Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence — NASA Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence

by
Rick Briggs
Roacs, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, California

Abstract

In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing. These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor.

But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1,000 years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old.

First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian Grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical implications of this equivalence will be given.

Semantic Nets
For the sake of comparison, a brief overview of semantic nets will be given, and examples will be included that will be compared to the Indian approach. After early attempts at machine translation (which were based to a large extent on simple dictionary look-up) failed in their effort to teach a computer to understand natural language, work in AI turned to Knowledge Representation.

Since translation is not simply a map from lexical item to lexical item, and since ambiguity is inherent in a large number of utterances, some means is required to encode what the actual meaning of a sentence is. Clearly, there must be a representation of meaning independent of words used. Another problem is the interference of syntax. In some sentences (for example active/passive) syntax is, for all intents and purposes, independent of meaning. Here one would like to eliminate considerations of syntax. In other sentences the syntax contributes to the meaning and here one wishes to extract it.

I will consider a "prototypical" semantic net system similar to that of Lindsay, Norman, and Rumelhart in the hopes that it is fairly representative of basic semantic net theory. Taking a simple example first, one would represent "John gave the ball to Mary" as in Figure 1. Here five nodes connected by four labeled arcs capture the entire meaning of the sentence. This information can be stored as a series of "triples":

give, agent, John

give, object, ball

give, recipient, Mary

give, time, past.

Note that grammatical information has been transformed into an arc and a node (past tense). A more complicated example will illustrate embedded sentences and changes of state:

John Mary

book past

Figure 1.

"John told Mary that the train moved out of the station at 3 o'clock."

As shown in Figure 2, there was a change in state in which the train moved to some unspecified location from the station. It went to the former at 3:00 and from the latter at 3:O0. Now one can routinely convert the net to triples as before.

The verb is given central significance in this scheme and is considered the focus and distinguishing aspect of the sentence. However, there are other sentence types which differ fundamentally from the above examples. Figure 3 illustrates a sentence that is one of "state" rather than of "event ." Other nets could represent statements of time, location or more complicated structures.

A verb, say, "give," has been taken as primitive, but what is the meaning of "give" itself? Is it only definable in terms of the structure it generates? Clearly two verbs can generate the same structure. One can take a set-theoretic approach and a particular give as an element of "giving events" itself a subset of ALL-EVENTS. An example of this approach is given in Figure 4 ("John, a programmer living at Maple St., gives a book to Mary, who is a lawyer"). If one were to "read" this semantic net, one would have a very long text of awkward English: "There is a John" who is an element of the "Persons" set and who is the person who lives at ADRI, where ADRI is a subset of ADDRESS-EVENTS, itself a subset of 'ALL EVENTS', and has location '37 Maple St.', an element of Addresses; and who is a "worker" of 'occupation 1'. . .etc."

The degree to which a semantic net (or any unambiguous, nonsyntactic representation) is cumbersome and odd-sounding in a natural language is the degree to which that language is "natural" and deviates from the precise or "artificial." As we shall see, there was a language spoken among an ancient scientific community that has a deviation of zero.

The hierarchical structure of the above net and the explicit descriptions of set-relations are essential to really capture the meaning of the sentence and to facilitate inference. It is believed by most in the AI and general linguistic community that natural languages do not make such seemingly trivial hierarchies explicit. Below is a description of a natural language, Shastric Sanskrit, where for the past millenia successful attempts have been made to encode such information.

Shastric Sanskrit

The sentence:

(1) "Caitra goes to the village." (graamam gacchati caitra)

receives in the analysis given by an eighteenth-century Sanskrit Grammarian from Maharashtra, India, the following paraphrase:

(2) "There is an activity which leads to a connection-activity which has as Agent no one other than Caitra, specified by singularity, [which] is taking place in the present and which has as Object something not different from 'village'."

The author, Nagesha, is one of a group of three or four prominent theoreticians who stand at the end of a long tradition of investigation. Its beginnings date to the middle of the first millennium B.C. when the morphology and phonological structure of the language, as well as the framework for its syntactic description were codified by Panini. His successors elucidated the brief, algebraic formulations that he had used as grammatical rules and where possible tried to improve upon them. A great deal of fervent grammatical research took place between the fourth century B.C and the fourth century A.D. and culminated in the seminal work, the Vaiakyapadiya by Bhartrhari. Little was done subsequently to advance the study of syntax, until the so-called "New Grammarian" school appeared in the early part of the sixteenth century with the publication of Bhattoji Dikshita's Vaiyakarana-bhusanasara and its commentary by his relative Kaundabhatta, who worked from Benares. Nagesha (1730-1810) was responsible for a major work, the Vaiyakaranasiddhantamanjusa, or Treasury of dejinitive statements of grammarians, which was condensed later into the earlier described work. These books have not yet been translated.

The reasoning of these authors is couched in a style of language that had been developed especially to formulate logical relations with scientific precision. It is a terse, very condensed form of Sanskrit, which paradoxically at times becomes so abstruse that a commentary is necessary to clarify it.

One of the main differences between the Indian approach to language analysis and that of most of the current linguistic theories is that the analysis of the sentence was not based on a noun-phrase model with its attending binary parsing technique but instead on a conception that viewed the sentence as springing from the semantic message that the speaker wished to convey. In its origins, sentence description was phrased in terms of a generative model: From a number of primitive syntactic categories (verbal action, agents, object, etc.) the structure of the sentence was derived so that every word of a sentence could be referred back to the syntactic input categories. Secondarily and at a later period in history, the model was reversed to establish a method for analytical descriptions. In the analysis of the Indian grammarians, every sentence expresses an action that is conveyed both by the verb and by a set of "auxiliaries." The verbal action (Icriyu- "action" or sadhyu-"that which is to be accomplished,") is represented by the verbal root of the verb form; the "auxiliary activities" by the nominals (nouns, adjectives, indeclinables) and their case endings (one of six).

The meaning of the verb is said to be both vyapara (action, activity, cause), and phulu (fruit, result, effect). Syntactically, its meaning is invariably linked with the meaning of the verb "to do". Therefore, in order to discover the meaning of any verb it is sufficient to answer the question: "What does he do?" The answer would yield a phrase in which the meaning of the direct object corresponds to the verbal meaning. For example, "he goes" would yield the paraphrase: "He performs an act of going"; "he drinks": "he performs an act of drinking," etc. This procedure allows us to rephrase the sentence in terms of the verb "to do" or one of its synonyms, and an object formed from the verbal root which expresses the verbal action as an action noun. It still leaves us with a verb form ("he does," "he performs"), which contains unanalyzed semantic information This information in Sanskrit is indicated by the fact that there is an agent who is engaged in an act of going, or drinking, and that the action is taking place in the present time.

Rather that allow the agent to relate to the syntax in this complex, unsystematic fashion, the agent is viewed as a one-time representative, or instantiation of a larger category of "Agency," which is operative in Sanskrit sentences. In turn, "Agency" is a member of a larger class of "auxiliary activities," which will be discussed presently. Thus Caitra is some Caitral or instance of Caitras, and agency is hierarchically related to the auxiliary activities. The fact that in this specific instance the agent is a third person-singular is solved as follows: The number category (singular, dual, or plural) is regarded as a quality of the Agent and the person category (first, second, or third) as a grammatical category to be retrieved from a search list, where its place is determined by the singularity of the agent.

The next step in the process of isolating the verbal meaning is to rephrase the description in such a way that the agent and number categories appear as qualities of the verbal action. This procedure leaves us with an accurate, but quite abstract formulation of the scntcnce: (3) "Caitra is going" (gacchati caitra) - "An act of going is taking place in the present of which the agent is no one other than Caitra qualified by singularity." (atraikatvaavacchinnacaitraabinnakartrko vartamaanakaa- liko gamanaanukuulo vyaapaarah:) (Double vowels indicate length.)

If the sentence contains, besides an agent, a direct object, an indirect object and/or other nominals that are dependent on the principal action of the verb, then in the Indian system these nominals are in turn viewed as representations of actions that contribute to the complete meaning of the sentence. However, it is not sufficient to state, for instance, that a word with a dative case represents the "recipient" of the verbal action, for the relation between the recipient and the verbal action itself requires more exact specification if we are to center the sentence description around the notion of the verbal action. To that end, the action described by the sentence is not regarded as an indivisible unit, but one that allows further subdivisions. Hence a sentence such as: (4) "John gave the ball to Mary" involves the verb Yo give," which is viewed as a verbal action composed of a number of auxiliary activities. Among these would be John's holding the ball in his hand, the movement of the hand holding the ball from John as a starting point toward Mary's hand as the goal, the seizing of the ball by Mary's hand, etc. It is a fundamental notion that actions themselves cannot be perceived, but the result of the action is observable, viz. the movement of the hand. In this instance we can infer that at least two actions have taken place:

(a) An act of movement starting from the direction of John and taking place in the direction of Mary's hand. Its Agent is "the ball" and its result is a union with Mary's hand.

(b) An act of receiving, which consists of an act of grasping whose agent is Mary's hand.

It is obvious that the act of receiving can be interpreted as an action involving a union with Mary's hand, an enveloping of the ball by Mary's hand, etc., so that in theory it might be difficult to decide where to stop this process of splitting meanings, or what the semantic primitives are. That the Indians were aware of the problem is evident from the following passage: "The name 'action' cannot be applied to the solitary point reached by extreme subdivision."

The set of actions described in (a) and (b) can be viewed as actions that contribute to the meaning of the total sentence, vix. the fact that the ball is transferred from John to Mary. In this sense they are "auxiliary actions" (Sanskrit kuruku-literally "that which brings about") that may be isolated as complete actions in their own right for possible further subdivision, but in this particular context are subordinate to the total action of "giving." These "auxiliary activities" when they become thus subordinated to the main sentence meaning, are represented by case endings affixed to nominals corresponding to the agents of the original auxiliary activity. The Sanskrit language has seven case endings (excluding the vocative), and six of these are definable representations of specific "auxiliary activities." The seventh, the genitive, represents a set of auxiliary activities that are not defined by the other six. The auxiliary actions are listed as a group of six: Agent, Object, Instrument, Recipient, Point of Departure, Locality. They are the semantic correspondents of the syntactic case endings: nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative and locative, but these are not in exact equivalence since the same syntactic structure can represent different semantic messages, as will be discussed below. There is a good deal of overlap between the karakas and the case endings, and a few of them, such as Point of Departure, also are used for syntactic information, in this case "because of". In many instances the relation is best characterized as that of the allo-eme variety.

To illustrate the operation of this model of description, a sentence involving an act of cooking rice is often quoted: (5) "Out of friendship, Maitra cooks rice for Devadatta in a pot, over a fire."

Here the total process of cooking is rendered by the verb form "cooks" as well as a number of auxiliary actions:

1. An Agent represented by the person Maitra

2. An Object by the "rice"

3. An Instrument by the "fire"

4. A Recipient by the person Devadatta

5. A Point of Departure (which includes the causal relationship) by the "friendship" (which is between Maitra and Devadatta)

6. The Locality by the "pot"

So the total meaning of the sentence is not complete without the intercession of six auxiliary actions. The action itself can be inferred from a change of the condition of the grains of rice, which started out being hard and ended up being soft.

Again, it would be possible to atomize the meaning expressed by the phrase: "to cook rice": It is an operation that is not a unitary "process", but a combination of processes, such as "to place a pot on the fire, to add fuel to the fire, to fan", etc. These processes, moreover, are not taking place in the abstract, but they are tied to, or "resting on" agencies that are associated with the processes. The word used for "tied to" is a form of the verbal root a-sri, which means to lie on, have recourse to, be situated on." Hence it is possible and usually necessary to paraphrase a sentence such as "he gives" as: "an act of giving residing in him." Hence the paraphrase of sentence (5) will be: (6) "There is an activity conducive to a softening which is a change residing in something not different from rice, and which takes place in the present, and resides in an agent not different from Maitra, who is specified by singularity and has a Recipient not different from Devadatta, an Instrument not different from.. .," etc.

It should be pointed out that these Sanskrit Grammatical Scientists actually wrote and talked this way. The domain for this type of language was the equivalent of today's technical journals. In their ancient journals and in verbal communication with each other they used this specific, unambiguous form of Sanskrit in a remarkably concise way.

Besides the verbal root, all verbs have certain suffixes that express the tense and/or mode, the person (s) engaged in the "action" and the number of persons or items so engaged. For example, the use of passive voice would necessitate using an Agent with an instrumental suffix, whereas the nonpassive voice implies that the agent of the sentence, if represented by a noun or pronoun, will be marked by a nominative singular suffix.

Word order in Sanskrit has usually no more than stylistic significance, and the Sanskrit theoreticians paid no more than scant attention to it. The language is then very suited to an approach that eliminates syntax and produces basically a list of semantic messages associated with the karakas.

An example of the operation of this model on an intransitive sentence is the following:

(7) Because of the wind, a leaf falls from a tree to the ground."

Here the wind is instrumental in bringing about an operation that results in a leaf being disunited from a tree and being united with the ground. By virtue of functioning as instrument of the operation, the term "wind" qualifies as a representative of the auxiliary activity "Instrument"; by virtue of functioning as the place from which the operation commences, the "tree" qualifies to be called "The Point of Departure"; by virtue of the fact that it is the place where the leaf ends up, the "ground" receives the designation "Locality". In the example, the word "leaf" serves only to further specify the agent that is already specified by the nonpassive verb in the form of a personal suffix. In the language it is rendered as a nominative case suffix. In passive sentences other statements have to be made. One may argue that the above phrase does not differ in meaning from "The wind blows a leaf from the tree," in which the "wind" appears in the Agent slot, the "leaf" in the Object slot. The truth is that this phrase is transitive, whereas the earlier one is intransitive. "Transitivity" can be viewed as an additional feature added to the verb. In Sanskrit this process is often accomplished by a suffix, the causative suffix, which when added to the verbal root would change the meaning as follows: "The wind causes the leaf to fall from the tree," and since English has the word "blows" as the equivalent of "causes to fall" in the case of an Instrument "wind," the relation is not quite transparent. 

Therefore, the analysis of the sentence presented earlier, in spite of its manifest awkwardness, enabled the Indian theoreticians to introduce a clarity into their speculations on language that was theretofore un- available. Structures that appeared radically different at first sight become transparent transforms of a basic set of elementary semantic categories.

It is by no means the case that these analyses have been exhausted, or that their potential has been exploited to the full. On the contrary, it would seem that detailed analyses of sentences and discourse units had just received a great impetus from Nagesha, when history intervened: The British conquered India and brought with them new and apparently effective means for studying and analyzing languages. The subsequent introduction of Western methods of language analysis, including such areas of research as historical and structural linguistics, and lately generative linguistics, has for a long time acted as an impediment to further research along the traditional ways. Lately, however, serious and responsible research into Indian semantics has been resumed, especially at the University of Poona, India. The surprising equivalence of the Indian analysis to the techniques used in applications of Artificial Intelligence will be discussed in the next section.

Equivalence

A comparison of the theories discussed in the first section with the Indian theories of sentence analysis in the second section shows at once a few striking similarities. Both theories take extreme care to define minute details with which a language describes the relations between events in the natural world. In both instances, the analysis itself is a map of the relations between events in the universe described. In the case of the computer-oriented analysis, this mapping is a necessary prerequisite for making the speaker's natural language digestible for the artificial processor; in the case of Sanskrit, the motivation is more elusive and probably has to do with an age-old Indo-Aryan preoccupation to discover the nature of the reality behind the the impressions we human beings receive through the operation of our sense organs. Be it as it may, it is a matter of surprise to discover that the outcome of both trends of thinking-so removed in time, space, and culture-have arrived at a representation of linguistic events that is not only theoretically equivalent but close in form as well. The one superficial difference is that the Indian tradition was on the whole, unfamiliar with the facility of diagrammatic representation, and attempted instead to formulate all abstract notions in grammatical sentences. In the following paragraphs a number of the parallellisms of the two analyses will be pointed out to illustrate the equivalence of the two systems.

Consider the sentence: "John is going." The Sanskrit paraphrase would be

"An Act of going is taking place in which the Agent is 'John' specified by singularity and masculinity."

If we now turn to the analysis in semantic nets, the event portrayed by a set of triples is the following:

1. "going events, instance, go (this specific going event)"

2. "go, agent, John"

3. "go, time, present."

The first equivalence to be observed is that the basic framework for inference is the same. John must be a semantic primitive, or it must have a dictionary entry, or it must be further represented (i.e. "John, number, 1" etc.) if further processing requires more detail (e.g. "HOW many people are going?"). Similarly, in the Indian analysis, the detail required in one case is not necessarily required in another case, although it can be produced on demand (if needed). The point to be made is that in both systems, an extensive degree of specification is crucial in understanding the real meaning of the sentence to the extent that it will allow inferences to be made about the facts not explicitly stated in the sentence

The basic crux of the equivalence can be illustrated by a careful look at sentence (5) noted in Part II.

"Out of friendship, Maitra cooks rice for Devadatta in a pot over a fire "

The semantic net is supplied in Figure 5. The triples corresponding to the net are:

cause, event, friendship

friendship, objectl, Devadatta

friendship, object2, Maitra

cause, result cook

cook, agent, Maitra

cook, recipient, Devadatta

cook, instrument, fire

cook, object, rice

cook, on-lot, pot.

The sentence in the Indian analysis is rendered as follows:

The Agent is represented by Maitra, the Object by "rice," the Instrument by "fire," the Recipient by "Devadatta," the Point of Departure (or cause) by "friendship" (between Maitra and Devadatta), the Locality by "pot."

Since all of these syntactic structures represent actions auxiliary to the action "cook," let us write %ook" uext to each karakn and its sentence representat(ion:

cook, agent, Maitra

cook, object, rice

cook, instrument, fire

cook, recipient, Devadatta

cook, because-of, friendship

friendship, Maitra, Devadatta

cook, locality, pot.

The comparison of the analyses shows that the Sanskrit sentence when rendered into triples matches the analysis arrived at through the application of computer processing. That is surprising, because the form of the Sanskrit sentence is radically different from that of the English. For comparison, the Sanskrit sentence is given here: Maitrah: sauhardyat Devadattaya odanam ghate agnina pacati.

Here the stem forms of the nouns are: Muitra-sauhardya- "friendship," Devadatta -, odana- "gruel," ghatu- "pot," agni- "fire' and the verb stem is paca- "cook". The deviations of the stem forms occuring at the end of each word represent the change dictated by the word's semantic and syntactic position. It should also be noted that the Indian analysis calls for the specification of even a greater amount of grammatical and semantic detail: Maitra, Devadatta, the pot, and fire would all be said to be qualified by "singularity" and "masculinity" and the act of cooking can optionally be expanded into a number of successive perceivable activities. Also note that the phrase "over a fire" on the face of it sounds like a locative of the same form as "in a pot." However, the context indicates that the prepositional phrase describes the instrument through which the heating of the rice takes place and, therefore, is best regarded as an instrument semantically cause.

Of course, many versions of semantic nets have been proposed, some of which match the Indian system better than others do in terms of specific concepts and structure. The important point is that the same ideas are present in both traditions and that in the case of many proposed semantic net systems it is the Indian analysis which is more specific.

A third important similarity between the two treatments of the sentence is its focal point which in both cases is the verb. The Sanskrit here is more specific by rendering the activity as a "going-event", rather than "ongoing." This procedure introduces a new necessary level of abstraction, for in order to keep the analysis properly structured, the focal point ought to be phrased: "there is an event taking place which is one of cooking," rather than "there is cooking taking place", in order for the computer to distinguish between the levels of unspecified "doing" (vyapara) and the result of the doing (phala).

A further similarity between the two systems is the striving for unambiguity. Both Indian and AI schools en-code in a very clear, often apparently redundant way, in order to make the analysis accessible to inference. Thus, by using the distinction of phala and vyapara, individual processes are separated into components which in term are decomposable. For example, "to cook rice" was broken down as "placing a pot on the fire, adding fuel, fanning, etc." Cooking rice also implies a change of state, realized by the phala, which is the heated softened rice. Such specifications are necessary to make logical pathways, which otherwise would remain unclear. For example, take the following sentence:

"Maitra cooked rice for Devadatta who burned his mouth while eating it."

The semantic nets used earlier do not give any information about the logical connection between the two clauses. In order to fully understand the sentence, one has to be able to make the inference that the cooking process involves the process of "heating" and the process of "making palatable." 

The Sanskrit grammarians bridged the logical gap by the employment of the phalu/ vyapara distinction. Semantic nets could accomplish the same in a variety of ways:

1. by mapping "cooking" as a change of state, which would involve an excessive amount of detail with too much compulsory inference;

2. by representing the whole statement as a cause (event-result), or

3. by including dictionary information about cooking. A further comparison between the Indian system and the theory of semantic nets points to another similarity: The passive and the active transforms of the same sentence are given the same analysis in both systems. In the Indian system the notion of the "intention of the speaker" (tatparya, vivaksa) is adduced as a cause for distinguishing the two transforms semantically. The passive construction is said to emphasize the object, the nonpassive emphasizes the agent. But the explicit triples are not different. This observation indicates that both systems extract the meaning from the syntax.

Finally, a point worth noting is the Indian analysis of the intransitive phrase (7) describing the leaf falling from the tree. The semantic net analysis resembles the Sanskrit analysis remarkably, but the latter has an interesting flavor. Instead of a change from one location to another, as the semantic net analysis prescribes, the Indian system views the process as a uniting and disuniting of an agent. This process is equivalent to the concept of addition to and deletion from sets. A leaf falling to the ground can be viewed as a leaf disuniting from the set of leaves still attached to the tree followed by a uniting with (addition to) the set of leaves already on the ground. This theory is very useful and necessary to formulate changes or statements of state, such as "The hill is in the valley."

In the Indian system, inference is very complete indeed. There is the notion that in an event of "moving", there is, at each instant, a disunion with a preceding point (the source, the initial state), and a union with the following point, toward the destination, the final state. This calculus-like concept fascillitates inference. If it is stated that a process occurred, then a language processor could answer queries about the state of the world at any point during the execution of the process.

As has been shown, the main point in which the two lines of thought have converged is that the decomposition of each prose sentence into karalca-representations of action and focal verbal-action, yields the same set of triples as those which result from the decomposition of a semantic net into nodes, arcs, and labels. It is interesting to speculate as to why the Indians found it worthwhile to pursue studies into unambiguous coding of natural language into semantic elements. It is tempting to think of them as computer scientists without the hardware, but a possible explanation is that a search for clear, unambigous understanding is inherent in the human being.

Let us not forget that among the great accomplishments of the Indian thinkers were the invention of zero, and of the binary number system a thousand years before the West re-invented them.

Their analysis of language casts doubt on the humanistic distinction between natural and artificial intelligence, and may throw light on how research in AI may finally solve the natural language understanding and machine translation problems.

References
Bhatta, Nagesha (1963) Vaiyakarana-Siddhanta-Laghu-Manjusa, Benares (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office).

Nilsson, Nils J. Principles of Artificial Intelligence. Palo Alto: Tioga Publishing Co

Bhatta, Nagesha (1974) Parama-Lalu-Manjusa Edited by Pandit Alakhadeva Sharma, Benares (Chowkhambha Sanskrit Series Office).

Rumelhart, D E. & D A. Norman (1973) Active Semantic Networks as a model of human memory. IJCAI.

Wang, William S-Y (1967) "Final Administrative Report to the National Science Foundation." Project for Machine Translation. University of California, Berkeley. (A biblzographical summary of work done in Berkeley on a program to translate Chinese.)

[THE AI MAGAZINE Spring, 1985 #39]

(NASA)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- कोई भी मूल्य एवं संस्कृति तब तक जीवित नहीं रह सकती जब तक वह आचरण में नहीं है.

रक्षाबंधन, स्वतन्त्रता दिवस, अण्णा हजारे

प्यारे दोस्तों,
आप सभी को रक्षाबंधन के अवसर पर मेरा प्यार और शुभेच्छा. मैं मज़े में हूँ और आशा करता हूँ कि आप सभी स्वस्थ एवं कुशल होंगे.

रक्षाबंधन का ऐतिहासिक महत्व तो आप सबको पता ही होगा. दशावतार में वर्णित वामनावतार के समय लक्ष्मी जी राजा बाली के घर में निवास कर रहीं थीं और उन्होंने श्रवण पूर्णिमा के दिन बाली को अपना भाई मानकर प्रथम बार रक्षा सूत्र बांधा था और उसी कारण वामन भगवान ने बाली को न मारकर उसे पाताल का राजा बनाकर भेज दिया था. महाभारत में भी द्रौपदी के प्रति श्री कृष्ण का भाई जैसा प्रेम जगत में भाई-बहन के पवित्र बंधन का प्रतीक माना गया.

इधर रक्षा बंधन के समय देश में हलचल मची हुई है. दो दिन बाद स्वतन्त्रता दिवस है और अगले दिन से श्री अण्णा हजारे जी जन- प्रतिनिधियों द्वारा तैयार जनलोकपाल विधेयक लागू करवाने के लिए अनशन आरम्भ करने वाले हैं. दिल्ली में धारा १४४ लगा दी गई है. प्रशासन सदा की तरह एक बेकार सा अपूर्ण विधेयक लाकर ये दिखाना चाहता है कि उसने भ्रष्टाचार को मिटाने के लिए एक विधेयक बना दिया है.

किन्तु मोटे तौर पर हम देख रहे हैं कि इसमें कई कमियां हैं. जिसके फलस्वरूप हम कलमाड़ी, राजा, कनिमोड़ी जैसे लोगों पर जांच नहीं कर पायेंगे और आदर्श घोटाला, खनन घोटाला आदि भी कभी पकड़ में नहीं आयेंगे.

मेरी ईश्वर से विनती है कि श्री अण्णा हजारे अपने इस अभियान में सफल हों.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- कोई भी मूल्य एवं संस्कृति तब तक जीवित नहीं रह सकती जब तक वह आचरण में नहीं है.

Mining bill gets it right

 Sustainable mining is an oxymoron. Environmentalists will tell you this. Mining—coal to limestone—takes away forests, devastates mountains and leaves the land pockmarked. It also destroys livelihoods of people and displaces them. Worse, modern, mechanised mining takes away livelihood based on land but does not replace it with local employment—all estimates show that direct employment in the mining sector has fallen sharply. It provides wealth, but not for local development.
This is where the dilemma kicks in. There is also no doubt that the nation will need to mine its natural resources for industrial development and saying no will not work. Therefore, the solution to mining is to find ways in which devastation to the environment is minimised. The solution is also to create a framework that will share the benefits of the resource with poor communities living in these rich lands. It is a challenge.
What should be the strategy to meet this challenge? The answers are difficult and diverse. But one part (small, but not insignificant) is to establish the principle that people will be stakeholders in the development of the natural mineral resource. This is not a new idea but is certainly neglected and discredited. In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that private leases over mines would not be allowed in Schedule V areas, which are predominantly tribal. The Samata judgement, as it is known, was named after the tribal activist group, which had taken the matter to the court on behalf of Nimalapedu village, where the Birlas wanted land for calcite mining. The court ruled that in these scheduled areas the land owned by government could not be given to a non-tribal entity. However, if after due process—permission from the state governor—mining was allowed, then the entity would have to follow conditions set to safeguard sharing of benefits and protect the environment. The court ruled that “at least 20 per cent of the net profits should be set apart as a permanent fund for community use”. But this judgement was an unacceptable game changer for the fast-growing and powerful mining sector. It was overturned or simply sidestepped.
In 2008, the Centre for Science and Environment’s report, Rich Lands, Poor People: is ‘sustainable’ mining possible?, discussed the global practice and imperative of sharing benefits with people. This was also the time when the country was beginning to revisit the provisions of outdated Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957. In 2006, the Hoda Committee, named after its chairperson Anwarul Hoda, the then member of the Planning Commission, was formed to recommend changes in the mining policy. The committee’s report, unfortunately, was steeped in the interests of the mining industry as it saw no need for sustainability (except for some weak and inconsequential words) and certainly had no time to waste on people’s interests.
But for once better sense prevailed. The Hoda report was junked as the Union ministry for mines began work on the new draft bill, amending the 1957 Act. This draft amendment included, for the first time, a provision for sharing benefits with the people. The first, and the most logical, idea was to create a system of granting equity (26 per cent) in companies. This would, as suggested by the Supreme Court, work towards build local control over mining companies and shareholders with interests in sustainability. But this idea, too, was killed. Mining companies led by their powerful lobbies, like FIMI, CII and FICCI, launched a virulent attack on the very principle of “benefit sharing”. Their argument was that if this bill went through then tribals, flush with money, would take to drinking and “beat up their wives”. The contempt for people was open and deplorable.
Finally, after much pushing and shoving, the draft bill went to the Group of Ministers (GoM) in June 2011. The draft included the provision for profit-sharing. But even at this last minute there was pressure to dilute the provision. The confidential note for the GoM ingeniously suggested that the current provision of royalty was sufficient. There was no need to introduce any direct payment to communities.
Once again, better sense prevailed. The GoM has reportedly insisted that the principle of benefit-sharing must not be diluted. But to make it easier to compute benefits it decided to ask for 100 per cent of the royalty paid on minerals (doubling current royalty) to be given to local communities through the district-level fund—roughly Rs 4,500 crore, and higher than what would have been given through profit-sharing. This would not apply to the nationalised coal sector, which would pay 26 per cent of the profit. Now the detailing of the fund needs to be worked out.
This is the first time the concept of natural resource rent is being established in the country. In this age of green accounting the wealth of a nation should be re-measured in terms of its value to equity and sustainability. Green growth is fundamentally about inclusive growth. So this baby step towards benefit-sharing is one that needs to be watched and supported.
(Sunita Narain)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- कोई भी मूल्य एवं संस्कृति तब तक जीवित नहीं रह सकती जब तक वह आचरण में नहीं है.

Useful Websites Worth a Bookmark!

The sites mentioned below, well most of them, solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web addresses (URLs) that you can easily learn by heart thus saving you a trip to Google.

01. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.

02. bounceapp.com – for capturing full length screenshots of web pages.

03. goo.gl – shorten long URLs and convert URLs into QR codes.
04. untiny.me – find the original URLs that’s hiding behind a short URLs.
05. localti.me – know more than just the local time of a city
06. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.
07. topsy.com – a better search engine for twitter.
08. fb.me/AppStore – search iOS app without launching iTunes.
09. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.
10. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents.
11. woorank.com – everything you wanted to know about a website.
12. virustotal.com – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
13. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching  – see more wolfram tips.



14. printwhatyoulike.com – print web pages without the clutter.
15. joliprint.com – reformats news articles and blog content as a newspaper.

16. isnsfw.com – when you wish to share a NSFW page but with a warning.

17. e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.
18. coralcdn.org – if a site is down due to heavy traffic, try accessing it through coral CDN.
19. random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.
20. mywot.com – check the trust level of any website – example.

21. viewer.zoho.com – Preview PDFs and Presentations directly in the browser.
22. tubemogul.com – simultaneously upload videos to YouTube and other video sites.

23. truveo.com – the best place for searching web videos.
24. scr.im – share you email address online without worrying about spam.
25. spypig.com – now get read receipts for your email.

26. sizeasy.com – visualize and compare the size of any product.
27. whatfontis.com – quickly determine the font name from an image.
28. fontsquirrel.com – a good collection of fonts – free for personal and commercial use.
29. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.

30. tineye.com – this is like an online version of Google Googles.
31. iwantmyname.com – helps you search domains across all TLDs.
32. tabbloid.com – your favorite blogs delivered as PDFs.
33. join.me – share you screen with anyone over the web.
34. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs and images – see other OCR tools.


35. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.
36. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.

37. pastebin.com – a temporary online clipboard for your text and code snippets.
38. polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.
39. awesomehighlighter.com – easily highlight the important parts of a web page.
40. typewith.me – work on the same document with multiple people.
41. whichdateworks.com – planning an event? find a date that works for all.

42. everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.


43. warrick.cs.odu.edu – you’ll need this when your bookmarked web pages are deleted.


44. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.

45. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.
46. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.
47. youtube.com/leanback – enjoy a never ending stream of YouTube videos in full-screen.
48. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.
49. wordle.net – quick summarize long pieces of text with tag clouds.
50. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.
51. kuler.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.

52. followupthen.com – setup quick reminders via email itself.

53. lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.
54. tempalias.com – generate temporary email aliases, better than disposable email.


55. pdfescape.com – lets you can quickly edit PDFs in the browser itself.

56. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.


57. feedmyinbox.com – get RSS feeds as an email newsletter.
58. isendr.com – transfer files without uploading to a server.
59. tinychat.com – setup a private chat room in micro-seconds.
60. privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.
61. flightaware.com – live flight tracking service for airports worldwide.
62. boxoh.com – track the status of any shipment on Google Maps – alternative.


63. chipin.com – when you need to raise funds online for an event or a cause.
64. downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?
65. example.com – this website can be used as an example in documentation.
66. whoishostingthis.com – find the web host of any website.
67. google.com/history – found something on Google but can’t remember it now?
68. errorlevelanalysis.com – find whether a photo is real or a photoshopped one.
69. google.com/dictionary – get word meanings, pronunciations and usage examples.
70. urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.
71. seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.
72. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.
73. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.
74. wobzip.org – unzip your compressed files online.
75. vocaroo.com – record your voice with a click.
76. scribblemaps.com – create custom Google Maps easily.
77. buzzfeed.com – never miss another Internet meme or viral video.
78. alertful.com – quickly setup email reminders for important events.
79. encrypted.google.com – prevent your ISP and boss from reading your search queries.
80. formspring.me – you can ask or answer personal questions here.
81. snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.
82. typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.
83. mailvu.com – send video emails to anyone using your web cam.
84. ge.tt – quickly send a file to someone, they can even preview it before downloading.
85. timerime.com – create timelines with audio, video and images.
86. stupeflix.com – make a movie out of your images, audio and video clips.
87. aviary.com/myna – an online audio editor that lets record, and remix audio clips online.
88. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online (review).

89. disposablewebpage.com – create a temporary web page that self-destruct.

90. namemytune.com – when you need to find the name of a song.


91. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3d.


92. snapask.com – use email on your phone to find sports scores, read Wikipedia, etc.
93. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.


94. livestream.com – broadcast events live over the web, including your desktop screen.
95. bing.com/images – automatically find perfectly-sized wallpapers for mobiles.


96. historio.us – preserve complete web pages with all the formatting.
97. dabbleboard.com – your virtual whiteboard.
98. whisperbot.com – send an email without using your own account.
99. sumopaint.com – an excellent layer-based online image editor.
100. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.
101. nutshellmail.com – Get your Facebook and Twitter streams in your inbox.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- कोई भी मूल्य एवं संस्कृति तब तक जीवित नहीं रह सकती जब तक वह आचरण में नहीं है.

European Conspiracy Against Vedic Culture

It is a fact that the stream of continuous invaders in India has always challenged the Vedic thoughts in order to fix their strong hold over the land and people. Vedic culture has withstood the challenges of each and every incursion of foreign elements and has retained its identity intact, often going through a process of rejuvenation and has kept the basic essentials much the same. No invading race or proselytizer exercise has ever succeeded in making any significant dent in the Vedic cultural aspect of universal thought.

There have been concentrated and planned attacks to eradicate Hinduism and consign it to a forgotten page of history book. Even the basic Aryan philosophy was distorted and misrepresented in a prejudiced and pre-planned arrangement. The very monism and the rare description of cosmological dogma were distorted by the use of jugglery of words and phrases. In the garb of simplification, the full freedom of worshippers was slighted and in the name of wrong and false worship, Hindu gods were condemned, something on the line of their own discarded and condemned gods. The concept of individual soul and reincarnation was unconceivable to these people and the concept of God remained an intellectual exercise, far away from the cry of the soul. The spiritual idea stood pagan to them.

It is unfortunate that a part of our English media and extra-territorial loyalists delight in act of distortion of the Vedic values and its relevance in modern day life of man and nation some like to paint the Vedic culture as world-negating and backward. The young generation is being misguided in the name of progress and progressive approach does progress mean going away from the base? No progress can be built without a strong foundation of Vedic culture.

Do not we have an absolute right to know our past especially the glory of Vedic age, so long suppressed from us? The general people want an access to it. Why should we be in so much haste of embracing modernity on global footage in the name of progress with growing applause? It may distract us from our extraordinary heritage, which we have to understand and withhold boldly to our best capability. We should be proud of our glorious past and built a glorious future for generation to come. Bharat has a rich history and a most elevated culture. We need to explore it and get it done by our own dedicated authors and not depend upon the motivated foreigners to speak to us about our mother country. Remember that Vedic culture is universal. It is the foundation and base on which a real progressive India can stand upon.

The Policy to DeHinduize is Born

The western scholars of missionary mindset along with the imperialist colonizers always reared an ambition of de-Hinduising Hindustan and westernizing the land for the cultivation of Christianity to “save people” The name of Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, Head of the Education Deptt. Of Br. India, in 1834 and Friedrich Max Muller, the German missionary scholar, tops the list. Max Muller wrote to the Duke of Argyll, the Secretary for State for India on December 1868, “India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again and the second conquest should be a conquest through education.” Lord Macaulay said, “We must form a class of persons who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons, Indian in blood and color but English in taste, in opinion, in mind and in intellect.”

prior to Macaulay, the Goan Inquisition under Alexia Dias Felear had committed immense atrocities on Hindus of Goa, Daman, Diu, and Vasai for about 250 years between 1560-1802 but an Italian Jesuit tried to built a bridge between Hindu and Christian societies. In 1608, Robert De Nobile, a Jesuit priest wore sacred thread, a knot and claimed he was a Brahmin from Rome. He learnt Tamil, Telegu and Sanskrit, wrote a Christian Sandhya Bandanam and also YeshurVeda. He called it; the fifth Veda .He took pains in acquiring knowledge of Hindu customs and rituals. Thus in this garb he snared simple Hindus and converted the largest harvest for Christians—87 Brahmins and a Lakh others. Forgery was his nature. Outwardly he retained all signs of Hinduism, sacred cord, oral caste mark on brow, a paste of ashes of sandalwood, and even wrote a Veda on Christianity.

There has been another ghastly side of the missionaries. They had already consigned to flames the biggest Alexandria library, housing about seven lakhs rolls. All the books of Gnostic Basilides, Porphyry’s 36 rolls and 27000 ancient documents were totally burned to ashes. St. John Chrysostom, the Father of Church proudly declared, ”Every trace of old philosophy and literature of ancient world has vanished from face of the earth.’ Missionaries planned to do, which they did to pagan cultures in Europe, the same in India. They destroyed traditional centres of learning, distorted history to create confusion among the various sections of Hindu society. The misinterpretation of Vedas, myth of Aryan Invasion Theory, putting Hindu epics in the category of myth and distortion of history was intended to drive a wedge between North and South and divide the country. Nevertheless we are thankful to the British rulers for, had they planned, they would have systematically destroyed all Hindu manuscripts as had been witnessed in the burning of Nalanda library which consisted of three sections—Ratna Sagar, Ratna Ranjak and Ratna Bandhu. The Britishers carefully collected and preserved the literature, saved it and paved way for a systematized work on them in Europe - Thanks to the rulers for this act of righteousness.

Today what we Indians consider to be something like progress, progressive but read what Macaulay means to say,”No Hindoo who has received an English education ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it as a matter of policy, but many profess themselves pure deists and some embrace Christianity.” How much confident and progressive was Macaulay when he declared, “It is my firm belief if our plan of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable class in Bengal 30 years hence” (The Shaping of Hindustan page 411)

The western game was well planned and its signs are evident even today after 63 long years of independence. English education flourishes at the cost of ignoring education in mother tongue all over the country... The dream of a progressive India still remains a very distant dream. Is it not because for providing temporal benefits to some people, we are out to destroy their faith in their age -old values?

The westerners were pragmatic and realistic. They planned their strategy well in advance .Their very first prerequisite was to get acquainted with Hindu ideology, society and culture. Reading and studying Sanskrit scriptures and Hindi language was the need of the day. So for the purpose dictionaries of local languages into English were edited. Indo-linguists and scholars like H.K.Wilson; J. T. Moles worth and many others agreeing with Macaulay came to his aid. As a result, Malayalam –English dictionary was prepared by Günter Stephenson and Marathi English dictionary was translated by Moles worth .In preface ,Moles worth writes, ‘It was undertaken for a desire to promote the propagation of the glorious gospel.”It was meant to conquer India once again through Education. Prof. Monier Williams was the author of Sanskrit- English Dictionary. He was the Professor of Sanskrit at the Oxford University. In 1878, he said that enormous territory of India has been committed to England for a great purpose - that every man, woman and child, from Cape Cameron to Himalaya Mountains, may be elevated, enlightened and Christianized. On May 2, 1877, he said that, ’the chief obstacle to spread Christianity in India is that these people are proud of their tradition and religion,” is it not a fact that pride in ones culture and religion is natural? It is instinctive. This is why Hindus are assertive and say, “We are proud to be Hindus.”

Formation of Institutions

For this very purpose educational institutions and universities were established. They also formed oriental societies to facilitate missionary propaganda and patronized many such institutions. In the series, Fort William College in Calcutta was formed in about 1800A.D. and translation into local languages was encouraged. This proved handy for the missionary work in common dialect to convert the people and platform and leaflets were flooded for the common masses with misleading truths about Hindu religion and its deities. They founded anti-Vedic and pro-Christian societies in order to de-Hinduism and Christianize the De-Hinduized ones. One such was Brahmo Samaj. Max Mullar, in September 1879, said, “There is a religious movement going on in India, the Brahma Samaj, which both in its origin and in its later development is mainly the result of European influences. It began with an attempt to bring the modern corrupt form of worship back to the purity and simplicity of the Vedas; and by ascribing to the Vedas the authority of a Divine revelation, it was hoped to secure that infallible authority without which no religion was supposed to be possible .How was that movement stopped and turned into a new channel? Simply by the publication of the Veda and by work of European scholars, such as Stevenson, Mill, Rosin, Wilson and others, who showed the natives what the Vedas really were and made them see the folly of their way?”

At the beginning the Samaj followed the chanting of Vedic richas in its meetings and accept the infallibility of the Vedas. Raja Ram Mohan Rai was the leading light who cherished Vedic ideals but also wanted some reforms. By 1848, the Vedic utilitarianism was superseded and western influence came in. Feeling of Hinduism faded away and forefathers were not remembered with pride. These people hesitated in mentioning the word “Brahma “even. The names of Hindu sages and seers were neglected. It was believed that since creation, there have never been men so learned as the Europeans. Fortunately there existed a line of thinkers like Dayanand , AryaSamaj, RKMission and Yogi Aurobindo who saved the fall and decline of Hinduism. Aurobindo said, ”The hollow worm-eaten outside of Hinduism, all crumbling so fatally, to some sudden and astonishing dissolution, do not frighten me. I find the soul of civilization alive, though sleeping.”

Devaluating the Hindu Gods

The Christian philosophy is said to be based on love and the phrase, Love thy neighbour as you love yourself” is the most significant one. European scholar Paul Deussen says, “The Gospels fix correctly as the highest law of morality, Love your neighbour as you love yourself. But why should I do so, since by the order of nature I feel pleasure and pain only in myself, not in my neighbour? The answer is not in the Bible but in the Vedas, in the great formula, Tat-Tvam-Asi which gives in three words, metaphysics and moral together, - ‘you are your neighbour”. (Easwarana: The Upanishads) This is monism of Vedas but the invaders had their own agenda.

MaxMuller declared that Hinduism is dead and dying religion, while Christianity is living and vibrant. He said,”The worship of Shiva or Vishnu and the other popular deities, is of the same, nay, in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship, of Jupiter, Apollo, and Minerva; it belongs to a stratum of thought which is long buried beneath our feet, it may live on like the lion and the tiger but the mere air of free thought and civilized life will extinguish it.’ (Westminster lectures on Missions December 1873)

The reality was different and the facts were otherwise. Zimmer says,”The gods were never dethroned in India, disintegrated, and dissolved as were the Greek deities in the days of Anaxagoras, Aristotle, and Democritus etc. Gods of Homer became laughable, were mocked as they were known for too much human love affairs and too much wrath - Hindus retained its anthropomorphic personification of cosmic gods force as vivid masks which alternately assist mind to comprehend that is manifest through them. They remained useful symbols, full of meaning and interest, served as guides and were accessible by rituals and Bhakti (devotion) “(Voice of Freedom page 106)

It has to be recollected that when whole of Bengal rose against British rule, Vande Matarama was chanted in the temple of Kalighat in Kolkata and goddess Kali was made a national symbol of destruction and death.

Echoing Macaulay’s views was another civil servant Edward Trevelyan. He attacked bitterly against Hindu belief of cosmology. What a fine understanding of Hindu philosophy, he had, when he said,” It is sufficient to prove that the world does not rest on back of the tortoise, or is composed of concentric circles of wine and cake and milk and so forth and their religion is gone (Virag Pachpore: The Indian Church? page 39) This quote refers to Post Vedic age belief, when Incarnation theory was accepted and divinity was seen even in small things like tortoise. The quote only means that it is God in His smallest form that bears the burden load of the Earth. God is great and omniscient.

The above quote will surely satisfy us in our quest as to why Max Muller chose to translate Vedas and other Hindu scriptures and with what intent.

The Great Conspiracy - AIT and Translation of Hindu scriptures

There is much more to tell. It was on December 1854, the Prussian ambassador Barron Von Bunsen became instrumental in arranging a meeting of the German MaxMuller with the English Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay. Germany and England were not on good terms. The East India Company agreed to pay Pound 200 per annum to Max Muller, the German national, for translation of Vedas and other Hindu scriptures. Then the annual salary of a British teacher was only pound 60. The German Max Muller accepted the offer in the interest of spreading Christianity in India. The company agreed to pay a sum of one lakh only in the way as he writes to his wife in his letter in July 1862. As a truly declared Christian, he writes, “All I can say is that I have read and heard the worst that can be said against our religion. I mean the true original teachings of the Christ. I feel that I am ready in mind, if not in body, to lay down my life for the truth of his teachings. All our difficulties arise from the doctrine of men and not from his doctrine.”

His friend P.B. Pusey in 1860 wrote to him, “Your work will form a new era in the efforts of the conversion of India and Oxford will have reason to be thankful that, by giving you a home, it will have facilitated a work of such primary and lasting importance for the conversion of India and which, by enabling us to compare that false religion with the true, illustrates the more than blessedness of what we enjoy.”’(Cradle of Civilization Page 12) Max Muller considered it God’s work to expose the roots of Hindu culture. He writes to his wife in December 1899, “I hope , I shall finish that work and I feel convinced that this edition of mine and the translation of the Vedas will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of that religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure is the only way of uprooting all that sprung from it during the last 3000 years. (The Life and letters of Max Muller 1902 vol.1-page 328)

”Now the Missionary man Max Muller was to present the Hindu religious scriptures before the world, something which was the privilege of Aryan seers and sages. Hindus were made to know their own scriptures through the missionary translators and not from their own seers and teachers or through their guidance.

There was no East India Company after 1857. By the time the company had revised its earlier commitment, and he was still satisfied to work on the project. Theodore Goldstucker says that he planned such a chronology of Vedas as Aryan invasion may be proved to occur only after the period of deluge as stated in the Bible and Aryans be established as a race ( Sacred Hymns of Brahmans ed. W. H. Allen page73)

Max Muller set the date of Rig Veda at only 1200 B.C. under Christen faith. The Christian belief current in those days was that the world was created at 9 A.M. on 23rd. October 4004 B.C. Bishop Ussher had declared it as the date of creation. The Holy Bible says that the human race began with Adam and Eve. Since their most direct descendents were among the Semitic tribe, Hebrew had to be the oldest language, then how can the Aryans be the possessors of the oldest culture? As no position is acceptable, lowering their culture, so the Vedic culture has to be of a later date and time. The cause of such facile conclusion and tailored theories, ignoring the facts of available history, was their commitment to Christianity.

There was great opposition among scholars. MaxMuller had to eventually disown the date he had ascribed and had to accept that “he put 1200 B.C. without any evidence whatsoever,” but the date continues still as a benchmark.

Dales, a U.S.A. historian challenged the proposed date and the findings to it. Wheeler, the political appointee of Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, was quick to retrace but not without a cunning. He amended and said that, “It cannot be proved that the invaders were Aryans. It is also possible that it might be completely wrong to conclude like it but however it is not entirely impossible” (Refer; In Search of Cradle of Civilization page 7-8) Max Muller was changing position regarding the dates of said Invasion. He said,” Whether Vedic hymns were written in 1000, 1500, or 2000 B.C or 3000B.C. no power on earth will ever be able to determine.”

Kenoyer says, ’we have no evidence for new population entering into sub-continent and replacing the indigenous people of the Indus valley” ‘From scholars like Langdon to Ranfrieve, the archaeological investigation accepted India as original homeland of Aryans and disapproved the A.I.T. of Max Muller. Thereafter Gordon Childe and Wheeler indicated that the Aryans may possibly be the invaders. Macoi was doubtful. Wheeler and Norman Brown sided with Max Muller and deliberately distorted the historical basis. Wheeler had to retrace and Childe was hesitant in naming Aryans. From Sir Wheeler to Stuart Piggott, there has been planned attempt to prove the AIT.

Max Muller was the master mind behind the Aryan Invasion Theory. He was the highly paid German employee of the East India Company. He intended to safeguard the rights of the foreigners on Indian soil to rule the country. So he planned to deny the Hindus of any political and moral ground to claim independence from the British proving that they too like them were outsiders and invaders .All of them were foreigners and invaders and being immigrants had claim on India. The then Viceroy Lord Curzon said that India had ever been the booty of foreign invaders and the British P.M. said,”We have as much right to be in India as anyone else except perhaps for the depressed class who are the native stock.’ (Koreroed Elst: Political aspects of the A. I. T, Debate page 49)The European political weapon; the A.I.T. questioned the very Aryan identity on their own land of birth. The loyalists and the Macaulay brand Indians began to justify the British presence and called it a reunion with the Aryan cousins

We all know well that people derive satisfaction in running down and humiliate their own brethren. Love to obey outsiders, to be patted by them is all they like...This was the general opinion prevailing then that Hindus are the most docile race, always willing to crawl in anticipation of being asked to bend. They liked to justify their slavery rather than offer any resistance. Friedrich Max Muller and Lord Macaulay successfully won the game. In independent India, an attempt was made to declare Sanskrit as a language of immigrants and therefore on par with Arabian and Persian languages, thus delegitimizing Sanskrit and deleting it in the 8th. Schedule of the constitution on the ground of its being a foreign language brought by the invading Aryans to India. and its effect was seen in the judgment on a writ petition (C) no 299 of 1989 by the bench of the Supreme Court Of India which delivered its historical judgment in favour of reinstating the teaching of Sanskrit in the syllabus of Delhi Board of CBSC on Oct. 4, 1994 The Board had treated Sanskrit on par with Persian and other foreign languages and ordered removal of its teaching which was in accordance to line of Macaulay but the supreme Court set aside the order. The press shied from publishing the reality and from taking the matter before the common man with full publicity.

Introducing the word Arya

So Max Muller became the first man in 1853, to introduce the word Aryan in the English and European usage applying it to racial and linguistic group .Later on he had to retreat and say that Arya means simply those who speak in Aryan language and Aryan grammar , whatever their colour, whatever their blood. There is nothing like Aryan blood, Aryan race, or Aryan eyes or hairs.” (Muller: Biography of words and the Home of Aryans)Vedas never speak of Arya in context to a race or language. It simply means, a gentleman. But Max Muller persisted with his concept of “Aryan language”There is a difference between language and race. They differ. They cannot be equated. Race is physical. Biological descent; language is cultural. Both have separate existence. But the fact stands that in n reference to Aryans, the two were equated right from the very start in the popular mind. Aryan race meant Aryan language also’ in this way the westerners assaulted the Vedic conception of universalism.

Fixing the Dates of Epics

Macaulay while setting the dates of Vedas had to alter the dates of other classical literatures, Ramayana and Mahabharata also. There are strong and sufficient evidences in these two epics to prove that Ramayana is older than Mahabharata and that Vedas are still very old. Swami Dayanand in “Light of Truth” presents a chart of rulers from Delhi king Prithviraj to Yudhisthir’s dynasty. It proves that the rule of Yudhisthira comes about 4099+885=4984Years. The astronomical date supports 3100 B.C. or close to it as the date of Mahabharata war... Post Vedic Sutric literature as contained in the works of Budhyana and Apasthamba and others refer to Rohini krttika transition in support of the astronomical date of 3100B.C. But the European scholars and colonial lobby of Macaulay invented their own arguments against history. They knew that to weaken a nation of its identity, one has to distort its ancient history. They declared that old traditions do not contribute proof of chronology of the Vedic hymns. This measurement was approved, though they were fully aware that their Bible was composed on the authority of verbal evidence of four or five centuries.

Lee Mee voiced against this wrong. He writes, ”Precious stones or durable material in gold, silver, bronze, marble, onyx or granite have h been used by most ancient peoples in an attempt to immortalize their achievements, not so, however, the Aryans. They turned to what may seem the most volatile and insubstantial material of all—the spoken word—and out of this bubble of air fashioned a monument which 30 perhaps 40 centuries later stands untouched by time or elements—Vedas remain recited by an unbroken chain of generation, travelling like a great wave throughout the living substance of the mind.”

Macaulay was determined to prove his Aryan Invasion Theory. He ignored the significance of Vedas as historical document and declared Vedas as mythology and theology but not as history. It is really strange that Europeans see relevance of history in their Christian scriptures, the Bible and treat Bible as history, the historical situation out of which the Old Testament and the Gospels grew.

Even they set aside the linguistic evidence to prove that the epics bear no historical evidence. These missionary scholars planned further to call these epics as myth and create doubt and confusion even on the existence of Rama and Krishna. We all know that the treatment of myth in the western experience has been negative. !8th. Century Greek and Roman heritage of pre-Christian religious stories; badly distorted and misshaped, were treated as myths. This word was used for all non-Jews and non-Christian cultural stories. On the other hand, the missionary scholars chose to place biblical and Christian stories in the category of history so the stories of Moses and Parting the Red Sea came as history unmindful of any chronological and textual evidences. It is strange that these very assaulters considered Ramayana and Mahabharata as myth despite enough archaeological and textual evidences. What else can we expect of these people who are out to DeHinduize Hindus in their own land? They used the term myth as a powerful weapon to minimize the effect of Hindu way of life; religious literature and sacred stories and to delegitimize the stories told to common folk of illiterate and ignorant people. All ancient seers, Manu, Parashar, Vyasa, Narada, Vashishtha etc. and even Rama and Krishna became mythic and therefore unreal to them. Vedas, Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Mahabharata, Ramayana all ancient literature of value became mythology, traditional narratives involving supernatural or imaginary persons and often embodying popular ideas on natural or social phenomena.

The mischievous propaganda proved so detrimental that in Independent India, the Question of Rama’ existence was raised and the present Ram Setu question reached the Supreme Court. The west has sown the poison and the sons of Macaulay want to reap the harvest to their benefit and vested interests.

Inventing the Dravidian – Aryan Divide

Bishop Robert Caldwell, a British Christian missionary in 1875, attempted a divide in Aryan life by calling Dravidians and Aryans as apart from each other. He said that the dark-skinned people living in the south and speaks Telegu, Tamil and Malayalam languages differ from Aryans who are white skinned. So inventing the theory, he admitted that it is of “vast political and moral importance.” W.W. Hunter said,” Scholarship is warmed with holy flames of Christian zeal.”Basham is clear. He says that many hymns in Rigveda refer to the battles between Aryan tribe and another. These have been wrongly interpreted. They interpret the word Anarya as non- Aryans or as some indigenous people originally living there as pre- Aryans. There existed no such Pre-Aryans. During the battle of Ten Kings we find that diverse tribes of people lived together in diversity of language and culture .Vedic Aryans looked down upon Dasses, Asuras, Dasyus, and called them Anaryas. It was a fight between spiritualism and materialism. Between light and Darkness. S.C. Talageri says that Dasas refer to non-Puru tribe and Dasyu to priestly class of the same Aryan language group. Their Gurus were all Aryans. Vashistha and Viswamitra on the side of Sudas and Pasadyumna Vayate, a sage of Sanskrit name on the rival side and all of them shared the same gods.Vedic seers guided all of them. Hence the divisive plot proved another attempted trick to break the Vedic culture.

The Reality of Max Muller

How strange that we Call Max Muller, a learned Sanskrit scholar even though he never visited Bharat nor met with any saint or seer in Europe. He did not read Sanskrit scriptures nor knew any Indian language. He declared India not as a country but as a sub-continent and invented a new theory of AIT while dividing Hindus on caste lines and differentiating them with tribals and animists...He had a band of followers of scholars like Alphinston, Keith, Parzitor, and others to side with him in converting Hindus into Christianity. He was adept in distortion, manipulation, and in creating confusion which he successfully did. While avoiding meeting Hindu seers, he tried to devaluate them. In his letter to Bairamji Malwari on 28 Jan. 1882, he writes, “People like Dayanand give undue importance to Vedas. They deduce the meaning which is not in the root. Observe Veda as a historical document only then even the simple thought of the primitives would look pleasant. But to search the source of electricity, magnetism, ethics and philosophy, we have to cut a sorry figure.” Max Muller in serial of importance had laid down the following scriptures as no 1-- The first is New Testament, 2-Quran 3-Old Testament 4-Tripitak 5-Leo 6-Confucious 7-Veda and lastly 8-Avesta. Such a man was made to translate the scriptures and Vedas by the vested interests with a motive to de-Hinduize the Hindus.

Peeping into depth of Vedic Vedanga

A part of Vedic literature, the Vedanga is unparallel. we have works on Ayurveda (Science of life); Dhanurveda (science of warfare); Gandharva veda (science of arts and music); Satpathya veda (science of architect and mechanism) Then the literature on phonetics, Kalpa, (Ritual with base of geometry and maths and calendar), Vyakarana, Nirukta (etymology or glossary); chandas 9prosody or metrical structure); jyotish (astronomy and other cyclical phenomena. 64 subjects were taught. Dhanvantari gave us surgery including bladder surgery and variety of surgical instruments. Carak in Samhita spoke on Anatomy, physiology, aetiology, pathology, therapeutics, and rules and regulations of diets and drugs. Susruta describes grouped and classified surgical operations; extraction of solid bodies, excising, incising, probing, scarifying, sulphuring, punching, fluid evacuation, and 125 instruments of surgery and midwifery.

The work of Aryabhatta and his contribution in Algebra bio-geometry and astronomy – he told us for the first time that the earth is round and rotates about its axis He gave us the value of (Pie )^=3.1416 and definition of time .He invented zero system. Albert Einstein says, ‘We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us to count without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been. Wheeler Wilcox writes, “India—the land of the Vedas, the remarkable work contains not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship all were known to the seers who founded the Vedas.” Now that Max Muller challenges our seers, we have to give him a fitting reply and make India know and realize our glorious past.

Another Divide: Tribals and Animists

Max Muller had another game-plan. He tried to bring about a divide between different sections of Hindu community. He targeted the forest dwellers and the hill dwellers, describing them as Tribals and Animists. These were the people who had played important role in Mahabharata and Ramayana. They had their ancestors linked in ancient times with Hindus. The A.I.T. described that these people were attacked by the invading Aryans in the past and were driven out towards the forests for shelter. The census report of 1921 did not approve of this finding. It opposed the plot of separation of these tribes with Hindu community. It was in 1931 census that the word Animists was replaced with a new invented category of “Tribal Regions. It was so coined as it may not be equated with Hindus Each tribe was given a proper religion So India was made a many tribal religion country. Their separate identity from Hindu society was also justified. Mahatma Gandhi opposed this discrimination and said, We were strangers to this sort of classification - animist, aboriginals etc. but we have learnt it from the English rulers.” speaking about the tribals in Kond hills, he said that from time immemorial they have been absorbed in Hinduism.

The west game did not stop in damaging India’s unity. It targeted the untouchables and the caste system. The British rulers documented caste and tribe in all its complexities in the gazetteers and counted it in census operations from 1881. For 1911 census, Sir Herbert Risley, the commissioner went a step further and said that the census had also to identify “social precedence as recognised by native public opinion “It means that the caste had to be located in the ritual and social hierarchy and it was to determine which caste was high, which intermediate, and which low. It was a divisive game played by the western rulers to divide and Rule and reduce the Hindu society into many fractions. Gandhiji felt that the caste was like religion a purely social institution and had no place in public life and political decision making.

The west and the proselytizers had already planted a seed of division and disintegration to fructify a politics of separation in future.

Distorting Vedic Values - Beef Eating

In Independent India, another conspiracy was hatched to justify the eating of beef and cow-slaughter in the name of Vedas. Articles in papers were written and published, quoting Vedic richas. It was all deliberate as they translated the word ghrit (clarified butter) into “fat implying tallow of cattle” and Mahisha (buffalo) into cow. They also invoked the richas regarding funeral fire and forest fire into their kitchens. The story is an old one. It was the allegation of fat i.e. tallow of cows and pigs were b being used in cartridges that sparked the War of Independence in 1857 called the Sepoy Mutiny against the British raj. Now it alerted the British. They tried to lower down the image of the cow and its reverence and prove that they were as much foreigner as the Hindus are. So it was their plan to invent the evidence of beef eating in Vedic age. It has always been the game plan of the west to field mercenaries as scholars and elites and through them propagate their own view point. Even today we witness such award winners working as a tool to vested interests and multinationals. They ascribed this job to European and some Indian nationals to invent evidence in the Vedas favouring cow slaughter and beef-eating. One Rajendra Lal Mitra came out and published “Beef in Ancient India” in the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1872 It was the time of Gandhiji Go Raksha Movement. So to face it, a swami was recruited. He was Swami Prakashanand He appeared on the scene and published the same essay in a booklet form.


A Sanskrit to Sanskrit dictionary in six volumes was used for this purpose. Pt Taranath, a prof. of Vyakarana at Sanskrit college Calcutta was made to translate the word Goghn as killer of cow. This was a deliberate attempt at distortion so as to prove that beef was eaten in Vedic age. H. H. Swami Prakashanand Saraswati in “The true History and Religion of India“ explains that goghn actually stands for the guest who receives cow as gift. He quotes Panini n3.4.73. as authority to justify that it only means the receiver of the gift of cow and nothing else but Tarachand overrules even the authority of Panini and the British agree. Why? The reality is that in 1866, the Bengal government had granted a commitment in advance to purchase 200 copies of his books @50/ per book to a total of 10,000/rupees (.vide letters no 507 dated 26 01-1866.) Mark the present market value, may be 25 lakhs. Even the governor vide letter no 1480 dated 12. 12 1870 granted extension of time to them for completing Vachaspatyam, the proposed Sanskrit dictionary... The income was assured and they had to justify what the payers wanted. The game goes on but with a changed garb and a different strategy.

Conclusion

On October, 26, 2008, Pope Benedict invoked Mahatma Gandhi name in an appeal to end violence. The Pope has chosen wisely for Gandhiji is revered by all of us even today for his cosmopolitan views, for his compassionate work for the poor and the downtrodden and for his morals. All this was possible because of his understanding of core Hindu philosophical tenets. In August 1925, he wrote in Young India, “Hinduism as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fill my whole being and I find solace in the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount - I must confess to you that when doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face and when I see not one ray of light in the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad-Gita.” It was Gandhi who showed in his life’s example that cowardly acceptance of injustice and unprovoked violence was not in keeping with his doctrine.

Today global powers so dominate that our identity in our own country is being questioned. M.J. Akbar says,”The church using international reach, has converted the attack on prayer halls in South and tribals in Orissa in a global story, persuading Rome, Washington and Paris to berate India publicly. While such assaults are never justified, this undermines the human value of our society but what a pity? Our PM says that he is embarrassed by the rebukes he heard in Washington and Paris. Ok, “but why should not the PM tell that the same fundamentalist missionaries, buoyed by fabulous donations have said blasphemous things about the most venerate Hindu gods. Implicit in their vituperation is the assumption that Hindus are the soft target.”

The Hindu view is liberal. His appeal is universal and therefore eternal. It is based on spiritual values. So long as spiritually is alive, Hinduism will not die. Macaulay and Max Muller may come and go the torch bearers of Hinduism; its saints and sages will deliver the good... Gandhi was the recent one. Vedic culture preaches the way of life where individual comes next duty first. Unity in diversity and that the man is essentially divine. There is divinity in every man. Happiness is the nature of man. We all have to realize this here and now. So act and stop not till the goal is reached. Be proud of being born for duty, without expectation of any fruit, to perform. No one can hinder the way. We know that a Parasuram is born when needed, a Viswamitra appears with a sword and a Drone is there to train you .It is a country of seers. Sages and not politicians can deliver the good. They can work only under a Chanakya. There was a Gandhi and there is a Ramdeo and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to guide and lead you on the altar of sacrificial fire. Why worry? The future is bright and shining. The demon of corruption and black money has to vanish away soon and the feeling of brother hood has to dominate the future projects. To the lowest level of B.P.L., the brotherhood stands together and intact. Let the centre of gravity in religion shift from authority to experience, from intellect that divides to spirituality that unites. Intuition will bind and unite together into tolerance and brotherhood, going beyond sphere of divergence on way to Eternity. Vedas teach us that the sole purpose of life is - Lead us from darkness unto Light; from untruth to truth and from mortality to immortality. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The whole world as one family) is all we desire to see “AUM”.
(May 29, 2010 by Dr. R.K. Lahiri)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- कोई भी मूल्य एवं संस्कृति तब तक जीवित नहीं रह सकती जब तक वह आचरण में नहीं है.