MY MOTHERLAND ... 42
The greatest discovery of the Hindus other than that of the Atman has been what they are most unduly castigated for, and it is their so-called idolatry. This physical feature of the Sanatan Dharma in its Puranic extension is not unique to it, for it was the common characteristic of almost all ancient religions, but is singular in its phenomenally developed mode in the Sanatan Dharma where other religions have stopped short at lesser development of the idea. And by physical feature is here being meant the physical representation or the material manifestation of the spiritual idea and not any gross physicality masquerading as spirituality as such.
The ancient Hindu seers, the Rishis of antiquity, were men and women steeped in both abstract and practical wisdom. They understood the limitations of the ordinary human mind and the need to provide it concrete tools for comprehending the subtle truths of the spirit. Thus, they developed the graded mode of spiritual understanding in the form of symbols and images that encapsulated the infinite idea within finite bounds suggestive of spiritual significance beyond the structural bounds of the materials used. Rituals evolved out of this, what is the content of the Karma Kanda of the Vedas.
As brahmanical tyranny came to corrupt the simple spiritual practices of earlier times and Buddhism arose by way of reaction to the ritualistic repression of the times, there came about a radical shift in the spiritual culture of ancient India.
Evolving and expanding ...
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : The ruins of the Nalanda University, the fruit of Islamic desecration of ancient Indian culture, the destruction perpetrated by the barbarous Bakhtiar Khilji in early 13th century. Nalanda was ransacked, its famous library that housed a thousand years of priceless literature was burnt to ashes, the monasteries (viharas) looted, monks killed indiscriminately and an entire civilisation resident there in nuclear concentration brought down to usher in the dark Islamic Age of India when the cultural life of India halted or moved snail-like through centuries of Mohammedan repression, imposition, onslaught and perversion whence it is yet recovering.
This has been the Hindu Holocaust that cost the lives of 80 to 100 million Hindus over a period of 1350 years beginning from 664 CE when Muhammad Bin Qasim invaded Sindh and continuing till date post-Partition in the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan where Hindus, Buddhist, Jains and Sikhs are regularly persecuted, forcibly perverted from their respective religions to Islam and killed when they put up any form of resistance to such perversion.
Buddhism suffered so badly at the hands of these Muslim invaders with Nalanda and Vikramashila destroyed, to cite but two major instances out of hundreds of such cases, that it never recovered, and, with carnal corruptions having set in among the supposed celibates on amass scale, the religion of the Tathagata became but extinct in the land of its birth. Repressive Islam played no mean role in this ultimate annihilation of Buddhism in India.
The greatest discovery of the Hindus other than that of the Atman has been what they are most unduly castigated for, and it is their so-called idolatry. This physical feature of the Sanatan Dharma in its Puranic extension is not unique to it, for it was the common characteristic of almost all ancient religions, but is singular in its phenomenally developed mode in the Sanatan Dharma where other religions have stopped short at lesser development of the idea. And by physical feature is here being meant the physical representation or the material manifestation of the spiritual idea and not any gross physicality masquerading as spirituality as such.
The ancient Hindu seers, the Rishis of antiquity, were men and women steeped in both abstract and practical wisdom. They understood the limitations of the ordinary human mind and the need to provide it concrete tools for comprehending the subtle truths of the spirit. Thus, they developed the graded mode of spiritual understanding in the form of symbols and images that encapsulated the infinite idea within finite bounds suggestive of spiritual significance beyond the structural bounds of the materials used. Rituals evolved out of this, what is the content of the Karma Kanda of the Vedas.
As brahmanical tyranny came to corrupt the simple spiritual practices of earlier times and Buddhism arose by way of reaction to the ritualistic repression of the times, there came about a radical shift in the spiritual culture of ancient India.
Evolving and expanding ...
Written by Sugata Bose
Photo : The ruins of the Nalanda University, the fruit of Islamic desecration of ancient Indian culture, the destruction perpetrated by the barbarous Bakhtiar Khilji in early 13th century. Nalanda was ransacked, its famous library that housed a thousand years of priceless literature was burnt to ashes, the monasteries (viharas) looted, monks killed indiscriminately and an entire civilisation resident there in nuclear concentration brought down to usher in the dark Islamic Age of India when the cultural life of India halted or moved snail-like through centuries of Mohammedan repression, imposition, onslaught and perversion whence it is yet recovering.
This has been the Hindu Holocaust that cost the lives of 80 to 100 million Hindus over a period of 1350 years beginning from 664 CE when Muhammad Bin Qasim invaded Sindh and continuing till date post-Partition in the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan where Hindus, Buddhist, Jains and Sikhs are regularly persecuted, forcibly perverted from their respective religions to Islam and killed when they put up any form of resistance to such perversion.
Buddhism suffered so badly at the hands of these Muslim invaders with Nalanda and Vikramashila destroyed, to cite but two major instances out of hundreds of such cases, that it never recovered, and, with carnal corruptions having set in among the supposed celibates on amass scale, the religion of the Tathagata became but extinct in the land of its birth. Repressive Islam played no mean role in this ultimate annihilation of Buddhism in India.
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