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Rani Padmini and four other Hindutva history myths exploded

Its a Chennai local train stop after Chennai beach...which stuck for years on name issue....tongue twisting...initially it looks I enroll for tongue twisting competition,its really hard pronounce it....Tamil is way different than Marathi..
Of course!!
Marathi is similar to Hindi.
Tamil, in my opinion, is closer to Sanskrit.
 
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Great post OP

These myths need to be busted as they are dangerous not only for Indian minorities but also its neighbors.

Of course the extremest Hindus love these myths as it perpetuates their misguided sense of history and honor.
 
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Girish Shahane’s myth-busting explodes in his own face

On the last day of 2014, Girish Shahane decided to be a mythbuster-I’m not saying this. They are his words wherein he purports to ‘debunk significant Hindutva myths.’ Mr. Sahane attempts in his so-called expose to correct our reading of history by clearing the air which was filled with clouds of Hindutva mythology. Let us look at Shahane’s myths and try to place them in the light of history.

1. Myth of Rani Padmini
As stated by Mr. Shahane :

Rani Padmini is not mentioned in any Rajput or Sultanate annals, and there’s absolutely no historical evidence she existed. Alauddin Khilji, one of the finest generals in India’s military history, certainly required no treachery to subdue Chittor. He repelled successive Mongol invasions while conquering much of Rajasthan and Gujarat. But what has survived of him is the image of a lustful, deceitful, tyrant pitted against chivalrous Rajputs…..

I think it is relevant here to quote this excerpt from page twenty seven of The History and Culture of the Indian People [Volume 6: The Delhi Sultanate]:

Alauddin Khalji’s lust for a Hindu queen is proved by the known instances of Queen Kamala Devi of Gujarat and the daughter of King Ramachandra of Devagiri. It is to be remembered also that Abul Fazl definitely says that he gets the story of Padmini from ‘ancient chronicles’ which cannot obviously refer to the Padmavat, an almost contemporary work. On the whole it must be admitted that there is no inherent impossibility in the kernel of the story of Padmini……

Hence although the existence of Rani Padmini is not documented as a concrete historical fact, it is equally illogical to dismiss it as a myth simply because it is undocumented. Furthermore, Malik Muhammad Jayasi is celebrated as a Sufi philosopher even by the secular scholars of India. So, on what grounds Mr. Sahane is calling Padmavat a Hindutva conspiracy is best known to him. And if he is so concerned, did Mr. Sahane take the initiative to debunk the secular myth of St.Thomas?

2. Myth of Prithviraj Chauhan
Girish Shahane:

In the hands of Prithviraj’s court poet Chand Bardai, and several later writers who embellished the narrative, the chivalrous Prithviraj defeated and imprisoned Ghuri, but generously set him free. The foe returned, attacked unfairly at night, captured and blinded the Rajput king, and took him back to his capital. Prithviraj’s companion convinced Ghuri to let the blind king demonstrate his skill as an archer. Instructed by the companion, Prithviraj killed Muhammad Ghuri before ending his own life in a suicide pact. I grew up believing this to be historical truth, thanks to the volume of Amar Chitra Katha about Prithviraj’s life.



Mr. Sahane seems to believe that the reputed court historians of Muslim rulers like Hasan Nizami (who wrote the Taj ul-Maasir) Ferishta ( who wrote Tarikh-i Firishta and the Gulshan-i Ibrahim) and Al-Badāoni ( who compiled Muntakhabu-’rūkh) were story writers since it is in the works of these historians that one gets to read about Prithviraj Chauhan and his gallant clash with Muhammed Ghuri in the two battles of Tarain. If that is the case, then I suggest Mr. Sahane to go through Abu Mohamed Habibullah’s The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India, a standard work on the early medieval history of the subcontinent and learn about the Ghori-Chauhan clash instead of blaming Amar Chitra Katha.

Of course, there are some elements of folklore about Chauhan’s personal life, a feature common to all great warriors of history from Hannibal to Napoleon. But how that equals to the non-existence of the historical figure itself is for Mr. Sahane to answer.

3. Violent Hindu rulers
Girish Shahane:

Ironically, Sri Lanka is one of the countries that Indian kings (Hindu ones at that, for in such a reckoning only Hindu kings count) have repeatedly invaded. The Cholas also launched naval expeditions against towns and regions across South-East Asia in the 11th century AD.Hindu rulers rarely hesitated to invade neighbouring domains, with all the killing and plunder associated with the business.



This practiced deception of balancing the religion-inspired wanton brutalities of Islamic invaders by trying to find similar parallels in Hindu rulers is a standard template used by most of our eminent historians who will go to any lengths to falsify the truth of medieval Islamic barbarism in India. Needless to say, one of the best practitioners of this balancing act is Romila Thapar who has been exposed by the erudite Arun Shourie in his book “Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud.” A sample of this meticulous expose can be seen in this extract:


…. the most popular “evidence” for Hindu persecutions of Buddhism is a passage in Kalhana’s history of Kashmir, the Rajatarangini (Taranga 7: 1089 ff.), where king Harsha is accused of looting and desecrating temples. This example is given by JNU emeritus professor of ancient history, Romila Thapar, in Romila Thapar et al.: Communalism in the Writing of Indian History, p.15-16, and now again in her letter to Mr. Manish Tayal (UK), 7-2-1999. The latter letter was written in reply to Mr. Tayal’s query on Arun Shourie’s revelations on the financial malversations and scholarly manipulations of a group of historians, mainly from JNU and AMU…Note, at any rate, Romila Thapar’s total reliance on arguments of authority and status. No less than seven times does she denounce Shourie’s alleged (and unproven) incompetence: Shourie has “not the faintest idea”, is “unaware”, “untrained”, and “does not know”, and what he does is “laughable”, “a joke”, “garbage”. But what exactly is wrong in his writing, we are not allowed to know. If history is now a professional discipline, one couldn’t deduce it from this letter of hers, for its line of argument is part snobbish and part feudal (appeal to formal authority), but quite bereft of the scientific approach…….
(The complete article can be read here.)



Speaking of Sri Lanka, Mr. Sahane narrates only a part of the story when he mentions only the Chola/Pandya invasion of Anuradhapura while cleverly ignoring the chapters from the Sinhalese historical chronicles, which speaks of the kinship early Sinhalese kings had with the same Hindu rulers who Mr. Sahane identifies as violent invaders. He chooses to ignore the fact from the Sinhalese historical chronicle Mahavamsa which speaks of the early ages of the Anuradhapura Kingdom, when King Devanampiya Tissa (250–210 BC) was said to be friends with Emperor Asoka which led to the introduction of Buddhism by Mahinda (son of Asoka) around 247 BCE. Was that an act of violent invasion? Throughout the ages, the Sinhala kings and their South Indian neighbours have often come to each other’s rescue in times of peril.


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More importantly, Sahane fails to provide a single verifiable source which can prove that the cultural scenario of Sri Lanka and South-East Asia was brutally stamped out by Hindu rulers as was the case with India under Islamic invaders. But then, making evidence-less assertions seems to be a feature perfected by India’s eminent historians in whose footsteps Girish Shahane faithfully follows.

4. Myth of Sanskrit
Girish Shahane:

The first person to discover this language family, William Jones, suggested back in 1786 that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, “have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”. He was exactly right. That source is now called proto-Indo-European, and is considered to have been spoken in the vicinity of the Black Sea around 5,500 to 6,000 years ago.In India, though, the idea is anathema that an ancestor of Sanskrit was spoken by pastoral nomads living in what is modern-day Turkey and Ukraine. For that would make Sanskrit essentially a language like many others. Which is what it is.

If Mr.Shahane cares to do some research, he can find that the methodology of today’s linguistic research is largely derived from the work carried out by the ancient Sanskrit grammarians like Panini. Experts of linguistics have nothing but words of praises for the Sanskrit grammarians and linguists who had attempted to catalogue and codify the rules inherent to Sanskrit’s proper usage.

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Also an important point to note here would be that European scholarship in Sanskrit which was carried by Heinrich Roth and Johann Ernst Hanxleden preceded the proposal of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones. The basics of modern linguistics employs many forms of the structures that evolved in the works of Sanskrit grammarians, but Mr. Sahane pooh-poohs all this without even citing one reliable source. Oh and on the so-called proto-Indo-European language, the words of perhaps one of the greatest contemporary Sanskrit linguists, Shatavadhani Dr. Ganesh should suffice: “proto-Indo-European language is a language in which there is the word “butter” but not the word “milk.”


5. The Myth Of India’s achievements
Girish Shahane:

In truth, almost nothing in India is 5,000 years old. … India’s major mathematical achievements originated almost exclusively in the medieval era.….

Over the past four or more decades, extensive research has been carried out by archaeologists and scholars in various other fields regarding the timeline of Indian civilisation. There are some passionate activists who advocate everything in the modern world originated in India. Sure, call them out on the basis of facts and evidence. But Shahane, you need to understand that in your childish zeal to deride even genuine Indian achievements that can be traced back to antiquity, you forget that such attempts show your own article in poor light. Consider the following examples:

1. The Śulba Sūtras which means ‘Aphorisms of the Chords’ in Vedic Sanskrit contain the earliest extant verbal expression of the Pythagorean Theorem in the world- The diagonal rope (akṣṇayā-rajju) of an oblong (rectangle) produces both which the flank (pārśvamāni) and the horizontal (tiryaṇmānī) <ropes> produce separately.1

2. Around 8th century BCE ,Baudhayana composed the Baudhayana Sulba Sutra, the best-known Sulba Sutra, which contains examples of simple Pythagorean triples, such as: (3, 4, 5), (5, 12, 13), (8, 15, 17), (7, 24, 25), and (12, 35, 37), as well as a statement of the Pythagorean theorem for the sides of a square: The rope which is stretched across the diagonal of a square produces an area double the size of the original square.2


Now the Śulba Sūtras are known to have been composed around 1750–500 BCE according to well-documented historical research. So how did Mr. Sahane reach the conclusion that ‘India’s major mathematical achievements originated almost exclusively in the medieval era?’ And as usual, he fails to furnish a single shred of evidence to prove this.

Indeed, Girish Shahane’s entire piece is an elaborate exercise in stating blatant untruths–or at best, unverifiable assertions about Indian history and expecting the reader to swallow them uncritically. It is a singular feat of valour indeed except that he shouldn’t have called it Hindutva history myth-busting. Here’s an accurate title for your piece, Mr. Shahane: Five Eminent Historical lies repeated.

References:

  1. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
  2. The History of Mathematics: A Brief Course


Girish Shahane's myth-busting explodes in his own face | IndiaFactsIndiaFacts

 
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I speak and understand many Indian languages and I find sanskrit very close to Tamil and malayalam. This comes from my personal experience. And no matter how many sources (from world wide web) are presented to me I would have a tough time accepting it any other way.
If it was true that sanskrit is a close cousin of a proto-Indo-European language then why do the other european languages (other than German) dont have anything in common???
Can you please tell what similarities you found between Sanskrit and Tamil?
 
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Of course!!
Marathi is similar to Hindi.
Tamil, in my opinion, is closer to Sanskrit.
Marathi is older than Hindi while its grammatically and letters nearer to Sanskrit than any other language(except Malayalam).After hearing Tamil i don't looks like closer to Sanskrit.
 
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Can you please tell what similarities you found between Sanskrit and Tamil?
wrong choice of words I guess. I meant malayalam as malayalam is my mother tongue and I would be able to quote a lot loan words from sanskrit. But what surprises me is that I havent found so many sanskrit words in other languages(in India).
Btw why did you delete your other post( "Levina Levina....)?? I dont mind occasional compliments on my non-existent brain.
Marathi is older than Hindi while its grammatically and letters nearer to Sanskrit than any other language(except Malayalam).After hearing Tamil i don't looks like closer to Sanskrit.
Trust me as a kid when I was learning sanskrit I did not face much trouble because the language and grammar was very similar to my mother tongue, which is malayalam.
 
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wrong choice of words I guess. I meant malayalam as malayalam is my mother tongue and I would be able to quote a lot loan words from sanskrit. But what surprises me is that I havent found so many sanskrit words in other languages(in India).
Btw why did you delete your other post( "Levina Levina....), I dont mind occasional compliments on my non-existent brain.

Trust me as a kid when I was learning sanskrit I did not face much trouble because the language and grammar was very similar to my mother tongue, which is malayalam.
Sanskrit grammar is entirely different from malayalam...I need to do a little more research before I can show you the grammatical differences with examples...I will soon create a separate thread to show the difference between Dravidian languages and Sanskrit..as for Sanskrit words in malayalam, well they are loan words..Urdu has many Arabic words in it but that doesn't make it an afro asiatic language similarly now every language has many English words but that doesn't make those languages Anglo Saxon languages..a language is defined by its verbs ,its inflections in relation to gender,person and number..you asked another question if sanskrit is an info European language why it has no relation with other indo European languages...indo European languages all don't share common grammar ;there are sub groups in them as well.it is just that they all have their roots in proto indo European.Just like the grammar of malayalam is a bit different from tamil and grammar of Tamil is a bit different from Telugu although they all belong to same Dravidian family..The farther the languages of a family are spread,the more the differences in their grammar over a period of time.
 
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Yudhistra, Dronacharya, Suyodhan, Aashritha etc are no easy names either. :)
Each name has a meaning and many names are a combination of 2 words. (Mungakanni + Amman where Amman should mean a relation usually uncle). And since you're not used to pronouncing tongue twisting words, you would find it difficult to pronounce it. And it's fine. I'm sure when I go to China and when France I might face the same issue.
Btw the name you have posted seems to be a place, koil means a place/house or something to that effect.
' Amman' means 'Mother/Goddess' and 'Koil/Kovil means ' Temple' in Tamil,Uncle is maman/mama..
Modern Tamil is somewhat Sanskritized,but the old Tamil is entirely from the present form and has minimal-zero Sanskrit influence.
eg-sooryan means sun,sandhiran means 'moon' in modern Tamil and both are loan words from Sanskrit(soorya,chandra)..But the original Tamil words are 'kathiravan/pagalvan/njayiru for sun and 'nila' for 'moon'...
But the rate of Sanskritization is far less in Tamil when comparing with other Dravidian languages like Malayalam,Kannada or Telegu...
Malayalam is a direct fusion between old Tamil and Sanskrit,so more Sanskrit influence...
 
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Started your communist mental Masturbation already?
Dont need that.It was also a primitive Hinduism.


It is about time you people start addressing him by his real type, that of a stinking Jihadi terrorist.

Look at this post where he try to belittle Hinduism while ar the same time demanding respect for his Cult.

when you say that, please discount hinduism.



don't use that phrase if you don't want to be taken as delusional and rude... 2017 will bring the 100th anniversary of the russian revolution... would you use your phrase for the beginnings of even this too?? or for islam or for prophet jesus or for buddha for far away to any preacher and prophet??

like any reactionary and regressive, rss and the entire sangh cannot string together a coherent and sensible sentence... no society in the world accepts the blatherings of these theocratic/capitalist anti-humans nor do they have a universal ideology ( which is why they stick to bharat ).

why do you want to stand beside these prime fools??
 
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Look at this post where he try to belittle Hinduism while ar the same time demanding respect for his Cult.

i was talking about the sanghi regressives/reactionaries... why are you getting angered??
 
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Yudhistra, Dronacharya, Suyodhan, Aashritha etc are no easy names either. :)
Each name has a meaning and many names are a combination of 2 words. (Mungakanni + Amman where Amman should mean a relation usually uncle). And since you're not used to pronouncing tongue twisting words, you would find it difficult to pronounce it. And it's fine. I'm sure when I go to China and when France I might face the same issue.
Btw the name you have posted seems to be a place, koil means a place/house or something to that effect.
Koil is actually a place also called Kovil,Kovilamu and Kohli ( a place of living) in Hindi.
Remember Virat Kohli the cricketer.

i was talking about the sanghi regressives/reactionaries... why are you getting angered??
Yeah yeah we know what you stand for. I recognized you the day you posted your views you are a closet Jihadi,Trying to piggyback Communism to preach what ISIS does actually.
 
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The biggest news story coming out of India in 2014 was the triumph at the polls of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Led by the charismatic Narendra Modi, the BJP achieved what many considered impossible: an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. Modi and a number of his colleagues subscribe to ideas I have described in a previous column asRaving Loony Hindutva History. The BJP’s misreading of history, however, is also underpinned by versions of history that circulate as truth within the mainstream. Here, in reverse chronological order, I list five major myths that have gained mainstream acceptance in India.

1.The Myth of Rani Padmini

In 1303 AD, Alauddin Khilji, the Turkic Sultan of Delhi, captured Chittorgarh after a long siege. Two hundred and thirty-seven years later, an Awadhi poet named Malik Muhammad Jayasi composed a poem titledPadmavatabout the fall of Chittor. The tale was picked up in succeeding eras by historians such as the chronicler of Akbar’s reign Abul Fazl.

The story of Padmini varies from one writer to another but the basic contours are similar. A sorcerer banished by the king of Mewar Ratan Singh finds refuge in the Khilji court, where he fills the Sultan’s ears with tales of the beauty of Ratan Singh’s wife, Padmini. Alauddin manages to get a glimpse of her, and is enraptured. He captures Ratan Singh by deceit, and offers to release him in exchange for Padmini. The Rajputs hatch a cunning stratagem to free their king, but lose several warriors in the process. Alauddin defeats the weakened Rajput army, only to discover that Padmini and all other women in Chittor fort have committed jauhar.

Rani Padmini is not mentioned in any Rajput or Sultanate annals, and there’s absolutely no historical evidence she existed. Alauddin Khilji, one of the finest generals in India’s military history, certainly required no treachery to subdue Chittor. He repelled successive Mongol invasions while conquering much of Rajasthan and Gujarat. But what has survived of him is the image of a lustful, deceitful, tyrant pitted against chivalrous Rajputs.

2.The Myth of Prithviraj Chauhan

History, they say, is written by the winners. The best poetry, though, is often composed by the losers and, in India at least, outweighs historical accounts. Prithviraj Chauhan ruled Delhi in the late 12th century AD. In 1191, the Afghan ruler Muhammad Ghuri took the fortress of Bhatinda on the border of Prithviraj’s kingdom. Prithviraj advanced towards the frontier, and met and defeated Ghuri’s army at Tarain. The next year, Ghuri returned with a stronger force, defeated Prithviraj, and had him executed.

Pretty standard give-and-take for that age. In the hands of Prithviraj’s court poet Chand Bardai, and several later writers who embellished the narrative, the chivalrous Prithviraj defeated and imprisoned Ghuri, but generously set him free. The foe returned, attacked unfairly at night, captured and blinded the Rajput king, and took him back to his capital. Prithviraj’s companion convinced Ghuri to let the blind king demonstrate his skill as an archer. Instructed by the companion, Prithviraj killed Muhammad Ghuri before ending his own life in a suicide pact.

I grew up believing this to be historical truth, thanks to the volume of Amar Chitra Katha about Prithviraj’s life. I suppose children today watching television serials about Prithviraj and Padmini swallow the same fictions. It is noteworthy that no cases have been filed in any Indian court against these erroneous retellings of Indian history.

3.The Myth of a Non-Violent India

“…our religion is truer than any other religion, because it never conquered, because it never shed blood.” Swami Vivekananda, who assiduously propagated the myth of peaceful India, often used “religion”, “nation” and “race” interchangeably. In Colombo in 1897, he said, “India has for thousands of years peacefully existed… We, of all nations of the world, have never been a conquering race, and that blessing is on our head.” Ironically, Sri Lanka is one of the countries that Indian kings (Hindu ones at that, for in such a reckoning only Hindu kings count) have repeatedly invaded. The Cholas also launched naval expeditions against towns and regions across South-East Asia in the 11th century AD.

Hindu rulers rarely hesitated to invade neighbouring domains, with all the killing and plunder associated with the business. If they rarely ventured outside the subcontinent, it had less to do with a reluctance to shed blood or invade foreign lands than with the juicier targets close to home. A simple cost-benefit analysis explains why it made sense for Afghan and Turkic cavalry to raid the fertile Indian plains, and no sense for Indian kings to transport their elephants, thousands of foot-soldiers, and complicated supply lines into the mountains to conquer a land of sheep herders. Shah Jahan tried invading Samarkand, out of a sense of duty to his forebears, and his army paid a terrible price.

4. The Myth of Sanskrit

Sanskrit has produced a marvellous quantity of hymns, philosophical meditations, poems, epics, plays, and treatises. It is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most culturally significant languages in the world. What it is not is the “mother of all languages”, or even the foundational tongue of the branch to which is belongs, known as the Indo-European family of languages.

The first person to discover this language family, William Jones, suggested back in 1786 that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, “have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists”. He was exactly right. That source is now called proto-Indo-European, and is considered to have been spoken in the vicinity of the Black Sea around 5,500 to 6,000 years ago.

In India, though, the idea is anathema that an ancestor of Sanskrit was spoken by pastoral nomads living in what is modern-day Turkey and Ukraine. For that would make Sanskrit essentially a language like many others. Which is what it is.

5. The Myth of a 5,000-year-old civilisation

Our Foreign minister Sushama Swaraj recently attended a function celebrating the 5151st anniversary of the Bhagavad Gita. That dating belongs to Raving Loony Hindutva History, but the 5,000 year mark is commonly used to describe everything connected with Hindu culture. The Vedas? At least 5,000 years old. Ayurveda?5,000 years old. Yoga,5,000 years old, or a little more. Indian art?5,000 years old. Mathematics, astronomy, grammar, you name it, it is all 5,000 years old.

In truth, almost nothing in India is 5,000 years old. The ruins of the Harappan civilisation come closest, but the artefacts that have survived, aside from a few pot shards, don’t date earlier than 2500 BC. The earliest literature we have was composed about 3,500 years ago, and there’s precious little art that’s datable to a period before 500 BC. India’s major mathematical achievements originated almost exclusively in the medieval era, while the asanas used in contemporary yoga have, in a majority of cases, an illustrated or descriptive history going back little over a century.

The fake 5,000-year figure plays into the hands of those who believe India once enjoyed a golden age before it was corrupted by, take your pick, the Kalyug, Muslim invaders, British imperialists, all of the above.
Selective alternate view of history, It should also consider secularism of Akbar, Tipu Sultan, Justice of Jhangir; best of all Akbar-Jodha connection and reality of Shahjahan lovestory
 
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