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Monday 24 December 2012

The origins of iron-working in India:
new evidence from the Central Ganga
Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas-
Rakesh Tewari


Recent excavations in Uttar Pradesh have turned up iron artefacts, furnaces, tuyeres and slag in
layers radiocarbon dated between c. BC 1800 and 1000. This raises again the question of whether
iron working was brought in to India during supposed immigrations of the second millennium
BC, or developed independently.

Keywords: India, Early Iron Age, Iron working, Ganga Valley, Eastern Vindhyas
yog

Thursday 20 December 2012

Mehrgarh was not the the farming seed of South Asia:

Early Farming at Lahuradewa

This paper embodies an outcome of investigations emanated from the excavations carried out at the lakeside settlement of
Lahuradewa, from 2001 to 2006, in district Sant Kabirnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India. The continuous occurrence of microcharcoal in the lakebeds justifiably mitigate the human activities that persistently set fire to the vegetation in the area during
past  ca. 10,000 years. Palynological studies from lakebeds helped in reconstruction of  vegetational history, sequential
changes in the climate and early agricultural activities from early  Holocene and onwards in Middle Ganga Plain. The human
groups at that early date, who subjected the vegetation to fire for environmental management, were those who brought into
being a settled early farming culture at Lahuradewa  – characterised by cord-impressed pottery. Primordially, the record of
domesticated rice in the opening phase of Lahuradewa settlement, prima facie constitutes the evidence of early Holocene

agriculture in Middle Ganga Plain.

Tuesday 27 November 2012


Sindhu civilization is more old than you knew...

Indus Valley Civilization as Old as 7380 BC: ASI


A new discovery has thrown new light on the age of Indus Valley Civilization making it older by another 2,000 years. This makes our native civilization older than that of Egypt and Babylon. The current findings revealed at the “International Conference on Harappan Archaeology”, organised by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Chandigarh place the date of the origin of the Indus Valley Civilisation at 6,000 years before Christ. The discovery puts at dispute the ongoing theory that settlements came up at an approximate of 3750 BC.
In connection with the current research, BR Mani, ASI joint Director General, and KN Dikshit, former ASI Joint Director General said,”The preliminary results of the data from early sites of the Indo-Pak subcontinent suggest that the Indian civilisation emerged in the 8th millennium BC in the Ghaggar-Hakra and Baluchistan area. On the basis of radio-metric dates from Bhirrana (Haryana), the cultural remains of the pre-early Harappan horizon go back to 7380 BC to 6201 BC.”
The current excavations have been carried out at two sites in Pakistan and Bhirrana, Kunal, Rakhigarhi and Baror in India. The previous set of excavations done in 1920 at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro showed Indus Valley Civilisation to be almost as old as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
yog

Monday 5 November 2012

All you need to know on BMAC and its ''Aryan relation'' (with some key info on Indian History)

Well BMAC is been connected with Arya culture by quite a few scholars including its founder Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi or Victor Sarigiannides but as we know or should know there is a difference between assumption and satya so i give you folks a speech by B.B.Lal, enjoy it...

Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!

Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology,
held at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on July 2-6, 2007.


Distinguished fellow delegates and other members of the audience,

I am most grateful to the organizers of this conference, in particular to the President, Professor Maurizio Tosi, not only for inviting me to participate in this Conference but also for giving me the additional honour of delivering the Inaugural Address. Indeed, I have no words to thank them adequately for their kindness. Perhaps this is the first occasion when a South Asian is being given this privileged treatment by the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists.

The conference hall is full of scholars from all parts of the world – from the United States of America on the west to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on the east. All these scholars have contributed in a number of ways to our understanding of the past of South Asia, and I salute them with all the humility that I can muster. However, I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that some amongst us have not yet been able to shake off the 19th-century biases that have blurred our vision of South Asia’s past.

As is well known, it was the renowned German scholar Max Muller who, in the 19th century, attempted for the first time to date the Vedas. Accepting that the Sutra literature was datable to the 6th century BCE, he gave a block-period of 200 years to the preceding three parts of the Vedic literature, namely the Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, he arrived at 1200 BCE as the date of the Vedas. However, when his contemporaries, like Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, objected to his ad-hocism, he toned down, and finally surrendered by saying (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979): “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.” But the great pity is that, in spite of such a candid confession by the savant himself, many of his followers continue to swear by his initial dating, viz. 1200 BCE.

The ultimate effect of this blind tenacity was that when in the 1920s the great civilization, now known variously as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, was discovered in South Asia, and was dated to the 3rd millennium BCE, it was argued that since the Vedas were no earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been Vedic. Further, since the only other major linguistic group in the region was the Dravidian, it was held that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking people.

Then came the master stroke. In 1946, my revered guru Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) discovered a fortification wall at Harappa and on learning that the Aryan god Indra had been referred to as puramdara (destroyer of forts) he readily pronounced his judgment (Wheeler 1947: 82): “On circumstantial evidence Indra [representing the Aryans] stands accused [of destroying the Harappan Civilization].” In further support of his thesis, he cited certain human skeletons at Mohenjo-daro, saying that these were the people massacred by the Aryan invaders. Thus was reached the peak of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.

And lo and behold! The very first one to fall in the trap of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory was none else but the guru’s disciple himself. With all the enthusiasm inherited from the guru, I started looking for the remains of some culture that may be post-Harappan but anterior to the early historical times. In my exploration of the sites associated with the Mahabharata story I came across the Painted Grey Ware Culture which fitted the bill. It antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware whose beginning went back to the 6th-7th century BCE, and overlay, with a break in between, the Ochre Colour Ware of the early 2nd millennium BCE. In my report on the excavations at Hastinapura and in a few subsequent papers I expressed the view that the Painted Grey Ware Culture represented the early Aryans in India. But the honeymoon was soon to be over. Excavations in the middle Ganga valley threw up in the pre-NBP strata a ceramic industry with the same shapes (viz. bowls and dishes) and painted designs as in the case of the PGW, the only difference being that in the former case the ware had a black or black-and-red surface-colour, which, however, was just the result of a particular method of firing. And even the associated cultural equipment was alike in the two cases. All this similarity opened my eyes and I could no longer sustain the theory of the PGW having been a representative of the early Aryans in India. (The association of this Ware with the Mahabharata story was nevertheless sustainable since that event comes at a later stage in the sequence.) I had no qualms in abandoning my then-favourite theory.

But linguists are far ahead of archaeologists in pushing the poor Aryans through the Khyber / Bolan passes into India. In doing so, they would not mind even distorting the original Sanskrit texts. A case in point is that of the well known Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, Professor Witzel. He did not hesitate to mistranslate a part of the Baudhayana Srautasutra(Witzel 1995: 320-21). In 2003 I published a paper in the East and West (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-4), exposing his manipulation. Witzel’s translation of the relevant Sanskrit text was as follows:

"Aya went eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and Kasi Videha. This is the Ayava(migration).(His other people)stayed at home in the west. His people are the Gandhari, Parasu and Aratta. This is the Amavasava (group).

Whereas the correct translation is:
Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasu migrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta. This is the Amavasu (migration).
According to the correct translation, there was no movement of the Aryan people from anywhere in the north-west. On the other hand, the evidence indicates that it was from an intermediary point that some of the Aryan tribes went eastwards and other westwards. This would be clear from the map that follows...

Tuesday 30 October 2012

“We are all immortal”

Psychiatrist and past life regression therapist Brian Weiss tells Nona Walia why he firmly believes in the continuity of individual souls.
It was quite by chance that psychiatrist Dr Brian Weiss started believing in past life regression. It was back in the mid-1980s, when he was treating a woman patient. During psychotherapy, he asked her to look into her past when she was a child, but she went back a thousand years to another life, with vivid memories of herself as another person. After successfully treating her, Weiss started researching on the subject and came out with his bestseller Many Lives, Many Masters. Since then, he has written several books, Through Time Into Healing, Only Love is Real, Same Soul, Many Bodies, among others. In his latest book, Miracles Happen, he talks about everyday miracles in people's lives, which they fail to recognise. "Our rational minds often attempt to minimise or negate the mystical encounters. We forget the power of our experiences. We mustembrace the reality of that event, which is a miracle," says Weiss. Excerpts from an interview:
Do people find it difficult to believe in reincarnation?
I have been documenting physical and emotional healings in my patients and workshop participants over the past 32 years. These are amazing accounts of the power of past life memories to transform people's lives. The Greeks and Indians have always believed in thetheory of reincarnation. I firmly believe karma is not punishment but an opportunity to learn our lessons. If the lessons have not been learnt in a previous lifetime, we come back to work on them. The lessons are about love, compassion, non-violence, patience, understanding and non-prejudice.
When do we attain moksha?
When the lessons and learnings are complete. Then there's no reincarnation.
Why don't we remember our previous lives?
I see that changing, that's what my past-life therapy is all about. We're trying to remember our past lives and learn from our mistakes. In my experiments, people are remembering through therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis, dreams and meditation. According to mythology, if you were born again and you drank from the River of Lethe, you would forget your previous lives.
You say, before we are born, our soul plans the trajectory of the life that lies ahead. How?
Every individual soul chooses the significant people in that life. Destiny will place you in the particular circumstance; it will dictate that you will encounter a particular person, at a certain time, place. The people it arranges you to meet are frequently the people with whom you have lived or have known in your past life. Once you meet them, you then exercise your free will: Do you stay? Or do you leave? You may love them, work with them, befriend them, or marry them. Or you might reject them. These are your choices and this is how you learn. Everything is part of the master plan of the soul's growth. We are here to learn deep lessons.
What is the biggest thing that stops people from living their lives in the present moment? Fear and we must learn how to overcome fear.
How can people eliminate their fears, which often draw them back?
Understanding dissolves fear. When we understand the true nature of our being, fears dissipate. We are spiritual beings, not human beings.
Your belief is that miracles may be large that affect an entire group, or they may be small and silent. How do we recognize miracles?
It is not the size of the healing or transformation that matters. It is the powerful spiritual effect that manifests at the physical or emotional level. It is evident when it occurs.
How can we go back in our past lives?
We can pray and ask for divine intervention but to experience the transformational power of past life memories, one needs to experience a regression. The human body is a vessel for the soul. With each life, we complete some part of the whole learning process. That's why I believe human beings are essentially immortal.
How can we experience magic?
You can experience magic when you are mindfully living in the present moment. It's a matter of awareness and mindfulness. It's also important not to live with any regrets of the past or worries of the future.
In what way does past life regression help a person?
It's very important to remember and remind yourself of the unfulfilled goals from your past lives. It eventually helps you get past all the obstacles of the present life. Past life regression therapy permanently heals the body and the mind.You have to know about the exact nature of the problem before seeking answers or solutions to overcome them.
We are living in a world full of anxieties that cripple us. How can we heal and be free of them?
This is a matter of recognising our true nature. We are spiritual beings. We are immortal and eternal. Anxieties and other negative emotions are merely temporary states.


Wednesday 24 October 2012

The export of Sunya aka How did Europeans learn to count correctly aka History of the seed of Modern Science

Historical scientists categorize the types of number systems peoples use, much the same way philologists break down languages into "analytic," "agglutinative," "inflectional," etc.
The path that leads to the discovery of "0" lies only in the most advanced type of number system, which is called "positional" because the value of a character depends on its position. Our modern way of counting is positional. The base figure "5" has a different value in 514 and in 145, determined by its position.
The Romans, Greeks, Hebrews (and Aztecs and pre-Islamic Arabs and a great many others) used an "additive" system, which is fundamentally a transcription of counting. A Roman "V" meant "five" and that's all it could mean.
An additive system can develop into a positional one -- the abacus has a tendency to suggest the positional model -- but as far as we know, the positional concept has emerged in only four places: c.2000 B.C.E., in Babylon; around the start of the Common Era, in China; between the 4th and 9th centuries C.E. among the Mayan astronomer-priests; and in India.
Positional systems have certain features in common. One is that each base number is denoted by a discrete symbol, purely conventional and not a graphic representation of the number itself (i.e., not "four slashes" for "four," as the Greeks and Romans had). Imagine the scribal confusion if the Romans had tried to use positional mathematics with their numbering system: "423" would be IIII II III, while "342" would be III IIII II.
Another feature of positional number systems is that they lack special symbols for numbers which are orders of magnitude of the base number. Romans had a symbol for "10," and a separate symbol for "100" (10 x 10) and another for "1,000" (10 x 100) and so on. This is necessary in an additive system, for simplicity of notation and record-keeping, but it is incompatible with a positional system.
But think about the positional system. You come across a big stumbling block when you try to write a number like 2,002. For a Roman, that's no problem: MMII. But in a positional system, you have to find a way to indicate the absence of "tens" and "hundreds." You could leave a gap (the Babylonians did this at first), but that opens the door to more scribal errors, and anyway how do you indicate two gaps, as in 2,002?
It becomes necessary to have a "zero," a character that signifies "empty." Maybe not necessary, because the brilliant Chinese mathematicians somehow managed to run a positional system without making this discovery. The Babylonians (eventually), the Indians, and the Mayans did discover it, however.
But the next step, the true miracle moment, is to realize that that "symbol for nothing" that you're using is not just a place-holder, but an actual number: that "empty" and "nothing" are one. The null number is as real as "5" and "2,002" -- that's when the door blows open and the light blazes forth and numbers come alive. Without that, there's no modern mathematics, no algebra, no modern science.
And as far as we know, that has only happened once in human history, somewhere in India, in the intellectual flowering under the Gupta Dynasty, about the 6th century C.E. There was no "miracle moment," of course. It was a long, slow process.
The daunting realization, for heirs of "Western Civilization," is that the Greek and Roman cultures we revere were benighted mathematically, plodding along in the most primitive of number systems. But as champions of these cultures point out, we can admire their accomplishments all the more for that.
Some authorities, however, put up strong resistance to the theory of the Indian origin of modern mathematics. At first, they were mired in the same religion-based worldview that denied the Indo-European linguistic link: the number system simply had to be Hebrew in origin, because nothing else would comport with the Bible (so they thought). Later, however, resistance took refuge in unwillingness to concede cultural superiority to non-Western civilizations.
It does seem to be a glaring omission in the "Greek miracle." Historical scientists in the early part of the 20th century (such as G.R. Kaye, N. Bubnov, B. Carra de Vaux, etc.) argued strongly against an Indian origin, insisting the numbers evolved in ancient Greece, perhaps among neo-Pythagoreans, were taken to Alexandria, and from there spread to Rome and Spain in the west (from whence medieval Europe rediscovered them), and, via trade routes, to India in the east.
Among the many problems with this idea is the utter lack of documentary evidence for anything like a positional number system in Greece or Rome, and its requirement that we believe ancient people had made this wonderful practical discovery, yet did not put it to any use.
Speculation about a Greek origin of the ten "Arabic numerals" goes back to the 16th century in Europe. But before that, there are many sources in Europe and the pre-Islamic Levant that frankly attribute them to India. The earliest depiction of them in English, "The Crafte of Nombrynge" (c.1350), correctly identifies them as "teen figurys of Inde."
The Arabic sources, from the earliest times, refer to them as arqam al hind -- "figures from India" -- or some such name. The Muslims of that day, generally contemptuous of non-Islamic culture, had no problem conceding the invention of this number system to India.

Saturday 20 October 2012

That is in Rikved

The abstract-

The rigveda contains and seems to preserve more common elements from 
the Proto-Indo-European Culture than any other branch of the family. This
essay  examines  various  points  of  language,  poetry  and  philosophy  but  it 
focuses mainly  on  grammatical  elements,  lexical  and syntactical,  and  on 
aspects  of  (fine)  poetry.  This  is  one  aspect  showing  that  Vedic  and  its 
culture  is  much  closer  to  the  PIE  language  and  culture  than  any  other 
branch in that family. Moreover, it shows that it is most unlikely that Vedic 
moved across thousands of miles over difficult terrains to come to rest in 
what is today N-W India and Pakistan, in Saptasindhu or the Land of the 
Seven Rivers. Certain  other  aspects show that Iranian moved  away from
Vedic and Saptasindhu and most probably the other branches did the same 
at  a  very  distant  but  undetermined  period.  Finally, monotheism  is  also  a 
notable feature in the RV despite its pronounced polytheism.
 Also to note the truthfulness of the indologist when he says
''I have not spoken explicitly of the origins of Indian Civilization. It should be obvious, however, 
that I regard the rise of the Vedic Culture as indigenous and not the result of an (Aryan or protoIndo-European) invasion or immigration.
I cannot speak of the origin of this Civilization because I do not know it. And I don’t think 
anybody  else  does.''
so guys say something that comes to your mind.
 link