First published at IndiaFacts: http://www.indiafacts.co.in/isis-caliphate-lessons-earliest-mohammedan-invasions-central-asia/

By the 1000CE the Turks were already on their way to becoming the primary spearhead of Islam against the Hindus of India, the heathen civilizations of Central Asia, and the Christians in the West. The Mongol conquests of Il-Khan Hülegü in West Asia put an end to the Arab Islamic Caliphate in Baghdad. This was followed by the ascendency of the Turkic Osman empire, at which point the power center within Islam completely shifted from the Arab world to the Turkic world. After the Osman Sultan Mehmet-II [Footnote 1] took Constantinople from the Byzantine Christians he declared himself the Khalifeh ül-Rasul Rab al-A’alamin, i.e. Caliph of Islam. This Osman Caliphate lasted until the last century when it was ended by the secular movement of Mustafa Kemal. Now, 90 years later, the Islamic Caliphate has re-emerged in its former west Asian heartland, where it held sway prior to the Mongol conquests under Dr. Abu Bakr, who claims descent from the same clan as the founder of Islam. The goriness and swiftness of its advance is comparable only to its earlier counterpart from around 1300 years ago. One of the major thrusts of Army of Islam under the early Arab Caliphate was in Central Asia. This came at the expense of the greater Indic civilization and still leaves its mark on bhārata by cutting our nation off from its natural sphere of influence, Central Asia, or what the Hindus called uttarāpatha. Now the new Caliphate has already placed bhārata in it cross-hairs, even as its commander, Ibrahim Awwad al-Badri, made this clear recently. Against this backdrop it is useful to examine the history of these earliest Islamic attacks on Central Asia.

Within 20 years from the death of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, the army of Islam had largely destroyed the powerful Zoroastrian empire of the Sassanians centered in Iran. While the exact reasons for this dramatic collapse of the Iranians before the Mohammedan charge remains unclear, it is conceivable that the death toll from the Justinian plague caused by a particularly virulent strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis greatly weakened the ability of the former to mount an effective response. In contrast, ensconced in the desert oases the Arabs seem to have been shielded to greater extant from the plague. The Army of Islam made its attempts to invade inner Eurasia and central Asia starting around 650 CE. In a quick-moving assault they pursued the Iranian Shah Yazdegird into Khorasan (Northeastern Iran). He took refuge in the city of Merv, where he was murdered by a Christian commoner for his possessions. With this the curtains came down on the Zoroastrian state, though its remnants kept fighting bravely for a while against Islam. The city of Merv was taken by the Moslems who settled 50,000 Arab families in therein by dispossessing the Zoroastrians of their prized properties and farmland. Thus, they created a base for waging demographic warfare to go hand in hand with their military objectives. Shortly after the death of Yazdegird, his sons fled towards China, while the Arabs launched a series of raids into the Eastern limits of the Sassanian territory around 655CE, and crossed the Amu Darya river into central Asia. Here, the cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand fell in their sight, with their chief targets being the richly endowed bauddha, āstika and Zoroastrian temples and religious sites.

This period was also one of great turmoil on other fronts: Kashmir was going through a phase of relatively weak rulers and so was the rest of northern India after the death of harṣavardhana. This prevented Indian military power from being effectively projected in Central Asia. A new power, Tibet, had emerged and was on its way to being a great power, boosted by their first emperor Songtsen Gampo. The Chinese were launching a massive thrust into central Asia and towards greater India as part of the expansionist policies of the Tang emperor Gaozong [Footnote 2]. Thus, the local powers in Central Asia facing various new political vectors around them were particularly vulnerable to the assaults of the surging Moslems. Despite this several of the small principalities with bauddha, āstika and Zoroastrian affinities boldly fought the Arabs preventing them from making substantial gains in the period between 655-705 CE. Among these was śubhakara siṃha, who was the young ruler of a kingdom in what is today Northern Afghanistan and Southern Tajikistan. He put up a bold fight to repulse the Arab foray into his lands [Footnote 3]. In 682 CE the local struggle against the Islamic assaults was also strengthened by the resurgent heathen Gök (Blue) Turks united by their Khan Qutlugh Eltrish, who helped repulse a Moslem thrust towards Khwarizm and Samarkand.

Finally, in 705 CE after several failed attempts to effectively penetrate Central Asia, the Caliphate appointed Qutayba bin Muslim as the chieftain of Merv. This Arab warlord led a series of brutal jihads to capture the key civilizational centers of Central Asia. The local rulers met at Khwarizm to plan a defensive strategy but it appears they were unable reach a proper plan for united action – it clearly seems they lacked a proper estimate of the threat before them. By the time of his death Qutayba had taken Bukhara, Balkh, Samarkand and other major Khwarizmian cities in quick succession. In each of the places he massacred part of the population and took over the best quarters of the cities and settled Moslems brought from Arabia in those. The rest were made to accept Mohammedanism in return for their heads remaining intact on their shoulders. They were then drafted as “cannon fodder” for the assault on the next city. In addition to the forced conversions, Qutayba took every step to erase all signs of Indic and Iranic civilization in those regions. The Moslem scientist Al-Biruni himself informs us that in the major cities of Khwarizm Qutayba demolished huge libraries and burnt their numerous Indic and Iranic texts. Al-Biruni also mentions that he systematically killed all the Indic and Iranian scholars who manned those libraries. It is of interest to note that certain Western scholars such as the Wilhelm Barthold have claimed that these events did not happen and tried to whitewash the violence of Qutayba. However, there are several accounts from the Moslem sources themselves of the brutality of Qutayba’s actions: In 706 CE as a prelude to the assault on Bukhara he took Paikend, which was bravely defended by heathen Iranian and Turkic fighters. He then killed all the males and took the women and children as booty. Many were sent to the slave markets at Kufa, Basra and Merv and it is said that the prices of Central Asian slaves fell drastically by several dirhams. In another assault that followed at the height of winter on the Bukhara oasis the Moslems took many captives who refused to accept Islam; thereupon they were stripped and left to freeze to death. In 709 CE Qutayba finally took Bukhara after much fighting. Those who did not lose their homes were forced to house Moslems and feed them. Then in 712 CE he demolished the main temple of Bukhara, which was a holy site for both bauddha-s and āstika-s [Footnote 4]; he built a Masjid using the material from it.

In 715CE Qutayba bin Muslim was killed in an inter-Moslem conflict for opposing the accession of the next Caliph (As Samuel Huntington said Islam is bloody within and without). But this did not mean that the jihad ended in Central Asia. Rather, new Ghazis or holy warriors volunteered from the Arab ranks to join the fight against the infidels in Central Asia. Without military resources to face the powerful Arab onslaught the local rulers turned to the “superpower” of the day China. The Tang emperors saw in it an opportunity to extend their power, but little real help to the heathens was forthcoming from those quarters. However a few surviving Indic and Iranic scholars found shelter in the cīna country. We know of this from the biographical account of the famous bauddha tAntrika teacher amoghavajra who was born in 705CE in Samarkand to a brāhmaṇa father from either prayāga or kāśī and an Iranic mother. His father died in course of the siege of Qutayba in 715CE and the young amoghavajra fled with his mother to the cīna-deśa. Despite no real aid from any quarter the local rulers did not give up their religion and fought manfully to defend their way of life. We get a glimpse of their difficulties from the letter Ghourek, the Iranic ruler of Samarkand, sent in 718 CE to the Tang emperor politely complaining of his not sending aid:
“Your subject [Ghourek], like the grass and soil trampled by your horses for a million li, submits to the godly emperor who, by the grace of the heavens, rules the entire world. The members of my family, and the various Hou kingdoms, have long been sincerely devoted to your great empire…Now for 35 years since we have fought ceaselessly with the Arab brigands; each year we have sent large armies of infantry and cavalry on campaign, without ever enjoying the good fortune of receiving soldiers sent to help us by your imperial kindness. For more than 6 years, the general commanding the Arabs has come at the head of a numerous army; we fought him and tried to defeat him, but many of our soldiers were killed or wounded; as the infantry and cavalry of the Arabs were numerous…I returned behind by walls to defend myself. The Arabs then besieged the city, placing 300 ballistas against the walls and at 3 points they dug deep ditches, trying to destroy our kingdom.”
In 719 CE, central Asian rulers nārāyaṇa (Southern Tajikistan), Ghourek (Samarkand) and the Indianized Turk tuṣārapati (Bukhara) put a firm resistance against the Arabs and blocked their advance. With this ended the first chapter of the Moslem assault on central Asia. Noting this, the Tang emperor sent them words of encouragement and acknowledged them as independent kings but did little else to help their cause. They finally received succor only when Khan Su-lu became the ruler of the Türgesh Turks and organized a combined heathen front to blunt the Arab advance.

In conclusion, the incidents from the early phase of the Islamic Caliphate’s advance into Central Asia are mirrored in many ways by the advance of the current Caliphate, replete with slaughter and enslavement of the Yezidis, one of the last remnants of the old Iranic tradition in the region. Moreover, Hindus need to note that these early invasions were at the expense of regions which were within their sphere of influence and peopled by their co-religionists. Today this memory is largely lost in the collective Hindu awareness. It is also important to note that the heathens of those regions, Indic, Iranic and Turkic, did not “accept” Mohammedanism as though it was gift being conferred on them – a view subtly propagated by certain western scholars in an attempt to create the image of a great flowering of an Arab civilization in Central Asia [Footnote 5]. First, they fought tooth-and-nail to try to halt the Islamic whirlwind sweeping into their lands from the Arabian deserts. Second, the loss of heathen civilization in these regions was ultimately because their libraries were specifically targeted and destroyed, and their scholars killed. Third, while their knowledge systems were destroyed, what remained was appropriated by Islam and is accepted by its proponents (both Mohammedans and their non-Mohammedan supporters) as being part of the Islamic civilization (e.g. several aspects of Al-Biruni’s science and the Shah Nameh). Finally, from a geopolitical viewpoint the memory of the struggle in Central Asia should inform Hindus that their ultimate objective should be a state that reasserts itself in those regions as in the past.

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Footnote 1: His brother Yusuf Adil Khan fled Turkey to evade assassination and founded the Adil Shahi Sultanate in South India. It was a major adversary of the great Hindu empires, namely vijayanagara and the marāṭhā empire founded by chatrapati śivājī.

Footnote 2: Gaozong was close to Turkic clan from the region to the North of China and as a youth liked to lead a life like them in camp grounds rather than in the palace. He had inherited the Turkic mounted cavalry divisions his father had built and this greatly aided his military ambitions.

Footnote 3: He is said to have been the descendant of the ruling clan from a small kingdom in what is today the border between modern Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. He went on to renounce his kingdom and become a great mantrayāna teacher who transmitted these traditions to China and from to Japan.

Footnote 4: One may see “Hindu Gods in Western Central Asia A Lesser Known Chapter of Indian History” by S.P. Gupta from evidence for Hindu images from here.

Footnote 5: As an example one may consider the recently published volume: “Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane” by S. Frederick Star. It gives an effusive account of the “Islamic golden age” in Central Asia with claim that the knowledge systems created there contributed fundamentally to Indian knowledge among others.

First published at IndiaFacts
After the great war at kurukṣetra and the conquest of hastināpura, yudhiṣṭhira went through a phase of deep despondency. Given his pacific nature, he was immensely troubled by the violence he had inflicted by killing his kinsmen, relatives, teachers and other great heroes. This came in the way of this ability to rule effectively and he apparently had thoughts of renouncing the world and leading the life of an ascetic. At this juncture he was shored up by some brilliant advice from his brothers and wife. To cap their advice, the sage vyāsa kṛṣṇa-dvaipāyana himself arrived at his court, confirmed the views of draupadī and the other pāṇḍava-s, and taught yudhiṣṭhira the right path. In course of this teaching, he narrated to him a small, ancient legend of a king known as hayagrīva (mahābhārata “Critical edition” 12.25.22-12.25.33 [Footnote 1]). Most of the narrative is in the triṣṭubh meter, an ancient Sanskrit meter with 11 syllables in each of its 4 units. The first two, the introductory ones, are in anuṣṭubh, a meter with 8 syllables in each of its 4 units (the most common meter used in both the itihāsa-s).

atra te rāja-śārdūla vartayiṣye kathām imām |
yad vṛttaṃ pūrva rājarṣer hayagrīvasya pārthiva ||
I shall narrate to you, tiger among kings, this legend of what happened in the past in regard to the royal sage hayagrīva.

śatrūn hatvā hatasya+ājau śūrasya+akliṣṭa-karmaṇaḥ |
asahāyasya dhīrasya nirjitasya yudhiṣṭhira ||
[The is the story of him] O yudhiṣṭhira, who was heroic, intelligent, of unfailing acts, who after slaughtering his foes without assistance, was overcome himself and slain in the midst of battle (ājau= in battle is a distinct epic usage).

yat karma vai nigrahe śātravāṇāṃ; yogaś ca+agryaḥ pālane mānavānām |
kṛtvā karma prāpya kīrtiṃ suyuddhe; vājigrīvo modate devaloke ||
Indeed, having performed those deeds for the suppression of enemies, adopting the foremost measures for the protection of people, having performed his duties in battle hayagrīva attained glory, and is rejoicing in the deva-world.

saṃtyakta+ātmā samareṣv ātatāyī; śastraiś chinno dasyubhir ardyamānaḥ |
aśvagrīvaḥ karmaśīlo mahātmā; saṃsiddhātmā modate devaloke ||
Having sacrificed his life in the midst of battle with bow drawn, slashed by weapons while attacked by evil-doers, firm in his actions, the great soul, having attained his objectives, is rejoicing in the deva-world.

dhanur yūpo raśanā jyā śaraḥ sruk; sruvaḥ khaḍgo rudhiraṃ yatra cājyam |
ratho vedī kāmago yuddham agniś; cāturhotraṃ caturo vājimukhyāḥ ||
[At this sacrifice] his bow was the sacrificial stake, his bowstring was the rope [for tying the animal victim], his arrows the offering ladle, his sword the scooping ladle, and the blood [spilled in it] the ghee. His chariot was the altar, his unrestrained movement in battle the [ritual] fire, and his four foremost horses his four Vedic ritualists.

hutvā tasmin yajña-vahnāv athārīn; pāpān mukto rājasiṃhas tarasvī |
prāṇān hutvā cāvabhṛthe raṇe sa; vājigrīvo modate devaloke ||
Having offered on that ritual fire his foes as oblations, free from sins that energetic lion among kings, finally offered his own life-breaths as though it was the offering at the bath at the termination of the Vedic ritual; hayagrīva now rejoices in the deva-world.

rāṣṭraṃ rakṣan buddhi-pūrvaṃ nayena; saṃtyaktātmā yajñaśīlo mahātmā |
sarvāṃl lokān vyāpya kīrtyā manasvī; vājigrīvo modate devaloke ||
Protecting his nation intelligently and with good policy, the great soul, firm in Vedic rituals sacrificed his life. All realms have been encompassed by the fame of this intelligent king hayagrīva, who rejoices in the deva-world.

daivīṃ siddhiṃ mānuṣīṃ daṇḍanītiṃ; yoga-nyāyaiḥ pālayitvā mahīṃ ca |
tasmād rājā dharmaśīlo mahātmā; hayagrīvo modate svargaloke ||
Accomplished in matters of divinities, human affairs and justice, and having protected his land with with the devices of law, that king, the great soul, firm in dharma, hayagrīva rejoices in heaven.

vidvāṃs tyāgī śraddadhānaḥ kṛitajñas; tyaktvā lokaṃ mānuṣaṃ karma kṛtvā |
medhāvināṃ viduṣāṃ saṃmatānāṃ; tanu-tyajāṃ lokam ākramya rājā ||
Learned, renunciatory, with good conviction and grateful, having performed his duties, he abandoned this world of men and attained that region reserved for the intelligent, scholarly and esteemed upon leaving his body.

samyag vedān prāpya śāstrāṇy adhītya; samyag rāṣṭraṃ pālayitvā mahātmā |
cāturvarṇyaṃ sthāpayitvā svadharme; vājigrīvo modate devaloke ||
Having obtained all the veda-s and having studied the shAstra-s, having protected his entire nation, having installed the four varṇa-s in their respective duties, the great soul, hayagrīva, rejoices in the deva-world.

jitvā saṃgrāmān pālayitvā prajāś ca; somaṃ pītvā tarpayitvā dvijāgryān |
yuktyā daṇḍaṃ dhārayitvā prajānāṃ; yuddhe kṣīṇo modate devaloke ||
Having won battles and having protected his people, having drunk soma having pleased the brāhmaṇa-s, and having held the rod of justice with appropriate measures for this people, slain in battle, he rejoices in the deva-world.

vṛttaṃ yasya ślāghanīyaṃ manuṣyāḥ; santo vidvāṃsaś cārhayanty arhaṇīyāḥ |
svargaṃ jitvā vīralokāṃś ca gatvā; siddhiṃ prāptaḥ puṇyakīrtir mahātmā ||
His conduct was laudable, learned and good men deservedly praise his worthy behavior. Having won heaven, and having gone to the realm of heroes, the great soul of pure fame attained perfect success.

Commentary
This short narrative, at the face of it, might seem unremarkable in body of the great epic bristling with all kinds of interesting legends. However, it embodies within it a succinct collection of notable ideals held by the ancient Hindus. The persistent motif in it is the ascent of king hayagrīva to the deva-world upon his death in battle. This motif is an ancient one which is seen in other sister cultures of the Indo-European world: It is rather pronounced in the Germanic world where the slain warriors go to rejoice in the divine realm of Valhalla. In the Greek world there is a memory of a realm called Elysium, which was attained by great heroes upon their death. While this theme is made obvious by the phrase modate devaloke (rejoices in the deva-world), it is also clear that vyāsa uses it as didactic platform. He wishes to instruct yudhiṣṭhira regarding the duties of an ideal ruler, including when he needs to commit violence and sacrifice his own life if needed.

The key points that are emphasized by the narrative are:
● It is necessary for a king to commit violence when he is confronted by evil-doers (dasyu-s) and slay them in battle. In particular, if this is committed to protect the nation (rāṣṭra) and his people (prajā) then it is meritorious deed.
● Death in such a battle is implied to be the gateway to the realm of the deva-s, where the ruler, who has died thus, is said to rejoice. The narrative also implies that the king should make fighting such a battle, even if outnumbered, his primary duty.
● Indeed, the performance of this act is hence equated to a Vedic ritual. In generating this equivalence the narrative establishes many saṃbandha-s(connections) between the Vedic ritual and the battle fought against the evil-doers. Specifically, it is compared to the Vedic animal sacrifice (e.g. nīrūḍha-paśubandha), along with the use of technical terms from ritual literature: the sacrificial stake (yūpa), the rope for tying the animal victim (raśana), the offering ladle (sruk), the scooping ladle (sruva), ghee offered in the fire, the altar (vedi), the ritual fire and four Vedic ritual specialists, namely the hotṛ belonging to the ṛgveda, the adhvaryu belonging to the yajurveda, the udgātṛ belonging to the sāmaveda and the brahman usually assigned to the atharvaveda. The final sacrifice of the king in such a battle is equated to the bath which takes places at the end of the Vedic ritual (the avabhṛtha). In Hindu tradition the performance of a ritual (karman) is said to yield a result (karmaphala), which, among other things, might be a place in the deva-realm. By equating the battle for the protection of the nation and people to a Vedic ritual the narrative offers a justification of the fruit attained by the king via his sacrifice. Through this equivalence vyāsa brings home to yudhiṣṭhira that such a battle is not a sinful act but a meritorious and holy act, just like the cognate Vedic ritual.

● The narrative also touches upon the duties of such a king with respect to his state. He is described as being intelligent and cultivating scholasticism through the study of texts and patronage to brāhmaṇa-s, who were generators of knowledge. He is described as being diligent in applying law to bring justice among his people (daṇḍa or the rod of chastisement) and upholding the stability of society. He is said to apply his intelligence and sound policy for the defense of his nation (rāṣṭraṃ rakṣan buddhi-pūrvaṃ nayena). He is also particular about the performance of Vedic rituals, such as the great soma rituals. Thus, vyāsa within a short narrative conveys to yudhiṣṭhira the essentials of the Hindu ideal of a ruler. He emphasizes that the upholder of dharma, who commits violence or perishes in the defense of his nation and people, is performing a holy act. Hence, there one should not be afflicted by doubt or grief over such actions.

When we look at pre-modern India, we find several rulers who lived up to this ideal, but one name which fits the bill in its entirety is the great paramāra ruler bhojadeva. He lived the life of a scholar, stood as a wall against the Islamic invasions of the Ghaznavids in the 1020s and again in 1043 CE, finally dying in battle defending his kingdom. This ideal widely permeated the collective kṣatriya mind and was kept alive by the overtures of the brāhmaṇa-s. A good example of this seen in course of the invasion of Northwestern India by Macedonian Alexander. He met some of the fiercest resistance in his entire career from the kṣatriya-s of those regions because they were inspired by the ideal of dying in the defense of their nation by brāhmaṇa-s [Footnote 2]. Alexander then targeted the brāhmaṇa-s who also sacrificed themselves following a similar ideal [Footnote 3]. When Alexander was about to hang a brāhmaṇa he asked him what had made him instigate the kṣatriya-s to attack the Macedonians. The brāhmaṇa bluntly replied: “I wish to live with honor or die with honor”. In essence, he was going by the ideal taught by the example of the ancient king hayagrīva. The consequence of these sacrifices was that the Macedonian forces were completely eliminated in Northwestern India within 10 years of Alexander’s retreat from India. In the medieval period it was the same ideal, which inspired the local warriors of whom the only memories are vīra-kal-s dotting peninsular India. Again, it was the same ideal which inspired the medieval and early modern Hindu warriors in the struggle against their mortal enemies in the form of the Mohammedan and Christian invaders.

In conclusion, one may note in passing that the Hindu self-sacrifice in a dharma-yuddha is a very distinct concept from that of martyrdom shared by Abrahamistic religions. Whereas the former is for the protection of dharma, the latter is for the imposition of a delusion that has come upon a mentally diseased “prophet” on an otherwise normal population.

Footnotes
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Footnote 1: The Critical Edition or the Pune edition of the mahābhārata is not a reconstruction of the ancestral text via textual criticism in the real sense. Rather, it is more of a strict consensus edition.

Footnote 2: For a complete narrative of these events one might refer to the book “Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography” by Peter Green; page 425.

Footnote 3: Just prior to this narrative in the mahābhārata, arjuna the third pāṇḍava provides a teaching wherein he clarifies that though it is not the primary duty of a brāhmaṇa, when the need arises he too needs to engage actively in combat to slay evil-doers and, if need be, die in the process.

Perhaps we should not be expending our extra-professional writing time on such stories; however, a long conversation with kauṇḍinyā after a long time since she left for the trivarga-deśa incited us to record yet another variation.

It was the end of the week – the social class which had the grace of śrī could still enjoy a pacific day or two away from the bustle of daily existence in bhārata or more precisely the residue that was left of the country. Thus, oblivious of the grim upheavals around them, many still led their existence in its bustling cities. Somakhya carefully took out a specimen of a ragworm from the alcohol jar and placed it on the dissection tray. Just then he heard a knock on the door. Peering through the look-hole he sighted the charming Lootika and Vrishchika, who looked radiant as the sun glanced of their ornaments. They rushed in even as he opened the door and seated themselves on the old couch that was stationed on one side of his makeshift home lab. Vrishchika then walked up to the table and intently gazed at the ragworm on the tray while remarking: “A beautiful annelid”.
Somakhya: “Good timing girls. Vrishchika you could perhaps help me by dissecting out the central nervous system – you have good hands.”
Vrishchika: “What do you intend to do with it?”
Somakhya: “Create a correspondence map of all peptide-amide neurotransmitters and neurons. We then wish to compare the pattern across different lineages to see how it related to our lineage-specific expansion model for the evolution of such neurotransmitters.”
Vrishchika: “That sounds pretty ambitious.”
Lootika: “A good chance to test the specific peptide-recognition reagents we developed with Varoli using the SuFu scaffolds. If nothing else we would at least know how they work in practice.”
Vrishchika: “Alright, I’ll dissect it for you but the two of you need to guide me appropriately. I suggest we leave the whole worm in fixing solution for 15 minutes – generally that gives better results and minimizes the chances of the nerve ring snapping.”

Even as Somakhaya started fixing the worm he said: “Lootika could you please take my tablet from over there and read out any interesting news that you might see.”
Lootika scrolled through and placed it aside saying there was nothing much of interest but picking it up again said: “Wait a minute. This is curious. Professor Angana Nanda stoned to death and hanged from tree on campus of Shaikh al Haqqani institute.”
Vrishchika “Ouch, that must have hurt.”
Lootika read on: “Prof Nanda a noted professor of the history of rationalism and secularism at the Shaikh al Haqqani institute of Islamic knowledge (formerly Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research) had decided to stay behind in Saltanat al Khair Allah after the partition agreement. She had been a strong supporter of the right for self-determination of the Islamic state of Khair Allah. She had written several articles on how the separation of the Khair Allah state from the Indian Republic could bring the Mohammedans out of the shadow of obscurantist oppression by the Hindu nationalist forces. She had hoped that it would usher the dawn of a new era of Islamic rationalism, even as the brilliant Abbasid Caliphate had forged the great Islamo-Christian scientific revolution that lay behind all modern science. However, she ran afoul of the Sultan Ghazi al Mansur when she broke the law by failing to wear the appropriate burkha. Things took a turn for the worse when she was seen gallivanting at the beach with her colleague Imran Khan without being appropriately covered up. At that point Fuckih al Abbas issued a legal decree as per the Sharia that she deserved the death punishment. His sentence was quickly executed by students of the Shaikh al Haqqani institute last evening.”
Somakhya: “Well, at least in her case the deserved karmaphala has been attained in full in the same janma. I wonder if she is now burning in the hellfire reserved for the rationalists or whether she has been transformed into a houri, one in a pack of 72, to serve the latest Shahid. By the way talking of all this, how did yesterday’s debate go?”
Lootika: “While Vrishchika and I vehemently argued for the position that we should put all effort to reconquer Saltanat al Khair Allah and the Islamic state of Greater Bangladesh we ended up losing as most were of the opinion that the double partition shedding the cera and vaṅga countries was a great idea. They argued that the the partition had removed the communal and fundamentalist elements from India and thus had reduced the chances of future communal violence that had dragged down national economic progress in the past. Moreover they were also shocked when we proposed that at least this double partition should have gone hand-in-hand with population exchange, with all marūnmatta-s being sent out and the pretasādhaka-s from the cera country not being let into residual bhārata. We argued that the proposed Islamo-Christian era of enlightenment, as in the Abbasid Caliphate, could happen only if pretasādhaka-s remained behind with their marūnmatta brethern. We were blamed as being neo-Nazis, frivolous idiots, or both and threatened with summary expulsion from the debate unless we shut our mouths!”

Continued…

A closer look at realms within this “Terra Mysterium”

Crystals by the shore-line:

Crystals in the crevice – realm of craters:

We are “geometric” in our thinking – perhaps, we are hence a little more Greek or the old type Arya than the later Hindu (who is more algebraic) in mentality. Long back in college we were fascinated by implicit trigonometric relations but were utterly defeated by the difficulty in visualizing. Without visualization, of what use are these relations to one who is inclined towards visible geometry? Then we wrote a bit of code that allowed us to visualize the same. Today far more efficient programs exist to do the same and we tend to revisit these relations, perhaps as a reenactment of our childish fancies.

During those explorations of ours we realized that certain class of trigonometric relations exist which produce the following:
1) Partitions: These might be defined as divisions of the x-y plane into continuous zones of 2 colors.
2) Perforations: These can be defined as completely bounded zones which can be visualized as perforations of the x-y plane.
Now, there might be relations which generate both partitions and perforations at the same time.
3) Depressions and bosses: They might be visualized as incomplete precursors of perforations in the x-y plane with the plane being deformed in either direction by vectors perpendicular to it.
4) Tilings: These completely tile the x-y plane by means of bounded tiles that share edges. There might be tiles which bear perforations or depressions and bosses on them.
5) Loopings: These might be defined as adjacent perforations that become contiguous via intersections involving a single point.

To illustrate these let us consider the below relationship:

It produces the below figure below which includes both partitions and perforations (the rhombuses with concave sides).

Some of these can have highly twisted partitions, in this case combined with depressions and bosses, that superficially make it look like a tiling (the figure to the right) as produced by:

Now let us consider the relation:

It produces perforations that show some complexity

Now let us consider the relation:

This produces a tiling but the tiles respectively have depressions or bosses.

The introduction of an irrational constant like adds a new wrinkle to these relations. For example let us consider:

The Golden ratio

The irrationality of the constant manifests in the resultant partitions, perforations, depressions/bosses in form an endless diversity of patterns – i.e. you do not get the same thing again even though they all look similar. This discovery greatly pleased us when we first stumbled upon it.

We shall conclude with a foray into the realm of personal symbolism. Below is what we term the gaze of indra intertwined with the gaze of Odin; produced by:

Why do we call it so? In Hindu tradition indra is said to have a 1000 eyes with which he watches over all. Hence, those many rows of eyes gazing at us are those of indra. Now in Germanic lore Odin is said to have sacrificed an eye of his at the well of Mimir. While he was left with just one eye, the drink at the well made him all knowing. Hence, we depict the second set of rows as representing the all-knowing gaze of Odin with only one eye being function and the other blind. The ocular anomaly is something he shares with his Hindu cognate rudra. While rudra is typically known as three-eyed, he is also described as being one-eyed in the rudra rahasya-gAna of the sAmaveda. This ocular trait is inherited by a subset of the ectypes of rudra known as the vidyeshvara-s who form part of the saiddhAntika shaiva pantheon. As an aside one may also note the “black grid” optical illusion produced by it.

The next one is termed the gaze of bhaga and aryaman and is generated by:

Here there are two sets of quasi-symmetric face-like figures with eyes and a mouth. Of these aryaman is the far-seeing one with normal eyes, while bhaga is the one with blind eyes. Hindu tradition going back to the shruti records a legend of bhaga losing his eyes when rudra attacked the yaj~na or prajApati. In the mahAbhArata the heroes are cast in the image of the ancient gods. In this matrix some of them are very obvious in their resemblance to the gods. Among the non-obvious ones are vidura who is cast in the image of the all-seeing aryaman, who is also the regent of the homestead, and the blind dhR^itarAShTra who is cast in the image of bhaga. Among the Aditya-s the first and the most prominent pair are mitra and varuNa, they are followed by the pair aryaman and bhaga. The former pair is potentially partitioned between pANDu and yudhiShThira in the mahAbhArata.

Published first in a slightly modified form at IndiaFacts

In the autumn of 1404 CE Timur-i lenk, after having spread the terror of Islam all over Asia for more than three decades, was poised to launch the final campaign of his life – the invasion of the Ming empire of China. He felt the subjugation of the infidels of China would be crowning act for his deeds of conquest, which had already turned many of the historical cities of the Asia – Delhi, Ispahan, Baghdad, Damascus, and Sivas among others – into charnel houses. Wherever he went, he kept true to the dictum of Islam being “bloody within and without” [to paraphrase Samuel Huntington]. But the Kaffirs in particular bore the brunt of his brutality, from Delhi, where nearly one lakh Hindus were slain, to Sivas, where thousands of Armenians were at once buried alive. In preparation for the grand march on Ming China, to regale his troops at Samarqand, he relaxed the strictures of society and let his men lapse into two months of unbridled hedonism – as a commentator put it they “brandished not the lances of war but plied the lances of love which were bent by embraces”. Keeping with this, Timur himself, despite having reached the age of 70, made the young Jawhar Agha the latest addition to his harem. The exploits, fueled by women captured from much of Asia, were accompanied by intemperate eating and binge drinking. Not surprisingly, Timur saw his hitherto vigorous frame being greatly weakened by the excesses around the time the celebrations were winding down. Yet, resolute on the conquest of China, which he saw as the last eastern frontier remaining to be brought under Islam, he pressed on with the campaign after calling the festivities to a close.

However, his astrologers gave dire predictions: They pointed out that Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were set to move into Aquarius and that it prognosticated something disastrous. His veterans knew that when they stood near Delhi, the astrologers had similarly said that a disaster awaited him. But then he had merely opened the Qoran and found a verse that he interpreted as prophesying his victory. He had thundered then: “Neither good nor bad luck depends on the stars. I trust Allah, who has never yet abandoned me. What does it matter if the planets are in this or that constellation?” Now again, Timur in his characteristic fashion brushed the astrologers aside. He was confident that the preparations he had made would not let him down on his march to Beijing – for every soldier he had provided two cows and ten goats that were to provide milk for the march and meat if the need arose. He had also assembled vast herds of female camels to supply the army with additional milk through the march. Thus, braving a winter more severe than any in the memory of his men, he pressed on. They had only reached as far as Otrar (modern Farab in Kazakhstan) when heavy snowfall prevented their advance. As they were waiting, the rigors of the winter, the unresolved illness, and age finally caught up with the tyrant. Drinking and poor diet aggravated his condition. He summoned Mewlana Fadl, whom his entourage thought to be the greatest doctor in the world, to treat him. However, with his drugs failing, Fadl claimed that putting ice on his patient’s chest would help him out. Rather, this made Timur get worse and soon he declared that he was seeing the promised houris calling him and that angel Israel was coming to take him to Allah. Thus, on 18 February 1405 CE Timur died.

Before his invasion of India Timur was vacillating between targeting India and China. At the urging of his son, grandson and Amirs he decided to go first against India for they felt this would bring him both greater glory as a Ghazi by slaying infidels and also greater riches. His death put an end to all Timurid ambitions in China, but only spurred greater interest in India in his successors. The geopolitical consequence of this turn of events on the ancient continental Asian civilizational powers, is not to be ignored. The capital of India was devastated by Timur’s invasion. At that point the Delhi Sultanate was on the decline and it was only a matter of time before the resurgent Hindu forces took back most of the territory they had lost to the former. However, Timur’s invasion savaged the already beleaguered Hindu population so greatly that it nearly took a century for it to recover. Moreover,the heavy losses inflicted by Timur (e.g. in the battle for the defense of the holy sites on the Ganga) paved the way for his successors, like Baboor, to establish a regime that reinforced horrors of Islam on India even more disastrously than the Sultanate. In contrast, China having escaped Timur’s invasion was able prosper unhindered for a while under the Han nationalist Ming empire. The effects are seen even today: India is plagued by the existential threat arising from the civilizational clash with Islam within and without its current boundaries. India has lost much of its territory to the Islamic states that surround it and hardly any vestiges of Hindu civilization remain in these regions. China in contrast escaped any major imposition of Islam on its population and has only expanded its territorial reach [Footnote 1].

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Timur had appointed his grandson Pir Mohammed, who was keeping a watch on his Indian conquests, as his successor, and instructed his family and followers to be faithful to him. Before Pir Mohammed could reach Samarqand, his other grandson Khalil Sultan, who was relatively close by in Tashkent, seized power. Timur’s men had quickly embalmed his body with oils and perfumes and Khalil Sultan had it brought to Samarqand (modern Uzbekistan) where it was interred in a new iron coffin he had prepared for the purpose. There he was buried at the feet of Shaikh Baraka, an Arab from Mecca or Medina, who claimed descent from the founder of Mohammedanism. This Shaikh had been a long-standing supporter of Timur inspiring his men to Jihad by reciting Qoranic verses before battle and supposedly performing magic on Timur’s behalf. He believed that the Shaikh would also aid him at the time of the Qayamat; hence, he desired to be buried at this feet. Subsequently, yet another grandson of Timur, Ulugh Beg, who for long was the governor of Samarqand, obtained a gigantic slab of nephrite (green jade) from Mongolia and embellished Timur’s coffin. Ulugh Beg had inscriptions carved on it, one of which states that the huge nephrite stone had been originally found by Du’a Soqor the legendary one-eyed ancestor of the Chingizid Mongols and used by him as his throne. Thus, Timur’s corpse remained interred, barring the irruption of yet another Mohammedan tyrant Nadir Shah, who in an attempt to appropriate the huge nephrite slab for himself only ended up breaking it. This was until 1941 CE, when a team led by the famous Soviet anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov was sanctioned by Stalin to go to Samarqand and dig up the graves of the Timurids. They did so in the following order:
1) Ulugh Beg’s sons; 2) the Timur’s favorite grandson Mohammed Sultan; 3) the two sons of Timur – Miran Shah and Shahrukh; 4) Ulugh Beg, Timur’s grandson via Shahrukh; 5) Finally Timur himself.

A combination of rumors spread by the local Mewlanas opposing the exhuming of the skeletons, and Soviet misinformation and sensationalism led to an oft repeated false claim that Gerasimov found an inscription on the inner casing of the coffin that read: “Whoever disturbs my tomb, shall unleash an invader more terrible than I”. This appears to have been inspired by the fact that within the next two days the Russians learned that they were facing the German Blitzkrieg ordered by Adolf Hitler. Stalin eventually had the remains of Timur and some of his clansmen returned to Samarqand and buried as per Islamic injunctions. But this was not before Gerasimov had made detailed reconstructions of their physique and appearance. Interestingly, within a month of the re-interring of the skeletons the Russians crushed the Germans at the battle of Stalingrad.

Other than Timur some of his successors who were exhumed by Gerasimov’s team were major players in Timurid empire both during and after Timur’s life:

His son Miran Shah was the direct ancestor of the Mogol tyrants of India, with Baboor being the 4th in line of descent from him. He suffered from bouts of insanity after breaking his skull on falling from his horse. As a consequence he would pull down palaces and other buildings at a whim and stabbed his wife, a descendant of Chingiz Khan.

Timur’s other son, Shahrukh also buried in this complex, was his youngest. He eventually defeated his nephew Khalil Sultan to seize power as the supreme ruler of Timurid empire. He placed his own son Ulugh Beg at Samarqand and moved the capital to Herat, where he ruled for the rest of his of reign of nearly 38 years. As Hafiz-i Abru mentions he strictly upheld the Sharia’t like his father and offered subsidies and support to various Shaikhs.

Timur’s grandson, Ulugh Beg, unlike his father, is described by the Islamic chroniclers as not being a proper observer of Islamic ways and prone to heretical tendencies. He was an extraordinarily intelligent man and a noted scientist who is well known for his astronomical treatise, the zīj-i jadīd-i güregen. As an illustration of his intelligence we are told this incident by a court astronomer: While he was taking a ride on his horse he was asked as to where the Sun was at a certain time on a certain day several years ago. Continuing to ride he quickly produced the solar position correct to minutes of an arc via mental calculation. Whereas under Timur, as Hafiz-i Abru said “none dared to study heretical philosophy or logic”, Ulugh Beg became deeply interested in Plato and held the view that science and geometrical reasoning transcended theology. Moreover, in his court he reverted to the old Mongol ways, letting men and women to sit together and sing. He also broke other strictures by having paintings made of human subjects, installing images of animals as decorative motifs for his constructions and completely disregarding Islamic finance.

The Shaikhs of the Naqshbandi Sufi silsilā filled with the indignation of Islamic zeal severely condemned these ways of Ulugh Beg. Shaikh ‘Ashiq, who is described by Islamic authorities as a second Moses, is said to have to burst into Ulugh Beg’s court on the steppe of Kāni-gil even as men and women were seated together and consuming alcoholic beverages. He then directly reprimanded Ulugh Beg: “You have destroyed the faith of Muhammad and have introduced the customs of the [Mongol] infidels”. Ulugh Beg was least bothered by this out burst and responded: “You have won fame through your descent from Sayyids and your knowledge of Islamic theology, and have attained old age. Apparently you also wish become a shahīd and therefore utter rude words, but I shall not grant you your wish.” Thus, driving the Sufi away he continued with his assembly. The work on Sufi activity in central Asia, the Rashaḥatu ‘ayni-ḥayat has many incidents of Shaikhs clashing with Ulugh Beg for his violations of Islamic precepts. As though in retaliation he is even said to have once sent a Mongol to give the Arab Shaikhs a thrashing with a stick. However, Ulugh Beg was popular with his people because he lowered the taxes considerably, gave the poor complete exemptions, and improved finances by setting up compound interest schemes to raise revenue by investing his own assets contrary to Islamic-banking (i.e. following the old Tamgha system of Chingiz Khan). However, the opposition from the Sufis and Ulema came to bite him eventually when his own son in a plot to seize power had him sentenced to death by the Sharia court and promptly beheaded. After his death his astronomical observatory was demolished along with his heretical art and his intellectual endeavors based on Greek ideas were condemned severely by the Sufi Khwājah Ahrār [Footnote 2] as being contrary to the right path. Thus, Ulugh Beg’s case illustrates that the Sufis were actually a potent force in central Asia in reinforcing Islam.

Mohammed Sultan the other grandson of Timur via his son of Jehangir was his favorite. He, like his grandfather was a vigorous in his pursuit of the Jihad. In particular, he is recorded as pointing the importance of a Jihad on India to his grandfather as they were deliberating on whether to invade China or India first. He is recorded as saying: “Now, since the inhabitants [of India] are chiefly polytheists and infidels, also worshipers of idols and the Sun, it is apposite, according to the mandate of Allah and his prophet Mohammed for us to conquer them (Tuzk-i-Timuri )”. Timur initially wanted Mohammed Sultan to succeed him; however, he died from an infection of his wounds acquired during the campaign against the Ottomans in Anatolia in 1403 CE.

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In terms of their identity, the Mogol tyrants of India made it a point to root their provenance to their Mongol past. The biographers closer to Timur’s age gave his line of descent thus:
Amir Tīmūr ibn Taraghāi Bahādur ibn Erkul Bahādur ibn Angīz Bahādur ibn Alhīl Noyān ibn Qārāchār Noyān.
This lineage is confirmed by the inscription in the Bibi Khanum jāmi masjid built by Timur to celebrate his invasion of India, which reads:
“The great sultan, pillar of the state and Islam, Amir Tīmūr güregen ibn Taraghāi ibn Burgul ibn Aylangīr ibn Ichīl ibn al-Amir Qārāchār Noyān, may Allah preserve his reign, was helped (by heavenly favor) to complete this jāmi masjid in the year 806 [1403–4CE]”
Thus, his origins are traced to Qārāchār Noyān, a high-ranked Mongol general in the army of Chingiz Khan who belonged to the Barlas clan of Mongols. The origin of the Mogol tyrants from this clan still leaves its footprints in Greater India in the form of the clan name Barlas being considered a respectable one in the Islamic hellhole of Pakistan. However, the Timurids derived their real prestige from their link to the illustrious Chingiz Khan via marriage. From the apologia and chronicles closer to the life of Timur we know that he saw a tremendous rise in his status when he added a Chingizid princess of the Chagadaid lineage to his harem. Hence, his primary title is güregen meaning son-in-law in Mongolian, i.e. son-in-law of Chingiz Khan’s clan. Keeping with this the Mogol tyrants of India themselves referred to their dynasty as silsilā-i güregen or the dynasty of the son-in-laws of the Chingizid lineage of the Chagadaids. The link to the Chagadaids was prominently advertised by the Mogols; we even have the Hindi poet bhūṣaṇa tripāṭhī describe the Hindu hero śivājī as destroying the house of Chagadai while referring to his defeat of the Mogols.

As zealous Mohammedans, the Timurids faced a deep contradiction in this link because Chingiz Khan was a heathen Mongol, whose exploits along with those of his successors had come closest to eradicating Mohammedanism. Thus, they generally avoided the word Mogol itself as it was taken as referring to the still heathen Mongols who had not accepted Mohammedanism. But in central Asia the hold of Chingiz Khan could not be easily shaken. So Timur and his successors sought to create a more “Islamic” link to the Chingizid clan. The origin-legend of the heathen Chingizids has the narrative of their famed ancestress Alan-qoa bearing sons without a visible father. This is explained in the Secret History of the Mongols by invoking the heathen Turco-Mongol totemic figure coming via the beams of light into the tent and impregnating Alan-qoa. Timur and his successors invented the legend that the light was not the heathen Turco-Mongol figure but in reality the grandson of Mohammed via his son-in-law Ali. This way Mohammed’s grandson in portrayed as siring the Mongol Khan Tumananay, whom they saw as the common ancestor of both Timur and Chingiz Khan. Thus, they tried to create a Mohammedan genealogy going back to Mohammed and at the same time claimed the ancestry of the Chingizid lineage for themselves. This was the self-image the Timurids perpetuated: the tyrant Akbar even commissioned an illustrated volume of the epic of Chingiz Khan, wherein he reinforced this genealogy and had the figure of the great Khan depicted after his own image [Footnote 3].

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The deracinated first prime minister of the Indian republic, Jawaharlal Nehru saw the invasion of the Mogols as a net positive for India: He wrote: “A foreign conquest, with all its evils, has one advantage: it widens the mental horizon of the people and compels them to look out of their shells. They realize that the world is a much bigger and more variegated place than they had imagined… The Mughals, who were far more cultured and advanced in ways of living than the Afghans, brought changes to India… Babar is an attractive person, a typical Renaissance prince, bold and adventurous, fond of art and literature and good living.” Following his footsteps the secularist eminent historians [vide Arun Shourie] insisted on portraying the Mogols as an integral, or even defining, element of the Indian historical consciousness.

This image created by the secularist historians ran contrary to the clear anchoring of the Timurid identity in their Islamic and Central Asian legacy. Moreover, the Timurids themselves held a very different but consistent views in regard to India going back to Timur’s times. The Tuzk-i-Timuri records the Amirs in Timur’s entourage as stating: “By the favor of Allah we may conquer India, but if we establish ourselves permanently therein, our race will degenerate, and our children will become like the natives of those regions, and in a few generations their strength and valor will diminish.” Thus, it would seem that they despised the idea of settling in India as they feared losing the martial ardor of the steppe warrior. However, Timur pointed out the real objective behind their need to invade India: “My object in the invasion of Hindustan is to lead an expedition against the infidels that, according to the law of Mohammed (upon whom and his family be the blessing and peace of Allah!), we may convert the people of that country to the true faith and purify the land itself from infidelity and polytheism, and that we may overthrow their temples and idols and become conquerors and crusaders before Allah.” Hence, the Timurids from the inception did not see themselves as part of the Indian system but as explicitly as an expeditionary power whose mission was to forcibly impose Mohammedanism on the Hindus of India [Footnote 4]. Indeed, the Timurid writers repeatedly used the terms India and Indians as a metaphor for dark, black, or the night [Footnote 5]. These attitudes are again exemplified by Timur’s descendant Baboor, the founder of the Mogol state in India; he writes in his memoir:
“Hindustan is a place of little elegance. The people of Hindustan have no beauty; they have no convivial society, no social intercourse, no character or genius, no urbanity, no nobility or chivalry. In the skilled arts and crafts there is no regularity, proportionality, straightness or rectangularity. There are no good horses, there are no good dogs, no grapes, muskmelons or first-rate fruits, no ice or cold water, no good bread or cooked food in the bāzārs, no hammāms, no madrasahs, no candles, no torches, or candlesticks.” Baboor was not alone in expression of such attitudes towards India. His senior Beg Khwājah Kalān wrote that everything in Hindustan is contrary to sense. However, Baboor betrays his real intentions for invading India by adding: “That which is appealing about Hindustan is that it is a large vilāyat [land/country] with a huge amount of gold and silver.” He also indicates his intentions are not far from Timur’s original intentions for the invasion of India as he poetically remarks:
“For Islam’s sake I became a wanderer;
I battled Kāffars and Hindus.
I determined to become shahīd;
Thank Allah I became a Ghāzi!”

Notably, in these attitudes of the Timurids are rather similar to those of the British conquerors of India – many of them expressed the same hate (e.g. succinctly conveyed by the British prime minister Winston Churchill ) while at the same time desiring the wealth of India. This commonality in expression with respect to the attitudes towards Hindus and India, spanning a whole millennium, by observers professing both the second and third Abrahamistic cults, might contrasted with those of other heathens from Greece, China, Tibet, and Mongolia. This ultimately points to the Abrahamistic foundation for Mohammedan and European attitudes towards India.

The translations of the the original sources used in this article might be found in Footnote 6.

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Footnote 1: Though the Moslem populations in China were much smaller compared to the situation in India they did revolt and wage Jihad on several occasions. However, their numerical inferiority to the Han, combined with the great aggression of the Han and their Manchu overlords during the Qing period prevented them from ever damaging Chinese civilization. Consequently, China has not just retained the Han character of its civilization but has also expanded its territories.

Footnote 2: Khwājah Ahrār was a figure greatly respected by Baboor and the Mogol tyrants of India. Baboor invokes the Mohammedan piety of this Sufi for inspiration as he felt nervous about the upcoming encounter with mahārāṇā saṃgā

Footnote 3: In a sense, this is not very different from his desire to depict rāmacandra āikṣvākava after his own image in the illustrated version of the Hindu epic that he had prepared for him).

Footnote 4: One may compare this with the parallel parallel attitudes of modern expeditionary powers, namely the USA and the post-colonial UK whose primary objective for an expedition is often presented as “bringing democracy” even as Timur sought to bring Mohammedanism.

Footnote 5: One may look up Annemarie Schimmel’s article written from a largely pro-Islamic perspective, “Turk and Hindu: A Poetical Image and its Application to Historical Fact,” in “Islam and Cultural Change in the Middle Ages” pg 107-26.

Footnote 6: The direct citations are provided from the following sources; in certain cases the form of the word in Arabic, Persian or Chagadai Turki is retained for better effect.
Chronicles pertaining to Timur:
● Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi
● The Bibi Khanum mosque in Samarqand: Its Mongol and Timurid architecture by Elena Paskaleva; The Silk Road 10 (2012): 81–98
● Epigrafika Vostoka, A critical review by Oleg Grabar in Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800, Volume 2 (Translations of Timurid tomb inscriptions).
● The rise and the rule of Tamerlane by B.F. Manz
● Timur the great Amir by Ahmed Ibn Arabshah translated from the Arabic by J. H. Sanders
● Tuzk-i Timuri translated from Persian version by H. M. Elliot, edited by J. Dowson
● The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane by Ron Sela

Pertaining to Ulugh Beg:
● Four studies on the History of Central Asia; Volume II Ulugh-beg by V.V. Barthold, translated from the Russian by V. and T. Minorsky

Pertaining to Baboor:
● Eight paradises: Bābur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530) by Stephen F. Dale (Translations from Baboornama from Chagadai Turki)
● The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor translated by W.M. Thackston, Jr. from Chagadai Turki

Others:
● I would like to thank śrī sarveśa tivārī for providing the verse of poet bhūṣaṇa tripāṭhī
● The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru

We have earlier proposed on these pages the postulates of the first responders and the preta-rākṣasābhisaṃdhi. These, together with the peculiar consequence of much of our elites’ vyavahāra happening in the āṅglika bhāṣā, has allowed our mleccha-, and to an extent our marūnmatta- foes to invest in the Indian media to use as potent weapon in propaganda warfare. The Indian mindset is particularly susceptible to it as the flotsam deśī is strongly prone to forming opinions based on 3rd persons evaluations, especially if the 3rd person is seen as some kind of authority. In the 10 years of disastrous UPA rule things became so bad that practically all the media in the country was purchased by these foreign powers to use as weapons against the Hindus. The lāṭa-siṃha on his way to becoming the bhārata-nṛpati repeatedly termed these purchased propagandists as “news-traders”. However, it remains to be seen how the lāṭendra deals with them as time goes by. There is little evidence that they are holding back. As examples we could cite: 1) the case of the Mohammedan who was forced to eat while keeping a religious fast by a member of the Shiv Sena party which was then allied to the BJP. On this occasion the propagandists made an enormous amount of noise regarding how the rākṣasa-vādin’s rights were violated. Many people with affinities to Hindu nationalism also came out to defend the said rākṣasa-vādin and condemn they own people. In stark contrast recently when an knot of marūnmatta ruffians, true to character, slew a Shiv Sena member, when he was trying to intervene with regard to their roguish behavior on the street , the propagandists chose to down-play the whole thing and report it as an ordinary crime. This incident is merely one among the many in which the evils perpetrated by pretāradhaka-s and marūnmatta-s are routinely downplayed or suppressed, be it the “bomb in Bengal”, the predatory activities of śava-bhāṇaka-s, the holdouts of the Nizam’s merry Razakars gaining new ground, or seizure of Hindu strī-s by both sādharaṇa and pracchanna dāḍhīka-s. 2) Another notable case was the willful incitement of people, including a street-fight with a person supporting the lāṭānarta-siṃha in navyarkapura by a ruffianly propagandist. Despite his actions been caught on video, the propagandists spun it as he being the one assaulted by the votaries of the bhārata-nṛpati.

Given this background we thought it useful to revisit our ongoing “Google News” experiment. To repeat ourselves, this experiment involves using Google News US edition and changing the settings so that India is on top and set to “always”. Then one might observe the primary India-related headlines coming to the fore on the news page. Below is based on the media items with negative coverage of India that surfaced to the top in this experiment starting June to October 25th (caveat: we usually check news three times a day; so this may not cover all of it but is still representative):

The first figure is unsurprising: Being the US edition it is dominated by US mainstream media outlets. However, it is notable that despite this we have a strong participation in the project from the UK. This illustrates that at its core it is a joint project of the Abrahamistic Anglosphere with an echo reverberating across the Atlantic. More importantly, we note a significant participation from Indian media outlets in amplifying the message ultimately generated in Anglosphere. These are first responders and the drohin propagandists. In the other category we have some from the smaller stations of the Anglosphere like Australia and the Mohammedans of West Asia, the latter representing the śava-rākṣasa-saṃmelana.

The second figure is the breakdown by the top media outlets involved in this activity. This is more informative. The clear winner is the New York Times, liberal outfit. This brings home a point that we have made on these pages that the Western liberals are not friends but venomous enemies of Hindus. The NYT is commonly read by Hindus for articles on science, culture and technology, but as far as Hindus/India goes it is patently toxic. This pattern is a replica of the US academia which is enriched in individuals with views similar to the NYT. Next come CNN, ABC and BBC. The first of these is a propaganda organ of the mleccha rulers of USA; thus, its concerted attack reflects in a sense the unofficial view of the Department of State and also the mlecchādhipati’s office who has a special dislike for the lāṭendra. The BBC, together with Reuters (which comes next) headquartered in UK, is the echo from across the Atlantic showing the unity of Anglospheric thought we saw in the above picture. The Economic Times and The Hindu represent the deśī purchased agents, though in part the latter is also an organ for the cīna-s. The Gulf News represent the rākṣasavādin contribution to the action.

On the whole we might note that while the whole political spectrum of the Anglosphere is involved in the attack on Hindu India, it is the liberal side of the spectrum which packs the biggest punch. Why is this so? To understand this we might note that even though the prathamonmatta-s are part of this matrix of media outlets their deśa has complained of bias against it in the same NYT. This suggests that all these relate in large part to the underpinnings of western liberalism. The people who constitute this category are to a notable extent genetically predisposed to yearn for the “holier than thou” and moral superiority internal sensations. We note that they feel a tremendous uptick in these feelings when the read and write such articles especially pertaining to a heathen nation which the Abrahamistic preconditioning sees as deeply revolting. The same Abrahamistic conditioning can be seen in how the same outlets, which root for various marūnmatta-s do not even let out the merest whimper for the heathen Yazidis who are being exterminated in West Asia by the Mohammedans.

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Supplementary Material: Articles gathered in this experiment

bhāskararāya was one of the greatest mantravādin-s of all times, who perhaps was only rivaled by the illustrious abhinavagupta or aghoraśiva deśika, who in times closer to our own was verily like how a brāhmaṇa sage of the time of the veda might have been. He shone like a luminary on the north bank of the Kaveri illuminating many śāstra-s including the ṛk and atharvaṇa śruti-s, navanyāya outside the vaṅga country and above all the śrīkula. In the introduction to his śrīkula work varivasyā-rahasya he says:

ā prācaḥ kāmarūpād druhiṇa-suta-nada-plāvitād ā pratīco
gāndhārāt sindhu-sāndrād-raghuvara-caritād ā ca setor avācaḥ ।
ā kedārād udīcas tuhina-gahanataḥ santi vidvat-samājā
ye ye tān eṣa yatnaḥ sukhayatu samajān kaśca mat kartum īṣṭe ॥

The learned assemblies, which indeed are from kāmarūpa in the east which is flooded by the riverine son of druhiṇa (i.e. brahmā) to gāndhāra in the west which is moistened by the Indus system, from the bridge in the south, by which the foremost of the raghu-s traveled, to the kedāra in the north laden heavy with snow, may this effort gratify them; who would wish to please the lay-folk by this work of mine?

Indeed this clearly expresses the extent of India as the domain of the sanātana-dharma. The marāṭhā patrons of bhāskararāya had placed the saffron Hindu flag on the fort of Attock. He had himself witnessed closely the marāṭhā campaigns against the Portuguese in the Konkan when he was writing his magnum opus the setu-bandha. Thus, there was a brief period of hope that indeed the idea of bājīrāv-I, of the complete liberation of bhāratavarṣa, might become reality. It was perhaps the vision engendered by this hope that inspired the words of bhāskararāya. Sadly, the marāṭhā-s stumbled and the extent of bhārata today has contracted and threatens to contract even more. Not surprisingly more than half the treatises written by bhāskararāya have been lost. But lest Hindus forget, they must keep in mind that this was the bhāratavarṣa that their people had in mind even as of 250 years ago and if its civilizational memory is lost all hopes of regaining it may also be seen as lost.

An updated version of our earlier ramblings first published at: http://www.indiafacts.co.in/polycentrism-many-one-problem-roots-yoga/

One of the central problems Hindus face on the intellectual battlefield is articulating their position vis-a-vis the stances of their Abrahamistic foes. An important aspect of this problem is the difficulty faced by many modern Hindus in understanding the contrast between their system and the exclusivity, belligerence and universalism of Mohammedanism and cult of Jesus. Thus, we see numerous Hindus taking a rather apologetic stance with respect to their polytheistic system. They might even try to deny it by claiming that in reality they are monotheistic, just as the followers of Mohammed and Jesus. We also see this tendency in daily life: many Hindus use terminology like “God”, in a sense similar to that used by the Abrahamists, instead of using their own rich language full of nuance with terms such as ātman, brahman, īśvara, or the specific names of deities from their pantheon. In our opinion the lack of clarity on these issues directly contributes to their flaccid response to the aggression of the Abrahamistic foes. Consequently, the use of terminology in an Abrahamistic sense can be seen as a memetic Trojan horse, left behind by the Mohammedans and Christians, after their physical conquests were nullified to an extent by the Hindu fight-back culminating in independence. Hence, we speculate that the adoption of Abrahamistic terminology in this regard could actually “soften” the Hindus who do so, and facilitate their fall to the rampant evangelism of the two Abrahamistic cults in India.

As the great scholar of Indic tradition, śrī Lokesh Chandra explained in an interview [Footnote 1], it is important that India retain and celebrate its “polycentrism” rather than monotheism, as the former is the defining feature of our civilization. Indeed, the great sage uddālaka āruṇi states in the veda:

ekam eva advitīyam | tad aikṣata bahu syām prajāyeya | chandogyopaniṣad in section 6.2
It was only one without a second. It willed: “I shall multiply and reproduce as many.”

Thus, in the in the Hindu system the one is seen as becoming many. Here the arrow of causation accepts and emphasizes the emergence of multiplicity as being the natural order. This is contrary to the Abrahamistic system of monotheism where the unitary deity is defined by exclusion of all others. Thus, the multiplicity, which was the natural state in the pre-Abrahamistic Afro-Asiatic heathen systems of West Asia, was force-fitted to a single standard. The multiplicity inherent in the Hindu system is consonant with the nature of existence itself: At the origin of the universe, in the earliest period, the unitary force manifested as the four forces of nature. Likewise, unitary matter manifested as particles with a multiplicity of masses, charges, ‘colors’, spins and other properties. Analogously, emergence of multiplicity characterizes life, where all its diversity, with manifold organisms including ourselves, has emerged from a single ancestral organism through the process of reproduction (“bahu syām prajāyeya”).

Hence, the ṛṣi gṛtsamada śaunahotra states:
yo apsv ā śucinā daivyena ṛtāvājasra urviyā vibhāti |
vayā id anyā bhuvanāny asya pra jāyante vīrudhaś ca prajābhiḥ || ṛgveda 2.35.8
All other beings are, as it were, branches of him, the plants, with their progeny, are born (of him), who, imbued with the natural law (ṛta), eternal, and widely-spreading, shines amid the waters with pure and divine (radiance).

Similarly, the veda states:
ajāyamāno bahudhā vijāyate | taittirīya+āraṇyaka in 3.13.1
The unborn is multiply born (i.e. the unmanifest manifests multiply).

Thus, for the Hindu the multiplicity of forms and the unmanifest are not a contradiction. Rather the direction of causation again emphasizes the emergence of a multiplicity of forms from what is unmanifest or not undergoing birth. This is again in contradiction to Abrahamistic thought, which rails and rants against form, leading to iconoclastic urges that seek to destroy all heathen depictions of divinities in diverse forms. Here again, the Hindu system is consonant with nature: from the incredibly dense singularity (i.e. the unmanifest) the universe with all its forms originated. From unmanifest instructions in genes and proteins present in a single-celled zygote a whole organism with a multiplicity of cell types can emerge via repeated reproduction. Thus, via its unitary emphasis and proscription of the manifestation of multiplicity, Abrahamistic thought is like a still-born embryo where the zygote never proceeded beyond the single-celled stage.

The heathens have had a long and sophisticated history of analyzing the basic philosophical question in this regard. The core of this question tackled both by Hindu and early Greek philosophies was what can be termed “the many-one problem”. One way of stating it is that there are many identical, similar or congruent entities, that just appear to be multiple manifestations of one single prototype. So how do we deal with the multiplicity while recognizing the unifying principle within them? In Sanskrit grammar we can reduce the various expressions of language to a relatively small set of prototypical rules – this was the means by which the great pāṇini formulated his monumental grammar. Similarly, we can classify the diversity of organisms to a few prototypes based on the principle of homology. Thus, many can be explained as few. Next, one might logically ask if this can be taken to the minimal prototype (may be just one), which is the foundational reality, but at the same time also explain the multiplicity logically rather than deny, exclude or proscribe it as is typical of Abrahamistic monotheism. To this end the Hindus applied themselves diligently.

The analysis of this question lies at the origin of one of the pillars of Hindu thought and religion – sāṃkhya-yoga. sāṃkhya emerges in “thought-matrix” of the upaniṣad-s: in section 6.13 of the śvetāśvatara+upaniṣad we hear that sāṃkhya is the basis of mokṣa. i.e., the soteriological conclusion of the realization of the unifying principle. The essential premise of the sāṃkhya-class of explanations for the many-one problem derives from a concept termed māyā, which goes back to the ancient Indo-Aryan past. Knowing māyā is knowing the ways of the deva-s! The deva-s exhibit māyā: thus, their one true or prototypic form appears in many diverse forms. This is true of indra in the ṛgveda. There the ṛṣi viśvāmitra says:

rūpam-rūpaṃ maghavā bobhavīti māyāh kṛnvānas tanuvaṃ pari svāṃ |(RV 3.53.8).
maghavan (indra) transforms into form after form, effecting the display of māyā around his own body.

In the itihāsa-s, viṣṇu and rudra put forth their māyā to assume many forms. In the purāṇa corpus this māyā is the great goddess māhākālī also called yoga-māyā. Thus, right from the beginning the term māyā appears to have implied the means by which the deva or dānava creates many forms which “veil” the underlying primal form. Thus, one Hindu approach to the “many-one” problem appears to have been a logical extension of this idea to describe the universe itself. Hence, in sāṃkhya we have the one puruṣa associating with prakṛti, who acting like the principle of māyā creates a multiplicity that is seen as the universe. This connection between the māyā of deva-s and sāṃkhya theory is very palpable in an explanation of universe offered in an exposition of sāṃkhya in the mahābhārata:

apāṃ phenopamaṃ lokaṃ viṣṇor māyā śatair vṛtam |
citta-bhitti pratīkāśaṃ nala sāram anarthakam || (Mbh-”critical” 12.290.57)
The universe is like the foam of water enveloped by hundreds of māyā-s of viṣṇu, like an illusory wall and ephemeral as sap in a [hollow] reed.

The use of māyā by deva-s leads to yoga, which was originally seen as a system of praxis involving the direct application of sāṃkhya principles. Evidence for this is abundant in the itihāsa-s and purāṇa-s. One of the most famous expressions of this, known to most Hindus, is the statement of kṛṣṇa in the bhagavad gītā:

nāhaṃ prakāśaḥ sarvasya yoga-māyā-samāvṛtaḥ |
mūḍho’yaṃ nābhijānāti loko mām-ajam-avyayaṃ || (BG7.25)
I am not manifest to all, veiled by the māyā of my yoga. This deluded world [i.e. entrapped by the display of māyā] knows not me, unborn and unlimited.

A more palpable application of māyā displayed via yoga is described in the mahābhārata, when at sunset on the fourteenth day of the Great War, devakī-putra turning to arjuna says: “arjuna, I have obscured the sun by the means of my yoga and the kaurava-s think it has set. Kill jayadratha!”

Another poignant expression of the fact that the application of yoga is essentially the same as the display of māyā is suggested by the story of the ancient bhārgava sage uśanas kāvya given in mahābhārata 12.278 (“critical edition”). kāvya was enraged with the deva-s because viṣṇu had beheaded his mother, who was a partisan of the asura-s. kāyva used his yoga to enter into kubera, the yakṣa who was the treasurer of the deva-s and stole his wealth. Furious, kubera went to rudra and told him that kāvya used his yoga to enter his [kubera]’s body and having robbed him of his wealth came out of it and escaped. rudra, himself of supreme yoga power, raised his dreaded trident and sought kāvya with the intention of striking him. kāvya realized from a distance the intention of rudra of superior yoga powers and wondered whether he should flee or try some other trick. Then using his mighty yoga, uśanas kāvya, the prefect and physician of the daitya-s, became small and went and sat on the tip of rudra’s trident. Unable to use his weapon he bent it with his arms to make it into the pināka bow! At this point uśanas fell into śiva’s hand, who promptly swallowed him and returned to perform his meditative yoga. The bhārgava wandered endlessly in rudra’s stomach and was absorbed into his body. As śiva had shut all his outlets in practice of yoga, he was unable to find an exit. Unable to escape he repeatedly worshiped the terrible mahādeva, who asked him to emerge from his semen. Thus, did the bhṛgu drop out. When rudra saw him he raised his trident to kill him. But umā intervened and asked him to spare the brāhmaṇa’s life.

The point of note here is that the famous bhārgava magic of parakāya-praveśa is effected by means of yoga, which is parallel to the ability of deva-s to exhibit māyā transforming their bodies into many forms. This is further clarified in the great itihāsa in course of the description of yoga:

brahmāṇam-īśam varadaṃ ca viṣṇum
bhavaṃ ca dharmaṃ ca ṣaḍānanaṃ ca
so brahmaputrāṃś-ca mahānubhāvān || 58
tamaś-ca kaṣṭaṃ sumahad-rajaś-ca
sattvaṃ ca śuddhaṃ prakṛtiṃ parāṃ ca
siddhiṃ ca devīṃ varuṇasya patnīṃ
tejaśca kṛtsnaṃ sumahac-ca dhairyaṃ || 59
narādhipaṃ vai vimalaṃ satāraṃ
viśvāṃś-ca devān uragān pitṝṃś ca
śailāṃś-ca kṛtsnānudadhīṃś-ca ghorān
nadīś-ca sarvāḥ savanan ghanāṃś-ca || 60
nāgān-nagān-yakṣa-gaṇān-diśaś-ca
gandharva-saṅghān-puruṣān-striyaś-ca |
parasparaṃ prāpya mahān-mahātmā
viśeta yogī nacirādvimuktaḥ || 61 MBh(12.289.58-61)
The high-souled yogin filled with greatness, at will, can enter into and come out of, brahmā the lord of all, the boon-giving viṣṇu, bhava, dharma, the six-faced kumāra, the sons of brahmā, tamas that results in trouble, rajas, sattva, the mahat and the pure, primordial prakṛtī, the goddess siddhi – the wife of varuṇa, the all-encompassing energy, courage, the king, the sky with the stars, the universe, celestial snakes, the ancestor-spirits, mountains, all terrible oceans, all rivers, thick forests, serpents, plants, yakṣa bands, the directions gandharva bands, and both males and females.

Thus it is clear the yoga was precisely the practical means of “effecting māyā” — the yogin could literally enter into all possible rūpa-s. We also see that it was described as a means of entering prakṛti, which is (the cause of) māyā.

As the great scholar Ganganath Jha remarked sāmkhya and yoga appear to be two faces of the same darśana. The former stands for the siddhānta or the theoretical framework and the latter for the practical means of achieving it. The earliest notable discoveries in terms of the practical means that characterize yoga were made by the Indo-Aryans probably in the late brāhmaṇa period of the Vedic age. One discovery was that there was something unique about the problem of consciousness and that it could be tackled in a special way by transcending the subject-object distinction. The second discovery was that this issue of consciousness could be understood only by some special physiologically alterations connected to the nervous system. We have no clear evidence whether these discoveries were known before or not – while some of the methods could go back to human antiquity, at least some of the background knowledge probably derived from the medical investigations of the atharvaveda. The second of these discoveries led to the primitive “kuṇḍalini system” and a precursor of what later came to be known as the khecarī mudra. The earliest traces to these system in the late brāhmaṇa period are seen in the ideas of the bhārgava prācinayogya in the taittirīya śruti and yājñavalkya in the vājasaneyi śruti. It was further developed in the bhṛgu smṛti [Footnote 2]. A subsequent preliminary synthesis of the different themes under an overarching framework was attempted by patañjali. However, his system was mainly an attempt to present yoga as an independent darśana by incorporating a slightly modified form of sāṃkhya as its internal siddhānta. The real task of a grand synthesis, which brought together various themes into a comprehensive system of practice was seen in the tantra-s. Here, in addition to the multifaceted development of the traditions of physical practice, the “kuṇḍalini” and “khecarī mudra” systems were brought together with the other ancient Hindu tradition of the mantra-śāstra. Credit in this regard goes to the great matsyendra, the fisherman-teacher, who wove the different strands into the great tantric synthesis. This was indeed one of the greatest achievements of Hindu thought, where the many and one are seamlessly integrated, something which is much neglected by many modern theoretical students of Hindu thought.

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Footnote 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_t-gC73AtI

Footnote 2: We offer an approximate, partial translation of the bhṛgu smṛti, an important document of Hindu thought here: https://app.box.com/s/5ws9garzbulhxvpeg0ka

This brief note might be read as a continuation of this one.

Phylogeny by Motani et al

As noted in the epistle linked above, the possibility of the monophyly of euryapsids, sometimes termed enaliosauria, has been spoken of repeatedly over the years. This idea in a primitive form was expressed by the odious Richard Owen, but he did go on to clarify that it might be an artificial grouping. In recent times it has emerged in phylogenies constructed by Caldwell, Merck, Rieppel and Motani as well as other works utilizing their matrices. Motani and Rieppel have been careful in stating that when they perform analyses where they remove characters, which they argue to be aquatic adaptations, the euryapsid monophyly collapses.

The most inclusive of these phylogenetic schemes includes the following lineages in the large monophyletic Euryapsid clade:
•Thalattosauriformes: This includes the two clades the Thalattosauroids and the Askeptosauroids.
• Sauropterygians: This clade includes the absolutely bizarre Atopodentatus as the most basal representative. This reptile is unprecedented in having a split bisecting the upper jaw with teeth lining either edge of this split along the premaxillae. The remaining clades are the placodonts and the eosauropterygians. The latter clade breaks up into pachypleurosaurs and eusauropterygians. The latter of those clades further splits up into the nothosaurians and the pistosauroids. The crown pistosauroids are the plesiosaurians.
• Saurosphargids: These are remarkable reptiles with broadly turtle-like or placodont-like body shape with expanded ribs. They have a dorsal carapace formed by numerous osteoderms that completely cover the dorsal body (vertebrae and ribs) and ventral osteoderms that cover part of the gastralia.
• Ichthyosauriformes: These include the classical ichthyopterygians and their recently described sister group Cartorhynchus.
• Hupehsuchids: These are another remarkable group of reptiles which have a generally ichthyopterygian-like body shape. However, their body is encased in armor formed by dorsal osteoderms and ventral interlocking gastralia. The arrangement of the dorsal osteoderms vis-a-vis the vertebrae is similar to what is seen in the saurosphargids.
• Wumengosaurus: Is a rather distinctive reptile with an elongated neck reminiscent of both the basal members of the eosauropterygian clade and several Thalattosauriformes like Endennasaurus or Askeptosaurus. However, its skull displays features closer to the hupehsuchids and Ichthyosauriformes. While it was originally thought to be sauropterygian more recent analysis by Rieppel, Motani and colleagues clearly counters this view.

Within this large euryapsid assemblage there are certain clades that seem to be strongly supported. Most recent analyses have strongly suggested that the Ichthyosauriformes and the hupehsuchids unify into an higher order ichthyosauromorpha. Likewise, the sauropterygians and saurosphargids are consistently recovered as uniting into a higher order clade. In these analysis Wumengosaurus does not group with sauropterygians but has some tendency to group with ichthyosauromorpha, a grouping which persists even if the aquatic adaptations are removed from the data matrix. In the most recent analysis by Motani, the removal of these aquatic adaptations results in Thalattosauriformes, ichthyosauromorpha and Wumengosaurus still remaining united into a higher order clade, though sauropterygians+saurosphargids break away from them. In most of these analyses, irrespective of whether aquatic adaptations are scored or not the choristoderes and Helveticosaurus, which are the other ancient aquatic/marine reptiles with an early Mesozoic provenance, do not unite with this clade. Thus, we would cautiously see the evidence as pointing in favor of a monophyletic euryapsida comprised of the above-listed groups. Indeed Wumengosaurus provides a form which could come close to their common ancestor in appearance.

Another clade, for which links to this greater euryapsid clade has been proposed is Testudinata (the turtles). In phylogenetic analysis by Rieppel and colleagues they have emerged as a sister group of the sauropterygians. In their recent analysis Hirasawa et al offer developmental arguments in favor of this hypothesis by presenting evidence that the rigid carapace of the turtle develops primarily from expanded plate-like ribs and rib-derived ossifications. They then go on to point out that the basal sauropterygians like the saurosphargids and placodonts possess laterally extended plate-like ribs with a configuration similar to the turtles and contributing to their rigid armor. This rib morphology is characterized by the limited mobility, reduction or loss of intercostal muscles and close contact between adjacent plate-like ribs throughout their length. Likewise, Rieppel and colleagues in their study of the basal ichthyosauromorph hupehsuchid, Parahupehsuchus longus, point out a similar tendency in its rib morphology, and explicitly state that: “there was no space for intercostal muscles, which must have been largely absent”. They reason that the lateral body armor in the hupehsuchians was similarly rib-based. Thus, if Hirasawa et al developmental argument for carapace formation are accepted, then in addition to bringing turtles into this euryapsid clade it also further strengthens the the idea of euryapsid monophyly.

However, the position of chelonians with respect to other euryapsids relates directly to another question pertaining to these reptiles, i.e., is euryapsida part of archosauromorpha or lepidosauromorpha? If euryapsida is not monophyletic then are specific monophyletic subclades included in it closer to archosauromorpha or not? In our opinion this is one of the biggest questions in reptilian phylogenetics that needs attention in the coming years.

In this regard, the retrograde ideas of Lyson et al linking turtles to the parareptile Eunotosaurus can be safely discounted because: 1) the molecular phylogeny unequivocally places turtles inside archosauromorpha; 2) splitting up Eureptilia as non-monophyletic or dragging the primitive Eunotosaurus into archosauromorpha are very unlikely given the rest of the molecular and morphological evidence.

In Rieppel’s earlier work the turtles and sauropterygians+saurosphargids have emerged as lepidosaurmorphs as a sister group to the lizards and tuataras. However, in Merck and Motani et al’s recent work the greater euryapsid clade has emerged as archosauromorphs. However, this linkage collapses on removing aquatic adaptations, with just the sauropterygians+saurosphargids grouping with the lepidosaurmorphs as in Rieppel’s trees. As we have discussed before, despite turtles having thoroughly adapted to marine life from some point in the Mesozoic they have never lost oviparity, a potentially disadvantageous character for marine life. In contrast, the sauropterygians and ichthyopterians rapidly evolved viviparity. Persistent oviparity, with no shifts whatsoever to viviparity, appears to be a feature of the archosauromorph clade – apparently something stemming from so deep in their reproductive biology that they cannot lose it even under strong selection. In contrast, viviparity might have been even primitive for lepidosauromorphs, and in a recent phylogenetic analysis of lizards has been shown to be extremely widespread in them. This would support a lepidosauromorph affinity for the greater euryapsid clade away from the archosauromorph turtles. However, we cannot rule out that the greater euryapsids diverged early from the remaining archosauromorphs, before the oviparity constraint emerged in them. In either case this puts considerable strain on the hypothesis which groups turtles with the greater euryapsid clade, contrary to the evidence of Hirasawa et al. Thus, the basic question still remains in need of more rigorous investigation.

Irrespective of the ultimate phylogenetic scenario, what remains clear is that shortly after the P-Tr extinction, and the dawn of the Age of the Reptiles, they underwent an extraordinary and explosive radiation into aquatic and marines environments with several comparable adaptations across distinct clades: flippers, body armor, viviparity and quite likely endothermy. Motani et al conclude their Cartorhynchus paper by stating: “The causes driving marine invasion could be multiple, including predation pressure and competition for food that may be lower in the sea than on adjacent land… The south China block was in the tropical latitudes at the time, forming a warm and humid archipelago. Future studies would be required to test if any climatic and geographic factors may have encouraged marine invasion.”

However, that this great marine radiation of reptiles was not mere chance and that there were some key biological pre-adaptations in the greater euryapsid assemblage that contributed to this process. We propose that these biological pre-adaptations were primary and whatever role climatic or geographic conditions played were secondary and transient in their effects. We hence posit that if the hypothesis of euryapsid monophyly is strengthened then hypothesis of primarily biological basis for the great marine radiation will be supported. In contrast, the more the monophyly hypothesis breaks down, more the geographic and climatic hypothesis gains credence. Cartorhynchus was from the Spathian division of the Olenekian age of the Early Triassic, approximately 248 Mya (within a window of 4 My from the great P-Tr extinction). Motani et al note that it comes from the zone marked by the ammonoid mollusc Procolumbites. In the older marine deposits from the Smithian division of the Olenekian age , i.e., the earliest part of the Triassic there are abundant fossil fishes but no reptiles have been found to date. This suggests that this great Triassic invasion of the sea began very close to 248 Mya within a mere 4 My of the great dying. The anatomy of Cartorhynchus suggests that it still retained features of its terrestrial ancestry in its limbs suggesting that it was capable of some ambulation on the shore, perhaps like the mammalian pinnipeds. Thus, at least in this case we are capturing something close to the ancestral condition for ichythyosauromorpha. By the time of the zone marked by the ammonoid Subcolumbites within a couple of more million years the explosive radiation of marine reptiles is already prominent with several new forms of various clades appearing: Recent studies by Jiang and colleagues indicate that by the end of the Spathian division we already have an ichthyopterygian Chaohusaurus and and the oldest known sauropterygian Majiashanosaurus. By the Anisian of the Middle Triassic they detect more than 15 species of marine reptiles such as the ichthyosaurs Mixosaurus and Phalarodon, the placodont Placodus, the eosauropterygians Nothosaurus and Lariosaurus and saurosphargids. By the Ladinian age of the Middle Triassic the marine reptile fauna diversifies even further to include pachypleurosaurs like Keichousaurus, Nothosaurus and Lariosaurus. They are joined by a new set of entrants in the form of the archosauromorphs of the protorosaurian clade like Macrocnemus, Fuyuansaurus and Tanystropheus, and even the poposauroid archosaur Diandongosuchus which marked the first marine invasion by the crocodile-line of archosaurs.

This invasion was marked by rapid emergence of morphological disparity: Long-necked forms, completely fish-like forms, armored forms, mollusc-crushing durophagous forms, and apex predators all emerged in a short time interval marking the reptilian conquest of the waters at a level which was never reached by the mysterious mesosaurs which are believed to be parareptiles or other Permian forms like the engimatic basal diapsids Hovasaurus, Tangasaurus and Acerosodontosaurus.

1, Wantzosaurus (trematosaurid ‘amphibian’); 2, Fadenia (eugeneodontiform chondrichthyan); 3, Saurichthys (actinopterygian ambush predator); 4, Rebellatrix (fork-tailed actinistian); 5, Hovasaurus (‘younginiform’ diapsid reptile); 6, Birgeria (fast-swimming predatory actinopterygian); 7, Aphaneramma (trematosaurid ‘amphibian’); 8, Bobasatrania (durophagous actinopterygian); 9, hybodontoid chondrichthyan with durophagous (e.g. Acrodus, Palaeobates) or tearing-type dentition (e.g. Hybodus); 10, e.g., Mylacanthus (durophagous actinistian); 11, Tanystropheus (protorosaurian reptile); 12, Corosaurus (sauropterygian reptile); 13, e.g., Ticinepomis (actinistian); 14, Mixosaurus (small ichthyosaur); 15, large cymbospondylid/shastasaurid ichthyosaur; 16, neoselachian chondrichthyan; 17, Omphalosaurus skeleton (possible durophagous ichthyosaur); 18, Placodus (durophagous sauropterygian reptile). From Scheyer et al; art by Nadine Bösch and Beat Scheffold, original copyright [2013]. However, note that the extension of ichthyosauromorphs in the Smithian is inaccurate

Further reading
• Early Triassic Marine Biotic Recovery: The Predators’ Perspective; Torsten M. Scheyer, Carlo Romano, Jim Jenks, Hugo Bucher
• A basal ichthyosauriform with a short snout from the Lower Triassic of China; Ryosuke Motani, Da-Yong Jiang, Guan-Bao Chen, Andrea Tintori, Olivier Rieppel, Cheng Ji, Jian-Dong Huang
• The endoskeletal origin of the turtle carapace Tatsuya Hirasawa, Hiroshi Nagashima, Shigeru Kuratani
• A new marine reptile from the Triassic of China, with a highly specialized feeding adaptation; Long Cheng, Xiao-hong Chen, Qing-hua Shang, Xiao-chun Wu
• The Enigmatic Marine Reptile Nanchangosaurus from the Lower Triassic of Hubei, China and the Phylogenetic Affinities of Hupehsuchia; Xiao-hong Chen, Ryosuke Motani, Long Cheng, Da-yong Jiang, Olivier Rieppel
• The Early Triassic Eosauropterygian Majiashanosaurus discocoracoidis, Gen. et sp. Nov. (REPTILIA, Sauropterygia), From Chaohu, Anhui Province, People’s Republic Of China; Da-Yong Jiang, Ryosuke Motani, Andrea Tintori, Olivier Rieppel, Guan-Bao Chen, Jian-Dong Huang, Rong Zhang, Zuo-Yu Sun, Cheng Ji
• New Information On Wumengosaurus delicatomandibularis Jiang et al., 2008 (DIAPSIDA: Sauropterygia), with a revision of the osteology and phylogeny of the taxon; Xiao-Chunwu, Yen-Nien Cheng, Chun Li, Li-Jun Zhao, Tamaki Sato

It was the last day of school and the exams were to begin at the start of the next week. Following their parents stern instructions, Jhilleeka and Varoli decided not hangout after school and were returning home on their bikes. However, they decided to take a small detour – they first crossed a shrine of a 19th century pāṣaṇḍa and reached the shrine of pātāla-rudra. They had plucked some Datura flowers and turkey berries from a fallow plot of land adjacent to their school. On reaching the shrine they placed these on the ancient liṅga, which had been installed by the mahāvratin candrabhūṣaṇa-paṇdita in the days of yore. Then they worshiped rudra by mentally reciting the secret mantra-s known as vāma-vardhana-tryaṃbaka and pratiṣṭhāpana-tryaṃbaka. Thereafter, they hopped back onto their bikes and took the homeward path after crossing a strange, large, flat boss of Deccan basalt that grotesquely jutted out off the ground. Then they rode past the government building of the water-works department with a well-maintained garden around it. They noticed an old gardener with an unkindly mien, wearing a white cap similar to that worn by a past prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, with the insignia of an open palm printed upon it. Just as they passed the gardener he darted at them and started chasing them snapping his large pair of scissors. The girls were terrified and pressed hard on their pedals but strength seemed to desert their legs. Soon they almost felt the scissors snapping at their pony tails. Screaming aloud, with one last effort they leaned forward on their handle bars and stood on their pedals. All of a sudden there was a calm. Their legs seemed to regain strength and they gained some distance. They cautiously looked back and they saw no gardener. Instead they saw a few pedestrians on the footpath beside the opposite side of the road look at them strangely. They put their hands on their head and felt their hair and heaved a sigh of relief when they found it to be intact. They looked at each other, and each could tell from the other’s face that it was a profoundly shocking and bizarre experience. On reaching home they were in two-minds whether to inform their mother about the incident or not. They let it pass and soon found themselves busy with their books as they needed to cram for the impending tests.

The recklessness of youth combined with the self-realization of their considerably above-average IQs had made Vrishchika and Lootika uncaring of their parents instructions. Despite the fact that their exams were of much greater significance, respectively in terms of their getting a seat in the college and the university, they hung out near school knowing fully well they could catch up with their cramming over the weekend. After fooling around for sometime with her friends Vrishchika realized that, despite her IQ edge, the hard-disk in her upper story was insufficiently stocked up. From the discussions of her friends, she learned to her horror that she had not even opened the pages pertaining to South America in her geography textbook. She realized that she was unsure of the very location of Brazil on the continent, leave alone the climatic zones it harbored or its exports. It hit her rather hard when one of her friends noted that, contrary to her perception, Brazil was bigger than India. Her friend rubbed in the salt by quipping: “Even the akhaṇḍa bhārata you keep talking about is not going to get you there”. Vrishchika realizing the Brazil-sized enormity of the lacunae in her learning quickly returned home to apply herself to the books. Lootika and Somakhya were having a whale of a time beside a fast-food joint talking about and planning all the fun things they were to do after the exams. It seemed to them as though the exams were already over, when Somakhya glanced at his watch and realized how late it was. It struck them they could not get any meaningful study done that day – this was no trifling matter given that neither of them had opened their organic chemistry textbook or even attended a single lecture of conics and vectors. All this they had boldly planned to finish over the weekend,which included the several hours of the Friday which they had just whiled away. On top of that Somakhya was supposed to instruct Vidrum on certain matters, who insistently reminded him about that. Vidrum made matters worse by telling him: “Bro, remember there have been times we have lost to Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Kenya! And even a good batsman can snick the ball to the slips.”

They decided to head straight home and fall asleep and make up for the hours by rising early the next morning. Somakhya knew that his parents would not wake him up given that they were major critics of his tradition of discovering and cramming stuff on the day before the exam. Hence, he asked Lootika to give him a call as soon as she woke up so that he could hit books early. When Lootika went home she was confronted by Jhilleeka who was cross that she did not come in time to help her with the Sanskrit verbs. Lootika having her own ship to salvage callously remarked: “Jhilleeka, Shrinivasa Ramanujan knew all the possible forms verbs could take across the dhātupāṭha when he was four. I know you are no Ramanujan but you are not that young any more and could get at least fraction of that into your head by yourself.” Thus, brushing her sister aside she hit the bed. Hours later Lootika was savoring the climax of a sweet dream, when it was rudely interrupted by the sound of a rattling drum. Startled she woke up, looked out of her window, and saw a tall wandering ascetic pass by her home holding a trident and beating his ḍamaru. He started saying something in a loud voice. She paid attention to that closely as such ascetics were said to have prognostic abilities after their rituals at the cremation ground. She heard him say: “suṭa suṭa khaṭa khaṭa khiṭi khiṭi khuṭu khuṭu । druhiṇasya patnyo haṃsā jalpanti । nadati nadati kumārasya kukkuṭaḥ । vetālasya protsāhena vadiṣyami ।”

Then he uttered some gibberish twice. After the first repeat Lootika became alert and wrote it down on a piece of paper: “ti-ya-drakṣ-maṃ-grā-saṅ-vraṃ-tī-se-ma-min-as-yam-ca-niś-ti-sa-va-min-as-he-gṛ-sā-kā-tri-pu-ṣṭa-jye|”

She then quickly called Somakhya to wake him up and proceeded to have her bath. Before getting started with the books, she spent a several minutes meditating on various deities with their respective mantra-s and upon conclusion smeared a tilaka on her forehead. At that moment it hit her that the ascetic had conveyed a viparīta saṃdeśa. She went back to the slip of paper and checked it out and to her horror realized that it was a rather ominous prognosis for her, especially given the impending exams. She was scared; nearly in tears and walked out to the terrace of her home wanting to call Somakhya and tell him about this. Looking out on to the road she saw Meghana racing along with Vidrum to make it in time for the pre-exam tutorials. She also saw the young sun lighting up the horizon and felt charged by that sight and felt that the power of the great kṣatriya and the wise asura was with her. Now she felt less intimidated by the message and decided in light of it she would be better of cutting her way through her books without further delay.

◊◊◊◊

The exams finally got over. Lootika felt relieved – they had gone much better than she had expected, despite her last minute preparations. She could concur with some of the guys in the group with whom she was hanging out that it felt like sending the ball to and over the fence, though she cared little for cricket. Silently, she told herself that after all the ascetic might have gotten it all wrong. The guys said that they were going to be playing a trio of twenty-twenty matches in the coming days and asked Lootika and the other girls to be spectators cheering their exploits on the field. She laughed them off saying she had better things to do than waste her time at a game of cricket played by amateurs. Thus, she returned home leaving the guys to their game. There she spent some time pacifying Jhilleeka who was still cross with her for her brusqueness and tried to regale her by teaching her how to write some code for generating interesting graphics. Most of the next day was spent cleaning up their room. Later that evening all four sisters decided to go biking to get some fresh air. After racing away on a long ride at top speed they went to the flat basaltic boss. Sitting down upon it to get some rest, they gazed towards the western sky in the competition of who would see Venus and Mercury first, even as the sun went down. Just then, Lootika noticed that her classmate Vidrum had appeared with Maurvi, a girl from a different college whom she knew in passing. They waved at Lootika and went and seated themselves at a bench beside the basaltic upheaval. Shortly thereafter she saw another classmate Meghana suddenly emerge from behind the crag rush at Vidrum and Maurvi uttering profanities in the language of the extant pāñcanada-s. Vidrum swiftly slipped away leaving the two girls behind and the two began fighting loudly, such that the others could hear them. Lootika and her sisters realized that it was an ugly situation and hopped on to their bikes to make an exit.

As they had sat on the basaltic escarpment the two younger sisters had narrated to the older ones their strange experience beside the water-works department building. So Lootika and Vrishchika decided to lead them home via an alternate route, a road on which lay a small masjid, which had been built atop an ancient shrine of the goddess padmāvatī during the invasion of Mohammed bin Tughlaq. As they were cycling past the masjid they heard the crier announce the evening call. Hearing it, Jhilleeka wondered what language it was in. Her sisters explained to her that it was a language spoken in the arid deserts of West Asia. In course of that conversation Vrishchika wryly remarked: “Normally when we have diseases of pandemic proportions caused by pathogens with genes people go to great lengths to eradicate it. That was the case with variola and polio. But when it comes to diseases caused by pathogens with memes, like marūnmāda and pretonmāda we have whole sections of the nation celebrate them and invite their infection, even though these memetic pathogens will exterminate our people in the long run!” The two younger sisters were fascinated by the idea of the meme that they had just learned about from the elder ones. They had many questions and spent the rest of their waking hours that evening talking about both genetics and memetics, till they lay on their cots and fell asleep.

Over the next few days the girls had a lot to do. Jhilleeka was fascinated by magnets and played with the circuits which Somakhya had made as a young kid and had gifted her via Lootika. Thus, she was taught herself more about electromagnetism. For her most recent birthday her parents had gifted her a powerful horseshoe magnet which she took along wherever she went. While they were sitting on the escarpment she had run the magnet on its surface and picked up several globules of iron embedded in the basaltic rock. This piqued Varoli’s attention who wondered how those iron globules got there. She first decided to do some comparative qualitative analysis; so they collected a large number of the globules and also broke some pieces of basalt. This kept Varoli busy in their home-lab doing chemical analysis to determine the elemental composition of the globules and the basalt. Vrishchika had found a dead rhinoceros beetle in the garden and was dissecting it carefully to learn more of its anatomy. Lootika spent her time studying a Sanskrit text termed the bhīmasena-vinoda in which Somakhya had noted the therapeutic use of the insect-killing fungi of the Ophiocordyceps complex. Hence, she alternated her time between the text and investigating the proteinaceous toxins produced by Ophiocordyceps and also the predatory mushroom Laccaria. In addition to checking on each other periodically, at lunch and dinner the sisters would discuss each other’s progress. In the evenings they usually went bike racing on long rounds. But on that day Lootika decided not to go biking by rather took their family scooter and decided to rendezvous with Somakhya.

◊◊◊◊

On meeting Somakhya, Lootika showed the chomma of the snake; he responded with the chomma of the sparrow. She asked: So how did the cricket go? Somakhya: “Not bad I scored a 42 in one of the matches albeit with some streaky shots through slips but it was all in vain!” L: “Why? you lost?” S: “No, a physical fight broke out when the opposing team saw us gain the upper hand. As it grew more violent and the weapons came out I fled the ground knowing that discretion is the better part of valor.”

Lootika then presented the sequences of the genes that corresponded to the protein toxins and introduced the strange problem, which confronted her with respect to the lack of a signal peptide in the protein coded by the second gene. Somakhya stared at those sequences for some time and then did some analysis of them on his computer with Lootika seated beside him. The result indicated what kind of toxin they were dealing and suddenly he realized what was going in Lootika’s experiments. He proposed to her a way of zeroing in on the toxin’s catalytic activity. Lootika high-fived Somakhya and was almost wanting to go back and initiate the requisite experiments. But the proteins were not the only reason she wanted to meet Somakhya. Other than endless talking about mysterious protein and nucleic acid molecules they shared other fascinations like that hardly any others in the country cared for, namely reptiles and stem mammals. Hence, they spent some time in silence drawing fossil reptiles and there after talking about them. That day they drew Euchambersia, Aelurosaurus, Njalila, and Inostrancevia. They felt a strange sense awe after drawing, a sense of coming face-to-face with their long-lost ancestors. They saw themselves in those long-gone synapsids, they marveled at their canines, and the dentary bone expanding to take over the lower jaw. Thus, they would have gone on endlessly, but Lootika suddenly realized it was getting dark and it was better she got back home. However, before parting she had something else to say.

Lootika: “Could you O son of a vipra finally initiate me into the aṣṭākṣara-kaumāra-manu that secret manu of the ancient bhārgava-s.”
Somakhya: “O daughter of a vipra, Lootika, there are some mantra-s I have taught you without much ado. But this should be given by a teacher who has no special feeling towards the student beyond an accurate evaluation of his competence. If you were a guy I would have strictly gone only by your competence. But I must confess that your charms have a hold on me and I would be inclined to impart you this mantra without bothering to objectively evaluate you. But tradition has to be transmitted without any attachments of special feelings even as brahmā conferred powers on hiraṇyākṣa or hiraṇyakaśipu despite their being diti-jana-s.”
L: “However, a true mantra should be reproducible by a competent sādhakā even as the activity of an enzyme by a good biochemist, and that should be test enough of whether I am fit or not. Moreover, I have seen enough of a yogin in you that you will not merely give something due to your feelings to me. I also do believe I make the basic cut; hence, this should not badly backfire as you will not be conferring the mantra on a ḍimbhikā”.
S: “I know you are no ḍimbhikā and this mantra but in your own interests I suggest that you take a different route for I do not see enough perfection in my yoga to be above your womanly charms. This mantra could sink both you and me in a seizure, much like what the old drāviḍa-s would call the murukan-veri.”
L: “But I doubt an alternative teacher exists.”
S: “Not so fast! There is the brāhmaṇa’s daughter Shilpika who had taught us the devabhāṣā when we were kids. She now teaches at the college beyond the hill of śiva and the cremation ground. She belongs to the same larger lineage of ātharvaṇa-s as I, descending from the very muni who first received the conglomerated lore of the bhṛgu-s. Her clan had lost the kumāra-śāsana but she has re-obtained it from a teacher among the kaliṅga-s. I shall inform her that you desire to receive the manu. She will then evaluate your situation.”

Lootika always game for challenge declared that she was eager to face the test from the brāhmaṇa’s daughter. Then they rode their vehicles to a corner near the road that Lootika had to take to get back home They stopped to chat briefly at that place regarding certain mysteries of the transmission of the kaumāra-śāsana that were known only to a few brāhmaṇa-s. They then exchanged chomma-s of the sun and the demilune and went their ways.

◊◊◊◊

It was a Friday and the four sisters went to the museum near their house, which characteristic of such establishments in bhārata, was open only for 4 hours from 11.00 AM to 3.00 PM. The sisters visited the museum every month on the last Friday, never tiring of the many activities they had there. Some days they sketched the fossils, skeletons, preserved and stuffed animals, plants, and organs, as photography was strictly prohibited. Other days Lootika, and sometimes Vrishchika, accessed the paleontological, microbiological and zoological journals in the museum’s library. Outside the museum was a garden with a few benches. Lootika used to collect pulmonate snails that were found in a perpetually wet part of the garden as part of their snail project. Somakhya had narrated to Lootika the tale of William Benson. After the last of the marāṭhā resistance had been pulverized by the English, they sent Mr. Benson as an administrator to lord over the newly conquered possessions. Benson trained a band of gūrkhā-s to help in collecting molluscs and had generated the first comprehensive survey of the land snails of bhāratavarṣa. Somakhya pointed out that the Hindus had failed to do something like that in their own land, following on the footsteps of their own naturalists like the great ātharvaṇa lādyāyana, lay at the root of their demise at the hands of the mleccha-s. There was much biology left to be discovered despite the Zoological Survey of India re-doing much of what Benson and his English successors had done. Somakhya, even before reaching the age of 10, had already made some progress in his studies on the biology of Cecilioides bensoni with his parents’ help. When he made acquaintance with Lootika, he realized he could take advantage of her virtuoso molecular biology and biochemistry skills to take it to the next level. Thus emerged their snail project, but it never got to where they wanted it to go. Finally, that summer they found a sufficiently long stretch of free time to take it up. They had planned to study the most remarkable snail Indrella ampulla. Since Lootika’s hands were already tied with her fungal explorations, Lootika had deputed Vrishchika to take the lead in helping Somakhya with the snail project. In the museum they checked out the Mesozoic fossils of land snails to test the hypothesis Somakhya had developed that a large group of snails from Western Indian descended from a single Mesozoic snail related to Corilla. Jhilleeka was also getting interested in the snail project as she had written a program to model the morphogenesis of unusual shells like Tortulosa and Ophisthostoma. As a result she discovered a relationship between the scale factor and the shape of the helical spiral, and was consequently able to combine them into a single equation. She was gathering material in the museum library to write a paper on this with Lootika and Somakhya.

Vrishchika went out to the wet garden patch to collect some snails. As Vrishchika went out, she saw her senior Vidrum sitting on one of the benches beside Maurvi in the museum garden and chatting. Some time later, Jhilleeka who was writing the draft of her paper in the library got stuck and decided to wander outside to open up her mind. So she headed to the garden to join Vrishchika. Just then she saw a slick looking guy sidle up towards the benches. He held a couple of bottles his hand and was headed towards Vidrum and Maurvi, when he intersected Jhilleeka on her way to the garden. He raised his clenched fist and struck out at her, but Jhilleeka being small evaded his blow by ducking swiftly. All four sisters were natural siddhā-s of five mantra-s, one of which was that of terrible bear-yoginī ṛkṣakarṇī and the four others they shared with the long gone Khmer king and his purohita. Realizing the guy’s hostile intention, Jhilleeka instantaneously brought to mind the ṛkṣakarṇī manu as a whole with the abhicārika saṃkalpa. The attacker saw a great black bear rush at him and in great fear ran away at top speed dropping the two bottles. The manu was not to be used casually, and if one of the sisters deployed it the others knew of its deployment nearly instantaneously. So they all sought each other and were soon in a huddle outside the museum. Jhilleeka narrated to the rest what had happened. Varoli in the mean time placed a marble pebble on the contents of one of the bottles that she had carefully tipped over. It fizzed vigorously. What could the bottles of acid mean? Lootika quickly understood what was happening and realized that it was probably an agent sent by Meghana to throw acid on Maurvi and/or Vidrum. She went up to them and informed them of the potential danger. They quickly got up and ran away. Lootika then herded her sisters and they all biked back home.

◊◊◊◊

Lootika woke up early that amāvāsya and performed some purificatory rituals. She then invoked the deva bṛhaspati and concluded his ritual by placing an oblation of ghee in the center of the ritual fire. She then hopped on to her bike and headed to her former teacher Shilpika’s house.

There Shilpika was also thinking of this matter and said to her husband: “Somakhya asks me to evaluate this girl Lootika for a powerful and secret mantra. Young men are often caught by the charms of women and are over-eager to share such things that should not be shared. After all the great raikva of the mahāvṛṣa-s parted with the secret vidyā of the great deva vāyu swindled by the face of jānaśruti’s daughter.”
Shilpika’s husband: “After all the kaliṅga conferred to you that mantra, which even your father the ātharvaṇa did not know. So may be she is genuine but we must rigorously check her.”
Shilpika:”Could you please join me in testing her; I do not want to give this mantra for the undeserving.”

Soon Lootika reached their place. After some exchange of pleasantries Shilpika’s husband spoke to her: “Should we not suspect your mantra credentials. After all it seems you have learned much of your stuff from that young brāhmaṇa Somakhya. But he is certainly of suspect standing himself. Shilpika and I have seen him singing a Vedic song while lying down in the pitṛvana. Which respectable brāhmaṇa would do that?”
Lootika: “I have learned much from my parents when young but indeed most rahasya-s I have learned from Somakhya. Sir, why would you call him suspect? In fact only one versed in the high rahasya-s would known what Vedic practice he might be carrying out in the cremation ground.”
Shilpika’s husband: “Whoever does a Vedic practice in the cremation ground?”
Lootika: “Why sir? That is the practice of the mysterious videha-sāman by which the ancient bhārgava-s achieved parakāya-praveśa and the one which was practiced in the pitṛvana by the great ritualist prātṛda bhālla in the realm of the kuru and the pañcāla.”
Shilpika’s husband: “Alright. But you are yourself rather impure to receive high mantra-s”
Lootika: “Sir, why is that so?”
Shilpika’s husband: “My dear wife tells me that in the saṃskṛta class you used be the drawing kapāla-s of various animals. Rather than using the term bhagala you would say kapāla. We also know from our friends that you spend you time with kyākuja-s, kīṭaka-s, and even worse gāṇḍulapada-s and jalauka-s. You grow such impure animals and fungi in your house. How could a pure brāhmaṇa girl do such things?”
Lootika: “I am the daughter of an aṅgira and my ancestor the great vāmadeva had said in the chant that is deployed in manifold ways in the ritual action known as the dūrohaṇam or the great ascent of the yajamāna. It is by that action the somayājin attains perfection; it is by that action the temples of Hindus attain completion:
haṃsaḥ śuciṣad vasur antarikṣasad dhotā vediṣad atithir duroṇasat ।
nṛṣad varasad ṛtasad vyomasad abjā gojā ṛtajā adrijā ṛtam ॥ indro viśvasya rājato3m
The goose seated in rays, the vasu seated in the sky;
the hotṛ seated at the altar, the guest seated in the house;
seated in men, seated in the wide earth,
seated in the natural law, seated in space;
born from water, born from cows,
born from the natural law, born from rocks,
such is the great natural law.
That is indra the ruler of the universe OM!

Now, what indeed is ajbā?
The great god bhagavān kumāra, whose mantra I seek, taught the aṅgiras known as nārada thus:
āpa evemā mūrtā yeyaṃ pṛthivī yad antarikṣaṃ yad dyaur yat parvatā yad deva manuṣyā yat paśavaś ca vayāṃsi ca tṛṇa-vanaspatayaḥ śvāpadāny ākīṭa-pataṅga-pipīlakam ।
āpa evemā mūrtāḥ । apa upāsva ॥
All these are particular forms of water: earth, atmosphere, sky, rocks, deva-s, humans, mammals, birds, herbs, trees, and all animals down to the worms, moths and ants. They are all particular forms of water. So worship water.

Thus, one knows the supreme ṛta only if one completely understands the abjā and those I study are indeed in the domain of water and all the other fundamentals elucidated by the great bhagavān skanda in his great teaching.”

Shilpika’s husband: “Young lady, you are firm in your siddhānta, fit to receive the mantra. But now we shall see what your practical abilities are.”

He continued: “Three blocks from our home is a house which a gentleman has bought and is trying to occupy. However, he is unable to do so because of a valaga which has been placed in it. Whenever the gentleman enters the house his fresh clothes are dumped in the latrine the next morning. Would you be able to locate the valaga and figure out the prayoga by which it has been activated? We know this is something very dangerous for a young lady; we will come along with you if you wish to look at the house.”
Lootika: “Let us go and check out the house. But keep a fistful of barley grains ready for me.”
They soon stood before the house. Lootika adjusted her spectacles and took a careful look at it and went around a few times looking at it, peering through all the windows and taking some notes of the dimensions on her tablet. Then she told Shilpika and her husband that she was ready to return and solve the matter. They then returned home and Shilpika handed over the fistful of barley to Lootika along with a bronze plate. Shilpika and her husband watched wide-eyed what Lootika did next. She performed an ācamana and sprinkled water on herself after touching various parts of her body. She then threw a few grains in certain directions muttering certain incantations. Thereafter, she heaped the barley on the plate and muttered the incantation known as aindrāvaiṣṇavī. Then she spread those grains into the outline of the targeted house and sat in meditation of a secret vetāla-bhairava mantra for some time. She seemed to be in a trance for some time, as though she was the daughter of pataṅjala kāpya possessed by kabandha ātharvaṇa. Thereafter, she dropped a barley seed in one of the outlines of the rooms and pointing to it said: “In that room, in that position lies the valaga. It was installed by a prayoga known as the turuṣkarāja-bhairavaṃ. That suggests that the abhicārin is perhaps one who has or whose ancestors had contracted the vile memetic disease known as marūnmāda. If you wish, I could come back tomorrow and break the valaga once I have suitably protected myself with appropriate prayoga-s.”

Shilpika and her husband’s jaws almost dropped. They could hardly believe what they were seeing. After some time Shilpika spoke: “You are entirely fit for the aṣṭākṣarī vidyā and more. I suggest that you get it from Somakhya directly because he knows its siddhānta more perfectly and when mantra-s are transmitted it is best the siddhānta-s are suitably transmitted too. I will convey this to him. As for the valaga we do not want you to incur harm in anyway so do not worry about extracting it. After all it is not your business nor were you called to intercede.”

◊◊◊◊

Lootika had phoned Somakhya to set up the appropriate aṣṭaka day for them him to give her the due dīkṣa in the mantra. While her mother had sent her on an errand to by a few spices, she ran into Maurvi and Vidrum eating greasy samosā-s by the grocer’s shop. They offered to get her a samosā, perhaps as a gesture in return for her sister blocking the intended attack on them. Lootika refused saying that she was observing a vrata and was avoiding abhojya and abhakṣya food. Then Maurvi asked: “Hey spider-girl, do you know of someone called kuṭṭi Shareef? Meghana threatened that she would take his help to punish us.”
Lootika: “His name sounds like a South Indian marūnmatta but I have never heard of one such.”
Maurvi: “Anyhow, I have found out a peddler who sells some great fabrics, garments and footwear for really inexpensive prices. Would you like to accompany me later today to check them out?”
Lootika: “That sounds great. I will certainly come along.” Then remembering that she had promised to help her mother with cooking that day she hurried back with the spices.

Normally, Lootika’s mother never let her daughters to step into the kitchen. This was despite having long watched the skills of at least the older three at their home lab, with even a sense of some pride at her children’s experimental abilities. However, when it came to the kitchen she feared that they might contaminate the food with their contact with all manner of biological samples. She also hated Lootika’s approach to cooking which involved using pipettes, burettes, centrifuges and measuring cylinders. She always chided Lootika saying that such precise measurements were not the real secret of good cooking; rather it needed a natural feel even as Lootika had in molecular biology. Her mother remarked: “When you do your cloning or protein purification how often do you go strictly by the published protocol? Do you not do things based on the intuition you have? Then why do you want to have so many measurements for something so much less precise.” Lootika had been pestering her to try out a new recipe she had divined for a turkey-berry curry. So finally her mother had acceded. As they were in the kitchen mother and daughter were chatting about various things, when Lootika told her about the prognosis of the ascetic who passed by their house. Her mother looked into her eyes and said: “Really dear Lootika? I did not hear the guy that day but few days ago I heard him say something which I decoded as: tava snuṣā dahiṣyati. I panicked at first. But since I really have no son I felt it was for someone else.” When the cooking was over Lootika refrigerated some of her curry to take to Somakhya. After lunch she heard Maurvi call from outside: “Hey cobweb-girl! come! let’s be going!” Lootika jumped onto her family scooter and left with Maurvi.

Continued…

By the time we were between the seven and eight years of age we had acquired some elements of the history our people from our parents: We knew of the coming of the ārya-s and the relationship of Indo-Aryan languages to other Indo-European languages. We had some idea of the central role this event played in the establishment of our identity as a people and as a nation, and that the historical events behind the two epics, which had been narrated to us by our father, happened after the conquest of northern India by the ārya-s. We had also learned of the existence of the mysterious IVC. In the telescoped historical narratives received from our parents, we were also made aware of certain great Hindu figures like candragupta the mauryan and his mentor kauṭilya, yajña śātakarṇi, chandragupta-II vikramAditya and bhojadeva paramāra. Then we had also been given an outline of the murder and destruction brought upon us by Mahmud Ghaznavi, Alla-ad-Khalji, Mohammad bin Tughlaq, Baboor, and Awrangzeb. Finally, we were told of the Hindu fight back featuring kṛṣṇadevarāya and śivājī as the chief heroes. A timely visit to the monuments of indraprastha and some forts in the marāṭhā country had impressed upon us the reality of this narrative. From a tourist guide purchased on the former occasion we embellished our knowledge beyond the above rudiments our parents had supplied. While allusions were made to our humiliating defeat at the hands of the English in 1857 CE and the eventual release from them in 1947 CE, we were not much informed about those events. The tourist guide had already led us to realize that 1857 was a landmark event that needed to be understood in greater detail. That indeed was the sum total of our historical knowledge as we faced our first formal history lessons at school via the medium of a slim textbook and an awfully boring teacher.

The said textbook comprised in its entirety, with neither an introduction nor a conclusion, of a series of biographies of leaders from the post-1857 CE period. It started with a brief account of the Iranian leader Dadabhai Naoroji and ended with interminably long chapter on cācājī, whom we learned was the collective uncle of the nation. In the middle of the book was an equally long chapter on the “father of the nation” interspersed between these were others like Tilak, Patel, Lala, Aurobindo, Mewlana, and the like. For most of our school days we were in a division of the class that primarily comprised of weak students who had been set aside after their dismal kindergarten performance. We were pretty happy with that for, barring a few jealous rivals, we were like the one-eyed man in the city of the blind. The history teacher soon realized that most of our division did not know why the English had taken control of bhārata in the first place for these leaders to be doing their stuff like Indian National Congress, satyāgraha, and all that. So she decided it was not worth covering all the biographies in the textbook for our division and skipped several arbitrarily. On the whole we were not unhappy about this because the ways of the father and uncle, who had been foisted upon us, were troubling to say the least. We, being a descendant of the vengeful brāhmaṇa clan of the bhṛgu-s, who went to great lengths to slaughter their enemies and fill up five lakes with their blood, found this satyāgraha business very strange. After all these barbarous Christian invaders are even denying us salt and all we do is some daṇḍāvālā march, cloth-burning, and wheel-turning – pretty deflating, we thought to ourselves. However, among those skipped biographies was a character whom I learned of for the first time named Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. While it was not required for the exam, I read his biography with some interest and felt: “Hey, this man seems much better than those satyāgrahin-s, who get their skulls cracked open but draw not even a drop of enemy blood in return.” We asked our parents more about this man and they supplied us an amara-citra-kathā comic, which only got us more excited about the man. Then we saw a Hindi documentary on television titled āzādī kī kahānī, which while extremely primitively made, was a surprising one in those secular years for it began with vīra-hammīra and harihara-deva-rāya and went all the way down to Subhas Chandra Bose. We thus learned of his saying: “The enemy has already drawn the sword. He must, therefore, be fought with the sword.” This seemed to make a lot of sense and was a refreshing contrast to the Gandhi-Nehru stuff as it resonated so well with the ātatāyin rule which lies in core of the sanātana dharma [Footnote 1]

This increased our interest in knowing more of the man and we saw more documentaries or perhaps even a film on TV and read what ever other information we could gather from occasional articles in newspapers. Thus, we learned that Dadabhai Naoroji’s granddaughter, a close confidant of Gandhi had said right within his āśrama to a mleccha journalist:
“If Bose entered India at the head of an Indian army he could rally the whole country… He is more popular than Nehru, and in certain circumstances had a stronger appeal than Gandhi.”
As we kept winding our way through our educational travails, we saw our classmates resonate with the above statement, even as many of them hummed an Urdu marching tune: In general the sentiment was pretty unanimous that Bose was the real man, not the father or the uncle. The plus side of this was that unlike the previous generation we were not be fooled by the charms of the two being thrust upon us. However, we noticed that strangely the farther we advanced in school our textbooks had lesser and lesser of SCB while intolerably bulking up on the stuti-s of the faux mahātman, the cācājī and their cohorts. In the last year of school and the last year of formal history, SCB was reduced to no more than three to four sentences, while Herr Hitler, comrade Stalin and the evil butcher Churchill got to fill up a whole chapter. In the final tally Indira Gandhi probably had more more space than Mr. Bose. In contrast, almost every year our Hindi textbook had a chapter on Bose (though none on Gandhi or Nehru), which was nothing short of laudatory and presented him as great hero. Similarly, we noticed that whereas the film on Gandhi made by an Englishman was repeatedly broadcast on television (our school even sponsored us to see it the theater due to a local Kangress politician’s largess), and the birth/death anniversaries of the cācājī and the mahātman were national affairs, that of SCB generally passed in silence, or, at best, received a one line mention in the vernacular news broadcast. This dissonance did not escape our eyes.

In addition, we had the chance to speak to our grandfather who had overlapped in time with SCB. We heard with great interest as he narrated how he clandestinely heard the speeches of Bose on the Japanese broadcast using his old radio. He agreed that the speeches had an rousing effect and that they felt for the first time that release from the clutches of the barbarous mleccha-s was a possibility. On being pressed further he remarked that SCB’s role in independence was important but it was perhaps being purposely undermined by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. However, on being asked if SCB should have been our prime minister he was surprisingly unenthusiastic. To us his objections did not seem to directly address the issue of Bose’s standing with respect to prime-ministership. In a nutshell his three objections were: 1) He felt the coming of Bose into India would have sparked a civil war that would have damaged the nation worse than the partition of 1947. 2) Bose trusted the prācya-s too much. He remarked [strangely to us at that point] that after the #bindudhvaja#-s were defeated SCB would made a deal with the cīna-s and facilitated an invasion or a land grab even bigger that of 1962. 3) He declared that SCB would have certainly set up a dictatorship and he felt that would be worse than the state set up by our bungling politicians, especially once Bose died or grew senile. We must state that by that time we were squarely on the side of the SCB admirers; so his objections did not bother us, and came across as lame to us.

Some years later we were having a long conversation with ekanetra on WW2, especially the geopolitical aspects of it. In course of that he remarked that if a fiery vaṅga had to lead the armed movement during WW2 it should have been “bāghā” Jatin. We countered as to what was wrong with SCB? After all we said that the Japanese warriors had declared that if there was a man who embodied the Samurai spirit in the true sense it was SCB. We further added that the Germans had said that they felt that SCB had planned everything about how to run India with the same organizational genius shown by the Germans. We concluded by stating that SCB was after all the natural culmination of the the process initiated by bāghā Jatin via Rash Behari Bose. This did not seem to have any effect on ekanetra – we knew he is one who can easily hold his position if he displayed the kind of certainty he showed on his face. So we waited for him to offer his point. He brought to our notice several statements of SCB [For a more chronological discourse on SCB’s proclivities that will be discussed below see the extensive work by śrī Sarvesh Tiwari]. One such was his remark when the INA was to set forth to combat the English.
“So long as ghāzīs are filled with the zeal of the Dīn, the sword of Hindustan will reach the takht of London.” (apparently a verse by the last Mogol emperor during the war of 1857)
Then ekanetra turned to us and asked: “Do you want someone like that to be at the head of the country?”
Suddenly, it seemed that this showed a statement by SCB in new light:
“It was misnomer to talk of Muslim rule when describing the political order in India prior to the advent of the British … as the administration was run by Hindus and Muslims together.” He was apparently referring to his kāyastha ancestors who faithfully served Mohammedan tyrants in vaṅga.

However, despite that glimmer of doubt we were not to change our opinion easily. We shot back to ekanetra pointing out that even Savarkar had said similar things in his work on 1857, and so had svamin Vivekananda, the inspiration behind bāghā Jatin. We added that after all SCB had said referring to Tilak that “Mandalay is a place of pilgrimage sanctified by one of India’s greatest men by continuous residence for a period of six years.” Thus, we should see him as a successor to the great Tilak, which certainly the wheel-turning mahātman and cācā were not? ekanetra responded by stating that irrespective of the various statements Savarkar or svamin Vivekananda might have made, their ultimate commitment to the Hindu cause was never in doubt. But he felt the same can never be said of the vaṅga-s Chittaranjan Das or SCB and suggested that we should go through the “Gandhi papers” and certain older newspaper articles with statements by Subbier Appadurai Ayer, the propaganda minister of the Azad Hind government. SAA had alluded to an incident, which ekanetra later pointed to us: The rich vaiśya-s from the dramiḻa country were major helpers of the Azad Hind government and army. When the Japanese took SCB to Singapore many of them came forward to make huge donations of personal wealth for the liberation of bhārata. These vaṇij-s had installed a spear of kumāra in Singapore on the way to their business centers in Malaysia and subsequently built a substantial temple at that site known as the daṇḍāyudhapāṇi temple (the rod-wielding kumāra). As big donors to SCB’s venture the dramiḻa śreṣṭin-s wanted him to visit the temple and receive the blessings from a rite specially performed for him. However, they apparently refused to allow his Mohammedan acolytes into the temple; so SCB refused to go to the temple. It is claimed that they finally they acceded and allowed them to join SCB to the temple. When he reached the temple he was greeted by a large throng of INA volunteers. SCB did not want to enter the garbhāgṛha but the arcaka pushed him and his Mohammedan friends in and put tilaka-s on their foreheads. As soon as they came out of the temple premises SCB made it a point to rub off the tilaka [Footnote 2].

Thereafter ekanetra opened our eyes for the first time regarding the role of SCB in suppressing “vande mātaram” of fellow vaṅga Vankimchandra for Iqbal’s “sāre jahān se accha hindustān hamārā”. Finally, he turned to what he called the Gandhi papers i.e., the writings of MKG. The vyuptakeśa wheel-turner had said: “Though the INA failed in their immediate objective, they have a lot to their credit of which they might well be proud. The greatest among these was to gather together, under one banner, men from all religions and races of India, and infuse into them the spirit of solidarity and oneness to the utter exclusion of all communal and parochial sentiment.”

It then hit us that the Gandhian fantasies and those of SCB were not very different after all. This combined with his yearning for Germanic Führer-hood could have made him a dictator [today we would say an even more monstrous manifestation of Mamata Banerjee] who could have facilitated an Islamic takeover of the whole of bhārata. From then on our fascination about SCB waned and we no longer actively sought to know more about him or his venture. More recently śrī Sarvesh Tiwari wrote a detailed analysis on this topic (see above for link): this drove the proverbial nail into the coffin for us – it only got worse from where ekanetra had led us to – SCB was a rather irredeemable case. Or as ST put it more recently in response to ekanetra: “From what you guys are saying his racy Urdu tune was perhaps the only good thing about him”. All of this said, we cannot still deny his contribution to the freedom movement, however “misguided a patriot” he might have ironically been. Thus, he becomes yet another exhibit in the showcase of history illustrating the Hindu fuzziness in response to the Mohammedan’s single-minded pursuit.

So should the pendulum swing all the way to the other extreme ? More precisely where should we place SCB in the whole scheme of things that matter to the Hindus?
To get a better understanding of this we should go back some time in history. The Indians, like the their Iranian and Greek cousins had a tradition of mercenary warriors or bhṛtaka senya-s or āyudha-jīvin-s. That this was an ancient tradition is suggested the legend of the loan of such mercenaries by the yadu chief kṛṣṇa devakīputra to the king duryodhana. Similarly we know of Greek mercenaries fighting on the side of the Iranians against their brethren in the Greco-Iranian showdown. Indeed, contrary to certain modern Western characterizations of the Greco-Iranian conflict as a west versus east or democracy versus barbarism conflict, there were numerous Greeks fighting till the end on the Iranian side against the Greek alliance. Likewise Iranian mercenaries fought on the side of the Greeks and Macedonians until at least until the “national holy war” organized by the Spitamenes, the descendant of Zaratushtra against the Macedonians. Similarly, Indians served as mercenaries in Iranian and Greek armies – something believed to have gone all the way back to the Illiadic war. We also have good evidence for both Greek and Iranian mercenaries in India all the way to the Tamil country where the kadaṃba-s had Iranian mercenaries assisting them against the pallava-s. Thus, this feature could have well been an old Indo-European trait. This feature of Hindu military organization proved deleterious to them when they clashed with the Abrahamisms: The Mogols first and the Western Europeans thereafter learned quickly to tap into this resource to detriment of the Hindus. Among the latter, the French leaders Marquis Dupleix and Monsieur Debussy managed to mobilize it first but came against the Hindu nationalist force of the marāṭhā-s, which successfully neutralized this attempt and also managed to divert part of the mercenary force to their own side. However, the failure of their zero-sum game with the English and the disastrous defeat at Panipat, which destroyed many of the regular marāṭhā divisions, allowed this resourced to be exploited by the English. This was indeed the biggest asset which made England a superpower. It was this Indian mercenary force by which they conquered India in the first place. It was with this force that they managed to break the mighty Ch’ing empire of the Manchus. Most importantly it was this force that helped the English decisively settle the sibling rivalry with their German cousins by precipitating the two world wars to bring the later down. Even today the English army has an elite force of Gorkha mercenaries from Nepal.

But this was not entirely without glitches of the English: In 1857 CE the marāṭhā leadership had made one last attempt to create a national confederation including not just themselves but various Hindu groups from the rājpūt-s to the Assamese, and as a sore thumb, the Mohammedan Jihadists. This lured back a significant fraction of the mercenaries to the nationalist cause. However, its eventual failure meant that by definition the mercenaries would return to the English fold. The INA of SCB was in large part a comparable attempt, although his personal charisma perhaps played nearly as big a role as the pure nationalist instinct of the fighters. In general both the English and the Indians saw this attempt as a parallel of 1857 CE. In fact, Savarkar’s larger plan can be interpreted similarly. He suggested that Hindus enlist in large numbers on the side of the English for WW2. Many Indian saw this contra-national unlike SCB’s attempt – indeed leading to Savarkar’s standing being damaged to an extent. However, his thinking was that by this act Indians, in particular Hindus, would be sufficiently armed and militarily trained to break the English stranglehold after WW2, now fighting or threatening to do so for a purely nationalist cause. He also correctly reasoned that this would give them sufficient military training and man-power to return to the unfinished issue of their older enemy, the Jaish al-Islam. 1857 was a failure but it was not all in vain. At an enormous human cost the Indians managed to slow down the direct imposition of Christianity upon them. Likewise, the attempt of Bose while a failure was not all wasted – it was indeed the trigger of the long needed event of the Indian mercenary force turning its loyalty away from the purchaser (the English) to the national cause. Until this event happened the Indian nation could never hope to free itself from the mleccha clutches, regardless of the wheels they turned or the satyāgraha-s they staged. Thus, we see SCB not as the liberator but as a catalyst that triggered a shift in the loyalties of the most important English asset. This, combined with the battering the English had taken at the hands of the Germans and Japanese, along with the lack of forthcoming help for their colonial battles from their American cousins finally forced them to leave.

Sadly, what we learned later in our life about SCB showed that his venture had the same deep-rooted ideological flaws as 1857 CE.This becomes important in distinguishing between SCB as the person and SCB as the player in a larger movement. First, a lot of individuals were clearly attracted towards his personal charisma because it was repeatedly mentioned by many of his admirers. Thus, SCB is illustrative of the widespread Indian tendency to fall for charismatic figure without bothering much about what they really have to offer. Today the most common manifestation of this is the pernicious problem of bābāism. Second a lot of Indians were clearly frustrated with the peace-mongering of MKG. They wanted to hit back at the English for the genocide being committed against them [Footnote 3]. SCB presented the only major hope in this regard drawing many Indians towards him. But when one looks at what he has to offer, at a deeper ideological level it is not very different from what MKG wanted. Both, like a whole lineage of leaders starting from 1857, thought that the Hindus and the Musalmans could bury the old hatchets and team up to fight with the English. By clinging to this canard, they utterly missed the fundamental consequences regarding the principle of the Abrahamistic Distinction (vide Jan Assmann). On account of this, like modern Hindus, despite the Mohammedan clearly making the point, they continued to insist that Hindu-Moslem unity was not just a possibility but the real way forward for India as a nation. Among the early generation of leaders, we would say that the great Lal-Bal-Pal trio was among the few who had clarity on this issue. Others, like Savarkar and Aurobindo learned after a few experiences that their earlier hopes for a Hindu-Moslem alliance were unlikely to ever bear any fruit. SCB like his mentor Chittaranjan Das went to the other extreme. They believed that Hindus should not just conciliate the Moslems but make major concessions for them. This was indeed done in the political career of CRD providing fertilizer for the seeds of Moslem belligerence in the modern vaṅga country, which today threatens to culminate in a second partition under the auspices of TMC politicians including Bose’s clansmen. SCB sincerely felt that India can only survive as a Hindu-Moslem joint venture: “India has first to save herself and she can save herself only if the Hindus and Muslims put forward a joint demand for a provisional national government to whom all powers should be immediately transferred.” Thus, what he was voicing was exactly what today goes under the garb of secularism in India. But secularism is not what our true heroes like chatrapati śivājī wanted: they were clear that the two Abrahamisms had to be swept out of jaṃbudvīpa.

In conclusion a SCB might have been charismatic and also perhaps a man of great plans as the Germans report. However, a charismatic leader can ultimately make the difference only if he also is able to produce or align with a robust ideology compatible with his nation, as it happened, most dramatically, in the case of Chingiz Khan or earlier in time in our history in the case of janamejaya pārikṣita or to a extant in the case of the Germans with Otto von Bismarck. Thus, while SCB, unlike the wheel-turner or the uncle, might have played an important role in the movement towards independence he cannot serve as a role model for national leadership on grounds of his flaky ideology. As for his organizational skills, there might be a lesson or two there, but others might question if much credit should go to SCB. In particular, in the final phase of his activities the yeoman services of Rashbehari Bose and Ayyapan Nayyar in leveraging their Japanese networks should not be denied. Moreover, his military command of the INA does not reveal any signs of great brilliance, especially when compared to the gold standards of Ho Chi Minh or Vo Nguyen Giap.

Finally, this brings us to an issue that greatly fascinated our classmates and acquaintances and still stirs the Hindus even today – the end of SCB. Did he really die from burns following the plane crash as the official version goes, or was he captured by the Soviets and imprisoned/killed by them or did something else happen? We do not profess to have any special understanding of this matter. Given what we learned first from our grandfather, it was not at all surprising that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty chose to keep the information regarding his fate under the wraps. Indeed, it almost looked like a cover up with willful misinformation on their part. The Nehru-Gandhi rulers, starting with the uncle lacked the charisma of Bose and he was certainly a grave threat to them if alive. So one can see a motive there. But even the current BJP government chose to keep key SCB papers under the wraps. Some pointed to the impending trip by the Russian ruler Putin, suggesting that the Indian government did not wish to sour the relationship with the Rus on whom we depend heavily for military hardware. We wondered if after all the reason might be different: There was something really unpalatable about SCB that the papers might have revealed, something which would cast him in particularly bad light. Simultaneously, this information might have also cast the 1st king of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in bad light. Sounds outlandish, but then…

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Footnote 1
ātatāyinam āyāntaṃ hanyād evāvicārayan ।
hananād eva nistāro narakāt tasya duṣkṛte ॥

When an assailant approaches one should kill him without a second thought;
it is by this act of killing one gets release from hell for an evil deed.

Footnote 2: This incident is also given in detail by Sugata Bose, the Trinamool Congress partisan in his biography of SCB, his great uncle. His political position can be summed up by his recent aphorism “Communalism is a bigger threat than Marxism.” He further elaborated that: “It is the duty of the incumbent government to address historical injustices and make sure Muslims get a fair shot at jobs and bank loans. It’s true that the TMC has also provided honorariums to Imams and muezzins, but these measures are far less important than the need to create a level playing field. When I was the chair of the Presidency mentor Group I found that out of 143 teachers only 2 were Muslims.”

Footnote 3: The genocide of Hindus by the English is a topic that hardly receives any attention as the Anglosphere controls the discourse. Hence, while we routinely hear of the genocide by the German or occasionally even those by the Stalinist Soviets, we are usually never informed of the genocides by the Anglosphere.

He who eats once is a tyāgin;
He who eats twice is a yogin;
He who eats thrice is a bhogin;
And he who eats four times a day
is verily destined to be a rogin!

Some find rest by going home,
Some find rest on the bed,
Some find rest in a woman,
But for some there is no rest,
except that which death brings.

Eight are the cremation grounds, the mahāśmaśāna-s:
caṇḍogra in the eastern reaches of the va~Nga-s,
yamajvāla where the sea laps the draṃiḍa shores,
varuṇakapāla where the ānarta-s have their drinks,
kuberabhairava where one learns mahālīlādevī’s teachings,
śrīnāyaka, outside which the andhra-s flock to brothels,
aṭṭahāsa, wherein cerikā-s are possessed by bhūta-s,
ghorāndhakāra, from beneath which hiṅgulā prances,
And kilikilārava where saṃkarṣaṇa slew the ape of gargantuan proportions.

continued…

One may ask why one needs to revisit elementary geometry that was usually studied at secondary school. The simple answer is it is a good recreation. But it is not like any recreation, because it also opens the doors to glimpse something deeper about reality as the yavana-s of yore might have said. It is interesting to see how unexpected connections turn up all over the place. Hence, we shall re-experience some of the trivia related to equilateral triangles.

A rather easily proved result is the following: Take a random point inside an equilateral triangle and drop perpendiculars from that point to the three sides of the triangle, then:

This becomes obvious if we take that random point to be P and then consider the sum the areas of the areas of which is equal to the area of the parent equilateral triangle . Since the heights of the three triangles are and that of the equilateral triangle is h we get the above relationship.

This result was apparently due an Italian scientist Viviani, a student of Galileo in the 1600s, illustrating that after the destruction of yavana tradition by the preta-mata there was still lot of simple geometry waiting to be revisited more than a 1000 years later.

Could this simple mathematical reality have any bearing on real life, given that so many geometric relationships show up in the real world. We believe this relationship gives us an analogy to understand certain optimization situations we often encounter in life. Consider three entities power (as in strength), speed and precision. Imagine you have fixed resource a fraction of which you can use to generate power, speed and precision. Then you can imagine your position in this triadic space of the fraction of the resource allocated power, speed and precision as a point within the equilateral triangle (because your overall resource is fixed) to be determined by the intersection of the perpendiculars from a position on each of the sides. Since the sum of those perpendicular segments is a constant h, you are are going to be able to increase one of the three, power, speed or precision only at the expense of the other two. Thus, the above relationship appears to represent the reality of tradeoffs such as this often encountered in the real world.

Now we shall revisit a realm arising from the contributions of the French mathematician Fermat and supposedly also the French conqueror Napoleon. However, most people believe that the attributions to the latter were merely apocryphal. We stumbled upon some of these for ourselves while doodling in classrooms in the past and during talks later in life.

Consider a random triangle . On each of its sides erect an equilateral triangle; thus we have: . Now an interesting result is that if you join the centers of these three equilateral triangles (remember that for any equilateral triangle the circumcenter, incenter, centroid, and orthocenter coincide) you get another equilateral triangle . While fascinated by this figure early in life, we learned later that this result and triangle bore the name of the famous French conqueror himself. This configuration of triangles is a veritable mother-lode of geometric results:

• The centroid G (i.e. the point of concurrency of the medians or the point where the equivalent uniform density triangle cutout will be balanced on a point) of the original and the center of the Napoleon are the same.

• If we join the vertices A, B, and C of the original triangle to the respective opposite peaks A’, B’ and C’ of the three equilateral triangles we had erected on the sides of we find that:
1)
2) The above segments are thrice the distance between the centroids of the 3 equilateral triangles (P, Q, R) and the centroid G of the original
Thus we have:

• are concurrent at a point termed the Fermat’s point F. This point has interesting properties:
1) All three vertices of are at an equal angular separation () from each other at this point F.
2) F is the minimum distance point, thus:
where X is a random point inside

• If we draw lines passing through the vertices of the Napoleon to the corresponding peaks of the three equilateral triangles (A’, B’ and C’) then these lines are concurrent at a point O which is the circumcenter of .

• Now, the Napoleon and form hexagonal star. If we connect the opposite vertices of this hexagonal star then the three lines are concurrent at a point , the Napoleon point 1 (N in the figure; there is a second Napoleon point formed by the inner Napoleon triangle obtained by erecting the equilateral triangles internally on ). Now in addition to the Napoleon centers we may also consider a few other centers of interest:
1) The orthocenter H, which is the point of concurrency of the 3 altitudes of the , an ancient center known to the yavana-s.
2) The Spieker’s center () is the incenter of the medial triangle of , i.e., the triangle formed by connecting the midpoints of its three sides. If one draws the lines , known as the cleavers, then each of them cleaves the ‘s perimeter into two equal halves. was apparently discovered by the eponymous German mathematician who wrote a textbook that apparently inspired the scientist Einstein on his mathematical journey.

Now there is a rather interesting result concerning these points: the three vertices of the , along with the following centers of it, namely, the orthocenter, the Fermat’s point, the Napoleon points, the centroid, and the Spieker’s center all lie on the same rectangular hyperbola. What was most striking to us was that a familiar conic emerged “out of the blue” in an investigation of triangles. This represents the mysterious (to us) tendency of one bit of mathematics to show up unexpectedly in another bit of it – perhaps a reflection a deeper reality. Incidentally, this hyperbola is named the Kiepert hyperbola after another German mathematician.

• Interestingly, the center of this rectangular hyperbola is situated on one more conic that mysteriously emerges among triangles. This is the circle discovered by the great Leonhard Euler, which passes through the midpoints of the three sides of , and the feet of three altitudes of this triangle. Additionally, it includes midpoints of the segments:
, which connect the orthocenter to the three vertices of the triangle. Thus, it is famed as the nine-point circle.

• Yet another degenerate conic, namely a pair of straight lines, emerges among the triangle centers in form of the Euler line and Nagel line (named after von Nagel, yet another German mathematician). The Euler line is the line on which the orthocenter H, the centroid G and the circumcenter O of lie. Moreover, the center of the nine-point circle also lies on this line. It gives rise to many interesting relationships; for example:
;
The slope of the Euler line is given in terms of the slopes of the 3 sides of , namely as:

The Nagel line connects the incenter the centroid and the Nagel point , which is the point of concurrency of the segments joining the vertices of to the points of contact of the same triangle’s external tangent circles. Interestingly, the Spieker’s center also lies on this line.

One may see in these deeply connected relationships certain reflections of a hidden underlying reality. For instance, the building block of 2D space, the triangle, can be seen as a section by a plane through a 3D structure made of three bi-cones. One of these is the bi-cones which gives rise to the Euler and Nagel lines is cut by the plane through its vertex perpendicular to its base. Another is a cone orthogonal to the previous which is cut by the same plane parallel to its base giving rise to the nine-point circle. The third cone is the on which the three vertices of the triangle lie and its section is seen as the Kiepert hyperbola. Indeed, mathematicians have defined some other hyperbolas like the Kiepert’s hyperbola and these could be other cones in that 3D structure.

Closer to real life, the fact that the centroid, the incenter, circumcenter, and Fermat’s point do not coincide for a random scalene triangle like one illustrated here suggests that there are different optimalities in the non-equilateral triangular space which cannot be achieved simultaneously at once. Thus while you can balance the triangle at a point using the centroid, you need a different point F to have the minimum distance to or equal angular separation between the vertices.

This world of triangles has many more complexities which mathematicians explore, only going to show how even high school Euclidean geometry has many more recreational avenues.

This article was originally published in a slightly modified form at IndiaFacts.

Starting sometime shortly before 200BCE all the way down to the 7th century of the common era, there occurred a series of irruptions of Inner Asiatic peoples, who appeared to have their origins in Mongolia and the lands in the immediate vicinity of it. These people were recorded by the Chinese as the Xiongnu (Hung-no in Cantonese). Shortly after 215 BCE, the Xiongnu in response to the expansionist policies of the first unified Chinese empire of the Chin founded by Shi Huangdi organized themselves into a powerful, mobile fighting force along the lines of the Iranic peoples of the steppe. This lead to a series of conflicts between the Xiongnu and these Iranic people, as well as other Altaic tribes of Mongolia and Southern Siberia. In the process the Xiongnu emerged as the dominant power and they also regained the ground ceded to the Chinese. In China the Chin empire collapsed and was replaced by the Han empire, which gave the modern Chinese their core ethnic character and identity. Not surprisingly, the rising Xiongnu power in Mongolia under their leader Motun [Footnote 1] came in conflict with the nationalist and expansionist Han power in China, which had imposed trade embargoes on them. Motun lead the Xiongnu to a major victory against the first Han emperor Gao-zu around 201 BCE, where his Mongolian cavalry destroyed up to a third of the huge Han army. In the mid-170s before the CE, Motun and his son lead a series of massive attacks against the tribes to their west, which were recorded by the Chinese. The first of these were against the Iranic Yüeh-chih, the ancestral confederation of tribes from whom the Kuṣāṇa-s descended. Most were slaughtered or enslaved, while the survivors fled westwards to eventually found the Kuṣāṇa empire in India and Central Asia. The Tocharian groups, like the Lou-lan and Wu-sun and the probably Altaic Hu-chieh (together these were predecessors the Uighurs) were also crushed and subjugated by the Xiongu in course of these operations [Footnote 2]. By 91 CE the Xiongnu empire was on the verge of collapse and a branch of them moved westwards to established a short-lived kingdom near the Caspian Sea. These were recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus as the Hunnoi. A group of foreign people from inner Asia are known in Hindu paurāṇika texts as the Hūṇa-s. In Central Asian Iranic sources studied by de la Vaissière the Xiongnu were described as Huns [Footnote 3]. This suggests that Chinese Xiongnu, Latin Hunnoi, Hindu Hūṇa and Iranic Hun were probably originally inspired by the ethnonym of the same horde of people associated with the first great Altaic expansion that occurred out of Mongolia.

Centuries after these events the Christian Roman empire and their Germanic neighbors (starting in the late 300s of the CE) faced invasions by an inner Asiatic people, who eventually established a short-lived but vast empire at the expense of the former. These peoples were also referred to as the Huns by the western sources. They reached the pinnacle of their power under a shrewd leader named Attila. A couple of years after Attila’s death in the west (~453 CE) there were a series of invasions of Bhārata and Iran by people who were again referred to as the Hūṇa-s or Huns. Some Indian sources do distinguish these from the regular Hūṇa-s as the Śveta-Hūṇa-s or White Huns. Likewise, in some Iranic and west Asian sources these are distinguished as Hephthalites or Hayatal. While the Gupta empire in Bhārata under the great rulers Kumāragupta and Skandagupta decisively defeated these Hūṇa invaders [Footnote 4], in the period after the collapse of the centralized Gupta rule the Hūṇa briefly established an empire in northern Bhārata. They were eventually defeated and overthrown by the efforts of Prakāshadharman and Yashodharman of the Aulikara dynasty and Bālāditya of the eastern Gupta kingdom. Further invasions by the Hūṇa-s occurred in the early 600s of the CE and these were successfully repulsed by the brothers Rājyavardhana and Harṣavardhana the emperors of the Puṣyabhūti dynasty and their ally Īśānavarman. The names of the famous Hūṇa rulers of Bhārata such as Khiṅgila, Toramāṇa and Mihirakula were clearly Iranic in origin, though they followed the Hindu religion. In contrast to the Guptas, the Iranian Sassanid empire did relatively poorly against these Hūṇa-s in the initial period. In 484 CE, their emperor Phiroz was killed fighting the Hūṇa-s. The Hūṇa-s who invaded the Sassanid empire are also recorded as having Iranic names such as Akṣuṇvār. The relationship of all these later groups of Huns to the earlier irruptions of the empire founded by Motun and subsequent Mongolian confederations of the Xianbei Khanate and the Tuguhun Khanate has been the source of much controversy and discussion. However, the persistence of the ethnonym is something which cannot be denied.

Against this background, we would like to bring attention to a peculiar verse composed by an obscure Sanskrit poet Aparājita-rakṣita, which in our opinion obliquely throws some light on the possible ethnicity of at least some of the people who were known as huṇa-s to the Hindus. We know next to nothing of Aparājita-rakṣita’s and only a few verses of his survive, perhaps the earliest mention being in a citation by vāmana in the 700-800s of the CE. Thus, all we can say is that Aparājita-rakṣita lived before that time. However, as the verse below would suggest he was likely to have been familiar in person with at least one of the group of people who were known as Hūṇa-s to the Hindus.

The verse, found in subhāṣita collections goes thus:
udgarbha-hūṇa-taruṇī-ramaṇopamarda-bhugnonnata-stana-niveśa-nibhaṃ himāṃśoḥ |
bimbaṃ kaṭhora-bisa-kāṇḍa-kaḍāra-gaurair-viṣṇoḥ padaṃ prathamam-agra-karair-vyanakti ||

udgarbha= pregnant; hūṇa-taruṇī= young Hun woman; ramaṇa= lover; upamarda=fondled; bhugna= pressed; unnata= full; stana= breast; niveśa-nibhaṃ=as though dented; himāṃśoḥ= of the icy-rayed (moon) |
bimbaṃ= orb; kaṭhora=mature; bisa= lotus; kāṇḍa= stem; kaḍāra= yellowish; gaurair= white (instrumental); viṣṇoḥ= of viShNu; padaṃ= step; prathamam= first; agra-karair= with its first rays; vyanakti= to make visible ||

Thus, one may translate it as:

The icy-rayed moon looks dented
as though it were the full breast
of a pregnant, young Hun woman
pressed while fondled by her lover;
the lunar orb with its first rays,
pale yellow as a mature lotus stem,
makes Viṣṇu’s first step to be visible.

Here, “Viṣṇu’s first step” means the earth, which was spanned by the first of the famous triple steps of the god. Thus, the pale yellow, rays of the rising moon are said to make the earth visible by their illumination.

The striking thing about this verse is the metaphor where the rising moon with a pale yellowish tinge is compared with the breast of a young Hun woman. This, is notable because it is a very specific and unique metaphor. The moon is commonly compared with the faces of women or on occasions their breasts in kāvya literature, but the specific use of a Hun woman’s breast as a descriptor for the rising moon, we believe, is not coincidental. Rather, we posit that it reflects the actual, distinctive, pale yellow complexion of a Hun woman. Such a complexion is not typical of Iranic people but of East Asians, suggesting that Hun woman in Aparājita-rakṣita’s metaphor was likely to have had East Asian ancestry in the least.

One may also compare this metaphor of Aparājita-rakṣita with the origin myth of the much later Chingizid Mongols (1100-1350 CE) found in the Secret History of Chingiz Khan. There, the origin of several Mongol clans is traced to their legendary ancestress Alan-qoa. Her last three sons, one of whom is presented as the direct ancestor of Chingiz Khan, were said to be born without a visible father. Hence, the first two sons wondered if their servant had fathered their half brothers after the death of their father Dobun-mergen. Sensing their agitation, their mother Alan-qoa said the following:

“Every night, a shining yellow man came into the yurt,
through the light of the smoke-hole and over the top of the door.
He caressed my belly and his light sank into it.
He [slunk] sheepishly away like a yellow dog
by the light of the sun and moon.”
(Secret History translated from the original Mongolian by U Onon)

Alan-Qoa then clarified that they were the sons of Köke Möngke Tngri the supreme god of the Mongols. It is interesting to note that in their self-account the Mongols saw their divine ancestor as coming at night to mate with Alan-qoa in the form of yellow moon beams. Indeed the yellowness is emphasized in describing him as going away as a yellow dog, and is specifically compared to the yellowness of the sun and the moon. Thus, we find that Aparājita-rakṣita’s account of the Hūṇa woman’s complexion compares with the self-perception of the Mongols who are considered to be descendants of the old Huns of Mongolia.

This is not the only reference to specific aspects of the Hūṇa-s in Sanskrit literature. The famous poet Rājaśekhara in his kāvyamīmāṃsā lists them alongside many other northern peoples, such as the Śaka-s, Kekaya-s, Kaṃbhoja-s, Bāhlika-s, Turuṣka-s (Turks) and Tuṣāra-s (Tocharians) and Mārgara-s (Magyar tribe of Huns). The great Kālidāsa also makes a specific mention of the Huns in his account of the Ikṣvāku emperor, Raghu’s digvijaya. After his conquest of the Iranians (Pārasika), Raghu is described as heading north to invade the Hun lands:

tataḥ pratasthe kauberīṃ bhāsvān iva raghur diśam |
śarair usrair ivodīcyān uddhariṣyam rasān iva ||

From there [i.e. after defeating the Iranians] Raghu proceeded to the direction of Kubera to uproot with his arrows the northerners as the sun to vaporize the northern waters [during uttarāyaṇa]

vinītādhva-śramās tasya vaṅkṣu-tīra-viceṣṭanaiḥ |
dudhuvur vājinaḥ skandhāṃl lagna-kuṅkuma-kesarān ||

The horses tired from the march of his cavalry rolled on the banks of the Oxus (Amu Darya) and they shook off the saffron flower stigmas adhered to their shoulders.

tatra hūṇāvarodhānāṃ bhartṛśu vyakta-vikramam |
kapola-pāṭalādeśi babhūva raghu-ceṣṭitam || RAGHUVAṂŚA 4.66-68

There, Raghu’s valor directed against the husbands in his attack caused the cheeks of the [women] of the Hun harem to become crimson.

This is a very specific reference to the Hun custom of slashing their cheeks as their dead were supposed to be mourned not just with regular tears but with those of blood. This is recorded as occurring during the funeral of Attila by Latin Christian author Jordanes and is also mentioned as a custom among the Huns by the Latin poet Sidonius. It has also been recorded among the Magyar ancestors of the Hungarians. [Footnote 5 ]. This suggests that Hindu poets had specific information about the Huns. It goes on to support our contention that Aparājita-rakṣita’s metaphor was likely based on fact. Taken together, these observations of the Hindu poets add further points to support the cultural and at least partial ethnic continuity of the Huns who invaded China, India and the West.

Finally, one may ask how this squares with the Iranic names we encounter among the Hūṇa-s associated with Bhārata and Iran. In reality the picture appears to be more complex. We do have coins from Northwestern India with titles such as Tegin, which is of Altaic origin (meaning prince or young ruler). Moreover, a recent study of ancient DNA from the Hun royal cemetery in Northeast Mongolia revealed that in addition to people of Northeast Asian origin there were also people of Western Eurasian origin as indicated by the Y-chromosomal R1a1 haplogroup [Footnote 6]. This suggests that as recorded by the Chinese sources the Xiongnu had absorbed Indo-Iranic peoples early on, and some of these occupied elite status in the Hun society. Thus, it is rather likely that as the Huns expanded from Mongolia they swept up within them people with non-Turco-Mongol ancestry. These included people of Finno-Ugric, Iranic and later even those of Slavic and Germanic ancestry. Even down to the days of the Chingizid Mongols there were Finno-Ugric and Indo-Iranian groups (like the Arans or Alans) active close to the heartland of the former. Thus, some leaders of non-Turco-Mongol ancestry might have been the dominant elite in particular Hun hordes, especially as they moved away from their eastern inner Asian heartlands. For instance, the Hungarians, a Finno-Ugric people, have an origin mythology of descending from Attila’s horde in addition to including later Eurasiatic mobile groups like the Avar and Magyar. In the case of the Huns who invaded Europe, the Germanic etymology of Bleda, the Hun ruler and brother of Attila, suggests that Germanic tribes might have been incorporated into their confederation. However, it is quite possible the rank and file was probably multiethnic including at at least some of Northeast Asian descent alongside those of Iranic or Germanic origins. Thus, Aparājita-rakṣita’s metaphor of the Hun woman of Northeast Asiatic ancestry would be completely consistent with such a picture.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Footnote 1: Motun is likely to be derived from the old Chinese rendering of the word bāghātur a cognate of Hindi bāhādur a Turco-Mongol loan word acquired during the Islamic period.

Footnote 2: For more details refer the UNESCO volume: “History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. II: The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 BC to AD 250”

Footnote 3: The French historian Étienne de La Vaissière has published strong evidence supporting the identity of the Huns and the Xiongnu of Chinese sources.

Footnote 4: Verse 8 of the Bhitari red sandstone pillar inscription of the great Gupta ruler Skandagupta mentions the fierce battle with the Hūṇa-s and his bow in that encounter is compared with the bow of the god Viṣṇu.

Footnote 5: “The world of the Huns: Studies in their history and culture” by O. J. Maenchen-Helfen.

Footnote 6: A western Eurasian male is found in 2000-year-old elite Xiongnu cemetery in Northeast Mongolia. Kim K et. al. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2010 Jul;142(3):429-40. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.21242.

The exam to qualify for pre-university college was just over and a long vacation lay ahead. Vidrum was drained by the huge mental effort he had put into the exams to earn a seat at a respectable college. It was the year Meghana had died. The tense competition, which characterized these exams, had kept Vidrum’s thoughts away from that event. Now that the exams were over, he wanted a clean break from all academic issues but two days into his vacation he felt his social life to be rather empty without his female companion. Sorely afflicted by this vacuum he paid a visit to his friend Somakhya. For a few minutes Somakhya patiently heard out Vidrum’s woes. Somakhya then said: “As the Tathāgata had said in the past, life is full of sorrow. What might bring pleasure or sorrow are almost as if two sides of the same coin – be it that which comes from women, oṣadhi-s or food. We have little control over what might come our way and how long they may stay with us. Indeed, all we can say is that the great Indra keeps all good things apart from each other. I sometimes feel there is indeed something like a genius of locus. You can either counter it with mantra-s or else you may try to throw off its grip by going elsewhere. May be you should go to some place away from our city to do something interesting.”

But Vidrum was worried about the next hurdle that lay on his educational track. He said: “Somakhya, I wish to enter a good university to study medicine, so would it not be prudent that I enroll in preparatory classes over the long vacations.” Somakhya: “Well if that is what you want to do, so be it. But there is ample time for such preparation, and any quest for knowledge merely for an upādi without a real interest in it will only result in you forgetting it pretty soon. So what is the use starting right now – it may not even stay in your mind till when college actually starts. So take a break, reflect about life in silence, and you might re-discover your lost touch.” It struck Vidrum that after all Somakhya’s suggestion might not be a bad one and he went away to stay with his maternal grandparents for a month. He journeyed by train and bus to their village which lay beyond the southern border of the province in which he stayed. He spent two to three days chatting with his kinsfolk and wandering around the lanes of the village chatting with other locals and drinking freshly tapped palm sap. His grandfather had told him of the existence of three huge caves that lay just beyond a gentle slope of fields that stretched out to the south of the village. His grandfather had warned him that the caves were a place of great danger and mystery and that it was better not to stray into them.

That hot afternoon under the shade of a huge tamarind tree Vidrum sat sipping palm sap along with a villager. The two soon got chatting. Vidrum asked him about the caves and the villager narrated a peculiar tale:
“Almost a millennium ago there lived a brave warlord by name the of śrī Bhetala Nayadu, who was the master of all the villages in this region. He had built a shrine to the 1000-eyed vajra-wielding goddess (ĀKHAṆḌALĀ DEVĪ), who was widely worshiped by these warrior nāyaka-s, their men, and the rakṣaka-s of the villages. At that time it is said that one of the caves was occupied by a powerful ghost going by the name DAṆḌALŪMA. This ghost is said to have terrorized the sheep of shepherds who grazed their flock near the caves. Many mantravādins are said to have tried to capture Daṇḍalūma but failed to do so. Hence, śrī Bhetala Nayadu, to pacify the ghost, instituted an annual bali and installed a balipīṭha for that purpose. In any case, I believe nobody grazes in the cool shadow of the outcrops beside the caves since then.

Now, some years ago there was a phase of bad south-west monsoons [which Vidrum realized was due to the El Niño oscillation] and that village which lies to the south, beyond the yonder caves, having poorer irrigation than ours, found itself in dire straits. It had a strongman, Chevi Reddi, who was then visited by a white man from America. Under his ministrations the strongman converted to the śavamata, who in turn ensured that many in the village became kīlita-śavopāsakas. He also seems to have given Chevi Reddi a new idea for livelihood – quarrying the rocky outcrops around the caves for limestone. After his conversion, now going by the name Chevi Jefferson Reddi, the strongman demolished the temple of the 1000-eyed goddess and the balipīṭha of Daṇḍalūma. We were enraged because we believed that the goddess had kept us safe from all manner of calamities for a nearly a 1000 years. Moreover, if the wrath of the ghost Daṇḍalūma was unleashed then there was no telling as to what might happen. This resulted in an armed confrontation between our village and that of CJR. But CJR’s men were better armed and they dynamited the pañcāyata hall of our village and that more or less forced us into submission. However, praise be to the deva-s, as they came to our aid! One day we heard an enormous noise, as though the mighty 1000-eyed goddess had hurled a great stone from the height of heaven. We learned that that even as CJRs men were laying the fuse cord their explosive went off suddenly and resulted in that thunderous clap that killed twenty of the quarrymen and busted two of their trucks. A fortnight later, CJR and his American missionary backer were out examining the site of the debacle, when a giant rock loosening itself from an elevation in the quarry came rolling down smashing into them. Thus, CJR and the American were taken away for their appointment with the stern-faced Citragupta and now indeed are doing time in raurava. Everyone in both this and that village saw this as a divine sign and decided to stay away from the both the śavamata and those caves, where they feared Daṇḍalūma was on the prowl.”

Vidrum felt rather excited hearing this tale. He thought to himself: “If men are scared away by the good old ghost Daṇḍalūma then the caves must really be safe for exploration, for after all man is the most wicked and dangerous of all animals.” So the next day he decided to explore the caves; being a great rock climber he, feared not falling boulders and treacherous outcrops. However, knowing that harm could always come ones way, he armed himself with a knife and a billhook, and set out for the caves on his grandfather’s bike after an early lunch. Having reached as far as he could by bike, he stopped noting a rocky path ahead beset with talus from the erstwhile mining operations of CJR, which the villager had talked about. He tethered his bike to a neem tree, locked it, and proceeded to the climb up the slope leading to the cave mouths. He noticed three large cave mouths, two situated at a higher elevation and one opening at a downward slope from the eminence where he stood. The latter cave seemed better lit and spacious so Vidrum decided to march into it. Before doing so he looked around surveying the lay of the land. The afternoon air was utterly still and there was hardly any noise beyond the background buzz of various insects broken by the occasional call of a bird. Indeed it looked as though Daṇḍalūma had succeeded in thoroughly eliminating any human presence from that place. Vidrum then surveyed the overhangs for any dangerous looking rocks that might come crashing down and having ascertained that the path to the cave he had chosen was safe he boldly strode in.

His initial impression was one of an anticlimax – he saw a few low-rising stalagmites forming some kind of obstacle to the inner chamber. He quickly got past them and saw a path that stank of bat dung which formed a visible layer on all surfaces. But soon the the narrow path hit a raised altar-like surface, which it at its far end dipped into a dimly lit chamber that seemed to go on endlessly into the utter blackness. He switched on the the torch he had got along and found that it shone as if illuminating the never-ending maw of the great dragon Surasā, with stalagmites and stalactites sporadically lining the floor and roof, as though they were her teeth. “This is exciting” he remarked to himself and with a perceptible quiver running through his body he pressed on. He got on to the altar-like eminence and crossed it to reach the great chamber that seemed to go on and on into a lightless realm. A few steps into the chamber he saw a white object jutting out from near the foot of a stalagmite in the dim light. Shining his torch for a better look he found that it was a strange jaw with several sharp curved teeth. Vidrum remarked to himself: “This must be a dinosaur’s jaw. What a find! May be I could sell it and make some money.” So used his billhook to dig up and carefully extract the jaw. Having placed it in his backpack, he shone his torch again and noticed that the sand around the jaw contained some minute white oddly shaped bone-like particles. He scooped a few of those and placed them in a container in his bag.

Then Vidrum arose, and wondering whether to explore the chamber further or retrace his steps, he shone his torch on a large stalagmitic eminence to the side of the chamber. So utterly unexpected a sight gleamed in the circle of light that for moment he was convinced that it was an apparition. But after standing rooted and gazing at it for few seconds he realized that it was indeed the real thing – a human skeleton with its neck arched backwards lay propped up against the stalagmitic eminence as though it was frozen in the position assumed at death. Suddenly, the sense of being close to Vaivasvata seized him: a vague sense of dread of being led to the desk of Citragupta at the end of the great tunnel came upon Vidrum. Just then, an old family tale suddenly flashed in his mind further amplifying this feeling into positive fear. But Vidrum was not one who lost his presence of mind easily; briefly regaining his composure he took a couple of photos of the spectacle that confronted him and then hurriedly retraced his steps and returned to his bike to ride back home.

◊◊◊◊◊

Despite the unforeseen encounter in the cave, on the whole Vidrum felt enlivened by his break and returned to his city carrying his specimens from the cave thinking them to be precious dinosaur bones. He checked the local news and saw that fair on the grounds of the CAṆḌIKĀ temple had started the previous day. He decided to visit the fair that evening, hoping that he might be able to buy something interesting. As he wandered around he saw the stall, which had been introduced to him by Sharvamanyu that had clandestinely sold knives in the previous years. He inquired if they might have gravity knives and soon found himself buying a wonderful 9-incher with a good solid wood-fronted handle. Vidrum was beside himself with joy over his purchase but knew that he should not handle it in the open as it was a potentially illegal object in public places; so he carefully slipped it into his bag and wandered a little more among the stalls. Then a curious stall caught his eye, which was manned by an Iranian Asura-worshiper, and sold magic tricks. Just outside the shop he saw a couple of activists from the deva-unmūlana-samiti staging a protest and distributing pamphlets. Vidrum collected a pamphlet from the enthusiastic female activist and proceeded right to the stall. There a curious planchette with pictures of Iranian deities and demons caught his eye and he purchased the same. As he headed out, the activists angrily asked if he had not read their pamphlet. Vidrum merely smiled at them and went his way. Later that evening he called Somakhya and said: “I am finally back and have a lot of interesting things to talk about – things that will make your eyes pop out.”
Somakhya: “Sounds like your trip has done you good.”
V: “By the way, you are the only one who might not consider me crazy: I have bought this really nice-looking Iranian planchette and we should try it out as soon as possible.”
S: “Why not tomorrow evening; may be should do so in the courtyard of the Sarasvatī temple in the cemetery.”
V: “May be you should call pretty Lootika too. She may also be interested in seeing what I have got.”
S: “She has also just returned from her vacation travel and has been wanting to talk to me. So let’s all try to meet tomorrow evening.”

◊◊◊◊◊

Early that evening Lootika and her sister Vrishchika came to Somakhya’s house racing on their bikes. Lootika was holding her spectacles in one had and holding something tight in the other with tears streaming down one of her eyes. Panting, she handed what was in her closed fist to Somakhya and said: “O vipra what is this insect? It almost blinded me by getting between my spectacles and eye.” Somakhya took a close look and remarked: “O jālayuvatī, hope your eye is alright? This beast is a fly, a species of Dacus.” Vrishchika peering closely at it remarked: “How remarkable! It so closely resembles a wasp: much like a follower of the pretonmāda might try to wear the appearances of a devayājin!” Lootika smiled at her sister and said: “Indeed, although in this case the insect has evolved to appear more threatening than it really is. It looks like the wasp Ropalidia which can give a nasty sting. The modern śavamata in contrast tries to conceal its real evil by camouflage.”
Vrischika: “Ah! that is an interesting inversion! Do you know of a biological analog of the modern śavamata?”
Somakhya: “The blue butterfly Maculinea is a particularly interesting example! It lays its eggs on certain plants, and the caterpillars feed on it for three instars. After molting into the fourth instar it drops down and ant species of the Myrmica genus might encounter it. The ants then take the caterpillars into their nest as they smell just like the ant larvae. Once inside they may feed on the ant’s own larvae. Or they may make sounds similar to that of the ant queen and the workers would come up to them and feed them. Thus, they might live for an year or two inside the ant nest, growing almost double in size and finally pupate. The pupa too makes sounds like the queen and might have their smell; so the ants leave it alone, only to for it to finally eclose and fly away as a butterfly.”
Lootika: “Those butterflies are fascinating: a true genetic analog of the pretamata! Then there are also the Microdon flies which use a similar strategy to invade Formica ant nests and feed of them. However, they seem to spread very little and are rather localized…”
Somakhya: “Indeed, because they have high specificity for the species and even local family groups which they can invade; thus unlike the butterfly they do not spread widely: the later is thus closer to the invasive success of the śavamata.”
Lootika: “Perhaps, the butterfly evolved out of a similar strategy as the coming of the śavamata to our parts of the world. Maculinea belongs to a larger family of butterflies known as the Lycaenids. Many of these form mutualistic associations, with the caterpillars providing nutrition to the ants and the ants in return providing protection. From this ancestral condition some butterflies evolved to become invasive parasites of the ants.”
Vrishchika: “That makes a good analog to the pretamata. After all it came to Bhārata with mleccha traders who would engage in a mutualistic relationship with the local trading communities. They might offer protection to these local traders with their gunships and artillery against the earlier predator, the rākṣasamata. From such a base position we now see them morphed into the deadly parasites that they are.”

Somakhya: “So what about your family vacation? You said you had some interesting things to say.”
Lootika: “Not bad at all. We successfully performed the astra-vrata by climbing the Triśūla-parvata with a 10 kg trident with all our names inscribed on it and planted it atop the massif. Hope The god does not shoot his darts at us.”
Vrishchika: “We then did a little trekking around the mountain of the Five Caves. There Jhilleeka found this peculiar microlith.” Pulling out her phone Vrishchika showed an image of it to Somakhya.
Lootika: “Varoli, who was with her when she found it, quickly recognized it to be made from porcelain, perhaps like what they use for power lines. We were mystified who ever made this microlith from an insulator: a rather incongruous combination of stone age and electrical age technology!”
Somakhya: “Well, that is interesting. However, in the region of the Five Caves there were niṣāda-s who had apparently not gone past the stone age until recently. Hence, when they would have encountered such insulators from the power lines from near the railway tracks they might have simply seen it as excellent raw material for their microlithic technology.”

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Even as they were chatting thus, Vidrum arrived and he had a load of things to show and tell. After quickly summarizing his visit he excitedly got into his dinosaur jaw and with much drama he pulled out the mandible from the bag in which he had placed it. But to his annoyance, his precious jaw was met with much laughter from Somakhya and Lootika. Making his irritation apparent Vidrum asked: “Why the hell should that be so funny to you guys!” Somakhya and Lootika smiling at each said: “That jaw which you have is indeed beautiful and even perhaps significant but it is not a dinosaur. Rather, it is that of a decent-sized varanid lizard – a godha like the one the Tathāgata claimed to have incarnated as.” Vidrum felt a deep disappointment and dejectedly asked it they really meant it. They informed him that they were well-conversant with archosaurian anatomy and explained how it simply could not be one and was doubtless from a long dead lizard. However, they consoled him: “If you let us study this more closely we might have a much needed record of a fossil varanid from India.” Vidrum then said that he had also found some strange white, oddly shaped minute objects in the vicinity of the jaw and showed those to his friends. Somakhya quickly recognized them to be the vermiform dermal bones of a varanid and remarked: “Those indeed confirm you animal to varanid!”

By now Vidrum was feeling the whole cave adventure to be a bit deflating and without proceeding further with his narration decided to show them his gravity knife. Somakhya and the girls tried it out a few times even as Vidrum told them that it certainly did not feel Chinese. They agreed and remarked that this was one example showcasing the ability of bhārata-s to make good stuff. Then he pulled out his Parsi planchette and said they should get moving to ply it. Having examined it closely and praised its workmanship, the four of them left for the environs of the Sarasvatī temple. As they were on the way to the temple Vidrum showed his friends the pamphlet he had been given by the activist of the deva-unmūlana-samiti. Some fine print on it caught Somakhya’s eye: “Hey! Look down here it says: Brought to you by the James Lawrence Skeptic Foundation. I am sure these activists are no volunteers but getting paid subversionists for this mleccha organization.” Vidrum: “Ah! that explains how they could afford such good paper. Now look here is a QR code; let’s check it out.” Vidrum showed the webpage he had pulled up to the three. There was a display with images of GAṆEŚA and KUMĀRA with the legend: “Do you really think it is biologically possible for a man to get an elephant’s head via plastic surgery or have six heads and twelve hands? We call these things teratological monsters.”
Lootika: “It almost seems these skeptics are in league with the pretaghoṣaka-s, much like the mleccha-marūnmattābhisaṅgati that our Hindus are generally ignorant about.”

In the meantime they reached the premises of the temple. Having worshiped the deity enshrined therein, and having smeared the tilaka on their foreheads, they set up the planchette. The remaining three told Vidrum that since it was his board he should have the honor of being the first to think of the dead individual whose bhūta they were going to summon. Having uttered the suitable incantations to summon the bhūta, the four placed their fingers on the brass disc and let it wander around among the letters. First, they asked it its name. The disc indicated the answer as “Kuryūma”. Then they asked how he had died? The answer came back as: “kiyaṅga sulavyama”. Then Vidrum asked where he had lived when alive. The answer was: “ḍaṃ daṃ doṇka”. Then Vidrum put off by the apparently crazy answers tested it by asking the bhūta to state what Vidrum’s favorite dish was. It replied “kustuṃbi cuṭṭu ceṇṭu”. Exasperated by these undecipherable words. Vidrum angrily asked if he might ever meet Meghana’s bhūta. The answer came back as: “ā3mu”. He hastily shouted: “suprasanno bhava suprasanno bhava priya-prete gaccha gaccha |” A cool evening breeze wafted through and the four were quiet for a moment. Vidrum finally broke the silence and with a tinge of indignation: “I am sure you guys were pushing the disc to make fun of me. What nonsensical stuff was that?” Lootika: “Hey, as you may have seen I kept my eyes closed during the entire process to be objective about this whole thing.”
Vidrum: “So it was either of you: Somakhya or Vrishchika!”
Somakhya: “See, if I was pushing it I would have made it look like Subhas Chandra Bose-jī’s bhūta. I would have thought he was your hero and that you might want to hear from him.”
Vidrum: “You think you are being funny?”
Somakhya: “Serious. Or was it supposed to be Tatya Tope-jī?”
Vrishchika: “Before you blame me, let me tell you this was a success. He was speaking in an extinct language and that is why it sounded like gibberish to us. He might have been a prehistoric fellow.”
Vidrum’s face turned ghastly pale: “Vrishchika, you know what, you are probably bang on target even if that was meant as a joke!”
Vrishchika: “Now see, I could make out that the gibberish still sounded linguistically syntactical. So should I conclude that it was you who was pushing the disc to make make up this prehistoric language?”
Vidrum: “No no! You guys never let me complete the story of my adventure at the caves by poking fun at me for my beautiful Varanus bones. If you had let me do so you will see how all this fits.”

The three asked him to continue saying that they were most eager to listen to his tale. Vidrum continued his narration by reiterating the tale of Daṇḍalūma, and then showing them pictures he had taken of the environs of the cave and the descent into the one he had chosen. Finally, Vidrum capped his tale by dramatically revealing the picture of the human skeleton he had encountered. Even as his friends were taking in the image, he slowly remarked: “You see it? That was the person whose bhūta I thought of to be summoned here.” His friends stared at it wide-eyed and then magnified the picture to take a closer look. Vrishchika almost breathlessly yelled: “See the supraorbital torus – that seems like a pretty archaic Homo. So he was a prehistoric fellow after all…” Lootika taking a hard look at the image remarked: “But then look at the mandible it has a prominent mental projection unlike any archaic Homo. Moreover the surface finish of the bone looks sub-fossil rather than genuinely fossilized suggesting a more recent age for this skeleton.”
Somakhya: “That seems right. This fellow is likely to have been from very old times but he is not a fossil man. He is probably anatomically modern Homo sapiens with some definitive archaic admixture as they have observed in Africa and supposedly seen to a degree in early Australian cranial specimens. Remember one of the few archaic crania we have from Bhārata shows that supraorbital torus, which might have persisted upon admixture with anatomical modern H.sapiens streaming in from Africa.”

Vidrum then wondered what the cause of his death might have been. Somakhya looked closely at the skeleton and then at some of the other pictures and turned to Lootika and asked: “Imagine you were a detective; what would you think to be the cause of death?” Lootika and Vrishchika looked at the skeleton again and again kept raking their heads. Finally, Lootika remarked: “His death seems to have occurred in situ and his corpse was not transported by the action of water or by a cat, a bear or hyaenas.”
Somakhya: “That’s right. But look more closely; what is so peculiar about the posture of death?”
Lootika: “He seems to have died with his neck arched backwards and that posture has been captured by the support of the stalagmite against which he was leaning. Could that some kind of neurological effect? The rest of his anatomy suggests a fairly robust adult man. Why would he suddenly die like this?”
Vrishchika pointing to a few peculiar protuberances on the hand and shoulder bones said: “Do you think that those strange outgrowths on the bone are exostoses? I remember our father describing something like that to us sometime back.”
Somakhya: “Excellent, I think both of you have made great observations, now look at Vidrum’s other pictures and see if you could arrive at the cause?”

Lootika stared at them for sometime and remarked that she was still not able to decipher the cause. Somakhya with a grin pointed in the pictures to a plant, which was abundantly growing in the environs of the caves.
Lootika: “Its violet bilaterally symmetric flowers suggest a legume – seems like a little chickpea to me.”
Somakhya: “So what would that mean?”
Lootika felt a sudden connection fire in her brain: “Why? That must be the viṣacaṇaka. I recall reading in the Bhīmasena-vinoda: māhaviṣaḥ pittaghno vātavardhako gaṇḍū-vikṛtin peśy ākṣepakaḥ | So he somehow ended up consuming a lot of those viṣacaṇaka-s and dying from the effects of its toxin.”
Vrishchika: “That sounds rather remarkable: what is the toxin in that innocuous-looking chickpea?”
Somakhya: “The exostoses and the cervical and the indicate that one of the toxins of this legume is 3-Aminopropanenitrile. I am also aware that it contains γ-glutamyl-β-cyanoalanine, which contributes to part of the toxicity. I believe there are one or more toxic amino acids/dipeptides in those beans, which together have contributed to the end of śrī Kuryūma. Perhaps he was cut off from his tribe for some reason and found shelter in that cave but failed to realized that the chickpea-lookalikes he was eating would do him in!”

Vidrum: “That’s really amazing. I must tell you a story that might corroborate your hypothesis! The reason I left that cave was not the fear of the skeleton but the vague dread that came to me from the recollection of that story.”
Somakhya: “Pray tell us more; we are all ears”
Vidrum: “This is a family story I heard from my maternal grandfather. Long, long ago, when the English tyrants lorded over our lands they caused and aggravated famines throughout the countryside. My lineal ancestor and his brother lived in the same village near the caves, which was at that time afflicted by famine. The English claimed to give relief by giving the flour made from a certain bean. But then many people died from subsisting off that flour. There was a special way of cooking it by thoroughly mixing it with the powder of a sarasaparilla’s tuber. By that means my folks apparently survived, and I can vouch that it is even quite delectable to the tongue. However, this secret was only known to my ancestress, who had became pregnant with my next-in-line ancestor. Hence, her husband went to deposit her at her parental home for the pregnancy. Thereafter, he was away, may be for a few months, doing a round of various holy kṣetra-s At that time his brother’s wife used the flour without the stated treatment with the sarasaparilla. When my ancestor returned to his home he found, to his horror, that the rest of his family were afflicted by a strange disease – some were paralyzed and some of had their necks arched backwards and most of them are said to have eventually died. He is said to have dreamed that the great ghost Daṇḍalūma was seizing them. In fear he fled the village to live with a cousin when my ancestress told him that rather than Daṇḍalūma they had probably not dealt with the bean appropriately. Armed with this knowledge they survived but I believe the fear of the genius of that locus still persisted and that is what I experienced in the cave.”

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Some legume toxins studied by Somakhya and the bhaginyaḥ

Years later, there was a family reunion at the house of Vrishchika and Indrasena. Having set the kids up to play with their youngest aunt Jhilleeka, the rest engaged in what for them was a most absorbing discussion: the biology, chemistry and pharmacology of some non-ribosomally synthesized peptides. Varoli describing a side-study of hers remarked that she had looked into an interesting dipeptide biosynthesis pathway, which used a papain-like peptidase to catalyze the formation of dipeptides using the glutamate of glutathione and certain unusual non-proteinic amino acids via a transpeptidase reaction. As she was describing the amino acids in her γ-glutamyl-dipeptides she remarked that she found the secondary amino acid, azetidine 2-carboxylic acid to be particularly interesting in terms of its biosynthesis. Varoli then turned to Lootika and said: “In addition to β-cyanoalanine, it is pretty abundant in the viṣacaṇaka bean that you had asked me to look at. I even sent some to Vrishchika to have its toxicity tested”. Vrishchika: “Yes, I forgot to tell you that my toxicologist did do some tests on it and found it to have devastating effects on connective tissue by disrupting collagen production.”
Somakhya high-fiving with Lootika remarked: “That is likely to be the other toxin I was suspecting in those beans. It must be taking the place of proline being sort of a square version of it. That probably explains its effect on collagen and certainly contributed to the end of the archaic-looking fellow in the cave and the havoc in our old friend Vidrum’s village.”

On pauṣa kṛṣṇapakṣa 11, kali 5115 (16th Jan 2015) around 8.10 PM, braving the cold of the height of winter (felt like -5°C) we caught sight of śvetaketu in the constellation of Taurus near the 6 mothers of our patron deity. It was a dhūmagola around the magnitude of 4.3 and clearly visible through our binoculars (20X70) and was about barely visible to naked eye close to the limiting magnitude from our bad observing site. It had a faint tail that was hardly discernible from our site via our instrument. Nevertheless we would place it as one of the brighter and memorable comets of our life. It could be located fairly easily by using the Kṛttikāḥ as the signpost. Thus, it was like a Skanda-graha coursing through the welkin. Indeed, the ancient jaina-s imagined Skanda as a comet emerging from the Kṛttikāḥ and coursing to Bhāratavarṣa to take the embryo of the future tīrthaṃkara the nagna to place him in a kṣatriya womb after removing all the brāhmaṇa molecules from his body and replacing them with clean ones [Indeed the brāhmaṇa hatred of the nagna-s began early!].

Orbit of Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2

Update: On pauṣa kṛṣṇapakṣa 13, kali 5115 (18th Jan 2015) a new observation was made. The comet had cleared moved from Taurus into Aries. Much of the day there was heavy cloud cover and rain which suddenly cleared in the evening leaving behind excellent skies. The comet was more easily seen with naked eye on this day. It appeared to be at the same brightness with a faint hint of a tail in the direction of the Pleiades.

Below is a more zoomed out view of its orbit which gives a feel for the enormity of the distance of the Oort’s cloud, where comets originate, from the planets and the Kuiper belt objects like Pluto, Eris and Makemake with their highly inclined orbits.

After 1370 CE the power of the Qubilaid Mongols declined precipitously leaving Mongolia in chaos, with several contenders jostling for supremacy but none gaining any ground. As they were fighting each other, the Kirghiz lord Ugechi routed the Qubilaid Khan Elbek and killed him in a battle in 1399 CE. He then declared himself the overlord of the Mongols. The resurgent nationalist Han under the aggressive Ming ruler Yung Lo harbored a deep resentment against the Qubilaids for their conquest of the Hans. Seeing an opportunity to end the Qubilaids once and for all he sent an emissary to immediately recognize Ugechi as the supreme ruler. However, around the same time, (i.e. towards the end of the 1300s) a new Mongol confederation of tribes, the Oirat arose in Western Mongolia under their leader Mahamu. He formed an alliance with the chief of the Mongolized Arans (Alan; Airya>Ara), who were late-surviving steppe Iranians who had been close to the Qubilaids. Initially, they acted as though restoring Qubilaid power by overthrowing Ugechi and killing him. However, Mahamu subsequently grew in ambition. Hence, he sent an emissary of peace to the Ming to secure his southern underbelly. The Ming who were keen to get eliminate the Chingizids once and for all, agreed for peace with Mahamu and urged him to destroy his erstwhile overlords. Mahamu quickly exploited to this lull to conquer most of the territory from the western shores of the Baikal to the Irtysh river. Indeed, the Chingizids of the Qubilaid line might have waned into anonymity had they found a new leader in the form of the direct descendent of Qubilai Khan, Puṇyaśrī Oljei Temür. On one hand Puṇyaśrī was a learned Sanskritist, with literary interests going beyond the vajrayāṇa tantra-s and encompassing the works of Daṇḍin and Bhojadeva Paramāra. On the other he was a vigorous warrior who started rebuilding the Mongol army and drew back the Arans to his side. He repulsed the Ming thrusts into Mongolia and struck out at the Chinese forces in several encounters to the south. However, in 1411 CE, the Ming ruler Yung Lo personally lead a gigantic Chinese army northwards with the express objective of exterminating the Chingizid Mongols. As Puṇyaśrī was being pinned down the by this Chinese assault, his coethnic Mahamu launched a surprise attack on him seized the kingship of Mongolia. Yung Lo alarmed at Mahamu’s rise turned his massive Chinese force across the Gobi against him. However, this was a bad move on his part for it allowed Mahamu to cut off his supplies and ambush his forces inflict heavy losses on the Chinese.

Taking advantage of this situation, Puṇyaśrī restored himself as the lord of Mongolia and resumed the war with the Chinese to take Gansu and Ningxia from them. Yung Lo finally retaliated in 1423 CE by launching a counter-attack on Mongolia. Puṇyaśrī used a similar strategy as Mahamu to draw him across the Gobi and ambush him, forcing the Chinese to retreat without any gains. However, his triumph was short lived for in 1424 CE the Arans and Puṇyaśrī had a falling out and the latter was killed in the conflict. Then Mahamu’s son Toghon Temür, who had succeeded his father, fell upon the Arans and routed them. They fled eastwards to Manchuria where they joined the horde of Adai the descendant of Qasar, the brother of Chingiz Khan, who made an attempt to establish himself as the lord of the Mongols. Adai defeated both the Chinese army sent against him and Toghon Temür to briefly establish himself as lord of Mongolia in 1425 CE, for the first time under a Qasarid emperor. But Toghon Temür patiently rebuilt his army and in 1428 CE and consolidated his power to the west by attacking Vais Khan, the Chagadaid ruler who wanted to wage a Jihad on the heathen Mongols. He routed Vais Khan in multiple battles and seized the Turfan basin from him. Having thus created strategic depth for himself in 1436CE he finally launched a major attack on Adai and slew him in a great battle for Mongolia.

Thus, Toghon Temür became the emperor of Mongolia by 1438CE and at his death passed his incipient empire on to his son Esen Taiji. On coming to power Esen started on an ambitious program of restoring unified heathen Mongol power. He began with a series of campaigns against the Mohammedan Chagadaids and brought them down in a battle fought on the shores of the Balkash. In the process he seized the Chagadaid princess Makhtum Khanim and made several renounce Mohammedanism. Esen Taiji then rapidly moved east to conquer the Hami oasis and in 1445 CE opened hostilities with the Ming and conquered Jehol from them. Esen then asked the Ming emperor to send his sister as his wife but was refused. He retaliated with a fierce attack on Tatung. The enraged young Ming emperor Zhu Qizhen (Zhengtong) marched against the Mongols with a large army directed by the castrato Wang Zhen. The Chinese decided to launch a counter-punch by invading Mongolia from the Southeast. Esen took a leaf of Chingiz Khan’s book and by means of swift secret marches intercepted the vast Chinese army unexpectedly as they were passing through the Chahar province. In an epic battle that took place at Tumu (near Suanhwa) in 1449 CE, Esen’s forces annihilated the Chinese army, killing over 100,000 of their men. Encircled by the Mongols, the Ming emperor Zhu Qizhen was taken captive. Three months later Esen Taiji marched against Beijing but lacking the genius of the great Chingiz Khan failed to take the city and running out of fodder for this horses returned to his territory with his royal prisoner. Unable to take the Ming capital he released his prisoner in 1450 CE and concluded a peace agreement with the Chinese. He then turned his attention west to conquer the ulus of the Chagadaid Toqtoa-buga and slew him.

Amasanji Taiji succeeded his father Esen in 1456 CE. His father, like other religiously liberal heathen Mongol rulers of the past, had allowed a few mullahs to settle in his territory. They were secretly instigated by the Mohammedan Chagadaid princesses whom they had captured to convert two royal Oirat Mongols to Mohammedanism as Ibrahim Ong and Ilyas Ong. These two established communication with the Chagadaid Khan Yunus and together started importing mullahs to conduct extensive missionary activity inside the Oirat Mongol empire. Together with the mullahs, Chagadaid backers and the new converts, Ibrahim and Ilyas initiated a Jihad against the heathen Mongols. Amasanji woke up to the threat as the rioters were approaching his camp. Realizing the great threat the Mongols faced he decisively retaliated by slaughtering the ghāzis in his kingdom. However, Ibrahim and Ilyas managed to escape to China with Ming assistance. Around 1460CE, Amasanji moved west to tackle the Mohammedan threat by invading the Chagadai ulus of Mogholistan and overthrowing Khan Yunus. He then moved against the Khan Abu’l Khair who sought to unify the Chagadais and the Jochids in an Islamic alliance against the heathen Mongols. Abu’l Khair drunk with his string of successes arrogantly asked them submit to the banner of Islam. In 1457CE Amasanji launched a surprise attack with 65,000 men against the Blue Horde. Abu’l Khair seeing them take the towns along the north bank of Syr Darya marched to meet them. In battle that ensued the Army of Islam led by Abu’l Khair was smashed to bits upon encirclement by Amasanji. Khan Abu’l Khair barely escaped with his life. This was the highpoint of the Oirat Mongol empire which remained a great power till 1490CE. But at that point a remarkable Chingizid princess, Mandughai, who was seen by some as a reincarnation of Chingiz Khan’s mother Hoelun, restored Chingizid power by overthrowing the Oirats in 1491CE. But in the west, in Kalmykia, the Oirat Mongols still held sway and relentlessly fought of the Army of Islam inspired by the example of their great leader Amasanji Taiji. Thus, in 1555CE they retaliated against the entry of Mohammedan marauders and missionaries into their territory by comprehensively crushing an triple Islamic alliance of Shaybanids, Kirghiz and Khazak hordes led by khans like Tawakkul and Nauruz Ahmed. Thus, to this date their territory remains the only island of the bauddha-dharma in Russia.

In addition to the survival of heathen traditions, the rise of Oirat power was also marked by the crystallization of a distinctive Mongol epic or tuuli known as Jangar. The epic has been preserved primarily as an oral tradition until it was printed in the last 30 years in Mongolia, but it is very hard to access these texts. More recently, the Mongol scholar Chogjin and Mark Bender have provided fragments of this epic in translation. Since it was a taboo to know the whole epic by heart most reciters know only a few cantos though some know very many. The full complexity of this epic is hardly known outside of greater Mongolia and there might be less than 100 people in these lands alive today who might know the recitation of even parts. The epic is usually recited to the accompaniment of the morin huur, tob-shur and pipa (stringed instruments). The general belief is that Jangar is mythological. A similar claim has been made for the other Tibeto-Mongol epic, the gigantic Geser Khan. However, some western scholars have held that the etymology of Geser being derived from Caesar was a mythologization of either Julius Caesar or Octavian Augutus. However, more likely, is the case that there was a historical element inspired by the Khan Su-lu of the Tuergish Turks with additional elements perhaps drawn from the later Uighur Khans. Likewise the demons or ogres of the Geser Khan epic might have some inspiration from the Arabs, like the Meccan demons in Indian tradition. In the same vein, it is possible that the crystallization of the Jangar epic might have been influenced by the heroic deeds of Esen Taiji and Amasanji Taiji. In this regard it might be noted that the Kirghiz epic Manas was also probably developed upon a historical foundation of the heathen Kirghiz Khan who conquered the Uighurs to take over the empire of Mongolia. In more general terms the study of these Central Asian epics might lend us some understanding of how much historicity might exist in the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata.

Continued…

We have spent most of our adult life in a world connected by the internet. It offers a few opportunities, which were largely absent in the world before it, though it must be emphasized that these come with major downsides: 1) It allows relatively impersonal interaction with people, which removes the complicating issues of real-life interpersonal dynamics. 2) It allows connecting and observing a wider range of personalities than in real life. On the downside it also results in encounters with a greater range of evil-doers and criminals than one would like to encounter. In this regard the development of social media has, in particular, facilitated observation of a larger sampling of humanity than would be possible in real life except for the most socially involved. The down-side is there might be bias because not all types (perhaps very wisely) bloviate on the internet. Indeed some of our good real life friends, unlike our own foolish selves, keep a low profile on the internet. 3) It allows a wider dissemination of discoveries and ideas, which was otherwise not be possible at all.

An offshoot of our many years on the internet has been the data it is has provided to understand the macrocosm of the modern Indian state via the microcosm of Indians (in particular Hindus) on social media. We list a few observations below that have come our way because they have graphically illustrated to us that the Hindus are rather prone to repeating the same errors they have committed in the past millennium since the “wondrous deeds of Mahmud of Ghazna caused the Hindus to scatter like atoms”. Indeed, even as we write these words we are close to the 1000th anniversary of the one bright spot in that litany of defeat to the marūnmāda, i.e. the repulsing of Mahmud Ghaznavi in Kashmir by the Lohara-s lead by Saṃgrāmarāja. It is indeed sad that the BJP government, the so called Hindu party of India, is doing nothing to commemorate the 1000th anniversary period of the events (of course as a negative but educational example and also as a celebration of the heroism of the last Hindu kings of the Punjab) that were to signal the near extinction of the Hindus.

• Hindus can be easily subverted by their Abrahamistic enemies: We have seen this happen on message board-type social media. A friend alerted us to such goings-on on Bhārata-rakṣaka, an internet message board that supposedly caters to the community interested in discussing Indian defense issues. We joined it to check out what our friend had alluded to, and were able to confirm for ourselves that it was indeed the case. A minority of Christian and Mohammedan elements on the message board were able suppress the expression of the factual history of Hindus and prevent them from actually discussing scenarios conducive to the defense of the Hindu nation. The large majority of Hindus in this stood like sheep before these wolfish Abrahamists, while yet other Hindus actively fostered policies to further the cause of the Abrahamists and cause harm to the Hindus. The latter claimed to be acting to uphold what in Indian circles goes by the peculiar name of “secularism”, without realizing that it is only a mechanism of subterfuge of the Abrahamists.

• Hindus long for that imaginary Mohammedan or Christian friend: This is a corollary to the above observation and was rampant on Bhārata-rakṣaka, where many Hindus were falling head-over-heels to curry favors with a Mohammedan or Christian while abusing and endangering their own kind. Little did they realize that those Abrahamists ultimately were undermining the Hindu cause by effectively using these friendship-seeking Hindus to bury the dagger into their coreligionists. This is also widely observed on Twitter. Here, there are some Mohammedans who pose as “atheists” and have acquired such a Hindu fan-club that the latter vie with each other to please those despicable louts. But as we have said before regarding the mleccha atheists (i.e. adherents of the cult of New Atheism), these Mohammedans are no friends of the Hindus. Indeed, marūnmāda itself can be seen as precursor of their atheism, for it mirrors their visceral hate for complex rituals, idols and other imagery, and asserts a truth-claim stemming from the Mosaic distinction that all else is false but for their cult. These Mohammedan atheists have merely transferred their allegiance from the ekarākṣasa to what they believe to be “scientific temper”. Thus, their hatred is quickly unmasked the moment they encounter a Hindu, who is firmly grounded in his tradition, has knowledge of the human ape, and is unaffected by the facade of needing to be modern.

• Hindus as idiots: Sadly, the internet furnishes rather many examples of what several white indologists have often often privately held regarding the Hindus, i.e. they are idiots or a cul de sac incapable of much original thinking. Such are abundantly seen on Twitter and formerly in a mailing list known as the Indian Civilization Mailing List (ICML). On Twitter they assume many forms, including sometimes as professional trolls. One sure shot way of getting them to pop up is to post something on the entry of Arya-s into the Indian subcontinent (aka the Aryan Invasion Theory). The detritus from the abysmal depths, which modern Hindu logic can scrape up, leaves you wondering where all the discernment and common sense of the teachings of Viṣṇugupta and Viṣṇuśarman have gone. There are even types who might boldly inform you that linguistics is not a science and yet others that genetics is not a science. This was indeed rather prevalent on the ICML, which ultimately resulted in Hindus being unable to establish a forum for scholarly discussion of their own past. The main reason was the boorish idiots plastering the place with profuse effusions from their ball-point ball-bearing-sized encephalizations, thereby exterminating any meaningful intellectual conversation. Again, the Hindus with rare exceptions watched like dummies even as the forum filled up like an anaerobic septic tank.

• Hindus open to subversion: If what was seen on the so-called Bhārata-rakṣaka forum was subversion by a minority faction Abrahamists aided by their fawning, “I-am-so-secular” Hindu friends, we can have the Hindus themselves volunteering to do it.

An example of such became apparent in the form a magazine named Swarajya, which was recently resurrected. It claims to position itself as: “A big tent for liberal right of centre discourse that reaches out, engages and caters to the new India”. Thus, it is a venue for something called the “liberal right” voice, which had apparently been previously suppressed in India. Right here we may note a potentially problematic issue: both the terms “liberal” and “right” are apposite for mleccha polities with their Abrahamistic under-girding. They make little sense in India, which at its heart is essentially an expression of the Hindu civilization [The Islamic and Christian components thereof are predatory overlays imposed on the Hindus along with some subverted hybrids like modern uṣṇīṣamoha. Its pre-Aryan tribal component is typologically related to the Indo-Aryan Hindu system in being sister heathen cultures]. In the Abrahamistic world “liberal right” is indeed an oxymoron. But it exists in the Indian parlance, just like secularism, because the Hindus have mapped semantics of these loaded mleccha terms unthinkingly to describe their own preferred position.

Perusing the free content of the magazine, to which even some of our discerning and firmly Hindu acquaintances contribute, we observe that a strand of it indeed gives expression to contemporary Hindu thought. There are, however, authors writing there who are really not allied to the Hindus and could be even inimical to the true rise of the Hindus, in the form of the free-market votaries, who keep insisting that Ha Joon Chang’s proverbial ladder has not been kicked away. Then there are those whom we would classify as the “neutrals”, i.e. those who want to appear genuinely at some political mid-point or “viśuvān”. But the positions they take are ultimately harmful to the Hindus [Footnote 1]. Finally, there are people in positions of power in that magazine who write stuff, which clearly suggests that they are damaging to Hindu interests and could serve as conduits for subversion. Indeed, what can you expect of a man who terms Ramachandra Guha (a well-known enemy of the Hindu cause) his friend. It is such types which can allow the entry into the arena of mleccha plants, even as the Fellowship of the Broom and before that the Italian barmaid was foisted upon the Hindus who indeed have acted like idiots in allowing them to triumph.

In the Veda the ṛṣi Vāmadeva Gautama said:
uta tyā sadya āryā sarayor indra pārataḥ | arṇā-citrarathāvadhīḥ ||
Though arṇa and citraratha were ārya-s, Indra mercilessly slew them beyond the Sarayu river just as he had slain the dasyu-s. Thus, we have people in our own pakṣa who need to be dealt with like those rogue ārya-s.

To end this note we shall provide a nugget from a member of the “liberal right” community which illustrates why New India should not substitute translations for actual readings from the foundational text of our civilization. In an article therein we are (mis)informed:
“In Vedic times, the usage of leech was so widespread that it has become the symbolic representation of medical profession itself. A famous verse in Rg speaks of a bard’s father as a “leech”, meaning he was a physician. At one place where Rudra, instead of the usual twin gods Ashwins, is projected as the god of healing, he is said to have leech in his hands.”

First, it is clear that the author has never studied the RV seriously. The sūkta he is talking about is RV9.112. A translation by the Englishman Griffith renders the word bhiṣak in the sūkta as leech, which was an old word for the physician. Now bhiṣak means physician coming from proto-IndoIranian and not the annelid leech. So in attempting to find leech therapy in this Ṛgvedic verse the author has fallen for a simple misunderstanding of an old translation. Second, Rudra is not presented as the healer *in place of the* usual Aśvinau. He is always the god of healing and a prominent one at that. Moreover, his jalāṣa-bheṣaja is not jalauka, the leech.

This exercise was not to nitpick. Rather it was to show how claiming modernity cannot be a substitute for actual textual study, which was the domain of the brāhmaṇa, who is hated by the author of the above-referred article, as was made clear by him in the declining days of the ICML.

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Footnote 1: Appended below is a response we wrote to one of these “neutral” authors on the Swarajya magazine. Our original comment on Twitter was:

“According to writer it would seem a good thing that “RW” outgrows Hindutva: http://swarajyamag.com/editors-pick/rajaji-beyond-market-and-state/
Another case of disarming immunity of H”

The article features the following elements:

“Add to this the fact that the elections have been won on the basis of Hindutva-centric historic claims, anxieties and paranoias—and the Right has had its ideological platforms cut out.”

“To this end, the Right has begun to restate its philosophic orientation in a new language that goes beyond the Hindutva rhetoric. Some might dismiss this as dressed-up Hindu chauvinism, but to do so would be to acutely misread the moment.”

“But lest he be reduced to an unimaginative Hindutva-type, Modi’s speech ended, to the surprise of many watchers, by asking if there was a Hindu garibi or a Muslim garibi.”

“When Modi or Raje begin to put the Hindutva message of the RSS/VHP kind of social conservatism on the back-burner, and make a case for a political vision different from that of Nehruvian legatees, they are articulating a political discourse that seeks to see past the concerns of history that had been important to the growth of the BJP.”

“To dismiss the Indian Right as merely some version of Hindutva and thus merely as regurgitators of historical concerns is to miss the larger transformation in play.”

On the basis of the above quotes and the overall tenor of the article, I conclude that the writer essentially sees Hindutva as a piece of rhetorical baggage that is best shed by the Hindus. This is the line of reasoning I am fundamentally opposed to, and also see as being potentially dangerous for the well-being of the Hindu people in the long run. In contrast to the writer, I do not see Hindutva as being a rhetorical device of the BJP or the Sangh Parivar; rather, I see it as an upwelling of the inner civilizational spirit of the Hindus, however imperfect its current expressions might be. Importantly, Hindutva, or the open and unapologetic expression Hindu-ness, along with the necessary aggression to counter the foes of Hindu civilization, is not just the defining feature of the Hindu nation, but also the foundation of its immunity against attacks. As my vision of the Indian Nation is a Hindu State as opposed to a secular one (i.e., one that does openly describe itself as Hindu and does not act first and foremost in Hindu self-interest), I see Hindutva as its very fundament. Hence, I see any attempt to redefine the vision of the government/state away from Hindutva as potentially deleterious to the Indian Nation. To lend a comparison, I see such a redefinition as backed by this article as being similar to the redefinition of Sanātana dharma by the tathāgata that led to the subversion of the sanātana dharma upheld by the āstika-s: the results were not pretty for the Sanātana-dharma.

Moreover, the overall tenor of the article internalizes Western categories founded on Abrahamism. Thus, it creates a projection of Hindu thought on a single axis:
conservative<—>liberal.
Such a projection fails to capture the components of sizable magnitude along other dimensions, which are necessary to properly describe Hindu socio-religio-political thought. Thus, this uni-axial reduction is not a useful descriptive model for Hindus to adopt.