"At the start of the Tang dynasty, in the early 7th century, a young wandering monk embarked on a 16-year long voyage from the imperial capital Chang’an (today’s Xian) to India to collect Buddhist manuscripts. At the time Chang’an was six times bigger than Rome at its height, with a population of over one million – the epicenter of Asian civilization." Source: UNZ Review (2019).
3D animation of ancient Chang'an.
"History ended up converting Xuanzang into a legend and a national hero in China – although in the West he would never reach Marco Polo levels of popularity.
"Xuanzang had embarked on a quest that still resonates today. He wanted to know whether all men – or just an enlightened few – could attain Buddhahood. There was only one way to find out: ride all the way to India and bring back Sanskrit texts to China, especially from the Yogacara school of Buddhism, which professed that the outside world did not exist: it was merely a projection of one’s consciousness."
The Hindus believe that we're living in the Kali Yuga, an apocalyptic Dark Age ruled by the demon Kali, the source of all evil and destruction. The Kali Yuga, also known as the "Age of Vice," is a period of warfare, chaos, social decline and spiritual decadence brought about by Man's separation from the gods. Kali himself is frequently pictured as a deranged figure dancing on corpses and wearing human heads as jewelry. I don't believe in demons, but this bloodthirsty lunatic with ten arms is the perfect symbol of human history.
Most writers use the term Kali Yuga to mean "end times" or the "last days," but technically this isn't accurate. The Hindus see Time as a cycle of four ages or Yugas known as the Yuga Cycle. The other three periods are called the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga and the Dvapara Yuga, and they all go spinning around like a cosmic ferris wheel. So the Kali Yuga isn't the end of the world. It's just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.
The Yuga Cycle describes a fall from grace--a loss of enlightenment. The first age, the Satya Yuga, is a golden age of supreme goodness when the gods rule and the average human lifespan is thousands of years long, but, like the Garden of Eden, it's all downhill from there. The other Yugas follow in order, the gods withdraw, the situation deteriorates and bottoms out with the Kali Yuga, then the whole thing starts all over again. Time is a circle--an infinite, recurring progression of Yugas in which the gods advance and retreat like the tides or the phases of the moon.
Now, this is good stuff and very ancient, but is it an accurate description of reality? That probably sounds like a strange question to ask. The Yuga Cycle is a symbolic, mythical cosmology based on the Hindu concepts of samsara, karmic cycles, rebirth, reincarnation and cyclic change. Taking it literally misses the point, but is it possible that Time is actually circular? Does the Yuga Cycle or at least its concept of Time have some basis in fact? Personally, I think the idea of circular Time is more interesting than the linear Christian view of history as moving in a straight line from Creation to Apocalypse, but I don't see any evidence that the universe actually runs in cycles like this.
Time is a one-way thing. The future changes into the present which changes into the past in an infinite stream of Becoming. There are cycles in nature, but they're more like recurring patterns with thousands of variations and they never repeat themselves in exactly the same way. The fossil evidence shows a gradual evolution from the simple to the complex punctuated by catastrophes, mass extinctions and sudden bursts of new life forms like the Cambrian Explosion. If there are cycles in nature, they are cycles of chaos in the mathematical sense. The gods of this world are fractals and strange attractors.
Human history repeats itself, but only in the sense that high cultures are subject to universal laws of growth and decay as described, for instance, by Oswald Spengler. Personally, I think there's a good argument that civilization in general has deteriorated over the last two thousand years, but I'm more inclined to blame it on the Second Law of Thermodynamics than the Yuga Cycle. Entropy and chaos are the natural state of things and organized systems tend to deteriorate over time. It takes energy and intelligence to keep a civilization going and both are in short supply.
The Yuga Cycle is appealing because it explains the decay and turmoil we see around us and because it suggests that things will change for the better as the cycle turns once again. Unfortunately, these cycles are so long that they don't really have any meaning for the human race in general, never mind individuals. The Kali Yuga is supposed to have started around 3000 BC and they say it will last for 432,000 years, almost half a million years. Considering the fact that only 5000 years or so have passed since the Kali Yuga started, we've got a long way to go.
Note: Many cultures have legends about a mythical Golden Age and a subsequent fall from grace. For instance, "Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value." (Wikipedia)
"In Hinduism, bhang(1) is associated with Lord Shiva, a popular deity who is often regarded as the religion’s supreme god. Some passages in ancient Hindu scriptures describe a plant with spiritual properties that Shiva discovered and brought down from the heavens for humans to consume. Shiva is often depicted with a chillum, or smoking pipe." Source: The Atlantic (2014).
(1) "In India, Cannabis Indica has been used for literally thousands of years in the worship of the god Shiva. Cannabis is used in an orally administered form called bhang which can be either the wet resinous leaves formed into pills of a drink made of milk, cannabis, and various spices consumed by worshipers of Shiva on festival days or by smoking the flowering buds of cannabis -- a practice generally reserved for holy men who dedicate their lives to ascetic practice and the worship of Shiva." --"Shiva, Lord of Bhang," PubMed.
"Cannabis has a long history in India, veiled in legends and religion. The earliest mention of cannabis has been found in The Vedas, or sacred Hindu texts. These writings may have been compiled as early as 2000 to 1400 B.C. According to The Vedas, cannabis was one of five sacred plants and a guardian angel lived in its leaves." Source: Psychology Today (2011).
"During the Hindu festival of Holi, people consume bhang which contains cannabis flowers. According to one description, when the amrita (elixir of life) was produced from the churning of the ocean by the devas and the asuras as described in the Samudra manthan, Shiva created cannabis from his own body to purify the elixir (whence, for cannabis, the epithet angaja or 'body-born'). Another account suggests that the cannabis plant sprang up when a drop of the elixir dropped on the ground. Thus, cannabis is used by sages due to association with elixir and Shiva." (Wikipedia)
"In the Ancient Near East, temple women, of whom one class was called qadištu, probably served as sacred prostitutes. Sometimes dedicated by their fathers to the deity, they had special statutes, and provisions were made for them by law (Code of Hammurapi). Customs connected with them are likely to underlie Herodotus' lurid and misleading statement that in Babylon every woman was to serve once as a sacred prostitute before getting married, thus sacrificing her virginity to the goddess Mylitta (Ishtar) ... In Israel the sacred prostitutes were condemned for their connection with idolatry. Deuteronomy 23:18–19 forbids Israelites, men and women alike, to become sacred prostitutes, and states that their wages must not be used for paying vows." Source: Jewish Virtual Library.
Astarte is the Greek name of the very ancient Mesopotamian goddess, Ishtar. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Ishtar was the "goddess of love and war, variously described as [the] daughter of Sin (moon god) or of Anu (sky god) with various attributes according to different city traditions." All of Ishtar's temples, according to the OCD, were probably "centers for cult prostitution of various kinds."
Some modern scholars believe that sacred prostitution, as an institution, never actually existed, but it seems like it must have occurred in one form or another or it wouldn't have been mentioned in all the various sources. If it did exist, however, it probably wasn't as widespread as previously believed. Herodotus' account, for instance, must be an exaggeration. It's hard to believe that every woman in Babylon had to serve once as a temple prostitute before getting married. If that was true, then the temples would have been swarming with them.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), "sacred prostitution is a strictly modern, not ancient, term and misleading in that it transfers to the institution, or rather a variety of institutions, an adjective [sacred] which in ancient sources denotes only the status of the personnel involved (sometimes also their earnings, which likewise became sacred on dedication.)." I've read this two or three times now and I'm still not sure what it means. If a prostitute is considered sacred and her earnings are dedicated to a god, then isn't she a "sacred prostitute" by definition? The term may be modern, but how is it misleading?
Sacred prostitution is apparently still practiced in parts of India.
This is the Karni Mata Temple, aka the Temple of Rats, in Rajasthan, India. According to Wikipedia, the Hindu temple to the deity / female warrior sage, Karni Mata, is famous for "the approximately 25,000 black rats that live, and are revered, in the temple. These holy rats are called kabbas, and many people travel great distances to pay their respects. The temple draws visitors from across the country for blessings, as well as curious tourists from around the world." There are also a few white rats living there and they are considered to be "manifestations of Karni Mata herself and her four sons." This makes the white rats ultra-holy.
The videos above show various food offerings made to the rats at the temple. In the top video, one worshiper is shown drinking straight from a bowl of milk set out for the sacred vermin. He claims that this is good for his health even though the milk is full of rat droppings. And this kind of lunatic behavior isn't unusual:
"The rodents move freely within the temple and can be seen eating from a huge metal bowl of milk and grains, placed there daily by devotees." Source: Daily Mail (2014).
"Small children can be seen playing and interacting with the rats - while scores of tourists flock there each day to catch a glimpse of the unique spectacle.
"Many visitors offer sweets and other candy to the vermin. The food nibbled by the rats is also considered holy and is sometimes consumed by a devotee - even if it has been half eaten by rodents."
Hindus believe that humans and animals are related through the cycles of reincarnation. We may have been animals in a previous life and we might end up coming back as animals in our next life, depending on our karma. "Humans and animals are believed to be one family and therefore, humans should treat all living creatures with respect and kindness." (Wikipedia)
Fine. I'm against animal abuse myself but worshiping rats, letting them run wild and sharing their food is flat-out disgusting. This temple is a major health hazard:
"Rats serve as outstanding vectors for transmittance of diseases because they can carry bacteria and viruses in their systems. A number of bacterial diseases are common to rats, and these include Streptococcus pneumoniae[causes pneumonia and meningitis in children and the elderly], Corynebacterium kutsheri,Bacillus piliformis [has been known to cause Tyzzer's disease in humans], Pasteurella pneumotropica, and Streptobacillus moniliformis, to name a few. All of these bacteria are disease causing agents in humans. In some cases, these diseases are incurable." (Wikipedia)
As far as I can tell, rodents are only worshiped in India. It's strange to think that this sacred animal is also responsible for wreaking havoc in the country:
"Twice a century, India is attacked by huge rat armies that devour crops in massive destructive waves and leave people without any food. Scientists long dismissed it as an urban myth...until they discovered that it really happens, and why." Source: Gizmodo (2010).
This is a weird situation. On the one hand, rats are worshiped in India; on the other hand, the country is carrying out pest control measures designed to keep the rat population under control, if not eradicate them altogether. Every fifty years these rat swarms wipe out crops, cause widespread famine and "wreak havoc on the entire ecosystem." (Gizmodo) This periodic disaster is called Mautum and it causes serious problems:
"Mautam (Mizo for 'bamboo death') is a cyclic ecological phenomenon that occurs every 48–50 years in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, which are 30% covered by wild bamboo forests, as well as Chin State in Myanmar, particularly Hakha, Thantlang, Falam, Paletwa, and Matupi Towships. It begins with a rat population boom, which in turn creates a widespread famine in those areas." (Wikipedia)
As nasty as it is, the Temple of Rats at least serves a religious purpose. In the West a lot of people keep rats as pets and prattle on about how adorable they are. This is also kind of crazy, but at least these people don't eat and drink out of their rats' food bowls. Maybe I'm just being narrow-minded about this, but as far as I'm concerned rats aren't just unhygienic; they're downright evil.
The best sources for reliable information about the true nature of rats can be found in the books of the noted rodent experts, James Herbert and H.P. Lovecraft. The next video, a news clip from 1982, shows the devastation caused by rats in the New York subway system. This is real footage. Some skeptics claim that the rats are just wiener dogs dressed up in rat costumes, but that's ridiculous.
Note: "In the first century B.C., India's artists, who had worked in the perishable media of brick, wood, thatch, and bamboo, adopted stone on a very wide scale. Stone railings and gateways, covered with relief sculptures, were added to stupas. Favorite themes were events from the historic life of the Buddha, as well as from his previous lives, which were believed to number 550. The latter tales are called jatakasand often include popular legends adapted to Buddhist teachings." Source: "Buddhism and Buddhist Art," The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This was a thriving trade. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), "the principal imports [from India] to Rome were perfumes, spices (especially pepper), gems, ivory, pearls, Indian textiles, and Chinese silk. The Romans exported linen, coral, glass, base metals, 'Arretine' tableware, wine in amphorae, etc., and also sent large quantities of gold and silver (and later copper) coins, of which large hoards have been found in south Indian and the eastern Deccan as well as some clay bullae ('amulets') of Roman coins."
The Romans seem to have been importing mostly luxury items from India. Payments in coin would have caused a significant outflow of money from the Roman economy. The effect on the monetary system must have played a role in the periodic attempts by Roman emperors such as Augustus to discourage excessive luxury spending by the aristocracy. This would have been difficult to do, however, because such spending was a sign of status among the Romans.
The Roman trade with India began to decline after around 200 AD when "communications with India passed into the hands of intermediaries (Arabians, Axumites[1], Sasanid Persians), and India again became a land of fable to the Mediterranean world." (OCD)
[1] "The Kingdom of Aksum, also known as the Kingdom of Axum or the Aksumite Empire, was an ancient kingdom centered in what is now Eritrea and the Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia." (Wikipedia) The strategically important Aksum was heavily involved in the ivory trade and controlled both banks of the Red Sea near its outlet into the Indian Ocean. All the sea traffic between Rome and India would have had to pass through the kingdom's zone of influence.
"On the shores of the Bay of Bengal, bathed in the rays of the rising sun, the [13th cent. Hindu] temple at Konarak [aka Konark] is a monumental representation of the sun god Surya's chariot; its 24 wheels are decorated with symbolic designs and it is led by a team of six horses. Built in the 13th century, it is one of India's most famous Brahman sanctuaries." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.
According to Myoksha, a provider of pilgrimage tours and temple guides in India, "Konark Temple was referred to as 'Black Pagoda' by European travelers sailing the shores of the Arabian sea. It was so called maybe because of its dark colour due to continuous plastering and subsequent blackening of the surface over many centuries as mentioned by S.P Gupta in his book 'Temples in India'. It may also be that some European scholars believed that the exceptionally frank eroticism [next video] of many of the Konark sculptures has given it the name 'Black Pagoda'."
"The Sun Temple at Konarak was built in about 1250 AD by the East Ganga king Narasimhadeva, It is thought he built the temple to commemorate military successes against Muslim invaders." Source: Sacred Destinations.
"According to local legend, the temple has a great aura of power that comes from two very powerful magnets said to have been built into the tower - magnets that allowed the king's throne to hover in mid-air."
This magnetic aura could also be the reason for the name "Black Pagoda:"
"European mariners sailing off the coast used the temple's tower for navigation, but dubbed it the Black Pagoda for the frequent shipwrecks that occurred along the coast. They attributed the disasters to the legendary magnets' effect on the tidal pattern." (Sacred Destinations)
This is a magnificent temple, but King Narasimhadeva should be especially remembered for the fact that he "defeated the Muslim forces of Bengal who were constantly posing a threat to the Eastern Ganga dynasty's rule over Odisha [ancient Utkala], and because he was "one the few rulers in India who took the offensive against the Islamic expansion over India..." (Wikipedia)
Narasimhadeva should receive the same respect that we give to Charles Martel in the West.
There was a big market in Rome for luxury goods from India and the East, but overland trade and travel to India was obstructed by the Arabs until Augustus came to power. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD 3rd ed. revised), "the Arab obstruction was removed by the great appetite of Rome for eastern luxuries in the prosperous days of Augustus, and by the discovery of open-sea routes from Aden to India. In the 1st cent. BC, or soon after, observation of the monsoon encouraged mid-ocean routes leading to various points on the western coast [of India] where settlements were subsequently established."
Roman trade with India was extensive. "In Augustus' day 120 ships sailed to India every year, and under his early successors the drain on Roman money to pay for Indian imports caused occasional anxiety..." (OCD) "...The principle imports to Rome were perfumes, spices (especially pepper), gems, ivory, pearls, Indian textiles, and Chinese silk."
The main trade was apparently with the Pandya kingdoms on the west coast of India. Evidence for this trade is still being uncovered today. For example, in 2015, The Hindu reported that "an excavation in Keezhadi, Sivaganga district, has thrown up a wealth of information on the flourishing Pandya trade with the west." The excavation can be viewed in this June 2016 video (no English version available).
The whole area of Roman contacts with India is difficult to research because of the language barrier. The next video's a good example. The slides are fantastic, but the speaker's hard to understand and the closed-captions are a joke.
Notes: "For almost a decade, Alexander the Great and his army swept across Western Asia and into Egypt, defeating King Darius III and the Persians at the battles of River Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela. Next, despite the objections of the loyal army who had been with him since leaving Macedonia in 334 BCE, he turned his attention southward towards India. It was there, in 326 BCE, that he would achieve what many would consider as his last major victory, the Battle of Hydaspes (in modern Pakistan)." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia. (In the next video, Alexander's forces are in blue. The red circles represent war elephants).
The invasion was brutal. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "Alexander moved into India at the invitation of the local dynasts of the Kabul Valley and Punjab. He was nothing loath to reaffirm the traditional Achaemenid [Persian] claims to the Indus lands. Resistance was treated as rebellion, and his progress through Bajaur and Swat was marked by massacre and destruction ... Even the remote rock-fortress of Aornus (Pir-sar) was reduced by siege at the cost of prodigious hardship, to demonstrate that there was no escape from his dominion."
At the time of Alexander's invasion, very little was known about the Indian subcontinent. According to the OCD, the country "remained a land of fable and wonders; it was believed to lie in the farthest east, yet Indians were confused with Ethiopians." Alexander pushed his army too far when he decided to add India to his already gigantic empire and a mutiny forced him to abandon the effort. He lost a lot of men crossing the Gedrosian desert and finally made it back to Babylon, where he either died from disease or was poisoned.
Alexander's empire quickly fell apart after his death, but his invasion of India increased the West's knowledge of that mysterious country. According to the OCD, "The conquests of Alexander the Great brought more accurate knowledge of NW India as far as the river Hyphasis (Beas) and vague information about the Ganges valley and Sri Lanka; and the voyage of Nearchus [the navarch commanding Alexander's fleet during the return] reopened a sea connection with the Persian Gulf."
The Kali Yuga
Most writers use the term Kali Yuga to mean "end times" or the "last days," but technically this isn't accurate. The Hindus see Time as a cycle of four ages or Yugas known as the Yuga Cycle. The other three periods are called the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga and the Dvapara Yuga, and they all go spinning around like a cosmic ferris wheel. So the Kali Yuga isn't the end of the world. It's just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.
The Yuga Cycle describes a fall from grace--a loss of enlightenment. The first age, the Satya Yuga, is a golden age of supreme goodness when the gods rule and the average human lifespan is thousands of years long, but, like the Garden of Eden, it's all downhill from there. The other Yugas follow in order, the gods withdraw, the situation deteriorates and bottoms out with the Kali Yuga, then the whole thing starts all over again. Time is a circle--an infinite, recurring progression of Yugas in which the gods advance and retreat like the tides or the phases of the moon.
Now, this is good stuff and very ancient, but is it an accurate description of reality? That probably sounds like a strange question to ask. The Yuga Cycle is a symbolic, mythical cosmology based on the Hindu concepts of samsara, karmic cycles, rebirth, reincarnation and cyclic change. Taking it literally misses the point, but is it possible that Time is actually circular? Does the Yuga Cycle or at least its concept of Time have some basis in fact? Personally, I think the idea of circular Time is more interesting than the linear Christian view of history as moving in a straight line from Creation to Apocalypse, but I don't see any evidence that the universe actually runs in cycles like this.
Time is a one-way thing. The future changes into the present which changes into the past in an infinite stream of Becoming. There are cycles in nature, but they're more like recurring patterns with thousands of variations and they never repeat themselves in exactly the same way. The fossil evidence shows a gradual evolution from the simple to the complex punctuated by catastrophes, mass extinctions and sudden bursts of new life forms like the Cambrian Explosion. If there are cycles in nature, they are cycles of chaos in the mathematical sense. The gods of this world are fractals and strange attractors.
Human history repeats itself, but only in the sense that high cultures are subject to universal laws of growth and decay as described, for instance, by Oswald Spengler. Personally, I think there's a good argument that civilization in general has deteriorated over the last two thousand years, but I'm more inclined to blame it on the Second Law of Thermodynamics than the Yuga Cycle. Entropy and chaos are the natural state of things and organized systems tend to deteriorate over time. It takes energy and intelligence to keep a civilization going and both are in short supply.
The Yuga Cycle is appealing because it explains the decay and turmoil we see around us and because it suggests that things will change for the better as the cycle turns once again. Unfortunately, these cycles are so long that they don't really have any meaning for the human race in general, never mind individuals. The Kali Yuga is supposed to have started around 3000 BC and they say it will last for 432,000 years, almost half a million years. Considering the fact that only 5000 years or so have passed since the Kali Yuga started, we've got a long way to go.
Note: Many cultures have legends about a mythical Golden Age and a subsequent fall from grace. For instance, "Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value." (Wikipedia)
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