Echoes of Antiquity Unveiling Ancient Wisdom in Puranas PDF Download

Author: Olivia K
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788196837402
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Shantha N. Nair
Publisher: Pustak Mahal
ISBN: 8122310206
Category : Hindu philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The echoes of ancient Indian wisdom can be heard from the oldest of scriptures that existed many years ago. Even thousands of years before they were written down on palm leaves, the teachings were passed on from generations to generations, from the teachers to the disciples in their oral form. These works are amongst the oldest of humanity. They laid the foundation of one of the most tolerant and diverse religions in the world, the Sanatan Dharma or Hinduism, which is marked by a wide range of ethos and philosophical approaches. Covering the vastness and immensity of the ancient Indian scriptures is akin to capturing a gigantic ocean in a small pitcher. Thus, in this book, the author has tried to catch a few 'echoes' resonating with age-old wisdom and has presented them to the readers. the book unravels the knowledge hidden inside the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads of the Shruti that form the Vedas, and in the Smriti like Agamas, Dharma Shastras and so on. In short, it provides a glimpse, or rather a macro view of the ancient treasure of India.

Author: A. Leo Oppenheim
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022617767X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.

Author: Olivia Milburn
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Cherishing Antiquity describes the commemoration within Chinese literature and culture of the southern kingdom of Wu, which collapsed in 473 BCE. The sudden rise and tragic fall of Wu within the space of just over one century would inspire numerous memorials in and around the city of Suzhou, once the capital of this ancient kingdom. A variety of physical structures, including temples, shrines, steles, and other monuments, were erected in memory of key figures in the kingdom’s history. These sites inspired further literary representations in poetry and prose—musings on the exoticism, glamour, great wealth, and hideous end of the last king of Wu. Through an analysis first of the history of Wu as recorded in ancient Chinese texts and then of its literary legacy, Olivia Milburn illuminates the remarkable cultural endurance of this powerful but short-lived kingdom

Author: D D Kosambi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000653471
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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First published in 1965, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline is a strikingly original work, the first real cultural history of India. The main features of the Indian character are traced back into remote antiquity as the natural outgrowth of historical process. Did the change from food gathering and the pastoral life to agriculture make new religions necessary? Why did the Indian cities vanish with hardly a trace and leave no memory? Who were the Aryans – if any? Why should Buddhism, Jainism, and so many other sects of the same type come into being at one time and in the same region? How could Buddhism spread over so large a part of Asia while dying out completely in the land of its origin? What caused the rise and collapse of the Magadhan empire; was the Gupta empire fundamentally different from its great predecessor, or just one more ‘oriental despotism’? These are some of the many questions handled with great insight, yet in the simplest terms, in this stimulating work. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, South Asian studies and ethnic studies.

Author: Sister Nivedita
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Author: Steven Kossak
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 0870999923
Category : Art, South Asian
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Presents works of art selected from the South and Southeast Asian and Islamic collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, lessons plans, and classroom activities.

Author: Charles Johnston
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781495946530
Category : Hinduism
Languages : en
Pages : 806

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"The Upanishads ... are among the noblest and most inspired books in the world; in them, the whole of the Indian wisdom is already contained; later teachers could but expand and comment on them, but in no way departed from this original treasure of wisdom." ... "The Upanishads teach the wisdom of Atma, the Supreme Self of all beings; the same divine Life which Philo of Alexandria later called the Logos, the Divine Mind, the collective spiritual consciousness of our universe. They tell us that, while each of us may seem to be a wanderer and exile, lonely, desolate in our world of shadow and of sorrow, we are in reality neither alone nor desolate, but undivided, unseparated rays of the Universal Self, the Logos. What is needed to secure our immortality-an immortality which is still conditional, until this victory is won-is the realization of our oneness with the Supreme Self. The Upanishads show how, step by step, we may mount the golden stairs; they tell us what we must leave behind; what we must gain, as we tread the small, old path; what we must achieve; with the promise that we shall in the fullness of time be initiated into the fullness of that eternal, universal Supreme Self of all beings. "The whole aim of their teachings is this: to point the path by which the personal self may win immortality and divinity, by becoming united with the Higher Self, which always possessed immortality and divinity."-Charles Johnston The Upanishads are the ultimate classic of Indian Spirituality. In this volume the reader will find the heart and soul of India, the foundations of the Vedanta philosophy, the source-wisdom that was later embodied in the teachings of such exalted sages as Krishna, Badarayana, Gaudapada and Sankaracharya. Johnston has here translated and comments upon the complete text of the 10 principal (mukhya) Upanishads, the oldest and most profound of all Upanishadic texts. Originally printed in two theosophical magazines-The Oriental Department Papers & The Theosophical Quarterly-between the years 1892 and 1931, these translations and commentaries have finally been collected and organized into a single volume. In addition to these, several articles on the Indian wisdom Tradition are included, both to introduce the translations and to supplement them. The student will find Johnston's commentaries drawing comparisons and correspondences between the hidden wisdom of the Upanishads and the wisdom embodied by the world's religious traditions as well as the modern philosophies of Kant, Schopenhauer and others, and even to the modern sciences of physics and astronomy. These commentaries provide a bridge for students and researchers that will enhance their understanding of the deep and timeless wisdom of the sages of old. "Traces of the teachings which have become known to us as Theosophy are found in the records of all ancient religions in both hemispheres, but nowhere are these teachings so fully, lucidly and profoundly recorded as in the oldest Upanishads and this is true not only of large generalizations, like the doctrines of rebirth and liberation, but also of those more particular and recondite doctrines which come gradually to the knowledge of students who follow a special line of study and work. So that, in the Upanishads, we have an invaluable proof of the antiquity and authenticity of both general and particular doctrines, a guarantee at least three thousand years old, and, in all probability, very much older. And if the Upanishads lend this invaluable support to our modern teachings, it is, on the other hand, true, that without these modern teachings, much that is most profound and of greatest value in the Upanishads is hardly intelligible, so that one may read the ordinary translations without gaining any idea of the meaning, or even the presence, of those particular teachings which we have spoken of. It was, therefore, necessary to read and translate, the Upanishads, in the light of Theosophy."-Charles Johnston

Author: James Mill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hindus
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Author: Roberto Calasso
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141971819
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom the Paris Review has called 'a literary institution', explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas. Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left behind almost no objects, images, ruins. They created no empires. Even the hallucinogenic plant, the soma, which appears at the centre of some of their rituals, has not been identified with any certainty. Only a 'Parthenon of words' remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life. 'If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities,' writes Calasso, 'they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture.' This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos. With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that define the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, he shows how these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more than neuroscientists have been able to offer us up to now. Following the 'hundred paths' of the Satapatha Brahmana, an impressive exegesis of Vedic ritual, Ardor indicates that it may be possible to reach what is closest by passing through that which is most remote, as 'the whole of Vedic India was an attempt to think further'.