Hinduism

"The Hindu religion appears … as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance — crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit."

"We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived."

"That is the India of which I have to speak — the India which, as I said, is to me the Holy Land. For those who, though born for this life in a Western land and clad in a Western body, can yet look back to earlier incarnations in which they drank the milk of spiritual wisdom from the breast of their true mother — they must feel ever the magic of her immemorial past, must dwell ever under the spell of her deathless fascination ; for they are bound to India by all the sacred memories of their past ; and with her, too, are bound up all the radiant hopes of their future, a future which they know they will share with her who is their true mother in the soul-life."

"Make no mistake. Without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil into which India's roots are struck, and torn out of that she will inevitably wither, as a tree torn out from its place. Many are the religions and many the races which are flourishing in India, but none of them stretches back into the far dawn of her past, nor is necessary for her endurance as a nation. Every one might pass away as they came, and India would still remain. But let Hinduism vanish, and what is she? A “geographical expression," of the past, a dim memory of а perished glory. Her history, her literature, her art, her monuments, all have Hinduism written across them."

"Although the ancient and modern scriptures and practices of Hinduism have been examined by European scholars for more than a century, it would be hardly an exaggeration to say that a faithful account of Hinduism might well be given in the form of a categorical denial of most of the statements that have been made about it, alike by European scholars and by Indians trained in our modern skeptical and evolutionary modes of thought."

"When heresies or strange gods became dangerously popular they tolerated them, and then absorbed them into the capacious caverns of Hindu belief; one god more or less could not make much difference in India. Hence there has been comparatively little sectarian animosity within the Hindu community, though much between Hindus and Moslems; and no blood has been shed for religion in India except by its invaders."

"Hinduism has not been made, but has grown. It is a jungle, not a building. It is a living example of a great national paganism such as might have existed in Europe if Christianity had not become the state religion of the Roman Empire."

"Compared to Islam and Christianity, Hinduism’s doctrines are extraordinarily fluid, and multiform. India deals in images and metaphors. Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thought is, it is less prone than European theology to the vice of distorting transcendental ideas by too stringent definition. It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors and figures. It is not afraid of inconsistencies which may illustrate different aspects of the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divine within the limits of a logical phrase."

"The only Hinduism which they like is museum Hinduism; any Hinduism that displays a will to survive is treated with the same horror that would be aroused if a mummy were to show signs of life."

"The Indian teaching, through its clouds of legends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It teaches to speak truth, love others, and to dispose trifles. The East is grand—and makes Europe appear the land of trifles … All is soul and the soul is the Almighty."

"Hinduism is a religion of the Earth. It honors the Earth as the Divine Mother and encourages us to honor her and help her develop her creative potentials. The deities of Hinduism permeate the world of nature."

"What the divine author of the Mahabharata said of his great creation is equally true of Hinduism. Whatever of substance is contained in any other religion is always to be found in Hinduism, and what is not contained in it is insubstantial or unnecessary."

"Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth and if today it has become moribund, inactive, irresponsive to growth, it is because we are fatigued. As soon as the fatigue is over, Hinduism will burst forth upon the world with a brilliance perhaps never known before."

"I am unable to identify with orthodox Christianity. I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism, as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find solace in the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount."

"On examination, I have found it to be the most tolerant of all religions known to me. Its freedom from dogma makes a forcible appeal to me in as much as it gives the votary the largest scope for self-expression."

"Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. The deeper you dive the more treasures you find."

"Before long, I read my first book on Hindu philosophy. It was like a blow to my solar plexus; it jarred me awake. Here, at last, was what I sought. Instead of an object of dispute and often ridicule, here, reincarnation was taken for granted. The teachings were logical, unsentimental, yet filled with the spirit of non-harmfulness, compassion, understanding, love."

"India indeed has a preciousness which a materialistic age is in danger of missing. Some day the fragrance of her thought will win the hearts of men. This grim chase after our own tails which marks the present age cannot continue for ever. The future contains a new human urge towards the real beauty and holiness of life. When it comes Hinduism will be searched by loving eyes and defended by knightly hands."

"The sparkling energy of India lies in Hinduism. Without the framework of Hindu belief India would fall apart. Without Hinduism India is not herself."

"Many Hindu intellectuals are just not able to comprehend the fact that there is no human aspiration or experience which lies outside the range of Hinduism; it provides for even demon-Gods. In contrast, all religions are in the nature of sects, though they cannot be so defined because of their insistence on their separateness and, indeed, hostility to Hinduism."

"The genius of Hinduism, then, was that it left room for everyone. It was a profoundly tolerant religion. It denied no other faiths. It set out no single path. It prescribed no one canon of worship and belief. It embraced everything and everyone. Whatever your personality there was a god or goddess, an incarnation, a figure, a deity, with which to identify, from which to draw comfort, to rouse you to a higher or deeper spirituality. There were gods for every purpose, to suit any frame of mind, any mood, any psyche, any stage or station of life. In taking on different forms, God became formless; in different names, nameless."

"Hinduism at its best has spoken the only relevant truth about the way to self-realization in the full sense of the word."

"Hinduism has proven much more open than any other religion to new ideas, scientific thought, and social experimentation. Many concepts like reincarnation, meditation, yoga and others have found worldwide acceptance. It would not be surprising to find Hinduism the dominant religion of the twenty-first century. It would be a religion that doctrinally is less clear-cut than mainstream Christianity, politically less determined than Islam, ethically less heroic than Buddhism, but it would offer something to everybody. It will appear idealistic to those who look for idealism, pragmatic to the pragmatists, spiritual to the seekers, sensual to the here-and-now generation. Hinduism, by virtue of its lack of an ideology and its reliance on intuition, will appear to be more plausible than those religions whose doctrinal positions petrified a thousand years ago."

"The culture that once flowered on the banks of the Sarasvati still flows on."

"When ignorant missionaries dilate upon the three hundred and thirty million gods of the Hindus they are making a very gross misrepresentation of a religion which is far more scientific than their own. Hinduism, like every other religion, knows perfectly well that there can be only one God, though there may be countless manifestations of Him."

"The civilization of India, at root purely religious, is only now becoming known in Europe; and as the mystery surrounding it is unveiled it emerges as one of the highest achievement in the history of mankind. By the very breadth of the outlook it affords on to the destiny of man the Vedic religion offers in abundance the spiritual experience that has inspired the Indian people since the dawn of their history. The vocation of India is to proclaim to the world the efficacy of religious experience."

"From Persia to the Chinese Sea, 'from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales and her civilization... She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that ignorance has refused her for a long time and to hold her place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity."

"We possess, in the sacred and secret books of India, of which we know only an infinitesimal part, a cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed."

"We cannot tell how the religion of the Hindus came into being. When we become aware of it, we find it already complete in its broad outlines, its main principles. Not only is it complete, but the farther back we go, the more perfect it is, the more unadulterated, the more closely related to the loftiest speculations of our modern agnosticism."

"[I]t must be borne in mind that Hinduism is far more than a mere form of theism resting on Brāhmanism. It presents for our investigation a complex congeries of creeds and doctrines which in its gradual accumulation may be compared to the gathering together of the mighty volume of the Ganges, swollen by a continual influx of tributary rivers and rivulets, spreading itself over an ever-increasing area of country and finally resolving itself into an intricate Delta of tortuous steams and jungly marshes."

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life... again I should point to India."

"The key Hindu concept of dharma — the right way, the sanctioned way, which all men must follow, according to their natures — is an elastic concept. At its noblest it combines self-fulfillment and truth to the self with the ideas of action as duty, action as its own spiritual reward, man as a holy vessel."

"If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India....For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay."

"Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief."

"The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe."

"The whole vast soul of India proclaims from end to end of its crowded and well ordered edifice the same domination of a sovereign synthesis. There is no negation. All is harmonized. All the forces of life are grouped like a forest, whose thousand waving arms are led by Nataraja, the master of the Dance. Everything has its place, every being has its function, and all take part in the divine concert, their different voices, and their very dissonances, creating, in the phrase of Heraclitus, a most beautiful harmony."

"Whereas in the West, cold, hard logic isolates the unusual, shutting it off from the rest of life into a definite and distinct compartment of the spirit. India, ever mindful of the natural differences in souls and in philosophies, endeavors to blend them into each other, so as to recreate in its fullest perfection the complete unity. The matching of opposites produces the true rhythm of life."

"The apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendant God includes all possible Gods… In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the profoundest Methodist and the crudest idolator are equally at home in it."

"They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of the British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity – that has been their stance... But Hinduism? Why, there is no such thing: it is just an aggregation, a pile of assorted beliefs and practices – ... And anyone who maintains anything to the contrary is a fascist out to insinuate a unity, indeed to impose a uniformity, where there has been none.... This is the continuance of, in a sense the culmination of, the Macaulay-Missionary technique. The British calculated that to subjugate India and hold it, they must undermine the essence of the people: this was Hinduism, and everything which flowed from it."

"Hinduism’s cosmology was prodigious in scope and depth, but India did not stop there. She went on to advance what was probably the most daring hypothesis man has ever conceived. We ourselves are the infinite, the very infinite from which the Universe proceeds. Everything in Hinduism works to drive the point home."

"Hinduism is like a great reservoir of water from which many streams take their rise and to which they again repair after passing through many strange and fair lands. It is a great, creative matrix giving birth to many beautiful and living forms. Itself a historical, it has given birth to many sects and branches with interesting, chequered histories. Paying sole allegiance to the Guide within seated in the cave of the heart, it has put forward from time to time many teachers and sages of incomparable power and vision, incarnating the very Gods above and within."

"The Vedic approach, is perhaps the best. It gives unity without sacrificing diversity. In fact, it gives a deeper unity and a deeper diversity beyond the power of ordinary monotheism and polytheism. It is one with the yogic and the mystic approach... In this deeper approach, the distinction is not between a true One God and false Many Gods; it is between a true way of worship and a false way of worship. Wherever there is sincerity, truth and self-giving in worship, that worship goes to the true altar by whatever name we may designate it and in whatever way we may conceive it. But if it is not desireless, if it has ego, falsehood, conceit and deceit in it, then it is unavailing though it may be offered to the most true God, theologically speaking."

"Belief in the Vedas, many means, no strict rule for worship: these are the features of the Hindu religion."

"I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true."

"The Hindus believe with regard to God that he is one, eternal, without beginning and end, acting by free-will, almighty, all-wise, living, giving life, ruling, preserving; one who in his sovereignty is unique, beyond all likeness and unlikeness, and that he does not resemble anything nor does anything resemble him."

"The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs."

"The Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people."

"For the reader must always bear in mind that the Hindus entirely differ from us in every respect, many a subject appearing intricate and obscure which would be perfectly clear if there were more connection between us. The barriers which separate Muslims and Hindus rest on different causes... …in all manners and usages they differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs, and as to declare us to be devil’s breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper. By the by, we must confess, in order to be just, that a similar depreciation of foreigners not only prevails among us and the Hindus, but is common to all nations towards each other… …there are other causes, the mentioning of which sounds like a satire – peculiarities of their national character, deeply rooted in them, but manifest to everybody. We can only say, folly is an illness for which there is no medicine, and the Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner. According to their belief, there is no other country on earth but theirs, no other race of man but theirs, and no created beings besides them have any knowledge or science whatsoever. Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khurasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they travelled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is."

"Most of the inhabitants of Hindustan are pagans ; they call a pagan a Hindu. Most Hindus believe in the transmigration of souls. All artisans, wage-earners, and officials are Hindus."

"The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this:- When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owning to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced…"

"A Hindu is a born mystic, and the luxuriant nature of his country has made him a zealous pantheist"

"'This Sanatana Dharma has any number of branches and offshoots. Within its fold, we have the Vaidika and the Tantrika, the Buddhist and the Jain; we have the Shaiva and the Vaishnava, the Shakta and the Sikh, the Arya Samaj and the Kabirpanth; we have in its fold the worshippers of Ayappa in Kerala, of Sarna in Chotanagpur and of Doni-pollo in Arunachal Pradesh. (...) through all these forms and variations flows an underlying current of shared spirituality which makes us all Hindus and gives us an intrinsic sense of harmony.'"

"The PM said the Hindus were a foul race ... and he wished Bert Harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them."

"Eventually, the Moslems will become master, because they are warriors, while the Hindus are windbags."

"Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean — anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. You happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in a Christian faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you'd be believing in . If you were brought up in central Africa, you'd be believing in the great up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?"

"The word Indian will be used in this Book as applying to India in general; the word Hindu, for variety’s sake, will occasionally be used in the same sense, following the custom of the Persians and the Greeks; but where any confusion might result, Hindu will be used in its later and stricter sense, as referring only to those inhabitants of India who (as distinct from Moslem Indians) accept one of the native faiths."

"It is not necessary to live in India to be a Hindu. In fact one must live in harmony with the land where one is located to be a true Hindu."

"In this way I can speak of an American Hinduism and call myself an American and a Hindu – an American connected with the land and a Hindu connected with the spirit and soul of that land. Hinduism has helped me discover the forces of nature in which I live, their past and their future, their unique formations and their connections with the greater universe and the cosmic mind."

"The Hindu as a rule is a coward."

"'These protagonists of separatism argue that these 'tribals' worship things like trees, stones and serpents. Therefore they are 'animists' and cannot be called 'Hindus'. Now this is something which only an ignoramus who does not know the ABC of Hinduism will say. (..) Do not the Hindus all over the country worship the tree? Tulasi, bilva, ashwattha are all sacred to the Hindu. (...) The worship of Nâg, the cobra, is prevalent throughout our country. (...) Then, should we term all these devotees and worshippers as 'animists' and declare them as non-Hindus?'"

"At least by the time of Albiruni (early 11th century), the word Hindu had a distinct religio-geographical meaning: a Hindu is an Indian who is not a Muslim, Jew, Christian or Zoroastrian. (...) A Buddhist, a Jain, a tribal, they were all included in the semantic domain of the term Hindu. Though the early Muslim writers in India had noticed a superficial difference between Brahmins and Buddhists, calling the latter 'clean-shaven Brahmins', they did not see an opposition between 'Hindus and Buddhists' or between 'Hindus and tribals', nor did later Muslim rulers see an opposition between 'Hindus and Sikhs'. On the contrary, Albiruni lists Buddhists among the idolatrous Hindu sects. (...) India's Constitution does not give a definition of the term Hindu, but it does define to whom the 'Hindu Law' applies. It has to do this because in spite of its pretence to secularism, the Indian Constitution allows Muslims, Christians and Parsis a separate Personal Law. .... Article 25 (2)(b) of the Constitution stipulates that 'the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jain or Buddhist religion'. The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 goes in greater detail to define [the term 'Hindu' in legal terms], by stipulating in Section 2 that the Act applies: '(a) to any person who is a Hindu by religion in any of its forms and developments, including a Virashaiva, a Lingayat or a follower of the Brahmo, Prarthana or Arya Samaj, '(b) to any person who is a Buddhist, Jain or Sikh by religion, and '(c) to any other person domiciled in the territories to which this Act extends who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion. This definition of the 'legal Hindu', though explicitly not equating him with the 'Hindu by religion', is exactly coterminous with the original Islamic use of the term Hindu: all Indian Pagans are legally Hindus."

"Hindus are damned if they do, damned if they don't."

"The Arya Samaj's misgivings about the term Hindu already arose in tempore non suspecto, long before it became a dirty Word under Jawaharlal Nehru and a cause of legal disadvantage under the 1950 Constitution. Swami Dayananda Saraswati rightly objected that the term had been given by foreigners (who, moreover, gave all kinds of derogatory meanings to it) and considered that dependence on an exonym is a bit sub-standard for a highly literate and self-expressive civilization. This argument retains a certain validity: the self-identification of Hindus as 'Hindu' can never be more than a second-best option. On the other hand, it is the most practical choice in the short run, and most Hindus don't seem to pine for an alternative."

"As a term introduced by Persian-speaking outsiders, “Hindu” is not an identity to which one has to subscribe in order to be included in it. To the Arab and Turkic invaders, it simply meant “any Indian who is not a Zoroastrian, Jew, Muslim or Christian”. The term is not limited to any specific sect or caste, nor does it require espousal or rejection of any specific set of beliefs, but it denotes the whole commonwealth of mutually interacting Indian religious traditions. It is an ongoing conversation between many different viewpoints, and Hindus will deem you a member of the club once you take part in the conversation, as an accepted member of any of the subsets of the conversing society. It is only a matter of course that as a participant located at a specific point in the broad spectrum of viewpoints, any Hindu voicing an opinion would thereby disagree with a great many other Hindus... To its original Muslim users, the term “Hindu” definitely included Buddhists, tribals, later on also the Bhakti (devotional) sects, such as the Nanak Panth now known as Sikhism, and independent Bhakti poets like Kabir."

"The word “Hindu” is a very general term encompassing every Indian form of Pagan religion no matter how old."

"Far from being an idiosyncratic innovation, Savarkar’s definition is in fact coterminous with the original understanding of the term “Hindu” by those who introduced it into India, viz. the Muslim invaders: “any Indian who is not a Parsi, Jew, Christian or Muslim”. Moreover, this concept has been retained as the definition of “legal Hindu” (i.e. Indian citizen to whom the “Hindu law” concerning marriage and inheritance applies) in the Hindu Code of 1955 and approximately also in Art. 25 of the Constitution, which applies the term “Hindu” for its purposes to Sikhs, Jainas and Buddhists. So, Savarkar’s definition is very sensible both historically and legally."

"The definition of “Hindu” is very simple. Originally a purely geographical Persian term for “India(n)”, the Muslim invaders introduced it with a mixed geographical-religious meaning: “an Indian Pagan”. Christians and Muslims were not included because they were no “idolaters”, and Parsis were not because they were not deemed Indian. But all Indian Pagans, including Brahmins and other castes, Buddhists (“clean-shaven Brahmins”), Jains, tribals, even communities yet to be born, like Lingayats, Sikhs, the Ramakrishna Mission, they were all “Hindu”. In Islamic theology, they were all going to hell anyway. To the Muslims, distinctions of social rank or religious tradition didn’t matter in the least. Their negative definition of “Hindu” was taken over in the definition used in the Hindu Marriage Act, and essentially also in VD Savarkar’s definition of “Hindutva”."

"All I can say at present is that by the time the Islamic sword swept over the South, and the Vijayanagara Empire took shape, the word “Hindu” was no more a hated word for the natives as it was for the foreign invaders... Thus by the middle of the fourteenth century, the word “Hindu” had dropped the derogatory associations imposed on it by the ancient Iranians and the Islamic invaders, and acquired a lot of lustre in the eyes of our own countrymen. Native heroes such as MahãrãNã Kumbhã, and Krishnadevarãya, who defeated the Islamic onslaught, were hailed as Hindu heroes in subsequent centuries. Padmanãbha uses the word “Hindu” for glorification of the Chauhãn harm of Jalor in his epic poem, KãnhaDade Prabandha, which he composed in AD 1455. It will not be long before MahãrãNã Pratãpa SiMha of Mewar becomes renowned as hindu-kula-kamala-divãkara, the Sun which brings bloom to the lotus that is the Hindu nation. Chhatrapati Shivãji, who turned back the tide of Islamic invasion and inaugurated the war of liberation from Islamic imperialism, will be hailed all over Bhãratavaršã as the saviour of Hindu Dharma and protector of its significant symbols - gaubrãhmaNa, šikhã-sûtra, devamûrti-devãlaya, and so on. So also Guru Gobind Singh, and Mahãrãjã Chhatrasãl."

"It was only in the nineteenth century that Western Indologists and Christian missionaries separated the Buddhists, the Jains, and the Sikhs from the Hindus who, in their turn, were defined as only those subscribing to Brahmanical sects.... Nowhere in the voluminous Muslim chronicles do we find the natives of this country known by a name other than Hindu. There were some Jews, and Christians, and Zoroastrians settled here and there... The chronicles distinguish these communities from the Muslims on the one hand, and from the natives of this country on the other. It is only when they come to the natives that no more distinctions are noticed; all natives are identified as ahl-i-Hunûd-Hindu!... In all their narratives, all natives are attacked as Hindus, massacred as Hindus, plundered as Hindus, converted forcibly as Hindus, captured and sold in slave markets as Hindus, and subjected to all sorts of malice and molestation as Hindus. The Muslims never came to know, nor cared to know, as to which temple housed what idol. For them all temples were Hindu but-khãnas, to be desecrated or destroyed as such. They never bothered to distinguish the idol of one God or Goddess from that of another. All idols were broken or burnt by them as so many buts, or deposited in the royal treasury if made of precious metals, or strewn at the door-steps of the mosques if fashion from inferior stuff. In like manner, all priests and monks, no matter to what school or order they belonged, were for the Muslims so many “wicked Brahmans” to be slaughtered or molested as such. In short, the word “Hindu” acquired a religious connotation for the first time within the frontiers of this country. The credit for this turn-out goes to the Muslim conquerors. With the coming of Islam to this country all schools and sects of Sanãtana Dharma acquired a common denominator - Hindu!... Once again, it goes to the credit of the Muslim conquerors that the word “Hindu” acquired a national connotation within the borders of this country."

"The Hindu happens to be a (wretched) slave in all respects."

"The Hindus… in the rapidity of their movements exceeded the wild ass and the deer, you might say they were demons in human form."

"In India today there is an Islamic culture as also an Indian culture. Only there is no Hindu culture. This word is now an untouchable (apãñkteya) in civilised society. They very word Hindu is now on the way to oblivion. Because many people believe that this word symbolises a narrowness of mind and a diehard communalism."

"There prevails a great difference of language and religion in these kingdoms, and they are frequently at war with each other. The most of them believe in the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul. The Hindus are distinct from all other black people, as the Zanjis, the Damadams, and others, in point of intellect, government, philosophy, strength of constitution, and purity of colour."

"The Hindus’, Mills wrote, ‘are full of dissimulation and falsehood, the universal concomitants of oppression. The vices of falsehood, indeed they carry to a height almost unexampled among the other races of men.’.. ‘No people … have ever drawn a more gross and disgusting picture of the universe than what is presented in the writings of the Hindus.’.... ‘In truth the Hindu, like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a slave … the Mahomedan is more manly."

"‘In no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to the moral and intellectual health of our race.’ [The Hindus had] ‘an absurd system of physics, an absurd geography, and absurd astronomy’. ... ‘Through the whole of the Hindoo pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling those beautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient Greece. All is hideous, and grotesque and ignoble.’"

"The Hindu is solitary, passive, other-worldly; his highest aim is self-realisation, the attainment of personal salvation by individual effort, private devotions and lonely austerities. To him birth is a misfortune and his fellow- beings so many sources of distraction from his one goal. Not by enjoyment of God’s gifts but by renunciation, not by joyous expansion but by repression of emotion, is he to attain to bliss."

"A Hindu is most intensely so, when he ceases to be Hindu; and with a Shankara claims the whole world for a Benares ... or with Tukaram exclaims: 'The limits of the universe - there the frontiers of my country lie'."

"Every person is a Hindu who regards and owns this Bharat Bhumi, this land from the Indus to the seas, as his Fatherland as well as Holyland, i.e. the land of the origin of his religion (...) Consequently the so-called aboriginal or hill tribes also are Hindus: because India is their Fatherland as well as their Holyland of whatever form of religion or worship they follow."

"In expounding the ideology of the Hindu movement, it is absolutely necessary to have a correct grasp of the meaning attached to these three terms. From the word " Hindu" has been coined the word "Hinduism " in English. It means the schools or system of Religion the Hindus follow. The second word " Hindutva " is far more comprehensive and refers not only to the religious aspects of the Hindu people as the word " Hinduism " does but comprehend even their cultural, linguistic, social and political aspects as well. It is more or less akin to " Hindu Polity " and its nearly exact translation would be " Hinduness ". The third word " Hindudom " means the Hindu people spoken of collectively. It is a collective name for the Hindu World, just as Islam denotes the Moslem World."

"[A Hindu] may be a theist, pantheist, atheist, communist and believe whatever he likes, but what makes him into a Hindu are the ritual practices he performs and the rules to which he adheres, in short, what he does."

"It is this psychology, not just etymology which leads the Standard Twentieth Century Dictionary, Urdu into English, to set out the meaning of Hunood as: ‘Hindu: Slave Thief Adj. Black’; and of Hindustani as, inter alia, ‘Basic Urdu...bastard form of Urdu written for Sanskrit script’. But it would be, to risk a malapropism, sacrilegious for a secularist to see any of this."

"The practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanâtana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism."

"Mark me, then and then alone you are a Hindu when the very name sends through you a galvanic shock of strength. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when every man who bears the name, from any country, speaking our language or any other language, becomes at once the nearest and the dearest to you. Then and then alone you are a Hindu when the distress of anyone bearing that name comes to your heart and makes you feel as if your own son were in distress."

"HINDOO, A person of Indian religion and race. This is a term derived from the use of the Mahommedan conquerors... In the following quotation from a writer in Persian observe the distinction made between Hindu and Hindi : c. 1290.— "Whatever live Hindu fell into the King's hands was pounded into bits under the feet of elephants. The Musalmans, who were Hindis (country born), had their lives spared."— Amir Khusrow."

"You know the nobleness of Hindus. They fear not death or destruction. In affairs of honour and fame we would place ourselves upon the fire like roast meat, and upon the dagger like the sunrays."

"Amir Khusrau, in his Nuh Sipihr, wrote that Prataprudra made a lengthy speech, in the course of which he said, The relation between Turk and Hindu is that of a lion and antelope, and the Turks whenever they please, can seize, buy, or sell any Hindu."

"My answer is that I am a Hindu and I love Hindu dharma. How can anyone destroy it? It provides happiness both in this world as well as in the other world. There is no other religion like it. Only a deranged person or a fool would leave it to become vile. Hindu dharma would remain in the world for ever. It is not going to be destroyed by your efforts.$"

"An inscription lying in the ruins of the fort area of Harihar town, Davanagere, has been dated to July 1, 1387 CE – during the reign of Harihara Raya II, the third king of the Vijayanagara Empire. The inscription calls Harihara II the ‘Hindu Raya Suratrana,’ (the protector of Hindu rulers). This is one of the earliest references to kings ascribed to as ‘Hindu,’ predating the arrival of Mughals by a century-and-a-half and Shivaji Maharaj by three centuries."

"The Hindus worship only one God. At any religious function, the Hindus utter the dominion of one God and to Him they direct the offerings of every religious ritual or observance whatever be its form. It is only fools who call the Hindus as idolators on the ground that they offer their devotion through some image built of stone or wood."

"Every Hindu may not be conscious of the finer points of his faith, but he has been raised in the tradition of its assumptions and doctrines, even when these have not been explained to him. His Hinduism may be a Hinduism of habit rather than a Hinduism of learning, but it is a lived Hinduism for all that."

"We stick, in spite of Western theories, to that definition of the word "Arya" which we find in our sacred books, and which includes only the multitude we now call Hindus."

"Let the Pundits fight among themselves; it is the Hindus who have all along called themselves Aryas. Whether of pure or mixed blood, the Hindus are Aryas; there it rests."

"Great indeed are the devas who have sprung out of Brahman."

"The act of offering is Brahman; that which is offered is Brahman; the sacred fire is Brahman; the one who makes the offering is Brahman; Brahman is thus attained by those who, in their actions, are absorbed in contemplation of Brahman."

"Similar to a person who is not attached to external pleasures but enjoys happiness in the Atman (soul), the person who perceives Brahman in everything feels everlasting joy."

"Om — That (supreme Brahman) is infinite, and this (conditioned Brahman) is infinite. The infinite (conditioned Brahman) proceeds from infinite (supreme Brahman). Then through knowledge, taking the infinite of the infinite (conditioned Brahman), it remains as the infinite (unconditioned Brahman) alone. Om! Peace! Peace! Peace!"

"That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which one does not think with the mind, that by which, they say, the mind is thought, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not see with the eye, that by which man sees the activities of the eye, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not hear with the ear, that by which man hears the ear’s hearing, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not smell with the organ of smell, that by which the organ of smell is attracted towards its objects, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped."

"Because of My affection for Thee I shall speak to Thee of that Supreme Brahman, Who is ever Existent, Intelligent, and Who is dearer to Me than life itself. O Maheshvari! the eternal, intelligent, infinite Brahman may be known in Its real Self or by Its external signs. That Which is changeless, existent only, and beyond both mind and speech, Which shines as the Truth amidst the illusion of the three worlds, is the Brahman according to Its real nature. That Brahman is known in samadhi-yoga by those who look upon all things alike, who are above all contraries, devoid of doubt, free of all illusion regarding body and soul. That same Brahman is known from His external signs, from Whom the whole universe has sprung, in Whom when so sprung It exists, and into Whom all things return. That which is known by intuition may also be perceived from these external signs. For those who would know Him through these external signs, for them sadhana is enjoined."

"The word ‘Brahman’ is derived from the Sanskrit root brih—to grow—and thus suggests a reality which is dynamic and alive. In its phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus intrinsically dynamic, and the apprehension of its dynamic nature is basic to all schools of Eastern mysticism. They all emphasize that the universe has to be grasped dynamically, as it moves, vibrates and dances."

"He who is called Brahman by the jnanis is known as Atman by the yogis and as Bhagavan by the bhaktas. The same brahmin is called priest, when worshipping in the temple, and cook, when preparing a meal in the kitchen. The jnani, following the path of knowledge, always reason about the Reality saying, "not this, not this." Brahman is neither "this" nor "that"; It is neither the universe nor its living beings. Reasoning in this way, the mind becomes steady. Finally it disappears and the aspirant goes into samadhi. This is the Knowledge of Brahman. It is the unwavering conviction of the jnani that Brahman alone is real and the world is illusory. All these names and forms are illusory, like a dream. What Brahman is cannot be described. One cannot even say that Brahman is a Person. This is the opinion of the jnanis, the followers of Vedanta. But the bhaktas accept all the states of consciousness. They take the waking state to be real also. They don't think the world to be illusory, like a dream. They say that the universe is a manifestation of the God's power and glory. God has created all these — sky, stars, moon, sun, mountains, ocean, men, animals. They constitute His glory. He is within us, in our hearts. Again, He is outside. The most advanced devotees say that He Himself has become all this — the 24 cosmic principles, the universe, and all living beings. The devotee of God wants to eat sugar, and not become sugar. (All laugh.) Do you know how a lover of God feels? His attitude is: "O God, Thou art the Master, and I am Thy servant. Thou art the Mother, and I Thy child." Or again: "Thou art my Father and Mother. Thou art the Whole, and I am a part." He does not like to say, "I am Brahman." They yogi seeks to realize the Paramatman, the Supreme Soul. His ideal is the union of the embodied soul and the Supreme Soul. He withdraws his mind from sense objects and tries to concentrate on the Paramatman. Therefore, during the first stage of his spiritual discipline, he retires into solitude and with undivided attention practices meditation in a fixed posture. But the reality is one and the same; the difference is only in name. He who is Brahman is verily Atman, and again, He is the Bhagavan. He is Brahman to the followers of the path of knowledge, Paramatman to the yogis, and Bhagavan to the lovers of God."

"Brahman and Śakti are identical. If you accept the one, you must accept the other. It is like fire and its power to burn. If you see the fire, you must recognize its power to burn also. You cannot think of fire without its power to burn, nor can you think of the power to burn without fire. You cannot conceive of the sun's rays without the sun, nor can you conceive of the sun without its rays. You cannot think of the milk without the whiteness, and again, you cannot think of the whiteness without the milk. Thus one cannot think of Brahman without Śakti, or of Śakti without Brahman. One cannot think of the Absolute without the Relative, or of the Relative without the Absolute."

"Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta's love, the water has frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn't feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see God's forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so disappears. He cannot find his "I" any more."

"You must know that there are different tastes. There are also different powers of digestion. God has made different religions and creeds to suit different aspirants. By no means all are fit for the Knowledge of Brahman. Therefore the worship of God with form has been provided. The mother brings home a fish for her children. She curries part of the fish, part she fries, and with another part she makes pilau. By no means all can digest the pilau. So she makes fish soup for those who have weak stomachs. Further, some want pickled or fried fish. There are different temperaments. There are differences in the capacity to comprehend."

"In the Kaliyuga, man, being totally dependent on food for life, cannot altogether shake off the idea that he is the body. In this state of mind it is not proper for him to say: "I am He". When a man does all sorts of worldly things, he should not say, "I am Brahman". Those who cannot give up attachment to worldly things, and who find no means to shake off the feeling of "I", should rather cherish the idea, "I am God's servant; I am His devotee.""

"God Vishnu has complete power over souls and matter and that Vishnu saves souls entirely by his grace which is granted to those who live pure and moral lives. Evil souls are predestined to eternal damnation and should of mediocre quality will transmigrate eternally."

"The final emancipation called mokhsha for the beings who are bound to the problems of samsara can be attained by intense devotion to the Lord with the true knowledge of HIM."

"Sriman Narayana is the Lord of the universe, and the creation, destruction, sustainanance, control, etc., are according to his wish. He is the one called Brahma in the vedas and HE is full of knowledge, bliss, and power [strength]."

"All living beings are different from Him and from each other and are subordinate to Him, all their actions are controlled by Him."

"All inanimate objects are different from Him and from each other and from all living objects."

"The world is real."

"The five-fold difference between God, living and non-living beings is an eternal fact"

"Vishnu is to be perceived in His nature through the holy scriptures and only through them."

"All living beings are dependent upon Vishnu for their existence."

"There is a hierarchy amongst living beings, that is eternal [without beginning or end]."

"Salvation lies in the soul experiencing its intrinsic joy."

"Salvation can be attained only through pure and unsullied love of God (combined with knowledge of His greatness)."

"Means of knowledge are sensory perception, inference and holy scriptures."

"A service without flowers, the king without a horse and friendship with one who does not know the language are a waste."

"While borrowing it is like eating a meal of milk and honey. When the loan is due to be paid, it feels as if the bones in the body are broken."

"A drunkard is like a pig. The poor pig, however, is helpful. The drunk is worse and useless."

"What is the use of circling round the temple without any feeling? It is like the ox which circles round the oil crusher."

"What use is giving advice to a fool a hundred times? It is like raining on a rock for hundred years. Will it ever soak in?"

"If fools claim that they jumped over six mountains, agree to it. It is not worth fighting over."

"For one who knows how to speak, it is like water pouring out of Eta [a device to draw water from a well]. For one who does not know, it is just the rope hanging down."

"Learn some things from those who know; Watch some things from those who do; Learn other things by self experience."

"Offering food [to the hungry], telling the truth and putting others above oneself is a happy way to heaven."

"A wife who keeps the home warm, watches expenses, knows what is on your mind and acts accordingly is everything. Who cares if the heavens catch fire!"

"One who gives [alms] without advertising is superior. One who gives and talks about it is medium. Only a knave talks much and gives nothing."

"The company of good men is like enjoying sweet honey. The company of evil men is like the stinking stuff in the sewer."

"By wearing a mark of ash one were to reach heaven, a donkey (that rolls in ash) should reach there surely."

"By dipping in the river everyday a Brahmin were to jump to heaven, the frog which is born and lives in water should surely go to heaven."

"By dabbing sandalwood paste on the forehead one were to reach heaven, the stone used to grind the paste should be first to go there."

"No one knows everything. The learned are few. There is no guarantee that the smart bring wisdom. Knowledge is not available for all."

"One who makes a gift to the deserving and needy attains the everlasting abode of Shiva."

"There is no god greater than Annam [food]. No one can survive without annam, give annadanam (donate food)and save the lives of the hungry."

"Some eat animals, some eat the plants. None can survive without eating either of them. The doctrine of Ahimsa is difficult to sustain."

"Control over one’s tongue, and good conduct enhance one’s prestige."

"A crow when it sees some foodstuff, it crows, gathers other crows and shares it with them. Crows and fowl have a better social etiquette than a man."

"A fool boasts about what little he knows. A wise man keeps quiet about what he knows and is safe."

"One who walks a hundred feet in a cool breeze after his meal and one who sleeps on his left side will never need a physician."

"From woman comes the new life on earth and woman is the source of all prosperity here and hereafter."

"Worship without a symbol, a garden without a source of water, and the household affairs of one without a woman, all these are doomed to fail."

"Truth leads one to glory now and forever. In this world truth and falsehood are found confusedly mixed yet it is truth alone that triumphs here and hereafter."

"The Vedanta and the Sankhya hold the key to the laws of the mind and thought process which are corelated to the Quantum Field, i.e., the operation and distribution of particles at atomic and molecular levels."

"The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe."

"The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on super imposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One."

"Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves."

"Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans appears like a feeble Promethear spark [before the Vedanta]."

"The correct meaning of the statement “The Vedas are beginningless and eternal” is that the law or truth revealed by them is permanent and changeless."

"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of Vedanta."

"He wise man who, by means of concentration on the Self, realizes that ancient, effulgent One, who is hard to be seen, unmanifest, hidden, and who dwells in the buddhi and rests in the body — he, indeed, leaves joy and sorrow far behind."

"The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being."

"Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived."

"On the tree of Indian wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy."

"The fundamental idea of the Vedanta system, as most tersely expressed in the words of the Veda, "That art thou" (tat tvam asi), and "I am Brahman"(aham brahma asmi) is the identity of Brahman and the soul. This means that idea of Brahman, that is, the eternal principle of all being, the power which creates all worlds, sustains them and again absorbs them, is identical with the Atman, the self, or the soul ; namely, with that in us which, when we judge rightly, we acknowledge as our own self, as our inner and true essence. This soul in each one of us is not a part of Brahman nor an emanation from him, but it is, fully and entirely, the eternal indivisible Brahman itself."

"Knowledge appears as the grace of God. In the higher knowledge, since the atman is in reality not an object, the cause of its knowledge is not further explicable. In spite of this, religious practice recognizes certain means by which knowledge of the atman may be promoted."

"Vedanta is a philosophy taught by the Vedas, the most ancient scriptures of India. Its basic teaching is that our real nature is divine. God, the underlying reality, exists in every being. Religion is therefore a search for self-knowledge, a search for the God within. We should not think of ourselves as needing to be SAVED. We are never LOST. At worst we are living in ignorance of our true nature. Find God. That is the only purpose in life."

"Ramakrishna attained god consciousness through Vedanta, the philosophy that has evolved from the teachings of the Vedas, a collection of ancient Indian scriptures,that are the world’s oldest religious writings. According to Vedas, ultimate reality is all pervading, uncreated, self-luminous eternal spirit, the final cause of the universe, the power behind all tangible forces, and the consciousness that animates all conscious beings."

"You may speak of the scriptures, of philosophy, of Vedanta; but you will not find God in any of those. You will never succeed in realizing God unless your soul becomes restless for Him. ~"

"Now I will tell you my discovery. All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita, Vishishtâdvaita and Advaita; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. This is the essential of religion: the Vedanta, applied to the various ethnic customs and creeds of India, is Hinduism. The first stage, i.e. Dvaita, applied to the ideas of the ethnic groups of Europe, is Christianity; as applied to the Semitic groups, Mohammedanism. The Advaita, as applied in its Yoga-perception form, is Buddhism etc. Now by religion is meant the Vedanta; the applications must vary according to the different needs, surroundings, and other circumstances of different nations. You will find that although the philosophy is the same, the Shâktas, Shaivas, etc. apply it each to their own special cult and forms. Now, in your journal write article after article on these three systems, showing their harmony as one following after the other, and at the same time keeping off the ceremonial forms altogether. That is, preach the philosophy, the spiritual part, and let people suit it to their own forms. I wish to write a book on this subject, therefore I wanted the three Bhashyas; but only one volume of the Ramanuja (Bhashya) has reached me as yet."

"According to the Vedanta, when a man has arrived at that perception, he has become free, and he is the only man who is fit to live in this world.["

"He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong."

"In our country there is only this religion of Vedanta. Compared with the Western civilisation, it may be said, we have hardly got anything else. But by the preaching of this universal religion of Vedanta, a religion which gives equal rights to acquire spirituality to men of all creeds and all paths of religious practice, the civilised West would come to know what a wonderful degree of spirituality once developed in India and how that is still existing."

"Man, therefore, according to the Vedanta philosophy, is the greatest being that is in the universe, and this world of work the best place in it, because only herein is the greatest and the best chance for him to become perfect. Angels or gods, whatever you may call them, have all to become men, if they want to become perfect. This is the great centre, the wonderful poise, and the wonderful opportunity — this human life."

"The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality."

"The Vedanta recognises no sin, it only recognises error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta, is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that. Every time you think in that way, you, as it were, rivet one more link in the chain that binds you down, you add one more layer of hypnotism on to your own soul. Therefore, whosoever thinks he is weak is wrong, whosoever thinks he is impure is wrong, and is throwing a bad thought into the world. This we must always bear in mind that in the Vedanta there is no attempt at reconciling the present life — the hypnotised life, this false life which we have assumed — with the ideal; but this false life must go, and the real life which is always existing must manifest itself, must shine out. No man becomes purer and purer, it is a matter of greater manifestation. The veil drops away, and the native purity of the soul begins to manifest itself. Everything is ours already — infinite purity, freedom, love, and power."

"We have a place for struggle in the Vedanta, but not for fear. All fears will vanish when you begin to assert your own nature. If you think that you are bound, bound you will remain. If you think you are free, free you will be."

"You must always remember that the one central ideal of Vedanta is this oneness. There are no two in anything, no two lives, nor even two different kinds of life for the two worlds."

"God is one, but with internal differences, represented as the souls and the material creation. God has qualities. He is an ocean of Divine knowledge, bliss, compassion and other unlimited attributes."

"The world, comprised of the souls and lifeless inert matter, is a part of His being. He is referred to as 'nirgun', without any qualities, but what this indicates is that God is without the 'mayic' qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas. The material creation arose from God, therefore it is not an illusion. Maya is a power of God and established in Him."

"A soul is an infinitesimal fraction of God, just as a spark is a part of a fire. It remains at one place at a time, whereas God is omnipresent. The soul is ignorant, but God is omniscient and omnipotent. Being a fraction of God, the soul will always remain in existence. The soul could be considered equal to God only with respect to the experience of Divine bliss."

"The only means for a soul to be liberated from maya is selfless, whole-hearted devotion to God. The soul is an eternal servant of God. To refer to himself as God is a great sin."

"...the souls, maya and God are described in the Vedas, therefore these are to be accepted as existences"

"If there are scriptural verses that relate to Advaita or non-dual philosophy, they are secondary, not primary... a soul can attain God realization and liberation only through bhakti."

"To refer to yourself as God is a delusion, because it can be clearly seen that God is omnipresent and the soul is not; God is all-powerful and the soul's powers are limited; God is the creator and is omniscient, and the soul is ignorant"

"Absorb yourself in the love of God. Remain unswervingly on the path recognized by the Vedas and other scriptures. When doing any good action, humbly remember God. He is your everything."

"The Alvars being devotees of Vishnu had access to the many temples dedicated to the god. During their visits they composed devotional hymns in praise of Vishnu. These hymns promoted devotion and surrender by glorifying the greatness of Vishnu. Although their hymns are replete with the ideas of the Vedas, their uniqueness lie in the great emphasis on devotion and surrender which are rarely found in the Vedic Mantras or in the highly metaphysical pronouncements within the Upanishads."

"Bhakti: Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and forced me to belong to him."

"It might be of value here if we dealt with the various "yogas" so as to give to the student a clear concept as to their distinctions and thus cultivate his discrimination. The principal yogas are three in number, the various other so-called "yogas" finding their place in one of these three groups: 1. Raja Yoga...the yoga of the mind or will, 2. Bhakti Yoga... the yoga of the heart or the devotee, 3. Karma Yoga.... the yoga of action."

"Raja Yoga stands by itself and is the king science of them all; it is the summation of all the others... Bhakti Yoga is the yoga of the heart; it is the bringing into submission of all the feelings, desires and emotions, to the one beloved, seen and known in the heart. It is the sublimation of all the lower loves and the bringing captive of all longings and desire, to the one longing to know the God of love and the love of God. It was the "kingly" or crowning science of the last rootrace, the Atlantean, just as the science of Raja Yoga is the great science of our Aryan civilization. Bhakti Yoga made its exponent an arhat or led him to the fourth initiation. Raja Yoga makes him an adept and leads him to the portal of the fifth initiation. Both lead to liberation, for the arhat is released from the cycle of rebirth but Raja Yoga liberates him to complete service and freedom to work as a White Magician. Bhakti Yoga is the yoga of the heart, of the astral body."

"Bharata Natyam is grounded in bhakti. In fact bhakti is at the center of all the arts of India. Our music and dance are two important offerings to God."

"The individual soul is forever a servant of the Supersoul and therefore, his reletionship with the Supersoul is to offer service. That is called Bhakti-Yoga or Bhakti-bhaava."

"One achieves bhakti [love of God] by hearing and chanting about the Supreme Lord's special qualities, even while engaged in the ordinary activities of life in this world."

"... he [Chaitanya] described bhakti as that state of mind in which one abandons all duties through love of Krishna...one cannot reach the path of love without renouncing all thoughts of oneself."

"The bhakti poets use an elaborate, multi-vocal rhetoric, which requires the taking on, not only of personal voices to suit different emotions and genres, but also the voices of some of the dramatis personae of classical Tamil (Cankam) poetry, such as the lovelorn heroine or her solicitous girlfriend."

"From meditation on difference, one proceeds to meditating on “He am I”. Meditation without a sense of difference is regarded as the most purifying...Once concentration develops, one begins with meditation on froms such as Shiva, Vishnu or the Goddess. This is the basis of Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion."

"Bhakti Yoga became progressively more important for me. Its value can be described with a simple metaphor: knowledge (jnana) is the flame and the mind is the wick, but bhakti is the oil. Without bhakti spiritual knowledge burns out the mind, like a flame does a wick without oil. I discovered that the Vedas are primarily books on Bhakti Yoga, quite contrary to a modern scholarly belief that Bhakti Yoga originated from a later Islamic or Christian influence in medieval India."

"Fill your mind with Me, be My devotee, sacrifice unto Me, bow down to Me; thus having made thy heart steadfast in Me, taking Me as the Supreme Goal, thou shalt come to Me."

"Equal to friend and enemy, equal to honour and insult, pleasure and pain, praise and w:Blame:blame, grief and happiness, heat and cold (to all that troubles with opposite affections the normal nature), silent, content and well-satisfied with anything and everything, not attached to person or thing, place or home, firm in mind (because it is constantly seated in the highest self and fixed for ever on the one divine object of his love and adoration), that man is dear to Me."

"In Manipur, dancing is charged with faith, the devotional fervour of bhakthi . To a Manipuri, one whole life is a dance offering."

"It [Kathak] was quintessential theatre, using instrumental and vocal music along with stylized gestures, to enliven the stories. Its form today contains traces of temple and ritual dances, and the influence of the bhakti movement."

"The second school of yoga is that of Shri Krishna, particularly expounded in the great poem the Bhagavad-Gita... This teaches above all else the doctrine of love. The disciple Arjuna, to whom the Guru spoke, was a great lover of mankind; according to the scripture this great soldier sank down upon the floor of his chariot before the battle of Kurukshetra began, full of sorrow because he loved his enemies and could not bear to injure them. The teacher Shri Krishna then explained to him, amid much philosophical teaching, that the greatest thing in life is service, that God himself is the greatest server—for he keeps the wheel of life revolving, not because any benefit can possibly accrue to him in consequence, but for the sake of the world—and that men should follow his example and work for the welfare of mankind. Many Great Ones, he said, had reached perfection by following this path of life, by doing their duty without personal desire. To love without ceasing is the way of the second Ray; in the Gita it is shown how this love should be directed to men and other beings in karma yoga (the yoga by action or work) and to God in bhakti yoga (the yoga by devotion)."

"The sixth school is that of bhakti or devotion...taught to a large extent in the Bhagavad-Gita; indeed, we find it in every religion among those true devotees who put their trust entirely in the Divine— who do not pray for personal favours, but are quite convinced that God is perfect master of his world, that he knows what he is doing, and that therefore all is well; they are therefore more than content, they are thrilled with ecstasy, if they can but have the opportunity and the privilege to serve and obey him in any way."

"The final emancipation called mokhsha for the beings who are bound to the problems of samsara can be attained by intense devotion to the Lord with the true knowledge of HIM."

"Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion, consists of surrender to the Divine within the heart. The Maharishi considered the most important yoga path after self-enquiry and usually recommended the two together. Surrender [Bhakti] can be done in four ways:To the Supreme Self (Atma-Bhakti);To God or the Cosmic Lord as a formless being (Ishvara-Bhakti);To God in the form of various Gods or Goddesses (Ishta Devata-Bhakti) and ; To God in the form of the Guru (Guru-Bhakti)."

"Complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-inquiry or through bhakti marga."

"On the path of bhakti there are no restrictions of time or place for meditation. You can meditate anytime, anyplace. There is also no required posture for meditation. The only requirement is that you should be remembering Radha Krishn."

"...devotion is love springing forth from God’s incomparable sweetness (madhurya-pradhana-bhakti) rather than reverence at His incomparable greatness (aishvaraya- pradhana-bhakti)"

"The veneration of sixty-three saints called ‘Nayanar’(Nayanar:saint; plural nayanmar) is an important element of Saiva devotional (bhakti) religion in the Tamil region."

"In their hymns the Nayanars celebrate specific visions they had of specific manifestations of Siva in particular places in the Tamil land, thus revealing the continuity of their conception of the sacred with the pre-bhakthi civilization."

"The Bhagavata Purana teaches nine primary forms of bhakti, as explained by Prahlada as:(1) w:śravaṇa|śravaṇa ("listening" to the scriptural stories of Kṛṣṇa and his companions), (2) kīrtana ("praising," usually refers to ecstatic group singing), (3) smaraṇa ("remembering" or fixing the mind on Viṣṇu), (4) pāda-sevana (rendering service), (5) arcana (worshiping an image), (6) vandana (paying homage), (7) dāsya (servitude), (8) sākhya ([[friendship), and (9) ātma-nivedana (complete surrender of the self)."

"No one can say with finality that God is only 'this' and nothing else. He is formless, and again He has forms. For the bhakta He assumes forms. But He is formless for the jnani, that is, for him who looks on the world as a mere dream. The bhakta feels that he is one entity and the world another. Therefore God, reveals Himself to him as a Person. But the jnani — the Vedantist, for instance — always reasons, applying the process of 'Not this, not this'. Through this discrimination he realizes, by his inner perception, that the ego and the universe are both illusory, like a dream. Then the jnani realizes Brahman in his own consciousness. He cannot describe what Brahman is."

"...bhakti devotion may be sattvic. A devotee who possesses sattvic bhakti, meditates on God in absolute secret, perhaps inside his mosquito net. Others think he is asleep. Since he is late in getting up, they think perhaps he has not slept well during the night. His love for the body goes only as far as appeasing his hunger, and that only by means of rice and simple greens. There is no elaborate arrangements about his meals, no luxury in clothes, and no display of furniture. Besides, such a devotee never flatters anyone for money."

"An aspirant possessed of rAjasic bhakti puts a tilak on his forehead and a necklace of holy rudrAksha beads, interspersed with gold ones, around his neck. At worship he wears a silk cloth."

"A man endowed with tAmasic bhakti has burning faith. Such a devotee literally exhorts boons from God, even as a robber falls upon a man and plunders his money. 'Bind! Beat! Kill!'—that is his way, the way of the dacoits."

"A brAhmin without this love is no longer a brAhmin. And a pariah with the love of God is no longer a pariah. Through bhakti an untouchable becomes pure and elevated."

"A seeker must acquire a true knowledge of the individual self and the Supreme; He must devote himself to meditation, worship and the adoration of the Supreme; This knowledge with discipline leads him to the realization of the Supreme."

"Bhakti is knowledge of Brahman, an unfailing recollection of the supreme Lord, a constant meditation on Him which develops into direct perception of Him....Disinterested performance of obligatory rituals removes the obstacles to knowledge, such actions become the means of attaining the constant memory of God."

"The Sandilya and Narada bhakthi sutras like the Bhagavata are fundamental works of mysticism. Sandilya bhakthi sutras seem to be older on account of its archaic tone and is evidently modeled on the pattern of the great philosophical Sutras. Narada Bhakthi sutra quotes sandilya but the sandilya does not quote Narada."

"Narad Bhakthi sutra surpasses not merely sandilya by its easy eloquence and fervid devotion but it may be even regarded as one of the best specimens of Bhakthi literature that have ever been written. The Sandilya-sutra is more philosophical than Narada-Sutra. It goes into the question of nature of Brahman and Jiva, their inter-relation, the question of creation, and so on."

"The Narad Bhakthi Sutra takes a leap immediately into the doctrine of devotion and analyses its various aspects, and sets a ban against mere philosophical constructions."

"Both the Sandilya and the Narada quote the Bhagavad Gita on the one hand, and later Bhakthi literature on the other."

"This whole sphere, this whole world of Knowledge and the Master and, practicing, and devotion, and participation and all that— This is traditionally in India called the path of devotion, bhakti marg."

"There is no sect [or, indeed, Hindu movement] without some element of bhakti."

"Rigveda is the Veda of knowledge, Yajurveda is the Veda of Karma, Sama Veda is the Veda of Bhakthi and Atharva Veda is Brahma-Veda, an umbrella celebrating the Divine Presence."

"Bhakti is the attitude of the mind, and jnana is the attitude of the intellect, both flow towards the Lord. In life to handle yourself, use your head, but to handle others, use your heart."

"He who renouncing all activities, who is free of all the limitations of time, space and direction, worships his own Atman which is present everywhere, which is the destroyer of heat and cold, which is Bliss-Eternal and stainless, becomes All-knowing and All-pervading and attains thereafter Immortality."

"Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Deva Maheshwara. Guru Sakshath Parambrahma, Tasmai Shri Gurave Namaha. Guru is the creator Brahma, Guru is the preserver Vishnu, Guru is the destroyer Shiva. Guru is directly the supreme spirit — I offer my salutations to this Guru."

"Jnana marga is like Ramphal. Bhakthi marga is like Sitaphal (custard apple), easy to deal with and very sweet. The pulp of Ramphal is inside and difficult to get at. Ramphal should ripen on the tree and plucked ripe, If it falls down it is spoilt. So if a Jnani falls, he is ruined. Even for a Jnani there is the danger of a fall, i.e., by a little negligence or carelessness."

"Tulsidas is a devotee of Rama, who is an emblem of moral values and decorum. Quite naturally, a tone of high seriousness marks his devotional poetry. His bhakti has a sound socio-moral base with a rational background."

"The name of the Lord is the mighty force He who takes refuge in Him is never abandoned. The castle of His grace becomes his shelter: They all resort to Him, great and small As with the touch of the mystical store Iron becomes gold."

"From the invocation to the conclusion, the poet Tulsidas seeks the grace of Rama and announces over and over again that the final object of his poetic performance is the attainment of bhakti – complete dedication to Rama. The narrative ends with an elaborate discourse on the supremacy of the devotional sentiment."

"...there were three different ways of approaching God, viz., the ways of action (karma), knowledge (jnana), and devotion (bhakti). Of these, bhakti is the best among them, since it is the only means of salvation and the state of love (prema) and service (seva) which bhakti implies is better than even release."

"The path of spiritual progress that the teachers of the Bengal school recommend is neither yoga nor jnana but bhakti. While the followers of the way of yoga emphasise the subjective aspect and those of the path of jnana both the subjective and objective aspect, the followers of the path of bhakti emphasize the objective aspect of consciousness."

"The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest and most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; it's great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism, Mohammedanism, or Christianity, have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers [sic] on the lower planes of Bhakti. That singleness of attachment (Nishthâ) to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e., by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal."

"Never say, "O Lord, I am a miserable sinner." Who will help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? What can prevail over you? You are the God of the universe; where can you seek for help? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself. In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself unknowingly. The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that someone was sending help to you. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm, you have built a cocoon around yourself. Who will save you? Burst your own cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth."

"Bhakti Yoga is described by Swami Vivekananda as the path of systematized devotion for the attainment of union with the Absolute."

"Bhakti is a series of succession of mental efforts at religious Realization|realization beginning with ordinary worship ending in a supreme intensity of love for Ishvara."

"The renunciation necessary for the attainment of bhakti is not obtained by killing anything, but comes naturally as in the presence of an increasingly stronger light, the less intense ones become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish away completely. So this love of pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself."

"Meera Bai belonged to a strong tradition of bhakti (devotional) poets in medieval India who expressed their love of God through the analogy of human relations—a mother's love for her child, a friend for a friend, or a woman for her beloved. The immense popularity and charm of her lyrics lies in their use of everyday images and in the sweetness of emotions easily understood by the people of India."

"The noun lila means anything from sport, dalliance, play to any languid or amorous gesture in a woman."

"The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila."

"The purpose of creation, is lila. The concept of lila escapes all the traditional difficulties in assigning purpose to the creator. Lila is a purpose-less purpose, a natural outflow, a spontaneous self-manifestation of the Divine. The concept of lila, again, emphasizes the role of delight in creation. The concept of Prakriti and Maya fail to explain the bliss aspect of Divine. If the world is manifestation of the Force of Satcitananda, the deployment of its existence and consciousness, its purpose can be nothing but delight. This is the meaning of delight. Lila, the play, the child’s joy, the poet’s joy, the actor’s joy, the mechanician’s joy of the soul of things eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and recreating Himself in Himself for the sheer bliss of that self-creation, of that self-representation, Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground"

"All exists here, no doubt, for the delight of existence, all is a game or Lila; but a game too carries within itself an object to be accomplished and without the fulfillment of that object would have no completeness of significance."

"The world, as God has made it, is not a rigid exercise in logic but, like a strain of music, an infinite harmony of many diversities, and his own existence, being free and absolute, cannot be logically defined...Maya is one realisation, an important one which Shankara overstressed because it was most vivid to his own experience. For yourself leave the word for subordinate use and fix rather on the idea of Lila, a deeper and more penetrating word than Maya. Lila includes the idea of Maya and exceeds it."

"Brahman is full of all perfections. And to say that Brahman has some purpose in creating the world will mean that it wants to attain through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is impossible. Hence, there can be no purpose of Brahman in creating the world. The world is a mere spontaneous creation of Brahman. It is a Lila, or sport, of Brahman. It is created out of Bliss, by Bliss and for Bliss. Lila indicates a spontaneous sportive activity of Brahman as distinguished from a self-conscious volitional effort. The concept of Lila signifies freedom as distinguished from a [w:Self-conscious|self-conscious]] volitional effort."

"The gods themselves had come down and taken birth as men; and when you think of all that took place throughout the wonderful childhood of the Lila of Sri Krishna, you must remember that those who played that act of the drama were the ordinary men, no ordinary women; they were the Protectors of the worlds incarnated as cowherds around Him. And the Gopis, the graceful wives of the shepherds, they were the Rishis of ancient days, who by devotion to Vishnu had gained the blessing of being incarnated as Gopis, in order that they might surround His childhood, and pour out their love at the tiny feet of the boy they saw as boy, of the God they worshipped as supreme."

"What but an unclean mind can see aught that is impure in the child [Krishna] dancing there as lover and beloved? It is as though He looked forward down the ages and saw what later would be said, and it is as though He kept the child form in the Lila, in order that He might breathe harmlessly into men’s blind unclean hearts the lesson that He would fain give."

"This eternal lila is the eternal truth, and, therefore, its this eternal lila - the playful love-making of Radha and Krishna, which the Vaishnava poets desired to enjoy. If we analyse the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva we shall find not even a single statement which shows the poet's desire to have union with Krishna as Radha had,- he only sings praises the lila of Radha and Krishna and hankers after a chance just to have peep into the divine lila, and this peep into the divine lila is the highest spiritual gain which poets could think of."

"Popular traditions in Benaras, [however], tend to associate with entire month of Kartik with rasa lila episodes. Participants in Kartik puja, the Hindu woman perform on the banks of the Ganges River throughout the month, consider it to be a version of the rasa lila transfigured into a form appropriate for human woman, and enacted each year in celebration of the earthly rasa lila of ancient times."

"Therefore, it is that Hinduism calls it all His sport — Lila, or calls it an illusion— Maya."

"...to be vigorously and devotedly involved in the Ramlila for one month is to take an excursion out of ordinary space and time. The Ramcharitmanas, along with mainstream devotional Hinduism, teaches that the universe is lila, or play, which in Sanskrit as in English means both “drama” and “game.” The idea of lila is closely akin to that of maya, which we may say here refers to the transient and illusory world of forms. I believe that the Ramlila is constructed in such a way as to produce an actual experience of the world as lila or maya."

"Maya and Lila answer the questions ‘how’ and ‘why’ with regard to the world. To the question ‘why’ creation? The answer is ‘Lila’ and to the question ‘How creation’ the answer is through Maya. Although these apparently look alike Vedantic answers to these questions, Sri Aurobindoconceives them not exactly in the Vedanta’s way but in his own way."

"The Ram Lila at Ramnagar, the fort that is home to the kings of Benares, is the most famous and traditional of all these Ram Lilas. The Ramnagar Ram Lila began because of the royal family's patronage, and the annual performance is still the oldest, most traditional and most important Ram Lila in Benares."

"Lila, as a concept denoting play, is applied to much of Indian thought, both spiritual and secular."

"Clearly not reserved strictly for the spiritual, lila is nevertheless employed as a justification for the mystery of existence in various Indian religions. Depending on the spiritual system claiming the term, lila denotes a specific Divine Play whose nature corresponds to the fundamental epistemological and spiritual beliefs of the tradition in question. Thus the tenor of the definition of lila provides a unique vantage point for any spiritual tradition that utilizes the term."

"This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play."

"The expansion (i.e. projection) and the contraction (i.e. dissolution) of the universe are called lila (the divine sport) in Hindu scriptures. In this divine play, the One becomes many and the many return into the One in endless rhythmic fashion."

"Lila (pronounced Leela) is the play of creation. To awakened consciousness, the entire universe. With all its joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, appears as a divine game, sport, or drama. It is a play in which the one Consciousness performs all the roles. Alluding to this lila of the Divine Mother the physical universe is a “mansion of mirth.”"

"For all this diversity, the core of East Indian spirituality is Hinduism, especially as disclosed in the notion of leela (also spelled lila), or play. The entire cosmos is a leela, a dance of energy, a drama staged by Brahman, the Absolute. Leelas are also specific celebrations."

"The thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal Self, the foundation of all cosmic existence , nor Mayavada, although it speaks of the Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor is it Qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in cold and heat, in God rather than in dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya, although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti."

"The concept of Prakriti and Maya fail to explain the Bliss aspect of the Divine."

"The spirit, universal nature (whether called Maya, Prakriti or Shakti) and the soul in living beings, Jiva, are the three truths which are universally admitted by all religious sects and conflicting religious philosophies of India."

"The Samkya philosophers say that of the two principles, Purusa and Prakriti, it is Prakriti, the creatrix of the world, that is devoid of consciousness (caitanya)."

"Vishnu is said to be beyond purusa and prakriti or to include both. … prakriti, like maya and shakti, in the Bhagavata, is something Vishnu possesses and controls. With prakriti becoming a goddess, or even identified with the Goddess, Devi, the old Samkhyan dualism, between a conscious spirit-person and an active but insentient material force was basically transcended “from the ground up.” P.30"

"The Devi-Bhagavata, expounding the sakta perspective, explicitly rejects the Samkhyan view of matter, prakriti."

"But in deep-sleep when temporarily our minds are not effective in our selves, all these tyrannies are at an end....from the body, senses, mind and intellect, all of which constitute the matter (Prakriti), and is only the witness of their functions."

"Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion. All actions are performed by the gunas of Prakriti. Deluded by identification with the ego, a person thinks, “I am the doer.” But the illumined man or woman understands the domain of the gunas and is not attached. Such people know that the gunas interact with each other; they do not claim to be the doer."

"Gandhi's understanding of 'nature' was a far more inclusive one, rooted in the Gujarati word Prakruti, which derived from the Sanskrit Prakriti, meaning ‘ the original or natural form or condition of anything, original or primary substance’, and ‘the personified will of the Supreme in creation...For Gandhi, the power of Prakriti made a mockery of even the most advanced technology of the day."

"In Prakriti and Gunas, the concept of prakriti is used in Sankhya philosophy to explain the evolution of the universe. Prakriti is defined as the ultimate unconscious primal matter or the ultimate cosmic energy, the material cause of the universe."

"Prakriti is the source of the five great elements earth, water, fire, air, and ether known as Panchamahabhutas. These five great elements comprise all material objects and the bodies of plants, trees, insects, animals, and human beings. All beings in the world are the products of the union of atman (or Purusha of Sankhya philosophy) and Prakriti."

"One should understand that the Atman is always like the King, distinct from the body, senses, mind and intellect, all of which constitute the matter (Prakriti); and is the witness of their functions."

"In Samkhya, since atman (Purusa) is pure consciousness, which cannot be defined further, and Prakrti is responsible for the creation of the empirical world, Purusa is regarded as essentially inactive. But, while in Advaita, the multitude of souls (of course, the karmic chain of transmigration might hold together one and the same soul but they are supposed to be innumerable chains representing different souls) is only valid on the empirical, lower stage of reality."

"Prakriti is called by the Sânkhya philosophers indiscreet, and defined as the perfect balance of the materials in it; and it naturally follows that in perfect balance there cannot be any motion. In the primal state before any manifestation, when there was no motion but perfect balance, this Prakriti was indestructible, because decomposition or death comes from instability or change."

"The Chit in the Purusha plus Prakriti is what we see around us. Whatever is pleasure and happiness and light in the universe belongs to Purusha; but it is a compound, because it is Purusha plus Prakriti."

"...if we ask the Sankhya the question, "Who created nature?" — the Sankhya says that the Purusha and the Prakriti are uncreate and omnipresent, and that of this Purusha there is an infinite number. We shall have to controvert these propositions, and find a better solution, and by so doing we shall come to Advaitism."

"The Samkhya system is associated with the name of the ancient sage Kapila. The basic contention of Samkhya is that the world evolves out of Prakriti through the interplay of gunas. Prakriti is constituted by three gunas – Sattva, Rejas and Tamas. Sattva is the quality of serenity or repose. Rajas stands for activity or movement. Tamas is inertia."

"Prakriti is the fundamental substance out of which the world evolves...Parkriti evolves under the influence of Purusa"

"The most perplexing of Samkhya system is the problem of relation between Purusa and Prakriti. Prakriti evolves a world full of woe and desolation to raise the soul from its slumber. The unrolling of the tragedy of the world is said to be necessary for the self, which remains inactive though it sees all that is presented to it...The evolution of Prakriti implies spiritual agency. But the spiritual centers admitted by Samkhya are incapable of exerting any direct influence on Prakriti; the Samkhya says that the mere presence of Purusas excited Prakriti to activity and development. Though Purusa is not endowed with creative might, Prakriti, which produces the manifold universe, is so on account of its union with Purusa. Prakriti is blind, but with the guidance of Purusa it produces the manifold universe. The union of the two is compared to a lame man of good vision mounted on the shoulders of a blind man of sure foot."

"Know therefore that Prakriti is maya and the controlled of maya is the Supreme Lord. All this world with all its beings are but parts of Him."

"Though the physical world and the individual souls are real they are not independent of the supreme. They are para-tantra, while God alone is sva-tantra. Prakriti, Purusa, Kala,Karma, Svabhava are dependent. Though eternal they do not exist by their own right but by the will of the Supreme."

"In Paramatma Sahita, [ Sankara says] that the Supreme Self regards him as His very self. The self in the body is generally absorbed by the world of dualities, cold and heat, pain and pleasure but when it controls the senses and masters the world, the self becomes free when the self is bound by the modes of Prakriti or nature as it is called Kshetragna, when it is freed from them, the same self is called the Supreme Self."

"Universal self which is beyond the universal modification of ‘Prakriti’ is what is called ‘Ishvara’, the Supreme Ruler, God."

"A physician who has learnt one science only cannot be sure of his own science (Ayurveda) and for this reason the physician has to be versed in many sciences."

"Anatomy and physiology, like some aspects of chemistry, were by-products of Hindu medicine. As far back as the sixth century B.C. Hindu physicians described ligaments, sutures, lymphatics, nerve plexus, fascia, adipose and vascular tissues, mucous and synovial membranes, and many more muscles than any modern cadaver is able to show. The doctors of pre-Christian India shared Aristotle’s mistaken conception of the heart as the seat and organ of consciousness, and supposed that the nerves ascended to and descended from the heart. But they understood remarkably well the processes of digestion—the different functions of the gastric juices, the conversion of chyme into chyle, and of this into blood. Anticipating Weismann by 2400 years, Atreya (ca. 500 B.C.) held that the parental seed is independent of the parent’s body, and contains in itself, in miniature, the whole parental organism. Examination for virility was recommended as a prerequisite for marriage in men; and the Code of Manu warned against marrying mates affected with tuberculosis, epilepsy, leprosy, chronic dyspepsia, piles, or loquacity. Birth control in the latest theological fashion was suggested by the Hindu medical schools of 500 B.C. in the theory that during twelve days of the menstrual cycle impregnation is impossible. Fœtal development was described with considerable accuracy; it was noted that the sex of the fœtus remains for a time undetermined, and it was claimed that in some cases the sex of the embryo could be influenced by food or drugs."

"The records of Hindu medicine begin with the Atharva-veda; here, embedded in a mass of magic and incantations, is a list of diseases with their symptoms. Medicine arose as an adjunct to magic: the healer studied and used earthly means of cure to help his spiritual formulas; later he relied more and more upon such secular methods, continuing the magic spell, like our bedside manner, as a psychological aid. Appended to the Atharva-veda is the Ajur-veda (“The Science of Longevity”). In this oldest system of Hindu medicine illness is attributed to disorder in one of the four humors (air, water, phlegm and blood), and treatment is recommended with herbs and charms. Many of its diagnoses and cures are still used in India, with a success that is sometimes the envy of Western physicians. The Rig-veda names over a thousand such herbs, and advocates water as the best cure for most diseases. Even in Vedic times physicians and surgeons were being differentiated from magic doctors, and were living in houses surrounded by gardens in which they cultivated medicinal plants."

"Only less illustrious than these are Vagbhata (625 A.D.), who prepared a medical compendium in prose and verse, and Bhava Misra (1550 A.D.), whose voluminous work on anatomy, physiology and medicine mentioned, a hundred years before Harvey, the circulation of the blood..."

"For the detection of the 1120 diseases that he enumerated, Sushruta recommended diagnosis by inspection, palpation, and auscultation. Taking of the pulse was described in a treatise dating 1300 A.D. Urinalysis was a favorite method of diagnosis; Tibetan physicians were reputed able to cure any patient without having seen anything more of him than his water. In the time of Yuan Chwang Hindu medical treatment began with a seven-day fast; in this interval the patient often recovered; if the illness continued, drugs were at last employed. Even then drugs were used very sparingly; reliance was placed largely upon diet, baths, enemas, inhalations, urethral and vaginal injections, and blood-lettings by leeches or cups. Hindu physicians were especially skilled in concocting antidotes for poisons; they still excel European physicians in curing snakebites. Vaccination, unknown to Europe before the eighteenth century, was known in India as early as 550 A.D., if we may judge from a text attributed to Dhanwantari, one of the earliest Hindu physicians: “Take the fluid of the pock on the udder of the cow . . . upon the point of a lancet, and lance with it the arms between the shoulders and elbows until the blood appears; then, mixing the fluid with the blood, the fever of the small-pox will be produced.” Modern European physicians believe that caste separateness was prescribed because of the Brahman belief in invisible agents transmitting disease; many of the laws of sanitation enjoined by Sushruta and “Manu” seem to take for granted what we moderns, who love new words for old things, call the germ theory of disease. Hypnotism as therapy seems to have originated among the Hindus, who often took their sick to the temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestion or “temple-sleep,” as in Egypt and Greece. The Englishmen who introduced hypnotherapy into England—Braid, Esdaile and Elliotson—“undoubtedly got their ideas, and some of their experience, from contact with India.”"

"The general picture of Indian medicine is one of rapid development in the Vedic and Buddhist periods, followed by centuries of slow and cautious improvement. How much Atreya, Dhanwantari and Sushruta owed to Greece, and how much Greece owed to them, we do not know. In the time of Alexander, says Garrison, “Hindu physicians and surgeons enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for superior knowledge and skill,” and even Aristotle is believed by some students to have been indebted to them. So too with the Persians and the Arabs: it is difficult to say how much Indian medicine owed to the physicians of Baghdad, and through them to the heritage of Babylonian medicine in the Near East; on the one hand certain remedies, like opium and mercury, and some modes of diagnosis, like feeling the pulse, appear to have entered India from Persia; on the other we find Persians and Arabs translating into their languages, in the eighth century A.D., the thousand-year-old compendia of Sushruta and Charaka.51 The great Caliph Haroun-al-Rashid accepted the preeminence of Indian medicine and scholarship, and imported Hindu physicians to organize hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad. Lord Ampthill concludes that medieval and modern Europe owes its system of medicine directly to the Arabs, and through them to India. Probably this noblest and most uncertain of the sciences had an approximately equal antiquity, and developed in contemporary contact and mutual influence, in Sumeria, Egypt and India."

"Ayurveda is not a weird diet and the practitioners are not really tree-hugging woo-woos with an extreme affinity for Mother Nature (they're normal people who take really good care of themselves & their communities). Funny how we make-up expectations & judgments about things before we even try them. – Ayurvedic wisdom leads to more profitable and passionate work."

"If your work is tuned in and based on timeless principles like Ayurveda or yoga, don't try to sell your people on something that will only work once. We're all happier when we're working together in harmony with the highest. It's part of all of our paths."

"Dhanvantari, also spelled Dhanwantari, in Hindu mythology, the physician of the gods. According to legend, the gods and the demons sought the elixir amrita by churning the milky ocean, and Dhanvantari rose out of the waters bearing a cup filled with the elixir. The Ayurveda, a traditional system of medicine, is also attributed to him. The name has also been applied to other semilegendary and historical physicians and to a legendary king."

"A fundamental Ayurvedic philosophy is that “food is medicine and medicine is food” An Ayurvedic proverb is “When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; when diet is correct, medicine is of no need."

"The principles of Ayurveda can "help you love them 'as is' instead of how you think they should be."

"The ancient system of Ayurvedic herbal medicine, dating back to the sixth century BC, has been making a healthy resurgence over the last few decades and nowhere more than in Kerala...The most common form of Ayurveda in Kerala is massage, which uses oils and herbs in a course of treatment, either for rejuvenation or as remedies. Ayurveda which aims to eliminate the toxic imbalances that cause the body to become susceptible to ill-health, concentrates on the well-being of the individual as a whole and not just the affected part."

"The great thing about Ayurveda is that its treatments always yield side benefits, not side effects."

"The Ayurvedic route to great health involves two simple steps: 1. Doing less; 2. Being more."

"Doing Ayurveda does not require conquering complicated Sanskrit terms, memorizing mantras, mastering body contractions, or struggling with religious beliefs. It requires nothing except that you commit your time and energy to your own supreme well-being. What is more it asks that you do this in as relaxed a manner as you like, step by baby step – a simple, friendly, and yes - fun way to be 100 percent healthy."

"Because the disharmony of mental doshas (satogun, rajogun, and tamogun) and body doshas (vata, pitta, and kapha) are the major cause of illness, the goal of illness management in Ayurveda is to bring back harmony among the doshas. The management includes clinical examination, diagnosis, and dietary and lifestyle interventions and treatment. The clinical examination consists of Astha Sthana Pariksha (8-point diagnosis: pulse-diagnosis, urine, stool, tongue, voice and body sound, eye, skin, and total body appearance examinations) and examination of the digestive system and the patient's physical strength. The treatment consists of cleansing (Panchkarma), palliation (improve digestion, remove toxic waste, fasting, observe thirst, exercise, sunbathing, and meditation), mental nurturing and spiritual healing depending on the disturbed doshas and the patient's constitution."

"Ayurveda is a sister philosophy to yoga. It is the science of life or longevity and it teaches about the power and the cycles of nature, as well as the elements."

"Sushruta described many surgical operations cataract, hernia, lithotomy, Caesarian section, etc. and 121 surgical instruments, including lancets, sounds, forceps, catheters, and rectal and vaginal speculums. Despite Brahmanical prohibitions he advocated the dissection of dead bodies as indispensable in the training of surgeons. He was the first to graft upon a torn ear portions of skin taken from another part of the body; and from him and his Hindu successors rhinoplasty the surgical reconstruction of the nose descended into modern medicine. "The ancient Hindus," says Garrison, "performed almost every major opera- tion except ligation of the arteries." ... *In the time of Alexander, says Garrison, "Hindu physicians and surgeons enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for superior knowledge and skill," and even Aristotle is believed by some students to have been indebted to them."

""Medicine.--Their knowledge was truly astonishing. In Tcharaka and Sousruta, the two princes of Hindu medicine, is laid down the system which Hippocrates appropriated later. Sousruta notably enunciates the principles of preventive medicine or hygiene, which he places much above curative medicine--too often, according to him, empyrical. Are we more advanced to-day? It is not without interest to remark that the Arab physicians, who enjoyed a merited celebrity in the middle ages--Averroes among others--constantly spoke of the Hindu physicians, and regarded them as the initiators of the Greeks and themselves[...] "Surgery.--In this they are not less remarkable. They made the operation for the stone, succeeded admirably in the operation for cataract, and the extraction of the foetus, of which all the unusual or dangerous cases are described by Tcharaka with an extraordinary scientific accuracy."

"Once when Caliph Harun-ur-Rashid suffered from a serious disease which baffled his physicians, he called for an Indian physician, Manka (Manikya), who cured him. Manka settled at Baghdad, was attached to the hospital of the Barmaks, and translated several books from Sanskrit into Persian and Arabic. Many Indian physicians like Ibn Dhan and Salih, reputed to be descendants of Dhanapti and Bhola respectively, were superintendents of hospitals at Baghdad. Indian medical works of Charak, Sushruta, the Ashtangahrdaya, the Nidana, the Siddhayoga, and other works on diseases of women, poisons and their antidotes, drugs, intoxicants, nervous diseases etc. were translated into Pahlavi and Arabic during the Abbasid Caliphate. Such works helped the Muslims in extending their knowledge about numerals and medicine."

"The Hindus were the first nation to establish hospitals, and for centuries they were the only people in the world who maintained them."

"The works of the great traditional Indian physicians, Charaka, and Susruta, were translated into Arabic not later than the 8th century... The name of Charaka repeatedly occurs in the Latin translations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Rhazes (Al Rasi), and Serapion (Ibn Serabi)."

"The Greek idea that disease was due to an imbalance of humours and the key to expel toxins was blood-letting, sweating and vomiting was similar but the Indian effective and the Greek primitive, often deadly. Hippocrates and Galen were not the fathers of modern medicine and surgery. Indian medicine or Ayur Veda, literally life science, remained ahead of Europe until 18th-century East India Company surgeons learned plastic surgery and rhinoplasty, the repair or creation of noses, from Indians. Ayur Vedic medicine’s main principle was a balance of body and mind. As Camran Nezhat has written, ‘In surgery the ancient Indians were essentially unrivalled, achieving some of the earliest known surgical firsts.’... Egyptian surgery techniques declined thereafter but Indians kept theirs alive. The Sushruta Samhita from about the 6th century BC described plastic surgery, removal of the prostate gland, crushing bladder stones, eye-surgery including extracting cataracts, amputations, training techniques for surgeons and more sophisticated medical instruments than later Roman ones. It was more detailed, sophisticated and four times larger than Aulis Cornelius Celcus’ (c. 25 BC-c. 50 ad) De Medicina, the surviving section of a work on diet, pharmacy, surgery and related fields. The Carack Samhita from the 1st century, representing a much older tradition, had an initiation oath, which must have served as a model for the Hippocratic Oath..."

"In fact , in 1835 the British banned the practice of Ayurveda in favor of European medicine in those regions where the East India Company ruled."

"Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani systems of India appear to be the most formal and organized among traditional medical systems...Unani and Siddha are bracketed with Ayurveda by the Government of India and the general public when referring to Indian or indigenous medical systems...Most scholars put the origin of Ayurveda much before that of Siddha or Unani...the three systems are fundamentally similar in their approach to health and disease."

"Ayurveda as the name implies ('Ayu': "life" and 'Veda':knowledge) is the knowledge of healthy living and is not confined only to treatment of illness. It is widely practiced in India and caters to the needs of nearly 75% percent of the population. The pharmacopeia of Ayurveda is a rich heritage of herbal practices describing medicinal uses of over 600 plants in seventy books containing 8,000 recipes of drug combinations."

"One of the most important features of modern medicine differentiating it from Ayurveda is the method of breaking complex phenomena into their component parts and dealing with each in isolation."

"The samhita (compendia) of Ayurveda are written in Sanskrit...They were propagated through centuries initially by word of mouth through the guru-shishya parampara (teacher–pupil tradition). For making the propagation easy, Ayurveda was written in the form of sutra (stanza) which concise yet precise versions of text, easy to memorize but unfortunately subject to different interpretations. Thus the samhita underwent considerable additions, modifications and editorial revisions from time to time."

"Initially India was predominantly Hindu land. During this time Ayurveda was widely practiced and accepted...When the Moghuls conquered most of India they enforced Unani system of medicine...which was heavily influenced by Ayurvedic practices...British rule prevented the development of Ayurveda or Unani systems of medicine. They introduced the allopathic medical systems."

"The exact origins of Ayurveda are lost in the mists of antiquity and are difficult to pinpoint. They have been placed by scholars of Ayurveda and ancient Indian literature at around 6000 BC...This period of ancient Indian medicine may be divided into three different periods – the pre-Vedic, Vedic and the Arsha period. **In: P.10"

"In the pre-Vedic period the Hindu system of medicine is said to have originated from Lord Brahma, the fountainhead of all learning. Brahma passed on this knowledge of life to Indra through Daksha Prajapati and Ashwins. This story is constant in several texts."

"During the Vedic period, the fourth Veda, i.e., the Atharvaveda, is the first authentic record of the state of medical knowledge. The science of Ayurveda is an upanga (supplement) of Atharvaveda. The eight branches of Ayurveda are mentioned in Atharvaveda...However, the fundamental principles of Ayurveda was not documented during the “Vedic” period. The growth and development occurred during the Arsha period (period of rishis:sages)."

"During the Arsha period (period of rishis:sages) systemetized treatises on the subject of Ayurveda were developed – Dhanvantri and Bharadwaja received the knowledge of life from Indra and developed the surgical and medical aspects of Ayurveda separately around the ninth century BC."

"The significant growth of Ayurveda during Arsha period is evidenced by the existence of two great universities in India– one at Benares where the head of the medical section was Sushruta and the other at Takhshshila in the west on the Jhelum river where medicine was taught under the leadership of Atreya, later taken over by Charaka."

"According to Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita, it was Lord Brahma who composed Ayurveda and divided in to eight branches since he believed that man had limited intelligence. The branches of Ayurveda described are: Kayachkitsa (Internal medicine); Shalakya (Surgery of head and neck, optholomology and otorhinolaryngology; Shalya (Surgery); Vishagarva virodhika tantra (Toxicology); Bhootavidya (Psychiatry); Kaumarbhrutya (Pediatrics); Rasayna tantra (Gerontology or science of rejuvenation); and Vajikarana tantra (Science of fertility)."

"Ayurveda must necessarily be differentiated from folklore medicine and ethnomedicine. It is instead a precise science with a strong philosophical basis. “Herbal medicines” does not form the soul of Ayurveda."

"Ayurveda is a holistic science and lays emphasis on preserving and promoting the fitness of healthy individuals besides giving methods for treatment of diseases. Health is defined in Ayurveda as “soundness of body, organs and mind." Thus sharira (the body), manas (the mind) and atma (the soul), “The Tripod of Life” receive equal attention for achievement of sound health’"

"The objective of “preserving and promoting health” in Ayurveda is achieved through different modalities , based on principles within its own conceptual framework. Ayurveda is not a science dealing with drugs. It is more a “way of life” and describes methods for promotion, prolongation and maintenance of positive health. It emphasizes the importance of a specific daily routine dinacharya, and seasonal routine rituacharya along with diet, drugs, physical exercise and good hygiene to achieve physical and mental health."

"The conceptual framework of Ayurveda is based on certain basic doctrines: the Darshana. These visualize the fundamental functional units of the body to be formed by these dosha (humors), seven dhatus (tissues), and mala (metabolic end products) which are in equilibrium during health."

"Ancient Ayurvedic physicians describe disease as a disequilibrium of these functional units. The objective of any therapeutic measure is therefore primarily to re-achieve a state of equilibrium."

"The ancient Ayurvedic tests have characterized the types, sites, sources and qualities of each of the dosha. Attempts have been made in the past to verify the concepts of tridosha by different scholars. Though there is no conclusive proof for the theories, all are in agreement that the dosha control and affect cellular function by altering the milieu interior in a very subtle but intricate manner."

"Thus the three primary forces: vata (motion), pitta (energy) and kapha (inertia) control all the functions if the human body. They are produced and regulated endogenously. The vata dosha controls the utilization of energy cells as well as the other two dosha, while the pitta dosha gives energy and is responsible for celluar, enzymatic and metabolic functions. Kapha dosha helps in synthesis and preservation of cellular components. They are subject to qualitative and quantitative change due to the influence of factors within or outside the body."

"From its ancient origins in India, Ayurveda has now spread all over the world. Its teaching uses a blend of herbal medicine, massage, nutrition, spiritual insight, practical experience, scientific analysis, and artistic creativity to guide us to a balanced fulfilled life style."

"There will be twists and turns along the way [in life], but as you learn to integrate Ayurveda in your daily existence you will be able to take more ownership over your life: your response to what crosses your path will begin to be your choice as opposed to what you feel you “should” do."

"Having developed at a time when cultures were profoundly dependent on their environment, Ayurveda uses language derived from nature as a metaphor to describe and prescribe for our health. According to its teachings, the foundational elements of Ether (or Space), Air (or its most dynamic aspect wind), Fire, Water and Earth are the building blocks that make up our physical world. We use adjectives to describe these elements as they appear in different forms, which Ayurveda depicts as ten pairs of opposing qualities (known as gunas) [[w:Hot|hot, cold; heavy, light; dry, greasy; sharp, dull; rough, smooth; stable, mobile; soft, hard; liquid, solid; subtle, gross; slimy, non-slimy."

"All of nature has qualities that impact on our own constitutional well-being. For example if we are already a “hot” body type, and we live in a desert and lots of heating food, we will become too hot! This elucidates a fundamental Ayurvedic principle that like increases like, meaning that the qualities of our constitution can be added to by qualities that are similar to it. This principle of “like increasing like” and “opposites balancing opposites” is central to understanding how Ayurvedic treatments work."

"Ayurveda divides us into three main constitutions types, vata, pitta and kapha, otherwise known as doshas. The doshas are qualities that influence all of the body’s functions; from biological processes to thoughts and feelings...the division between the doshas is the keystone in understanding Ayurveda, helping us determine and manage our genetic constitution or prakriti."

"Ayurveda spends a lot of its time teaching us how to remain within our threshold, and understanding the three doshas."

"[in genetic language.] Ayurveda is interested in our constitutional phenotypes (the results we can observe when an individual interacts with their environment) rather than our human genotypes (the genetic constitution of the individual)."

"Ayurveda recommends integrating your "being" into your “doing,” so that your life is your “practice.” Whether your focus is on health, wealth, joy, or spiritualgrowth, how you lead your life becomes an expression of who you really are."

"Ayurvedic wisdom says that our waking consciousness rests in the heart. Experiencing how your mind lives in your heart is central to understanding how your feelings and emotions affect your experience of wholeness."

"Charaka Samhita says that there are two very important concepts in Ayurveda: prana and agni, the life force and the digestive fire. Ayurveda weaves myriad insights into how we can nurture these vital energies and make our life full of health and wonder."

"In fact, Ayurveda considers diet to be the most important factor in health and uses food for medicinal purposes as well as for nutritional effects. Herbal remedies, massage, exercise, and spiritual practice can balance and repair the body, but its is a “good diet” that gives us an easy, everyday opportunity to take control of our health."

"Ayurveda has a theory that anything can be food, medicine, or a poison, depending on who is eating, what is eaten, and how much is eaten. A familiar usage in this context: “One man’s food is another man’s poison”."

"Ayurveda says that poor digestion leads to every disease, and many insights can be gained from this. Ayurveda thinks of digestion as a fire, which is known as agni in Sanskrit. A warm fire burns well with good-quality, dry wood that is put on the fire at the right time in the proper place, with plenty of air to fan the flames."

"In Ayurveda there are four types of agni that categorise people’s digestive tendencies. These are: Balanced (regular hunger), irregular (erratic appetite), intense (intense hunger), and weak (low appetite)."

"Ayurveda identifies six tastes, each of which has a different effect on the body and influence on the doshas."

"You have to be on your toes with Ayurveda: There is always an exception to the rule! The sour flavor is associated with Fire, together with a little Earth and Water, and creates both moisture and heat within us. Examples of sour foods are lemon, lime and vinegar."

"Salt is found in minerals and Ayurveda classifies different types: rock, sea, black, pink, and lake salt. Rock salt is considered the best as it is high in minerals and has fewer negative effects. Salty is the flavor most rarely found in food, but seaweeds and selery are good sources."

"Most important in all is a healthy diet. Ensuring that you get the best nutrition means that you start with best ingredients. Fresh, unprocessed, and organically grown. In Ayurveda there are some essentials that should be in every pantry, and a number that, depending on your individual constitution, should be limited."

"Generally speaking, Ayurveda considers the most beneficial foods to be rice, wheat, barley, mung beans, asparagus, grapes, pomegranates, ginger, ghee (clarified butter), unpasteurized milk, and honey. These are all thought to be rejuvenating to the tissues and digestion (provided the food is good quality and there are no intolerances). Ayurveda also recommends avoiding habitual use of “heavy” meats (e.g.beef), cheeses, yogurt, refined salt, processed foods, refined sugar, yeast, coffee, tomatoes, bananas, citrus fruits, and black lentils."

"Because Ayurveda developed in India, where the cow is worshipped as a sacred animal, high quality and properly prepared dairy products have a revered status and are central to its practice."

"Vegetarian foods also contain high amounts of various “super-nutrients," such as protective antioxidants, healingphytochemicals, and essential micronutrients, known to protect from a host of degenerative diseases."

"In keeping with its holistic view of life, Ayurveda extends the idea of digestion to our emotional as well as nutritional diet."

"To any one practicing natural medicine both the concept and reality of toxins is very clear....difference is because of the language and perspective of each tradition, for example “damp” and “heat” can be thought of as toxins in Ayurveda."

"Remember that Ayurveda is not just about taking appropriate remedies—it is a eat a simple, organic diet (avoid processed foods, sugar, yeast, nonorganic dairy, and reduce strenuous exercise; practice a gentle form of yoga instead have a massage."

"In the Ayurvedic view immunity is a strength within all of us that resists the causes of diseases and their aggressive tendencies."

"In Ayurveda immunity is literally known as “the self avoidance of disease. It considers immunity in terms of both quantity and quality; how much of it you have as well as how effective it is. Its holistic view includes an understanding ob both natural immunity and acquired immunity. This approach is like considering your immunity as a combination of the genetic bank balance you inherit from your ancestors, the savings deposit you make yourself and the interest on your account."

"From the Ayurvedic perspective, there are many components that build healthy immunity –ojas, the heart, the eyes, digestive strength and tissue health – and there are general princiles we can all follow everyday to achieve optimum health."

"Ayurveda recommends nourishing yoga practices such as the dynamic salutation (Surya namaskar). Regular relaxation and daily breathing practices can keep everyday stress at bay."

"As an Ayurvedic practitioner I firmly believe that the prevalence of cancer today is because we, as a society, are taking the wrong approach to managing the condition."

"The Ayurvedic formula triphala is known to be toxic to tumor cells but life-enhancing to healthy cells."

"The origins of chyavanaprasha - millions of spoons chyawanprasha are eaten every day beacuse of its revered rejuvenating powers. Its main ingredient is amla fruits which is blended with about thirty-five other ingredients and cooked into a paste with honey, sesame oil and jaggery (concentered sugar-cane juice which unique nutritional properties)."

"When the body is healthy and strong it is easier to gain insight into your mind. In Ayurveda this is achieved through diet, exercise, massage, and herbs, with particular attention paid to ideas of balance and the regulation of your own rhythms."

"One of the best systems for helping us to deal with stress and find a way back to inner peace is yoga, which has a long and interesting relationship with Ayurveda. From their Indian origins yoga and Ayurveda have flourished around the world. Ayurveda also includes lifestyle advice, along with massage, diet and herbal treatments. Its breadth ranges from simply daily routines to deep and sophisticated medical practice, all empowering the individual with greater potential for health."

"The seeds of yoga and Ayurveda appear to have their origins in ancient Indian Vedic culture, but the direct connection between them does not become clear until the sixteenth century. Around this time we can see that they began to adopt aspects of each others tradition."

"It is estimated that the Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia includes upwards of 1250 species, with approximately 300 of these in regular demand. Similar figures exist for Chinese, North American, and Western herbal medicine. In India and Sri Lanka most herbs come from the wild: in excess of 90 percent of herbal material used in Ayurveda comes from the forests, mountains, and plains of the Indian subcontinent and is sourced in an unregulated manner."

"The word "Diwali" means an arrangement or a row of lights. Traditionally, Diwali is celebrated on the darkest night of the year when the necessity and the beauty of lights can be truly appreciated. Light is a symbol in the world's religions for God, truth and wisdom."

"Given the antiquity of India, the diversity of its religious traditions and the interaction among these, it should not surprise us to know that many religious communities celebrate Diwali. Each one offers a distinctive reason for the celebration that enriches its meaning. For every community, however, Diwali celebrates and affirms hope, and the triumph of goodness and justice over evil and injustice. These values define the meaning of Diwali."

"Diwali, also spelled Divali, one of the major religious festivals in Hinduism, lasting for five days from the 13th day of the dark half of the lunar month Ashvina to the second day of the light half of Karttika, corresponding to October/November."

"Over the centuries, Diwali has become a national festival that is enjoyed by most Indians regardless of faith: Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs."

"Aurangzib's order to the subahdar of Gujrat, 20 Nov. 1665, is clear :—“In the city and parganahs of Ahmadabad (i.e., Gujrat), the Hindus following their superstitious customs light lamps in the night of diwali, and during the days of holi open their mouths in obscene speech and kindle the holi bonfire in chahlas and bazars, throwing into the fire the faggot of all people that they can seize by force or theft. It is ordered that in bazars there should be no illumination at diwali, nobody’s faggot should be taken by force or theft and flung into the holi bonfire, and no obscene language used." (Mirat, 276.) It was really a police regulation as regards holi, and an act of bigotry only in connection with diwali"

"The name [Divali] is derived from the Sanskrit term dipavali meaning “row of lights,” which are lit on the new-moon night to bid the presence of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. In Bengal, however, the goddess Kali is worshiped, and in north India the festival also celebrates the return of Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, and Hanuman to the city of Ayodhya, where Rama’s rule of righteousness would commence."

"The Diwali holds an imperative meaning among the Hindus, since, the day is reckoned with Lord Rama’s coronation ceremony as the King of Ayodhya after his return to the kingdom from 14 years of exile along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman."

"[The observance of certain Hindu customs by Muslim women filled Sirhindi with grief. He observed,] “There would hardly be any women who does not perform one or the other ceremony of Shirk (polytheism) ... Showing respect to the sacred days of Hindus and performing the ceremonies prevalent amongst them are nothing but kufr. For instance, during the Dewali of the kafirs, the ignorant ones amongst Muslims, particularly women, perform the ceremonies of kufr. They celebrate it like their own Jd and send presents to their daughters and sisters like the hafirs and Mushriks ... They attach much importance and weight to this season. All this is Shirk and kufr’"

"Even in India customs can vary greatly. Celebrations in other countries can also be quite different. In some places it is a three-day festival, but it usually lasts for five days. Diwali includes the beginning of the new financial year."

"Hindus interpret the Diwali story based upon where they live:In North India they celebrate the story of King Rama's return to Ayodhya after he defeated Ravana by lighting rows of clay lamps. South India celebrates it as the day that Lord Krishna defeated the demon Narakasura. In western India the festival marks the day that Lord Vishnu, the Preserver (one of the main gods of the Hindu trinity) sent the demon King Bali to rule the nether world."

"Five Days of Diwali: On the first day of Diwali, housewives consider it auspicious to spring clean the home and shop for gold or kitchen utensils. On the second day, people decorate their homes with clay lamps or diyas and create design patterns called rangoli on the floor using colored powders or sand. This is the main day of the festival when families gather together for Lakshmi puja, a prayer to Goddess Lakshmi followed by mouth-watering feasts and firework festivities. This is the first day of the new year when friends and relatives visit with gifts and best wishes for the season. On the last day of Diwali, brothers visit their married sisters who welcome them with love and a lavish meal."

"The Diwali’s main days starts with 1st day Dhantrayodashi ('Dhan' means some "gold"/"silver" purchase occurs); 2nd day Narakachaturdashi; 3rd day Lakshmi Pujan (main day of Diwali), 4th day Bali Prati Pada and 5th day w:Bhau-beejBhai Beej or Bhaiya Dooj."

"First Diwali day called Dhanteras or wealth worship. We perform Laskshmi-Puja in evening when clay diyas lighted to drive away shadows of evil spirits.In Diwali, goddess Lakshmi visits all people. Cows are worshipped for they are incarnations of Goddess Lakshmi."

"Second day is called Naraka Chaturdashi or Chhoti Diwali. Narakasur, after defeating Lord Indra, snatched the magnificent earrings of Mother Goddess Aditi and took sixteen thousand daughters of gods and saints to his harem. Lord Krishna killed the demon, brought all women and earrings of Aditi. Lord Krishna came home early in the morning with demon blood on his forehead. Women massaged scented oil on Krishna and washed away dirt from his body. So we take oil massage and bathe before sunrise this day."

"The third day Lakshmi Puja of the festival is the most important day of Deepawali and is entirely devoted to the propitiation of Goddess Lakshmi. On this very day Sun enters its second course and passes Libra which is represented by the balance or scale; Hence this design of Libra is believed to have suggested the balancing of account books and their closing. Despite the fact that this day falls on an Amavasya (the night of New Moon) day it is regarded as the most auspicious."

"It is extremely important to keep the house spotlessly clean and pure on Diwali. Goddess Lakshmi likes cleanliness, and she will visit the cleanest house first. Lamps are lit in the evening to welcome the goddess. They are believed to light up her path."

"Lakshmi Puja consists of a combined puja of five deities. Ganesha is worshiped at the beginning of every auspicious act as Vignaharta; Goddess Lakshmi is worshipped in her three forms – Mahalakshmi the goddess of wealth and money), MahaSaraswathi (the goddess of books and learning), and Goddess Mahakali; Also Kuber, the treasurer of the gods is worshipped."

"On the fourth day, Govardhan puja is performed. On this day Krishna saved Gokul by lifting up the Govardhan Mountain on his little finger and holding it over the people as an umbrella."

"The fifth day is celebrated as Bhai dooj. On this day, sisters apply tika on their brother’s foreheads and pray for their well-being and long life."

"Throughout the festival, Hindus decorate their homes, temples and other buildings with rows of lights. In the past small clay lamps called Divas (or diwas) were used. ‘Diwali’ is a short form of “Deepavali”, which means “rows of lights”. Today, small electric lights are often used instead of lamps. Glitter and tinsel are also used for decorations."

"In India Hindus will leave the windows and doors of their houses open so that Lakshmi can come in. Rangoli are drawn on the floors - rangoli are patterns and the most popular subject is the lotus flower."

"Diwali last for five fun-filled days and nights. Each day honors a Hindu legend. These legends each teach an important lesson."

"Playing cards is very popular during Diwali. According to a Hindu legend, people who do not play card games during Diwali will be born as donkeys in their next lives."

"Aryans made the Dravidians to celebrate the Deepavali festival, Rama’s birthday, Krishna’s birthday. Similarly the Northerners made the Dravidians celebrate August 15th as the Independence Day. That is all. There is no other benefit or laudable reason."

"Ganesha is frequently depicted with Saraswati, the Goddess of learning and music, and Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth and prosperity. Since Ganesha is associated with similar attributes as the goddesses, many devotees believe that they are his wives in previous incarnations. This assumption is reinforced by their worship along with Ganesha, especially during Diwali. But no myths support this notion. The deities are worshiped together simply because they represent similar goals."

"Like Christmas in the West, Diwali is very much a time for buying and exchanging gifts. Traditionally sweets and dried fruit were very common gifts to exchange, but the festival has become a time for serious shopping, leading to anxiety that commercialism is eroding the spiritual side of the festival. In most years shopkeepers expect sales to rise substantially in the weeks before the festival."

"Diwali is also a traditional time to redecorate homes and buy new clothes. Diwali is also used to celebrate a successful harvest."

"Diwali is also an important festival in Jainism. For the Jain community, many of whose members belong to the merchant class, the day commemorates the passing into nirvana of Mahavira, the most recent of the Jain Tirthankaras. The lighting of the lamps is explained as a material substitute for the light of holy knowledge that was extinguished with Mahavira’s passing."

"Religious group of the Jains, celebrate Diwali in a strictly religious way. They even fast, or stop eating, for three days! They offer their sufferings to their Gods."

"It [Divali] is an occasion for rejoicing and gratitude for a life spent in rigorous religious search, realization and teaching centered on non-violence."

"Since the 18th century Diwali has been celebrated in Sikhism as the time Guru Hargobind returned to Amritsar from a supposed captivity in Gvalior—apparently an echo of Rama’s return to Ayodhya. Residents of Amritsar are said to have lighted lamps throughout the city to celebrate the occasion."

"For Sikhs, Diwali is particularly important because it celebrates the release from prison of the sixth guru, Guru Hargobind, and 52 other princes with him, in 1619."

"The Sikh tradition holds that the Emperor Jahangir had imprisoned Guru Hargobind and 52 princes. The Emperor was asked to release Guru Hargobind which he agreed to do. However, Guru Hargobind asked that the princes be released also. The Emperor agreed, but said only those who could hold onto his cloak tail would be allowed to leave the prison. This was in order to limit the number of prisoners who could leave. However, Guru Hargobind had a cloak made with 52 pieces of string and so each prince was able to hold onto one string and leave prison. Sikhs celebrated the return of Guru Hargobind by lighting the Golden Temple and this [[tradition continues today."

"A thousand heads hath Puruṣa, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On every side pervading earth he fills a space ten fingers wide. This Puruṣa is all that yet hath been and all that is to be."

"Splendid and without a bodily form is this Purusha, without and within, unborn, without life breath and without mind, higher than the supreme element. From him are born life breath and mind. He is the soul of all beings."

"Oh leader of Kurus! From the mouth of the Puruṣa came forth Brahman (the Veda) and the Brāhmaṇa class like syllables coming out from the mouth (head). Hence the Brāhmaṇa Varṇa became the foremost among the Varṇas.From his arms emanated the power of protection and the Kṣatriya class who follows that vow, viz. the duty of protecting the world. This class born from Puruṣa (Lord Viṣṇu) protects the classes of people from wounds (i.e. injuries or troubles) caused by thorns (in the form of miscreants).From the thighs of that All-pervading Lord were born the vocations like agriculture which maintain the livelihood of the public. The Vaiśya class, born from the same part of the body, carries out trades and agriculture for the maintenance of people.From the feet of the Lord was born to service for the achievement of religion. Formerly the Śūdra class was born for the sake of service, whereby Hari is pleased."

"That Supreme Being (purusha), Partha, is attained by undivided devotion. The living beings are situated within him and he pervades this entire world."

"You are the Supreme Brahman, the supreme abode and the supreme purifier. You are the eternal divine purusha, the primordial Deity, unborn and all-pervading."

"Kama, in the mythology of India, the god of love. During the Vedic age (2nd millennium–7th century BCE), he personified cosmic desire, or the creative impulse, and was called the firstborn of the primeval Chaos that makes all creation possible. In later periods he is depicted as a handsome youth, attended by heavenly nymphs, who shoots love-producing flower-arrows. His bow is of sugarcane, his bowstring a row of bees. Once directed by the other gods to arouse Shiva’s passion for Parvati, he disturbed the great god’s meditation on a mountaintop. Enraged, Shiva burned him to ashes with the fire of his third eye. Thus, he became Ananga (Sanskrit: “the Bodiless”). Some accounts say Shiva soon relented and restored him to life after the entreaties of Kama’s wife, Rati. Others hold that Kama’s subtle bodiless form renders him even more deftly omnipresent than he would be if constrained by bodily limitation."

"The Sanskrit term kama also refers to one of the four proper aims of human life—pleasure and love. A classic textbook on erotic love and human pleasure, the Kama-sutra (5th century CE), is attributed to the sage Vatsyayana."

"Unlike the Mahabharata, which is specifically recognized as tradition to be a Kavya, a sastra, and a smriti all in one, the Ramayana is not regarded as anything other than a Kavya. But the Northern Recensions contain a stanza, which states that the reader of the Ramayana really learns the great science of Polity (Dandaniti), and also the three professions (Trayivarta), i.e., Agriculture, breeding of cattle and trade. Moreover it is said to teach the Artha and the Dharma, to which another verse adds Kama as well. It is an interesting problem that the Ramayana, although held with reverence by the Hindus, is not stated to be conducive to Moksha."

"The concept of love represented in the Ramayana appears to be the same as that current in later Indian literature. The feeling of love had been conceived as a god, who was known as Manmatha, Kama, Ananga and Kandarpa."

"To Kala there is no relationship, no reason, no valour; it (respects) no friendship or kinship no cause nor one’s control. But the evolution of Kala should be well observed by him who sees. Dharma, Artha, and Kama are established in the course of Kala (Kalakrama)."

"Hinduism takes a comprehensive view of the human condition and classifies all the things people seek in the world and beyond into four broad categories called purushaarthas, kama, artha, dharma and moksha."

"Basic Life Attributes. Four purusharthas or goals of the life be, So very crystal clear in life undisputedly: 1 Artha getting useful wealth and prosperity, Finding the meaning for living herein truly; 2 Kama fulfilling desires, acting repeatedly, It the physical, material desire fulfillment be; 14 Dharma - the foundation of all human goals be, Refers to obligations, conduct, moral duties; 25 Moksha - the liberation from the web of maya be, Freedom from the cycles of birth and death clearly; 33 As all the rivers must lead to the sea eventually, All spiritual paths leading to the same goal finally; 43 And all of the variety of life are created certainly, By combination of the three Gunas undisputedly. 44 That the backdrop for the Bhagwad Gita surely be, All three gunas so held to delude the World clearly: 75 World deluded by Three Gunas does not know Me: Who beyond these Gunas, imperishable does be. 76 If Brahman an infinite ocean, then Atma a wave within be, Ocean not different from its waves, the waves as ocean be; They are but one and the same very similar in actuality, So Brahman and Atma are one and the same in reality."

"The first three goals pertain to the world we know, whereas moksha involves freedom from the world and from desires... Moksha, although the ultimate goal, is emphasized more in the last two stages of life, while artha and kama are primary only during Grihasthshram, the householder stage.... Hindus themselves prefer to use the Sanskrit term sanatana dharma for their religious tradition.... According to Hinduism, our experience, our reason and our dialogue with others - especially with enlightened individuals - provide provide various means of testing our understanding of spiritual and moral truth..."

"Because the goddess has come to the great mountain Nilakuta to have sexual enjoyment with me [Shiva], she is called Kamakhya, who resides there in secret. Because she gives love, is a loving woman, is the embodiment of love, is the beloved, she restores the limbs of Kama, she is called Kamakhya. Now hear of the great glory of Kamakhya, who, as primordial nature, sets the entire world in motion."

"Desire (kama) as a cosmogonic force, even more than the w:Purusha|purusa motif of Rg 10.90, imparts a [[psychological tone to the present hymn, for the impulse behind the creation of the universe is here said to be a familiar human emotion occurring in the divine mind. p.22"

"As one might expect, having noted the emotional orientation of manas clearly expressed in the “Nasadiya” hymn [Hymn of Creation in Rigveda] — where it is said that desire (kama) is the original seed of manas — the most common function of manas in the Rg Veda is its function as the locus of a wide range of emotions."

"Of these desire (kama), and volition (kratu) have already been noted. These two attributes of manas relate to sankalpa as creative conceptualization in what is perhaps a surprising way, i.e. through the mechanism of karma and rebirth."

"Thereafter rose Desire [Kama] in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit, Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent."

"There are lovely figures [in Khajuraho temples of India] the most beautiful females in numberless gaysome postures: Playing with ball, holding a mirror, writing a letter, waiting on the threshold, removing thorn from the foot, uncovering under intense Kama—passion, bathing, dancing, playing on the flute, and worshipping; their rounded legs, rich marble thighs, thin waist, fully developed rounded and voluptuous breasts and shapely arms present several perfect eras of ideal feminine beauty"

"A man practicing Dharma, Artha and Kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come. The good perform these actions in which there is no fear as to what is to result from them in the next world, and in which there is no danger to their welfare. Any action which conduces to the practice of Dharma, Artha and Kama together, or of any two, or even one of them should be performed. But an action which conduces to the practice of one of them at the expense of the remaining two should not be performed."

"A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. In short, an intelligent and knowing person attending to Dharma and Artha and also to Kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do."

"Karma is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact is called Kama."

"Kama is also learnt from the Kama Sutra (aphorisms on love) and from the practice of [[citizens."

"When all three viz., Dharma, Artha, and Kama together, the former is better than the one which follows it, i.e., Dharma is better than Artha, and Artha is better than Kama. But Artha should be always practiced by the king, for the livelihood of men is to be obtained from it only. Again, Kama being the occupation of public women, they should prefer to the other two, and these are exceptions to the general rule."

"Man, the period of whose life is one hundred years, should practice Dharma, Artha, and Kama at different times and in such a manner that they may harmonize, and not clash in any way. He should acquire learning in his childhood; in his youth and middle age he should attend to Artha and Kama, and in his old age he should perform Dharma, and thus seek to gain Moksha, that is, release from further transmigration."

"In Atharva Veda, Kama is associated with the broad range of human desire; wanting enemies to be defeated; wanting lovers to reciprocate feelings of infatuation, lust, affection, wanting more money and more power; in short wanting to be successful in love and work."

"This god of desire is known as Kamadeva, literally the god (deva) of desire/passion (Kama). Just as passion forms the backdrop for good stories everywhere, the passion evoked by Kamadeva promises captivating and amusing drama, as well as an exploration of the myriad ethical and philosophical questions raised by desire."

"Kama dies in the central story involving his struggle with Shiva, but is resuscitated out of his own ashes so that life can continue. A world without Kamadeva is shown repeatedly to be barren, dry, leafless — indeed, unbearable."

"When the Indians describe Kama in terms of sexual relations they do not mean to restrict the operation of this attitude to just those objects with which one can come into a sexual relationship, but are rather pointing to sexual relationships as typically involving instances of the taking of this kind of attitude."

"According to Brahma, in the moment the male and female beheld one another, desire simply happened. Overwhelmed with the beauty of Sandhya, Brahma looked up to see Kama, fully formed and well armed, with his own beauty, five flower arrows, and a seductive gaze."

"Identifying desire with memory, passages from ancient texts such as the Atharva Vedas refer to Kama as Smara, and contemporary literature continues to use this epithet for the god of desire. Indeed, connections between desire and remembering are found throughout Sanskrit literary and philosophical texts."

"Rather, after being struck and burning Kama, Shiva returns to the steadfast depth of his meditation. The message of these narratives is that asceticism is stronger than desire. The serious ascetic will defeat even the most powerful form of desire."

"Without announcing himself, Kama pervades our environment and disturbs our equanimity. On another level, the revival of Kama as invisible establishes the dominance of Shiva over Kama, the possibility that ascetic discipline can conquer craving."

"This Shiva Purana variant establishes a specific power relationship between desire and discipline, as Kama becomes Shiva's gana, one of his troops, permanently attached to the great god."

"That steadfast Kama, begotten of Vasudeva [Krsna] in Rukmini, that one who was known as the destroyer of Sambara, was the handsome Pradyumna who looked like Kama."

"He knows tomorrow, he knows the world and what is not the world. By the mortal he desires the immortal, being this endowed. Man is the sea, he is above all the world. Whatever he reaches he desires to go beyond it."

"Artha, in Hinduism, the pursuit of wealth or material advantage, one of the four traditional aims in life. The sanction for artha rests on the assumption that—with the exclusion of the exceptional few who can proceed directly to the final aim of moksha, or spiritual release from life—material well-being is a basic necessity of man and is his appropriate pursuit while a householder, that is, during the second of the four life stages. Furthermore, artha, as the pursuit of material advantage, is closely tied to the activities of statecraft, which maintains the general social order and prevents anarchy. But, as the immoderate pursuit of material advantage would lead to undesirable and ruinous excesses, artha must always be regulated by the superior aim of dharma, or righteousness."

"Unlike the Mahabharata, which is specifically recognized as tradition to be a Kavya, a sastra, and a smriti all in one, the Ramayana is not regarded as anything other than a Kavya. But the Northern Recensions contain a stanza, which states that the reader of the Ramayana really learns the great science of Polity (Dandaniti), and also the three professions (Trayivarta), i.e., Agriculture, breeding of cattle and trade. Moreover it is said to teach the Artha and the Dharma, to which another verse adds Kama as well. It is an interesting problem that the Ramayana, although held with reverence by the Hindus, is not stated to be conducive to Moksha."

"To Kala there is no relationship, no reason, no valour; it (respects) no friendship or kinship no cause nor one’s control. But the evolution of Kala should be well observed by him who sees. Dharma, Artha, and Kama are established in the course of Kala (Kalakrama)."

"Hinduism takes a comprehensive view of the human condition and classifies all the things people seek in the world and beyond into four broad categories called purushaarthas, kama, artha, dharma and moksha."

"Morality is well practiced by the good. Morality, however, is always afflicted by two things, the desire of Profit entertained by those that covet it, and the desire for Pleasure cherished by those that are wedded to it. Whoever without afflicting Morality and Profit, or Morality and Pleasure, or Pleasure and Profit, followeth all three - Morality, Profit and Pleasure - always succeeds in obtaining great happiness."

"Man, the period of whose life is one hundred years, should practice Dharma, Artha, and Kama at different times and in such a manner that they may harmonize, and not clash in any way. He should acquire learning in his childhood; in his youth and middle age he should attend to Artha and Kama, and in his old age he should perform Dharma, and thus seek to gain Moksha, that is, release from further transmigration."

"A man practicing Dharma, Artha and Kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come."

"Basic Life Attributes. Four purusharthas or goals of the life be, So very crystal clear in life undisputedly: 1 Artha getting useful wealth and prosperity, Finding the meaning for living herein truly; 2 Kama fulfilling desires, acting repeatedly, It the physical, material desire fulfillment be; 14 Dharma - the foundation of all human goals be, Refers to obligations, conduct, moral duties; 25 Moksha - the liberation from the web of maya be, Freedom from the cycles of birth and death clearly; 33 As all the rivers must lead to the sea eventually, All spiritual paths leading to the same goal finally; 43 And all of the variety of life are created certainly, By combination of the three Gunas undisputedly. 44 That the backdrop for the Bhagwad Gita surely be, All three gunas so held to delude the World clearly: 75 World deluded by Three Gunas does not know Me: Who beyond these Gunas, imperishable does be. 76 If Brahman an infinite ocean, then Atma a wave within be, Ocean not different from its waves, the waves as ocean be; They are but one and the same very similar in actuality, So Brahman and Atma are one and the same in reality."

"... Vatsayana was a law giver like Manu or Kauitilya and was anxious to reconcile Dharma, Artha and Kama the three recognized ends of life by emphasizing their equal importance and harmonious blending, and hence it was not possible for him to reduce his work to gross sexual level as did his successors or imitators in the subsequent erotic writing."

"The first three goals pertain to the world we know, whereas moksha involves freedom from the world and from desires... Moksha, although the ultimate goal, is emphasized more in the last two stages of life, while artha and kama are primary only during Grihasthshram, the householder stage.... Hindus themselves prefer to use the Sanskrit term sanatana dharma for their religious tradition.... According to Hinduism, our experience, our reason and our dialogue with others - especially with enlightened individuals - provide various means of testing our understanding of spiritual and moral truth..."

"Artha includes the pursuit of material well being, wealth and power. Dharma includes striving for righteousness and virtue. Moksha describes the desire for liberation from reincarnation. The first three goals pertain to the world we know, whereas moksha involves freedom from the world and from desires."

"The ultimate goal of human life is to attain spiritual perfection (moksha), or freedom from transmigration of the atman. The social existence of an individual is means for attaining this supreme goal. Since an individual cannot attain moksha without fulfilling his (her) individual and social duties, responsibilities and obligations, Hindu social philosophy...includes the essential social principles and practices, goals of human life: dharma (moral law), artha (wealth), kama (pleasure), and moksha (spiritual perfection, the ultimate goal)."

"A man practicing Dharma, Artha and Kama enjoys happiness both in this world and in the world to come. The good perform these actions in which there is no fear as to what is to result from them in the next world, and in which there is no danger to their welfare. Any action which conduces to the practice of Dharma, Artha and Kama together, or of any two, or even one of them should be performed. But an action which conduces to the practice of one of them at the expense of the remaining two should not be performed."

"A person acquainted with the true principles of this science, who preserves his Dharma (virtue or religious merit), his Artha (worldly wealth) and his Kama (pleasure or sensual gratification), and who has regard to the customs of the people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses. In short, an intelligent and knowing person attending to Dharma and Artha and also to Kama, without becoming the slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything that he may do."

"Mimamasa definition:Codana lakshano artho dharmaha is according to Sabara’s interpretation means that whatever is indicated by the Vedic injunctions (or enjoined by the Vedas) and leads to the good is dharma. Codana refers here to the injunctive text, ‘Laksano’ is that by which something is indicated. ‘Codana laksano’ means what is indicated by the injunctive text. ‘Artha' means something conducive to good. Thus the entire sutra means 'that which is indicated by the injunctive text and which leads to the good is dharma'. As a matter of fact, 'artha' is a controversial term in the sutra admitting of different interpretations."

"The Vedas abound in both injunctions and prohibitions. It is the prohibitions not the injunctions which lead to evil consequences. If one trespasses prohibitions anartha is produced. So artha and anartha are the two opposite results emerging from the sacrifices — the former out of the injunctions and the latter when prohibitions are trespassed. So killing of animals is not in itself bad. What is bad is its result and that will bedecided by the vedas themselves."

"There are four purusharthas – Kama, artha, dharma and Moksha of which the last one is the highest. The three earlier purusarthas in the order they are mentioned do not however represent the progressive steps of the ladder such that kama comes first, then artha and then dharma. As a matter of fact, dharma pervades both kama and artha such that in the observance of both of them dharma must be our essential guide."

"Besides the above, the vanaprastha should continue to offer the five great sacrifices like the householder, the only difference being that whereas the householder performs the sacrifices with the aim of attaining artha and kama, the vanaprastha is inspired by no such worldly motive."

"... dharma is generally regarded merely as a means to Moksha. In any case, however, its role is very important insofar as the observance of dharma is necessary for any and every human being even while pursuing the goals of kama and artha, the two lower purusharthas."

"When all three viz., Dharma, Artha, and Kama together, the former is better than the one which follows it, i.e., Dharma is better than Artha, and Artha is better than Kama. But Artha should be always practiced by the king, for the livelihood of men is to be obtained from it only. Again, Kama being the occupation of public women, they should prefer to the other two, and these are exceptions to the general rule."

"Benediction. Í[S'] a preserve you ! he who is revealed In these eight forms by man perceptible— Water, of all creation's works the first; The Fire that bears on high the sacrifice Presented with solemnity to heaven; The Priest, the holy offerer of gifts; The Sun and Moon, those two majestic orbs, Eternal marshallers of day and night; The subtle Ether, vehicle of sound, Diffused throughout the boundless universe; The Earth, by sages called 'The place of birth Of all material essences and things'; And Air, which giveth life to all that breathe."

"King: Now, Charioteer, see me kill the deer."

"A Voice: Hold, O King! this deer belongs to our hermitage. Kill it not! kill it not!"

"Charioteer: Great King, some hermits have stationed themselves so as to screen the antelope at the very moment of its coming within range of your arrow."

"King: Then stop the horses."

"Hermit:This deer, O King, belongs to our hermitage. Kill it not! kill it not! Now heaven forbid this barbed shaft descend Upon the fragile body of a fawn, Like fire upon a heap of tender flowers! Can thy steel bolts no meeter quarry find Than the warm life-blood of a harmless deer? Restore, great Prince, thy weapon to its quiver. More it becomes thy arms to shield the weak, Than to bring anguish on the innocent."

"Hermits: May heaven indeed grant thee a son, a sovereign of the earth from sea to sea!"

"King: I accept with gratitude a Bráhman's benediction.... Is the Chief of your Society now at home?"

"Hermit: No; he has gone to Soma-tírtha to propitiate Destiny, which threatens his daughter Shakoontalá with some calamity; but he has commissioned her in his absence to entertain all guests with hospitality."

"King: The inhabitants of this sacred retreat must not be disturbed. Stay the chariot, that I may alight.... Charioteer, groves devoted to penance must be entered in humble attire. Take these ornaments.... Here is the entrance to the hermitage. I will now go in. Serenest peace is in this calm retreat, By passion's breath unruffled; what portends My throbbing arm? Why should it whisper here Of happy love? Yet everywhere around us Stand the closed portals of events unknown."

"A Voice: This way, my dear companions; this way."

"King: Hark! I hear voices to the right of yonder grove of trees. I will walk in that direction. Ah! here are the maidens of the hermitage coming this way to water the shrubs, carrying water-pots proportioned to their strength."

"SHAKOONTALÁ:This way, my dear companions; this way."

"Anasúyá: Dear SHAKOONTALÁ, one would think that father Kanwa had more affection for the shrubs of the hermitage even than for you, seeing he assigns to you, who are yourself as delicate as the fresh-blown jasmine, the task of filling with water the trenches which encircle their roots."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Dear Anasúyá, although I am charged by my good father with this duty, yet I cannot regard it as a task. I really feel a sisterly love for these plants>....Good Anasúyá, Priyamvadá has drawn this bark-dress too tightly about my chest. I pray thee, loosen it a little."

"King: Can this be the daughter of Kanwa? The saintly man, though descended from the great Kasyapa, must be very deficient in judgment to habituate such a maiden to the life of a recluse. The sage who would this form of artless grace Inure to penance, thoughtlessly attemptsbr>To cleave in twain the hard acacia's stem With the soft edge of a blue lotus-leaf. Well! concealed behind this tree, I will watch her without raising her suspicions."

"Priyamvadá: Why do you lay the blame on me? Blame rather your own blooming youthfulness which imparts fulness to your bosom."

"King: A most just observation! This youthful form, whose bosom's swelling charms By the bark's knotted tissue are concealed, Like some fair bud close folded in its sheath, Gives not to view the blooming of its beauty. But what am I saying? In real truth this bark-dress, though ill-suited to her figure, sets it off like an ornament."

"Priyamvadá: The Keshara-tree, whilst your graceful form bends about its stem, appears as if it were wedded to some lovely twining creeper."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Ah! saucy girl, you are most appropriately named Priyamvadá('Speaker of flattering things')."

"King: What Priyamvadá says, though complimentary, is nevertheless true. Verily,Her ruddy lip vies with the opening bud; Her graceful arms are as the twining stalks; And her whole form is radiant with the glow Of youthful beauty, as the tree with bloom."

"Priyamvadá: She is wishing that as the jasmine is united to a suitable tree, so, in like manner, she may obtain a husband worthy of her."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Speak for yourself, girl; this is the thought in your own mind."

"King: Would that my union with her were permissible! and yet I hardly dare hope that the maiden is sprung from a caste different from that of the Head of the hermitage. But away with doubt: That she is free to wed a warrior-king My heart attests. For, in conflicting doubts, The secret promptings of the good man's soul Are an unerring index of the truth. However, come what may, I will ascertain the fact."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: How now! he is following me here. Help! my dear friends, help! deliver me from the attacks of this troublesome insect[Bee]."

"Priyamvadáand Anasúyá: How can we deliver you? Call Dushyanta to your aid. The sacred groves are under the King's special protection."

"King: An excellent opportunity for me to show myself. Fear not— When mighty Puru's offspring sways the earth, And o'er the wayward holds his threatening rod, Who dares molest the gentle maids that keep Their holy vigils here in Kanwa's grove?"

"Anasúyá: All is well indeed, now that we are honoured by the reception of a distinguished guest. Dear Shakoontalá, go, bring from the hermitage an offering of flowers, rice, and fruit. This water that we have brought with us will serve to bathe our guest's feet."

"King: The rites of hospitality are already performed; your truly kind words are the best offering I can receive."

"SHAKOONTALÁ [Aside]: How is it that the sight of this made me sensible of emotions inconsistent with religious vows?"

"King: How charmingly your friendship is in keeping with the equality of your ages and appearance!"

"Anasúyá: Your kind words, noble Sir, fill me with confidence, and prompt me to inquire of what regal family our noble guest is the ornament? what country is now mourning his absence? and what induced a person so delicately nurtured to expose himself to the fatigue of visiting this grove of penance?"

"King: How now shall I reply? shall I make myself known, or shall I still disguise my real rank? I have it; I will answer her thus. [Aloud.] I am the person charged by his Majesty, the descendant of Puru, with the administration of justice and religion; and am come to this sacred grove to satisfy myself that the rites of the hermits are free from obstruction... May I be allowed, in my turn, to ask you maidens a few particulars respecting your friend?"

"King: The sage Kanwa lives in the constant practice of austerities. How, then, can this friend of yours be called his daughter?"

"Anasúyá: I will explain to you. Sir. You have heard of an illustrious sage of regal caste, [[w:Vishwamitra|Vishwámitra, whose family name is Kaushika....Know that he is the real father of our friend. The venerable Kanwa is only her reputed father. He it was who brought her up, when she was deserted by her mother."

"King: 'Deserted by her mother!' My curiosity is excited; pray let me hear the story from the beginning."

"Anasúyá: You shall hear it, Sir. Some time since, this sage of regal caste, while performing a most severe penance on the banks of the river Godávarí, excited the jealousy and alarm of the gods; insomuch that they despatched a lovely nymph named Menaká to interrupt his devotions.... You shall hear it, Sir. Some time since, this sage of regal caste, while performing a most severe penance on the banks of the river Godávarí, excited the jealousy and alarm of the gods; insomuch that they despatched a lovely nymph named Menaká to interrupt his devotions...."

"King: The rest may be easily divined. Shakoontalá, then, is the offspring of the nymph....It is quite intelligible. How would a mortal to such charms give birth? The lightning's radiance flashes not from earth. And so my desire has really scope for its indulgence. Yet I am still distracted by doubts, remembering the pleasantry of her female companions respecting her wish for a husband....I am so eager to hear the particulars of your friend's history, that I have still another question to ask."

"King: I wish to ascertain one point respecting your friend. Will she be bound by solitary vows Opposed to love, till her espousals only? Or ever dwell with these her cherished fawns, Whose eyes, in lustre vying with her own, Return her gaze of sisterly affection?"

"Priyamvadá: Hitherto, Sir, she has been engaged in the practice of religious duties, and has lived in subjection to her foster-father; but it is now his fixed intention to give her away in marriage to a husband worthy of her."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Anasúyá, I shall leave you...That I may go and report this impertinent Priyamvadá to the venerable matron, Gautamí."

"King: [Making a movement to arrest her departure, but checking himself. Aside.] Ah! a lover's feelings betray themselves by his gestures. When I would fain have stayed the maid, a sense Of due decorum checked my bold design; Though I have stirred not, yet my mien betrays My eagerness to follow on her steps."

"King: Spare her this trouble, gentle maiden. The exertion of watering the shrubs has already fatigued her. The water-jar has overtasked the strength Of her slim arms; her shoulders droop, her hands Are ruddy with the glow of quickened pulses; E'en now her agitated breath imparts Unwonted tremor to her heaving breast; The pearly drops that mar the recent bloom Of the [S']irísha pendent in her ear, Gather in clustering circles on her cheek; Loosed is the fillet of her hair; her hand Restrains the locks that struggle to be free. Suffer me, then, thus to discharge the debt for you. [Offers a ring to Priyamvadá. Both the maidens, reading the name Dushyanta on the seal, look at each other with surprise.]...Nay, think not that I am King Dushyanta. I am only the King's officer, and this is the ring which I have received from him as my credentials."

"Priyamvadá: The greater the reason you ought not to part with the ring from your finger. I am content to release her from her obligation at your simple request. Now, Shakoontalá, my love, you are at liberty to retire, thanks to the intercession of this noble stranger, or rather of this mighty prince."

"A Voice: O hermits, be ready to protect the animals belonging to our hermitage. King Dushyanta, amusing himself with hunting, is near at hand."

"Priyamvadáand Anasúyá: Noble Sir, we are terrified by the accidental disturbance caused by the wild elephant. Permit us to return to the cottage."

"King: Go, gentle maidens. It shall be our care that no injury happen to the hermitage....The mere sight of you, sweet maidens, has been to me the best entertainment."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Anasúyá, a pointed blade of Kusha-grass has pricked my foot; and my bark-mantle is caught in the branch of a Kuruvaka-bush. Be so good as to wait for me until I have disentangled it."

"Máthavya(King's friend): Oh! here he comes, attended by the Yavana women, with bows in their hands, wearing garlands of wild flowers. What shall I do? I have it. I will pretend to stand in the easiest attitude for resting my bruised and crippled limbs."

"King: True, by no easy conquest may I win her, Yet are my hopes encouraged by her mien, Love is not yet triumphant; but, methinks, The hearts of both are ripe for his delights."

"Máthavya: Here are you living the life of a wild man of the woods in a savage unfrequented region, while your State-affairs are left to shift for themselves; and as for poor me, I am no longer master of my own limbs, but have to follow you about day after day in your chases after wild animals, till my bones are all crippled and out of joint. Do, my dear friend, let me have one day's rest."

"General: Victory to the King! We have tracked the wild beasts to their lairs in the forest. Why delay, when everything is ready?"

"King: My friend Máthavya here has been disparaging the chase, till he has taken away all my relish for it....My good General, as we are just now in the neighbourhood of a consecrated grove, your panegyric upon hunting is somewhat ill-timed, and I cannot assent to all you have said."

"King: Recall, then, the beaters who were sent in advance to surround the forest. My troops must not be allowed to disturb this sacred retreat, and irritate its pious inhabitants."

"King: Máthavya, it may be said of you that you have never beheld anything worth seeing; for your eyes have not yet looked upon the loveliest object in creation."

"Máthavya: If, as you intimate, she is a hermit's daughter, you cannot lawfully ask her in marriage. You may as well then dismiss her from your mind, for any good the mere sight of her can do."

"King: Think you that a descendant of the mighty Puru could fix his affections on an unlawful object? Though, as men say, the offspring of the sage, The maiden to a nymph celestial owes Her being, and by her mother left on earth, Was found and nurtured by the holy man As his own daughter, in this hermitage. So, when dissevered from its parent stalk, Some falling blossom of the jasmine, wafted Upon the sturdy sun-flower, right|thumb|I will describe her, my dear friend, in a few words, Man's all-wise Maker, wishing to create A faultless form, whose matchless symmetry Should far transcend Creation's choicest works,... - w:Dushyanta|King Dushyanta"

"Máthavya: This passion of yours for a rustic maiden, when you have so many gems of women at home in your palace, seems to me very like the fancy of a man who is tired of sweet dates, and longs for sour tamarinds as a variety....I can quite understand it must require something surpassingly attractive to excite the admiration of such a great man as you."

"King: I will describe her, my dear friend, in a few words, Man's all-wise Maker, wishing to create A faultless form, whose matchless symmetry Should far transcend Creation's choicest works, Did call together by his mighty will, And garner up in his eternal mind, A bright assemblage of all lovely things;And then, as in a picture, fashion them Into one perfect and ideal form— Such the divine, the wondrous prototype, Whence her fair shape was moulded into being."

"Máthavya: Make haste, then, to her aid; you have no time to lose, if you don't wish this fruit of all the virtues to drop into the mouth of some greasy-headed rustic of devout habits."

"King: Maidens brought up in a hermitage are naturally shy and reserved; but for all that She did look towards me, though she quick withdrew Her stealthy glances when she met my gaze; She smiled upon me sweetly, but disguised With maiden grace the secret of her smiles. Coy love was half unveiled; then, sudden checked By modesty, left half to be divined."

"Máthavya: Why, of course, my dear friend, you never could seriously expect that at the very first sight she would fall over head ears in love with you, and without more ado come and sit in your lap."

"King: You must know, my good fellow, that I have been recognised by some of the inmates of the hermitage. Now I want the assistance of your fertile invention, in devising some excuse for going there again."

"Two hermits: The inhabitants of the hermitage, having heard of your Majesty's sojourn in our neighbourhood, make this humble petition:In the absence of our Superior, the great sage Kanwa, evil demons are disturbing our sacrificial rites. Deign, therefore, accompanied by your charioteer, to take up your abode in our hermitage for a few days."

"King: Go first, reverend Sirs, I will follow you immediately."

"Warder: Sire, the chariot is ready, and only waits to conduct you to victory. But here is a messenger named Karabhaka, just arrived from your capital, with a message from the Queen, your mother."

"Karabhaka: Victory to the King! The Queen-mother bids me say that in four days from the present time she intends celebrating a solemn ceremony for the advancement and preservation of her son. She expects that your Majesty will honour her with your presence on that occasion."

"King: Friend Máthavya, as you were my playfellow in childhood, the Queen has already received you like a second son; go you, then, back to her, and tell her of my solemn engagement to assist these holy men. You can supply my place in the ceremony, and act the part of a son to the Queen."

"Máthavya: Already I feel quite like a young prince."

"King: This is a giddy fellow, and in all probability he will let out the truth about my present pursuit to the women of the palace. What is to be done? I must say something to deceive him."

"King: Dear friend, I am going to the hermitage wholly and solely out of respect for its pious inhabitants, and not because I have really any liking for [S']akoontalá, the hermit's daughter. Observe: What suitable communion could there be Between a monarch and a rustic girl? I did but feign an idle passion, friend, Take not in earnest what was said in jest."

"Máthavya: Don't distress yourself; I quite understand."

"King: The holy sage possesses magic power In virtue of his penance; she, his ward, Under the shadow of his tutelage, Rests in security, I know it well; Yet sooner shall the rushing cataract In foaming eddies re-ascend the steep, Than my fond heart turn back from its pursuit. God of love! God of the flowery shafts ! we lovers are cruelly deceived by thee, and by the Moon, however deserving of confidence you may both appear...."

"King: Welcome this anguish, welcome to my heart These rankling wounds inflicted by the god, Who on his scutcheon bears the monster-fish Slain by his prowess; welcome death itself, So that, commissioned by the lord of love, This fair one be my executioner. Adorable divinity! Can I by no reproaches excite your commiseration? Have I not daily offered at thy shrine Innumerable vows, the only food Of thine ethereal essence? Are my prayers Thus to be slighted? Is it meet that thou Should'st aim thy shafts at thy true votary's heart, Drawing thy bow-string even to thy ear?... I have but one resource. Oh for another sight of the Idol of my soul! I will seek her."

"King: I will peep through those branches. Ah! now my eyes are gratified by an entrancing sight. Yonder is the beloved of my heart reclining on a rock strewn with flowers, and attended by her two friends. How fortunate! Concealed behind the leaves, I will listen to their conversation, without raising their suspicions."

"Anasúyá: We know very little about love-matters, dear Shakoontalá; but for all that, I cannot help suspecting your present state to be something similar to that of the lovers we have heard about in romances. Tell us frankly what is the cause of your disorder. It is useless to apply a remedy, until the disease be understood."

"Priyamvadá: What Anasúyá says, dear [S']akoontalá, is very just. Why give so little heed to your ailment? Every day you are becoming thinner; though I must confess your complexion is still as beautiful as ever."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Dear friends, to no one would I rather reveal the nature of my malady than to you; but I should only be troubling you."

"Priyamvadáand Anasúyá: Nay, this is the very point about which we are so solicitous. Sorrow shared with affectionate friends is relieved of half its poignancy."

"King: Pressed by the partners of her joys and griefs, Her much beloved companions, to reveal The cherished secret locked within her breast, She needs must utter it; although her looks Encourage me to hope, my bosom throbs As anxiously I listen for her answer."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Know then, dear friends, that from the first moment the illustrious Prince who is the guardian of our sacred grove presented himself to my sight—Ever since that happy moment, my heart's affections have been fixed upon him, and my energies of mind and body have all deserted me, as you see. You must consent, then, dear friends, to contrive some means by which I may find favour with the King, or you will have ere long to assist at my funeral."

"King: Enough! These words remove all my doubts."

"Priyamvadá to Anasúyá: She is far gone in love, dear Anasúyá, and no time ought to be lost. Since she has fixed her affections on a monarch who is the ornament of Puru's line, we need not hesitate for a moment to express our approval."

"Priyamvadá: An idea strikes me, Anasúyá. Let [S']akoontalá write a love-letter;I will conceal it in a flower, and contrive to drop it in the King's path. He will surely mistake it for the remains of some sacred offering, and will, in all probability, pick it up."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Well, I will do my best; but my heart trembles when I think of the chances of a refusal....Listen, dear friends, and tell me whether the ideas are appropriately expressed. I know not the secret thy bosom conceals, Thy form is not near me to gladden my sight; But sad is the tale that my fever reveals, Of the love that consumes me by day and by night."

"King: Nay, Love does but warm thee, fair maiden,—thy frame Only droops like the bud in the glare of the noon; But me he consumes with a pitiless flame, As the beams of the day-star destroy the pale moon."

"Priyamvadá and Anasúyá: Welcome, the desire of our hearts, that so speedily presents itself!"

"SHAKOONTALÁ toPriyamvadá What do you mean by detaining the King, who must be anxious to return to his royal consorts after so long a separation?"

"King: Sweet maiden, banish from thy mind the thought That I could love another. Thou dost reign Supreme, without a rival, in my heart, And I am thine alone; disown me not, Else must I die a second deadlier death, Killed by thy words, as erst by Káma's shafts."

"Anasúyá: Kind Sir, we have heard it said that kings have many favourite consorts. You must not, then, by your behaviour towards our dear friend, give her relations cause to sorrow for her."

"King: Listen, gentle maiden, while in a few words I quiet your anxiety. Though many beauteous forms my palace grace, Henceforth two things alone will I esteem The glory of my royal dynasty— My sea-girt realm, and this most lovely maid."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Infringe not the rules of decorum, mighty descendant of Puru. Remember, though I love you, I have no power to dispose of myself."

"King: Why this fear of offending your relations, timid maid? When your venerable foster-father hears of it, he will not find fault with you. He knows that the law permits us to be united without consulting him. In Indra's heaven, so at least 'tis said, No nuptial rites prevail, nor is the bride Led to the altar by her future lord; But all in secret does the bridegroom plight His troth, and each unto the other vow Mutual allegiance. Such espousals, too, Are authorised on earth, and many daughters Of royal saints thus wedded to their lords Have still received their father's benison."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Leave me, leave me; I must take counsel with my female friends."

"King: I will leave thee when I have gently stolen from thy lips Their yet untasted nectar, to allay The raging of my thirst, e'en as the bee Sips the fresh honey from the opening bud."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Great Prince, I hear the voice of the matron Gautamí. She is coming this way to inquire after my health. Hasten and conceal yourself behind the branches."

"Gautami: My child, is the fever of thy limbs allayed?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Venerable mother, there is certainly a change for the better."

"Gautami: Let me sprinkle you with this holy water, and all your ailments will depart. The day is closing, my child; come, let us go to the cottage."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Oh my heart! thou didst fear to taste of happiness when it was within thy reach. Now that the object of thy desires is torn from thee, how bitter will be thy remorse, how distracting thine anguish!Farewell! bower of creepers, sweet soother of my sufferings, farewell! may I soon again be happy under thy shade."

"King: Alas! how many are the obstacles to the accomplishment of our wishes!Albeit she did coyly turn away Her glowing cheek, and with her fingers guard Her pouting lips, that murmured a denial In faltering accents, she did yield herself A sweet reluctant captive to my will. As eagerly I raised her lovely face; But ere with gentle force I stole the kiss, Too envious Fate did mar my daring purpose."

"King: Albeit she did coyly turn away Her glowing cheek, and with her fingers guard Her pouting lips, that murmured a denial In faltering accents, she did yield herself A sweet reluctant captive to my will. As eagerly I raised her lovely face; But ere with gentle force I stole the kiss, Too envious Fate did mar my daring purpose."

"King: Here printed on the flowery couch I see The fair impression of her slender limbs; Here is the sweet confession of her love, Traced with her nail upon the lotus-leaf; And yonder are the withered lily-stalks That graced her wrist. While all around I view Things that recall her image, can I quit This bower, e'en though its living be fled?"

"Anasúyá: Although, dear Priyamvadá, it rejoices my heart to think that [S']akoontalá has been happily united to a husband in every respect worthy of her, by the form of marriage prevalent among Indra's celestial musicians, nevertheless, I cannot help feeling somewhat uneasy in my mind."

"Anasúyá: You know that the pious King was gratefully dismissed by the hermits on the successful termination of their sacrificial rites. He has now returned to his capital, leaving [S']akoontalá under our care; and it may be doubted whether, in the society of his royal consorts, he will not forget all that has taken place in this hermitage of ours."

"Priyamvadá: On that score be at ease. Persons of his noble nature are not so destitute of all honourable feeling. I confess, however, that there is one point about which I am rather anxious. What, think you, will Father Kanwa say when he hears what has occurred?"

"Anasúyá: From the first, it was always his fixed purpose to bestow the maiden on a husband worthy of her; and since heaven has given her such a husband, his wishes have been realized without any trouble to himself."

"Anasúyá: That must be the voice of a guest announcing his arrival."

"Priyamvadá: Surely, Shakoontalá is not absent from the cottage."

"A Voice[Durvasa]: Woe to thee, maiden, for daring to slight a guest like me! Shall I stand here unwelcomed—even I, A very mine of penitential merit, Worthy of all respect? Shalt thou, rash maid, Thus set at nought the ever sacred ties Of hospitality? and fix thy thoughts Upon the cherished object of thy love, While I am present? Thus I curse thee, then— He, even he of whom thou thinkest, he Shall think no more of thee; nor in his heart Retain thine image. Vainly shalt thou strive To waken his remembrance of the past; He shall disown thee, even as the sot, Roused from his midnight drunkenness, denies The words he uttered in his revellings."

"Priyamvadá: Alas! alas! I fear a terrible misfortune has occurred. [S']akoontalá, from absence of mind, must have offended some guest whom she was bound to treat with respect."

"Priyamvadá: Ah! yes; I see; and no less a person than the great sage Durvásas, who is known to be most irascible. He it is that has just cursed her, and is now retiring with hasty strides, trembling with passion, and looking as if nothing could turn him. His wrath is like a consuming fire."

"Anasúyá: Go quickly, dear Priyamvadá, throw yourself at his feet, and persuade him to come back, while I prepare a propitiatory offering[59] for him, with water and refreshments."

"Priyamvadá: Well, dear Anasúyá, I have done my best; but what living being could succeed in pacifying such a cross-grained, ill-tempered old fellow? However, I managed to mollify him a little."

"Priyamvadá: When he refused to turn back, I implored his forgiveness in these words: 'Most venerable sage, pardon, I beseech you, this first offence of a young and inexperienced girl, who was ignorant of the respect due to your saintly character and exalted rank."

"Anasúyá: And what did he reply?"

"Priyamvadá: My word must not be falsified; but, at the sight of the ring of recognition the spell shall cease.' So saying, he disappeared."

"Anasúyá: Oh! then we may breathe again; for, now I think of it, the King himself, at his departure, fastened on [S']akoontalá's finger, as a token of remembrance, a ring on which his own name was engraved. She has, therefore, a remedy for her misfortune at her own command."

"Priyamvadá: See, Anasúyá, there sits our dear friend, motionless as a statue, resting her face on her left hand, her whole mind absorbed in thinking of her absent husband. She can pay no attention to herself, much less to a stranger."

"Pupil: My master, the venerable Kanwa, who is but lately returned from his pilgrimage, has ordered me to ascertain how the time goes. I have therefore come into the open air to see if it be still dark."

"Pupil: While the round Moon withdraws his looming disc Beneath the western sky, the full-blown flower Of the night-loving lotus sheds her leave In sorrow for his loss, bequeathing nought But the sweet memory of her loveliness To my bereaved sight; e'en as the bride Disconsolately mourns her absent lord, And yields her heart a prey to anxious grief."

"Anasúyá: Little as I know of the ways of the world, I cannot help thinking that King Dushyanta is treating Shakoontalá very improperly."

"Anasúyá: I am broad awake, but what shall I do? I have no energy to go about my usual occupations. My hands and feet seem to have lost their power. Well, Love has gained his object; and Love only is to blame for having induced our dear friend, in the innocence of her heart, to confide in such a perfidious man. Possibly, however, the imprecation of Durvása's may be already taking effect. Indeed, I cannot otherwise account for the King's strange conduct, in allowing so long a time to elapse without even a letter; and that, too, after so many promises and protestations. I cannot think what to do unless we send him the ring which was to be the token of recognition. But which of these austere hermits could we ask to be the bearer of it? Then, again, Father Kanwa has just returned from his pilgrimage; and how am I to inform him of Shakoontalá's marriage to King Dushyanta, and her expectation of becoming soon a mother? I never could bring myself to tell him, even if I felt that Shakoontalá had been in fault, which she certainly has not. What is to be done?"

"Priyamvadá: Quick! quick! Anasúyá! come and assist in the joyful preparations for Shakoontalá's departure to her husband's palace....Listen, now, and I will tell you all about it. I went just now to Shakoontalá, to inquire whether she had slept comfortably—"

"Priyamvadá: She was sitting with her face bowed down to the very ground with shame, when Father Kanwa entered, and, embracing her, of his own accord offered her his congratulations. 'I give thee joy, my child,' he said, 'we have had an auspicious omen. The priest who offered the oblation dropped it into the very centre of the sacred fire, though thick smoke obstructed his vision. Henceforth thou wilt cease to be an object of compassion. This very day I purpose sending thee, under the charge of certain trusty hermits, to the King's palace; and shall deliver thee into the hands of thy husband, as I would commit knowledge to the keeping of a wise and faithful student."

"Anasúyá: Oh, my dear Priyamvadá, what delightful news! I am pleased beyond measure; yet when I think that we are to lose our dear [S']akoontalá this very day, a feeling of melancholy mingles with my joy."

"Priyamvadá: Quick, quick, Anasúyá! They are calling the hermits who are to go with Sakoontalá to Hastinápur."

"Priyamvadá: See! there sits [S']akoontalá, her locks arranged even at this early hour of the morning. The holy women of the hermitage are congratulating her, and invoking blessings on her head, while they present her with wedding-gifts and offerings of consecrated wild-rice. Let us join them."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: I ought indeed to be grateful for your kind offices, now that I am so soon to be deprived of them. Dear, dear friends, perhaps I shall never be dressed by you again."

"Kanwa: This day my loved one leaves me, and my heart Is heavy with its grief; the streams of sorrow, Choked at the source, repress my faltering voice, I have no words to speak; mine eyes are dimmed By the dark shadows of the thoughts that rise Within my soul. If such the force of grief In an old hermit parted from his nursling, What anguish must the stricken parent feel— Bereft for ever of an only daughter."

"Gautami: Daughter, see, here comes thy foster-father; he is eager to fold thee in his arms; his eyes swim with tears of joy. Hasten to do him reverence."

"Kanwa: Holy flames, that gleam around Every altar's hallowed ground Holy flames, whose frequent food Is the consecrated wood, And for whose encircling bed, Sacred Kusha-grass is spread; Holy flames, that waft to heaven Sweet oblations daily given, Mortal guilt to purge away, Hear, oh hear me, when I pray— Purify my child this day! Now then, my daughter, set out on thy journey."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Eager as I am, dear Priyamvadá, to see my husband once more, yet my feet refuse to move, now that I am quitting for ever the home of my girlhood."

"Priyamvadá: You are not the only one, dearest, to feel the bitterness of parting. As the time of separation approaches, the whole grove seems to share your anguish. In sorrow for thy loss, the herd of deer Forget to browse; the peacock on the lawn Ceases its dance; the very trees around Shed their pale leaves, like tears, upon the ground."

"Kanwa: Daughter, the cherished purpose of my heart Has ever been to wed thee to a man That should be worthy of thee; such a spouse Hast thou thyself, by thine own merits, won. To him thou goest, and about his neck Soon shalt thou cling confidingly, as now Thy favourite jasmine twines its loving arms Around the sturdy mango. Leave thou it To its protector—e'en as I consign Thee to thy lord, and henceforth from my mind Banish all anxious thought on thy behalf."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: My father, see you there my pet deer, grazing close to the hermitage? She expects soon to fawn, and even now the weight of the little one she carries hinders her movements. Do not forget to send me word when she becomes a mother."

"Kanwa: Shárngarava! when you have introduced Sakoontalá into the presence of the King, you must give him this message from me:— Most puissant prince! we here present before thee One thou art bound to cherish and receive As thine own wife; yea, even to enthrone As thine own queen—worthy of equal love With thine imperial consorts. So much, Sire, We claim of thee as justice due to us, In virtue of our holy character, In virtue of thine honourable rank, In virtue of the pure spontaneous love That secretly grew up 'twixt thee and her, Without consent or privity of us. We ask no more—the rest we freely leave To thy just feeling and to destiny."

"Shárngarava: A most suitable message! I will take care to deliver it correctly."

"Kanwa: Listen, then, my daughter. When thou reachest thy husband's palace, and art admitted into his family, Honour thy betters; ever be respectful To those above thee; and, should others share Thy husband's love, ne'er yield thyself a prey to jealousy; but ever be a friend, A loving friend, to those who rival thee In his affections. Should thy wedded lord Treat thee with harshness, thou most never be Harsh in return, but patient and submissive; Be to thy menials courteous, and to all Placed under thee, considerate and kind; Be never self-indulgent, but avoid Excess in pleasure; and, when fortune smiles, Be not puffed up. Thus to thy husband's house Wilt thou a blessing prove, and not a curse. What thinks Gautamí of this advice?"

"Gautamí: An excellent compendium, truly, of every wife's duties! Lay it well to heart, my daughter."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Removed from thy bosom, my beloved father, like a young tendril of the sandal-tree torn from its home in the western mountains, how shall I be able to support life in a foreign soil?"

"Kanwa: Daughter, thy fears are groundless. Soon shall thy lord prefer thee to the rank Of his own consort; and unnumbered cares Befitting his imperial dignity Shall constantly engross thee. Then the bliss Of bearing him a son—a noble boy, Bright as the day-star, shall transport thy soul With new delights, and little shalt thou reck Of the light sorrow that afflicts thee now At parting from thy father and thy friends."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Dear father, when shall I ever see this hallowed grove again?"

"Kanwa: I will tell thee; listen:— When thou hast passed a long and blissful life As King Dushyanta's queen, and jointly shared With all the earth his ever-watchful care; And hast beheld thine own heroic son, Matchless in arms, united to a bride In happy wedlock; when his aged sire, Thy faithful husband, hath to him resigned The helm of state; then, weary of the world, Together with Dushyanta thou shalt seek The calm seclusion of thy former home; There amid holy scenes to be at peace, Till thy pure spirit gain its last release."

"Gautamí: Come, my child, the favourable time for our journey is fast passing. Let thy father return. Venerable Sire, be thou the first to move homewards, or these last words will never end."

"Kanwa: Daughter, detain me no longer. My religious duties must not be interrupted."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Beloved father, thy frame is much enfeebled by penitential exercises. Do not, oh! do not, allow thyself to sorrow too much on my account."

"Kanwa: How, O my child, shall my bereaved heart Forget its bitterness, when, day by day, Full in my sight shall grow the tender plants Reared by thy care, or sprang from hallowed grain Which thy loved hands have strewn around the door— A frequent offering to our household gods? Go, my daughter, and may thy journey be prosperous."

"Priyamvadá and Anasúyá: Holy father, the sacred grove will be a desert without Sakoontalá. How can we ever return to it?"

"Kanwa: It is natural enough that your affection should make you view it in this light. As for me, I am quite surprised at myself. Now that I have fairly dismissed her to her husband's house, my mind is easy; for, indeed, A daughter is a loan—a precious jewel Lent to a parent till her husband claim her. And now that to her rightful lord and master I have delivered her, my burdened soul Is lightened, and I seem to breathe more freely."

"Máthavya: Hark! my dear friend, listen a minute, and you will hear sweet sounds proceeding from the music-room. Some one is singing a charming air. Who can it be? Oh! I know. The queen Hansapadiká is practising her notes, that she may greet you with a new song."

"King: She means to reprove me, because I once paid her great attention, and have lately deserted her for the queen Vasumatí. Go, my dear fellow, and tell Hansapadiká from me that I take her delicate reproof as it is intended."

"Máthavya: But stay—I don't much relish being sent to bear the brunt of her jealousy. The chances are that she will have me seized by the hair of the head and beaten to a jelly. I would as soon expose myself, after a vow of celibacy, to the seductions of a lovely nymph, as encounter the fury of a jealous woman."

"King: Go, go; you can disarm her wrath by a civil speech; but give her my message."

"Vátáyana, Chamberlain: Victory to the King! So please your Majesty, some hermits who live in a forest near the Snowy Mountains have arrived here, bringing certain women with them. They have a message to deliver from the sage Kanwa and desire an audience. I await your Majesty's commands."

"King: Tell my domestic priest Somaráta to receive the hermits with due honour, according to the prescribed form. He may then himself introduce them into my presence. I will await them in a place suitable for the reception of such holy guests."

"Warder (Vetravatí): Here is the terrace of the hallowed fire-chamber, and yonder stands the cow that yields the milk for the oblations. The sacred enclosure has been recently purified, and looks clean and beautiful. Ascend, Sire."

"King: Vetravatí, what can possibly be the message that the venerable Kanwa has sent me by these hermits? Perchance their sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favourites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage, Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around the hallowed grove. Such troubled thoughts Crowd through my mind, and fill me with misgiving."

"Warder (Vetravatí) If you ask my opinion, Sire, I think the hermits merely wish to take an opportunity of testifying their loyalty, and are therefore come to offer homage to your majesty."

"Shárngarava: O Sháradwata, 'Tis true the monarch lacks no royal grace, Nor ever swerves from justice; true, his people, Yea such as in life's humblest walks are found, Refrain from evil courses; still to me, A lonely hermit reared in solitude, This throng appears bewildering, and I seem To look upon a burning house, whose inmates Are running to and fro in wild dismay."

"Sháradwata: It is natural that the first sight of the King's capital should affect you in this manner; my own sensations are very similar. As one just bathed beholds the man polluted; As one late purified, the yet impure; As one awake looks on the yet unawakened; Or as the freeman gazes on the thrall, So I regard this crowd of pleasure-seekers."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Alas! what means this throbbing of my right eyelid?"

"Gautami: Heaven avert the evil omen, my child! May the guardian deities of thy husband's family convert it into a sign of good fortune!"

"King: But the lady there— Who can she be, whose form of matchless grace Is half concealed beneath her flowing veil? Among the sombre hermits she appears Like a fresh bud 'mid sear and yellow leaves."

"Priest: These holy men have been received with all due honour. One of them has now a message to deliver from his spiritual superior. Will your Majesty deign to hear it?"

"King: I trust no one is molesting you in the prosecution of your religious rites."

"Hermits: Who dares disturb our penitential rites When thou art our protector? Can the night Prevail to cast her shadows o'er the earth While the sun's beams irradiate the sky?"

"King: Such, indeed, is the very meaning of my title—'Defender of the Just.' I trust the venerable Kanwa is in good health. The world is interested in his well-being."

"Hermits: Holy men have health and prosperity in their own power. He bade us greet your Majesty, and, after kind inquiries, deliver this message."

"Shárngarava: He bade us say that he feels happy in giving his sanction to the marriage which your Majesty contracted with this lady, his daughter, privately and by mutual agreement. Because, By us thou art esteemed the most illustrious Of noble husbands; and Shakoontalá, Virtue herself in human form revealed. Great Brahmá hath in equal yoke united A bride unto a husband worthy of her; Henceforth let none make blasphemous complaint That he is pleased with ill-assorted unions Since, therefore, she expects soon to be the mother of thy child, receive her into thy palace, that she may perform, in conjunction with thee, the ceremonies prescribed by religion on such an occasion."

"Gautami: So please your Majesty, I would add a few words; but why should I intrude my sentiments when an opportunity of speaking my mind has never been allowed me? She took no counsel with her kindred; thou Didst not confer with thine, but all alone Didst solemnize thy nuptials with thy wife. Together, then, hold converse; let us leave you."

"King: What strange proposal is this?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Aside] His words are like fire to me."

"Shárngarava: What do I hear? Dost thou, then, hesitate? Monarch, thou art well acquainted with the ways of the world, and knowest that A wife, however virtuous and discreet, If she live separate from her wedded lord, Though under shelter of her parent's roof, Is marked for vile suspicion. Let her dwell Beside her husband, though he hold her not In his affection. So her kinsmen will it."

"King: Do you really mean to assert that I ever married this lady?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Aside] O my heart, thy worst misgivings are confirmed."

"Shárngarava: Is it becoming in a monarch to depart from the rules of justice, because he repents of his engagements?"

"King: I cannot answer a question which is based on a mere fabrication."

"Shárngarava: Such inconstancy is fortunately not common, except in men intoxicated by power."

"King: Is that remark aimed at me?"

"Gautami: Be not ashamed, my daughter. Let me remove thy veil for a little space. Thy husband will then recognize thee.[Removes Shakuntala's veil]."

"King: [Aside]What charms are here revealed before mine eyes! Truly no blemish mars the symmetry Of that fair form; yet can I ne'er believe She is my wedded wife; and like a bee That circles round the flower whose nectared cup Teems with the dew of morning, I must pause Ere eagerly I taste the proffered sweetness."

"Warder (Vetravatí) How admirably does our royal master's behaviour prove his regard for justice! Who else would hesitate for a moment when good fortune offered for his acceptance a form of such rare beauty?"

"Shárngarava: Great King, why art thou silent?"

"Gautami: Holy men, I have revolved the matter in my mind; but the more I think of it, the less able am I to recollect that I ever contracted an alliance with this lady. What answer, then, can I possibly give you when I do not believe myself to be her husband, and I plainly see that she is soon to become a mother?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Aside] Woe! woe! Is our very marriage to be called in question by my own husband? Ah me! is this to be the end of all my bright visions of wedded happiness?"

"Shárngarava: Beware! Beware how thou insult the holy Sage! Remember how he generously allowed Thy secret union with his foster-child; And how, when thou didst rob him of his treasure, He sought to furnish thee excuse, when rather He should have cursed thee for a ravisher."

"Sháradwata: Shárngarava, speak to him no more. [S']akoontalá, our part is performed; we have said all we have to say, and the King has replied in the manner thou hast heard. It is now thy turn to give him convincing evidence of thy marriage."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Aside] Since his feeling towards me has undergone a complete revolution, what will it avail to revive old recollections? One thing is clear—I shall soon have to mourn my own widowhood."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: My revered husband. But no—I dare not address thee by this title, since thou hast refused to acknowledge our union. Noble descendant of Puru! It is not worthy of thee to betray an innocent-minded girl, and disown her in such terms, after having so lately and so solemnly plighted thy vows to her in the hermitage."

"King: [Stopping his ears].I will hear no more. Be such a crime far from my thoughts!"

"King: What evil spirit can possess thee, lady, That thou dost seek to sully my good name By base aspersions, like a swollen torrent, That, leaping from its narrow bed, o'erthrows The tree upon its bank, and strives to blend Its turbid waters with the crystal stream?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: If, then, thou really believest me to be the wife of another, and thy present conduct proceeds from some cloud that obscures thy recollection, I will easily convince thee by this token."

"King: An excellent idea!"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Feeling for the ring]. Alas! alas! woe is me! There is no ring on my finger!"

"Gautami: The ring must have slipped off when thou wast in the act of offering homage to the holy water of Shachí's sacred pool, near Sakrávatára."

"King: People may well talk of the readiness of woman's invention! Here is an instance of it."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Say, rather, of the omnipotence of fate. I will mention another circumstance, which may yet convince thee."

"King: By all means let me hear it at once."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: One day, while we were seated in a jasmine-bower, thou didst pour into the hollow of thine hand some water, sprinkled by a recent shower in the cup of a lotus-blossom—"

"King: I am listening; proceed."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: At that instant, my adopted child, the little fawn, with soft, long eyes, came running towards us. Upon which, before tasting the water thyself, thou didst kindly offer some to the little creature, saying fondly:—'Drink first, gentle fawn.' But she could not be induced to drink from the hand of a stranger; though immediately afterwards, when I took the water in my own hand, she drank with perfect confidence. Then, with a smile, thou didst say;—'Every creature confides naturally in its own kind. You are both inhabitants of the same forest, and have learnt to trust each other.'"

"King: Voluptuaries may allow themselves to be seduced from the path of duty by falsehoods such as these, expressed in honeyed words."

"Gautami: Speak not thus, illustrious Prince. This lady was brought up in a hermitage, and has never learnt deceit."

"King: Holy matron, E'en in untutored brutes, the female sex Is marked by inborn subtlety—much more In beings gifted with intelligence. The wily Koïl[83], ere towards the sky She wings her sportive flight, commits her eggs To other nests, and artfully consigns The rearing of her little ones to strangers."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Dishonourable man, thou judgest of others by thine own evil heart. Thou, at least, art unrivalled in perfidy, and standest alone—a base deceiver in the garb of virtue and religion—like a deep pit whose yawning mouth is concealed by smiling flowers."

"King: [Aside] Her anger, at any rate, appears genuine, and makes me almost doubt whether I am in the right. For indeed, When I had vainly searched my memory, And so with stern severity denied The fabled story of our secret loves, Her brows, that met before in graceful curves, Like the arched weapon of the god of love, Seemed by her frown dissevered; while the fire Of sudden anger kindled in her eyes."

"King: My good lady, Dushyanta's character is well known to all. I comprehend not your meaning."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Well do I deserve to be thought a harlot for having in the innocence of my heart, and out of the confidence I reposed in a Prince of Puru's race, entrusted my honour to a man whose mouth distils honey, while his heart is full of poison."

"Shárngarava: Thus it is that burning remorse must ever follow rash actions which might have been avoided, and for which one has only one's self to blame. Not hastily should marriage be contracted, And specially in secret. Many a time, In hearts that know not each the other's fancies, Fond love is changed into most bitter hate."

"King: How now! Do you give credence to this woman rather than to me, that you heap such accusations on me?"

"Shárngarava: That would be too absurd, certainly. You have heard the proverb:—Hold in contempt the innocent words of those Who from their infancy have known no guile; But trust the treacherous counsels of the man Who makes a very science of deceit."

"King: Most veracious Bráhman, grant that you are in the right, what end would be gained by betraying this lady?"

"Shárngarava: Ruin."

"Sháradwata: This altercation is idle, Shárngarava. We have executed the commission of our preceptor; come, let us return."

"Sháradwata: to the King Shakoontalá is certainly thy bride; Receive her or reject her, she is thine. Do with her, King, according to thy pleasure— The husband o'er the wife is absolute."

"Sháradwata: Go on before us, Gautamí."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: What! is it not enough to have been betrayed by this perfidious man? Must you also forsake me, regardless of my tears and lamentations? [[Attempts to follow them.]"

"Gautami: My son Sárngarava, see! Shakoontalá is following us, and with tears implores us not to leave her. Alas! poor child, what will she do here with a cruel husband who casts her from him?"

"Shárngarava: Wilful woman, dost thou seek to be independent of thy lord?...Shakoontalá! If thou art really what the King proclaims thee, How can thy father e'er receive thee back Into his house and home? but if thy conscience Be witness to thy purity of soul, E'en should thy husband to a handmaid's lot Condemn thee, thou may'st cheerfully endure it. When ranked among the number of his household. Thy duty therefore is to stay. As for us, we must return immediately."

"King: Deceive not this lady, my good hermit, by any such expectations. The moon expands the lotus of the night, The rising sun awakes the lily; each Is with his own contented. Even so The virtuous man is master of his passions, And from another's wife averts his gaze."

"Shárngarava: Since thy union with another woman has rendered thee oblivious of thy marriage with Shakoontalá, whence this fear of losing thy character for constancy and virtue?"

"King addressing a priest: You must counsel me, revered Sir, as to my course of action. Which of the two evils involves the greater or less sin? Whether by some dark veil my mind be clouded. Or this designing woman speak untruly, I know not. Tell me, must I rather be The base disowner of my wedded wife, Or the defiling and defiled adulterer?"

"Priest: You must take an intermediate course....I will provide an asylum for the lady in my own house until the birth of her child; and my reason, if you ask me, is this: Soothsayers have predicted that your first-born will have universal dominion. Now, if the hermit's daughter bring forth a son with the discus or mark of empire in the lines of his hand[84], you must admit her immediately into your royal apartments with great rejoicings; if not, then determine to send her back as soon as possible to her father."

"King: I bow to the decision of my spiritual advisor."

"Priest: Daughter, follow me."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: O divine earth, open and receive me into thy bosom!"

"A Voice: A miracle! a miracle!"

"Priest: Great Prince, a stupendous prodigy has just occurred....May it please your Majesty, so soon as Kanwa's pupils had departed, Sakoontalá, her eyes all bathed in tears, with outstretched arms, bewailed her cruel fate— When suddenly a shining apparition, In female shape, descended from the skies, Near the nymph's pool, and bore her up to heaven."

"King: My good priest, from the very first I declined having anything to do with this matter. It is now all over, and we can never, by our conjectures, unravel the mystery; let it rest; go, seek repose."

"Priest: Be it so. Victory to the King!"

"King: Do what I will, I cannot call to mind That I did e'er espouse the sage's daughter; Therefore I have disowned her; yet 'tis strange How painfully my agitated heart Bears witness to the truth of her assertion, And makes me credit her against my judgment."

"Prelude To ACT VI (Scene—A Street.)"

"Two Constables: Take that for a rascally thief that you are; and now tell us, sirrah, where you found this ring—aye, the King's own signet-ring. See, here is the royal name engraved on the setting of the jewel."

"Fisherman: Mercy! kind sirs, mercy! I did not steal it; indeed I did not....One day I was cutting open a large carp[87] I had just hooked, when the sparkle of a jewel caught my eye, and what should I find in the fish's maw but that ring! Soon afterwards, when I was offering it for sale, I was seized by your honours. Now you know everything. Whether you kill me, or whether you let me go, this is the true account of how the ring came into my possession."

"Superintendent: Well, Jánuka, the rascal emits such a fishy odour that I have no doubt of his being a fisherman; but we must inquire a little more closely into this queer story about the finding of the ring. Come, we'll take him before the King's household."

"Second Constable: There's our Superintendent at last, I declare. See! he is coming towards us with a paper in his hand. We shall soon know the King's command; so prepare, my fine fellow, either to become food for the vultures, or to make acquaintance with some hungry cur."

"Superintendent: Ho, there, Súchaka! set the fisherman at liberty, I tell you. His story about the ring is all correct."

"Fisherman: Now, master, what think you of my way of getting a livelihood?"

"Superintendent: Here, my good man, the King desired me to present you with this purse. It contains a sum of money equal to the full value of the ring."

"Fisherman: His Majesty does me too great honour."

"Súchaka (Constable): You may well say so. He might as well have taken you from the gallows to seat you on his state elephant."

"Jánuka (another constable): Master, the King must value the ring very highly, or he would never have sent such a sum of money to this ragamuffin."

"Superintendent: I don't think he prizes it as a costly jewel so much as a memorial of some person he tenderly loves. The moment it was shown to him he became much agitated, though in general he conceals his feelings."

"Fisherman: Here's half the money for you, my masters. It will serve to purchase the flowers you spoke of, if not to buy me your good-will."

"Superintendent: My good fisherman, you are an excellent fellow, and I begin to feel quite a regard for you. Let us seal our first friendship over a glass of good liquor. Come along to the next wine-shop, and we'll drink your health."

"Sánumatí: (The nymph Sánumatí is seen descending in a celestial car.) Behold me just arrived from attending in my proper turn at the nymph's pool, where I have left the other nymphs to perform their ablutions, whilst I seek to ascertain, with my own eyes, how it fares with King Dushyanta. My connexion with the nymph Menaká has made her daughter Sakoontalá dearer to me than my own flesh and blood; and Menaká it was who charged me with this errand on her daughter's behalf. How is it that I see no preparations in the King's household for celebrating the great vernal festival? I could easily discover the reason by my divine faculty of meditation but respect must be shown to the wishes of my friend. How then shall I arrive at the truth? I know what I will do. I will become invisible, and place myself near those two maidens who are tending the plants in the garden."

"Chamberlin: Hold there, thoughtless woman [the two maids in the garden]. What are you about, breaking off those mango-blossoms, when the King has forbidden the celebration of the spring festival?"

"Both Maidens: Pardon us, kind Sir, we have heard nothing of it."

"Chamberlin: You have heard nothing of it? Why, all the vernal plants and shrubs, and the very birds that lodge in their branches, show more respect to the King's order than you do....But tell us, kind Sir, why has the King prohibited the usual festivities? We are curious to hear, if we may."

"Sánumatí: Men are naturally fond of festive entertainments. There must be some good reason for the prohibition."

"Chamberlin: The whole affair is now public; why should I not speak of it? Has not the gossip about the King's rejection of Shakoontalá reached your ears yet?"

"Both Maidens: Oh yes, we heard the story from the King's brother-in-law, as far, at least, as the discovery of the ring."

"Chamberlin: Then there is little more to tell you. As soon as the King's memory was restored by the sight of his own ring, he exclaimed: 'Yes, it is all true. I remember now my secret marriage with Shakoontalá. When I repudiated her, I had lost my recollection!' Ever since that moment, he has yielded himself a prey to the bitterest remorse."

"Sánumatí: To me this account is delightful"

"Chamberlin: In short, the King is so completely out of his mind that the festival has been prohibited....Oh! here comes his Majesty in this direction. Pass on, maidens; attend to your duties."

"Sánumatí: Now that I have seen him, I can well understand why [S']akoontalá should pine after such a man, in spite of his disdainful rejection of her."

"King: [In deep thought] When fatal lethargy o'erwhelmed my soul, My loved one strove to rouse me, but in vain; And now, when I would fain in slumber deep Forget myself, full soon remorse doth wake me."

"Sánumatí:[Aside] My poor Shakoontalá's sufferings are very similar."

"Máthavya: He is taken with another attack of this odious Shakoontalá-fever. How shall we ever cure him?"

"Chamberlin: Victory to the King! Great Prince, the royal pleasure-grounds have been put in order. Your Majesty can resort to them for exercise and amusement whenever you think proper."

"King: Vetravatí, tell the worthy Pishuna, my prime minister, from me, that I am so exhausted by want of sleep that I cannot sit on the judgment-seat to-day. If any case of importance be brought before the tribunal, he must give it his best attention, and inform me of the circumstances by letter."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] Now that you have rid yourself of these troublesome fellows, you can enjoy the delightful coolness of your pleasure-grounds without interruption."

"King: Ah! my dear friend, there is an old adage:—'When affliction has a mind to enter, she will find a crevice somewhere;' and it is verified in me. Scarce is my soul delivered from the cloud That darkened its remembrance of the past, When lo! the heart-born deity of love With yonder blossom of the mango barbs His keenest shaft, and aims it at my breast."

"Máthavya: Well, then, wait a moment; I will soon demolish Master Káma's[47] arrow with a cut of my cane."

"King: That will do. I see very well the god of love is not a match for a Bráhman. And now, my dear friend, where shall I sit down, that I may enchant my sight by gazing on the twining plants, which seem to remind me of the graceful shape of my beloved?"

"Máthavya: Don't you remember? you told your personal attendant, Chaturiká, that you would pass the heat of the day in the jasmine-bower; and commanded her to bring the likeness of your queen [S']akoontalá, sketched with your own hand."

"King: True. The sight of her picture will refresh my soul. Lead the way to the arbour."

"Máthavya: Here we are at the jasmine-bower. Look, it has a marble seat, and seems to bid us welcome with its offerings of delicious flowers. You have only to enter and sit down."

"Sánumatí: I will lean against these young jasmines. I can easily, from behind them, glance at my friend's picture, and will then hasten to inform her of her husband's ardent affection"

"King: Oh! my dear friend, how vividly all the circumstances of my union with [S']akoontalá present themselves to my recollection at this moment! But tell me now how it was that, between the time of my leaving her in the hermitage and my subsequent rejection of her, you never breathed her name to me? True, you were not by my side when I disowned her; but I had confided to you the story of my love, and you were acquainted with every particular. Did it pass out of your mind as it did out of mine?"

"Máthavya: No, no; trust me for that. But, if you remember, when you had finished telling me about it, you added that I was not to take the story in earnest, for that you were not really in love with a country girl, but were only jesting; and I was dull and thick-headed enough to believe you. But so fate decreed, and there is no help for it...."

"King: How can I be otherwise than inconsolable, when I call to mind the agonized demeanour of the dear one on the occasion of my disowning her? When cruelly I spurned her from my presence, She fain had left me; but the young recluse, Stern as the Sage, and with authority As from his saintly master, in a voice That brooked not contradiction, bade her stay. Then through her pleading eyes, bedimmed with tears, She cast on me one long reproachful look, Which like a poisoned shaft torments me still."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] Alas! such is the force of self-reproach following a rash action. But his anguish only rejoices me."

"Máthavya: An idea has just struck me. I should not wonder if some celestial being had carried her off to heaven."

"King: Very likely. Who else would have dared to lay a finger on a wife, the idol of her husband? It is said that Menaká, the nymph of heaven, gave her birth. The suspicion has certainly crossed my mind that some of her celestial companions may have taken her to their own abode."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] His present recollection of every circumstance of her history does not surprise me so much as his former forgetfulness."

"Máthavya: If that's the case, you will be certain to meet her before long."

"King: Why?"

"Máthavya: No father and mother can endure to see a daughter suffering the pain of separation from her husband."

"King: Oh! my dear Máthavya, Was it a dream? or did some magic dire, Dulling my senses with a strange delusion, O'ercome my spirit? or did destiny, Jealous of my good actions, mar their fruit, And rob me of their guerdon? It is past, Whate'er the spell that bound me. Once again Am I awake, but only to behold The precipice o'er which my hopes have fallen."

"Máthavya: Do not despair in this manner. Is not this very ring a proof that what has been lost may be unexpectedly found?"

"King: Ah! this ring, too, has fallen from a station not easily regained, and I offer it my sympathy. O gem, The punishment we suffer is deserved, And equal is the merit of our works, When such our common doom. Thou didst enjoy The thrilling contact of those slender fingers, Bright as the dawn; and now how changed thy lot!"

"Sánumatí: [Aside] Had it found its way to the hand of any other person, then indeed its fate would have been deplorable."

"Máthavya: Pray, how did the ring ever come upon her hand at all?"

"Sánumatí: [Aside] I myself am curious to know."

"King: You shall hear. When I was leaving my beloved [S']akoontalá that I might return to my own capital, she said to me, with tears in her eyes: 'How long will it be ere my lord send for me to his palace and make me his queen?'...Then I placed the ring on her finger, and thus addressed her:— Repeat each day one letter of the name Engraven on this gem; ere thou hast reckoned The tale of syllables, my minister Shall come to lead thee to thy husband's palace. But, hard-hearted man that I was, I forgot to fulfil my promise, owing to the infatuation that took possession of me."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] A pleasant arrangement! Fate, however, ordained that the appointment should not be kept."

"Máthavya: But how did the ring contrive to pass into the stomach of that carp which the fisherman caught and was cutting up?"

"King: It must have slipped from my Shakoontalá's hand, and fallen into the stream of the Ganges, while she was offering homage to the water of Shachí's holy pool."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] Hence it happened, I suppose, that the King, always fearful of committing the least injustice, came to doubt his marriage with my poor Sakoontalá. But why should affection so strong as his stand in need of any token of recognition?"

"King: O forsaken one, unjustly banished from my presence, take pity on thy slave, whose heart is consumed by the fire of remorse, and return to my sight."

"Chaturiká: Here is the Queen's portrait."

"Máthavya: Excellent, my dear friend, excellent! The imitation of nature is perfect, and the attitude of the figures is really charming. They stand out in such bold relief that the eye is quite deceived."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] A most artistic performance! I admire the King's skill, and could almost believe that Shakoontalá herself was before me."

"King: I own 'tis not amiss, though it portrays But feebly her angelic loveliness. Aught less than perfect is depicted falsely, And fancy must supply the imperfection."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] A very just remark from a modest man, whose affection is exaggerated by the keenness of his remorse."

"Máthavya: Tell me:—I see three female figures drawn on the canvas, and all of them beautiful; which of the three is her Majesty [S']akoontalá?"

"King: My finger, burning with the glow of love, Has left its impress on the painted tablet; While here and there, alas! a scalding tear Has fallen on the cheek and dimmed its brightness. Chaturiká, the garden in the background of the picture is only half-painted. Go, fetch the brush that I may finish it...."

"Vetravatí: So please your Majesty, your prime minister begs respectfully to inform you that he has devoted much time to the settlement of financial calculations, and only one case of importance has been submitted by the citizens for his consideration. He has made a written report of the facts, and requests your Majesty to cast your eyes over it."

"King: What have we here? 'A merchant named Dhanamitra, trading by sea, was lost in a late shipwreck. Though a wealthy trader, he was childless; and the whole of his immense property becomes by law forfeited to the king.' So writes the minister. Alas! alas! for his childlessness! But surely, if he was wealthy, he must have had many wives. Let an inquiry be made whether any one of them is expecting to give birth to a child."

"Vetravatí: They say that his wife, the daughter of the foreman of a guild belonging to Ayodhyá , has just completed the ceremonies usual upon such expectations."

"King: The unborn child has a title to its father's property. Such is my decree. Go, bid my minister proclaim it so...."

"King: Let there be no question whether he may or may not have left offspring; Rather be it proclaimed that whosoe'er Of King Dushyanta's subjects be bereaved Of any loved relation, an it be not That his estates are forfeited for crimes, Dushyanta will himself to them supply That kinsman's place in tenderest affection."

"Vetravatí: Your Majesty's proclamation was received with acclamations of joy, like grateful rain at the right season."

"King: So, then, the property of rich men, who have no lineal descendants, passes over to a stranger at their decease. And such, alas! must be the fate of the fortunes of the race of Puru at my death; even as when fertile soil is sown with seed at the wrong season....Fool that I was to reject such happiness when it offered itself for my acceptance!"

"Sánumatí: [Aside] He may well blame his own folly when he calls to mind his treatment of my beloved Shakoontalá."

"King: Ah! woe is me! when I forsook my wife— My lawful wife—concealed within her breast There lay my second self, a child unborn, Hope of my race, e'en as the choicest fruit Lies hidden in the bosom of the earth."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] There is no fear of your race being cut off for want of a son."

"King: Alas! the shades of my forefathers are even now beginning to be alarmed, lest at my death they may be deprived of their funeral libations. No son remains in King Dushyanta's place To offer sacred homage to the dead Of Puru's noble line; my ancestors Must drink these glistening tears, the last libation A childless man can ever hope to make them."

"Sánumatí: [Aside] Alas! alas! though a bright light is shining near him, he is involved in the blackest darkness, by reason of the veil that obscures his sight. I will now reveal all, and put an end to his misery. But no; I heard the mother of the great Indra, when she was consoling Shakoontalá, say that the gods will soon bring about a joyful union between husband and wife, being eager for the sacrifice which will be celebrated in their honour on the occasion. I must not anticipate the happy moment, but will return at once to my dear friend and cheer her with an account of what I have seen and heard. [She rises aloft and disappears]."

"A Voice: Help! help! to the rescue!"

"Vetravatí: Your friend [Máthavya] is in danger; save him, great King....Some evil demon, invisible to human eyes, has seized him, and carried him to one of the turrets of the Palace of Clouds."

"Another Voice: Here, thirsting for thy life-blood, will I slay thee, As a fierce tiger rends his struggling prey. Call now thy friend Dushyanta to thy aid; His bow is mighty to defend the weak; Yet all its vaunted power shall be as nought."

"King: What! dares he defy me to my face? Hold there, monster! Prepare to die, for your time is come."

"A Voice: Help! Save me! I can see you, though you cannot see me. I am like a mouse in the claws of a cat; my life is not worth a minute's purchase."

"King: Avaunt, monster! You may pride yourself on the magic that renders you invisible, but my arrow shall find you out. Thus do I fix a shaft That shall discern between an impious demon, And a good Bráhman; bearing death to thee, To him deliverance—even as the swan Distinguishes the milk from worthless water."

"Mátali: Turn thou thy deadly arrows on the demons; Such is the will of Indra; let thy bow Be drawn against the enemies of the gods; But on thy friends cast only looks of favour."

"King: What, Mátali! Welcome, most noble charioteer of the mighty Indra."

"Máthavya: So, here is a monster who thought as little about slaughtering me as if I had been a bullock for sacrifice, and you must e'en greet him with a welcome."

"Mátali: Great Prince, hear on what errand Indra sent me into your presence....There is a race of giants, the descendants of Kálanemi, whom the gods find it difficult to subdue."

"King: So I have already heard from Nárada."

"Mátali: Heaven's mighty lord, who deigns to call thee 'friend,' Appoints thee to the post of highest honour, As leader of his armies; and commits The subjugation of this giant brood To thy resistless arms, e'en as the sun Leaves the pale moon to dissipate the darkness. Let your Majesty, therefore, ascend at once the celestial car of Indra; and, grasping your arms, advance to victory."

"King: The mighty Indra honours me too highly by such a mark of distinction. But tell me, what made you act thus towards my poor friend Máthavya?"

"Mátali: I will tell you. Perceiving that your Majesty's spirit was completely broken by some distress of mind under which you were labouring, I determined to rouse your energies by moving you to anger. Because To light a flame, we need but stir the embers; The cobra, when incensed, extends his head And springs upon his foe; the bravest men Display their courage only when provoked."

"King: My dear Máthavya, the commands of the great Indra must not be left unfulfilled. Go you and acquaint my minister, Pishuna, with what has happened, and say to him from me:— Dushyanta to thy care confides his realm— Protect with all the vigour of thy mind The interests of his people; while his bow Is braced against the enemies of heaven."

"King: My good Mátali, it appears to me incredible that I can merit such a mark of distinction for having simply fulfilled the behests of the great Indra."

"Mátali: Great Prince, it seems to me that neither of you is satisfied with himself. You underrate the services you have rendered, And think too highly of the god's reward; He deems it scarce sufficient recompense For your heroic deeds on his behalf."

"King: My good Mátali, yesterday, when I ascended the sky, I was so eager to do battle with the demons, that the road by which we were travelling towards Indra's heaven escaped my observation. Tell me, in which path of the seven winds are we now moving?"

"Mátali: We journey in the path of Parivaha— The wind that bears along the triple Ganges And causes Ursa's seven stars to roll In their appointed orbits, scattering Their several rays with equal distribution. 'Tis the same path that once wassanctified By the divine impression of the foot Of Vishnu, when, to conquer haughty Bali, He spanned the heavens in his second stride."

"King: This is the reason, I suppose, that a sensation of calm repose pervades all my senses.Ah! Mátali, we are descending towards the earth's atmosphere....The car itself instructs me; we are moving O'er pregnant clouds, surcharged with rain; below us I see the moisture-loving Chátakas.In sportive flight dart through the spokes; the steeds Of Indra glisten with the lightning's flash;And a thick mist bedews the circling wheels."

"King: Tell me, Mátali, what is the range of mountains which, like a bank of clouds illumined by the setting sun, pours down a stream of gold? On one side its base dips into the eastern ocean, and on the other side into the western."

"Mátali: Great Prince, it is called 'Golden-peak,' and is the abode of the attendants of the god of wealth. In this spot the highest forms of penance are wrought out. There Kashyapa, the great progenitor Of demons and of gods, himself the offspring Of the divine Maríchi, Brahmá's son, With Adití, his wife, in calm seclusion, Does holy penance for the good of mortals."

"King: Then I must not neglect so good an opportunity of obtaining his blessing. I should much like to visit this venerable personage and offer him my homage."

"Mátali: If your Majesty will rest under the shade, at the foot of this Ashoka-tree, I will seek an opportunity of announcing your arrival to Indra's reputed father."

"King: Wherefore this causeless throbbing, O mine arm? All hope has fled for ever; mock me not With presages of good, when happiness Is lost, and nought but misery remains."

"A Voice: Be not so naughty. Do you begin already to show a refractory spirit?"

"King: This is no place for petulance. Who can it be whose behaviour calls for such a rebuke?"

"King: A child, is it? closely attended by two holy women. His disposition seems anything but child-like. See! He braves the fury of yon lioness Suckling its savage offspring, and compels The angry whelp to leave the half-sucked dug, Tearing its tender mane in boisterous sport."

"Child: Open your mouth, my young lion, I want to count your teeth."

"First Attendant: You naughty child, why do you tease the animals? Know you not that we cherish them in this hermitage as if they were our own children? In good sooth, you have a high spirit of your own, and are beginning already to do justice to the name Sarva-damana ('All-taming'), given you by the hermits."

"King: Strange! My heart inclines towards the boy with almost as much affection as if he were my own child. What can be the reason? I suppose my own childlessness makes me yearn towards the sons of others."

"Second Attendant: This lioness will certainly attack you if you do not release her whelp."

"Child: Oh! indeed! let her come. Much I fear her, to be sure!"

"King: The germ of mighty courage lies concealed Within this noble infant, like a spark Beneath the fuel, waiting but a breath To fan the flame and raise a conflagration."

"First Attendant: Let the young lion go, like a dear child, and I will give you something else to play with."

"Child: Where is it? Give it me first."

"King: How's that? His hand exhibits one of those mystic marks[84] which are the sure prognostic of universal empire. See! His fingers stretched in eager expectation To grasp the wished-for toy, and knit together By a close-woven web, in shape resemble. A lotus blossom, whose expanding petals The early dawn has only half unfolded."

"Second Attendant: We shall never pacify him by mere words, dear Suvratá. Be kind enough to go to my cottage, and you will find there a plaything belonging to Márkandeya, one of the hermit's children. It is a peacock made of china-ware, painted in many colours. Bring it here for the child."

"Child: No, no; I shall go on playing with the young lion."

"King: I feel an unaccountable affection for this wayward child. How blessed the virtuous parents whose attire Is soiled with dust, by raising from the ground The child that asks a refuge in their arms! And happy are they while with lisping prattle, In accents sweetly inarticulate, He charms their ears; and with his artless smiles Gladdens their hearts, revealing to their gaze His pearly teeth just budding into view."

"Attendant: Addressing the King Kind Sir, could you come hither a moment and help me to release the young lion from the clutch of this child who is teasing him in boyish play?"

"Child: Listen to me, thou child of a mighty saint! Dost thou dare show a wayward spirit here? Here, in this hallowed region? Take thou heed Lest, as the serpent's young defiles the sandal, Thou bring dishonour on the holy sage Thy tender-hearted parent, who delights To shield from harm the tenants of the wood."

"Attendant: Gentle Sir, I thank you; but he is not the saint's son."

"King: His behaviour and whole bearing would have led me to doubt it, had not the place of his abode encouraged the idea.... I marvel that the touch of this strange child Should thrill me with delight; if so it be, How must the fond caresses of a son Transport the father's soul who gave him being!"

"Attendant: I am astonished at the striking resemblance between the child and yourself; and, what is still more extraordinary, he seems to have taken to you kindly and submissively, though you are a stranger to him."

"King: If he be not the son of the great sage, of what family does he come, may I ask?"

"Attendant: Of the race of Puru."

"King:[Aside] What! are we, then, descended from the same ancestry? This, no doubt, accounts for the resemblance she traces between the child and me. Certainly it has always been an established usage among the princes of Puru's race, To dedicate the morning of their days To the world's weal, in palaces and halls, 'Mid luxury and regal pomp abiding; Then, in the wane of life, to seek release From kingly cares, and make the hallowed shade Of sacred trees their last asylum, where As hermits they may practise self-abasement, And bind themselves by rigid vows of penance."

"King: But how could mortals by their own power gain admission to this sacred region?"

"Attendant: Your remark is just; but your wonder will cease when I tell you that his mother is the offspring of a celestial nymph, and gave him birth in the hallowed grove of Kashyapa."

"King:[Aside] Strange that my hopes should be again excited!"

"King: But what, let me ask, was the name of the prince whom she deigned to honour with her hand?"

"Attendant: How could I think of polluting my lips by the mention of a wretch who had the cruelty to desert his lawful wife?"

"King:[Aside] Ha! the description suits me exactly. Would I could bring myself to inquire the name of the child's mother!But it is against propriety to make too minute inquiries about the wife of another man."

"Second Attendant: Sarva-damana, Sarva-damana, see, see, what a beautiful Shakoonta (bird)."

"Child: My mother! Where? Let me go to her."

"King:[Aside]What! is his mother's name Shakoontalá? But the name is not uncommon among women. Alas! I fear the mere similarity of a name, like the deceitful vapour of the desert, has once more raised my hopes only to dash them to the ground."

"First Attendant: Alas! alas! I do not see the amulet on his wrist."

"King: Don't distress yourself. Here it is. It fell off while he was struggling with the young lion."

"The Two Attendants: Hold! hold! Touch it not, for your life. How marvellous! He has actually taken it up without the slightest hesitation."

"King: Why did you try to prevent my touching it?"

"First Attendant: Listen, great Monarch. This amulet, known as 'The Invincible,' was given to the boy by the divine son of Maríchi, soon after his birth, when the natal ceremony was performed. Its peculiar virtue is, that when it falls on the ground, no one except the father or mother of the child can touch it unhurt."

"King: And suppose another person touches it?"

"First Attendant: Then it instantly becomes a serpent, and bites him...."

"King: [After embracing the child, aside] Joy! joy! Are then my dearest hopes to be fulfilled?"

"Second Attendant: Come, my dear Suvratá, we must inform [S']akoontalá immediately of this wonderful event, though we have to interrupt her in the performance of her religious vows."

"Child [To the King]: Don't hold me. I want to go to my mother."

"King: We will go to her together, and give her joy, my son."

"Child [To the King]: Dushyanta is my father, not you."

"King: His contradiction only convinces me the more"

"SHAKOONTALÁ [Aside]: I have just heard that Sarva-damana's amulet has retained its form, though a stranger raised it from the ground. I can hardly believe in my good fortune. Yet why should not Sánumatí's prediction be verified?"

"King: [Aside]Alas! can this indeed be my Shakoontalá? Clad in the weeds of widowhood, her face Emaciate with fasting, her long hair Twined in a single braid, her whole demeanour Expressive of her purity of soul; With patient constancy she thus prolongs The vow to which my cruelty condemned her."

"SHAKOONTALÁ [Aside]: Surely this is not like my husband; yet who can it be that dares pollute by the pressure of his hand my child, whose amulet should protect him from a stranger's touch?"

"Child: Mother, who is this man that has been kissing me and calling me his son?"

"King: My best beloved, I have indeed treated thee most cruelly, but am now once more thy fond and affectionate lover. Refuse not to acknowledge me as thy husband."

"SHAKOONTALÁ [Aside]: Be of good cheer, my heart. The anger of Destiny is at last appeased. Heaven regards thee with compassion. But is he in very truth my husband?"

"King: Behold me, best and loveliest of women, Delivered from the cloud of fatal darkness That erst oppressed my memory. Again Behold us brought together by the grace Of the great lord of Heaven. So the moon Shines forth from dim eclipse, to blend his rays With the soft lustre of his Rohiní."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: May my husband be victorious—"

"King: O fair one, though the utterance of thy prayer Be lost amid the torrent of thy tears, Yet does the sight of thy fair countenance And of thy pallid lips, all unadorned And colourless in sorrow for my absence, Make me already more than conqueror."

"Child: Mother, who is this man?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: My child, ask the deity that presides over thy destiny."

"King:[Falling at her feet] Fairest of women, banish from thy mind The memory of my cruelty; reproach The fell delusion that o'erpowered my soul, And blame not me, thy husband; 'tis the curse Of him in whom the power of darkness reigns, That he mistakes the gifts of those he loves For deadly evils. Even though a friend Should wreathe a garland on a blind man's brow, Will he not cast it from him as a serpent?"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Rise, my own husband, rise. Thou wast not to blame. My own evil deeds, committed in a former state of being[37], brought down this judgment upon me. How else could my husband, who was ever of a compassionate disposition, have acted so unfeelingly? But tell me, my husband, how did the remembrance of thine unfortunate wife return to thy mind?"

"King: As soon as my heart's anguish is removed, and its wounds are healed, I will tell thee all. Oh! let me, fair one, chase away the drop That still bedews the fringes of thine eye; And let me thus efface the memory Of every tear that stained thy velvet cheek, Unnoticed and unheeded by thy lord, When in his madness he rejected thee."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Seeing the signet-ring on his finger] Ah! my dear husband, is that the Lost Ring?"

"King: Yes; the moment I recovered it my memory was restored."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: The ring was to blame in allowing itself to be lost at the very time when I was anxious to convince my noble husband of the reality of my marriage."

"King: Receive it back, as the beautiful twining-plant receives again its blossom in token of its reunion with the spring."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Nay; I can never more place confidence in it. Let my husband retain it."

"Mátali: I congratulate your Majesty. Happy are you in your reunion with your wife; happy are you in beholding the face of your own son."

"King: Yes, indeed. My heart's dearest wish has borne sweet fruit. But tell me, Mátali, is this joyful event known to the great Indra?"

"Mátali: What is unknown to the gods? But come with me, noble Prince, the divine [[Kashyapa graciously permits thee to be presented to him."

"King: Shakoontalá, take our child and lead the way. We will together go into the presence of the holy Sage."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: I shrink from entering the august presence of the great Saint, even with my husband at my side."

"King: Nay; on such a joyous occasion it is highly proper. Come, come; I entreat thee."

"Kashyapa [To his wife]: O Adití, This is the mighty hero, King Dushyanta, Protector of the earth; who, at the head Of the celestial armies of thy son, Does battle with the enemies of heaven. Thanks to his bow, the thunderbolt of Indra Rests from its work, no more the minister Of death and desolation to the world, But a mere symbol of divinity."

"Aditi: He bears in his noble form all the marks of dignity."

"Mátali: Sire, the venerable progenitors of the celestials are gazing at your Majesty with as much affection as if you were their son. You may advance towards them."

"King: Are these, O Mátali, the holy pair, Offspring of Daksha and divine Maríchi, Children of Brahmá's sons, by sages deemed Sole fountain of celestial light, diffused Through twelve effulgent orbs? Are these the pair From whom the ruler of the triple world, Sovereign of gods and lord of sacrifice, Sprang into being? That immortal pair Whom Vishnu, greater than the Self-existent, Chose for his parents, when, to save mankind, He took upon himself the shape of mortals?"

"King: Most august of beings! Dushyanta, content to have fulfilled the commands of your son Indra, offers you his adoration."

"Kashyapa: My son, long may'st thou live, and happily may'st thou reign over the earth!"

"Aditi: My son, may'st thou ever be invincible in the field of battle!"

"SHAKOONTALÁ: I also prostrate myself before you, most adorable Beings, and my child with me."

"Kashyapa: My daughter, Thy lord resembles Indra, and thy child Is noble as Jayanta, Indra's son; I have no worthier blessing left for thee, May'st thou be faithful as the god's own wife!"

"Aditi: My daughter, may'st thou be always the object of thy husband's fondest love; and may thy son live long to be the joy of both his parents! Be seated."

"Kashyapa: Hail to the beautiful Shakoontalá, Hail to her noble son, and hail to thee, Illustrious Prince—rare triple combination Of virtue, wealth, and energy united!"

"King: Most venerable Kashyapa, by your favour all my desires were accomplished even before I was admitted to your presence. Never was mortal so honoured that his boon should be granted ere it was solicited. Because— Bloom before fruit, the clouds before the rain, Cause first and then effect, in endless sequence, Is the unchanging law of constant nature; But, ere the blessing issued from thy lips, The wishes of my heart were all fulfilled."

"Mátali: It is thus that the great progenitors of the world confer favours."

"King: Most reverend Sage, this thy handmaid was married to me by the Gándharva ceremony, and after a time was conducted to my palace by her relations. Meanwhile a fatal delusion seized me; I lost my memory and rejected her, thus committing a grievous offence against the venerable Kanwa, who is of thy divine race. Afterwards the sight of this ring restored my faculties, and brought back to my mind all the circumstances of my union with his daughter. But my conduct still seems to me incomprehensible; As foolish as the fancies of a man Who, when he sees an elephant, denies That 'tis an elephant; then afterwards, When its huge bulk moves onward, hesitates; Yet will not be convinced till it has passed For ever from his sight, and left behind No vestige of its presence save its footsteps."

"Kashyapa: My son, cease to think thyself in fault. Even the delusion that possessed thy mind was not brought about by any act of thine. Listen to me."

"King: I am attentive."

"Kashyapa: Know that when the nymph Menaká, the mother of Shakoontalá, became aware of her daughter's anguish in consequence of the loss of the ring at the nymph's pool, and of thy subsequent rejection of her, she brought her and confided her to the care of Adití. And I no sooner saw her than I ascertained by my divine faculty of meditation, that thy repudiation of thy poor faithful wife had been caused entirely by the curse of Durvásas—not by thine own fault—and that the spell would terminate on the discovery of the ring."

"King: Oh! what a weight is taken off my mind, now that my character is cleared of reproach."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: Joy! joy! My revered husband did not, then, reject me without good reason, though I have no recollection of the curse pronounced upon me. But, in all probability, I unconsciously brought it upon myself, when I was so distracted on being separated from my husband soon after our marriage. For I now remember that my two friends advised me not to fail to show the ring in case he should have forgotten me."

"Kashyapa: At last, my daughter, thou art happy, and hast gained thy heart's desire. Indulge, then, no feeling of resentment against thy consort. See, now, Though he repulsed thee, 'twas the sage's curse That clouded his remembrance; 'twas the curse That made thy tender husband harsh towards thee. Soon as the spell was broken, and his soul Delivered from its darkness, in a moment, Thou didst regain thine empire o'er his heart. So on the tarnished surface of a mirror No image is reflected, till the dust, That dimmed its wonted lustre, is removed."

"King: Holy father, see here the hope of my royal race."

"Kashyapa: Know that he, too, will become the monarch of the wholes earth. Observe, Soon, a resistless hero, shall he cross The trackless ocean, borne above the waves In an aërial car; and shall subdue The earth's seven sea-girt isles. Now has he gained, As the brave tamer of the forest-beasts, The title Sarva-damana; but then Mankind shall hail him as King Bharata, And call him the supporter of the world."

"King: We cannot but entertain the highest hopes of a child for whom your Highness performed the natal rites."

"Aditi: My revered husband, should not the intelligence be conveyed to Kanwa, that his daughter's wishes are fulfilled, and her happiness complete? He is [S']akoontalá's foster-father. Menaká, who is one of my attendants, is her mother, and dearly does she love her daughter."

"SHAKOONTALÁ: [Aside] The venerable matron has given utterance to the very wish that was in my mind."

"Kashyapa: His penances have gained for him the faculty of omniscience, and the whole scene is already present to his mind's eye."

"King: Then most assuredly he cannot be very angry with me."

"Kashyapa: Nevertheless, it becomes us to send him intelligence of this happy event, and hear his reply. What ho there!"

"Pupil: Holy father, what are your commands?"

"Kashyapa: My good Gálava, delay not an instant, but hasten through the air and convey to the venerable Kanwa, from me, the happy news that the fatal spell has ceased, that Dushyanta's memory is restored, that his daughter Shakoontalá has a son, and that she is once more tenderly acknowledged by her husband."

"Kashyapa: And now, my dear son, take thy consort and thy child, re-ascend the car of Indra, and return to thy imperial capital."

"King: Most holy father, I obey."

"Kashyapa: And accept this blessing— For countless ages may the god of gods, Lord of the atmosphere, by copious showers Secure abundant harvests to thy subjects; And thou by frequent offerings preserve The Thunderer's friendship. Thus, by interchange Of kindly actions may you both confer Unnumbered benefits on earth and heaven."

"King: Holy father, I will strive, as far as I am able, to attain this happiness."

"Kashyapa: What other favour can I bestow on thee, my son?"

"King: What other can I desire? If, however, you permit me to form another wish, I would humbly beg that the saying of the sage Bharata be fulfilled: May kings reign only for their subjects' weal; May the divine Saraswatí, the source Of speech, and goddess of dramatic art, Be ever honoured by the great and wise; And may the purple self-existent god, Whose vital Energy pervades all space, From future transmigrations save my soul."

"The third or spiritual eye has several functions. Amongst others, it is the organ for illumination, the unveiled eye of the soul, through which light and illumination comes into the mind, and thus the entire lower life becomes irradiated. It is also the organ through which pours the directing energy which streams out from the conscious creating adept to the instruments of service, his thought-forms. The little evolved do not, of course, employ the third eye for the stimulating of their thought-forms."

"The third eye is the director of energy or force, and thus an instrument of the will of Spirit. . . . It is the eye of the inner vision, and he who has opened it can direct and control the energy of matter, see all things in the Eternal Now, and therefore be in touch with causes more than with effects, read the akashic records, and see clairvoyantly... It is through the medium of this "all-seeing eye" that the Adept can at any moment put Himself in touch with His disciples anywhere."

"'Cause there's a hole where your heart lies And I can see it with my third eye"

"If you could flick the switch and open your third eye You'd see that we should never be afraid to die"

"When both eyes are closed, the energy that was moving through these two eyes starts turning—a conversion happens. That energy hits the third eye in you. The third eye is not a physical thing: it is just that the energy that moves through the eyes towards outside objects is now returning towards the source. It becomes the third eye, the third way of seeing the world."

"I never knew I could see something so clearly looking through my third eye Never knew karma could be so rewarding and bring me to your light Maybe this is the beginning of something so magical tonight"

"I'll see you there with your hands in the air Where the canvas is bare And there's no more despair And your third eye would stare Nothing can compare not want care and I'll see you there"

"Mr. Bubble meets superfly in my third eye"

"Wiping the webs and the dew from my withered eye"

"Prying open my third eye So good to see you once again I thought that you were hiding And you thought that I had run away Chasing the tail of dogma I opened my eye and there we were"

"One simple method is to take a pen or pencil and hold it up against a blank wall or ceiling. Now concentrate on the pen as if it is the most important thing in the world. Then allow your sense to relax, so you see the pen against the background of the wall. Concentrate again. Relax again. Keep on doing this until you become aware of the ability to focus attention at will. You will find that this unaccustomed activity of the will is tiring; it produces a sense of strain behind they eyes. My own perception is that if you persist, in spite of the strain, the result is acute discomfort, followed by a sudden immense relief - the 'peak experience'."

"One who visits Ayodhya the way enjoined sheds all one’s sins and finds one’s abode in the House of Hari (Hari-mandira). Likewise, ‘for one who takes bath in the Svargadvara and visits the Rama temple (Ramalaya) nothing remains to be done here and he has fulfilled his duty."

"A man who has seen the Janmasthana will not be born again even if he does not offer gifts, practise asceticism, goes on pilgrimages or make sacrifice-offerings. A man observing the vow world be liberated from the bondage of rebirth on arrival of the Navami day because of the miraculous power of a bath and a gift. By seeing the Ramjanmabhoomi he shall obtain the result that accrues to one who gives away a thousand red cows day after day."

"All sins of those persons, who after being purified on the Sarayū’s bank visit the Janma-bhūmi, are effaced, by its mere glimpse, for hundreds, thousands and crores of kalpas. Having reached the temple of Rāma, men, who have his darśana (glimpse) or even his remembrance, are liberated from the charana-trayam i.e. birth, life and death. By a darśana of the Janma-bhūmi or remembrance of the Rāma-nāma or bathing in the Sarayū river all sins are destroyed. He, who remembers the sacred city of Ayodhyā, is blessed with wealth, reputation, long life, virtues and destruction of sins."

"Today is the ninth day of the bright fortnight of the Chaitra month, i.e. Rāmanavami. By the impact of the festival of the Rāmanavami, bathing in the Sarayu river, having a darśan of the idol of Lord Rāma and beholding the Janmabhūmi, all they went to the Sāntānaka Loka by planes. Even Brahmā is not competent to describe the importance of the Janmabhūmi. On the ninth day of the Chaitra month if a man, bristling with millions of sins, visits the Janmabhūmi, he is liberated from all vices and goes to the Supreme World where there is no worry."

"The inscription is composed in high-flown Sanskrit verse, except for a small portion in prose, and is engraved in the chaste and classical Nagari script of the eleventh-twelfth century AD. It was evidently put up on the wall of the temple, the construction of which is recorded in the text inscribed on it. Line 15 of this inscription, for example, clearly tells us that a beautiful temple of Vishnu-Hari, built with heaps of stone (sila-samhati-grahais) and beautified with a golden spire (hiranya-kalasa-srisundaram) unparalleled by any other temple built by earlier kings (purvvair-apy-akrtam krtam nrpatibhir) was constructed. This wonderful temple (aty-adbhutam) was built in the temple-city (vibudh-alaayni) of Ayodhya situated in the Saketamandala (district, (...). Line 19 describes god Vishnu as destroying king Bali (apparently in the Vamana manifestation) and the ten-headed personage (Dasanana, i.e., Ravana). Line 20 contains an allusion to the serious threat from the west, apparently posed by Sultan Subuktigin and his son Mahmud of Gahni, and its destruction by the king."

"The inscription is not in any way dated, but may be assigennd, with confidence, to the middle of the 12th century... The most important internal historical information we get from this epigraph is the mention of Govindachandra..... verse 21 gives the important information that, in order to ensure his easy passage into the heavens, Meghasuta built a lofty stone temple for the Gode Visnu-Hari.. verse 28 refers to a king (probaly Ayusyacandra) as warding off the danger of invasion from the west... Lines 13-14, verse 19. His nephew (literally brother's son), the widely, celebrated Meghasuta, the illustrious one, who superseded Anayacandra; he earned the lordship of Saketa-mandala through the grace of his elder, the lord of the earth, Govindacandra. Lines 14-15, verse 21. By him, who was meditating in his mind on the easiest means of quickly jumping across the ocean of worldly attachments, was erected this beautiful temple of [The god] Visu-Hari, [on a scale] never before done by the preceding kings, compactly formed [i.e., built] with rows of large and lofty stones which had been sculpted out. Lines 15-16, verse 22. ... king Govindacandra's empire, .... his younger (son?) Ayusyacandra. Line 17, verse 24. By him, who was of good conduct, and abhorred strife, while residng at Ayodhya, which had towering abodes, intellectuals and temples, Saketa-Mandala was endowed with thousands of wells, reservoirs, alms-houses, tanks. Lines 18-19, verse 27. Separating [the flesh and blood of the demon] Hiranyakasipu from his skeleton,....and performing many valorous deeds, having killed the Ten-headed [demon Ravana],..."

"Here are also the ruins of Ranichand[s] castle and houses, which the Indians acknowledge for the great God, saying that he took flesh upon him to see the tamasha of the world."

"[The Ram Janmabhoomi] secures heaven for whomever pays a visit to it."

"“..thence (from Lucknow) to Oudee (an ancient city, once the seat of Pathan Kings, but now almost deserted), 50 cos. Not far from this city may be seen the ruins of the fort and palace of Ramchand, whom the Indians regard as God Most High: they say that he took on him human flesh that he might see the great tamasha of the world. Amongst these ruins live certain Bramenes who carefully note down the name of all such pilgrims as duly perform their ceremonial ablutions in the neighboring river. They say that this custom has been kept up for many centuries. About two miles from these rivers (sic.) is a cave with a narrow mouth but so spacious within and with so many ramifications that it is difficult to find one’s way out again. They believe that the ashes of the god are hidden here. Pilgrims come to this place from all parts of India and after worshipping the idol take away with them some grains of charred rice as proof of their visit. This rice they believe to have been kept here for many centuries.” (pp. 64-65)"

"“At this Oudee or Oujea (a citty in Bengala & felicitated by Ganges) are many Antick Monuments, especially memorable is the pretty old castle Ranichand built by a Bannyan Pagod of that name about 994500 yeares ago after their accompt, from which to this the Bannyans have repayred to offer here and to wash away their sinnes in Ganges, each of which is recorded by name by the laborious Bramyns who acquaintes this Pagod with their good progressions and charitable offerings.” (p. 92) “Ducerat, who begat Ram, a King so famous for piety and high attempts, that to this day his name is exceedingly honoured, so that when they say Ram Rame, 'tis as if they should say, all good betide you”. (p. 47)"

"A spot particularly famous is known as Sita Rassoi, i.e. table of Sita, Rama's wife... Emperor Aurangzeb demolished the fortress called Ramcot, and erected on the same place a Mohammedan temple with three cupolas. Others say that it was constructed by Babor... Fourteen pilllars of black stone.. are located in the fortress.. The other two (pillars) are in the tomb of an unknown Maure (Muslim)... On the left one can see a square box... Hindus call it Bedi (i.e. the cradle) because formerly it was the house where Beschan (Vishnu) and his three brothers were born under the form of Ram... Subsequently Aurangzeb and some say Babar destroyed the place in order to prevent the heathens from practising their ceremonies. However, they have continued to practice their religious ceremonies in both the places knowing this to have been the birth place of Rama by going around it three times and prostrating on the ground.. On 24th of Chaitrra a large number of people gather here to celebrate the birth of Rama extremely popular throughout India..."

"Oudh is an ancient city... It is the birthplace of Raja Ramachandra, who was one of the ten avataras, that is, a perfect manifestation of God. Sita was married to him."

"[A letter dated 1735 by a Faizabad qazi (judge) describes Hindu-Muslim riots in Ayodhya over] “the Masjid built by the emperor of Delhi”."

"In the very heart of the city stands the Janam Asthan, or 'Birth-place temple' of Rama""

"“Avad, also known as Aoude and Oude in our country (France), and the learned Indians name it Adjudea, is one of the most ancient cities, situated on the banks of the river Ghaghra and we consider that the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu happened in this city, in the form of Ramji, whose father was the King of Avadh. The Indians come here from far off places on a big pilgrimage."

"In those days at Ayodhya there was an edifice called the Celestial Temple, from where it is said that Ram or Ramji had taken to the heaven all the inhabitants of the city. This temple and several others were destroyed by the order of Aurang-zeb as he considered that these used to serve the purposes of a superstitious religion (cult).”"

"“Oude, a town of Hindostan, in the above prov. and kingdom of which it was the former cap; on the Gogra across which an iron bridge, the materials having been brought from England is said to have been recently thrown 74 mile E. Lucknow; Lat. 26º48’ N. Long. 82º4’ E. It extends a considerable distance along the banks of the river, stretching as far as Fyzabad. It is said by Hamilton to be tolerably populous; but except along the river’s brink, it consists wholly of ruins and jungle, among which are the remains of various celebrated Hindoo temples. Hindoo pilgrims still visit Oude; and did so in great numbers, until Aurangzebe demolished most of their places of resort. A mosque erected by that monarch, and 2 tombs, greatly venerated by mohammedans are now the principal and almost sole remaining public edifices. (Mod.Trav. ix, 312-315)”"

"The bigot by whom the temples were destroyed, is said to have erected mosques on the situations of the most remarkable temples; but the mosque at Ayodhya... is ascertained by an inscription on its walls... to have been built by Babur (...) The only thing except these two figures and the bricks, that could with probability be traced to the ancient city, are some pillars in the mosque built by Babur, These are of black stone, and of an order which I have seen nowhere else, and which will be understood from the accompanying drawing. That they have been taken from a Hindu building, is evident, from the traces of images being observable on some of their bases; although the images have been cut off to satisfy the conscience of the bigot."

"[According to tradition] Vikramaditya, king of Oojein, half a century before the Christian era, and by him [Ayodhya was] embellished with 360 temples. Not the smallest traces of these temples, however, now remain and according to native tradition, they were demolished by Aurangzeb, who built a mosque on part of the site. The falsehood of the tradition is, however, proved by an inscription on the wall of the mosque, attributing the work to the conqueror Babur, from whom Aurangzeb was fifth in descent. The mosque is embellished with fourteen columns of only five or six feet in height, but of very elaborate and tasteful workmanship, said to have been taken from the ruins of the Hindoo fanes.... A quadrangular coffer of stone, whitewashed, five ells long, four broad, and protruding five or six inches above ground, is pointed out as the cradle in which Rama was born as the seventh avatar of Vishnu; and is accordingly abundantly honoured by the pilgrimages and devotions of the Hindoos."

"A fine temple in the Janmasthan; for many of its columns arc still in existence and in good preservation, having been used by the Musalmans in the construction of the Babari Mosque. ... The Janmasthan is within a few hundred paces of the Hanuman Garhi. In 1855 when a great rupture took place between the Hindus and Mahomedans the former occupied the Hanuman Garhi in force, while the Musalmans took possession of the Janmasthana. The Mahomedans on that occasion actually charged up the steps of the Hanuman Garhi, but were driven back with considerable loss. The Hindus then followed up this success, and at the third attempt, took the Janmasthan, at the gate of which 75 Mahomedans are buried in the “Martyrs’ grave” (Ganj-Shahid). Several of the King’s Regiments were looking on all the time, but their orders were not to interfere ... It is said that up to that time, the Hindus and Mohamedans alike used to worship in the mosque-temple. Since the British rule a railing has been put up to prevent dispute, within which, in the mosque the Mohamedans pray, while outside the fence the Hindus have raised a platform on which they make their offerings."

"It is locally affirmed that at the Mahomedan conquest there were' three important Hindu shrines ... at Ayodhya. These were the Janmasthan, the Sargadwar Mandir and the Treta- ka-Thakur. On the first of these Babar built the mosque which still bears his name ... On the second, Aurangzeb did the same ... and on the third that sovereign, or his predecessor, built a mosque, according to the well-known Mahomedan principle of enforcing their religion on all whom they conquered"

"At one corner of a vast mound known as Ramkot, or the fort of Rama, is the holy spot where the hero was born. Most of the enclosure is occupied by a mosque built by Babar from the remains of an old temple, and in the outer portion a small platform and shrine mark the birth place."

"[According to Balfour, Ayodhya has] ‘three mosques on the sites of three Hindu shrines: the Janmasthan on the site where Rama was born…..’"

"From old records and the tradition it is gathered... Wherever they found magnificent temples of the Hindus ever since the establishment of Sayyid Salar Mas’ud Ghazi’s rule, the Muslim rulers in India built mosques, monasteries, and inns, appointed mu’azzins, teachers, and store-stewards, spread Islam vigorously, and vanquished the Kafirs.... And this to such an extent that all over Hindustan no trace of infidelity was left besides Islam and no practice of idol-worship survived besides worship of God. And the few Hindus who remained safe from the hands of the Muslims became the slaves of Islam, began to pay kharaj, became subdued... In short, even as the Muslim rulers cleared up Mathura, Banares etc from the dust and dross of infidelity ... Likewise, they cleared up Faizabad and Avadh, too, from the filth of reprobation (infidelity), because it was a great centre of worship and capital of Rama’s father. Here they broke the temples and left no stone-hearted idol intact. Where there stood the great temple (of Ramjanmasthan), there they built a big mosque, and, where there was a small mandap (pavilion), there they erected a camp mosque (masjid-i mukhtasar-i qanati). The Janmasthan temple is the principal place of Rama’s incarnation, adjacent to which is the Sita ki Rasoi. Hence, what a lofty mosque was built there by king Babar in 923 A. H. (1528 A.D.), under the patronage of Musa Ashiqan! The mosque is still known far and wide as the Sita ki Rasoi mosque. And that temple is extant by its side."

"According to old records, it has been a rule with the Muslim rulers from the first to build mosques, monasteries, and inns, spread Islam, and put (a stop to) non-Islamic practices, wherever they found prominence (of kufr). Accordingly, even as they cleared up Mathura, Bindraban etc., from the rubbish of non-Islamic practices, the Babari mosque was built up in AH 923 (?) under the patronage of Sayyid Musa Ashiqan in the Janmasthan temple (butkhane Janmsthan mein) in Faizabad Avadh, which was a great place of (worship) and capital of Rama's father'...‘Among the Hindus it was known as Sita ki Rasoi’ (p. 9-10)... 'A great mosque was built on the spot where Sita ki Rasoi is situated. During the regime of Babar, the Hindus had no guts to be a match for the Muslims. The mosque was built in AH 923 (?) under the patronage of Sayyid Mir Ashiqan' Aurangzeb built a mosque on the Hanuman Garhi' The Bairagis effaced the mosque and erected a temple in its place. Then idols began to be worshipped openly in the Babari mosque where the Sita ki Rasoi is situated.'"

"Mir Khan built a masjid in A.H. 930 during the reign of Babar, which still bears his name. This old temple must have been a fine one, for many of its columns have been utilized by the Musalmans in the construction of Babar's Masjid.'"

"In an application dated November 30, 1858, ... the Babari mosque has been called ‘masjid-i Janmasthan’ and the courtyard near the arch and the pulpit within the boundary of the mosque, ‘maqam Janmasthan ka’. The Bairagis had raised a platform in the courtyard which the applicant wanted to be dismantled. He has mentioned that the place of Janmasthan had been lying unkempt/in disorder (parishan) for hundreds of years and that the Hindus performed worship there... Well, if the Babari mosque is the Janmasthan mosque, its courtyard is the Janmasthan, and the Hindus had all along been carrying out their worship, all that implies that there must have been some construction there as part of a (Janmasthan) temple, which Mir Baqi partly demolished and partly converted into the existing Babari mosque, with or without Babar’s approval. And the Hindus had no alternative but to make do with the temple-less courtyard. Otherwise, it is simply unthinkable that they might have been performing worship for such a long time and on such a sacred place without a proper temple."

"Sir! Of late, one Nihang Sikh, who is a resident of Punjab, a Government employee and a Bairagi, is on rampage at the Janmasthan. In the middle of Baburi mosque near the mehrab and mimber he has constructed a chabutara made of clay which measures about four fingers in height by filling it with lime-stones. Following his faith he has unnecessarily made illumination and after having raised the platform in the mosque to the height of one and a quarter yards he has placed a flag, picture and idol there. After digging a pit equal to that measurement he has constructed a concrete parapet. Thereafter, he has made aatish and illumination. He is fully occupied with worship and homa. He has written ‘Rama’, ‘Rama’ with coal everywhere in the mosque. Now it is time for justice, as the Hindus are committing acts of high-handedness and tyranny on the Muslims. You are the master of both the parties, and if any person constructs forcibly, he would be punished by your honour. Kindly consider the fact that a mosque is a place of worship for the Muslims only and not for the Hindus. Earlier the flag (nishan) of Janmasthana was lying there for hundreds of years and Hindus used to do puja. ... It is requested that Murtaza Khan of Kotwal City be ordered that he himself should visit the spot, inspect the new construction, get it demolished and oust the Hindus from there. He should get the flag and the idol removed and the writing on the walls washed. Orders may be issued for the future (paper torn). Having deemed it necessary, it has been urged so."

"A great mosque was built on the spot where Sita ki Rasoi is situated. During the regime of Babar, the Hindus had no guts to be a match for the Muslims. The mosque was built in 923(?) A.H. under the patronage of Sayyid Mir Ashiqan… Aurangzeb built a mosque on the Hanuman Garhi… The Bairagis effaced the mosque and erected a temple in its place. Then idols began to be worshipped openly in the Babari mosque where the Sita ki Rasoi is situated,’ (pp. 71-72). The author adds that ‘formerly, it is Shykh Ali Hazin’s observation which held good’ and quotes the following Persian couplet of the Shykh:... O Shykh! just witness the miracle of my house of idols, which, when desecrated, or demolished, becomes the house of God (a mosque). So, purporting to mean that formerly temples were demolished for construction of mosques, the author, Surur, laments that ‘the times have so changed that now the mosque was demolished for construction of a temple (on the Hanuman Garhi)’ (p. 72)."

"‘….and the masjid buit by Babar stands on the border of the town of Ayodhya,that is to say to the west and south it is clear of habitations. It is most unfortunate that a masjid should have been built on land specially held sacred by the Hindus, but as that event occurred 356 years ago it it too late now to remedy the grievance…."

"Sayyid Musa Ashiqan built a mosque after levelling down Rajah Ramachandra's palace and Sita's Kitchen by order of ...Babar... and king Muhiyy-u d-Din Aurangzib Alamgir built another mosque at the same place."

"And now they call it Janmasthan and Rasoi-i Sita Ji. Having demolished these structures, King Babar got a majestic mosque constructed. ... Accordingly, in fulfilment of the pledge King Babar had taken before those saints, Babar ... got a magnificent mosque constructed.... The faqirs answered that they would bless him if he promised to build a mosque after demolishing the Janmasthan temple. Babar accepted the faqirs' offer..."

"“...the destruction is very generally attributed by the Hindus to the furious zeal of Aurungzabe, to whom also is imputed the overthrow of the temples in Benares and Mathura.”"

"“What may have been the case in the two latter, I shall not now take upon myself to say, but with respect to Ayodhya the tradition seems very ill-founded. The bigot by whom the temples were destroyed is said to have erected mosques on the situations of the most remarkable temples; but the mosque at Ayodhya, which is by far the most entire, and which has every appearance of being the most modern, is ascertained by an inscription on its walls (of which a copy is given) to have been built by Babur.”"

"“Several of the King’s regiment were looking on all the time, but their orders were not to interfere. It is said that up to that time, the Hindus and Mahomedans alike used to worship in the mosque-temple. Since British rule, a railing has been put up to prevent disputes, within which in the mosque the Mahomedans pray, while outside the fence the Hindus have raised a platform on which they make their offerings.” (p. 236)"

"Subsequently Aurangzeb also desecrated the shrines of Ayodhya which led to prolonged bitterness between the Hindus and Muslims. The latter occupied the Janmmasthan by force ,and also made an assault on Hanuman Garhi .... As a result, in 1858 an outer enclosure was put up in front of the mosque and the Hindus, who were forbidden access to the inner yard , had to perform their puja on a platform outside ... Outside the outer wall of this contested shrine there is an old and broken image of the Varah (boar)"

"“Notwithstanding all the difficulties discussed above, the original location of the Janma-sthãna is comparatively certain since it seems to be attested by the location of the mosque built by Babur in the building of which materials of a previous Hindu temple were used and are still visible. The mosque is believed by general consensus to occupy the site of the Janmasthana.”"

"“The oldest pieces of archaeological evidence are the black columns which remain from the old (Visnu) temple that was situated on the holy spot where Rama descended to earth (Janma-bhumi). This temple was destroyed by the first Mogul prince Babur in AD 1528 and replaced by a mosque which still exists. The following specimens of these pillars are known to exist: fourteen pillars were utilized by the builder Mir Baqi in the construction of the mosque and are still partly visible within it; two pillars were placed besides the grave of the Muslim saint Fazl Abbas alias Musa Ashikhan, who, according to oral tradition, incited Babur to demolish the Hindu temple. The grave and these two pillars (driven upside-down into the ground) are still shown in Ayodhya, a little south of the Kubertila. A seventeenth specimen is found in the new Janmasthana temple of the north of the Babur mosque. It is rather a door-jamb than a column.” ... The original birthplace temple dated from the 10th or 11th century. Before its destruction the temple must have been one of the main pilgrimage centres of Ayodhya, _ especially on the occasion of Ramanwami."

"In conclusion we may say that there is evidence for the existence of five Visnu temples in Ayodhya in the twelfth century: 1) Harismrti (Guptahari) at the Gopratara ghat, 2) Visnuhari at the Cakratirtha, 3) Candrahari on the west side of the Svargadvara ghats, 4) Dharmahari on the east side of the Svargadvara ghats, 5) a Visnu temple on the Janmabhumi. Three of these temples have been replaced by mosques and one was swept away by the Sarayu. The fate of the fifth is unknown but the site is occupied today by a new Guptahari/Cakrahari temple."

"‘And among them is the great mosque that was built by the Timurid King Babar in the sacred city of Ajodhya. It is believed that Rama Chandra, considered to be the manifestation of God, was born here. There is a long story about his wife Sita. There was a big temple for them in this city. At a certain place Sita used to sit and cook food for her consort. Well, the said King Babar demolished it and built a mosque at that very place with chiselled stone in 923 A.H."

"At Ayodhya, where there stood the temple of Ramchandra Ji's Janmasthan, there is Sita Ji Ki Rasoi adjacent to it, King Babar got a magnificent mosque built there... Babar got the mosque built after demolishing the Janmasthan and used in his mosque the stone of the same Janmasthan, which was richly engraved, precious kasauti stone..."

"This mosque was constructed by Babar at Ajodhya which the Hindus call the birthplace of Ram Chanderji. There is a famous story about his wife Sita. It is said that Sita had a temple here in which she lived and cooked for her husband. On that very site Babar constructed this mosque..."

"Whether the temple was destroyed by Mohammed Ghori in 1194, or by Babar, or by a ruler in between these two, or even by more than one of them (since Hindus were tireless rebuilders if given a chance), this all makes no difference to the facts pertinent for the Hindu case: one, there was a temple there since at least the eleventh century, attested by archaeology : two, the use of temple materials in the Babri Masjid entirely fulfills a set pattern of temple destruction followed by replacement with a mosque; three, Hindus continued to worship on the spot to the extent possible, as witnessed by travelers and locals, something they would never have done except on a specially sacred spot and in continuation of a pre-Masjid tradition."

"Future historians will include the no-temple argument of the 1990s as a remarkable case study in their surveys of academic fraud and politicized scholarship."

"Until 1989, there was a complete consensus in all sources (Hindu, Muslim and European) which spoke out on the matter, viz. that the Babri Masjid had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple.""

"Until the beginning of this century, official documents called it Masjid-i-Janamsthan, “mosque of the birthplace”, and the hill on which it stands was designated as Ramkot (Rama’s fort) or Janamsthan (birthplace). Since 1949, the building is effectively in use as a Hindu temple..."

"The Janmasthan was in Ramkot and marked the birthplace of Rama. In 1528 A.D. Babar came to Ayodhya and halted here for a week. He destroyed the ancient temple and on its site built a mosque, still known as Babar's mosque. The materials of the old structure [i.e., the temple] were largely employed, and many of the columns were in good preservation."

"“It is locally affirmed that at the time of the Musalman conquest there were three important Hindu shrines at Ajodhya and little else. These were the Janamasthan temple, the Swargaddwar and the Treta-ka-Thakur, and each was successively made the object of attention of different Musalman rulers. The Janamasthan was in Ramkot and marked the birthplace of Rama. In 1528 A.D. Babar came to Ajodhya and halted here for a week. He destroyed the ancient temple and on its site built a mosque, still known as Babar’s mosque. The materials of the old structure were largely employed, and many of the columns are in good preservation; they are of close-grained black stone, called by the natives kasauti, and carved with various devices.” ... This desecration of the most sacred spot in the city caused great bitterness between Hindus and Mussalmans... It is said that up to this time both Hindus and Musalmans used to worship in the same building but since the mutiny an outer enclosure has been put up in front of the mosque and the Hindus, who are forbidd en access lo the inner yard, make their offerings on a platform which they have raised in the outer one."

"All relevant British government records followed by the District Gazetteer Faizabad compiled and published by the Congress government in 1960 declare with one voice that the so-called Babari mosque at Ayodhya is standing on the debris of a Ramjanmasthan temple demolished by the order of Babar in 1528."

"But the unique and the most important feature of its construction is the use of... nook-shafts (corner pillars)... They bear stylized designs of kirttimukha and lahara-vallari and are obviously Hindu in their origin... Technically called a 'clerestory', this feature has been used on a large scale in the mosques of Ahmedabad in imitation of the preceding temples of the region... More than the (supposedly) corbelled ceilings and corbelled pendentives, these 11 nook-shafts testify, without any doubt, that material from some despoiled Hindu temple was used in the construction or the final restoration of this mosque."

"The foregoing study of the architecture and site of the Baburi Masjid has shown, unequivocally and without any doubt, that it stands on the site of a Hindu temple which originally existed in the Ramkot on the bank of the river Sarayu, and Hindu temple material has also been used in its construction."

"I have been to the site and have had occasion to study the mosque, privately, and I have absolutely no doubt that the mosque stands on the site of a Hindu temple on the north-western corner of the temple-fortress Ramkot."

"Of quite a few casualties of the standards of academic integrity at the hands of self-styled 'secular' academics, those in the field of medieval Indian historiography happen to be the worst."

"Thanks to the growing politicization of the aristocracy of letters, the unwary are being fed on the misconception that the tales of tyranny over the Hindus under the Sultans and Mughuls are all fabrications of the ... British... in pursuance of the much-maligned British policy of divide-and-rule."

"A veritable brain washing of the nation is under way trying to turn history upside down and write off the persecution of Hindus through various subterfuges."

"When the British authors' evidence was procuced, it was rejected as being motivated. When the Muslim authors' evidence is being procuced, it rejected as being motivated in its own way. God knows what type of evidence will satisfy people of this ilk."

"Critics will do well to remember that demolition of the Rama temple has never been doubted save in our own time."

"It is a pity that none of the 'secular' historians have to their credit the search for any of the Muslim sources discovered by us. Their job appears only to discourage and stifle attempts to carry out such a search."

"There has for some time past been in evidence a sinister move in certain quarters to suppress, conceal or eliminate primary sources in Arabic, Persian and Urdu testifying to the temple demolition. ... The Urdu version is found to have been withdrawn from circulation and even removed from several libraries. There is an English translation also, with which undue liberties have been taken. ... An Urdu translation of the work was published ... at least two more editions came out in 1979 and 1981 respectively... [but] the account ... is conspicuous by its absence in the 1981 edition. ... Dr. Kakorawi rightly laments that 'suppression of any part of any old composition or compilation like this can create difficulties and misunderstandings for future historians and researchers. ... The original edition of Mirza Rajab ... contained a reference to the demolition of the Rama temple. Sayyid Masud Hasan Rizwi Adib omitted the reference altogether in its second edition.... As a matter of fact, black-out of well documented, acutely argued contributions ... continues with renewed vigour. A certain leading library of the country of late instituted an enquiry as to how a particular book came to be utilized by the Vishva Hindu Parishad."

"It is a pity that thanks to our thoughtless 'secularism' and waning sense of history, such primary sources of medieval history .. are presently in danger of suppression or total extinction. Instead of launching sustained search and research in this behalf, 'secular' historians are going about dismissing relevant data out of hand, imputing unfounded motive to the recorders themselves. The state in general and the universites in particular must do something to protect and retrieve such invaluable documents from unscrupulous hands."

"India is witnessing a golden historic moment with the blessings of the mighty Lord Bhaskara on the banks of the auspicious river Saryu. Across the length and breadth of India, from Kanyakumari to KsheerBhawani, from Koteshwar to Kamakhya, from Jagannath to Kedarnath, from Somnath to Kashi Vishwanath, SametShikhar to Shravanabelagola, from Bodhgaya to Sarnath, from Amritsar to Patna Sahib, from Andaman to Ajmer, from Lakshadweep to Leh, the entire country is encompassed by and for Lord Rama!"

"The whole country is ecstatic and each heart is illuminated. Entire country is emotional and overwhelmed to be a part of history and witness this long awaited historic moment."

"The centuries of wait is getting over today. Crores of Indians, I am sure are unable to believe that they could be a part of such a momentous occasion in their lifetimes."

"Today, the Ram Janmabhoomi has become free from the centuries-old chain of destruction and resurrection."

"Friends, several generations devoted themselves completely during our freedom struggle. There was never a moment during the period of slavery that there was not a movement for freedom."

"Friends, Lord Ram is entrenched in our hearts. Whenever we undertake any work, we look upon to Lord Rama for inspiration. Look at the phenomenal powers of Lord Rama."

"Buildings collapsed, every attempt was made to erase the existence … but Lord Rama is fully embedded in our hearts. Lord Rama is the foundation of our culture; he is the dignity of India. He personifies dignity."

"You will find Rama in different forms, in the different Ramayanas, but Ram is present everywhere, Rama is for all. That is why, Rama is the connecting link in India's 'unity in diversity'."

"Indonesia is the country that has the maximum number of muslimsin the world. They are having various unique versions of Ramayana i.e. ‘Kakawin Ramayana’, ‘Swarnadeep Ramayana’, ‘Yogeshwar Ramayana’ just like our country. Lord Rama is venerated & adored there even today. There are ‘Ramker Ramayana’ in Cambodia, ‘Fra Lak Fra Lam Ramayana’ in Lao, ‘Hikayat Seri Ram’ in Malaysia and ‘Ramaken’ in Thailand. You will find description of Lord Rama and Rama Katha even in Iran and China. In Sri Lanka, the katha of Ramayana is taught &sung in the name of ‘Janaki Harana’ i.e. Abduction of Janaki. Nepal is directly connected to Lord Rama through Mata Janaki."

"Ayodhya is the town of Lord Rama himself. Lord Rama himself has described the glory of Ayodhya “जन्मभूमि मम पूरी सुहावनि।।“ (janma bhoomi mama poori suhaavani) i.e“My birthplace Ayodhya is the city of supernatural beauty.”"

"A nation rising by breaking the mentality of slavery, a nation drawing courage from every affliction of the past, creates a new history in this manner. A thousand years from today, people will talk about this date, this moment. And how great is Lord Ram’s grace that we are living in this moment, witnessing it happen."

"There was a time when some people said that if the Ram temple was built it would lead to unrest. Such people failed to understand the purity of India’s social sentiment. The construction of this temple of Ram Lalla is also a symbol of peace, patience, harmony, and coordination in Indian society."

"We are seeing that this construction is not igniting any fire, but rather it is giving birth to energy. The Ram Temple has brought inspiration for every section of society to move towards a brighter future. Today, I call upon those people … Feel it, rethink your perspective."

"Moving beyond the construction of the temple, now all of us citizens, from this moment, pledge to build a capable, magnificent, and divine India. The thoughts of Ram should be in ‘Manas’ as well as in the public psyche — this is the step towards nation-building."

"I tell the youth of my country. You have the inspiration of thousands of years of tradition in front of you. You represent the generation of India… that is hoisting the flag on the moon, that is successfully conducting Mission Aditya by travelling 15 lakh km to the Sun, that is waving the flag of Tejas in the sky and Vikrant in the sea. You have to write the new dawn of India while being proud of your heritage."

"Our Ram Lalla will no longer live in a tent. Our Ramlala will now reside in this divine temple. I firmly believe, with immense devotion, that the experience of what has happened will be felt by devotees of Lord Ram in every corner of the country, and the world. This moment is supernatural. This time is the most sacred. This atmosphere, this environment, this energy, this moment… is a blessing from Lord Shri Ram."

"January 22, 2024… this sun has brought a remarkable aura. January 22, 2024, is not just a date on the calendar. It marks the beginning of a new era."

"Today, I also seek forgiveness from Lord Shriram. There must have been some shortcomings in our efforts, our sacrifices, our penance, that we couldn’t accomplish this task for so many centuries. Today, that deficiency has been fulfilled. I believe Lord Ram will surely forgive us today."

"Today, in this historic moment, the country is also remembering those personalities whose efforts and dedication have made this auspicious day possible. Many people have shown the pinnacle of sacrifice and penance in the work of Ram. We are all indebted to those countless devotees of Ram, those countless volunteers, and those countless saints and sages."

"This is India’s time, and India is now moving forward. We have reached here after centuries of waiting. We all have been waiting for this era, this period of time. Now, we will not stop. We will reach the heights of development."

"Keeping the triumph of Islam in view, devout Muslim rulers should keep all idolaters in subjection to Islam, brook no laxity in realization of Jizyah, grant no exemption to Hindu Raja-s from dancing attendance on ‘Id days and from waiting on foot outside mosques till the end of prayer (Namaz) and discourse (Khutobah), and ‘keep in constant use for Friday and congregational prayer the mosques built to strengthen Islam after demolishing temples of idolatrous Hindus situated at Mathura, Varanasi and Awadh, etc., which the wretched Kafir-s have, according to their faith adjudged to be the birthplace of Kanhaiya in one case, Sita Rasoi in another, and Hanuman’s abode in a third and claim that after conquest of Lanka Ramachandra established him there. And, as has been stressed, idol-worship must not continue publicly, nor must the sound of bell reach Muslim ears. (p. 318)"

"[Indra's Net is a metaphor for ] the profound cosmology and outlook that permeates Hinduism. Indra's Net symbolizes the universe as a web of connections and interdependences [...] I seek to revive it as the foundation for Vedic cosmology and show how it went on to become the central principle of Buddhism, and from there spread into mainstream Western discourse across several disciplines."

"The Avatamsaka Sutra (which means 'Flower Garland') of Mahayana Buddhism uses the metaphor of Indra's Net to explain cosmic interpenetration. This sutra explains everything as both a mirror reflecting all and an image reflected by all. Everything is simultaneously cause and effect, support and supported. This important sutra was translated from Sanskrit, and its logic further developed in China under the name of Hua-yen Buddhism."

"The Hua-yen tradition was developed by a series of thinkers, most notably Fa-tsang (CE 643-712). Through him, it passed on to Korea and other East Asian countries, becoming known as 'Kegon' in Japan. Hua-yen is praised as the highest development of Chinese Buddhist thought. D.T. Suzuki called Hua-yen the philosophy of Zen, and Zen the meditation practice of Hua-yen. Francis Cook explains the core philosophy of Hua-yen as follows: 'Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.'"

"The Atharva-Veda puts Indra at the centre of the sophisticated concept of Indrajâla, “Indra’s net”. In this net, a diamond in every knot reflects every other diamond knot, and thus the whole. The West needed another four thousand years to develop the similar concept of the “holographic paradigm”."

"The metaphor of Indra's Net also suggests a creative intelligence which is omnipresent, permeating all life. All appearances of separateness are maya (illusory). The capacity of one jewel to reflect the light of every other within this infinite net is difficult for the linear mind to comprehend, but it serves as an apt precursor to an understanding of multidimensional theories which have emerged in physics and metaphysics."

"After crossing the age of fifty, one should emphasise the spiritual aspect of man's life. ... The Vanaprastha now ceases to be a mere family-man. He becomes a 'society-man'. The boundaries of family expand. The whole society or nation should now become his family. Thus, gradually, he becomes a global man or a universal man."

"Ambedkar traces Buddha's rational approach, which he values so much, to Kapila, the founder of the Samkhya-Darshana, the 'viewpoint' focusing on cosmology: 'Among the ancient philosophers of India the most preeminent was Kapila (') The tenets of his philosophy were of a startling nature. Truth must be supported by proof. This is the first tenet of the Samkhya system. There is no truth without proof. For purposes of proving the truth Kapila allowed only two means of proof-1) perception, and 2) inference'."

"According to Dr. Ambedkar, Kapila is the source of one of Buddhism's most fundamental concepts, causality, and also of the related Buddhist rejection of the belief in a personal Creator of the universe: 'His next tenet related to causality-creation and its cause. Kapila denied the theory that there was a being who created the universe.'"

"Kapila's arguments are listed [by Dr. Ambedkar], and the last one introduces yet another fundamental concept of Buddhism: suffering (dukkha). It is brought in from an unusual angle: 'Kapila argued that the process of development of the unevolved is through the activities of three constituents of which it is made up, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. These are called three Gunas. [Sattva is] light in nature, which reveals, which causes pleasure to men; [Rajas is] what impels and moves, what produces activity; [Tamas is] what is heavy and puts under restraint, what produces the state of indifference or inactivity (') When the three Gunas are in perfect balance, none overpowering the other, the universe appears static (achetan) and ceases to evolve. When the three Gunas are not in balance, one overpowers the other, the universe becomes dynamic (sachetan) and evolution begins. Asked why the Gunas become unbalanced, the answer which Kapila gave was that this disturbance in the balance of the three Gunas was due to the presence of Dukkha (suffering).' Buddhism is quite close to the Samkhya-Yoga viewpoint: to Samkhya for its philosophical framework, to Yoga for its methods of meditation."

"The Hindu revivalist movement perceives itself as the cultural chapter ofIndia's decolonization. This means that it tries to free the Indians from the colonial condition at the mental and cultural level, to complete the process of political and economic decolonization. The need for "reviving" Hinduism springs from the fact that the said hostile ideologies (mostly Islam) have managed to eliminate Hinduism physically in certain geographic parts and social segments of India, and also (mostly the Western ideology) to neutralize the Hindu spirit among many nominal Hindus."

"It is undeniable that Hindu revivalism has been the biggest mobilizing force in modern Indian history, at least in terms of the crowds it got walking or cheering.... More recently, the Ayodhya campaign became the largest-ever mass movement in India. Though impressive, this show of numerical strength has yielded very little result..."

"The only component of the current [of Hindu revivalism] which could be called 'fundamentalist', i.e. seeking to revive Scripture as normative for today's society and attacking those co-religionists who have allegedly deviated from scriptural purity, is the Arya Samaj ... still standing out as a progressive movement. In the case of Hinduism, it so happens that many of the traditional inequalities, injustices and unwholesome customs of Hindu society are not attested in Vedic scripture, and even less so in the Arya Samaj's own understanding of it. This made it possible to present a programme of social equality as a return to the Vedas."

"In the Arya Samaj, girls get the complete Vedic initiation, as apparently they used to in the Vedic age itself."

"It is only when we move to modem times that we find the first traces of sarva-dharma-samabhâva surfacing in India in the form of the Brahmo Samaj. Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the founder of this cult, was a votary of Islamic monotheism, and later on became infatuated with Jesus Christ. He confused the monism of the Upanishads with the monotheism of Biblical creeds, and gave birth to a lot of confusion. But, by and large, he stayed a Hindu who had some very hard words to say about the doings of Islam and Christian missionaries in India. Even Keshub Chunder Sen cannot be called a votary of sarva-dharma-samabhâva, strictly speaking. The man fancied himself as the prophet of a New Dispensation (Nababidhâna) which had not only equated all religions but also gone beyond them. He ended by becoming a bag of nauseating nonsense. In any case, the Brahmo Samaj remained confined to a miniscule minority in Bengal. One of its splinters, the Adi Brahmo Samaj, returned to Hinduism for all practical purposes. That is more than obvious in the works of Rabindranath Tagore, particularly his poetry which is saturated with Vedic imagery and Vaishnavite devotion. The trail blazed by Keshub Chander Sen, however, did not go in vain. It was followed by the first disciples of Sri Ramakrishna who took over the Mission after the death of its founder, Swami Vivekananda. Most of these desciples of Sri Ramakrishna, particularly those two who compiled his Gospel and Biography had come from the flock of Keshub. It took them no time to swallow the 'synthesis' and its 'transcendance' offered by their earlier guru. The only difference was that they replaced Keshub by Sri Ramakrishna as being the last and the best who had seen the equal truth of all religions including Christianity and Islam, and 'synthesised' them in his own avatarhood."

"I have said many times in my talks that Ramakrishna Mission is the real crest jewel of Hinduism.... But if the other religious minorities are allowed to run their educational institutions, why are Hindus being discriminated against? My view is that there should be no reverse discrimination on the basis of religion. It should be uniform."

"It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans. First to suffer was Swami Shradhanand, who was shot by Abdul Rashid on 23rd December 1926 when he was lying in his sick bed."

"Swami Shradhanand relates a very curious incident which well illustrates this attitude... He says :— "It was from the beginning a Hindu Conference in all walks of life. The only Mahomedan delegate who joined the National Social Conference was a Mufti Saheb of Barreily. Well! ... Then the Mufti asked permission to speak.... There was no loophole left for the President and Mufti Saheb was allowed to have his say. Mufti Saheb's argument was that as Hindu Shastras did not allow remarriage, it was a sin to press for it. Again, when the resolution about the reconversion of those who had become Christians and Musalmans came up. Mufti Saheb urged that when a man abandoned the Hindu religion he ought not to be allowed to come back.""

"In my opinion, they are not examples of real conversion. If a person through fear, compulsion, starvation or for material gain or consideration goes over to another faith, it is a misnomer to call it conversion. Most cases of mass conversion, of which we have heard so much during the past two years, have been to my mind false coin… I would, therefore, unhesitatingly re-admit to the Hindu fold all such repentants without much ado, certainly without any shuddhi... And as I believe in the equality of all the great religions of the earth, I regard no man as polluted because he has forsaken the branch on which he was sitting and gone over to another of the same tree. If he comes to the original branch, he deserves to be welcomed and not told that he had committed sin by reason of his having forsaken the family to which he belonged. In so far as he may be deemed to have erred, he has sufficiently purged himself of it when he repents of the error and retraces his step."

"[Asymmetry was the principle as in the case of Islam;] conversion was held to be and acted upon as something that was an essential principle of Christianity; but when a person like Swami Shraddhananda argued in favour of taking back into the Hindu fold the converts who wanted to return, they were condemned as persons who were inventing a practice for which there was no warrant in Hinduism.”"

"If the agitation in the Andamans . . . had only awakened the conscience of the Hindus to the possibility that a Mussalman can also be converted to Hinduism, I would have achieved a great deal. For up to that time the question that was always put to us was, ‘A Hindu can become a Mussalman, no doubt; but how can a Mussalman be admitted into Hinduism?’ Hundreds of Hindus had asked me that question and sincerely believed that there was no answer for it. But none put such a conundrum before us any longer. For the Shuddhi movement had shown that it could be done, and we had done it. The food touched or prepared by the Muslims could be eaten by the Hindu without tarring his stomach and making him lose his caste and religion. Hinduism was not so anaemic as that; and the Hindus in the Andamans had realized the fact, as they had not done it before. This was a great achievement of the Shuddhi movement in that part of the world. For there are in the so-called wise and liberty-loving Hindus of India bigoted champions of Hinduism who, seriously enough, still seek to confound us by the same conundrum. This awakening in the Andamans was not confined to the few but had spread all over the place and the roots of the new feeling had gone deep down into the soil of the Andamans."

"The salvation of man lies in dying in his own religion . . . We will no longer let any Hindu boy or girl, man or woman, however fallen they may be, pass into another religion, and we shall not fail to re-convert those whom you may have duped into embracing your faith . . . It is the duty of every Hindu to persuade a Hindu to remain a Hindu. It is a principle to be followed as vital to his community and culture for the preservation and progress of both."

"The folly of disallowing reconversions to Hinduism is a self-destructive one. How easily Hindus converting to Islam or Christianity merge in their new milieu. Yet the same facility is not available to a non-Hindu who might earnestly wish to return to his or her fold or adopt Hinduism as a matter of faith. This shackle seriously depletes our numbers and makes the Hindu community a ready preying ground for the conversion factories that are always looking at swelling their numbers, many times by stealth or inducements. I have nothing against those who convert to another faith by sheer conviction. But such examples are rare. Why should we not allow the enhancement of our numbers due to some antiquated idea that does not even have any scriptural sanction that we cannot convert to Hinduism?"

"“I want to see you, Swami,” I began, “on this matter of receiving back into Hinduism those who have been perverted from it. Is it your opinion that they should be received?” Certainly, they can and ought to be taken... And then every man going out of the Hindu pale is not only a man less, but an enemy the more. .... Again, the vast majority of Hindu perverts to Islam and Christianity are perverts by the sword, or the descendants of these. It would be obviously unfair to subject these to disabilities of any kind."

""Then as to names," I enquired, "I suppose aliens and perverts who have adopted non-Hindu names should be named newly. Would you give them caste-names, or what?" "Certainly," said the Swami, thoughtfully, "there is a great deal in a name!" and on this question he would say no more."

"Muhammad Ali's observation on the sudden manifestation of zeal by the Muslims and Hindus for conversion and reconveision to their faith is worth quoting : “My own belief is that both sides are working with an eye much more on the next decennial census than on heaven itself, and I frankly confess it is on such occasions that I sigh for the days when our forefathers settled things by cutting heads rather then counting them'"

"The Hindus naturally resented the attitude of the Muslims toward the Suddhi movement and felt themselves perfectly justified in converting or reconverting otherL to their own faith, — a right which the Muslims had fully exercised all along without any restraint, and which alone accounted for their number in India."

"Shaukat Ali to Savarkar: But you do realize that you polarize the minds of Muslims with your activities. Muslims have been converting Hindus for such a long time. It is not a new thing that has come up now. It is your shuddhi that is a new phenomenon that sows seeds of discord amidst tranquil society. Isn’t it blatantly anti-Muslim? Savarkar: But whose fault is this, Maulana Sahab? If a religion as tolerant and peace-loving as Hinduism—that never proselytized anyone forcibly and even forgave or forgot the coercive and violent attempts made on its faith—has to today take the help of shuddhi, where should the blame lie? On the victim or the aggressor? Till date we trusted people and kept the doors of our houses open. Thieves from across the world came in and looted our possessions. Today we have gathered some sense, become alert and have decided to keep our doors locked. And if the same dacoits come and tell us, ‘We have been looting for so long, putting a lock on your doors is being unfair to us and this will spoil relationships between us’, what are we to reply? Such a lethal unity is best broken in my view."

"A letter I received from a Hindu leader in Sindh makes it clear that the condition of Hindus in Sindh is worrisome. There is a caste called Sanyogi in Sindh who were converted by force centuries ago, but they have retained their Hindu roots and customs. They want to become Hindu again, but their Hindu caste panchayats are not willing to accept them back. The organizations that want [sic] to get these people back into Hinduism face a stiff resistance from the Muslim organizations of Sindh, who are saying that such efforts will go against ‘Hindu Muslim unity’ in the region. But the unity that tells only Hindus that they shouldn’t propagate their religion even by talking about it, but we are free to spread our religion using force, you should not do ‘shuddhikaran’ but we will do ‘bhrashtikaran’, is not unity. It is a division that must be fought."

"…Shivaji, the great founder of the Maratha Empire, established a council of eight ministers, viz. Mukhya Pradhana, Amatya, Saciva, Mantri, Senapati, Panditarao, Nyayadhisha and Sumanta. The jurisdiction of the Panditarao extended over all religious matters…There are letters which show that the Panditarao convened meetings of learned brahmanas and with their approval declared prayascitta in the case of a [Hindu] who had been forcibly converted by Mahomedans and who was thereafter restored to [his] caste."

"God and Muhammad engaged you to extinguish the idolatry of the Indians."

"The only resolute defender of Hinduism in this intellectually hostile atmosphere was Bankim Chandra Chatterji. He was well-versed in Western literature and philosophy and his knowledge of Hindu Shastras and history was deep as well as discerning.... “If the principles of Christianity,” he wrote, “are not responsible for the slaughter of the crusades, the butcheries of Alva, the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the flames of the Inquisition... If the principles of Christianity are not responsible for the civil disabilities of Roman Catholics and Jews which till recently disgraced the English Statute Book, I do not understand how the principles of Hinduism are to be held responsible for the civil disabilities of the sudras under the Brahmanic regime. The critics of Hinduism have one measure for their own religion and another for Hinduism.”"

"The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this:- When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owning to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced…"

"Alexander Duff was convinced that “of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen men, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous” and that India was “the chief seat of Satan’s earthly dominion.”"

"But some media outlets have chosen to craft a false narrative of intrigue by profiling and targeting all of my donors who have names of Hindu origin and accusing them of being “Hindu nationalists.” Today it’s the profiling and targeting of Hindu Americans and ascribing to them motives without any basis. Tomorrow will it be Muslim or Jewish Americans? Japanese, Hispanic or African Americans? I too have been accused of being a “Hindu nationalist.” ... To question my commitment to my country, while not questioning non-Hindu leaders, creates a double standard that can be rooted in only one thing: religious bigotry. I am Hindu and they are not. ... Religious bigotry and attempts to foment fear of Hindus and other minority religions persist. During my 2012 and 2014 elections, my Republican opponent stated publicly that a Hindu should not be allowed to serve in the U.S. Congress and that Hinduism is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. In the 2016 race for Congress, my Republican opponent said repeatedly that a vote for me was a vote for the devil because of my religion. ... Those who are trying to foment anti-Hindu sentiment expose the dark underbelly of religious bigotry in politics and must be called out. To advocate voting for or against someone based on religion, race or gender is simply un-American."

"While one should always be vigilant for traces of totalitarianism in any ideology or movement, the obsession with fascism in the anti-Hindu rhetoric of the secularists is not the product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political compulsions."

"Thus, to depict Rama as a virile warrior was a sin against Hinduism, an imitation of colonialist virility myths, a betrayal of the feminine passivity of genuine Hinduism. Or, to organize the Hindu religious personnel on a common platform (the Dharma Sansad, more or less 'religious parliament') is an un-Hindu imitation of the Bishops' Synod in the Catholic Church. Or, to alert the Hindus against Muslim or Christian conversion campaigns is an abandonment of the cheerful Hindu indifference to sectarian name-tags, the only thing which really changes upon conversion. Indeed, anything that could play a role in upholding and preserving Hinduism was found to be un-Hindu, while anything that could make or keep Hinduism defenceless and moribund, was glorified as true Hinduism. Anything that smacked of vitality and the will to survive was dubbed 'Semitic'."

"Elst, Koenraad, Who is a Hindu, (2001)"

"The present-day progressives, leftists and dalits whose main plank is anti-Brahminism have no reason to feel innovative about their ideology. Anti-Brahminism in India is as old a the advent of Islam. Our present-day Brahmin-baiters are no more than ideological descendants of the Islamic invaders. Hindus will do well to remember Mahatma Gandhi’s deep reflection--“if Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism must perish.”"

"If we would reveal our intentions, without hiding them at all, we hold that the Hindu Puranas and Hinduism must disappear from this land; and the sooner they disappear, the more welcome."

"If a scholar were to refute the very existence of Allah..... it would be called Islamophobia. .... An analogous situation exists in the way an attiutde gets classified as anti-Semitic. Hindus should be alarmed by the existence of a double standard in Western academics, because the same sensitivity and adhikara to speak for our tradition is not granted to Hindus. ..... We need to define a level playing field for characterizing a work as Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Hinduphobia, etc."

"I do not know the meaning of the secularism. Yet I do not understand. Of course the dictionary meaning is absolutely different. There was a time when people were talking about the secularism, they were about the simply [sic] religious harmony. Slowly it changed the colour. Then, secularism means a lip sympathy to the minorities. Then slowly the colour changed. Then, secularism was [...] means appeasement to the minorities. Then the secularism changed the colour. Focus only on the Muslims' votebank in the name of secularism. Then the secularism changed the colour. Then, hate Hindu means secularism."

"One might think this position (that the English colonialist should convert their Indian "brethren" to the Gospel) would have endeared Max Muller to missionaries, but in fact it did not. Rather, they found him entirely too sympathetic to the "heathen" and suspected him of being insufficiently committed to the faith. Accordingly, in 1860 he was passed over for Oxford's Boden chair in Sanskrit, which carried responsibility for preparing the Sanskrit-English dictionary, both of which were intended, under the terms of Lt-Col Boden's will, to advance the conversion of Indians to Christianity, not to foster English understanding or respect for India"

"A violent propaganda campaign was launched by Carey and his associates against Hinduism in Bengal which seemed to them to be in a state of dissolution. But Hindu orthodoxy reacted vigorously and Lord Minto felt obliged to prohibit such propaganda in Calcutta. Minto's letter to the Court of Directors is worth quoting: `Pray read the miserable stuff addressed specially to the Gentoos (Hindus) in which . . . the pages are filled with hell fire, and hell fire and with still hotter fire, denounced against a whole race of men, for believing in the religion which they were taught by their fathers and mothers. . ."

"[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India.... I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic hindu religon and our political failure forced itself on my mind.'"

"“India is like a mighty bastion, which is being battered by heavy artillery. We have given blow after blow, and thud after thud, and the effect is not at first very remarkable; but at last with a crash the mighty structure will come toppling down, and it is our hope that some day the heathen religions of India will in like manner succumb.”"

"“You train and educate and clothe and pay men to do what ? To come over to my country to curse and abuse all my fore-fathers, my religion and everything…… They walk near a temple and say, ‘you idolaters, you will go to hell’. But they dare not do that to the Mohammedans of India, the sword would be out.... And whenever your ministers criticise us, let them remember this : If all India stands up and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you are doing to us."

"Jeffery Long, a Professor of Religion and South Asian Studies, defines Hinduphobia as “an intense and deeply rooted aversion — a fear and hatred… of Hindus and Hinduism [which manifests itself] as a set of intellectual claims that portray Hindus and Hinduism in a negative light.”"

"However, and this is a key point that Elst notes, the sheer demographic scale of Hindu populations also means that in absolute terms even a small percentage of Hindu populations being exterminated implies a very large number of casualties, mass slaughter by any lens imaginable. According to his framework, Hindus have been subjected to at least two forms of genocide listed in his schema above; the slaughter of the “backbone” or spiritual and cultural leader ship, and mass negligence or indifference to deaths due to colonial, racial, or religious bigotry as in the case of the famines under British rule. More recent cases of Hindu genocide, such as their slaughter in East Pakistan in 1971, and the forced displacement of Hindus from Kashmir in the early 1990s, are also rarely acknowledged as a sufficient real-world cause of concem in the scholarly literature to perhaps justify taking the study of media whitewashing of violence against Hindus seriously. However, what media researchers need to engage with in order to further develop the rationale for the scholarly study of Hinduphobia is not only the phenomenon of silencing and exclusion of Hindu victimhood in media discourses but also the deeper question of “epistemicide” (Viswanathan, 2019) and dehumanization that continues through the prolif eration and normalization of essentially colonial-era anti-Hindu tropes from the imagination of racist-eugenicists like Katherine Mayo even in present-day entertainment like the movie Slumdog Millionaire. By erasing Hindu views of our own symbols, sacred and secular, by overwriting our own languages and meanings with their own propagandistic terminology such as BBC’s translation of “Jai Sri Ram” or “Victory to Lord Ram” as “Hail Lord Ram” with its close insinuation of the Nazi “Heil,” media Hinduphobia also involves an act, through brute force of technology and capital investment, of cultural genocide. There are no human rights, essentially, is what this machine seems to say, if you are Hindu. If you erase the name “Hindu,” then and only then can one bedeemed worthy of human rights discourse, just as Hari Kondabolu sought to do in the space of pop culture."

"A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes.... The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism... During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune."

"A number of Indians have tried to define secularism as sarva dharma samabhava (equal respect for all religions). I cannot say whether they have been naive or clever in doing so. But the fact remains that secularism cannot admit of such an interpretation. In fact, orthodox Muslims are quite justified in regarding it as irreligious. Moreover, dharma cannot be defined as religion which is a Semitic concept and applies only to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Hinduism is not a religion in that sense; nor are Jainism and Buddhism, or for that matter, Taoism and Confucianism."

"This view of Sarva Dharma Samabhava has been turned into a political principle in modern India. ... The correct term for the common Western idea of religion, which is a particular belief, in Hindu thought would not be Dharma but “mata” meaning a belief, view or opinion. There is no such possible statement as “Sarva Mata Samabhava” or the equality and unity of all opinions. Opinions are as diverse as the minds of creatures. Nor need we seek to make all opinions one and the same. Diversity of opinions is necessary as part of freedom of seeking the truth....Sarva Dharma Samabhava has been used to court the favor of various religious groups and to uphold vote banks based upon religious belief. It is often a one-way street. Hindus are told to accept Sarva Dharma Samabhava which means that they should not mind if Hindus are converted to Christianity and Islam and should avoid criticizing these religions even if what they believe appears to be a violation of what Hindus hold to be true. On the other hand, under the same principle, Muslims and Christians are not expected to reciprocate, stop their conversion efforts, or to become Hindus. The result is that Sarva Dharma Samabhava has only served to erode the Hindu view of truth and encouraged Hindus to give up their critical faculties in matters of religion. It is contrary to the spirit of the Yogis and Rishis in which all manner of debate was encouraged in order to arrive at truth. ...We are entering a new era in civilization today, in which religion must be radically recast, if not discarded. Only those religions willing to undergo a radical transformation are likely to survive. This change will be in the direction of experiential spirituality, in which the individual’s direct experience of God or truth becomes the most important thing, and religious dogma and institutionalism is set aside. This is the real Sarva Dharma that no group can claim to own or dispense. One should not forget the Dharma in Sarva Dharma Samabhava."

"Hinduism applauds diversity and consequently accepts that people of different temperaments, circumstances and levels of understanding develop different viewpoints and different forms to express even the same view point. In that sense, it has always paid equal respect to shrarnanas and brahmanas, to jnana and bhakti etc. It showed samabhava to all traditions, which counted as dharma. This respect was never extended to adharma practices and doctrines such as Christianity and Islam, the religions for whose benefit the slogan is used mostly."

"There is no similar record of any Islamic authority who has said that Shiva and Allah are one, nor Ram and Rahim, nor Kashi and Kaaba. All this "oneness of all religions" rhetoric is a strictly Hindu projection of the oneness of the different Hindu gods and traditions on a juxtaposition of radically incompatible notions from Islam and Hinduism. Whereas the opposition between Ram and Rahim, between Kashi and Kaaba, led to endless persecutions and a Partition, such things have not happened between Shaivas and Vaishnavas."

"Great debaters like Yajnavalkya or Shankara would not be proud to see modern Hindus fall for anti-intellectual soundbites like “equal respect for all religions”. Very Gandhian, but logically completely untenable. For example, Christianity believes that Jesus was God’s Son while Islam teaches that he was merely God’s spokesman: if one is right, the other is wrong, and nobody has equal respect for a true and a false statement (least of all Christians and Muslims themselves). Add to this their common scapegoat Paganism, in India represented by “idolatrous” Hinduism, and the common truth of all three becomes unthinkable. It takes a permanent suspension of the power of discrimination to believe in the syrupy Gandhian syncretism which still prevails in India. The Mahatma’s outlook was neither realistic nor Indian. Not even the Jain doctrine of Anekantavada, “pluralism”, had been as mushy and anti-intellectual as the suspension of logic that is propagated in India under Gandhi’s name. It could only come about among post-Christian Westerners tired of doctrinal debates, and from their circles, Gandhi transplanted it to India."

"The only mention of religion is the worn-out Gandhian slogan (which numerous Hindus wrongly believe to be “Vedic”) Sarva-Dharma-Samabhava, more or less “equal respect for all religions”, moreover usually misinterpreted as “equal truth of all religions”. However, while this wording obviously means to avoid any specifically Hindu agenda, the slogan itself, analyzed beyond its conspicuous superficiality, does reintroduce some Hindu desiderata. Thus, whatever the slogan really means, it speaks of some kind of religious equality. Nothing about it points to the anti-majority discrimination inherent in the Nehruvian interpretation of Art. 30 (inviolabilty of minority schools) or in Art. 370 (special status of Kashmir) of the Constitution, let alone the existence separate of Civil Codes, one reformed by the secular Parliament (Hindu Code) but the others the preserve of the respective religious establishments. That is why Hindu activists have wanted to abolish or change the relevant laws. These are perfectly sensible and genuinely secular demands, but the BJP secularists avoid them because they are still in thrall to the ideological hegemony of the Nehruvians."

"The confusion has by now become very widespread, and is symbolized by the sanctimonious slogan of sarva-dharma-samabhava. This slogan was coined by Mahatma Gandhi and included in his Mangala Prabhata as one of the sixteen mahavratas. The result was an unprecedented appeasement of Islam starting with the Mahatma’s support of the Khilafat movement. The Mahatma had believed sincerely that he could touch the heart of Islam and win over the Muslims to nationalism by paying handsome tributes to the Quran and the Prophet... In the final upshot, he had to pay the price with his own life, and the nation had to suffer partition of the motherland."

"Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - the opiate which lulled the Hindus into a deep slumber such as they had never known vis-à-vis Muslim aggression."

"What has caused confusion and misunderstanding about his Hinduism is the concept of sarva-dharma-samabhAva (equal regard for all religions) which he had developed after deep reflection. Christian and Muslim missionaries have interpreted it to mean that a Hindu can go aver to Christianity or Islam without suffering any spiritual loss. They are also using it as a shield against every critique of their closed and aggressive creeds. The new rulers of India, on the other hand, cite it in order to prop up the Nehruvian version of Secularism which is only a euphemism for anti-Hindu animus shared in common by Christians, Muslims, Marxists and those who are Hindus only by accident of birth. For Gandhiji, however, sarva-dharma-samabhAva was only a restatement of the age-old Hindu tradition of tolerance in matters of belief. Hinduism has always adjudged a man’s faith in terms of his Adhara (receptivity) and adhikara (aptitude). It has never prescribed a uniform system of belief or behavior for everyone because, according to it, different persons are in different stages of spiritual development and need different prescriptions for further progress. Everyone, says Hinduism, should be left alone to work out one’s own salvation through one’s own inner seeking and evolution. Any imposition of belief or behaviour from the outside is, therefore, a mechanical exercise which can only do injury to one’s spiritual growth. Preaching to those who have not invited it is nothing short of aggression born out of self-righteousness. That is why Gandhiji took a firm and uncompromising stand against proselytisation by preaching and gave no quarters to the Christian mission’s mercenary methods of spreading the gospel."

"Sarva-dharma-samabhava was unknown to mainstream Hinduism before Mahatma Gandhi presented it as one of the sixteen mahavratas (great vows). in his booklet, Mangala-Prabhata. It is true that mainstream Hinduism had always stood for tolerance towards all metaphysical points of view and ways of worship except that which led to Atatayi-Achara (gangsterism). But that tolerance had never become samabhava, equal respect for all points of view. The acharyas of the different schools of Sanatana Dharma were all along engaged in debates over differences in various approaches to Sreyas (the Great Good). No Buddhist acharya is known to have equated the way of the Buddha to that of the Gita and vice versa, for instance. It is also true that overawed by the armed might of Islam, and deceived by the tall talk of the sufis, some Hindu saints in medieval India had equated Rama with Rahim, Krishna with Karim, Kashi with Kaba, the Brahmana with the Mullah, puja with namaz, and so on. But, the sects founded by these saints had continued to function on the fringes of Hindu society while the mainstream followed the saints and acharyas who never recognized Islam as a dharma. In modern times also, movements like the Brahmo Samaj which recognised Islam and Christianity as dharmas had failed to influence mainstream Hinduism, while Maharshi Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda who upheld the Veda and despised the Bible and the Quran, had had a great impact. This being the hoary Hindu tradition, Mahatma Gandhi’s recognition of Christianity and Islam not only as dharmas but also as equal to Sanatana Dharma was fraught with great mischief. For, unlike the earlier Hindu advocates of Islam and Christianity as dharmas, Mahatma Gandhi made himself known and became known as belonging to mainstream Hinduism. ... No other slogan has proved more mischievous for Hinduism than the mindless slogan of Sarva-dharma-samabhava vis-a-vis Christianity and Islam."

"Gandhi's sarva-dharma-samabhava did not stop at equal respect for all religions; it went much further and stood for equal validity of all religions. The Mahatma had spared no ink or breath to inculcate the belief that all religions embody the same truths, pursue the same goal, and lead to the same spiritual fulfilment. .... So we are left with Mahatma Gandhi as the first and real prophet of sarva-dharma-samabhava. (...) The explanations for [Gandhi's] pervert behaviour can be many... Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that he bound the Hindus hands and feet with the shackles of his sarva-dharma-samabhâva, and made them helpless in the face of Islamic gangsterism. At the same time, [Gandhi] gave full freedom to Muslims to deal with Hindus as they pleased. The record of what Muslim did under the leadership of the mullahs and the Muslim League exists in cold print. It never occurred to him to appeal to Muslims even once to practise sarva-dharma-samabhâva vis-à-vis Hinduism. That he thought was against their religion with which he could not interfere. The dope was meant only for Hindus. (...) The temptation to become the spokesman of all religions was irresistible for him, as for many Hindu gurus before and after. He ended by being the spokesmen of none, and made a mess of whatever religion he touched. He never evolved a criterion for distinguishing dharma from adharma."

"Nehruvian Secularism had stolen a march under the smokescreen of Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava"

"So never think that you can become wise by collecting wise sayings. That is not possible. In this age many people have tried that. In India, Mahatma Gandhi was trying it – take a few things from the Koran and a few things from the Bible and a few things from the. Gita and a few things from the Dhammapada, and collect them and make a concoction. That concoction he used to call the synthesis of all religions. This is just meaningless. You cannot create a synthesis of all religions. It will be like you cut off one of my hands and a leg of Krishnamurti and the head of Meher Baba, and put them all together and call it synthesis of all religions. It will not be of any use. It will stink! It will be ugly. That’s what Mahatma Gandhi has done."

"The current ideology of religious harmony emphasizes similarity—different religions are harmonious because they say the same thing; The older doctrine of multiple paths lays stress on their diversity—these paths are valid because they serve genuine different needs and answer to different natures. In short, they serve humanity not by being the same but by being different."

"A major influence on the budding RSS was the Arya Samaj. Somewhat like the Brahmo Samaj earlier, it called “true” Hinduism monotheistic. Nowadays, very many Hindus will tell you that in essence, Hinduism is a monotheism. These Hindus are not even aware of the proper meaning of this word. Monotheism does not mean that you worship one God (already requiring a serious reinterpretation of the many Gods effectively worshipped by most Hindus, from the Vedic rishis on down), the way some Hindus choose one God to worship from among many, a phenomenon that scholars of religion call henotheism. Nor is it the inclusive oneness of a divine essence underlying all the gods, or monism, as enunciated in the profoundest Vedic verses. It means an exclusive worship of a jealous God banishing all others. Mono- does not mean “one”, as Hindus seem to think; it means “alone”, hence “not tolerating another”. It does not say: “Allah and Shiva are one”, it says: “Only Allah is true, burn Shiva.”"

"A man delivers a sermon before an assembly in which non-Muslims such as Hindus are present, the querist informs the ulema of Dar al-Ulum, Deoband; the man says that there is no difference between Hindus and Muslims, and that we create differences because of our foolish doctrines; he says that the idol house as well as the Kaba are both made of stone and that there is no difference between blowing the conch and calling out the azan; he compares the scriptures of the Hindus and the Holy Quran, and says that the two decree the same things—all staples, if I may add, of the speeches of our leaders, of the writings of our secularists, of the panegyrics to secularism in the judgments of our courts. What is the law in regard to such a person?, asks the querist of the ulema of Deoband. These are utterances of kufr, they declare. A person who has such beliefs and teaches such beliefs is not a Muslim but an infidel and an apostate, they declare. He is a reprobate and a heretical inventor, in fact an infidel and an apostate, they repeat. Muslims should keep away from him rather than listen to his infidel utterances. Yet, whenever our courts and leaders recall those Sarva Dharma Samabhava passages they address them to the Hindus, asking them to live up to these ideals. They never address the passages to the ulema who staunchly and openly denounce the ideals, who proclaim from housetops that to countenance such parity—even for the sake of form, even nominally and verbally—is to be out of Islam!"

"But Gandhi's slogan of sarva dharma samabhava, had sent the country into a deep slumber."

"Ah lady! ah lady! hear a word, At length having seen (him) I have come again; Looking, looking, (my) pain increased, Whatever was done profited not. He binds not his hair, he girds not his waist, He eats not food, he drinks not water. The colour of gold Šyâm has become, Constantly remembering thy name. He does not recognize any one, his eye does not wink, He remains with fixed look like a doll of wood. I placed a piece of wool to his nose, Then only I perceived that he breathed, There is breath, but there remains no life, Delay not, my happiness depends on it! Cha.n.dî Dâs saith (it is) the anguish of separation In his heart, the only medicine is Radha."

"Chandidas celebrates the divine love by singing the love of Radha and Krishna. His poetry is one of the best in India's devotional literature. In his poems, he celebrates soul's love for God,... with a matchless purity of feeling and diction."

"The Brahmins and the Untouchables belong to the same race."

"Mahommad bin Qasim's first act of religious zeal was forcibly to circumcise the Brahmins of the captured city of Debul ; but on discovering that they objected to this sort of conversion, he proceeded to put all above the age of 17 to death, and to order all others, with women and children, to be led into slavery. The temple of the Hindus was looted, and the rich booty was divided equally among the soldiers, after one-fifth, the legal portion for the government, had been set aside."

"A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which could alone qualify him for the task."

"The Buddha too said that moral conduct and mental disposition, not birth, determined who is a Brahmin."

"But that is not all. To abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins would be an act of cruel and wicked negligence. It would shame for ever those who bore its guilt. These Brahmins who mouth and patter the principles of Western Liberalism, and pose as philosophic and democratic politicians, are the same Brahmins who deny the primary rights of existence to nearly sixty millions of their own fellow countrymen whom they call ‘untouchable’, and whom they have by thousands of years of oppression actually taught to accept this sad position. They will not eat with these sixty millions, nor drink with them, nor treat them as human beings. They consider themselves contaminated even by their approach. And then in a moment they turn round and begin chopping logic with John Stuart Mill, or pleading the rights of man with Jean Jacques Rousseau. While any community, social or religious, endorses such practices and asserts itself resolved to keep sixty millions of fellow countrymen perpetually and eternally in a state of sub-human bondage, we cannot recognise their claim to the title-deeds of democracy. Still less can we hand over to their unfettered sway those helpless millions they despise."

"Such was the erosion of demography and prosperity that after the capture of Brahmanabad, "all people, the merchants, artisans and agriculturists were divided separately into their respective classes, and (only) ten thousand men, high and low, were counted. Muhammad Qasim then ordered twelve dirhams weight of silver (i.e., twelve silver coins or their equivalent) to be assigned to each man (for rehabilitation), because all their property had been plundered."15 The Brahmans, "the attendants of the temples were likewise in distress. For fear of the (Muslim) army, the alms and bread were not regularly given to them, and therefore they were reduced to poverty."16 From the destruction of Debal to the end of the campaign temples had been broken with the zeal of an iconoclast and their purohits and other dependents had no employment, no income. "It was ordained (by Qasim) that the Brahman should, like beggars, take a copper basin in their hands, go to the doors of the houses, and take whatever grain or other thing that might be offered to them, so that they might not remain unprovided for.""

""And there is no stronghold of evil so impregnable as Brahmins"."

"Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently. The transmigration of souls is no fable."

"In this age of multiculturalism, we had just learned to scrap the word “barbarian” from our dictionaries, and that we should see the complex cultural motifs and structures even in the most illiterate and primitive cultures. But the Barbarian is back, and his name is Brahmin. It is perfectly OK to say about Brahmins those things which anti-racist legislation has prohibited in many countries in the case of Blacks and others."

"During the Islamic conquests in India, it was a typical policy to single out the Brahmins for slaughter, after the Hindu warrior class had been bled on the battlefield. Even the Portuguese in Malabar and Goa followed this policy in the 16th century, as can be deduced from Hindu-Portuguese treaty clauses prohibiting the Portuguese from killing Brahmins."

"In fact, apart from anti-Judaism, the anti-Brahmin campaign started by the missionaries is the biggest vilification campaign in world history"

"Of course, it is only in the crassest propaganda literature that the Brahmins are dominant and therefore rich. According to a survey in Karnataka in the late seventies, Brahmins were the poorest community there. In a district in Andhra, 55% of the Brahmins lived below the poverty line, substantially more than the local as well as the national average."

"Mahomed Kasim levelled the temple and its walls with the ground and circumcised the brahmins. The infidels highly resented this treatment, by invectives against him and the true faith. On which Mahomed Kasim caused every brahmin, from the age of seventeen and upwards, to be put to death; the young women and children of both sexes were retained in bondage and the old women being released, were permitted to go whithersoever they chose... On reaching Mooltan, Mahomed Kasim also subdued that province; and himself occupying the city, he erected mosques on the site of the Hindoo temples."

"I very much lament for what has happened to the groves in Madhura. The coconut trees have all been cut and in their place are to be seen rows of iron spikes with human skulls dangling at the points. In the highways which were once charming with the sounds of anklets of beautiful women, are now heard ear-piercing noises of Brahmins being dragged, bound in iron fetters."

"I am convinced that Brahmins are known for their self-sacrifice at all times... I appeal to my non-Brahmin brethren not to hate the Brahmin and not to be victims of the snares of the bureaucracy..."

"By indulging in violent contempt of a community which has produced men like Ramdas, Tulsidas, Ranade, Tilak and others it is impossible that you can rise."

"The Brahmans who were custodians of the idols and idol-houses, and “teachers of the infidels”, also received their share of attention from the soldiers of Allãh. Our citations contain only stray references to the Brahmans because they have been compiled primarily with reference to the destruction of temples. Even so, they provide the broad contours of another chapter in the history of medieval India, a chapter which has yet to be brought out in full. The Brahmans are referred to as magicians by some Islamic invaders and massacred straight away. Elsewhere, the Hindus who are not totally defeated and want to surrender on some terms, are made to sign a treaty saying that the Brahmans will be expelled from the temples. The holy cities of the Hindus were “the nests of the Brahmans” who had to be slaughtered before or after the destruction of temples, so that these places were “cleansed” completely of “kufr” and made fit as “abodes of Islam”. Amîr Khusrû describes with great glee how the heads of Brahmans “danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet”, along with those of the other “infidels” whom Malik Kãfûr had slaughtered during the sack of the temples at Chidambaram. Fîrûz Shãh Tughlaq got bags full of cow’s flesh tied round the necks of Brahmans and had them paraded through his army camp at Kangra. Muhmûd Shãh II Bahmanî bestowed on himself the honour of being a ghãzî, simply because he had killed in cold blood the helpless BrãhmaNa priests of the local temple after Hindu warriors had died fighting in defence of the fort at Kondapalli. The present-day progressives, leftists and dalits whose main plank is anti-Brahminism have no reason to feel innovative about their ideology. Anti-Brahminism in India is as old a the advent of Islam. Our present-day Brahmin-baiters are no more than ideological descendants of the Islamic invaders. Hindus will do well to remember Mahatma Gandhi’s deep reflection--“if Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism must perish.”"

"One immediate consequence of the murder which is usually left unmentioned in the numerous hagiographies of the Mahatma is the wave of revenge which hit the Hindu Mahasabha, the RSS and most of all, the Chitpavan Brahmin caste. It seems that most hagiographers were embarrassed with the way the apostle of non-violence was mourned by his fans as well as by others who merely used the opportunity for, as in Red Fort Trial (p. 4) P.L. Inamdar puts it, ‘the manhunt of Maharashtrian Brahmins irrespective of their party allegiance by non-Brahmins in Poona and other districts.’ Offices and houses were burnt down, numerous people were molested and at least eight people were killed, according to an official tradition. However the article ‘Gandhi is killed by a Hindu’, published by The New York Times on 31 January 1948, puts the number of mortal victims in Bombay (now called Mumbai) alone, and on the first day alone, already at fifteen. Locals in Pune (where of course the Hindu Rastra office was set on fire, along with the offices of other pro-Hindu papers) told me they estimated the death toll in Pune alone at fifty. One of the rare studies of the event, by Maureen Patterson, concludes that the greatest violence took place not in the cities of Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, centres of Hindu nationalism, but in ‘the extreme southwest of the Deccan plateau—the Desh—of the Marathi linguistic region’, including Satara, Belgaum and Kolhapur. Then, as now, press reporting on communal rioting was under strict control, and Maureen Patterson reports that even decades after the facts, she was not given access to relevant police files. So, we may not know the exact magnitude of this ‘Gandhian violence’ until all the records are opened, but the death toll may well run into several hundreds.... But unlike in the case of the anti-Sikh pogrom, where a few local Congress leaders were brought to trial after a long delay, and where references to the events keep on being made in studies of ‘communalism’, the Mahatma riots had no consequences for the perpetrators and were flushed down the memory hole, probably because the accused in the latter case did not have a high profile."

"The king seizes the Brahmanas, pollutes their caste and even takes their lives. If a conch-shell is heard to blow in any house, its owner is made to forfeit his wealth, caste and even life. The king plunders the houses of those who wear sacred threads on the shoulder and put scared marks on the forehead, and then binds them. He breaks the temples and uproots tulsi plants… The bathing in Ganga is prohibited and hundreds of scared asvattha and jack trees have been cut down."

"In short, it was the holy place of the Hindus, which the Malik dug up from its foundations with the greatest care… and heads of the Brahmans and idolaters danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet,’ and blood flowed in torrents."

"According to the official report of Col. Fullarton of the British forces stationed in Mangalore, worst type of brutalities on Brahmins were committed by Tipu Sultan in 1783 during his siege of Palghat Fort which was being defended by the Zamorin and his Hindu soldiers. "Tipu's soldiers daily exposed the heads of many innocent Brahmins within sight from the fort for Zamorin and his Hindu followers to see. It is asserted that the Zamorin rather than witness such enormities and to avoid further killing of innocent Brahmins, chose to abandon the Palghat Fort"."

"Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata says the following: The marks of the shudra are found in a brahmin; but a shudra is not necessarily a shudra nor a brahmin a brahmin. in whomever a brahmin's marks are found, he is known as a brahmin and in whomever they are not found, him we designate as a shudra."

"The Brahmin is therefore well worth looking at! We have more to do with him than with the Czar of all the Russians. The battle we have to fight with him is not against guns or rifles, not against flesh and blood."

"The Brahmin is an object of worship for the gods."

"Swami Vivekananda said that the four castes, by turn, governed human society. The brahmin dominated the thought-current of the world during the glorious days of the ancient Hindu civilization. Then came the rule of the kshattriya, the military as manifested through the supremacy of Europe from the time of the Roman Empire to the middle of the seventeenth century. Next followed the rule of the vaisya, marked by the rise of America. The Swami prophesied the coming supremacy of the sudra class. After the completion of the cycle, he said, the spiritual culture would again assert itself and influence human civilization through the power of the brahmin. Swami Vivekananda often spoke of the future greatness of India as surpassing all her glories of the past."

"But it was St. Xavier who made anti-Brahminism the central theme of his missionary thrust. “These are,” he wrote, “the most perverse people in the world...they never tell the truth, but think of nothing but how to tell subtle lies and to deceive the simple and ignorant people...the poor simple people do exactly what the Brahmins tell them...If there were no Brahmins in the area, all Hindus would accept conversion to our faith.”"

"“What the Brahmans as protectors of their culture achieved in those days,” writes Wilhelm von Pochhammer, “has never been properly recorded, probably because a considerable number of people belonging precisely to this class had been slaughtered. If success was achieved in preserving Hindu culture in the hell of the first few centuries, the credit undoubtedly goes to the Brahmans. They saw to it that not too many chose the cowardly way of getting converted and that the masses remained true to the holy traditions on which culture rested…”"

"The Brahmin’s natural (instinctive) temperament is mischievous and cantankerous, and it is so inveterate that it can never be eradicated."

"As they (the Brahmins) surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals, and on physical and religious sciences, and reach a high degree in their knowledge of the future, in spiritual power and human perfection, they brought proofs based on reason and testimony.... and so skilfully represented things as quite self-evident... that no man could now raise a doubt in His Majesty."

"[Brahmans] surpass other learned men in their treatises on morals....His Majesty, on hearing… how much the people of the country prized their institutions, commenced to look upon them with affection."

"An earlier anti-Brahmin activist, Ramaswamy Naicker, had said that "we will do with the Brahmins what Hitler did with the Jews". Another slogan of his was: "If you see a snake and a Brahmin, kill the Brahmin first"."

"The Jews are only interested in themselves, and nobody else. They somehow contrive to have the rulers in their pocket, participate in governance and conspire to torture and suck the lives out of other citizens in order that they live (in comfort). ... Are they not comparable to the Brahmins who too have no responsibility but have the rulers in their pocket, have entered the ruling dispensation and been lording over (all of us)?"

"O the vast avenues of the holy land, the terraces of the temple. What became of the Brahman who taught me the Proverbs?"

"The Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry, and the infidels were dependent upon them."

"“The narrative of thy battles eclipses the stories of Rustam and Isfandiyar. Thou didst bring an army in one night from Dhangan to Jalandhar… Thou didst direct but one assault and by that alone brought destruction upon the country. By the morning meal not one soldier, not one Brahman, remained unkilled or uncaptured. Their beads were severed by the carriers of swords. Their houses were levelled with the ground with flaming fire… Thou has secured victory to the country and to religion, for amongst the Hindus this achievement will be remembered till the day of resurrection.”"

"[Sultan Firoz Tughlaq] convened a meeting of the learned Ulama and renowned Mashaikh and suggested to them that an error had been committed: the Jiziyah had never been levied from Brahmans: they had been held excused, in former reigns. The Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry, and the infidels were dependent on them (kalid-i-hujra-i-kufr und va kafiran bar ishan muataqid und). They ought therefore to be taxed first. The learned lawyers gave it as their opinion that the Brahmans ought to be taxed. The Brahmans then assembled and went to the Sultan and represented that they had never before been called upon to pay the Jiziyah, and they wanted to know why they were now subjected to the indignity of having to pay it. They were determined to collect wood and to burn themselves under the walls of the palace rather than pay the tax. When these pleasant words (kalimat-i-pur naghmat) were reported to the Sultan, he replied that they might burn and destroy themselves at once for they would not escape from the payment. The Brahmans remained fasting for several days at the palace until they were on the point of death. The Hindus of the city then assembled and told the Brahmans that it was not right to kill themselves on account of the Jiziyah, and that they would undertake to pay it for them. In Delhi, the Jiziyah was of three kinds: Ist class, forty tankahs; 2nd class, twenty tankahs; 3rd class, ten tankahs. When the Brahmans found their case was hopeless, they went to the Sultan and begged him in his mercy to reduce the amount they would have to pay, and he accordingly assessed it at ten tankahs and fifty jitals for each individual."

"“Mahomed Shah now sat down before Condapilly and Bhim Raj, after six months, being much distressed, sued for pardon; which being granted, at the intercession of some of the nobility, he surrendered the fort and town to the royal troops. The King having gone to view the fort, broke down an idolatrous temple, and killed some bramins, who officiated at it, with his own hands, as a point of religion. He then gave orders for a mosque to be erected on the foundation of the temple, and ascending a pulpit, repeated a few prayers, distributed alms, and commanded the Khootba to be read in his name. Khwaja Mahmood Gawan now represented, that as his Majesty had slain some infidels with his own hands, he might fairly assume the title of Ghazy, an appellation of which he was very proud. Mahmood Shah was the first of his race who had slain a bramin…”"

"My only purpose is and has always been to achieve the eternal or Brahman. Now I realize that my countrymen are nothing but a form of the Brahman only. The way to achieving Brahman is not necessarily through asceticism in the Himalayan peaks alone, but from serving my countrymen and freeing them from British yoke."

"Vijaya Gupta wrote a poem in praise of Husain Shah of Bengal (1493-1519 AD). The two qazi brothers, Hasan and Husain, are typical Islamic characters in this poem. They had issued orders that any one who had a tulsi leaf on his head was to be brought to them bound hand and foot. He was then beaten up. The peons employed by the qazis tore away the sacred threads of the Brahmans and spat saliva in their mouths. One day a mullah drew the attention of these qazis to some Hindu boys who were worshipping Goddess Manasa and singing hymns to her. The qazis went wild, and shouted: “What! The haramzadah Hindus make so bold as to perform Hindu rituals in our village! The culprit boys should be seized and made outcastes by being forced to eat Muslim food.” The mother of these qazis was a Hindu lady who had been forcibly married to their father. She tried to stop them. But they demolished the house of those Hindu boys, smashed the sacred pots, and threw away the puja materials. The boys had to run away to save their lives."

"There are in these parts among the pagans a class of men called Brahmins. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and to whom applies the Psalm which says: ‘From an unholy race, and wicked and crafty men, deliver me, Lord.’ If it were not for the Brahmins, we should have all the heathens embracing our faith."

"The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this:- When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owning to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced…"

"Ziyauddin Barani voiced his opinion against the Hanafi school when he wrote as follows in his Fatwa-i-Jahandari: “If Mahmud… had gone to India once more, he would have brought under his sword all the Brahmans of Hind who, in that vast land, are the cause of the continuance of the laws of infidelity and of the strength of idolators; he would have cut off the heads of two or three hundred thousand Hindu chiefs. He would not have returned his Hindu-slaughtering sword to its scabbard until the whole of Hind had accepted Islam. For Mahmud was a Shafiite, and according to Imam Shafii the decree for Hindus is Islam or death, that is to say, they should either be put to death or accept Islam. It is not lawful to accept jiziya from Hindus who have neither a prophet nor a revealed book.”"

"...speaking of Bhakti, not as religious concept, but as a movement, a phenomenon of a set of religious ideas and structures first seen in the South in 7th century and slowly sweeping upto the North by the 15th century....Bhakti has been credited with securing the final triumph of Hinduism over Jainism and Buddhism, with bringing the vernaculars into being as literary languages with spreading the concepts of the Great Tradition of Brahmanical Hinduism to the common man, with reconciling Hinduism and Islam, with reviving Hinduism in the face of the Muslim threat, with providing the ethos for the last great Hindu Kingdom in India, the Marathas...The bhakti movement has been seen as the Indian counterpart of the Protestant Reformation, with one or another of its poet saints, usually Kabir, sometimes Chaitanya, filling the role of Luther."

"Bhakti movement is of indigenous origin, since, besides a number of devotional hymns in the Rigveda, there is a sizable volume of material in the Gita, in the santiparva of Mahabharata, as well as as in some earlier Puranas to establish its Indian origin beyond doubt."

"But Islam was never accepted as a dharma by mainstream Hinduism. It was only in the fourteenth century of the Christian era that we meet the so-called Nirguna school of bhakti or santamata, founded by Kabir, which started treating Islam as a way of worship and even equating it with Hindu Dharma - Rama with Rahim, Veda with Kateb (Kitâb, the Book or Quran) Kashi with Ka'ba, Pandit with Mullah, Temple Bells with Azan, and so on. Quite a bit of this equating was done for ridiculing the rituals of both Islam and Hinduism, and proclaiming that the spiritual secret was known only to the sadguru, the True Teacher like Kabir. For the rest, the bulk of the santamata literature is Vaishnavite derived from the Puranas, particularly the Bhâgavata-purâNa. The only variation is the mention of a few sufis like Mansur Al-Hallaj, Abu Yazid (Bayazid) and Adham Sultan, who were hardly sufis like those we meet in the latter day silsilas (orders). It is significant that none of the sufis from the silsilas finds place in this literature.... The main-stream Bhakti Movement which was wide-spread among Hindus including those belonging to most of the lower castes, always looked down upon the santamata, even when the latter became increasingly more and more Hindu except for its incongruent streaks of monotheism, prophetism (guruvâda) and anti-Brahminism. It is significant that no adherent of any school of Santamata is known to have converted to Islam. What we know is that some converts to Islam joined its ranks, notably Dadu and Sadhna. So the doctrine of sarva-dharma-samabhâva cannot be attributed to the santamata. What we find in santamata is not equal respect for all religions but equal contempt for all rituals and institutions, whether Hindu or Islamic."

"The most effective Hindu protest against atrocities was registered by the Bhakti Movement in medieval India. Bhakti means devotion to God. A Bhakt may worship Him at home, in the temple, all by himself through meditation, or in congregations through Bhajan and Kirtan (chorus singing). He need not go out into the streets to organize a movement. But this is exactly what happened at the behest of the socio-religious reformers in the fifteenth-sixteenth century. And the movement triumphed insofar as it succeeded in saving India from total Islamization. The Bhakta saints who spearheaded this movement belonged to all classes, but essentially the protest was a middle class movement and it was a strange combination of Renaissance, Reformation and dissent."

"On the other hand, Hindu saints used to assuage the outraged feelings of Hindus and encourage them reconvert to Hinduism. For instance Harihar and Bukka, sons of the Raja of Kampil ,converted to Islam by Muhammad bin Tughlaq, fled his court. At the instance of sage Vidyaranya they reverted to Hinduism and founded the Vijayanagar kingdom to resist the expansion of Muslim power in the South. Like Vidyaranya, there were scores of Bhakta saints who were helping people to resist injustice and retain their original religion. In Maharashtra, Namdeva in the fourteenth century declared that people were blind in insisting upon worshipping in temples and mosques, while His worship needed neither temple nor mosque.69 Such courageous denunciations were infectious and these spread in Gujarat, Bengal, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. Ramananda, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya, Raidas, Dhanna, Sain, Garibdas and Dadu Dayal and a host of others spoke out in the same idiom openly and repeatedly. They came from all classes of society - Raidas was a chamar, Sain was a barber while Pipa was a Raja, Raja of Gauranggarh - but they were all respected and listened to. Of these the three most important saints who turned Bhakti into a movement were Kabir, Nanak and Chaitanya."

"The second school of yoga is that of Shri Krishna, particularly expounded in the great poem the Bhagavad-Gita... This teaches above all else the doctrine of love. The disciple Arjuna, to whom the Guru spoke, was a great lover of mankind; according to the scripture this great soldier sank down upon the floor of his chariot before the battle of Kurukshetra began, full of sorrow because he loved his enemies and could not bear to injure them. The teacher Shri Krishna then explained to him, amid much philosophical teaching, that the greatest thing in life is service, that God himself is the greatest server—for he keeps the wheel of life revolving, not because any benefit can possibly accrue to him in consequence, but for the sake of the world—and that men should follow his example and work for the welfare of mankind. Many Great Ones, he said, had reached perfection by following this path of life, by doing their duty without personal desire. To love without ceasing is the way of the second Ray; in the Gita it is shown how this love should be directed to men and other beings in karma yoga (the yoga by action or work) and to God in bhakti yoga (the yoga by devotion)."

"The sixth school is that of bhakti or devotion...taught to a large extent in the Bhagavad-Gita; indeed, we find it in every religion among those true devotees who put their trust entirely in the Divine— who do not pray for personal favours, but are quite convinced that God is perfect master of his world, that he knows what he is doing, and that therefore all is well; they are therefore more than content, they are thrilled with ecstasy, if they can but have the opportunity and the privilege to serve and obey him in any way."

"In a way, none of these values were new but in the crucible of the Bhakti Movement they combined to crystallise in a new form and give rise to a new ethos. And under the influence of many great bhaktas and santas, they acquired a new urgency, a new poer. It made religion living for millions of people. Bhakti is now one of the greatest elements in Hindu religion. ....Hinduism has never been exclusively 'brahmanical'. It is particularly true of present-day Hinduism. It is the product of influences emanating from the humblest sources, and from most diverse circumstances. Kabir was a weaver; Raidas was a cobbler; .... (p 121 ff)"

"“Rajput is a corrupt form of the Vedic word Rajputra. It occurs in Rigveda, Yajurvedic Kaphak Samhita, and Aitareya Bramana of the Rigveda as a synonym for Râjanya. ...In Mahabharata also the word Rajputra has been used in the sense of nobles and chiefs, as well as ordinary Kshatriyas. The literal meaning of Kshatriya again is the son of a Kshatra. ... So the primary meaning of Rajanya and Kshatriya is the same and Rajputra is used for either of the two words though its meaning becomes distinct as we proceed on the long road of time... As pointed out by G.H. Ojha in Rajputane ka Itihasa Vol. I, Rajputras have been referred to in Kautilya’s Arthasastra, Kalidasa’s Malvikagnimitra, Asvaghosha’s Saundarananda and Banabhatta’s Harshacharita and Kadambari. The word has been used with different connotations by these authors. In Kautilya’s work it implies sons of the king while by Kalidasa and Asvaghosha it is used for nobles. Banabhatta in the first work uses it in the sense of nobles and in the latter work as sons of the nobles”"

"The Kshatriya was a Kshatriya not merely because he was the son of warriors and princes, but because he discharged the duty of protecting the country and preserving the high courage and manhood of the nation, and he had to cultivate the princely temperament and acquire the strong and lofty Samurai training which alone fitted him for his duties."

"Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom."

"Whatever the provocation, the shrine, the Brahman and the cow were sacrosanct.... War being a special privilege of the martial classes, harassment of the civilian population during military operations was considered a serious lapse from the code of honour. The high regard which all Kshatriyas had for the chastity of women, also ruled out abduction as an incident of war."

"When Alexander had asked a Brahmin as to what they taught which inspired Hindu warriors to such high heroism, the Brahmin had replied in one sentence – “We teach our people to live with honour.”"

"The most curious thing was the code of war of those days; as soon as the battle for the day ceased and evening came, the opposing parties were good friends, even going to each other's tents; however, when the morning came, again they proceeded to fight each other. That was the strange trait that the Hindus carried down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion. Then again, a man on horseback must not strike one on foot; must not poison the weapon; must not vanquish the enemy in any unequal fight, or by dishonesty; and must never take undue advantage of another, and so on. If any deviated from these rules he would be covered with dishonour and shunned. The Kshatriyas were trained in that way. And when the foreign invasion came from Central Asia, the Hindus treated the invaders in the selfsame way. They defeated them several times, and on as many occasions sent them back to their homes with presents etc. The code laid down was that they must not usurp anybody's country; and when a man was beaten, he must be sent back to his country with due regard to his position. The Mohammedan conquerors treated the Hindu kings differently, and when they got them once, they destroyed them without remorse."

"Where are all the ksatriyas, are they all dead, burnt out, where have they fallen down?"

"Looking at your own svadharma you ought not waver, for there is nothing higher for a Kshatriya than a righteous war. … Happy indeed are the Kshatriyas, who are called to fight in a righteous battle… But if you will not fight this righteous war, then having abandoned your own duty and fame, you shall incur demerit."

"Swami Vivekananda said that the four castes, by turn, governed human society. The brahmin dominated the thought-current of the world during the glorious days of the ancient Hindu civilization. Then came the rule of the kshattriya, the military as manifested through the supremacy of Europe from the time of the Roman Empire to the middle of the seventeenth century. Next followed the rule of the vaisya, marked by the rise of America. The Swami prophesied the coming supremacy of the sudra class. After the completion of the cycle, he said, the spiritual culture would again assert itself and influence human civilization through the power of the brahmin. Swami Vivekananda often spoke of the future greatness of India as surpassing all her glories of the past."

"Tukaram in his message to Chhatrapati Shivaji says:“Now listen while I tell you the duties of a kshatriya. He must conquer his enemies and protect his own faith; reverence the brahmins; see the supreme in all creatures; oppress none; delight in worship; speak no falsehood; feed the hungry; and remember God continually”. (Fraser and Edwards 1922:101)"

"There was not the idea of 'interest' in India as in Europe, i.e., each community was not fighting for its own interest; but there was the idea of Dharma, the function which the individual and the community has to fulfil in the larger national life. There were caste organizations not based upon a religio-social basis as we find nowadays; they were more or less guilds, groups organized for a communal life. There were also religious communities like the Buddhists, the Jains, etc. Each followed its own law'Swadharma'unhampered by the State. The State recognized the necessity of allowing such various forms of life to develop freely in order to give to the national spirit a richer expression.... Then over the two there was the central authority, whose function was not so much to legislate as to harmonize and see that everything was going on all right. It was generally administered by a Raja; in cases it was also an elected head of the clan, as in the instance of Gautama Buddha's father. Each ruled over either a small State or a group of small States or republics. The king was not a law-maker and he was not at the head to put his hand over all organizations and keep them down. If he interfered with them he was deposed because each of these organizations had its own laws which had been established for long ages.... The machinery of the State also was not so mechanical as in the West... it was plastic and elastic.... This organization we find in history perfected in the reign of Chandragupta and the Maurya dynasty. The period preceding this must have been a period of great political development in India. Every department of national life, we can see, was in the charge of a board or a committee with a minister at the head, and each board looked after what we now would call its own department and was left free from undue interference of the central authority. The change of kings left these boards untouched and unaffected in their work. An organization similar to that was found in every town and village and it was this organization that was taken up by the Mahomedans when they came to India. It is that which the English also have taken up. The idea of the King as the absolute monarch was never an Indian idea. It was brought from Central Asia by the Mahomedans.... The English in accepting this system have disfigured it considerably. They have found ways to put their hand on and grasp all the old organizations, using them merely as channels to establish more thoroughly the authority of the central power. They discouraged every free organization and every attempt at the manifestation of the free life of the community. Now attempts are being made to have the cooperative societies in villages, there is an effort at reviving the Panchayats. But these organizations cannot be revived once they have been crushed; and even if they revived they would not be the same.... If the old organization had lasted it would have been a successful rival of the modern form of government.... You need not come back to the old forms, but you can retain the spirit which might create its own new forms.... It has been a special feature of India that she has to contain in her life all the most diverse elements and assimilate them. This renders her problem most intricate.... The 'nation idea' India never had. By that I mean the political idea of the nation. It is a modern growth. But we had in India the cultural and spiritual idea of the nation..."

"I do not regard business as something evil or tainted, any more than it is so regarded in ancient spiritual India.... All depends on the spirit in which a thing is done, the principles on which it is built and the use to which it is turned. I have done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary politics, ghoram karma, and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmani. Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was mistaken or wrong in principle?... I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine.... The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmani, is un-Indian, European or western and unspiritual."

"Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom."

"“At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)]."

"Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit."

"May we attain that excellent glory of Savitar the god: So may He stimulate our prayers."

"The Gayatri is perhaps the greatest and most beautiful of all the ancient mantras. It has been chanted all over India from time immemorial... in an antiquity so remote that the very memory of it has been forgotten, the altruistic use of such mantras was fully comprehended and practiced. It begins always with the sacred word Om, and with the enumeration of the planes upon which its action is desired—the three worlds in which man lives, the physical, the astral and the mental."

"This aim is formulated with utmost brevity in the famous Gâyatrî Mantra which is daily recited by hundreds of thousands of people all over India. The Mantra prays for arousing, activating, animating and manifesting our mind and understanding. Several Upanishads begin with this prayer: "Make strong my limbs, my speech, my vitals, my eyes, my ears and other senses"."

"In the Arya Samaj, girls get the complete Vedic initiation, as apparently they used to in the Vedic age itself."

"The only component of the current [of Hindu revivalism] which could be called 'fundamentalist', i.e. seeking to revive Scripture as normative for today's society and attacking those co-religionists who have allegedly deviated from scriptural purity, is the Arya Samaj ... still standing out as a progressive movement. In the case of Hinduism, it so happens that many of the traditional inequalities, injustices and unwholesome customs of Hindu society are not attested in Vedic scripture, and even less so in the Arya Samaj's own understanding of it. This made it possible to present a programme of social equality as a return to the Vedas."

"The Arya Samaj was the first Hindu movement to take up a bold stand in this context. Maharshi Dayanand himself had showed up Muhammad for the sort of man he was. Soon after, however, the Arya Samaj was silenced effectively by a series of murders, notably that of Pandit Lekhram and Swami Shraddhananda. The British were inclined to permit fair criticism, particularly that which was based on Islamic sources. But they could not prevent Muslim assassins from taking the law in their own hands."

"It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans... This was followed by the murder of Lala Nanakchand, a prominent Arya Samajist of Delhi. Rajpal, the author of the Rangila Rasool, was stabbed by llamdin on 6th April 1929 while he was sitting in his shop. Nathuramal Sharma was murdered by Abdul Qayum in September 1934. It was an act of great daring. For Sharma was stabbed to death in the Court of the Judicial Commissioner of Sind where he was seated awaiting the hearing of his appeal against his conviction under Section 195, 1. P. C., for the publication of a pamphlet on the history of Islam. .... This is, of course, a very short list and could be easily expanded. But whether the number of prominent Hindus killed by fanatic Muslims is large or small matters little. What matters is the attitude of those who count towards these murderers. The murderers paid the penalty of law where law is enforced. The leading Moslems, however, never condemned theses criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs and agitation was carried on for clemency being shown to them. As an illustration of this attitude, one may refer to Mr. Barkat Ali, a Barrister of Lahore, who argued the appeal of Abdul Qayum. He went to the length of saying that Qayum was not guilty of murder of Nathuramal because his act was justifiable by the law of the Koran. This attitude of the Moslems is quite understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr. Gandhi. (p. 157)"

"The [Arya Samajs'] defiant stand against Islam was increasingly reaping the whirlwind... A pamphlet of the local Sanatana Dharma Sabha... contained an anti-Islamic poem. Frightened by the first Muslim protests, the Hindu minority convened and passed a resolution "regretting their error and requesting pardon". To appease the Muslim protesters, the authorities arrested Jiwan Das... Nevertheless, on 9 and 10 September 1924, Muslim mobs raided the Hindu neighbourhood, killing dozens of Hindus... The most outstanding Arya Samaji of the twentieth century, Swami Shraddananda, was killed by one Abdul Rashid.... When Abdul Rashid was hanged... Muslim clerics all over India held prayer-meetings for his martyred soul. Dr. Ambedkar testifies: "The leading Muslims, however, never condemned these criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs."... In 1933, another Arya Samaji, Nathuramal Sharma, was taken to court for publishing a similar pamphlet as Lekh Ram's... in the courthouse itself he was murdered by one Abdul Qayum."

"Indians may recall that such death sentences against people who have insulted the Prophet, have been carried out earlier this century: against Arya Samaj propagandists Swami Shraddhananda and Pandit Lekh Ram, and against Rajpal, the writer of the Rangila Rasool (more or less Playboy Mohammed). This was a book on the sex life of the Prophet and his wives, certainly insulting, and as a criticism of Islam rather beside the point, but understandable as a reaction against a similar vilifying Muslim pamphlet about Sita. These murders had the desired effect, for the Arya Samaj became less straightforward in its criticism of the Prophet."

"I have said many times in my talks that Ramakrishna Mission is the real crest jewel of Hinduism."

"It is only when we move to modem times that we find the first traces of sarva-dharma-samabhâva surfacing in India in the form of the Brahmo Samaj... Even Keshub Chunder Sen cannot be called a votary of sarva-dharma-samabhâva, strictly speaking. The man fancied himself as the prophet of a New Dispensation (Nababidhâna) which had not only equated all religions but also gone beyond them. He ended by becoming a bag of nauseating nonsense.... The trail blazed by Keshub Chander Sen, however, did not go in vain. It was followed by the first disciples of Sri Ramakrishna who took over the Mission after the death of its founder, Swami Vivekananda. Most of these desciples of Sri Ramakrishna, particularly those two who compiled his Gospel and Biography had come from the flock of Keshub. It took them no time to swallow the 'synthesis' and its 'transcendance' offered by their earlier guru. The only difference was that they replaced Keshub by Sri Ramakrishna as being the last and the best who had seen the equal truth of all religions including Christianity and Islam, and 'synthesised' them in his own avatarhood."

"As regards Ramakrishna’s “practice of Islam and Christianity” of which the Mission makes so much, it finds no mention in the Gospel, the earliest and most authentic account of Ramakrishna’s thoughts and experiences in his own words. In this work we find that though Ramakrishna reminisces often about his experiences and God-filled states, there is hardly a word about his so-called practice of Islam and Christianity.... It also seems that the practice of Islam and Christianity made a less than deep impression on Ramakrishna, for subsequently he does not mention on his own initiative either Muhammad or the Koran, neither Jesus nor the Bible. Not even once! Nor did he draw from” his practice such excessive and indiscriminate conclusions as Mission monks now do."

"It is only when we move to modem times that we find the first traces of sarva-dharma-samabhâva surfacing in India in the form of the Brahmo Samaj. Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the founder of this cult, was a votary of Islamic monotheism, and later on became infatuated with Jesus Christ. He confused the monism of the Upanishads with the monotheism of Biblical creeds, and gave birth to a lot of confusion. But, by and large, he stayed a Hindu who had some very hard words to say about the doings of Islam and Christian missionaries in India. Even Keshub Chunder Sen cannot be called a votary of sarva-dharma-samabhâva, strictly speaking. The man fancied himself as the prophet of a New Dispensation (Nababidhâna) which had not only equated all religions but also gone beyond them. He ended by becoming a bag of nauseating nonsense. In any case, the Brahmo Samaj remained confined to a minuscule minority in Bengal. One of its splinters, the Adi Brahmo Samaj, returned to Hinduism for all practical purposes. That is more than obvious in the works of Rabindranath Tagore, particularly his poetry which is saturated with Vedic imagery and Vaishnavite devotion. The trail blazed by Keshub Chander Sen, however, did not go in vain. It was followed by the first disciples of Sri Ramakrishna who took over the Mission after the death of its founder, Swami Vivekananda...."

"Besides this purely literary movement, there is a religious movement going on in India, the Brahmo-Samaj, which, both in its origin and its later development, is mainly the result of European influences. It began with an attempt to bring the modern corrupt forms of worship back to the purity and simplicity of the Vedas; and by ascribing to the Veda 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 the works of European scholars, such as Stevenson, Mill, Rosen, Wilson, and others, who showed to the natives what the Veda really was, and made them see the folly of their way. Thus the religion, the literature, the whole character of the people of India are becoming more and more Indo-European. They work for us, as we work for them."

"Besides this, you have doubtless heard that the most intellectual class of natives in India are those who belong to the Brahmo sect, and many of them are almost persuaded to be Christians. Some of their ministers actually preach sermons from texts taken from the Bible, and they have declared that the British Government may be the secular ruler of England, but the supreme ruler is no less than Christ the Lord."

"Two miles to his west lay Gokul, the seat of the pontiff of the rich Vallabhacharya sect. The Abdali’s policy of frightfulness had defeated his cupidity: dead men could not be held to ransom. The invader’s unsatisfied need of money was pressing him; he sought the help of Imad’s local knowledge as to the most promising sources of booty. A detachment from his camp was sent to plunder Gokul. But here the monks were martial Naga sannyasis of upper India and Rajputana. Four thousand of these naked ash-smeared warriors stood outside Gokul and fought the Afghans, till half of their own number was killed after slaying an equal force of the enemy. Then at the entreaty of the Bengal subahdar’s envoy (Jugalkishor) and his assurance that a hermitage of faqirs could not contain any money, the Abdali recalled the detachment. ‘All the vairagis perished but Gokulnath [the deity of the city] was saved’, as a Marathi newsletter puts it.”"

"The Hindu Bethlehem now lay utterly prostrate before the invaders. Early at dawn on 1st March the Afghan cavalry burst into the unwalled and unsuspecting city of Mathura, and neither by their master's orders nor from the severe handling they received in yesterday's fight, were they in a mood to show mercy.... A Muslim eyewitness thus describes the scene in the ruined city a fortnight later. 'Everywhere in the lanes and bazaars lay the headless trunks of the slain and the whole city was burning. Many buildings had been knocked down. The water of the Jamuna flowing past was of a yellowish color, as if polluted by blood. The man [a Muslim jeweller of the city, robbed of his all and fasting for several days] said that for seven days following the general slaughter the water had turned yellow. At the edge of the stream I saw a number of huts of vairagis and sannyasis [i.e., Hindu ascetic], in each of which lay a severed head with the head of a dead cow applied to its mouth and tied to it with a rope round its neck.'"

"The rivers invoked are . . . the real rivers of the Punjāb, and the poem shows a much wider geographical horizon than we should expect from a mere village bard."

"Apart from its silence on a former homeland, or immigration, the RV contains positive indications about the Áryas’ very long presence in Saptasindhu. Hymn X, 75 gives a list of names of rivers not in the order west-to-east, as we would expect from invaders advancing in that direction, but from east- to-west, as of a people long settled and having the east as a starting point of reference. Then there are passages expressing the Aryans’ strong sense of being rooted in their lands when they recall their ancestors taking their place in the sacrifice “here”, like the Angiras family (IV, 1, 3) or the Vasis†has (VII, 76, 4), etc."

"...in the RV we find references only to the Seven Rivers saptá síndhavaḥ (and different oblique cases of the plural). Now Avestan has the name Haptahǝndu as a place, like Airyana Vaējah, Raŋhā, Haetumant, etc, from which the Iranians had passed before settling down in eastern Iran, then spreading west and north. But what is this name? Yes, hapta- is the numeral ‘seven’ but what of hǝndhu? It is a fairly obvious Avestan correspondence to the Sanskrit síndhu. Now hǝndu is an isolated occurrence. The stem does not otherwise exist in Avestan. Hindu appears in Old Persian indicating the Indian province under the Achaemenids, and that is all. The interpretation ‘seven rivers’ comes from the Sanskrit collocation. But the Avestan for river is usually θraotah- (=S srotas) and raodah-. In Sanskrit síndhu ‘river, sea’ comes either from √syand ‘flowing’ or from √sidh ‘reaching, succeeding’, both of which generate several derivatives, while síndhu itself appears in compounds like sindhuja, sindhupati ‘riverborn, riverlord’ etc, and has cognates like saindhava ‘marine, salt, horse’ etc. Surely nobody would be so foolhardy as to suggest that the IAs took this otherwise unattested stem from Iranian and used it so commonly and productively."

"Clearly, the Avestan and Vedic names are connected. Since the Vedic name cannot reasonably be said to come from the Avestan, then the Avestan must come from the Vedic. Moreover, the Vedic collocation saptá síndhu- does not occur at all in the very early Books of the RV (i.e. 3, 6, 7) but once only in Bk2 (12.3,12) and Bk4 (28.1), then twice in Bk1 (32.12; 35.8), Bk8 (54.4; 69.12) and Bk10 (43.3; 67.12) and once in Bk9 (66.6). Now in the earliest Maṇḍalas 3,6,7 (as well as later ones) we find collocations like saptá srótas-, srávat-, yahvī- or nadí- but not síndhu-. This then suggests that the Iranians left the Saptasindhu only after the collocation saptá síndhu- had been established by the late Maṇḍalas."

"The hymn, which seeks to glorify Indus as the greatest of all rivers, enumerates two types of rivers – First, those which flow into the Indus, directly or through a tributary Second, those which do not flow into the Indus and reach the ocean or a desert lake independently. My hypothesis is that the hymn mentions each and every river in the first category, because of which even the smallest tributaries and sub-tributaries of Indus are mentioned."

"It is worth noting that Haraxvaiti is one of the 16 places the Iranians had passed through before settling down. In Indo-Iranian linguistics the sound shift is from s to h (Vsu, soma/ Av hu, haoma etc); so Sarasvati/Haraxvaiti would indicate a movement out of Saptasindhu (as also Haptahendu) rather than the reverse. This suggests to me a movement of IAs north-westward and eventually into Iran. It could have been a large contingent, and the areas sparsely (or not) populated so that the immigrants could give new names reminiscent of their homeland."

"May the rivers overflowing grant us their grace (VI.52.4)."

"The powerful bull with seven rays, who releases the seven rivers to flow; he, oh men, is Indra. - Rig Veda 11.15.12"

"From the lap of the mountains, happy, smiling, like two running mares, like two bright Mother cows licking their calf, Vipas and Shutudri run with fluid. Directed by Indra, seeking power, as chariots they travel to the sea."

"Your ancient home, your auspicious friendship, O Heroes, your wealth is on the banks of the Jahnavi."

"Brbu hath set himself above the Panis, o'er their highest head, Like the wide bush on Ganga's bank."

"Sarasvati, pure in her course from the mountains to the sea."

"Maruts, what medicine of yours is in the Indus and in the Asikni rivers, what is in the oceans or what is in the mountains."

"The seven {priests} milk the one (cow {= some plant?}, and the two {= hands?} send the five {fingers?} nearby, at the ford of the river, at its sound."

"Favour ye this my laud, O Gangā, Yamunā, O Sutudri, Paruṣṇī and Sarasvatī: With Asikni, Vitasta, O Marudvrdha, O Ārjīkīya with Susoma hear my call. First with Trstama thou art eager to flow forth, with Rasā, and Susartu, and with Svetya here, With Kubha; and with these, Sindhu and Mehatnu, thou seekest in thy course Krumu and Gomati."

"1. Oh Waters let the singer, in the seat of the creative Sun (Vivaswan), declare that supreme greatness of yours. Threefold, seven by seven, they flow. Of the streams, the river is the fastest with power. 2. For you, Varuna made a path to flow, oh River, when you ran to victory. You descend through the summits of the Earth, when as the first of the moving ones, you rule. 3. His roar extends above the Earth to Heaven; he raises an endless vigor with the light. Like a cloud the rains give forth their thunder, when the River flows roaring like a bull. 4. Oh River, like mothers to their child, the milch cows flow to you with milk. As a king to battle you lead their sides, when you go forth as the first of the torrents. 5. Oh Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, follow my hymn, Shutudri with the Parushni. Listen to me, with Asikni, Marudvridha with Vitasta, Arjikiya with Sushoma. 6. With Trishtama you are first to flow, together with Susartu, Rasa and Shweta, Oh Sindhu with such as the Kubha and Mehatnu, you seek the Gomati and Krumu. 7. Straight, shining, white, she encompasses the regions in greatness. The inviolable River, the most artful of the artful, like a dappled mare, has a beautiful form. 8. Like a good horse, like a good chariot, like a good garment, the River is golden, well made and full of power, young, dressed in wool, rich in plants, auspicious you wear a growth of honey. 9. The River yokes her chariot moved by horses, by which she will win the prize in the race. Great, her glory is lauded, of her inviolable, self-effulgent and rapturous."

"When the [Rig Vedic] hymns were written the focus of Āryan culture was the region between the Jamnā (Sanskrit Yamunā) and Satlaj (Shutudrī), south of the modern Ambālā, and along the upper course of the river Sarasvatī. The latter river is now an insignificant stream, losing itself in the desert of Rajasthan, but it then [in Rig Vedic times] flowed broad and strong..."

"Sarasvati's rediscovery, although arguably suggestive of considerable Vedic antiquity, cannot be used to prove absolute synonymity of the Indus Valley residents and the Vedic Aryans."

"Likewise for the interminable discussion on the Sarasvati, although I will note, here, that proposals correlating her with other rivers in Afghanistan or elsewhere are unconvincing to my mind, as are attempts to argue that she ended in a terminal lake rather than the ocean. Kazanas has provided additional philological arguments to support the least complicated opinion, that Sarasvati as known in the Rgveda was a mighty river that flowed to the sea. One can always engage in special pleading to avoid this conclusion..."

"In any case, the Sarasvati-phobia of this group of scholars is inexplicable. If they are upset by the density of distribution of Harappan sites in the region drained by the Sarasvati and get alarmed by the prospect of the Indus civilization being associated with ancient Brahmavarta, basically the land between the Sarasvati and the Drishadvati, that is their problem."

"The Ghaghar river . . . does not in the heaviest season pass in force beyond Bhatnir . . . and the period when this river ceased to flow as one is far beyond record, and belongs to the fabulous periods of which even tradition is scanty... When the depopulation took place, I am not prepared to say; it must have been long since, as none of the village sites present[s] one brick standing on another, above ground,—though, in digging beneath it, very frequent specimens of an old brick are met with, about 16 inches by 10 inches, and 3 inches thick, of most excellent quality: buildings erected of such materials could not have passed away in any short period. The evident cause of this depopulation of the country is the absolute absence of water."

"The most sacred and eastern source of the Sarasvatī is said to be Adi-Badri Kunda north of Katgadh [Kathgarh], while the latter is still remembered to be the place where the sacred stream came out of the hills."

"As for Burrow‘s thesis that some place names reflect the names of geographical features to the west, and thus preserve an ancestral home, they once again rather rely on an assumption of Arya migrations than prove it. [...] His cited equivalence of Sanskrit Saraswati and Avestan Haraxvaiti is a case in point. Burrow accepts that it is the latter term that is borrowed, undergoing the usual change of s- > h in the process, but suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran, then it was brought into India at the time of the migrations, while its original bearer had its name modified by the speakers of Avestan who assumed control of the areas vacated by proto-Indoaryans. It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion."

"The treatment of the Saraswati evidence forms an interesting case study in the stonewalling of putative pro-OIT evidence by AIT militants, typically outsiders to Indo-European studies such as comparative historian Steve Farmer: they lambast the equating of the Vedic Saraswati with today’s Ghaggar as a paranoid Hindu-nationalist concoction, when actually it was established by a string of Western scholars since the 1850s, in tempore non suspecto. A case study of how this debate has been poisoned by endless political imputations."

"Often enough it seemed as though, like the river Sarasvatī, the lost stream of the old Sapta-sindhavas, the river of Indian thought had disappeared beneath the surface or had become lost in shallow marshes and morasses . . . But, sooner or later, we see the stream reappear, and then old ideas resume their way."

"In view of Stein’s statement which had led us to believe that nothing very ancient would be found in the region, it was a great thrill for us when even on the first and second days of our exploration we found sites with unmistakable affinities with the culture of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. And a few subsequent days’ work convinced us that the Sarasvatī valley had been really a commingling of many rivers, not only geographically, but culturally... ‘the valleys of the Sarasvatī and the Drishadvatī must be regarded as very rich indeed in archaeological remains’."

"Some of the earliest Aryan settlements in India were on the banks of the Saraswati, and the surrounding country has from almost Vedic times been held in high veneration. The Hindus identify the river with Saraswati, the Sanskrit Goddess of Speech and Learning."

"It is certain... that the Rigveda offers no assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Áryans entered India... the bulk at least [of the R V] seems to have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvati river."

"Now, it would be ludicrous to claim that the IAs left the common Indo-Iranian habitat, as per the AIT, moved into Saptasindhu and turning the Haraχvaiti name into Sarasvatī gave it to a river there to remember their past while they proceeded to generate the root sṛ and its derivatives to accord with other IE languages. Occam’s razor, which here is conveniently ignored by AIT adherents, commands the opposite: that the Iranians moved away, lost the root sṛ and the name Sarasvatī in its devolved form Haraxvaiti was given to a river in their new habitat."

"The country bears traces of having once been well inhabited. At no very distant period, the waters of the Guggur [Ghaggar] river reached as far as Sooratgurh, and old wells are numerous as far as Bhatner [Hanumangarh]’..."

"[It] revealed an incredibly dense concentration of sites, along the dried-up course of a river that could be identified as the ‘Saraswati’. . . Suddenly it became apparent that the ‘Indus’ Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the rise and development of the civilization, the ‘lost Saraswati’ River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity...Many people today refer to this Early state as the ‘Indus-Saraswati Civilization’ and continuing references [in her book] to the ‘Indus Civilization’ should be seen as an abbreviation in which the ‘Saraswati’ is implied."

"It can be stated with certainty that the present Ghaggar-Hakra is nothing but a remnant of the RgVedic Sarasvati which was the lifeline of the Indus Civilization."

"The Sarasvatī comes between the Jumna and the Sutlej, the position of the modern Sarsūti . . . There are strong reasons to accept the identification of the later and the earlier Sarasvatī throughout [the Rig Veda]."

"Here we see samudra used clearly in the sense of sea, the Indian sea, and we have at the same time a new indication of the distance which separates the Vedic age from that of the later Sanskrit literature. Though it may not be possible to determine by geological evidence the time of the changes which modified the southern area of the Penjāb and caused the Sarasvatī to disappear in the desert, still the fact remains that the loss of the Sarasvatī is later than the Vedic age, and that at that time the waters of the Sarasvatī reached the sea."

"The waters of the Sarasvati [are] continuous with the dry bed of a great river [Hakra], which, as local legends assert, once flowed through the desert to the sea."

"Although the river below the confluence [with the Ghaggar] is marked in our maps as Gaggar, it was formerly the Saraswatī; that name is still known amongst the people."

"We have also seen that the Vedic description of the waters of the Saraswatī flowing onward to the ocean, and that given in the Mahabharata, of the sacred river losing itself in the sands, were probably both of them correct at the periods to which they referred."

"[The Hakra’s drying up] reduced a vast extent of once fruitful country to a howling wilderness, and thus several flourishing cities and towns became ruined or deserted by their inhabitants."

"More important is the Sarasvatī, the true lifeline of Vedic geography, whose trace is assumed to be found in the Sarsutī, located between the Satlaj and the Jamnā. With the Indus and its five tributaries, it forms the Veda’s “seven rivers”."

"The trace of the ancient riverbed was recently found, still quite recognizable, and was followed far to the west. [This discovery] confirmed the correctness of the tradition."

"The Ran is the delta of the Hakra, the lost river of Sind."

"Traditional Indian belief recognizes in this well-marked bed the course of the sacred Sarasvatī, once carrying its abundant waters down to the ocean and since antiquity ‘lost’ in desert sands... [The Ghaggar was] still known as the Sarsuti (the Hindi derivative of Sarasvatī) [which] passes the sacred sites of Kurukshetra near Thanesar, a place of Hindu pilgrimage."

"There is now a desperate salvage operation on, in powerful leftist and "secularist" political circles in India, to put a complete full stop to any further official research on the Sarasvatī (including archaeological and geological investigations), and to launch an all-out Goebbelsian campaign through a captive media to deny that there ever was a Vedic Sarasvatī river in existence in India: the river named in the Rigveda was either completely mythical, or it was the river in Afghanistan, but it definitely was not identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra!"

"To the drying up of the Hakra, or Gliaggar, many centuries ago, in conjunction with moral evils, is ascribed the existing desolation... The vestiges of large towns, now buried in the sands, confirm the truth of this tradition, and several of them claim a high antiquity..."

"Many [Rigvedic] verses celebrate the might of the ancient river Sarasvati, nah priyà priyàsu ‘dearest of all our dear ones’. The word priyá... has the sense of ‘one’s own, that one is used to, or attached to’."

"The earliest seat of the Hindus within the confines of Hindusthān was undoubtedly the eastern confines of the Panjab. The holy land of Manu and the Purānas lies between the Drishadwatī and Saraswatī rivers, the Caggar [Ghaggar] and Sursooty [Sarsuti] of our barbarous maps. Various adventures of the first princes and most famous sages occur in this vicinity; and the Āshramas, or religious domiciles, of several of the latter are placed on the banks of the Saraswatī . . . These indications render it certain, that whatever seeds were imported from without, it was in the country adjacent to the Saraswatī river that they were first planted, and cultivated and reared in Hindusthān."

"This dry bed is indeed the holy river ‘Sarasvatī’ . . .; once upon a time, this was a genuine solitary river which reached the ocean without any tributaries on its long way through the desert."

"At a distance of a journey of forty days on horseback from the spot where the Sarasvati is lost (in the sand of the desert), (is situated) Plaksa Prasravaja."

"Sarasvatī’s stream lost in barbarous sandy wastes."

"When Harsha’s father, the king of Sthānvīshvara, passed away, the people ‘bore him to the river Sarasvatī, and there upon a pyre befitting an emperor solemnly consumed all but his glory in the flames’."

"On the Sarasvatī there are ruined sites called Naitandhava; Vyarna is one of these."

"Sarasvati, pure in her course from the mountains to the sea."

"O Sarasvati, lead us on to better, Do not spurn us, do not deprive us of your plenty; Rejoice in our company, and that we’re neighbours, Let us not go away from you to foreign fields."

"O Gangā, Yamunā, Sarasvatī, Shutudrī (Sutlej), Parushnī (Ravi), hear my praise!"

"Your excellent waters fill this whole universe."

"In some parts (of her course) she becomes visible and in some parts not so."

"Although the Sarasvatī seems to be lost, yet persons crowned with ascetic success . . . and owing also to the coolness of the herbs and of the land there, know that the river has an invisible current through the bowels of the earth."

"The sacred Sarasvatī is the foremost river of all rivers. She courses towards the ocean and is truly the first of all streams."

"Where else is such happiness as that in a residence by the Sarasvatī? . . . All should ever remember the Sarasvatī! Sarasvatī is the most sacred of rivers!"

"Knowing that nothing can prove the superiority of the Aryan race better than invasion and conquest of the native races, the Western writers have proceeded to invent the story of the invasion of India by the Aryans, and the conquest by them of the Dasas and Dasyus."

"That the Dasas and Dasyus were the same as the Shudras is a pure figment of imagination. It is only a wild guess. It is tolerated because persons who make it are respectable scholars. So far as evidence is concerned, there is no particle of it, which can be cited in support of it."

"It is urged that the Dasyus are described as black of skin and noseless in opposition to the fair and high-nosed Aryans. But the former distinction is certainly applied to the Aryan Gods and the Dasa Powers in the sense of light and darkness, and the word anasah does not mean noseless. Even if it did, it would be wholly inapplicable to the Dravidian races; for the Southern nose can give as good an account of itself as any "Aryan" proboscis in the North."

"Evidence for the characterization of Dasas and Dasyus as black is tenuous in the extreme.... Even apparently clear indications of historical struggles between dark aborigines and Arya conquerors turn out to be misleading.... [The Dasas and Dasyus] appear to be demonic rather than human enemies.... It is a cosmic struggle which is described in detailed accounts that are consistent with one another."

"The Iranian identity of Dasas and Dasyus is now well-established, a development which should at least put an end to the talk of the Dasas being ‘the dark-skinned aboriginals enslaved by the Aryan invaders’."

"Very obviously, the enemies of the Vedic people at that time, when Rg-Vedic books 7 and 4 and the contemporaneous parts of books 1 and 9 were composed, were Iranian, not “black aboriginal”. This is attested from so many angles that one tends to wonder how this mistake could have been made at all, and how the true Iranian identity of the Dāsas (Greek Dahai) could have been missed."

"The racial interpretation of the notions light/white and dark/black found in Geldner's translations and echoed or precedented in numerous other publications must be considered dubious. Where there is sufficient context for interpretation, we find that the notions can at least equally well be read as an ‘ideological’ distinction between the ‘dark/black’ world of the dāsas/dasyus and the ‘light/white’ world of the āryas."

"The Dasyus or Dasas were those who were opposed to the Indra Agni cult and are explicitly described thus in those passages where human Dasyus are clearly meant. They are avtata without (the Arya) rites, anyavrata of different rites, ayajavdna, non-sacrificers, abrahma without prayers, also not having Brahmana priests, anrichah without Riks, brahmadvisha, haters of prayers to Brahmanas, and anindra without Indra, despisers of Indra. They pour no milky draughts, they heat no cauldron. They give no gifts to the Brahmana. . . . Their worship was but enchantment, sorcery, unlike the sacred law of fire-worship, wiles and magic. In all this we hear but the echo of a war of rite with rite, cult with cult and not one of race with race."

"The great difference between the Dasyus and the Aryans was their religion... It is significant that constant reference is made to difference in religion between Aryans and Dasa and Dasyu."

"I have gone over the names of the Dasyus or Asuras, mentioned in the Rigveda, with the view of discovering whether any of them could be regarded as being of non-Aryan or indigenous origin, but I have not observed any to be of that character."

"According to Aurobindo,... there are passages in which the spiritual interpretation of the Dasas, Dasyus and Panis is the sole one possible and all others are completely excluded. There are no passages in which we lack a choice either between this interpretation and a nature-poetry or between this interpretation and the reading of human enemies."

"It was already in the middle of the former century that Christian Lassen qualified the opposition of arya and dasyu or dasa as a contrast between different religions expressed by the age-old symbolism of black opposed to white and not as a contrast of dark complexioned to white coloured men."

"Thou, O Indra, advancing singly, hast slain the wealthy Dasyu, together with his allies, with thy destructive weapon."

"born shone out slaying the Dasyus, the darkness by the Light; he found the Cows, the Waters, Swar."

"Far far away hath Agni chased those Dasyus, and, in the east, hath turned the godless westward."

"Root up, as of old, like (a tree) overgrown by a creeping plant; subdue the might of the Dasa; may we through [or with] Indra divide his collected wealth."

"Around us is the Dasyu, riteless, void of sense, inhuman, keeping alien laws. Baffle, thou Slayer of the foe, the weapon which this Dasa wields."

"May this Manu (Sávarni) quickly be born, may he increase like (well-watered) seed, who sends me at once a thousand and a hundred horses for a present. ... Yadu and Indra speaking auspiciously, and possessed of numerous cattle, gave them like (appointed) servants, for the enjoyment (of Manu Sávarni)."

"Thou hast conquered the property, whether situated in the plains or hills, (thou hast conquered) the Dasa and the Ārya enemies."

"The sovereign Indra attacking him overcame the loud-shouting, six-eyed, three-headed Dása, invigorated by his strength, smote the cloud with his iron-tipped finger."

"Armed with the thunderbolt, and confident in his strength, he has gone on destroying the cities of the Dasyus. Thunderer, acknowledging (the praises of thy worshipper), cast, for his sake, thy shaft against the Dasyu, and augment the strength and glory of the A′rya."

"The amulet created by Pragâpati has subjected those that hate me. The Atharvans did tie it on, the descendants of the Atharvans did tie it on; with these allied, the Angiras cleft the castles of the Dasyus. With it those that hate me do thou slay!"

"All those tribes in this world, which are excluded from (the community of) those born from the mouth, the arms, the thighs, and the feet (of Brahman), are called Dasyus, whether they speak the language of the Mlekkhas (barbarians) or that of the Aryans."

"It is unwise to underestimate the forces of the adversaries [evil], especially when their beloved Kali Yuga comes to its end. Certainly it is a decisive battle and one should take care..."

"Thus one can see the end of Kali Yuga. It depends upon humanity where will be the beginning of Satya Yuga. We know that Satya Yuga is preordained, but its location and conditions may differ. My warriors, I can assemble you according to usefulness and devotion. Man has fallen into a dark pit and closed the outlet with a black cover."

"The time of Kali Yuga has been a difficult one; Satya Yuga must once more bring together the worlds, which were separated by force. One has to wait for this time in solemnity, wait for it as the return of the perfection ordained. So let us agree to pay the proper attention to spirit-creativity. We can grow used to thinking about things from this perspective. Thus, we need to concern ourselves with what is most significant in giving life its direction. Whoever schools himself in maintaining a balance between the worlds is making his path a great deal easier."

"Falsehood and darkness fill the end of Kali Yuga. One must realize this in order not to lose one's strength. It is impossible to avoid the dark days, and only a knowledge of their cause will give one the patience to survive them. People do not want to simplify the path to Truth; and encumbrances like technocracy only serve to reveal the dark chains of lower matter. Blasphemies, in all their virulence, also reveal the darkness of negation in contrast to the realization of Light. You can read about these signs in the Puranas, therefore the fulfillment of all the other predictions can be anticipated. We all must now adapt ourselves to the fiery element—this also is affirmed in the Puranas. I consider that it is time to call people to the understanding of Be-ness."

"The Higher World is incorruptible, but instead of self-purification through thought and labor, people still try to bribe the Higher Grace. In such ignorance is expressed a complete unwillingness to reflect upon the essential nature of the worlds. The history of prayer shows that at first hymns were chanted, then prayers were spoken for all beings, and only later did man dare to importune with demands for himself. Sufficient evidences have been given as to how worthless for evolution is everything engendered by selfishness. One cannot purchase favor and justice. Is it not shameful that such words must be repeated? One may ask oneself, Is not involution taking place? The end of Kali Yuga can also produce such manifestations. Terrible cataclysms have been indicated, but what can be more frightful than a catastrophe of the spirit. No earthquake can be compared with the dissolution of consciousness. All forces need to be intensified in order to hold back humanity from the abyss, therefore meditation about the Higher World is a necessity of the day."

"Black Age – The passing materialistic era of darkness. Kali-Yuga."

"The manifestation of unfit elements is great at the end of Kali Yuga. The fiercer Armageddon is, the better it serves as purifier of the dross. (66) The end of Kali Yuga is significant, for many cosmic events are connected with this period... Armageddon was predicted ages ago, and the abnormalities at the end of Kali Yuga were described in the Puranas, but even keen thinkers underestimated those clear indications. However, the unusualness of the events does not impress humanity, whose mental confusion was also predicted ages ago. (106) The significance of Armageddon is little understood. Anyone who knows about the approaching end of Kali Yuga recognizes that it cannot occur without world upheavals. The forces that were particularly powerful during the Black Age must now struggle for survival, and they prefer a general catastrophe to defeat... The tension of spatial currents and the discovery of Primal Energy could not be mentioned in the Puranas even though they were intended for the seeking, advanced thinkers. But both of these conditions have now been manifested in a pronounced form, making the significance of the approaching end of Kali Yuga the more obvious.(127)"

"It is true that Armageddon is raging and incredible crimes have been committed, but it is also true that against the background of these terrors a speedy evolution rushes onward. Is it possible that people do not see how much of the new is entering life? We should not permit the doubting worldlings to proclaim that the dark forces are victorious. That which belongs to Infinity cannot be conquered. The Thinker wisely encouraged His disciples, and prophesied the victory of the Forces of Light. (259) In the Puranas it was predicted that toward the end of Kali Yuga humanity would be driven to acts of madness. It is very dangerous that people do not recognize this state, for while it is possible to cure a patient who does not resist treatment, if he struggles against it the beneficial effects of the medicine will be diminished. But how do you explain to people that their leaders and their teachers are insane? ...such mental confusion fully corresponds with the end of Kali Yuga... Most people hate the messenger who brings knowledge... let them at least remember the warning that humanity is acting insanely. The Thinker warned, “Do not fall into madness.” (285)"

"Sathya Yuga: the Age of Truth; Tretha Yuga: the era when the Divine elements were on one side and the demonic on the other; Dwapara Yuga: the era in which the Divine and demonic elements were in the same kingdom; Kali Yuga: the Age of Iron; the age of all-round moral decline, when the Divine and demonic forces are battling in each human being."

"We are in the Kali Yuga [a Sanskrit term meaning Dark Age] and its fatal influence is a thousand-fold more powerful in the West than it is in the East; hence the easy preys made by the Powers of the Age of Darkness [evil] in this cyclic struggle, and the many delusions under which the world is now laboring. One of these is the relative facility with which men fancy they can get at the "Gate" and cross the threshold of Occultism without any great sacrifice. It is the dream of most Theosophists, one inspired by desire for Power and personal selfishness, and it is not such feelings that can ever lead them to the coveted goal. For, as well said by one believed to have sacrificed himself for Humanity--"Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life" eternal, and therefore "few there be that find it." (Matthew 7:14) So strait indeed, that at the bare mention of some of the preliminary difficulties the affrighted Western candidates turn back and retreat with a shudder... Let them stop here and attempt no more in their great weakness. For if, while turning their backs on the narrow gate, they are dragged by their desire for the Occult one step in the direction of the broad and more inviting gates of that golden mystery which glitters in the light of illusion, woe to them!"

"As the “ Satya-yuga” is always the first in the series of the four ages or Yugas, so the Kali ever comes the last... Anyhow, it is curious to see how prophetic in almost all things was the writer of Vishnu Purâna when foretelling to Maitreya some of the dark influences and sins of this Kali Yug. For after saying that the “barbarians” will be masters of the banks… he adds: “ There will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth— kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their subjects, and be intent upon the wives of others; they will be of unlimited power, their lives will be short, their desires insatiable... People of various countries intermingling with them, will follow their example; and the barbarians being powerful... in the patronage of the princes, while purer tribes are neglected... Wealth and piety will decrease until the world will be wholly depraved. Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification."

"It had been declared from the first and has been repeatedly asserted since that no Theosophist, not even as an accepted chela – let alone lay students – could expect to have the secret teachings explained to him thoroughly and completely, before he had irretrievably pledged himself to the Brotherhood and passed through at least one initiation, because no figures and numbers could be given to the public, for figures and numbers are the key to the esoteric system. (164) We are not given the figures of the Great Kalpa, and are not allowed to publish those of our small Yugas, except as to the approximate duration of these. (206)"

"We are now in the fourth age, the Kali- Yuga or 'dark age', and have been so already, it is said, for more than six thousand years, that is to say since a time far earlier than any known to 'classical' history. Since that time, the truths which were formerly within reach of all have become more and more hidden and inaccessible; those who possess them grow fewer and fewer, and although the treasure of 'nonhuman (that is, supra-human) wisdom that was prior to all the ages can never be lost, it nevertheless becomes enveloped in more and more impenetrable veils, which hide it from men's sight and make it extremely difficult to discover. This is why we find everywhere, under various symbols, the same theme of something that has been lost-at least to all appearances and as far as the outer world is concerned-and that those who aspire to true knowledge must rediscover; but it is also said that what is thus hidden will become visible again at the end of the cycle, which, because of the continuity binding all things together, will coincide with the beginning of a new cycle."

"We have in fact entered upon the last phase of the Kali-Yuga, the darkest period of this 'dark age', the state of dissolution from which it is impossible to emerge otherwise than by a cataclysm, since it is not a mere readjustment that is necessary at such a stage, but a complete renovation. Disorder and confusion prevail in every domain and have been carried to a point far surpassing all that has been known previously, so that, issuing from the West, they now threaten to invade the whole world; we know full well that their triumph can never be other than apparent and transitory, but such are the proportions which it has reached, that it would appear to be the sign of the gravest of all the crises through which mankind has passed in the course of its present cycle."

"At the present time we are in a cycle of transition, when, as a transition period should indicate, everything in philosophy, religion and society is changing. In a transition period the full and complete figures and rules respecting cycles are not given out to a generation which elevates money above all thoughts and scoffs at the spiritual view of man and nature."

"We may conclude that the older and original version of the Era of the Seven Rsis commenced with the Seven Rsis in Krttika in 6676 BC, used a total of 28 Naksatras, and placed the start of the Kali Yuga in 3102 BC. This version was in use in northern India from at least the 4th century BC, as witnessed by the statements of Greek and Roman writers; it was also the version used by Vrddha Garga, at around the start of the Christian era."

"First, let us observe the "Evils of the Kali Age" in Pargiter: "There will be Yavanas here by reason of religious feeling, or ambition, or plunder... Massacring women and children and killing one another, kings will enjoy the earth at the end of the Kali age. Kings of continual upstart races, falling as soon as they arise, will exist in succession through Fate. They will be destitute of righteousness, affection and wealth. Mingled with them will be Ārya and Mleccha folk everywhere...""

"In Kali-yuga vice increases to such a point that at the termination of the yuga the Supreme Lord Himself appears as the Kalki avatara, vanquishes the demons, saves His devotees, and commences another Satya-yuga."

"It would be more correct to say that the cycle of Kali Yuga is approaching its end on our planet and that we are now going through a transitory stage. Satya Yuga must begin with the affirmation of the sixth race, individual groups of which are already appearing on Earth."

"Long ago, it was said, "Blessed are the obstacles, by them we grow." Thus, also in the most ancient Hindu scriptures it is said that the Kali Yuga is particularly useful for spiritual perfectment, and that which in the Satya Yuga could only be achieved through hundreds of thousands of incarnations can be attained in Kali Yuga in a few lives... But, of course, here as ever, only strong spirits who love to overcome difficulties are particularly successful, whereas lukewarm ones, who choose the easiest and irresponsible path, are destined to hard toil, which will finally lead them to a most difficult path. Therefore, profoundly just and scientific are the words from the Apocalypse, "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.""

"Maitreya corresponds to the Kalki Avatar in Hinduism (the "White Horse Avatar" — see the Revelation of St. John), and to the Messiahs of all nations..."

"The dark forces proceed in a united front, hounded by fear of their approaching weakening. The year 1942 marks the end of the Black Age; our planet will enter a new, better epoch. Although the effects of the Black Age will still tag along, the bright sowings already begin to produce sprouts under the beneficial rays of new combinations of the luminaries; and the sowers of darkness will begin to suffer defeat. At present, these sowers are reinforced by heavy cosmic currents throughout the whole world. This is why it is so essential for all those who know about the extraordinary moment to guard unity, because it will defend them from many attacks. Unity is the best shield for the health. (11 February 1938)"

"The aim of the Ahrimanic powers is to prevent...development... to harden and freeze up the earth, to shape it in such a way that, together with the earth, man remains an earthbound creature. He becomes hardened... and continues to live in the future ages of the world as a kind of statue of his past... The earth could not reach its goal if the Ahrimanic powers were to gain the victory, if man were alienated from his beginnings, from the powers who supported him at the beginning of his evolution. Outwardly, the human being would develop in a way entirely in keeping with the earthly sphere, but by suppressing his innate disposition, which must lead him beyond the earth. The Ahrimanic powers could not touch man while the intellect was still rooted in the spiritual through an old inheritance, as was the case during the past three or four centuries. But this has changed since the beginning of the 20th century. The ancient Indian wisdom knew this, and fixed the end of the 19th century as the end of the “Dark Age,” of Kali-Yuga. Thus it had an intimation of a new age. This new age was to indicate that from the beginning of the 20th century, our deepest concern should no longer be that of clinging to an old spiritual inheritance, but of absorbing the new light, the pure light, in our earthly life."

"In this world-historic moment it is as though we could behold the deeds of those who lived upon earth before the end of Kali-Yuga, in the 1880's and 90's. That which was then enacted among men on earth, has now been received by Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. Yet never was the spiritual contrast-of-light so great as it is to-day, in the realm of these spiritual facts. In the 1880's one could look upward and see how the people of the Revolutionary period of the middle of the 19th century, were received as to their deeds by Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim. But as one looked, a kind of darkling cloud settled over the middle of the 19th century. What one then saw passing into the realm of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, lighted up only a very little."

"The closing quarter of the 19th century was an extremely important and crucial period in humanity’s history and evolution. Three great cycles all intersected at the same time, a very rare and uncommon occurrence. The first 5,000 year cycle of the Kali Yuga was due to draw to a close between late 1897 and early 1898. The Age of Pisces was rapidly fading out and the New Age of Aquarius was to gradually begin its 2,155 year course from the dawning of the new century in 1900."

"According to Manu a child who is born of lust is not an Aryan. The child whose very conception and whose death is according to the rules of the Vedas, such is an Aryan. Yes, and less of these Aryan children are being produced in every country, and the result is the mass of evil which we call Kali Yuga."

"O thou foremost of all speakers, O Muni of Bhrigu's race, that which we have heard from thee about the destruction and re-birth of all things at the end of the Yuga, is, indeed, full of wonder! I am filled with curiosity, however, in respect of what may happen in the Kali age. When morality and virtue will be at an end, what will remain... tell me all in detail, O Muni, for all that thou narratest is varied and delightful...(Section CLXXXIX, p. 387)"

"Thus addressed, that foremost of Munis began his discourse... listen to me as I narrate the future history of the world during the sinful age. O bull of the Bharata race, in the Krita age, everything was free from deceit and guile and avarice and covetousness; and morality like a bull was among men, with all the four legs complete... (Section CLXXXIX, p. 387)"

"In the dark age (of Kali)... morality mixed with three parts of sin liveth by the side of men... men in general will deceive their fellows... And men with false reputation of learning will... cause truth to be contracted and concealed. And in consequence of the shortness of their lives they will not be able to acquire much knowledge. And in consequence of the littleness of their knowledge, they will have no wisdom."

"Covetousness and avarice will overwhelm them all. And wedded to avarice and wrath and ignorance and lust men will entertain animosities towards one another...(Section CLXXXIX, p. 387)"

"And the lowest orders of men will rise to the position of the intermediate ones, and those in intermediate stations will, without doubt, descend to the level of the lowest ones..."

"Even they that are always observant of vows, will become covetous... People will become atheists and thieves... the kings of the earth, with hearts wedded to sin without knowledge and always boastful of their wisdom, will challenge one another... (Section CLXXXIX, p. 388)"

"And the Kshatriyas [military caste] also towards the end of such a period will become the thorns of the earth. And filled with avarice and swelling with pride and vanity... And attacking and repeating their attacks upon the good and the honest, and feeling no pity for the latter... the Kshatriyas will, O Bharata, rob these of their wives and wealth... (Section CLXXXIX, p. 388)"

"And no one will ask for a girl (for purposes of marriage) and no one will give away a girl (for such purposes), but the girls will themselves choose their lords, when the end of the Yuga comes..."

"And the kings of the earth with souls steeped in ignorance, and discontented with what they have, will at such a time, rob their subjects by every means in their power..., the right hand will deceive the left; and the left, the right...."

"And men with false reputation of learning will contract Truth and the old will betray the senselessness of the young, and the young will betray the dotage of the old. (Section CLXXXIX, p. 388)"

"And cowards will have the reputation of bravery and the brave will be cheerless like cowards..."

"Men will cease to trust one another... full of avarice... sin will increase and prosper, while virtue will fade and cease to flourish. And Brahmanas and Kshatriyas and Vaisyas will disappear, leaving, O king, no remnants of their orders... jealousy and malice will fill the world. And no one will, at that time, be a giver (of wealth or anything else) in respect to any one else... (Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"Men will... become omnivorous without distinction, and cruel in all their acts... urged by avarice, men will, at that time, deceive one another when they sell and purchase. And when the end of the Yuga comes, urged by their very dispositions..."

"Men will act cruelly, and speak ill of one another... * people will, without compunction, destroy trees and gardens. (Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"And men will be filled with anxiety as regards the means of living... overwhelmed with covetousness, men will kill... and enjoy the possessions of their victims... And when men become fierce and destitute of virtue and carnivorous and addicted to intoxicating drinks, then doth the Yuga come to an end... (Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"Friends and relatives and kinsmen will perform friendly offices for the sake of the wealth only that is possessed by a person..."

"When the end of the Yuga comes, men abandoning the countries and directions and towns and cities of their occupation, will seek for new ones, one after another. And people will wander over the earth, uttering, 'O father, O son', and such other frightful and rending cries. (Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"And when those terrible times will be over, the creation will begin anew. And men will again be created and distributed..and about that time, in order that men may increase, Providence, according to its pleasure, will once more become propitious... And the clouds will commence to shower seasonably, and the stars and stellar conjunctions will become auspicious. And the planets, duly revolving in their orbits, will become exceedingly propitious. And all around, there will be prosperity and abundance and health and peace....(Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"And commissioned by Time, a Brahmana of the name of Kalki will take his birth. And he will glorify Vishnu and possess great energy, great intelligence, and great prowess.... vehicles and weapons, and warriors and arms, and coats of mail will be at his disposal as soon as he will think of them. And he will be the king of kings, and ever victorious with the strength of virtue. And he will restore order and peace in this world crowded with creatures and contradictory in its course. (Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"And that blazing Brahmana of mighty intellect... will be the Destroyer of all, and will inaugurate a new Yuga. And surrounded by the Brahmanas, that Brahmana will exterminate all the mlecchas wherever those low and despicable persons may take refuge. Markandeya continued, Having exterminated the thieves and robbers... and having established anew the blessed rectitude ordained by the Self-create, Kalki, of sacred deeds and illustrious reputation... the people of this earth will imitate his conduct... there will be prosperity everywhere (on earth). And as the countries of the earth will one after another be subjugated... (Section CLXL, p. 392)"

"Vaisampayana continued, "Hearing these words of Markandeya, the royal head of the Kurus... spoke... 'O muni, if I am to protect my subjects, to what course of conduct should I adhere? And how should I behave so that I may not fall away from the duties of my order?' Markandeya, hearing this, answered, 'Be merciful to all creatures, and devoted to their good. Love all creatures, scorning none. Be truthful in speech, humble, with passions under complete control, and always devoted to the protection of thy people. Practise virtue and renounce sin, and worship thou the manes and the god and whatever thou mayst have done from ignorance or carelessness, wash them off and expiate them by charity. (Section CLXL, p. 393)"

"Renouncing pride and vanity, be thou possessed to humility and good behaviour. And subjugating the whole earth, rejoice thou and let happiness be thine. This is the course of conduct that accords with virtue. I have recited to thee all that was and all that will be regarded as virtuous. There is nothing appertaining to the past or the future that is unknown to thee. Therefore, O son, take not to heart this present calamity of thine. They that are wise are never overwhelmed when they are persecuted by Time. O thou of mighty arms, the very dwellers of heaven cannot rise superior to Time. Time afflicts all creatures. (Section CLXL, p. 393)"

"It begins about ten days before the full moon of the month Phalgun (February-March), but is usually only observed for the last three or four days, terminating with the full moon. This is the spring festival of the Hindus. In the spring season all the trees are filled with sweet smelling flowers. They all proclaim the glory and everlasting beauty of God. They inspire you with hope, joy and a new life, and stir you on to find out the creator and the Indweller, who is hiding Himself in these forms."

"This same scene is enacted every year to remind people that those who love God shall be saved, and they that torture the devotee of God shall be reduced to ashes. When Holika was burnt,people abused her and sang the glories of the Lord and of His great devotee, Prahlad. In imitation of that, people even today use abusive language, but unfortunately forget to sing the praises of the Lord and His devotee! In North India, people play joyfully with coloured water. The uncle sprinkles coloured water on his nephew. The niece applies coloured powder on her aunt’s face. Brothers and sisters and cousins play with one another. Huge bundles of wood are gathered and burnt at night, and everywhere one hears shouts of “Holi-ho! Holi-ho!” People stand in the streets and sprinkle coloured water on any man who passes by, be he a rich man or an officer. There is no restriction on this day. It is like the April Fool’s Day of the Europeans. People compose and sing special Holi songs."

"Aurangzib's order to the subahdar of Gujrat, 20 Nov. 1665, is clear :—“In the city and parganahs of Ahmadabad (i.e., Gujrat), the Hindus following their superstitious customs light lamps in the night of diwali, and during the days of holi open their mouths in obscene speech and kindle the holi bonfire in chahlas and bazars, throwing into the fire the faggot of all people that they can seize by force or theft. It is ordered that in bazars there should be no illumination at diwali, nobody’s faggot should be taken by force or theft and flung into the holi bonfire, and no obscene language used." (Mirat, 276.) It was really a police regulation as regards holi, and an act of bigotry only in connection with diwali"

"The processions are liable to meet in the street, and the lees of the wine of the Hindoos, or the red powder which is substituted for them, is liable to fall upon the tombs of the others. Hindoos pass on, for- getting in their saturnalian joy all distinctions of age, sex, or religion, their clothes and persons besmeared with the red powder, which is moistened and thrown from all kinds of machines over friend and foe ; while meeting these come the Muhammadans, clothed in their green mourning, with gloomy downcast looks, beating their breasts, ready to kill themselves, and too anxious for an excuse to kill any- body else. Let but one drop of the lees of joy fall upon the image of the tomb as it passes, and a hundred swords fly from their scabbards ; many an innocent person falls ; and woe be to the town in which the magistrate is not at hand with his police and military force. Proudly conscious of their power, the magistrates refuse to prohibit one class from laughing because the other happens to be weeping ; and the Hindoos on such occasions laugh the more heartily to let the world see that they are free to do so."

"The Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707) first intervened in the affairs of the region in 1665, when he prohibited celebrations of Holi and Diwali, and cremation of the dead on the banks of the Yamuna. The Italian traveller, Niccolao Manucci (1638-1717) noted the ban on Holi, “He hindered the Hindus from enjoying their merry-making or carnival ... The time of this festival or carnival falls ordinarily on the moon of March”."

"A farman of Aurangzeb, dated 20th November 1665, contained several discriminatory regulations against Hindus. It stated that on .... on Holi “they open their tongue with foul speech,” and light the Holi fire in every chakla and bazaar. Mughal officers were ordered to make sure that Hindus did not light the bazaars on Diwali, and did not throw sticks into the Holi fire."

"It was mostly a city of priests and pilgrims many of whom had come from outside for the Holi festival of the springtime rejoicings which had been celebrated two days earlier. Jahan Khan had the fullest opportunity for a literal execution of his master's command “to slay and plunder”. His fury had been further enflamed by the resistance of the previous night and he was not in a mood to show mercy. He ordered an indiscriminate massacre of the people, and the Holi was played afresh with the deep red blood of the Hindus. In addition to his carnage, the city was set at fire and it burnt like a huge bonfire."

"The fatwa volumes display almost a paranoia about the tilak. Mufti Kifayatullah’s general position is that it is the mark of kufr, but he relents to the extent that he makes the outcome depend on intention and circumstance. Hindus and Muslims are in a procession together; supporters of the cause put chandan tilaks on the participants, including some Muslims: are the Muslims guilty of kufr?, he is asked. Is their nikah with their wives terminated? ... To put chandan and marks on the forehead is the special national and religious characteristic of the Hindus, he says. It was obligatory for those Muslims, he rules, to abstain from this. But, he adds with his usual moderation in regard to specific transgressors, because we do not know whether the chandan was put on those Muslims with their willing approval, one cannot decree that those on whom chandan was put are apostates or kafirs or that their nikah has become void. However, he concludes, they should do taubah and abstain from such actions in the future."

"The Barelvis are predictably much more stern. ... the Barelvis taunted Mufti Kifayatullah, Maulana Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal and the Deobandis in general on the ground, among others, that by involving Muslims into a campaign in which ... kafirs put tilak and chandan on the foreheads of the believers—these ulema (though Ahmad Riza Khan would never use such a respectable expression for them) had deliberately ensnared Muslims in kufr. Tilak, the Fatawa-i-Rizvia declares, is a way of worshipping Mahadev and is kufr. And, it declares with great emphasis, to acquiesce in kufr even for a second is as much kufr as it is to consent to kufr for a hundred years. By wiping off the tilak the kufr which has taken place is not erased: you must embrace Islam again, you must do nikah again; the reason for this is that a person who having bowed to Mahadev raises his head is in the same position as a person who lies prostrate before Mahadev all day long. [...] To put marks on the forehead—as is done by well-wishers and organizers at such processions—is permanently haram; in fact, there is the apprehension of kufr in doing so. One who does such things becomes a fasiq, a sinner, and must do taubah. [...]Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan predictably is not satisfied with reciprocity. He does not countenance consideration being shown even formally for the religious sentiments of the non-believers—active dissociation, hostile spurning are enjoined, that is his tenor. When a procession bearing idols is brought to or passes their house and the persons thank the processionists, when they allow the processionists to put a tilak mark on them, when they join the Hindus in shouting ‘jai’ to the false god—all of them and all those who joined such a procession are close to kufr, declares the Fatawa-i-Rizvia. More specifically, those who had the tilak put on them, those who joined Hindus in saying that ‘jai’ have become kafirs, it declares. Their women are out of their nikah. Those who did not do these things but joined the procession have come close to kufr. The places of worship of the kafirs, it declares, are places of the Devil. To join in the prayers of kafirs, to go to their places of worship is kufr. And to think lightly of kufr is also kufr. ... To allow tilak to be put is definitely kufr, the Maulana (Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi) reiterates, and against Islam. The zunnar is after all a thread which remains covered under clothes, he points out. But this tilak is a mark, and a mark on the face, and in the face on the forehead—from where it proclaims at all times, ‘We are kafirs.’ Quoting authorities, the Maulana declares, the difference between Hindu and Muslim is the difference between kufr and Islam. And that, the Maulana declares, cannot be erased till the Muslim remains Muslim, and the kafir, kafir..."

"“The Indian Vedic fire altar seemed to have borrowed its construction principles from the Indus civilization”, all while “the very idea of the fire cult was Indo-Iranian”."

"This falls neatly into place if we equate proto-Harappan with Indo-Iranian: the idea of a fire cult was taken along by the emigrating Iranians, while the Indo-Aryans stayed on in the Indus-Saraswati region to develop their altars’ distinct Indian style of construction.... At any rate, how deeply had these Aryan fire-worshippers not penetrated the Harappan civilization, that they had installed their altars in patrician mansions of three of the largest Harappan cities, all three moreover very far from the northwestern border? Indeed, in the Harappan cities on the Indus itself, to my knowledge at least, no such fire-altars have yet been found; if they were imported from outside, it seems they came from the east, which would bring us back to Shrikant Talageri’s thesis that IE originated in the Ganga basin and entered the Harappan area from there. Leaving aside this question of ultimate origins, the very fact of the Vedic fire-altars in the Indus-Saraswati culture is a serious problem for the AIT."

"These three contexts suggest that fire-rituals formed a part of the religious life of the town, at a civic, domestic and popular level... They are highly suggestive of an Indo-Iranian, if not more specifically Indo-Aryan, element in the culture of the period covered by these excavations."

"First of all, many Indian tribals do practise linga worship. Pupul Jayakar (whose work is admittedly coloured by AIT assumptions) situates both Shiva and the liNga within the culture of a number of tribes, e.g. the Gonds: “There are, in the archaic Gond legend of Lingo Pen, intimations of an age when Mahadeva or Shiva, the wild and wondrous god of the autochthons, had no human form but was a rounded stone, a lingam, washed by the waters of the river Narmada. Even to this day there are areas of the Narmada river basin where every stone in the waters is said to be a Shiva lingam: ‘(…) What was Mahadev doing? He was swimming like a rolling stone, he had no hands, no feet. He remained like the trunk (of a tree).’ [Then, Bhagwan makes him come out of the water and grants him a human shape.]” Till today, Shiva or a corresponding tribal god is often venerated in the shape of such natural-born, unsculpted, longish but otherwise shapeless stones."

"Every word embodies a spectrum rather than a single value. For example, the word lingam is often misunderstood, because it is collapsed into only one value/meaning that is taken to be its essence. Incorrectly translated as 'phallus', this has become lingam's normative usage in Western discourse. However, lingam's range of meanings includes sign, mark, spot, token, badge, emblem, and even gender. In the proposition, 'there is fire because there is smoke', the smoke is the linga. Broadly, it indicates a sign or meaning referring to something other than itself. The American flag, Statue of Liberty and national anthem are all linga for America, yet they are not redundant, because they represent different aspects of America. The logo of a company is its lingam, and there may be several linga for the same entity."

"This leads us to the question of the Indus religion. Many scholars ,both foreign and Indian, are very reluctant to find any trace of modern Hindu rituals and beliefs in the finds which have been interpreted as evidence of Indus religion. Two facts, however, cannot be wished away – regrettably from the point of view of this group of people. One is the indubitable presence of Siva in the form of linga-like stones found both at Mohenjodaro and Harappa, a distinctively phallic stone column at Dholavira, a seated ithyphallic stone figure from the same site, the famous ‘Siva-Pasupati’ figure on a seal, and the terracotta representation of a Siva-linga set in ‘Yoni-patta’ at Kalibangan."

"Finally, if a myth or religious custom is attested in India but not in the other IE cultures, this need not mean that the Indians have borrowed it from “pre-Aryan natives” or so. It can also mean that the other Indo-Europeans have lost what was originally a pan-IE heirloom. All of them have started by going through the same bottleneck, passing through Afghanistan, immediately plunging themselves into a very different climate from India’s permanent summer, so that they had to adopt a very different lifestyle. And as they moved on, the difference only got bigger. Of practically all IE myths attested in some IE cultures, we know that they have been lost in other (generally in most) IE cultures; it is statistically to bib expected that some myths have survived only in the Hindu tradition. And because of the full survival of Pagan religion in India plus the long centuries of literacy, it is in fact to be expected that a much higher percentage than the statistical average has only survived in India. So, probably, some myths attested only in Hinduism are purely IE, and if they are also attested in a non-IE neighbouring culture, the possibility remains that the latter has borrowed it from the Indo-Europeans."

"Some NRI-PIO organizations created in the 21st century explicitly adopt the Voice of India line. One is the Hindu Human Rights group in London... Their answer to the humourless RSS and its equally humourless secularist critics is to "put the fun back into fundamentalism". The HRR publishes an on-line paper and occasionally stages demonstrations on matters of Hindu concern, such as human rights in Bangladesh. Interestingly, it has also joined hands several times with Muslim groups on matters of common interests or against common enemies. On the challenge of the Christian missions, it has monitored and promoted scholarly studies, outgrowing the simplistic Hindutva positions current in India and the diaspora, which tend to confuse "Christian" with "white", as if the world and the Churches hadn't changed since decolonization. It interacts critically with the official pan-Hindu platforms and with the British multiculturalism authorities. These sometimes solicit its views, knowing that it represents a really existing and growing segment of opinion in the British Hindu community. Typically, the HHR sometimes cooperates with Muslim organizations on matters of common concern, all while staying away from the usual Hindu platitude that "all religions essentially say the same thing". Human understanding does not require suspension of the mental power of discrimination."

"“in parts of their careers, Arjuna and Odysseus show similarities so numerous and detailed that they must be cognate figures, sharing an origin in the proto-hero of an oral proto-narrative. (…) Either the proto-journey was like the Greek and contained nothing relating to yoga, in which case the yogic aspect of the Sanskrit story was an innovation that developed in the Indian branch of the tradition. Or the proto journey was like the Sanskrit and was quasi-yogic or proto-yogic in character, in which case Greek epic tradition largely or wholly eliminated that aspect of the story. I shall argue for the second scenario, claiming both that the proto-narrative shared certain features with yoga and that the telling of such a story makes it likely that there already existed ritual practices ancestral to yoga. (…) I argue that some significant and fairly precisely identifiable features of yoga go back to the culture of those who told the proto-narrative (…) may well have been proto-Indo-European speakers.” ... “it is a priori quite likely that the account of the proto-hero's journey served as a myth explaining and justifying ritual practices ancestral to yoga as we know it.”"

"Then the king went along with Mahamada (Muhammad), the preceptor of mleccha-dharma, and his followers to the great god, Lord Shiva, situated in the desert."

"Suta Goswami said: After hearing the king’s prayers, Lord Shiva said: O king Bhojaraja, you should go to the place called Mahakakshvara, that land is called Vahika and now is being contaminated by the mlecchas. In that terrible country there no longer exists dharma. There was a mystic demon named Tripura (Tripurasura), whom I have already burnt to ashes, he has come again by the order of Bali. He has no origin but he achieved a benediction from me. His name is Mahamada (Muhammad) and his deeds are like that of a ghost. Therefore, O king, you should not go to this land of the evil ghost. By my mercy your intelligence will be purified. Hearing this the king came back to his country and Mahamada (Muhammad) came with them to the bank of the river Sindhu. He was expert in expanding illusion, so he said to the king very pleasingly: O great king, your god has become my servant. Just see, as he eats my remnants, so I will show you. The king became surprised when he saw this just before them. Then in anger Kalidasa rebuked Mahamada (Muhammad) “O rascal, you have created an illusion to bewilder the king, I will kill you, you are the lowest...""

"That city is known as their site of pilgrimage, a place which was Madina or free from intoxication. Having a form of a ghost (Bhuta), the expert illusionist Mahamada (Muhammad) appeared at night in front of king Bhojaraja and said: O king, your religion is of course known as the best religion among all. Still I am going to establish a terrible and demoniac religion by the order of the Lord . The symptoms of my followers will be that they first of all will cut their genitals, have no shikha, but having beard, be wicked, make noise loudly and eat everything. They should eat animals without performing any rituals. This is my opinion. They will perform purificatory act with the musala or a pestle as you purify your things with kusha. Therefore, they will be known as musalman, the corrupters of religion. Thus the demoniac religion will be founded by me. After having heard all this the king came back to his palace and that ghost (Muhammad) went back to his place. .... The musalman people were kept on the other side of the river Sindhu."

"The Bhavisya Purana (139, 13-15) records, "contrary to the Vedic practices, your son will become famous by name of Mag. His name will be Jarathushtra Mag - and will bring fame to the dynasty. His descendents will worship fire and will be known by the name Mag (Saka), and being Soma worshippers (Magadha Sakadvipi) will be known as Mag Brahmins.""

"Salute your enemies. The word “namaste” means “I bow to the divine in you.” Having respect for your enemies will help you learn from their strengths and be more objective about your own weaknesses. So salute your enemies. You may also find yourself with fewer of them if you do."

""Namaste means the light in me sees the light in you. When we teach it in school it's a greeting in India. It's a greeting like hello. We tell them that the goodness in me sees the goodness in you."

"If you've ever attended a yoga class, you know that every practice ends with the instructor putting their hands together in prayer position in front of their chest or their third eye (between your two eyes) and saying Namaste... In English, Namaste translates to "I bow to you" or "The divine in me honors the divine in you." Francesca de Luca, a certified yoga teacher in Rome, Italy, says that when you say Namaste, you connect to your divine soul. "From that 'sacred space,' you bow to the divine in the person in front of you," she says. “When we talk about the divine, we aren't referring to something religious, but to the most pure or elevated part of ourselves—to our inner light, to our spirit,” de Luca explains."

"With the number of coronavirus cases climbing.. in the UK, Prince Charles seems to have shifted to a “desi” way of greeting people while ditching physical contact. A video of the 71-year-old greeting people with an Indian-style “namaste” has gone viral on social media... we Indians told to do this to the world many many years ago. Now just a class on ‘how to do namaste properly’,” tweeted Indian Forest Service officer Parveen Kaswan while sharing the video of Charles... Prior to Charles, a picture of French President Emmanuel Macron folding hands while greeting people was shared... along with a caption that read, “President Macron has decided to greet all his counterparts with a namaste, a graceful gesture that he has retained from his India visit in 2018.”"

"Often used in yoga, namaste involves uniting the hands in a prayerful manner, holding them close to the heart and nodding gently. Mahatma Gandhi, the renowned disciple of nonviolence, defined the sentiment behind namaste: “I honor the place in you where the entire Universe resides. I honor the place in you of Light, Love, Truth, Peace and Wisdom. I honor the place where, when you are in that place and I am in that place, there is only one of us.”"

"Mahatma Gandhi, the renowned disciple of nonviolence, defined the sentiment behind namaste: “I honor the place in you where the entire Universe resides. I honor the place in you of Light, Love, Truth, Peace and Wisdom. I honor the place where, when you are in that place and I am in that place, there is only one of us.”"

"Mahatma Gandhi once explained the meaning of Namaste to Albert Einstein – “I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you the light, love, truth, peace and wisdom.""

"Centuries old traditional wisdom and ritual of 1.3 billion Indians ie being acknowledged by the world today. After the success of Namaste Trump, it’s time for Namaste Benjamin Netanyahu and Namaste Angela Merkel for equally recommending the gesture, followed by Anupam Kher and Salam Namaste by Salman Khan. In the tough Corona times, non-contact greeting Namaste is-in, hugs, kisses, high-fives are totally-out. Namaste is respectful, its safe distance, hygienic, friendly and simple to practice and followed by everyone. Namaste is a connecting thread, it’s a bond and feeling of oneness across nooks and corners of India.... Flavours of Namaste vary with in the diversity of India from Namaskar in Hindi speaking North India to Namaskaramulu in Telegu, while Namaskara or Namaskaragalu in Kannada. Tamilians prefer Vanakkam and Malayali’s say Namaskaram. In East Indian states it is called Nomoshkar in Bengali and Nomoskar in Assamese. Not just Hindus, but Sikhs also greet everyone by folding their hands, however, their greeting is called ‘Sat Sri Akal’. Alternatively, people also use other similar forms called – Pranam, Ram-Ram, Sita-Ram, Radhey-Radhey, Satshriakal, Jai Jinedra and Assalam Walekum and many more. They all mean the same as Namaste – acknowledging the person before any conversation or transaction beings... Like the Yoga, Namaste can surely be next Indian cultural diplomacy and soft-power gift ready to be exported to the world."

"In a Covid-19 world, handshakes are out and ‘Namaste’ is in! In order to ensure social distancing, many people, especially world leaders, are now opting for the Indian greeting of Namaste rather than going for a handshake... A combination of two Sanskrit words, Namaste means 'bowing to you' and does not involve skin contact and allows people to maintain a distance."

"A recent viral video of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh's interaction with Russian officials... has raked immense praises from Indians, thanks to yet another Namastey! ... In February, 'Kem Chho Trump', the mega event for Donald Trump in Gujarat, was named 'Namaste, President Trump'... Indian rapper Baba Sehgal in one his recent raps, Namaste... spread awareness about the COVID-19 virus... "So guys let's do this namaste and beat this corona." Sehgal then grooves to energetic beats while folding his hands in a 'namaste' style... In April, a video conferencing service going by the name ‘Say Namaste’ started doing rounds on WhatsApp groups and Twitter circles... Say Namaste was a nod towards the present times of avoiding physical contact..."

"Bullets for the kar sevaks, biryani for the Kashmiri militants."

"The Hindus have been so much humiliated and insulted since 1947 that sometimes it seems doubtful whether they are living in their own country adding that in Kashmir & Punjab Hindu blood is being shed so much so that even in Ayodhya unarmed Kar Sevaks including the Sadhus were brutally killed."

"I regret giving orders to shoot kar sevaks at Ayodhya. My decision to order firing at kar sevaks was to save Muslim minorities. This decision was needed to keep the faith of Muslims in this country intact.”"

"There is something profoundly worrying in the response of what might be called the secular establishment to the massacre in Godhra. ... There is no suggestion that the karsewaks started the violence ... there has been no real provocation at all ... And yet, the sub-text to all secular commentary is the same: the karsewaks had it coming to them. Basically, they condemn the crime; but blame the victims ... Why then are these poor karsewaks an exception? Why have we de- humanised them to the extent that we don't even see the incident as the human tragedy that it undoubtedly was ... I know the arguments well because—like most journalists—I have used them myself. And I still argue that they are often valid and necessary. But there comes a time when this kind of rigidly ‘secularist’ construct not only goes too far; it also becomes counter-productive. When everybody can see that a trainload of Hindus was massacred by a Muslim mob, you gain nothing by blaming the murders on the VHP 19 or arguing that the dead men and women had it coming to them. Not only does this insult the dead (What about the children? Did they also have it coming?), but it also insults the intelligence of the reader... There is one question we need to ask ourselves: have we become such prisoners of our own rhetoric that even a horrific massacre becomes nothing more than occasion for Sangh Parivar-bashing?"

"This evidence from the Zenda Avesta as to the meaning of the word Varna leaves no doubt that it originally meant a class holding to a particular faith and it had nothing to do with colour or complexion."

"The true conclusion to be drawn from the Rig Veda is not that the Varna system did not exist, but that there were only three Varnas and that Shudras were not regarded as a fourth and a separate Varna. The second piece of evidence I rely on is the testimony of the two Brahmanas, the Satapatha and the Taittiriya. Both speak of the creation of three Varnas only. They do not speak of the creation of the Shudra as a separate."

"What is the difference between Caste and Varna as understood by the Mahatma? I find none. As defined by the Mahatma, Varna becomes merely a different name for Caste for the simple reason that it is the same in essence—namely pursuit of ancestral calling. Far from making progress the Mahatma has suffered retrogression. By putting this interpretation upon the Vedic conception of Varna he has really made ridiculous what was sublime. While I reject the Vedic Varnavyavastha for reasons given in the speech I must admit that the Vedic theory of Varna as interpreted by Swami Dayanand and some others is a sensible and an inoffensive thing. It did not admit birth as a determining factor in fixing the place of an individual in society. It only recognized worth. The Mahatma’s view of Varna not only makes nonsense of the Vedic Varna but it makes it an abominable thing. Varna and Caste are two very different concepts. Varna is based on the principle of each according to his worth-while Caste is based on the principle of each according to his birth. The two are as distinct as chalk is from cheese. In fact there is an antithesis between the two. If the Mahatma believes as he does in every one following his or her ancestral calling, then most certainly he is advocating the Caste System and that in calling it the Varna System he is not only guilty of terminologicale inexactitude, but he is causing confusion worse confounded. I am sure that all his confusion is due to the fact that the Mahatma has no definite and clear conception as to what is Varna and what is Caste and as to the necessity of either for the conservation of Hinduism."

"It has, at any rate, been an extremely consequential mistake. That white Aryan invaders defeated black aboriginal resisters has been taken over by numerous authors, including many who had no ideological agenda but naïvely lapped it up. It underpinned a second and similar mistranslation, viz. that the Sanskrit term for “caste”, varṇa, means “colour” in the sense of “skin colour” In fact, varṇa means “one in a spectrum”: a colour in the visual spectrum, a class in the social spectrum, but also a letter in the sound spectrum (hence varṇamāla for “alphabet”). The whole edifice of the “racial Aryan”, notorious through its Nazi application but equally popular in British colonial discourse and among its Indian copycats, was based on nothing better than a simple mistranslation... Actually, jati has all the meanings which the word “race” had in the 18th-19th century: kinship group, nation, race, species. Thus, manava-jati means “the human race”, or more accurately, “the human species”. And varna, “colour”, has nothing to do with skin colour, but refers to symbolic colours allotted to the elements, the cardinal directions, and likewise also to the layers of society... Moreover, “Colour” might even not be the original, Vedic meaning of varNa. Reformist Hindus eager to disentangle the institution of varNa from any doctrines of genetic determinism, derive it from the root var-, “choose” (as in svayamvara, “[a girl’s] own choice [of a husband]”), with the implication that one’s varNa is not a matter of birth but of personal choice. This seems to tally with Stanley Insler’s rendering, in his classic translation of The Gathas of Zarathustra, of the corresponding Avestan term varanA as “preference” (which other translators sometimes stretch to mean “conviction”, “religious affiliation”). But we believe that the root meaning is even simpler.... In the Rg-Veda, the word varNa usually (17 out of 22 times) refers to the “lustre” (i.e. “one’s own typical light”, a meaning obviously related to “colour”) of specified gods: Usha, Agni, Soma, etc. As for the remaining cases, in 3:34:5 and 9:71:2 it indicates the lustrous colour of the sky at dawn. In 1:104:2 and 2:12:4, reference is only to quelling the varNa of the DAsas, - meaning “the Dasas’ luster” (in the first case, Ralph Griffith translates it as “the fury of the DAsa”). Finally, in the erotic Rg-Vedic hymn 4:179, verse 6, where Agastya, in doing the needful with his wife Lopamudra to obtain progeny, is said to satisfy “both varNas”, this is understood by some as referring quite plainly to the two families of husband and wife, who rejoice in the arrival of a grandchild. Since the hymn mentions the conflict between sexuality and asceticism, others interpret it as meaning “both paths (of worldliness and world-renunciation)”. At any rate, there is simply no question of reading a racist meaning into it."

"In my opinion, the semantic development has passed through varna, "colour", in the sense of "one in a spectrum", with the spectrum of colours serving as a metaphor for other spectrums, e.g. varnamala, literally "garland of colours", meaning "garland of sounds", "sound spectrum", "alphabet". Society too is a spectrum, viz. a spectrum of functions or varnas."

"[Trautmann likewise points out that there is no contextual evidence supporting the nontraditional interpretation of varna, “colour, caste” as “skin colour”:] “On the evidence of use it appears that varna here simply means ‘category, social group’.”"

"G.C. Pande, the noted Sanskrit scholar, says that only the Dharmashastra in the post-Vedic period started to pervert the original idea of varna by conflating it with jati. And this period is when the ritual superiority of the brahmins got converted into a more or less formal hereditary right of priesthood."

"Discussing the early Vedic period, V.M. Apte says that the Rig Veda refers to the varnas in a way that cannot be considered discriminatory or hierarchical. He concludes that the Brahmins did not constitute an exclusive caste or race and the prerogative of composing hymns and officating at the services of the deities in the age of the Rig Veda was not entirely confined to men of priestly families. Even the other vocations such as being a poet or a physician were more flexible. Apte emphasizes that in the Rig Veda, there is not even a remote hint of prohibitions of inter-dining or intermarrying among the varnas; these are the prohibitions that have been considered the most serious forms of oppression in recent times."

"The case for color as a dominant factor in the development of caste was not supported by the evidence of historical literature, and that it was foreign scholars who had made it so."

"In that connection, the reading of varna, ‘colour, social class’, as referring to skin colour, was upheld as proof of the racial basis of caste. To put this false trail of 19th -century race theory to rest, let us observe here that neither the Rg-Veda nor the Manu Smrti connects varna to skin colour. The term varna, ‘colour’, is used here in the sense of ‘one in a spectrum’, just as the alphabet is called varna-mâla, ‘rosary of colours’, metaphor for ‘spectrum (of sounds)’. So, the varna-vyavasthâ is the ‘colour system’, i.e. the ‘spectrum’ of social functions, the role division in society. Just as the existence of social classes in our society doesn’t imply their endogamous separateness, the Vedic varna-s were not defined as endogamous castes."

"The idea is that all varnas are contained in every individual, instead of every individual being comprised within one of the varnas."

"The four varnas were created by me on the basis of individual character and occupation."

"We are reminded of this famous verse in the Tamil compendium of didactic poetry, Nālaṭiyār: When men speak of ‘good varna’ and ‘bad varna,’ it is a mere figure of speech, and has no real meaning. Not even by possessions, made by ancient glories, but by self-denial, learning, and energy is varna truly determined."

"On the 24th of the Tschet month, a big gathering of people is taken here to celebrate the birthday of Rama, so famous in entire India.”"

"By the impact of the festival of the Rāmanavami, bathing in the Sarayu river, having a darśan of the idol of Lord Rāma and beholding the Janmabhūmi, all they went to the Sāntānaka Loka by planes."

"By the merit of visit to Janmabhūmi, the darśana of the idol of Lord Rāma, bathing in the Sarayū river and the impact of the festival of the Rāmanavamī (the birthday of Rāma)all went to the Santanaka Loka in a plane."

"O best of sages! I made a darśana on the Rāmanavamī day."

"If people fast on the Rāmanavamī day, bathe in the Sarayū and make donation, they are liberated from the bound of birth."

"“Then Mahadeva said to the goddess, “I have told you the advantages of Ayodhya, the Sarayù, the Birthplace, and the day of the Navami. He who hears them, or relates them to others, obtains salvation in the end after having enjoyed all pleasures.”"

"Only by visiting it a man can get rid of staying (frequently) in a womb (i.e. rebirth). There is no need for making charitable gifts, performing penance or sacrifices or undertaking pilgrimages to holy spots. On the Navamī day the man should observe the holy vow. By the power of the holy bath and charitable gifts, he is liberated from the bondage of births."

"He, who fasts on the (Rāma) Navamī, takes bath and makes a donation, is liberated from all perils of birth by having a glance at the Janmasthāna."

"“By evening, we had arrived at Shri Kshetra Ayodhya and stopped at the Kale Rama temple. The festival of Ramnavami (the day Lord Rama was born) was only a few days away and so the city of Ayodhya was milling with some seven to eight lakh pilgrims and holy men. I had never seen so many sadhus and bairagis together. There were also many pilgrims from the south.” (p. 177)"

"The Ramnowmee, or festival commemorating the birth of Rama, fell with the eighth day of the Mohurrum, on the 30th March, 1871. The public part of the Hindoo festival at Bareilly consists in carrying out an idol of Rama to a grove on the outskirts of the city, where the image is washed and adorned with flowers, and, after ceremonial performances, brought back again to the temple. For the going and returning of this procession a route had to be laid down and Police were called in in large numbers to accompany and direct it. Its direction was widely apart from that taken by the Mahomedan processions accompanying the tazias; and as neither sect was allowed to pass through the more crowded thoroughfares of the town, there was no danger of an accidental collision. But the events showed that a portion of the Mahomedan community had resolved at all costs to interrupt the Hindoo festival, to attack the procession and-to plunder the Hindoos in different parts of the city. The procession ‘was a very large one and was accompanied by 4OO Police and several of the District Officers. It started about 2 P. M., and was to return an hour before sunset The grove was quickly reached and the due ceremonies performed. About half an hour afterwards the procession was attacked on its way back, not far from the temple, at a turning in the road. With much difficulty the assailants were beaten off, and the idol brought back without the procession being broken up. But meanwhile the Mahomedan mob, failing in its attack upon the procession, broke into parties and fell back upon the city, intent on rapine and bloodshed."

"The evolution of the centres is a slow and gradual thing, and proceeds in ordered cycles varying according to the ray of a man's Monad. (p. 173) The centres in physical matter are recognised as being simply focal points of energy located on the etheric body, and having a definite use. This use is to act as transmitters of certain forms of energy consciously directed by the... Self, with the intent of driving the physical body (which is not a principle) to fulfil egoic purposes. (p. 1155)."

"Only one in a thousand aspirants is at the stage where he should begin to work with the energy in the centres, and perhaps even this estimate is too optimistic. Better far that the aspirant serves, and loves, and works, and disciplines himself, leaving his centres to develop and unfold more slowly, and therefore, more safely. Unfold they inevitably will, and the slower and safer method is (in the vast majority of cases), the more rapid. Premature unfoldment involves much loss of time, and carries with it often the seeds of prolonged trouble. (p. 590)."

"I teach no mode of awakening the centres, because right impulse, steady reaction to higher impulsions, and the practical recognition of the sources of inspiration, will automatically and safely swing the centres into needed and appropriate activity. This is the sound method of development. It is slower, but leads to no premature development, and produces a rounded unfoldment; it enables the aspirant to become truly the Observer and to know with surety what he is doing; it brings the centres, one by one, to a point of spiritual responsiveness, and then establishes the ordered and cyclic rhythm of a controlled lower nature. (p. 261/2)"

"The word Chakra is Sanskrit, and signifies a wheel. It is also used in various subsidiary, derivative and symbolical senses, just as is its English equivalent; as we might speak of the wheel of fate, so does the Buddhist speak of the wheel of life and death; and he describes that first great sermon in which the Lord Buddha propounded his doctrine as the Dham­machakkappavattana Sutta (chakka being the Pali equivalent for the Sanskrit chakra) which Professor Rhys Davids poetically renders as “to set rolling the royal chariot-wheel of a universal empire of truth and righteousness”. That is exactly the spirit of the meaning which the expression conveys to the Buddhist devotee, though the literal translation of the bare words is “the turning of the wheel of the Law”. The special use of the word chakra with which we are at the moment concerned is its application to a series of wheel-like vortices which exist in the surface of the etheric double of man."

"These seven force-centres are frequently described in Sanskrit literature, in some of the minor Upanishads, in the Puranas and in Tantric works. They are used today by many Indian yogis. A friend acquainted with the inner life of India assures me that he knows of one school in that country which makes free use of the chakras - a school which numbers as its pupils about sixteen thousand people scattered over a large area... It appears also that certain European mystics were acquainted with the chakras. Evidence of this occurs in a book entitled Theosophia Practica by the well-known German mystic Johann Georg Gichtel, a pupil of Jacob Boehme, who probably belonged to the secret society of the Rosicrucians. It is from this work of Gichtel’s that our Plate III is reproduced by the kind permission of the publishers."

"Let me take the example of a man who is filled with fear... The vibrations radiated by an astral body in that state will at once attract any fear-clouds that happen to be in the vicinity; if the man can quickly recover himself and master his fear, the clouds will roll back sullenly, but if the fear remains or increases they will discharge their accumulated energy through his umbilical chakra, and his fear may become mad panic in which he altogether loses control of himself... In the same way one who loses his temper attracts clouds of anger, and renders himself liable to an inrush of feeling which will change his indignation into maniacal fury - a condition in which he might commit murder by an irresistible impulse, almost without knowing it. Similarly a man who yields to depression may be swept into a terrible state of permanent melancholia; or one who allows himself to be obsessed by animal desires may become for the time a monster of lust and sensuality, and may under that influence commit crimes the thought of which will horrify him when he recovers his reason. All such undesirable currents reach the man through the navel chakra."

"Fortunately there are other and higher possibilities... there are clouds of affection and of devotion.. he who feels these noble emotions may receive through his heart chakra a wonderful enhancement of them, such as is depicted in Man Visible and Invisible in Plates XI and XII."

"The kind of emotion which affects the navel chakra in the manner before-mentioned is indicated in Dr. Besant’s A Study in Consciousness, where she divides the emotions into two classes, those of love and those of hate. All those on the side of hate work in the navel chakra but those on the side of love operate in the heart."

"The force of kundalini.. We hear much of this strange fire and of the danger of prematurely arousing it; and much of what we hear is undoubtedly true. There is indeed most serious peril in awakening the higher aspects of this furious energy in a man before he has gained the strength to control it, before he has acquired the purity of life and thought which alone can make it safe for him to unleash potency so tremendous."

"It’s interesting to see how your body’s energy chakras are closely correlated with the endocrine glands."

"The holy fights by Moslem heroes fought, The saintly works by Christian hermits wrought And those of Jewry or of Sabian creed— Their valour reaches not the Indian's deed Whom zeal and awe religiously inspire To cast his body on the flaming pyre."

"And like the dead of Ind I do not fear To go to thee in flames; the most austere Angel of fire a softer tooth and tongue Hath he than dreadful Munker and Nakir."

"They [the Mughals] do not, indeed, forbid it (satī) by a positive law, because it is a part of their policy to leave the idolatrous population, which is so much more numerous than their own, in the free exercise of its religion; but the practice is checked by indirect means."

"She chose her ruin, and resign'd her life, In death undaunted as an Indian wife."

"'Tis the procession of a funeral vow, Which cruel laws to Indian wives allow, When fatally their virtue they approve; Cheerful in flames, and martyrs of their love."

"Yea, I am persuaded, that the English breast has not a more joyous sensation on seeing the launch of a ship, than these inhuman beings experienced at the launch of an immortal spirit, loaded with all its aggravated sins, into an awful eternity!"

"The mythological origin of the practice comes from the story of the goddess Sati, who burned herself to protest her father’s insult to Shiva. However, formal widow burning emerged later, especially among elite Rajput clans during medieval India, and was often linked to notions of honor, purity, and loyalty. Widows who committed sati were believed to become goddesses, and their cremation sites were marked with memorial stones or temples. …Sati must be understood as both a religious rite and a social imposition. While some women may have embraced it as a path to spiritual purity, others were coerced or lacked alternatives. …Modern scholarship emphasizes the need to distinguish between voluntary religious acts and socially enforced violence. Sati’s legacy continues to provoke debates about agency, tradition, and the limits of religious freedom."

"A word may here be said about the important though cruel customs of Sati and Jauhar prevailing in medieval times. With the loss of power and constant danger of attack, the customs of Sati and Jauhar were gaining strong roots not only among the Kshatriyas, but among other people also. However, the most significant fact about these customs is that except perhaps by Muhammad Tughlaq, no serious attempt was made to put a stop to such an inhuman system of self-immolation. On the other hand it was universally admired. Even an extremely cultured man like Amir Khusru exclaimed: “See how noble it is”. Ibn Battiita witnessed the Sati on many occasions and gives many unhappy details. Jauhar was prevalent both in the north and the south. During Timir’s invasion Muslim women also performed Jauhar when Bhatnir was sacked.”"

"The evening sun-beams threw their golden light, And smiling ushered in the bridal night; The gay procession wound its happy way In colours brilliant as the jocund day. The pipe, the viol, and unceasing drum, Proclaim to all, the blooming bride is come! Light dancing maids the gaudy train prolong, And Gunga’s banks are startled, too, with song. Thousands rush forth the joyous scene to hail, And lend their voices—lest the music fail; The bride reclined, in costly jewels dressed— Jewels less bright than hope within her breast; Of sweetly-scented flowers, a snowy braid, Pure as the fancies of the espousèd maid, In her black hair a striking contrast show, While o’er her neck the sable ringlets flow. The bride reclined; a crimson litter bore Her blushing charms along the sacred shore. What joy is breaking from her large dark eye— The vivid lightnings of a tropic sky! The rosy veil is archly drawn aside To show the glances she affects to hide. ’Tis all a modest maiden dare betray— The sudden sparkle of a meteor’s play. No band may give those features to the light, Save his who takes her to his hall tonight. Hark, from that hall what happy spirits break! What joyous revelry the echoes make! Lo, the young lord awaits her at the porch, While mid-day bursts from each attending torch. The maid has reached her bridegroom’s home at last:— The morning came, and all her joy had passed; Death had gone over like a wild simoom, And marked her youthful husband for the tomb. And must be only suffer? Still the pride Of youth and beauty lives, the lovely bride. She, too, must die: some savage god, unknown To Christian climes, demands her for his own. The pile now rears aloft its awful head, Where late the bride her gay procession led: Still ring the notes of merriment: the strain Of mirth still sweeps along the crowded plain. Why rush the thousands? Why this grand display Of pomp and pride? A widow burns today! Must the same mirth, the same bright hues appear To grace the bridal, and to deck the bier? Is there no sorrow in the hurrying throng? Will the wild herd still pour the maddening song? No breast to sympathise, no tear to fall, No trembling hand to elevate the pall? It is some jubilee;—it cannot be, That death is hailed with such a savage glee. Another bridal! see the gathering fire; The altar stands upon that burning pyre! There, in still death, the bridegroom waits his spouse: To bind their union, and renew her vows, Calmly she stands, and gazes o’er the scene, Unnerved by thoughts of what she might have been. How changed that day, on which, almost from birth, Arose the star of all her hopes on earth! For, pledged in childhood, all her charms had grown (So fondly thought she) for that day alone; To bless his sight, whose name was wont to share In every wish and every childish prayer, Since first she lisped the mighty Brahmah’s name! Yet now unawed she views the spreading flame; With false devotion gazes on the pile And moves to die—with a contented smile; Waves a farewell; and, stedfast to the last, Scorns on this world one lingering look to cast. Yes! she rejects this world without one thought Of all the bliss but yesterday had brought; Sees unconcerned an aged father stand, And scarcely owns the pressure of his hand; Hears a loved brother urge her on to die With cold indifference: not a rebel sigh Bursts to declare that yet one pulse remains, Against her will to throb at human pains. Beyond this transient earth her heart is set; She dreams that happiness may meet her yet; Thinks, like a phoenix, ’tis her fate to rise Pure from her ashes, to adorn the skies; And bear (for all her torments seek but this) Her husband with her to divide her bliss, For this she suffers, and for this she dies; Disowns, for this, all nature’s dearest ties. O noble spirit! In a Christian’s cause, A martyr’s crown, and a whole world’s applause, To bury the hopes, and mitigate the pain, Have oft displayed their tempting lures in vain: Heroes have shrunk before the torture’s wheel, And e’en in martyrdom have stooped to feel. Yet here, each day, in agonising fires, For sinful man some gentle dame expires, Gentle and pure, with every tender fear A woman knows, yet all forgotten here. A cheerful victim, lo, she mounts the pile, While the flame quickens in the fragrant oil: The thickening smoke now circles o’er her head; Her husband’s bosom forms an easy bed. Here she reclines, nor seeks a safer rest; No couch so sweet as his unconscious breast. While the fire wreathes around each quiv’ring limb, She feels it not, she slumbers upon him;— A fleeting rest: with him she wakes, to reach Eternal joy, for thus the Vedahs teach. Too fatal error! Oh! that such a mind To truth divine should still continue blind! She will not doubt: devoted to her creed, She claims the glory, and demands the meed; Courts the proud triumph of a Hindoo bride, Betrothed in life, in death to be allied."

"12 November 1623 – ... As we return'd home at night, we met a Woman in the City of Ikkerì, who, her Husband being dead, was resolv'd to burn her self, as 'tis the custom with many Indian Women. She rod on Horse-back about the City with open face, holding a Looking-glasse in one hand, and a Lemon in the other, I know not for what purpose; and beholding her self in the Glass, with a lamentable tone sufficiently pittiful to hear, went along I know not whither speaking or singing certain words, which I understood not; but they told me, they were a kind of Farewell to the World and her self; and indeed, being utter'd with that passionateness which the Case requir'd and might produce, they mov'd pity in all that heard them, even in us who understood not the Language. She was follow'd by many other Women and Men on foot, who, perhaps, were her Relations; they carry'd a great Umbrella over her, as all Persons of quality in India are wont to have, thereby to keep off the Sun, whose heat is hurtful and troublesome. Before her, certain Drums were sounded, whose noise she never ceas'd to accompany with her sad Ditties or Songs; yet with a calm and constant Countenance, without tears, evidencing more grief for her Husband's death then her own, and more desire to go to him in the other world than regret for her own departure out of this: A Custom, indeed, cruel and barbarous, but withall, of great generosity and virtue in such Women, and therefore worthy of no small praise. They said, she was to pass in this manner about the City, I know not how many dayes, at the end of which she was to go out of the City and be burnt, with more company and solemnity. If I can know when it will be, I will not fail to go to see her, and by my presence honor her Funeral, with that compassionate affection which so great Conjugal Fidelity and Love seems to me to deserve."

"India's Kumbha Mela amply demonstrates that diversity can be self-organized and not anarchic, even on a very large scale. Held every twelve years, this is the world's largest gathering of people, attracting tens of millions of individuals from all corners of India, from all strata of society, and from all kinds of traditions, ethnicities and languages. Yet there is no central organizing body, no 'event manager' to send out invitations or draw up a schedule, nobody in charge to promote it, no centralized registration system to get admitted. Nobody has official authority or ownership of the event, which is spontaneous and 'belongs' to the public domain. Since time immemorial, numerous groups have put up their own mini-townships and millions go as individuals just to participate in the festivities."

"Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare (full text of the mantra)"

"Actually, it doesn't matter – Krishna or Christ – the name is the same. The main point is to follow the injunctions of the Vedic scriptures that recommend chanting the name of God in this age."

"It is very simple. Hare means, “O energy of the Lord," and Krsna means, ‘‘O Lord Krsna."' Just as there are males and females in the material world, similarly, God is the original male (purusa), and His energy (prakrti) is the original female. So, when we chant Hare Krsna, we are saying, “O Lord Krsna, O energy of Krsna, kindly engage me in Your service.”"

"The purpose of this Krsna consciousness movement is to awaken man’s original consciousness. At the present moment our consciousness is designated. Someone is thinking, “I am an Englishman,” and another is thinking, “I am an American.” Actually, we do not belong to any of these designations. We are all part and parcel of God; that is our real identity. If everyone simply comes to that consciousness, all the problems of the world will be solved. Then we shall come to - know that we are one—the same quality of spirit soul. The same quality of spirit soul is within everyone, although it may be in a different dress. This is the explanation given in the Bhagavad-gita. Krsna consciousness is actually a purificatory process... Its purpose is to make people free from all designations... Eventually, we reach the ideal perfection of human life. Krsna consciousness is also a very simple process. It is not necessary to become a great philosopher, scientist, or whatever. We need only chant the holy name of the Lord, understanding that His personality, His name, and His qualities are all absolute."

"The Hare Krishna mantra is a sacred Sanskrit verse, recited as a means to cultivate awareness of a higher power and revive God-realization, known as Krishna consciousness. Rooted in the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism, the Hare Krishna mantra is mentioned in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad, and is central to the path of Bhakti Yoga. Otherwise known as the Maha or "Great" mantra, the Hare Krishna mantra has only four lines, composed of the names of Hindu deities and their energies: Hare, Krishna and Rama. Hare refers to either the energy of Hari (Lord Vishnu) or Hara (Krishna's consort, Shakti). Krishna and Rama are the names of two avatars of Lord Vishnu. The Hare Krishna mantra is chanted as a petition to God, and its meaning can be interpreted as "Oh Lord, oh energy of the Lord, please engage me in your service."

"Whatever might be his origin, the Charan and the Rajput in historical times are found inseparable like body and soul. In the social fabric of Rajputana, the Charan occupies an intermediate position between the Brahman and the Rajput, and in character, he combines the characteristics of the Rajput with those of the Brahman. The Charan was the esteemed and faithful companion of the Rajput, sharing his ammal(opium) and half of his loaf in adversity, and receiving his extravagant bounty in prosperity. He followed his client chief on horseback to the thickest of fight, where the poetic fire of his gert of old gave a Rajput "the strength of ten" on the field of carnage. The post of honour at - the main gate of the princely castle belonged to the premier Charan, who haughtily demanded his neg there from bridegroom's party, and whose privilege it was to open that gate on the foe in times of sally and receive the first blow of hostile sword."

"The Charan was not the proverbial strife monger between rival clans adding fuel to the fire of fray on a point of honour; he was rather an agent of peace in the feud-torn land of the Rajputs. The typical Charan of Rajputana was fearless of speech, true to his word unto death, kindly and charitable to all, and genuinely devoted to his country's good and the welfare of the Kshatriyas particularly. The Charan, though as sensitive and proud as the Rajput, excelled the Rajput in humane virtues, moral courage and political morality. His weapon against the Rajput was only his moral force backed by superstition; namely, the threat to kill himself and thereby bring upon the obdurate Rajput the wrath of gods. The Charan was classed with "the cow and the Brahman," whose slaughter was forbidden to the Rajput. Next to the Rajput the Charan only enjoyed the privilege of giving sarna (protection) under his roof. When rival septs living in neighbourhood indulged in civil feuds, both sides would send their women and children to the houses of the Charans, which were a haven of refuge in a demilitarised zone as it were though within the striking distance of skirmishes. Thus the inviolability of the Charan's home saved the seed of the clan when its adults, were killed in insane feuds. A single determined Charan rushing in between the ranks of fighting warriors sometimes stopped blood-shed. If the exhortation of the well-wishing Charan went unheeded, he would kill himself with his katar in living faith that no Rajput would dare to cross the ban of Charan's blood. This was no fiction, but a long-established institution in the code of honour and morality barked by religious awe in that land of eternal vendetta."

"Singhasan is the ancient term for the Hindu throne, signifying ‘the lion-seat.’ Charans, bards, who are all Maharajas, ‘great princes,’ by courtesy, have their seats of the hide of the lion, tiger, panther, or black antelope."

"The Charans are the sacred order of these regions; the warlike tribes esteem the heroic lays of the bard more than the homily of the Brahman. The Charans are throughout reverenced by the Rathors, and hold lands, literally, on the tenure of ‘an old song’."

"Marla is an excellent township, inhabited by a community of Charans, of the tribe Kachhela, who are Banjaras (carriers) by profession, though poets by birth. The alliance is a curious one, and would appear incongruous, were not gain the object generally in both cases. It was the sanctity of their office which converted our Bardais into Banjaras, for their persons being sacred, the immunity extended likewise to their goods, and saved them from all imposts; so that in process of time they became the free-traders of Rajputana. I was highly gratified with the reception I received from the community, which collectively advanced to me at some distance from the town. The procession was headed by the village-band, and all the fair Charanis, who, as they approached, gracefully waved their scarfs over me, until I was fairly made captive by the muses of Marla! It was a novel and interesting scene: the manly persons of the Charans, clad in the flowing white robe, with the high loose folded turban inclined on one side, from which the mala, or chaplet, was gracefully suspended; the Naiks, or leaders, with their massive necklaces of gold, with the image of the pitrideva (manes) depending therefrom, gave the whole an air of opulence and dignity. The females were uniformly attired in a skirt of dark brown camlet, having a bodice of light-coloured stuff, with gold ornaments worked into their fine black hair; and all had the favourite churis, or rings of hathi-dant (elephant’s tooth), covering the arm, from the wrist to the elbow, and even above it. Never was there a nobler subject for the painter in any age or country; it was one which Salvator Rosa would have seized, full of picturesque contrasts: the rich dark tints of the female attire harmonizing with the white garments of their husbands; but it was the mien, the expression, the gestures, denoting that though they paid homage they expected a full measure in return. And they had it; for if ever there was a group which bespoke respect for the natural dignity of man and his consort, it was the Charan community of Marla."

"Even the ruthless Turk, Jamshid Khan, set up a protecting tablet in favour of the Charans of Marla, recording their exemption from dand contributions, and that there should be no increase in duties, with threats to all who should injure the community. As usual, the sun and moon are appealed to as witnesses of good faith, and sculptured on the stone. Even the forester Bhil and mountain Mer have set up their signs of immunity and protection to the chosen of Hinglaj; and the figures of a cow and its kheri (calf), carved in rude relief, speak the agreement that they should not be slain or stolen within the limits of Marla."

"Monuments to Warriors—Dabhi is the line of demarcation between Mewar and Bundi, being itself in the latter State, in the district of Loecha,—dreary enough! It produces, however, rice and makkai, or Indian corn, and some good patches of wheat. We passed the cairns, composed of loose stones, of several Rajputs slain in defending their cattle against the Minas of the Kairar. I was particularly struck with that of a Charan bard, to whose memory they have set up a paliya, or tombstone, on which is his effigy, his lance at rest, and shield extended, who most likely fell defending his tanda."

"In them we have a combination of the traditional characteristics of the Brahmin and the Kshatriyas. Like the Brahmins, they adopted literary pursuits and accepted gifts. Like the Rajput, they worshipped Shakti and engaged in military activities. They stood at the front gate of the fort to receive the first blow of the sword."

"The Charans - In between the social order of the Rajputs and the status of the Brahmans there is a caste of Charans which exercises a great respectability and influence in Rajasthan. The speciality of the caste is that it combines in its character the characteristics of Rajputs and Brahmans in an adequate manner. In literary pursuit and receiving gifts from the Rajputs a Charan approximated himself to a Brahman. As regards taking of flesh, drinking of liquor, worshipping of Sakti and engaging in war he resembled a Rajput. He was an equal partner of his Rajput chief both in war and peace."

"The Charans of Marwar have also played an important role in hours of need. According to the Achaldaskhichi-Vachanika Charan Magha, Sadau and Napau girded their loins against Muslim arms. In the year 1615 A.D., Narhar Charan fell fighting in the action of Sur Singh against Kishan Singh of Kishangarh. In the famous field of Dharmat in 1658 A.D., Jagmal Khadiya made his end as a valiant warrior. In the battle of Delhi when Durgadas planned the rescue of Ajit Singh, Charan Sandu and Mishan Ratan distinguished themselves as martyrs for the cause of their land. Charan Jogidas, Mishan Bharmal, Sarau, Asal Dhanu and Vithu Kanau were among the chosen brave warriors who escorted prince Akbar through his way to Shambhaji’s court."

"‘We never refused a Charan,’ declares Maharani Anant Kunverba, Rajmata of the coastal state of Porbandar. ‘They are supposed to curse one and people are rather frightened of their curses. Even if you want to refuse or feel that they don’t need any help, it’s something that a Rajput never does.’"

"The persons of these Charans were regarded as sacred and every Rajput would treat them with the greatest respect. Rulers would reward them with hereditary grants of land known as jagirs, at feasts they would be invited to eat first, and whenever they came into a ruler’s presence he would rise to greet them, for ‘Charans were very strong supporters of the Rajputs and the Rajputs were very strong well-wishers of this community’."

"There was no horoscopy yet in the Vedic age. There did exist a certain astrology, not based on the 12 Zodiac signs (rāśi) but on the 27 or 28 moon houses (nakṣatra), with beneficial and harmful configurations determining auspicious and inauspicious times for conducting a ritual or starting an enterprise. It would nowadays be called mundane and electional astrology; an important relic still observed today are the auspicious times for weddings. But that is something else than the individual birth horoscopes with which Hindu astrologers make a living."

"It is clear as day that horoscopy was imported, yet traditionalists graft it onto the Vedic stem."

"Among the Chinese, a narrowly corresponding term for ṛta is 道 dao, “path”, “way”, and more precisely 天道 tiandao, “way of heaven”. Its visible embodiment was the daily (seeming) course of the stars around the earth, the orderly movement of constellations, the day cycle and year cycle."

"The personification of ṛta among the Vedic gods is Varuṇa, lord (Asura) of heavenly hosts, the star-studded night sky, the oceanic expanse above us."

"I am not the ruler of Gujarat, I'm a servant of Gujarat. The environment in which I grew up, seva is treated as a dharma, not power."

"A reading of the RSS history tells us that seva has always been at the core of Hindutva praxis. Since its inception, an important aspect of the organization’s work revolved around providing service in the form of relief during natural and political calamities such as the Partition of India in 1947, the Assam earthquake of 1950, the Punjab Floods in 1955, the Tamil Nadu cyclone in 1955, the Anjar earthquake in 1956, the Andhra Cyclone of 1977, the Latur earthquake of 1993, the Odisha Super Cyclone in 1999, the Bhuj earthquake in 2001, Koshi River Floods in 2008 and most recently the Uttarakhand Floods in 2013. Apart from creating a humanitarian and compassionate image for itself, _ relief interventions after these disasters also provided opportunities to the RSS to undertake cadre building and consolidate its organizational network."

"Many workers appear to take a delight in blaming others for all ills. Some may put the blame on the political perversities, others on the aggressive activities of the Christians or Muslims and such other faiths. Let our workers keep their minds free from such tendencies and work for our people and our Dharma in the right spirit, lend a helping hand to all our brethren who need help and strive to relieve distress wherever we see it. In this service no distinction should be made between man and man. We have to serve all, be he a Christian or a Muslim or a human being of any other persuasion; for, calamities, distress and misfortunes make no such distinction but afflict all alike. And in serving to relieve the sufferings of man let it not be in a spirit of condescension or mere compassion but as devoted worship of the Lord abiding in the heart of all beings, in the true spirit of our dharma of surrendering our all in the humble service of Him who is Father, Mother, Brother, Friend and Everything to us all. And may our actions succeed in bringing out the Glory and Effulgence of our Sanatana-Eternal - Dharma."

"Hindu polytheism isn't really polytheism but monotheism in disguise."

"Monotheism is not merely the cult of a single god, which would be called henotheism, but also implies the active rejection of all other gods. The recipient of monotheistic worship is not Heis Theos, “one god”, but Ho Monos Theos, “the only god”. Thus, Hindus worshipping an ishta devata, “chosen deity”, selected from among many, are henotheists but not monotheists. A Hindu who never worships any god except Shiva, but doesn’t object to his neighbour’s worshipping Krishna or Durga, fails the test of monotheism."

"When ignorant missionaries dilate upon the three hundred and thirty million gods of the Hindus they are making a very gross misrepresentation of a religion which is far more scientific than their own. Hinduism, like every other religion, knows perfectly well that there can be only one God, though there may be countless manifestations of Him. p. 129"

"The Hindus worship only one God. At any religious function, the Hindus utter the dominion of one God and to Him they direct the offerings of every religious ritual or observance whatever be its form. It is only fools who call the Hindus as idolators on the ground that they offer their devotion through some image built of stone or wood."

"The Hindu understanding of the universe has often been misunderstood as bizarre and primitive. The Hindu imagery is in fact a sophisticated iconography conveying universal religious truths only now beginning to be understood in the West."

"The images of the Indian deities are usually highly magnetized, and when they are carried round the streets at the festivals their influence upon the people is unquestionably productive of much good. In many of the Hindu temples there are strong permanent influences at work, as is the case for example at Madura. Once when I visited that city some white ashes from the temple of Shiva were given to me, and also a bright crimson powder from the temple of Parvati, and I found that both of these were so powerfully magnetized as to retain their influence for some years and after much travelling. India is essentially a country of rites and ceremonies. The religion is full of them, and a great many of them are said to have been prescribed by the Manu Himself, though it is quite obvious that many others have been added at a much later date. p. 130"

"Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible."

"The controversy recorded in this book has generated much heat. But where there is heat there is also the possibility of light. Perhaps it will shine forth all the more if now the focus is turned towards resolving the pedagogical and epistemological issues raised by it, as it will then move the debate on to a plane where reasonable people might still differ but will have reasons clearer to all for doing so."

"RISA scholars condemn their Indian-American interrogators using no- holds-barred hyperbolic terms to label and silence them. They are accustomed to dealing only with certain categories of Indians, and when they meet Indians outside of these boxes, their attempts to apply their standard tools of domination fail, leading them to great frustration."

"Malhotra notes that Freud spent his entire career studying European patients with pathologies in the lower chakras, hence his obsession in analyzing them solely in terms of their sexuality. Later, Jung studied Hinduism intensely and practised yoga, based on Patanjali’s texts. He claimed to have achieved states of emotional and spiritual consciousness associated with the fourth, fifth, and sixth chakras. This enabled him to break away from Freud (a significant historical development in Western thought) and thus help spiritualize Western science. He also reinterpreted Christian myths and their archetypes using a neo-Hindu worldview.176 Joseph Campbell and others continued this tradition that was initially respectful of Indic world views. As we will note in section IV, Jung’s followers like Joseph Campbell are seen as threats by Doniger from her second and third chakra worldview. She has launched ad hominem attacks on Campbell, in an attempt to discredit his ideas."

"However, even Jung did not abandon Eurocentrism. Given his enormous influence over prominent Western thinkers for several decades, he helped to radically transform Western thought by appropriating Indic concepts. Malhotra notes that Jung’s followers erased the Indian influences on his works. And Jung, too, remapped Indian categories on to Greek-Abrahamic and his own original categories. Till the end, Jung denied the existence of the crown (seventh) chakra because non- duality and transcendence would refute the biblical reinterpretations he had developed. Therefore, by the end of his career, Jung had blocked off any such experiences and “started to impose pathologic glosses on yogic claims about states of consciousness associated with the seventh chakra”. He even discouraged his students from practising yoga, calling it dangerous for Westerners, and wanted to develop a special ‘new yoga’ for Westerners."

"Going deeper into the history of these disciplines (with respect to India) drove home some lessons very deeply: in both form and content, there was pretty little to differentiate between the Christian missionary reports of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and the Indological tracts."

"Modern psychoanalysis of India, beginning with Carstair’s ‘The Twice Born’ through ‘The Oceanic Feeling’ of Mussaief-Masson (another Indologist using psychoanalysis to understand Indian religions), had already told our tale: Indian culture was ‘narcissistic’ (in the sense of ‘secondary narcissism’) and thus pathological in nature."

"Most of our so-called social sciences are not ‘sciences’ in any sense of the term: they are merely bad Christian theologies"

"If this is true, it also helps us understand why both ‘conversion’ and the notion of ‘secularism’ jars Indian sensibilities. Somehow or the other, Nehruvian ‘secularism’ always connotes a denigration of Indian traditions; if you look at the debates in the EPW and SEMINAR and journals like that, one thing is very clear: none of the participants really understands what ‘secularism’ means. In India, ‘secularism’ is counter posed to ‘communalism’ whereas ‘the secular’, in European languages, has only one contrast—‘the sacred’."

"Freud viewed all human possibility through the lenses of the first (anal) and the second (procreative) chakras. In contrast, Indic thought aims to put the focus on higher chakras that represent more elevated or evolved states of consciousness."

"And indeed, many psychologists and non-psychologists, in particular anthropologists and Religious Studies academicians, have used Freudian analysis to offer facile and parochial explanations of the complexities of Indic civilization. Interestingly, this seems more prevalent in studies of India than in studies of other regions of the world."

"Ethnographic psychoanalysis may claim to enhance the understanding of non-Western cultures, but in actuality, it simply imposes Eurocentric constructs to describe the Other."

"For Doniger, too, this overwhelming desire to discredit any political identity for Hindus—leads to her eager approval of David White’s reductionist thesis on Tantra, not because she finds his evidence entirely convincing— she doesn’t—but because of the immense political and civilizational value of degrading uppity Hindus and taking them down a notch or two. Both Daly and Doniger seem to share a common anxiety about putting the Hindus in their proper place, lest their rebellious tendencies threaten the world order and/or academic stability."

"However, in today’s politically correct world of public proclamations, scholars are careful to apply this blanket reasoning only to the despised Hindutva-Hindus or to particularly iconic figures such as Sri Ramakrishna—both seen as contributing to a dangerous Hindu revivalism."

"The first observation we make is that scholars who profess those faiths have written the articles on Christianity and Islam; this is not the case with Hinduism. While the topic of emic (insider) and etic (outsider) study is often debated within academia, we would expect Encarta to choose uniformly either the emic or etic view of the major religions."

"While there is some evidence of prejudice on the part of Encarta’s author on Hinduism, it is not clear whether prejudice also exists in Encarta as well. Certainly, as the ultimate editorial authority, Encarta cannot evade responsibility for the situation, at the very least in the selection of authors and editorial oversight over prejudiced treatment in a sensitive topic like religion. However, Encarta may well have, knowingly or unknowingly participated in an environment of bias. An Eastern graduate student of Hinduism at a US university suggests a broader prejudice: “. . . in American academia it is politically incorrect to treat Hinduism in a positive light and it is taboo to deal negatively with Islam”."

"We find that there are significant differences in the treatment of Hinduism vs. the treatment of Islam or Christianity in both, the selection of content and the attitude displayed in the writing—resulting in a distinctly negative portrayal of Hinduism vs. the other religions. We conjecture that the reason for this difference is related largely to the differences in choice in the selection of authors—whether they are emic or etic, and their area of interest or specialization in the religion they study. We also find that Prof. Doniger, the author of the Encarta article on Hinduism is controversial within the Hindu community. The authors of the article on ‘Islam’ and ‘Christianity’ have a mature and balanced viewpoint and they represent their religions in a way that the vast majority of adherents will find appropriate and positive."

"As a result of the reasoned arguments above, and community activism spurred on by the publication of this article, Microsoft Corporation decided to change the article on Hinduism in Encarta. This change is reflected in its 2004 edition. The larger problem of prejudice in Hinduism studies in academia remains unchanged."

"What we are referring to is the complete Freudianization of Indological parlance, or lingo, by a small band of academics."

"To conclude then, Courtright’s book may be considered as an example of excellent pornographic fiction, and also as an example of careless academic scholarship. It is therefore surprising that scholars in South Asian and Indology programs in the United States have praised the book and awarded it prizes. It makes one wonder if this is due to the fact that the level of scholarship in Indian and Hinduism studies is really substandard in American Universities."

"Once the savagery of the Native is expertly ‘proven’, the story and discussion ends. The Natives’ inherent human right to defend their sacred sites and families in the face of white greed and aggression, and the huge discrepancy between White and Native atrocities, are never discussed. Drinnon writes: “Yes, the reader was asked to reflect, ‘Is it not too easy to be virtuous at a distance?’ A little cheap to forgive merciless savages when we ourselves have not suffered . . . at their hands?”16 The same appeal is made by Wendy’s Children to fair- minded Americans who may otherwise be swayed by the evidenc presented by the diaspora. The ‘others’ may have a point, they reluctantly acknowledge, but how can you judge us when we are being threatened—especially when you have not suffered at the hands of Hindu savages like we have? Thus, the model of the Savage Heathen versus the Civilized, so deeply embedded in America’s self-mythologizing, comes to life in the contemporary context."

"Hindus are the latest in a long list of ‘savage’ minorities to be pitted against the ‘civilizing’ force of the America’s Manifest Destiny. Unlike the frontier struggles of the past, this is not a physical battle with literal bloodshed, but a battle of ideas, where indigenous traditions and ways of knowledge are sought to be decimated by Western tropes and ontologies (brought forth by academic ‘pilgrims’ venturing into foreign and exotic intellectual and cultural territory),...."

"He pointed out the tremendous difference between the missions of RISA and those of Islamic Studies faculty in America:65 Contrast this [RISA attitude of antagonism to the Hindu community] to the Study of Islam section of AAR. In its mission statement, the Study of Islam section recognizes the key role it has in shaping the understanding of Islam in public schools, universities, and in the public consciousness. They explicitly state that they need to contribute to the ‘public understanding of religion’ in general and of Islam in particular. This concern that Islam be understood in ways that are balanced and fair from both the emic and the etic perspective is seen in the various projects they take on. They created a website66 in order to deflect criticism of Islam after the terrorist attack on the WTC. Many scholars of Islam Studies have dedicated themselves to making Islam better understood in the West. Prof. Alan Godlas has created an award-winning website67 that is “intended to be of use for non-Muslim and Muslim students and teachers at all levels as well for members of the general public who wish to get a non-polemical view of Islam.” On his site, Godlas provides links to a number of other efforts by Study of Islam members to make Islam better understood and to present a positive spin on Islam."

"He observed, regarding Islam: “It is clear that these efforts emerge because scholars of Islam in AAR, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, feel a responsibility to the community they study.” He asked, incredulously, Why are there no similar efforts by RISA? Where are the websites, public talks and statements, and books that try to provide a fair and balanced presentation of Hinduism and to correct misunderstandings of Hinduism in the public sphere (in the media, in schools, etc.)? On the contrary, he observed, “RISA scholars appear more interested in the exotic and erotic aspects that they identify in Hinduism. They appear more concerned with trying to highlight social problems in India which they blithely blame on Hinduism.” He concluded, “It is no wonder there is such disconnect between the Hindu community and RISA scholars.”"

"However, Rao observed that this facile advice from Emory, a leading Methodist Christian institution: presumes that the playing field in these matters is level. At present there are no Hindu equivalents for academic journals in the US, there are no Hindu presses and radio and television stations, no central body to represent Hindu interests and only one ‘infant’ Hindu university that can take on the might of well-endowed universities and their well-paid scholars."

"It was disquieting to read Prof. Zydenbos’ recent post concerning the discussion on Indian secularism. The main purpose of his remarks seems to be to associate Prof. Balagangadhara and me with the anti-Muslim agenda of certain political organizations in Flanders and in India. He does not in any way address my arguments on secularism, but merely tries to discredit me by making insinuations about my political affiliations. This is unworthy of any intellectual. (Jakob De Roover, quoted in page 299)"

"Another key difference is that Mohler is backed by a formidable battalion of Biblical theologians who are ready, willing, and able to counteract one-sided and fanciful depictions the very moment such depictions come out. They comprise the Christian ‘home team’ of insiders in the establishment, with their own academic journals, PhD granting institutions, scholarly conferences, funding mechanisms, media connections, and even deep links to the US government. On the other hand, Hinduism simply lacks comparable institutional mechanisms and champions in the intellectual establishment."

"Dravidianist scholars have tried to position Saiva Siddhantha as something unique to Tamil spirituality and not linked to Hinduism. Although the traditional works on Saiva Siddhantha cite the Vedas as their authority, this is circumvented by conjuring up a separate Tamil spirituality from a distant past. For G.U. Pope and other evangelists, Saiva Siddhantha is seen as an approximation to, but not an equal of, Christianity. Thus, it is to be used as an indirect and diluted form of Christianity that works as a stepping stone towards direct, pure Christianity. Once people are convinced that for many centuries they have practiced a corrupted version of Christianity, it would be easy to upgrade them to the accepted or contemporary Christianity."

"All the terms and forms we use are derived from Sanskrit: and the bulk of literature in Tamil dwindles to insignificance when compared with the vast 'Agama' Literatre in Sanskrit. Our Tamil acharyas were also great Sanskritists . . . Our author states expressly . . . how this precious religion and philosophy is based on the Vedas and Agamas."

"The Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the Solar race. . . . The Shudras did not form a separate Varna. They ranked as part of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society.."

"Though theoretically the position of the Shudras was very low, there is evidence to show that many of them were well-to-do. Some of them succeeded in marrying their daughters in royal families. Sumitra, one of the 3 wives of king Dasharatha, was a Shudra. Some of them even worked their way up to throne. The famous Chandragupta is traditionally known to be a Shudra."

"As a matter of fact, we see Shudras occupying the position of kings and emperors in Vedic times.. Abmedkar] further confirms that some of the most eminent and powerful kings of ancient India were Shudras. The Mahabharata mentions a Shudra king conducting yajnas . And Ambedkar identifies this king with Sudas who is mentioned in the Rig Veda."

"The Nanda dynasty rulers of northern India in the fourth century bce were Shudras as per Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist sources. This means Mahapadma Nanda, the great emperor of northern India, was a Shudra. Likewise, the next great emperor of India, Chandragupta Maurya was also a Shudra. The Maurya empire was the biggest that India ever saw, and for the first time an all-Indian nationality was achieved under a centralized government. It is important to note that a Shudra was the head of such an empire."

"Buddhist sources regard the powerful Pala dynasty, which ruled Bengal and other parts of eastern India for nearly four hundred years, from the mid-eighth to the eleventh century, to be of Shudra origin. The Buddhist text Manjushri-mula-kalpa states that Gopala, the founder of the Pala dynasty (750-1160 ce), was a Shudra. 75 The Pala dynasty monarchs were great patrons of Buddhism, and their copper plate inscriptions begin with an invocation to Buddha."

"In medieval India, the Kakatiya dynasty monarchs (c. 1163-1323 ce) who ruled the Telugu-speaking Andhra region claimed themselves to be Shudras in their inscriptions. One peculiarity of medieval Andhra society was that many leading warrior families made no pretensions to be Kshatriyas and instead, proudly proclaimed their Shudra status by mentioning their descent from that of Lord Brahma’s feet. Shudras possessed the greatest degree of actual political power in medieval Andhra."

"An important Sanskrit inscription of the Andhra chief, Prolaya Nayaka mentions a Shudra’s movement to liberate a large territory from the Muslims in 1329. Then arose chief Prolaya of the Musumuri family of Shudra caste. Unable to resist his might, the Yavanas abandoned their forts and fled to unknown places. He restored the agrahara lands to the Brahmins and revived the performance of Vedic sacrifices. He cleansed the Andhra Pradesha of the pollution caused by the movements of the Turushkas by means of the butter smoke arising out of the sacrificial fire pits."

"Swami Vivekananda said that the four castes, by turn, governed human society. The brahmin dominated the thought-current of the world during the glorious days of the ancient Hindu civilization. Then came the rule of the kshattriya, the military as manifested through the supremacy of Europe from the time of the Roman Empire to the middle of the seventeenth century. Next followed the rule of the vaisya, marked by the rise of America. The Swami prophesied the coming supremacy of the sudra class. After the completion of the cycle, he said, the spiritual culture would again assert itself and influence human civilization through the power of the brahmin. Swami Vivekananda often spoke of the future greatness of India as surpassing all her glories of the past."

"High birth cannot be a certificate for a person of no character. But persons with good character can distinguish themselves irrespective of low birth."

"A shudra who is ever engaged in self-control, truth and righteousness, I regard him a brahmin. One is a twice-born by conduct alone."

"Far more seriously, both in America and in India, scholars suspected of pro-Hindu sympathies are blocked in their access to academe, and their work gets studiously ignored. For India, a tip of the blanket over this hushed-up phenomenon was lifted by Dr. A. Devahuti: Bias in Indian Historiography (1980). It is seriously in need of an update, but I am given to understand that one is forthcoming. For America, a start was made by Rajiv Malhotra with his books Invading the Sacred (2007) and Academic Hinduphobia (2016)... At any rate, one does not have to follow Hindutva, or even be a Hindu or an Indian, to observe that American India-watchers utter a strong anti-Hindu prejudice in their publications."

"[Hinduphobia in academia] "is not simply a critique of Hinduism" but "a deeply embedded and very often unexamined set of assumptions pervading some, though not all, academic writing on Hinduism...hinduphobic discourse... follows a circular logic, in which the conclusion has already been built into the premises: that, whatever the problem or issue in question, Hindus and Hinduism are at fault..""

"There is at the moment a very powerful, sustained, and unrelenting cultural and intellectual attack on Hinduism in the media and in the academy."

"[in academia] "the most vile and baseless writing too is deemed acceptable against Hindus"."

"[hinduphobia is fueled by a number of factors including] "academic bias still rooted in colonial-era misportrayals"."

"Hinduism studies has produced ridiculous caricatures that could easily be turned into a Bollywood movie or a TV serial."

"The two great biographies of the great Vaishnava saint Chaitanya, namely, the Chaitanya-charitamrita and the Chaitanya-bhaga-vata.... Both the books refer to a famous episode in the life of Lord Chaitanya. He had introduced the system of public worship in the form of kirtan (a sort of congregational song loudly sung together by a large number of men in public streets to the accompaniment of special musical instruments). This enraged the Muslim qazi, and one day when Chaitanya’s devotees were singing the name of God in the streets of Nadiya (Navadvipa in Bengal), he came out, struck blows upon everybody on whom he could lay hands, broke the musical instruments, and threatened with dire punishment all the Hindus who would dare join a kirtan party in this way in his city of Nadiya. To prevent the recurrence of public kirtan, the qazi patrolled the streets of Nadiya with a party. The people of Nadiya got afraid, but Chaitanya decided to defy the qazi’s orders, and brought out a large kirtan party which was joined by thousands. The qazi was at first wild with anger and held out the threat that he would destroy the caste of all the Hindus of Nadiya; but terror seized him when his eyes fell upon the vast concourse of people in a menacing attitude. He fled, and his house was wrecked by the angry crowd. The Chaitanya-bhagavata does not describe the sequel. But the other work, Chaitanya-charitémrita, describes how Chaitanya sent for the qazi who was now in a more chastened mood, and the two had a cordial talk."

"Throughout the Chaitanya-bhagavata there are casual references to Hindus being constantly oppressed by the fear that the public performance of kirtan, and even singing religious songs loudly in one’s own house, would provoke the Sultan and bring untold miseries upon the people of Nadiya. A section of them was therefore angry with the Vaishnavas, and once a rumour was spread that the Sultan had sent two boats full of soldiers to Nadiya to arrest those who sang kirtan. Many people expressed their amazement that Chaitanya and his followers were engaged in loudly singing kirtan at Rama-keli near the capital city, Gauda, without any fear of the terrible Muslim king living so near."

"Shiva also continues Indra’s role of warrior-god. Till today, many Shiva sadhus are proficient in the martial arts. ‘The Shaiva war-cry Hara Hara Mabadeva is still used by some regiments of the Indian army. It is a very effective battlefield mantra instilling fear in the enemies of Hinduism, as was clear from the secularists’ demand to cut out the Hara Hara Mahadeva sequences from the Chanakya TV-serial (broadcast in truncated version on Door-darshan in 1992)."

"In the Chanakya TV-serial, broadcast in truncated version on Doordarshan in 1992, the Hara Hara Mahadev sequences were censored out for fear that they might arouse communal passions."

"Instead, I stand by another Sanskrit maxim. It is one that can’t be shaken by any possible context, because it is always a reliable guiding principle: Satyameva jayate, “truth verily triumphs”, “truth shall prevail”. This is from the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, and nothing in the context gives a different or contrary message. It has become India’s national motto, and I feel so strongly about it that I have put in on my business card. When it conflicts with more popular phrases, I will drop those others any time."

"[She] who manages to retain the sperm that the partner has deposited in her and to make it go back into her body, mixed with her own rajas , this is a yoginî perfect. (III.102)"

"One should stimulate that sleeping serpent by grasping its tail. Then that shakti , awakening from her torpor, will be forced to rise upwards. It should be done with the paridhana technique and, by inhaling through the solar channel, one will have its awakening every day for ninety minutes, morning and evening."

"The trika is the essence of the śaiva tradition, and the Mālinī is the essence of the trika. (Abhinavagupta)"

"In the Trika the god Śiva mostly appears in the hypostasis of Bhairava. (Raniero Gnoli)"

"Since all aspects of reality are in fact nothing more than the rhythms of divine energy and its all-pervading vibration, the Trika and Kaula systems do not contrast matter with spirit, body with soul, microcosm with macrocosm , but they recognize only one original rhythm that propagates freely from level to level. (Lilian Silburn)"

"But, taken as a whole, their religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguishable from still living Hinduism or at least from that aspect of it which is bound up with animism and the cults of Siva and the Mother Goddess — still the two most potent forces in popular worship. Among the many revelations that Mohenjo-daro and Harappa have had in Store for us, none perhaps is more remarkable than this discovery that Saivism has a history going back to the Chalcolithic Age or perhaps even further still, and that it thus takes its place as the most ancient living faith in the world."

"Kashmir Shaivism"

"Preservation represents the triumph of the one in Vaikuntha, while sustenance results from his favours."

"He will be extremely fortunate and great-souled. He will be great in his sentiments and will be the greatest of the great. Through his increased devotion, when he gives up this life, he will enter Vaikuntha and find bliss there."

"O god! There are those who drink the nectar of your account. Their store of devotion is extensive. They obtain the comprehension that is the essence of non-attachment. They swiftly obtain their place in Vaikuntha."

"Sanaka and the others were my sons through my mental powers and were born before you. Without any desires, they travel through the sky and go to all the worlds and the residents there. They once went to Vaikuntha, where the illustrious one with the unblemished atman resides. All the worlds revere Vaikuntha. All the people who reside in Vaikuntha have a form like Vaikuntha. They are not driven by any material aspirations, but worship Hari because of dharma. The original and illustrious Purusha is there and he can be approached through the use of words. He accepts the pure form of sattva and the foremost confers happiness on us, his devotees."

"Let me reiterate the crucial aspect of my speech: I believe, like the spread of diseases like COVID-19, Dengue, and Malaria by mosquitoes, that Sanatan Dharma is responsible for many social evils."

"Alleging that BJP was enforcing Sanatan Dharma that rejects equality, freedom and brotherhood in the country, VCK had named the convention "Save Nation" from the hands of RSS and BJP. DMK president M K Stalin said the meeting had turned out to be an event to oppose Sanatan. "The Sanatan forces came to power....""

"Sanãtana Dharma stands for self-exploration, self-purification, and self-transcendence."

"If Sanatana Dharma is what you say it is, I am all for it. You can count me as a Sanatanist from today. You can say to whomsoever you please that JP has become a Sanatanist."

"THERE are many who, lamenting the by-gone glories of this great and ancient nation, speak as if the Rishis of old, the inspired creators of thought and civilisation, were a miracle of our heroic age, not to be repeated among degenerate men and in our distressful present* This is an error and thrice an error. Ours is the eternal land, the eternal people, the eternal religion, whose strength, greatness, holiness may be overclouded but never, even for a moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi, the saint, are the natural fruits of our Indian soil; and there has been no age in which they have not been born. Among the Rishis of the later age we have at last realised that we must include the name of the man who gave us the reviving mantra which is creating a new India, the mantra Bande Mataram. The Rishi is different from the saint. His life may not have been distinguished by superior holiness nor his character by an ideal beauty. He is not great by what he was himself but by what he has expressed."

"They establish the consecration soma-pressings before(hand). They should consecrate themselves one day after the new moon of Taisa, or of Magha, so they say. Now, either (view) is widely proclaimed; but that of Taisa is more (commonly) proclaimed, as it were. They obtain this thirteenth, additional month. So great indeed is the year as this thirteenth month. So here the entire year is obtained."

"He (the sun) rests at the new moon of Magha, about to turn northward; these (the priests) rest (too), about to sacrifice with the introductory atiratra; so they obtain him first . . . [A clear reference to the winter solstice, after which the sun “turns northward,” i.e. begins to rise farther and farther to the north each day] He goes northward for six months; him they follow with six-day sacrifices in correct order. Having gone north for six months, he stays, about to turn south; they rest, about to sacrifice with the vifuvat ( midsummer) sacrifice; so they obtain him a second time. [A clear reference to the summer solstice, after which the sun “turns south,” i.e. begins to rise farther and farther to the south each day] He goes south for six months; they follow him with six-day sacrifices in reverse order. Having gone south for six months, he stays, about to return north; they rest, about to sacrifice with the mahavrata sacrifice; so they obtain him a third time [a clear reference to the winter solstice again]."

"Varuna knows the twelvefold months and their progeny, and he knows the one additionally born (I.25.8)."

"The Sun Gods (Adityas) ordain in harmony the year, the month and the day, the sacrifice, the night and the chant (VII.66.11).17"

"He arises from his rest and divides the seasons. The Divine holy Sun has come (II.38.4)."

"He speaks according to the seasons the words that must be said (VII.9.3)13"

"The season was the Mother. From her work, instantly born, he entered into the plants in which he grew (11.13.1)."

"They guard the Divine order of the twelve months. The men do not violate the seasons. When the day of the rains comes in the year, havin cooked the offerings, they gain their release (VII. 103.9)."

"When the Brahmins, in the Atiratra rite of Soma, sing like a lake that is full, on that day the year ends; when the frogs become desirous of the commencement of the rains, the Soma-drinking Brahmins raise their voice, accomplishing the year-long rite (VII. 103.7-8).21"

"When for twelve days, oh Ribhus, you delighted, sleeping in the house of him who cannot be hidden, you made the fields fertile, you led down the rivers. Plants stood in the deserts, the waters entered the depths (IV.33.7)."

"I saw the Shakadhuma by the solstice in the distance, dividing the superior from the inferior.25 The heroes cooked the spotted bull. These were the first laws. Three horses with manes appear with the seasons: in the year one of them is shorn; one sees all with his powers; the movement of one is seen but not his form (I.164.43-4)."

"The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from which the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived Hindus their knowledge."

"That Hindu astronomical lore about ancient times cannot be based on later back-calculation, was also argued by Playfair’s contemporary, the French astronomer jean-Sylvain Bailly: “The motions of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the [modern] tables of Cassini and Meyer. The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also the Arabs.”"

"...it is unwise, in my opinion, to reject the astronomical evidence in too hasty a fashion. As has long and continuously been pointed out by numerous scholars, the Brahmana texts have a significant number of references that might point to the position of the sun in Kritika (Pleiades) at the vernal equinox some time in the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Granted, as Whitney (1895), Thibaut (1985) and more recently Pingree (1973) point out, the zodiac may not have been divided in the exact same way in the ancient period as in the historic, and the computing skills of the ancient Indo- Aryans may not have been as accurate as they became. But, at the same time, there are actually no demonstrable grounds to assert that they were not. The astronomical treatise, the Vedangajyotisa, albeit open to similar objections, gives very precise astronomical information on all four solsticial and equinoctial points corresponding to the late 2nd millennium B.C.E., and this text is much later than the Brahmanas. These data are as valid evidence for an early date for the Rgveda (which long proceeded all these texts), as any evidence brought forward to promote a later date."

"A few things can be established with certainty, others with a good degree of likelihood, and yet others remain entirely uncertain."

"“The observations on which the astronomy of India is founded, were made more than three thousand years before the Christian era. (…) Two other elements of this astronomy, the equation of the sun’s centre and the obliquity of the ecliptic (…) seem to point to a period still more remote, and to fix the origin of this astronomy 1000 or 1200 years earlier, that is, 4300 years before the Christian era”."

"If we exclude the possibility of every astronomical notice in Vedic literature being a record of ancient tradition, which is extremely unlikely, we can say that there is strong astronomical evidence that the Vedas are older than B.C. 2500. They might be as old as B.C. 4000. There is some support for this date, but it is not convincing."

"...a reference in Satapatha Br II, 1, 2, 2-3 to the effect that the Krttikás/Pleiades are fixed in and do not swerve from the east. This reference has been examined, analysed, interpreted and discussed ad nauseam yielding all kinds of results according to the scholar’s desires. S. Kak arrived at a date 2950 (1994:35). This comes very close to what Achar finds, namely that such astronomical events could have been observed only c 3000. Achar mentions that S. B. Dikshit had propounded the very same idea about 100 years earlier but later Western scholars rejected it by claiming that the ÍB phrase "never swerve from the east" means something else."

"He [Jacobi] thinks that the Rigveda shows that the winter solstice took place in the month Phalguna, and on the ground of the precession of the equinoxes this must mean that the observation thus recorded was made in the third millenium B.C. This view ... he supports by the fact that in the Grhya Sitras, or manuals of domestic ritual, of much later date, the ceremonial of the wedding includes an injunction to the wife to look at a star called Dhruva, “fixed,” and this can only have originated at a time when « Draconis was in the vicinity of the pole, there being no other star which could be called fixed at any period coincident with the probable age of the Rigveda: further he contends that the fact that Krttikas, the Pleiades, are placed at the head of the list of twenty-seven or twenty-eight Naksatras, “lunar mansions,” in the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda Samhitas means that Krttikas marked the vernal equinox when the list was compiled, and this date fell in the third millenium B.C.'"

"They establish the consecration soma-pressings before(hand). They should consecrate themselves one day after the new moon of Taisa, or of Magha, so they say. Now, either (view) is widely proclaimed; but that of Taisa is more (commonly) proclaimed, as it were. They obtain this thirteenth, additional month. So great indeed is the year as this thirteenth month. So here the entire year is obtained."

"He (the sun) rests at the new moon of Magha, about to turn northward; these (the priests) rest (too), about to sacrifice with the introductory atiratra; so they obtain him first . . . [A clear reference to the winter solstice, after which the sun “turns northward,” i.e. begins to rise farther and farther to the north each day] He goes northward for six months; him they follow with six-day sacrifices in correct order. Having gone north for six months, he stays, about to turn south; they rest, about to sacrifice with the vifuvat ( midsummer) sacrifice; so they obtain him a second time. [A clear reference to the summer solstice, after which the sun “turns south,” i.e. begins to rise farther and farther to the south each day] He goes south for six months; they follow him with six-day sacrifices in reverse order. Having gone south for six months, he stays, about to return north; they rest, about to sacrifice with the mahavrata sacrifice; so they obtain him a third time [a clear reference to the winter solstice again]."

"A thousand heads hath Puruṣa, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On every side pervading earth he fills a space ten fingers wide. This Puruṣa is all that yet hath been and all that is to be."

"We need not agree with the Śāstrakāra-s that the varnāśramadharma is truly “Vedic”, for we do not find it in the first nine books of the Rg-Veda. Even in the tenth book, the last and youngest one, we find it mentioned only once, and there only in the vaguest use, viz. the Purusa Sūkta’s recognition of the existence of four functions in society, without any details of how their personnel is recruited nor of how they should conduct themselves vis-à-vis one another, the very stuff that is the main focus of the Śāstra-s. Like medieval and contemporary Hindus, the Śāstra composers may have considered as ”Vedic” everything they held sacred, regardless of whether a particular norm or custom is indeed traceable to the Veda-s."

"“ That remarkable hymn (the Purusha Sukta) is in language, metre, and style, very different from the rest of the prayers with which it is associated. It has a decidedly more modern tone ; and must have been composed after the Sanskrit language had been refined, and its grammar and rhythm perfected. The internal evidence which it furnishes serves to demonstrate the important fact that the compilation of the Vedas, in their present arrangement, took place after the Sanskrit tongue had advanced from the rustic and irregular dialect in which the multitude of hymns and prayers of the Veda was composed, to the polished and sonorous language in which the mythological poems, sacred and profane (puranas and kavyas), have been written.”"

"“ There can be little doubt, for instance, that the 90th hymn of the 10th book ... is modem both in its character and in its diction. It is full of allusions to the sacrificial ceremonials, it uses technically philosophical terms, it mentions the three seasons in the order of Vasanta, spring, Grishina, summer and Sharad, autumn; it contains the only passage in the Rig Veda where the four castes are enumerated. The evidence of language for the modern date of this composition is equally strong. Grishma, for instance, the name for the hot season, does not occur in any other hymn of the Rig Veda ; and Vasanta also, the name of spring does not belong to the earliest vocabulary of the Vcdic poets. It occurs but once more in the Rig Veda (x . 101 . 4), in a passage where the three seasons are mentioned in the order of Sharad, autumn ; Hemanta, winter ; and Vasanta, spring.”"

"“ That the Purusha Sukta, considered as a hymn of the Rig Veda, is among the latest portions of that collection, is clearly perceptible from its contents. The fact that the Sanaa Samhita has not adopted any verse from it, is not without importance (compare what I have remarked in my Academical Prelections). The Naigeya school, indeed, appears (although it is not quite certain) to have extracted the first five verses in the seventh prapathaka of the first Archika, which is peculiar to it.”"

"In Greece the name rbhu appears as Orpheus, the famous poet and musician from Thrace who gave rise to the Orphic cult and mysteries. The later story about his descent into Hades to recover Eurydice may well be an echo of a rejuvenation attempt, while the shamanist aspect of the myth is maintained. Orpheus’s poetry and music links well with the rbhus’ poetic power in [the Rigveda]. It is therefore very curious that many philologists refuse to see this connection... There is no substantial reason, philological or semantic, why Greek Orpheus and Germanic elf should not be related to Sanskrit rbhu."

"Sara grass, Darbha, Kuśara, and Sairya, Muñja, Vīraṇa, Where all these creatures dwell unseen, with poison have infected me."

"[A female figurine from the Indus valley civilization has hair which] is painted black and parted in the middle of the forehead, with traces of red pigment in the part. This form of ornamentation may be the origin of the later Hindu tradition where a married woman wears a Streak of vermilion or powdered cinnabar (sindur) in the part of her hair."

"You should not be taken aback if you find that the practice of applying sindura (vermilion) to the simanta/manga partition of the hair on the head) by Hindu womenfolk is rooted back in the Harappan Civilization itself."

"Long before it became a scientific aspiration to estimate the age of the earth, many elaborate systems of the world chronology had been devised by the sages of antiquity. The most remarkable of these occult time-scales is that of the ancient Hindus, whose astonishing concept of the Earth's duration has been traced back to Manusmriti, a sacred book."

"In the great philosophy of Brahma, such violent turns of the scale are quite unknown. It embraces vast stretches of time, cycles of human ages, whose successive lives gravitate in concentric circles, and travel ever slowly towards the center...."

"A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions."

"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still."

"To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it... It is, indeed, a remarkable circumstance that when Western civilization discovers Relativity it applies it to the manufacture of atom-bombs, whereas this Oriental civilization applies it to the development of new states of consciousness."

"In view of deliberate attempts in recent decades to project Buddhism and Jainism as separate religions, distinct from Hinduism, it would be in order to deal with them in passing. the attempts have clearly been motivated by the design to separate their followers from the parent body called Hinduism just as Sikhs have been to an extent. Though not to the same extent as in the case of Sikhs, the attempts have succeeded in as much as neo-Buddhists and at least some Jains have come to regard themselves as non-Hindus. In reality, however, Buddhisms and Jainism have been no more than movements within the larger body of Hinduism, not significantly different from Lingayats, Saktas or Bhaktas of more recent times."

"Over time, apparent misunderstandings have arisen over the origins of Jainism and relationship with its sister religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. There has been an ongoing debate between Jainism and Vedic Hinduism as to which revelation preceded the other. What is historically known is that there was a tradition along with Vedic Hinduism known as Sramana Dharma. Essentially, the sramana tradition included in its fold, the Jain and Buddhist traditions, which disagreed with the eternality of the Vedas, the needs for ritual sacrifices and the supremacy of the Brahmins."

"As to Jains being Hindu dissenters, and, therefore governable by Hindu law, we are not told this date of secession [...] Jainism certainly has a longer history than is consistent with its being a creed of dissenters from Hinduism."

"We may legitimately conclude: There were a number of Saka Eras. Two of them were much older than that of 78 A.D ., and one of them which both Bhattotpala and Varahamihira have used to indicate the epochs of their works went back to the middle of the 6th century before Christ: the year 551-550."

"A hundred to you, ten thousand years, two Yugas, three Yugas, four we make."

"The Aitareya Brāhmana (VII.15.4), describing the merits of exertion, has the picturesque phrases: "A man while lying is the Kali; moving himself he is the Dvāpara; rising, he is the Tretā; walking, he becomes the Krita.'""

"The waning strength and stability of Dharma in the four yugas is graphically depicted by representing it as a majestic bull which stood firm on its four legs in the golden age of the world (krtayuga) and lost one of its legs to [ either of] the succeeding two yugas, Tretā and Dvāpara, to stand tottering on a single leg during the present kaliyuga."

"In the great philosophy of Brahma, such violent turns of the scale are quite unknown. It embraces vast stretches of time, cycles of human ages, whose successive lives gravitate in concentric circles, and travel ever slowly towards the center...."

"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense and indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond […] to those of modern scientific cosmology."

"Hinduism’s cosmology was prodigious in scope and depth, but India did not stop there. She went on to advance what was probably the most daring hypothesis man has ever conceived. We ourselves are the infinite, the very infinite from which the Universe proceeds. Everything in Hinduism works to drive the point home... While the West was still thinking, perhaps, of a 6000-year-old universe—India was already envisioning ages and eons and galaxies as numerous as the sands of the River Ganges. A universe so vast that modern astronomy slips into its folds without a ripple."

"All the universe rests within your nature, in the ocean, in the heart, in all life."

"Law and truth from the power of meditation were enkindled. Thence the night was born and thence the flooding ocean. From the flooding ocean the year was born. The Lord of all that moves ordained the days and nights. The Creator formed the Sun and Moon according to previous worlds; Heaven and Earth, the atmosphere and the realm of light (X. 190)."

"The creative Sun upheld the Earth with lines of force. He strengthened Heaven where there was no support. As a powerful horse he drew out the atmosphere. He bound fast the ocean in the boundless realm. Where the ocean overflows its boundaries, the creative Sun, as the Son of the Waters knows that. Thence came the world and the upper region, thence Heaven and Earth were extended (X. 149.1-2)."

"In the beginning there was darkness hidden in darkness, all this universe was an unillumined sea (X. 129.3)."

"When the Gods stood together in the sea. Then as dancers they generated a swirling dust. When, like ascetics, the Gods overflowed the worlds, then from hidden in the ocean, they brought forth the Sun (X.72.6-7)."

"From the ocean the blissful wave has arisen, together with its wave it attained immortality.... All the universe rests within your nature, in the ocean, in the heart, in all life. That which is borne in the confluence of the waters, may we attain that blissful wave of yours, oh Gods (IV.58.1, 11)."

"Endless wide paths encompass Heaven and Earth from all sides. The bull, the ocean, the radiant bird, has entered into the home of the original Father (V.47.2-3)."

"This life of yours which you are living is not merely apiece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.""

"The Swami Narayan order is probably the best organized Hindu sect, as well as the most modern in its technology and media resources. At the same time it is probably the best disciplined and the most ascetic of modern Hindu monastic orders... Most important was my visit to their Cultural Festival of India in 1997 in Mumbai, which marked Pramukh Swami’s seventy-fifth birthday, on which occasion I gave a short talk. The Swami Narayan Order had taken a piece of land in the slums of Mumbai and turned it into a modern temple and garden complex showing a futuristic Hinduism with the power to solve all the world’s problems. Such is the power of real devotion."

"Manu, however, has one verse that in connection with this subject is of interest, and deserves to be translated, though till now it never has been rendered into English. I refer to ii. 17, and translate in paraphrase: "The country divinely meted out by the rivers Sarasouti and Ghuggar, and lying between them, is where the (Rig, etc.) Veda arose, and hence is called brahmavarta or 'home of the Veda' in the tradition of the learned.""

"Moments drag on for ages Eyes shower storms of tears The whole world is an empty void Without you, Govinda"

"Yuga-yitam nimo-shena Chakshusha pravrisha-yitam Shunya-yitam jagat sarvam Govinda-virahena me"

"The BAPS case should serve as a cautionary tale for policymakers, journalists, and activists. Trafficking laws are essential tools for protecting vulnerable populations, but when wielded indiscriminately, they can become instruments of cultural and religious repression. Minority religions, already stigmatized by labels like “cult,” are especially at risk. In the end, the dismissal of the trafficking charges against BAPS is a victory for common sense applied to religion. It is a reaffirmation of the principle that religious liberty includes the right to define one’s own spiritual path, even when that path involves sacrifice, discipline, and communal labor."