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Mathomathis would like to present an article on Vastu for house adopted from the website: Freevastushastra.com Vastu Shastra a refined combination of ancient Hindu traditions developed as an art, analyzed as a science, and interpreted astrologically can lead the way into healthy living. There is a universal call for world peace hence the smallest unit of the society like the family should raise their offspring in an environment that knows the meaning of peace. Vastu Shastra:- it teaches us how to recognize a land suitable as a vastu for a house that will receive magnetic energy from elemental forces: the Sun, the Earth, the Sky, the Air, and the Water. Discover how ancient principles and practices interpret the value of land in terms of shapes and other geographical characteristics. How even the debris and rubbish unearthed can play an important part on the quality of the land we build our house on. Understand how and where we should position ourselves in order to receive the sun’s unseen benefits. We all wish to live a life as peacefully and comfortably as we can and a simple knowledge of the positive elemental influences can help us achieve what we all hope for. Learn the importance of laying out your house in a manner that will ensure a harmonious balance between you and nature. The objective is to become open to positive elemental influences and at the same time become protected from unseen malevolence. Positive vibrations can bring happiness through excellence in health and business dealings while the negative vibrations can bring grief and losses. There is a purpose in each location and positioning. What we do as dwellers in a house designed as per vastu shastra can be aptly guided by the way our rooms are positioned. Vastu Shastra is a vast field and it may take more than this ebook to acquire specialization. Some basic knowledge on what are favorable and unfavorable will help us develop our own instincts to recognize a suitable land, a correct alignment, and an ideal location. Understanding the scientific reasons will help us appreciate the logic of ancient traditions which may very well help us to achieve what has been elusive for so long: happiness, contentment, and inner peace. THE PRINCIPLES OF VASTU SHASTRA India in the richness of its culture and tradition has some helpful tips to share with us on how we can design our homes or any kind of building for that matter. It lies in the basic principle that for man to get the maximum benefits of life’s energy giving sources, he must keep his bodily placement in balance with nature. The guiding principles are embodied in the ancient tradition known as Vastu Shastra. Roughly translated Vastu means land to live on and Shastra has reference to harmony and balance of man with nature. Vastu Shastra teaches us on how we can lay out our house design so that we as human beings can get the maximum benefits of the natural forces given-off by nature. Basically, this system deals with the five elements in Indian Mythology namely, air, water, earth, fire, and sky which are believed to be sources of natural power. These five elements in ancient Vedic beliefs are said to be capable of giving off energy. How we, as human beings absorb this energy rely on where we are positioned. Therefore a good enough knowledge and understanding about the art or science of vastu shastra helps us appreciate its traditional values. Before we get into details about vastu shastra, let us first have a clearer concept about the five elements and its significance to human life. Ancient Vedic tradition believes that the Earth was formed 460 million years ago and it started out from being just a big fiery ball. Vedic theory has it that, earth possessed magnetic forces that caused a surface to be formed out of the rocks that melted through the passing of time. As magnets have it, there is the existence of two poles: the North Pole and the South Pole. Then there came the creation of space represented by the sky, the air inherent in space, or vacuum, the earth which is the solid surface, the water which comprises ¾ of the earth’s surface and the fire which is natural to the sun. Sky something that denotes space, a vacuum endless and infinite yet holds an unimaginable power that can reach our earthly existence. Air the gasses biologically needed by all living things on earth whether for subsistence or for ecological balance. Water believed to be rainfall from the skies which filled up the gaps and low lying areas of the Earth. Earth that which was formed out of the molten rocks and which attracts all other elements because of its great magnetic force. Sun the bearer of fire and the main source of life on earth. It plays an important part in vastu shastra since it is worshipped as the personification of God being the potential source of creation. If we are to really think about it, life without the sun is like having the main switch turned-off. The invisible powers emanating from these elements can come in all directions. It is a must therefore to know where we can position our property, our house as well as our physical beings in order to receive the natural life forces.. POSITION BENEFITS North Happiness and Calm East Abundance of wealth South Shortage of female members or tragedies West Stomach and sexual troubles to occur among male members North West Unhealthy rivalry that can cause trouble South West Brings conflict with the son South East Death will be dreaded Center of the House Suffer from heavy monetary losses Vastu Shastra adapts its principles by revolving its concept in the huge power of the Sun to reach man’s existence on earth. A mere fraction of the Sun’s heat is enough to sustain the life and continuous existence of living things in a place as distant as […]
The following article on Poet in Vedic Aesthetics is a continuation from Part 101 | Previous article, do read the previous article before continuing here. The discrepancy between the old and the new selves is quite conspicuous and Dirghatamas as a poet shrugs off his old self but cannot explain the dynamics of this transformation. Indeed the split in the poet’s personality is multi directional. It is to the ultimate truths of the world that the personality of the poet is directed. This runs counter to the personality of the ordinary man that gravitates towards the prosaic order of the extraneous world – the world that is too much with us, getting and spending. Here the double personality in Dirghatamas is a case in point. He uses both the singular and the dual number while speaking of himself. Very clearly, the riks or the syllables of poetry are the supreme abode of language. The Atharvanic poet acts as the purohita (priest) of the kings as he wrestles against the messengers of Yama who have come to take away the life of a person, declaring himself as brahmacharin of Mrityu. In contrast to the ordinary language that relates itself to the objects of this experienced world, the language of poetry establishes itself as the real language where the gods can find their refulgent mansion – ‘ the undying syllable of the song is the final abode where all the gods have taken their seat’.(l.l64.39)(O’ Flaherty 1994:80) What follows from it is the importance of understanding the syllables – an understanding that sustains the relation between language of poetry and the presence of god therein. Also, what finds a durable niche is the fact that through the understanding of poetry man can achieve a communion with the gods. It must be mentioned that the poet with the gift of imagination (pratibha) shares an aesthetic sensibility with the ideal critic (sahridaya or rasika). Importantly, in Dirghatamas the critic who understands the essence of poetry, and the creator called poet, lose all distinctions. Dirghatamas juxtaposes two concepts ksara and aksara. The word ksara means what sheds down and the word aksara means what cannot be shed or what is indestructible. The implication of the contrast is what obtains between the empirical and the transcendent or between that what is conditioned and that what is unconditioned. The world beyond can only be spoken of by language. The world of experience is rooted in or allied with the transcendent. When Wordsworth in his great poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” speaks of the unknown modes of being he was thinking what had ab-eady been thought by Dirghatamas so long back. ‘Speech was divided into four parts that the inspired priests know. Three parts, hidden in deep secret, humans do not stir into action; the fourth part of speech is what men speak.’ (1.164.45 (O’Flaherty 1994:80) So it is the poet who with the benison of imagination (kavi pratibha) has free access to all the four quarters. He wields language in such a way that ‘the unknown modes of being’ are made known. (One can profitably refer to the Agni Purana which maintains that words attain preeminence in science [sastra], meaning in epic history [Itihasa] and suggestion in poetry. In Dhvani Kavya [DhvanyaIoka] we find that the apparent meaning delightfully eases into another territory of meaning and manifests that [other suggested ) sense. Interestingly enough, Tagore hints at this truth in a line of his song: adhara madhuri dharaci chanda bandhane – I have held the ineffable beauty or charm in the prison house of rhythm.) The Vedic poet commands this ‘zone’ of meaning to reveal the innate beauty beyond the ambience of logical discourse. One of Dirghatama’s major poems is addressed to. his Muse, the river goddess Sarasvati.( It may be noted that there is only one Muse in Indian theory of poetry as distinguished from the nine Muses of the Greeks) The word Sarasvati denoted a river and connoted a goddess. The river is spoken of in the Vedas as the greatest of the rivers and also as the greatest of the mothers: nanditame, ambetame. Sarasvati as a goddess is the apotheosis of a river held in high esteem by the Vedic people. As a goddess she incarnates the sacred divine knowledge, Brahmavidya swarupini. She is the fountainhead of all faculties (mental and spiritual), the purifier and bestower of pure reason, the recompenser of worship and is the source of inspiration and accomplishment for all our benevolent acts. She sets in motion all the energies of the soul and intellect. She imparts deep knowledge to all who are seekers of truth. It was in the valley of the river Saraswati that the Aryan civilization had originated and flourished in India. In the poem the poet is the child of Saraswati. She is thought of as a mother who nurses the poet on her breast : ‘Your inexhaustible breast, Sarasvati that flows with the food of life, that you use to nourish all that one could wish for, freely giving treasure and wealth and beautiful gifts – bring that here for us to suck’.(1.164.49) (O’Flaherty 1994:81). It is implied that what a poet can give to a man is what a mother gives to a baby. But the difference is important for us to note. The milk available in the mother’s breast is only for a particular period of time; but the milk from Saraswati’s breast is everlasting. It keeps on nourishing the poet unconditionally. One has to admit that the mysticism, symbolism, and the enigma of the poem baffle the modem reader with a near impenetrable density. But what cannot be disclaimed is the fact that the poem is a work of high quality dappled with exquisite images evincing a deft handling of language. It is crowned by a laudable artistic unity achieved through a remarkable commingling of contrasts. The line of argument cannot be strengthened without an adequate discussion of […]
Mathomathis would like to present an article written by T.L.Subash Chandira Bose on “Who am I”. Note that, there are many articles that would be circulating on the similar discussion, henceforth mathomathis would not like to generate any conclusion by comparing articles that are written by various research scholars across the globe. Mathomathis would just like to present an article written by author T.L.Subash Chandira Bose to our readers. Readers are indeed free to comment or ask questions on the same. At certain stage each and every human being asked a question in the past, asking now and will ask in future i.e., who am I? and search for the correct answers. The answers are given in a form of symbol (Sogam) on Indus seals. The symbol Sogam reveals an interesting Vedantham philosophy. According Thamizh dictionary; Sogam means all the souls (life) and Supreme soul is one and the same and Vedantham means Upanishad and end of knowledge. According to swami Vivekananda the Upanishads are attributed to 5000 years before. The whole of the Vedaantha philosophy is in a story of two birds living on a same tree. Swami Vivekananda describes the Vedantha as a story in his translation work on Mundaka Upanishad pages 38-41; 2006, Published by Advaida Ashrama, Kolkata-700 014 Upon the same tree there are two birds, one on the top, the other below. The bird on the top is calm, silent and majestic, immersed in his own glory; the bird on the lower branches, eating sweet and bitter fruits by turn, hopping from branch to branch, is becoming happy and miserable by turns. After a time the lower bird eats an exceptionally bitter fruit and gets disgusted and looks up and see the other bird, that wondrous one of golden plumage, who eats neither sweet nor bitter fruits, who is neither happy nor miserable, but calm and who sees nothing beyond his self. The lower bird longs for this condition, thinking, “How I would love to be like him!” and hops a little way towards him. Soon he forgets all about his desire to be like the upper bird and begins to eat the fruits. After little while he eats another exceptionally bitter fruit, which makes him feel miserable, and he again looks up and tried to get nearer to the upper bird. Once more he forgets and after a time he looks up and so on he goes again and again, until he comes very near to the beautiful bird. He sees the reflection on light from upper bird’s plumage playing around his own body. He feels a change and seems to melt away. Still nearer he comes and everything about him melts away and at last he understands this wonderful change. The lower bird was, as it were, only the substantial looking shadow, the reflection of the higher; he himself was in essence the upper bird all the time. This eating of fruits, sweet and bitter, this lower, little bird, weeping and happy by turns, was a vain Chimera, a dream: all along, the real bird was there above, calm and silent, glorious and majestic, beyond grief, beyond sorrow. The upper bird is God, the Lord of universe; and the lower bird is human soul (mind and Pranan), eating the sweet and bitter fruits of this world. The human soul knows that it is weak and small and tells all sorts of lies. It says it is a woman or it is a man. It says it will do good or do bad; it will go to heaven and will do a hundred sorts of things. In delirium it talks and works, and the central idea of its delirium is that it is weak. Thus it suffers because it thinks it is nobody. It is a created little being. It is a slave. It is governed by some god or gods, and so is unhappy. Now and then comes heavy blow to the soul. For a time, it stops the eating and goes towards unknown God, and a flood of light comes. It thinks that this world is a vain show. But again senses drag it down, and it begins as before to eat the sweet and bitter fruits of the world. Again an exceptionally hard blow comes. Its heart becomes open again to divine light. Thus gradually it approaches God, and as it gets nearer and nearer, it finds its old self melting away. It finds that its individuality – it’s low, vulgar, intensely, selfish individuality –is melting away. When it has comes near enough, it sees that it is no other than God, and it exclaims, “Why, it has my own glory that I called God, and this little ‘I’, this misery, was all hallucination, it never existed. I was never a woman, never a man, never any of these things.”Then the soul gives up all sorrow. The lower bird was but the reflection of the one above. So we are in reality one with God, but the reflection makes us seem many, as when the one sun reflects in a million dew-drops and seems a million tiny suns. The reflection must vanish if we are to identify ourselves with our real nature which is divine. The universe itself can never be the limit of our satisfaction. That is why the robber robs, the sinner sins that are why you are learning philosophy. All have one purpose. There is no other purpose in life, save to reach this freedom. Consciously or unconsciously we are all striving for perfection. Every being must attain it. That which is in every atom, everywhere present, the essence of all things, the God of this universe-know that thou art He, know that thou art free. This is what Vedaantham teaches. It tells us that we are essentially divine. It shows us the real unity of beings, and that each one of us is God Himself manifested on earth. All of us, from the lowest worm that […]
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 | 103) Their website can be located Indicstudies.us. The studies is also conducted by N.S. Rajaram PhD. Author’s in the volume 1 of thier research start their discussion on a topic called Why are History and the Chronology Important by Kosla Vepa PhD. Simulations using Planetarium Software and the date of the war: A search is made for the years in which there is a conjunction of Saturn (sani) with Aldebaran (Rohini) between 3500 BCE and 500 CE. As Saturn takes an average of 29.5 years to go around the sun once, the event also repeats with the same period. There are 137 such conjunctions during the interval specified in the previous section/articles. A search is then made for those years from among these 137 dates when Mars (angaraka) is retrograde before reaching Antares (Jyestha). Since the retrograde motion of Mars repeats with the same period as its synodic period, a spread of two years on either side of each of the dates was considered in the search. The search reduced the set to just seventeen: 3271 BCE, 3067 BCE, 2830 BCE, 2625 BCE, 2388 BCE, 2183 BCE, 1946 BCE, 1741 BCE, 1503 BCE, 1299 BCE, 1061 BCE, 857 BCE, 620 BCE, 415 BCE, 28 CE, 233 CE and 470 CE, when Saturn was near Aldebaran and Mars executed a retrograde motion before reaching Antares. A search is then made for those years in which there is a lunar eclipse near Pleiades (i.e., on the Karthika Purnima). This reduces the set to just two, 3067 BCE and 2183 BCE. It turns out that in both of these years the lunar eclipse is followed by a solar eclipse at jyestha. A sequence of ‘two eclipses within a period of 13 days also occurs in the two eclipse seasons. When one considers the fact that Bhisma passed away on the Magha Shukla Astami, after the occurrence of winter solstice, a unique date results, for the winter solstice in January 13, 3066 BCE occurred on sukla panchami where as the winter solstice in 2182 BCE occurred on Krishna Chaturthi. Thus a unique date of 3067 BCE for the date of the war emerges. The author has shown that this date is consistent with all the other astronomical references in the epic in several publications with the help of copious illustrations of star maps generated by Planetarium software. Some of them will be included as part of this essay by way of illustration Illustrations: Astronomical events are reproduced, shown from the figure(s) below (Star Maps). In the 1st Figure, the day lord krishna starts on his diplomatic mission, it is clearly seen that moon is near revati, and sani is at rohini. Second Figure, shows the full moon in kartika, it also happens to be a lunar eclipse day. At this time, lord krishna is busy with the peace talks in Hastinapura. In the 3rd Figure, lord krishna rides with Karna after the failure of the peace mission, it is Uttaraphalguni. Seven days from that day, it will be amavsya at jyestha. Lord Krishna sends the message to Bhisma and Drona to start the war rituals that day. 4th Figure shows the star map for that that day, which is also a solar eclipse day. The retrograde loop of Mars in that year is also shown in the figure. The retrograde motion of Mars before reaching Jyestha had occurred several months earlier. 5th Figure shows the day the war starts: moon is at bharani. 6th Figure shows the fourteenth day, when the war continues until the wee hours (mean the early hours of a day, or the period immediately after midnight) of the morning and stops when the moon rises. 7th Figure shows the last day of the war, it is Shravana Nakshatra and lord balarama returns. 8th Figure shows the day of Bhima’s expiry: Shukla Astami, Rohini Nakshatra. The sheer volume of astronomical data and the consistency of the astronomical references reinforce conclusively the traditional belief that the war took place about five thousand years ago, and that the astronomical references are not clever interpolations of some latter day astronomer. The date established, 3067 BCE, provides the ‘sheet-anchor’ for the history of India The uniqueness of this date: It should be noted that the date of 3067 BCE has been derived entirely on the basis of astronomical information found in the epic alone. No information from any other outside source has been used. This date is identical to the date proposed by four other scholars. However, more than forty scholars have proposed a date for the Mahabharata war ~3000 BCE. Of these seventeen have proposed 3102 BCE, ten other authors have proposed 3101 BCE, seven authors have proposed 3139 BCE, some 3138 BCE, and 3137 BCE respectively. The question naturally arises which should be accepted and which should be rejected, if any. It is very easy to demonstrate that none of these dates can reproduce the astronomical events as described in the epic. For example, Figure shown below the star map for October 19, 3138 BCE, it is jyestha amavasya, and according to Dr. Vedavyas, war began on that day. However, the day of jyestha amavasya is required to be a solar eclipse day, as per the conversation between lord krishna and and Karna: rahurarkamupesyati…and..saptamacchapi divasad amavasya bhavisyati….tamahuh sakradevatam but October 19, 3138 BCE is not a solar eclipse day. The solar eclipse in that year had occurred on August 21 near [email protected] and not near jyestha. Furthermore, Shani is at mula and not rohini, and angaraka is at ardr (where he becomes retrograde later in the year) and not past anuradha having become retrograde before reaching jyestha as described in the epic. In short, none […]
Mathomathis would like to publish an article on Cosmos Graphical Mapping presented by Author: JOSEPH E. SCHWARTZBERG. Author in one of his text starts with a category of Underlying Cosmological Conceptions as follows: Commenting on the relative unpopularity of cosmological investigations among modern Indologists, R. F. Gombrich has opined that “the most discouraging feature of traditional Indian cosmology is not its fantastic and uncritical character, but its complexity.” He explains that complexity as follows: Just as the Indian system of social organisation, caste, has grown throughout history by aggregation and inclusion, not abolishing the practices and customs of newly assimilated peoples but assigning them a low place in the social hierarchy, so Indian cosmology which remained largely a branch of Indian mythology- rarely abandoned a theory or idea, but allowed it to remain alongside the new ideas, even if it was inconsistent with them…. Nevertheless, there are certain Hindu texts, the Puranas, composed since the beginning of our era, which concern themselves with [among other things]… the universe in space and time, that is cosmology; and the Puranas do make attempts to reconcile various versions and to present a systematized picture-though no two attempts give quite the same result. Systematization proceeds, as I have just suggested, by aggregation and encapsulation; for instance, different cosmogonies are generally accommodated by making them occur successively, rather than by, say, interpreting one story as an allegorical alternative to another. It is this… which largely accounts for the notorious fact that the dimensions of both space and time in the classical Indian cosmologies are so unconscionably large; two systems are reconciled by putting the one inside the other, and making it a cosmo-graphical or temporal part of a much larger whole In light of these remarks it is hardly surprising that in the lengthy article on cosmogony and cosmology in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, the sections on the Buddhist and Indian views are far longer than for any other religious tradition or world region; the former the longer of the two-is in fact allotted three times the space given to the section on the views associated with Christianity. Of Kirfel’s book, Die Kosmographie der Inder, Gombrich observes, not quite accurately, that it comprises “over 400 large pages with hardly anything more than bare quotations and tables.” Nevertheless, for our purposes the Kirfel text, despite being directed primarily to an audience of Indologists, possesses the great merit of containing what is perhaps the most representative sample of actual photographs of Indian cosmographic productions of any hitherto published work. Among other works treating the several traditions within Indian cosmology at some length, Bastian’s Ideale Welten analyzes at greatest length the specific cosmographic views presented, rather than the conceptual schema underlying them, though not, obviously, from the perspective of a historian of cartography. Sircar’s approach: is not so dissimilar to Kirfel’s and, on cursory inspection, appears to be much in the nature of a catalog; but he strives less for completeness and more for critical analysis and comprehensibility. Moreover, to an extent unmatched by other authors cited in this essay, he considers the real-world referents of the many places named in the cosmographies. Within the present context, it will not be possible to consider, even in a cursory fashion, many of the numerous cosmographical conceptions that have enjoyed currency within the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. But within each of these traditions I do offer some generalizations on the purposes of the cosmographies; the media employed; their scale, orientation and directionality, use of color, and symbolization; and their degree of conformity to the real world. Finally, I shall consider the pervasiveness of cosmographic imagery in a variety of noncartographic contexts. The inconsistencies in Indian cosmography-Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain-to which Gombrich draws our attention are evident even in the earliest of texts. Sircar notes that in the Rig Veda, composed over several centuries between 1500 and 1000 B.C., there are at least five different words to refer to the earth and that the universe therein was conceived “as consisting of either two or three units, i.e., of either the earth and the sky (heaven), or the earth, the air (atmosphere) and the sky.” Furthermore, “each of these constituents was regarded as having three parts or layers, so that there were either six units of three earths and three heavens or nine units of three earths, three atmospheres and three skies.” To these the later Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda (believed to have been composed between 900 and 500 B.C.) added a hemispheric “world of light, i.e. the vault of the sky,” which was in due course matched by an antipodal nether vault. Thus the world was seen as a disk-a form frequently used in later cosmographies-suspended between “two great bowls turned towards each other,” and that view led in time to the long-enduring conception of the universe as a “cosmic egg” commonly designated Brahmanda (egg of Brahma). A similar early conception is that of the Chandogya Upanishad (date uncertain, but probably composed about the time of the later Vedas), which speaks of the cosmic golden womb (or fetus) (hiranyagarbha) splitting apart to form the heaven and the earth. On the size of the universe the Vedas themselves are silent, but the Aitareya Brahmana informs us that “the distance between the earth and the sky is … 1000 days’ journey for a horse,” while the Panchavimsa Brahmana puts it, more modestly, at “the altitude coverable by 1000 cows standing one upon another.” Whether the conceptions presented to this point were of purely Indian origin or were borrowed from Babylonia is debatable. Kirfel thinks the Babylonian influence is significant, whereas Gombrich finds little support for that proposition. This, however, is an argument we need not enter, since the concern here is not so much with cosmology per se as with cosmography; and of visible representations of the very early Vedic/Indian views we have no surviving example. But at least from the middle of the first millennium B.C., by […]