The arrival of the European Christians in Australia was a catastrophic event for the aboriginal peoples of that island. They never recovered from that encounter and today eke out a shambolic and reduced existence, almost as though the karma-phala of their exterminating the megafauna of the island had caught up with them. Human genomics is now revealing their remarkable genetic heritage. Recent studies have shown that they and their cousins from the highlands of New Guinea are actually the result of the admixture of at least 3 distinct populations. The first being an ancient wave of out of Africa immigrants moving east in the direction of Sahul (the combined continent of New Guinea and Australia). Even before this population reached Sahul it mixed with the non-Homo sapiens population of Denisovans (who are closer to the Neanderthals) somewhere in the South East Asia (probably Philippines) and then proceeded further east. In the meantime they appear to have been reached by a second wave of immigrants coming from the west (the “Onge-like” wave), with which they mixed to give rise to the aborigines of Sahul.

This “big picture” has apparently subsumed within finer but remarkable strands of the genetic heritage of these peoples. First, for a long time there has been a suspicion of some kind of connection between the aborigines of Australia and Indian populations. In academic terms, this idea was first presented in the form the anthropological study of Birdsell and Tindale which proposed a “trihybrid” model for the peopling of Australia. According to this model the first settlers of Australia were the negritos, whom he thought were similar to the negritos of Andamans, the Jehai and the Mamanwa. Indeed, negritos with similar morphology were recorded and photographed by the above anthropologists in Australia itself. The second wave of people to enter Australia were believed to be the Murrayians, who partly displaced or mixed with the old negritos. Birdsell suspected that these Murrayians might have in someway be connected to the old Asians, such as the Ainu of Japan. The monophyletic Pama-Nyungan languages were supposed to correspond to Murrayian wave This wave was supposed to be followed by Carpentarian wave that came from India and had a morphology similar to the Veddoid negroids. These peoples were supposed to have a distinct group of languages and their remnants are supposed to constitute to the non-Pama-Nyungan languages distributed in North Australia closer to the coast. This trihybrid model was largely forgotten over time, but other lines of evidence have been brought up to suggest an Indo-Australian connection. For example, the morphology of the dingo dog has been found show similarities to the Indian pariah and Iranian wolves suggesting that it was first transported from the Indus valley. This time of introduction of the dingo is also coeval with the emergence of microliths in Australia, which is clearly well after the time they first appear in India. This had led to suggestions by archaeologists that the dingo and microliths are parts of a single Indian influx into Australia approximately around 4000 years ago. These suggestions have been countered based on studies of the mitochondrial genomes of the dingo which has been proposed to be non-Indian in origin. At the same time there has been support for an Indo-Australian connection from some Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA studies. However, in none of these studies (except one Y-chromosome study) it is clear if this connection is a recent one or part of the second wave that moved eastwards (the “Onge-like wave”).

It is in this context that a just-published study of Pugach et al is rather striking. Their study based on the analysis of genomic data of several populations presents the following salient results:
1) They confirm the previously reported specific relationship between the Australian aborigines, the New Guineans and the Mamanwa negritos of Philippines. These groups are marked by their shared heritage of the hybridization of the Denisovans and the first wave of east-moving Homo sapiens. Their divergence is estimated in this work to be about 36,000 years.
2) They identify a specific admixture between Indians and Australians, which they estimate as taking place around 141 generations ago, which with a liberal estimate of generation time as 30 years gives us a date of 4,230 years bp.
3) Using a variety of south east Asian populations (e.g. Timor, Flores, Alor, Hiri, Roti, Borneo, etc) and New Guineans the authors find no evidence for gene flow between Indians and these populations. Hence, they rule out an indirect entry of Indian genetic contributions into Australia via Southeast Asia. In contrast, it supports a direct entry into Australia after the Australian aborigines had separated from the New Guineans.
4) They estimated the Indian contribution to the Australian genome to be around 11% and find this thus far among the aborigines from the Northern Territories, who overlap with those speaking non-Pama-Nyungan languages or the Carpentarian wave in the trihybrid model.
5) In terms of Indian populations, they see a the greatest frequency of the shared Indo-Australian component with Chenchus, Kurumbas and Dravidian-speaking groups from Andhra and Tamil Nad. Unfortunately, they do not define that group properly, resulting in some issues in terms of inferences that can be drawn. Further, they have strong evidence that this Indo-Australian component is specifically closer to these mainland populations than their Onge sister group, suggesting that it is distinct from any contribution which might have occurred from the Onge-like second wave.
6) In conclusion, the authors suggest that this Indian influx into Australia was the one which brought the microlith technology, dingos and caused a change in plant processing technology in Australia.

The most remarkable aspect of this study is the dating of the Indian influx into the aborigines to around 4200 years ago. This was the height of the Indus(Sindhu)/Sarasvati civilization. So was this journey to Australia actually achieved by SSVC/IVC mariners? This civilization was certainly a bronze age civilization, so why is it nothing more than stone age microlithic technology go transferred, why not metal technology. The latter question can be answered by positing that the mariners lacked metal smelting capabilities and were in any case not able to establish such industry in a distant land like Australia. However, they were probably bearing the microlithic technology which anyhow existed in the Indus sites. Alternatively, were these mariners from peninsular India which was still in the stone age at that time.

Continued …

An integral aspect of the life of the post-Vedic Hindu community was participation in the temple celebrations. It was considered highly beneficial in the tAntrika tradition, both to the individual and the community, and helps explain the basic premises of the prescriptions of the mature vAstushAstra. This indeed also explains the archaeology of medieval bhArata, wherein the temple forms the primary focus of any human settlement, from city to village. Today, this once pan-Indian facet of Hindu life can only be experienced in a form comparable to its historical performance south of mahArAShTra and in Nepal and Orissa, because centuries of Islamic savagery and a failure to reestablish Hindu tradition upon the eviction of the Christian barbarians has all but erased classical Hindu custom in the rest of the subcontinent (although some vestiges survive beyond the subcontinent in Bali, the refugium for the Indonesian tradition that also came under the cloud of the West Asian madness). Thus, we can only imagine based on textual and archaeological reconstructions the glorious performances of the once vigorous centers of the Agama tradition, such as those in kashmIra, vArANasi, the kShetra-s of the pa~nchanada, tirAbhukti, va~Nga, mAlava, jejakAbhukti and the like.

The temple celebration like most Agama traditions of larger Astika fold has its ultimate origins in the older smArta rites of vaidika period. On one hand, its community aspects lie in the ancient public festivals of the vaidika period. The foremost and most ancient of these was the glorious indra mahotsava. Many aspects of the Agamika festivals are fashioned on this ancient smArta festival, which probably goes back to the period of Indo-European unity. Other old vaidika public festivals are specified by the rAja-karma-sAMvatsarIya sUtra-s, along with the mantra-s from the atharvaveda which are deployed in them, whose celebration was the duty of the kShatriya ruler. These include the autumnal festival of the lustration of horses and elephants along with some type of military procession (which is retained today in the dashamI festivities following the autumnal navarAtrI) and the autumnal dIpotsava (which survives today retaining some old aspects in the form of the dIpAvalI). The former was also preceded by an apotropaic/protective veterinary festival to the deva-s agni, vAyu, mitra-varuNa and the ashvin-s. Elements from this ritual in the form of consecration of water pots with various oShadhi-s and dhAnya-s placed on a square altar were adopted by the Agamika festivities. The other aspect, which contributed to the origin of Agamika celebrations, was related to smArta rites pertaining to the iconic worship of certain deities that emerged in the late Vedic period. This aspect included the general elements in the iconic worship of deities like brahmA, skanda, rudra, viShNu and durgA in temporary maNDapa-s, hoisting of flags and also the specific ritual of bathing (snapana) of images (specified for rudra, viShNu and durgA). The relationship of the above-mentioned ancient rituals to an interesting, recent archaeological find from an IVC/SSVC site in the form of a procession (apparently) of a female deity remains entirely unclear, but might point to some type of vague continuity with practices from an early period of Indian history. In temporal terms, the Agamika rites which we shall be discussing are closer to comparable temple celebrations elsewhere in the Indo-European world, such as those occurring under the Neoplatonic system in the Greco-Roman world. While the prototypes were already in place by the late vaidika period, the Agamika-style rituals, which we shall be discussing here, appear to have first blossomed with the rise of the gupta-vAkATaka empire that unified the subcontinent, bringing forth the new Hindu golden age and a period of monumental temple-building.

The core of the Hindu temple celebration is centered on the principle of the two-fold nature of the consecrated images: the achala-mUrti-s and chala-mUrti-s. The former are immovable images made usually of stone installed in the grabhagR^iha of the Ayatana. The latter are smaller portable images usually made of metal. The former are worshiped in situ only by those qualified to access the grabhagR^iha (usually tAntrika-s of the first varNa and no one else) and is at best seen from outside the garbhagR^iha by the initiates from the 4 varNa-s, but never touched or directly worshiped by them. The latter idols, in contrast, are meant to be seen by all and sundry and are taken out on processions, wherein they provide a darshana to the people, much like a kShatriya going on his procession. It is this procession of the portable idols that lies at the heart of the classical Hindu temple celebration (the utsava). Such utsava-s are a common feature of the saiddhAntika shaiva, pA~ncharAtrika vaiShNava, shAkta, medieval kaumAra, saura and shAstA systems. While such utsava-s are also practiced by the vaikhAnasa vaiShNava-s it is not entirely clear if their medieval practice was an evolute of their earlier versions closer to the late Vedic performances or a secondary acquisition inspired by their pA~ncharAtrika counter parts. The shAkta utsava-s from south India that survive today are clearly modeled after their shaiva counterparts, though the kAlikA purANa clearly indicates the presence of a once more diverse shAkta tradition that partly survives in East India. It is likely that there were earlier shaiva versions distinct from the saiddhAntika utsava tradition (as hinted by the bhairavotsava-s, the bhUtamAtR^ikA ritual alluded to by rAjA bhojadeva, and the foundations of the siddhilakShmI festival, i.e. the public pratya~NgirA). Currently, there is considerable textual material regarding these celebrations from saiddhAntika shaiva and pA~ncharAtrika traditions followed, by much smaller textual collections from the kaumAra, shAstra and shAkta traditions.

The shaiva temple utsava-s are specified in several of the major tantra-s of the IshAna-srotas, such as the raurava, sUkShma, kAmika, kAraNa, ajita, suprabheda, vijayottara and the like. But in actual practice the paddhati-s of famous deshika-s like somashaMbhu, trilochanashiva and aghorashiva have considerable influence on the realized shape of the ritual. In particular, in the Tamil country the extensive manual of the great aghorashiva, the kriyAkramadyotikA plays an important role. There is another manual used for the daily celebratory procession, namely the parArtha-nityapujA-vidhi from the Tamil country which was written by another Acharya with the same name, but distinct from the great aghorashiva. These utsava-s or the celebratory processions have found a place in a several regional poems such as umApatishiva’s machi makaM pATu from Chidambaram, the chera king chEramAn perumAL’s poem AdiyulA (centered on his pilgrimage to Kashmir with the shaiva tamil poet sundaramUrti), ahobala’s virUpAkSha-vasantotsava-chaMpU in the Vijayanagaran capital, ShaDakSharI-deva’s account in the karNATa country, and ma~Nkhaka’s account in the Kashmirian shrIkaNTha-charita. These expressions testify the notable imprint left by these utsava-s on the minds of the beholders. The utsava-s themselves span a wide range of performances from the daily nityotsava, the pakShotsava-s on the full and new moon days, the sa~NkrAnti-s or the solstitial festivities, the R^ikShotsava-s to mark particular astronomical configurations (e.g. the full moon in Ardra which is the constellation of rudra as stated in the veda) and finally the mahotsava-s which could last from 1 to 17 days.

The daily procession, nityotsava, provides a model for all the utsava-s, which are developed via iteration and modification of the recursive elements to lead to the culmination in the form of the mahotsava. Thus, it might be compared to the vaidika formulation of the great rituals such as the rAjasUya, the vAjapeya and the ashvamedha through a similar process of elaboration from ground plan of the basic darsha and pUrNamAsa rituals. It should be noted that the utsava-s, probably even more than the above-stated great shrauta rituals, are distinct from regular deployments of mantra practice in that they interface closely with the laity (i.e. those not or insufficiently conversant with the principles mantra practice; these might include both “casual” worshipers and highly involved individuals like those Hindus in the community who follow the bhakti practices). While certain saiddhAntika tantra-s, like the sUkShma go into various circum-ritual matters such as temple employees and their salaries, the primary concern of these as well as the paddhati-s are rituals. Thus, in laying out the their elaborations of utsava-s, the tantra-s mainly describe how the ritual activity is expanded even as the utsava is being enlarged (though it is not blind to the interface with the non-ritual domain). What exactly comprises the ritual followed a certain logic that was primarily only understood by the learned deshika-s – thus, aspects of the utsava that impinge on the sphere of the ritual are closely regulated by Agamika injunctions, whereas others are not, and left in the domain of the lay celebrators [Footnote 1]. Thus, there is a distinction in how the utsava is ultimately “understood” by the tAntrika initiate or knowledgeable observer and the laity, even though they may share several aspects of the basic experience.

The nityotsava is performed on a daily basis, in the morning, noon or evening and is described in detail in the ajitamahAtantra (paTala 25). After the worship of the main achala-mUrti (typically a li~Nga) shaiva ritualist next performs the daily homa of the IshAna-srotas. Before the procession starts, having completed his homa the ritualist enters the grabhagR^iha and worships either just the trident or up to 9 deities (see below) with their respective mantra-s in their respective chala-murti-s with a pa~nchopachAra pUjA. For the pAshupata missile, he draws a lotus figure on the center of a bali plate and worships the missile in it with the famed pAshupatAstra mantra. The trident is placed on this plate. Thereafter he might make a temporary li~Nga if needed and invokes bhava or uses the golakA (the metal sheath of the li~Nga) for the same purpose. He may then invoke dharma and yaj~na in the sandals of shiva. He then strikes the large bell of the temple to set the procession in movement. In increasingly more elaborate versions of the nityotsava, the tantra instructs that along with the trident other images also be carried in the procession. In its most elaborate form with all 9 deities, an image of vinAyaka is borne in front of the possession. This is followed by the image of maheshvara with the idol of umA carried to the left. Alternatively both of them might be seated together on the same throne. Behind them the idol of the regent of the pAshupata missile, known as the pAshupateshvara is carried. He is followed by the trishUla borne on the bali-vessel. This is followed by (the golakA) borne aloft on a stick; alternatively a li~Nga made of rice or flowers is carried. This is followed by the pAduka-s, then the vR^iShbha and finally the gaNa chaNDeshvara makes up the rear of the procession. All the 9 deities or in the simplest form only the trident is taken around the outer walls of the temple in a pradakShiNa on head of a putraka [Footnote 2], who has had a bath, cleaned his mouth and who is wearing clean white clothes with an upper garment, a turban, a pavitra on the fingers, the tripundra on his forehead and flower garlands. The images are fanned by peacock feather fans and yak-hair fly whisks, and are shielded by canopies. There is drumming and taurya-gAna following the ma~NgiNI tAla (rhythm), flags of shiva are waved, incense is burned and lamps are lit. However, silence is observed in the gateway of the temple. After the pradakShiNa is complete in the procession makes an inner pradakShiNa stopping at the directions of the following gods and music should be played for each of them as per the following ancient rhythms:
indra: East: sama-tAla
agni: Southeast: baddhAvaNa-tAla
yama: South: bhR^i~NgiNI-tAla
nirR^iti: Southwest: malli-tAla
varuNa: West: nava-tAla
vAyu: Northwest: bali-tAla
soma: North: koTishikhara-tAla
IshAna: Northeast: ta~NkarI

The the procession images are brought into the garbhagR^iha with the playing of the vR^iShatAla music. Then the putraka-s are sent away to wash their feet. The ritualist does a pa~nchopachAra pUja to the images. Then he lifts up the trishUla from the bali plate with the pAshupatAstra mantra and reciting it again places it to the right side of achala li~Nga. In the case of an invasion by an enemy the ritual is done only inside the temple with the trishUla.

The mahotsava is a much larger affair which itself comes in many forms which are named as per the encrypted numeration of days (AMT paTala 27): bhauvana (7), shAkta (9), raudra (11), saura (12). mAnava (14), pakSha (15). Of these, aghorashiva states in kriyAkramadyotikA that the mahotsava of 9 days is the ideal one. These may be performed to coincide with particular specified nakShatra, or the birth nakShatra of a king or patron, or the date of founding of the temple or village. These festivals are marked by the making and hoisting of the bull flag. The bull flag is made of a white denim-like cotton cloth that can be up to 10 ells in length and 2.5 ells in breadth with a double triangle free edge typical of Hindu flags. In the center of the cloth a white bull is drawn in with a prominent hump. The mouth, horns, hooves, ears, dewlap, genitals, and lips are painted red and the eyes are black and white. The tail is painted yellow, the arse painted orange. Bull is depicted with a garland of small bells. Set of ten trees namely, sAla, tamAla, kramuka, madhuka, champa, veNu, ashoka, punnAga, shirISha and bilva are specified for the flag post. The flag itself has additional components such as the second supporting staff, the “shoulder” planks, a cotton hoisting rope, a metal ring for the rope, a darbha grass garland, a golden tortoise or bull for the hole where the staff is inserted and a brick barricade for the staff. All of these are specified in great detail. This just gives an idea of the kind of ritual detail to material that is found in the tantra-s. This is combined with considerable mantra practice that is only familiar to the shaiva initiates. The fire altars for the ritual are also rather elaborate, just as in a larger shrauta ritual. There is a one out rim of eight altars in the 8 directions with a central large one. In the outer eight the oblations are made to bhava, sharva, IshAna, pashupati, ugra, rudra, bhIma and mahAdeva with their respective mantra-s as specified in the kAraNAgama. In central altar an offering is made to shiva. In a similar circuit the homa with the first four brahma mantra-s is offered in their respective directions followed by the fifth in the central altar. For the fire offerings the ritualists wear new clothes (necessarily covering his chest with the upper garment) and turbans and accompany the sAdhaka-s who might sponsor the rituals and the putraka-s who carry the idols. The pUrNAhuti in the central fire is performed with the recitation of the famed vyomavyApin mantra or just the pa~nchAkSharI. There is also a ceremony of the weapons of rudra and other deva-s, wherein metal replicas of these weapons are worshiped. In addition to maheshvara who is the central deity of the festival other deva-s are also given special worship in specific days. In the classical 9 day festival for example, vinAyaka is specially worshiped on day one for warding of obstacles. On day two prajApati is worshiped, on day five indra is worshiped, on day 7 viShNu is worshiped, on day 8 the vasu-s are worshiped on day 9 the marut-s are worshiped.

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Footnote 1: The logic of ritual is very important element of Hindu thought that forms the foundation of the Astika dharma or the sanAtana dharma. It was this foundation that was attacked by the nAstika-s such as the tathAgata, the nagna and maskarin of the cowshed. However, the former two systems eventually fell back to reinstate the logic of ritual via the backdoor. However, the discussion of this logic is a topic in itself, which we might revisit at a later point. For now we shall point to a curious parallel in the yavana world mentioned by Plutarch suggesting that perhaps this logic was probably present even there (even though it is not usually understood in the modern west as such) – Lysimache the priestess of the goddess Athene Polias was asked by the muleteers who had ferried the holy vessels to the Acropolis temple in Athens for drinks. She refused stating that if she obliged such an action might become part of the ritual. This suggests that yavana-s had a logic comparable to that of the Hindus of what constitutes ritual and what cannot be allowed to wander into its domain.

Footnote 2: A putraka is an initiated assistant to the deshika, but he has not attained the high dIkSha that is supposed to completely obliterate his pashupAsha.

continued…

Ichthyopterygia (colloquially ichthyosaurs in this note), like many other reptilian clades, is well known to the lay reader but remains mysterious in terms of its origin. The ichthyosaurs first appear in the fossil record around the second half of the Olenekian age of the Triassic (~248.5 Mya) and continue to be present till the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary (Cretaceous, ~93.9 Mya), thus spanning a total of 154.6 My through much of the Mesozoic. Interestingly, unlike many other Mesozoic reptiles, they seem to disappear from the fossil record approximately 30 My before the catastrophic close of the Mesozoic era. Thus, on the whole they appear to have survived along side several other phylogenetically distant clades of marine reptiles, such as the various branches of sauropterygians, the archosaurian crocodiles, turtles and pleurosaurs, through the Mesozoic. When they disappear from the fossil record we see a concomitant rise of the mosasaurian marine lizard clade for the last part of the Cretaceous. However, the age of dominance and diversification of the ichthyosaurs was in the Triassic for a window of about 46 Mya. Several recent studies are throwing considerable light on the biology of these animals and present some interesting questions in terms macroevolutionary phenomena.

Through their history the ichthyosaurs covered an extraordinary size range from the tiny Chaohusaurus at 70 cm, through the great predators like Thalattoarchon and Himalayasaurus at around 9 m, to the gigantic piscivorous or squid-gulping forms like Shonisaurus (16 m) and Shastasaurus sikanniensis (21 m). The remarkable diversification of the ichthyosaurs was nearly complete by the first 35-40 My of their 154.6 My fossil record and the above size spectrum was already achieved in that period. Over this period they appear to have rapidly evolved from forms that swam within the continental shelves to forms that swam in the open oceans. Several lines of evidence are pointing towards early emergence of homeothermy in ichthyopterygia:

First, from early in their history there is evidence that the ichthyosaurs had the ability to cover large distances in the sea across the globe, actively pursue prey and also conduct deep dives in sampling prey through a wide temperature gradient. We know that homeothermy has convergently evolved in fishes and sharks that pursue such predatory strategies on multiple occasions: In tunas, marlins, sailfish, swordfish among actinopterygians and the white sharks, makos and porbeagle sharks (the lamnid clade) among the sharks. Thus, the Japanese researcher Motani used such arguments to suggest that it is quite likely that convergent adaptations also arose among the ichthyopterygians. It could have either been regional endothermy, as in the sharks and fishes, wherein metabolic heat is conserved by vascular countercurrent heat exchangers to elevate the temperature of the slow-twitch locomotor muscles, eyes and brain, or viscera, or full-fledged endothermy seen in crown members of the dinosaur and mammal clades.

Second, recent studies by a French group compared the oxygen isotope compositions of the tooth phosphate of marine reptiles to those of coexisting fish to determine their body temperature and fluctuations therein. The results suggested the both ichthyopterygians and crown sauropterygians maintained a rather constant body temperatures. While these researchers caution that these values are most reliable for Jurassic ichthyosaurs, there is no reason a priori to dismiss the Triassic data without more careful investigation.

Third, investigations on the bone structure of derived ichthyosaurs had indicated that the more derived ichthyosaurs had a rapid growth rate and cancellous inner organization suggestive of a fully marine cruising life-style. But recently, a more striking result was presented regarding one of the most basal ichthyopterygians, Utatsusaurus. It was shown to possess inner cancellous bone and also rapid bone deposition suggestive of rapid growth rate and by extension possible homeothermy. Thus, it is quite likely that homeothermy had emerged at the base of ichthyopterygia and that they were well-adapted for an open marine life-style even before they gained a tuna-like body shape.

The progressive evolution of a tuna-like body shape in ichythopterygians

The conclusion that the ichthyopterygians were possibly homeothermic from the start leads to the biggest mystery in their natural history – what were their ancestors or closest sister groups? High metabolic rates did not evolve in all reptilian lineages. Currently we only have evidence for such physiology in the archosaurs, crown sauropterygians and ichthyopterygians. Among the lizards, while the varanoid clade has adaptations for much higher performance than other lizards, they still do not reach archosaur levels. Furthermore, those varanoids which invaded the sea as active predators, i.e. the mosasauroids, appear to have only achieved partial homeothermy, which was still short of that seen in ichthyopterygians. This, suggests that from a clade with no preadaptation for homeothermy (but some other high performance adaptation e.g. the gular pump), namely the varanoid lizards it was not entirely easy to reach homeothermy. Thus, one could argue that the ichthyosaurs probably came from a clade with greater pre-adaptations. Now which was this clade? We can say with some certainty that ichthyopterygia actually emerged from within diapsida and are more derived than the basal diapsids such as Araeoscelis, Petrolacosaurus, Lanthanolania, Tangasaurus and Youngina. We also hold that they are likely to be within Sauria (i.e. archosauromorpha+lepidosauromorpha). Now they like the sauropterygians have a euryapsid skull. Less certain are answers to the questions such as: are these euryapsids monophyletic (first presented by the nasty Englishman Richard Owens in form of the enaliosaurian hypothesis)? If not, do both or subsets of them fall in archosauromorpha or lepidosauromopha?

The current morphological phylogenetic analyses have generally been poor at establishing the affinities of highly derived forms such as the sauropterygians, ichthyopterygians and turtles. However, we favor the euryapsid monophyly – this hypothesis has been supported by early work by Caldwell, to a certain extant in Rieppel’s work and most importantly Merck’s which is mentioned on his website but not yet formally published. We suspect that at the Permian-Triassic boundary, during the rebound from the extinction there was an explosive radiation of euryapsids in aquatic niches resulting in extraordinary disparity in their body forms, thus erasing most obvious phylogenetic signals in morphology. We have no evidence for genuine homeothermy ever emerging in the the lepidosaurian clade. However, there is reasonable evidence that it emerged relatively early in archosauriformes, even though it might have been secondarily lost in the extant crocodile clade. Evidence for homeothermy emerging in the euryapsid clade might indicate that they were archosauromorphs (as suggested by Merck’s analysis), and were able to exploit certain preadaptations of this clade for acquiring this physiology. On the other hand viviparity has never evolved in archosauromorphs, even if they acquired a complete marine life-style (like the turtle). This suggests that the crown archosauromorphs (turtles+crocodile-line+dinosaur-line) had a fundamental biological constraint in being able to move from laid eggs to live birth. However, there is strong evidence that both ichthyopterygians and sauropterygians were to a large extent viviparous. In lepidosauria we have evidence for numerous independent origins of viviparity. About 20% of the extant lizards are viviparous and we also have evidence for this from the Mesozoic in the form of the basal mosasauroid aigialosaur Carsosaurus and the terrestrial lizard Yabeinosaurus from the early Cretaceous. This feature would be more in line with lepidosaurian affinities for euryapsida. However, in Merck’s phylogeny the euryapsids emerge as a basal branch of archosauromorpha. Hence, it is conceivable that the euryapsids branched off from the rest of the archosauromorphs before the biological constraint preventing vivipary came into being.

The links between homeothermy, vivipary and the invasion of the are interesting because these traits certainly help high performance, predatory life-styles in the high seas. Reptiles (defined as the clade uniting parareptilia and eureptilia) had already invaded aquatic environments in the Permian itself. However, we have no evidence for invasion of such environments in a serious way by the synapsids or the stem mammals in the Permian. Among the Permian reptiles we have the parareptilian mesosaurs, which appear to have reasonably specialized themselves for an aquatic life-style. They even appear to have been one of the first amniote groups to acquire vivipary. Among the eureptiles we have the basal diapsid clade of Tangasaurus, Hovasaurus and Acerosodontosaurus which were well-adapted for an aquatic life and also a closer sister-group of the saurians, Claudiosaurus. However, none of these were particularly large (greater than a meter) nor showed specializations suggestive of active pursuit of large prey in the high seas. The fact that these types of ancient aquatic reptiles did not develop the level of high-performance marine life-style seen in multiple euryapsid clades suggests to us that the latter were distinguished from early in their evolution by physiological specializations that allowed them to effectively dominate marine niches. These might have included a tendency towards homeothermy, or respiratory adaptations as were seen in the archosauriformes. Thus, after the Permian extinction, these adaptations probably helped the euryapsids to explosively radiate into the Early Triassic seas to occupy various ecological guilds at a scale way beyond what was achieved before by the Permian reptiles. The first to seize the initiative on a large scale were the ichthyopterygians. While the sauropterygians too diversified into many niches in this period, the ichthyosaurs probably achieved somewhat greater diversity if not disparity in body form.

This adaptive radiation through the Triassic included several interesting strategies. As marine predators, piscivory or predation on soft-bodied molluscs was common place across most of their size range in ichthyosaurs. By the middle Triassic, some forms like Omphalosaurus and Phalarodon developed broad posterior teeth to crush hard shelled molluscs. Thus, they probably had a degree of specialization in hunting ammonites. By the beginning of the late Triassic, the gigantic shastasaurids displayed another notable specialization in hunting thin long cephalopods such as squids and belemnites, i.e. by sucking them into their toothless jaws. A parallel to this specialization was to be reinvented only much latter in squid-hunting sperm whales. Even more enigmatic were the forms that arose closer to the end of the Triassic such as Leptonectes, which were succeeded by related forms in the Jurassic, such as Excalibosaurus and Eurhinosaurus. These were characterized by an upper jaw which form a sword-like structure extending way beyond the lower jaw. This extended region was equipped with teeth and it is unclear it was used for probing or stabbing prey or in intra-specific conflict. Among the marine amniotes this morphology was again recapitulated only much later among the Miocene dolphins, Eurhinodelphis and Macrodelphinus, which had a similarly elongated upper jaw. However, most dramatic were forms like Thalattoarchon and Himalayasaurus which had large bicarinate, triangular teeth which were clearly adapted for cutting out large chunks of flesh. Thus, these icthyosaurs were probably the apex predators on the middle Triassic sea which preyed on other actively swimming ichthyosaurs and sauropterygians in addition to various marine vertebrates and cephalopods.

continued…

In 438 BCE the 12 meter image of the great goddess Athena made by the foremost of the yavana idol makers, Pheidias under the patronage of Perikles was installed at the Acropolis in Athens. It was built with 1.1 tons of gold, the face and the arms were made entirely from ivory and it was decorated with gems. It was described thus by the Pausanias in the 100s of the common era:

“The image of Athena is upright, with a tunic reaching to the feet, and on her breast the head of Medusa is worked in ivory. She holds a statue of Nike about four cubits high, and in the other hand a spear; at her feet lies a shield and near the spear is a serpent. This serpent would be Erichthonius. On the pedestal is the birth of Pandora in relief [description of the Parthenon temple of Athena].”

873 years after its installation, the pious Christian emperor Theodosius II passed an edict to extirpate the already beleaguered heathens:

“All persons of criminal pagan mind we interdict from accursed immolations of sacrificial victims and from damnable sacrifices and from all other practices prohibited by the authority of the more ancient ordinance, and we order that all their shrines, temples, sanctuaries, if any even now remain intact, should be destroyed by the magistrates’s command and that these should be purified by the placing of the venerable Christian religion’s sign [the Cross] – all persons knowing that if it it shall have been established by suitable proofs before a competent judge that anyone has mocked this law, the said person must be punished with death [Theodosius II legal edict 16.10.25 Nov 14th, 435 CE].”

The pretasAdhaka-s swung into zealous action putting the pious emperor’s directives into practice. They damaged the eastern pediment of the Parthenon and then uprooted the Athena from its precincts and placed a cross atop it. Thus, they recycled it as a church for the puMshchalI who birthed the preta. Subsequently, the Parthenon was to become a Masjid when fatih sultan Mehmed-II of the Osmans conquered it from the pretAcharin-s in 1460 and erected a minar. In 1687 during the war between the two West Asian cults the temple was blown up by the pretacharin-s leaving the ruins we see today at the Acropolis.

While the image of Athena was uprooted it was not destroyed and was taken by the last of the great yavana R^iShi-s, Proclus (Πρόκλος), the mathematician, heathen lawyer, philosopher, hymn composer and ritualist, to a villa in the southern Acropolian slope. Here the last sacrificers of the old deities of the yavana-s, besieged and battered, charily assembled for their rituals, away from the gaze of “those who moved that which should not be moved” and “the neighbors who abandon sobriety”. Though “the typhonic winds of Christianity” were hammering their world, they still took hope as long as the towering figure of Proclus could still invoke the gods and compose his hymns. Then on April 17th 485 BC Proclus died at the age 75 – he had stated in a hymn of “mokSha” in his 42nd year that he would attained oneness with the stars. He had lived through the darkest hour of the heathen world in the near West, yet was one of its greatest. His end, like that of the great emperor Julian before him, was to almost mark the end of the brahma and kShatra of that world.

Even before the convert and enforcer of the pretamata, Constantine, came to power, it was not without risks for the Hellenes to freely express their view: The Greek philosopher Porphyry who wrote the brilliant tract “Against the Christians” was beaten up by a mob of shavapUjaka-s at Caesarea in Palestine. Thus, it was gradually becoming harder to openly voice an opinion on the shava or the preta-pustaka without running into the danger of being attacked by them. All this even when the shavapUjaka-s were claiming to be persecuted and heathen emperors were still in power. With the coming to power of Constantine, he passed an edict that all copies of Porphyry’s “Against the Christians” be burned and prescribed the death penalty for any one who kept secret copies of the text. More than a century later Theodosius II and Valentinian II were still burning copies of Porphyry’s works with much vehemence. It was the reign of Theodosius II during which the heathen really came to see the grim darkness of the pretamata bringing an end to their world. Heathen thinkers like Hypatia the daughter of Theon were murdered by pretAcharin gangs. Temples were desecrated and Proclus and his school could only refer to the shavapUjaka-s with cryptic terms. As we have said many times before on these pages, these events are a chilling reminder of what can and is happening to us, who uphold the last, unbroken transmission of the Indo-European heathen tradition. Today in bhArata it is not easy to criticize the violent West Asian lunacy cults. The Hindus are losing their rights in their own land despite being the majority. A parallel to the desecration of the Acropolis could very well be the next stage. In this context we feel it worthwhile to revisit the brilliant heathen thinker Georgios Gemistos Plethon whom we had briefly alluded to on these pages.

Continued …

Most students of Indian archeology and history are very familiar with an animal called the unicorn on the seals of the IVC/SSVC. According to one census they are present on 1159 seals collected from various Indus sites. In addition to seals, 3D images of this animal with a single horn have been recovered from Chanhudaro, Harappa and Lothal suggesting that it was not merely an artistic convention of showing a two horned animal in profile. Also arguing against this claim is the presence of Indus art, other than seals, where the unicorn is depicted alongside other animals like a bull and antelope; the latter display two horns whereas the former has a single horn. This is also the case when the unicorn is shown on 3-headed animal seals, where the bull and the antelope always have two horns. The animals on the Indus seals are among the most realistically depicted objects of all items we see represented on them. Thus, there is really no issue in identifying bulls, antelopes, makhors, tigers, elephants, rhinos, buffaloes, scorpions. So in the absence of any other information, one would reason that the unicorn is also a faithful depiction of a real animal just like the rest. But the unicorn resembles no living animal in jaMbudvIpa or elsewhere. So the question arises as to what was this animal? The general consensus has been that it is a mythical animal – a view expressed by white Indologists and Western archeologists like Possehl and others. Nevertheless, it has puzzled us, and many others before us, that this unicorn on the Indus seals has a certain resemblance to a description of the unicorn by the yavana physician Ctesias who lived in the Achaemenid court in Iran for almost 17 years (415-398 BCE; geographically relatively close to the Indus region). He writes in his Indica, an account of India regarding the unicorn:

“There are in India certain wild asses which are as large as horses, and larger. Their bodies are white, their heads dark red, and their eyes dark blue. They have a horn on the forehead which is about a foot and a half in length. The base of this horn, for some two hands’-breadth above the brow, is pure white; the upper part is sharp and of a vivid crimson; and the remainder, or middle portion, is black. Those who drink out of these horns, made into drinking vessels, are not subject, they say, to convulsions or the holy disease [epilepsy]. Indeed, they are immune even to poisons if, either before or after swallowing such, they drink wine, water, or anything else from these beakers. Other asses, both the tame and the wild, and in fact all animals with solid hooves, are without the ankle-bone and have no gall in the liver, but these have both the ankle-bone and the gall. This ankle-bone, the most beautiful I have ever seen, is like that of an ox in general appearance and in size, but it is as heavy as lead and its color is that of cinnabar through and through. The animal is exceedingly swift and powerful, so that no creature, neither the horse nor any other, can overtake it. When it starts to run it goes slowly but it gradually increases its speed wonderfully, and the further it goes, the swifter. This is the only way to capture them: when they take their young to pasture you must surround them with many men and horses. They will not desert their offspring, and fight with horn, teeth, and heels; and they kill many horses and men. They are themselves brought down by arrows and spears. They cannot be caught alive. The flesh of this animal is so bitter that it cannot be eaten; it is hunted for its horn and ankle-bone.”

People have generally held the view that this is a confused account, with Ctesias conflating hearsay reports on rhinos, antelopes and asses into a single unicorn. Calling it an ass might be on account of some general idea of perissodactyl anatomy, arising from the similarities between rhinos and equids, on part of Ctesias (after all he was a physician). Even the Mogol tyrant Babur noticed the relationship between the horse and the rhino. But there are some aspects of the description that are clearly at odds with a rhino – the color of the animal, the color of the horn, its great speed of running, and the ox-like ankle. This account appears to be more compatible with an animal like the SSVC unicorn than the rhino. Despite this, some people have dismissed the link between Ctesias account and the Indus animal (e.g. Possehl), while others, like the zoologist Lavers who has extensively studied this issue, have felt that these are not real animals but mythical ones composed from multiple inspirations. Against this backdrop comes the work of gautama vajrAchArya who presents evidence that this Indus unicorn was none other than the original Vedic and post-Vedic R^iShya of Indo-Aryan tradition. He posits that it represents a real one horned animal that was not only around in the SSVC but its horns were actually used in ritual by Arya-s in North India.

Now, several authors, including Lavers have proposed links between the R^iShyashR^i~Nga legend and the unicorn. R^iShyashR^i~Nga is first mentioned in the tradition of the vaMsha brAhmaNa of the sAmaveda, where he and his father vibhANDaka are founders of the tradition of saman singing. His story is elaborated in the itihAsa-s and in the rAmAyaNa he is the potential niyoga seminal donor in the fertility ashvamedha of dasharatha. This keeps with the virile nature of the R^ishya seen in the form of the prominent li~Nga in the SSVC seals. Several authors, even some of those who connect the motif of the R^ishyashR^i~Nga legend with that of Enkidu in the Gilgamesh, have also admitted possibility of the SSVC unicorn playing a role in the development of the R^ishyashR^i~Nga legend in Indo-Aryan texts. But in large part these authors have considered the unicorn to be a mythical animal. However, what vajrAchArya does is to propose that it was a probably a real one-horned animal known to the SSVC and also probably the Indo-Aryans.

In the earliest layers of the shruti we have multiple references to the R^ishya. These include one in the RV in the sUkta of devAtithi kANva (noticed by vajrAchArya) and one in the aindra nivid used in the soma offering to indra (unnoticed by him). The first goes thus:

R^ishyo na tR^iShyann avapAnam A gahi pibA somaM vashAM anu | (RV 8.4.10ab )
Come like a thirsty R^ishya to the water tank; drink soma as you please [Footnote 1].

Here vajrAchArya correctly notes that the R^ishya is a wild animal that has come out of thirst to the water tank (avapAna) that is used by the domestic animals.

Second goes thus:
asya made jaritar indra R^ishyAm iva pamphaNataH parvatAn prakupitAn aramNAt |
In its [soma's] exhilaration O chanter indra set to rest the agitated mountains that were like bounding R^ishya-s.

In the AV-P 4.5.6 the virility of the R^ishya is mentioned (wrongly stated as AV-S 4.4 by vajrAchArya), whereas in AV-P 19.24.2 the diseases are said to bound away like R^ishya-s when treated by gulgulu (guggulu). In AV-S 5.14.3 (a pratya~Ngira ritual) the horn of the R^ishya is mentioned in singular – this is a key observation that is strongly argued by vajrAchArya. The single horn is also mentioned in a parallel mantra in AV-P 7.1.10 (not noticed by vajrAchArya). The form of this mantra, when compared to that in the AV-S, suggests that there might have been a form of the pratya~Ngira ritual that actually involved the R^ishya horn (potentially negating the translation of vajrAchArya but not his proposal of the single horn [Footnote 2]). Thus, from the vaidika tradition we can infer the following: 1) the R^ishya was a wild animal rarely seen in the vicinity of settlements of the Arya-s. While it is often translated as an antelope, there are multiple other Vedic terms for antelopes that do not ever seem to be used equivalently with R^ishya. It was also probably a rare animal suggested by its relatively infrequent mention. 2) There is evidence for it being considered a virile animal in the shruti, and this is consistent with both the tale of R^ishyashR^i~Nga and the SSVC seals. Moreover, indra being compared to a R^ishya is also in line with him being compared to other virile horned animals like vR^iShabha and gaur. 3) It was a animal capable of bounding and running fast – this is consistent with Ctesias’ account of the unicorn and not inconsistent with the morphology of the SSVC unicorn. 4) The comparable references in the AV-P and AV-S suggest that it had a single horn. However, vajrAchArya’s further claim that this horn was used to make a the parIshAsa-s for holding the heated pravargya vessel is rather unfounded: Just because (as he correctly argues) the horn of the R^ishya is called parIshAsa in the AV tradition it does not mean that the parIshAsa-s used in the pravargya ritual were made from that horn. It amounts to arguing that because the rhino is called khaDga, swords were made from the rhino’s horn! In any case, as proposed by vajrAchArya, we do see philological support from the Vedic and post-Vedic Indo-Aryan tradition for the R^ishya being a one horned animal with features consistent with the unicorn of the SSVC seals and aspects of Ctesias’ Indian unicorn. Thus, we do feel we cannot dismiss the R^ishya and the SSVC unicorn being the same. The Vedic references, though rather infrequent, do suggest the possibility of it being a real animal, which goes well with the argument based on the realism of the SSVC animal depictions made above. Other bits of information from Vedic and post Vedic texts might be adduced as circumstantial arguments of the reality of the R^ishya. For instance, the unicorn’s color alluded to by Ctesias is similar to what the Hindu naturalist varAhamihira states regarding the R^ishya’s color in his bR^ihat saMhitA (65.2; where he describes a ram with color similar to it). Likewise the description of a trap in RV 10.039.8 as a R^ishyada points to the presence of traps that might have been used to hunt real R^ishya-s. Thus, on the whole the inference of the reality of the R^ishya, while suggestive and logical, is not entirely unambiguous and begs for more clear-cut archeo-zoological support.

Before moving on archeo-zoological considerations we shall first touch upon what comparative linguistics can bring to the table in this regard. First, from the form of the word, R^ishya appears to be part of the core Indo-European heritage in Indo-Aryan. While to my knowledge there is no surviving cognate currently available in old Iranian, we have two cognates in later Iranian languages. In Wakhi from the Wakhan corridor and Khotanese, both eastern Iranian languages we have rUsh/rUSh for the large Argali ram, which can be derived from Old Iranian R^ishya. In Slavic we have cognates (the Indo-Iranian versions are rhotacized with respect to them), like losu (Russian), los (Czech) which stand for elk. Further, these appear to be cognates of Latin alces and proto-Germanic alkhi (both meaning elk), which are the kentum forms opposed to the satem forms lacking the initial vowel in the former group. This suggests that they are indeed descendants of the PIE *[hx]olkis. It appears that the meaning change primarily happened in the Indo-Iranian branch with the Iranians appearing to have applied it to a sheep, while Indians applied it to an animal in India. Based on the cognacy with the elk the R^ishya has been routinely assumed to be a large Indian cervid close to the elk like the Sambar or perhaps some other artiodactyl, such as a bovid or an antelopid. However, given that in Iranian we see a major change in meaning, there is nothing holding it from being applied to some other animal in Indo-Aryan. Hence, even though the linguistic argument might suggest that R^ishya was an animal similar to what Indo-Aryans were already familiar with in their Inner Eurasian homeland, there still enough room for it being applied to a different animal in the subcontinent.

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Footnote 1: When we were talking about this to a learned AV scholar from the mahArATTa country the said scholar proposed that the “standard device” with holes exuding droplets seen on the SSVC seals actually stands for a soma filter and that the unicorn was indra as a R^ishya. We are not entirely convinced by the “standard device” being a soma filter, an idea also floated by the Dravidianist Mahadevan. However, it is possible that it might be something inspired by the soma filter of the Indo-Aryans.

Footnote 2:
Continued…

The third paNDava, as an impetuous warrior, the embodiment of the great indra on earth gave a powerful lesson to his brother yudhiShThira when urged by his wife yAj~nasenI. The pith of this lesson is truly one for the kali age, especially the situation in which the rAShTra that founded by the kuru and the pA~nchAla finds itself in, ruled by duShTa-s, taskara-s and kulu~ncha-s who are but frontmen of barbarous mlechCha-s. Indeed, it is quite likely that a nation that forgets the essence of this lesson of the embodiment of indra, instead perpetually follows the false teachings of the muNDaka who was proclaimed to be a mahAtman by the uneducated, might fail to exist in the future.

We present the core of that teaching here:
nAchChittvA para-marmANi nAkR^itvA karma dAruNam |
nAhatvA matsyaghAtIva prApnoti mahatIM shriyam ||
Without piercing the weak points [Footnote 1] of enemies, without performing ruthless acts, without [slaying foes] creatures with the ruthlessness of a fisherman (slaying fish), no person can obtain great prosperity.

nAghnataH kIrtir astIha na vittaM na punaH prajAH |
indro vR^itravadhenaiva mahendraH samapadyata ||
Without slaughter, no man has been able to achieve fame in this world or conquer wealth or subjects. Verily indra became the great indra (mahendra) by slaughtering vR^itra.

ya eva devA hantAras tAMl loko .archayate bhR^isham |
hantA rudras tathA skandaH shakro .agnir varuNo yamaH ||
Those amongst the gods who are slayers are more extensively worshiped in the world. The gods rudra, skanda, shakra, agni, varuNa and yama are all slayers.

hantA kAlas tathA vAyur mR^ityur vaishravaNo raviH |
vasavo marutaH sAdhyA vishvedevAsh cha bhArata ||
kAla, vAyu, mR^ityu and kubera, ravi, the vasu-s, the marut-s, the sAdhya-s, and the vishvedeva-s, O bhArata, are all slayers.

etAn devAn namasyanti pratApa-praNatA janAH |
na brahmANaM na dhAtAraM na pUShANaM kathaM chana ||
Laid low by the prowess of the above gods, all people pay obeisance to them, but not all time to brahmA or dhAtR^i or puShaN.

madhyasthAn sarvabhUteShu dAntA~n shamaparAyaNAn |
yajante mAnavAH ke chit prashAntAH sarvakarmasu ||
Only a few men that are pacific disposition worship in their rituals those gods that are equally disposed towards all creatures and that are pacific and peaceful.

na hi pashyAmi jIvantaM loke kaM chid ahiMsayA |
sattvaiH sattvAni jIvanti durbalair balavattarAH ||
I do not see an organism in this world that lives without doing any harm to others. Organisms live upon other organisms, the stronger upon the weaker [Footnote 2].

nakulo mUShakAn atti biDAlo nakulaM tathA |
biDAlam atti shvA rAja~n shvAnaM vyAlamR^igas tathA ||
The mongoose eats the mouse; the cat the mongoose; the dog eats the cat; O king the dog is then [consumed] by the cheetah .

tAn atti puruShaH sarvAn pashya dharmo yathAgataH |
prANasyAnnam idaM sarvaM ja~NgamaM sthAvaraM cha yat ||
All of these are eaten by man , behold [this] dharma [i.e. yama] which comes for all. All that is mobile and immobile are food for [the continuation] of prANa [Footnote 3].

vidhAnaM deva-vihitaM tatra vidvAn na muhyati |
yathA sR^iShTo .asi rAjendra tathA bhavitum arhasi ||
This process is the way of the gods; hence, the learned man is never mystified by it. It is becoming you, O lord of the kings, to accept the very nature of your origins.

vinIta krodha harShA hi mandA vanam upAshritAH |
vinA vadhaM na kurvanti tApasAH prANayApanam ||
Giving up anger and pleasure [it is] the slow-witted [who] take refuge in the woods. [Because] even the performers of austerities cannot support their lives without carrying out slaughter.

udake bahavaH prANAH pR^ithivyAM cha phaleShu cha |
na cha kash chin na tAn hanti kim anyat prANayApanAt ||
In water, on earth, and in fruits, there are numerous living forms. It is not possible that one does not slaughter them how could one support one’s life else?

sUkShma-yonIni bhUtAni tarka-gamyAni kAni chit |
pakShmaNo .api nipAtena yeShAM syAt skandhaparyayaH || Mbh 12.15.14-12.15.26
There microscopic germ-like organisms whose existence can only be inferred by logic. At the wink of an eyelid whole multitude of such microscopic organisms are destroyed [Footnote 4].

What arjuna does is to present this basic biological logical to this brother and explain that there can be no existence of one life form without injury to another. Hence, arguments for absolute ahiMsa are illogical. It is in this regard he taught a famous principle that was willfully distorted to emasculate the Hindus in modern times:

lokayAtrArtham eveha dharma-pravachanaM kR^itam |
ahiMsA sAdhuhiMseti shreyAn dharma-parigrahaH ||
The dharma has been taught only for the appropriate maintenance of ways of the world. Between nonviolence (ahiMsa) and violence guided by proper motives (sadhuhiMsa), the superior action is that by which dharma is maintained.

nAtyanta guNavAn kash chin na chApy atyanta nirguNaH |
ubhayaM sarva-kAryeShu dR^ishyate sAdhv asAdhu cha || Mbh 12.15.49-50
There is no act that is entirely meritorious, nor any that is entirely wrong. In all acts, something of both, right and wrong, is [always] seen.

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Footnote 1: In the Hindu martial tradition marman-s are special “junction” points where a warrior strikes to instantly disable or kill the opponent. The tradition of these marman-s and striking them survives today only the south Indian martial tradition from the Tamil and chera countries. What arjuna is talking about here is striking these marman points of enemies in battle.

Footnote 2: All students of biology know this to be a truism – perhaps even an inherent to life, as the pANDu clarifies in this shloka.

Footnote 3: Here the pANDava is describing the food chain and the fact that flow of prANa is the consumption of food by all – death is the dharma of life were every organism ends up as food for another.

Footnote 4: Here arjuna is encapsulating a very important facet of early Hindu knowledge i.e. that of microbial life. Even though they could not be seen, the early Hindus had inferred their occurrence by reasoning based on fermentation and postulated that the whole earth, water and plants are covered by these microbial life forms. We regard this a major scientific inference of our early tradition. This knowledge, which the nirgrantha-s inherited from their predecessors, combined with obsession for ahiMsa of their founder led to their numerous practices to avoid killing microscopic life.

Continued…

It was in the year yuvan, which we were passing through for the first time in our life, when skanda freed us from the vile dasyu who was tailing us for a while. In the city of the great dancers our eyes fell upon a remarkable paper on the library racks – the upper Semliki valley harpoons of Zaire (today DR of Congo). Having read it and made some notes we stumbled out taking a eastern route through the wooded track. ST joined us but we were so engrossed in the thought of what we had read that we did not converse with her for a while. What so striking about all this?

For a while it had been supposed that anatomically modern Homo sapiens appeared in Africa sometime between 130-100 Kya. Between 130-60 Kya Africa is dominated by what are known as Middle Stone Age (MSA) technologies. By around 40 Kya there is a notable technological shift observed in certain parts of Africa, with a new microlithic technologies, the preparation of bone tools and the use of ostrich eggshell beads (something still used by the bushmen of the Kalahari). These technologies are termed the Later Stone Age (LSA). In western Eurasia and Central Asia we see the middle Paleolithic Mousterian stone tool technology dominate till around 35 Kya. Here, somewhere between 40-30 Kya we see the emergence of the prismatic blade cores, bone and horn tools, advanced fire places, ornaments, and symbolic art. By 30 Kya these features start dominating, marking the transition to the late Paleolithic. At least in West Asia and Europe this transition seems to have been coeval with the rise of Homo sapiens and the decline of Homo neanderthalensis. In India the situation is very murky due to limited data. However, we know that around 80-70 Kya we have MSA technologies resembling those seen in Africa. It is believed that in India from around 30 Kya a gradual replacement of MSA technologies with more LSA-like technologies happened as opposed to the more abrupt transitions elsewhere (However, this contention is based on limited data). It was against this background that the Semliki valley bone harpoons were striking – they were dated to around 90 Kya, squarely within the African MSA. Such barbed weapons were to be found in Ishango in DR of Congo and also Tsodilo Hills in Botswana only 60 Kys later. In Europe such barbed tools are only 14 Ky old. Thus, despite anatomically modern Homo sapiens apparently existing in Africa by the time of these tools, nothing comparable to this type of tool-making is seen in Africa or elsewhere for a long. So here we have an unusually precocious record of modernity from the MSA of Africa, which does not temporally correlate the emergence of advanced technology elsewhere.

The related harpoons from more than 60 Kys later (thus a LSA site from ~26 Kya), found at Ishango, DR of Congo, in the same general region of Africa, points to a certain continuity with the earlier MSA technology over a rather long period of time. Along with these tools de Heinzelin recovered remains belonging to at least 9 humans – while rather fragmentary there are some well-preserved mandibles, femora and other bones. A recent study of these bones, so far only reported in abstract form, finds evidence for archaic features in them, i.e. morphological elements typical of representatives of Homo prior anatomically modern H.sapiens (AMHs). Thus, as late as 26 Kya we still have evidence for possible inter-breeding between more archaic Homo coexisting with AMHs. While this report is still preliminary, we have a rather well-worked out study by Stringer, Harvati and colleagues that looks at the LSA remains dating to about 11-16 Kya from Iwo Eleru, Nigeria. This partial skeleton, includes a calvaria, mandible and fragmentary postcranial remains and is accompanied by LSA artefacts and charcoal dating to 11.2 Kya (consistent with the bone’s date). Strikingly, the calvaria of this individual had features that resembled archaic fossil Homo represented by skulls such as Omo1/2 (195-200 Kya, Ethiopia), Saccopastore 1 a primitive Neanderthal-like skull (100-130 Kya, Italy) and Ngandong, i.e. the Solo man or a Homo erectus-like skull (>143 Kya, Java). A principal component analysis of calvarial landmarks including the Iwo Eleru human shows that it groups outside the cluster of modern and almost all Upper Paleolithic humans and shows affinities with Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis. Thus, it is rather notable that as late as 11-12 Kya in Southern Nigeria there were individuals who still retained archaic features that were present in representatives of Homo more than 150,000 years before that time. This is the remarkable archaism of Africa that appears to go alongside with the precocious modernity note above. For a while we have felt that in the vast continent of Africa there should be signs of interbreeding between Homo of archaic and modern aspect resulting in hybrid morphologies. These remains do seem to point in that direction and suggest that the so called AMHs and archaic Homo have been diverging and them merging again, never fully isolated from each other.

A few days ago Mendez et al reported a remarkable finding. A deceased African-American from South Carolina had submitted his DNA for genealogical studies. Surprisingly, his Y chromosome displayed the ancestral state for all known Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphism. Further analysis showed that his Y chromosome was well outside of all the previously known human chromosome, including the extremely early branching ones of the Bushmen of Southern Africa. An estimate of the age of divergence of this Y chromosome from the rest of the human males showed that it was 338 Kya (95% confidence interval 237–581 Kya). This is well beyond the age of any thing which has been considered AMHs! Interestingly, this African-American was not alone in having this Y-chromosome. Further investigations by the authors showed that related Y-chromosomes could be seen in multiple males among the Mbo people of Cameroon not far from the Nigerian border.

Continued…

On the shuklapakSha prathamI of the month of phAlguna in the year nandana, 5113 of the kaliyuga, a shvetaketu-putra was sighted by us .625 muhUrta-s after sunset. The shikhin was in the quarter of awful nirR^iti to the south of both the sun and moon and due to its low altitude needed a binoculars to sight it. Both the moon and the comet where in our nakShatra. Yet it was pretty bright and and its magnitude by comparison with the sliver of the prathamI moon could be placed as around .25 or so. Thus, we would place it among our memorable shikhin-s: Hale-Bopp, Hayakutake and Halley, which was the first ever we saw in our lives. The moon was a like the sword of rudra with comet above its southern horn with a prominent tail and bright nucleus.

The tale of poisoned arrows
The bushmen clans generally used to not fight each other because most adult males are armed with arrows that have been smeared with deadly toxins. However, when from the mid-1600s the Dutch started intruding into their land and waging a war of extermination, the bushmen fought unrelentingly and with much distinction putting their poisoned arrows to good use against the invaders. The archeological investigations at the Borders cave in South Africa has uncovered a poison applicator from 24 Kya resembling the equivalent device of extant bushmen suggesting that they have been using such poisoned arrows for at least that point in time if not older. Indeed this long-standing tradition of poisoned arrows has continued from this most basal branch of humanity to the more recent branches. Based on philological evidence we can say that it was likely that the common ancestor of the Arya-s and the yavana-s within the Indo-European sphere extensively used such toxic arrows. Right in the R^igveda we have a mention of the poisoned arrow in the battle incantations of the bharadvAja-s:

AlAktA yA rurushIrShNy atho yasyA ayo mukham |
idam parjanyaretasa iShvai devyai bR^ihan namaH || RV 6.75.15
Obeisance to this arrow goddess, born of parjanya, smeared with venom, with a point of deer-horn and metal.

Among the yavana-s we encounter the poisoned arrows being used by the hero Herakles, which were later passed on to Philoctetes. Odysseus also said to go to Ephyera to obtain poisoned arrows.

Over time a variety of toxins have been utilized on the tips of the poisoned arrows. The bushmen as one of the earliest discoverers of the use of toxins in this capacity have explored a wide range of possibilities. They are known to use toxins derived from a variety sources such as castor beans, the mamba snake, and certain chrysomelid and carabid beetles. The beetles are what we are interested in talking about here. The bushmen use larvae of three chrysomelid beetles: Diamphidia nigroornata and Diamphidia vittatipennis most frequently and Polyclada flexuosa less so. Most remarkably all these chrysomelids are parasitized by the larvae of the carabid beetle Lebistina holubi and some other Lebistina species. The adult carabids closely resemble the adult chrysomelids and track them on the same host plant (the guggulu plant). These carabid larvae attach themselves to full-grown Diamphidia and Polyclada larvae and thus gain access to them when the enter diapause within their cocoons . Here the Lebistina slowly sucks them dry keeping them alive till the last larval stage. These Lebistina are also used for their venom. We do not know if they derive at least part of their venom from their hosts. However, from the reports of the bushmen it is clear that there is a difference – they distinguish the parasitic Lebistina larvae from the host and consider its toxin to be better as it apparently loosens flesh from the bone. The full-grown larvae of the chrysomelids migrate 0.5-1 meter into the ground and form an egg-shaped cocoon in which they remain in diapause for several years. The bushmen dig out these cocoons and prepare the toxin in many different ways: The simplest is carefully crushing the larva on to the arrow heads followed by heating them lightly in a fire. They might mix the crushed beetle with plant extracts and their own saliva and then apply the mixture to the arrows using an applicator as mentioned above. They may also dry the larvae and then grinding them into powder which is mixed with a plant gum and applied to the arrow.

We consider the use of these poison beetles an extraordinary discovery of the bushmen. The beetle itself is hard to get (i.e. underground) and its poison’s effect is not immediately apparent – it has no effect on endothermic vertebrates if delivered orally. However, intravenously it is lethal with no known antidote or treatment. Thus, the bushmen can safely consume the animal they have killed with its toxin. Not surprising they have evolved a code around its use: The cocoons can only be collected by the chief hunters and they are stored live in ostrich eggshell containers. From them they are taken out periodically to be used sparingly. They are also supposed to be exchanged between clans living throughout the Kalahari. The toxin from Diamphidia is a single subunit protein of weight around 50-60 Kd but to my knowledge the sequence of the gene coding for it remains unknown. Its mode of action is still not fully understood but has been demonstrated to cause cell lysis and apparently has no peptidase activity. It is only effective against endothermic vertebrates. Interestingly, a similar toxin has been reported from the North American chrysomelid Leptinotarsa and it parasitoid Lebia. Hence, we cannot rule out the possibility that the toxin is made or has been acquired by lateral transfer from a bacterial endosymbiont – this comparable to the Black widow spider latrotoxin (a protein toxin) which we recently shown to have been acquired by lateral transfer from bacterial endosymbionts.

Interestingly, there is a parallel story concerning the ancient use of toxic beetles from bhArata that is today not widely know to our people.

The use of poisons in warfare are well-known in Indo-Aryan tradition. Right in the RV we are informed in a mantra composed by kakShIvAn the son of dIrghatamas the twin deva-s, the ashvin-s devised such a toxin to slay the viShvAcha-s [Footnote 1]:

ajohavId ashvinA vartikA vAm Asno yat sIm amu~nchataM vR^ikasya |
vi jayuShA yayathuH sAnv adrer jAtaM viShvAcho ahataM viSheNa || (RV 1.117.16)
When the quail had invoked you, O ashvin-s, you saved her from the the wolf’s jaws; in your victorious march you two stormed the mountain citadel and slew the clan of the viShvAcha-s with poison.

So was a beetle toxin known to the Arya-s? The answer to this question leads to a rather convoluted story, which we shall begin with an observation of Ctesias the yavana physician of the Iranian king Artaxšaça-II in his Indica (Aelian’s citation of Indica book 4, chapter 41):

“In India there is a sort of bird as big as the egg of a patridge. It is a yellow color and makes its nest on the mountains. Indians call it dikairon. If any one takes of the feces of these birds so much as a grain of millet-seed, and in the morning drinks it dissolved in water, he falls asleep and must die in the evening. Poets, however, paint it as the sweetest and pleasantest death in the world. The Indians on that account place the greatest value on the possession of the same, for they hold it in fact as an oblivion of evil [of death]. Thus, the king of India sends it as one of the most costly gifts to the king of Iran who treasures it as a preservative and preventative of incurable ills in time of need. Therefore, among the Persians, no one possesses it but the king and the king’s mother.”

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Foonote 1: A lead-based toxin of the ashvin-s is deployed in AV-vulgate 6.50 to counter pests that target granaries.

continued …

The young Mongol scholar Dorje Banzar, published a book in 1846 in Russian at the university of Kazan that brought to light for the first time the old religion of the Mongols to the scholarly world. In the 1960s, M. Jaadamba, a descendent of Chingiz Kha’Khan, along with a group of Mongolian workers brought to light several texts and incantations of the ancient Mongol ritual that had never been seen before. We have alluded to some of these incantations on these pages before. This old religion of the Mongols has been considerably diluted by the missionary activity of the tAthAgata-s but remains in certain pockets of steppe eking out a precarious existence. Along with the hoary Shinto tradition of the eastern islanders it remains one of the important documents of old Eurasian ritual expression. We had early pointed out parallels between to Mongol fire ritual and the ancient Hindu one in the veda. We had also pointed to the interactions of the Mongol tradition with the Indo-Aryan and Iranian traditions, with elements such as the the nakShatra mantra-s, the equation of Köke Möngke Tengri with Ahura Mazda and the invocation of Darqan Guejir Tengri.

The old Mongol religion called its invocations as daghudalgha and considers itself an oral tradition, much like the early Indo-Iranian traditions. This appears to be stated explicitly in the starting invocations of the shaman-s:
My teacher, you have given [me]
the ritual practice without writing!
My teacher, you who have taught [me]
the ritual practice without books…

Or:
You my three teachers, he hi hi !
With my unwritten ritual teaching, he hi hi!
[Translated by Heissig from Monghol kele bichikh of Mongol scholar Manijab]
The nAstika practioners wanted to remove many elements of these old deities and subordinate them to the tathAgata-s. The practitioners of the old Mongol religion saw the nAstika mata as diluting influence on their spirit. This was expressed early on by another great Altaic tribe, the Uighurs, where the steppe orthodoxy stalled the progress of Manichaeism in their midst. Finally, a compromise was reached with the tAthagata-s letting alone the worship of these deities by the shamans with some cosmetic changes. Still we see the tension in some of the ritual incantations composed by the Mongol ritualists of the medieval period, e.g. a recitation to one of their noted deities Dayan Degereki:
Khan, Black Tengri
With medicine in you thumb,
With divine healing power in your index finger,
With a breast of bronze ore,
With hips of iron ore,
With the trees of the Khangai as posts to tie up your horses,
With black blood as libation,
You have drunk the blood of a hundred Lamas,
You who have made a hanging decoration from the skulls of a thousand Bandi [break]
With black crows as your retinue,
With the pups of spotted bats,
You who still do not see a shorn headed [bhikShu],
You who see no shramaNa or vajrAcharya.
You who do not see the yellow and red color,
You who do not smell the smoke of incense-offering of juniper…[break]
[Based on translations by B.Rinchen who first recorded the incantation and Walther Heissig]

In general the tAthAgata-s have seen it prudent to accommodate the great Kha’Khan, the father of the Mongol nation. Hence, they have declared him as an incarnation of vajrapAnI, and confer on him the traits inhered by vajrapAnI from the ancient indra, which meld with with the shamanic conception of their ancestor as being sent by Köke Möngke Tengri. They also retain much of the shamanic liturgy associated with the worship of the father of the nation, with some bauddha insertions to bring it in line with nAstika doctrines. Indeed, to this date the Mongols worship their ancestor in a small idol kept in their gers (below)

Alternatively, he is publicly worshiped at large stone steles, which bear his image, erected on the steppes in the manner of the balbal stones of the ancient Hun Khans.

In this context, we may note an interesting discovery made the Hungarian Gábor Bálint, who was interestingly a scholar of Tamil and Mongolian, during his expedition to Kalmykia where he recovered a text preserved by the bauddha Mongols on the worship their rAShTrapitar, which recorded the maxims of Chingiz Kha’Khan (or elements of his Yasa) along with some liturgy for his worship. This suggests that the worship of the ancestor was closely associated with the transmission of the nuggets of his wisdom.The worship of ancestors was certainly around at least from the time of the Chingizid Mongols. In the Secret History we here that such a ritual was performed in spring with offerings to the departed ancestors just before the Mongols moved to their summer camps [Footnote 1]. This equinoctial ancestor festival is comparable to an Iranian ancestor rite to the fravashi-s [Farwardigan], which comes around the same time of the Mongol ritual noted in the Secret History. The Mongol tradition holds that Chingiz Kha’Khan had formalized and recast the ritual in his time. For example, the Mongol chronicle Bolor Erike notes:

“On the cool meadows of the Onon river Chingiz had his general Jelme [Footnote 2] set up a ritual arena bounded by ropes and decorated by flowers, and the wise Choua-mergen of the Juerchid tribe round-up the foals. After 7 days and nights Chingiz himself arrived and announced a new ritual practice in which mare’s milk was poured out as offerings to Tengri-s and then his ancestor Borduanchar (the fifth son of their legendary ancestress Alan Goa) followed by the rest.”

Rituals at the founding of the Mongol nation might be compared to the rituals performed by bharata dauHShanti to indra and other deities at the foundation of the Hindu nation; an old gatha is remembered regarding his great ashvamedha-s and his name is taken at the beginning of all shrauta rites where the ritual fire is declared as belonging to the bhArata-s. The promulgation of new rituals at the founding of nation are important for a nation’s identity. A parallel might also be noted with respect to the promulgation of new rituals with the emergence of the unified Hindu nation in northern India after is complete conquest by janamejaya pArikShita. On the occasion of his indrAbhiSheka, the tura kavasheya who was previously rejected by other brAhmaNa-s, was declared as the chief ritualist. At the directive of janamejaya the shrauta system was unified along with the composition of a new AprI for the ashvamedha by tura kavasheya that is preserved in the yajurveda.

Chingiz is also said to have formalized other rituals such as those of marriage. Walther Heissig noted that in eastern Mongolia they still recite this history during the pre-marriage ritual:
“The fortunate Chingiz Kha’Khan, the incarnation of Qormusta Tengri, at the time when he took to wife Boerte [Footnote 3], the daughter of the Bayan of the Khunggirad tribe, the subject of Ughichud, sent his wise officials, led by the ministers Boghorju and Muqali [Footnote 4] and following the custom of the old, the custom was fulfilled to ask after the name and the year of birth of the bride. He is said to have introduced the ritual of anointing the yurt followed by the worship of the deities of the sun and moon and making offerings to the yurt hearth fire.”

The last can be compared to the ritual offering to the gArhapatya fire in the Hindu tradition.

We have alluded several times to the transmission of Indo-Iranian traditions to the Altaic people. In this context we may note that the earliest phase of transmission of the fire ritual might go back in time before any of the known Altaic people appear in history. For this we have to turn to the records of the chIna-s brought to light by the modern chIna scholar Zhang He. The Chu Ci or the poetry of the Chu kingdom which has works going back 300 BCE is of great interest in this regard. The ruling clan of the Chu kingdom is supposed to have been one of outsiders coming from the northwest, who took over the custody of this chIna kingdom. They are described as being characterized by a distinctive shamanistic practice involving a fire ritual. The medieval chIna scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095 CE) made a remarkable observation. In his study of an ancient Chu incantation, known as the Zhao Hun, he noted that a word that comes frequently as the end of the formula pronounced in the Chu language as ‘sai’ corresponded to svAhA in Sanskrit (“sa po he” in Chinese). A Chu poem Tian Wen has also been proposed to bear parallels to verses in the veda and the avesta. The maternal ancestress of the Chu are described by chIna chronicles as being of the Guifang clan. The chIna historians state that they were a clan of the Central Asian pastoralist raiders known as the Xiongnu or Hunyu, who were the Huns of history. The paternal ancestor of the Chu ruling clan is said to be emperor Zhuan Xu. His grandsons Zhongli and Wuhui are supposed to have become Chu ritualist-ministers called the “Officer of Fire” with the title Zhurong (In later chIna parlance apparently Zhu Rong is the name of the fire deity). The chIna text termed Zhou Li (Rituals of Zhou) from around 500 BCE records the duties of such an “Officer of Fire”, named Si Quan, which have no parallels elsewhere in the Han chIna world. He is supposed to issue orders for fire rituals, kindle the new fire at the beginning of each of the four seasons, conduct fire worship with oblations, and maintain the “fire seed” or original fire for the state. These are remarkably parallel to the Indo-Iranian ritual tradition. This when taken together with an observation made by Zhang He appears to be a clincher in this regard. The chIna-s currently term the holy soma plant (Ephedra species) huang ma or ma huang which is taken to mean yellow (huang) ma (hemp). Now the yellowness is indeed a feature of the plant that the Indo-Aryan and Iranians emphasize (hari and zairi). One possibility is that the chIna-s purposely used the name huang ma to also capture the phonetics of the Iranian name of the plant hauma. But more telling is the fact that among the Chu poems, the Jiu Ge, comprising of the ritual recitations of the Chu fire shamans, one encounters a plant called suma:

“Pluck the suma and the yaohua;
Present them to the one who departs:
We are getting older, toward the end of our lives,
But we are no nearer each other.”

The word shu-ma or su-ma has been interpreted by the chIna-s as “distant hemp”, with the ma being the same as in huang ma, but the plant itself was believed to be mythical by many. As Zhang He points out this is clearly soma itself. Thus, one may infer that the rulers of the chu state probably emerged from a hybrid of an Indo-Iranian tribe with a Mongolic tribe (the Hun) and observed Indo-Iranian-type fire and soma rituals before being assimilated completely within the chIna world. Thus, we have reasonable evidence for Indo-Iranian influx very early in the history of the Altaic tribes, before bauddha-mata ever reached them or the chIna-s. While the soma ritual appears to have died down the fire ritual was certainly retained and renewed in various forms through their history.

There have been clearly been several periods of contact between the Indo-Iranian and Tocharian peoples on the Indo-European side and the chIna-s and Altaic steppe peoples. This first of this appears to have been the one recorded in the Chu state. It has been proposed that the horse and chariot tradition frequently mentioned by some poets associated with Chu state might be a further marker of this contact. It indeed appears that the chariot and the equestrian culture were transmitted on one or even more occasions from the Indo-Iranians. It appears that a robust equestrian warfare arose somewhat later than the chariot culture (often linked to the need for the stirrup for effective warfare). Proto-Indo-Iranian tradition, while aware of horseback riding and equestrian warfare, placed much greater emphasis on the chariot in war and does not seem to record a stirrup. The invention of the stirrup itself remains murky – it is first seen in India and then in the steppes, yet the first major users of equestrian warfare were the steppe Indo-Iranians like the Shakas and Kushanas. It was from them that it was transmitted to the first Altaic people who became known to the world the Huns under Motun Tegin, and the Kushanas themselves became the first victims of the Huns. We suspect that the echoes of these contacts were seen not just in the acquisition of technologies but also mythic motifs and ritual actions. The transmission of the horse and the chariot cultures were accompanied by horse-based rituals. It was one such ancient equestrian ritual was reworked by Chingiz into the special ritual of the Suelde Tengri with the famous 9 horse tail banners. The Suelde banners were extremely auspicious for the Mongols and was the center of much struggle in the 1900s. One of those belonging to the great Khans was apparently stolen or destroyed by the Russians in Mongolia. The other was supposed to be shown in a place called Sarachi which was much sought after by the Japanese warriors when they invaded China and was apparently taken by then to Japan. But some of the ritual incantations and actions pertaining to the horse-standard still survive in a relative unchanged form from the Chingizid period which show the tell-tale Iranian “hoof prints” of an earlier period from which they were derived. In this regard an remarkable tale is recorded by a descendant of Chingiz Kha’Khan with respect the to horse-standard deity:
“There was a great battle between the demons and the Tengri in which the latter were defeated. They turned to Qormusta Khan Tengri (ahura mazdA), the high god, for aid. He declared that their defeat was due to them having no horse-standard and recommended that they invoke the Suelde Tengri the god of the horse-banner. Then appeared 9 divine brothers armed with swords, tiger-skin quivers and bows, the eldest of whom was Suelde Tengri, riding fiery horses (corresponding to the nine horse tails of the banner). Aided by these deities, the Tengri fought the demons and defeated them.”
This is followed by a verse incantation to the Suelde deities. The Dalai Lamas declared that the Suelde deity was the same as mahAkAla and homologized it dGra lha tradition of the Tibetans. The formalization of the ritual appears to have emerged at the time when Temujin acquired the title Chingiz Kha’Khan in 1206 CE. We know from some material preserved from the earlier Uighur Khanate that there were followers an Iranian religion, Manichaeism, in their midst. Genetic and physical anthropological studies reveal that Uighurs have a major Indo-European admixture. We know that the Chingizid Mongols were close to the Uighurs, e.g. Alaltuen, daughter of Chingiz and Boerte, was married to the lord of the Uighurs and was the viceroy of the Kha’Khan in the Uighur state. There is ample philological evidence for Uighur to Mongol transmission of religious terms So one could argue that the Iranian influence came via the Uighurs. We do not seen this as likely – whereas the earlier Uighur Khanate was certainly influenced by Iranian religions, examination of the Uighur texts of those affiliated with Chingiz shows that they lost Manichaeism and followed the mAhAyAna and vajrAyANa streams of the bauddha-mata. Moreover, we do not see any evidence for the dualism of the Manichaeism in the Mongol or later Uighur tradition. Hence, suspect that that Iranian influence actually belongs to the earlier period.

Some clues for the earlier Iranian transmissions come from an unexpected source, namely the Japanese Shinto tradition. In the period before 250 CE (Yayoi period) there is no major presence of horses in Japan. Sometime after 250-300 CE (the Kofun period) for the first time one sees horses coming into prominence, with their depiction and of chariots being a major feature of the art of this period. A key Shinto ritual is leading of the holy white horse before the goddess Amaterasu three times a month at the Ise shrine, the holiest Shinto shrine whose ritualists come from the emperor’s clan. On mythological and philological grounds we can say that the Shinto tradition per say is an ancient Eurasiatic tradition whose primary deities emerged in some form before the introduction of the horse to the islands. However, the coming of the horse clearly had a major impact with it being incorporated whole scale into the ritual. In some form, a ritual parallel to the the leading of the holy horse before the Ise shrine was already in place at beginning the Kofun period (the Japanese chronicles refer to emperor Suujin dedicating a horse to the Shinto deities). Importantly, along with horses in the Kofun there are also images of horse-borne warriors who look just like the Shaka-tigrakauda – a depiction not seen before or after in Japan. Both their non-Japanese facial appearance and the tigrakauda (the pointed hat just as in the Iranian carvings of Darius) strongly suggest that these are not natives but the Shakas who got the horse from central Asia to Japan. The other key feature is the ancient mirror used in sun-worship by the Shakas (e.g. the case made recently by Vassilkov for the use for mirror in pre-maurya times by the Shakas on the steppes) which appears to have become part of the Shinto tradition around this time.

We may note that the Japanoic languages have a distant relationship to the Mongolic, Turkic and Tungusic languages suggesting a common origin. However, the old Turkic and Mongolic people have rather similar religious traditions and legends that share many features that are not seen in Japan. This indicates that there was a considerable development of the continental Altaic tradition after its separation from the island version. We suggest that the above discussed Indo-Iranian these transmissions are part of this divergence and that it happened over a prolonged early phase of interaction that culminated in the conflicts of the Shaka and Kushana with the Altaic tribes. This eventually resulted in the defeat of the steppe Iranians and their expulsion from their ancient seats. But in the process the continental Altaics had absorbed many of their traditions. This is also reflected in the genetics of the Huns: Among the people whose DNA was recovered from the Hun cemetery in Duurlig Nars, Northeast Mongolia (~20-0 BCE), there was one with the typical Indo-Iranian R1a1 Y-chromosome alongside others with North-East Asian markers. Some of the steppe Iranians fled towards India with which they had deep and long-standing cultural connection. Another a group appears to have reached Japan and transmitted the use of the horse along with several elements to the Shinto religion. But these transmissions were not identical to the transmissions seen in the continent and might have in fact led to a divergence in the Shinto practice from its old Altaic state. For instance, the transformation of the role of the Miko ladies from the old Altaic shamaness to a ritual assistance appears to be part of this process.

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Footnote 1: This festival is the backdrop of the hostilities between the Taidjuts and Hoelun the mother of Chingis Kha’khan, where the latter gets driven out along with her young kids.

Footnote 2: Jelme was one of the great Mongol generals who saved Chingiz’s life when he was struck down by an arrow of his future general Jebe in the battle with the Taidjuts. Jelme treated his wound and stole curds from the Taidjut camp itself to feed Chingiz and keep him alive. He was the brother of Subedai another great Mongol general who subjugated the Rus.

Footnote 3: Boerte was the principal wife of Chingiz and is worshiped by Mongols as an ancestress along with him. She was the mother of all his primary successors Jochi, Chagadai, Ogodai and Tolui.

Footnote 4: Boghorju was one of the great generals of Chingiz. He helped the latter when the two were just boys and Chingiz’s horses were stolen. The two went on a recovery expedition where Chingiz killed the thief even as he was trying to lasso Boghorju and recovered the horses. Boghorju was the chief commander of the Mongol armies in the northern campaigns. Muqali was the other great general who was the chief commander in the Chinese campaigns.

The neglect of human sociobiology
Our intellectual tradition: non-existent, decadent, or congenitally dilute?

One may see the following as rollovers from the above.

As we have stated before on these very pages, one thing the old Hindus were good at was creating knowledge, systematizing it and teaching it. So the Hindus had a legitimate academic system. Among other Indo-European peoples such a system appears to have existed among the yavana-s and to a degree among the Iranians. We also know that at different points in the ancient world parallel academic systems were created by some of the West Asians, prAchya-s and in the krau~ncha dvIpa-s by the Maya civilization. Among all of these ours was one of the oldest solid academic systems (notwithstanding claims to the contrary among white indologists), and we can state with some confidence that it was one of the most extensive among those seen in the ancient world. It is the mental edge that this system conferred on it is custodians, the first varNa, which has enabled them to survive in modern academic systems dominated by other hostile groups. Despite this, we can say that today the Hindu academic system is in a shambolic state – not so much from the absence of creative individuals as from the lack of a more fundamental vision of its structure. Instead, the Hindu is forced to operate within the Euro-American academic system that is presented as the only one that exists. To be more clear, when we talk of the Euro-American academic system we are talking of the system that came into place in the leukosphere (even as leukospheric identity was just emerging) coeval with the phase that they term the “enlightenment” and was expanded primarily by the Germanic and Romance speakers in course of the second half of the 1800s and the 1900s – a period during much of which the Hindus were subjugated by the leukosphere. Certain scholars, such as the white indologists spearheaded by the American Sheldon Pollock, are certainly aware of the existence of an alternative Hindu academic system and study it closely. Nevertheless, the general attitude in this group is that the former Hindu academic system is a museum piece that does not deserve a de-extinction program, rather it needs to remain in the collections just as the skeleton of a dodo or a native American’s codex, with a few chosen items allowed for general display. We do not blame them for such a view as it is not their system but their object of study. But we certainly need to be concerned about their activities because it is our system and their actions could harm its revival. On the other side some people might realize that this *is* the Euro-American system but most do not even realize it – they believe that it is the only one that exists and has ever existed.

The only large scale reaction that has been observed in this context in recent times is from the prAchya-s. This has emerged in the first place because, as noted above, certain prAchya-s have had an independent historical academic system. But its modern form under Euro-American dominance has, not surprisingly, followed the path reflecting the general prAchya mode of imaging the self – for prAchya-s it is important to receive a second-person report on oneself in order to construct an image of self. Hence, they crave a report from the leukosphere in order to construct an image of their performance in the dominant Euro-American academic system, for after all the metrics of that system were set up by the former. Thus, they act much like vishvAmitra for whom being confirmed as a brahma-R^iShi by the deva-s not sufficient, rather he needed this to come from the mouth of his former rival vasiShTha. This tendency has gone hand-in-hand with metrics developed by the anglosphere for human capital. The not-so-distinguished cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton, had declared more that a century ago that the Hindoos were idiots whereas the prAchya-s were of superior intellect and that they could colonize Africa by edging out the cognitively less-endowed denizens of that continent. This image coming from the mlechCha has been of great importance for the prAchya-s and they have striven ever since to repeatedly earn assessments such as that offered by Mr. Galton (including the claiming ownership of African resources by chIna-s). Thus, their response to the Euro-American academic system has been to study it closely and game it at every level so that they come out as winners. Here we see distinct trends among different prAchya-s. The Japanese have shown greater innovation that certainly challenges the Euro-Americans at their own game. The chIna-s have shown more of artful and not so artful plagiarism accompanied by mass production to achieve a bulk that cannot be matched by mlechCha-s or their cousins from the islands. In the Koreans are similar to the chIna-s but on a smaller scale. They back these actions with a careful manipulation of Galton’s “original sin” i.e. cultivation of an image that they are cognitively superior to the mlechCha-s under the same metrics used by the mlechCha-s. Thus, what we have here is not a the creation of alternative knowledge system by the prAchya-s but an aggressive gaming of the mlechCha one. This could at some point even break the mlechCha hold on it – it could then be digested just as other systems under the prAchya legalistic framework. However, given that that they depend heavily on mlechCha approval for the measurement of their success, the mlechCha-s have thus far held the trump card. It is common for scientific institutes in prAchya lands like Japan, China and Singapore to call powerful mlechCha professors to assess their programs and advise them of whether they are doing good or bad. It is also common in these countries for a scientist’s net worth to be determined by papers published in certain tabloids and journals for which mlechCha-s have cultivated a universalist image. Thus, the study of the system by the prAchya-s, however careful, is only designed at discovering the best approach to the mastering game, not the the reasons for why the game exists and whom it favors. In a sense he is interested in being the player bought and sold at the IPL trade for a largest fee, rather than being the one who figures out who is raking in the millions by formulating such a bizarre version of the game.

Hence, it is not via the accepting glance of the prAchya but via the approach of an anatomist cutting up a cadaver that we need to look deeper into the Euro-American academic system. When we were in bhAratavarSha we only cared about the knowledge produced by the system for its sociology and structural scaffold was something with which we never intersected. Within our first few months in the mlechCha-land we got the chance to more closely investigate the scaffold, because some mlechCha-s viewed us as something of a curiosity and invited us to some of their sabha-s. It was then that we began discovering features of the system that show how it is structured. We placed these under several distinct categories such as 1) Systems of entry into the power structure; 2) Systems of legitimization; 3)the social dimension; 4) the code of unstated norms that must be adhered.

The formal mechanisms for entry into the power structure of the Euro-American academic system are rather complex and multi-tiered despite appearing superficially simply. Our own entry at the lower rungs of the system began in bhArata itself where the mlechCha administered to us an IQ test. We wondered then as to why we need to participate this rather idiotic exam when we had already attained a much higher education. Perhaps, due to our low IQ it took us some time realize that this was a thinly disguised IQ text and the mlechCha did not really care for what your true knowledge capital was. Instead, he was interested in knowing if we possessed sufficient cognitive capacity to serve as cannon fodder in the intellectual conquests of professor Big. Thus, the Galtonian yardstick was the primary entry point into the system, even as in the early days of our clade females chose males by the ratio of their shoulder to hip and the length of their member. We are not at all the type who denies the mensuration of intelligence or its predictive value, but what became apparent to us was that in the mlechCha system it was institutionalized to obtain high quality brain for use by the sUtradhArin-s.

Continued ..

Based on the Icosahedron mated with the Mandelbulb of power 8

Its dual, the Dodecahedron, mated with the Mandelbulb of power 8

Hindus face three major civilizational threats – two from the Abrahamisms, the religions of peace and love, and one from the legalistic Han imperialism. The assault from the religion of love is primarily spear-headed by the leukosphere and is abetted by their internal allies in the form of the shava-sAdhaka-s within India. The onslaught from the religion of peace belongs to the whole umma, but the primary ghazis deployed against the Hindus come from remnants of the Mogol empire in the form of terrorist state of Pakistan, the terrorist state of Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Many Hindus wrongly believe that the Han are not a civilizational enemy, but the conflict with them is a recent and unfortunate consequence of Marxism. As we stated before the Marxism and Westernism of the chIna-s is only a facade for the inner legalism, which has conferred identity to chIna policy since the days of the wall-building Chin Shi Huang. Per say Marxists are merely subversionist rabble who might by used by all the three civilizational enemies of ours. Some interlocutors have questioned, somewhat indignantly, as to how we could call our Asian neighbor and a hoary nation a civilizational enemy. The problem is these people, like many other Hindus, have not studied history too closely. Nor have they understood the essentiality of an uncompromising, maximalist Hindu realist position. To briefly reiterate, this position entails the total defanging of the religions of peace and love, along with the restoration of global paganism nourished by the benign light of bhArata. Of course this naturally includes restoration of the Tibetan, and other central Asian pagan traditions, which is in direct conflict with the Han rapacity.

There have no more brazen land-grabbers in history than the Han. The mlechCha-s grabbed vast lands but in most cases they have not been able to attach them to their own country. In the case of Spain and Portugal their south and central American conquests they ruined and looted the pagan civilizations but it has not made a big difference to the modern economies of those countries. Further, the south and central American are not Spanish or Portuguese people anymore, nor do they identify with their conquerors in a major way. While one could say that the English conquest of North America was complete in terms of the genocide of the natives, still the continent has long ceased to be a part of the English empire. Similarly, with the French conquests. The Han in contrast seem to only be increasing the stranglehold over their conquered territories to the point that those territories are accepted by the rest of the world as Han property belonging to the Han state of China, governed by the legalism emanating from the belligerent Beijing. Yet we all know that the Han had but the weakest hold or none at all over most of their recently acquired territories. Thus, the primary dimension of the Han civilizational threat is a territorial one – wherein is steadily occupies territory which was under Hindu control or nourished by the Hindu civilizational ethos. It follows this by the definitive erasure of the Hindu civilizational ethos and the genocide of the peoples to make Lebensraum for the Han.

The Han civilization was largely demolished by the cunning mlechCha-s, followed by a stern cut from the samurai’s blade. However, the mlechCha-s in their conquest of Japan ended up giving the chIna-s a new leash of life. The chIna-s not being the type that easily passes up an opportunity took the chance to resurrect their power and display their belligerence ever since. Ironically, they have been aided in this process by none other than the mlechCha-s, whose constructs they have exploited against the mlechCha-s themselves and also other civilizations. The key in all this was the destruction and conquest of Japan which was vastly superior to the chIna-s in military prowess. This completely freed their eastern flank, with Japan unlikely to ever challenge the chIna power again. The fall in birth rates in Japan indicates that they will not be able to have the key ingredient by which wars are fought – young men. While the chIna-s also have this problem, they are vastly better off than the Japanese, which combined with the potential use of directed eugenics in the future [Footnote 1] would keep them ahead of the Japanese in terms of human capital. While the chIna-s were sharpening on advice of Sun Tzu and the practices of Shi Huang, the chAchA was conjuring up his grandiose ideas on an armyless state, the superfluity of missiles, and the Pan-Asian non-aligned alliance, while neglecting the advice of viShNugupta (and closer to the times Vallabhbhai Patel) and the action of chandragupta. Not surprisingly, the chIna-s gobbled Tibet even as a snake devouring a frog, while chAchA kept talking nonsense such as pa~nchshIla or hindI-chInI bhai-bhai. The consequences were keenly felt with the surprise invasion of India in 1962 by the chIna-s followed by a crushing defeat. Things could have gone worse in the subsequent years had the Rus-chIna conflict not broken out. The drubbing which the Rus gave the chIna-s put some fear into their hearts (though today the chIna-s like to claim that they won the war), and made them wary of further adventures. However, the mlechCha-s locked in conflict with Rus again ended up strengthening the chIna-s as a potential force multiplier against them. Let us not forget that the mlechCha-s again stood by the chIna tyrant Deng Xiaoping when he declared that he would teach the Hindus a lesson during the Sumdorong Chu invasion in 1986-1987 and were trying to incite a war.

Given this background the current chIna invasion is not unexpected. Having looked into situation, we wrote a few years back that a chIna invasion was imminent. We thought that it would take place that year itself. However, it has come a little later. This point is of interest to us as it throws greater light on the chIna approach to war. Essentially, there are several parallels to the Sumdorong Chu invasion in particular, and more generally the approach in their invasions of the Rus and Vietnam. The Hindus have not taken decisive steps to cultivate allies, such as Vietnam and Japan, to create a ring around the chIna-s – the classical maNDala principle of chANakya. Instead, they have allowed the chIna-s to penetrate Nepal and and also get into Lanka (let us not forget how the chIna-s tried to conquer Lanka in the past by an audacious naval incursion followed by kidnapping of the Lankan prince). The chIna-s sensed that the Hindus are weak, with numerous internal problems. They also know that the Hindus are isolated with their former ally, the Rus, on the decline. The chIna-s have also shown a recent history of belligerence occupying territory of the Philippines, threatening Japan and using North Korea to create a dependency of the mlechCha-s on them. We see their intention to game India as an extension of the same belligerence. The essential idea it appears is to probe the Indians closely to get a feel for how weak they really are, and follow it up with a land-grab. Extent of the land-grab they are intending would depend on how deep their probe sinks into the Hindu defenses. This we will see playing out in the coming month. A big territorial gain would seen as boost to the swelling arrogance of the Han hegemon and an equivalent blow to the Hindu dignity. By this they wish to signal their status as a superpower and show India to be a mere pretender who has been put in his place. Since, this matches the mlechCha perception of India, it will be seen as a successful testing of the hypothesis. A successful test would be lapped by the mlechCha-s and also TSP to the west to treat India with even greater disdain. Are the Hindus ready for the real world of men?

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Footnote 1: Hsu, an American professor of Han origin (who is batting for the Hans right in the mlechCha land) has a large project to determine the genetic determinants for Han and mlechCha intelligence, and has presented a proposal for directed eugenics that could be used by the Hans down the line.

While today the US, as the leader of the leukosphere, is renowned for its intelligence and subversion operations all over the world, it has acquired this capability in a relatively recent in historical terms. Although the FBI carried out various intelligence and counter-intelligence operations, its activities were primarily conducted on US territory rather than in other countries. Only during world war-2 the OSS, the precursor of the CIA was constituted in order to conduct intelligence and subversion operations primarily aimed at the Germans and the Japanese. The American elite quickly realized that they lacked the depth of the operations conducted by their English allies and they needed a robust force of their own that would give them complete independence from the English. This became even more important for them as the WW2 progressed because: 1) the English were taking a hammering at the hands of the Germans and the Japanese and their abilities were stretched to the limit. 2) The American elite realized that there was a certain divergence in their interests with respect to that of the English and they were already coming to see their role as a future world hegemon in place of England. 3) They knew that they needed information on areas/regions where England traditionally had a much lower level of involvement. 4) After the Russians pulverized the Germans in the battle of Stalingrad and later the Japanese in Manchuria, they realized that they were in a compromised situation vis-a-vis the Rus. Hence, they wished have a strong force of spasha-s and rAShTrabhid-s to penetrate Russia. While this force (the OSS operatives) was developed in Washington DC, many of its agents came right from the Ivy League schools from the northeastern US. This included academics who would study foreign nations to prepare reports and understand alien peoples, as well as actual agents, such as the one from Princeton University who was supposed to assassinate the German scientist Werner Heisenberg of uncertainty principle fame. While certain Ivy League academics claimed to tread on the path of German Jewish anthropologist Franz Boas and stay away from such intelligence and sabotage operations, most seem to have enthusiastically involved themselves in the OSS operations, including some students of Boas.

Of primary interest to us here is the development of OSS activity in India and the greater Indosphere. As we have mentioned before some notable white indologists acted as agents as part of the OSS and related operations. We had earlier talked about Daniel Ingalls and Richard Frye of Harvard University. Another notable figure whom we must consider here is W. Norman Brown of University of Pennsylvania, the father of South Asianism. After the catastrophic defeat of the Indian army in the first war of independence in 1857 CE, the English victors announced that they would not overtly interfere with the religion of the Hindus or the Mohammedans in the sub-continent. However, they covertly facilitated all manner of white Isaistic subversionists to try to convert the Hindus to the shavamata. Brown was the son of one such American Isaistic subversionist who was active in Madhya Pradesh to plant pretAlaya-s and reap a harvest of Hindu souls. Despite starting with subversionist intentions the senior Brown became more and more sympathetic to Hindu tradition and began seriously studying saMskR^ita and Vedic tradition with the white indologist Bloomfield. Due to his early exposure to Hindu traditions the junior Brown also acquired a sympathetic attitude towards Hindu tradition leading to his academic study of Greek followed by the devabhAShA. In the 1920s he took the Sanskrit chair at Penn and was involved both in studies of saMskR^ita literature and the archeology of SSVC sites such as Chanhudaro. Of course among those familiar with the kaula-mArga he is best known for his translation of the saundaryalahari. His other major contributions were the study of the kathA-sAhitya in saMskR^ita, the folktales of India which he did in collaboration with a Japanese scholar, and the study of the veda following his predecessor Bloomfield. He started the American Oriental Society which was the mainstay of indology in the US and also its journal that published a wide array of scholarly indological papers. But what most Hindus are not aware of is that he was an important OSS agent who was key to acquiring knowledge regarding the India for the Americans. Like Ingalls, he was active in trying to prevent an alliance between the Japanese and Indian nationalists, though it appears from his notes that in general he was not supportive of the English tyranny in India and had “strong sympathies” for the Indian independence movement. This brings up an interesting point regarding the American objectives in India. It appears that there was a section of the American elite, including their president Roosevelt, who had a degree of sympathy for the Indian independence and the India nationalists. Roosevelt proposed in 1941 that the English relinquish their hold on India:
“India should be made a commonwealth at once. After a certain number of years–five perhaps, or ten–she should be able to choose whether she wants to remain in the Empire or have complete independence.”
Indeed, after WW2 when the English saw that the Americans were unlikely to militarily help them in the event of an armed struggle for independence in India, they realized how tenuous their grip on the sub-continent really was. There were others, like some OSS operatives who during WW2 went to aid the English retain their hold over India; however, even these operatives eventually lost their fervor to aid the English against the Indian nationalism. Thus, it appears that although the OSS agents were deployed for operations in India, on the whole they were not entirely damaging for the independence movement, and some like Brown might have even been involved in conveying a favorable opinion to the elite – after all in 1939 itself he sensed that the svarAjya of bhArata was imminent and declared:
“How can Americans who have never met India in their educational experience be expected to live intelligently in such a world.”

Brown himself displayed a largely correct understanding of the Indian situation in certain matters; he outlined that: 1) India was essentially an Aryan civilization. 2) the tradition borne by the medium of saMskR^ita upheld by the brAhmaNa-s was the defining bond that held India. 3) The Mohammedan invasions and imposition of Islam denuded this bond and caused a decline of Hindu civilization. 4) He also correctly realized that the partition of jambudvIpa into the India and the Mohammedan terrorist state was due a clash of cultures arising from the monotheistic zeal of Islam which is fundamentally incompatible with the diversity of thought in Hindu tradition. But in other respects he held views typical of most white indologists: 1) Hindus have no theory of state other than that of a supreme tyrant or a feudal chieftain (e.g. his statement of shivAjI as such a Hindu chieftain): a regurgitated version of “the Indians should know that they would prosper under the benign rule of the British rather than rot under an oriental despot”. 2) Misunderstanding of the jAti-varNa system of the Hindus. 3) Hindus treat their females badly. 4) The primary greatness of the Hindus lies in the realm of religion and philosophy, especially development of theories such as advaita. By silence it was implied that Hindus really did not have much else to show in other quarters of intellectual endeavor. One of the key things done by Brown during his tenure at the OSS was the establishment of the concept of “Area” or “Regional” studies, wherein the world is divided into several areas and American experts gather and systematize information in each of these areas. While this movement gathered steam in Washington after WW2 in moved to the Ivy League departments along with the individual scholars. Thus, with Brown the “Area studies” department focused on bhArata developed at Penn, which he originally termed “India: A Program of Regional Studies”. But in the coming years as the partition and independence followed the area was designated geographically as “South Asia” and the program became one of South Asian studies. While seemingly innocuous, this was later to be a potent weapon in the delegitimizing the concept of greater India and the indosphere. Ironically, this turn of South Asianism originated in part from Brown’s expansive vision and OSS background – the department was no longer a place only for philologists engaged in study of Indian tradition but a place where all manner of studies on the area/region would be conducted including political movements, archeology, sociology and anthropology. This was epitomized in the volume Brown wrote with a strategic intention titled: “The United States and India and Pakistan”.

This inclusive South Asianism, which moved beyond the philological study of Hindu tradition, was soon to become a container that would accommodate all manner of subversionists directed against Hindus. Even under Brown’s watch subversionist elements started operating in these departments. For example, we have the case of Eleanor Zelliot who wanted to “study” and popularize Ambedkar. She was correctly denied a visa by the Indian authorities. However, Brown interceded on her behalf to get her to go to India as part of the Penn’s South Asianist activities. Here, she connected with the Dalit movement and worked as its representative among the mlechCha-s. This was the beginning of American support to Dalitism, which has been used as a potent tool in stirring Indian affairs. Let us not forget how such Dalitists operating in the US were mobilized by the Harvard Sanskritist Michael Witzel against Hindus during the California textbook case. Once the “area/region” studies at Penn came to include India in a broad sense it spawned several such successor departments all over the US. As noted above Brown saw several features of Hindu civilization in correct light and others wrongly. However, as South Asianism evolved and the departments expanded those aspects which he correctly envisioned were replaced by views inimical to Hindus and the dharma, and those aspects he misunderstood were now spun in new ways using the jargon of subterfuge. For instance, take the case of the noted South Asianist from Columbia University (another Ivy League school), Nicholas Dirks, who has looked back closely at his OSS predecessors. He has specifically attacked the correct apprehensions of Hindus and the dharma by Brown. He declared that saMskR^ita was not the defining bond of “South Asia” as Brown suggested and further that the Mohammedans did not suppress saMskR^ita. He has also taken the stance the pro-Hindu views such as those expressed by Brown are dangerous because they are used by proponents of Hindutva and led to acts such as the destruction of the despicable Babri Masjid. Indeed, today the South Asianists of Penn are the hive of anti-Hindu/Indian activities, along with several of their Ivy League colleagues from Columbia, Harvard and Cornell. We recently saw the activism of some of these individuals against the lATa-naresha, who is being repeatedly impugned for protecting the Hindus of the gurjara desha against Mohammedan rowdyism. These include saMskR^ita scholars like the Mohammedan, Daud Ali, who invited various anti-Hindu/Indian activists and Naxalites who have aided and abetted socialist terrorism in India and supported Mohammedans from TSP.

Thus, the South Asianist departments and their effluents today play roles fitting their origins in the intelligence community. For example, we just need to see a recent US intelligence dispatch regarding India that was leaked:
“We interact regularly with a cross-section of NGOs, both religious and secular, that encourage inter-faith dialogue, secularism, and actively counter religious extremism of all kinds, as well as providing material comfort to victims of hate crimes. We ensure these NGO leaders participate in the IV program; USAID and PA ensure that they have access to USG funding. We express our support by visibly attending their public events. We make sure that their information on the activities of extremists is included in the Human Rights Report and the Religious Freedom Report…

State and local governments in western India have a complicated relationship with NGOs working on human rights issues and on religious tolerance. NGOs often criticize state bodies for not doing enough to deal with extremism. In Gujarat in particular, NGOs have pointed out just how widespread the state was involved in the fueling of the 2002 riots and how it has failed to bring those responsible to justice. We tend to support such NGO views on Gujarat.”

The NGOs referred to in this leak include South Asianist bodies which are fed by products of the Ivy League departments and people having academic ties to such departments in Penn and Columbia among others. Even before this leak we had realized from the pattern of the response that these mlechCha forces were involved in supporting the Mohammedans within India and attacking Hindus, such as during the events following the train Jihad in Gujarat.

When the English gained ascendancy after the defeat of the marATha-s and the sikh-s they had gained military control over India but they knew well that their hold was still tenuous. Hence, in the period leading to the first war of independence in 1857 CE they realized that to control India they need to undermine the Hindu dharma and “storm the fortress of brahminism”. To achieve this they deployed all manner of white missionaries to plant churches and bring in the harvests for the religion of love. They also saw this as a civilizing mission in which the barbarism of the Hindu dharma was to be purified by the shavamata. In particular, they sent European writers to denigrate the dharma in native languages of India. This attack from the pretamata could have well poisoned the wells of dharma had not :1) Hindu polemicists spear-headed by brAhmaNa-s not launched a counter-attack on the pretamata. 2) The military mobilization taken place for the first war of independence. One of these polemics was composed by the by the proponent of the navanyAya school tarka-pa~nchAnana. Key to his approach, unlike that of several mahArAShTrI brAhmaNa-s, was to engage in a direct counter-attack on the preta himself and expose the jejuneness of the primary belief of the pretamata. In this he was similar to kumAra-kArttikeya ayyar, another brAhmaNa, who launched a similar counter-attack on the pretamata in lankA. This approach was critical because otherwise a Hindu could be lost in being defensive, thereby conceding an advantage to the enemy right away. It also directly exposed the foundational principle of the shavamata to be flaky and thereby showed it as not meriting consideration as a serious cult. He also realized the real intention of the English pretAcharin-s, like John Muir who challenged the dharma, and explicitly warned people that he was a hindu-dharmAtivairin. It is clear that his arrow had hit its mark because the pretAcharin-s declared: “If the enemies we shall by and by have to contend in India are not more formidable than this brahman, our task will be an easy one” – clearly a sense that they did not have an answer but only a boast. This smashing critique of the pretamata served as a model for later critiques by other brAhmaNa-s in Hindi composed in response to the missionary attempts at vArANasi.

tarka-pa~nchAnana’s devastating attack on the preta:

meri-nAmnI khR^iSTamAtA bahubhir yAjakair vR^itA |
ekadevAlaye .atiShThat ShoDaShAbda vayo .avadhi ||
The mother of the preta, named merI, was loved by many worshipers when she lived in a certain temple till the age of sixteen.

tatra garbhAhvitA bhUtvA janayAm Asa saMshayam |
svAmino nishchayaM vApi tataH so .acintayat sadA ||
Then having become pregnant, she gave rise to doubt in her husband, who, therefore, constantly bothered with the uncertainty of whether it was him or not.

svapne chintAkulatvena tena dR^iShTah samAgatah |
devadUto jagAdochchair mA chintA kriyatAm iti ||
Unhinged with worry, he dreamed of a godly messenger coming to him from heaven and told him “do not to worry”.

IshvareNaiva dharmAtmA janito .asti striyAm tava |
na sha~NkA vyabhichArasya tasmAt kAryA tvayA naya ||
“By the lord, indeed, this holy one is conceived in your woman. Therefore, there should no suspicion of adultery in her actions by you.

evam svapnasya vR^ittAnte sarvatra prakaTi kR^ite |
svIya-doShApahArAya yAjakAs te .api saMmatAh ||
Thus, when the rumor of the dream was made known to all, to conceal their own offense those same worshipers [in the temple] colluded.

vichArayantu vidvAMso yuvatyAH puruSaiH saha |
vAso garbhasya hetuH syAt svapno vA syAt pramAtmakaH ||
The knowledgeable should think whether sleeping with men could be the cause of the fetus or whether the dream could be believable.

tayA chet svIya-doShasya gopanArthaM niveditam |
svapne dR^iShTam evam evaM tena kiM satyatA bhavet ||
Either she has announced [this rumor] to conceal her offense, or he actually saw what he did in the dream. Who would not the reality?

evaM sa jAra-jato .api yAjakair api saMstutaH |
dharmAtmA .aham iti j~nAtvA dharmaM vaktuM prachakrame ||
Thus, though he was a bastard, even the worshipers [at the temple] praised him. He thinking “I am a holy soul” he began to preach a religion.

kR^itva tad vAchi vishvAsam avichArya katha~nchana |
alpa-buddhi janAs tasya jAtAH sevA-parAyanAH ||
Placing belief in his words, hardly giving thought to anything, dim-witted people became his flock and servile followers.

svIya-doShAchChAdanArtham Uchur adbhUtacheShTitam |
tathA tan mAyayA te .api mohitA hata-buddhayaH ||
The worshipers [from the temple] hide their own offense claimed miracles for him. Thus they too deluded by their own falsehoods became deprived of sense.

Ishvaro .ayam iti granthe varNanAm chakrur adbhutAm |
evaM krameNa dharmasya prachAro janito bhuvi ||
In their book they made the tall claim: “This [i.e. the preta] is the lord”. Thus was this cult was
publicized over the earth!

With the direct attack on the preta tarka-pa~nchAnana had put back the ball in the court of the enemies and had exposed the chicanery at the heart of the preta cult.

Further tarka-pa~nchAnana also launches a criticism of the way the pretasAdhaka-s earn their converts:
kevalaM dhUrta-pR^iShtAnAm mAyAjAle patan janaH |
madya-mAmsAdi-lobhena pR^iShtA-kanyAdirUpataH ||
Only a person falling in the web of delusion woven by roguish pretAcharin priests, driven by the greed for liquor, meat or the beauty of the daughters of pretAcharin priests and the like,

mohito bhoga-lAbhechChur avichArya svakaM mataM|
khR^iSTa-dharmasya doShaM vA nAvekShya khR^iSTako bhavet ||
One who is deluded by the urge for acquiring pleasures, who has not studied and contemplated his own religion nor looked at the flaws of Isaism, would become an Isaist.

These keen criticisms raised by tarkapa~nchAnana are strikingly consonant with the criticisms of the great yavana polemicist Celsus suggesting that the heathens have had a rather similar vision of the preta-mata over great distances in space and time. Many of tarkapa~nchAnana’s criticisms of people falling to the moha of the pretamata are valid even today: how often one sees Hindus becoming shavasAdhaka-s for imbibing mada and consuming mAMsa in the saMgha of the mlechCha-s. Likewise, one also encounters Hindus falling to the delusions of the pretamata in order to consort fair-skinned strI-s. Indeed these Hindus turn out to be those who have failed to study the dharma and look into the lunacy of the West Asian cult. If we had truly regained our freedom this work of tarkapa~nchAnana would be published in full and taught as part of our history of the struggle against the attacks we faced. Unfortunately, it is not easy at all to get a full copy of his work in bhArata today.

In his famed kAvya the buddhacharita, ashvagoSha states that when the tathAgata was about to renounce the world he had an “akShaya-dharma-jAta-rAgaH”, i.e., a “passion” of the indestructible dharma was born in him. When we encountered this term we realized that it was a nAstika’s version of term sanAtana-dharma. Thus, ashvagoSha is continuing the trend in the bauddha-mata, seen right from its founder, of repositioning the realizations of the tathAgata as the real sanAtana-dharma as opposed to the shruti and its spirit transmitted by the itihAsa-s and the darshana-shAstra-s. Thus, despite all his urge to separate himself from the sanAtana-dharma, the bauddha needed it to provide an essential background for the very existence of his mata. Even the tathAgata, who seems to have seen his teachings as an absolute supersession of the sanAtana-dharma, needed to place himself in the context of its darshana-s. Thus, the bypassing of the yoga master ArADa kAlAma and the shrauta ritualist urubilvA jaTila kAshyapa are important events in his narrative. Even ashvagoSha in his kAvya tries to subtly hint this supersession by stating that siddhArtha’s father shuddhodhana was a great kShatriya soma ritualist in the manner of father manu the lawgiver, and pointing out that the buddha being raised in such a household was familiar with all that. Now the constant need for the Astika backdrop among the tAthAgata-s is something that has been misunderstood by several modern students of history, in part due to the influence of the white indologists and their fellow travelers. The primary misunderstanding is to interpret this background of sanAtana-dharma as being an integral bauddha innovation that has later been adopted by the Astika-s. For example, several have called ashvaghoSha as the originator of “real” kAvya literature. Some (e.g. Winternitz) have gone even as far as to claim that ashvaghoSha was the original exponent of kAvya and even vAlmIki borrowed from him! We also heard a claim that ashvaghoSha preceded the mahAbhArata as we know it. Of course there is much to suggest that none of these claims are consistent with the available facts. First, there is ample evidence from ashvaghoSha himself that he considered vAlmIki the founder of kAvya (i.e. kAvya in the later sense, as distinct from the R^ik mantra-s of the earlier vaidika kavI-s and their Iranian counterparts). Second, the whole of the background of ashvaghoSha’s buddhacharita as well as saundara-nanda is an Astika one, transparently borrowed from Astika contexts including the itihAsa-s. He knows of the rAmAyaNa, the mahAbhArata and paurANika tales like the burning of kAma by rudra and the birth of kumAra and uses them for similes to describe the buddha’s life. It was in this context that Spitzer manuscript was brought up to present a more subtle argument that the mahAbharata was not yet in its current parvan structure at the time of ashvaghoSha. While the Spitzer manuscript is useless to support this claim, it is still of enormous interest in terms of understanding the state of the indosphere in the first two centuries of the common era and the also the general framework of the Astika background within which the nAstika tradition placed itself at that time.

The Spitzer manuscript is a highly fragmented Sanskrit manuscript that was discovered in Qizil (Eastern Turkestan; today Han-occupied Xinjiang) during the German expedition of 1906 (3rd of the Turfan expeditions). Its exact date is not known, but is believed to be between the 100-300 CE. It appears to have been written with a broad-nib copper pen in brAhmI script following a style similar to that seen in the time of the kushAna-s, which forms the basis for the above temporal window. A very difficult to find version has been published by Eli Franco and some additional material in the form of fragments known only as copies has been studied by Japanese researchers. The contents of the manuscript are a rather diverse mixture of Astika and nAstika issues that are not entirely clear due to the state of the manuscript. However, it can be said this manuscript is rather unique in that there is no parallel text that has been found to date. The account of the manuscript as edited by Franco is presented below with a few comments.
* avidyA-lakShaNa; godAna vastra-dAna, criticism of the ghR^ihastAshrama, brAhmaNa-s. None of this is clear as the pages are rather fragmentary.
* An account of AjIvika theories such as dharma and adharma having no consequence.
* Some account of sukha, dukha, death, bandha and mokSha, etc.
* An account of the properties (lakShaNa-s) of the primary substances teja, vAyu, Apa etc. A detailed account of vaisheShika theory of guNa-s, probably statement of a pUrvapakSha for a nAstika (?)
* The four Arya satyAni of the buddha and the concept of nairAtmya.
* Some account of principles of logical inference and argument.
* saMkSipta rAmAyaNa- a summary of vAlmIki’s epic. A parvan summary of the mahAbhArata. It should be note that this is fragmentary with the so claimed missing virATaparvan being a lacuna in the manuscript with some name starting in ‘a’ or ‘A’, which might have read aj~nAtaparvan – effectively the same as the virATaparvan. The missing anushAsanaparvan cannot be confirmed as being really missing or: 1) poor preservation; 2) some Mbh manuscripts outside India, like Indonesia, combine the shAntiparvan and the anushAsanaparvan; simply accidental or ignorant omission by the author. In conclusion, the evidence is just tenuous to insist that this fragmentary parvan list from a unique manuscript from uttarApatha (Central Asia) represented the state of the Mbh as was known elsewhere in jambudvIpa at that age. Franco also places a fragment of the text regarding the origin of daitya-s and dAnava-s, a legal procedure, an account of the gandharva veda, the chatuH ShaShTi kalA-s, vedA~Nga-s, and the duties of each varNa in this part of the text.
* Brief account of upaniShad-s, mantra-s and brAhmaNa injunctions. The concepts of adhidaiva and adhyAtman.
* Brief account of taxonomy of living beings.
* The claim that the buddha knew all of the veda, the vedA~Nga-s, astronomy, dance and music. Arguments [possibly of an Astika] as to why the buddha could not have been all-knowing.
* The buddha as an authoritative teacher, the merits of building stUpa-s, the evils of dishonest actions, destruction of desire by knowledge, a meditation on the bodily processes to end desire, mokSha, use of garlic vis-a-vis brAhmaNa-s and shaka-s.
* Nature of saMsAra, a refutation of Ishvara concept, law of conservation of matter and the beginningless nature of saMsAra.
* An attack on the bauddha-mata [Arguments of mImAMsaka-s]: The buddha’s teaching is not pramANa because he used prAkR^ita, examples of vulgar prAkR^ita
* Debate regarding whether compassion is dharma because it involves attachment to the object of compassion.
* sharabha and other animals.
* Existence of past and future dharma-s in addition to those of the present – bauddha theory of sarvAstivAda, which was popular in uttarApatha and among the chIna-s.
* Discourse on how the Arya satyAni of the buddha can be understood – by a gradual process or in a sudden revelation. The text explains that it is a gradual process.
* An attack on the Astika theory of the “self-luminescent” consciousness.
* The tathAgata’s place in the saMgha and the obscure question of whether making a donation to the saMgha is a donation to the buddha.
* The concepts of samyag-buddhi and mithyA-buddhi – correct and wrong cognition.
* An attack on the kAshyapIya theory of the action continuing to exist until it bears fruit.
* Lengthy philosophical considerations and debates between tAthAgata-s and naiyAyika-s, mImAMsaka-s and sAMkhyavAdin-s.

What the text illustrates is the degree to which the nAstika-s needed to place themselves in the context of the Astika-s. The darshana-bheda is well-know as it goes back to the tradition of the tathAgata himself trying to refute the darshana-s of other contemporary thinkers. But there is also a second stream – that of taking up and transmitting Astika knowledge regarding their texts and traditions. This is distinct from the parallel nAstika tendency (both among bauddha-s and jaina-s) of producing “fake” versions of the Astika traditions like the mahAbhArata, rAmAyaNa and purANa-s in order to present their doctrines as being superior to those of the Astika-s. Rather the tendency which we note in this text is the faithful acquisition of Astika knowledge, perhaps as part of illustrating the omniscience of the buddha and also thereby attempting to show all Astika knowledge as a mere subset of nAstika knowledge. In historical terms, this appears to have accompanied to conversion of various brAhmaNa-s to the nAstikamata (like ashvaghoSha himself). Thus, we should see kAvya as being one of these appropriations of the “kalA-s” for the omniscient buddha, even as kAvya-composing brAhmaNa-s started falling for the seductions of the tAthagata -mata. Thus, the urge to create a life of buddha in kAvya is more naturally seen as an imitation of the preexisting kAvya-s that Astika-s had starting from vAlmIki whom ashvaghoSha as a brAhmaNa still salutes as the first kavI.

In fact, we see more of a link between the Spitzer manuscript and ashvaghoSha: 1) There is evidence that copies of the buddha-charita, saundara-nanda and this bauddha play on the brAhmaNa student of the buddha, shari-putra, were widely distributed in Central Asia. 2) Tocharian plays have been recovered from the lost Indic civilizational centers of the Central Asian oases like Kucha, Agni and the like, which were destroyed by the invasions of Han imperialists and their Turkic ally Arshina Shuoel. The plays are Tocharian versions of Sanskrit originals that point to the transmission of kAvya to central along with the bauddha-dharma. This, reinforces the idea that certain nAstika-s of this period like ashvaghoSha saw it as important part of their tradition to create kAvya with bauddha themes but mirroring the astika originals, which is where a bulk of their metaphors and similes come from. 3) ashvaghoSha shows a wide knowledge of the Astika itihAsa-purANa and also strongly attacks saMkhya, vaisheShika and mImaMsa and vaidika traditions. Moreover, he specifically goes into a refutation of IshvaravAda (all of these through the mouth of maitreya who will come as buddha of a future age) and show evidence for specific knowledge of the upaniShad-s. These points covered by ashvaghoSha are key points in the Spitzer manuscript all together with an account of the itihAsa-s. Thus, we suspect that this manuscript represents some one belonging to the same tradition of ashvaghoSha. There is much debate as to whether ashvaghoSha was a sarvastivAdin or belonged to one of the many proliferating schools of nAstika thought from that period. But we feel this does not detract from the idea of a link between his school and the manuscript as they share some basic similarities which go beyond the general pUrvapakSha of Astika sources.

Continued…

In mahAbharata the fiercest fighting takes place on the 14th day and vyAsa excels himself in the description of this awe-inspiring conflict of the kuru field. After the killing of jayadratha by arjuna during the evening solar eclipse the rage spilled over and rather than stopping at sundown the battle raged through the night. One of the great battles of the night was that between karNa and ghaTotkacha after the latter had beheaded alaMbuSha. Finally, karNa slew ghaTotkacha with the shakti given to him by indra in return for his kavacha and kuNDala-s.

saMjaya described ghaTotkacha thus to dhR^itarAShTra:

lohitAkSho mahAkAyas tAmrAsyo nimnitodaraH |
UrdhvaromA harishmashruH sha~Nku-karNo mahAhanuH ||
He was with: red eyes, and a massive body a coppery hued face and and a sunken belly; with hair pointing upwards, a tawny mustache, pointed ears and a massive jaw.

AkarNAd dAritAsyash cha tIkShNadaMShTraH karAlavAn |
su-dIrgha-tAmra-jihvoShTho lambabhrUH sthUlanAsikaH ||
With a mouth extending from ear to ear and terrible, sharp teeth; with coppery hued long tongue and lips, long eye brows and a large nose.

nIlA~Ngo lohita-grIvo giri-varShmA bhayaMkaraH |
mahAkAyo mahAbAhur mahAshIrSho mahAbalaH ||
He was blue in color with with a red neck tall as a mountain peak and terrifying; of gigantic body, great arms, a big head and of great strength.

vikachaH paruShasparsho vikaTodbaddha-piNDikaH |
sthUlasphig gUDhanAbhish cha shithilopachayo mahAn ||
With hairless, rugged skin, and hair on head tied into a terrifying knot. With great hips, a deep navel and a great mass of flexible muscle.

tathaiva hastAbharaNI mahAmAyo .a~NgadI tathA |
urasA dhArayan niShkam agnimAlAM yathAchalaH ||
With arm-guards, possessed of great magical powers, he also bore shoulder guards. On this chest was an ornament like a blazing volcanic ring.

tasya hema-mayaM chitraM bahu-rUpA~Nga-shobhitam |
toraNa-pratimaM shubhraM kirITaM mUrdhny ashobhata ||
His head was decorated by a golden, beautiful diadem endowed with many beautiful links, shining like an arch.

kuNDale bAla-sUryAbhe mAlAM hema-mayIM shubhAm |
dhArayan vipulaM kAMsyaM kavachaM cha mahAprabham ||
With ear-rings like the rising sun, and beautiful chains made of gold. He wore on his body gigantic armor of bell-metal that shone greatly.

ki~NkiNI-shata-nirghoShaM rakta-dhvaja-patAkinam |
R^ikSha-charmAvanaddhA~NgaM nalva-mAtraM mahAratham ||
With a hundred tinkling bells and blood-red flags;with seats covered with bear-skins was his giant battle car the size of a nalva.

sarvAyudhavaropetam Asthito dhvajamAlinam |
aShTa-chakra-samAyuktaM megha-gambhIra-nisvanam ||
Equipped with all kinds of weapons, it had a tall standard with garlands; equipped with eight wheels it made the deep noise of thunder-clouds.

tatra mAta~Nga-saMkAshA lohitAkShA vibhIShaNAH |
kAma-varNa-javA yuktA balavanto .avahan hayAH ||
It was borne by horses that were like elephants, red-eyed and terrifying, assuming any color they wished, endowed with great speed and might.

vahanto rAkShasaM raudraM balavanto jita-shramAH |
vipulAbhiH saTAbhis te heShamANA muhur muhuH ||
They bore that terrible rAkShasa imbued with great might and without fatigue with long manes and neighing repeatedly.

rAkShaso .asya virUpAkShaH sUto dIptAsyakuNDalaH |
rashmibhiH sUrya-rashmyAbhaiH saMjagrAha hayAn raNe ||
A rAkShasa of terrible eyes, was his charioteer, with a blazing mouth and ear-rings; with reins shining as rays of the sun he lead the horses into battle.

sa tena sahitas tasthAv aruNena yathA raviH |
saMsakta iva chAbhreNa yathAdrir mahatA mahAn ||
With that [charioteer] he came to battle like the sun borne by aruNa. [ghaTotkacha] appeared like mighty mountain peak shrouded by clouds.

diva-spR^ik sumahAn ketuH syandane .asya samuchChritaH |
raktottamA~NgaH kravyAdo gR^idhraH parama-bhIShaNaH ||
The tall standard erected in his [car] was like a comet across the sky; A most terrifying flesh-eating vulture with blood-red body [was pictured on it].