Tag: Himalayas

Ayurveda

Ayurveda

As per W.H.O.about 21000 plants have got
medicinal values.Among them about 300
plants are in India.Nearly 70% of the rural
people of India depend upon these medicinal
plants to get relief from their ailments. India
especially the Himalayas have got an
unparalleled collection of these medicinal
plants

Mystic Saraswati River Himalayas

Mystic Saraswati River Himalayas

Refer Wikipedia:-Saraswathi River

Sarasvati River
The Sarasvati River (Sanskrit : सरस्वती नदी sárasvatī nadī) is one of the chief Rigvedic rivers mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts.

The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda (10.75) mentions the
Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later Vedic texts like Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas as well as the Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.

The goddess Sarasvati was originally a personification of this river, but later developed an independent identity and gained meaning.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Triveni Sangamam
Recent Hindu belief is that still
Saraswati river flows underground and meets Yamuna and Ganga at their confluence in Prayag (Allahabad)
—————————————
Refer Wikipedia Saraswathi Vedic River >

Sarasvatī is an exact cognate with
Avestan Harax vatī , perhaps
originally referring to Arədvī Sūrā
Anāhitā (modern Ardwisur Anahid ), the Zoroastrian mythological world river, which would point to a common Indo- Iranian myth of a cosmic or mystical Sáras-vat-ī river.
In the younger Avesta, Harax v atī is Arachosia , a region described to be rich in rivers, and its Old Persian cognate Harauvati , which gave its name to the present-day Hārūt River in Afghanistan , may have
referred to the entire Helmand drainage basin (the center of Arachosia).
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Vedic period
The Sarasvati River is mentioned in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda .
RV 6 .61, RV 7 .95 and RV 7 .96.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

in Rig Veda V 2 .41.16 she is called
ámbitame nádītame dévitame
sárasvati, “best mother, best river,
best goddess”.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
The Sarasvati is mentioned in 13 hymns of the late books (1 and 10) of the Rigveda.
Only two of these references are unambiguously to the river: 10.64.9, calling for the aid of three “great rivers”, Sindhu, Sarasvati and Sarayu; and 10.75.5, the geographical list of the Nadistuti sukta.

According to the Mahabharata , theSarasvati dried up in a desert (at a place named Vinasana or
Adarsana); after having disappeared in the desert, reappears in some
places; and joins the sea
“impetuously”.
MB.3.81.115 locates
Kurukshetra to the south of the
Sarasvati and north of the Drishadvati.

Dried up seasonal Ghaggar River in
Rajasthan and haryana reflects the
same geographical view as described in Mahabharata .

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

A new study titled,‘Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan
civilisation’, has concluded that the
Indus Valley Civilisation died out
because the monsoons which fed therivers that supported the civilisation,bmigrated to the east.

With the rivers drying out as a result, the civilisation collapsed some 4000 years ago. The
study was conducted by a team of
scientists from the US, the UK, India, Pakistan and Romania between 2003 and 2008. While the new finding puts to rest, at least for the moment, other theories of the civilisation’s demise, such as the shifting course of rivers
due to tectonic changes or a fatal
foreign invasion, it serves to strengthen the premise that the civilisation that we refer to as the Indus Valley Civilisation was largely located on the banks of and
in the proximity of the Saraswati river. More than 70 per cent of the sites that have been discovered to contain archaeological material dating to this civilisation’s period are located on the banks of the mythological — and now
dried out — river. As experts have been repeatedly pointing out, nearly 2,000 of the 3,000 sites excavated so far are located outside the Indus belt that
gives the civilisation its name.
According to experts who have studied the map of all relevant undergroundchannels that are intact to date and
connected once upon a time with the river, the Saraswati was probably 1500 km long and 3–15 km wide.

The latest study, whose findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, too is clear on the river’s existence and its
role in sustaining the ancient
civilisation. The report said that the
Saraswati was “not Himalayan-fed by a perennial monsoon-supported water course.” It added that the rivers in the region (including Saraswati) were “indeed sizeable and highly active.”
The Union Water Resources Ministry had then quoted in writing the conclusion of a study jointly conducted by scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation, Jodhpur, and the Rajasthan Government’s Ground Water
Department, published in the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing.
Besides other things, the authors hadsaid that “clear signals of palaeo-nchannels on the satellite imagery in the form of a strong and powerful continuous drainage system in the North West region and occurrence of archaeological sites of pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan age, beyond doubt indicate the existence of
a mighty palaeo-drainage system of Vedic Saraswati river in this region…
The description and magnanimity of these channels also matches with the  river Saraswati described in the Vedas .

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
The Sarasvati River of late Vedic and post-Vedic times is generally identified with the Ghaggar River. But the implication of a river of substantially greater volume makes the same identification of the early Vedic references problematic: either the Ghaggar was a more powerful river in earlier times, or the early VedicSarasvati was located elsewhere.
According to Hindu scriptures, a journey was made during the Mahabharata by Balrama along the banks of theSaraswati from Dwarka to Mathura.

There were ancient kingdoms too (the era of the Mahajanapads) that lay in parts of north Rajasthan and that were named on the Saraswati River. This gives some logic to the theory of Ghaggar-Hakkar being the ancient Saraswati.
During the Pleistocene period the
Himalayan mountains were under glacial cover and climate was fluctuating between glacial and interglacial phases.

Around 40,000 yrs BC, the present Thar Desert enjoyed wet climate and greenery. Mythological River Saraswati/ Vedic Saraswati (also known as Saraswati Nadi, Saraswati Nala, Sarsuti
and Chautang in certain places,
variously spelt as Sarasvati) is believed to have flowed during 6000–3000 BC
from the melting glaciers of Garhwal Himalaya to Arabian Sea through the Thar Desert1,2. Several researchers agree about the existence of palaeochannels2. According to the Ground Water Cell of Haryana, a large number of water wells fall on these
palaeochannels and their lithology is coarse sand/gravel of riverine nature.
Now palaeochannels exhibit
discontinuous drainage.
Geomorphological and tectonic studyof drainage of northern Haryana wasdiscussed by Thussu3 and Virdi et al.4.
A good compilation of researches
covering various aspects of Saraswati isavailable in Valdiya5 and also posted by him at http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/
The_Saraswati_was_a_Major_River.pdf
°°°°°`°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

References
Bryant, Edwin (2001). The Quest for
the Origins of Vedic Culture . Oxford
University Press.
ISBN 0-19-513777-9 .
Gupta, S.P. (ed.). 1995. The lost
Saraswati and the Indus Civilization.
Kusumanjali Prakashan, Jodhpur.
Hock, Hans (1999) Through a Glass
Darkly: Modern “Racial”
Interpretations vs. Textual and General
Prehistoric Evidence on Arya and
Dasa/Dasyu in Vedic Indo-Aryan
Society.” in Aryan and Non-Aryan in
South Asia, ed. Bronkhorst &
Deshpande, Ann Arbor.
Keith and Macdonell. 1912. Vedic
Index of Names and Subjects.
Kochhar, Rajesh, ‘On the identity
and chronology of the Ṛgvedic river
Sarasvatī’ in Archaeology and
Language III; Artefacts, languages
and texts, Routledge (1999), ISBN
0-415-10054-2 .
Lal, B.B. 2002. The Saraswati Flows
on: the Continuity of Indian Culture.
New Delhi: Aryan Books International
Oldham, R.D. 1893. The Sarsawati
and the Lost River of the Indian
Desert. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society. 1893. 49-76.
Puri, VKM, and Verma, BC,
Glaciological and Geological Source
of Vedic Sarasvati in the Himalayas,
New Delhi, Itihas Darpan, Vol. IV,
No.2, 1998 [1]
Radhakrishna, B.P. and Merh, S.S.
(editors): Vedic Saraswati:
Evolutionary History of a Lost River of
Northwestern India (1999) Geological
Society of India (Memoir 42),
Bangalore. Review (on page 3)
Review
Shaffer, Jim G. (1995). Cultural
tradition and Palaeoethnicity in
South Asian Archaeology . In: Indo-
Aryans of Ancient South Asia. Ed.
George Erdosy.. ISBN 3-11-014447-6 .
S. G. Talageri, The RigVeda – A
Historical Analysis chapter 4
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

There is a book available that goes
further into the details of the Saravati river research, ‘New Discoveries About Vedic
Sarasvati’ written by Dr Ravi Prakash Arya.
He is the Chief Editor of Vedic Sciencejournal.Stephen Knap>>

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

The Miracle River is [was] broadcast at 3.30pm on Saturday 29 June, 2002 on BBC
Radio 4
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/
south_asia/newsid_2073000/2073159.stm
°°°°°°°°`°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Mystic Saraswati River Himalayas

Mystic Saraswati River Himalayas

Refer Wikipedia:-Saraswathi River

Sarasvati River
The Sarasvati River (Sanskrit : सरस्वती नदी sárasvatī nadī) is one of the chief Rigvedic rivers mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts.

The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda (10.75) mentions the
Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later Vedic texts like Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas as well as the Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.

The goddess Sarasvati was originally a personification of this river, but later developed an independent identity and gained meaning.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Triveni Sangamam
Recent Hindu belief is that still
Saraswati river flows underground and meets Yamuna and Ganga at their confluence in Prayag (Allahabad)
—————————————
Refer Wikipedia Saraswathi Vedic River >

Sarasvatī is an exact cognate with
Avestan Harax vatī , perhaps
originally referring to Arədvī Sūrā
Anāhitā (modern Ardwisur Anahid ), the Zoroastrian mythological world river, which would point to a common Indo- Iranian myth of a cosmic or mystical Sáras-vat-ī river.
In the younger Avesta, Harax v atī is Arachosia , a region described to be rich in rivers, and its Old Persian cognate Harauvati , which gave its name to the present-day Hārūt River in Afghanistan , may have
referred to the entire Helmand drainage basin (the center of Arachosia).
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Vedic period
The Sarasvati River is mentioned in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda .
RV 6 .61, RV 7 .95 and RV 7 .96.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

in Rig Veda V 2 .41.16 she is called
ámbitame nádītame dévitame
sárasvati, “best mother, best river,
best goddess”.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
The Sarasvati is mentioned in 13 hymns of the late books (1 and 10) of the Rigveda.
Only two of these references are unambiguously to the river: 10.64.9, calling for the aid of three “great rivers”, Sindhu, Sarasvati and Sarayu; and 10.75.5, the geographical list of the Nadistuti sukta.

According to the Mahabharata , theSarasvati dried up in a desert (at a place named Vinasana or
Adarsana); after having disappeared in the desert, reappears in some
places; and joins the sea
“impetuously”.
MB.3.81.115 locates
Kurukshetra to the south of the
Sarasvati and north of the Drishadvati.

Dried up seasonal Ghaggar River in
Rajasthan and haryana reflects the
same geographical view as described in Mahabharata .

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

A new study titled,‘Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan
civilisation’, has concluded that the
Indus Valley Civilisation died out
because the monsoons which fed therivers that supported the civilisation,bmigrated to the east.

With the rivers drying out as a result, the civilisation collapsed some 4000 years ago. The
study was conducted by a team of
scientists from the US, the UK, India, Pakistan and Romania between 2003 and 2008. While the new finding puts to rest, at least for the moment, other theories of the civilisation’s demise, such as the shifting course of rivers
due to tectonic changes or a fatal
foreign invasion, it serves to strengthen the premise that the civilisation that we refer to as the Indus Valley Civilisation was largely located on the banks of and
in the proximity of the Saraswati river. More than 70 per cent of the sites that have been discovered to contain archaeological material dating to this civilisation’s period are located on the banks of the mythological — and now
dried out — river. As experts have been repeatedly pointing out, nearly 2,000 of the 3,000 sites excavated so far are located outside the Indus belt that
gives the civilisation its name.
According to experts who have studied the map of all relevant undergroundchannels that are intact to date and
connected once upon a time with the river, the Saraswati was probably 1500 km long and 3–15 km wide.

The latest study, whose findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, too is clear on the river’s existence and its
role in sustaining the ancient
civilisation. The report said that the
Saraswati was “not Himalayan-fed by a perennial monsoon-supported water course.” It added that the rivers in the region (including Saraswati) were “indeed sizeable and highly active.”
The Union Water Resources Ministry had then quoted in writing the conclusion of a study jointly conducted by scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation, Jodhpur, and the Rajasthan Government’s Ground Water
Department, published in the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing.
Besides other things, the authors hadsaid that “clear signals of palaeo-nchannels on the satellite imagery in the form of a strong and powerful continuous drainage system in the North West region and occurrence of archaeological sites of pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan age, beyond doubt indicate the existence of
a mighty palaeo-drainage system of Vedic Saraswati river in this region…
The description and magnanimity of these channels also matches with the  river Saraswati described in the Vedas .

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
The Sarasvati River of late Vedic and post-Vedic times is generally identified with the Ghaggar River. But the implication of a river of substantially greater volume makes the same identification of the early Vedic references problematic: either the Ghaggar was a more powerful river in earlier times, or the early VedicSarasvati was located elsewhere.
According to Hindu scriptures, a journey was made during the Mahabharata by Balrama along the banks of theSaraswati from Dwarka to Mathura.

There were ancient kingdoms too (the era of the Mahajanapads) that lay in parts of north Rajasthan and that were named on the Saraswati River. This gives some logic to the theory of Ghaggar-Hakkar being the ancient Saraswati.
During the Pleistocene period the
Himalayan mountains were under glacial cover and climate was fluctuating between glacial and interglacial phases.

Around 40,000 yrs BC, the present Thar Desert enjoyed wet climate and greenery. Mythological River Saraswati/ Vedic Saraswati (also known as Saraswati Nadi, Saraswati Nala, Sarsuti
and Chautang in certain places,
variously spelt as Sarasvati) is believed to have flowed during 6000–3000 BC
from the melting glaciers of Garhwal Himalaya to Arabian Sea through the Thar Desert1,2. Several researchers agree about the existence of palaeochannels2. According to the Ground Water Cell of Haryana, a large number of water wells fall on these
palaeochannels and their lithology is coarse sand/gravel of riverine nature.
Now palaeochannels exhibit
discontinuous drainage.
Geomorphological and tectonic studyof drainage of northern Haryana wasdiscussed by Thussu3 and Virdi et al.4.
A good compilation of researches
covering various aspects of Saraswati isavailable in Valdiya5 and also posted by him at http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/
The_Saraswati_was_a_Major_River.pdf
°°°°°`°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

References
Bryant, Edwin (2001). The Quest for
the Origins of Vedic Culture . Oxford
University Press.
ISBN 0-19-513777-9 .
Gupta, S.P. (ed.). 1995. The lost
Saraswati and the Indus Civilization.
Kusumanjali Prakashan, Jodhpur.
Hock, Hans (1999) Through a Glass
Darkly: Modern “Racial”
Interpretations vs. Textual and General
Prehistoric Evidence on Arya and
Dasa/Dasyu in Vedic Indo-Aryan
Society.” in Aryan and Non-Aryan in
South Asia, ed. Bronkhorst &
Deshpande, Ann Arbor.
Keith and Macdonell. 1912. Vedic
Index of Names and Subjects.
Kochhar, Rajesh, ‘On the identity
and chronology of the Ṛgvedic river
Sarasvatī’ in Archaeology and
Language III; Artefacts, languages
and texts, Routledge (1999), ISBN
0-415-10054-2 .
Lal, B.B. 2002. The Saraswati Flows
on: the Continuity of Indian Culture.
New Delhi: Aryan Books International
Oldham, R.D. 1893. The Sarsawati
and the Lost River of the Indian
Desert. Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society. 1893. 49-76.
Puri, VKM, and Verma, BC,
Glaciological and Geological Source
of Vedic Sarasvati in the Himalayas,
New Delhi, Itihas Darpan, Vol. IV,
No.2, 1998 [1]
Radhakrishna, B.P. and Merh, S.S.
(editors): Vedic Saraswati:
Evolutionary History of a Lost River of
Northwestern India (1999) Geological
Society of India (Memoir 42),
Bangalore. Review (on page 3)
Review
Shaffer, Jim G. (1995). Cultural
tradition and Palaeoethnicity in
South Asian Archaeology . In: Indo-
Aryans of Ancient South Asia. Ed.
George Erdosy.. ISBN 3-11-014447-6 .
S. G. Talageri, The RigVeda – A
Historical Analysis chapter 4
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

There is a book available that goes
further into the details of the Saravati river research, ‘New Discoveries About Vedic
Sarasvati’ written by Dr Ravi Prakash Arya.
He is the Chief Editor of Vedic Sciencejournal.Stephen Knap>>

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

The Miracle River is [was] broadcast at 3.30pm on Saturday 29 June, 2002 on BBC
Radio 4
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/
south_asia/newsid_2073000/2073159.stm
°°°°°°°°`°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Mr.M Mumtaz Ali and SatSang Foundation – A new insight


Mumtaz Ali, otherwise known as m, is a greatly respected Vedanta teacher and spiritual mentor to thousands across the world.spiritual instructor and founder of Satsang Foundation.

http://satsang-foundation.org/

M’s spiritual journey is thrilling and began in the most mysterious way at age nine, when a strange being approached him in his home in Trivandrum, Kerala, and pronounced himself as his guru. Wearing a white loin cloth, the long-haired fair-skinned visitor told him that he would not meet him again for many years but that all means for his spiritual tuition would be provided. Sure enough, different people manifested at different stages in his life and led the boy, who by now had already attained the experience of inner bliss, onward. In his second year of college, he ran away to the Himalayas and in due course met his master, who he calls Babaji, once again.

Some Sayings Of Shri.M

1. Nobody disagrees that the soul’s dross, which is covered with impurities, has to be purified.

2.You can have some other kind of ego but you cannot drop the ego because you cannot function without it. Anyone who is functioning has to have a semblance of an ego. You have to say that I am, otherwise how can you function?

3.I have never seen anyone whose ego has totally gone. Especially the sanyasis, who have a stronger ego than ordinary people like you and me. I love Kabir. He said, I looked for evil and I could not find it anywhere. I looked within my heart and could not find any good there. How many of our so-called enlightened people are prepared to say that?

4.From my point of view, I am very careful about calling myself enlightened. First, one must realize one’s own limitations. The first step to self-realisation is to understand one’s own self. Where I stand. How do I relate to the world, how do I act in different circumstances, what are my motivations, above all. Unless we figure that out, we cannot get out of this. The person is slightly enlightened when one has learnt to see oneself as one is – not as the Supreme Being, but as one is. Then as one moves forward, and sees oneself in all one’s dimensions, relationships, networking, patterns, then perhaps there is a chance that it will fall. But it does not mean that one becomes totally egoless. I think there are good egos and bad.

5. I can see traces of ego in myself. – Sometimes I feel proud to have founded an institution. Sometimes, that thought does pop up. And there are times when people tell you, you are great, wonderful. I think all one’s life one has to watch this ego. If one lets go of this watchfulness then it is possible that one can get caught. One can get established in watchfulness. That is very important. My master used to say, it does not matter what people think about you. Let them think anything. That is watchfulness. The Upanishads also declare, he who thinks he know, knows not.

6. Eventually, after many adventures I reached Badrinath. While exploring around, I reached a place called Vyasa guha. A strange force rooted me to the spot and refused to let me go further. Taking this as a sign I walked in and met the man who I had last seen at age nine! He looked so much like Mahatvar Babaji.

He had long hair. He wore a big rudraksh, and carried a small kamandulam. I called him Babaji. He claimed, and I have no reason to doubt this, to be a close disciple of Mahavtar Babaji. I spent three-and-a-half years with him. He had no ashram, no banner, no organisation. He had two or three disciples who would come and meet him off and on.

Whatever I possess of spirituality I acquired during that time. I may have added on a few things since but the basic thing I got there. He broke something inside. Life became completely different. It’s both joyful and a crown of thorns. Your enjoyment is not confined to your own geographical location. You are overpowered by others’ happiness too.

7. But it is the same thing with sorrow. You deeply experience the sorrows of others. However, one has learnt that sorrow is not something to run away from. So that becomes an enjoyment in itself. A sweet sorrow. But it can be overpowering when someone feels very badly hurt. Then you want to do something about it.

8.You try to do something. To somehow get the sorrow out of the person. After this experience, there were very few prejudices left. There may be some but few. Therefore one sees very clearly. You say only what you feel. You don’t want to pretend because you have nothing to hide. Also, meditation becomes effortless. I learnt the kriya yoga from my master and that is what I teach my students. I also teach the Sri Vidya upasana. I initiate a few, but there are no number games.

9. The mind is quiet and peaceful. It is not a passive peace because I am always on the move. I am unruffled in most situations. Consciousness is steady and quiet. On this path there is no end. What we are seeking is infinite. But there is no incompletion. One is forever expanding. You can’t say it is ended. Ended means decay. Everyday, one sees a new aspect.