People talk of the need for change as if the times gone by were soiled diapers. But seriously, were the previous ages all that bad? Perhaps the luxuries may have been wanting in some respects; the plasma television sets, the split-units and the condos may have been missing. But people still had fun. In fact, large amounts of it. The rich had their Riviera and the middle classes their ambition. The poor had fellow feeling.
Wherever you looked in the 1950s, be it in India or in Europe, the desire to start life all over again was in evidence. We in India were washing away the stains of Partition’s blood; those in the West were busy putting the trauma of World War II behind them. They were grim times, but there was hope in the air and a great confidence that we were the makers of our future. That’s why the past is not to be cast aside.
Still, every age leaves its mark on people. Despite the advances that we have made in knocking at the frontiers of knowledge, it is not adequately appreciated that the physical conditions, the political system and economic circumstances of the era shape vitally the behaviour and mental make-up of the population. Dictatorship, for instance, leaves people suspicious and nervous; they walk about morosely, constantly looking over their shoulders to see as to who is following them. Thus cramped they leave corrosiveness as their mark on history. The grim art and brooding literature of the Soviet era East Europe are examples. But it is not just dictatorship; social conditions too can corrode the creative process.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels has a large display of paintings by Bosch. He was a great artist, but his art overwhelms with its grotesqueness. Most of his paintings are of starving people and withering bodies. Many others are fantasies. All this was a reflection of the times because in the 15th century, Western Europe was in a state of great turbulence. The Catholic Inquisition was in full sway; hangings, moral depravity and protest against the church were commonplace. Moreover, thousands of people would die regularly due to plague and other epidemics. Since the printed word did not have mass circulation then, paintings became the message. Bosch captured images of the time by painting misery on canvas.
Yet, barely a few hundred kilometres to the south, there were stirrings of a great renaissance. The same 15th century saw the flowering of some of the most joyous and delicate art the world has ever seen. All this was taking place in Italy because of the amazing financial boom it was enjoying under art-loving royal patrons.
Centuries later, our age has been witness to this phenomenon repeatedly. Wars, recessions and periods of financial boom have each left a profound mark. Thus those born before 1946 were called ‘The Silent Generation’ because of the deprivation of recession and the hardships of war that they had to cope with. An entire generation went through life with heads hung down.
Then, came the sunshine years of peace and plenty. No wonder that people born after World War II came to known as ‘The Baby Boomers’. There was optimism in the air and people had money to experiment with lifestyles. Who, for example, can forget the heady days of the late-Sixties, 1968 in particular, when students erupted in a revolt that was daring yet endearing. Love and lament were equally in the air.
Up until today, people continue to be nostalgic about the hippie era. Its excesses may have consumed the gullible but the joys of that age also led to a bountiful flowering of the mind. If Pandit Ravi Shankar, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and The Beatles were beckoning the world to the exotic, groups like ABBA were lilting out an altogether new beat. Fashion and literature were strumming refreshingly bold themes, even as technology was reaching for the Moon. And why just the Moon, the information technology age is largely the product of the Baby Boomers’ imagination.
Despite being so productively fertile otherwise, that generation seems to have faltered on the reproductive front. The wonderful world of plenty that was their creation was brought to its knees by their offspring. It is the children of the Baby Boomers, people born in the late-Sixties and thereafter, who became the financial masters of the world at a very young age.
They are the ones who were making the major decisions in the high street banks of New York that led to the global financial meltdown and the drying up of creative juices. Art and literature no longer sprout stunning new forms. One doesn’t hear of path-breaking writers or great sculptors any longer. Now it is staid sameness. The young no longer demand the impossible, like those who had so famously barricaded the streets of Paris in May 1968.Perhaps that is why the latest generation, born after 1980, is known as GenY. It questions every issue with a ‘Y’ — ‘Y’ should I get a job?’; ‘Y should I shift out and find my own home?’; ‘Y should I clean my room?’ Of course, it will be unfair to tar an entire generation with the same brush. But caught as GenY is between the age of plenty and the current spell of uncertainty, its members could well turn out to be a confused lot. That is a worrying prospect because previous generations, from those of the Silent Age to the Baby Boomers and thereafter, would be dependent upon the decisions and actions of GenY.
This generation’s acts of commission and omission would influence our daily lives far more intimately and comprehensively than ever before. Earlier, people lived in units of families, tribes and communities, often disconnected from the daily destinies of others. But in our age globalisation is the intrusive buzz word — our stocks plunge every time the DOW dips.
GenY, therefore, carries an enormous extra cross — one that might hold them accountable for oil spills like that in the Gulf of Mexico, or for failing to meet the minimum aspirations of the tribals vis-a vis their heritage of natural resources. But isn’t it is all so unfair? Y should GenY be called upon to shoulder the burdens of the past?
The new generation is raw of age and relatively innocent. It was bred on plenty with promises of a lot more in perpetuity. It was told to believe that all would always be well, that the good times would keep rolling in.
Yet the tide has turned, abruptly and painfully. With the Governments across the world tightening belts, the consumer spending is going to be squeezed steadily making good times feel like a mirage. But adversity could be their big chance, provided they seek the impossible. For all you know that quest may bring out the best in them — a Picasso here, a Hemingway there, maybe even a Gandhi like transformational figure.
Rajeev Dogra
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Most neglected in neglected North-East
All petrol pumps in Imphal are firmly shut. They look like forlorn relics in a ghost town. But on the road outside these once-bustling outlets sit rows of women with bottles of various shapes and sizes. They contain petrol or kerosene; diesel is completely out of stock. Petrol is currently selling at Rs 90 a litre, a dramatically reduced price compared to Rs 150 a couple of weeks ago. LPG cylinders, if and when available in the black market away from public areas, sell at Rs 1,500 — down from Rs 2,200 at the peak of scarcity. Food items are no less costly, with rice, the people’s staple, priced at Rs 27 a kg, more than double its normal rate. “When you organised a Bharat Bandh to protest against the hike in fuel prices, we could only laugh. The Rs 53 for a litre of petrol that you pay in Delhi is only of nostalgia value here,” a Manipuri journalist told me.
How do people make both ends meet when prices compare to Zimbabwe, which endured 4,400 per cent inflation some years back? Manipuris, resigned to their fate and pessimistic about matters improving, just grin and bear it — at least on the surface. But beneath the impassive exterior lies a grim, almost sinister, reality. My inquiries revealed that most middle class families follow a simple strategy: They depute members into diverse professions, pool in the resources and lead a reasonable existence. It is not uncommon to find the youngest son of a family enrolled in a terrorist outfit, which indulges in extortion and loot. Another male member becomes a contractor. In cahoots with politicians and officials, he siphons off development funds meant for improving the infrastructure. But some members of the family lead perfectly respectable lives as junior functionaries in Government establishments or teachers in schools and colleges.
I read that last week a crude petrol bomb exploded in a busy commercial area in the heart of Imphal. The next day, shops and establishments in the vicinity received a threat letter from the ‘commander’ of a new militant outfit demanding a hefty sum as protection money. None had heard the commander’s name earlier and doubted if his so-called organisation existed. But some interlocutors said that the signatory to the letter was certain to pick up a couple of lakh rupees because not paying up could invite targeted attacks. With this ‘seed money’, the commander would probably go on to actually recruit a handful of associates and emerge as yet another ‘recognised’ terror outfit. On present count, the number of militant organisations, spanning Naga, Kuki, Meitei and other Manipuri groups, is estimated at between 40 and 52. Incidentally, Manipur’s population is merely 25 lakh, one-fifth of Delhi’s!
Dr Mahendra Singh, CMO of Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, narrated his institution’s pathetic tale in my hotel room. Ever since the 67-day blockade of the main highway connecting Manipur to the rest of India by Naga students’ organisations (lifted barely 10 days ago), the hospital has run out of essential drugs. Although some medicines are periodically airlifted, supplies of bulk material are yet to be restored. The onset of the monsoon and consequent water-logging has provided mosquitoes with perfect breeding sites. In the last fortnight, six persons died of Japanese encephalitis, and over a hundred are feared infected. “To prevent encephalitis assuming epidemic proportions it is essential to do methadone fogging, which used to be carried out this time every year. The drug has to be mixed in the ratio of 1:9 with diesel before being sprayed. Since there is no diesel, we can’t undertake this,” he pointed out.
Similarly, RIMS has shut down the State’s only MRI facility because helium, which is needed to run the imaging machine, is almost over. “It has to be topped up every year. But trucks are not running and so the gas, which is brought from Mumbai, has virtually run out. I shut the machine down because operating it with a very low reserve of helium will damage the costly equipment and we will never get a replacement,” he ruefully admitted.
I had never experienced or heared such abysmal negligence and callous indifference towards people’s suffering on the part of the Indian state and the political establishment. New Delhi allowed the Naga students’ blockade to continue for over two months, while the Congress-led State Government was too busy aggrandising and appropriating vast Central funds for private pockets. The media, hyperactive in Jammu & Kashmir offering gratuitous suggestions for appeasement of pro-Pakistan separatists, disdainfully ignored Manipur’s pain. Even now, the situation is viewed with cynicism because everybody seems convinced things can never improve.
Manipur is the forgotten eastern outpost of a country that prides itself on democracy and the rule of law. How many of us even know that there are only two highways linking the State to the rest of India? How many bother to find out that the shorter and reasonably well-maintained NH 39, connecting Imphal to Guwahati, passes through Dimapur in Nagaland and was effortlessly blocked by Naga students protesting the Government’s last-minute denial of permission to Mr T Muivah, chief of NSCN(I-M), to visit his home village in the Naga-dominated Ukhrul district of Manipur? At least I didn’t know that the only other road link to Manipur, NH 53, goes via Silchar in Assam, is 300 km longer than NH 39, was described by a globe-trotting Japanese driving enthusiast as the “worst road in the world”, and takes 60 hours to cover a distance that should be done in six.
With trucks still refusing to run on NH 39, fearing more extortion and also because they have not been compensated for their losses during the blockade, the only alternative is to improve the condition of NH 53. Last Friday I learnt that the Truckers’ Association had despatched 80 lorries laden with stones and some labourers to repair the most seriously damaged portions of NH 53, without waiting any longer for the Government to intervene. Can there be a more telling example of the supreme unconcern of the Indian Establishment towards people’s suffering?
The Indian state can sometimes be more insensitive that tin-pot dictatorships of African countries. By treating the problems in Manipur as a pure law and order issue, fuelled by ethnic rivalries, the authorities have blindfolded themselves to the appalling reality of India’s abandoned State. Ironically, those who cry themselves hoarse over alleged human rights violations by the state against Kashmiri terrorists and Maoist predators have no time for the wanton violation of the Manipuris’ basic human right to live with dignity.
The problem of manipur is not only confined to its boundries but prevalent in almost in whole north east differing in intensity only. However i didn't expect any firm and really good step in this matter as they are involved in much more serious and country saving issues like the fake encounter case of "his highness Sohrabbuddin "and allied glorious criminals who were real patriot of this country, the uncontrollable Inflation and mindit it is beacause of the international causes our government has nothing to do with it etc etc etc the list is more lengthy but these two are important and much relevent this time.
Gandhi ji once said to British that leave us on our god and we still left on the god. Now only God will save us as we are very peaceful , dumb and mind about our own business type Great Indians , Glorifying the history of being ruled rather than rule.
How do people make both ends meet when prices compare to Zimbabwe, which endured 4,400 per cent inflation some years back? Manipuris, resigned to their fate and pessimistic about matters improving, just grin and bear it — at least on the surface. But beneath the impassive exterior lies a grim, almost sinister, reality. My inquiries revealed that most middle class families follow a simple strategy: They depute members into diverse professions, pool in the resources and lead a reasonable existence. It is not uncommon to find the youngest son of a family enrolled in a terrorist outfit, which indulges in extortion and loot. Another male member becomes a contractor. In cahoots with politicians and officials, he siphons off development funds meant for improving the infrastructure. But some members of the family lead perfectly respectable lives as junior functionaries in Government establishments or teachers in schools and colleges.
I read that last week a crude petrol bomb exploded in a busy commercial area in the heart of Imphal. The next day, shops and establishments in the vicinity received a threat letter from the ‘commander’ of a new militant outfit demanding a hefty sum as protection money. None had heard the commander’s name earlier and doubted if his so-called organisation existed. But some interlocutors said that the signatory to the letter was certain to pick up a couple of lakh rupees because not paying up could invite targeted attacks. With this ‘seed money’, the commander would probably go on to actually recruit a handful of associates and emerge as yet another ‘recognised’ terror outfit. On present count, the number of militant organisations, spanning Naga, Kuki, Meitei and other Manipuri groups, is estimated at between 40 and 52. Incidentally, Manipur’s population is merely 25 lakh, one-fifth of Delhi’s!
Dr Mahendra Singh, CMO of Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, narrated his institution’s pathetic tale in my hotel room. Ever since the 67-day blockade of the main highway connecting Manipur to the rest of India by Naga students’ organisations (lifted barely 10 days ago), the hospital has run out of essential drugs. Although some medicines are periodically airlifted, supplies of bulk material are yet to be restored. The onset of the monsoon and consequent water-logging has provided mosquitoes with perfect breeding sites. In the last fortnight, six persons died of Japanese encephalitis, and over a hundred are feared infected. “To prevent encephalitis assuming epidemic proportions it is essential to do methadone fogging, which used to be carried out this time every year. The drug has to be mixed in the ratio of 1:9 with diesel before being sprayed. Since there is no diesel, we can’t undertake this,” he pointed out.
Similarly, RIMS has shut down the State’s only MRI facility because helium, which is needed to run the imaging machine, is almost over. “It has to be topped up every year. But trucks are not running and so the gas, which is brought from Mumbai, has virtually run out. I shut the machine down because operating it with a very low reserve of helium will damage the costly equipment and we will never get a replacement,” he ruefully admitted.
I had never experienced or heared such abysmal negligence and callous indifference towards people’s suffering on the part of the Indian state and the political establishment. New Delhi allowed the Naga students’ blockade to continue for over two months, while the Congress-led State Government was too busy aggrandising and appropriating vast Central funds for private pockets. The media, hyperactive in Jammu & Kashmir offering gratuitous suggestions for appeasement of pro-Pakistan separatists, disdainfully ignored Manipur’s pain. Even now, the situation is viewed with cynicism because everybody seems convinced things can never improve.
Manipur is the forgotten eastern outpost of a country that prides itself on democracy and the rule of law. How many of us even know that there are only two highways linking the State to the rest of India? How many bother to find out that the shorter and reasonably well-maintained NH 39, connecting Imphal to Guwahati, passes through Dimapur in Nagaland and was effortlessly blocked by Naga students protesting the Government’s last-minute denial of permission to Mr T Muivah, chief of NSCN(I-M), to visit his home village in the Naga-dominated Ukhrul district of Manipur? At least I didn’t know that the only other road link to Manipur, NH 53, goes via Silchar in Assam, is 300 km longer than NH 39, was described by a globe-trotting Japanese driving enthusiast as the “worst road in the world”, and takes 60 hours to cover a distance that should be done in six.
With trucks still refusing to run on NH 39, fearing more extortion and also because they have not been compensated for their losses during the blockade, the only alternative is to improve the condition of NH 53. Last Friday I learnt that the Truckers’ Association had despatched 80 lorries laden with stones and some labourers to repair the most seriously damaged portions of NH 53, without waiting any longer for the Government to intervene. Can there be a more telling example of the supreme unconcern of the Indian Establishment towards people’s suffering?
The Indian state can sometimes be more insensitive that tin-pot dictatorships of African countries. By treating the problems in Manipur as a pure law and order issue, fuelled by ethnic rivalries, the authorities have blindfolded themselves to the appalling reality of India’s abandoned State. Ironically, those who cry themselves hoarse over alleged human rights violations by the state against Kashmiri terrorists and Maoist predators have no time for the wanton violation of the Manipuris’ basic human right to live with dignity.
The problem of manipur is not only confined to its boundries but prevalent in almost in whole north east differing in intensity only. However i didn't expect any firm and really good step in this matter as they are involved in much more serious and country saving issues like the fake encounter case of "his highness Sohrabbuddin "and allied glorious criminals who were real patriot of this country, the uncontrollable Inflation and mindit it is beacause of the international causes our government has nothing to do with it etc etc etc the list is more lengthy but these two are important and much relevent this time.
Gandhi ji once said to British that leave us on our god and we still left on the god. Now only God will save us as we are very peaceful , dumb and mind about our own business type Great Indians , Glorifying the history of being ruled rather than rule.
The Myth: Aryan Invasion
One of the main ideas used to interpret and generally devalue the ancient history of India is the theory of the Aryan invasion. According to this account, India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500-100 BC, who overthrew an earlier and more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization from which they took most of what later became Hindu culture. This so-called pre-Aryan civilization is said to be evidenced by the large urban ruins of what has been called the "Indus valley culture" (as most of its initial sites were on the Indus river). The war between the powers of light and darkness, a prevalent idea in ancient Aryan Vedic scriptures, was thus interpreted to refer to this war between light and dark skinned peoples. The Aryan invasion theory thus turned the "Vedas", the original scriptures of ancient India and the Indo-Aryans, into little more than primitive poems of uncivilized plunderers.
This idea totally foreign to the history of India, whether north or south has become almost an unquestioned truth in the interpretation of ancient history Today, after nearly all the reasons for its supposed validity have been refuted, even major Western scholars are at last beginning to call it in question.
In this article we will summarize the main points that have arisen. This is a complex subject that I have dealt with in depth in book "Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization", for those interested in further examination of the subject.
The Indus valley culture was pronounced pre-Aryans for several reasons that were largely part of the cultural milieu of nineteenth century European thinking As scholars following Max Mullar had decided that the Aryans came into India around 1500 BC, since the Indus valley culture was earlier than this, they concluded that it had to be preAryan. Yet the rationale behind the late date for the Vedic culture given by Muller was totally speculative. Max Muller, like many of the Christian scholars of his era, believed in Biblical chronology. This placed the beginning of the world at 400 BC and the flood around 2500 BC. Assuming to those two dates, it became difficult to get the Aryans in India before 1500 BC.
Muller therefore assumed that the five layers of the four 'Vedas' & 'Upanishads' were each composed in 200 year periods before the Buddha at 500 BC. However, there are more changes of language in Vedic Sanskrit itself than there are in classical Sanskrit since Panini, also regarded as a figure of around 500 BC, or a period of 2500 years. Hence it is clear that each of these periods could have existed for any number of centuries and that the 200 year figure is totally arbitrary and is likely too short a figure.
It was assumed by these scholars many of whom were also Christian missionaries unsympathetic to the 'Vedas' that the Vedic culture was that of primitive nomads from Central Asia. Hence they could not have founded any urban culture like that of the Indus valley. The only basis for this was a rather questionable interpretation of the 'Rig Veda' that they made, ignoring the sophisticated nature of the culture presented within it.
Meanwhile, it was also pointed out that in the middle of the second millennium BC, a number of Indo-European invasions apparently occured in the Middle East, wherein Indo-European peoples the Hittites, Mit tani and Kassites conquered and ruled Mesopotamia for some centuries. An Aryan invasion of India would have been another version of this same movement of Indo-European peoples. On top of this, excavators of the Indus valley culture, like Wheeler, thought they found evidence of destruction of the culture by an outside invasion confirming this.
The Vedic culture was thus said to be that of primitive nomads who came out of Central Asia with their horse-drawn chariots and iron weapons and overthrew the cities of the more advanced Indus valley culture, with their superior battle tactics. It was pointed out that no horses, chariots or iron was discovered in Indus valley sites.
This was how the Aryan invasion theory formed and has remained since then. Though little has been discovered that confirms this theory, there has been much hesitancy to question it, much less to give it up.
Further excavations discovered horses not only in Indus Valley sites but also in pre-Indus sites. The use of the horse has thus been proven for the whole range of ancient Indian history. Evidence of the wheel, and an Indus seal showing a spoked wheel as used in chariots, has also been found, suggesting the usage of chariots.
Moreover, the whole idea of nomads with chariots has been challenged. Chariots are not the vehicles of nomads. Their usage occured only in ancient urban cultures with much flat land, of which the river plain of north India was the most suitable. Chariots are totally unsuitable for crossing mountains and deserts, as the so-called Aryan invasion required.
That the Vedic culture used iron & must hence date later than the introduction of iron around 1500 BC revolves around the meaning of the Vedic term "ayas", interpreted as iron. 'Ayas' in other Indo- European languages like Latin or German usually means copper, bronze or ore generally, not specially iron. There is no reason to insist that in such earlier Vedic times, 'ayas' meant iron, particularly since other metals are not mentioned in the 'Rig Veda' (except gold that is much more commonly referred to than ayas). Moreover, the 'Atharva Veda' and 'Yajur Veda' speak of different colors of 'ayas'(such as red & black), showing that it was a generic term. Hence it is clear that 'ayas' generally meant metal and not specifically iron.
Moreover, the enemies of the Vedic people in the 'Rig Veda' also use ayas, even for making their cities, as do the Vedic people themselves. Hence there is nothing in Vedic literture to show that either the Vedic culture was an ironbased culture or that there enemies were not.
The 'Rig Veda' describes its Gods as 'destroyers of cities'. This was used also to regard the Vedic as a primitive non-urban culture that destroys cities and urban civilization. However, there are also many verses in the 'Rig Veda' that speak of the Aryans as having having cities of their own and being protected by cities upto a hundred in number. Aryan Gods like Indra, Agni, Saraswati and the Adityas are praised as being like a city. Many ancient kings, including those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, had titles like destroyer or conquerer of cities. This does not turn them into nomads. Destruction of cities also happens in modern wars; this does not make those who do this nomads. Hence the idea of Vedic culture as destroying but not building the cities is based upon ignoring what the Vedas actually say about their own cities.
Further excavation revealed that the Indus Valley culture was not des- troyed by outside invasion, but according to internal causes and, most likely, floods. Most recently a new set of cities has been found in India (like the Dwaraka and Bet Dwaraka sites by S.R. Rao and the National Institute of Oceanography in India) which are intermidiate between those of the Indus culture and later ancient India as visited by the Greeks. This may eliminate the so-called dark age following the presumed Aryan invasion and shows a continuous urban occupation in India back to the beginning of the Indus culture.
The interpretation of the religion of the Indus Valley culture -made incidentlly by scholars such as Wheeler who were not religious scholars much less students of Hinduism was that its religion was different than the Vedic and more likely the later Shaivite religion. However, further excavations both in Indus Valley site in Gujarat, like Lothal, and those in Rajsthan, like Kalibangan show large number of fire altars like those used in the Vedic religion, along with bones of oxen, potsherds, shell jewelry and other items used in the rituals described in the 'Vedic Brahmanas'. Hence the Indus Valley culture evidences many Vedic practices that can not be merely coincidental. That some of its practices appeared non-Vedic to its excavators may also be attributed to their misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of Vedic and Hindu culture generally, wherein Vedism and Shaivism are the same basic tradition.
We must remember that ruins do not necessarily have one interpretation. Nor does the ability to discover ruins necessarily gives the ability to interpret them correctly.
The Vedic people were thought to have been a fair-skinned race like the Europeans owing to the Vedic idea of a war between light and darkness, and the Vedic people being presented as children of light or children of the sun. Yet this idea of a war between light and darkness exists in most ancient cultures, including the Persian and the Egyptian. Why don't we interpret their scriptures as a war between light and dark-skinned people? It is purely a poetic metaphor, not a cultural statement. Moreover, no real traces of such a race are found in India.
Anthropologists have observed that the present population of Gujarat is composed of more or less the same ethnic groups as are noticed at Lothal in 2000 BC. Similarly, the present population of the Punjab is said to be ethnically the same as the population of Harappa and Rupar 4000 years ago. Linguistically the present day population of Gujrat and Punjab belongs to the Indo-Aryan language speaking group. The only inference that can be drawn from the anthropological and linguistic evidences adduced above is that the Harappan population in the Indus Valley and Gujrat in 2000 BC was composed of two or more groups, the more dominent among them having very close ethnic affinities with the present day Indo-Aryan speaking population of India.
In other words there is no racial evidence of any such Indo-Aryan invasion of India but only of a continuity of the same group of people who traditionally considered themselves to be Aryans.
There are many points in fact that prove the Vedic nature of the Indus Valley culture. Further excavation has shown that the great majority of the sites of the Indus Valley culture were east, not west of Indus. In fact, the largest concentration of sites appears in an area of Punjab and Rajsthan near the dry banks of ancient Saraswati and Drishadvati rivers. The Vedic culture was said to have been founded by the sage Manu between the banks of Saraswati and Drishadvati rivers. The Saraswati is lauded as the main river (naditama) in the 'Rig Veda' & is the most frequently mentioned in the text. It is said to be a great flood and to be wide, even endless in size. Saraswati is said to be "pure in course from the mountains to the sea". Hence the Vedic people were well acquainted with this river and regarded it as their immemorial hoemland.
The Saraswati, as modern land studies now reveal, was indeed one of the largest, if not the largest river in India. In early ancient and pre-historic times, it once drained the Sutlej, Yamuna and the Ganges, whose courses were much different than they are today. However, the Saraswati river went dry at the end of the Indus Valley culture and before the so-called Aryan invasion or before 1500 BC. In fact this may have caused the ending of the Indus culture. How could the Vedic Aryans know of this river and establish their culture on its banks if it dried up before they arrived? Indeed the Saraswati as described in the 'Rig Veda' appears to more accurately show it as it was prior to the Indus Valley culture as in the Indus era it was already in decline.
Vedic and late Vedic texts also contain interesting astronomical lore. The Vedic calender was based upon astronomical sightings of the equinoxes and solstices. Such texts as 'Vedanga Jyotish' speak of a time when the vernal equinox was in the middle of the Nakshtra Aslesha (or about 23 degrees 20 minutes Cancer). This gives a date of 1300 BC. The 'Yajur Veda' and 'Atharva Veda' speak of the vernal equinox in the Krittikas (Pleiades; early Taurus) and the summer solstice (ayana) in Magha (early Leo). This gives a date about 2400 BC. Yet earlier eras are mentioned but these two have numerous references to substantiate them. They prove that the Vedic culture existed at these periods and already had a sophisticated system of astronomy. Such references were merely ignored or pronounced unintelligible by Western scholars because they yielded too early a date for the 'Vedas' than what they presumed, not because such references did not exist.
Vedic texts like 'Shatapatha Brahmana' and 'Aitereya Brahmana' that mention these astronomical references list a group of 11 Vedic Kings, including a number of figures of the 'Rig Veda', said to have conquered the region of India from 'sea to sea'. Lands of the Aryans are mentioned in them from Gandhara (Afganistan) in the west to Videha (Nepal) in the east, and south to Vidarbha (Maharashtra). Hence the Vedic people were in these regions by the Krittika equinox or before 2400 BC. These passages were also ignored by Western scholars and it was said by them that the 'Vedas' had no evidence of large empires in India in Vedic times. Hence a pattern of ignoring literary evidence or misinterpreting them to suit the Aryan invasion idea became prevalent, even to the point of changing the meaning of Vedic words to suit this theory.
According to this theory, the Vedic people were nomads in the Punjab, comming down from Central Asia. However, the 'Rig Veda' itself has nearly 100 references to ocean (samudra), as well as dozens of references to ships, and to rivers flowing in to the sea. Vedic ancestors like Manu, Turvasha, Yadu and Bhujyu are flood figures, saved from across the sea. The Vedic God of the sea, Varuna, is the father of many Vedic seers and seer families like Vasishta, Agastya and the Bhrigu seers. To preserve the Aryan invasion idea it was assumed that the Vedic (and later sanskrit) term for ocean, samudra, originally did not mean the ocean but any large body of water, especially the Indus river in Punjab. Here the clear meaning of a term in 'Rig Veda' and later times verified by rivers like Saraswati mentioned by name as flowing into the sea was altered to make the Aryan invasion theory fit. Yet if we look at the index to translation of the 'Rig Veda' by Griffith for example, who held to this idea that samudra didn't really mean the ocean, we find over 70 references to ocean or sea. If samudra does noe mean ocean why was it traslated as such? It is therefore without basis to locate Vedic kings in Central Asia far from any ocean or from the massive Saraswati river, which form the background of their land and the symbolism of their hymns.
One of the latest archeological ideas is that the Vedic culture is evidenced by Painted Grey Ware pottery in north India, which apears to date around 1000 BC and comes from the same region between the Ganges and Yamuna as later Vedic culture is related to. It is thought to be an inferior grade of pottery and to be associated with the use of iron that the 'Vedas' are thought to mention. However it is associated with a pig and rice culture, not the cow and barley culture of the 'Vedas'. Moreover it is now found to be an organic development of indegenous pottery, not an introduction of invaders.
Painted Grey Ware culture represents an indigenous cultural development and does not reflect any cultural intrusion from the West i.e. an Indo-Aryan invasion. Therefore, there is no archeological evidence corroborating the fact of an Indo-Aryan invasion.
In addition, the Aryans in the Middle East, most notably the Hittites, have now been found to have been in that region atleast as early as 2200 BC, wherein they are already mentioned. Hence the idea of an Aryan invasion into the Middle East has been pushed back some centuries, though the evidence so far is that the people of the mountain regions of the Middle East were Indo-Europeans as far as recorded history can prove.
The Aryan Kassites of the ancient Middle East worshipped Vedic Gods like Surya and the Maruts, as well as one named Himalaya. The Aryan Hittites and Mittani signed a treaty with the name of the Vedic Gods Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Nasatyas around 1400 BC. The Hittites have a treatise on chariot racing written in almost pure Sanskrit. The IndoEuropeans of the ancient Middle East thus spoke Indo-Aryan, not Indo-Iranian languages and thereby show a Vedic culture in that region of the world as well.
The Indus Valley culture had a form of writing, as evidenced by numerous seals found in the ruins. It was also assumed to be non-Vedic and probably Dravidian, though this was never proved. Now it has been shown that the majority of the late Indus signs are identical with those of later Hindu Brahmi and that there is an organic development between the two scripts. Prevalent models now suggest an Indo-European base for that language.
It was also assumed that the Indus Valley culture derived its civilization from the Middle East, probably Sumeria, as antecedents for it were not found in India. Recent French excavations at Mehrgarh have shown that all the antecedents of the Indus Valley culture can be found within the subcontinent and going back before 6000 BC.
In short, some Western scholars are beginning to reject the Aryan invasion or any outside origin for Hindu civilization.
Current archeological data do not support the existence of an Indo Aryan or European invasion into South Asia at any time in the preor protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural development from prehistoric to historic periods. The early Vedic literature describes not a human invasion into the area, but a fundamental restructuring of indigenous society. The Indo-Aryan invasion as an academic concept in 18th and 19th century Europe reflected the cultural milieu of the period. Linguistic data were used to validate the concept that in turn was used to interpret archeological and anthropological data.
In other words, Vedic literature was interpreted on the assumption that there was an Aryan invasion. Then archeological evidence was interpreted by the same assumption. And both interpretations were then used to justify each other. It is nothing but a tautology, an exercise in circular thinking that only proves that if assuming something is true, it is found to be true!
Another modern Western scholar, Colin Renfrew, places the IndoEuropeans in Greece as early as 6000 BC. He also suggests such a possible early date for their entry into India.
As far as I can see there is nothing in the Hymns of the 'Rig Veda' which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking population was intrusive to the area: this comes rather from a historical assumption of the 'comming of the Indo-Europeans.
When Wheeler speaks of 'the Aryan invasion of the land of the 7 rivers, the Punjab', he has no warrenty at all, so far as I can see. If one checks the dozen references in the 'Rig Veda' to the 7 rivers, there is nothing in them that to me implies invasion: the land of the 7 rivers is the land of the 'Rig Veda', the scene of action. Nor is it implied that the inhabitants of the walled cities (including the Dasyus) were any more aboriginal than the Aryans themselves.
Despite Wheeler's comments, it is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley civilization. Hence Renfrew suggests that the Indus Valley civilization was in fact Indo-Aryan even prior to the Indus Valley era:
This hypothesis that early Indo-European languages were spoken in North India with Pakistan and on the Iranian plateau at the 6th millennium BC has the merit of harmonizing symmetrically with the theory for the origin of the IndoEuropean languages in Europe. It also emphasizes the continuity in the Indus Valley and adjacent areas from the early neolithic through to the floruit of the Indus Valley civilization.
This is not to say that such scholars appreciate or understand the 'Vedas' their work leaves much to be desired in this respect but that it is clear that the whole edifice built around the Aryan invasion is beginning to tumble on all sides. In addition, it does not mean that the 'Rig Veda' dates from the Indus Valley era. The Indus Valley culture resembles that of the 'Yajur Veda' and the reflect the pre-Indus period in India, when the Saraswati river was more prominent.
The acceptance of such views would create a revolution in our view of history as shattering as that in science caused by Einstein's theory of relativity. It would make ancient India perhaps the oldest, largest and most central of ancient cultures. It would mean that the Vedic literary record already the largest and oldest of the ancient world even at a 1500 BC date would be the record of teachings some centuries or thousands of years before that. It would mean that the 'Vedas' are our most authentic record of the ancient world. It would also tend to validate the Vedic view that the Indo-Europeans and other Aryan peoples were migrants from India, not that the Indo-Aryans were invaders into India. Moreover, it would affirm the Hindu tradition that the Dravidians were early offshoots of the Vedic people through the seer Agastya, and not unaryan peoples.
In closing, it is important to examine the social and political implications of the Aryan invasion idea:
First, it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other. This kept the Hindus divided and is still a source of social tension.
Second, it gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago.
Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West.
Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis, as any Vedic basis was largely disqualified by the primitive nature of the Vedic culture.
This discredited not only the 'Vedas' but the genealogies of the 'Puranas' and their long list of the kings before the Buddha or Krishna were left without any historical basis. The 'Mahabharata', instead of a civil war in which all the main kings of India participated as it is described, became a local skirmish among petty princes that was later exaggerated by poets. In short, it discredited the most of the Hindu tradition and almost all its ancient literature. It turned its scriptures and sages into fantacies and exaggerations.
This served a social, political and economical purpose of domination, proving the superiority of Western culture and religion. It made the Hindus feel that their culture was not the great thing that their sages and ancestors had said it was. It made Hindus feel ashamed of their culture that its basis was neither historical nor scientific. It made them feel that the main line of civilization was developed first in the Middle East and then in Europe and that the culture of India was peripheral and secondary to the real development of world culture.
Such a view is not good scholarship or archeology but merely cultural imperialism. The Western Vedic scholars did in the intellectual spehere what the British army did in the political realm discredit, divide and conquer the Hindus. In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice. Such prejudice may not have been intentional but deep-seated political and religious views easily cloud and blur our thinking.
It is unfortunate that this this approach has not been questioned more, particularly by Hindus. Even though Indian Vedic scholars like Dayananda saraswati, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Arobindo rejected it, most Hindus today passively accept it. They allow Western, generally Christian, scholars to interpret their history for them and quite naturally Hinduism is kept in a reduced role. Many Hindus still accept, read or even honor the translations of the 'Vedas' done by such Christian missionary scholars as Max Muller, Griffith, MonierWilliams and H. H. Wilson. Would modern Christians accept an interpretation of the Bible or Biblical history done by Hindus aimed at converting them to Hinduism? Universities in India also use the Western history books and Western Vedic translations that propound such views that denigrate their own culture and country.
The modern Western academic world is sensitive to critisms of cultural and social biases. For scholars to take a stand against this biased interpretation of the 'Vedas' would indeed cause a reexamination of many of these historical ideas that can not stand objective scrutiny. But if Hindu scholars are silent or passively accept the misinterpretation of their own culture, it will undoubtly continue, but they will have no one to blame but themselves. It is not an issue to be taken lightly, because how a culture is defined historically creates the perspective from which it is viewed in the modern social and intellectual context. Tolerance is not in allowing a false view of one's own culture and religion to be propagated without question. That is merely self-betrayal.
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References
"Atherva Veda" IX.5.4.
"Rig Veda" II.20.8 & IV.27.1.
"Rig Veda" VII.3.7; VII.15.14; VI.48.8; I.166.8; I.189.2; VII.95.1.
S.R. Rao, "Lothal and the Indus Valley Civilization", Asia Publishing House, Bombay, India, 1973, p. 37, 140 & 141.
Ibid, p. 158.
"Manu Samhita" II.17-18.
Note "Rig Veda" II.41.16; VI.61.8-13; I.3.12.
"Rig Veda" VII.95.2.
Studies from the post-graduate Research Institute of Deccan College, Pune, and the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), Jodhapur. Confirmed by use of MSS (multi-spectral scanner) and Landsat Satellite photography. Note MLBD Newsletter (Delhi, India: Motilal Banarasidass), Nov. 1989. Also Sriram Sathe, "Bharatiya Historiography", Itihasa Sankalana Samiti, Hyderabad, India, 1989, pp. 11-13.
"Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha", Indian National Science Academy, Delhi, India, 1985, pp 12-13.
"Aitareya Brahmana", VIII.21-23; "Shatapat Brahmana", XIII.5.4.
R. Griffith, "The Hymns of the Rig Veda", Motilal Banarasidas, Delhi, 1976.
J. Shaffer, "The Indo-Aryan invasions: Cultural Myth and Archeological Reality", from J. Lukas(Ed), 'The people of South Asia', New York, 1984, p. 85.
T. Burrow, "The Proto-Indoaryans", Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, No. 2, 1973, pp. 123-140.
G. R. Hunter, "The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its connection with other scripts", Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London, 1934. J.E. Mitchiner, "Studies in the Indus Valley Inscriptions", Oxford & IBH, Delhi, India, 1978. Also the work of Subhash Kak as in "A Frequency Analysis of the Indus Script", Cryptologia, July 1988, Vol XII, No 3; "Indus Writing", The Mankind Quarterly, Vol 30, No 1 & 2, Fall/Winter 1989; and "On the Decipherment of the Indus Script A Preliminary Study of its connection with Brahmi", Indian Journal of History of Science, 22(1):51-62 (1987). Kak may be close to deciphering the Indus Valley script into a Sanskrit like or Vedic language.
J.F. Jarrige and R.H. Meadow, "The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley", Scientific American, August 1980.
C. Renfrew, "Archeology and Language", Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987.
This idea totally foreign to the history of India, whether north or south has become almost an unquestioned truth in the interpretation of ancient history Today, after nearly all the reasons for its supposed validity have been refuted, even major Western scholars are at last beginning to call it in question.
In this article we will summarize the main points that have arisen. This is a complex subject that I have dealt with in depth in book "Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization", for those interested in further examination of the subject.
The Indus valley culture was pronounced pre-Aryans for several reasons that were largely part of the cultural milieu of nineteenth century European thinking As scholars following Max Mullar had decided that the Aryans came into India around 1500 BC, since the Indus valley culture was earlier than this, they concluded that it had to be preAryan. Yet the rationale behind the late date for the Vedic culture given by Muller was totally speculative. Max Muller, like many of the Christian scholars of his era, believed in Biblical chronology. This placed the beginning of the world at 400 BC and the flood around 2500 BC. Assuming to those two dates, it became difficult to get the Aryans in India before 1500 BC.
Muller therefore assumed that the five layers of the four 'Vedas' & 'Upanishads' were each composed in 200 year periods before the Buddha at 500 BC. However, there are more changes of language in Vedic Sanskrit itself than there are in classical Sanskrit since Panini, also regarded as a figure of around 500 BC, or a period of 2500 years. Hence it is clear that each of these periods could have existed for any number of centuries and that the 200 year figure is totally arbitrary and is likely too short a figure.
It was assumed by these scholars many of whom were also Christian missionaries unsympathetic to the 'Vedas' that the Vedic culture was that of primitive nomads from Central Asia. Hence they could not have founded any urban culture like that of the Indus valley. The only basis for this was a rather questionable interpretation of the 'Rig Veda' that they made, ignoring the sophisticated nature of the culture presented within it.
Meanwhile, it was also pointed out that in the middle of the second millennium BC, a number of Indo-European invasions apparently occured in the Middle East, wherein Indo-European peoples the Hittites, Mit tani and Kassites conquered and ruled Mesopotamia for some centuries. An Aryan invasion of India would have been another version of this same movement of Indo-European peoples. On top of this, excavators of the Indus valley culture, like Wheeler, thought they found evidence of destruction of the culture by an outside invasion confirming this.
The Vedic culture was thus said to be that of primitive nomads who came out of Central Asia with their horse-drawn chariots and iron weapons and overthrew the cities of the more advanced Indus valley culture, with their superior battle tactics. It was pointed out that no horses, chariots or iron was discovered in Indus valley sites.
This was how the Aryan invasion theory formed and has remained since then. Though little has been discovered that confirms this theory, there has been much hesitancy to question it, much less to give it up.
Further excavations discovered horses not only in Indus Valley sites but also in pre-Indus sites. The use of the horse has thus been proven for the whole range of ancient Indian history. Evidence of the wheel, and an Indus seal showing a spoked wheel as used in chariots, has also been found, suggesting the usage of chariots.
Moreover, the whole idea of nomads with chariots has been challenged. Chariots are not the vehicles of nomads. Their usage occured only in ancient urban cultures with much flat land, of which the river plain of north India was the most suitable. Chariots are totally unsuitable for crossing mountains and deserts, as the so-called Aryan invasion required.
That the Vedic culture used iron & must hence date later than the introduction of iron around 1500 BC revolves around the meaning of the Vedic term "ayas", interpreted as iron. 'Ayas' in other Indo- European languages like Latin or German usually means copper, bronze or ore generally, not specially iron. There is no reason to insist that in such earlier Vedic times, 'ayas' meant iron, particularly since other metals are not mentioned in the 'Rig Veda' (except gold that is much more commonly referred to than ayas). Moreover, the 'Atharva Veda' and 'Yajur Veda' speak of different colors of 'ayas'(such as red & black), showing that it was a generic term. Hence it is clear that 'ayas' generally meant metal and not specifically iron.
Moreover, the enemies of the Vedic people in the 'Rig Veda' also use ayas, even for making their cities, as do the Vedic people themselves. Hence there is nothing in Vedic literture to show that either the Vedic culture was an ironbased culture or that there enemies were not.
The 'Rig Veda' describes its Gods as 'destroyers of cities'. This was used also to regard the Vedic as a primitive non-urban culture that destroys cities and urban civilization. However, there are also many verses in the 'Rig Veda' that speak of the Aryans as having having cities of their own and being protected by cities upto a hundred in number. Aryan Gods like Indra, Agni, Saraswati and the Adityas are praised as being like a city. Many ancient kings, including those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, had titles like destroyer or conquerer of cities. This does not turn them into nomads. Destruction of cities also happens in modern wars; this does not make those who do this nomads. Hence the idea of Vedic culture as destroying but not building the cities is based upon ignoring what the Vedas actually say about their own cities.
Further excavation revealed that the Indus Valley culture was not des- troyed by outside invasion, but according to internal causes and, most likely, floods. Most recently a new set of cities has been found in India (like the Dwaraka and Bet Dwaraka sites by S.R. Rao and the National Institute of Oceanography in India) which are intermidiate between those of the Indus culture and later ancient India as visited by the Greeks. This may eliminate the so-called dark age following the presumed Aryan invasion and shows a continuous urban occupation in India back to the beginning of the Indus culture.
The interpretation of the religion of the Indus Valley culture -made incidentlly by scholars such as Wheeler who were not religious scholars much less students of Hinduism was that its religion was different than the Vedic and more likely the later Shaivite religion. However, further excavations both in Indus Valley site in Gujarat, like Lothal, and those in Rajsthan, like Kalibangan show large number of fire altars like those used in the Vedic religion, along with bones of oxen, potsherds, shell jewelry and other items used in the rituals described in the 'Vedic Brahmanas'. Hence the Indus Valley culture evidences many Vedic practices that can not be merely coincidental. That some of its practices appeared non-Vedic to its excavators may also be attributed to their misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of Vedic and Hindu culture generally, wherein Vedism and Shaivism are the same basic tradition.
We must remember that ruins do not necessarily have one interpretation. Nor does the ability to discover ruins necessarily gives the ability to interpret them correctly.
The Vedic people were thought to have been a fair-skinned race like the Europeans owing to the Vedic idea of a war between light and darkness, and the Vedic people being presented as children of light or children of the sun. Yet this idea of a war between light and darkness exists in most ancient cultures, including the Persian and the Egyptian. Why don't we interpret their scriptures as a war between light and dark-skinned people? It is purely a poetic metaphor, not a cultural statement. Moreover, no real traces of such a race are found in India.
Anthropologists have observed that the present population of Gujarat is composed of more or less the same ethnic groups as are noticed at Lothal in 2000 BC. Similarly, the present population of the Punjab is said to be ethnically the same as the population of Harappa and Rupar 4000 years ago. Linguistically the present day population of Gujrat and Punjab belongs to the Indo-Aryan language speaking group. The only inference that can be drawn from the anthropological and linguistic evidences adduced above is that the Harappan population in the Indus Valley and Gujrat in 2000 BC was composed of two or more groups, the more dominent among them having very close ethnic affinities with the present day Indo-Aryan speaking population of India.
In other words there is no racial evidence of any such Indo-Aryan invasion of India but only of a continuity of the same group of people who traditionally considered themselves to be Aryans.
There are many points in fact that prove the Vedic nature of the Indus Valley culture. Further excavation has shown that the great majority of the sites of the Indus Valley culture were east, not west of Indus. In fact, the largest concentration of sites appears in an area of Punjab and Rajsthan near the dry banks of ancient Saraswati and Drishadvati rivers. The Vedic culture was said to have been founded by the sage Manu between the banks of Saraswati and Drishadvati rivers. The Saraswati is lauded as the main river (naditama) in the 'Rig Veda' & is the most frequently mentioned in the text. It is said to be a great flood and to be wide, even endless in size. Saraswati is said to be "pure in course from the mountains to the sea". Hence the Vedic people were well acquainted with this river and regarded it as their immemorial hoemland.
The Saraswati, as modern land studies now reveal, was indeed one of the largest, if not the largest river in India. In early ancient and pre-historic times, it once drained the Sutlej, Yamuna and the Ganges, whose courses were much different than they are today. However, the Saraswati river went dry at the end of the Indus Valley culture and before the so-called Aryan invasion or before 1500 BC. In fact this may have caused the ending of the Indus culture. How could the Vedic Aryans know of this river and establish their culture on its banks if it dried up before they arrived? Indeed the Saraswati as described in the 'Rig Veda' appears to more accurately show it as it was prior to the Indus Valley culture as in the Indus era it was already in decline.
Vedic and late Vedic texts also contain interesting astronomical lore. The Vedic calender was based upon astronomical sightings of the equinoxes and solstices. Such texts as 'Vedanga Jyotish' speak of a time when the vernal equinox was in the middle of the Nakshtra Aslesha (or about 23 degrees 20 minutes Cancer). This gives a date of 1300 BC. The 'Yajur Veda' and 'Atharva Veda' speak of the vernal equinox in the Krittikas (Pleiades; early Taurus) and the summer solstice (ayana) in Magha (early Leo). This gives a date about 2400 BC. Yet earlier eras are mentioned but these two have numerous references to substantiate them. They prove that the Vedic culture existed at these periods and already had a sophisticated system of astronomy. Such references were merely ignored or pronounced unintelligible by Western scholars because they yielded too early a date for the 'Vedas' than what they presumed, not because such references did not exist.
Vedic texts like 'Shatapatha Brahmana' and 'Aitereya Brahmana' that mention these astronomical references list a group of 11 Vedic Kings, including a number of figures of the 'Rig Veda', said to have conquered the region of India from 'sea to sea'. Lands of the Aryans are mentioned in them from Gandhara (Afganistan) in the west to Videha (Nepal) in the east, and south to Vidarbha (Maharashtra). Hence the Vedic people were in these regions by the Krittika equinox or before 2400 BC. These passages were also ignored by Western scholars and it was said by them that the 'Vedas' had no evidence of large empires in India in Vedic times. Hence a pattern of ignoring literary evidence or misinterpreting them to suit the Aryan invasion idea became prevalent, even to the point of changing the meaning of Vedic words to suit this theory.
According to this theory, the Vedic people were nomads in the Punjab, comming down from Central Asia. However, the 'Rig Veda' itself has nearly 100 references to ocean (samudra), as well as dozens of references to ships, and to rivers flowing in to the sea. Vedic ancestors like Manu, Turvasha, Yadu and Bhujyu are flood figures, saved from across the sea. The Vedic God of the sea, Varuna, is the father of many Vedic seers and seer families like Vasishta, Agastya and the Bhrigu seers. To preserve the Aryan invasion idea it was assumed that the Vedic (and later sanskrit) term for ocean, samudra, originally did not mean the ocean but any large body of water, especially the Indus river in Punjab. Here the clear meaning of a term in 'Rig Veda' and later times verified by rivers like Saraswati mentioned by name as flowing into the sea was altered to make the Aryan invasion theory fit. Yet if we look at the index to translation of the 'Rig Veda' by Griffith for example, who held to this idea that samudra didn't really mean the ocean, we find over 70 references to ocean or sea. If samudra does noe mean ocean why was it traslated as such? It is therefore without basis to locate Vedic kings in Central Asia far from any ocean or from the massive Saraswati river, which form the background of their land and the symbolism of their hymns.
One of the latest archeological ideas is that the Vedic culture is evidenced by Painted Grey Ware pottery in north India, which apears to date around 1000 BC and comes from the same region between the Ganges and Yamuna as later Vedic culture is related to. It is thought to be an inferior grade of pottery and to be associated with the use of iron that the 'Vedas' are thought to mention. However it is associated with a pig and rice culture, not the cow and barley culture of the 'Vedas'. Moreover it is now found to be an organic development of indegenous pottery, not an introduction of invaders.
Painted Grey Ware culture represents an indigenous cultural development and does not reflect any cultural intrusion from the West i.e. an Indo-Aryan invasion. Therefore, there is no archeological evidence corroborating the fact of an Indo-Aryan invasion.
In addition, the Aryans in the Middle East, most notably the Hittites, have now been found to have been in that region atleast as early as 2200 BC, wherein they are already mentioned. Hence the idea of an Aryan invasion into the Middle East has been pushed back some centuries, though the evidence so far is that the people of the mountain regions of the Middle East were Indo-Europeans as far as recorded history can prove.
The Aryan Kassites of the ancient Middle East worshipped Vedic Gods like Surya and the Maruts, as well as one named Himalaya. The Aryan Hittites and Mittani signed a treaty with the name of the Vedic Gods Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Nasatyas around 1400 BC. The Hittites have a treatise on chariot racing written in almost pure Sanskrit. The IndoEuropeans of the ancient Middle East thus spoke Indo-Aryan, not Indo-Iranian languages and thereby show a Vedic culture in that region of the world as well.
The Indus Valley culture had a form of writing, as evidenced by numerous seals found in the ruins. It was also assumed to be non-Vedic and probably Dravidian, though this was never proved. Now it has been shown that the majority of the late Indus signs are identical with those of later Hindu Brahmi and that there is an organic development between the two scripts. Prevalent models now suggest an Indo-European base for that language.
It was also assumed that the Indus Valley culture derived its civilization from the Middle East, probably Sumeria, as antecedents for it were not found in India. Recent French excavations at Mehrgarh have shown that all the antecedents of the Indus Valley culture can be found within the subcontinent and going back before 6000 BC.
In short, some Western scholars are beginning to reject the Aryan invasion or any outside origin for Hindu civilization.
Current archeological data do not support the existence of an Indo Aryan or European invasion into South Asia at any time in the preor protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural development from prehistoric to historic periods. The early Vedic literature describes not a human invasion into the area, but a fundamental restructuring of indigenous society. The Indo-Aryan invasion as an academic concept in 18th and 19th century Europe reflected the cultural milieu of the period. Linguistic data were used to validate the concept that in turn was used to interpret archeological and anthropological data.
In other words, Vedic literature was interpreted on the assumption that there was an Aryan invasion. Then archeological evidence was interpreted by the same assumption. And both interpretations were then used to justify each other. It is nothing but a tautology, an exercise in circular thinking that only proves that if assuming something is true, it is found to be true!
Another modern Western scholar, Colin Renfrew, places the IndoEuropeans in Greece as early as 6000 BC. He also suggests such a possible early date for their entry into India.
As far as I can see there is nothing in the Hymns of the 'Rig Veda' which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking population was intrusive to the area: this comes rather from a historical assumption of the 'comming of the Indo-Europeans.
When Wheeler speaks of 'the Aryan invasion of the land of the 7 rivers, the Punjab', he has no warrenty at all, so far as I can see. If one checks the dozen references in the 'Rig Veda' to the 7 rivers, there is nothing in them that to me implies invasion: the land of the 7 rivers is the land of the 'Rig Veda', the scene of action. Nor is it implied that the inhabitants of the walled cities (including the Dasyus) were any more aboriginal than the Aryans themselves.
Despite Wheeler's comments, it is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley civilization. Hence Renfrew suggests that the Indus Valley civilization was in fact Indo-Aryan even prior to the Indus Valley era:
This hypothesis that early Indo-European languages were spoken in North India with Pakistan and on the Iranian plateau at the 6th millennium BC has the merit of harmonizing symmetrically with the theory for the origin of the IndoEuropean languages in Europe. It also emphasizes the continuity in the Indus Valley and adjacent areas from the early neolithic through to the floruit of the Indus Valley civilization.
This is not to say that such scholars appreciate or understand the 'Vedas' their work leaves much to be desired in this respect but that it is clear that the whole edifice built around the Aryan invasion is beginning to tumble on all sides. In addition, it does not mean that the 'Rig Veda' dates from the Indus Valley era. The Indus Valley culture resembles that of the 'Yajur Veda' and the reflect the pre-Indus period in India, when the Saraswati river was more prominent.
The acceptance of such views would create a revolution in our view of history as shattering as that in science caused by Einstein's theory of relativity. It would make ancient India perhaps the oldest, largest and most central of ancient cultures. It would mean that the Vedic literary record already the largest and oldest of the ancient world even at a 1500 BC date would be the record of teachings some centuries or thousands of years before that. It would mean that the 'Vedas' are our most authentic record of the ancient world. It would also tend to validate the Vedic view that the Indo-Europeans and other Aryan peoples were migrants from India, not that the Indo-Aryans were invaders into India. Moreover, it would affirm the Hindu tradition that the Dravidians were early offshoots of the Vedic people through the seer Agastya, and not unaryan peoples.
In closing, it is important to examine the social and political implications of the Aryan invasion idea:
First, it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other. This kept the Hindus divided and is still a source of social tension.
Second, it gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago.
Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West.
Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis, as any Vedic basis was largely disqualified by the primitive nature of the Vedic culture.
This discredited not only the 'Vedas' but the genealogies of the 'Puranas' and their long list of the kings before the Buddha or Krishna were left without any historical basis. The 'Mahabharata', instead of a civil war in which all the main kings of India participated as it is described, became a local skirmish among petty princes that was later exaggerated by poets. In short, it discredited the most of the Hindu tradition and almost all its ancient literature. It turned its scriptures and sages into fantacies and exaggerations.
This served a social, political and economical purpose of domination, proving the superiority of Western culture and religion. It made the Hindus feel that their culture was not the great thing that their sages and ancestors had said it was. It made Hindus feel ashamed of their culture that its basis was neither historical nor scientific. It made them feel that the main line of civilization was developed first in the Middle East and then in Europe and that the culture of India was peripheral and secondary to the real development of world culture.
Such a view is not good scholarship or archeology but merely cultural imperialism. The Western Vedic scholars did in the intellectual spehere what the British army did in the political realm discredit, divide and conquer the Hindus. In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice. Such prejudice may not have been intentional but deep-seated political and religious views easily cloud and blur our thinking.
It is unfortunate that this this approach has not been questioned more, particularly by Hindus. Even though Indian Vedic scholars like Dayananda saraswati, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Arobindo rejected it, most Hindus today passively accept it. They allow Western, generally Christian, scholars to interpret their history for them and quite naturally Hinduism is kept in a reduced role. Many Hindus still accept, read or even honor the translations of the 'Vedas' done by such Christian missionary scholars as Max Muller, Griffith, MonierWilliams and H. H. Wilson. Would modern Christians accept an interpretation of the Bible or Biblical history done by Hindus aimed at converting them to Hinduism? Universities in India also use the Western history books and Western Vedic translations that propound such views that denigrate their own culture and country.
The modern Western academic world is sensitive to critisms of cultural and social biases. For scholars to take a stand against this biased interpretation of the 'Vedas' would indeed cause a reexamination of many of these historical ideas that can not stand objective scrutiny. But if Hindu scholars are silent or passively accept the misinterpretation of their own culture, it will undoubtly continue, but they will have no one to blame but themselves. It is not an issue to be taken lightly, because how a culture is defined historically creates the perspective from which it is viewed in the modern social and intellectual context. Tolerance is not in allowing a false view of one's own culture and religion to be propagated without question. That is merely self-betrayal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
"Atherva Veda" IX.5.4.
"Rig Veda" II.20.8 & IV.27.1.
"Rig Veda" VII.3.7; VII.15.14; VI.48.8; I.166.8; I.189.2; VII.95.1.
S.R. Rao, "Lothal and the Indus Valley Civilization", Asia Publishing House, Bombay, India, 1973, p. 37, 140 & 141.
Ibid, p. 158.
"Manu Samhita" II.17-18.
Note "Rig Veda" II.41.16; VI.61.8-13; I.3.12.
"Rig Veda" VII.95.2.
Studies from the post-graduate Research Institute of Deccan College, Pune, and the Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), Jodhapur. Confirmed by use of MSS (multi-spectral scanner) and Landsat Satellite photography. Note MLBD Newsletter (Delhi, India: Motilal Banarasidass), Nov. 1989. Also Sriram Sathe, "Bharatiya Historiography", Itihasa Sankalana Samiti, Hyderabad, India, 1989, pp. 11-13.
"Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha", Indian National Science Academy, Delhi, India, 1985, pp 12-13.
"Aitareya Brahmana", VIII.21-23; "Shatapat Brahmana", XIII.5.4.
R. Griffith, "The Hymns of the Rig Veda", Motilal Banarasidas, Delhi, 1976.
J. Shaffer, "The Indo-Aryan invasions: Cultural Myth and Archeological Reality", from J. Lukas(Ed), 'The people of South Asia', New York, 1984, p. 85.
T. Burrow, "The Proto-Indoaryans", Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, No. 2, 1973, pp. 123-140.
G. R. Hunter, "The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and its connection with other scripts", Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London, 1934. J.E. Mitchiner, "Studies in the Indus Valley Inscriptions", Oxford & IBH, Delhi, India, 1978. Also the work of Subhash Kak as in "A Frequency Analysis of the Indus Script", Cryptologia, July 1988, Vol XII, No 3; "Indus Writing", The Mankind Quarterly, Vol 30, No 1 & 2, Fall/Winter 1989; and "On the Decipherment of the Indus Script A Preliminary Study of its connection with Brahmi", Indian Journal of History of Science, 22(1):51-62 (1987). Kak may be close to deciphering the Indus Valley script into a Sanskrit like or Vedic language.
J.F. Jarrige and R.H. Meadow, "The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley", Scientific American, August 1980.
C. Renfrew, "Archeology and Language", Cambridge University Press, New York, 1987.
Arya: Its Significance
To those not familiar with Vedic culture, the word 'arya' is no more than a hieroglyph which attracts or repels according to their temperament. To some, the word has been converted to purely racial terms, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values. To others, the word represents a difference of culture because the Vedic rishis had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration. Their gods were the supraphysical powers who assisted the mortal in his struggle towards the nature of the godhead. All the highest aspirations of the early human race, its noblest religious temper, its most idealistic velleities of thought are summed up in this single vocable.
In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness of knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan or anarya (colloq anari). There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history.
In the early days of comparative Philology, when the scholars sought in the history of words for the prehistoric history of peoples, it was supposed that the word Arya came from the root 'ar', to plough, and that the Vedic Aryans were so called when they separated from their kin in the north-west who despised the pursuits of agriculture and remained shephards and hunters. This ingenious speculation has little or nothing to support it. But in a sense we may accept the derivation. Whoever cultivates the field that the Supreme Spirit has made for him, his earth of plenty within and without, does not leave it barren or allow it to run to seed, but labours to exact from it its full yield, is by that effort an Aryan.
If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be 'ar', meaning strength or valour, from ar to fight, whence we have the name of the Greek war-god Ares, areios, brave or warlike, perhaps even arete, virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus, first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept. "We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors." For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it. And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is not easily enforced.
Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no geatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the srestha of the Gita.
Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.
Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest. Therefore, what he conquers he does not destroy, but ennobles and fulfils. He knows that the body, life and mind are given him in order to attain to something higher than they; therefore they must be transcended and overcome, their limitations denied, the absorption of their gratifications rejected. But he knows also that the Highest is something which is no nullity in the world, but increasingly expresses itself here, - a divine Will, Consciousness, Love, Beatitude which pours itself out, when found, through the terms of the lower life on the finder and on all in his environment that is caoable of receiving it. Of that he is the servant, lover and seeker. When it is attained, he pours it forth in work, love, joy and knowledge upon mankind. For always the Aryan is a worker and warrior. He spares himself no labour of mind or body whether to seek the Highest or to serve it. He avoids no difficulty, he accepts no cessation from fatigue. Always he fights for the coming of that kingdom within himself and in the world.
The Aryan perfected is the Arhat. There is a transcendent Consciousness which surpasses the universe and of which all these worlds are only a side-issue and a by-play. To that consciousness he aspires and attains. There is a Consciousness which, being transcendent, is yet the universe and all that the universe contains. Into that consciousness he enlarges his limited ego; he becomes one with all beings and all inanimate objects in a single self-awareness, love, delight, all-embracing energy. There is a consciousness which, being both transcendental and universal, yet accepts the apparent limitations of individuality for work, for various standpoints of knowledge, for the play of the Lord with His creations; for the ego is there that it may finally convert itself into a free centre of the divine work and the divine play. That consciousness too he has sufficient love, joy and knowledge to accept; he is puissant enough to effect that conversion. To embrace individuality after transcending it is the last and divine sacrifice. The perfect Arhat is he who is able to live simultaneously in all these three apparent states of existence, elevate the lower into the higher, receive the higher into the lower, so that he may represent perfectly in the symbols of the world that with he is identified in all parts of his being, - the triple and triune Brahman
____________________________________________________________________
References
In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness of knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan or anarya (colloq anari). There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history.
In the early days of comparative Philology, when the scholars sought in the history of words for the prehistoric history of peoples, it was supposed that the word Arya came from the root 'ar', to plough, and that the Vedic Aryans were so called when they separated from their kin in the north-west who despised the pursuits of agriculture and remained shephards and hunters. This ingenious speculation has little or nothing to support it. But in a sense we may accept the derivation. Whoever cultivates the field that the Supreme Spirit has made for him, his earth of plenty within and without, does not leave it barren or allow it to run to seed, but labours to exact from it its full yield, is by that effort an Aryan.
If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be 'ar', meaning strength or valour, from ar to fight, whence we have the name of the Greek war-god Ares, areios, brave or warlike, perhaps even arete, virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus, first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept. "We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors." For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it. And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is not easily enforced.
Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no geatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the srestha of the Gita.
Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.
Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest. Therefore, what he conquers he does not destroy, but ennobles and fulfils. He knows that the body, life and mind are given him in order to attain to something higher than they; therefore they must be transcended and overcome, their limitations denied, the absorption of their gratifications rejected. But he knows also that the Highest is something which is no nullity in the world, but increasingly expresses itself here, - a divine Will, Consciousness, Love, Beatitude which pours itself out, when found, through the terms of the lower life on the finder and on all in his environment that is caoable of receiving it. Of that he is the servant, lover and seeker. When it is attained, he pours it forth in work, love, joy and knowledge upon mankind. For always the Aryan is a worker and warrior. He spares himself no labour of mind or body whether to seek the Highest or to serve it. He avoids no difficulty, he accepts no cessation from fatigue. Always he fights for the coming of that kingdom within himself and in the world.
The Aryan perfected is the Arhat. There is a transcendent Consciousness which surpasses the universe and of which all these worlds are only a side-issue and a by-play. To that consciousness he aspires and attains. There is a Consciousness which, being transcendent, is yet the universe and all that the universe contains. Into that consciousness he enlarges his limited ego; he becomes one with all beings and all inanimate objects in a single self-awareness, love, delight, all-embracing energy. There is a consciousness which, being both transcendental and universal, yet accepts the apparent limitations of individuality for work, for various standpoints of knowledge, for the play of the Lord with His creations; for the ego is there that it may finally convert itself into a free centre of the divine work and the divine play. That consciousness too he has sufficient love, joy and knowledge to accept; he is puissant enough to effect that conversion. To embrace individuality after transcending it is the last and divine sacrifice. The perfect Arhat is he who is able to live simultaneously in all these three apparent states of existence, elevate the lower into the higher, receive the higher into the lower, so that he may represent perfectly in the symbols of the world that with he is identified in all parts of his being, - the triple and triune Brahman
____________________________________________________________________
References
The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings By Sri Aurobindo
Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization,Dr.David Frawley,
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
How to surmount our ego
I do always harbor a delusion that I’m a nice man. I feel everyone should have a good opinion if not an fulsome admiration for me. I’m not Mr Perfect but I’m not a bad entity either. If you aren’t necessarily bad, you are a good man. I love the people I come in contact, why can’t they be like me ? Why can’t they reciprocate in the similar vein. Why can’t I get along with every one ? Many people hate me, contradict me and ignore me. One penny question - Am I alone with this complex ? Did I ever ask myself : why the people don’t care for me ?
A wise man has said, “When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majorities because they are supported by the approval of their neighbors. It’s not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.” It would give me little relief if I accept this theory.
However, everyone is EGOISTS in this world. The levels may be at variance. Everyone wants to be superior to next person he or she meets. We may hide these feelings in the most sophisticated manner, style and language but we all are hypocrites. We all are the victim of a strange complex which you may term as superiority or inferiority complex. These complexes are invisibly intertwined. Superiority Complex is the acute form of Inferiority Complex.
We all need friends and we have two type of friends. A friend who tells point blank that I’m a loser. I may not like this friend. No one ever likes him anyway. And we have the other kind of friend who will always tell me that I’m a great guy. He lies but still he is the best friend ? It is socially acceptable to offer mild false praise. Its symbolic of mediocrity. We all want to be honest but we end up doing the opposite. Honesty is the best policy but the deliverance of this policy is also an art. Advice delivered in a caustic manner doesn‘t go far. We can't see our shortcomings ourselves. That’s why it is necessary to surround ourselves with people who will tell us the truth about us - even when we don't want to hear it. Still we let down the same best friends and they let down us at times.
Let us realize that human nature is prone to egoism. We do always want to receive. We feel ‘giving up‘ could be a virtue and ‘giving in’ is defeat. The law of nature is quite contrary to that. It is based upon altruism. The essential force which binds us is love. The whole balance of existence is based on giving in. The whole flora and fauna give in for us. The ecosystem of the universe revolves around giving in. As Paulo Coelho of “The Achemist’ has said - The whole universe conspires for us when we move forward. The separate objects which surround us work together just like organs within our body. Everything in nature functions that way except for the inner life of an individual that’s me.
I love to receive as much as possible to satisfy myself and I care two hoots about giving the least amount of effort to anyone. I always end up being at the expense of others. Our most outwardly kind and generous acts are done only with the intention of self-gratification. Is it our fault ? Aren’t we were built this way ? Hate, avarice and greed are integral part of our nature. How to mold these negative instincts into a positive energy ? Can’t we just turn around our egoistic nature in a way that allows us to rise above it. Religion and not the science has the solution for this dilemma. “Love our Neighbor as our self – Love others exactly as you love yourself! – Putting their interests before anything else – just like you do with your own self interest now.”
A wise man has said, “When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majorities because they are supported by the approval of their neighbors. It’s not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.” It would give me little relief if I accept this theory.
However, everyone is EGOISTS in this world. The levels may be at variance. Everyone wants to be superior to next person he or she meets. We may hide these feelings in the most sophisticated manner, style and language but we all are hypocrites. We all are the victim of a strange complex which you may term as superiority or inferiority complex. These complexes are invisibly intertwined. Superiority Complex is the acute form of Inferiority Complex.
We all need friends and we have two type of friends. A friend who tells point blank that I’m a loser. I may not like this friend. No one ever likes him anyway. And we have the other kind of friend who will always tell me that I’m a great guy. He lies but still he is the best friend ? It is socially acceptable to offer mild false praise. Its symbolic of mediocrity. We all want to be honest but we end up doing the opposite. Honesty is the best policy but the deliverance of this policy is also an art. Advice delivered in a caustic manner doesn‘t go far. We can't see our shortcomings ourselves. That’s why it is necessary to surround ourselves with people who will tell us the truth about us - even when we don't want to hear it. Still we let down the same best friends and they let down us at times.
Let us realize that human nature is prone to egoism. We do always want to receive. We feel ‘giving up‘ could be a virtue and ‘giving in’ is defeat. The law of nature is quite contrary to that. It is based upon altruism. The essential force which binds us is love. The whole balance of existence is based on giving in. The whole flora and fauna give in for us. The ecosystem of the universe revolves around giving in. As Paulo Coelho of “The Achemist’ has said - The whole universe conspires for us when we move forward. The separate objects which surround us work together just like organs within our body. Everything in nature functions that way except for the inner life of an individual that’s me.
I love to receive as much as possible to satisfy myself and I care two hoots about giving the least amount of effort to anyone. I always end up being at the expense of others. Our most outwardly kind and generous acts are done only with the intention of self-gratification. Is it our fault ? Aren’t we were built this way ? Hate, avarice and greed are integral part of our nature. How to mold these negative instincts into a positive energy ? Can’t we just turn around our egoistic nature in a way that allows us to rise above it. Religion and not the science has the solution for this dilemma. “Love our Neighbor as our self – Love others exactly as you love yourself! – Putting their interests before anything else – just like you do with your own self interest now.”
Friday, April 30, 2010
Create a strong Aura for yourself
ओरा व्यक्ति के आभामंडल को कहते हैं। हर व्यक्ति का अपना एक प्रभाव होता है और उसमें इस ओरा का खास महत्व होता है। स्वयं को प्रभावशाली बनाने के लिए ओरा का प्रभावी होना आवश्यक है। पेश है कुछ टिप्स अपने ओरा को चमकदार बनाने के लिए।
1. अपने प्रवेश द्वार पर 2 इंच ऊँची दहलीज लगवाएँ। यह दहलीज लकड़ी की ही हो।
2. प्रवेश स्थल को साफ-सुथरा एवं ठीक रखें।
3. प्रवेश द्वार के सामने बाथरूम का दरवाजा न दिखे, अगर ऐसा हो तो प्रयास करें कि उसका दरवाजा दूसरी तरफ खुले अथवा उसके दरवाजे पर बाँस की चिक का पर्दा लगाएँ।
4. घर के अंदर दरवाजे के सामने कचरे का डिब्बा न रखें।
5. घर के किसी भी कोने में अथवा मध्य में जूते-चप्पल (मृत चर्म) न रखें।
6. जूतों के रखने का स्थान घर के प्रमुख व्यक्ति के कद का एक चौथाई हो, उदाहरण के तौर पर 6 फुट के व्यक्ति (घर का प्रमुख) के घर में जूते-चप्पल रखने का स्थल डेढ़ फुट से ऊँचा न हो।
7. द्वार के बाहर दरवाजे के दोनों तरफ प्रमुख व्यक्ति की आँखों की सतह की ऊँचाई पर काले स्वस्तिक बनाएँ, जिससे नेगेटीव आकाशीय एनर्जी घर में प्रवेश न कर सके।
8. द्वार के सामने खाली दीवार हो तो काँच के कटोरे को ताजे फूलों से भरकर रखें।
9. बैठक के कमरे में द्वार के सामने की दीवार पर दो सूरजमुखी के या ट्यूलिप के फूलों का चित्र लगाएँ।
10. घर के बाहर के बगीचे में दक्षिण-पश्चिम के कोने को सदैव रोशन रखें।
1. अपने प्रवेश द्वार पर 2 इंच ऊँची दहलीज लगवाएँ। यह दहलीज लकड़ी की ही हो।
2. प्रवेश स्थल को साफ-सुथरा एवं ठीक रखें।
3. प्रवेश द्वार के सामने बाथरूम का दरवाजा न दिखे, अगर ऐसा हो तो प्रयास करें कि उसका दरवाजा दूसरी तरफ खुले अथवा उसके दरवाजे पर बाँस की चिक का पर्दा लगाएँ।
4. घर के अंदर दरवाजे के सामने कचरे का डिब्बा न रखें।
5. घर के किसी भी कोने में अथवा मध्य में जूते-चप्पल (मृत चर्म) न रखें।
6. जूतों के रखने का स्थान घर के प्रमुख व्यक्ति के कद का एक चौथाई हो, उदाहरण के तौर पर 6 फुट के व्यक्ति (घर का प्रमुख) के घर में जूते-चप्पल रखने का स्थल डेढ़ फुट से ऊँचा न हो।
7. द्वार के बाहर दरवाजे के दोनों तरफ प्रमुख व्यक्ति की आँखों की सतह की ऊँचाई पर काले स्वस्तिक बनाएँ, जिससे नेगेटीव आकाशीय एनर्जी घर में प्रवेश न कर सके।
8. द्वार के सामने खाली दीवार हो तो काँच के कटोरे को ताजे फूलों से भरकर रखें।
9. बैठक के कमरे में द्वार के सामने की दीवार पर दो सूरजमुखी के या ट्यूलिप के फूलों का चित्र लगाएँ।
10. घर के बाहर के बगीचे में दक्षिण-पश्चिम के कोने को सदैव रोशन रखें।
Monday, April 19, 2010
चीन है तो चैन कहां रे?
यह अखाड़ा कुछ फर्क किस्म का है। यहां कमजोर भी जीतते हैं, वह भी सीना ठोंक कर। यह लड़ाई बाजार की है जिसमें कमजोर होना एक बड़ा रणनीतिक दांव है। देखते नहीं कि महाकाय, बाजारबली चीन ने अपनी मुद्रा युआन (आरएमबी) की कमजोरी के सहारे चचा सैम के मुल्क सहित दुनिया के बाजार पर इस तरह कब्जा कर लिया कि अब अमेरिका और चीन के बीच ट्रेड वार की नौबत आ गई है। अमेरिका चीन को आधिकारिक रूप से धोखेबाज यानी (करेंसी मैन्युपुलेटर) घोषित करते-करते रुक गया है। चीनी युआन का तूफान इतना विनाशक है कि उसने अमेरिकी बाजार से रोजगार खींचकर अमेरिका के खातों में भारी व्यापार घाटा भर दिया है। पाल क्रुगमैन जैसे अर्थशास्त्री कह रहे हैं कि दुनिया के बाजार में छाया मेड इन चाइना चीन की मौद्रिक धोखेबाजी का उत्पाद है। सस्ते युआन के सहारे चीन दुनिया के अन्य व्यापारियों को बाजार से दूर खदेड़ रहा है। अमेरिकी संसद में चीन के इस मौद्रिक खेल के खिलाफ कानून लाने की तैयारी चल रही है। अमेरिका के वित्त मंत्री गेटनर, हू जिंताओ को समझाने की कोशिश में हैं। क्योंकि करेंसी मैन्युपुलेटर के खिताब से नवाजे जाने के बाद चीन के लिए मुश्किलें बढ़ जाएंगी। वैसे बाजार को महक लग रही है कि शायद चीन अपनी इस मारक कमजोरी को कुछ हद तक दूर करने पर मान भी सकता है। बाजारबली की मारक दुर्बलता चीन को यह बात दशकों पहले समझ में आ गई थी कि कूटनीति और समरनीति की दुनिया भले ही ताकत की हो, लेकिन बाजार की दुनिया में कमजोर रहकर ही दबदबा कायम होता है। यानी अगर निर्यात करना है और दुनिया के बाजारों को अपने माल से पाट कर अमीर बनना है तो अपनी मुद्रा का अवमूल्यन ही अमूल्य मंत्र है। 1978 में अपने आर्थिक सुधारों की शुरुआत से ही चीन ने निर्यात का मैदान मारने के लिए मुद्रा अवमूल्यन के प्रयोग शुरू कर दिए थे। आठवें दशक में चीन का निर्यात बुरी तरह कमजोर था। सस्ती मुद्रा का विटामिन मिलने के बाद यह चढ़ने और बढ़ने लगा। इसे देख कर अंतत: 1994 में एक व्यापक बदलाव के तहत चीन ने डॉलर व युआन की विनिमय दर को स्थिर कर दिया, जो कि इस समय 6.82 युआन प्रति डॉलर पर है। चीन का युआन, डॉलर और यूरो की तरह मुक्त बाजार की मुद्रा नहीं है। इसकी कीमत चीन के व्यापार की स्थिति या मांग-आपूर्ति पर ऊपर नीचे नहीं होती, बल्कि चीन सरकार इसका मूल्य तय करती है, जिसके पीछे एक जटिल पैमाना है। चीन की सरकार बाजार में डॉलरों की आपूर्ति को बढ़ने नहीं देती। चीनी निर्यातक जो डॉलर चीन में लाते हैं उन्हें चीन का केंद्रीय बैंक खरीद लेता है, जिससे युआन डॉलर के मुकाबले कम कीमत पर बना रहता है। अमेरिका का आरोप है कि चीन अपने यहां उपभोग को रोकता और बचत को बढ़ावा देता है, जिससे चीन के बाजारों में अमेरिकी माल की मांग नहीं होती, लेकिन अमेरिकी बाजार में सब कुछ मेड इन चाइना नजर आता है। अमेरिका का यह निष्कर्ष उसके व्यापार के आंकड़ों में दिखता है। पिछले साल चीन के साथ अमेरिका का व्यापार घाटा 227 अरब डॉलर था, जो अभूतपूर्व है। चीन ने अमेरिका को 296 अरब डॉलर का निर्यात किया, जबकि अमेरिका से चीन को केवल 70 अरब डॉलर का निर्यात हो सका। चीन का विदेशी मुद्रा भंडार भी इसका सबूत है जो पिछले एक दशक में पूरी दुनिया में जबर्दस्त निर्यात के सहारे 2,500 अरब डॉलर बढ़ चुका है और चीन के सकल घरेलू उत्पादन का 50 फीसदी है। ऐसे में छोटे निर्यात प्रतिस्पर्धी युआन की आंधी में कहां टिकेंगे? ....चीन ने दुर्बल मुद्रा से दुनिया के बाजारों को रौंद डाला है। महाबली की बेजोड़ विवशता महाबली इस समय ड्रैगन के जादू में बुरी तरह उलझ गया है। चीन इस महाबली को कर्ज से भी मार रहा और व्यापार से भी। अमेरिका के अर्थशास्त्री क्रुगमैन का हिसाब कहता है कि चीन के मौद्रिक खेल के कारण हाल के कुछ वषरे में अमेरिका करीब 14 लाख नौकरियां गंवा चुका है। उनके मुताबिक चीन अगर युआन को लेकर ईमानदारी दिखाता तो दुनिया की विकास दर पिछले पांच छह सालों में औसतन डेढ़ फीसदी ज्यादा होती। चीन ने सस्तंी मुद्रा से अन्य देशों की विकास दर निगल ली। अमेरिकी सीनेटर शुमर व कुछ अन्य सांसद चीन को मौद्रिक धोखेबाज घोषित करने और व्यापार प्रतिबंधों का विधेयक ला रहे हैं। अमेरिका के वित्त विभाग को बीते सप्ताह अपनी रिपोर्ट जारी करनी थी जिसमें चीन को मौद्रिक धोखेबाज का दर्जा मिलने वाला था, लेकिन अंतिम मौके पर रिपोर्ट टल गई। .. टल इसलिए गई क्योंकि महाबली बुरी तरह विवश है। चीनी युआन की कमजोर ताकत बढ़ाने में अमेरिका की बड़ी भूमिका है। चीन जो डॉलर एकत्र कर रहा है, उनका निवेश वह अमेरिका के बांडों व ट्रेजरी बिलों में करता है। यह निवेश इस समय 789 अरब डॉलर है, जो कि अमेरिकी सरकार के बांडों का 33 फीसदी है। दरअसल अमेरिका के लोगों ने बचत की आदत छोड़ दी है। सरकार कर्ज पर चलती है जो कि बांडों में चीन के निवेश के जरिए आता है। अगर चीन निवेश न करे तो अमेरिका में ब्याज दरें आसमान छूने लगेंगी। अमेरिकी अर्थव्यवस्था में मौद्रिक प्रवाह का पहिया इस समय चीन से घूमता है। अमेरिका के वित्तीय ढांचे में चीन के इस निवेश के अपने खतरे हैं, सो अलग लेकिन अगर मौद्रिक धोखेबाजी की डिग्री मिलने के बाद चीन ने निवेश रोक दिया तो चचा सैम के लिए मुश्किल खड़ी हो जाएगी। लेकिन अगर अमेरिका युआन की कमजोरी को चलने देता है तो अमेरिका के उद्योग ध्वस्त हो जाएंगे। ... अमेरिका के लिए कुएं और खाई के बीच एक को चुनना है। दुनिया में दोहरा असमंजस पांच छह साल पहले मुद्राओं की कीमतों को मोटे पर अंदाजने के लिए एक बिग मैक थ्योरी चलती थी, जिसमें दुनिया के प्रमुख शहरों में बर्गर की तुलनात्मक कीमत को डॉलर में नापा जाता था। तब भी युआन सबसे अवमूल्यित और स्विस फ्रैंक अधिमूल्यित मुद्रा थी। लेकिन अब बात बर्गर के हिसाब जितनी आसान नहीं है, बल्कि ज्यादा पेचीदा है। चीन के लिए दस फीसदी व्यापार बढ़ने का मतलब है कि अमेरिका के रोजगारों में दस फीसदी की कमी, लेकिन अगर चीन अपने युआन या आरएमबी को 25 फीसदी महंगा करता है तो उसे अपनी 2.15 फीसदी जीडीपी वृद्घि दर गंवानी होगी। दुनिया को उबारने में चीन का बड़ा हाथ है, इसलिए यह गिरावट उन देशों को भारी पड़ेगी जो मंदी से परेशान हैं और चीन उनका बड़ा बाजार है। इन देशों में आस्ट्रेलिया व न्यूजीलैंड प्रमुख होंगे। इस सबके बाद भी दुनिया में यह मानने वाले बहुत नहीं हैं कि ताकतवर युआन महाबली की समस्याएं हल कर देगा। अमेरिका में बचत शून्य है और निर्यात ध्वस्त। जिसे ठीक करने में युआन की कीमत की मामूली भूमिका होगी। अलबत्ता इतना जरूर है कि भारत, ताईवान, कोरिया, मलेशिया जैसों को बाजारबली चीन की प्रतिस्पर्धा से कुछ राहत मिल जाएगी। दुनिया का सबसे सफल युद्ध वह है, जिसमें शत्रु को बिना लड़े पराजित कर दिया जाता है। ..यही तो कहा था ढाई हजार साल पहले चीन के प्रख्यात रणनीतिकार सुन त्जू ने। चीन ने दुनिया के बाजार को बड़ी सफाई के साथ बिना लड़े जीत कर सुन त्जू को सही साबित कर दिया। पूरी दुनिया युआन की खींचतान का नतीजा जानने को बेचैन है। नतीजा वक्त बताएगा, लेकिन दिख यह ही रहा है कि बाजार में खेल के नियम फिलहाल बीजिंग से तय होंगे। चीन अपनी शर्तो पर ही युआन के तूफान पर लगाम लगाएगा, क्योंकि भारी कर्ज और ध्वस्त वित्तीय तंत्र के कारण दुनिया के महाबलियों की तिजोरियां तली तक खाली हैं, जबकि चीन अपनी कमजोर मुद्रा के साथ इस समय महाशक्तिशाली है। दुनिया का ताजा आर्थिक विकास मेड इन चाइना है, जबकि दुनिया का ताजा आर्थिक विनाश मेड इन अमेरिका और यूरोप।.. जाहिर है कि दुनिया मूर्ख नहीं है अर्थात वह विकास को ही चुनेगी, यानी चीन की ही शर्ते सुनेगी।
Friday, April 16, 2010
Elections still can be fixed, even if voting machines can't
When I cast my vote, does the machine record it properly? And how would I know? That’s a great question. Then there's also the question of whether electronic receipts would expose who voted for whom.
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There has been no lack of controversy over electronic voting machines in recent years. What started out as a technological progression of convenience in casting and counting ballots has turned out to be a giant argument of security, anonymity and the old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Just the other day El Paso County Judge Anthony Cobos put an item on the regular agenda to propose purchasing electronic voting machines that produce a receipt after a ballot is cast. Seems pretty simple, right? Not really.
I’m sure you remember as well as I do the controversy that has surrounded our foray into electronic voting, but do you know the history? Let’s review.
The first thing you need to know is that in the voting machine industry the touch screen type of ballot casting system you use is referred to as a Direct Recording Electronic voting system, or a “DRE” if you want to sound cool the next time you run into an elections department head. If you trust the government they’ll tell you that way back in 1996 a whopping 7.7 percent of Americans cast their ballot on a DRE voting machineThe machines at that time were approved sparingly by state governments. Remember, the Constitution provides for the states to conduct elections, which means they are responsible for setting the rules. That all changed in 2002. Why?
The infamous “hanging chads” of the 2000 election convinced Congress to pass the Help America Vote Act of 2002. While the act did not require every precinct in the nation to use DRE voting systems, it pretty much made it the most viable option for states to comply with the new standards. The government even made money available to municipalities to make the switch all that much easier. Wikipedia has pretty decent rundown of the requirements put forth in the act. [link
The presidential election in 2004 was the first major test of the new machines. One of the major manufacturers of DRE voting systems was Diebold, Inc. Their CEO, Walden O'Dell, announced in August of 2003 that he was a fundraiser for then-President George W. Bush. Needless to say a storm of controversy has since surrounded not just Diebold-produced machines, but all DRE voting machines. Shortly thereafter charges of being able to hack the DRE machines with MacGyver-like skills and tools surged through the media, convincing almost everyone who had lost their election that they had been cheated.
Using the simplest historical high points, that’s how we find ourselves here. Feel free to rage about your personal experiences with DRE machines or the vast right wing conspiracy in the comments section below. However, do know that I didn’t steal your vote, invent the machines or ask the State of Texas to approve them. But go ahead and call me an asshole if it makes you feel better.
We now find ourselves with a question of how to authenticate our election results so that we know the winner is really the winner.
We could go back to optical scan sheets or paper ballots. They leave the often sought “paper trail” people are so sure will keep all elections secure. The initial problem with both options is the possibility of someone casting an “over vote.” An over vote occurs when a voter marks more than one candidate for a particular office. This results in the vote being thrown out given that it cannot be determined what the voter’s intent was. This was the exact problem they faced in 2000 in Florida. You can’t over vote on a DRE machine – it simply won’t let you.
The DRE machine prevents the events of Florida from recurring, but it doesn’t make any of us feel better about what happens when we electronically cast our vote. When I cast my vote, does the machine record it properly? And how would I know?
That’s a great question. A question you should have also been asking about your old paper ballots as well.
There’s no guarantee that when you take your paper ballot and put it in the ballot box as you leave that it will be counted later that night at all. Voter fraud using paper ballots is historically the most common way of stealing an election by the sheer amount of time the system has been around. Let me explain how simply this can be done.
All one needs to do to compromise a paper ballot system is to have anyone in the process of transporting the ballot box or handling the ballots on the take. Paper ballots are only counted to make sure they match up with the number of voters on that precinct’s register. At any point a new batch of ballots that have been pre-marked and of the same count can be substituted. You have no way of knowing if this happens. There is zero chance for you to verify that your vote was accurately cast. You can only check the voter rolls after the election to see if they have you marked as having voted in the last election. Nobody knows but you how you voted. If you think they got your vote wrong, what proof do you have of it? None, zero, nada – when you drop that ballot in that box you are as helpless in the process as when you cast your ballot on a DRE machine. You have no real “paper trail” with paper ballots. Your “I Voted” sticker doesn’t count, either.
Ah, but where does one get a paper ballot? They must be impossible to replicate and are under strict lock and key at all times, right? Nope. I used to have stacks of the different kinds of ballots from all around the country in my office in Washington, D.C. I simply called up the FEC and state elections offices and asked them for samples because I spent my days on the road working on getting people registered to vote and trained on how to use a voting machine. They were always more than happy to help.
I had provisional ballots, ex-pat ballots, absentee ballots, optical scan ballots and regular paper ballots. The only difference was that the optical scan and paper ballots didn’t have the printed progressive numbers below the perforated edge. A quick trip to any print shop or a person with a good number stamp could knock out thousands of valid-looking paper ballots in a day. Besides, they are quite easy to replicate. We’re not exactly talking about the new $20 bill here, are we?
Going back to the paper ballots would also mean we spent a lot of money on DRE machines we can’t use anymore. So what is a county government to do?
Well, maybe they could buy new DRE machines that print out a receipt of your vote. This doesn’t solve the problem of abandoning a bunch of expensive DRE machines, but it does appear to leave a “paper trail.” Are there any drawbacks to this perfect solution? Yes.
The folks in Ohio have required that the machines spit out a receipt of a cast ballot and have run into a very disturbing problem – people can see who voted for whom!If you’re too lazy to click the link, I’ll explain. When a person casts their vote the computer must keep a record of it, obviously. When giving you a receipt it must mark that receipt in some manner that allows someone to go back and verify the ticket against the computer. A “time stamp” is the most common method of validating the receipt. Obviously the elections department retains a copy of the receipts on their system because it is what tallies the votes. All anyone has to do is get that tally and compare the time stamp to the registrar’s book. They match up the time people came in and the vote cast at that time and they know exactly how you voted. So much for a secret ballot, I guess. Anybody who has those two pieces of information has a lot of power.
Critics of the DRE voting machines giving out a receipt also point out that the receipts don’t go home with the voter as many assume. They go into a ballot box at the polling place and are considered the official count. Again, there’s no guarantee that the computer didn’t print one thing and tally another. Then there’s the whole problem with the receipts being corrupted, lost or counterfeited. You still have no record of your vote.
Basically what I’m getting to here at the end of this journey is that there isn’t currently a full proof solution on the table. We are left to either accept the imperfect methods in front of us, or keep searching. I guess what I’m saying is that if you aren’t busy, there could be a lucrative market out there for a better ballot casting and counting system.
Any change to be made at the municipal level would have to take a basic principal of change into account. Is the solution that much more secure for the cost? If the solution costs a lot of money and isn’t that much more secure, then we should probably wait until the right system comes along before we make a move.
The only request I have is that when we do find a new system – we vote on it.
The Future of our Televisions
Television has changed a lot over the years--from black-and-white tube sets to Technicolor consoles to plasma and LCD high-definition TVs.
But the medium is still evolving. Tech companies are producing bigger (yet thinner) TV screens and immersive, customizable viewing experiences with Internet connectivity, widgets, and apps; and broadcasters are looking at ways to move beyond high-definition.
We still have a long way to go before our home entertainment systems look like something out of Minority Report, but some of the new technologies are pretty impressive: 3D TV that approximates what you'd get in a movie theater, multiple monitors designed to present a wall-size picture, and ultra-definition resolution are just some of the innovations you can look forward to.
We spoke with representatives of Samsung, one of the leaders in the television industry, about what TVs of the future might have in store for consumers. Here's what they told us.
3D Television
When tech companies tried to make "3D TV" the catch-phrase of CES 2010, many reviewers were skeptical. What's the demand for 3D TV? How many people want to don a pair of expensive and dorky-looking glasses just to watch TV? Is there enough 3D content out there for 3D TV to be more than an expensive curiosity?
Scott Birnbaum, vice president of Samsung's LCD business, says that the demand for 3D TV will skyrocket in the next couple of years, fueled by televised sports. ESPN plans to broadcast this year's soccer World Cup (which is being held in South Africa) in 3D.
If you're unsure whether a 3D TV is a good investment, you may be reassured to learn that 3D TVs can handle 2D video just fine; also, Samsung's 3D TV can convert 2D content into "3D" content (that is, content with simulated depth, but not "real" 3D content). In addition, Samsung has formed a "global strategic partnership" with DreamWorks Animation, the studio that produced such 3D features as Monsters vs Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon, to make 3D television more feasible, with Samsung producing the hardware and DreamWorks producing the content.
Sony plans to introduce its 3D TVs in Japan on June 10, and will start selling 3D TVs worldwide at around the same time. Leaked reports indicate that LG Electronics will begin delivering full-array LED-backlit LCD 3D TVs in the near future. For its part, Panasonic has promised 3D Plasma TVs by this summer, and it launched one model in March at Best Buy.
Though a number of companies are launching 3D TVs this year, the industry faces quite a few unresolved issues. 3D shutter glasses, which usually come bundled with 3D Blu-ray disc players and 3D TVs, can be quite expensive on their own (around $100 for a low-end pair). In addition, some people may experience bad effects from watching 3D TV--the list includes teens, children, the elderly, pregnant women, sufferers of serious medical conditions, and individuals who are sleep-deprived or inebriated, according to Samsung's 3D TV Warning. And finally, 4 to 10 percent of the population can't even see 3D TV because they're unable to process stereoscopic imagery (optometrists say that the condition is treatable, however).
Samsung has produced a 3D display that lets you see the 3D effect without glasses, for the "Digital Out of Home" market (for example, for screens used on digital billboards and signage). The technology uses a lenticular lens to produce 3D effects that are visible without special glasses; initially advertisers will employ it to display ads in places like airports, as a novel way of catching the attention of passersby. Though this nonglasses technology is not as yet suited for home entertainment, it could be someday. And if 3D TV ever manages to ditch the glasses, it may really take off.
Superthin Bezels
LCD panels keep getting thinner and thinner, but what about those annoyingly thick screen bezels? Enter the Runco WindowWall, which Samsung developed for high-end home-theater enthusiast vendor Runco.
An LCD screen consists of two pieces of glass that must be bonded together around the edges, and this creates a certain amount of dead space where LCD two panels abut. Samsung has reduced the amount of dead space between contiguous panels to just 7.33mm, however, giving the WindowWall an almost seamless look.
The 1366-by-768-pixel panels in the WindowWall measure 46 inches diagonally. From close up you can see the 7.33mm-thick bezels between panels, but if you look at the whole picture from about 15 feet away, the big picture looks great.
The WindowWall is scalable and can consist of as few as four or as many as twenty screens. You can hook up the screens to display one image across all of the screens or to display something different on each screen. To make the system work in sync, however, you must have a display controller unit and power supply unit for every four screens.
TV manufacturers already can make huge, seamless LCD screens--but the WindowWall is a more economical product. For one thing, shipping a 92-inch screen costs a lot more than shipping four 46-inch screens does. Unfortunately, the technology isn't consumer-friendly at the moment: A nine-screen setup costs around $100,000.
Visible Light Communication
One day, you may be able to obtain customized information directly from your television's LED backlights, thanks to a new technology dubbed "Visible Light Communication." The LED lights transmit information by flickering at high frequencies; a device with a photodiode (for example, a cell phone) then picks up the transmitted signals.
According to Samsung, this new technology could have a profound impact on the future of TV, in part because it would allow advertisers to take a completely different approach to airing commercials.
Though Samsung says that products featuring Visible Light Communication won't arrive anytime soon, the technology has been demonstrated with working prototypes. The Nakagawa Laboratory of Tokyo's Keio University has done extensive research in Visible Light Communication, as well.
Ultra-Definition TV
Visible Light Communication, WindowWalls, and 3D TV aren't all that's in store for home-theater systems. TVs with 240Hz refresh rates and Internet connectivity are becoming increasingly common, and 480Hz sets are slated to arrive later this year. Farther down the road, ultra definition (with 3840-by-2160-pixel resolution in place of high definition's 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution) could make its way into your living room.
Ultra definition (UD) will become more critical as display sizes get larger, Birnbaum says. Samsung has demonstrated a UD 82-inch LCD panel, but UD content is not readily available yet, and as a result no market for the technology exists yet. Like HDTV, UDTV will be able to handle lesser (720p or 1080p) content.
A significant feature of ultra-definition television will be its zoom capability. As screens get bigger, viewers will be able to zoom in to get a close-up view of the action. "Imagine watching a football game, pausing the action, and zooming in on your own instant reply to 'make the call' on a questionable end-zone catch. UD will get viewers completely involved in the game," Birnbaum says.
So that's what awaits you in the future of television: an immersive viewer experience, personalized content, and huge screens. It looks as though Samsung and its fellow TV producers are out to make movie theaters obsolete. But much of this technology is still far ahead of the market--so you'll have to continue paying for movies for at least a couple more years.
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