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TatTvamAsi
16 November 2010, 10:14 PM
Namaste,

I was thinking about the seemingly indifferent attitudes of Hindus, modern and otherwise, towards their history not only of their religion, but of their country etc. At first, one can write historical scholarship off as a cumbersome activity afforded only by the wealthy and apparently erudite sections of society while the majority is busy trying to subsist.

However, when one looks deeper into the philosophy behind Hinduism, the whole concept of "history", as commonly defined, seems rather superfluous and consequently unimportant.

This, in my opinion, is a double-edged sword for several reasons. One, Hindus, impelled by their philosophy to live in the "now", or perhaps out of sheer indolence, seem the least bit bothered about their history, as aforementioned. Since history, like time, is usually defined as a series of events that have arisen due to a perennial cycle of cause and effect; is ultimately, linear in nature. Since the Hindu ethos is to think about things cyclically, the importance, or rather, the apparent importance of "one" particular event at "one" particular time is null and void. Thus, the primary reason Hindus are not too obsessed with their history is philosophical in nature.

The second reason, I believe, that Hindus' indifference about their history is a double-edged sword, is when the modern educational system was institutionalized, history was one of the most important subjects of study. As the old adage states, history is often written by the victors as they are the arbiters of their own destiny. Since Hindus didn't chronologically record their history, others, in this case the British, felt that they had free reign to write the history of the Hindus "for them".

As I've stated several times before, India has the dubious distinction of the only country of such stature to have its history written by non-natives, or etic scholars.

So the conundrum is as follows: is history, as commonly defined and understood, really important? If so, in what respect? What are the implications of ignoring or being indifferent to one's history?

As the great historian HG Wells said, "The only thing we learn from history is that we have learnt nothing from it!"

Is history as superfluous as our sages perceived it to be? Or is it important to preserve traditions, civilization, and the country itself?

I hope we Hindus can learn just enough from "history" not to repeat it! India, that is Bharat, should shine forth in her splendor like she has for thousands of years!

Vande Mataram!

Jai Hind!

Namaskar.

sanjaya
17 November 2010, 10:43 AM
Hi TTA. I think you raise two issues here. There's historicity, which we discuss when talking about the historical veracity of Hindu Scriptures (i.e. was there really a Kurukshetra war or did these stories about Gods and kings really happen? etc.). Then there's recorded history, and the passing on of various traditions. It seems to me that the latter is indeed emphasized in Hinduism. After all, we perform pujas certain ways and do various other rituals primarily because this is the way they've always been done. This is an example of the passing on of tradition. So in that sense we do learn from history.

But it seems that while we excel at learning spiritual lessons, political ones come much harder. For whatever reason we're not so great at modern history, hence we forget about the various deeds of the Moghuls and British. Perhaps the issue here is selective disregard of history?

amra
17 November 2010, 11:05 AM
Linear history is important as a symbol of what can be called a Sacred History or a history of existent being. But if you are into finding 'facts' that are facts of the physical world then it is very good use of time to go about proving these facts of history. But physical facts find greater importance as reflections of something unperceivable to sense as symbols.

Manu is regarded as descended from the Sun. How can this be proved by a linear history that sees Manu as the first man akin to Adam of semitic mythology? In fact Manu or Adam is not a physical personage but an archetype or a hypostatized personage. As such he could represent a principle in creation of Mind. Most historic genealogies must be viewed in this way for them to make sense. An archetype or power of creation would use a historic personage as a vehicle for the power of the Archetype. Probably a historic personage who embodied a certain virtue. Historic 'real' facts are thus secondary to more real psychic facts of mind which is outer as well as inner.

And what is the point of passing on tradition if no one understands what it means and makes no effort to do so? Such tradition is useless, it has to be living. Or more accurately made to live.

yajvan
17 November 2010, 02:05 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namasté



itihāsa is iti+ha+āsa = 'so indeed it was'; some say 'thus it was' - talk , legend , tradition , history , traditional accounts of former events; thus (iti) , history , his - story of what occurred.

From an esoteric POV the wise say now only exists. Yet we ~feel~ this time pass by.
Time , they say is the collection of moments. What is a moment ? It is the time it takes light to pass the width of an atom (truṭi¹) .
Yet in sanātana dharma we deal from the smallest to the largest. Somewhere in the middle history occurs. Yet what is so curious about
this is the ancient paṇḍita had such precision of thought and measure, yet they were not much interested in date-stamping their work.


Their brilliance is uncanny; as I see it must have been a mindful decision not bother with dates when dealing with the subject of eons.


praṇām


words
truṭi - a very minute space of time, an atom ; an atom = 7 reṇu ;reṇu = a grain or atom of dust = 8 trasareṇu the mote or atom of dust
moving in a sun-beam considered as an ideal weight either of the lowest denomination or equal to 3 invisible atoms . truṭi is sometimes
used for tuṭi meaning small cardamoms.

yajvan
17 November 2010, 05:00 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namasté





Time , they say is the collection of moments. What is a moment ? It is the time it takes light to pass the width of an atom (truṭi¹) .

I digress from the original subject but thought some may find this interesting ( i hope).

Add to the quote above another time measure that we find in jyotish . That of muhūrta , equaling 48 minutes and there are 30 muhurta in a 24 hr. period. Yet we will find an 'atom of time' called out as the 54,675,000th part of a muhūrta. This = 0.000052675 seconds.

This is what our ancient joytiṣa's were able to comprehend.

praṇām

words
truṭi - a very minute space of time, an atom ; an atom = 7 reṇu ;reṇu = a grain or atom of dust = 8 trasareṇu the mote or atom of dust
moving in a sun-beam considered as an ideal weight either of the lowest denomination or equal to 3 invisible atoms . truṭi is sometimes
used for tuṭi meaning small cardamoms

TatTvamAsi
20 November 2010, 12:54 PM
Their brilliance is uncanny; as I see it must have been a mindful decision not bother with dates when dealing with the subject of eons.


Yes, that is true. In fact, that is why I call it a double-edged sword because OTHERS have to recognize and appreciate that brilliance. It isn't the case though and that is why we have non-Hindus and non-Indians writing so-called "history" of Hindus and India!

It is analogous to the native Americans who said there is no "ownership" (of land etc.) and look what happened to them! Their ideal was wonderful and advanced for its time but the invaders could never understand the profundity of such a message. The end result was catastrophe for the natives. It is a forewarning for Hindus much in the same way; thus, the (apparent) importance of historicity in Hinduism.

Eastern Mind
20 November 2010, 01:23 PM
Vannakkam: I really take objection to the oversimplification of in both cases. This map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Langs_N.Amer.png serves as a good example of the complexity in North America, just as a linguistic map of India might do the same.

And this one just gives an amaazing list of tribes by area... http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/indianlocation.htm

So as an example, the Europeans only recognised 2 languages, mine, and notmine. Its far more complicated than that. Fact is most of us know very very little, and that includes most 'historians' . More accurate term would be 'conjecturres of the past'.

Aum Namasivaya

Believer
20 November 2010, 01:29 PM
I was thinking about the seemingly indifferent attitudes of Hindus, modern and otherwise, towards their history not only of their religion, but of their country etc.

At school, history was not one of my favorite subjects as far more time was spent in recounting the bashing of Hindus by foreign invaders, than on glorifying the accomplishments of native Hindu kings. One administration in the recent past tried to rectify that, but the secularists cried foul and termed it saffronization of Indian history. It has since been reversed to its original status of glorifying the invaders/occupiers. Whereas, the sages, in all their wisdom, may not want to time stamp linear events, we mere mortals do tend to have interest in that. However, if what is taught at school has little to do with the accomplishments of your race/culture and more with how you got the craX beat out of you; one can understand why there would be a stand-offish attitude towards history. Just my POV!