Secret of Cosmos in Vedic Literature

Science and Religion: Workshop on Veda and Science

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In English Literature we tend to differentiate in the countries where English is the native language or it is second or third language. In the long history of literature in India, five languages have remained the official language at different stages. 

1. Sanskrit- Up to Mughal invasion

2. Persian-Brought by Moghuls

3, Urdu - Based on Hindi, Arabic and Persian

4. English- During British regime

5. Hindi - written in Devanagari script having 13 dialects.

Sanskrit is the ancient language of India, and was lingua franca in Greater India. A broad definition of literature would consider all text is literature, whether written or oral.

Vedas are large bodies of text generated in ancient India. They are the oldest scriptures available to human civilization. There are four Vedas

1. Rigveda

2. Yajurveda

3. Samaveda

4. Atharvaveda

In the end of the famous book “One hundred years of solitude” Gabriel Garcia Marquez said “"It was the history of the family, written by Melquiades, down to the most trivial details, one hundred years ahead of time. He had written it in Sanskrit...". So it is just possible that Sanskrit was also popular in South America.

Actually, many theories support the argument that South America was Patala described in Hindu Mythology. The main argument in the support of the theory is that in a tunnel map the antipode of India is South America. It had seven regions based on the seven levels of evolution of psyche of human beings. According to a theory Ulupi the wife of Arjuna, was from South America (Patala). Apsara~Nina Bonita, a literary fiction based on Hindu Mythology has interesting details of it.

In Vedic Science the interpretation of many scholars of Sanskrit and scientist and physicist working in NASA especially of Indian origin have reached to the conclusion that the Secrets of Cosmos were known to Indian Sages in Vedic Era.

Seminar Hall, Language Wing, JNV University Jodhpur

In a 5 days Seminar held by Department of Sanskrit, JNV University, Jodhpur which commenced from Jan. 18, 2016 many scholars of Sanskrit, Physicist, and Scientist of NASA, discussed various issues and some interpretations and assumptions were drawn on following lines:

1. The static element that governs the dynamics of the cosmos, is beyond time and space. This is called consciousness.

2. Vajna is not only a ritual but a scientific process of transfer of energy. Soma is offered to Agni in whole cosmos. Like rainfall is Soma and ploughed land is source of Agni, which germinates seeds. Soma has downward movement like all liquids, and Agni has upward movement like gases.

3. Yajurveda describes three dimensions of existence, appearance, values and vision.

4. The science can answer How cosmos was created, but Veda answers Why it was created.

5. Consciousness in convertible in Energy. Pran is converted into matter. Science is observation of the behavior of nature. Technocrat interferes with nature. Jaan is acquiring knowledge of Whole, Vijyan is knowledge of Parts.

6. In Tao of Physics Fritjof Capra said Heinsberg while making Quantum Theory visited India and had long discussions with R. N. Tagore about Indian Philosophy in context with Quantum Theory. The knowledge that scientist obtain by Logic was obtained by the Sages through introspection.

7. Niels Bohr said  “We must be clear when it comes to atom, language can be used only as in Poetry”. Consciousness is beyond space and time.

8. The 9 forms of Goddess Durga represent nine types of Energy namely Potential Energy, Kinetic Energy, Sound Energy, Nuclear Energy, Magnetic Energy, Atomic Energy, Thermal Energy, Electrical Energy and Chemical Energy.

9.  References of Fermions and Bosons from Vedas were quoted. Six types of quarks Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top and Bottom were identified and relevant verse connotes the particle theory in Vedas. Vedic seers when asked Which deity should we offer the worship? (kasme devay havisha vidhem~Sanskrit verse from Vedas), it was referring to the particle that is fundamental to all deities.

10. The concept of Hiranyagarbha (Golden Womb) was compared with the Big Bang Theory. It requires a lot of research to reach a final conclusion. The Multiverse has a Grand Design as per Hawking, but the object of its formation is yet to be determined.

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© Vipin Behari Goyal

Old Age in Literature

The Best is Yet To Come

The Old Age is one of the prime issues for Literature. How society provides necessities and comfort to older generation is the criterion of its evolution. The old age is embodiment of all types of physical and mental degeneration. The consumption of youth is old age and consumption of old age is death. The inevitability has an unexpectedness and epiphany in store.

The Time has arrived to change your old tattered coat and get a new one. The Master has already chosen a perfect design that would suit you best. He has already forgiven all your sins and Kingdom of Heaven is waiting for you.

Literature has deep connections with old age. Every great poet has written at least something about it. Every person has his own perception of old age. What is the age when a person can be called old?

Being a senior citizen is different from being an old man. How old is really old that everybody would agree is old. How does anybody matter if that person himself does not agree to it.

The NY Times has many views of its readers on this topic. The range is wide. Some believe that 30 is the onset of old age while others believe that 75 is a good age to be labeled as old. It seems that every person becomes old at different age. There are many external factors that determine the oldness of a person. How disciplined life you have lived? Were you moderate in your approach? Did you sin and never heard the voice of conscience? Have you earned the love and respect of your family and friends?

Not only the factors that are in your hand, but also there are factors over which you had no control. Have you inherited a strong body? All those to whom you loved and cared are safe and healthy? Have you attended many funerals of your loved one younger to you?

Robert Browning in his poem Rabbi Ben Ezra said

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life for which the first was made:

In fact, all the thirty-two stanzas in this poem are full of wisdom to accept the old age and depart happily.

W. B. Yeats in his poem “Sailing to Byzantium” declares

There is no country for old men.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick,

W. B. Yeats in his poem “The Tower” cries

What shall I do with this absurdity

O heart, O troubled heart - This caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to me

As to a dog’s tail.

Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem "Ulysses" said

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

At the end of this poem Tennyson revealed

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

R. W. Emerson in "Terminus" accepts

It is time to be old,

To take in sail:-

DH. Lawrence in "Beautiful Old Age" expects

It ought to be lovely to be old

to be full peace that comes of experience

King Lear in a play by Shakespeare laments

I am very foolish fond old man…

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

“The old man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway is a saga of an old man who had a strong will power and conquers the nature.

The literature is quite optimistic about old age.

                                                        From ”Tall Man Small Shadow”.

“The Old Man and the Nymph” show how life force of nymphs can rejuvenate the old age.

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© Vipin Behari Goyal

Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India 

Virginia Woolf : The Unsolved Mystery of Her Death

This is not A Hat and A Stick

It was as usual a dull afternoon of April 1941. Under a bridge in Southease children were playing Hide and Seek discovered a washed up dead body of a woman. It could not be identified immediately due to putrefaction. There was no missing complaint in the record of Police. Rodmell is a small village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex in England. Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf bought a weather boarded cottage in 1919. Her sister Vanessa also lived in a nearby farmhouse.

The Monk House, which was once lively with spirited intellectuals like T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster was now wrapped up in dead silence. Bloomsbury Group deeply mourned the sudden demise of their beloved member.

Associated Press made an official announcement “Mrs. Woolf’s body found” on 19 April confirming that she was drowned in the river Ouse three weeks earlier. The body was decomposed and flesh was eaten by fishes. A hat and cane were discovered at some distance above, upstream on the bank of the river. They were identified to belong to Virginia Woolf. Her house was also in proximity to the place where hat and stick were discovered. It was not an accident, she had committed suicide.

“April is the cruellest month” said T.S.Eliot in the opening line of his much admired poem "The Wasteland". No doubt it took away one of the most admired scholars of the twentieth century.

Virginia Woolf: An Evening walk with Hat and Stick

A letter addressed to her husband was recovered which proved her intention to commit suicide, but no investigation was held. Her husband was a powerful politician in the Village Rodmell and played an important role in the society of the village.

What happens in the four walls of “a room of one’s own” is nobodies guess.

"A woman makes her house a work of art in which the very walls are permeated by her creative force."

The backyard of her house had two Elm trees. They were intertwined like a romantic couple in embrace. One tree was strong and dominating than other. Virginia called them "Leonard and Virginia" in satire perhaps. Her remains were buried under the tree and the epitaph reads

Against you I fling myself

unvanquished and unyielding

O Death ! the waves broke on the shore

These lines are taken from her novel "The Waves".

Who can read her suicide note without a turmoil and pang in the heart.

One cannot believe it is written by the same woman who advocated equality of men and women working together for a common cause. Men and women must make willing emotional acknowledgement of each other as individuals. Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsay of Three Guineas created on the bank of Ouse in the wooden cottage were reflections of ‘those terrible times’ she mentioned in her suicide note.

“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”

There is excessive gratitude in the suicide note. Does a wife need to be so much grateful to her husband for spending happy time together. Is it only she who has a happy time or it is a happy time together.

Every happiness has a subtle streak of melancholy, but here it is so obvious. Many members of the Bloomsbury Group discard the theory that Virginia suffered from nervous breakdown. They found her ‘enormous fun’.

Her lesbian friend Vita said “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia.” In a letter Virginia once wrote to Vita “I am in bed making up stories about you.” Such loveable creatures do not pass away or just melt into thin air, the truth and reality pop on surface as chaotic impressions in triviality and ordinary day event of life, as she was discovered by playing children.

Some of her relatives believed and even confessed that it was better if her body was never recovered.

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught:

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

(To a Skylark ~P. B. Shelley)

A ‘luminous halo’ was extinguished. No ashes, No embers, No wailing.

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© Vipin Behari Goyal

Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India 

A country in Romance

Decline of Romanticism

Kerala Photo by Ashu Mittal

Being a Country in Romance is entirely different from being a Democratic or Sovereign country. It implies that the country which is a political unit with well defined geographical territory, is inhibited by people who are romantic.

William Wordsworth had visited France before he composed the poem “The French Revolution”. He was obviously impressed that the whole nation is enchanted by Reason as the prime motive for a revolution to bring a change. The attraction of a country in romance was undeniable. As we know W. Wordsworth, he would never compose a poem when there is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion, but after some time when he would sit in contemplative mood he would recollect those emotions in tranquility. Slowly the tranquility would disappear and the emotions would gradually re-emerge with more intensity. At this moment he would compose the poem which would become immortal as 'The Daffodil' or 'Tintern Abbey'.

If we examine the characteristics of Romanticism we can decide if the country is really in Romance.

1. Love of Nature:

It is not as easy as it sounds. If we had ever really loved nature, it would have never become so dangerously polluted as it is today. If we go by statistics of environmental science no country can claim to have a love of nature. Loving is nurturing, not destroying.(Tweet it)

2. Emotional dominance:

Instead of reason or intellect, emotions, feelings, instincts and intuitions should prevail in a country in Romance. In an analysis, we find that people have become more egocentric, selfish, goal oriented and materialistic in approach. They have become more callous towards the suffering of humanity. Disparity in rich and poor would not have widened, if people were emotional.

3. Folklore language in Literature:

Since beginning, literature was created in two types of languages. Language of Elite and that of Folklore. Though out of fashion elite also read and appreciate Folklore literature but that is only a pretense to show off that they understand and care about life and sufferings of common people.

4. Exoticism:

Lands of mysteries and voodoo have always enchanted the curious mind of people. After the advent of media and transportation nothing is exotic any more.

5. Supernatural:

Due to spread of education and progress of science less and less people now believe in supernatural powers.

6. Haunted by the Past:

Some countries do not have a glorious past. If we go few centuries back, which is small time looking into the history of civilization, they did not even existed on the map of the world. They are now leading powers of the world. Some others who have a rich history of thousands of years are now almost beggars. Past is future, so no need to be haunted by it.

Thus we find that there is no country in Romance, Wordsworth was also disappointed by aftermath of French Revolution.

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© Vipin Behari Goyal

The Unspoken Agony of the Girl in The Last Ride Together by Robert Browning

The girls are mysterious, The boys are obsessive

No doubt, the readers are so much hooked by the thrill and passion of narrator that they become totally oblivious to the feelings of the girl. In the last stanza the lover too is taken aback by the total silence of his girl friend
“And yet-she has not spoke so long!
But her silence does not seem to bother him. For a moment he comes out of his engrossment by her silence, but that doesn’t stop him from further contemplating that heaven is nothing but life at its best.
In the first stanza lover demands two things from the girl when she declined his proposal. His first demand is only a trick to get her consent for his second demand. In a way he has coaxed and enticed her for his ulterior motive.

Robert Browning

    “Take back the hope you gave,-I claim
     Only a memory of the same,
     And this beside ,if you will not blame
    Your leave for one more last ride with me.”    
The girl was dubious and apprehensive since she saw no point in the pleadings of her lover. If he wants to keep memories who can stop him? Why he wants my permission for that? Why he is insisting for one more ride? In their long relationship they had many rides together in all kinds of seasons and ambience. How does one more matters ? He had always been gentle in his approaches, does he want to cross the limits on his last ride together.
  “My mistress bent that brow of hers
   Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
   When pity would be softening through
   Fixed me a breathing- while or two
   With life or death in the balance : right !
The boy looked at her as if his life depended on her answer. She saw that no harm could come from him. The girl could read that boy has hushed the conscience. The boy had no moral right to take the girl on ride when she had already declined his proposal.
“Thus leant she and lingered- joy and fear !
  Thus lay she a moment on my breast.”
After deciding to give him the advantage of her company for the last time she climbs beside him. In a natural gesture her head rests on his breast for a moment longer and she saw how his face was filled with ecstasy. She again hesitated in depriving him of a bliss which he may never have again in his life.

                                                                       “Then we began to ride.”

Who are they?(Hint-Bollywood Legend)

 And it was long, serene, peaceful ride. She does not know what he was thinking all the time. Both of them remained silent. She was expecting him to be gloomy, but he looked cheerful and gay.

 “ Had fate proposed bliss here should sublimate
    My being - Had I signed the bond—
    Still one must lead some life beyond, 
    Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried".
She was feeling uncomfortable due to his exuberance. Does he want to show that he would live more happily without her. He was full of pity when he requested for last ride together, but now his charms seems to have returned fortified and he was in jubilant mood due to his victory over her. This thought has made her uncomfortable and she wants to finish the ride as soon as possible. In a way she also cursed the weak moment when her heart melted and she gave consent for this ride.
His face was glowing with radiance. She had no heart to shun it.
After all, she also had reminiscences of precious moments of her life spent with him.
© Vipin Behari Goyal
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