Chandraketugarh, a 4th c. BCE urban site in West Bengal that had thriving trade connections with other ancient civilisations of the world. The site is rich in archaeological remains. (*contd. in thread) @LostTemple7
(All info from IIT Kharagpur research paper)
Photos: google
The ruins have yielded innumerable archaeological antiquities ranging from coins, beads, terracotta, stone sculptures, gold coins, & bone, ivory and wooden artifacts. The quality and artistic skill of the excavated artifacts indicate that it was once a highly developed city.
A polygonal brick temple facing north, known as Khana Mihirer Dhipi was recovered from this site. Since this area in all probability was then connected to the Bidyadhari River, it can be termed as a port city. This site was known as ‘Gangaridai’ to the ancient Greeks & Romans.
This ‘Gangaridai’ (Bengali: Gonggarriddhi meaning wealth of the Ganges. In Sanskrit: Ganga Rashtra meaning nation of the river Ganges) was an ancient state established around 300 BCE is described by the Greek traveler Megasthenes in his work ‘Indica’.
Ptolemy mentioned that Gangaridai occupied the entire region around the five mouths of the Ganges. In ‘The Periplus of the Erythraean sea’, the location of Gangaridai was mentioned to be close to the Bay of Bengal, north of the port city of Dosarene of Kalinga (ancient Odisha)
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In my previous post that showed the Christian leanings of Max Müller, I was asked to show how Max Müller mistranslated the Vedas, here are two examples ~
Max Müller translated it as -‘That Self, cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. The Self chooses him (his body) as his own.’
Now check the translation by Sri Aurobindo ~ ‘The Self is not to be won by eloquent teaching, nor by brain power, not by much learning: but only he whom his Being chooses can win Him: for to him this Self bares His body.’
Max Müller in his translation modified ‘Pravachan’ to represent ‘Veda’, which was corrected by Sri Aurobindo, as ‘eloquent teaching.’
Thus, Müller’s version downplays the importance of the Vedas for self-realization, giving them an inferior position.
📍Katha Upanishad (Chapter 1, Verse 25)
यस्य ब्रह्म च क्षत्रं च उभे भवत ओदनः। मृत्युर्यस्योपसेचनं क इत्था वेद यत्र सः ॥
Max Müller’s translation- ‘He to whom the sages are as meat and heroes as food for his eating and Death is an ingredient in His banquet, how thus shall one know of Him where He abides?’
Sri Aurobindo writes : ‘He for whom priesthood and nobility both are as food and death is as a sauce, who really knows where it is?’
Here Müller adds the word ‘meat,’ when the Sanskrit word ‘Odan’, simply means cooked rice, and has no association with ‘meat.’ Müller’s addition of ‘meat,’ puts in a word that is not there in the original verse.
Max Müller helped the British in slowly cutting off the Hindus from their original religious and cultural heritage. His translations with their subtle distortions alienated the Hindus from their ancient heritage. Since he did a lot of translations, these got widely spread, causing irreparable damages.
There are two more narratives that were started by him to show Hindu -Indian civilisation as an inferior one -
1. AIT theory, which claimed Aryans came from outside, starting the Aryan-Dravidian rift, and
2. Sanskrit was a foreign language.
Müller’s translations and narratives unfortunately have had a long lasting negative impact on the collective consciousness of the Hindus. Not only was the Hindu society divided, there was created a strong sense of cultural inferiority.
This was later further reinforced by the Marxist-I$lamist ‘academicians’ post independence.
📍Later Müller changed his opinions, and his translations were much more accurate without the deceptions, and these works were really appreciable. He also broke the myth of the Aryan race myth that he had himself created.
📍However his initial phase of prolific writings, with the distortions got wide publication thanks to the British regime, and did the intended damage on Hindu society. The effects are still visible among Hindus who still believe in myths like the AIT, indo-islamic architecture, inferiority of ancient Indian medical systems, etc.
Witch hunting in Europe was very much associated with the Church.
From Legal POV (as per UC Berkeley Law) :
‘Historians have identified a number of legal developments that led to the hunting and subsequent trials of w!tches in Early Modern Europe.
1. One was the idea of “heretical fact,” by Pope John XXII (1316-1334), that made heresy to be seen as an act or a deed, and not merely an intellectual crime.
2. Another one was the establishment of a link between witchcraft and heresy, a link that had not existed before the end of the 15th century, which emerged because of a new theory of “diabolical witchcraft” that held that the practice of malefice (such as using religious objects to curse one’s neighbor) involved an active pact with the Devil, and was therefore a heretical act and not just a ritual performed by misguided country folk.
These views of witchcraft was then spread throughout Europe by handbooks like the Malleus Maleficarum.
The first wave of w!tchhunting occurred in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and the second wave came in 17th century. Witch hunts were seen across all of Early Modern Europe, but the area that saw maximum w!tch hunting is said to be the southwestern parts of Germany, where the highest concentration of w!tch trials occurred between 1561 to 1670.’
The witch hunts in Europe took off in the 15th century and lasted for almost 300 years, resulting in the prosecution of roughly 90,000 people, with nearly 45,000 executions.
Belief in witches and witchcraft had been present in European culture for centuries, but the level of systematic, widespread persecution that occurred during this period was unprecedented. It is said the printing press helped in the fast spread of books like ‘Malleus maleficarum,’ that led to mass scale witch hunting.
Malleus maleficarum was both a theoretical and practical guide for identifying, interrogating, and prosecuting witches.
Dr. Charlotte-Rose Millar in her research, ‘Women as witches: past present, and future,’ says that witchcraft has been considered a moral crime from around 16th century. Of the 90,000 people accused in the past, 90% were women in England; 76% in the Roman Empire; 90% in Hungary; 95% in Switzerland, and 76% in France.
Many of these ‘witches’ were healers, widows, spinsters, and elderly women. They were mostly independent, autonomous, and ‘unprotected,’; therefore seen as a threat to the patriarchal standards of the society and Church.
Mu$lims DID NOT invent Algorithms or Algebra, or for that matter anything associated with Mathematics.
In 1974, IBM through its Advertisement had acknowledged the historical fact that 1500 Years back three Indians, Bhaskara, Brahmagupta and Aryabhatta, had developed Algebra.
The origins of algebra, however, go further back than just 1500 years. Roots of Algebra can be traced back to the ancient texts known as the ‘Shulba Sutras,’ the earliest of which was compiled around 800 BCE. The four major Shulba Sutras, which are mathematically the most significant, are Baudhayana, Manava, Apastamba and Katyayana. It is in these Shulba Sutras that one finds early forms of algebraic formulas with reasoning, and the problem solving methods.
It is from the Shulba Sutras that the world learned Mathematics, including Algebra.
The word algorithm, came from the Arab mathematician/astronomer Al-Khwarizmi who wrote a book copied from Indian mathematicians, and he had acknowledged that too.
In 12th century, Latin translations of al-Khwarizmi's textbook on Indian arithmetic (Algorithmo de Numero Indorum), codified various Indian numerals, and introduced the decimal-based number system to the Western world.
Today Mu$lims are claiming they invented Algebra and Algorithms, and entire Google is filled up these Mu$lim lies!
Al-khwarizmi had forgotten that in his earlier works he had credited the Hindus for inventing mathematics and whose works he had copied giving them due credits.
Later however he lied in ‘Liber Algebre’ and gives credit to himself 🤦🏻♀️
|| An example of Nexus between Criminals and Politicians, and Police Failure in W•B ~ the Murd€r of DCP Vinod Mehta on 18th March 1984 ||
The police in W•B botching up investigations (eg: Kamduni gang-r@pe case), or failing to carry out their normal duties is not new. From CPI-M to T-M-C, the trend continues.
A particularly h0rrific incident that comes to mind was the 1984 murd€rs of Vinod Mehta, a 35 year old IPS officer, then DC (Port) of Kolkata Police, and his bodyguard Mukhtar Ali.
In broad daylight, Vinod Mehta (35), and Mukhtar Ali (36), were dragged into a narrow lane in GardenReach, by a mob. Four hours later, their mut¡lated bodies were discovered.
Vinod Mehta's nak€d body was found in a drain with his eyes g0uged out. His hands and feet had been tied, and the body had multiple burn and stab wounds. Mukhtar Ali’s arms and legs had been sev€red, and what remained of his torso, was only a charred heap.
Vinod Mehta, an IPS officer from Punjab, was known as an honest officer, who could not be bribed.
1/4 … 🧵👇🏼
2/4
On the morning of 18th March, 1984 (it was a Sunday), after receiving input from the Home Secretary Rathin Dasgupta that trouble was brewing in the Garden Reach area, Mehta immediately rushed to the spot.
The local police station was informed of the DC’s visit to GardenReach (a no-go Mu$lim area), yet the police made delays, and went to check half-hour an hour later.
As they entered GardenReach, they were met with bombs and bricks. As the police stood there, they suddenly noticed Mehta's parked car, but he or his bodyguard were nowhere to be seen.
Few policemen then went to his house to check if he was there. Not finding him at home, finally the police was forced to launch a manhunt in the GardenReach area.
3/4
Garden Reach, which is termed as “Mini Pakistan,” is a no-go zone. The place is a den for Mu$lim smugglers, and many of them are from Bangladesh, who have illegally settled there over many years.
As these illegal BD Mu$lim smugglers prospered, so did some of the local policemen, who had good rapport with the smugglers, which helped them to earn a lot of money.
Vinod Mehta had become a major threat to these smugglers, because of his frequent raids on their illegal establishments.
Regarding DC Vinod Mehta’s murd€r, there are two theories ~
📍As per one theory, r!0ts had been carefully preplanned, in order to bring Mehta to the area and murd€r him. Apparently a day before, the smugglers had bought many bombs, which were then lobbed in the area on Sunday morning, and subsequently a rumour was spread of communal r!0ts.
📍As per another theory, it was a revenge murder. Few days back, Mehta had ordered his men to fire at a ri0ting mob, which keeled two young men. At a protest meeting, the father of one of the keeled men had said: "I will certainly avenge the death of my son and will see that Mehta does not live long." Soon posters demanding Mehta's head appeared in Garden Reach; however, neither the local policemen nor the detective department took any action.
Re-Reading the 1971 Indo -PK war atroc!t!es on Hindu women.
It is said that the number of mass r@p€s in the 9 month long war is between 200,000 and 400,000.
Most of the r@p€ victims of the Pak!stan! Army and its allies (razakars), were Hindu women. Many of these women di€d in captivity, or later committed suic¡de, while others migrated to India.
During the war, a fatwa was declared in Pak!stan that said Hindu women could be taken as the "booty of war". Imams and MsLm religious leaders of Pak!stan openly declared that the Bengali Hindu women were 'gonimoter maal' (war booty) and they openly supported the r@p€ of these women by the PK Army.
Given below is a documented account of a young Hindu bride (17 year old) who was gang r@p€d by Pak¡stani soldiers -
“Two went into the room that had been built for the bridal couple. The others stayed behind with the family, one of them covering them with his gun. They heard a barked order, and the bridegroom's voice protesting. Then there was silence until the bride screamed ... In a few minutes one of the soldiers came out, his uniform in disarray. He grinned to his companions. Another soldier took his place in the extra room. And so on, until all six had r@p€d the belle of the village. Then all six left, hurriedly. The father found his daughter lying on the string cot unconscious and bleeding. Her husband was crouched on the floor, kneeling over his vomit.” (Bina D’Costa, pp. 121-122)
Almost 200,000-400000 women were r@p€d, giving birth to thousands of war-babies. The Pak!stani soldiers and razakars also kept Bengali Hindu women as s€X-slav€s inside the PK Army camps.
(Image is of a teenage girl r@p€d by a PK soldier who left her war baby with the missionaries of charity for adoption)
Author Bina D’Costa tracked down the Australian doctor, Geoffrey Davis, who was brought to Dhaka by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the UN. Davis was tasked with performing late-term ab0rt¡Ons, and facilitating large scale international adoption of the war babies born to the r@p€d Hindu Bengali women.
D’Costa’s conversation with Dr. Davis was published in a Bangladeshi publication. There are details of women being t!ed to trees and gang r@p€d, breasts hack€d off, dumped in mass graves, and held in Pakistani r@p€ camps.
Dr. Geoffrey Davis said that the 200,000 to 400,000 r@p€ victims were an underestimation. The Pakistan army would “keep the infantry back and put artillery ahead and they would shell the hospitals and schools. And that caused absolute chaos in the town. And then the infantry would go in and begin to segregate the women. Apart from little children, all those were s€Xually matured would be segregated..And then the women would be put in the compound under guard and made available to the troops ... Some of the stories they told were appalling. Being r@p€d again and again and again. A lot of them died in those r@p€ camps. There was an air of disbelief about the whole thing. Nobody could credit that it really happened! But the evidence clearly showed that it did happen."
Read:
Bina D'Costa, 2011. Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia.
Margaret Alston, 2015. Women and Climate Change in Bangladesh, p. 40.
New York Times report, 'Horrors of East Pakistan Turning Hope into Despair', Malcolm W. Browne.
Herbery Bodman and Tohidi Nayereh Esfahlani (1998). Women in Muslim societies: diversity within unity.
Ami Birangona Bolchhi ("I, the heroine, speak") by Nilima Ibrahim.
Hinduism is still present in China, though it is now in minuscule numbers. However archaeological evidences suggest there was once a thriving presence of Hindus in different provinces of medieval China.
In photos is the Kaiyuan temple, in Quanzhou, a province of southeast China. According to the historians, there were more than a dozen Hindu temples, including two big shrines, in Quanzhou and the surrounding villages, which were built by a group of Tamil traders who lived here during the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) periods.
In 1271, a visiting Italian merchant recorded that the Indian traders "were recognised easily. These rich Indian men and women mainly live on vegetables, milk and rice, unlike the Chinese who eat meat and fish."
The Kaiyuan temple show many Shaiva motifs, similar to the ones seen on temples in Tamil Nadu of the same period (10th-14th centuries).
@LostTemple7
In the 1930s, many murtis of Narasimha were unearthed from Quanzhou during an archaeological excavation by Wu Wenliang. Among other Hindu artefacts, images depicting Puranic stories associated with Vishnu and Shiva were also found, showing a style similar to what is seen on temples in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh of the same period (10th -14th centuries).
Besides the Tamil traders, Indians entered China through the Kamrup route (Assam) via Burma into south Chinese province of Yunnan, as well as other southwestern regions of modern China. This is supported by by the discovery of Shiva-linga and yoni in Jianchuan caves, while many other Hindu artefacts were found during excavation of Dali temple in Yunnan.
Another route to enter China was through Kashmir, and it was this route that carried Buddhism to China.
(All images from Google)
My post is in context to a Hanuman murti photo that I had shared on Hanuman Jayanti. The murti was from China, and few then had said there was no Hinduism ever in China, and the hanuman murti was actually from a jataka tale of Buddhism.