Its existence had been inferred for long, but now archaeologists using airborne laser technology have confirmed the discovery of a lost city on the slopes of a mountain in Cambodia, a Machu Picchu of sorts, that could have an even greater impact on the Southeast Asian nation’s already booming tourist industry. A team of French and Australian archaeologists peeled away layers of jungle foliage to trace the contours of the ancient temple city of Mahendraparvat that existed some 1,200 years ago, in today’s Siem Reap province, 40 km north of the Angkor Wat, the famous Hindu temple complex that draws more than 2 million visitors every year.

Mahendraparvat predated Angkor by at least 350 years and served as one of the three capitals (courts) of King Jayavarman II, said to be the founder of the Khmer empire. According to legend, his other two seats were Amarendrapura and Hariharalaya. Up on the slopes of Phnom Kulen, a mountain sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, archaeologists have found five previously unrecorded temples and a gridded network of roads and dykes that connected these and 36 other previously recorded ruins. What amazed them was that all these ruins were divided in regular city blocks scattered across the mountain.

This discovery is bound to prompt an international effort for a detailed scientific excavation and development of the area, and its mountain-top location is sure to trigger wider tourist interest, just as the ruins of Machu Picchu, an Inca citadel in Peru that’s half as old as Mahendraparvat, draw hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. And that would mean new development activity in the region – roads, ropeways, hotels, service facilities – adding to Siem Reap’s already thriving boom. What’s equally interesting is a recently released report from the US National Academy of Sciences, based on an April 2012 airborne laser survey, which has revealed a much larger Angkor landscape, covering almost 370 sq km of terrain, which, researchers say, was nothing less than a monumental, planned, low-density mega-city without parallel in the pre-industrial world. While rewriting much of Cambodia’s history, the impact of the two discoveries on the country’s economy is going to be very big indeed.

Tourism forms the biggest chunk of the gross domestic product of what’s still one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. Arrivals totalled 3.58 million last year and all indications point to that figure rising to over 4 million this year and reaching 7 million by 2020. Cambodia and Thailand have devised a single visa plan that helps. At the Mekong Tourism Forum recently held in Guilin, other countries in the sub-region have also expressed a wish to join the common visa programme, which should open up the prospects even wider, especially with an ASEAN common market coming into being in 2015.

At the Guilin Forum, countries of the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) endorsed a $741-million funding package to promote regional tourism. Much of the funding, of course, will come from the Asian Development Bank, which has been at work on Mekong tourism since 1995 and is presently preparing a new GMS tourism strategy for 2016-2026. Already being developed are 13 priority tourist zones and 16 thematic projects, including the management of natural and cultural heritage, the social impact of tourism, marketing and promotion, cross-border tourism, capacity building, and skills development. A total of $15 billion has been spent on developing the necessary infrastructure, including roads, highways and piers since a GMS Tourism Working Group was first set up.

The target is to achieve 52 million international tourist arrivals and $53 billion in sub-regional tourism revenue by 2015. Thailand, where the Mekong Tourism Coordination Office is located, is naturally at the heart of this ambition. Having received 22.35 million international tourists in 2012, it’s now projecting 24 million this year and 28 million in 2014. Even landlocked Laos, with four international airports, nine border crossings with Thailand, seven with Vietnam, and one each with China and Cambodia, reported 3.3 million arrivals last year.

The Cambodian government is now actively preparing to cash in on the likely opportunities, and opening up as many border crossings as possible is a key element of the strategy. There already are 20 international checkpoints in place, including 10 overland crossings with Vietnam, six with Thailand, and one with Laos, plus three airports and a seaport. The government has a master plan specifically aimed at mainland Chinese tourists, and intends to launch its own annual tourism fair, probably as early as 2014 and ahead of the Pacific Area Travel Association’s annual travel mart in September that year in the world heritage town of Siem Reap. And, to make sure that there’s no shortage of skilled manpower to cope with rising tourist flows, tourism has now been made part of the curriculum for Grade 11 and 12 students.

rbarun@gmail.com

Charles Allen’s aim in writing a biography of Ashoka is laudable. However, although we know Ashoka as the benevolent, paternalistic Emperor who respected all religions while promoting Buddhism, we still don’t know enough about his life to fill 400 pages. So instead of being a biography of Ashoka, Allen’s latest book is mainly about the British men-and they are all men-who rediscovered his existence. In fact, Ashoka is a companion volume to two of Allen’s earlier works on the history of archaeology in British India-The Buddha and the Sahibs and The Buddha and Dr Fuhrer. It really should have been called ‘The Sahibs and Ashoka’.

These sahibs embarked on endless adventures and explorations in some of the wildest and most beautiful parts of the subcontinent at a time when jungle was jungle and remote areas truly remote. It was these men who savoured the wonder of stumbling upon the secrets of Sanchi, Sarnath, and Amaravati, and of uncovering ruins from Afghanistan and the vale of Peshawar to as far south as Mysore. Allen has trawled the rich waters of archive and scholarship and truly communicates the thrill of discovery. His portraits of these intelligent men, largely enthusiastic amateurs, sometimes getting it right, very often getting it wrong and habitually dying of horrible diseases just as they are on the brink of great achievements, are impeccably researched and very well drawn.

Allen adds suspense by starting with a clean slate, as the sahibs themselves did, for they didn’t know that there was ever an Indian called Buddha or such a thing as a Mauryan Empire. We are not sure how they became lost to memory, but Allen argues that it was a combination of destruction wrought by Muslim armies and Hindus, a Brahminical conspiracy of silence and the weakening of the institutions of Buddhism themselves. Allen then presents his readers with the same set of clues that the sahibs of previous centuries had, as they set out determinedly to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of ancient India. He tells how manuscripts from beyond India’s borders began to be translated, and how eventually they were used to try to make sense of, and to locate, archaeological remains in India. Then there is the mystery of the edicts inscribed in Brahmi script that literally looked Greek to early epigraphists, and the story of Prinsep’s deciphering of the script and the ultimate identification of Ashoka as their author. One of the edicts was even recovered from a dhobi ghaat where it was being used to beat clothes on.

However, the relentless procession of sahibs, and occasionally their Indian assistants, does at times make the search for Ashoka seem like a marathon, and that too a marathon with no clear winner. The emperor speaks most clearly through his edicts, and Allen gives all of them in full as well as providing a complicated chapter where he attempts to make sense of the contradictory legends surrounding Ashoka’s life. But Ashoka himself remains a mystery, and perhaps this is why Allen feels it necessary to frame his book with uncharacteristic polemic.

He begins with a passionate attack on Edward Said’s, and Indian nationalists’, criticism of the Orientalists. For him, the need of the hour is to champion these much-maligned Orientalist sahibs. But this argument has little meaning in India, where the Archaeological Survey has just published a book written in celebration of its founding and its founders, including many of the men Allen writes about. Contemporary Indian historians, like Delhi University’s erudite Nayanjot Lahiri, take a very even-handed view of the Orientalists. Lahiri’s criticisms of them are in fact the same as Allen’s-for example, the destruction they inflicted on the historical sites they excavated.

Allen concludes by appealing for Ashoka to be better appreciated in the world, and in India. His claim that Ashoka created a nation state and a welfare state is going too far as these are modern, not ancient concepts. His revelation that before Gandhi there was ahimsa is also no revelation-after all, where did the Mahatma get the idea from? Allen also has trouble understanding the complexities of modern India and in particular its natural pluralism-perhaps due to blinkers of unbelief with which he appears to view Islam and Hinduism. He unfairly caricatures Gandhi’s Ram Rajya and paints a dire picture of communal relations in present-day Varanasi. For him, the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute was over the fortress of Rama. He also fails to see the difference between modern Hindutva, which attempts to unite Hindus, including Dalits, and has only had a limited appeal, and the widespread casteism of Ambedkar’s time that made Dalits untouchables. All these, and other strange comments, are unnecessary accretions to an otherwise informative and well-written book, and one that truly deserves praise for attempting to bring Emperor Ashoka into the limelight of the 21st century.

Source:

www.indiatoday.in

Hindus have rejected “end of the world” proclamations saying that time is considered cyclical in Hinduism and not linear.

One of such declaration said that “God will destroy the world” on May 21, 2011.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that ancient Hindu scriptures Upanishads pointed to cyclical/non-ending nature of time through the principle of rebirth and karma.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, says that world travels through infinite cycles of conception, ripening and desolation; thus resulting in the dismantled world to be reborn again.

Rajan Zed points out that destruction is not final in Hinduism as each is succeeded by a new fabrication. According to Samakhya, one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, Purusha causes Prakriti to evolve into various constituents, which will ultimately be reintegrated into Purusa at the termination of each cycle.

Zed argues that at the end/beginning of each mahakalpa, there is diffusion/formulation.

Hinduism is the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about a billion adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal.
 

More than four millennia have passed since the many artefacts of the ancient Indus civilisation were fashioned. Yet one tiny sculpture, made by an unknown artist, still seems strikingly relevant to us today. The seal shows a seated figure on a low platform in a pose that is familiar to modern practitioners of yoga and meditation: the knees spread to the sides with the feet touching, and the arms stretch from the shoulders away from the body with the fingertips resting on the knees. Assuming the symmetrical and balanced form of a triangle, the body of the adept thus posed can endure lengthy sessions of yoga and meditation without needing to shift.

The word yoga means “to unite” and ancient yoga was intended to prepare the body for meditation through which the individual would seek to understand his or her oneness with the totality of the universe. Once this understanding was complete, people could no more hurt another living being than themselves. Today, such practices are routinely prescribed to complement western medical and psychotherapy treatments. Among the documented benefits of yoga and its corollary, meditation, are lowered blood pressure, greater mental acuity and stress reduction.

To the ancients who developed and perfected these mentally and physically challenging methods, however, yoga and meditation were tools for finding inner peace and a harmonious existence. Once you look closely, plenty more evidence points to the non-violent, peaceful nature of these early peoples. For example, the archaeological remains of the cities and towns of the Indus civilisation during its florescence from c2300-1750BC show little if any indication of internal dissent, criminality, or even the threat of war and conflict from the outside. There are no known fortifications, nor is there proof of ransacking and pillaging.

There is also an emphasis on citizenship rather than a ruling elite in this period. Indeed, archaeological evidence suggests there was, in fact, no hereditary ruler – such as a king or other monarch – that amassed and controlled the wealth of the society. Thus, in contrast to the other ancient civilisations of the world, whose vast architectural and artistic undertakings, such as tombs and large-scale sculptures, served the wealthy and powerful, the Indus civilisation leaves nothing in the way of such monuments. Instead, government programmes and financial resources seem to have been directed towards the organisation of a society that benefited its citizens.

Another feature that sets the ancient Indus culture apart from other early civilisations is the prominent role played by women. Among the artefacts we have been able to unearth are thousands of ceramic sculptures representing women, sometimes interpreted as goddesses, and, specifically, mother goddesses. This is a core element in the major religious developments of India, which are populated with goddesses – some supreme and others whose role is to complement male deities who would otherwise be incomplete or even powerless. It is thus hardly surprising that the symbol chosen for the nationalistic independence movement of the early 20th century and the establishment of India’s modern democracy was Bharat Mata – that is, Mother India.

Cradle of faiths

The area’s first ancient culture, the Indus or Harappan civilisation, was at its peak centred in what is now Pakistan in the northwestern reaches of south Asia. It stretched southward for a thousand miles along the western coastal areas of India. It eventually disappeared around 1750BC, because of a combination of natural and human factors. Earthquakes in the high Himalayas may have changed the course of the rivers that provided life-sustaining agricultural irrigation, leading to the abandonment of cities and towns and relocation elsewhere. In addition, the ancient inhabitants, unaware of the need to replant as they cut down trees to use for building and fuel, deforested the region, thus contributing to its transformation into the desert of today.

Ceramic figure of a woman from the Indus civilisation Photograph: British Musuem

The period that followed the Indus civilisation from c1750BC to the third century BC has left a spotty material record. But we know it was in this time that some of the most important principles of Indic civilisation appeared. Some of these precepts come from the Indus culture, but other ideas arrived in India from the outside, such as with the nomadic, Indo-European Aryans from central Asia.

Perhaps the most important figure to emerge in this period was the historical Buddha, born Siddhartha Gautama in the Ganges river region of northern India in the sixth century BC. Attaining perfect knowledge at the age of 36, after a quest that involved ascetic and meditational practices, the Buddha taught what is known as the Middle Way, advocating the abandonment of both extreme asceticism and extreme luxury. The Buddha also taught that all living beings have the capacity to transform themselves from an ignorant, self-centred state to one that embodies unqualified goodwill and generosity. Enlightenment was a matter of personal responsibility: every person had to develop wisely directed compassion for all living beings along with perfect knowledge of their role in the universe.

It’s important to note that the historical Buddha is not considered a divine being and his followers do not worship him – rather, they revere and honour him through their practices. In art, he is shown as a human, not a superhuman being. Because there is no all-powerful central deity in Buddhism, the religion is easily compatible with other traditions and there are many people throughout the world today who combine Buddhism with another faith.

Jainism

A contemporary of Buddha was Mahavira: the 24th in a line of perfected human beings known as jinas, or victors, and a major figure in the Jain religion. Like the Buddha, Mahavira is not considered a god but an exemplar to his followers. When depicted in art, he and the other 24 jinas appear as highly perfected humans.

Unlike Buddhism and Jainism, India’s third major indigenous religion, Hinduism, did not have a human teacher to whom the beliefs and practices of the tradition may be traced. Instead, it is centred around devotion to specific deities, both supreme and minor, who are numbered among a vast pantheon of gods and goddesses. Shiva destroys the universe with his cosmic dance when it has deteriorated to the degree that it needs to be reborn; Vishnu is the protector and preserver of the world as it struggles to maintain stasis. Archaeological evidence for Hinduism appears later in India’s material record than those of Buddhism and Jainism, and stone and metal artefacts portraying the host of deities are rare before the fifth century AD.

All three of these Indic religions share the belief that every living being is subject to a cycle of birth and rebirth over countless aeons. Known as samsara, this cycle of transmigration is not limited to humans but includes all sentient beings. The form one will take in a future birth is determined by one’s karma – a term that in modern parlance has come to mean little more than “luck”, but the original Indic use of the word specifically refers to one’s actions, which are the result of choice, not chance. The escape from samsara, called nirvana by Buddhists and moksa by Hindus and Jains, is the ultimate goal of each of the three religious traditions, and all human activity should, ideally, be directed towards improving one’s karma to achieve this end.

Although today we assign different names to these three religious traditions, in many ways they are considered different paths, or margs, toward a similar objective. Within Indic culture, and indeed even within families, individuals have been free to choose their own marg, and we have no evidence of religious conflict among these traditions.

Greece meets India

Around the third century BC, a mix of internal cultural evolution and stimulating contact with ancient western Asia and the Mediterranean worlds brought change to the Indic regions. The arrival of Alexander the Great in the northwestern region of south Asia in 327BC, and the collapse of the ancient Persian Empire, introduced new ideas – including the development of the concept of kingship, and technologies such as the tools and knowledge necessary for large-scale stone carving. Had Alexander succeeded in conquering the Indian subcontinent – mutiny and fatigue among his troops is said to have caused a retreat – one can only imagine how Indian history might have evolved. As it stands, his legacy is mainly cultural, not political, as the pathways across western Asia that he forged remained open for trade and economic exchange for centuries after his death.

Ashoka pillar at Lauriya Nandangarh Photograph: British Library Board

One thing to pass through this gateway was a system of rule by kingship, which took hold of northern India in the rich lands fertilised by the life-giving Ganges river. The most renowned of India’s first kings was Ashoka, who even today is admired by India’s leaders as a paradigm of the benevolent ruler. After years engaged in waging war to aggrandise his empire, Ashoka, having seen some 150,000 people carried away as captives, 100,000 more slain, and many more dead after his final conquest, was struck with remorse at the suffering he had caused. Converting to Buddhism, Ashoka spent the remainder of his life in righteous, peaceful activities. His benevolent kingship was adopted as a model throughout Asia as Buddhism moved beyond its Indic homeland. The set of four lions portrayed on one of his most famous monuments – the stone pillar he erected at Sarnath, where the Buddha taught his first sermon – has become a ubiquitous symbol of India’s modern democracy, and is used on coins, stamps, government stationery, and elsewhere to laud the modern nation’s roots in enlightened rulership.

Legacy

As suggested by the artefacts that have survived and what we know about the religious and philosophical beliefs of the people, the period 2500BC-AD500 in ancient India was one of extraordinary cultural brilliance, with innovations and traditions that still leave their mark on the world today. Furthermore, the cultural continuity between India’s past and present is unmatched in the other regions of the world. The modern societies in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, the Americas and China for the most part bear little resemblance to their ancient counterparts. Indeed, what is striking from an overview of the early phases of India’s long and rich cultural development is the fact that so many of the features in evidence through the material record have had a persistent and lasting effect on Indic society and the world.

Ancient India’s legacy in the fields of science and mathematics is significant. Mathematics was important to the layout of religious buildings and the philosophical comprehension of the cosmos. The fifth century AD astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata is credited with originating the modern decimal system, which is predicated on an understanding of the concept of zero. Evidence of the Indic origin of the idea of zero, including the use of a small circle to denote the numeral, is found in Sanskrit texts and inscriptions.

Science of life

Another cultural legacy is an ancient branch of medicine known as Ayurveda, still widely practiced in India today. It has also gained popularity in the western world as a “complementary” medicine. Translating literally as “science of life”, it conceives basic principles for human health and points to physical and mental balance as the means to wellbeing.

Perhaps ancient India’s most lasting legacy is the belief in non-harm to living beings – a centrepiece of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism – which was transformed into the passive resistance advocated by Mahatma Gandhi during India’s early 20th century struggle for independence from British rule. After Gandhi, many other modern luminaries have been guided by the principle of non-violence in their quests for social justice, most famously Reverend Martin Luther King, who spearheaded the struggle for racial equality in the US during the 1960s. In his autobiography, King notes that “Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change” during the bus boycott in 1956 that ended Alabama’s transport segregation on the city’s buses. John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama have also claimed inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and the ancient Indian principle of non-harm, and the Indic compassion towards all living beings and the corresponding non-violent stance has been adopted by groups that advocate vegetarianism, animal welfare and environmental activism. Perhaps there is no greater compliment that can be paid to India’s ancient culture than the fact that its sophisticated beliefs and reverence for life can serve as guideposts to the world today. Susan L Huntington is professor in art history at Ohio State University. Among other books, she is the author of the Art of Ancient India (Weatherhill)

Prior to the fourth century BC, most of the construction activities in India were done using wood. There are no surviving proofs of these wooden structures but the Rig-Veda has many names for such a house in its text.The Rig-Veda defines a house as “a place where men and animals live.” According to another text,the Atharvaveda, most of the houses were made from wood. This text compares an ornamented wooden house with an ornamented female elephant.

The palace of the great Mauryan emperor, Asoka, at his capital Pataliputra (in modern Bihar, near Patna) was made completely out of wood. Ananda K.Coomarswamy has noted that, “Magasthenes has described this palace of Asoka as no less magnificent than the palaces of Susa and Ecbatana; it was still standing at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., when Fa Hsien tells us that it was attributed to the work of genii, but when Hsuan Tsang visited the city in the seventh century AD, the palace had been burnt to the ground and the place was almost deserted.”

This tradition was copied in amore permanent medium first by the Buddhists and then by the Hindus and the Jains in their rock-cut architecture. The wooden havelis of Gujarat represent this ancient tradition of wooden architecture of India.

Elaborate manuals were written about constructing houses in wood. These manuals and texts have two traditions: the northern andsouthern tradition. During middle ages, manuals about wooden constructions continued to be written — Samrangan Sutradhar; Aparajit Pruchha and Sutradhar Mandan — are among the important ones in the northern tradition. The poet Mull had written a very delicate poem of 304 lines about house-making, revealing a great depth of knowledge in the 13th or the 14th century AD.

Possessing such a long tradition, it is not surprising that house-making in wood had attained the status of high art centuries before the arrival of the Middle Ages in India, though examples of great beauty are found only in Gujarat, some regions of the Himalayas and in the south of India. The famous havelis of the towns of Gujarat represent the splendour of this ancient tradition of architecture. There are literally thousands of such havelis existing till this very date in these towns of Gujarat. The town of Vaso in Kheda district is world famous for its beautiful havelis.

A typical haveli of Gujarat has a central place called chowk (open court)from which many rooms open,wherepeople of the household gather. A typical Gujarat haveli displays carved brackets ; their facades are also covered with carvings.The struts in such a haveli generally have filigree-like work and the doorways display decorative ornamentation.

These havelis once stood as a symbol ofpower and prestige of a family in society. The carvings of these havelis have the power to spellbind the onlooker, which is why they are considered the ornaments of architecture of our world.