Just Pontification 4: Science of Small Things

I may acknowledge the obvious borrowing of the title of this Blog from Arundhati Roy's best seller titled "God of Small Things". I have not read the book though I held it in my hand several times, including an indonesian version in Roman script from Google Books. I can only guess therefore how that book is related to what I have to write on the Science of Small Things. According to one review, Roy's book "... is a description of how the small things in life build up, translate into people's behavior and affect their lives."

This blog and all our human yesterdays will take that last statement as obviously given. It may have escaped the attention of our (desi) tomorrow's and yesterday's budding/budded scientists who (except J C Bose notably, and few others) try to be clones of other (non-desi) exalted scientists. Originality is not usually our forte.

The role of the scientist in the western world has always emphasized its part in the conquest of harsh nature as in their winter months. It is the drudgery of their winters that led them to the printed novels and music scores, and room lighting and central heating, and radios and televisions for their recorded home entertainment, all of which followed and helped build their science culture and their precision.

The value systems of these scientists are good for their society and produce their essential and probably vital things which seem unique and even desirable even if they may be unnecessary to us.

We have our own weather, our long history of having our own social systems for living and amusement, and dealing with our weather and their attendant complications and health problems. We have analyzed them and have formulated ways to handle them and the long-term benefits of this analysis has survived 5000 years of civilized living.

Do we need to follow the objectives of the recent science of the western world?

I would think not --- even if I think so belatedly. My views in this blog may not be the prevailing view of Indian scientist. Science is universal they would say. So it is. The objectives of science to an inquisitive mind require being shaped (and is usually shaped) by one's real environment and not by one's images of a different picture on travel brochures or advertisement billboards or even by the editorials of science periodicals.

After sixty years of independence, when the newly independent people have retired with their mindsets, it is time for the new generation to take over as truly independent minds. I do not think that this new generation, now in their twenties, is as much worried about a western hand that feeds and nurtures their scientific curiosity. Thanks to many modern young men --- and I would include A R Rahman and Ashoke Sen and Saina Nehwal and even Rahul Gandhi --- of a truly original tribology (science of interacting surface; interacting and interfacing is essential) one may visualize the beginnings of a new day in Indian Science.

In the past sixty years efforts are made to remove the so-called small irritants in a scientist's (usually trained abroad) life, that is thought to prevent him from practicing his science (of relevance to life abroad) in an unperturbed (which really means with all the western comforts) manner. I think that all that is now dismissed as droppings of a bull. Perhaps this post Egypt era can actually be an opportunity to rediscover oneself with respect to one's environment and benefit from this understanding and from this rediscovery.

The term rediscovery does imply that we had known about our environment earlier but it has been obscured and buried under our present modes of "learning" from western "gods".

It also stems from the belief that luxury breeds more and more luxury so insatiably that all the small things in life have to be trampled and buried without ever savoring their essence although they always will remain the essentials.

It is time we thought back on our value systems.

Howsoever, as they say, as a pre-independence man, I think it is my prerogative to rediscover and re-preach.

It should also be my duty to have practiced what I now preach. I plead guilty that I may not have done so ... but then, I may say, I did not preach as much when I was practicing.

I have included some old poetry in lieu of my preaching for old poetry never dies.

That is why this blog is a pontification blog?

However, I warn, that my future blogs (at least three) will attempt to point direction of what kind of science of small things that we can do. I will put my head on the block to be chopped off then, even if that will not be my purpose.

We (my siblings) were brought up with as children with family values that shunned the pursuit of material gain of the chalaak and caused much avoidable un-naturalness and asthma and cancer. I cannot find a particular reason why we should have been so. I now think that it was mainly influenced by the buddhist sack-cloth-and-ashes attitudes of my mother which seemed to so easily fit into the history and culture of resident bengalis (see my blog "The Bon of the Bongs, Part I: East or West, East is the Best (Sometimes)" of November 7, 2008) or indeed the resident Indians from any place.It is this attitude that makes people sympathetic to concerns about social injustice as also to love nature and to desire it as a sufficient enough luxury.

Oliver Goldsmith (http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/o/19565-oliver-goldsmith-by-e-s-lang-buckland?start=3)must have been one of these kinds. One of my earliest literary impressions has been his poem "The Deserted Village" which, it seems from Wikipedia, was the pangs he felt when an ancient village was being demolished to make a garden for an wealthy man. This was in the middle of the eighteenth century. Such demolitions persist even today. Those of us who live in Pune know how a garden city has been converted to a concfrete jungle.

I still remember the voice of the English teacher reciting the first lines from this poem (not only because of the strange word 'swain'):

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain,

The lines that impressed us most (perhaps because of my mother's subconscious buddhist leanings --- she was born in Burma and her family lived long in Burma --- and also because we were averagely poor) were

O, luxury! thou curst by Heaven's decree,
How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!
How do thy potions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy!
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown,
Boast of a florid vigor not their own:
---- ---- ----
Till, sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.

Tagore's "Dui Bigha jomi" had a similar theme (see http://drishtighuri.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/103/) although the beauty of the poem is always lost in its transliteration:-

Of my land only a little remained, the rest having been mortgaged away.
The zamidar (landlord) said one day, “Know what Upen? This too should come my way”.
I said, “O Lord, countless are the plots of land you already own,
But consider --–I only have land enough to bury me when I’m gone!’
The zamindar brushed me aside saying, “Upen, I’m building a garden,
Your half-acre will allow me to design for it a lovely fountain–
You’ll have to sell it to me!” ……. I replied, tears in my eyes,
and hands on my heart, “Spare this poor man’s land, or else he dies!
For seven generations we’ve tilled this plot and it’s everything to me,
Selling it will be like selling my mother because of poverty!”


Tagore's poem would go on to reflect the mindset of the Indian rich which does not seem to have changed since the time he wrote it more than a hundred years ago:

In six weeks I was forced out of my ancestral land and into the road
By a court decree. Falsely, it said I had defaulted on a loan and owed
The zamindar the whole lot! Alas, in this world those who have most want all
Even the king won’t stop until he has grabbed everything–big or small!


I think (Shiva's Dance and the Stock Market: Creative Destruction, October 26, 2008) Goldsmith's the "down, down sinking" part in recent times came with the stock-market crash of 2008 the repercussions of which is manifesting in several ways. The not least of these is the Egypt phenomenon which would require another blog.

Tagore's "dui bigha jomi" must find its equivalence in the several new SEZs (Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a geographical region that has economic and other laws that are more free-market-oriented than a country's typical or national laws ... to enable a private sector developer to obtain a reasonable rate of return (20%!!!, emphasis mine) --- Wikipedia).

Both of these poems show that those who have the wealth use it many time for their trivial conspicuous consumption. Those who have nature's wealth and are content to live by it end up as losers, increasingly so in this modern world.

This trend requires to be reversed, hopefully bloodlessly.

The science of small things (SOST) should be concerned with the way this reversal can be brought about.

This blog will not consciously be on Schumacher's theme of Small is Beautiful though I agree almost instantaneously with his almost opening statements:
"They may disagree on many things but they all agree that the problem of production has been solved; that mankind has at last come of age. For the rich countries,they say, the most important task now is 'education for leisure' and, for the poor countries. the 'transfer of technology'.
"That things are not going as well as they ought to be going must be due to human wickedness. We must therefore construct a political system so perfect that human wickedness disappears and everybody behaves well, no matter how much wickedness there may be in him or her.
Schumacher finds these assumptions to be erroneous. "The arising of this error, so egregious and so firmly rooted. is closely connected with the philosophical, not to say religious, changes during the last three or four centuries in man's attitude to nature. ... since the whole world is now in a process of westernisation, ... modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.
"... illusion of having solved the problem of production ... is based on the failure to distinguish between income and ... the irreplaceable capital which man had not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing."

The "irreplaceable capital" must include "Sweet Auburn" and "dui bigha jomi".

Schumacher quotes Keynes as saying '...For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair,; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.’.

The Science of Big Funding may unconsciously be aimed at supporting the gods of "avarice and usury" towards the utopia of an universal well being.

This must be the thoughts of our (strictly non-original and therefore non-Indian) economists like World-Bank-serving Manmohan Singh and his much more presentable and much more wily clone Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who would have petrol taxes be reduced and diesel subsidies removed.

There are statements such as "The road to peace, it is argued, is to follow the road to riches." "The dominant modern belief is that the soundest foundation of peace would be universal prosperity."

Every tranquil lake of equality will inevitably and spontaneously make a wave from a fluctuation or an external disturbance. The wave of inequality cannot be suppressed and will propagate unless there are different cultures that do not recognize the wave.
Universal difference-less prosperity is not the road to permanence in relationships but the cliche unity in diversity is likely to be. The Science of Small Things (SOST) may require providing social science inputs that makes social differences (perhaps including caste differences) stigma-less without pandering to the masses of conspicuously consuming invasion of tourists; it will also require suppressing differences that serve only the purposes of profit-making commercial advertisements.

The sharpest and most adventurous Indian minds are now busy making copies for advertisements and scripts for mass-entertainment. Would that they could use it for SOST.

The question to ask is whether the world would have been a better place, say, without the glamour of the Shah Rukh Khans or Amitabh Bachans or NDTV for saving the Tiger.
The Tiger and the Elephant and the woodchucker would have certainly not preferred their tinsel attention.

The Science of Small Things (SOST) must bear in mind the obvious (Schumacher) 'Nothing makes economic sense unless its ontinuance for a long time can be projected without running into absurdities'.
In the absence of these absurdities there will be no inflation. SOST must help in pointing out the absurdities.
Inflation-less permanence is "incompatible with a predatory attitude of conspicuous consumption which rejoices in the fact that what were luxuries for our fathers have become necessities for us', ... a "taxation which the public find hardest to evade" (Keynes)

Permanence is a virtue that must assert itself without succumbing to the delusions of change. There is enough change in nature that can be amusing for one's lifetime especially if this change includes changes in watching one's creation grow.

... It is more than likely, as Gandhi said, that 'Earth provides enough to satisfy~ every man's need, but not for every man's greed'. Modifying Gandhi one may add 'the people of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the people'

It is nice to have a refined taste by sampling and tasting to one's refinements various food and wines than to have built up a stock of fine wines based on the gloss of some baron or castle or (more likely) some glossy advertisement print even if it features the singularly featureless Vijay Mallaya and his very imitating calendar girls.

Although we may not have realized it ourself, Schumacher points out that Gandhi had said 'Every machine that helps every individual has a place, but there should be no place for machines that concentrate power in a few hands and turn the masses into mere machine minders, if indeed they do not make them unemployed.'

SOST could train its mind on machine-busting than machine minding.

Happiness is, of course, no use to economists as there is no way to quantify happiness. It is not certain, for example, which one is the more happier. Is it the man in his Audi caught in busy traffic (Fig below left) the children playing on the kerb at the same point (Fig below, middle) or the old lady in the old building (figure below right) on the old Lakshmi Road of Pune? (click to expand)


One of the favourite tools of economists is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is a measure of long term economic growth even if the more important stock-market profits of parasites comes from short-term business cycles. Ignoring the modern trend of stocks-and-shares parasitology of the upwardly mobile and inwardly insecure, SOST may still ask what the GDP means in terms of permanence. By permanence we will use the Schumacher approach of idenifying permanence with the permanence of our natural resources, our natural capital.


If one takes a GDP as a measure of a nation's luxury quotient,LQ, one naturally assumes that if luxury is a wasteful expenditure then the energy-luxury quotient, ELQ (ELQ = Energy/GDP) will increase with time --- all else being the same. In the Figure below the energy used by Japan and its GDP is plotted for various years starting from 1958 (data from Wikipedia). The S-type plot for GDP may be interpreted in terms of kinetics of phase transformation from a GDP-low to a GDP-high phase. The low GDP initially may be attributed to a low life-style contrast that does not motivate the population. In the intermediate rapid growth phase old frugal habits die and new spending sprees grow with the intentto produce more to aquire more for wasteful expenditure. In the latter stages this transformation is either completed (every body is wasting) or draws to an end because the cost of energy becomes prohibitive.

On the other hand, it is seen from the graph that the ELQ shows a (what one can call) a "mrror-reflected S-shape curve" where the ELQ is high in 1958 and tapers down to a constant value towards the year 2000. If one were to normalize the purchasing power (PP) of the dollar over this time (the dollar value is reduced) the plot of ELQ(PP normalized) or ELQpp vs time would be rather flat since the purchasing power of the dollar was from about (http://hubpages.com/hub/US-Dollar-Purchasing-Power) $6 in 1958 if the purchasing power in 2000 is taken as 1$.

In terms of this dollar normalized sense we may look at the ELQ by some other standards. Assuming one trillion to be 10^12 1$ to be 100 yen then an ELQ of neaqrly 1 exaJ/100trillion yen works out to be ~ 1 million calories per dollar of GDP.The energy required to boil one liter of water is nearly 6.5 x 10^5 calories so that an increase of 1$ in GDP is equivalent to the energy used to boil one and a half litres of water per year. An Indian per capita GDP of 1000$ is equivalent to boiling 1500 litres of water per year or nearly four litres of water per day per person in India. To burn petrol it is nearly 10,000 calories per g or 8x10^6 calories per litre. A GDP of 1000$ is equivalent to burning about 300 ml of petrol per person per day.

This seems reasonable.

To achieve an US GDP of 40,000$ we will require burning 12 litres of petrol per day per person or boil 160 litres (16 buckets) of water per day per person.

This certainly seems unreasonable!

But still there could be hope. The curves are flattening out and saturating in the above figure. The Energy used may slow down and start decreasing as population stabilizes and energy use becomes more efficient. Will GDP become less as population decreases in some foreseeable future?

One view (http://www.aei.org/outlook/21588) is the following:

"The population bomb and its resource-scarcity corollaries have a quaint ring now, like bellbottoms, gas lines, Jimmy Carter’s grin, and other totems of 1970s sensibility. It is this kind of ecoapocalypticism that Bjørn Lomborg called “The Litany”:

We are all familiar with the Litany: the environment is in poor shape here in Earth. Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet’s species are becoming extinct in vast numbers--we kill off more than 40,000 each year. The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing, and the coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing; we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world’s ecosystem is breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability, and the limits of growth are becoming apparent."

At the same time the article cited above goes on to add
"Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Dawn, is currently dean at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and was chairman of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under President Jimmy Carter, where he was the driving force behind The Global 2000 Report to the President. Global 2000 had the misfortune of offering specific predictions for the year 2000, such as $100-a-barrel oil, a 40-percent loss of forestland in developing nations, and a 20-percent increase in desertification. Some of these predictions were not just wrong; they were wrong by an order of magnitude."

From the hindsight of 2011, Gus Speth was not all that wrong. Changes due to the economic policies incorporated in Globalization that unexpectedly made China and India and so many other poor rich was not taken into account.

On top of it, changes due to the freedom of expression brought about by the power of the internet, has not been factored in. The exploitation of Oil sources has now unseen future because of the unforeseen political changes.

SOST will require answers to these questions... more importantly it will require framing questions. ... Ahluwalia's planning commission will certainly not do it.

Goldmsith said what is known through ages

"Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that states of native strength possess'd,
Though very poor, may still be very blessed;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labor'd mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky".

Among the ancient civilization, Iraq could not resist the billows and the sky. China and India have not learnt to spurn the rage of gain. The hope lies in Egypt's "self-dependent power".

Science of Small Things can make a beginning in true self-dependence and freedom into which Tagore (for another reason perhaps) would want us to awake.

Pune Street Scene VII: Pashan’s (Very) Old Hanuman Idol and (Very) Old Bakul Tree

When I first landed in Pune more than twenty years ago, I was recommended to do my fresh vegetable shopping at Pashan Gaon’s vegetable market that was held on the streets of the Pashan Gaon. Pashan was still considered a village (Gaon) at that time. For that matter, the centre of Pune city is still considered to be Pune gaon to the older residents.

This blog will be about some of the wonders of Pashan which seems to have been ignored and which can ill afford to be ignored any longer. Indeed, Pashan's claim to glory may be as old as Puneshwar (which may be true even if I say so myself) and certainly older than the glory brought by the Peshwas.

I did not know this till I started on this blog. The story certainly does not end with this blog. Some of my surprises concerning Pashan is given here. The blog, needless to say is long like other blogs; I was biding my time between difficult to publish scientific papers.

Click on images to expand for a better viewpoint.

Pashan and some of its history.

Pashan which means stone in Marathi/Sanskrit could have been named after the rock quarries on its hills (such as tekdi behind the bungalow quarters of the National Chemical Laboratory) which produce the rare fluorine-containing apophyllite among its more exotic gemstones. I have not found any early (before 1700) reference to Pashan as a quarry, although there have been early European interest in locating quarries where Indian gemstones are found. Pashan is the only quarry in the world to produce the beautiful mesolite crystals especially those growing on apophyllite (see figure above) which is perhaps the closest that one can get to an image of a crystallized metasatable superbeing. This is probably because of the peculiar and uniques geological history of the Deccan trap in which Pune is located. Mesolite and apophyllite grow from a watery solution when in contact with ancient lava flows. These crystals are a consequence perhaps of the cosmic accident that led to the separation of the Deccan region from its African mother.

A few years ago, while researching for a blog, I came across a Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Volume XVIII, Part II, Poona, printed at the Government Central Press, 1885. There is mention of Pashan as a village on a feeder (Ramnadi) to the Mula river six miles west of Poona. At the time I first came to Pune, Pashan was famous for its Lake which the Gazetteer informs me was a reservoir made in 1867-68 built at a cost of ₤16,700 ( when it was Rs 10 to a ₤; at independence Rs 13.3 was a ₤; today it is Rs 73.7 for a ₤!). The water from this reservoir was sent to the (Gun?) Powder Works in Kirkee and must have been of tremendous use to the British for maintaing their authority. The improved supply of water to Pashan must have improved their prosperity because of which the Pashan farmer paid the highest tax for channeled water. In Part III of the above-mentioned Gazetteer it is mentioned that Pashan had a population of 913 in 1885.

The important aspect of the above information as far as the blog is concedrned is the bund on the river Ramnadi which played perhaps a much more vital role for the history of Pashan. Of particular interest is the building of a Someshwar mandir on the banks of this Ramnadi.

I was researching on Buddhist influences on Indian religion and I was impressed by the possibility that the idol at Tirupathi was a Buddhist idol. The idol at Tirupati was found on an ant-hill. It was on searching the net for idols and ant-hills that I came across the Gazetteer and its contents. The Gazetteer writes “The (Pashan) village is pleasantly placed in a beautiful grove on a feeder (Ramnadi) of the Mula river. The common story of the cowherd watching his milk-less cow and finding it feeding a serpent who lived in an ant-hill is told of Pashan. The cowherd dug the ant-hill, and finding five lings, built a shrine, called it Someshvar, and became its ministrant. The village of Pashan was built near the shrine and a temple was built by the mother of Shahu (1708-1749).”

The Shahu referred to here is Chatrapati Shahu, the grandson of Shivaji, the truly great Maratha warrior as far as a people’s acknowledgment is concerned. The mother of Shahu is Yesu bai, wife of Sambhaji who succeeded Shivaji.

As it turns out --- for at least a phonetic connection to the Ganguly name --- Shahu was born in the Gangoli fort at Konkan.

The biography Life and times of Shivaji II: Chatrapati Shahu, 1680-1749 A.D by Mukund Wamanrao Burway would portray Sambhaji as a villainous drunkard and Chatrapati Shahu as a godsend to restore the family pride of Shivaji’s Bhonsle family.

In a small way, because of Yesubai, the Someshwar shrine has a historic link with the establishment of the Peshwas of Pune.

As far as Poona is concerned it was Balaji Viswanath, the Peshwa of Shahu, who was instrumental in running the Marathi state for Shahu. Shahu ran his state from Satara and the Peshwa made Pune effectively the (Advanced study in the history of modern India 1707-1813 by J. L. Mehta) headquarters of the Maratha state for all practical purposes. “After establishing himself at Poona, (Balaji Vishwanath) went out on a whirlwind tour of the Maratha dominions, restoring order and adopting measures for the consolidation of Shahu’s power. When Balaji Vishwanath died suddenly, Shahu declared that Baji Rao, the eldest son of Balaji Vishwanath would be come the next Peshwa and senapati.”

Why Yesubai visited the Someshwar shrine at Pashan is not clear to ordinary mortals like me. Yesubai must have had a remarkable life to have her husband decapitated by Aurangazeb's men and then to have been imprisoned with Aurangazeb's family for twenty years or so; to see her son brought up by Aurangazeb's daughter whom her husband Sambhaji would marry as a pre-condition for surrender; because of which this daughter would lovingly bring up the son and call him Shahu; and who influenced in the decision making that would make Shahu a king of the Marathas, a Chatrapati.

Why after all this did Yesubai visit Pashan? Was it because of the cool grove of trees by the river where she could have peace of mind? So which was the more important historical incident --- the visit of Yesubai and her attendant lords? or was the beautiful tree grove that attracted Yesubai? Was the important historical fact a consequence of the shrine which was linked to the worry of the cowherd about his milkless cow feeding the serpents on an anthill by a river?

Did Yesubai's visit establish Pashan as a village or a gaon?

Before the temple took up its present form in 1780 the fourth Peshwa, Madhavrav (1761 - 1772) , would hire Brahmins to pray for water at the spot. When the Brahmins succeeded (the Gazetteer writes) he made a grant of £330 (Rs. 3300) which is still (at least in 1885) continued with the Brahmins being chosen in batches from Pune every eleventh day to offer prayers every morning and evening, each being paid an handsome amount of £16 4s. (Rs. 162).

Bliss was it at that Peshwa dawn to be a praying Brahmin!

The Mahadev or Someshwar Mandir at Pashan.

The temple, which is enclosed by a high wall, is a heavy sombre-looking square structure built of stone with a brick roof. Two verandas and halls or mandaps were added to the main building by one Shivram Bhau about 1780 and the building now measures 36' x 17' X 31'. In front is a bull or Nandi and a lamp-pillar or dipmal. A flight of steps leads from the temple to the river bed where is a square bathing place called chakratirth with steps on four sides. In a year of threatened drought the fourth Peshwa Madhavrav (1761-1772) engaged Brahmans to offer prayers at the temple, and when their prayers were heard, he made a grant of a sum of £330 (Rs. 3300) which is still continued. The Brahmans, who are chosen in batches every eleventh day in Poona, besides board and lodging receive each £16 4s. (Rs. 162). They offer prayers from morning to eleven and again in the afternoon. The permanent staff consists of a cook, a clerk, a storekeeper, a Ramoshi, a watchman, and a Kamathi. This could account for the living quarters within the mandir complex.

There is no other mention I could find in the net on whether Yesubai visited the same spot where the temple is located and whether she built a temple there or in, what is now, Pashan gaon.

The milk-less cow feeding serpents in an ant-hill is not a story that seems to be now remembered in Pashan.

Nevertheless the temple complex of yore must have been a “beautiful grove” which one visited and was charmed enough to build shrines there or nearby. Pictures of a temple complex are not much changed and there are rather extensive photographs taken of the spot in the blog by Abhijit Rajadhakshya in http://travelogueunlimited.blogspot.com/2010/11/someshwar-temple-pune-photo-feature.html and in http://rahultravels.blogspot.com/2009/03/14-mar-2009-someshwar-temple-pashan.html.

The purpose of this blog is not o describe the temple complex as it now stands. It will require a few more visits and research.

What seems to be more important to me is to speculate on what it might have been. Whe I asked someone who obviously lived there, he said that it is 900 years old. He did not say 800 to 1000 years old.

Maruti of Pashan

When I walked down the steps into the temple complex among the first thing I saw was a man worshipping at the feet of a figure which was painted hideously/shabbily with what could have been thought of as a saffron colour. It was that of a typical hanuman or so I thought at first glance. It was huge, being about seven feet tall and four to five feet wide. It was the figure of Hanuman.

Quite coincidentally there was a newspaper item at this time regarding a discovery of a 6' by 3.5' idol of Hanuman in the bed of the Muthaq river near Sangam bridge. The discovered figure had a bell on its tail, carried a conch, had a dagger at its waist ("which meant it was worshiped by warriors").It is thought to be 250 years old. According to this newspaper report there are six hanuman figures of this size in Pune including those in Nanapeth, Chaturshringhi hill and Pashan's Someshwar mandir.

The Pashan Someshwar Hanuman (Wikimapia calls it Mahadev Mandir) has no conch, no dagger and no bell on its tail. Hanumanji is also quite unlike the hanuman images normally seen elsewhere when the mouth is closed. The images of hanuman in south-eastern countries have their mouths usually open as if they are laughing or mocking or being aggressive.

I am not familiar with the figure of Hanuman that I saw in this mandir. Some of the typical hanuman images on stone that I have seen are shown in figure. A tail can probably be seen hanging docilely in the 11th century figure on the left. The one in the middle, from Belur, possibly of recent vintage and is of vishnu origin judging from the namaam on its forehead. It should be of the warrior type looking at the bell at the end of its tail. The hanuman on the right is of shiva origin considewring the horizontal bibhuti marks all over its body. The last has the typical twisted tuft of hair (kudumi) of an orthdox brahmin; it also has, typical of a happy monkey, what looks like a bunch of bananas at the end of its tail. All the monkeys from India have a loin cloth for their modesty.

I must say, that in my first limited search and with my limited knowledge, I could not find one on the net a hanuman iconography similar to the one in Pashan, with its open mouth, and two fingers clasping a flower over its chest, and its right hand holding up its tail over it head. I found even an image of hanuman in an uncommon buddha-like padmasana pose within six-corenered star yantra in the Yantroddhara (after yantra) Anjaneya (another name for Hanuman) Temple at Hampi which would suggest an early Buddhist connection to the image and a probable vsishnavite subversion of a buddha image unless the original buddha was hanuman.

Anything is possible in India?

I searched for anjaneya, son of anjana a beauty from the monkey people and vayu the wind god. I could not find any iconography for anjaneya that matched the image at Pashan.

A search for maruti was made next. It slowly turned out to be the more successful. The initial hits showed human like figures with a long tail. The one at Sajjenagar near Satara showed the figure carrying a mace with his left leg on a prostrate human figure. The one at Zendewadi off Saswad road near Divey had maruti with a Vishnu symbol trampling a lying human figure with folded hands and shaivite symbols. The one at Chaphal (Satara) shows a figure similar to that at Pashan and trampling a human figure crouching with folded hands and with shaivite marking on the forehead.

I guess this is where the vaishnavites started showing their supremacy over shaivites by their symbols on hanuman --- at least in the area around Satara in Maharashtra.

These caste marks could not be found on the Pashan figure, so that one could expect the pashan image to be created before the vaishnavite-shaivite conflicts.

A more exhaustive search of the net led me to http://vhp.org/dharmacharya-sampark-vibhag/ which gave me many more images derived from hanuman as maruti. All of them have the vaishnavite symbol on their forehead which they must now do if the followers of Ram Mandir are to maintain their history-based stand and especially if these followers are to be appeased. The Pashan hanuman is probably before these times. He was probably installed when the human image of a god was not the main source of income for sustaining temples of worship or to sustain a god-credibility.

One could nevertheless ask "When was the hanuman image positioned in Pashan?" The Hanuman image, two nandis and the shivling are in a straight line. This is unusual but there are records fr such an alignment as in the Ramnagiri hills on the waz from Chennai to Tirupati *http://relijournal.com/hinduism/a-beautiful-hill-temple/). What makes the Pashan mandir unique perhaps is that there are two nandis in the straight line between Hanuman and the shivling.
Why?
I dont know if anyone knows.
The cowherd had discovered a panchalinga. There does not seem to be any indicator of the panchalinga_here. Maybe the original nandi was placed before the original panchalinga. This original lingam got lost or was placed in another temple? When Yesubai visited the place and a new shrine made was the second nandi and the new, conventional (mono) lingam installed?.

One cannot guess which came first, the hanuman or the shivling, in the present complex?

My guess is the Hanuman came earlier than the present shivling.

So how old is the hanuman?

There is another Someshwar mandir in Raviwar peth which is considered to be one of the older temples of Pune. There is also an image of hanuman (fig below middle). This image is much smaller than that in Pashan. I could not quite make out what was at the end of its tail. The head-priest informed me that the hanuman image is the only one of its kind in its iconography. Not surprising since we Indians, bz our nature, do not care about being consistent unless one is a law abiding ram bhakt (perhaps).

On going through some photos of the chennakesava temple in Belur, I noticed on one of its front walls (fig on top, left) a laughing monkey with its tail over its head (see enlarged view inset). I dont know whether this monkey is supposed to be hanuman. But it seems to be a rare open-mouthed monkey. This open-mouthed image(http://www.pazhs.com/gallery/Belur.htm), different from the one referred to above, has no bell on its tail and has Buddha-like curls of hair. I guess it is on what I call the "remnant" wall of Belur where fragments of various lateral layers of temple architecture and sculpture can be found (see my previous blog. There are no caste marks on this hanuman and the figure is not trampling anybody, so, I guess again, that this figure is the older of the two hanuman figures from Belur in this blog. Since the Chennakesava temple started more than 900 years ago one could conclude that the Hanuman at the Pashan mandir could be from that time ...

The resident of the Pashan mandir could have been right when he told me that the temple was 900 years old, even if he may not be convinced about it himself.

An old Bakul Tree

Before I go to the old Bakul tree at the Pashan mandir I must point out an old tamarind tree that seems to have been not noticed in the net.

Pashan village proper has a central part in which there is a place where people gather for their prayers and their village ceremonies; there is an old house built on a platform of huge (by modern standards) hand-cut stones on which stands an obvious old house built with what seems to be unbaked clay brick stones.

Next to this old house is a huge tamarind tree which must have marked the centre of the village for I do not how many years. The diameter of this tree (as the picture below would indicate) is easily close to or greater than 2.5 meteres or eight feet.
Tamarind trees are usually kept outside a village boundary in some places because of the belief that ghosts live in it. This old tamarind tree seems to be benign in this matter. The tree and its platforrm is used in several ways by the people of Pashan village.

Old tamarind trees figure frequently on the net. Some of the pictures from the net of such trees are given below.A two-hundred-year-old tamarind tree from Thailand (now associated with a restaurant) is shown on the top left. On the bottom left is a five-hundred year old tamarind tree (from carbon dating) in Surola village of Chapal Nawabganjin Bengal, while a painting of a 400 year old Tamarind tree near the Sangam at Allahabad is shown at bottom left of the picture below (see http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/features/08-10/features1816.htm).

By these standards the tamarind tree in Pashan would be more than three hundred years old in which case it will predate Yeasubai's visit.

I did look around for signs of an old tree that could be associated with the temple. There was a banyan (vad; it looked to me to be a cluster fig tree or ficus racemosa) tree with signs of tying thread around it (see Figure below left) as married ladies do 108 times during vad purnima in May-June. Behind this tree is the living quarters associated with the middle of the eighteenth century (see earlier).

There was another huge tree (Fig above, middle) which at first glance I thought was a tamarind tree similar to the one in the centre of Pashan gaon. The stem of the tree was much larger than the spread of an average man (fig above, left inset). A closer examination of the tree showed it to be different from the tamarind tree. A man there said that it was a bakul tree. The very sound of bakul stirs the cockles (cockles is the wrong word for a bengali who does not really care for sea food; I guess the good equivalent is ilish maacher jhaal) of a bengali's heart or the womb, say, under the shade of the bakul tree. My favourite verse, of course, is from tagore's kalmrigya simply because I was blessed by two happy sisters and two happy brothers. You cannot translate the songs into English. One transliteration (http://www.fipa.org.uk/repertory/more_fatalhunt_script.htm) has a part that reads like this
... come and look brother!
Run to me and look at our bokul trees …
like a row of smiles,
How many flowers have blossomed !
The flowers rolling under these trees,
Come to me, run to me … but do take care not to bruise them under your feet.


The bokul tree can last very long and can be strong enough to be called bullet-wood tree. It probably lives very long because of this strength. A very old bakul tree (fig below top left)is a tourist attraction in antpur (Hooghly district, where I was born: bengalis have a nasal intonation when they say aat for eight) so that antpur means eight villages. There is a tree (called the siddha bakul tree, This tree is believed (among believers) to have been planted by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (15th century) in Jagannath Puri which is now venerated (Fig below middle and right) as a spiritual tree.

Pashan has suddenly come alive for me. The new high´-rise buildings have crushed the rare stones that probably gave Pashan its name. The river which now has a name had brooks and groves that have long since gone. So have the cowherds. So have most of the trees. The cows have to fend for themselves and in rainy weather sit on the new roads which are the only dry places they have.

These roads carry moneyed soul-less soles working for the yankee dollar and rootless in their homes.

With every long funeral procession of a Pashan villager, one more link to older root ends.

Pantocrator: the snake, the lion and the dragon ... and Belur

Some days ago a very good friend and mutually adopted brother of mine hailing proudly from Sienna and Bologna sent me a picture (below) of a mosaic. Along with that he wrote a cryptic note:
... A short visit last day to Pisa showed to me a little detail of the Pantocrator mosaic who is ....Super aspides et basiliscum ambulabis...that I would like to share with you. I do not know why. But this is the way we christians think we should treat our enemies. We are in a good company around the word. ...

I did not (probably still don’t) have an idea of what he meant. I had not heard of Pantocrator nor had I heard of “super aspides …. ” and so on. I had just visited Belur and Halebid and like many ignoramuses (which I shamelessly admit I am simply because you learn so much when you know you don’t know: you see, I do not even know whether it should be ignoramuses or ignormusii) I was a bit intrigued by some of the things that I noticed at Belur-Halebid which I need not have noticed.

There are many beautiful pieces of sculpture in the temples. They were apparently not carved at the spot but were probably mass produced elsewhere and assembled at the various structures housing the gods for worship. The particular architecturally distinguishing feature is perhaps not the sculptures themselves but the way the edifices were built. But as I said the sculptures themselves will not be the main part of this blog. Rather it will be to find a connection between Pantocrator and Belur.


Why?

As somebody said when attempting to climb mount Everest “Because it is there” or “because it has not been done before” or something like that. "Aiseyii" as we would say in India for "just like that". It need not be important. But ... it could be important also.

I have not been able to contain the size of my blog. I have, however, broken it up into several smaller parts instead of making several blogs (as my daughter and other best (better?) friends want me to. Most figures require being expanded to see the details.

Pantocrator


A quick search through the internet gave me some images of Pantocrator which when collaged looks something like that in Fig 2. There is a “kiss curl” on the image on the right top (Fig 2) which is thought to be influenced by Alexander (the kiss curl I mean). A Princeton professor would write in the '40s that the curls on Buddha's forehead is due to the influence on the sculptor of Alexander's kiss curls!

Pantocrator, the Wikipedia, tells me is Greek for almighty and as “El Shaddai” it may mean “all sufficient” which may or may not mean “all sufficient”. The tribals of Mesopotamia may think it is related to a goddess of fertility from which one could easily jump to the conclusion that the popular word for marriage in India, shaadi, came from that word (I digress too much?). The Christians think it refers to Jesus, and that is what we will accept for the purpose of this blog. What makes the icons Jesus in Fig 2 is the halo and the cross.

Pantocrator from Buddha?
My religious stream of consciousness nowadays is flowing over the pebbles of bon religion of the Tibetan people and as a true devotee perhaps I find the bon Buddha in everything. It is a much more harmless time-pass than the screeching TV debates on our news channels on base matters.

So what struck me in these images is not the book that the icon held in his left hand as all Brahmins of learning (not birth) do as their birthmark. Rather, it is the way that he held his right hand up. The fingers were positioned close to that of Buddhist Vitarka Mudra or Jnana Mudra both of which are associated with intellectual activities (see bottom left of Fig 2). The dissimilarities with the correct finger positions must be attributed to the artist’s unfamiliarity with Buddhism (if my version is to hold any water). Whatever it may be, the earliest of these is (from internet) the icon at the top centre which was produced at around 550 AD in the St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. It is around this time, it is said, that the popular images (http://www.shroudofturin4journalists.com/pantocrator.htm) of Christ was changed from that of a shepherd---like our Krishna or keshto---to the latter day images with a beard as in the acheiropoeta (not made by hand like the swayambhu image of Kasba Ganapti of Pune, for instance) shroud of Turin found a few years earlier.

Pantocrator as Ardhanareshwari?
What is interesting from my perspective (as always) is the split personality built into the face in this earliest icon (second from left on top in Fig 2). This is absent in the others. The right-side of the icon’s face (reader’s left), controlled by his analytical left brain after he has become familiar with his environment, has a calm resoluteness of a scholar. The right side of the icon’s face reflects his right-brain activity which controls his response to unfamiliar environment, being hostile in this case --- the beard is ruffled, the eyes are hostile, the hair is long the lips are curled angrily upwards. This is not unfamiliar with those of us brought up in the ardhanareshwari images, which is the extreme of this split personality. A common calendar image in the above collage shows shiva with the docile bull (nandi) on the left-brain controlled right-side and parvati (with the lion, but also holding a lotus like Lakshmi, thereby identifying with Vishnu and thereby with Shiva-Vishnu Hari-hara ?) on the left hand side. As one would notice it is the lady which has the sharper mind that responds creatively to unfamiliar situations --- and, therefore, and chiefly therefore, is the better half. Women never required to be liberated!?

There is some confusion (in my mind) about the difference between ardhanareshwar (shiva-parvati) and ardhanareshwari. It won’t bother me now as Indian iconography does not seem to have set rules that are carried through all time --- a national character we do not seem to be bothered about, thankfully. Let us assume that the nareshwar has Shiva associated with destruction as well as his tranquil meditative nature. In this case, St. Catherine of Sinai’s image of pantocrator would correspond (in my mind) to the dual personality of shiva without a change of sex for the two halves.

It is interesting therefore to think of Pantocrator in the ardhanareshwar version of Shiva. Shiva the destroyer is Pantocrator’s left and Shiva the tranquil is Pantocrator’s right. The connection with Buddha will come a little later.

The Snake and the Dragon and the Lion.
The other thing my Italian brother/friend wrote that I did not know was the phrase Super aspides et basiliscum ambulabis… . When I got the translation I seemed to remember it from my Catholic School days. One meaning is “Thou shalt walk upon the adder and the basilisk and shalt tread down the lion and the dragon.”

At school I did not really believe my catechism master that the “adder” is a snake. I thought it was some sort of an adding machine, like the Chinese abacus. And the basilisk, I thought was some sort of a church steeple like the obelisk in some vague way. Thanks to my friend I paid more attention to the real meaning. The rest of the blog is a consequence of this understanding.

The basilisk, as I read from the Wikipedia, is sometimes said to be, in European legends, a twelve-finger long snake with a white spot on its head that looks like a crown (Fig 3 top left, a common cartoon in the net). It features in the coat of arms of Moscow being killed by St. George (Fig 3 in colour). “It is said that one of these, being killed with a spear by one who was on horseback, and its venom flowing on the spear, not only the man but the horse also died. It spoils the wheat and not only that which it touches, but where it breathes the grass dries and the stones are split.” I wonder what happened to St. George.

The basilisk also could have figured (Fig 3, right) perhaps in Lewis Carroll’s poem Jaberwocky (only now I know what it could be meaning --- after nearly sixty years!!) the first and last paragraphs of which had the slithering snake when you read it aloud.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

A closer look (Fig 4, bottom) at the Pantocrator image gave me the logic behind the superaspidem in my brother/friend’s cryptic note. The pantocrator was really stomping with his foot (Fig bottom) the two creatures whom we can recognize as (or understand the artist’s interpretation of) a snake (although why it should have teeth is not clear unless it is also “Black Adder’s” Cheshire cat) and the basilisk. The lion can be easily recognized snoozing; the all-important dragon of this blog will be discussed later. Both are not being tread upon by the Pantocrator.

My search of the internet got me a rather interesting incident from Google book’s “Christopher Marlowe: the plays and their sources” by Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman. Part of this incident is given below:

"The Pope being at Venice, and required to be sent of the Venetians to the Emperor, they would not send him. Whereupon Fredericus the Emperor sent thither his son Otho, with men and ships well appointed, charging him not to attempt anything before his coming. The young man, more hardy than circumspect, joining with [attacking] the Ventians, was overcome; and so taken, was brought into the city. Hereby the Pope took no small occasion to work his feats.


"The father, to help the captivity and misery of his son, was compelled to submit himself to the Pope, and to entreat for peace. So the Emperor coming to Venice, at St. Mark’s church, where the bishop was, there to take his absolution, was bid to kneel down at the Pope’s feet.

The proud Pope, setting his foot upon the Emperor’s neck, said the verse of the psalm, ‘Super aspidem et basiliscum ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et draconem’: that is, ‘Thou shalt walk upon the adder and the basilisk, and shalt tread down the lion and the dragon.’ To whom the Emperor answering again, said, ‘Non tibi sed Petro’: that is, ‘Not to thee but to Peter.’ The Pope again, ‘Et mihi et Petro’: ‘Both to me and to Peter.’ The Emperor, fearing to give any occasion of furthe quarrelling, held his peace, and so was absolved and peace made between them. The conditions whereof were these: that he should receive Alexander for the true Pope. Secondly that he should restore again to the Church of Rome all that he had taken away before. And thus the Emperor, obtaining again his son, departed."

This is quite in line --- in my interpretation at least --- of the dual personality to strike and to appease, always to serve Peter (peter can as well be to the stone worshipper, a stone which you worship in the image of the god you want to worship). I, of course, do not know why one should “walk upon the adder and the basilisk” or “tread down the lion and the dragon” unless they symbolized another religion hostile to it.

The basilisk does not move by wriggling like a snake but from the centre forwards to the right it is said. Some would say that the basilisks refer to the common or Brown basilisks of Mexico and Equador. Others say that the resemblance is to the upright movement of the cobra. Both basilisk and the cobra are deadly poisonous and king of snakes. The cobra has a natural enemy in the mongoose and the basilisk in the weasel.

Which should prove conclusively, except to the common (and they are numerously common) sceptic, that the basilisk in the psalm is referring to a cobra? Maybe. We pursue on our line regardless.

Shiva wears a cobra and could have been the target for Christian wrath. The lion is the vehicle of Parvati, Shiva’s consort or the better half.

Makara and Kirtimukhi

A version of the dragon-like creature in Indian and Tibetan temple architecture is the Makara which is a sea dragon. It is many times depicted with a front like that of an elephant, but with extended teeth like that of a magar crocodile, and a tail with that of an aquatic creature such as lobster/fish/seal, sometime a peacock-like tail is depicted!

It is here that I would try to make a connection between Pantocrator’s image and Belur-Halebid temples.

When we reached Belur just after dusk we found a decent-ish hotel which was about a kilometer away from the main temple. We walked down to the temple before it closed for the night. There was some crowd in the sanctum sanctorum and it took us some time to get near the main idol of the Chennakesava temple. What strikes me (Fig 5, left) immediately at first sight are the elephant-like creatures supporting an arch (torana). These "elephants" are the makara (see my blogs on Pune Street Scenes III and IV on Trishundiya Ganapati). The image is blurred because my digital camera has not learnt not to move when taking the shot at long exposure. In any case a nearly identical structure is found (Fig 5, right) at the entrance of the Hoysaleshwara temple at Halebid a few kilometers away which I shot in bright daylight. There are many others, of course. The arch (torana) supported by the makara comes out of the mouth of a kirtimukha which transliterates to a “glorious face”.

To one who is not a scholar in such affairs there may not kirtimukha in it, but a just a powerful face with bulging eyes and gaping mouth ready to swallow (or disgorge) the torana. It would have been the face of a lion to the uninitiated like the early explorers/stragglers from western lands who reported to their religions.

The makara and the kirtimukhas are everywhere in Indian temple decorations, degenerating with time to common familiar images; such as the makara beoming actually an elephant as in gajalakshmis; or the “glorious face” becoming just a face with the tongue sticking out like maa kaali. Somehwere inbetween the “glorious face” could have become the lion face.


In Halebid there is one row of makaras which meet at a corner in the most interesting way (Fig 6 left) if only because of the slight asymmetry which must have been an error of no consequence when perfection is not the objective but the imagination. There are kirtimukhis alternating with the makaras; the makaras do not book-end a torana and the kirtimukhis grasp a chain with its mouth instead of disgorging an arch (or torana).

The kirtimukhis seem to be seen as a “glorious face” when they are supporting arches. Otherwise they become faces of stylized imperious lions as in Fig. 7. The mane of the rows of lions at the right of Fig have obviously evolved from the chains of the kirtimukhis in Fig. 6,left.

The main gopuram at Belur has mainly work of plaster and is likely to be a latter day creation. The figures in the front have different characteristic from those at the back. The figures at the back seem shorter and dwarfish and resemble the local people, which I suppose they should. There are remnants of the “glorious face” (besides those of pigeons) on top of these figures;the only change being that the disgorging of arches has turned simply into hanging of a tongue. I wonder whether goddess kaali’s image (click to expand) with a hanging tongue (see inset of Fig 6, centre) came from this glorious face.

In the meanwhile, the present-day devotees (Fig 6, right), looking similar to the figures on the gopuram (Fig 6, centre), enter the temple with their own veneration of the primeval fire.

So, one asks, where is the connection with the cross of Christianity?

St. Thomas's Cross and the "double Vajra"

While researching this blog I came across a blog titled Saint Thomas’ Cross- A Religio Cultural Logo of Saint Thomas Chrsitans at http://thomaschristians.blogspot.com/ by one Thomas Anthony who has written a series of well-researched blogs. In this blog he has a picture of an Empty eastern cross standing on a lotus (Fig 8, top left). According to this blog the most ancient emblem of the cross in India is the St. Thomas Cross. St. Thomas, being an apostle of Christ must predate Constantinople’s time when the Byzantine influence on the iconism of Christ influenced Christianity. “According to St Thomas Christian tradition, the Apostle Thomas planted crosses in the Christian communities he established. Acts of the Apostles doesn’t comment about any such acts by any Apostles despite the author of Acts of the Apostles, St Paul who himself being a champion of the power of Cross.(1 Cor.1:17, Gal.6:14). The early Roman catacombs have no symbolism of Cross.”

In this blog it is said that “East Syrian Church had a great veneration of the cross. They even considered the sign of the cross as one of the sacraments.” Kerala Christians call themselves Syrian Christians. There is a statement that early Christians used the symbol of fish for their worship. The matsya or fish is used in the golden-fish-pair symbol in Buddhism (Fig 8, top right) for the rivers Ganges and Yamuna. The makara is the vahana or vehicle for these rivers. “In ancient Eastern Indian mythology, the fish is a symbol of transformation and creation. This is observed in the ancient flood myth in which Vishnu transformed himself into a fish (Matsya) to save the world from a great flood. In this form, he guided king Manu’s boat (which contained the select few survivors and seeds of life to re-create the world after the flood subsided) to safety.“ What persists even today in Bengal is the presentation of fish (preferably live) as a gift to a wedding couple, so that this must be a “bon” tradition of “bongs”(see my blog The Bon of the Bongs, Part I: East or West, East is the Best (Sometimes)” of 7th November 2008).

The so-called “empty” St. Thomas Cross shows, on closer examination, the cross to be under the remnant symbolism of the makara-kirtimukhi arch or torana and standing on a lotus. It may have been derived from the Buddhist symbol of Dorje or vajra (Fig. 8, bottom centre) used as a thunderbolt by Indra (Fig , bottom right). One of the oldest Tibetan civilization (although they may resent it themselves), has the Viśvajra or the “double vajra” as its emblem (Fig 8, bottom left) This (Fig 8, bottom left) sign is worn on beaded necklaces of Tibetan, nepali girls, as a Buddhist sign (Fig 8, top middle). They kiss it during prayers the same way as the Christians kiss their cross.

So we go back to pre-christian a Tibetan or Buddhist or pre-Buddhist time (who knows?). One may reverse all arguments and conclude that all this only shows that the Christian religion precedes all others but adopted by different countries differently. Ant the Buddhist and the yogi would say does it matter? Religious symbolism is only for the requirements of those who depend on it. It only lasts in those who did not at all think about it lasting.

They could include at least one blogger.

The Halo and Buddha and Parshwanath

There is one more symbolism to be dealt with before I end the blog--- the halo.

In China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region there appeared a rare natural spectacle which was identified with Buddha’s halo (July 24, 2010) which was captured photographically in several ways so as to look like a halo. Buddha’s halo is thought to emit five beams of light (one would have counted five colours in the halo of FIG. 0, left if one did not know about vibgyor) and is sometimes represented by five hooded serpents providing him shade. There are many images of Buddha with a halo. An image (Fig 9, right) from the sixth century shows an halo with twelve lotus petals.

In one non-revered part of the complex at Belur there is an undecorated structure inside which there is, what seems like (Fig 10, left) a seated figure of Buddha in Dharmachakra mudra (see left inset of Fig 18, left). One interesting feature that I noticed while writing this blog is that a ghost image of a halo and the missing buddha’s head seems to be on the wall (right inset of Fig 10, left); like the image of Jesus in the Turin shroud?

On the right side (facing it) walls of the main temple there is a corridor with various images fixed on the wall. One of these has a stack of Buddha-like heads. They seem to have been plastered over so as to hide their giveaway features. Buddhist? Or jain? In another instance there is a nagini a lady serpent (Fig 10, right) with an halo of serpent’s heads. A search of the net for snake goddess many time have an image of this piece and the description “The altar where Jory Goddess is worshipped. Photo taken at the main temple in Belur Karnataka”. I could not get any more internet strike on the Jory goddess except that along with another snake-goddess, Manasa, she is prayed to for curing snake bites.

There could be another connection. The seven-headed serpent’s hood on the nagini goddess (Fig. 10, left) is similar to that of kalpasutra (ancient Jain text containing biographies of their last two Tirthankaras) images (inset of Fig 10, right) of Parshwanath (~ 900 BCE) the earliest historically acknowledged leader of the jain sect. Parshwanath is always shown with this hood of serpents.

This brings on another question. My answer to this question should lead to my beheading by the narrow-minded political classes of the lower parochial types. I have lived a life well so I can do without my head, at least in the after-life.


The question is this. Is the image of Vishnu as Chennakesava at Belur (Fig 11 top right) a Jain image? The early Jain idols (not from belur) are usually made from black stones such as those on the left and middle in Fig 11. The image at top centre is said to be from the sixth century AD. The image in bbottom left of Fig. 11 is from the Jain temple at Lakkundi. A characteristic feature of all Jain images is that the eyes are wide open. The four-faced (chaturmukhi) image of Brahma in the Jain temple complex at Lakkundi also has its eyes wide open. The widen open eyes of Jain idols are in contrast to the Buddhist idols which have their eyes nearly closed in deep meditation, so they say. So is the idol of Chennakesava (handsome Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, not Vishnu himself) actually a Jain image. Will we see a naked mahavir if we remove the adornments? Have jain and naga structures been demolished by the later Hoysala kings? Without changes in the style of the craftsmen?

What can we now say about the Halo of the Pantocrator. The earliest one (top centre of Fig 2 has no features), When did the cross appear in the halo of the pantocrator as it does in later images of Fig 2. It is not easy for a scholar to comment on this as they have their professional positions to worry about. For a blogger it is easier. In the absence of easy access to historic evidence I relied on the only book I could lay my hands on in the net. This book is Art in the Early Church, by Walter Lowrie (Princeton), Pantheon Books, New York, 1947. Without dwelling on what the learned Lowrie had to say, I reproduce only two images (Fig 12) of the 5th-6th century A.D. from his book. The one on the left is from plate 134.b titled “Judas or Barabbas” and the one in Fig. 12 right is from Plate 132a titled The Last supper and Christ washing Peter’s feet. In these pictures the halo is eight-spoked and is not like the cross. The halo could have been like the original Gandharan carvings of Buddha in the first century BCE, in which the halo has flames of light bursting out from it like a sun. The cross of St. Thomas was yet to reach Rome, at least in the halo of Christ.

There is strong evidence that the structures left standing at Belur were built on remains of some other previous structure unlike the structure at Halebid a little further away from Belur. Many of the stones that pave the spaces between structures at Belur have geometrical shapes that suggests pillars and bases and arches (Fig 13, left and centre). In one or two places there are even signs of worship with haldi and kumkum (Fig 13, left). There is no sign of an idol having been installed there although there is some sign of some inscription on the whiter stone. There are many such geometrical shapes but no other with signs of worship (at least that day). It is as if there is a folk memory (swarm intelligence if you like) of time past when a sacred object of worship would have been associated with the stone. The worship endures because the memory endures because the worship continues with or without the haldi and the kumkum. There is little veneration from the devotee for the art of the sculptor as such.

It will take many more blogs to uncover any understanding of this part of the Belur complex. It suggests that the area where the belur temple now stands has several layers (not necessarily vertical) of religious history. The Belur temple is a story of temples upon temples. It is more a story of what Hindus have done to other hindus and Buddhists and other older tribal indigenous places of worship.

The Shaman, the Tantrik and the Geometry of Star of David

Looking at the paved remains of temple structures in Belur, one sees a strange figure (Fig 13, right). At first glance it looks like a patient amateur's attempt to reproduce the sculptor's images. On that hard rock, it must have been a patient art-less artist. But maybe it was not. A closer look seems to suggest that the head of the figure is upside down!. That could have been by design. So was there a shamanist at work?

From the way this blog has been going it may as well end there.

It won’t, if only because we may not want 13 figures. Any blog on religion cannot end without the shaman and the tantric. The wall of remnants at Belur has one (relatively recently carved it would seem) pillar with what would at first glance seem to be the Israeli Star of David (without the inscribed lotus) , at least to those strongly influenced by the holocaust of the second world war. It turns out that the star of David as it is known today was roughly a mid 15th-16th century development introduced by cabalists and is much after the development of tantric signs.


According to tantriks (and later day cabalists) the Star of David or six-pointed star made by the overlapping of two oppositely-oriented equilateral triangles is actually a tantric symbol representing the divine union of the male and female. The three corners of the primitive triangle are supposed to be Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.

The triangle in a common interpretation represents a woman and two overlapping triangles (for some unclear reason if one thinks of them as two women) is supposed to represent the supreme act of reproduction. The hexagram could then be a geometrical representation of the goddess of fertility. If one doesn’t colour the triangles to represent different species it becomes the purely geometrical pattern of the Star of David as represented on the Israeli flag (inset of Fig 14 top left, or in the Star of David of the masoretic text (Fig 14 top centre).

When one colours the triangles (as in Fig 14 right top and middle and in the Star of David in the re-created Shiloh Synagogue, Fig 14, bottom middle) the six-fold symmetry is lost and the triangular aspect stands out. When the triangles are interlocked and coloured differently only the three-fold symmetry of the equilateral triangle is retained.

An equilateral triangle could mean that the relationships between each other are the same. You are as much created as you are destroyed or as you are preserved, much like a (dry) sand-pile’s shape when one pours (dry) sand on it. That is an equilibrium, fixed state, without an ability to change one’s final state when the triangle is being formed.

A tantric yantra (Fig 14 right) could have concentric symmetrical geometrical figures such as triangles and circles and squares (Fig 14 right top) or in the masoretic text (Fig 14, bottom middle).

When the equilateral symmetry is lost, the equality between preserver (P), creator (C) and destroyer (D) is lost, one expects the triangles to become isosceles to begin with.

If one requires a direction of time, one may find P-C equal P-D but not equal to C-D. In a version of the Sri Yantra (Fig 14 bottom right) the triangles are isosceles and their aspect ratio changes as one goes outwards.

All kinds of changes appear and simple arguments disappear --- as it should I suppose when considering the many-parameter complexities of the life of the universe.

It will take many more blogs to uncover any understanding of this part of the Belur complex.

I am satisfied with my current level of not understanding --- with my state of nirvana.

This blog suggests that the area where the belur temple now stands has several layers (not necessarily vertical) of religious history. The most important revelations could be lying in the history of the remnant figures on the wall. This Remnant wall (partly shown in Fig 10) and the puzzle of paved remainders (Fig 13) is more very perplexing than any simple geometry of an yantra can give.

The Belur temple compley is (for me) a story of temples upon temples. It is more a story of what Hindus have done to other hindus and Buddhists and other older tribal indigenous places of worship.

The purpose of a religion would seem to be to establish a kingship through the agencies of the rituals ordained by the priests who serve their king. It will not matter if it is Christian or Islam or Buddhist or Jain.

We cant say Hindu because we dont have a structured religion as yet, except for their influence on other structured religions.

Pune Street Scenes VI : Camp Area at Christmas Time

After a long spell of rain we had an unusual spell of cold which was 3-5 C below normal. Although I refused to bring out my "winter wear" it was nice to loaf around in the sun.

Christmas time is Camp time. Camp used to mean military camp. The British military camp... where Indian traders lent money to the perennially broke and perennially high-living British types and made their killings very obediently...

All the activity was around Main Street, now losing its identity as MG road except that MG Road in all Indian cities (and they each have their own MG road ... I have a suspicion that you wont find your way to the road if ask for Mahatma Gandhi Road)all used to be the Main street. They still have the East Street and the West Streets which are east and west of the main street. I suppose you cant call them east mahatma and west mahatma roads. There must have been a political problem to call them Nehru street and Patel street because one may not know who was easter of the two and who a waster.

The Christmas spirit was every where with as much commercial jest as anywhere in the world and as much as a non-Christian community could allow. It is always more important in the camp area. Red Santa caps are a must buy. This year they give sometimes along with the cap a proper European coloured Santa face. They also give spiderman, and phantom and tiger faces to please children of all interests I guess. The bakers shop (on West street) are stacked with what they think are appropriate Christmas goodies. A dalit christian board makes the most sense for the season.



A white dog could have been a reindeer in the snow and diwali decorations find dual use as stars of Bethelhem.

So... why not? ... have a merry christmas... who cares what faith one belongs to in the old Industan even if it did not include kaveri-sthan or narmada-sthan or ganga-sthan.

When one walks down main street from the ABC farm end one often sees people outside a window praying rather seriously and without any of the ostentation or without even a priest. If you peek through the window it is not very clear since it is rather dark. However, with the digital camera things brighten up and are brought closer. So this time I saw with the digital eye. It was an image of skanda or karthika or murugan similar to what I had seen earlier and speculated upon as marking a corner stone of a settlement (see my blog "Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: II Khandoba Mandir (Warwadi) and the mystery of a Stone Pillar" Fig 11). So, I guess this temple was an ancient stone-worship center that has grown in size but not lost out on true faith and devotion because of that.


There is no possibility of a white Christmas as yet in Pune but many of the animals that I photographed could once have been snow-white in colour. A calf in front of a temple had its mouth muzzled for some reason ... it probably ate the cars nearby or temple flowers given for worship ... a horse had its food tied to its mouth and not given any other option for eating ... a dog seemed to ask me where Bruno was... a black Christmas ram was caged and butted violently within the case against my camera preferring to remain unidentified, perhaps.


One end (south?) of the MG road still has the older camp quality in the sense that old building remain and the cobbler shops were there. The beginning of the south end of the road is marked by what must have been a grand building. Somebody said of Bombay, long before it became Mumbai, that Bombay had stately old buildings bandaged by the daily wash. The building at the end of MG road was one such. As old buildings adapt to newer life styles, they usually add more floors so that the upper floors are of a later style than the lower ones. The building on MG road all have some modern shops at the ground level so that when walking down MG road now you have upper floors that have the older style and the bottom floor is ultra modern.

One such magnificent building, almost fully bandaged by the laundry, shown below (click to expand you must), always tempts me to go in and talk to ghosts and relatives. What a story must be lurking there! One wonders what a chair doing up on the top left hand corner is doing (click to expand) in the top right picture!


Just before one enters the proper Main Street (MGRd)one goes past a bakery (that to the old "camp"ers makes the best cakes) and a cobbler's shop manned by cobblers from Bihar who have been there perhaps for a century and where many discerning people (including myself because my left foot is UK size 11 and my right foot is size 10) get their shoes hand-made and ever lasting. Just after that is a house with the most renarkably finished brickwork (see pictures below; click on picture to expand) I have seen in Pune. There is a machine shop at the ground level called the Delhi Machine Shop, Pune (House number 205 on MG road). It is adjacent to a medical shop. The owner of this medicine shop own the house. She says that the house is 150 years old and was built by her mother-in-law's mother's mother-in-law's mother. That's quite a great great mother-in-law story. It rests on wooden pillars and the wooden work on the front of the house is from that time. There is no house in Poona to match the house, and I quite believe her. Somewhere on west street is a similar brick-worked house which seems to be more dilapidated (bottom picture bottom right).

The day was a nice day where all the old familiar Pune places looked more familiar and better. The sky was a clear blue and the sun caressed the walls without a glare.


There are many nice buildings on main street around (see pictures immediately below). I dont really know what is the Indo-Portugese style. I read somewhere that this style influenced European architecture. Some of the buildings remind me of buildings in Trieste (one on left below)... I dont know if the Indian part is the Nritish colonial part.... It could also be the old wada style.

One of the very strong impressions of Main street is, if one is not busy window-shopping, the quality of the grill work some of which are shown below.

There is also some out-standing (at least by my standards) plaster-of-paris work that is European if not colonial in style. This work known to have been used well in the temples around Pune.


The grill-work and the old colonial style is struggling to survive. It is perhaps fortunate that business is so good on Main Street that they prefer to keep the shops on the ground floor going without worrying what happens to the floors above.


It is easy to imagine that not too long ago,say about eighty years or so ago, main street was still mainly for the British army personnel... the officers lived further away... main street would have been only for shopping. The rest of the "natives", the barbers, the cooks, the gardeners or malis, the babus and the clerks lived around main street in their own open style. So there are small lanes leading out of the main street, but not to any well organized living areas. It was as if this main street was attached to a village or villages. This gives "camp" a gaon- or village-like appearance. There are so many intriguing lanes leading out of Main street (see pictures below)

A place that we usually visit for lunch is the Badshah restaurant opposite the old Victory theatre (see left picture below). The other place where we stop for coffee if we have the money is Barrista which is located at a corner and offers interesting views. The container on the cart seemed to be an antique beauty (picture in the middle below).


Most of the times Barrista is filled by young people trying to convince their clients about whatever, if they are not whiling away time wastingly (as my son says). Sometimes there are young people who seem to be artistically inclined ... very rarely. This time I saw an young man who seemed to be an artist sketching something. So I asked him and he said he is a cartoonist. To cut things short this cartoonist is ananth gupta (not a bengali... from UP) ... he learnt from Mario Miranda and followed his style. He allowed us to see his book and photograph it. I have chosen two. One of them for the way he used Escher and the other for the way he used his philosophy. I dont know if Mario Miranda was that deep.


In the meanwhile the impact of the younger generation continues to grow. A study on chimpanzees nearly forty years ago had shown that if a mother is completely away from a baby, then when the baby becomes a mother it does not know anything about bringing up babies and treats her baby as something like an unwanted toy. The frightening feature is that it takes one generation to forget one's roots. The children are like those anywhere else in the world, I guess. Around Main Street, the fashion is to be western. Around west street, where we get into the area of small Indian businessmen, the styles are more Indian (picture below: top row centre, bottom row right). Main street is where the east ignores the east.

Life along west street is far removed from that on Main street. People know each other on the street. They sit outside their homes and wait to chat with passers by and neighbours. One such man is on the left in the picture below. He worked in the post office for forty two years and built himself the house on west street outside which he sits. His upper teeth are firm. He is eighty two now. He laments that he lost all his lower teeth because he chewed tobacco. He is sprightly and healthy.

On west street there is a Husseini Bakery which was started in 1932. Its not too long a time for a bakery. But by Indian standards it is impressive. What is most impressive is that over the last 80 years or so the front of the shop has undergone little change. If one enters the shop, as I was invited to, one meets an extremely fair, European looking man who is extremely courteous. He tells me about his shop and shows me pictures testifying to the age of the shop. He has just shaved his beard. He had a beard longer than the man behind him (bottom right picture). I buy brun and an Iranian bread. He poses for the photographs. My day is complete. After all the travels through time in this month of Christmas I got my daily bread from Husseiny bakery in the camp of endless time in the yuletide spirit (it must be a good spirit).


I have finished the blog in a hurry to post it tonight.

Merry Christmas once again.