Dwaraka Update (3): The City submerged by Tsunami

One question that has often come  regarding the under water archaeology happening in Dwaraka is about age of the retrieved artifacts. When some artifacts were retrieved in 2002, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi made the claim that a 9500 year old civilization, which pre-dated the Harappan civilization has been discovered, but some experts remained skeptical, both about the age and the use of the word “civilization”.

Under water earthquakes or volcanic eruptions can cause water to move as fast as 600 miles/hour and cause waves as tall as 100 meters  capable of destroying islands and coastal cities without any warning. It is believed that the shore temple at Mahabalipuram which survived the 2004 tsunami is one of seven temples, of which six got destroyed in previous tsunamis.

In a recent conference, it has been revealed that the debris found under water in Dwaraka are the ruins of a city dated to 2280 BCE and destroyed by a tsunami. The region around Dwaraka had suffered tectonic upheavals in 3000 BCE, 1000 BCE and 550 BCE, but since the city has been dated to 2280 BCE, it is believed that the second upheaval destroyed it.

One of the earlier complaints about the mapping and under water photography of the Dwaraka site has been addressed. The site has been scanned through high resolution underwater photography and the sea bed mapping has also been done.

Previously it was found that during the Late Harappan Phase, Bet Dwaraka had an extensive shell industry which provided artifacts to the Indus Valley Civilization. One significant find now has been a glyptic clay seal identical to ones found in Mohejo-Daro, thus confirming the contact between Indus Valley and the Gujarat coast.

See Also: Dwaraka Update (1), Dwaraka Update (2)

Public Radio Links (2)

National Public Radio  and local affiliates like KQED in San Francisco  bring some of the best interviews and discussions you can hear in American Media. Here are some interviews worth listening.

(For all these links, click on the Listen button to hear the interview)

See Also: Public Radio Links (1)

Foreigners!

If California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger meets Sonia Gandhi (mother of India’s future), they will have a common topic to talk about. As per American laws, Arnold cannot be the President of United States since he is a citizen by naturalization. In India, the Supreme Court has asked the Government’s opinion on the issue of registered citizens holding constitutional posts. By registered citizens’  everyone means Sonia Gandhi.

Let us say by some miracle, the court finds that Sonia cannot hold any constitutional post, it still does not prevent the next generation of the Royal Family from giving us that world class governance.  More effective that this PIL business would be to plead with Rahul Gandhi to give a public speech every day.

If there has been one news which has denied front page coverage of Abhishek Bachchan’s marriage to some Ms. Rai for at least one day, it has been the kissing (not on lips) of Shilpa Shetty by that foreigner Richard Gere. Apparently this is not Indian Culture and I agree for it provides excellent business opportunity for my effigy making startup. Due to this Richard Gere-Culture-Vulture thing, I am missing all those wonderful Rakhi Sawant, Mallika Sherawat, Emraan Hashami movies on TV which were instilling Indian culture into us.

The last foreigner issue comes from the Infosys Campus in Mysore where they decided not to sing the national anthem in a function attended by the President of India. Instead they decided to play the instrumental version. So far so good. Then Mr. Narayana Murthy made the statement that they decided not to sing the Indian National Anthem in India because the foreigners present would feel embarrassed.

President Abdul Kalam thinks Mr. Narayana Murthy would be a good candidate for the post of President of India. As President, Narayana Murthy will have to receive  many foreign dignitaries and there is a 100% chance that the national anthem will be played in all those occasions. To avoid embarrassing situations for foreigners, President Narayana Murthy will have to enforce a new rule –  visitors can bring their own songs which will be played instead of the national anthem. This could sometimes result in the Teletubbies theme song being played when President Bush visits India, but hey Athithi Devo Bhavah!

 What would we do without foreigners?

Future King or Court Jester?

Rahul Gandhi, son of Rajiv Gandhi, Grand Son of Indira Gandhi and Great Grand Son of Jawaharlal Nehru, all of whom have done great service to the nation, has been projected as the future of Uttar Pradesh by none other than our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

By claiming that if his family were in charge of the country, the demolition of Babri Masjid would not have happened he showed that he is clueless about what happened during that era. Now he has come up with some more gems which explains why every road and every building in the country is named after the Gandhi family.

Rahul said that his family had always worked for a vision for the future, but in the past too, members of the Gandhi family have achieved the goals they have initiated like the freedom of the country, dividing Pakistan into two and leading the nation to the 21st century. [Rahul: Gandhis divided Pak]

The British have their Royals who provide entertainment to the masses at the tax payers expense and now have got our own Russel Peters. The scary thing is that this comedian could one day become our Prime Minister.

Dwaraka Update (2)

The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, a 1st century book about a sea journey from the Red Sea to India talks about a the Gulf of Baraca, which contains seven islands and where the sea is violent. The unknown author then writes that from that point it is the begining of the Kingdom of Nambanus and all of India.

An article in The Hindu mentions that some scholars think Baraca refers to Dwaraka while Wilfred H. Schoff who translated Periplus from Greek thinks Gulf of Baraca is the modern Gulf of Kutch and the claim that it comes from Dwaraka is suspect. Schoff is of the opinion that Baraca is the same as Bahlika, associated with Saurashtra in Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa and the Vishnu Purana, while A.S.Gaur of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa who has been conducting exvations writes that Baraca is Dwaraka.

While there is confusion regarding if Baraca is Dwaraka or not what we know for sure is that Gujarat had a maritime history dating back to the mid-3rd millennium BC with Mesopotamian texts mentioning that boats used to be harbored there. Archaeological excavations have discovered a jetty at Kuntasi and stone anchors at Lothal dating to the Harappan period

Recently, the ASI has been conducting extensive archaeological work in the Dwaraka area, both on land and under water and it has revealed fascinating information about life in that region from the Late Harappan Period (1900 – 1300 BCE).

Continue reading “Dwaraka Update (2)” →

Book Review: Next

Next by Michael Crichton, HarperCollins (November 28, 2006),448 pages

In Shekhar Kapur’s first film, Masoom, the character played by Naseeruddin Shah brings home his illegitimate son and  upsets everyone in the family. In Next, scientist Henry Kendall brings home Dave and his wife of fifteen years, Lynn Kendall asks the question, “This monkey is your son?”

When the human genome was decoded, scientists discovered that the genome of a chimpanzee was separated from that of a human being by only five hundred genes. There was then the question of whether humans and chips could hybridize to make a humanzee. While on sabbatical at the National Institute of Health, doing research on autism, Henry inserted his genes into a chimpanzee embryo.

He had expected to fetus to die, but it survived resulting in Dave, a transgenic chimp who could talk. That’s not the only genetic oddity in Michael Crichton’s new work of fiction (except for parts that aren’t). The others who enthrall us include Gerard, the talking parrot, a talking chimp sighted in Java, and turtles carrying fluorescent advertisements on their shells in Costa Rica.

After handling dinosaur’s, nano particles, and global warming, Crichton shows us what is happening in the field of genetics and what the future holds for us. He presents a scary world.
Continue reading “Book Review: Next” →

Pyramid building techniques

If you are looking for information on how the Egyptian pyramids were built, there is information on the location of the quarries, tools used to cut the stone, how the stone was transported and how the foundation was leveled. If you want to know how the stones were lifted to the height of the pyramids, there is not much help from historical accounts. 

The most commonly accepted theory is that ramps along with levering was used to move the blocks, but archaeological evidence shows only small ramps which definitely could have been used for constructing the pyramid. Even though there is no evidence, it has been accepted that only a large straight external ramp can be used for constructing something of that size.

French Architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has concluded, after an eight year study, that the tomb of Khufu was built using a ramp that spirals around the pyramid’s interior.

Houdin’s theory posits that a long, straight ramp was used to build the first 129 feet (39 meters) of the pyramid and the internal ramp was used to complete construction.

Drawings from a 1986 survey of the pyramid show a “spiral anomaly” inside that conforms exactly to this theory, he said. [Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says]

Greek writer Herodotus wrote about the pyramids, 2000 years after it was constructed. So did Diodorus Siculus and both of them gave two different techniques which boil down to levering and ramping. People do not think Jean-Pierre Houdin’s theory as outlandish, but still he was denied permission to test his theory.

If  Jean-Pierre Houdin investigates how Raja Raja Chola built the Big Temple at Tanjore, for which he had to move more stones than the pyramid at Giza, he will find that external ramps were used.

Note: Image shows how a large straight external ramp is used.

An obstacle for Islamic Reform

 Tawfik Ahmed, a former member of Jemaah Islamiya,  blames non-Muslim Western intellectuals as obstacles in the path for reforming Islam in an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria — which happened in the last few decades — or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine’s formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America’s enemies.

Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today. [The Trouble With Islam (Subscription reqd)]

Changing Views of Christianity

In Gore Vidal’s novel about the the Roman Emperor Julian, there is a scene where Bishop George of Cappadocia quizzes a young Julian on the difference between Homoiousios and Homoousios. Julian, the young philosopher correctly articulates that Homoiousios means that Jesus the son is of one substance with God the father while Homoousios means that the father and the son and the holy spirit are one and the same. In the Council of Nicaea held by the Roman Emperor Constantine differences like these were debated, one view point was accepted and the other was suppressed.

Another fundamental teaching of Christianity is that Jesus died for your sins and only by accepting Jesus as your personal savior, you can be absolved of all sins. Before the religion was designed by a committee, there were other competing ideologies about  the death of Jesus and that has now surfaced thanks to the discovery of the Gospel of Judas. The Gospel of Judas consisting of 13 sheets of Coptic manuscripts dated between 220 and 340 A.D reveals that Judas was a friend of Jesus and is asked by Jesus to betray his identity. Though the author is unknown it is obvious that he had issues with the “Jesus died for the sins” concept in general.

But the Gospel of Judas challenges that view and suggests that the fundamental message of Jesus is that we come from God, created in God’s image; when we die and leave the visible world, we step into the infinite world of God, into the divine light, and we go into that glorious light with God. How that happens it doesn’t say, any more than Paul does when he talks about resurrection. But it’s a conviction that’s fundamental to this Gospel. And it’s a very different way to look at Christianity.[FINDING MY RELIGION]

While present followers of Christianity think that the death of Jesus was a kind of sacrifice, the author of the Gospel of Judas thinks other wise. According to him Jesus showed that  he can face death with courage knowing that he is going back to God.

The Roman Emperor Constantine thought that if there was no set creed, the religion would not survive over time. So some doctrines were accepted and some were rejected and were never heard again. Apparently the Emperor had not heard about how Hinduism survived with diverse doctrines all existing within the same umbrella.

Evangelicals who come to sinners like to you and me think they are doing us a favor by offering to save our souls.  The next time one of those conversion fanatics come to save your soul,  tell them about the Gospel of Judas. If they still want to save your soul, tell them you do it the old fashioned way by  creating a word document called “Soul” and press Ctrl-S.