard of.

The history of the Roma in Europe, gleaned, for the most part, from court- and church-records and from rare academic publications, is a horror--Europe's heart of darkness. One of the examples Fonseca cites is the 1783 dissertation published by Heinrich Grellman of Gottingen University. In his book, Grellman describes an event of the previous year in Hont county, Hungary: "The case involved more than 150 Gypsies, forty-one of whom were tortured into confessions of cannibalism. Fifteen men were hanged, six broken on the wheel, two quartered, and eighteen women beheaded -- before an investigation ordered by the Hapsburg monarch Joseph II revealed that all of the supposed victims were still alive."

During World War II, the Nazis exterminated 1.5 million Gypsies. At the Nuremberg trials, the Nazis' lawyers argued that the killing of the Gypsies was justified since they had been punished as criminals, not as a race. There was no one to speak for the Gypsies, and the international tribunal accepted this as exonerating defense! Ah, humanity.

Although tyrants, bigots, and the misinformed have often stereotyped the Gypsies as congenital criminals, sociological studies show that the Gypsies commit crimes no more than others. A large-scale study cited by Fonseca: In Romania, which has the largest Gypsy population of any country, out of all criminal convictions that of the Gypsies total 11 percent. Their population in the country? Exactly 11 percent. (The Gypsies in Romania do not have equal access to the justice system. Their situation is worse than that of the Blacks and Hispanics in the U.S.A.)

In recent decades, a Gypsy intelligentsia has begun to emerge. Fonseca presents detailed profiles of several. Dr. Ian Hancock, an American Gypsy, and the author of The Pariah Syndrome, was instrumental in bringing about, in April 1994, the first-ever Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., on the human-rights abuses of the Gypsies. After prolonged efforts, Hancock also succeeded in the Gypsy inclusion in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Gypsy inclusion had long been opposed by Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner! It was only after Wiesel's resignation, writes Fonseca, herself an American Jew, that one Gypsy was allowed onto the museum's 65-member council. (The council comprised more than thirty Jews as well as Poles, Ukranians, and Russians among others but not a single Gypsy.)

Saip Jusuf is the author of one of the first Romani grammars and a principal leader in Skopje, Macedonia, which has the largest Gypsy settlement anywhere. Jusuf helped organize the first world Romany Congress in 1971 in London. The conference was financed in part by the Government of India, and at its urging the U.N. agreed first to recognize the Rom as a distinct ethnic group and several years later accorded voting rights to the International Romani Union.

In an interview with the author, Jusuf, having converted from Islam to his ancestral Hinduism, joyously displayed his new icon collection of Ganesha, Parvati, and Durga . Ramche Mustupha, a poet, showed his passport. Under "citizenship" it recorded Yugoslav; under "nationality," Hindu. The lost children of India, having found their ancestral land, are very proud of its ancient civilization -- the oldest continuous civilization in the world -- "Amaro Baro Thanh" (Romani for "our big land"). Fonseca observes: "Many of the young women, fed up with the baggy-bottomed Turkish trousers they were supposed to wear, have begun to wear saris."

Unlike other beleaguered and marginalized minorities, the Rom are not seeking a homeland of their own, a Romanistan, in or outside India. The Rom are resisting, as they always have, to maintain the freedom for a life-style of their choosing. "To allow this to the Gypsies," Vaclav Havel, in Prague, said, "is the litmus test of a civil society." However, Havel's is a lonely voice. All over Central and East Europe "Death to the Gypsies" graffiti can be observed. Since the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslavakia, twenty-eight Gypsies have been murdered.

Fonseca cites several specific cases of terrorism against the Gypsies during the 90's. "In February 1995, in Oberwart, Austria, a town seventy-five miles south of Vienna, four Gypsy men were murdered. A pipe bomb had been concealed behind a sign that said, in Gothic tombstone lettering, 'Gypsies go back to India'; the bomb exploded in their faces when they tried to take it down. The first response of the Austrian police was to search the victims' own settlement for weapons; 'Gypsies killed by own bomb,' the papers reported." Oberwart, Austria, is in Burgenland, where the Gypsies have been settled for three centuries.

The resurging repression of the Gypsies is Europe's continuing crime against humanity. At the Nazi trials in Nuremberg, there was no one to speak on behalf of the Gypsies. Now, the Gypsies have at least this eloquent book exposing Europe's recrudescing genocidal threats to them.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In an interview with the author, Jusuf, having converted from Islam to his ancestral Hinduism, joyously displayed his new icon collection of Ganesha, Parvati, and Durga . Ramche Mustupha, a poet, showed his passport. Under "citizenship" it recorded Yugoslav; under "nationality," Hindu. The lost children of India, having found their ancestral land, are very proud of its ancient civilization -- the oldest continuous civilization in the world -- "Amaro Baro Thanh" (Romani for "our big land"). Fonseca observes: "Many of the young women, fed up with the baggy-bottomed Turkish trousers they were supposed to wear, have begun to wear saris."
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Good news.
There are between 8 to 15 million gypsies.
It will be great if they all return back to Hinduism.

[Guest]

Mmmh I doubt of that many are zealous protestant christians now propagating christianity.

[Guest]

<b>A Romani Resettlement: Bosnia Refugee Rom in England </b>

[Guest]

<b>Sarasvati Civilization</b>
This monograph with maps and other figures at URL
http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/sarasvatilocus1.pdf (188 pages, about 3.5 mb) is divided into the following sections:

· Sarasvati Civilization: Cultural Typology
· Sarasvati Civilization: Locus
· River Sarasvati: Archaeology, Culture and Tourism Promotion
Projects
· National Water Grid including Rebirth of River Sarasvati
· List of Sites of Sarasvati Civilization
· Bibliography (Civilization)

Scroll down to Page 7 to see the sediment analysis of River Ghaggar (Sarasvati); himalayan riverine sediments are dated to between 10,500 to 12,500 years Before Present thus confirming that prior to the Yamuna tear on Siwaliks, River Yamuna (combined with Rivers Tamasa and Giri) was a tributary of River Sarasvati, flowing through Dr.s.advati and earlier through Bata divide and Markanda River strreams.


R.gveda (RV 3.23.4) attests the geography of River Sarasvati as
close to Dr.s.advati, Apaya and Manus.a. Rivers Dr.s.advati and
Apaga and Lake Manas (Haryana) help affirm what is presently called as Sarsuti River as Vedic River Sarasvati. Scientific investigations by a number of scientists from a number of disciplines (glaciology, hydrology, geology, archaeology, seismology, nuclear sciences) have confirmed the extension of the Sarsuti-Ghaggar channels as an independent channel flowing into the delta region of Rann of Kutch and beyond through Little Rann and Rann of Kutch into Saura_s.t.ra to join the Sindhu sa_gara at Prabhas Patan (Somnath). R.gveda r.ca 7.36.6 also affirms Sarasvati_ as saptathi_ sindhuma_ta_ attesting
to the Sapta Sindhu region which is acknowledged as the region where the r.s.i-s perceived the R.gveda.

a_ yatsa_kam yas'aso va_vas'a_nah sarasvati_ saptathi_ sindhuma_ta_
ya_h sus.vayanta sudugha_h sudha_ra_ abhisvena payasa_ pipya_na_h
(RV. 7.36.6)

May the glorious seventh (stream) Sarasvati, the mother of the Sindh and other (rivers) charged with copious volume of water, flow vigorously; come together, gifting abundant food and milk.

ni tva_ dadhe vara a_ pr.thivya_ il.a_ya_spade sudinatve ahna_m
dr.s.advatya_m ma_nus.a a_paya_ya_m sarasvatya_m revad agne didi_hi (RV 3.23.4)

Agni, you were placed on the earth on an auspicious day (at the time of fine weather) on the best of the places on the earth, in the dwelling of Il.a_. Blaze (shine opulently, O Agni) with wealth among the descendants of Manu (on the banks of) Dr.s.advati, A_paya_ and Sarasvati.

Sarasvati was also viewed in three ru_pa_'s: nadi_, amba_, devi_
even in the days of the R.gveda (R.s.i Gr.tsamada). She was a mother who nurured a civilization on her banks. She was a devi who promoted arts and crafts on her river banks using the material resources of the regions of Sapta Sindhu (seven rivers). No wonder, she is also adored as an a_pri_ devata_ in the yajna-s. She is also va_k, mahi_, bha_rati_, il.a_.

The reality or ground-truth (to use the technical term used by
geologists and surveyors) is emphatic, and established by a grid of scientific findings. The stunning complex of archaeological sites alone suffice to establish River Sarasvati course during the period from 4th to 2nd millennia (3300 to 1500 BCE) for nearly 2 millennia, as fully flowing glacier-fed river draining Uttaranchal, H.P., Punjab, Rajasthan, Bahawalpur, Sind, Rann of Kuthc and Gujarat regions.

The rebirth of Sarasvati is ongoing and within three years, will
flow into Gujarat upto River Sabarmati.

[Guest]

<b>Archaeologists Uncover Ancient Maritime Spice Route Between India, Egypt</b>
Popular Science, April 1, 2004

Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Delaware have unearthed the most extensive remains to date from sea trade between India and Egypt during the Roman Empire, adding to mounting evidence that spices and other exotic cargo traveled into Europe over sea as well as land.

"These findings go a long way toward improving our understanding of the way in which a whole range of exotic cargo moved into Europe during antiquity," said Willeke Wendrich, an assistant professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and co-director of the project. "When cost and political conflict prevented overland transport, ancient mariners took to the Red Sea, and the route between India and Egypt appears to have been even more productive than we ever thought."
"The Silk Road gets a lot of attention as a trade route, but we've found a wealth of evidence indicating that sea trade between Egypt and India was also important for transporting exotic cargo, and it may have even served as a link with the Far East," added fellow co-director Steven E. Sidebotham, a history professor at the University of Delaware.
Wendrich and Sidebotham report their findings in the July issue of the
scholarly journal Sahara.
For the past eight years, the researchers have led an international team of archaeologists who have excavated Berenike, a long-abandoned Egyptian port on the Red Sea near the border with Sudan.
Among the buried ruins of buildings that date back to Roman rule, the team discovered vast quantities of teak, a wood indigenous to India and today's Myanmar, but not capable of growing in Egypt, Africa or Europe. Researchers believe the teak, which dates to the first century, came to the desert port as hulls of shipping vessels. When the ships became worn out or damaged beyond repair, Berenike residents recycled the wood for building materials, the researchers said. The team also found materials consistent with ship-patching activities, including copper nails and metal sheeting.
"You'd expect to find woods native to Egypt like mangrove and acacia," Sidebotham said. "But the largest amount of wood we found at Berenike was teak."
In addition to this evidence of seafaring activities between India and
Egypt, the archaeologists uncovered the largest array of ancient Indian goods ever found along the Red Sea, including the largest single cache of black pepper from antiquity - 16 pounds - ever excavated in the former Roman Empire. The team dates these peppercorns, which were grown only in South India during antiquity, to the first century. Peppercorns of the same vintage have been excavated as far away as Germany.
"Spices used in Europe during antiquity may have passed through this port," Wendrich said.
In some cases, Egypt's dry climate even preserved organic material from India that has never been found in the more humid subcontinent, including sailcloth dated to between A.D. 30 and 70, as well as basketry and matting from the first and second centuries.
In a dump that dates back to Roman times, the team also found Indian coconuts and batik cloth from the first century, as well as an array of exotic gems, including sapphires and glass beads that appear to come from Sri Lanka, and carnelian beads that appear to come from India.
Three beads found on the surface of excavation sites in Berenike suggested even more exotic origins. One may have come from eastern Java, while the other two appear to have come either from Vietnam or Thailand, but the team has been unable to date any of them.
While the researchers say it is unlikely that Berenike traded directly with eastern Java, Vietnam or Thailand, they say their discoveries raise the possibility that cargo was finding its way to the Egyptian port from the Far East, probably via India.
The team also found the remains of cereal and animals indigenous to
sub-Saharan Africa, pointing to the possibility of a three-point trade route that took goods from southern Africa to India and then back across the Indian Ocean to Egypt.
"We talk today about globalism as if it were the latest thing, but trade was going on in antiquity at a scale and scope that is truly impressive," said Wendrich, who made most of her contributions as a post-doctoral fellow at Leiden University in the Netherlands. "These people were taking incredible risks with their lives and fortune to make money."
Along with the rest of Egypt, Berenike was controlled by the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries. During the same period, the overland route to Europe from India through Pakistan, Iran and Mesopotamia (today's Iraq) was controlled by adversaries of the Roman Empire, making overland roads difficult for Roman merchants. Meanwhile, Roman texts that address the relative costs of different shipping methods describe overland transport as at least 20 times more expensive than sea trade.
"Overland transport was incredibly expensive, so whenever possible people in antiquity preferred shipping, which was vastly cheaper," Sidebotham said.
With such obstacles to overland transport, the town at the southernmost tip of the Roman Empire flourished as a "transfer port," accepting cargo from India that was later moved overland and up the Nile to Alexandria, the researchers contend. Poised on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, Alexandria has a well-documented history of trade with Europe going back to antiquity.
Over the course of the grueling project, the researchers retraced a route that they believe would have moved cargo from Berenike into Europe. Wendrich and Sidebotham contend cargo was shipped across the Indian Ocean and north through the Red Sea to Berenike, which is located about 160 miles east of today's Aswan Dam. They believe the goods were then carried by camels or donkeys some 240 miles northeast to the Nile River, where smaller boats waited to transport the cargo north to Alexandria. Cargo is known to have moved during antiquity from Alexandria across the Mediterranean to a dozen major Roman ports and hundreds of minor ones.
The team believes that Berenike was the biggest and most active of six ports in the Red Sea until some point after A.D. 500, when shipping activities mysteriously stopped.
Shipping activities at Berenike were mentioned in ancient texts that were rediscovered in the Middle Ages, but the port's precise location eluded explorers until the early 19th century. The former port's proximity to an Egyptian military base kept archaeologists at bay until 1994, when Wendrich and Sidebotham made the first successful appeal for a large-scale excavation. At the time, Egyptian officials, eager to develop the Red Sea as a tourist destination, had started to relax prohibitions against foreign access to the region. But the area's isolation remains a challenge for the team, which has to truck in food and water, and to power computers and microscopes with solar panels.
"The logistics are really tough there," said Wendrich, who is affiliated with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.
The Berenike project received major funding from the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research. The National Geographic Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Utopa Foundation, Gratama Foundation and the Kress Foundation also provided support, as did private donors.
http://popular-science.net/history/india_e...rade_route.html

[acharya]

From BR- amrit


I think that there is a reason why the "Greater India" concept is not applied to South East Asia even though there may be a clear factual basis for doing so.

I believe that an earlier generation of scholars (both Indian and European - eg seee Ananda Coomaraswamy, History of Indian and Indonesian Art), took this approach.
However, after South East Asian countries became independent, there was some resentment to this way of looking at things. So the new scholarship tended to emphasise the indigenous over the Indian and other foreign elements.

That I think is the historical reason for the current approach to the study of South East Asia.

Nevertheless, I believe that much has been written on the subject (as well as in respect of Indian influence over China, Korea and Japan).

What, I must say, interests me more, is Indian influence, to the West, both the Middle East and Europe. Very little has been done here by way of research. The influence of India on Greek and Roman philosophy is one obvious point - the biography of just about every major Hellenistic philosopher states that he studied Indian philososhy. The doctrines they evolved certainly bear a striking resemblance to Hindu and Buddhist thinking - enough to validate that claim the the biographies. I think that Greek tradition has it that Indian philosophers visited the Academy in Athens and debated with the Greeks.

What is probably even clearer is the impact of Indian technology to the areas to the West incuding most textile technologies (eg the chakra/gin), the water wheel and possibly metallurgy which went accross quite early, maybe even by Gupta/Roman times. For anyone who is interested, there is a brief discussion on the matter in F and J Gies, Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel, Technology and Invention in the MIddle Ages.
In all, a very fertile area for research but little has been done compared to the work done on Indian influence to the East.

[acharya]

I first read about the influence on Indian thought on the Greeks and Romans in AL Basham's "The Wonder that was India". Unfortunately, the discussion is all too brief but just points to the the similaritites between (earlier) Indian though and (later) Greek and Roman thought (see epilogue of book).

The biographies of Greek thinkers commonly refer to the study of Indian philosophy by the Greeks (eg the last great neo-platonist thinker Plotinus is said to have travelled east eager the investigate "the system adopted among the Indians" (see Plotinus, The Enneads, Penguin ed, p civ).
However, the Greeks do not quote Sanskrit sources (probably because they did not know Sanskrit). It seems that they learnt through personal contact with Indians and assimilated their the ideas into their own works.

Little is writtem on the subject but a study of the original sources themselves (and the continual referance to the study of Indian thought), together with a clear similarity between the earlier Indian and later Western thought I would have though is enough evidence, especially given the significant contact between the Greek/Roman world and India. I think there was a large colony of Gujarati merchants in Alexandria and a large volume of trade (particularly with South India). Several embassies from India also went to Rome.
The limited study of the area (compared with study of Indian influence on the East) I think is partly due to the influnce of India on the West as being less obvious (othern than in science) but also because of what is probably a reluctnace on the part of Western scholars to acknowledge any foreign influence on the development of Western classical culture. There was a huge hoo-ha some years ago on the publication of a work called "Black Athena, the Afroasiatic roots of classical culture". The thesis is that of a Middle Eastern foundation for Greek culture. If I remember, the reaction of Western classicists at times verged on hysteria. I though that argument was well founded and is now to some extent accepted though begrudgingly. I suspect that something similar may be happening in attitudes to the subject of Indian influence on Western classical culture.

I hope this gives you some ammunition.

[Guest]

Plotinus (204/5-270 c.e.) was an Egyptian by birth but Greek (or Hellenistic) by upbringing. He studied philosophy in Alexandria under Ammonius Saccus,<b> before joining a military campaign against Persia, where he encountered Indian ideas</b>. He went to Rome c 244, where he taught until about 268. His lectures were only committed to writing later in life. As the central figure of Neoplatonism, Plotinus was the representative of a spiritual-philosophical tradition that begins with Plato or before, and passes through the stages of early post-Platonism and Middle Platonism.

[Guest]

<b>An Euopean Pagan and Non Western Perspective</b>Von Christopher Gérard

[ramana]

Link: http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/india.html

Title: Influence from Ancient India & Persia, on Ancient Greece & the Hellenistic Roman Empire

[acharya]

The concept of a soul that is distinguishable from the body and can exist independently of it is alien to Judaism. It is first known in Hinduism. Only after the Babylonian captivity did any such concept arise among the Jews, and it is in the epistles of Paul, the "debtor to both the Greeks and the Barbarians," that the notion receives its first clear expression. (See 2 Corinthians 5:8 and 12:3 .)

The Brahmin caste of the Hindus are said to be "twice-born" and have a ritual in which they are "born in the spirit." Could this be the ultimate source of the Christian "born again" concept (John 3:3 )?

The deification of Christ is a phenomenon often attributed to the apotheosis of emperors and heroes in the Greco-Roman world. These, however, were cases of men becoming gods. In the Jesus story, the Divinity takes human form, god becoming man. This is a familiar occurrence in Hinduism and in other theologies of the region. Indeed, one obstacle to the spread of Christianity in India, which was attempted as early as the first century, was the frustrating tendency of the Hindus to understand Jesus as the latest avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu.

It is in the doctrine of the Trinity that the Hindu influence may be most clearly felt. Unknown to most Christians, Hinduism has a Trinity (or Trimurti) too: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, who have the appellations the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer (and Regenerator). This corresponds to the Christian Trinity in which God created the heavens and the earth, Jesus saves, and the Holy Spirit is referred to as a regenerator (Titus 3:5 ). It is interesting to note, furthermore, that the Holy Spirit is sometimes depicted as a dove, while the Hebrew language uses the same term for both "dove" and "destroyer"!

The Trinity was a major stumblingblock for the Jews, who adhered to strict monotheism. The inherent polytheism in the Trinity doctrine cannot be explained away with the nonsensical claim that three is one and one is three. Besides, Jesus himself undermined any pretense of triunity (or omnipotence, for that matter) in Matthew 19:17 , "And he said unto them, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God...." Matthew 20:23 ; Mark 14:32 ; John 5:30 ; 7:16 and 14:28 also contradict the Trinitarian concept. ...

Then there is the Hindu epic, the Bhagavad-Gita, a story of the second person of the Hindu Trinity, who took human form as Krishna. Some have considered him a model for the Christ, and it's hard to argue against that when he says things like, "I am the beginning, the middle, and the end" (BG 10:20 vs. Rev. 1:8 ). His advent was heralded by a pious old man named Asita, who could die happy knowing of his arrival, a story paralleling that of Simeon in Luke 2:25 . Krishna's mission was to give directions to "the kingdom of God" (BG 2:72), and he warned of "stumbling blocks" along the way (BG 3:34; 1 Cor. 1:23 ; Rev. 2:14 ). The essential thrust of Krishna's sayings, uttered to a beloved disciple, sometimes seems to coincide with Jesus or the Bible. Compare "those who are wise lament neither for the living nor the dead" (BG 2:11) with the sense of Jesus' advice to "let the dead bury their own dead" (Matt. 8:22 ). Krishna's saying, "I envy no man, nor am I partial to anyone; I am equal to all" (BG 9:29) is a lot like the idea that God is no respecter of persons (Rom. 2:11 ; see also Matt. 6:45 ). And "one who is equal to friends and enemies... is very dear to me" (BG 12:18) is reminiscent of "love your enemies" (Matt. 6:44 ). Krishna also said that "by human calculation, a thousand ages taken together is the duration of Brahma's one day" (BG 8:17), which is very similar to 2 Peter 3:8. ...

{end quote}



THIS IS A FANTASTIC ARTICLE WHICH NEEDS TO BE STUDIED DEEPLY.

[ramana]

I would like a short decription of the reforms intiated by Shankaracharya and what were the drivers?
Next I would like to know about Ramanujacharya and his reforms and the drivers?

I feel that these religoius leaders had great historical impact on modern India and this aspect has not been studied.

[Guest]

In brief , the dharma was steeped in ritual on the one hand (without necessarilly understanding the meaning of the slokas) reminiscent of the situation today. On the other hand Buddhism ( a naastik darshana) had propagated the notion of sunyavada, with nihilistic overtones. Sankara placed the pendulum back within the 2 extremes with a proper understanding of the relationship of the Brahman (the universal reality) and Atman (the essence of the individual). From that flows many corollaries namely that the action of the individual does matter. For a summary of his life and teachings see

http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/sankara-life.html

http://www.sivananda.org/publications/yoga...ita-vedanta.pdf.

It is my belief that AS introduced the notion of the monastic order (borrowed from Buddhism) into the SDharma. Prior to his advent, i have no knowledge of monastic orders, although there were rishis and their ashramas. I will attempt a fuller reply once i have access to broadband.

I am not as familiar with the works of Ramanujaacharya, and will defer to others.