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Mathomathis would like to present article on Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 103 by the author Kosla Vepa Published by Indic Studies Foundation, 948 Happy Valley Rd., Pleasanton, Ca 94566, USA. Previous article can be found here (Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 102) Their website can be located Indicstudies.us. The studies is also conducted by N.S. Rajaram PhD. Author’s in the volume 1 of their research start their discussion on a topic called Why are History and the Chronology Important by Kosla Vepa PhD. Majumdar, the great historian, asserts that history records the achievements of man. According to him, history deals with facts, which can be known only from records kept. Western Scholars, while acknowledging that unlike other ancient civilizations, the ancient traditions in Bharat (India) have been preserved without a break down to the present day, have generally argued that Bharatiyas lack a sense of history and that there is a dearth of ‘historical texts’ in Bharata, that contain records of dates and events. Hence, they deny the existence of any ‘historical record’ for Bharata. These scholars have discounted the fact that two of the greatest epics of the world, Ramayana and Mahabharata are traditionally regarded as itihasas, i.e., historic texts and that there are in addition, a host of supporting texts in the form of Puranas. Ignoring the fact that Bharata has its own sense of history and the purpose of history, which differs from their own concept of history, the scholars have systematically misrepresented the chronology of Bharata so as to fit some misguided theory and have often proposed rather fanciful hypotheses. For example, one scholar even suggested that Lord Krishna , the most important personality in the whole epic, was not in existence at the time of the Mahabharata war! All of the itihasa and Purana – texts mentioned above have been considered less trustworthy as records of dates and events because of possible interpolations as they were transmitted orally over a very long period of time. However, these texts do contain references to astronomical events, many of which are genuine and can be regarded as inscriptions in the sky. If properly deciphered and validated, the astronomical events can form the basis of providing reliable chronology. Recently powerful computer software products marketed generically as planetarium software have become commercially available. These computer programs can project the view of the sky at any time, and at any place in the world, all at the touch of a mouse. The planetarium software can therefore be used advantageously to project the view of the ancient sky and validate the “deciphering of celestial inscriptions,” by comparing the descriptions in the texts with the actual views of the sky. The author has shown that the astronomical references in various texts can be simulated using the planetarium software resulting in a reliable inference of the date of the events. The present essay examines a number of such texts and shows that a consistent and reliable chronology of ancient Bharata can be established on the basis of simulations using the planetarium software. Our own sense of time is rooted in astronomy, for it arises from the three fundamental motions namely, the rotation of the earth, the revolution of the earth around the sun and the revolution of the moon around the earth. It is not at all surprising that a ‘chronology’ can be established on the basis of astronomy. It is a tribute to the wisdom of the ancient rishis (sanints) of Bharata who have preserved for posterity that chronology in terms of astronomical events as recorded in various texts. The plan of the essay is as follows. First, the astronomical references in the epic Mahabharata, from which a date can be ascertained, are discussed. The methodology of arriving at a date is explained. The date arrived at is supported by star maps from the planetarium software. It is important to stress that the date of the war is determined solely on the basis of astronomical references in the epic Mahabharata alone and the date is established independently of any other source, as the sheet-anchor for the chronology of Bharata. The consistency with other texts of Vedic and other traditions is then discussed. This is followed by a discussion of the consistency with the genealogy lists from Puranas texts. A further step in establishing the chronology of Bharata is given in the simulations of the dates of certain inscriptions, namely, the dates of Vikrama samvat, Buddha nirvana, and the date of Adi Guru Sankaracharya. This essay goes a long way in demonstrating a consistent chronology of Bharata through the simulations using planetarium software, with the date of the Mahabharata War as the sheet-anchor and is largely in agreement with the chronology as advocated by Kota Venkatachelam and a host of other scholars. The Date of the Mahabharata War The importance of the date of the Mahabharata war as the sheet-anchor for the chronology of Bharata is too well known to be stated again. According to tradition, the war between the Kauravas and Pandavas took place at the transition between Dwapara and Kaliyuga, around 3000 BCE. However, ever since Western Scholars showed interest some hundred years ago in the epic and began to discuss its ‘historicity’, a lively debate (or rather a war of dates!) has been going on. While some scholars declare that the whole epic is a myth denying any historical truth to the story of the epic and ignore the tradition, many do believe that the war actually took place, but are divided as to the magnitude of the event and as to the date when it actually took place. Some scholars portray the epic as an exaggerated account of a family feud. A plethora of dates ranging from before 5000 BCE to around 1000 BCE have been proposed on the basis of estimates arrived at by using diverse methodologies (some based on fanciful assumptions) and there appears to be no consensus for the […]
Year 1985 – The AI Magazine Mathomathis would like to present an article on: Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence by Rick Brigs | RIACS, NASA Ames Research Centeu, Moffet Field, California 94305. In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money has been expended on designing an unambiguous representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing These efforts have centered around creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief that natural languages arc unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one There is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost more than 5000+ years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its own Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millenia old First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian Grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical implications of this equivalence will be given. For the sake of comparison, a brief overview of semantic nets will be given, and examples will be included that will be compared to the Indian approach. After early attempts at machine translation (which were based to a large extent on simple dictionary look-up) failed in their effort to teach a computer to understand natural language, work in AI turned to Knowledge Representation. Since translation is not simply a map from lexical item to lexical item, and since ambiguity is inherent in a large number of utterances, some means is required to encode what the actual meaning of a sentence is. Clearly, there must be a representation of meaning independent of words used. Another problem is the interference of syntax. In some sentences (for example active/passive) syntax is, for all intents and purposes, independent of meaning. Here one would like to eliminate considerations of syntax. In other sentences the syntax contributes to the meaning and here one wishes to extract it. Author considers a “prototypical” semantic net system similar to that of Lindsay, Norman, and Rumelhart in the hopes that it is fairly representative of basic semantic net theory. Taking a simple example first, one would represent “John gave the ball to Mary” as in Figure 1. Here five nodes connected by four labeled arcs capture the entire meaning of the sentence. This information can be stored as a series of “triples”: give, agent, John give, object, ball give, recipient, Mary give, time, past. Note that grammatical information has been transformed into an arc and a node (past tense). A more complicated example will illustrate embedded sentences and changes of state: “John told Mary that the train moved out of the station at 3 o’clock.” As shown in Figure 2, there was a change in state in which the train moved to some unspecified location from the station. It went to the former at 3:00 and from the latter at 3:O0. Now one can routinely convert the net to triples as before. The verb is given central significance in this scheme and is considered the focus and distinguishing aspect of the sentence. However, there are other sentence types which differ fundamentally from the above examples. Figure 3 illustrates a sentence that is one of “state” rather than of “event .” Other nets could represent statements of time, location or more complicated structures. A verb, say, “give,” has been taken as primitive, but what is the meaning of “give” itself? Is it only definable in terms of the structure it generates? Clearly two verbs can generate the same structure. One can take a set-theoretic approach and a particular give as an element of “giving events” itself a subset of ALL-EVENTS. An example of this approach is given in Figure 4 (“John, a programmer living at Maple St., gives a book to Mary, who is a lawyer”). If one were to “read” this semantic net, one would have a very long text of awkward English: “There is a John” who is an element of the “Persons” set and who is the person who lives at ADR1, where ADR1 is a subset of ADDRESS-EVENTS, itself a subset of ‘ALL EVENTS’, and has location ‘37 Maple St.‘, an element of Addresses; and who is a “worker” of ‘occupation 1’. . .etc.” The degree to which a semantic net (or any unambiguous, nonsyntactic representation) is cumbersome and odd-sounding in a natural language is the degree to which that language is “natural” and deviates from the precise or “artificial.” As we shall see, there was a language spoken among an ancient scientific community that has a deviation of zero. The hierarchical structure of the above net and the explicit descriptions of set-relations are essential to really capture the meaning of the sentence and to facilitate inference. It is believed by most in the AI and general linguistic community that natural languages do not make such seemingly trivial hierarchies explicit. Below is a description of a natural language, Shastric Sanskrit, where for the past millenia successful attempts have been made to encode such information. Shastric Sanskrit The sentence: (1) “Caitra goes […]
Mathomathis would like to present article on Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 103 by the author Kosla Vepa Published by Indic Studies Foundation, 948 Happy Valley Rd., Pleasanton, Ca 94566, USA. Previous article can be found here (Indian Astronomy | Astronomical Dating of Events | 104) Their website can be located Indicstudies.us. The studies is also conducted by N.S. Rajaram PhD. Author’s in the volume 1 of their research start their discussion on a topic called Why are History and the Chronology Important by Kosla Vepa PhD. Beginning of kaliyuga and Information from Puranas: According to Sengupta, there are three traditions regarding the date of the Mahabharata war, namely The Aryabhata tradition, according to which Pandavas lived at the beginning of the astronomical Kali age, 3102 BCE; kaho manavo dha manuyugah skha gatastemanuyugahchnaca | kalpaderyugapadagaca gurudivasacca bharatapurvam || A.I.5 || 2449 BCE, based on the saptarshi tradition as allegedly recorded by Varahamihira; The tradition of the Puranas, according to which from the birth of Pariksit to the accession of Mahapadmananda, there was a time interval is one thousand and five hundred years. Based on the Purana tradition, modern historians who have identified Chandragupta Maurya (who followed the Nanda s) to have lived in 324 BCE, assign a date ~1900 BCE for the war. All these three will be examined for consistency. It is to be reemphasized that the date of 3067 BCE has been derived independent of any of these traditions and is truly based on the internal evidence based on astronomical references found in the epic alone. Aryabhata Tradition: Aryabhata declares that when he was 23 years old, 3600 years of Kaliyuga had elapsed. This identifies the beginning of Kaliyuga with 3102 BCE. At first sight there appears to be some question about the consistency of the date 3067 BCE for the war with the beginning of Kaliyuga, which is traditionally thought to have started after the war. A large number of scholars who have proposed the date of ~3000 BCE for the war rely on the information regarding the beginning of Kaliyuga in one-way or the other. However, the epic it self does not explicitly give any information about the beginning of Kaliyuga. It is generally accepted that the astronomical beginning of Kaliyuga coincides with 17/18 February, 3102 BCE. The date of the war is then tied to the beginning of Kaliyuga (which according to some authors coincided with asanmaghasu munayah sasati prthvim yudhistire nrpatau | sadvika pancadviyutah sakakalah tasyarajnasyat ||BrS yavat pariksito janma yavat nandabhisecanam | evam varsa sahasrantu jneyam pancasatottaram sastyabdanam sastiryada vyatitastrayasca yugapadah | tryadhika vimsatirabdastadeha mama janmanotitah || A. III. 10|| The end of the war and thus giving the date as 3102 BCE for the war). But there are others who take their clue from the Puranas, according to which Kaliyuga began with the departure of Lord Krishna from this world, an event occurring after 36 years after the war. This results in the proposed date of 3138 BCE for the war. The spread of +/- 1 year on either side of these dates arises from slightly different modes of counting. Of course, the date 3067 BCE is posterior to 3102 BCE. Is there a conflict? Should not the war precede the beginning of Kaliyuga? Not really. All that the epic says is that the war occurred during the transitional interval between Dwapara and Kali yugas, and nowhere it says exactly when the Dvapara ended or Kali began. The antara or the interval between the yugas is quite extensive. According to Vishnu Purana, the sandhya for Dvapara lasts for 200 years and for kali, it is 100 years. Thus there is a period of some 100 years or so, which can be legitimately referred to as sandhya and 3067 BCE falls within this interval of 3102 BCE. In fact, there is some indication that the Kaliyuga had already started by the time of the war. Even Bhagavata Purana acknowledges that although Kaliyuga had already started, because of the presence of Krishna, Kali’s effect had been controlled. The full power of Kali became effective only with the departure of Krishna, according to Kali raja vrttanta. Thus there is no conflict with the war occurring in 3067 BCE and the reckoning of Kaliyuga from 3102 BCE. etad kaliyugam nama aciradyatpravartate || MB. III.148.37|| The following remark is made when during the gadayuddha, Bhima hits Duryodhana’s thigh, the adharma act being the result of Kali having already entered praptam kaliyugam viddhi pratijnam pandavasyaca || MB IX.59.21|| yada mukundo bhagavanimam mahim jahau svatanva sravaniya satkathah | tadahareva pratibuddhacetasamabhadrahetuh kaliranvavartata ||BP I.15.36|| yavat sa bhagavan vishnu pasparsemam vasundharam | tavat prthvim parakrantum samartho nabhavat kalih || bhaga III, a. III || The alleged Varahamihira Tradition: Varahamihira states in his Brihatsamhita that the saptarishis were in magha when Yudhisthira was ruling and to get the epoch of saka kala one should add 2526 years to the epoch of Yudhisthira. Historians have assumed that the saka kala or saka nrpati kala refers to the Salivahana saka of 78 CE. Thus arriving at the date -2448 (= 78-2526 ) or 2449 BCE for the Yudhisthira Era, the scholars declare that Varahamihira gives this as the date of the Mahabharata war. Kalhana also assumes that the position of saptarishis has been given by Varahamihira, and makes the same mistake regarding the saka kala in his Rajatarangini. However, he assumes that Kaliyuga began in 3102 BCE, hence declares that Pandavas lived 3102-2449 = 653 years after the start of the Kaliyuga. This has only contributed to the confusion and some Indologists actually declare Kaliyuga as a figment of imagination. Varahamihira simply quotes vrddha Garga’s opinion regarding when Yudhisthira lived and how to get that period from saka kala and this is not Varahamihira’s opinion. Garga by all accounts lived before CE and the word saka kala of Garga cannot refer to Salivahana saka of 78 CE. The saka kala or saka nrpati kala in Garga’s words refers to the […]
The following article on Cosmo Graphical Mapping by JOSEPH E. SCHWARTZBERG is a continuation from the Previous article Cosmo Graphical Mapping | Cosmographies In Hindu Tradition | 103. Apart from painted cosmographies, a half-dozen cosmographic globes (bhugolas), all based largely on Puranic texts, are known to exist. These are of types described by Hindu astronomers, as far back as Aryabhata (b. A.D. 476). Two of these five globes are found today at the British Museum in London, and one each are at the Victoria and Albert Museum, also in London; the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford; and the Bharat Kala Bhavan in Varanasi. Author tries to refer to them as BM(A), BM(B), VA, Oxford, and BKB globes. The sixth globe was reported to Gole by N. P. Joshi of the Archaeological Survey of India, who saw it in an Indian village (location unknown). The simplest of the five globes studied, the VA globe, is a solid wooden sphere, about nineteen centimetres in diameter (shown in previous articles – Figure 5). This globe is believed to have been made in Orissa in the early to mid-nineteenth century. On it land is colored mainly in yellow, mountain ranges in a lighter peach tone, rivers in white, oceans in several colors, among which gray is most common, and text in red. The northern hemisphere of this globe shows Jambudvipa according to the four-continent earth conception (catur-dvipa vasumati). It is depicted by a lotus with four petals whose tips virtually reach the equator. East-west mountain ranges extend across each petal: there are three ranges on each of two petals (those that appear to be centered on 0° and 180° longitude) and only one on each of the others (those that appear to be centered on 90° east and west longitude). The northernmost and southernmost of the former set of ranges are shown as forested. Near what would be the northern pole, a circle within a square denotes Mount Meru, and that appears within a larger square just north of the northernmost mountain ranges. From near Mount Meru, originating within the larger square, rivers flow southward through the middle of each continent. Painted in the four inlets of ocean that separate the northern hemisphere continents are aquatic animals, boats, and four white palaces signifying the cities of Lanka, Romaka, Siddhapura, and Yamakoti, described by astronomers as occupying cardinal points on the equator. The southern hemisphere differs completely from the northern. With its six ring continents and intervening oceans, it is essentially like that of the four globes still to be discussed. Interestingly, three of the southern ring oceans are in colors other than the prevailing gray-tan, pink, and turquoise. Substantial text, written in a rather tiny Devanagari script, appears on the globe, but neither transliterations nor translations are available at present. Finally, there are unnumbered black tick marks at five-degree intervals South Asian Cartography along the prime meridian, along another meridian approximately 150 degrees to the west (in the northern hemisphere only), and around the equator. Much older and more interesting than the preceding globe is a not-quite-spherical thin brass container on which is inscribed not only a hybrid cosmography, but also a wealth of minute pictorial detail and text in Devanagari script. This artifact (plate 26), held by the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford, has been the object of detailed scholarly scrutiny by Simon Digby, who considers it not only from the perspective of traditional Indian cosmology, but also as an art historian. Supplementing Digby’s observations are a pair of diagrams kept within the sphere that provide a complete inventory of the regional features it portrays. Many of these features are also found on the BKB globe (Figure: 6, from the previous article), to which Digby’s observations also are largely applicable. Rather exceptionally, the creator of the bhugola at Oxford, one Ksemakarna, undoubtedly a Brahman, inscribed on it both his own name and the date of his work, Saka 1493 (A.D. 1571). The area of provenance, however, is not known. Digby presents evidence for several possibilities but seems to favor the view that the globe was fashioned for a wealthy patron from Saurashtra. He also suggests that the globe’s function was primarily utilitarian, probably for storing food or condiments, and that “the depiction of the regions of the earth upon it was an elegant conceit suggested by its shape.” The mean equatorial diameter of the bhugola is about 26 centimetres, and its height 22 centimetres. Joined by a hinge at the equator, both hemispheres are slightly flattened, but the northern one, though essentially round, comes to a rather gently sloping polar peak. Tick marks at one-degree intervals are inscribed around the equator and small circles are etched in at ninety-degree intervals. The bhugola’s cosmography draws primarily on Puranic sources but modifies their content in light of knowledge derived from post-Ptolemaic Sanskrit astronomers, reconciling the two “in an unscriptural but rational manner.” The upper half of the container represents the continent of Jambudvipa, and the subequatorial remainder, except for the anomalously positioned islands of Lanka and Palanka (= ?), is given over to the other six ring-shaped continents and their intervening oceans in concentric latitudinal bands. These continents necessarily diminish in size toward the southern pole, “in contrast to the common Puranic account in which they increase in size by geometrical progression (2, 4, 8 … ). As on the bhugola the largest ring of land is the closest to the Equator, they also in fact enclose one another in inverse order to that prescribed in the Puranas.” Digby notes that “theoretical distances” are inscribed in yojanas at the equator, but not below it; but he neglects to indicate which features those distances apply to. Meru-over which, astronomers reasoned, Dhruva (the Pole Star) was situated-is positioned at the northern pole rather than at the center of the four quarters of the world, which was the usual Puranic view. This placement meant that if the southernmost Puranic continent, Bharatavarsa […]
Hindu Scriptures & Sanskrit Literature | Mathomathis would like to present an article on Root By Kadambi Srinivasan | Published by | Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams | Tirupati 2019. The following article would focus on Hindu Scriptures & Sanskrit Literature. Three religions are regarded as the oldest having come down to us from prehistoric times. They are Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Sanskrit, as defined by Panini, is the classical Sanskrit which evolved from the earlier Vedic Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas consisting of Samhitas, Brahmanas and Upanishads. The metrical hymns of the Rig Veda Samhita are regarded as the earliest composed by man. Prof. Max Muller while recording the first voice on a Gramophone chose the first Sloka of Rig Veda “Agni Meele Purohitam”. He proceeded to explain the reason for his choice – “Vedas are the oldest text of the human race. And Agni Meele Purohitam is the first verse of Rig Veda. In the most primordial time, when the people did not know how even to cover their bodies and lived by hunting and housed in caves, Indians had attained high civilization and they gave the world universal philosophies in the form of the Vedas.” There are two important aspects about the Vedas – (a) Hindus regard that the Vedas have been received through revelation. It was not written by any man (Apaurusheya); and (b) The Vedas are without a beginning and end. How is it possible? Swami Vivekananda explains. “By the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by different persons at different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits, were there before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them”. The name given to the discoverers of these laws was” Kavi”. The Vedas described them as kavayah satyasrutah meaning seers who were the hearers of the truth. The Veda itself was called Shruti meaning revealed scripture. The sage who had a direct intuitional perception is called Sakshath Krutha Rishi. The sage who heard it from his Guru and remembered it is called Shrutha Rishi. Veda have been divided into Karma Kanda (section of works and rituals) and Jnana Kanda (section of knowledge) the former associated with the hymns and the later with the Upanishads. European scholars took up the ritualistic tradition and went on to make their own etymological explanation of the words resulting in arbitrary meaning for Vedic verses. In fact, what they were looking for in Veda was the early history of India, its society, institutions – in short a picture of the times. They then invented the theory (based on the difference of languages) of an Aryan invasion from the north, and an invasion of the Dravidian India. The Indians themselves had no memory of such invasions and there were no records of such events in their classical literature. Yet, this appears to have persuaded the minds of some Indians in favour of this view. All this resulted in a chaos and a mutilation of dates of historical events. As Aurobindo puts it “the Vedic religion was on this account only a worship of Nature-Gods full of solar myths and consecrated sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed and apotheosized Veda”. And we were left to trace our civilization and ancestors from among the ruins at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. In recent years, Indian scholars have started work on the scientific dating of various events described in our Puranas. The Rishis, the poet seers of Veda, were men with a great spiritual and occult knowledge not shared by ordinary men. Among this enlightened group, there are a number of Rishikas (female Rishis) as well. Still the task is unfinished. To be revealed is one thing, to preserve it and pass it on is quite another thing. The mantras acquire their powers by virtue of their acoustic energy of the syllables (Shabda). In addition, correct sequence of words, purity of the language, exact pronunciation of the words, precise stress on syllables, measured pause between syllables, appropriate tone, accent, modulation and pitch of recitation, proper breath control etc are very critical. In the case of written texts comparisons may be carried out much more easily. How can you devise a system to control the requirements of Vedic texts? In addition the requirement for memorising the entire Vedic texts existed. The Ashrams of the Rishis served as the learning centres and they were located in forests. And maintaining large libraries was impracticable. Oral Tradition Systems have been devised to meet this challenge. It is astounding that large volumes of Vedic texts were preserved by oral tradition for over thousands of years, safeguarding their purity and entirety. Svaadhyaya, the oral tradition, by which Vedas have been preserved, emphasizes the preservation of actual sound of the Vedas over their meaning and interpretation! Careful thought and planning have gone into devising methods to achieve the desired results. Oral methods have been around in other parts of the world as well but rarely has any other oral tradition been so venerated and so well preserved as the Vedic tradition. Rishi Veda Vyasa categorised and compiled four Vedas so that they are more amenable to study and memorise. The task of preserving and perpetuating each branch of Veda in its entirety and purity was assigned to a specified Shakha (branch). The followers of each Shakha, identified as Shakhins of that particular Vedic school, were responsible for preserving their assigned part of Veda. Followers of each Shakha would learn and preserve one of the four Samhitas along with their associated Brahmana, Aranyaka, Upanishads and the Sutras such as Grihya Sutra […]