Hinduism

"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."

"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."

"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"

"The season was the Mother. From her work, instantly born, he entered into the plants in which he grew (11.13.1)."

"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"

"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)."

"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)."

"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."

"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."

"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....""

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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)"

"The trika is the essence of the śaiva tradition, and the Mālinī is the essence of the trika. (Abhinavagupta)"

"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."

"[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."

"Kashmir Shaivism"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"[in academia] "the most vile and baseless writing too is deemed acceptable against Hindus"."

"There is at the moment a very powerful, sustained, and unrelenting cultural and intellectual attack on Hinduism in the media and in the academy."

"Hinduism studies has produced ridiculous caricatures that could easily be turned into a Bollywood movie or a TV serial."

"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..""

"[hinduphobia is fueled by a number of factors including] "academic bias still rooted in colonial-era misportrayals"."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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)"

"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.”"