The story that was propagated about Subhash Bose’s death, that he died in a plane crash in Taiwan turned out to be false. Now that has been confirmed by Americans as well. Theory (2) is that he was held as a prisoner in Russia where he died or probably escaped. Theory (3) is that he lived as a monk in Uttar Pradesh
The Mitrokihn Archive which broke the news that Congressmen and Communists were on KGB payroll has some relation to information about Subhash Bose as well.

A key deponent of the Mukherjee Commission, Purabi Roy, who took off for Moscow tonight, said Mitrokhin knew about Bose’s Russia link and had helped her locate classified information on him.
But Roy, who has submitted four affidavits till date in front of the Mukherjee Commission till date, is worried. “My key worry is that the Commission should be allowed access to classified documents in three archives, the Federal Security Bureau(FSB) – which was called the KGB in the Soviet era, the President’s archives in Kremlin and GRU, the military intelligence archive. After all, the Commission has been asking for permission for visiting Moscow for the past three-and-a-half years,” Roy said.[Netaji disappearance case takes a new turn]

One of the witnesses the Commission met in Russia told that he had never told Purabi Roy anything related to Bose. After spending so many days in Russia, the Commission has not been able to unearth much information which causes Udayan Namboodiri to ask if this Russian story is also fake, like the plane crash.
One person who knows something about this is L.K.Advani. While he was the home minister he refused to give some files related to Subhash Bose’s disappearance to the Commission saying that it would affect India’s relations with some friendly countries, which I guess is a code word for Russia. Maybe the search should be done more thoroughly at home first.
Previous Links: Subhash Bose: The investigations, How did Subhash Bose die?

Often, Indian Hindus and Sikhs make demands to Pakistani authorities to give them permission to visit their holy places located in Pakistan. These visits allow the visitors to worship in those places and also see for themselves how temples and gurudwaras are maintained in the Islamic state.
One such holy place, the Sharada temple, according to Subhash Kak, is the most famous and sacred of all Kashmiri pilgrimage centers. It is located in Neelam valley in Pakistan occupied Kashmir near the Line Of Control. According to Al-Biruni Sharada was as important as Somnath, Multan and Thaneshvar.
The native script for Kashmiri is also called Sharada and was derived from Brahmi. The earliest records in Sharada have been dated to 800 A.D and was found all over northwest India. Also, Gurmukhi, the Punjabi script was based on Sharada script. None of the history books, even ones by eminent historians[3] do not mention this script or temple.
A mention of the Sharada temple is present in the second volume of Rajatarangini, translated by M.A.Stein.

In the centre of the quadrangle is the temple raised on a basement of 24 feet square and 5 feet 3 inches high. The entrance to this inner temple is from the west side and is approached by stairs five and a half feet wide with flanking side walls. The interior of the inner temple is a square of 12 feet and 3 inches and it has no decoration of any kind. The only conspicous object inside is a large slab which measures about 6 by 7 feet with a thickness of about half a foot. This slab is believed to cover a kunda, or spring, in which goddess Sharada appeared to the sage Shandilya. This kund is the object of the special veneration of the pilgrims.[Sharadha Tirtha]

Recently someone traveled to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and sent a detailed report on the journey as well as the state of the temple.

Anyway, we arrived in Sharda to be told that the Sharda temple was inside Pak army barracks and permission had to be obtained to see it. Apparently, the Pak army moved there a long time ago, taking over the temple complex and the surrounding area for their barracks.The upside of this was that the remains of the temple were being maintained and protected by Pak army. Anyway, we got permission to see the temple but were not allowed to take photographs due to some law. (I think it was more to do with the current political climate etc). Anyway, we talked to the commanding officer and he gave us permission for photography.[Pictures of Sharda Peeth (has 22 pictures) via IndiaArchaeology]

Looking at the pictures, you can see for yourself how well the Pakistani Army has maintained the temple. Well, atleast they did not blow it up like what the Taliban did to the Bamiyan Buddhas.
Footnotes:
[1] After looking around I could not find who built the temple or what era it was built. If you have any information/links, please let me know.

Two years back the National Mission of Manuscripts was launched to catalogue India’s ancient documents. These documents in temples, monasteries and mosques are decaying fast due to lack of proper care. For this project some 30,000 manuscript hunters are moving across the whole nation.

After Rana takes off his shoes and washes his hands, he prays at the shrine. Then Jain leads him to the temple’s dimly lighted manuscript room. He opens a creaky steel cupboard and reveals rows of old texts, bundled in yellow cotton cloth. Rana squats on the ground and cautiously holds some pages up to the window light to examine the writing.
“It is in Prakrit language,” he says, referring to a popular dialect of classical Sanskrit, no longer spoken. “The period is early 1600s. It prescribes a model code of living for Jain monks,” a religious order that arose along with Buddhism in the 6th century B.C.
The manuscript project’s officials say the nationwide survey will open a window to India’s ancient knowledge systems: religion, astronomy, astrology, art, architecture, science, literature, philosophy and mathematics

This project has led to the discovery of some very ancient documents.

The oldest manuscripts that India possesses are a set of 6th-century Buddhist texts that were found buried in the hills of Kashmir about 60 years ago. In the last two years, the surveyors have found rare ancient Sanskrit and Arabic treatises on such subjects as diabetes, astrophysics, interpretation of dreams, surgical instruments, concepts of time and the art of war. A 400-year-old handwritten Koran was also found in a locket measuring three inches..[In India, Marking the Paper Trail of History]

Whoever thought of this should be commended.
The article also credits some 18^th century European scholars for translating ancient Sanskrit and Buddhist manuscripts and making them available to the world. I hope he means the western world because there was this thing called the eastern world, which apparently does not qualify as a world.
Buddhism spread to China, Korea, Japan and Sri Lanka and many Indian manuscripts were translated into those languages. In fact the very technique which Buddha taught – Vipassana was lost in India and survived only in Myanmar[7]. A ninth-century Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra was the oldest-known printed book in the world. In fourth century AD, Kumarajiva was invited by the Chinese emperor to translate Sanskrit texts into Chinese and he translated among other things, the Lotus Sutra. Around the same time the Indian scholar Buddhaghosa went to Sri Lanka. The Indian monk Paramartha went to China in 546 AD and Santarakshita translated lot of documents to Tibetan[6]. Besides this many Chinese and Korean students travelled to India and studied and translated documents.
It was in 1844 that the first attempt to explain Buddha’s teachings to the west was done by Eugène Burnouf, an academic at the Collège de France. Only that seems to matter now.
Note: I am currently reading Pankaj Mishra’s book on Buddha[6] and hence the focus on Buddhist history.
Related Links: On China and India, Alberuni, the father of Indian Historical writing?

Few days back we reported on the discovery of a Haritika statue in Sirpur, a town in Chattisgarh state. This is a place which still has samples of Shaiva, Vaishnava, Buddhist and Jain architecture. Now a temple complex, much bigger than Nalanda has been discovered in Sirpur.

About 200 mounds, 100 Buddha vihars, four Jain vihars and more than 100 Shiva temples spread across 25 sq km were found during excavations that began in February but have had to be suspended for the monsoon.
A 1.8-metre Shivalinga, believed to be the tallest in the state, has been found during the recent excavations.
Agreeing with Sharma, Muhhamed said Sirpur gave temple architecture in India a turning point. The Laxman Temple here is one of the country

Jammu and Kashmir Archaeology Department has made some discoveries in Anantnag

Excavators have stumbled into the remains of a bustling ancient urban settlement in Anantnag district of south Kashmir with tiled pavements “stamped in colourful human and animal motifs” and inscriptions in the now defunct Karoshti script.
It consisted of a tiled pavement in concentric circles with a “full-blown lotus” at the centre. “The pavement was laid out in such a wonderful sequence that it left the excavators baffled,” Zahid told PTI.
He said it’s tiles were “stamped in a variety of colourful motifs of humans, animals, mystical creatures, flowers and other abstract designs… Most of the tiles are inscribed in the Karoshthi script” prevalent in civilisations of north- western India circa AD 3rd-4th century. “The features speak of some highly advanced urban civilisation which looks to have flourished on this plateau in the ancient period,” Zahid said and claimed the human-animal motifs on the few exposed tiles were the first to be noticed at any archaeological site. [KASHMIR-DISCOVERY via IndiaArchaeology]

Most most history books don’t mention kharoshthi and the only reference I could find were in the books of Romila Thapar[3, 5]. Sometime before 530 B.C., Cyrus the Achaemenid emperor of Persia converted Gandhara into his satrapy, the most famous city of which was Takshashila where Iranian, Indian and Hellenistic Greek learning mingled. The language of the Achaemenid empire was Aramaic (the same language supposedly spoken by Jesus Christ) and kharoshthi was derived from it.

Ayaz Amir writes

STRANGE that one of history’s cradles, the Indian peninsula, should have so little truck with genuine history, as opposed to myth-making and mythology.
Is there any Indian Herodotus? Or Thucydides or Tacitus? One of the richest histories of the world, full of blood, conquest and great achievement without any chronicler, not even an apology of a Gibbon. Before Alberuni who accompanied the armies of Mahmud Ghaznavi, we have the Hindu holy texts, the Upanishads, Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Megasthene’s account of the court of Chandragupta Maurya. But nothing that can be credited as historical writing.
Indian history – that is, historical writing – begins with the coming of the Muslims. This is a remark made not in the spirit of drum-beating because we of the sub-continent are prickly to an inordinate degree, apt to stand on our dignity and pick quarrels about the wrong things, but just a bald statement of fact.[A travesty of history via an email from The Acorn]

Amir’s assertion is that till Muslims came to India, there was no historical writing. A civilization which was thriving from 2500 BC, did not have any “historical writing” till 1017 AD till Alberuni visited India, which is a big gap of 3500 years. Now what did Alberuni write about?

He accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni to India and stayed there for many years, chiefly, in all probability in the Punjab, studied the Sanskrit language and translated into it some works from the Arabic, and translated from it two treatises into Arabic (Elliot and Dowson:5). Sachau, translator of Alberuni’s Indica believes Alberuni “composed about twenty books on India (Sachau:xxvii), both translations and original compositions, and a number of tales and legends, mostly derived from the ancient lore of Eran and India.” He was indeed a prolific writer and his works are stated to have exceeded a camel-load. (Elliot and Dowson:3)
Let me also make another observation about Alberuni. He regards Hindus as excellent philosophers and he felt strong inclination towards Hindu philosophy but still he was a Muslim and at times does not fail to point out the superiority of Islam over Brahmanic India[India as Alberuni saw it]

Alberuni translated Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra into Arabic (called Kitab Patanjal). He also wrote a monograph on Indic culture, Kitab al-Hind which did not achieve the prominence of other works of comparative religion written around the same time. Romila Thapar adds that Alberuni was the finest intellect of central Asia. In the ten years he spent in India, he made observations on Indian conditions, systems of knowledge, social norms and religion. His book Tahqiq-i-Hind is the most incisive made by any visitor to India. But was he the first person to indulge in some “historical writing” as Ayaz Amir writes.
Huen Tsang was a Chinese scholar who visited India in 630 A.D at the age of 26. Huen Tsang returned to China with enough statuary and texts to load twenty horses and wrote a long account of India which was based on personal observation[1]. It seems his accounts had more detail than his predecessors and was meticulous in detail [3]. Alberuni carried one camel load of books and Huen Tsang required twenty horses and so the winner is…
Around the same time Banabhatta wrote Harshacarita which provided a descriptions of significant events during the reign of Harshavardhana [3] This was the first biography in Sanskrit as well as a masterpiece of literature.[1]. At this time Alberuni’s grandfather was not even born.
Continue reading “Alberuni, the father of Indian Historical writing?” →

Archaeologists have unearthed the statue of Buddhist female monk dating 6th century in Chhattisgarh state. This woman, Haritika used to abduct children and kill them and was converted by Buddha himself, by kidnapping her child.

Arun Kumar Sharma, chief of the excavation project, said that it was for the first time they have discovered the image of Haritika, which proves that female deities were as popular as their male counterparts in that era.
“This is for the first time the image of Haritiki has been found in Sirpur. So far Jambal image was discovered but this Haritiki is first, which too inscribed in 6th century. It shows that female deities were as important as the male deities,” Sharma said.
The archaeologists have also excavated a unique nine-room area with eight ladders leading to the rooms.
Rare emblems of Hindu lord Shiva have also been discovered for which the excavators are trying to trace the roots.
“So far I have excavated nearly seven mounds and this (includes) Shiva temples. This Buddha Vihar (residence) is unique. You have to climb eight steps to enter the Buddha Vihar and there are nine rooms and 12 pillared Mandapa (a columned hall) in the centre and in the south there is a sanctum sanctorum where Buddha statue must have been there, which is stolen,” Sharma said. [Sixth century Buddhist statue discovered]

Sirpur was visited by Huen Tsang in the 7th century and the treasures he described were unearthed two years back. Sirpur also has one of the oldest Laxman temples of India, built using bricks.

The shore temple at Mahabalipuram survived the tsunami and now the waters have revealed some carvings on two rocks which has been interpreted by K.T. Narasimhan, Superintending Archaeologist of ASI.

..the west-facing carving inside a socket on the smaller rock was that of Yoga Narasimha. This beautiful carving depicted the Yoga Narasimha squatting and doing penance.
The socket is framed by a lion’s carving, typical of the Pallava dynasty, which built the monuments at Mamallapuram. On the socket’s right side on the rock face is a carving, depicting a Varaha (Boar) lifting Boodevi (earth). Varaha is visible but not Boodevi.
The adjacent bigger rock has carvings on both sides. On the western side is a socket with a carving of seated Siva.
This socket is also framed by a lion’s sculpture. On the rock face are Siva ganas such as Singhi and Bringhi. There is also a carving of Mahishamardini, riding a lioness and slaying a buffalo. On the eastern face (that is towards the sea) are carved an elephant and a horse.
Above the elephant’s head is a socket with a carving of Siva depicted as Gajasamharamurthy

Terracota figurines of Mother Godess has been found in three locations in Tamil Nadu, of which one has been dated to pre-Christian era and the others to 8-9th century AD.

Archaeologists estimate that the two figurines found at Andipatti belong to 8th to 12th century A.D. They also found three potsherds with Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions there.
One reads “kan narpo” and department epigraphists date it between 4th and 5th century A.D. The other two Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, written on pot lids, read: “… aa th tha… ” and “…ku ma… ” They may belong to an earlier period.

T.S. Sridhar, Special Commissioner, said the 12 trenches dug at Andipatti in Chengam taluq of Tiruvannamalai district yielded a cornucopia of artefacts.
They included a figurine of Goddess Durga, a bull, coarse red ware, black and red ware, a few pieces of Roman pottery, terracotta beads, spindle whorls, iron knife and nails, copper objects, an incomplete well, bangles made of conch shell with beautiful designs, human torso made of terracotta and so on.
“On the basis of the unearthed antiquities, it can be deduced that Andipatti was inhabited by humans from the 1st century B.C. to 12th century A.D. Andipatti was a megalithic site. The discovery of spindle whorls and iron objects shows the industrial activity in the area,” he said.
The Mother Goddess cult is one of the earliest cults in India. It was prevalent during the Harappan period (circa 3,500 B.C.). It was a fertility cult. Mother Goddess figurines have been found in several places in Tamil Nadu such as Adichanallur near Tirunelveli, Melaperumballam near Poompuhar and Poluvaampatti near Coimbatore. All of them are made of terracotta. If the figurine is depicted in the nude, it “definitely signifies a fertility cult,” said an archaeologist.
Fifteen trenches were dug at Modur in Palacode taluq of Dharmapuri district. They yielded spectacular objects such as celts, polishing and grinding stones, hammers made of stones and cylindrical pestles belonging to the Neolithic period. The megalithic objects found were black and red ware, grey ware and red slipped ware. Artefacts such as terracotta figurines, decorative potsherds, spindle whorls, shell bangles, well-crafted smoking pipes and graffiti potsherds belonged to the historical period after 1st century A.D. [ Mother Goddess figurines found in Tamil Nadu]

The Brahmi script was initially thought to be bought to the South by Jain and Buddhist monks in 3rd century BC, but later discoveries refined the date to Buddha’s time. From this news, it looks like the Brahmi script was in use till the 5th century AD. The Wikipedia entry on Tamil says that the language was initially written in Brahmi, then moved to the Grantha script into the current vattezhuthu script sometime between the 6th and 10th centuries AD.

The Central Govt extended the term of the Liberman Commission inquiring into the demolition of disputed structure at Ayodhya, but at the same time it has denied extension to the Justice MK Mukherjee Commission investigating the disappearance of Subhash Chandra Bose. Subhash Bose, was believed to have died in a plane crash in Taipei, but recently it was discovered that there was no plane crash at that time. There are theories that he was in Soviet Union at that time and the Commision is not visiting Russia to examine the documents due to lack of time. Why is the Congress Govt. not interested in finding the truth ?
So we come to our favourite whipping boy, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had infact setup a commision to investigate Bose’s disappearance.

Intriguingly enough (a fact glossed over nowadays), Nehru declared that the death of Netaji in Taihoku aircrash was a settled fact even before the committee could furnish its report. Its tenure was a mere four months and it dared not upset Nehru’s “settled fact”. So it recommended repatriating the ashes preserved in Japan’s Renkoji temple, fabled to be of Netaji’s, but is doubtful whether it is of any human being at all. The only accompanying “proof” was a death certificate in Japanese, which, when translated into English, turned out to be a Japanese soldier who had died of heart failure from exhaustion during World War II.
The opinion of other two members of the committee was at variance with that of Shah Nawaz but his (actually Nehru’s version) prevailed. After all, this ex-INA Major General was deeply indebted to Nehru personally. In Independent India, former INA members were debarred from entering the Indian Armed forces or try their luck in politics. Nehru found INA-people “disloyal, uncouth, and unpatriotic” and it was not until Indira Gandhi’s regime that they allowed pension. On the contrary, there was no such restriction in Pakistan as Taya Jenkin informs in her book, Reporting India.
Nehru was exceptional in patronising one ex-INA brass, Shah Nawaz Khan, who was recalled (virtually highjacked) from Pakistan where he had migrated after Partition, and was made a minister of state in Nehru’s Ministry. Such was the private reason for Shah Nawaz’s public statement endorsing Nehru’s views on Netaji’s “death”. However, Nehru himself was not convinced of Netaji’s death. Indians were given to believe as gospel what people like Shah Nawaz and Habibur Rehman, who had crossed over to Pakistan, said about Netaji’s fate. A battered Nehru, sometime before his death in 1964, had engaged in correspondence with Netaji’s elder brother Ashok Bose. Nehru therein had agreed that the truth behind Netaji’s disappearance should be brought out. Nothing unsettled Nehru’s “settled fact” like his own admission. [Netaji beyond Taihoku aircrash]

There are stories that Subhash Bose came later to India and lived as a monk in Uttar Pradesh. The present commision has investigated this monk and visited the places where he stayed and examined his belongings.
We may not know the whole truth, but some information will be available when the MK Mukherjee Commision submits its report soon.
There is also a new movie by Shyam Benegal titled Bose: The Forgotten Hero based on the last five years of Subhash Bose’s life.