#7 - What is your religion? Quiz:

I saw this years ago and found it very entertaining:

Take this quiz to see what you believe/think:
http://www.selectsmart.com/RELIGION

I think most people in the world are decent, but we're living with systems that may have trained us to believe things which are just not very logical or helpful.  I've  always believed that if people are educated, informed and free, they will choose to make decisions themselves versus having someone else dictate to them what they should do. It is the general historical weakness of people that has led to enslaving ideologies.

Oh well....   I am an optimist and think at some point in the future, we'll be past all this and look back at how people lived and what they believed - and we'll have a good laugh.

#6 - Myths: Sita banishmenet, Shambuka murder

Sita Banishment and Shambuka Murder Myths

"The earliest mention of a mighty king bearing the name Rama is found in a hymn of the tenth book of the Rgveda and this is in conformity with the genealogical account of the Puranas which makes it clear that this great hero lived in the Vedic age. ... The oldest of the present Puranas are the Vayu and its counterpart Brahmanda.  The account of Rama as found in them is as follows:

...

This story [Sita's banishment] is found in the seventh book of the Ramayana, called the Uttarakanda. 

This book contains a number of myths concerning Ravana and other prominent figures of ancient times, many of whom are well-known in the Puranas.  But the central theme of the book is the exile of Sita and the slaying of the Sudra ascetic Sambuka by Rama.  The spurious nature of the entire Uttarkanda is indubitably established by the unimpeachable evidence of the last canto of the Yuddhakanda.

After a charming account of the coronation of Rama and Sita, this Canto not only gives a glowing description of the peace, prosperity, and piety that prevailed in the kingdom of Kosala during the reign of Rama, but also mentions the promise of the reward [sravanaphala] which is assigned to those who would hear the Ramayana.  This is the clearest proof of the fact that the poem of Valmiki ended here, because the sravanaphala is always at the end of a poem.

So far as the central theme of the Uttarakanda is concerned we are fortunate in possessing the additional testimony of the Mahabharata and the Puranas.  A study of these works conclusively establishes that the central theme of the Uttarakanda is not only unauthentic but also a very late invention.  The Ramopakhyana of the Mahabharata gives a fairly detailed story of Rama but is silent about the banishment of Sita and the slaying of the sudra ascetic by Rama.  The Harivamsa and the Vayu,

Brahmanda, Kurma, Garuda and Visnu Puranas also give the story of Rama but are totally unaware of the banishment of Sita and the slaying of the sudra ascetic by him.  These myths had not yet come into existence even when Bhasa wrote his Rama plays.  The earliest works which mention the incident of the banishment of Sita by Rama are the Gautamimahatmya of the Brahma Purana, the Agni, Bhagavata and Padma Puranas and the Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa.  The slaying of sudra ascetic Sambuka is mentioned only in the last two works.  The inevitable conclusion is that the incident of Sita's exile by Rama was invented at a very late period, while the tale of Sambuka arose later still.  The date of the rise of these myths could not have been earlier than the fourth century AD.

The central theme of the Uttarakanda, is discredited not only by the internal evidence of the Ramayana and the external evidence of the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa and the ancient Puranas, but is also inconsistent with some other facts.  Having commended the tapas of a woman of the lowly Sabara tribe in III,70,7, Rama could not have punished a man of the sudra caste, for the same act of piety.

So far as the banishment of Sita is concerned, it does not take note of the fact that from the report given by Hanumat, the people of Ayodhya must have been convinced about the purity of Sita, and so there was no question of any murmur arising among them.

In summing up we can say that besides the testimony of Hanumat, two very important facts lead us to the inevitable conclusion that the stories of Sita's banishment and the slaying of the sudra ascetic Sambuka by Rama were invented at a very late period.

These two facts are as follows:

1) The Ramayana has been concluded at the end of its sixth book named Yuddhakanda pointing to the fact that its last book named Uttarakand, containing the stories of Sita's banishment and the slaying of Sambuka, was a later addition.

2) The Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, and five of the ancient Puranas, viz., Vayu, Brahmanda, Kurma, Garuda and Visnu which give the story of Rama are silent about the incidents of the banishment of Sita and the slaying of the sudra ascetic by him.

The evidence against the genuineness of the story of Sita's banishment by Rama is so overwhelming that one really feels flabbergasted on seeing not only laymen but even scholars harping on it.

It is, to say the least, the gravest of injustice to Rama that is being perpetrated by the very people who claim to adore him."

(Source: Retrieval of History from Puranic Myths, PL Bhargava, DK Printworld Ltd, 1998)

#5 - Historical basis for Ramayana

Historical Basis of Ramayana:

Balmiki Ramayana is the "aadi" (original) Ramayana. Most of the scholars agree on the matter that Balmiki Ramayana originally consisted of five parts starting from Ajodhya kanda to Judhya kanda. Balmiki Ramayana described Ram NOT as an avatar but just as a mighty king who was eminently skilled in warfare. There was no supernatural phenomenon characterizing Ram that could be related to a deity. Bal-kanda and Uttar-kanda in Ramayana were the addition of later stage.

Rama mentioned in the last book of the RV – X.93, 14.  Since Mandala 10 of the RV was chronologically the last and likely was composed from 2200 to 1700 BCE, this timeframe makes sense since Rama probably lived around 2100 BCE.

More Ramayana Evidence:

By Nanditha Krishna

Yahoo Groups

July 2003

Ayodhya is in the headlines every day. One would have to be an ostrich to avoid the subject. Was there a temple before the mosque? Archaeologists would have to answer that. Was Rama born there? The answer is a matter of belief. Did Rama exist? Yes, I am quite sure he did. Rama’s life was a fact. His divinity is a matter of faith.

To doubt the existence of Rama is to doubt all literature. There is no archaeological or epigraphic evidence for either Jesus Christ or Prophet Mohammed, who are known only from the Bible and Koran respectively. Does it mean they did not exist? If Rama performs miracles such as liberating Ahalya, the Biblical story of Jesus walking on water or the Koranic tale of Mohammed flying to heaven on a horse are equally miraculous. Such stories reinforce divinity, not fact.

The Ramayana starts with Valmiki asking Narada who was the greatest man who ever lived.  Narada narrates the story of Rama, king of Ayodhya, in a few terse, factual lines. Valmiki then goes on to elaborate the story in poetry, creating the Ramayana. Creativity distinguishes the epic from Narada’s news report. Rama is not a god in the epic. But we have contemporary examples of people deified in their lifetime, such as the Shirdi and Sathya Sai Babas, who need a Valmiki or Vyasa to immortalise them.

The Ramayana is geographically very correct. Every site on Rama’s route is still identifiable and has continuing traditions or temples to commemorate Rama’s visit. Around 1000 BC, no writer had the means to travel around the country inventing a story, fitting it into local folklore and building temples for greater credibility.

In 1975 the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) unearthed fourteen pillar bases of kasauti stone with Hindu motifs near the mosque at Ayodhya; reports of the excavations are available with the ASI. Rama was born in Ayodhya and married in Mithila, now in Nepal. Not far from Mithila is Sitamarhi, where Sita was found in a furrow, still revered as the Janaki kund constructed by her father Janaka. Rama and Sita left Mithila for Ayodhya via Lumbini. In 249 BC, Ashoka erected a pillar in Lumbini with an inscription referring to the visits by both Rama and Buddha to Lumbini.

Ashoka was much nearer in time to Rama and would be well aware of his facts.

Rama, Lakshmana and Sita left Ayodhya and went to Sringaverapura — modern Sringverpur in Uttar Pradesh — where they crossed the River Ganga. They lived on Chitrakoot hill where Bharata and Shatrughna met them and the brothers performed the last rites for their father.

Thereafter, the three wandered through Dandak-Aranya in Central India, described as a land of

Rakshasas, obviously tribes inimical to the brothers’ habitation of their land. Tribals are still found in these forests.  The trio reached Nasik, on the River Godavari, which throbs with sites and events of Rama’s sojourn, such as Tapovan where they lived, Ramkund where Rama and Sita used to bathe, Lakshmankund, Lakshmana’s bathing area, and several caves in the area associated with their lives in the forest.

Rama then moved to Panchavati near Bhadrachalam (AP), where Ravana abducted Sita. The dying Jatayu told them of the abduction, so they left in search of Sita. Kishkinda, near Hampi, where Rama first met Sugriva and Hanuman, is a major Ramayana site, where every rock and river is associated with Rama. Anjanadri, near Hospet, was the birthplace of Hanuman (Anjaneya); Sugriva lived in Rishyamukha on the banks of the Pampa (Tungabhadra); Sabari probably also lived a hermitage there. Rama and the Vanara army left Kishkinda to reach Rameshwaram, where the Vanaras built a bridge to Lanka from Dhanushkodi on Rameshwaram Island to Talaimannar in Sri Lanka. While parts of the bridge — known as Adam’s Bridge — are still visible, NASA’s satellite has photographed an underwater man-made bridge of shoals in the Palk Straits, connecting Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar. On his return from Sri Lanka, Rama worshiped Shiva at Rameshwaram, where Sita prepared a Linga out of sand.  It is still one of the most sacred sites of Hinduism.

Sri Lanka also has relics of the Ramayana. There are several caves, such as Ravana Ella Falls, where Ravana is believed to have hidden Sita to prevent Rama from finding her. The Sitai Amman Temple at Numara Eliya is situated near the ashokavana where Ravana once kept her prisoner.

The presence of the Vanaras or monkeys, including Hanuman, has made the authenticity of the epic suspect. But this is the most plausible part of the story. The Vanaras were obviously tribes with the monkey totem: after all, the Ramayana belongs to a period when most of India was jungle with tribal forest-dwellers. India still contains several tribes with animal totems. An early issue of the Bellary District (now in Karnataka) Gazetteer gives us the interesting information that the place was inhabited by the Vanara people. The Jaina Ramayana mentions that the banner of the Vanaras was the vanaradhvaja (monkey flag), thereby reinforcing the totemic theory.

Similarly, Jatayu would have been the king of the vulture-totem tribe and Jambavan of the bear-totem tribe.

Was Lanka the modern Sri Lanka? One school of thought places Lanka on the Godavari in Central India, citing the limited descriptions of the South in the latter half of the epic. Narada does not mention Panchavati or Rameshwaram, but refers to Kishkinda and Lanka. Living in the north, it is unlikely that Valmiki knew the south. But Valmiki would know the difference between a sea and a river. Lanka, says the author definitively, was across the sea.

All the places visited by Rama still retain memories of his visit, as if it happened yesterday.  Time, in India, is relative. Some places have commemorative temples; others commemorate the visit in local folklore. But all agree that Rama was going from or to Ayodhya. Why doubt connections when literature, archaeology and local tradition meet? Why doubt the connection between Adam’s Bridge and Rama, when nobody else in Indian history has claimed its construction? Why doubt that Rama traveled through Dandakaranya or Kishkinda, where local non-Vedic tribes still narrate tales of Rama? Why doubt that he was born in and ruled over Ayodhya?

Major settlements, including temples, were renovated several times: restoration is a 20th century development. When the main image was made of perishable materials, it was replaced by stone. For example, we know that the wooden image of Varadaraja Perumal of Kanchipuram was replaced by a stone image, for the earlier image is still preserved in a water tank. The present architecture belongs to the sixteenth century Vijayanagara style. Yet the temple was known to have existed before the Pallava period (seventh century). This is the story of many sacred sites in

India. This happened to several Rama temples too.

Rama’s memory lives on because of his extraordinary life and his reign, which was obviously a period of great peace and prosperity, making Ramarajya a reference point. People only remember the very good or the very bad. Leftist historians have chosen to rubbish archaeology, literature and local tradition. So how do we prove that Rama did exist?

Finally, although there is enough evidence that Rama did exist, it still does not justify breaking down a mosque. Would Rama have approved? It makes us as barbaric as Babar and his General Mir Baqi who, says Hafizullah in his Persian document, built the mosque over the Ramjanmasthan.

The author can be contacted at nankrishna@v...

#4 - Article about India's History

A Nation without a History

An earlier version of this was published on March 26, 2005 at IndiaNest.com

http://www.indianest.com/history/030.htm

It is a common refrain that India lacks any history. Although the antiquity of the civilization is well-known, there are no pyramids nor ancient stone temples to speak of nor any stone walls with inscribed hieroglyphics. Who then were these people? Were they a nameless, faceless mass of population or were they living, breathing, caring individuals with distinct personalities and aspirations? Did they have names and did they name the cities they lived in? Is there any way to know if they left us nothing?

The attempts to decipher the true history of India have been too few and too often undertaken under unfavorable conditions. The ancient Indians themselves often freely conflated their ideas about India’s past events with their beliefs. The end result was an often confusing mix of fantastical mythology with plenty of internal contradictions, unbelievable timeframes and an endless supply of names of kings, priests, seers, noblemen and commoners. Taken as a whole, the testimony would seem tainted and probably worthless. During the medieval era, the Islamic kings’ conquests and struggles was recorded by their court scribes and those records give us a simpler view into India’s past, but they do not shed much light on the ancient or hoary past. By the time India was under the sway of colonial European powers, there was an environment in place with the set objective to undermine India’s past in order to suppress the culture to allow for less resistance to colonization. An honest inquiry into India’s origin was yet to take place.

Today we have a world-view of India as a land of mystery that was populated by an ancient civilization of gentle, black-complexioned illiterates. These Harappans were supposedly the ancestors of the current Dravidians and were a peace-loving, spiritual people who obtained a high standard of living in north and northwestern India five thousand years ago, but who left us no literature, ostensibly because they could not read or write. At some point in the past (1500 BCE is the most quoted date), aggressive, white-complexioned Aryans on horseback and with chariots charged down from the mountains and conquered the hapless Harappans and imposed their language, Sanskrit and their religion, Hinduism, upon them.  The central belief of the Aryan religion was the strict separation of peoples based upon race. This became the infamous caste system.  Supposedly, following this “invasion” was roughly one thousand years of darkness until circa 600 BCE we have the Buddha, who for the first time is an Indian who actually has a name.  This theory is referred to as the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT).  Sometimes it is “softened” into something called the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) to sound less harmful, but regardless of what it is called, it is treated as almost an historical event of its own.

This bizarre view of history is still represented in textbooks about India throughout the world as if it were a known fact. The truth however is that these colonial theories about the history of India were an honest guess based upon inadequate data. There was no anthropological or archaeological data to corroborate the AIT and there was never a case in human history of an advanced civilization that was illiterate. And despite the discovery of conflicting data (the startling archaeological finds at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa), the dogmas built up in academia and the political benefits of the historical distortions were too much to overcome. The old view of India’s ancient past did not waiver and the result is quite sad to see. The general public is forced to believe a highly illogical and quite racist view of India’s ancient past. This view then taints their general opinion of this civilization and what it can contribute to the world and what it is worth in and of itself.

The reaction in some circles to this view of Indian history is equally absurd. Many in the public cling to views of ancient history that are based on religious beliefs or based upon misunderstandings without a proper analysis of the facts. The mythological version of Indian history that is often propped up as a counter-balance to the AIT-version of Indian history is that India is millions of years old with each yuga (eon, age) representing hundreds of thousands of years. Therefore events described in Indian literature were composed so long ago that they cannot be dated. Events involving monsters and monkey-people are simply ancient people’s portrayal of hominids that had not yet evolved into homo-sapiens. The only event in India’s ancient past that can be reasonably dated according to this view is the Mahabharata War occurring in 3100 BCE. The other epic, the Ramayana is supposed to have taken place in Treta Yuga and, depending on who you talk to, that can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago. The problem with this position is that it totally destroys the credibility of Indians themselves as a source of testimony or opinion about their own ancient past. Although these people may mean well, they will be ignored by any audience with a sincere interest in India’s ancient past and as a result, they will achieve the opposite of their goal – to undo the incorrect view of India’s history and to replace it with a more credible one.

Growing up here in the U.S. in the 1970s, I approached this issue from a slightly different angle. I was taught the standard AIT-version of Indian history and I certainly believed it because I was never shown any data disproving it. As I grew older, my thoughts nagged me though because I knew this version had too many holes and common sense would force me to accept that India is not so unique that its people are a different species than other humans. In other words, given that they are as human as any other civilization, the patterns of development too must be similar. Therefore, the ancient history should follow recognizable patterns of hunter-gathering transitioning into settled agriculture (beginning along major rivers) and from there into the development of villages and cities and city-states and kingdoms and empires. All along this continuum of development should be material evidence of the people’s labors, their art, architecture, commerce, literature, religion, wars, etc. The timeframes too must follow a reasonable pattern with civilizational elements beginning sometime with the past ten thousand years and plenty of time within each phase of transition from hunter-gatherer all the way to empire.

In the late 1990s all these thoughts met a challenge. My own son was studying ancient Indian history at school and sure enough, the textbooks had not changed at all in the past thirty years. I was shocked and dismayed that with all the technological progress this world has made, we still are nearly completely ignorant about one of the four cradles of civilization and one-fifth of humanity. I spoke with his teacher and agreed to do some research and come back in a month with my findings. During that month I scoured the Internet for hard data and stumbled upon quite a few good Indian historians whose books are unfortunately well kept secrets (very low circulation). I ordered some of these books from India and talked to my son’s teacher that I would need more time, but that afterwards I would be able to make a nice presentation to the class. When I received the books and started to read them, my eyes opened. For the first time in my life I realized that I had been cheated. My heritage was stolen from me and I didn’t even understand the depth of the crime until I had a chance to delve deeper into the details of India’s ancient history as analyzed by some superb historians and a few archaeologists. The unbelievable secret I discovered was that my nagging thoughts were correct. The rules of India’s history are not substantially different than that of other equally ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia or Egypt. All the phases of human development from hunter-gatherer to agrarian to urban to imperial all flowed in a measurable pattern and there was sufficient evidence today to see the approximate timeframes of all these developmental transitions. In addition, the racial and linguistic misunderstandings of the past were all easily explained by studying the immense literary history of India. There was no record of any ancient ‘invasion’ or migration of Aryans, there was very little sense of ‘race’ as we know it today in India’s past, there was a continuity of development of language over thousands of years, there was a well-recorded list of kings in dynasties and priests in Guru-Paramparas (teacher-disciplic successions). The analysis of India’s ancient literature cleared away all the misconceptions. The mythology-laden literature, such as the Puranas are an excellent source of detailed information when compared and correlated against more reliable sources (due to their memorization and preservation) such as the Vedas. This combined with anthropological evidence (showing no major migration into India from 4500 to 800 BCE and probably not from 6000 BCE) and the ever-growing archaeological evidence paints a picture that is getting clearer each day. Although only far less than 5% of the nearly 2,600 Harappan sites have been excavated, we still have enough to see what the culture was and it was not too different from what it is today. There is an incredible continuity from India’s past to today. Whether it be the way women decorate themselves (sindhur, churi/bangles, bindi, hair styles, clothing, jewelry, etc.) or the art forms (with elements that are still used today) or religion (artifacts that speak of an early form of Hinduism) to the games people played (chess, pittu, etc.). The continuity is unmistakable and almost blatantly obvious.

The question that remained unanswered in my mind however was more specific. If the AIT-version of India’s past is essentially disproved and we have a plethora of literary, archaeological, anthropological and other evidence, then what was the *real* history of India? What really happened and *when* did it happen? It did not satisfy me to hear about details of Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization on the one hand with details of Indian epics and legends on the other. Did the people living in all those Harappan cities not have names? Were there no rulers or kings or priests? On the other hand, didn’t the people in the Indian epics live somewhere? Did any of those cities overlap the Harappan sites? These are the questions I asked because the dichotomy between what we accept about India’s ancient past and the remembered history of its people is too large. The peoples of Egypt may have traditions that date back to the Pharoah’s time and we have a well-organized list of these kings and when they ruled. It provides a linkage of the literature, beliefs with other evidence such as archaeology. It greatly disturbed me that this linkage seems to never be made in India. There doesn’t appear to be a serious effort on the behalf of the Indian government or even its people to demand to know more about their past. Political issues aside, I felt a desire to do what I could to remedy this situation.

I vowed to combine all that I had learned into one document that could be viewed by the general public. This document would combine all the excellent literary and scriptural analysis I read from numerous Indian historians (such as G.P. Singh, Shrikant Talageri, P.L. Bhargava, Thaneswar Sarmah, Dharampal, David Frawley, etc.) with the data I’ve compiled from archaeologists (B.B. Lal, S.P.Gupta, S.R. Rao, M.R. Mughal, etc.) and add the anthropological and numismatic evidence to that. In addition, I added in the strong hydrological evidence for the events in India’s past. The desiccation of the Sarasvati River in 1900 BCE and the Drsadvati River in 2600 BCE provide “sheet anchors” to delineate certain events in India’s past. For example, if a war took place along the flowing Drshadvati River, it must have occurred before 2600 BCE, and if we have the lists of kings in the dynasties involved in that war before and afterwards, we can date those kings too. We can then line up their timeframes with kings from other dynasties and locate the cities and kingdoms each was from. Expanding this process over dozens of dynasties and hundreds of kings reveals something amazing. India not only has a history, but that history is better documented than that of any other comparable ancient civilization. For any given timeframe in India’s past (all the way back to the beginnings of its recorded history around approximately 4000 BCE) there is some literary evidence shedding light on dozens of names of kings and priests for that given slice of time. Adding up all these slices produces a history that spans approximately six thousand years with over ten thousand names (and growing). My combined document is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet called the ‘Royal Chronology of India’ with over 325 generations (rows) and dozens of columns producing well over 10,000 cells of data. Many of these cells have comments in them that are over one page in length and nearly all the sources I used to construct the timeline have been listed. I presented an early version of this timeline to my son’s school classroom and they were shocked to hear that India actually had ancient dynasties and kings and lineages of priests from the hoary past that continue even today. I am constantly updating this timeline and a current version is always freely available for download at: http://www.IndiaHistoryOnline.com. This spreadsheet is so full of data that it may be overwhelming, but the idea is not to read the document as if it were a novel, but rather to treat it as a reference. Just as you would search for a particular word in a dictionary, you can search for any name in India’s past and chances are it is in the Royal Chronology timeline where it should be surrounded by people associated with that person and potentially with a comment describing some aspect of their life or work.

To bring the raw data of this timeline to life, I am currently writing the first book of a series that I am calling ‘The Epic Trilogy of India’. This will be a series of historical fiction novels that will describe the events of India’s three epics (not two) in an exciting way that presents people as people and avoids feeding into any stereotypes of the “mystic east.”  The ancient story will involve fiction, but will be based on the historical research I have done. The reason why I am writing a trilogy (i.e., why there are three epics) is because the earliest major event in Indian history happened so long ago that it has been nearly forgotten. That event is the astounding victory of King Sudas (of the Puru-Bharata Dynasty) against a confederation of over ten of his enemies. The major war is referred to in numerous places in the Rg Veda as the Dasharajnya War or War of 10 Kings (“Dasha”-Rajna). The approximate timeframe of this war is the end of the early Vedic period or roughly 2900 BCE according to my Royal Chronology timeline. The timeframes of the other, better known epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata are approximately 2100 and 1400 BCE respectively. The fascinating observation you can make by looking at the timeline is how neatly these three epics divide Ancient Indian history into phases. There was over 1000 years of development leading to the time of King Sudas, 800 years of the Ikshvaku Dynasty from there down to King Rama, 700 years down from there to the Yadava Prince Krsna and then another 800 years down to the time of Mahavira and the Shakya (Ikshvaku) Prince Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha). With this new view of India’s ancient past, hopefully much of the mystery is removed. These people were probably not much different from you and me. They lived, breathed, ate food, worked, recreated, dreamed, hoped, fought, etc. in much the way people still do today. We would be doing a great disservice to them if we relegated them to some unknown magical past where nothing followed any rules of logic and all the events they’ve described to us (in detail in many cases) must be ignored in favor of worshipping them as opposed to the literary and cultural legacy they’ve left us. We should be honored to inherit such an unbelievably long, continuous and noble (‘Arya’) tradition. I hope to convey some of that respect and honor in this upcoming book series. I hope to have the first installment out next year.

It is a pleasant surprise and yet a predictable result that all my years of research has only shown what most people would know instinctively. That is, that the flow of India’s history followed normal patterns and that all phases of India’s past have been recorded. We must therefore apologize to our ancestors for blaming them for having ‘no historical sense’ or ‘no chronological sense’ when in fact they did. It was only our lack of initiative to decipher their culture and the way they expressed themselves and their history which led to all the unnecessary misunderstandings. My sincere desire is to continue to update and add to my Royal Chronology timeline, continue to present it at academic and non-academic gatherings, to complete my Epic Trilogy series in the coming six years and to have all this knowledge accepted into the academic community to finally update the textbooks regarding Indian history to reflect a more accurate view of its past. I certainly do not want to have the experience with my son repeated with my grandchild! 

– Niraj Mohanka

January, 2006