About India
IndiaEconomics: An introduction to India
It is often said that visitors to India can be divided into two groups - those who love India enormously and those who cannot stand the 'heat, the sounds and the sights'of India. It is difficult to be ambivalent to the varied sensations that a visit to India entails. The following presents some glimpses into India.
An excerpt: 'At a time when Freud was liberating sex, Gandhi was reining it in; when Marx was pitting worker against capitalist, Gandhi was reconciling them; when the dominant European thought had dropped God and soul out of the social reckoning, he was centralizing society in God and soul; at a time when the colonized had ceased to think and control, he dared to think and control; and when the ideologies of the colonized had virtually disappeared, he revived them and empowered them with a potency that liberated and redeemed.' - Mandela, TIME.
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Vedic Civilisation
The Rig Veda, an extensive collection of more than one thousand hymns, represents the first extensive composition in any IndoEuropean / IndoAryan language (written circa 1500-1200 BC). Fraught with paradox, the hymns are meant 'to puzzle, to surprise, to trouble the mind [Prof O'Flaherty].' The Rig Veda contains details of daily life, the rich symbolism and mechanism of Vedic ritual and the pure poetry of hymns. These elements combine to form a unique insight into early Indian mythology and philosophy. As the personification of fire, cosmic or man-made, Agni is second in importance only to Indra, being addressed in at least two hundred hymns. Agni symbolises a pure, eternal element that empowers and cleanses. The following link includes excerpts from the Rig Veda, hymns to Agni. Friedrich Max Mueller (1828-1900) was a great friend of India. He was a savant who familiarised the West with classical Sanskrit literature, and he produced a highly acclaimed translation of the Upanishads. In his honour, Germany's cultural centres in India are called Max Mueller Bhawan(s), instead of Goethe houses as is the practice in the rest of the world.