Significance of mantras (in my view)

The fundamental view of Hinduism is that the entire universe is made of exactly the same substance vibrating at different levels. Since vibration of a substance makes a sound (whether audible or not) the hindu view is that the universe can be seen as ‘sound’ itself. This is something that I have touched upon in an earlier post. It then followed that it is possible to do some friendly manipulation of the universe with certain sounds that acted as short cuts or key words or passwords to different dimensions. Hence the predominance of mantra’s and their the stress on their correct pronunciation in India and its vedic culture.

No other culture has worked so hard and so intelligently at these discovering these sounds and in some cases even creating specific sequences towards achieving certain goals. The stress on perfection in Indian classical music is another window to this view of the hindus. Sadly, this view is lost on Indians today. Surprisingly, this is perhaps increasingly becoming the view of modern physicists who are now working on a ‘string theory’ that echoes the ‘everything made of the same thing’ belief. It is not surprise that CERN agreed to install an idol of the Natraja, a form of Shiva that is moving in the unpredictable dance of creation and destruction of the existence, outside of their head-office in Geneva. It is notable that CERN that is possibly filled with atheists and agnostics have acknowledged the spiritual tradition that first visualised this form of Shiva.

I am not an expert on mantras, I am not even in the first grade in that department. But since this is my blog and I can write anything on it, I will! My only hope that the people who do read this become more aware of their ancestor’s traditions and are encouraged to explore various mantras for themselves. In fact most hindu religious texts (such as the Srimad Bhagwat) which discussed the original ‘string’ knowledge never asked for ‘faith’, they challenged the reader to test what was being told and accept only if it worked.

The most powerful mantras are called ‘beej’ mantras or seed mantras, these are the sounds on whose foundations more elaborate incantations were formed. But these by themselves are extremely powerful and for that reason dangerous given the possibility of mispronunciation. The most famous one of course if the sound of ‘AUM’, three distinct sounds (aaa, uuu, mmm) to be uttered for equal duration. Our religious/ spiritual tradition also considers AUM to be the first sound that was created with the very first vibration of creation. While I can perhaps append several studies to prove that chanting ‘AUM’ centres us, just one funded by the Government of India should be enough, given that the government that appears to project a image of wanting to discredit spiritual traditions of India (or replace them?) was unable to find fault with AUM. The study basically says that chanting AUM mimics the effect of medicines given to counter depression and epilepsy. There are several other beej mantras as just like AUM they do not have a meaning in Sanskrit, they are simply sounds like Hreem, Klim, Aiyem, Shreem, Dum, Hara, Hari…each for a specific purpose.

Anyway, several self-realised yogis devised their own mantras fashioned in the form of prayer to allow the busy householder to take advantage of these ‘keywords’ without the risk associated with mispronunciation. Some of these mantras are known as siddha mantras that have been infused by the life energy of its creator. Perhaps the most famous one is the Gayatri Mantra created by Rishi Vishwamitra. There are several others such as Ram Raksha stotra by Budha Kaushik Rishi and one of my favourites, the Maruti Stotra by Sant Ramdas. These are extremely powerful incantations whose benefits can be perceived by anyone who chants them correctly and regularly. In fact, one chant the Ram Raksha stotra is supposed to be equivalent to a thousand chants of the Vishnu Sahasranaam, another powerful prayer in its own right. The primary aim of the latter two mantras I mentioned is to protect the chanter from evil energies, bad thoughts and remove fear, each of which is much required today. It is also interesting to note that the Maruti Stotra was created by Ramdas when India was ruled by Mughals and young Shivaji was raising a small band of soldiers to fight them off. India finds itself in a similar situation today and regular chanting of Maruti Stotra should be compulsory for all Indian children in my view. In fact several of Shivaji's soldiers were trained by Sant Ramdas himself and no doubt his teaching of the Maruti stotra played a big part in the bravery that the Chhatrapati and his soldiers displayed in establishing a just, welfare kingdom.

This is only an introductory blog and I shall try to create related posts that explain the meaning of the stotras so that those interested can read and chant them perfectly with their meaning known.

The bullsh!t about Aryan invasion

If you were a student in the 1980s in any school in India, you will remember a chapter about the Aryan invasion theory that was taught as gospel truth to you (surprisingly under the ‘history’ subject). After reading you may (if you were a racist pig) remember sneaking an arrogant peek at a south Indian class mate after having just learned that your great grandfather had kicked his great grandfathers arse all the way from Iran (ok, atleast from the now infamous Af-Pak border) to the very bottom end of the Indian peninsula. Then, on having learned of how you were somehow related to Germans with the gora skin, the racist in you must have positively gloated over the discovery (no matter the Jerrys actually lost both wars). If any such feelings of superiority have came over you then I will not blame you entirely, because you have just been punked by an old British tactic that exploited the inherent need in human beings to see themselves as 'above' someone else. It is this weakness that allows white-black-any other colour racism to persist. It is this weakness that results in one religion proclaiming itself to be the only way to  God. It is this weakness that allows the strong to prey on the weak, one language to pick on another, the republicans to beat up the democrats...oh well…the examples are endless…but you get the general idea.

If you are someone who has enjoyed this sense of false superiority since then, I am going to have to bust your bubble here. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is just that…a theory…and a wrong one at that. I also apologise to all those who consider themselves as Dravidians and love to wallow in the grief that was allegedly heaped on you in 1500 B.C. (which of course you don’t actually remember) and have wanted to be ‘different’ from the rest of us. Err…you aren’t. And that’s a fact.

Before I go on, let me recapitulate the AIT itself. I am going to exaggerate here so bear with me. In its simplest form it states that India was populated by a peace loving, intelligent people who called themselves the Dravidians. The Dravidians were a weak race that was short in stature and dark skinned. Then the fair-skinned, strong Aryans came from Europe and thus began the biggest massacre that no one has ever seen, read or heard of (surprising in itself). The Dravidians ran away en masse (a distance of over 1500 miles, they must have been distance runners) till for some mysterious reason the Aryans suddenly stopped killing them at the border of the region now known as Karnataka State.

The date of this alleged invasion, around 1500 B.C. also has an interesting origin (well as per David Frawley anyway). When the British ruled India it was already well known that the Vedas pre-dated Christ, since they definitely pre-dated the Buddha who died sometime between 400-500 B.C. Also, these paragons of science were sure that the world was created in 4000 B.C., based on the irrefutable scientific evidence of the Bible saying so. They also knew that Noah’s flood took place in 2,500 B.C. (again on the “book says so” proof that we all so completely agree with). So the Aryan invasion must have taken place between 2,500 BC and 500 B.C. the only window being 1,500 B.C. as per these scientists (also being suspiciously the average of 2500 and 500, not saying that this is how the date was arrived at of course).

Ok, I have read several pieces online about how there is not a shred of evidence (physical or documentary) that any such vast movement of people happened from Europe to India (or from North India to South India). There is not a shred of evidence that any mass killing and exodus of Dravidians took place. Also, if I am an Aryan whose army has just killed, plundered and looted a few thousand Dravidians and sent them packing, would I not want to maintain a record boasting of my achievement? Yes, you say (especially after reading the brutal records kept by Arab invaders about their conquests)?  Well…the answer is no…there is not a single stanza in the Vedas about any such mass killing. Hang on, what if the Vedas were actually written by the Dravidians? Well…if I am a nice, peace-loving, intelligent Dravidian, whose kingdom has been plundered and many of his innocent subjects, men, women and children, have been killed, would I not maintain a written record or even a verbally passed down account of this cruelty? Yes, you say again?…you are incorrigible aren’t you? Well…the answer is no, again. For some reason, one of the biggest exodus of humans and animals through years of wanton killing and genocide has gone unrecorded in text, through speech, or folk songs or even cave drawings for that matter…by both, the victor and the vanquished.

Now I am aware that I haven’t read the Vedas and this contention about there being no recorded history may be false. But, if it was, there is yet no rebuttal from the left leaning historians, of whom India has no dearth. 

So instead of relying on documentary or archaeological evidence, or any corroborative evidence that AIT is a LIE, let’s look at some conclusive stuff, genetic evidence. This is the stuff that is considered good enough to send people to the gallows, the stuff that makes you one-in-seven-billion and lastly this is the stuff that even ND Tiwari is scared of. It is that accurate.

I am not a biologist but have done my best to understand this study within given time constraints. I will also try to link the DNA report and if anyone can improve on the explanation within the comments section, it will be much appreciated. The study was carried out in 2006 by a bunch of scientists from the National DNA Analysis Center, Kolkata, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Estonian Biocentre, Estonia and National Institute of Biologicals, Nodia. As you can see there is enough gora influence here for those Indians who need that sort of a thing to make anything credible. The link to the report is this:http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/843.full.pdf

The scientists used something called as ‘Haplogroups’ to track the origins of the population. I understand (from Wikipedia, of course) that a Haplogroup is a bunch of different genetic types that share a common ancestor. In human genetics, haplogroups are broken up into Y-chromosomes (Y-DNA) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Y-DNA is part of the genetic material that comes down from the fathers’ side while mtDNA is that from the mothers’ side. The haplogroups are named after the alphabet…like A, B, C etc with numbers added for refinement (A1, B1 etc). The basic premise of this exercise is that, if all Indians are genetically similar, then the question of another race migrating to India does not arise at all. And since there are no two races in India (ie most Indians are from the same ancestors), the AIT is automatically proven false.

To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India were studied. Sounds pretty comprehensive to me.

Now the report specifically tackles the Indo-Aryan migration thesis in the following words:

“Indo-Aryan migration scenario advocated in ref. 19 rested on the suggestion that all Indian caste groups are similar to each other while being significantly different from the tribes. Using a much more representative data set, numerically, geographically, and definitively, it was not possible to confirm any of the purported differentiations between the caste and tribal pools.”

Then it adds another nail to the proverbial coffin of the (deliberately?) ill-informed AIT expounder:

“Although it is arguable that assimilation of tribal populations into the caste system could skew distributions in any particular region, it cannot explain the persistence and prevalence of those lineages put forward as being typical of incoming Indo-Europeans (J2, R1a, R2, and L) among many of those populations who are still designated as tribals…”

…and finally in the reports conclusion (also the bit that tells me that though I haven’t understood the full report, what I have understood is not incorrect)

“It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny”

There was another study that used the matrilineal side of the genetic equation to arrive at similar conclusions. The report is at the following location:

http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild1999a.pdf

I haven’t read it, but the conclusion is

“A commonly held hypothesis, albeit not the only one, suggests a massive Indo-Aryan invasion to India some 4,000 years ago [1]. Recent limited analysis of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of Indian populations has been interpreted as supporting this concept [2,3]. Here, this interpretation is questioned. We found an extensive deep late Pleistocene genetic link between contemporary Europeans and Indians, provided by the mtDNA haplogroup U, which encompasses roughly a fifth of mtDNA lineages of both populations. Our estimate for this split is close to the suggested time for the peopling of Asia and the first expansion of anatomically modern humans in Eurasia [4–8] and likely pre-dates their spread to Europe. Only a small fraction of the ‘Caucasoid-specific’ mtDNA lineages found in Indian populations can be ascribed to a relatively recent admixture.”

In conclusion, the concept of AIT was another tool to rule India. They divided us based on caste, colour, religion, region and language. Why not, they must have thought, divide Indians on race as well. Let’s make some of them Aryans, people that are closer to us, and then watch them bicker over non-existent differences. Some idiots still believe in this today! The DMK, the political party in Tamil Nadu, most notorious for its corrupt and immoral practices is a proponent of the Dravidian cause. It uses it to divide rather than unite the country. For a long time the DMK idolised Ravan, the antagonist (I can’t call him a villain) in the Ramayana, it was after several years that these brilliant people realised that Ravan was a Brahmin and a knower of the Vedas…in other words…a (fictional) Aryan, exactly the sort of the guys Dravidians are supposed to hate. Imagine that! I can only appeal to the good sense of Indians to get rid of this Aryan- Dravidian mindset and stop being caught in either superiority or a persecution complex.

Another advantage of the AIT was that this false divide gave some moral support to the British conquering India, since their ancestors (the fictional Aryans) had done the same thing anyway. It also allowed for the idea to take hold that India had nothing to offer of its own and its Vedas and everything that this culture gave to the world (yoga, non-violence, advaita philosophy, the Gita, ayurveda, mathematics, astrology, astronomy etc) was actually derived from the Aryans, who were Europeans. The religion of India also become closely related to the middle-east by the claim that what we know basically came from the Greeks. It furthered the servitude mentality of the Indians, something which was necessary to control our huge land mass. In light of the DNA evidence (which not an opinion, but more a conclusion), I believe anyone believing in the AIT is either a deliberately trying to keep the country divided on false racial grounds or is him/herself completely bereft of self-respect.