Tag Archives: history

DAILY PHOTO: 824 Year Old Magnolia Tree

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Taken on March 30, 2014 near Madikeri.

Taken on March 30, 2014 near Madikeri.

This tree near Madikeri in Coorg is believed to have sprouted in 1190. That means it was living when:

-Jerusalem was recaptured during the 3rd Crusade.

-Genghis Khan came to power.

-the Magna Carta was issued.

-the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan.

-the first Black Plague struck.

 

I could go on and on, but you get my drift.

[Please note: Correlation does not equal causation. I’m not implying that the afore-pictured tree had anything to do with any of the aforementioned events.]

DAILY PHOTO: Bangalore Fort: The Tiny Attraction You Probably Missed

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20140312_170923

20140312_171102

20140312_171018The inscription reads: “Through this breach the British assault was delivered March 21, 1791.” I guess that means that the 223rd anniversary of the British attack on Bangalore is right around the corner.

Bangalore Fort is a tiny piece of the 16th century Vijayanagar fortification that remains intact–it’s all that remains. It’s located between city market and Tipu Sultan’s Bangalore Palace. As it takes only about 10 minutes to walk through, a lot of people don’t even realize it’s there.

 

You’ll Never Guess Who I Saw In Cubbon Park

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Taken in March of 2014 in Cubbon Park.

Taken in March of 2014 in Cubbon Park.

One of the little anomalies that surprised me when I moved to Bangalore last Fall was a set of statues of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII that are located in Cubbon Park.

There are a number of cities, towns, and other places named after British royalty in the eastern United States, but I always assumed that was because they were named before the Revolution and changing them would require getting American politicians to agree on something (other than the urgent need to eavesdrop on everybody’s communications.)

Edward VII, Emperor of England

Edward VII, Emperor of England

Having statues up seems a little beyond vestigial names, however. Most of the Warsaw Pact countries ripped up their monuments to tyranny after the Cold War ended. Budapest created a nice open air park of Stalins, Lenins, Béla Kuns, and generic Stakhanovite workers.

I remember reading Michael Palin’s book, Himalaya, and he mentions having a moment of pause after passing from Pakistan into India near Amritsar. He had thought of the border crossing as representing a trip from risky and tumultuous Pakistan into safe and secure India. However, among the first sights he saw was a monument to the assassin who killed Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the tyrannical governor of Punjab, and a monument for 400 peaceful protesters massacred by British troops in 1919. This reminded him that a British man might not be the most welcome visitor in those parts.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t forgive and forget. Nor am I suggesting that one should lose sight of one’s history past the current regime. Those are both perfectly rationale and virtuous notions, but, yet, I’m still curious why those monuments remain.

Penguin India and The Hindus: Do Self-Imposed Bans Sell?

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Hindus

If anything sells a book more effectively than sex, it’s being banned. One knows that a book contains powerful ideas when someone goes to the effort to try to have it banned. Granted, the powerful ideas may or may not be good ideas–or true ideas, but thinking minds will demand to see for themselves. (I for one will be stopping by my local bookstore to see if they have a copy they’ll sell me for less than 1,000 rupee [$16USD], because I’ve got to know what has the thought Nazis up in arms.)

But does a self-imposed ban have the same effect? Penguin India settled a suit by agreeing to stop printing the book The Hindus: An Alternative History, and to burn outstanding copies. This, after a protracted legal battle against a Hindu nationalist group called Shiksha Bachao Andolan. However, there may be more to it than simply trying to build sales on the four+ year old book (that likely would have been long forgotten in an environment of free speech.) Indian law makes it a criminal offense to offend Hindu sensibilities, and thus puts the publishers in physical as well as fiscal jeopardy. Of course, it’s already come and gone as a best-seller in India, so it couldn’t hurt to restoke global interest.

It should be noted that there isn’t overwhelming support for banning the book in India. There has been outrage against Penguin’s fold by Indians who read, who believe in freedom of speech, and who are terrified of the idea of a crime of hurting someone’s feelings by discussing their religion’s history. (The latter being a direct route to tyranny if ever there was one. )

As I said, sex sells and bans sell double; the book in question has both. One might be inclined to think that it’s some sort of porn novel churned out on pulp.  Actually,  the author is a Professor of Religious History at the University of Chicago, Wendy Doniger. The book does apparently focuses heavily on the role of sexuality in Hindu mythology. What some readers might not know–and might be surprised to learn–is that hardcore Hindu nationalists are two steps to the right of Jerry Faldwell on issues of sex.

Here’s are accounts by the LA Times and Galleycat.

One of the most extensive discussions of the forces who succeeded in getting the book banned is in the NY Times.

Kalaripayattu and Single Point Origin Myths

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I just began my study of Kalaripayattu this morning. Kalaripayattu is an Indian martial art that is named for the training space (kalari) in which it is conducted. It’s a very different martial art from others I’ve studied, and is a great learning experience—as well as an excellent workout. Kalaripayattu is said to be one of the oldest formal martial arts that has survived into the modern era. I have no reason doubt this. The art is documented in the 11th century by a historian who attributes its development to wars between the Chola and Chera kingdoms.

However, there’s another common claim that is much more controversial, and that’s that Kalaripayattu is the “mother of all [Asian] martial arts.” With all due respect, I’m skeptical of this claim—even if we don’t take it in the literal sense (i.e. Asia is a big place and there are almost certainly places where martial arts were established before contact with the Buddhist diaspora.) I obviously don’t base my skepticism on what I have been taught—as that is, at this point, a miniscule portion of the most basic of basics.

While I can offer no definitive proof to discredit the claim, I do have specific reasons to be skeptical. The theory of Kalaripayattu as the origin of martial arts is based on the legend of Bodhidharma. The legend says that the famous monk shared martial arts with the monks of Shaolin in conjunction with the Zen (Cha’an) form of Buddhism, and from Shaolin as Buddhism spread so did the martial arts. I’ve read myths about the origins of the Japanese martial arts that I’ve studied that place the beginnings of their ancestor arts with Chinese Buddhists fleeing persecution during the T’ang Dynasty (as well as later periods.)

The first problem with this theory is that historians have found it to be unsubstantiated and dubious. While the belief that Bodhidharma introduced the Chinese to martial arts is one of the most widely believed and cited pieces of martial arts lore, Meir Shahar in his book The Shaolin Monastery [http://www.amazon.com/The-Shaolin-Monastery-History-Religion/dp/082483349X] states that the evidence doesn’t support this popular belief. Specifically, the only historical documentation of this theory is a document that was written in the 1600’s that the author claimed was “discovered” from an earlier time—the problem is that the language usage isn’t consistent with the claim that the document was from a much earlier period, and there are many verified mistakes in the document.

Even if Shahar and other historians are wrong, the evidence that Bodhidharma came from southern India and that he studied Kalaripayattu specifically seems to be non-existent. There is at least one popular theory of Bodhidharma that puts the origin of this famous spiritual leader outside of India altogether. If the aforementioned Indian historian was right and Kalari developed during 11th century wars, then it’s late for the life of Bodhidharma by some 500 years.

The challenge is that it’s difficult to compare the modern martial arts and see definitive evidence of historic connections. Some will say, “But Kalaripayattu doesn’t look like Shaolin Kung fu (or any other subsequent arts) at all.” While it’s not true that they don’t look anything alike, it’s true that they look very different. However, what one has to keep in mind is not only did Kung fu continue to evolve in order to optimize to its circumstance, its predecessor system (whether Kalaripayattu or otherwise) would have continued to evolve as well. The Kalaripayattu of today most likely looks quite different from 11th century Kalaripayattu, but we can’t know how so in any detail. This could make for some pretty rapid divergence. Others may say, “But, hey, I do see the similarities in kicks and postures and so forth.” This may be true as well, but can one be sure that one of those commonalities is causal of the other? What if it’s just the constraints of the human body that make all martial arts similar at some level of granularity?

My intent is neither to destroy origin stories nor to discredit any martial art. Obviously, Kalaripayattu has a long history, and the fact that it survived to modern times is a testament to its value over that time. Combat is a harsh evolutionary environment, and things that don’t work for the situations they face are likely to die with the people who practice those systems. However, I think it’s important for warriors to not succumb to false fables because they must see the world as it is and not as they wish it to be.

BOOK REVIEW: Auschwitz by Miklos Nyiszli

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Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness AccountAuschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account by Miklós Nyiszli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Auschwitz is the account of a Jewish medical doctor who performed autopsies at the crematoria of Auschwitz at the behest of the infamous Dr. Mengele. It’s gut-wrenching reading. One is constantly reminded of the words of another famous Holocaust chronicler, Viktor Frankl, who said, “We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles – whatever one may choose to call them – we know: the best of us did not return.” That’s a sad fact with which Dr. Nyiszli had to live. Nyiszli lent his expertise to many despicable acts in the process of surviving, and it’s to his credit that he had the courage to write this work. He was the only one who could have told much of this story, and it’s a story that he felt the world must know–even if it meant rehashing the nightmare scenario of his life during the holocaust years, even if he was not always to be seen at his most virtuous.

While Nyiszli was a man of science who tried to stick to the objective task of conducting autopsies, his results were routinely perverted to support Nazi pseudo-science—the pseudo-science used by Nazis to justify elimination of the Jews and other despised classes of humanity. Nyiszli stayed alive first-and-foremost because Dr. Mengele valued Nyiszli’s expertise, and perhaps the credibility that expertise offered to the Nazi’s insane attempts to emulate science.

Sometimes by just answering basic scientific questions, Nyiszli was contributing to the advancement of dire atrocities. There’s no better example than when Mengele asked Nyiszli how one could obtain a skeleton from a corpse. These skeletons displayed deformities, and were thus to be sent to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics to support the absurd assertion that Jews were genetically degrading. Of course, as Nyiszli points out the disease these two people were afflicted with was no less common among blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans than it was among the Jewish people. At any rate this resulted in two corpses (made corpses by force, not nature) being boiled to remove the skeletons so they could be sent to an institute as pseudo-evidence.

Nyiszli’s forthcomingness is astounding. Nyiszli performed many objectionable actions at the behest of Mengele, but it’s clear he couldn’t have survived disobeying the Nazi doctor. However, there were also times when Nyiszli acted on his own in a way that was, arguably, detestable. After Auschwitz was abandoned, Nyiszli used his former position–and Mengele name-dropping)-to cut in line to get into an encampment (essentially a refugee camp) so he could get a shower and food for the night when others were left out in the cold.

I don’t mean to make Nyiszli look evil. He did many virtuous things in the process of surviving as well. This included sneaking medical supplies from the crematoria infirmary (where there was abundance) to barracks infirmaries (where there was a dire shortage.) He did his best to save those he could. It’s to Nyiszli’s credit that he shows us a complete picture. One expects such a book to be distorted when it comes to the author, but Nyiszli’s book seems honest.

This is an important book as it lets us peer into one of the darkest hours of humanity, and gaze upon a terribleness that would have been lost to posterity. The book gives a chilling account of what it must have been like to be in the gas chambers, told by someone who saw the aftermath in person. Nyiszli saw the piles of bodies reaching to the ceiling—dog piles in which the weakest were trapped on the bottom as the strongest tried to climb over women and children to get a gulp of good air. (Another proof of Frankl’s thesis.) Nyiszli also describes how one little girl, in a freak occurrence, managed to survive the chambers owing to an air pocket, only to have the SS finish the execution by cruder means.

I think everybody should read this book, but I’ll offer a warning that it’s not for the faint of heart. One has to keep righteous rage in check to just get through the book. However, to ignore this wicked moment in history is to fail to see the traps humanity is capable of falling into through simple refusal to do the right thing or a willingness to try to feel better about oneself by casting aspersions on those with slightly different physical features.

View all my reviews

DAILY PHOTO: India Gate

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Taken October 16, 2013 in Delhi.

Taken October 16, 2013 in Delhi.

The India Gate honors 70,000 Indians who died during World War I fighting on behalf of the United Kingdom. Beneath the arch is India’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

It’s India’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe, and it sits at the opposite end of the Rajpath from the President’s house, i.e. the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Like the President’s house, the Gate was designed by Edwin Lutyens, a famous British architect.

The India Gate is among the must-see sights for visitors to New Delhi.

DAILY PHOTO: An Emperor’s Jail

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Taken on October 12, 2013 at Agra Fort.

Taken on October 12, 2013 at Agra Fort.

The top of this tower is where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son, Aurangzeb–the latter being the 6th Mughal Emperor. The 5th Emperor’s “cell” offered a great view of the Taj Mahal, the monument that Jahan built to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

This just goes to show that just because one kills off one’s brothers who are ahead of one in line for succession, and imprison one’s own dad,  doesn’t mean one has to be completely heartless.

This is what Jahan would have seen-- except from about one story up and a couple hundred feet to the left.

This is what Jahan would have seen– except from about one story up and a couple hundred feet to the left.

 

DAILY PHOTO: Chennakeshava Temple at Belur

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Taken November 23, 2013 at Belur.

Taken November 23, 2013 at Belur.

Chennakeshava temple at Belur is a Hoysala era temple to Vishnu–the deity of the Hindu trilogy responsible for processes of sustenance and evolution (as opposed to creation or destruction, which are the bailiwicks of Brahma and Shiva, respectively.)

This temple and its sister temple at Halebidu, Hoysaleshwara temple, are probably the most ornate structures I’ve seen anywhere in the world. They are covered with soapstone carvings arranged in several tiers. For example, the bottom layer is a series of elephants, each one unique. There is a layer that tells tales from the Mahabharata in pictures.

Soapstone is soft and easily worked when quarried, but it becomes hard enough to survive everything but looters as it’s exposed to the elements. You’ll note the “windows” carved in the rock to allow in light and breezes.

Close up

Close up

 

DAILY PHOTO: Mahanavami Dibba

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Taken November 3, 2013 at Hampi

Taken November 2, 2013 at Hampi

The Mahanavami Dibba was a monument built to honor Emperor Krishnadevaraya’s win over the state of Kalinga. (I believe he had it built himself. The arrogance of emperors knows no bounds.) At a little over 20 foot tall, it’s the highest structure in the Royal Enclosure, and offers a nice view of the palace ruins as well as  the boulder mountains of the surrounding countryside. The sides of the platform are covered in friezes in which elephants play heavily, but also dancing-girls and hunting scenes.  We had great skies for our visit.

The Royal Center is part of Hampi that one will need to have transportation to get around because it’s quite far from the Hampi Bazaar (where the guest houses are) and the key sites (e.g. Queens Bath, Hazara Rama Temple, the Lotus Mahal, and the Royal Elephant Stables) are spread out over a large area. However, willing auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) drivers abound.