There are some people who would want everything they fancy to themselves. I suppose this is a kind of weakness in a human being. But in a society, it can be troublesome. That is why the Manmohan Singh Government in India, when it took power the first time, had to spend a lot of time and energy to "detoxify" the history textbooks which had been infiltrated with a lot rubbish during an earlier dispensation. Falsification of hisotry is a pastime for many. But often it can land people in most ridiculous situations. During the time when Murli Manohar Joshi was the Human Resources Minister in India, Ddr M G S Narayanan was appointed chairman of the Indian Council for Historical Research. Joshiji, an Allahabad physics professor, was of the view that Indian history was much much older than what the colonial historians did accept. This led to some hilarious moments in the ICHR. The minister felt we need to set right this imbalance. He suggested to Dr Narayanan that we must rewrite history pushing the Vedic period by at least by 10,000 years into the past to make it more respectable. "Well, there may be a problem, ministerji," the historian said," we may also have to push the histories of others like the Persians and Arabs also by 10,000 years..." The minister was left to ponder how to manage at add an extra few thousand years to Indian history without allowing the same benefit to others who had trade and other relations with them! On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:30 PM, Arvind Kolhatkar <[email protected]>wrote: > Kerry, > > I must frankly admit at the outset that I have not gone through the volumes > of information and arguments that the link > http://www.stephen-knapp.com/was_the_taj_mahal_a_vedic_temple.htm > provides. Yet, my defence for writing the following is that before we are > invited to invest time and labor needed for fully exploring the link, some > kind of a prima facie case has to exist to say that Taj Mahal was not built > by Shahjehan but was an acquisition from a Hindu ruler. > > Taj Mahal has stood where it stands for over 400 years now. Accounts > survive of persons who saw it being built. Tradition has always associated > it with Shahjehan. When other Hindu temples were converted into mosques, > such as the temples at Mathura, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Somnath and other > places, > the Hindu origin of those sites has remained alive in peoples' minds from > the very first day - that fact did not have to be 'discovery's. Yet we are > now invited to believe that Taj Mahal's Hindu origin has been totally > forgotten and needs to be 'discovery's. How could it have been 'forgotten' > if it was a such a holy site for the Hindus? Besides, in all the long and > recorded history of India of 2500 years, the city of Agra has never been > counted among Hindu holy cities. Could this have been so had a Shiva > temple > stood there as recently as 400 years ago? Ancient cities like Mathura, > Varanasi, Ayodhya, Dwarka and a dozen others considered holy or important > by > Hindus are met frequently in Hindu religious and classical literature. > Agra > does not figure even once. It gains prominence only after Mughals make it > their capital. > > Since a prima facie case cannot be made out in favor of the theory of Hindu > origins of the Taj Mahal, I would think that it will remain as a fad or an > eccentricity. Each person has to decide for himself whether his valuable > time and effort should be devoted to scrutinizing it. > > There is a revivalist school in India which is trying to prove that India > did not have to take anything from the others and that everything good in > India is entirely an Indian (or Hindu) creation. For them, Aryans and > their > ancient language, and the literature in it such as the Vedas, did not come > from the West but are originally from India and spread outwards from India. > They consider that the theory of Aryans migrating from the West is a > mythology built by Western indologists of the colonial days, who, because > of > their colonial mentality, would deny that anything original could be an > Indian creation. Some of the arguments of these revivalists border on the > absurd. For example, they say that Christianity is an Indian creation - it > is nothing but Krishna-niti (teachings of Lord Krishna) and that Taj Mahal > is nothing but the adaptation of the original Hindu name of the temple > 'Tejo-Mahalaya' (great house of light). (Forget the fact that as the name > of a Hindu temple, 'Tejo-Mahalaya' sounds unconvincing!) > > Incidentally, what is a 'Vedic Temple?' Deities and temples as we know > them > are all post-vedic creations. > > Arvind Kolhatkar, Toronto, May 07, 2010. > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >