indologists

"I also remember reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East. I learned that there were great spiritual and mystical traditions in the East that perhaps still existed. I began my own journey to the East. Meanwhile I also studied European poetry and art. I particularly enjoyed the French symbolist poets like Rimbaud and Mallarme who had a mystic vision. The German mystic poet Rilke, however, was my favorite and best epitomized what I thought real poetry should be. Poetry had a depth and ambiguity that philosophy could not reach. I realized that it was a better vehicle to reflect this mysterious universe in which we live. ...My own poetry became more imagistic, reflecting a symbolist base like that of Rilke or Rimbaud. Images of the dawn and the night, the sun, wind and fire arose in mind like primordial forces, with vague images of ancient Gods. These poems also had eastern affinities that I was gradually discovering."

"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."

"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. For example, Shiva is the God of the mountains, while Parvati is the mountain Goddess. Shiva dwells in high and steep rocky crags and cliff faces. Parvati rules over mountain streams, waterfalls, and mountain meadows with their many flowers."

"The most important insights that have come to me usually occur while walking in nature, particularly hiking in the high mountains. In the wilderness nature can enter into our consciousness and cleanse our minds of human-centered compulsions. I think that liberation is like wandering off into nature, climbing up a high mountain, and not coming back to the lowlands of human society."

"Hinduism never seemed to be something foreign or alien to me or inappropriate to my circumstances living in the West. It is the very religion of nature and consciousness in the broadest sense, which makes it relevant to everyone."

"The Hindu mind has a vision of eternity and infinity. It is aware of the vast cycles of creation and destruction that govern the many universes and innumerable creatures within them."

"The Hindu mind represents humanity's oldest and most continuous stream of conscious intelligence on the planet. Hindu sages, seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have maintained an unbroken current of awareness linking humanity with the Divine since the dawn of history, and as carried over from earlier cycles of civilization in previous humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited culture."

"“David Frawley is a formidable scholar of Vedanta and easily the best known Western Acharya of the Vedic wisdom.”"

"“Certainly America’s most singular “practicing Hindu.””"

"“Frawley is an Indian in an American body. The ease with which he enters into the spiritual of the Indian tradition and renders its deeper concepts in terms of modern thought shows an unusual familiarity with this ancient wisdom.”"

"“David Frawley is one of the most important scholars of Ayurveda and Vedic Science today. I have great respect and admiration for his knowledge and the way he has expounded the ancient wisdom of the Vedas.”"

"Here [Witzel] throws a bombshell: “Kazanas is heavily influenced here by Frawley’s most amazing paradox”. (Elsewhere I borrow from Kak or some other “fundamentalist-colleague”.) I was not heavily influenced by Frawley’s paradox. I simply acknowledged (after some research) that Frawley had “first noted” this paradox, namely that the literate Harappans left no literature while the non-literate, archaeologically unattested Aryans left their voluminous productions. With this I suppose [Witzel] tries to draw attention away from the fact that he has no explanation for the Aryanisation of North India. In [Witzel]’s mind Frawley is a fiendish figure of fundamentalist Hindutva, Astrology and the like, and therefore cannot utter any truth; if [Kazanas] is “influenced”, [Kazanas] also cannot utter any truth."

"One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India."

"One occasion where I saw US-based Indian Marxists in action was at the 1996 Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin... I knew that excellent and innovative papers by N.S. Rajaram and Shrikant Talageri had been rejected by the organizers, so I felt entitled to expect presentations of top-notch scholarship dwarfing even that of Rajaram and Talageri. Instead, what the audience got, was a canvassing session for the “Forum of Indian Leftists” without any scholarly papers. The speakers disdained to even mention any of the argumentative contents of the AIT debate, except “David Frawley’s paradox” (the AIT’s puzzling implication pointed out by Frawley, viz. that the Harappan civilization had numerous cities but no literature, while Vedic civilization had a vast literature but no cities), which they simply laughed off without discussion ad rem. ... But Frawley’s paradox is entirely pertinent: what are the chances that a literate culture leaves the biggest conglomerate of archaeological sites behind, but only a handful of short inscriptions as the complete corpus of its literature; while the illiterate conquerors produce a vast and sophisticated literature within a few centuries, but leave no sizable architecture behind? What are the chances that the largest civilization of the world loses its language to a conquering band of nomadic tribesmen? The AIT has the weight of probability against it."

"According Dr. David Frawley eminent teacher and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine: "No religion, perhaps, lays as much emphasis on environmental ethics as does Hinduism. It believes in ecological responsibility and says like Native Americans that the Earth is our mother. It champions protection of animals, which it considers also have souls, and promotes vegetarianism. It has a strong tradition of non-violence or ahimsa. It believes that God is present in all nature, in all creatures, and in every human being regardless of their faith or lack of it.""

"Yoga, Ayurveda, Vedanta and the Vedic view of history should be taught in India's schools as part of the national cultural heritage. If western views of wellbeing, psychology, history and culture can be taught, it is colonialism to exclude the legacy of Bharatiya traditions."

"What happened India today is probably the only country in the world in which the colonial narrative against it has not been changed.... what happened is that the Marxists perpetuated the negative colonial narrative... so instead of the British being the enemy the Hindus became the enemy...."

"Using Marxism to understand India's ancient and vast dharmic civilization is like consulting a frog in a well for explaining the ocean. Those trapped in dialectical materialism cannot understand the unity of Self and universe, humanity and the cosmos."

"Social media owners and directors have long allowed or promoted an anti-Hindu and anti-India bias. Are not providing a neutral platform but have their own political agenda. This extends to Wikipedia as well. Time for them to be made accountable."

"Wikipedia has published many questionable statements about Hindu writers, leaders, causes and historical issues. Is not an unbiased forum. Hindus should protest against its anti-Hindu views."

"Mosques built over important traditional Hindu temples like Kashi Vishwanath were not monuments to secularism, nationalism, religious pluralism or Bharatiya heritage. They were products of domination by hostile rulers trying to suppress the majority Hindu population."

"Can we trust transnational internet groups like Wikipedia, which are self-regulating and unaccountable, to determine or censor information for the public, to decide what are the facts in nearly all fields of life and learning?"

"However, the entire right-left division reflects the conditions of western politics and is inaccurate in the Indian context. We must give up such concepts in examining Indic civilization, which in its core is spiritually based, not politically driven. It reflects older and deeper concerns that precede and transcend the West's outer vision. As long as we define ourselves through politics our social order will contain conflict and confusion. Democracy may be the more benign face of a political order, but it still hides the lack of any true spiritual order. We must employ the vision of dharma and subordinate politics to it, which should be a form of Karma Yoga."

"The causes taken up by the Hindu movement are more at home in the New Left than in right wing parties of the West. Some of these resemble the concerns of the Green Party. The Hindu movement offers a long-standing tradition of environmental protection, economic simplicity, and protection of religious and cultural diversity. There is little in the so-called Hindu right that is shared by the religious or political right-wing in western countries, which reflect military, corporate and missionary concerns. The Hindu movement has much in common with the New Age movement in the West and its seeking of occult and spiritual knowledge, not with the right wing in the West, which rejects these things. Clearly, the western right would never embrace the Hindu movement as its ally."

"The American Christian right is still sending missionaries to the entire world in order to convert all people to Christianity, the only true religion. It is firmly fixed on one savior, one scripture and a rather literal interpretation of these. Yet when Hindus ask the pope to make a statement that truth can be found outside of any particular church or religion they are called right-wing and backwards, while the pope, who refuses to acknowledge the validity of Hindu, Buddhist or other Indic traditions, is regarded as liberal!"

"The Hindu movement in India in its most typical form follows a Swadeshi (own-country) movement like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch. It emphasizes protecting the villages and local economies, building economic independence and self-reliance for the country. It resists corporate interference and challenges multinational interests, whether the bringing of fast food chains to India, western pharmaceuticals or terminator seeds."

"Not surprisingly, the same leftists in India, who have long been allied to communist China, similarly style the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause as right-wing and regressive, though the Dalai Lama is honored by the American left. This should tell the reader about the meaning of right and left as political terms in India. When one looks at the Hindu movement as the assertion of a native tradition with a profound spiritual heritage, the whole perspective on it changes."

"When native Americans ask for a return of their sacred sites, the left in America supports them. When Hindus ask for a similar return of their sacred sites, the left in India opposes them and brands them as intolerant for their actions! When native peoples in America or Africa protest missionaries for interfering with their culture, they are supported by the left. Yet when Hindus express the same sentiments, they are attacked by the left. Even the Hindu demand for rewriting the history of India to better express the value of their indigenous traditions is the same as what native Africans and Americans are asking for. Yet the left opposes this Hindu effort, while supporting African and American efforts of a similar nature."

"The Hindu cause is similar to the cause of native and tribal peoples all over the world, like native American and African groups. Even Hindu concerns about cultural encroachment by western religious and commercial interests mirrors those of other traditional peoples who want to preserve their cultures. Yet while the concerns of native peoples have been taken up by the left worldwide, the same concerns of Hindus are styled right-wing or communal, particularly by the left in India!"

"However, if we look at their actual views, Hindu groups have a very different ideology and practices than the political right in other countries. In fact many Hindu causes are more at home in the left in the West than in the right. The whole idea of the 'Hindu right' is a ploy to discredit the Hindu movement as backward and prevent people from really examining it. The truth is that the Hindu movement is a revival of a native spiritual tradition that has nothing to do with the political right-wing of any western country. Its ideas are spiritually evolutionary, not politically regressive."

"Hence, examining astronomical references in Vahara Mihira and Vedanga Jyotish, we arrive at the equinoctial positions of about 1280 BC. This is found as the latest reference in later Vedic texts like the Brahmans, with the new Moon in Magha marking the winter solstice. Using the different points of Krittika as marking the vernal equinox and the lunar positions earlier in the month of Magha back to the eighth day of the waning Moon (Ekashtaka), we get a period of 2800-1760 BC. Vedic references show an ongoing adjustment of their solstice-oriented calendar, proving the existence of Vedic culture at this time along with the existence of a sophisticated system of astronomical observation."

"Hindu Sidereal calculations are thus more complicated than Tropical ones. Hindu astronomy is a very specialized system that requires precise astronomical observations and shows an ongoing knowledge of the exact placement of the planets and equinoxes relative to the fixed stars. Such Sidereal measurements show how much the Hindus relied on actual stellar positions. On this basis it is hard to dismiss the positions of early Hindu astronomy as having no basis in observation."

"Some Greek astronomers and astrologers knew of the precession, though they did not know exactly what it was or how to calculate it. Hipparchus appears to have discovered it among the Greeks and calculated it at 36" per year, which Ptolemy, the most famous Greek astrologer, adopted. The Hindus, in the Surya Siddhanta calculated the rate as 54", much closer to what is observed today as 50.3" per year.a While modem scholars consider this figure a lucky guess on the part of the Hindus it may reflect a better knowledge of the precession, perhaps arrived at by long term observations and necessary calendar shifts through time. For this reason, it is hard to derive Hindu astrology from the Greeks, as most Western scholars do. The Hindus compute the zodiac differently and the precession more accurately than the Greeks. Yet we are told, based upon the appearance of minor Greek terms in later Hindu astrology, that any accuracy in Hindu astronomy comes from the Greeks. Hindu astronomy has a long history and an extensive literature following different methods than those of the Greeks. As Vedic astrology is Sidereal, we cannot discountenance the astronomical references we find commonly in Vedic literature relative to the precession. Precessional changes are the hallmark of Hindu astronomy, the essence of the system. We cannot ignore them in ancient texts just because they give us dates too early for our conventional view of human history."

"A culture would not likely have developed the myth of the winning of the rivers to flow into the sea if it had never seen the ocean. Moreover, the winning of the Waters and the winning of the Light are presented in the Rig Veda as a single victory; the Waters are those of the Sun world. Why should a culture equate a daily light myth with a yearly water-rain myth? In north India there is a unique climatic condition wherein the rains occur at the summer solstice, the time when the days are longest. Inhabitants of such a land would quite naturally associate the light with the rains. Equating the rains with the year and the Sun would thus suggest north India as the land wherein this myth originated."

"References to seas and oceans and a vision of the universe as a series of oceans cannot be explained away by supposing that some big river was imagined to be the ocean by the primitive mind. This is not a rational interpretation of what is said but an irrational reduction of it according to the imposition of outside ideas and preconceptions. Yet this has been part of the general and accepted method of Vedic scholarship. Most of what has been done on the Vedas so far remains largely the unquestioned work of nineteenth century Western scholars who were often trapped in the cultural and sometimes imperialistic bias of their times."

"We are the voices of the wandering wind, Which moan for rest and rest can never find; Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life, A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."

"The Buddhas who have been and who shall be, of these am I and what they did, I do."

"Birthless and deathless and changeless remainaineth the spirit forever; Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!"

"Now, when our Lord was come to eighteen years, The King commanded that there should be built Three stately houses, one of hewn square beams With cedar lining, warm for winter days; One of veined marbles, cool for summer heat; And one of burned bricks, with blue tiles bedecked, Pleasant at seed-time, when the champaks bud-- Subha, Suramma, Ramma, were their names. Delicious gardens round about them bloomed, Streams wandered wild and musky thickets stretched, With many a bright pavilion and fair lawn In midst of which Siddartha strayed at will, Some new delight provided every hour; And happy hours he knew, for life was rich, With youthful blood at quickest; yet still came The shadows of his meditation back, As the lake's silver dulls with driving clouds."

"He who died at Azan sends This to comfort all his friends:— Faithful friends! It lies I know Pale and white and cold as snow; And ye say, 'Abdallah’s dead!' Weeping at the feet and head. I can see your falling tears, I can hear your sighs and prayers; Yet I smile and whisper this: I am not the thing you kiss. Cease your tears and let it lie; It was mine—it is not I."

"Below the highest sphere four Regents sit Who rule our world, and under them are zones Nearer, but high, where saintliest spirits dead Wait thrice ten thousand years, then live again; And on Lord Buddha, waiting in that sky, Came for our sakes the five sure signs of birth So that the Devas knew the signs, and said "Buddha will go again to help the World." "Yea!" spake He, "now I go to help the World. This last of many times; for birth and death End hence for me and those who learn my Law. I will go down among the Sakyas, Under the southward snows of Himalay, Where pious people live and a just King.""

"Arnold’s great project was a blank verse poem based loosely on the Lalitavistara Sutra. It ran for forty-one thousand words and was composed in eight volumes and published in 1879 as the Light of Asia: the Great Renunciation. The Light of Asia was an instant success and would capture the English speaking imagination. It would be reprinted numerous times in England and the United States. The best estimate I could find was sixty editions in England and another eighty in the US. The Light has also been translated into many languages, including Hindi. But, most importantly, it is generally credited as the first book to bring the life and teachings of Gautama Siddhartha broadly to the attention of the English speaking public."

"Like everything the British poet Edwin Arnold wrote, The Light of Asia was quickly written: a poem in eight books of about five hundred lines each, mostly in blank verse, composed over a period of several months when Arnold was busy with other concerns. Immediately upon its publication in the summer of 1879, the poem began to sell copies and win attention. It was a life of Siddhartha Gautama, told from the point of view of “an Indian Buddhist” (so read the title page) in high English style. The immediate sensation surrounding The Light of Asia was remarkable: for some time on both sides of the Atlantic, newspapers and dining rooms were charged with discussion about the Buddha, his teaching, and Arnold’s presentation of Buddhism. The book’s success was also sustained. By 1885 the authorized English version had gone through thirty editions. Pirated editions, which went for as little as three cents in the U.S., make a count of the book’s circulation impossible, but it has been estimated at a million copies (not far short of Huckleberry Finn). After thirty years it had become one of the undisputed bestsellers of Victorian England and America, had been translated into a number of languages (German, Dutch, French, Czech, Italian, Swedish, Esperanto), and had inspired a stage version and even an opera."