When we were young some we had made some scientific discoveries that we described to the elders around us. They were unable to make any sense of it but had an intuitive feel that there might be something to our blabberings; so they carted us to some professional scientists who were supposed to understand such things. Their understanding of the matter was insufficient to understand what we narrated them; however, they interpreted our explorations as the possibility of the beginnings of a proto-scientific fascination in us. So as well-meaning adults they decided to give us a general lecture before sending us off. We heard attentively. They said that we, in our childish fantasy, were looking at extremely disparate or unconnected systems and that our observations purporting to be fundamental, unifying findings were a mark of someone who really did not get the scientific process. It was all about focusing on a controlled model system and understanding it deeply by asking structured questions, constructing models and testing those models they said. Further they added that you do not just make fundamental discoveries about well-understood things like biological evolution by taking a bunch of data generated by various different people and looking at it with your intuition: as though the people who actually generated the data could not have seen what you have. At the conclusion of the lecture our elders felt we were blabbering after all and let us to our own devices. This was not the first time we were to hear such things in life. When we reached the shores of the mlechCha-land we were again told about focusing on one problem (the word focus being repeated many time). To this the mlechCha-s added buzzwords like “thinking big”; “the one clever experiment”; “big science”; million dollar grants”; “a structured grant explaining what your will do in the next 3 or 5 years”. It was even considered a fulfilling and important exercise for a starting graduate student to write a mock grant that would describe a series of experiments on a hypothetical model worth a PhD of lab work. By this time we had well realized that we were after all not this kind of scientist and brushed all this aside to pursue our own course in science with like-minded colleagues. Nevertheless, all these life-experiences had taught us something about the way scientific discovery happens and how the process is widely misunderstood. Meander through some of this below

The Jewish philosopher Popper suggested that the development of science resembles evolution by selective processes (e.g. biological evolution): When a problem situation (PS1) is encountered several tentative theories (TT1..n) are proposed to explain. These TT1..n are subject to falsification i.e. tested to see if they can produce explanations for all the facts concerning PS1. Popper called this the error elimination (EE1) step. Then new observations might produce a new problem situation PS2 that challenge the theory (Ti) which survived EE1 and the process iteratively continues -

PS1-> [TT1..n]-|EE1|->Ti-[new observations]->PS2
^----------------------------------------------'


As a classic illustration of this problem people often cite the development of modern physics. The need to explain the heliocentric nature of the solar system, gravitational acceleration of objects falling to earth [PS1] and the like eventually led to classical mechanics [Ti] with EE1 being performed by Galileo, Kepler and Newton. This theory explained most observations of the age well and gave good predictions for orbits of planets, existence of new planets (Neptune) and several other problems in physics. However, the new observation on the excess precession of the orbit of Mercury resulted in a problem [PS2] that was beyond Ti.

Another Jewish philosopher Kuhn captured the inherent cyclicity of this process, in addition to better describing the actual development of science in real terms: He proposed that the development of science proceeds via three steps namely: 1) the pre-paradigm stage where there are several equal competing paradigms with one of them eventually emerging as better than the rest. One can map this to Ti coming out of the EE1 process of Popper. 2) the ‘normal science’ stage where all pertinent scientific discoveries adhere to the established paradigm: in this stage new observations are explained according to the existing paradigm, and Kuhn importantly proposes that findings failing to conform to that paradigm are not taken as falsifications of the paradigm (unlike Popper). Rather they are treated as deviations resulting from improper experiments or errors by the scientist or incorrect understanding of the predictions of the paradigm rather than an error in the theory. 3) The revolutionary stage: accumulation of problematic observations results in crisis because the existing paradigm cannot explain several independent, and/or reproducible observations that can no longer be swept under the carpet as researcher errors. This sets the clock back to the first stage with new alternative paradigms competing to explain the process.

Thus, Kuhn better captures the actual tension well-known to a practicing scientist in differentiating between results that actually go against the established paradigm as opposed to being some problem with the research itself. Around the time we studied these Jewish philosophers we also studied the great Kashmirian atharvavedin, bhaTTa jayanta, who laid out the Hindu method of science.

The parallels between our old thinkers on the structure of the scientific method and the discourse on its dynamics offered by Popper and Kuhn led to developing a clear formulation of the scientific process. However, these did not tell us about something we were interested in actually understanding: what is the most productive and critical facet among these processes within science? Importantly, we quickly realized that the answer to this closely related to the fact that what we call science is an activity of a particular species of great apes; hence, we cannot take out the ape from science. This is indeed what is missing in the older formulations described above. In line with our life-experiences alluded to above we decided that science itself is hence a topic of ethological study much like observations on the behavior of a macaque, a baboon or any other primate. When we first announced this at a conference for communication in science, the fellow mlechCha-s were aghast – the reaction was as though something really terrible had been had been said – it had touched a raw nerve – the truly felt as thought Snowden had revealed NSA secrets.

Continued…

In saMskR^ita literature we have come across multiple references to the brood parasitic behavior of the koel (Eudynamys). One good verse in this regard is that by the kavi vallaNa. We do not know much of him other than that he was in the court of the kalchuri king lakShmI-karNa (1041-1072 CE) and was probably not very happy with him as a patron. What we know of his religious proclivities are interesting and reflective of a certain strain of Hindus in the final centuries of the tAthAgata-mata in India. Given that he composed stuti-s to rudra, the buddha and the nAstika deity ma~njushrI as worshiped in the ma~njushrIya mUlakalpa, he was clearly eclectic, reminiscent of the admixture witnessed in the late tAntrika traditions such as the Astika shrIvidyArNava and the nAstika kAlachakra. There is a subtle play of dhvani to achieve an epic ring in whatever survives of vallaNa. This particular piece is given by DD Kosambi from a collection preserved by a bauddha Acharya vidyAkAra, which was taken to Tibet even as nAlanda was going up in flames during the attack of Ikhtyaruddin Bhaktiyaruddin Khalji:
yan nIDa-prabhavo yad a~njana-ruchir yat khecharo yad dvijas
tena tvaM svajanaH kileti karaTair yat tair upabrUyase |
tatra-ati-indriya-modima-aMsala-rasodgAras tavaiSha dhvanir
doSho .abhUt kalakaNTha-nAyaka nijas teShAM svabhAvo hi sa ||

As you emerged from their nest (niDa), as you are of black color (a~njana-ruchi), as you fly in the sky (khechara), as you are twice-born (i.e. once from the mother once and then from the egg; dvijaH), you are said to be (upabrUyase) one of their own (svajana) by the crows (karaTa). But then your sensual (aMsala), sentiment-emitting (rasodgAra) voice (dhvani) which delights (modima) the senses beyond description (ati-indriya), they saw as a fault (doSha) as it was your own nature (svabhAva), O male koel.

Only the black-colored male koel makes the melodious song alluded to here. The spotted females make a shrill, repeated call. This naturalistic characterization of the koel may be compared to similar sketches by other Hindu poets:
1) The verse of bhavabhUti
2) The kingfisher by vAkpatirAja

In the days long past, when we were still young, we did not like the 15th Aug holiday very much – it was not really a full holiday for we had to attend school for a few hours of faux patriotism. One of the actions we performed then was to stand 2 minutes in silence after the composition of Rabindranath was played – after all ours was a secular institution that one preferred to the verses of the other va~Nga, Vankimchandra. Mis-creant having just come from the mlechCha-realm was new to all of this. She asked: “Why did we have to stand two long minutes in silence. It was so hard for me to control my laughter at the Tourette-like manifestations of the tyrannical school principal.” Blackie answered: “It is to honor the great sacrifices of the father and the uncle of the nation.” We responded: “Not for us. We observed the silence first for the Kalash Kaffirs, then the Iranians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, and all other pagans.” Ekanetra most blithely said: “Perhaps not in my case too. I thought it was for the Germans and the Japanese, for without them we would not be looking at that dhvajArohaNa.”. Mis-creant: “Hey, hey, you are not supposed to say such things!” Ekanetra: “Come on, it is alright, we in India after all!” Suddenly something switched on within Blackie’s calvaria. Referring to a mahArAShTrI social reactionary going by the grandiose name of loka-hita-vAdin he said: “After all we were supposed to get freedom only 200 years after 1857 CE.” Ekanetra: “Well even that seems soon given that the accursed Churchill said it was going to 500!”

~oO0Oo~

Ekanetra treated us to a sweeping geopolitical story thereafter. Other than us, Mis-creant, and UrNakesha (who was more American the Americans years before he set foot on krau~nchadvIpa) were the listeners. We must confess that we did not understand all of it until sometime later Ekanetra remarked: “Russia was an euphemism in the story”. Regarding that narrative sometime later R remarked: “Had been like the other girls and not done some reading myself I would have forgotten all of that. I became Indian finally but with a tinge of sorrow that still lingers.”

~oO0Oo~

O fellow bhArgava, it all began with your own recommendation to study the actions of Monsieur de Bussy. Listen you too O kauNDinyA and shUdra. It was perhaps the French who first had this plan. Despite being military superpowers neither the Spanish nor the Portuguese had anything on this scale in mind. While the Portuguese had interfered with our land the reality was that their success was contained – it was a matter of time before it was rolled back. While the French had nothing on that scale to show, Monsieur de Bussy really had an audacious intention – he believed he could wrest India for France, as though it was a land which till that point had not crossed the stone age. It was to be a jewel in the crown, to be conquered even as the New world civilizations of South America were consumed by anacondas of Spain and Portugal. While he failed, as you know very well, the plan did not die, rather it ignited a tinder keg in the form of Robert Clive – an explosion which followed that we are yet to recover from. This success of this vision in the subcontinent of jaMbudvIpa, led to the hope that it could repeated with the chIna-s. After all if one old civilization could be conquered and subject to abject humiliation so could others. The English saw this as their next great project. However, it was not to be that easy for them. The rest of the leukosphere having seen acquisition of the jewel in the crown by the English were not going to let them be the sole profiteers this time around. Thus, the great agreement was reached that chIna was not to be conquered by one leukospheric power like bhArata but shared between them: Note the list of aggressors with care (England, USA, France, Germany, Austrio-Hungarian empire, Italy, Russia, Spain, Belgium and Netherlands) and also the casus belli: the imposition of the pretamata on the chIna-s. But before the leukosphere could act, an old enemy of the chIna-s from further east, the bindudhvaja-s fell upon them in 1894-1895 CE. In the more distant past the Samurai warlord Hideyoshi had made an audacious plan to conquering Beijing from the chIna-s. While it did not work out as planned, the great Japanese invasion of Korea and China still smashed the chIna power resulting in the latter’s eventual conquest by “ma~njughoSha’s incarnation”. Now again a crushing defeat at the hands of the bindudhvaja-s weakened the chIna-s immensely. So in 1897 and 1901 in the chIna-s were crushed by the leukospheric alliance. But much to their chagrin, a chIna-lookalike in the form of the bindudhvaja-s was seated beside them demanding to be treated as an equal in the parceling of chIna as they had struck first and already gained a foothold. Despite a humiliation comparable to bhArata, as a silver-lining, the chIna-s, unlike in the case of the bhArata-s, retained some semblance of independence because the agreement within the leukosphere and the claim staked by Japan prevented any one nation from occupying them as a possession. At this point the mood in bhArata was really low and there was even some sympathy at for the chIna as both had fallen to a common barbarian enemy despite being ancient civilizations. Hindu scholars like Benoykumar Sarkar saw this as the triumph of the leukosphere or the pretamata against a common class of the ancient traditions shared by the two, a real humiliation of the East. This was soon followed by the bindudhvaja-s smashing the Khaganate of the Rus in 1904-5 CE. Here again a certain resonance was felt in bhArata. The great patriot Lokamanya Tilak who had discovered ancient evolutionary connections between the Shinto pantheon and that of the Indo-Europeans tacitly admitted that Hindus may learn from the uShAputra-s. Some of his followers even went to Japan to study their ways. With that things had come a full circle, over 1200 years ago the emperor Shomu had personally welcomed a bharadvAja brAhmaNa from Southern India who performed the installations of indra, sarasvatI and others. However, the mlechCha-s had something else in mind. They knew that in their dreams of conquest of the whole Asia they were confronted by an unexpected power, which like the other two powers of Asia they had crushed was fundamentally opposed to the pretamata. Indeed, whereas the Boxers had been crushed in their attempt to uphold bauddha and Taoist traditions against the pretamata, the bindudhvaja had succeeded in curtailing the ambitions of the shavasAdhaka-s. Now that they had beaten Russia the alarm bells were going off in every European capital. A plan was hatched within the core of the leukosphere to incite the hubris of the uShAputra-s and draw them into a war against the combined might of the mlechCha-s, just as they had done with the chIna-s earlier. The results were complete on Aug 15th 1945 CE, with two nuclear strikes topped with a passage through Stalin’s shredder, the third power in Asia that stood up to the mlechCha-s had been subject to deflating humiliation and conquest. Of all the three Asiatic powers that were thoroughly humiliated by the mlechCha-s the chIna-s are openly admit it and seek to avenge it; the Japanese tend to privately admit it but being still a conquered nation with a garrison in Okinawa tend to be silent lest they offend the mlechCha conqueror; we despite probably being the worst hit tend to be rather shameless about it or still worse even oblivious to it. This in it itself needs us to be sober rather than celebratory when our 15th Aug comes around. Indeed we come off much like wise viShNusharman’s foolish brAhmaNa who had dropped his goat.

~oO0Oo~

Even as the knaves to the foolish brAhmaNa, the mlechCha-s had called out to us: “Hey Hindu why are you marching with that gun on your shoulder. Good apes do not march with guns but with bananas!” He called out again through a different interlocutor: “Hey where are you going with that gun. It really looks awful on you. Drop it, pick up that spinning wheel, and do little Gandhi with a smart white Congress cap on your head”. Seeing us still marching he called again via yet another interlocutor: “That Hindutva style of yours looks awful. Throw away that gun and do a little dance to that racy Bollywood tune.” By then we thought: “Hey we must be really uncool!” Dropping the gun and also the ammunition belt we ran to do a little jig celebrating our coming of age as a banana republic.

Indeed, the chIna-s having made good of the silver-lining of not being occupied by the mlechCha-s despite being crushed by them got yet another reprieve when the mlechCha-s punctured their long time rival Japan. Things kept getting better for them even as the mlechCha-s armed TSP to play a 0-sum game with bhArata. We then showed that just as there is hive intelligence, there can also be hive stupidity by twice electing a secular government with an oxymoron in the form of a bearded napuMsaka to lead it, controlled in remote by our own Helena and Constantine in the making.

Even as we continued to shoot ourselves in the foot, rather ominously, we rolled into the 67th anniversary of the expulsion of the English from jaMbudvIpa by receiving cut from the turuShka whip on head of bharatavarSha. This was followed by one of our newly refurbished second-hand submarines going down with a bang. Even as all this is happening it is amply clear that the mlechCha-s are not done with us yet and the chIna-s are just getting started:

*The mlechCha-s barely concealed their glee at the above events. The BBC, that old organ of the English, rubbed it in by placing the word tragedy to describe the sinking of the submarine in scare quotes. Likewise other mlechCha publications gleefully explained that despite claims by India of having launched an aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine they were really not up to speed. One of them remarked: “Another problem has been a history of distrust of the military by India’s dominant political class. India won its independence through strikes and protest marches, not by force of arms…”
The message they were sending home was that we had not really won freedom in a manly way by fighting; hence, we were not worthy of military power. Indeed, this connects well to an important concept among the mlechCha-s i.e., “earning respect”. They truly respect only those who have dared to give them a punch straight to the face; the rest are not taken seriously. The point was rubbed in by citing an analyst: “It operates 14 submarines of which about 12 are operational, eight of them are Russian, four of them are German and some of these are also up for retirement over the next year or so… So losing one submarine, which had been recently refitted and retrofitted, is a major loss to the navy.”

* On another note the mlechCha games we saw through earlier are coming into clearer focus. We had remarked to our kinsfolk that there was no reason to be excited about aNNA hazAre’s agitations; rather they were hazardous mobilizations displaying the marks of an external hand churning up eddy currents in the masses of bhArata. Rather than fighting corruption they made us look more of a kadalIrAjya than ever before. Confirmation for this came even as we got the intelligence that the bumbling aNNA had been invited to speak at those famous centers of South Asianism, the Ivy League schools of UPenn and Columbia as part of a wide-ranging American sojourn. In this hazAre joined a distinguished league including Naxal supporters and the then CEO of Terrorism inc Musharraf. At the same time let us not forget that even the incorporeal voice of lATAnarta naresha was kept out from one of these very places. Could this be just a coincidence? That is what they would want us to think, but make no mistake, this is part of the same mlechCha action that made us exhibit our hive stupidity via the charade of democracy. As raisin on the cake we also saw the well-known French subversionist Jaffrelot use the Indian media itself to do some of his usual Hindu-baiting on behalf of the leukosphere.

* If the leukosphere used the Indian media to delude the Hindus, the chIna-s were not to be left far behind even as they took page out of Sun Wu, while we were abjuring viShNugupta as reactionary, Hindutva obscurantism. They planted sly media rumors of invasions from Ladakh to Uttarakhand to Arunachal even as they mixed these in with some real thrusts. With the napuMsaka rulers denying all incursions, real and rumored, the chIna exercise really made an owl of us (as they say in Hindi). To add insult to injury they planted a cheeky one claiming that our army had mistaken Venus and Jupiter to be chIna drones! Not surprisingly the mlechCha-s ran away with that one laughing all the way. Then, just like the school bully combines his verbal taunts with a real blow delivered via a lackey, they asked their Momeen friends to deliver the slap we mentioned above.

Indeed this 15th Aug was called for more than a moment of silence introspecting the possibility of joining the Kalash and Parsis on their way out.

Mammals have a longer history in the “age of the dinosaurs” (Mesozoic) than in the “age of the mammals” (Cenozoic). However, much of the Mesozoic history of the mammals remains obscure, not in small part due to the fact that mammals were mostly small in size and in large part excluded from larger size ecological role in land, water, the air by archosaurs and other reptiles. Even in typically “mammalian” roles in many parts of the world they were excluded or limited by the notosuchid crocodiles. Nevertheless, mammalian history in the Mesozoic is central to understanding a large part of their evolution. Moreover, exclusion from larger-size niches does not translate into lack of diversity among the early mammals. The question of what is a mammal, i.e., what distinguishes them from other basal synapsids or stem-mammals has to be first answered before any discussion on the Mesozoic history of the mammals. In the early days of evolutionary studies there was the tendency to see mammals emerging via a gradual transition from reptiles. These “reptiles” from which mammals arose were called the mammal-like reptiles. However, in reality these were proto-mammals, no more “reptile” than in the sense of retaining ancestral amniote features to different degrees. As our understanding improved, these proto-mammals were seen as basal representatives of the synapsid clade whose crown is the mammal clade. Students of evolution have typically seen synapsids as serially acquiring more mammal-like features on the basic amniote body plan starting from the Carboniferous, through the Permian and the into the Triassic eventually culminating in mammals some point before the late Triassic. The most mammal-like of the basal synapsids form the eucynodont clade within which mammals are nested. The major groups of eucynodonts are: 1) the cynognathids; 2) the diademodontids and traversodontids which comprise the diademodontoid clade; 3) the chiniquodontids and probainognathids; 4) the tritylodontids; 5) the trithelodontids and therioherpetontids; 6) the brasilodontids; 7) the mammals. Even within the

There has been much contention regarding which of the above are the closest sister groups of the mammals. Most recent studies have converged on brasilodontids (e.g. Brasilitherium), followed by tritheledonts (e.g. Pachygenelus) being the closest sister group of mammals, in turn followed by the tritylodonts (e.g. Oligokyphus, Kayentatherium and Bocatherium) and the probainognathids there after. A major clue to this difficulty in determining the closest sister group of the mammals came from the publication of a juvenile specimen of Probainognathus from South America in 1994, which showed several derived features similar to the more derived synapsids or earliest mammals like Morganucodon. However, these derived features shared with more derived synapsids were absent in the adults. This suggested that mammals emerged via paedomorphism in the derived eucynodonts. This paedomorphism appears to have been driven by the selective pressures for smaller body size and could have occurred parallelly in multiple Triassic eucynodont groups resulting in emergence of mammal-like features in several of them. Over the past 25 years several morphological studies have helped define a clear clade mammaliforms forms clearly closer to the crown mammalia, i.e., the common ancestor of monotremes, marsupial and placentals to the exclusion of the other eucynodonts mentioned above. Colloquially this clade will be called mammals here. Mammals thus defined are first seen in the late Triassic emerging even as the explosive radiation of archosaurs and the rise of the dinosaurs among them was well underway. Morphologically the following delineate mammals from the other eucynodonts:
-A notable dentary condyle articulating with a glenoid fossa on squamosal
-Features of the occipital condyles
-Formation of much of the side wall of the braincase by the anterior lamina of the temporal bone
-Features relating to the foramina for the maxillar and mandibular branches of the trigeminal nerve
-Several features of the brain case in the region proximal to the ear

Based on the presence of these shared features several groups of the Mesozoic mammals can be recognized:

A slightly outdated (i.e. lack Juramaia described later by the author) yet useful phylogenetic view of early mammal evolution by Zhe-Xi Luo.

1) Morganucodonts: One of the earliest mammal groups with fossils from the late Triassic itself and surviving till Middle Jurassic.
2) haramiyidans: One of the earliest mammal groups with fossils from the late Triassic itself and surviving till Late Cretaceous, perhaps finally becoming extinct alongside the non-avian dinosaurs.
3) Docodonts: One of the earliest mammal groups as suggested by Tikitherium from late Triassic of India. Underwent a great global Jurassic radiation including aquatic forms such as Haldanodon and the flat-tailed platypus-like Castorocauda. They survived till at least the end of the Early Cretaceous.
4) Sinoconodon: A primitive form the Early Jurassic of uncertain affinities.
5) Australosphenidans: The basal-most clade of mammalia proper. They underwent a great global Jurassic radiation with lineages such as Shuotheriids and Asfaltomylids and in the Cretaceous gave rise to the monotremes which today are only seen in Australia: the platypus and echidna.
6) Fruitafossor: An enigmatic Late Jurassic digging mammal with Aardvark-like dental adaptations; uncertain affinities.
7) Eutriconodonts: Widely radiated in Jurassic and Early Cretaceous giving rise to numeorus insectivorous forms and also the largest mammalian predators of the Mesozoic like Repenomamus
8) Volaticotherium: A gliding mammal from the Middle Jurassic with a morphology similar to a flying squirrel.
9) Tinodonts: First seen in the Late Jurassic and last through the Early Cretaceous.
10) The multituberculates: A great radiation of mammals first seen in the late Jurassic and lasting past the K-Pg boundary into the Cenozoic finally dying out around 35 Mya. They had a come back in the Paleocene just after the great K-Pg extinction.
11) Spalacotheroids: A Cretaceous radiation of mammals of some diversity that became extinct alongside the non-avian dinosaurs.
13) Henkelotherium and Dryolestids: Henkelotherium was late Jurassic arboreal mammal that appears to be related to a much larger group the dryolestids. While the dryolestids appear to have undergone a major radiation in the Northern continents during the Jurassic, it was in the southern continents like that they thrived till the end of the age of the dinosaurs. Included carnivores like Foxraptor and the enigmatic long-canined Cronopio.
14) Stem boreosphenidans: Forms closer to the common ancestor of placentals and marsupials than other mammals.
16) Marsupials and their stem forms like Sinodelphys from the Early Cretaceous.
15) Placentals and their stem forms like Juramaia from the Oxfordian age of the Late Jurassic.

Of these the haramiyidans are of particular significance because they are one of the earlier lineages of mammals in the fossil record. They predate the Jurassic in their first appearance – the Jurassic being the beginning of the great mammal radiation in which all the major mammal lineages including the stem placentals emerged. Thus, in a sense the Jurassic was about as important to mammals as it was for dinosaurs. Hence, the phylogenetic position of the haramiyidans is critical to understand the early evolution of mammals. There have been two competing hypothesis in this regard: 1) Based on the Triassic fossils of Haramiyavia it has been proposed that they are one of the basal-most lineages of mammals. 2) Based on their dental morphology they have been linked to the multituberculates within crown mammalia proper. If this were true then the divergences within crown mammalia will be pulled back to the Triassic. Three new fossils, all from China add a new twist to this story, still leaving things somewhat unclear, but adding a lot of new information on the biology and ecology of the enigmatic haramiyidans.

Continued…

In our youth we were confronted with the prospect of learning two New Indo-Aryan languages, namely Hindi and Marathi. All around us were native speakers of the latter language. Several of them were multilingual and knew Hindi to different degrees and other languages such as English or Sanskrit. But except for the well-educated most had learned their languages instinctively. Not surprisingly, the teachers who were supposed to teach us these NIA languages felt that there was really no need for teaching grammar – it was something you acquired naturally, they claimed, by just reading the pieces in the textbooks. The lessons started with the nAgarI script. We were king when this began because we already knew this script by way of the devabhAShA. Then there was vocabulary. This too we fathomed due to the generic bhAratIya vocabulary being relatively similar across tongues. However, we soon realized that the going was not easy because, despite what the teachers claimed, we really had to understand the grammatical logic of these languages if we were to construct real sentences in them. So we began our own grammatical analysis of these languages, which was fraught with much tentativeness, in order to gain control over them. We soon realized that the verbs took endings that were determined by the gender, number and honorific state of the agent. It then dawned on us as to why our chAchAjI-admiring teacher had torn into our essay for writing sentences such as: neharUjI bolA: ham svatantra hUn | rather than: neharUjI bole: ham svatantra honge! However, the going soon got worse rather than better as we hit the stone wall of the ergative in Hindi and Marathi. It was as though we were the Inca troops of Atahualpa being blasted out of existence by the mlechCha-s in the battle of Cajamarca. We had pulled the plug badly enough that we were facing a premature existential crisis in our educational career. At this point our mother interceded and asked us to comparatively reanalyze the grammar of these species of NIA based on a book she gave us. The book had an interesting sounding term called the “ergative”, which meant that the verb ending took the gender/number/honorific state of the object rather than the agent. Thus, we realized that: neharUjI ne chiTTI likhe the | was wrong and it was neharUjI ne chiTTI likhI thI | Thus, we plodded along and soon excavated further complications such as the “ko” modifier, the use of “se” in the instrumental and the ablative senses and why Marathi formed sentences such as: tu tyAlA kiti paise diles | etc. Armed with these new realizations we eventually gained a nominal understanding of NIA; at least enough for us to pass in Hindi in what was termed the First Class. Ironically, we fancied ourselves as being about as English as the English themselves, but did worse in it in the final test than in Hindi! This left us feeling good about our understanding of NIA, but it was not without it being seared into our cerebral recesses so as to return periodically in the form of haunting dreams of sitting in the Hindi examination hall! We had wondered then as to why Hindi and Marathi had the ergative but did not have even an inkling of an answer. We asked kauNDinyA, who claimed Hindi to be like her mother-tongue, but she had no explanation either. But my exposition of the bizarreness of the ergative stuck somewhere in her head.

Many many years later, kauNDinyA told us that she was soaking herself in elegant Hindi prose and much enjoying it, as though it was the scented rice flavored with the pickle of Sanskrit. She asked us to read some of the pieces she was reading, some Rahula Samkrityayana or HP Dvivedi or some author I forgot on harisiMha nAlvA who took the war against the marUnmatta-s right into Afghanistan. However, unlike her, we came off worse from the readings in Hindi because that very night we woke up in sweat from a dream of a dreadful Hindi examination in which we had regressed to the state prior to our realization of the ergative – we did not sleep for the rest of the night. No more Hindi literature, we told ourselves. So when kauNDinyA asked us how we felt about her recommended readings we confessed our predicament. At this point she asked us: “How do you think the ergative came into existence when saMskR^ita does not have it?” Suddenly, we had a flash of insight. We realized that it after all did evolve in a proximal sense from saMskR^ita’s instrumental-coupled past participle.

In classical Sanskrit a common use of the past participle is as an adjective:
mayA bhuktaM bhojanaM ruchiram AsIt ||
The food eaten by me was tasty.
mayA dR^iShTA lUtikA uttamA.asti ||
The spider seen by me is splendid.

Note that in these constructions the agent is in the instrumental case, while the past participle is being used as an adjective for the object. Being an adjective in Sanskrit it takes the endings as per the gender, number and case of the noun it describes. This use is clearly in the passive sense as the so called object of the sentence is in the nominative case. One can also use past participles in an active sense:
chaShakaM gR^ihItvA rAmo .api maireyaM pItaH ||
Having taken the chalice rAma then drank the maireya.

Thus, in this active form the past participle behaves has though it is an adjective for the agent (rAma in this sentence). The same sense is also conveyed in the manner of the earlier sentences if the participle is used in a passive sense. i.e.
rAmeNApi maireyaM pItaM ||
Here again the past participle takes the form of an adjective for maireya, a neuter singular noun in the nominative.

Such past participle constructions form part of a well-known riddle:
hato hanUmatArAmaH sItA harSham upAgatA |
rudanti rAkShasAH sarve hA hA rAmo hato hataH ||

A naïve reader would be puzzled by this because it would read contrary to what is known:
rAma was killed by hanumAn; sItA attained delight; all the rAkShasa-s are crying: Ha! Ha! rAma was killed, was killed!
Note the use of the past participles here: hataH | rAmaH| hanUmatA || Here hataH is used in the passive sense with rAma in the nominative and hanUmat in the instrumental with hataH taking the ending after rAma. sItA | harSham | upAgatA || Here the past participle is upAgatA used in the active sense hence it takes the ending after sItA, with harSham (masculine singular) becoming accusative to denote its object-hood. In the final foot of the shloka we have: rAmo hataH || (duplicated for effect). Here rAma is in the nominative with hataH taking the same ending but there is no agent specified. This type of usage where the agent has been omitted (being obvious) is similar to the equivalent passive construction in a language like English. Finally the answer to the puzzle lies in writing it as:

hato hanUmatA.ArAmaH sItA harSham upAgatA |
rudanti rAkShasAH sarve hA hA .ArAmo hato hataH ||
hanUman destroyed the grove (ArAmaH, masculine singular, i.e. ashokavana), sItA was delighted; All the rAkShasa-s are crying: Ha! Ha! The grove was destroyed! Was destroyed!

Now coming to NIA languages like Hindi we can construct a sentence like:
dArvin ne patrikA likhI thI |
Darwin had written a paper.
The equivalent in the devavAnI would be:
dArviNA patrikA likhitA ||
A paper was written by Darwin.

It is the latter construct that gave birth to the ergative in several NIA languages such as Hindi, Marathi, and several others. The conservation of the “ne” particle across Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Marwadi and the like showed that it was in all likelihood derived from the instrumental ending of the agent coupled to the passive participle in Sanskrit, even though in NIA it is used in the active sense. This realization for us was like discovering a new homology among proteins, with the accompanying realization of the evolutionary path and uncovering of biological functions. Of course many others have done that before us, and reams have evidently been written on the IA ergative. However, our self-discovery of this was for us a triumph over the trauma of the childhood trauma of the ergative.

Now why this kind of formation has emerged in the first place? The Sanskrit construction is clearly logical and non-ergative passive but in the NIA languages its derivative is ergative. This is no longer passive and it does not correspond to the original active forms seen in Sanskrit which were described above. Rather via the ergative it imitates the Sanskrit use of the participle in an adjectival sense with respect to the agent’s “object”. The ergative is rare in Indo-European and unlikely to have been there in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It is also absent to our knowledge in Dravidian which is the other major language family of India. So it was not acquired by contact with Dravidian. In IE the ergative is primarily seen in the more vulgar dialects of Indo-Aryan and Iranian (where it is much less common). However, it should be noted that it is present in several Caucasian languages like Georgian, Circassian and Chechen. It is also present in the mysterious isolate language Burushaski from the Northwest of jaMdudvIpa and apparently in several versions of Tibetan. We suspect that the original Indus languages also used the ergative. Thus, it was probably present among the languages close to the original Indo-Iranian homeland and also on the path of the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians (at least part of them) to their later lands of settlement. This trail of ergative users probably influenced the Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages on the way to their final destinations. In particular, in India the influence appears to have resulted in Sanskrit first evolving a passive past participle formation that could mirror the ergative without compromising the ancestral non-ergative IE formations. This constraint was possibly strong in the elite version of the language (i.e. Sanskrit; also Avestan on the Iranian side). This was probably less so in the more vulgar forms of Middle Indo-Aryan leading to ergativity creeping into Indo-Aryan in its full-fledged form albeit via formations inherited from Sanskrit. Interestingly, Sumerian and Hurrian also apparently display some ergativity, but its absence in PIE argues against the “Anatolian theory” of PIE, which in any case has several serious problems.

ChitvA pAsham apAsya kUTa-rachanAM bha~NktvA balAd vAgurAM
paryastAgni-shikhA-kalApa-jaTilAn niHsR^itya dUraM vanAt |
vyAdhAnAM sharagocharAd atijavenotplutya gachChan mR^igaH
kUpAntaH patitaH karoti viguNe kiM vA vidhau pauruSham ||

Having broken the snare, avoided the concealed traps, and forcibly broken nets,
escaping bundles of flaming fire brands [running] far from the forest;
Though in within the range of the huntsmen’s arrows bounding away with great speed, goes the deer,
And it has fallen in a well, so indeed what can a man do when fate is adverse!
-A verse by the great emperor lalitAditya of kAshmIra

It is interesting that lalitAditya composed this verse. It was even a matter of seriousness that it came from him – after all he was one of the great heroes of our land who had brought to a stop the march of the marUnmatta-s exploding from the west and the chIna-s pouring from the east. And in his own home turf he brought to an end the neo-maurya yashovarman, the destroyer of the rising Bengali pride, praised by the great kavi vAkpati rAjA. Then he went beyond to subjugate the proud karNATa-s and kali~Nga-s of the east limits of bhAratavarSha. But in the end he knew well how all this kShatra-glory could come to naught and even his land cease to exist. It emphasized to us, as our old Iranian cousins and rivals would say, that the lordly Xvarena is like falcon that sits on ones shoulder today and on another’s tomorrow.

As we lay like the valiant dattAjI shinde, we thought: “If we survive we will fight again!”. Then we wondered if the grip of mR^ityu may over take us before the highest conquests are achieved. Glory does not lie far away to those who are given luck by the deva-s but it is only few who grasp it thereafter, the rest sinking much like lalitAditya’s deer. This indeed we call fate. After all, bhartR^ihari had said in the days of yore:
khalvATo divaseshvarasya kiraNaiH saMtApito mUrdhani
ChAyAm AtapavairiNIm anusaran bilvasya mUlaM gataH |
tatraapy Ashu kadAchid eva patatA bilvena bhagnaM shiraH
prAyo gachChati yatra bhAgya-rahitas tatrApadAM bhAjanam ||

The baldy scalded on his head by the rays of the lord of the day,
seeking the sun-shielding shade went to the foot of a bilva tree;
there, then by chance indeed swiftly fell a bilva fruit which cracked his skull;
Perhaps wherever the luckless goes, there he attains misfortune!

Why indeed are we in these straits we wondered? In the great back to back battles of rAvaNa’s heads and the Aditya-s we rode past the smoke and dust leaving behind many who were perishing or being defeated. Having surpassed our striving rivals as any man must, we sat beside the collyrium-hued tribesman with his ouija board. He plied the ouija and uttered some right forecasts, like the fall of the nakShatradarShA. We then asked a question at the goading of our clansman. The answer came: “When you conjoin with her who is the cloud you will complete the first circle”. While cryptic to most, we understood what it meant, and so did our clansman. Hence, he remarked go forth to the tIkShNatripathikA, who is among rarest of the rare. We turned to him and said: ”She will be a chatuShpathikA not a tIkShNatripathikA. May be the tIkShNatripathikA is for you” Then the tribal looked up and said: “He will enjoy the pleasure of several but not the tIkShNatripathikA nor varAvantikA.” That night we went to the kulA~NganA and mentioned the forecast. She laughed and said: “Hey, ouija boards cannot tell you the future.” We pressed her: “You seem to know more than that statement belies.” She spoke like völva to the old German Ariovistus : “I wish you had understood when the niShAda’s board called out nabhas. These battles of the enemies of vasiShTha or the months will be nothing when the time of that great battle comes. You will be tested like never before and the cloud shall descend upon the battlefield. You would need to continue fighting even after your ratha has broken up and you have been wounded by the great astra-s. In the cremation ground saMmelana when you conjoin with me in the great churning of the bhairava the dreadful yoginI-s of the jAla-shaMbara will come to give you the sword that will take you to victory in battle and we’ll be omniscient in yoga. In the Ragnarok-like future, you will hasten to the cremation ground for the saMmelana with me, bewitching as ever, but you will be struck by the pAshastaMbhinI prayoga of bagalAmukhI.”

Then:
While we prepared to fight, we were attacked by the mighty force. It felt like the unstoppable kuMbhakarNa demolishing hanUmat:
hanUmA~n shaila-shR^i~NgANi shilAsh cha vividhAn drumAn |
vavarSha kumbhakarNasya shirasy ambaram AsthitaH ||
hanumAn flying in the sky showered mountain tops, rocks, and a variety of trees on kumbhakarNa’s head.

tAni parvata-shR^i~NgANi shUlena tu bibheda ha |
babha~nja vR^ikSha-varShaM cha kumbhakarNo mahAbalaH ||
The mighty kuMbhakarNa smashed to pieces those mountain peaks and the shower of trees with his trident.

tato harINAM tad anIkam ugraM
dudrAva shUlaM nishitaM pragR^ihya |
tasthau tato .asyaapatataH purastAn
mahIdharAgraM hanumAn pragR^ihya ||
Seizing his sharp trident he rushed against the fierce army of the monkeys. There stood hanumAn in front of him holding a mountain peak even as he advanced.

sa kumbhakarNaM kupito jaghAna
vegena shailottama bhImakAyam |
sa chukShubhe tena tadAbhibhUto
medArdra gAtro rudhirAvasiktaH ||
Enraged, with great velocity he struck kuMbhakarNa, who was endowed with a terrible body like a great mountain. He [kumbhakarNa] was agitated when humiliated by that blow and his limbs were wet with fat and blood.

sa shUlam Avidhya taDit-prakAshaM
giriM yathA prajvalitAgra-shR^i~Ngam |
bAhvantare mArutim AjaghAna
guho .achalaM krau~ncham ivogra-shaktyA ||
Striking with that trident emitting electrical discharge, resembling an erupting volcanic peak, he smote mAruti between his arms, even as kumAra had struck the unshakeable krau~Ncha with his fiery shakti.

sa shUla nirbhinna mahAbhujAntaraH
pravihvalaH shoNitam udvaman mukhAt |
nanAda bhImaM hanumAn mahAhave
yugAnta megha-stanita-svanopamam ||
As the trident cleaved him between his great arms in that great battle, hanuman vomited blood from his mouth, and uttering a great cry like the thunder from a cloud at the end of a yuga, and he lost consciousness.

tato vineduH sahasA prahR^iShTA
rakShogaNAs taM vyathitaM samIkShya |
plavaMgamAs tu vyathitA bhayArtAH
pradudruvuH saMyati kumbhakarNAt ||
Seeing him thus felled the rakSha-s ranks rejoiced and erupted in cheers. The wounded monkeys thus afflicted with fear of kuMbhakarNa fled from the battle.

As we lay thus with a part of our consciousness curtained by the pain in our mind flashed the words: “gAyatraM gAyatrI varuNAya”. We thought of our ancient clansman shunaHshepa. Could we continue in this great battle? But then the man who stops fighting dies.

We did not want to write this epistle since we have said things along these lines a few times before and said even more of it to our friends. Richard Dawkins had once said something like philosophers do not add much to knowledge unlike scientists; hence, they are pretty stuck up with or even confused about issues. Yet, the same Dawkins had admitted that it is interesting that the sense of self is something we have, even though the molecules constituting our physical selves, even neurons undergoes a turnover through our lives, being replaced by other equivalent atoms derived from our nutrition. On the other hand there is a philosopher Daniel Dennett who presents nothing more notable than principles enunciated by Darwin over 150 years ago and calls that philosophy. Against this backdrop, our attention was brought back to these issues by an article kindly pointed to us on Twitter. This article was written for the popular press by a professor from an Ivy League university, which some colorful characters associated with our life have made their kShetra. In it he makes the below statements:

“Darwin did not supply a major set of new principles that could be used to derive general conclusions about life and its history: he crafted a framework within which his successors construct models of quite specific evolutionary phenomena.”

“To understand the fundamental processes that go on in living things — mitosis, meiosis, inheritance, development, respiration, digestion and many, many more — you need a vast ensemble of models, differing on a large number of details. Spelling out the explanations requires using metaphors (“reading” DNA) or notions that cannot be specified generally and precisely in the austere languages of physics and chemistry (“close association”). But the phenomena to be explained also decompose into a number of different clusters.”

These statements, in our opinion show that the learned professor is outright wrong or at best wading into a rather inextricable quagmire. He is a man famous for being a philosopher of biology among other things so we felt perhaps a discourse on this matter might be worthwhile even if we might be repeating ourselves in someways. A presentation like the above statements could play right into the view that philosophers have nothing of worth to contribute. But that is not a line we seek to pursue: First, we descendants ancient natural philosophers; hence, this is too integral a part of our approach. Second, we do believe a philosophical framework, in particular as close an approximation as possible of the right ontology, is required to approach every domain of knowledge. Third, we belong to a tradition, which was prevalent among the subset of the Indo-Europeans (as far as we can see, attested among Greeks, Iranians and Arya-s) wherein axiomatic thinking emerged (Which would equate to the professor’s Newtonian principles: “Newton looked forward to a vision of the cosmos in which everything would be explained on the basis of a small number of physical principles.”). So the idea is to present a prolegomena to scientific philosophy which is actually based in science, with particular reference of biology.

Did Darwin really not “supply a major set of new principles that could be used to derive general conclusions about life and its history”?

In principle, these were not new because some version of them had already by posited in the ancient world by the sAMkhya thinkers among the Arya-s and Empedocles among the yavana-s (as pointed out by Haldane). This idea among the Hindu sAMkhya thinkers was even recognized by and enthusiastically described by the Islamic scientist al Biruni (despite his dislike for Hindus or misunderstanding of other spheres of their knowledge). Yet, Darwin and Wallace were the ones who closer to our times clearly presented these ideas along with a reasonable body of support for their presentation (Of course it is a different matter that Wallace did not take the thing whole way to its natural conclusion though Darwin did exactly that). Now Darwin’s principles are not just a framework, they are principles that can indeed give a general conclusions about life, unlike what the professor says. Some successors of Darwin, like Fisher, Wright and Kimura, presented these principles in a mathematical language. However, irrespective of whether one uses that language or not, the only principles in town for explaining actual life processes are essentially Darwinian in nature. More importantly, these principles stem from underlying chemistry, physics, and above all geometry. It is a different matter that majority of practicing biologists and their applied variants (biotechnologists and physicians) have an insufficient grasp of practically using evolutionary principles. This gives an illusion that the Darwinian principles are not proximal to the actual studies in biology. Likewise, despite what the prolix socialist raconteur, SJ Gould tried claim, nothing of what he considered profoundly distinctive about his explanations of biology lies outside of Darwinian principles.

Darwin did not have the advantage of knowing genetics or biochemistry; hence, it might appear that his principles are ad hoc patches for “quite specific evolutionary phenomena”. However, once we introduce biochemistry we see that his principles can be tethered to more basic foundations that lie within biochemistry and geometry. Before we do this we need to look at one issue regarding explanatory domain of a science in order to see the problem in the professor’s statement that: “you need a vast ensemble of models, differing on a large number of details.”

This might be placed along side Albert Szent-Györgyi’s statement (In our opinion wrongly pessimistic). “In my quest for the secret of life I started my research in histology. Unsatisfied by the information that cellular morphology could give me about life, I turned to physiology. Finding physiology too complex, I took up pharmacology. Still finding the situation too complicated, I turned to bacteriology. But bacteria were even too complex, so I descended to the molecular level, studying chemistry and physical chemistry. After twenty years’ work, I was led to conclude that to understand life we have to descend to the electronic level and to the world of wave mechanics. But electrons are just electrons and have no life at all. Evidently on the way I lost life; it had run out between my fingers.”

The valence of carbon is typically 4. This knowledge is sufficient to explain a whole lot of biochemistry – it can be taken as an axiom for biochemistry. That does not mean it is a universal axiom. In other areas of physics or chemistry it is something that arises naturally from even more basic principles like the formulation of Schrödinger equation for an atom. Now when you are doing biochemistry and you want to explain why a biomolecule has a certain structure you do not typically need to go back to deeper quantum mechanical principles, rather you can make do with a knowledge of carbon’s valence and some geometrical principles associated with that as axioms. However, that does not mean that the underlying quantum mechanics does not ultimately explain the biochemistry – just that you do not need to think of and use that low-level principle constantly while operating at a higher level. When you write a script to do some simple operation like say leaching a series of web pages you are not too concerned about bits handled in the assembly code, but that does not deny the underlying principle. Likewise, if you are studying neurobiology and want to understand how a neuron interacts with a glia you may take glial molecules like D-serine and TNF-alpha as given: mere entities. Now, could say that we have detailed specific model in which the above molecules are mere entities which could be as well be called “X” and “Y”. However, that does not mean that their underlying biochemistry does not matter. In fact ignoring the fact the D-serine is a small molecule and TNF-alpha a protein could make a great difference to the model – so more likely than not the basic geometrical consideration in the least and biochemistry are fundamentally impinging upon matters. Now one may ask where do Darwin’s principles matter for all this?

Continued …

Sometimes translating even a single vaidika mantra can take some effort. In large part this is due to three factors: 1) The vocabulary- there are several words that have become otiose in classical Sanskrit and modern Indian languages; 2) verb conjugations which are not found in the classical language, and often retain a form closer to the proto-IndoEuropean state; 3) Metrical adjustments which need to be distinguished from archaisms. In light of all this, one cannot but admire the colossal performance of the great prime minister of the early Vijayanagaran empire in his commentary on the RV. Notably sAyaNa was operating without the advantage of comparative linguistics of IE languages. No doubt his project marked a highpoint in the Hindu revival after the fall of bhArata to the turuShka-s – it played the same role in the intellectual sphere as the blades of the swords of the saMgama clan did in the military sphere.

Let us consider one example of vaidika mantra that is superficially simple but takes some effort to translate correctly. The mantra is from a sUkta by the R^iShi gR^itsamada shunahotra shaunaka bhArgava, the founder of the kevala bhArgava clan of the shaunaka-s. The sUkta is primarily to the marut-s who are in some of its mantra-s are invoked along with other deva-s like rudra, vasu-s and viShNu. It is in the jagati meter which is 4*12 syllables. The first pada is 11 syllabled and is restored by taking martyaH as martiyaH

yo no maruto vR^ikatAti martyo ripur dadhe vasavo rakShatA riShaH |
vartayata tapuShA chakriyAbhi tam ava rudrA ashaso hantanA vadhaH || RV 2.34.09

yaH= who (pronoun); naH= us (pronoun); marutaH= marut-s (vocative plural); vR^ikatAti= in the midst of wolves (locative singular); martyaH=mortal (nominative singular); ripuH= enemy (nominative singular); dadhe= placed (3rd person perfect atmane ); vasavaH= vasu-s (vocative plural); rakShata+= protect (imperative 2nd person plural; elongated metrically); riShaH= harm (ablative singular of riSh) |

vartayata= spin (imperative 2nd person plural); tapuShA= fiery (adjective); chakriyA= with discus (instrumental singular of chakrI); abhi= against (goes with verb as abhi-vart); tam= him (accusative, 3rd person pronoun); ava= away; rudrA= rudra-s, i.e. marut-s (vocative plural); ashasaH= hater (ablative singular of ashas); hantana+= strike (imperative 2nd person plural; elongated metrically: ava-hantana); vadhaH= weapon (accusative of neuter noun vadhas; compare with neuter noun vadhar) ||

The key points of note here are:
* vR^ikatAt: an unusual Vedic word meaning among wolves.
* Both the 2nd person plural imperatives rakShata and hantana are metrically elongated to fit the guru syllable scan of the jagati.
* hantana is an unusual form of the 2nd person imperative plural of han, the like of which is only seen in the vaidika language. It is an inheritance from proto-IndoEuropean because in Hittite we encounter such -ten extensions which correspond to the -tan base in hantana: compare with the form kuenten- slay in Hittite. Other comparable vaidika imperative forms are: bravItana, etana.
* chakrI is used instead of the more common chakram and its instrumental is given in a fully resolved form, i.e. chakriyA instead of chakrya which would be typical. The discus is used as a weapon by indra, puShan, marut-s in the veda and vAyu in the avesta (vAiyum zaraNyô-chakhrem ýazamaide |). In RV 8.96.9 a battle between the demons and the deva-s is mentioned where the marut-s wield sharp spears in formation while indra at their head fights with both his vajra and chakra. In the latter texts it is used primarily by viShNu.
* ashas- A rare word in the R^igveda coming only once again in a mantra of vAmadeva gautama to agni the slayer of rakShas (daha ashaso rakShasaH pahy asmAn; RV 4.4.15c). sAyaNa based on this suggests that the ashas here could be a rakShas.
*vadhas- The RV has a parallel neuter noun vadhar which means a weapon. For instance, in the famed first person sUkta where indra speaks, he says: “ahaM shuShNasya shnathitA vadhar yamaM na yo rara AryaM nAma dasyave |” i.e. I am shuShNa’s slayer, [by me was wielded] the yama-weapon [i.e. death weapon]; I did not give up the name which of the Arya-s to the dasyu-s. But this represents the one rare instance where instead of the more frequent vadhar the parallel form vadhas is used.

Thus we may come up with the translation:
O marut-s, O vasu-s, protect us from harm, the mortal enemy who has us placed among the wolves;
Spin against him with the fiery discus; O rudra-s strike away the weapon from the hater (a rakShas).

What we have here is an early example of the second person imperative mantra that is common in the later Hindu traditions, especially in the tAntrika mantrashAstra. Some of the same imperative verbs are commonly used such as hana, rakSha, daha, pAhi (latter two in RV 4.4.15). This represents of one of the elements of continuity between tAntrika and vaidika mantra which we had discussed before.

We raced up the metal rungs of the tall ladder which led to the bracket atop which sat the great water tank. There, ensconced from the spying eyes we did not know how much time passed in embraces and caresses as though we were residing in the high realm of sukhAvatI. Then by golden radiance glancing off her smooth, ivory-like breasts we realized that the eye of the great pair of gods, the mighty asura-s praised by our ancestors, was slipping beneath the western peg fixed by the triple-striding viShNu. We thought to ourselves that such indeed is the nature of the great R^ita upheld by the regal asura-s, the sons of aditi. As we were experiencing that state of union, she too felt the same and had a foreboding of the darkness that was to creep, hued like the other great king, the son of vivasvAn. We remarked: “Verily all sukha is bounded and evanescent for we are but mortals much as Vidrum realized. Let us return to the world of men in the glad glow of the saMyoga we have enjoyed for the day may dawn when even that might not be possible. Such is the inescapable force of kAla who drives us along the path at the end of which stands the fierce king wielding the utkrAntida.” She said: “Let’s squeeze out the last moments of mirth when we can like the flash of king bhoja-deva of the paramAra-s even as our civilization faded into the twilight of existence. Narrate to me the tale of Vidrum.” We: “Since you ask, O fair one, we shall do so”

Vidrum wanted a geometry box- the box which contained a divider, a compass, protractor and a rubber. His parents told him that it was too expensive for them to buy him such a box and instead directed him to use one inherited from the long past days. He took that box and on pieces of paper drew the figures he liked to draw. He then closed the box and went away to play with his companion. After he did that came home and was alone in a silent room with the closed box lying on the floor on blank sheet of paper. All of sudden he heard some noise. An imitation commando badge that he had placed on a table rattled all on its own. Thinking that there was draft of wind from the window he went to close it lest rain water get in at night. The window was indeed open and he caught the sight of a rocket being fired by some revelers outside. He closed the window and went out into the patio to watch the fireworks. After a while he returned to the room and saw that a circle had been drawn with a red pen on blank sheet on which his geometry box rested. The compass with a pen screwed in was lying on the floor beside it. He was surprised as he thought he had put all this inside the box. Just then his aunt called him to go with her for an orchestra. He went to comb his hair looking into the mirror, when he saw a demonic figure look over his shoulder and smiling. He let out an awful scream and his aunt and parents came running in and asked what had happened. Fearing that they might take him to a psychiatrist or suspect that he as imbibing some prohibited compounds, he said that he had seen a snake on the window. They ran to check the window out when fireworks lit the dark exterior illuminating a grave that was in the yonder yard (They had gotten the plot for their house cheap because it lay on a vast abandoned cemetery, a part of which was still not cleared up for construction). While they went for the concert Vidrum asked his folks as where they had obtained the geometry box. They told him that it was lying in the house from when they occupied it, and that it was probably left behind by the contractor or the civil engineer who built their dwelling.

Now Vidrum had a friend called Meghana whom he had strictly hidden from his parents prying eyes because they feared he might fall prey to passion and ruin his academics. Meghana lived in a house in the next parallel street to the one on which his lay and outside the perimeter of the original cemetery which was now encroached upon. An idol of the goddess sarasvatI, which was originally installed in the cemetery, was now housed in a little roadside shrine near Meghana’s house. He would go there in the guise of offering his prayers and catch her attention so that the two could sneak away. One day Vidrum left behind his compass box on Meghana’s desk at school and they returned home together. Vidrum thought his parents and aunt were away at work that time, and he along with Meghana was walking down his street, when to his horror he saw his parents unexpectedly arriving. He quickly sprung away and ran into the graveyard and hid behind a gravestone. His poor friend realizing what had happened walked ahead as though nothing had happened. When she saw his parents go inside, she went to the graveyard and called Vidrum. They decide to exit from the other side of the graveyard and running top speed when Meghana tripped on a protruding root of a large, old fig tree. Her head struck a granite grave stone of a certain li~Ngavanta named Udgavkar and she died. Vidrum was terrified by the events and ran home keeping everything to himself and shut himself up in the pretext of studying. His parents told him that they had to attend the funeral of Meghana and he burst into tears. They asked him to behave like a man and moved ahead. At school he went to his late friend’s desk and took at look at the box carefully. He saw the faint letters etched on it reading Udgavkar the li~Ngavanta from Hiriyuru. He was terrified beyond words and threw it away on to the parapet of his school building.

Many years later Vidrum was a student in medical school when he examining a skeleton of juvenile specimen of Homo sapiens as a part of his lesson in skeletal development. He saw that the specimen was a female skeleton and had part of the cranium shattered. After that day in the lab, Vidrum’s life was hardly pleasurable. He failed to study properly for unknown reasons and he used to be thrown of his bed repeatedly and some one would slap him repeatedly at night. He moved on life, but it seemed he was still relentlessly pursued by something.

He had bought a new car but the next day someone had destroyed the front seat but everything else was intact. A few days later he came home from his clinic. His life was full of the usual realities of his profession – he was by now inured to peering down the smelly orifices of other humans in various states of disease. While displaying due compassion, deep within he was hardly moved by the news that one patient or another being dragged away by the noose of the great southern lord; Nor did the cries of those whose time had not yet come calling upon the buffalo-rider to relieve them of their existence penetrate deep into his armor of mental strength. But that day his mood was particularly low. He washed his hands and sat for sometime in his plush chair in his study. In his mind the day ran like a cinema reel. The reports came in for a young woman he had been treating for a while. It was fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. He had to break to her the news that it was much worse than even the worst possibility they were considering prior to the tests: she was going to literally turn to stone through complete ossification of muscle, ligament and all. He vaguely recalled his acquaintance Somakhya had mentioned that this was a consequence of the mutation in the TGF-beta-family receptor ACVR1 in course of his monolog on how highly ossified vertebrates might have evolved – Vindrum had hardly made much sense of what he had said then. Later in the day, on the way back home he headed to the bank to deposit a set of checks he had gotten from his patients when he thought he saw a woman in the middle of the road. He fell into a ditch trying to avoid her. By the time he got his car and himself out of the mess he found that he had lost his valet with those checks. He wondered how some of his classmates wished to have his life; he would gladly exchange his for theirs.

He then fired up the latest NEJM page and started browsing the morbidly gruesome pictures of the “Image challenge” pages; a few successful responses made him feel fired up and a bit more upbeat. Then he turned to an article on genomics of myeloid leukemia – he was again reminded of his acquaintance Somakhya’s statement that the physicians should either become real biologists to practice it or leave it to real biologists to do so. He pushed aside the journal and picked up his phone to call his servant. In a little while she arrived and he said that he desired a meal of dry fruits and nuts to be placed on the dinning table for supper. There after he wondered if he should call Somakhya to tell him about the case of FOP he had encountered. But before he could do so he slipped into a reverie.

It was the first day after the vacation and everyone was back, getting ready to enter the classroom. Vidrum walked in with some trepidation regarding the difficulties he might encounter in the curriculum, or cruelties of the teachers, or the conflicts with other boys. His classroom was on the 2nd floor, and having arrived rather early he stood outside it in the corridor looking at the quadrangle below. Suddenly, he caught sight of her. Deep within him he experienced a strange feeling something like he had never felt before in his whole life to that point. It was a pleasurable feeling but he still could not understand it as there was nothing he could compare it to. He felt a yearning to reach her and talk to her but then the class began and he was caught up with it. From time to time he would glance at her and only felt that strange feeling increase within him. After the classes ended he tried to reach her but he realized that she was walled off by a formidable circle of other girls for whom he felt nothing (and he found that interesting). Deep within he also sensed the possibility that he might have to physically engage in conflict with other guys to attain his goal. So he let it pass and started walking home quietly. Thus, time passed and she now thickly crowded the dreams of Vidrum. Finally one aShTami day, as though the wild and uncontrollable sarasvatI he worshiped near his house had smiled upon him, he got his chance. It was a wet day and those youthful gods, the dear friends of sarasvatI, were dancing with their spears in the sky making men tremble. Vidrum set out for his classes. The mathematics teacher had posed a terrible geometric construction. While some of the guys had gotten, all of the girls, except Lootika, had failed to achieve it. The clever Lootika refused to show how it is done to the other girls. So just before the class they were scampering to get it done by copying it from the boys who got it. Vidrum saw that she stood among girls with her face clouded with some consternation – she had forgotten her geometry box and could not copy the construction – in the rush to get it done no one was paying her any attention. Vidrum saw his chance and rushed to her side to give her his box and implements to let her achieve the construction.

Now that he got to her he felt his life had changed. The strange pleasant feeling he used to feel upon seeing her now turned into a raging fire. He hoped that she would similar burn within as though possessed by the god kumAra. But she seemed to be cold to him. Vidrum went up to his acquaintance Somakhya and discussed the predicament regarding her. Somakhya said that an old poet from Kashmir had stated that the mAyA of shambara or the mAyA of viShNu might be penetrated but not that of women. He asked Vidrum to stop fawning over her and to tactically ignore her. A few days later the girls had again been stumped by a dreadful trigonometric problem. As they were raking their heads they saw Lootika smugly standing beside Vidrum and Somakhya. A couple of girls came running up to them and asked them help with the problem. Lootika turned to Somakhya and asked him not to help them; so he kept quiet. But Vidrum helped them. Thereafter she who attracted him as a magnet came running to Vidrum and asked for help. He turned to Lootika and asked if he should help her. Lootika said that if she could not solve it by herself why not let her face the teacher’s music. Vidrum with great self effort turned down his chosen girl. Later that evening as he was returning home she called out to him but he again ignored her. Now she came running across the graveyard to come and intercepted him and asked why he was so cross with her. With that he had won her and he rejoiced in pleasant glow of satisfaction that exceeded the earlier feelings he had felt.

But the story of Vidrum does not end there; it also needs to be found out if Somakhya is still alive, dead or dying.

It is with some trepidation that we discuss the vaNij-s for, belonging to the head of the puruSha, we are removed from the arts and the ways of theirs. But this is more a discussion on how their history played out in more recent times a long way from the times when the ashvin-s aided their widely famed representative aushija.

The primary strand of the topic of this note hit us long ago. When we had once visited kauNDinyA, she introduced us to a coethnic of ours who lived close to her realms. He informed us of his remarkable journey which included fleeing from the island of Fiji. We had heard of the Austronesian upheaval under a shavArAdhaka bully in Fiji against the Hindus but did not have too many details of the event. He filled us in with the intimate details of the unfolding events. The islands, colonized during the great seafaring expansion of the Austronesians, had become the home of several ferocious tribes that extensively practiced cannibalism giving them the notorious moniker, the Cannibal Isles. Our friend introduced us to the colorful cannibal chief Udre Udre who wielding his heavy bludgeon had brained and eaten 800-1000 men. Apparently he completely consumed each corpse not sparing any soft part or marrow within the bones. To commemorate his achievement he piled a monument of rocks one for each of his victims. We were curious to know if his end fittingly came from kuru as no warrior on the islands could defeat him, but for that we got no answer. Nevertheless, our friend brought out an exotic curiosity, a bludgeon of a tribal male and showed it to us. Sometime after the conquest of India in 1857 CE the English turned their greedy eyes on the Cannibal Isles. The cannibals chiefs, despite working up a great frenzy with their cudgels and mallets, proved no match to the English artillery and were soon subjugated by them. The English deposited several Hindus as serfs to work for them in the newly acquired isles of Fiji. In the salubrious isles the Hindus grew even as the English tacitly encouraged shavasAdhakas to convert the subjugated cannibal tribes to the shavamata. Thus they came to be infected with a disease more devastating than kuru: At least kuru was just a matter among cannibals but the shavamata posed greatest danger to the uninfected heathen Hindus. This process was not very different from what happened under the noses of the Hindus in bhArata, despite brave Rani Gaidinliu warnings and efforts, to our own head-hunters, the Naga tribes, who today sing paeans to the preta and declare English to be their tongue.

In the second half of the last century the English relinquished the islands. The Hindus being much better equipped and adapted for a modern nation than the descendents of the former cannibal tribes quickly took over from where the English left and raised a reasonably flourishing economy. Our coethnic was not part of the original Indian settlement in Fiji. His family had moved there during the post-English economic upturn as white collar professionals to partake of the wealth being generated. The Austronesians not being adapted for such an economy fell behind. However, the shavamata, despite its pretensions of being a religion of love, had not dulled the warrior killer instincts of the recently modernized Austronesians. Thus, instead of working on the economy, they got back to doing what they were good at – raising a fighting force or the Fijian army. Thus, on the island emerged two castes of different ethnicity: The Indian business caste or the vaNij and the Austronesian warrior caste. The latter not really getting much of the economic expansion, turned jealous of the Indian vaNij-s and deployed their arms against them. Being followers of the pretamata the Austronesians were tacitly aided by the mlechCha-s who did not not want a Hindu island in so strategic a place – after all in the future it could turn into India’s much wanted Pacific base overlooking the mlechCha lands of Australia and New Zealand. Thus, in few quick moves the Austronesians backed by the mlechCha-s deprived the Hindus of their power, and sent many of them scampering to India or Australia. India being a soft power that could not do much when the Nagas were being infected by the shavamata, could not do much beyond condemning the events in “strongest terms” and calling for a equitable settlement. That is how our friend landed back in the homeland with the cannibal’s bludgeon and hopes of the great economic bubble in Fiji reduced to naught.

As we rode back home on our ashva we kept thinking of the griping account we had just heard and the discussion we had there after. It struck us that the Fijian venture of the Hindus had floundered because they had completely neglected the use of arms and organizing a fighting force. Instead they had only concentrated on the activities of the vaNij. All their economic success was of no use because even a recently civilized tribal population, which was much more attuned to war, was able to easily overthrow them. A little later in life we read about a new movement among mlechCha academics to redescribe Hindu cosmopolitanism in the far East. They were doing following things:1) They were down-sizing the role of Hindus and boosting the role of the chIna-s, even though it was clear that in this sphere the chIna-s played a minimal role in the historical period under consideration. 2) Other than chIna-s, they were aggrandizing their own role and that of their ideological cousins the marUnmatta-s and giving oversized roles for “local movements”. 3) They were claiming that the Hindu (with a particular emphasis on the bauddha component thereof) activity in the far east was mainly driven by trade, with projection of soft-power that entangled power-hungry locals seeking legitimization via imported Brahminical constructs such as the manusmR^iti. These constructs were claimed to be used to coercively dominate their fellow locals, with brAhmaNa-s sanctifying this dominance in return for patronage. Based on the Fijian situation we wondered: If the Hindus civilized and integrated their Austronesian cousins in various isles in the great Malay archipelago, why did they fail in recent times with the Fijians? Of course we realized there were many factors: 1) The true military conquerors of the Fijians were the English. This and subsequent mlechCha intervention imposed the pretamata on them thereby preventing their Hinduization. 2) Furthermore, there was probably to wide a cultural gap between the Hindus and the ex-cannibal Austronesians of these isles to allow a meaningful interaction. 3) The Hindus settled in these isles were probably more insular in their attitude, which further diminished their ability to Hinduize these Austronesians.But above all, we felt the failure of the Hindus in Fiji lay in that they did not acquire kShatra power. This might be compared to the situation in bhArata itself where the deep contradictions in the traditions of the Gandhi-Nehru clique played out against those represented by Savarkar during WW2, with later arguing for armed power. Indeed, this brought home to us that the claims of the mlechCha-s that the Hindu colonization of the east was merely one of soft-power were wrong. The Hindus were able to hold their own because there was actual kShatra presence that was enterprising enough to inspire locals to fight under their banners. This in turn also inspired locals to aspire to kShatra-hood by closely emulating the originals to eventually join their ranks and engage in marriage with them. This process might be compared with the Aryanization of the southern peninsula of the Indian subcontinent: the northern kShatra immigrants inspire similar aspirations among sufficiently enterprising individuals in the local population who could emulate them. The brahma-kShatra alliance was continued not because of the need for legitimizing constructs from the brahma (after all if you have the power why do you need someone whom your subjects understand even less than you to “legitimize” your power) but because of the knowledge and administrative skills brought in by them. Of course in this regard we need to distinguish between the modes of transmission of Astika and bauddha streams of the dharma because the latter is fundamentally a missionary religion whereas the former is so, while capable of rather effective assimilation. Nevertheless, the overall dynamics of establishing dharma in a strong way does involve some gene transmission.

This led us to a tale of Hindu dispersal driven mainly by the 3rd varNa. In a sense its rise and fall were to us reminiscent of the fate of the Hindus of Fiji: vaNik with some brahma without kShatra. It is for this reason we chose to preface a discussion of them with the tale of Fiji. We first became aware of this from talking to some north Indian vaishya-s whose people had very much been part of this story. On the occasion of a marriage a coethnic somewhat tactlessly asked as to why their women were more good-looking on an average than those of our own. They vaishya-s gave a peculiar answer that got us thinking: They declared that for centuries their people had sought central Asian women in course of their business journeys and brought them back to bhAratavarSha enriching their genotypes with raw material for good looks. The discovery of the pre-mauryan Indian mirrors in Russia indicated to us that such journeys had gone on for at least 2500 years and certainly longer given the origins of part of our genetic heritage and practically all of our culture from the Indo-Aryans. We were also aware of the fact that some north Indian vaishyas had married women with Mongol blood during the more recent centuries (we had first suspected this from the looks of Igul). But credit must be given foremost to S.C Levi for publishing a scholarly work on this matter about a decade ago (though as disclaimer we should state that we do not share his secular view of history; ours being a purely Hindu perspective). Levi had narrated an interesting tale that we reproduce from his book in full below (he uses Indian for the original Hindu which we restore):

“A holiday was approaching and a teacher [i.e. a mewlana] in Bukhara wanted to buy a gift of some fine clothing for the subject of his love. He was very upset that he could not afford to buy the clothing and afraid that should he not produce a gift he would be left alone. The teacher and two of his students decided to go to the Hindu mohalla where they would break into the house of a wealthy Hindu and steal his money. They quietly snuck into the house, foot on shoulder, and found the box (of jewels) they wanted. As they were quietly climbing back onto the road the Hindu awoke; they jumped down from the house and took off running down the street. Hearing the Hindu man’s cry, the Mir Shab (nightwatchman) ran to the street and grabbed the three men. One of them threw a rock at the policeman’s lantern and exclaimed, ‘Barak Allah, Nadir Divan Begi!’ To which another replied, ‘Hey, Emperor of the Universe! It wasn’t me. It was ‘Abd al-Wasi Qurchi.’ Thinking that he had made a mistake and stopped Imam Quli Khan, Nadir Divan Begi and ‘Abd al-Wasi Qurchi, the nightwatchman allowed the three thieves to pass, along with the valuable box, without any problems. The next day the enraged Hindu went to the court of Imam Quli Khan wearing black felt around his neck and with his shirt ripped open [expressing that he was angry and had been wronged]. Pleading for justice, he explained that three men had robbed him and he had almost caught up with them when the nightwatchman put out his own lantern and let the men go. Imam Quli Khan looked from the Hindu to the nightwatchman and asked, ‘Why did you do this?’ The nightwatchman did not answer and, getting upset, Imam Quli Khan asked again. The nightwatchman requested a private discussion and Imam Quli Khan called him forward and commanded, ‘Alright, speak!’ He explained what he saw to Imam Quli Khan and told him that he thought that the three perpetrators were he himself and his two companions, Nadir Divan Begi and ‘Abd al-Wasi Qurchi, out getting information about the city. After an investigation the box was recovered and returned to the Hindu merchant.”

continued…

The bovine species lay at the center of the existence of the early Indo-Aryan. After all he owed his very success in history to the strength of milk. Hence, rather appropriately payas means both milk and strength in saMskR^ita. Not surprisingly, he tended to literally see the world as a bovine expression of cosmic proportions, replete with homologies or saMbandha-s between the macrocosmos and microcosmos of the bovine body. In a sense this persists in the image of bhArata even today: videshin-s instinctively associate bhArata with the “holy cow”, even though a deracinated, urban, modern Hindu might try to protest that India is not just about cows. All this said, the evidence suggests that the spread of the Indo-Aryans within bhAratavarSha itself was accompanied by the spread of their bovine herds and at the genetic the spread of a certain strain of lactose tolerance. Not surprisingly, bovine symbolism is central to Aryan ritual and thought, be it in the plaint of the Iranian zaotar zarathushtra, i.e., geush urvan or the many ritual incantations of the atharvaveda. Indeed, the strong bovine connection to the atharvan-s (and their Iranian counterparts) emerges as the central element of the famous legend of our clan: the theft of the family cow leading to the multi-generational feud which end in the great war between the bhR^igus and the haihaya-s (alluded to in the brahma-gavi spell of the atharvaveda). Thus, in the AV bovine rites we sense a special connection to our forebears, rites which were done by bhR^igu and paulomi, the clan-furthering chyavAna and sukanyA, the famed apnavAna and ruchi, R^ichIka and satyavati, jamadagni and reNukA.

Among others the taurocentric Weltanschauung of the atharvan-s is best captured in a yajush incantation from the vulgate atharvaveda (AV 9.7), which provides a remarkable parallel to the Iranian legend of the gav-aēvō-dātā or the ratu of the bovine (eventually slain by angra mainyu). This incantation is part of the offering verses belonging to a now largely forgotten ritual performed by the bhR^igu-s and a~Ngirasa-s of the atharvan tradition. These rituals belong to a category know as the AtharvaNa sava-s which are only performed by the atharvavedin-s and differ from the sava-s performed by the ritualists belonging to other vaidika traditions. These sava-s are performed usually in the uttarAyaNa period and may be done only if the ritualist’s female partner is initiated in the appropriate mantra lore and has had an earlier AV ritual dIkSha with yoktra girdle tied around her waist. Before the sava a reddish-brown bull should have been sacrificed to the terrifying mahAdeva and its organs offered thus with the names of rudra:
chitta: the sinews;
bhava: the liver,
rudra: the pancreas
pashupati: the stomach
agni: the heart,
rudra: the blood
sharva: the kidneys:
mahadeva: the marrow of the ribs
auShiShThahan: intestine and colon
Its complete hide is then prepared as a seat for the ritualist and his patnI.

The two then perform the sava dIkSha. Here sitting on the bull hide with its neck facing east and its hairy side upwards they offer oblations of ghee into the fire with all the mantra-s from AV-vulgate 6.114-124 (known as the deva-heDanaM recitation). When in course of this rite they make oblations to yama they touch water after each svAhA. On completion they observe the vrata for 3 days during which they abstain from all sexual activity. They bow to all the directions and thereafter the mortar, pestle and winnowing fan are purified with mantra-s. They churn out and establish the fire with the incantations specified in the kaushika sUtra chapter 60. The patnI cooks a plate of rice on the ritual fire and mixes it with ghee and fresh milk. One part is cut out and kept for offering to the ancestors, one part is used to feed brAhmaNa-s and the third part is used for the daiva oblations. For the rite the ritualist and his patnI wear identically colored garments. If he desires cattle he uses the bovine incantation (AV 9.7) to make oblations to the deities imagining the whole universe to be a gigantic bovine:

prajApatish cha parameShThI cha shR^i~Nge indraH shiro agnir lalATaM yamaH kR^ikATam ||1||
prajApati and parameShThin are the two horns, indra is the head, agni the forehead, yama the cranio-cervical joint.

somo rAjA mastiShko dyaur uttarahanuH pR^ithivy adharahanuH ||2||
King soma the brain, the heaven (dyaus) the upper jaw and the earth (pR^ithivi) the lower jaw.

vidyuj jihvA maruto dantA revatIr grIvAH kR^ittikA skandhA gharmo vahaH ||3||
Lighting the tongue, the marut-s the teeth, the revatI-s the neck, kR^ittikA the shoulders and heat (or the pravargya pot) the cervico-thoracic joint.

vishvaM vAyuH svargo lokaH kR^iShNadraM vidharaNI niveShyaH ||4||
vAyu the all encompassing lungs, the dewlap the heavenly world, the cyclone the diaphragm.

shyenaH kroDo .antarikShaM pAjasyaM bR^ihaspatiH kakud bR^ihatIH kIkasAH ||5||
The heavenly eagle the manubrium, the atmosphere the sternal body, bR^ihaspati the hump and the bR^ihatI incantations his vertebrae.

devAnAM patnIH pR^iShTaya upasadaH parshavaH ||6||
The goddesses the zygapophyses, the upasad ritual the ribs.

mitrash cha varuNash chAMsau tvaShTA chAryamA cha doShaNI mahAdevo bAhU ||7||
mitra and varuNa the clavicles, tvaShTR^i and aryaman are the humeri and mahAdeva the forearms.

indrANI bhasad vAyuH puChaM pavamAno vAlAH ||8||
indrANI the sacrum, vAyu the tail, and the purifying soma the tail whisk.

brahma cha kShatraM cha shroNI balam UrU ||9||
brAhmaNa-s and kShatriya-s the ilia and strength the femora.

dhAtA cha savitA chAShThIvantau ja~NghA gandharvA apsarasaH kuShThikA aditiH shaphAH ||10||
dhAtR^i and savitR^i the patellas, the gandharva-s the calves, apsaras-s the dew claws and aditi the hoofs.

cheto hR^idayaM yakR^in medhA vrataM purItat ||11||
Consciousness the heart, intelligence the liver, and vrata-s the pericardium.

kShut kukShir irA vaniShThuH parvatAH plAshayaH ||12||
Hunger the belly, food the rectum, and the mountains the pancreas.

krodho vR^ikkau manyur ANDau prajA shepaH ||13||
anger the kidneys, fury the gonads, the beings the genitals.

nadI sUtrI varShasya pataya stanA stanayitnur UdhaH ||14||
The rivers the blood vessels, the breasts the lord of rain (parjanya), the thunder the udders.

vishvavyachAs charmauShadhayo lomAni nakShatrANi rUpam ||15||
The bounds of the universe the skin, the plants the hairs, the stars comprise the form.

devajanA gudA manuShyA AntrANy atrA udaram ||16||
The god-folks in the large intestine, the men in the intestines and animals in the uterus.

rakShAMsi lohitam itarajanA Uvadhyam ||17||
rakSha-s in blood, other beings in the digestive secretions.

abhraM pIbo majjA nidhanam ||18||
The clouds the fat and death in the marrow.

agnir AsIna utthito .ashvinA ||19||
When resting [the bovine] is agni, when standing [the bovine represents] the ashvin twins.

indraH prA~N tiShThan dakShiNA tiShThan yamaH ||20||
indra when standing eastwards and yama when standing southwards.

pratya~N tiShThan dhAtoda~N tiShThant savitA ||21||
dhAtR^i when facing west and savitR^i when facing north.

tR^iNAni prAptaH somo rAjA ||22||
When seeking grass [the bovine] is soma.

mitra IkShamANa AvR^itta AnandaH ||23||
When observing [the bovine is mitra] when running away felicity.

yujyamAno vaishvadevo yuktaH prajApatir vimuktaH sarvam ||24||
[The bovine ] is of the vishve devas when being yoked, prajApati when yoked and to all when freed.

etad vai vishvarUpaM sarvarUpaM gorUpam ||25||
The is the omniformed, bearing all forms, in the form of a cow.

upainaM vishvarUpAH sarvarUpAH pashavas tiShThanti ya evaM veda ||26|| AV-vulgate (9.7)
Omniformed cattle, of all forms attend on him who knows thus!

At first sight this collection of mantra-s epitomizes the macranthropic (or macrotherian) theme. Seen abundantly in Hindu traditions from the veda onwards, which we have earlier discussed on these pages. However, a closer examination shows that it is not just any macrotherian theme but a specific version, which we may term stellar macranthropy. In this form we have the explicit equation of parts of the macranthropic entity with stars/constellations in the sky. This interpretation overturns the assertion made in the last century by the American indologist Whitney who translated and largely followed by white indologists and their fellow travellers thereafter:
“The revatI-s and kR^ittikA-s are two asterisms in Pices and Taurus; their connection with the parts to which they are assigned is, as in nearly all the other cases in this hymn, of the most purely imaginary and meaningless kind.”

However, the statement in AV9.7.15 that the stars comprise the form (nakShatrANi rUpam) of the bovine suggest that the allusion to these constellations is not purely meaningless as the indologist would have us believe. Rather it indicates the macranthropic bovine was indeed meant to span the stars and the mention of the two constellations is not entirely without meaning. This class of stellar macranthropic constructs are repeatedly encountered in the veda. As the Hindu scholar Narayana Aiyangar had pointed out 115 years ago in his “Essays on Indo-Aryan mythology”, these stellar constructs occur at least three times in distinct forms in the taittirIya shruti: The starry prajApati (taittirIya brAhmaNa 1.5.2.2); the starry dolphin or shishumAra (taittirIya AraNyaka 2.5.13) and the uttaranArAyaNa or the puruSha (taittirIya AraNyaka 3.13). This tradition of stellar puruSha continued down to the purANa-s (e.g agnipurANa chapter 196) and is also specified in detail in the 105th chapter of the bR^ihat-saMhitA of the great naturalist varAhamihira. In this later version the nakShatra puruSha is also invoked as viShNu (shAmbhavAyanIya ritual) during every month of the year. The ritual is supposed to be performed by both men and women for greater sexual accomplishment. In the parallel, later bAdarAyaNIya ritual the stellar prajApati is comprised of rAshI-s instead of nakShatra-s. Returning to the yajurvedic versions of the rite we find that the uttaranArAyaNa is the least detailed in terms of equivalences. However, that it represents the nakShatra puruSha is clear because it has the explicit statement, same as that seen in AV 9.7.15 (nakShatrANi rUpam ||). This is followed by the only explicit association it makes:
ashvinau vyAttam ||
His open mouth are the twin ashvin-s. This choice is strange at first sight but makes complete sense as it indicates the position of the beginning of the nakShatra-s on the ecliptic: a proper parallel to the statement in the taittirIya brAhmaNa, where the nakShatra lists begin with kR^ttikA, that kR^ittikA is the mukham (mouth) of the nakShatra-s. As correctly inferred by Tilak, this indicates that the nakShatra at the vernal equinoctical point marked the beginning of the list and was termed the mouth. Now, when the ashvin-s are at the mouth it clearly indicates a period after the kR^ttikA period as ashvayajau the nakShatra of the ashvinau is two nakShatra positions away from kR^ttikA. Thus, the uttaranArAyaNa might be inferred as being approximately 1100-900 BCE in age (see figure below).

The equinox at ashvavyuja around 1000 BCE

Thus, it clings to the Vedic corpus at its fag end and is consistent with its late hallmarks, namely the rise of puruSha nArAyaNa, who was superseding prajApati in most of his roles. This also provides the transition between the vaidika nakShatra puruSha and paurANika one clearly identified with viShNu. This period might correspond to the rise of the nArAyaNIya or epic pA~NcharAtra which alludes to these mantra-s as the mahopaniShat. This it negates the nonsensical and obviously biased assertion of the American indologist Whitney maintained to this date among white indologists and their imitators:
“The Hindus borrowed their nakShatra system from Mesopotamia and would probably have retained it in that form [i.e. with kR^ittikA at the vernal equinox of 2300 BCE] until the present day but for the revolution wrought in their science by Greek teaching.”
Clearly even within the vaidika period (including vedA~Nga jyotiSha) the Hindus had made multiple changes for precession not just at the time of varAhamihira after interactions with yavana-s.

The vaidika stellar macrotherian, the shishumAra, also hints a specific astronomical position: it describes the constellation of Draco with the deva-s, ritual entities and atri, the primordial astronomer among the vipra-s, identified with various stars of the constellation. It is described as containing the pole star dhruva and is associated with the ritual where the yajamAna recites this incantation while gazing at the north pole. This was correct for alpha Draconis at 2800 BCE (below).

North Pole in shishumAra (Draco): dhruva (Alpha Draconis)

Now returning to the macrotherian bovine we observe that kR^ittikA and revatI do not occupy the head of the bovine. Rather at the “forefront” of the bovine is prajApati who is identified with the horns. In vaidika tradition prajApati is traditionally associated with rohiNI (alpha Tauri; prajApate rohiNIvetu patnI |) and the Hyades cluster from which the horns of the bovine emerge. So, we propose that the forefront of the stellar macrotherian bovine is the fore part of Taurus and kR^ttikA and revatI are placed behind it for a reason, contra-Whitney. Now one could protest that we are bringing in a rAshI of the Bull, which the dull-witted Hindus are not supposed to have known in the Vedic period, rather adopting it much latter from their erudite West Asian and Greek teachers. However, we, like several before us, argue that the Indo-Aryans were very much aware of constellations distinct from nakShatra-s that were used primarily for a lunar purpose. Starting from Tilak, it has been proposed the that dogs (Canis Major and Canis Minor), Bear, Draco, Hunter (in Hindu world moved to Canis Major on occassions); mR^iga and other constellations were known and figured distinctly from the ecliptic divisions in the form of the nakShatra-s. Indeed the bovine associated with Taurus seems to be one such. Several lines of evidence support this view:
1) We had earlier argued this with respect to the sauchIka agni mantra.

2) The atharvaveda states:
yA rohiNIr devatyA gAvo yA uta rohiNIH | (AV-vulgate 1.22.3ab)
Of the cattle which indeed are red, of them rohiNI is the deity.
Thus, rohiNI (alpha Tauri) the nakShatra is linked to cattle.

3) A mantra of kakShIvAn of the gotama clan to the ashvin-s states:
revad uvAha sachano ratho vAM vR^iShabhash cha shiMshumArash cha yuktA || [RV 1.116.18cd]
The chariot that bore you two brought beautiful riches: a bull and a dolphin were yoked together.
This absurd yoking of the bull and the dolphin to the car of the ashvin-s has greatly mystified later observers and practitioners of this mantra. However, it can be resolved, if as noted above the shishumAra is the constellation of Draco which marks the cycle of the chariot that revolves daily around the north pole. The yearly revolution was the one corresponding to the bull or Taurus. Around the time the vernal equinox was in rohiNI, there was also a northern polestar in the form of alpha Draconis, the dhruva of shishumAra (above picture). This further strengthens the link between the nakShatra rohiNI and a constellation equivalent Taurus overlapping with it.

4) The above is further supported by a mantra to the ashvin-s composed by agastya that states:
pra vAM sharadvAn vR^iShabho na niShShAT pUrvIr iShash charati madhva iShNan |
evair anyasya pIpayanta vAjair veShantIr UrdhvA nadyo na AguH || (RV 1.181.06)
Approximately: The autumnal bull of you two, like a mighty one comes forth, sending from the east, sending forth honey. Let them swell with the other ways and strength: the heavenly speeding rivers (high rivers) have come to us.
Here the bull of the ashvin-s is again alluded to as rising in autumn in the east (which would correspond with Taurus at the vernal equinox) and the heavenly rivers are said to come along. While some interpret this as rain. We suspect it is the Milky Way which rises just ahead of Taurus.

5) Another allusion comes from the mantra of vAmadeva gautama to agni:
sa jAyata prathamaH pastyAsu maho budhne rajaso asya yonau |
apAd ashIrShA guhamAno antAyoyuvAno vR^iShabhasya nILe || (RV 4.1.11)
n dwellings first he came into being, at great base [of heaven], and in this atmosphere’s womb;Footless and headless, concealing both his ends, drawing himself together in the bull’s station.
The first hemistich refers to the 3 manifestations of agni:the ritual fire, the celestial fire and the atmospheric fire. Here, as Santillana and von Dechend argued in the Hamlet’s Mill the heavenly fire (vaishvAnara) is associated with the equinoctial colure: This is implied in this mantra by the statement that his ends come together – i.e. the ecliptic ends meet and this happens in the station of the bull. Here again we see an allusion the vernal equinox in a constellation conceived as Taurus, i.e. the rohiNI period.

Continued…

The great drying
Like the ikShvAku-s bound by the rakShas,
like bhIma neutralized by the cast of dice,
like rAma stopped by the lord of the armies,
like abhimanyu felled by the kuru hosts,
within us were diversely oscillating pistons,
we lay as an engine unable to engage the wheels.

We dodged the strike of the agent of skanda,
twice skipped entry into the abode of the asura,
then came out of the realm of the sylvan durgA,
thereafter back-hurled the vile, gripping kR^ityA,
But was this all just to fall like a common man,
in the manner truly detested by kShatriya-s

Eight are the cremation grounds, the mahAshmashAna-s:
chaNDogra in the eastern reaches of the va~Nga-s,
yamajvAla where the sea laps the draMiDa shores,
varuNakapAla where the Anarta-s have their drinks,
kuberabhairava where one learns mahAlIlAdevI teachings,
shrInAyaka, outside which the andhra-s flock to brothels,
aTTahAsa, wherein cherikA-s are possessed by bhUta-s,
ghorAndhakAra, from beneath which hi~NgulA prances,
And kilikilArava where the gargantuan ape was killed.

We only vaguely knew of the shmashAna-s, not their names or locations. Then we ascended to the stronghold of upasha~Nkushiras where he was relaxing with his dUtI barbarIkA. We asked what had befallen mahAsha~Nkushiras. His face turned pale. He then pointed to the west and said there he is roasting away on a pyre at varuNakapAla. The amAtya and shachiva wanted to hide from us or play down the end of mahAsha~Nkushiras. But we were not to be fooled. It struck a cord somewhere deep within us: could it be that we follow him on that way? The lesser brAhmaNa in our retinue said that we should go and meet vAtulashiras. So we went there with our retinue . We heard from his beautiful daughter kShetrA that vAtulashiras had been possessed by a DAvI. The looks of kShetrA bewitched us; we wanted to linger in her company reading comics and our retinue was more than happy to oblige. We soon learned she was rather accomplished in many ways and kShetrA of her own tried to make conversation with us. She was telling us that she was intent on performing a six year sAdhana to relieve her father of the DAvI. We were intently listening to her plans all the time snatching glimpses of her face. But right then our most trusted alter ego signaled to us, pointing to two mating cats which were screaming in an orgiastic climax just beyond the hedge which surrounded kShetrA’s house. We were awakened like matysendra in kadalIrAjya by gorakSha. Leaving the amAtya and the lesser brAhmaNa to deal with kShetrA with rushed out with our alter ego. The cats continued their engagement, their cries reverberating through the afternoon quiet. Our alter ego said that the DAvI had probably seized both of us even as we had been enamored by kShetrA. We left the place without even saying bye to kShetrA.

We returned home and at the evening hour with our alter ego left towards the rocky massif of vAyava. In our mind we were repeatedly turning the issue of the end of mahAsha~Nkushiras.

Continued…

For about 150 million years, during the Mesozoic, archosaurs of the ornithodiran (panaves) clade dominated terrestrial and aerial ecosystems. Brushing aside several extinction events they not just tenaciously held on but thrived; justifying the epithet of ruling “reptiles”, at least four major clades of these animals, namely pterosaurs, ornithischians, sauropodomorphs and theropods lasted through much of this time interval. The catastrophic extraterrestrial impact ~66 mya brought down the curtains on the reign of the archosaurs. The pterosaurs, ornithischians and sauropodomorphs were entirely wiped out, while a single line of theropods, the birds, made it past this K-Pg event. Through the Cenozoic they retained their dominance of the skies during the daytime but ceded the prime positions in most ecosystems to the ascendent mammals, or so the narrative goes. What is often missed in this narrative is that the one surviving lineage of theropods did well during the Cenozoic radiating rapidly to become one of the most speciose groups of vertebrates (there are over 10,000 species of birds still alive today). Moreover these dinosaurian survivors launched one more attempt made by to restore themselves to the apex positions in ecological webs in the first part of the Cenozoic (the Paleogene). In South America this attempt was a success and in the form of the remarkable avian predators of the phorusrhacid clade they held sway until as recently as 17,500 years ago (based on fragmentary, but quite convincing fossils recently reported from Uruguay).

It is widely believed that the only representatives of the phorusrachid lineage which are alive today are the two species of seriema, wonderful birds from south America (Cariama and Chunga). Hardly any paleontologist has doubted the relationship between them and the phorusrhacids. They seem to retain inferred features of the extinct phorusrhacids, especially in terms of general predatory behavior: They are aggressive predators which kill snakes by the up-down strikes, which Witmer/Wroe and their team inferred for the extinct phorusrhacids. They might possibly deploy a “sickle claw” to tear larger prey once they have immobilized them perhaps in the manner of phorusrhacids, and also reminiscent of their more ancient deinonychosaur relatives from the Mesozoic. Several recent findings have emerged regarding these birds:

1) Traditionally, the cariamids (including phorusrhacids) used to be allied with the cranes by the morphological taxonomists. However, molecular studies strongly suggest that they are unrelated to cranes. Rather they are nested deep within the crown group of neoaves and appear to form a clade with falcons (which do not group with eagles, hawks, secretary birds and New World vultures), parrots and passerines.

2) Bona fide members of the cariamid clade have been primarily found in South America. Some fragmentary avian remains from Antarctica have been described as phorusrhacids. Of these a premaxillary fragment described by Case et al might indeed come from a phorusrhacid suggesting that they had entered Antarctica from the southern tip of South America. Recently there have been claims of phorusrhacids occurring in the Old World. The first of these is Lavocatavis from Algeria from around 52-46 Ma. This bird is known only from a single robust femur which generally resembles the phorusrhacid Patagornis from Argentina. If similarly built, while standing with its neck held up it is likely to have been comparable to a man in height. The similarly sized Eleutherornis from France and Switzerland (41-43 Mya) was recently described an European example of a phorusrhacid by Angst et al.

3) Mayr in a comprehensive review of birds from the Paleogene points out that the European fossil bird Idiornis (~45 Mya) is likely to be a member of the cariamid clade. Likewise another Eocene bird Elaphrocnemus might also be related to the cariamids. The bathornithids from the North American Eocene and the ameghinornithids like Strigogyps were also described as cariamids. But currently the evidence for their specific relationship to the cariamids is uncertain. In any case the idiornithids and Elaphrocnemus offer reasonable evidence that cariamids might have after all existed outside South America.

4) The general view has been that formation of the isthmus of Panama and the resulting faunal exchange resulted in the extinction of the phorusrhacids due competition with the placental invaders, the cats, bears and dogs. But recently the finds in Uruguay suggest that the phorusrhacids lasted until at least 17,500 years, which is much after the land bridge fomation. On the other hand Titanis another phorusrhacid appears to have made it rather early to North America, even as it had just neared South America (~5 Mya), and lived there for at least over 3 Mya. These, observations suggest that they withstood the faunal exchange quite successfully raising questions about the actual causes for their ultimate extinction.

South American cariamids

The above points from the recent studies raise puzzling questions regarding the evolutionary history of these birds:

First, there is an apparent temporal discordance emerging from the deeply nested position of the extant Cariamids in the molecular trees and their early emergence in the fossil record relative to their sister groups. While cariamids, in the form of the earliest phorusrhacids appear around 59 Mya in the fossil record their sister groups like the falcons, parrots and passerines appear only much later. This is not consistent with the inferred molecular branch lengths as they would suggest that these sister lineages should have emerged by around 53 Mya (assuming relatively constant rates after bursts of cladogenesis). This is also discordant with the timing of the major cladogenesis in birds that apparently happened shortly after the K/Pg boundary that spawned most of the clades within neoaves. Going by branch lengths it would seem that the radiation of cariamids, falconids, parrots and passerines within crown neoaves should have happened later than 59-53 Mya, some time after original radiation of the major clades of neoaves that occurred sometime after K/Pg. Thus, we are forced to accept that the rates of nucleotide change were very uneven in course of the early evolution of neoaves or that what have been termed stem cariamids from the Paleocene are not really related to the extant cariamids.

Second, is the issue of avian biogeography and the degree of concordance with the fossil record. Molecular evidence previously suggested that the falconids evolved in the Southern Hemisphere, perhaps South America. Similarly, the molecular and biogeographic evidence has suggested that the parrots and passerines emerged in the southern hemisphere on ex-Gondwanan continents (e.g. P Ericson’s work). In support of this the supposedly earliest passerine fossils have been claimed to occur in the Eocene of Australia (Work of WE Boles). This would imply that the origin and initial radiation of the cariamid-falconid-parrot-passerine clade happened in Southern Hemisphere. However, the case of the South American tinamous show that simple biogeographical visions of the past might need modification. Morphological phylogenies had suggested that the tinamous form the basalmost branch of the paleognath birds, followed by a single origin for flightlessness and subsequent dispersal by vicariance as the Gondwana broke up. However, molecular phylogenies are unequivocal in showing the tinamous to be nested deep within the paleognaths, with the ostrich being the most primitive extant paleognath bird. Moreover, the tinamous forms a clade with the now extinct moa of New Zealand to the exclusion of the Kiwi, which on the other hand groups with the (emu,cassowary) clade. This would mean that simple vicariance was not the explanation for the biogeography of the paleognaths; rather there was at least one active dispersal after the separation of Africa between South American and the Australo-New Zealand fragments of Gondwana. Such a dispersal could have involved flight. Then we have the superficially tinamou like paleognaths (lithornithids) of North America and Europe (late Paleocene-middle Eocene) and Palaeotis (middle Eocene of Europe). The lithornithids appear to be well-adapted to flight while Palaeotis appears to be flightless. These observations reinforce the multiple origins of flightlessness and raise the possibility that even the origin of the ostrich in African could have alternative explanations with flighted ancestors such as the lithornithids. This necessarily makes any definitive biogeographical conclusion about the place of origin of an avian clade uncertain. A similar situation is possible for the cariamids. The discovery of Itaboravis from the late Paleocene of Brazil which is similar to Elaphrocnemus from Europe suggests that there was indeed a direct or indirect avifaunal exchange in the Paleogene between Europe and South America. Likewise, Idiornis is very similar in several features to Cariama and might have been a limited flier but fast runner like the former. This raises questions regarding their dispersal: The most likely pathway is via island chains connecting South America and Africa via the paleo-Atlantic which was narrower and similar land connections between Africa and Europe probably during periods of low sea-level. But this does not solve the question of the precise region of origin of the ancestral cariamids. Given the older South American fossils the best scenario is currently the movement from South America to the Old World on one or more occasions. Indeed, it is possible that idiornithids, Elaphrocnemus, and the larger ancestor of Lavocatavis/Eleutherornis represent independent movements. Given the presence of large cariamids in Antarctica, the puzzling question is why did they not reach Australia like the marsupials in the middle/late Paleocene. A possible explanation is that the trans-Antarctic mountain range was already presenting a barrier for these birds.

Finally, the cariamids (phorusrhacids in particular) and falconids share several predatory adaptations in their beaks: the hooked tip, the narrow mandible and strengthening for top-down attack. These could be convergent but their phylogenetic relationship suggests that the ancestor of the cariamid-falconid-parrot-passerine clade was probably a strong flying carnivore. Several enigmatic Paleogene birds could be basal members of this clade or stem members of the falconid or parrot clades. One such is Salmila from the Middle Eocene of Germany. Mayr reported features similar to the cariamids. However, it also has certain features in common with the trumpeters of the crane clade suggesting that we cannot be certain of its affinities. Then there is Masillaraptor from the same deposit which might be a stem member of the falconid clade. Interestingly, studies by Mayr also identified several possible stem members of the parrot clade: 1) These include the quercypsittids from the Eocene of Europe and Vastanavis from Gujarat, India. 2) Halcyornithids and the related messelasturids (Messelastur and Tynskya). These birds do not have any of the specialized features of crown parrots. Rather they show different predatory adaptions of the feet and beak. Thus, these birds might help close the gap between the parrots and the two other carnivorous clades, falconids and cariamids (predatory capabilities are seen in a more basal modern parrot, the remarkable kea [contra that earlier post we no longer think parrots might have emerged in the Cretaceous itself. Nor are the phylogenetic views on parrots higher order relationships correct in that post as they reflect a much more primitive state of molecular analysis]). Moreover, these might also present a model for how the common ancestor of this clade might have looked. In conclusion we cannot rule out the possibility that some of these stem lineages repeatedly lost flight through the Paleogene and gave rise to flightless predators that today we tend to artificially group together.

A halcyornithid Pseudasturides

Masillaraptor

The teacher had renounced worldly life and become a saffron-robed yati. He was teaching the installation of the awful gaNesha for the vara-chaturthi rite. In course of that he provided mantra-s that indicated that the qualities of vairAgyaM and avairAgyaM are both to be worshiped. Then he added that one must merely use these to remind oneself that one withdraws from avairAgyaM to vairAgyaM and then prepares for the piNDa-patana along with the simultaneous mokSha which ensues from the realization that triggered vairAgya. He then narrated the tale of bhartR^ihari and emperor vikramAditya. In course of that he mentioned how bhartR^ihari had whiled away his time in his days of avairAgyaM composing delicate verses on shR^i~NgAra before finally realizing its utter futility and taking to the course of vairAgyaM. He told the assembled students to attend the saMskR^ita class on the vairAgya-shatakaM to learn more and use it as stepping stone to graduate to the course on the teachings of aShTAvakra. Thereafter as an appendix to the main teaching he asked the students to meditate on the following mantra:
kAmo hi sarvaduHkhAnAM yoniH | kamo .akArShIn manyur akArShIt kAmaM shamaya shamaya manyuM shamaya shamaya vairAgyaM dehi me svAhA ||
While uttering svAhA he instructed the students to imagine all their desires and anger arising from unfulfilled desired being offered as an oblation into the fire and being utterly burnt up.

We were not to be seen in the class that expounded the vairAgya-shatakam but watched the students spilling out of it. Even as they came out, they were accosted by another ocher-robed muNDaka, who followed the way of shuddhodana-putra. He said: “vairAgyaM is indeed the path but how can you attain your goal if the alAtaM within you does not undergo nirvANaM? Is the clinging to the reality of your selves not a kAma in itself by which you are feeding that ever-hungry alAtaM? buddhaM sharaNaM gachChata | dharmaM sharaNaM gachChata | saMghaM sharaNaM gachChata |” Even as the students stood confused, we wondered: “though the buddha sAkhyamuni might have blown off his alAtaM after a prolonged practice of vairAgyaM what about the cosmic buddha who “gave up the ghost” in the yonI of the splendid chitrasenA and spat out the buddhakApala tantraM postmortem from his desiccated cranium. This made us turn to the verses on shR^i~Ngara by bhartR^ihari, wondering after all there might be a teaching therein.

Therein we encountered this beauty:
mattebha-kumbha-pariNAhini ku~NkumArdre
kAntA-payodharayuge rati-kheda-khinnaH |
vakSho nidhAya bhuja-pa~njara-madhyavartI
dhanyaH kShapAH kShapayati kShaNa-labdha-nidraH ||

Happy is he who whiles his nights away exhausted by sexual exertion,
resting his chest upon his woman’s twin breasts moist with vermillion,
that swell like the frontal globes of an elephant in musth and
[therein] encaged in the midst of her arms may gain sleep in a moment!

That indeed sounded like a high attainment a man might desire to attain. To us it seemed as worthy an attainment as that of vairAgyaM, perhaps more natural.

The yati and his followers told us that we were in error, engaging in kutarka, even as our coethnic uddaNDa of Kanchipuram had addressed his naMbUthiri rivals as elephants of kutarka. They explained that the blissful sleep alluded to in the above verse was an ephemeral one. Moreover, its perpetual continuation till the point of piNDa-patana, as in the case of the tantra-spitting buddhakapAla, was hardly a given. In reality the man seeking such pleasures could weaken his immunity and fall prey to disease or acquire a venereal affliction. Then from the great sukha of rati he could descend to the immense pains of roga. Not just that, such a state was unlikely in the real life – either him, or his girl or both could lose their libido in due course and this sukha could come to naught. Or else one or both of them could lose their bodily charms to age or disease making the other’s company unbearable. The woman might also not yield up such pleasures; she might merely use the promise of them to ensnare the unwitting man in something much worse unlike her pretty bhuja-pa~njara and leave you in greater agony with nothing in return. Furthermore, to keep her yielding such pleasures it might turn out be an unpleasant game of constantly putting up false displays which could cancel any pleasures from the rati-lAbha at the end of it. Thus, they concluded it was just a Platonic ideal not existing in this world, which is chased only by men unable to make out difference between the two.

It was in that statement they fell into our trap of what they might call our kutarka-buddhi. After all, we argued all of this applied to vairAgyaM too: It is an ideal that a trifling minority have ever attained. In the path to vairAgyaM there are just as many pitfalls as on the path to rati-shikharaM described above by bhartR^ihari. One could lose focus even as one might lose libido – the pangs of roga could be so profound that one might lose interest in any pursuit of vairAgya; so whatever might be the benefits one experiences upon its attainment, they are of little use to the jij~nAsu on that path, even as the rivals might argue regarding mahArati-sukhaM to its jij~nAsu. Moreover, ultimate goal of mumukShutvaM is attained only on piNDapatanaM; so one is not sure if it is true. If one can understand the principle of mokSha through vichAra and one can confirm it is true via yoga then vairAgyaM becomes superfluous in this pursuit. Finally, we do not see organisms by natural behavior seek vairAgyaM but they do seek the ideal represented by bhartR^ihari’s verse. In fact, in bhAratavarSha one encouters vairAgin-s who exhibit atypical behaviors, in a sense like those seen in the mathematically gifted with Asperger’s spectrum of fitness-nullifying behaviors. Hence, we concluded that vairAgyaM is not a replacement for avairAgyaM. Indeed, that is why in the vinAyaka-sthApana we seek worship both of them.

The true kShetraj~na is he who like the eponymous bhairava holds both in his hands using one as a balance for the other so that he indeed reside in the rati-shikharaM even as the bhairava with the fair-complexioned mAlinI. Since all this easier said than done one might relax and meditate on the Platonic ideal offered by bhartR^ihari.

Prolog
In our youth we spent an inordinate amount of time reveling in intricacies of history that few around us really cared for. Not unexpectedly, a girl told us that she was shocked that we took these readings in history more seriously than much else of what she considered fundamentally important. We were once in an involved discourse, surrounded by our few companions, of something we had recently learned about – the great Gujarati rebellion of 1320 CE. In course of his great jihads Alla-ad-din Khalji had brought 40,000 Hindu slaves from Gujarat to Delhi. Among them was a boy who was renamed Kushroo and taken as a homosexual partner by Sultan Qutub-ad-din Mubaraq Khalji the son of Alla. Recalling his past, Khusroo assassinated his lover, declared himself the ruler of Delhi, and aided by his fellow Gujaratis unleashed a Hindu rebellion in Delhi. The Hindu fighters killed the Mullahs of the Jami Masjid and seized the masjid. The masjid was converted to a temple the worship of Hindu gods reinstated. Qorans were confiscated and torn to pieces. Other Masjids in Delhi were also taken over and converted to temples and cow slaughter was proscribed. Mohammedans killing cows were captured and forthwith executed. Mohammedans were also prevented from taking Hindu women. Khusroo declared himself Hinduan Khan aur Sultan (hindUkAnAM suratrANa) and strove to roll back Islam from Hindustan. He established contact with the energetic Mongol princess Sati Khatun (great-great grand daughter of Hülegü) who was similarly facing the problem of subversion by the Mohammedan faction upon the death of Il Khan Oljeitu and sought to form an alliance to sandwiching the Islamic army between theirs. His ally the brave rAjpUt mokhadAjI guhila started a naval campaign on the coast of saurAShTra against Arabs and Moslem shipping to cut off horse supplies from Arabia. Sadly, all this came to an abrupt end. The Mullahs in Delhi sent Fakhr Maliq to alert his father Tughlaq Ghazi Baba who was with the bulk of the Khalji army to come and save them from the Hindu wrath. In the ensuing battle the Gujarati force was routed and Khusroo Khan met a gruesome end. On ascending the throne as Sultan Ghiyas-ad-din in Delhi, the Amirs, Mullahs and Fuckihs praised him as Amir al Momin and the proselytizing sword of Islam but Tughlaq modestly stated: “mai.n to AwAra mard hU.n”. Nevertheless, Amir Khusroo sung a peculiarly worded panegyric for him:
Your name was Tughlaq the holy warrior, the revered one,
The Mongol Khan too at that time had the same name, Tughlaq!

This Tughlaq Ghazi whose line was to be as a dreadful disease upon India was a representative of the Qaraunas Turks. Our companions asked who were the Qaraunas Turks. The answer to this led us back to a part of Mongol history that is generally neglected i.e., the later days of the house of Ögödei and Chagadai. The house of Ögödei had some connections with our land which we had narrated before – some members fought on the side of Hindus led by hammIradeva against Alla-ad-din Khalji. But their story in Central Asia is one of interest primarily to connoisseurs though with some general instructive lessons.

The successors of Chingiz Khan
In August of 1227 CE the great Chingiz Khan, on verge of victory over the Tangut Kingdom, lay on his deathbed from a hunting accident surrounded by his clansmen and warriors. After having laid out the grand plan for “world” conquest, he counseled them with his famous maxim: “The glory of a deed lies in its completion”. Then by the illustration of the bundle of arrows he asked his family to be united and conceived a system wherein the whole Mongol Ulus would be their common inheritance with each Horde having one of his sons as a ruler. He formally appointed his 3rd son Ögödei as as his successor, the great Khan, but he was only primus inter pares with respect to the lords of the other Ordas governed by his descendants from his principle wife Boerte. However, he did not depart from the old Altaic tradition of the youngest son inheriting the mainstay of all his father’s property. Thus, it was not Ögödei but the 4th and youngest Tolui who got this distinction. Tolui had inherited his father’s military abilities and ferocity in battle. A good archer, at age of 21, Tolui led the Mongol force against the Jurchen (the ancestors of the Manchus, the Jin dynasty) in the Dexing campaign. He showed extraordinary personal bravery by scaling the strong fort of Dexing under fire and seizing it from the Jurchen defenders. This marked the beginning of the end for the Jurchen. Now after the death of Chingiz he acquired the largest share of the Mongol army (over 100,000 men) and was the caretaker ruler for 2 years till his brother was formally elected in the subsequent Quriltai.

Tolui had four sons Möngke, Qubilai, Hülegü and Arigh Böke. When Qubilai and Hülegü came of age their grandfather took them out on their first hunt. The younger Hülegü brought down a ghural while the older Qubilai shot a fast-running hare. In this incident the Khan noticed that while Hülegü had the makings of a future warrior like his father, Qubilai had the cunning to catch elusive prey, like his mother the niece of Toghrul Wang Khan. Hence, on his death bed, the Khan remarked that someday the wise Qubilai will sit on his throne. In this statement he had already set the stage for the future conflict between the houses of Ögödei and Tolui. However, the more politically savvy Ögödei and the closeness of Tolui to him kept Mongol empire intact and even expanding after the death to Chingiz. After Tolui’s death, his wife Sorghaghtani stood by Ögödei while ensuring that her four sons got good education, military training and high ranks in the Mongol system. She trained them in various lores by appointing the Uighur bauddha scholar Tolochu and a paNDita who had arrived via Tibet. She also had Möngke gain good battle experience and acquire military distinction by participating with Batu the son of Jochi in the great campaign against the white Christians. Her other sons gained experience in the Chinese campaigns like the battles in Hebei. The great Khan title was next taken by Ögödei’s son Güyüg but after his death Sorghaghtani cunningly moved to get her son Möngke the title, in the process having the rival women from the house of Ögödei brutally murdered during the internecine “war of the princesses”. Batu also supported Möngke reminding members of the Quriltai of his acts of valor against the Europeans and his higher intelligence than most. When Möngke died from dysentery during the final conquest of China his brother Qubilai took over as grand Khan, thereby fulfilling Chingiz Khan’s deathbed prognostication. Before that he had already proven himself in the war against the chIna-s by his cunning strategies which resulted in huge victories. The long reign of Qubilai was a high point of the Mongols except for the meteorological ill-luck from the Kamikazes in Japan and Kit Buqa’s disaster against the Mohammedans.

But wrapped under these successes was the disastrous war between the Ordas, which was to eventually mean that Mongols for all their achievements and influence on world history were never to leave behind an expansive civilization like that of the Indo-Europeans. At the heart of this war between the Ordas was the rivalry between the Toluids and the houses of Ögödei and Chagadai. Much of the synthesis of these events is due the Judaist scholars Biran and Amitai-Preiss. We are much indebted to their works in what is said below though we differ in interpretation of some points from them.

Qaidu and Du’a
Ögödei had 7 sons of whom Güyüg became the grand Khan. Of his other sons, Köten was a major patron of paNDita-s from Tibet, Köchü’s descendants fought against Alla-ad-din with rAjpUt-s and Qashi the father of Qaidu. Qaidu’s mother was Shabkine who was the princess of the Mekrin tribe that originally ruled mountain belt north of Tarim before being subjugated by the Mongols. He was born in 1235 CE and Qashi died just before his birth after passing out on a large volume of drink. It was Qaidu who was to revive the house of Ögödei in the process going to war against the house of Tolui. In this he was aided by Du’a the great great grandson of Chagadai (Chagadai->Möetüken [killed in Afghan campaign of Chingiz]->Yesünto’a->Baraq->Du’a).

Due to Qaidu’s falling out with the house of Tolui he is not the center of any chronicle. While he had 14 recorded sons and at least 3 daughters the Orda of Ögödei came to an end sometime after him (Qaidu->Chabar->Oljei Timur->Quladai). But the Orda which he founded continued under the Chagadais with whom he allied against Qubilai. Thus, we have very little by way of a sympathetic account from his own side. What we know of him suggests that he was a rather distinctive character. Accounts state that unlike his father and grandfather or for that matter most Mongols he abstained from all forms of alcohol and never used salt in his food. He was reputed to be a disciplined man who woke up around 3.30 AM daily and meditated for about an hour. He kept aside as much time as possible for discussion of various topics with men who were reputed to be wise. He was very “secular” in the sense Indians to use it these days – he met Islamic, Christian and bauddha missionaries patiently heard their truth claims or ideas and inquired about their views on religion. While he heard all their views, from all we know he remained faithful to the old Mongol religion. The tale of his daughter Qutulun Aiyaruk became a widely known fable and has been unduly romanticized, or presented a paragon of sexual equality in the west. Nevertheless, by all accounts she was a fierce warrior whom Marco Polo describes as striking like a hawk deep within enemy ranks to carry away men as prisoners. Qaidu even wanted to make her his successor upon his death bypassing his sons.

Qaidu was brought up by Ögödei initially and being young he did not participate in the politics against Möngke after Güyüg’s death. Hence, as part of the reconciliation package Möngke appointed the 17 year old Qaidu as the local Khan of the region in Southern Khazakastan between the Ili and Emil rivers (between Balkash and Alakol Lakes). Being very “secular” he allowed representatives of all religions to build religious structures in his domain and also set up a chain of well-protected and managed markets that increased the prosperity of his domain. In 1256 CE Möngke sent the chIna Tianlin Shi to assist Qaidu with standardizing the legal system. However, he felt Shi was interfering with the system and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. However, the relations still remained calm until the early years of Qubilai when he confirmed Qaidu as the local Khan of his realm and sent him gifts to mark their continued collaboration. The Mongols used to practice a form of astrology similar to Indians that they had acquired from the Uighurs or perhaps Tibetans. Berke the son of Batu told Qaidu that his horoscope indicated great promise. But none of this showed in his early campaigns against the local Chagadai Khan Alghu which met with limited success. Luckily for him Alghu death gave him a chance to get greater power in the region. Qaidu then decided to occupy Alghu’s territory which was to his west. But Qubilai interceded by sending troops to drive him out of Chagadai territory and enjoined him to act only with his consent. It seems this incident inspired Qaidu to break free from the great Khan and live up to his horoscope. He decided to extend his domain by using his maternal connections to the mountainous region near Uighuria which they formerly ruled. Thus with Shabkine and her Mekrin clansmen he annexed their former territory to his own ulus. The Uighurs had a special relationship with the family of Chingiz Khan because their lord was married to his daughter. Thus even though Uighuristan was annexed by Chingiz they retained their cities and had certain control over their territory with Chingiz’s daughter acting as the viceroy. Chingiz also recognized that the Uighurs had the most advanced civilization among the Altaic peoples and saw them as civilizational teachers of the Mongols and wanted to preserve their knowledge systems for the benefit of the Mongols – e.g. their script was derived from the Uighur script. Subsequently, Qubilai retained this special relationship vis-a-vis Uighuristan. But now having taken the adjoining mountainous territory Qaidu decided to dispossess the Uighurs completely. His troops swept down upon the Uighurs in 1267 CE, sacking and burning their cities. Their capital Besh Baliq was besieged and they were forced to flee eventually. This caused immense harm to the Uighurs and was to ultimately weaken them for their later capitulation to the West Asian delusion. It also brought end to the Altaic civilizational center that Chingiz had cultivated. Qubilai was alarmed at this conquest of Uighuristan by Qaidu and sent the royal Mongol army against Qaidu. He was defeated and forced to retreat west of Talas.

Qubilai then asked the local Chagadai Khan Baraq to contain Qaidu even as the capital of the Mongol empire was permanently moved from Qara Qorum to Shangdu in China. Thereafter Qaidu fought a see-saw war with Baraq and finally drove him out with help from Jochi’s successors to Samarkand. But at this point he decided to reconcile with Baraq and other Chagadai princes and together they held a grand rival Quriltai in 1269 CE at Talas. There in a fiery speech Qaidu prophetically pointed out that contact with Han legalism will bring catastrophe to the Mongols and advantage to the Hans. He called upon his fellow princes assembled at the Quriltai to draft a strong warning to Qubilai. The Tangut chronicler Gao Zhiyao recorded this statement issued at the Quriltai, in which Qubilai was addressed pejoratively as the local Khan of China:
“The old customs of our dynasty are not those of the Han laws. Today, when you remain in the Han territory, build a capital and construct cities learn their method of reading and writing and use Han laws what will happen to the old tradition ours.  They declared that we will be lost and all that will be left is the law of the Han despite having followed the way of the great Khans to conquer China.” Clearly, Qaidu was seeing the Chinese legalism as being used as the inner core which will marginalize the Mongols even as they adopted Chinese practices. Thus, he felt a total rupture with Qubilai was necessary. While further details of this quriltai remain unclear it appears that the participants tacitly accepted Qaidu as the grand Khan (Kha’khan) place of Qubilai. Qubilai then shifted his capital to Beijing completing his immersion in the Han sphere – an act which only seemed to confirm Qaidu’s views and also gave him an opportunity to establish himself as a rival power center among the Mongols. But Qubilai was not to sit quiet and asked his nephew Abaqa the son of Hülegü to cut off Baraq from Qaidu. In 1270 CE a great inter-Mongol battle was fought in Herat where Abaqa smashed the forces of Baraq and sent him fleeing to Bukhara. At this point Qaidu surrounded his erstwhile ally and Baraq supposedly died from the shock that night. After this about 30,000 of Baraq’s troops joined Qaidu. In 1271 CE Qaidu declared himself the combined ruler of the Chagadai and Ögödei Ordas. Thus, rather than weaken Qaidu, Qubilai and Abaqa’s actions had only strengthened him. But for the next several years he was occupied with various rebellions among different Chagadaid princes in the combined Orda even as Qubilai called on them to bring Qaidu in line. But by 1276 CE he had defeated or diplomatically brought everyone in in line and they acknowledged him as the supreme Khan in opposition to Qubilai. Finally, 1281 CE he sealed the deal by appointing Du’a, the second son of Baraq as the Khan of all the Chagadaids. This was to inaugurate a 20 year collaboration between the two where they de facto ruled an independent Mongol ulus spanning most of central Asia. In this period Du’a and his daughter Aiyaruk became his main assistants who were to fight many campaigns in extending their domain.

Despite the sources not being exactly pro-Qaidu they all admit that he was a legendary maker of armies and had developed a scheme of discipline and training that was seen before only his great-grandfather, the great Chingiz. The Jewish chronicler Rashid-ad-din also noted that Qaidu was one of the most intelligent men he had ever seen and could put this ability to use in both strategic and political cunning. Now at the lord of a mighty force he sent an embassy to Abaqa and obtained peace with him. Then the Moslem rebellion in Kabul attempted to recapture southern Afghanistan for the Mamluq Sultans of al Hind. With Qaidu having secured the alliance with Abaqa, Du’a invaded Kabul and smashed the Islamic army there. In a subsequent campaign he took back Ghazni from the Moslems incorporated it into the Ulus of Qaidu with him as the local Khan. It appears that in course of these campaigns the Mongols became acquainted with Hindustani music an incorporated some of its instruments into their system. These appear to have come back several years later to al Hind when a Mongol woman was captured near Delhi by Alla-ad-din Khalji.

Continued…

Many turns of the sun ago, when we landed on the shores of the krau~ncha continent, we were politely informed by the mlechCha-s that our Indian degrees were not really worth their name. While we were arguing the case of our possession of genuine education that in the least equaled the Americans, we were subject to the indignity of having to take a course in genetics from a mlechCha professor who did know the difference between a transcription factor and an enhancer! Being coerced into this course was galling, but it was not as bad as the existential crisis it presented to a black African gentleman from Botswana. The said gentleman had been a star in his country having displayed his practical knowledge in goat-breeding. His government felt he was a major hope of their future and felt he should advance beyond his exploits in goat-breeding by acquiring a high education in the wonders of modern genetics (the omics was not yet an in thing those days). So they thought that it would appropriate if he returned home with the booty of an exalted degree from a well-ranked US university. Sadly, our Botswanan’s path to that destination was now being jeopardized by the mlechCha gentlemen who was more Texan cowboy than biology professor. He thunderously informed the Botswanan’s that he stood really close to failing and not clearing that course would mean that he would debarred from even qualifying to attempt the high degree he aspired. At that time, in the heady rush of youthful arrogance and frustration over life’s inequities, we had acquired for ourselves a certain negative publicity by our pointed questioning of the mlechCha professor’s understanding of the subject of the course, notwithstanding our aunt’s warning that we should not question the mlechCha professors too much. Now, this caught the attention of the Botswanan, who in his predicament approached us to give him some lessons in genetics. We acquiesced, mainly because we had little other motivation to do the volleys of homework which the Texan fired routinely as though from a six-shooter straight from his hip.

During one such lesson on which genes determine various human traits our African pensively declared that the more one studied this science the more it became clear that God had not made everyone equal as the church father who had converted his family would say. We asked him if he really took that seriously, to which he responded that he is becoming increasingly uncertain of all the stuff that the padres filled him up with in his youth. Then he looked up at us and said: “I guess you do not follow any of this religion. Indeed, our padre had said how difficult it was to convert Hindus and he was happy to leave India and come over to Botswana. The padre said that he had best success in India with urbanized students of pretavAdin schools or tribals/lower strata of society but even that totally ‘sucked’. The former never came to church again to hear more of the good news; the latter soon placed the preta as one among their many gods with various animal faces. Soon a Hindu priest would come and ask them to remove Jesus and with that all the pretavAda was gone.” We asked him why his Africans did not do the same. It seemed that this made sense to him and shaking his head he broke out in to song which ran something like the mlechCha-s taking away all the resources from Africa leaving them with only the empty pretavAda.

This phenomenon narrated by the Botswanan regarding his padre’s failure in bhArata is that of heathen assimilation and neutralization of eka-rAkShasa-mata-s. It might be contrasted with phenomenon represented by the likes of the faux romAka brAhmaNa where mimicry is used by the eka-rAkShasa-mata to penetrate heathens. This was clearly articulated in those days by Arun Shourie and culminates in what is described by the arrogant but occasionally insightful malla rAjIva as “digestion” of the heathen. There is a third phenomenon, which goes by the colorful moniker of moron-svAmism (adopting a term coined by an internet interlocutor), wherein a heathen religious teacher claims oneness between his deities and the eka-rAkShasa thereby voluntarily opening a backdoor for the eka-rAkShasa-mata to penetrate his system.

We used to teach the Botswanan in the library after dinner. After those lessons we would wander among the books seeking new knowledge and it was in course of one such wandering we fell upon the complete collection of the Greek magical papyri (PGM) which till that point we only had a limited knowledge of. This remarkable collection opened our eyes to how the Hellenistic religion assimilated the paleo-Abrahamists and neutralized their eka-rAkShasatvam. It was this understanding that helped us distinguish the three above-noted phenomena, which are often dangerously confused by modern Hindus. Indeed, it presented a case for how a strong, well-defended polytheism can be more attractive than eka-rAkShasatvam-s and regularly liberate followers from the latter cults. This also explained why the prophets of paleo-Abrahamism had to routinely harangue their flock about falling away from eka-rAkShasatvam and following the polytheistic systems that were prevalent around them in West Asia.

-۩۞۩-۩۞۩-۩۞۩-

“And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. And many that believed came, and confessed, and showed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver… For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana [Artemis], brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover, you see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worships.” The Acts of the Apostles; chapter 19

This is just one excerpt to illustrate how the advance of the pretamata resulted in a holocaust of books worth an enormous sum of money along with the attack on worship of heathen deities. The books referred to here as the “curious arts”, which were claimed to be ineffectual before the miracles the preta, are indeed the corpus of the Greek rituals (“witchcraft”) that were practiced by both the Greco-Romans and in a syncretic form by the Judaists turning their back to eka-rAkShasatvam. Despite the burnings, some of these papyri survived and were discovered in Egypt by Mohammedan vendors in the early 1800s who sold them off to an Armenian collector of antiquities Jean d’Anastasi. Some others were found by a French collector in Egypt. They in turn auctioned them off to the major museums in England, Holland, France and Germany where they currently lie. The German scholar of Greek religion Albrecht Dieterich made the first comprehensive study of all of these and his student Preisendanz edited them. Their translations were published by a team with Betz as an editor. These were supposed to be secret writings that were only in circulation among initiates. Hence, the emperor Julian’s statement provided by Betz applies to the spirit of the corpus:
“Shall we write about the things not to be spoken of?
Shall we divulge the things not to be divulged?
Shall we pronounce the things not to be pronounced?”
-Julian, Hymn to the Mother of the Gods

We produce below a syncretic ritual to Apollo deployed by a Semitic worshiper from the Betz collection translated by the American classicist Edward N. O’Neil. We modify a few points of translation based on our own heathen insider’s understanding of these matters (PGM 1.262-347):

Apollonian invocation: Take a seven-leafed sprig of laurel and hold it in your right hand as you summon the heavenly gods and chthonic daimons. Write on the sprig of laurel the seven characters for deliverance.

The characters are:

the first character onto the first leaf, then the second again in the same way onto the second leaf until there is a matching up of the 7 characters and 7 leaves. But be careful not to lose a leaf [and] do harm to yourself. For this is the body’s greatest protective charm, by which all are made subject, and seas and rocks tremble, and daimons [avoid] the characters’ magical powers which you are about to have. For it is the greatest protective charm for the rite so that you fear nothing.

Now this is the rite: Take a lamp which has not been colored red and fit it with a piece of linen cloth and rose oil or oil of spikenard, and dress yourself in a prophetic garment and hold an ebony staff in your left hand and the protective charm in your right (i.e., the sprig of laurel). But keep in readiness a wolf’s skull so that you can set the lamp upon the skull of the wolf, and construct an altar of unburnt clay near the skull and the lamp so that you may sacrifice on it to the god [Apollo]. And immediately the divine spirit enters.

The burnt offering is a wolf’s eye, storax gum, cassia, balsam gum and whatever is valued among the spices, and pour a libation of wine and honey and milk and rainwater, [and make] 7 flat cakes and 7 round cakes. These you are going to make completely [near] the lamp, robed and refraining from all unclean things and from all eating of fish and from all sexual intercourse, so that you may bring the god into the greatest desire toward you.

Now these are the names, [which] you are going to write on the linen cloth and which you will put as a wick into the lamp which has not been colored red:
“ABERAMENTHŌOULERTHEXANAXETHRENLYOŌTHNEMARAIBAI
AEMINNAEBARŌTHERRETHŌBABEANIMEA.”

When you have completed all the instructions set out above, invoke the god [Apollo] with this chant (in iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter):

“O lord Apollo, come with Paian’
Give answer to my questions, lord O master
Leave Mount Parnassos and the Delphic Pytho
Whenever my priestly lips voice secret words,
First angel of great Zeus. IAŌ
And you, MICHAĒL,who rule heaven’s realm,
I call, and you, archangel GABRIEL,
Down from Olympos, ABRASAX, delighting
In dawns, come gracious who view sunset from
The dawn, ADŌNAI. Father of the world,
All nature quakes in fear of you, PAKERBĒTH.
I request the god’s head, which is Olympos;
I request god’s signet, which is vision;
I adjure the right hand you held over the world;
I adjure the god’s bowl containing wealth;
I request the eternal god, ĀION of all;
I entreat the self-growing Nature, mighty ADŌNAIOS;
I adjure setting andrising ELŌAIOS:
I adjure these holy and divine names that
They send me the divine spirit and that it
Fulfill what I havc in my heart and soul.
Hear blessed one, I call you who rule heaven
And earth and Chaos and Hades where dwell
[Daimons of men who once gazed on the light]
Send me this daimon at my sacred chants,
Who moves by night to orders ‘neath your force,
From whose own tent this comes, and let him tell me
In total truth all that my mind designs,
And send him gentle, gracious, pondering
No thoughts opposed to me. And may you not
Be angry at my sacred chants. But guard
That my whole body come to light intact,
For you yourself arranged these things among
Mankind for them to learn. I call your name,
In number equal to the very Moirai,
ACHAIPHŌTHŌTHŌAIĒIAĒIA
AIĒAIĒIAŌTHŌTHŌPHIACHA.”

And when he comes, ask him about what you wish, about the art of prophecy, about divination with epic verses, about the sending of dreams, about obtaining revelations in dreams,about interpretations of dreams, about causing disease, about everything that is a part of magical knowledge.

Cover a throne and couch with a cloth of linen, but remain standing while you sacrifice with the afore-mentioned burnt offering. And after the inquiry, if you wish to release the god himself, shift the aforementioned ebony staff, which you are holding in your left hand, to your right hand; and shift the sprig of laurel which you are holding in your right hand, to your left hand; and extinguish the burning lamp; and use the same burnt offering while reciting [in dactylic hexameter]:
“Be gracious unto me, O primal god,
O elder-born, self-generating god.
I request the fire which first shone in the void;
I adjure your power which is greatest over all;
I adjure him who destroys even in Hades,
That you depart, returning to your ship,
And harm me not, but be forever kind.”

Even to a casual observer, three distinct strands can be recognized in this syncretic ritual. The first which forms the main body of the rite is the Greek element of Indo-European vintage: The deity Apollo and the general ritual structure is similar to purely Greek Apollonian rituals with an altar of unbaked clay going back to the Indo-Greek period of Indo-European or even earlier. Similarly, the fire ritual at the heart of the rite and the invocation and releasing verses (AvAhanaM and upasthAnaM) are essentially Indo-European in character. The characterization of Apollo as the lord of ghosts of departed people is again an archaic feature shared with his Hindu cognate rudra – indeed rudra is the deity invoked in comparable vetAla prayoga-s in the Hindu world.

Then there two distinct Afro-Asiatic elements. The first is in the form of the archaic heathen tradition of Egypt, something entirely expected given that these papyri were composed in Greco-Roman Egypt where some form of the old religion was still thriving. These are apparent in the magical incantation in a non-Greek tongue: The first beginning with the phrase “ABERAMENTHŌ” is an Egyptian incantation to the falcon-headed god Horus and the mysteriously therocephalic god Seth. The two deities were often shown together in the unified Egyptian kingdoms as conferring divine mandate to the pharaohs, and this incantation appears to be a representation of the same. The terminal palindromic incantation with the word Thoth repeated twice means the god “Thoth is great” and represents the other great avicephalic old Egyptian deity Thoth with an ibis head. Then in the final incantation the phrase “returning to your ship” is used which is clear allusion to the old Egyptian solar deity returning to his ship. However, it should be noted that the Indo-Aryan solar deity puShaN is also supposed to have a ship while traveling in the night sky [Footnote 1], suggesting that this could be an old Eurasiatic motif. Finally we have another Afro-Asiatic element that clearly emerges from a form of Semitism close to the paleo-Abrahamism. This element sits as a patina on the underlying older heathen traditions and is represented by the names such as Iao (Yahweh), Adōnai, Elōaios (Elohim) and the angels Michael and Gabriel.

At first sight it might seem something like what would a moron svAmI would be proud to produce.

Continued…
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Footnote 1
yAs te pUShan nAvo antaH samudre hiraNyayIr antarikShe charanti |
tAbhir yAsi dUtyAM sUryasya kAmena kR^ita shrava ichChamAnaH || RV 6.58.3