Women in Ancient Egypt

Women occupied an important position, even superior that man. According to a literary evidence, a king and a town was destroyed because a woman was wronged by the state.

They instill high ideals on humankind, that is the reason why India created goddesses to instill respect to woman and enjoyed equal status with her husband.

Ancient India was permissive then, a woman is allowed to have multiple husbands and can leave their husband, widows could remarry, and divorce was permittd due to incompatibility or estranged.

In religious ceremony, the women are allowed to participate in rituals and tribal assemblies.


Ref:

http://www.term-papers.us/ts/ia/smu288.shtml

http://www.thisismyindia.com/ancient_india/woman-in-ancient-india.html

Mughals in India

- Babur was the first ruler of the Mughal dynasty, he claimed that his right of inheriting the subcontinent is due to the conquest of Delhi by his ancestor Timur.

- His empire defeated the army of Lodis at Panipat.

- It covers from beyond Afghanistan to the Bengal region along Gangetic plain.

- However, his son, Humayum lost the kingdom to Bihar-based Sher Khan Sur and fled to Persia.

- But in the 1555, Humayum recaptured Delhi before his death.

- Akbar, Humayum’s son who inherited his position, was able to extend the Mughal Empire and built the administrative machinery that forms the basis for many present-day practices in India

- The next successor was Jahangir, Akbar’s son, showed a luxurious living as well as his son, who became the next ruler, Shah Jahan.

- Shah Jahan is known for his building program example is the Taj Mahal and he is also instrumental in extending the Mughal Empire to the Deccan Plateau.

- After the death of the last ruler, Aurangzeb (Shah Jahan’s son), the empire disintegrated quickly.

ref: Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, Microsoft Encarta 2007

Early Islamic influence in India

- during AD 711, Islam first entered India due to a young Arabian general, Muhammad ibn Qasim

- in the 9^th and 19^th centuries, Arab traders began to convert many Hindus in port cities along the southwest coast.

- The central Asians onverts were the chief Muslim conquerors of India who began to enter India around 1000.

- Mahmud of Ghazni led a series of raid into the Punjab region to ensure for the Muslims gateway to the Indian subcontinents.

- The Muslims managed to convert many low-caste hindus and Buddhists, many coverts hoped that they would become part of a equal society and gain protection.

ref: Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, Microsoft Encarta 2007

Origins of Civilization in India

A. Indus Valley Civilization

- flourished around 2500 B.C. to around 1700 B.C. on the Valley of Indus River and its tributaries.

- Extends as far to the northeast Delhi and south to Gujarat

- Oldest known civilization, its site is at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro

- It is known for its complex culture and special artifacts.

- This civilization was considered one of the most advanced of ancient times since the cities were carefully planned with water-supply system, sewage facilities, and centralized granaries.

- During the 1800 B.C., this civilization undergone a swift decline, its cause was unknown but some theories points out on extreme climatic changes and atural disaster.

B. Aryan Settlement and the Vedic Age

- during 1500 B.C. the Aryans settled in the upper reaches of Indus, Yamuna, and Gangetic plains.

-Aryans are nomadic people from central Asia andspoke an archaic form of Sanskrit.

- by 800 B.C. the Aryans ruled in most of northern India.

- Aryans originated the earliest form of sacred Vedas, whish is described a highly ritualistic worship with innumerable deities, a rich mythology and an elaborate fire sacrifice.

- the Vedas also provides information about the Aryans

- As the Aryans settled into agriculture, they changed their nomadic living and developed a new social and political structure.

- the caste system was developed: Brahmins or priests, Kshatriya or political ruler or warriors, Vaishya or traders and cultivators, and Shudra or artisans.

- this system remain central to the Indian socioreligious system, Hinduism.

ref: Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, Microsoft encarta 2007

Republic of India: Geography

- Area: 3,287,590 km²

- It can be into three main topographic regions; the Himalayan mountain system,
on the north; the Northern Plain, drained by the Indus, Ganges, And Brahmaputra rivers in north central India; and Peninsular India, in the south.

ref: Grolier Encyvlopedia of Knowledge

lost civilization

The Lost Civilization of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa

Sometime around 6000 BCE a nomadic herding people settled into villages in the Mountainous region just west of the Indus River . There they grew barley and wheat using sickles with flint blades, and they lived in small houses built with adobe bricks. After 5000 BCE the climate in their region changed, bringing more rainfall, and apparently they were able to grow more food, for they grew in population. They began domesticating sheep, goats and cows and then water buffalo. Then after 4000 BCE they began to trade beads and shells with distant areas in central Asia and areas west of the Khyber Pass. And they began using bronze and working metals.
The climate changed again, bringing still more rainfall, and on the nearby plains, through which ran the Indus River, grew jungles inhabited by crocodiles, rhinoceros, tigers, buffalo and elephants. By around 2600, a civilization as grand as that in Mesopotamia and Egypt had begun on the Indus Plain and surrounding areas. By 2300 BCE this civilization reached had reached maturity and was trading with Mesopotamia. Seventy or more cities had been built, some of them upon buried old towns. There were cities from the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains to Malwan in the south. There was the city of Alamgirpur in the east and Sutkagen Dor by the Arabian Sea in the west.
One of these cities was Mohenjo-daro (Mohenjodaro), on the Indus river some 250 miles north of the Arabian Sea, and another city was Harappa, 350 miles to the north on a tributary river, the Ravi. Each of these two cities had populations as high as around 40,000. Each was constructed with manufactured, standardized, baked bricks. Shops lined the main streets of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, and each city had a grand marketplace. Some houses were spacious and with a large enclosed yard. Each house was connected to a covered drainage system that was more sanitary than what had been created in West Asia. And Mohenjo-daro had a building with an underground furnace (a hypocaust) and dressing rooms, suggesting bathing was done in heated pools, as in modern day Hindu temples.
The people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa shared a sophisticated system of weights and measures, using an arithmetic with decimals, and they had a written language that was partly phonetic and partly ideographic. They spun cotton and wove it into cloth. They mass-produced pottery with fine geometric designs as decoration, and they made figurines sensitively depicting their attitudes. They grew wheat, rice, mustard and sesame seeds, dates and cotton. And they had dogs, cats, camels, sheep, pigs, goats, water buffaloes, elephants and chickens.
Being agricultural, the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa had religions that focused on fertility, on the earth as a giver of life. They had a fertility goddess, whose naked image as a figurine sat in a niche in the wall of their homes. Like the Egyptians they also had a bull god. They worshiped tree gods, and they had a god with three heads and an erect phallus, which they associated with fertility. Like some others, including the Egyptians, they buried objects with their dead. And they had taboos, especially about cleanliness.
The Disappearance of the Mohenjo-daro and Harappa Civilization
Between the years 1800 and 1700 BCE, civilization on the Indus Plain all but vanished. What befell these people is unknown. One suspected cause is a shift in the Indus River. Another is that people dammed the water along the lower portion of the Indus River without realizing the consequences: temporary but ruinous flooding up river, flooding that would explain the thick layers of silt thirty feet above the level of the river at the site of Mohenjo-daro. Another suspected cause is a decline in rainfall.
Agriculture declined and people abandoned the cities in search of food. Later, a few people of a different culture settled in some of the abandoned cities, in what archaeologists call a "squatter period." Then the squatters disappeared. Knowledge of the Mohenjo-daro civilization died - until archaeologists discovered the civilization in the twentieth century.
Aryans and the Origins of Hinduism
If rainfall declined in the Indus region between 1800 and 1700 BCE, around 1500 BCE it increased again, making the Indus Plain better able to support life. It has been estimated by various scholars that between 1500 and 1200 an illiterate, pastoral people migrated from the northwest, perhaps the steppe lands of central Russia through what is now Afghanistan, onto the Indus Plain. These migrants were to be called Aryans and to be classified as Indo-Europeans, their speech related to modern European languages except Basque, Finnish and Hungarian.
The word "Hindu" was created by the British while they held India as a colony. Among those people called Hindus are believers in a divine origins of their religion - not unlike other religions across the world. They take pride in Hindu scripture being the oldest scripture among the great religions of today, claiming that Hindu scripture was composed sometime around 3000 BCE by several sages in direct contact with their god, Krishna. They object to the theory of outsiders, the Aryans, having invaded India and bringing with them that scripture. They claim that there is no evidence of any such Indo-European invasion and blame the theory on Christian scholars from the nineteenth century and endeavor to made the theory of an Aryan invasion politically incorrect.
The rival theory among scholars is that the so-called Aryans came to the Indus Plain on horseback and oxcart, in waves separated perhaps by decades or longer. Like other pastoral people, they were warriors. They had two-wheeled chariots like the Hyksos, and coming through the mountains and the Khyber Pass they had the precious wheels of their chariots packed away on their carts.
The Aryans were familiar with prowling and hunting with bow and arrow. They enjoyed chariot racing, gambling and fighting. Like other pastoral peoples, men dominated the women. Like the pastoral Hebrews each family was ruled by an authoritarian male. And each Aryan tribe was ruled by a king who felt obliged to consult with tribal councils.
Gods, Creation and Human Mortality
Like other pastoral people, the Aryans were storytellers. They had centuries old sacred hymns, myths and oral history - stories that expressed their desire to please the gods. Like the Hebrews, the Aryans had a father god of the heaven, sky and atmosphere: Dyaus Pitar (sky father). They had a male god of thunder and rain called Indra, who was a god also of that other awesome disturbance - war. Indra was also called the "breaker of forts." And he was what the Aryan men thought a man should be: a warrior with courage, strength and energy who enjoyed drinking and making war.
The Aryans had a god called Agni who was fire. They believed that Agni hungrily devoured the animals that they sacrificed in their rituals of burning. These sacrifices were performed by priests to obtain from their gods the gifts of children, success in war, wealth, health, longevity, food, drink or anything else that contributed to their happiness.
The Aryans enjoyed singing around their campfires, and they had a hymn about creation. Like many other creation myths, theirs described the world as beginning with the kind of creation they understood: birth. They believed that their father god, Dyaus Pitar, the embodiment of sky, had mated with his own daughter, the goddess that was earth.
A later Aryan version of The Creation reads as follows:
In the beginning was nothing, neither heaven nor earth nor space in between. Then Non-being became spirit and said: "Let me be!" He warmed himself, and from this was born fire. He warmed himself further, and from this was born light.
The Aryans had a story that described humanity as having been created with virtue and everlasting life. According to this story, the gods were concerned that humanity would become gods like themselves, and to guard against this the gods plotted humanity's downfall. The gods talked Dyaus Pitar into creating a woman who lusted after sensual pleasures and who aroused sexual desires in men. According to this story, the world had become overcrowded because humankind lived forever like the gods. So Dyaus Pitar decided to make humankind mortal, and he created the goddess Death - not a goddess who ruled over death, but death itself. This creation of mortality for humankind pleased the gods, for it left them separate and of a higher rank than humans.
According to this story, Dyaus Pitar proclaimed that he did not create the goddess Death from anger. And the goddess Death was at first reluctant to carry out the task assigned her, but she finally did so, while weeping. Her tears were diseases that brought death at an appropriate time. To create more death, the goddess Death created desire and anger in people - emotions that led to their killing each other.
Settlement, Conquest and Autocracy
With the passing of generations, the waves of Aryan tribes that had come to the Indus Plain spread out across the region. They warred against local, non-Aryan people, and they settled in areas that provided them with pasture for their animals. They grouped in villages and built homes of bamboo or light wood - homes without statues or art. They began growing crops. Their environment supplied them with all they needed, but, responding to their traditions, and perhaps impulses, the different Aryan tribes warred against each other - wars that might begin with the stealing of cattle. The word for obtaining cattle, gosati, became synonymous with making war. And their warring grew in scale, including a war between what was said to be ten kings.
Gradually, Aryan tribal kings were changing from tribal leaders to autocratic rulers. Aryan kings had begun associating their power with the powers of their gods rather than the approval of their fellow tribesmen. They had begun allying themselves with priests. And, as in West Asia, kings were acquiring divinity. By taxing their subjects, these kings could create an army that was theirs rather than an instrument of the tribe. And these kings allied themselves with the horse-owning warrior aristocracy to which they often belonged.
Caste and Religious Blending
In the decades around 1000 BCE came a shortage of rainfall, and, running from drought, Aryan tribes trekked eastward along the foot of the Himalayan mountains, where jungles were less dense and rivers easier to cross. They entered the plains of the Ganges Valley . And some Aryan priests wandered ahead of their tribe and tried to evangelize among the tribes they came upon. They found these societies with a more egalitarian organization than they had, and they despised them for not having kings as autocratic as theirs.
By now, the Aryans had iron tools and weapons, iron having spread eastward through Persia . And with their superior weaponry and self-confidence, the Aryans fought those who resisted their advance, the Aryans believing that their gods were on their side and that resistance from local peoples was inspired by demons. Gradually the Aryans spread over much of the Ganges Valley, clearing land for themselves by calling on their god of fire, Agni.
Some Aryans migrated south along the western coast of the Indian continent, and some Aryans went down the eastern coast, to an area called Kalinga . A few Aryans went as far south as the island that in Hindu literature was called Lanka . And some Aryan priests went as missionaries to southern India, where they found a dark-skinned people called Dravidians. Occasionally the missionaries felt mistreated. They sought the aide of their king, and their king's warrior nobles came south to their rescue. But southern India remained independent of Aryan rule.
The Beginnings of Caste
With the Aryans settling alongside local peoples, a complex hierarchy of classes developed that would be called caste. At the top of this class ranking were the priests and their entire families: the Brahmins. Also at the top were the warrior-aristocrats, the Kshatriyas, whose job it was to practice constantly for combat. Neither the Brahmins nor the Kshatriyas conceded superiority to the other, but they agreed that the other classes were lower than they. The first of these lower classes were the Vaishas and their families: Aryans who tended cattle and served the Brahmins and Kshatriyas in others ways. The lowest class were the conquered, darker, non-Aryans who were servants for the Aryans: the Shudras. The Aryans made these four classifications a part of their mythology. The four groups, it was claimed, came from the body of the god Prajapati, the Brahmins from the god's mouth, the warriors from the god's arms, the tenders of cattle from his legs, and the Shudras from his feet.
This class system was less rigid than it would be centuries later. People from different classes could dine together. A man from a non-Brahmin family could still become a priest and therefore a Brahmin. And although marriage within one's own class was preferred, there was no absolute restriction against marrying people from a different class. Brahmins married women from a lower caste whom they found attractive, but this was a male prerogative. A girl from a Brahmin family was allowed to marry only someone also from a Brahmin family.
A Blending of Pastoral and Agricultural Religion
The Common Era (CE) is equivalent to Christianity's Anno Domini (AD) - in the year of the Lord.
Like the mix between the agricultural religion of the Canaanites and the pastoral religion of the Hebrews, in India a mix developed between the pastoral religion of the Aryans and the local religions of the conquered. This mix came with Aryan males marrying non-Aryan females, and it came with some among the conquered accepting the religion of their conquerors - much as those in the Americas the 1500s CE NOTE would accept the religion of their Christian conquerors. In India this blend of Aryan and local religions became known as Hinduism, a word derived from the Aryan word Sindu, the name the Aryans gave to the Indus River. The Hindu religion ranged from veneration of traditional Aryan gods by urban intellectuals to the worship of a diversity of local, rural, agricultural deities.
Hindu Scripture and Sin
Maybe before and maybe around the same time that writing spread to the Hebrews, it appeared among the Aryans in India. Some Brahmins considered it a sacrilege to change from communicating their religion orally. But a sufficient number of Brahmins supported the innovation, and they put traditional Aryan stories into writing, in what became known as the Vedas - Veda meaning wisdom. The Vedas became wisdom literature, a literature that would be considered an infallible source of timeless, revealed truth.
The most important of the Vedas was the Rig Veda, which consisted of hymns or devotional incantations of 10,562 written lines in ten books. Another Veda, the Yajur Veda, focused less on devotional incantations and more on sacrificial procedures as a means of pleasing the gods. A third Veda, the Sama Veda, was mainly concerned with the god Indra. Indra was now seen as the god that had created the cosmos, the ruler of the atmosphere, and the god of thunderbolts and rain - Dyaus Pitar having diminished in importance. Also mentioned in the Sama Veda were other gods of the sky and atmosphere: Varuna, guardian of the cosmic order; Agni, the god of fire; and Surya, the sun. A fourth Veda, the Atharya Veda, was a collection of 730 hymns, totaling six thousand stanzas, containing prescriptions for prayer, rituals for curing diseases, expiations against evils, protection against enemies and sorcerers, and prescriptions for creating charms for love, health, prosperity, influence, and a long life.
Among the Vedas were descriptions of funeral rites that included cremation, and there were descriptions of lengthy and solemn rituals for marriage. The Vedas implied that humanity is basically good, and, in contrast to the view of sin in West Asia, sin among the Hindus was viewed as a force from outside oneself - an invader. Hinduisms's Vedas saw evil as the work of demons that might take the form of a human or some other creature, which could be removed by the prayers and rituals of priests.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch05.htm#top

talk about mythology...

The Sacred Bride
- a cross-cultural reference
by
Dr. Manoshi Bhattacharya

The concept of the Sacred Bride and the Sacred Marriage began on the plains of the Indus Valley over 4000 years ago and the symbolism, that made Da Vinci Code a best-seller, owes its origin to those ancient nature worshippers. India is unique because its culture and tradition survived despite the numerous invasions, which brought in new ways of thinking. While the ancient nature worshippers in the rest of the world died out, only those in India survived.
Accepting the woman – albeit a supernatural one – as being the source of the ultimate knowledge is not a new concept. The ancient thinking of the Indus Valley Civilization, placed the male and female principles as equals. The male principle, Shiva or D united with the female, Shakti or Ñ to form the Y hexagram or mandala. The hexagram was a symbol of the Sacred Marriage. The earliest evidence of this symbol was found among coins from the excavation of the city of Ujjain in India. The coins have been dated to be 2000 - 3000 years old. These coins came into the possession of Colonel James Tod, the Political Agent to the Western Rajput States of India in the early 1800s. The Indus Valley Harappan seal numbered 297 bears one of the first representations of Shakti with her foot planted on a buffalo's nose grasping a horn with one hand and thrusting a spear into its back with the other.
A similar thought existed in ancient Babylon and Sumeria where the divine lady Belit-ili, or Belili was worshipped. The Canaanites worshipped her as Baalat. A tablet from Ur, dating back to 2000 BC addressed her as Laillake. She was adopted by the Jews during their days of captivity in Babylon. As the home-sick Jews compiled the Old Testament, they incorporated tales that they had imbibed from their land of captivity - Iraq. Adam’s first wife became Lilleth of the Genesis and the Rabbinic literature. She was Laila of the later Islamic version. The world over, nature worshippers celebrated the woman as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment. The act of Hieros Gamos, the union of Amon and Isis, was as hallowed in Egypt as in Greece.
A wave of change swept the world. Lilleth of the Rabbinic literature refused to bow her head before Adam. She was his equal in every way. Uttering the name of God, she disappeared and was condemned as a demon. A lesser woman was created out of Adam’s rib and pulled out of his back. Eve would always stand behind Adam. The Greek and Egyptian cultures died and in India, the position of the Sacred Bride suffered. The civilization that replaced that of the Indus Valley was strongly patriarchal in nature. Early Vedic literature made no mention of Her until the age in which the Shatpat Brahmin was compiled. It was said however, that the creator’s work had not been perfect. His creations would not multiply. Finally, He sought his answer among the practioner’s of the ancient Indian way. He witnessed Shiva and Shakti together in their ‘ardhanareshwar’ form. The body was split longitudinally into two. One half was male, the other female. Neither was complete without the other. Prajapati Brahma, the creator now understood. The Shatpat Brahman goes on to say, "Prajapati created the universe. He populated the earth with living creatures of every kind. Exhausted, he rested. Sri, in her divine beauty, issued from within him. Instantly the gods were jealous. Kill her, was the cry. Prajapati intervened. He let her live." Although, the female principle was acknowledged as necessary and in every respect equal to the male, like Lilleth, she was denied the respect due to her. However, in India the position of the Sacred Bride gradually recovered. Her ancient worshippers survived in small pockets, principally in Bengal. The mystery that lay within Her could not be denied. By the time the Kena Upanishad was written, the position of the Vedic woman had greatly improved. The female principle was acknowledged as the source of divine knowledge. "The Brahman (the one and only supreme being) appeared before the gods of the patriarchs. Agni, the fire god, plucked up his courage. He challenged the Brahman. The Brahman offered him some straw. Agni was unable to burn it. Vayu, the god of wind, was unable to blow it away. The king of the gods arrived. Indra was determined to learn the true nature of the Brahman. He found instead the sacred feminine, Uma or Himavati (Shakti). Humbled, Indra submitted. Uma taught him."
The knowledge that was in the possession of the Sacred Bride was coveted by all but while Shakti survived, Lilleth did not. Neither did Isis nor She who held a buffalo in an upraised hand at Dordogne, France. Their counterpart at the temple of Nagar in Nubia who slaughtered a demon with her sword while her lion mount waited in the background fared no better. Nor did the Celtic Tara.
The ancient architecture of India remained alive and Shakti’s presence dominated the worship of every form of the Brahman (greater or lesser gods). The very act of entering a temple was taking part in the mystic union. Indians worshipped in dimly lit little rooms though their temples were large and the spires reached out to the skies. A long corridor led to sanctum sanctorum, which lay deep within the temple. The womb of the temple would admit but one devotee. Here, all by himself, the devotee would aspire to cross over and unite with the Brahman, both in mind and in body. Entrances to ancient Celtic temples were marked in a similar manner with flowers and roses, symbolizing the entrance to the womb. Few ancient temples survived and though the beautiful carvings were inherited by the modern day churches, their meaning was long forgotten.
God’s own bride was successful in India. Sri Sukta, a late addition to the original Rig Veda, sang of the glory of the sacred feminine. She was adored by many names - Mahalaxmi, Mahasaraswati and Mahakali in the Khilaratri Sukta and Durga in the Taittirya Aranakyas. In the Epic Age, she was celebrated as Durga who helped Lord Ram overcome King Ravan. Ram’s devotions lived on and her worshipper’s continued to follow the steps laid down by Lord Ram in the invocation of the goddess, an autumnal, rite called Durga Puja, celebrated even today. She traveled through the world once again, staking her claim wherever mankind struggled to abandon her. Her mystery drew many followers. She was both venerated and feared. Juneiti Kannon or Chundi and Juntei Butsubo, the mother of seven crores of Buddhas or the Sapta Koti Buddha Matri took her place in Japan. Mahayan Buddhism with Tara’s (a form of Kali – the aggressive form of Durga) powers spread through Tibet and China. The cosmic union with its Yin Yang balance appealed to Chinese thought and the mandala became a popular symbol. Sara-Kali or the Black Virgin, was worshipped by gypsies and dacoits through the world. Though Kali compared with Lilleth in many ways, her respect for Shiva could keep her in control. When Lilleth and Kali were on a rampage, a great loss of life would follow.
By the beginning of the Middle Ages (AD 395 to the Renaissance) it was apparent that great suffering had been imposed upon the Jews. It was blamed upon the abandonment of God’s feminine half. The concept of Shakti and the Sacred Marriage was imported from India. The Shiv-Shakti mandala, Y, with its magical powers became the Star of David or the Magen David. Though David, king of the Jews, is traditionally placed in the same time period as the heroes of the great Indian epic, Mahabharat, it isn’t until the 4th Century A.D. that the mandala came to became popular. It was adopted as a symbol of the dynasty of the Messiah – the dynasty of David, the first Messiah. Popular among the followers of the mystic Kaabala, all Jewish women have since celebrated the Shabat every Saturday. White candles are lit and the Sacred Bride is welcomed. Regarded as Hebrew lore, the name of Shekina is omitted from the modern Bible. In the ancient Aramaic version, it says, "God shall choose that his Shekina may dwell there, unto the house of his Shekina shall you seek." The Bible merely uses ‘the name’ in place of Shekina. The Gnostic Christians of the 4th century acknowledged Sh’kina as a spirit of glory. The foreign origin resulted in some conservatives referring to the Star of David as the mark of evil.
The 4th Century A.D. saw another revival in India. After years of Buddhist rule a strong Hindu Empire had taken root. The Gupta emperors ordered scholars to commit to writing the classical teachings and epics. The Purans were the result and they elevated the Sacred Bride, Durga, to the highest position, abandoning with enthusiasm the entire male pantheon. The bride was now firmly back on her throne. She now evolved into two forms. Mahishasura Mardini, the slayer of the demon Mahishasura, was the warrior while simple stones, aniconic representations, were said to be the body of Uma or Sati or Parvati, the fertile nurturing form of the goddess who was the devoted wife of Shiva. By the 11th Century AD, the many diverse forms of the sacred feminine were consolidated into one. The cult of the goddess was at its peak. The Purans dictated the image while the Chundi section described the manner of worship. The prescription given was permanent. Mahishasura Mardini remains the most popular form even today. Her right foot rests on her lion’s back and the left on the shoulder of the demon Mahishasura. Her third eye is open and her ten arms bear weapons bestowed upon her by the male pantheon. She has a slender, well developed body, skin the colour of gold like that of the Vedic beauties and almost frizzy black hair, reminiscent of her ancient aboriginal roots. Dressed as a bride, she is resplendent in her red silk sari and ornaments of gold and papyrus. A severed buffalo head lies at her feet and the demon, having emerged from within its carcass, brandishes a sword and shield. The goddess drives her trident into his chest. Shiva, her husband, is present in his iconographic form.
The two thousand year old Y hexagram has since adorned the walls and floors of sacred monuments. The hexagram or the Trinitarian symbol, appeared on the beautiful abbey gate of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, United Kingdom, in A.D. 1377. Islamic rule in India used the mandala in their architecture in the 16th Century. Emperor Humayun’s tomb, in Delhi, heralded the beginning of Mughal architecture in India. It was built by his first wife, Hajji Begum, the virtuous Muslim empress, who was distinguished for having performed the Haj. She made prominent use of the mandala on every face of the tomb. This mandala which has no Biblical or Talmudic authority was first used by the Jewish community of Prague as an official symbol in the 17th Century and by the 19th Century, became a striking emblem of Judaism appearing on synagogues, tomb-stones and the flag of Israel.
The hunt for the knowledge, which could end mankind’s miseries, sparked off the quest for the Holy Grail in the Christian world. The Holy Grail was speculated to be the chalice of Christ, akin to the ‘Celtic horn of plenty,’ by Chretian de Troy in the 12th century A.D. Wolfram Essenbach’s epic, Parzival, declared it to be the stone that fell from heaven - the philosopher’s stone? The mystical teachings of Saint Bernard of Claivaux, reflecting on man’s rise to perfection, influenced the writing of Quest del Saint Graal. This became Malory’s 15th century Le Morte Darthur, which identified the Grail with the mystical union experienced by Sir Galahad. The divine love of Arthurian legends akin to the mystical union of Shiva and Shakti Y hexagram, prevailed and has proved to be a fruitful theme in Christian literature.
Dan Brown’s effort, at establishing the role of Mary Magdalene as Christ’s bride and the possessor of the sacred knowledge, is yet another proof that deep within its heart the Western world still yearns for the return of the Sacred Bride.

http://www.the-south-asian.com/Jan2005/The_Sacred_Bride.htm

http://www.the-south-asian.com/index.htm

Aids and Indian woman

NOTHING POSITIVE
- AIDS & THE INDIAN WOMAN
by
Surabhi Khosla

Powerful ad campaign…" I care for you. Why don’t you care for me? "
The fact that over 19 lakh women in India are living with HIV AIDS is setting off alarm bells in the Indian medical fraternity – especially since more than 90percent of these are married women in monogamous relationships…

-More married women in India are at risk of getting AIDS than sex workers
-India is about to be hit by the worst AIDS epidemic in the world
-Research groups are now calling AIDS in India ‘a woman’s disease’
It is easy to misjudge the challenge of HIV/AIDS. Rarely perceived as a major public health issue in India, AIDS has taken on nightmarish proportions in recent years. The large population, low literacy and even lower levels of awareness has made AIDS one of the most challenging public health problems ever faced by the country.
The rising number of women (over 1.9 million at the last count) afflicted with AIDS is setting off alarm bells in the Indian medical fraternity – especially since more than 90 percent of these are married women and are in a monogamous relationship.
In the light of these statistics, Breakthrough, a human rights organisation has launched a media campaign titled What Kind Of Man Are You? The campaign highlights the rising incidence of married women infected by the AIDS virus by their husbands.

Crusade Against AIDS
As part of the crusade against AIDS, popular television stars Mandira Bedi and Samir Soni have joined hands with Breakthrough and both feature in a music video, Maati. sung by Shubha Mudgal, Maati talks about a pregnant woman who discovers she is HIV positive because of her husband’s promiscuity.
Apart from this, Breakthrough has been organizing various workshops to provide sex education to the general public. It also has an SMS facility through which people’s queries are answered, informing them about the treatment and care for the infected.
The organisation has also launched an intensive multimedia campaign to focus public attention on the growing problem of HIV AIDS. The message is being conveyed through music videos, eye catching advertisements in newspapers, radio and television that are being directed by renowned adman Prasun Joshi. The different visuals have the same theme - a woman asking her husband to protect her by using a condom.
The campaign aims to empower women in an exceedingly patriarchal society, enabling them to discuss sexuality freely with their husbands and encouraging the use of condoms among men.

Negotiating Safe Sex
According to Mallika Dutt, founder and executive director Breakthrough, "It’s a challenge for any woman to negotiate safe sex with her husband. Many times the request for a condom may be interpreted as an accusation of promiscuity against the husband. Our campaign helps married women to understand the need for safe sex and how to voice their opinion."
Both Sameer Soni and Mandira Bedi feel that the responsibility and the guilt that a man feels on infecting his innocent wife, is brought out beautifully in the video, directed by Arjun Bali.. "The fact that television and music are so popular with the masses will help spread the message much faster in a populated country like India, than workshops and prevention measures targeting small groups of people," says Soni.
Until recently HIV education programmes targeted only the high-risk population such as truck drivers, drug users and sex workers but the reality is that an increasing number of married women are at risk. They are ignorant about the dangers they face and hence are easy targets of infection.
Most Indian women are completely uninformed about sex and sexual health practices at the time of marriage. Under great pressure to produce children (particularly sons), the use of condoms and other contraceptives does not arise. The low economic and social status of women renders them unable to have much of a say in sex and thus, they cannot suggest the use of a condom which in turn can lead to their becoming infected with the HIV virus.
Cultural practices and outdated beliefs still plague the Indian society and there is rampant discrimination against women. A woman is labelled "immoral and loose" if detected with the deadly virus. Subjected to ill treatment and isolation of the worst kind, these women are faced with no family support, loss of job opportunities and an extremely low economic status.
Worse, there is lack of access to treatment and medical facilities for these women.
Besides they can also be subject to increased violence. Voiceless, disgraced and ostracized, these women sometimes end up being branded as untouchables or worse being killed by their own family members

Preventive Measures
In India sex is rarely discussed openly. However it is important to educate and inform the people. According to many health experts, the future course of AIDS in Asia will be set by India's example. Sex education in schools to promote the magnitude of safe sex is essential. Yet over 42 percent of boys and 69 percent of girls of 15 years and older do not go to school. To educate them mass media drives and sex education workshops for the general public are essential.
Allopathic medicines like AZT used in combination with other drugs form the main treatment for AIDS related diseases. Also early diagnosis and effective treatment can help in prolonging life expectancy.
Research is currently underway for a cure and to develop effective and cheaper female condoms that will put the power of protection against HIV in the woman’s hands. But until then the only way to contain the spread of the disease is cooperation by the male partner.
Says Mallika Dutt, "India needs to follow the example of Brazil in aggressively pursuing AIDS prevention and treatment as the country is on the edge of a pandemic that might make India resemble one of those African nations where one in three people is afflicted with the deadly HIV AIDS virus.

http://www.the-south-asian.com/June2005/AIDS-Women-in-India.htm