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The
Religious consequences of Defeat
The conquest of India by the Muslims and the establishment of
an Islamic state apparatus as an instrument of its propagation is
an experience that Hinduism has difficulty in handling even to
this day. Moreover, during this long period of Muslim Rule (ca.
1000-1858), the Hindus squandered many chances of regaining
control over their political destiny, so that the Hindus
had to face the religious consequences of not just defeat but also
demoralization. There are some parallels with the
Jewish experience. There was the
destruction not of the Temple but of temples, and a
kind of Hindu diaspora. Thus Alberuni
wrote: “Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of
the country conquered by us, and have fled to places when our
hands cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and other places.”
Sculptures
of Hindu Divinities: Shiva and Parvati at Ellora.
(image
source: History of
India - By A V Williams Jackson).
Refer
to chapter on Survarnabhumi
and Sacred
Angkor
***
But there was one marked contrast between Hindu and Jewish
experiences. While the Jews were scattered from their homeland, the
Hindus were subdued in their own homeland. The dominant
mood in the north was one of demoralization with the replacement
of the Hindu rule by the Muslim. Hindu learning centered on
Sanskrit received a setback, and the vacuum was filled at the
political level by Persian but at the popular level by the rise of
numerous regional languages.
South India emerged as the citadel
of Hinduism after the north had been overrun by the Muslims.
In the south, the Vijayanagar Empire (14th –17th
centuries), although it also finally succumbed to Muslim pressure,
held it at bay for a sufficiently long period of time to prevent
such fissures in the body politic arising in the south as led to
the formation of Pakistan and Bangladesh in the north.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the British
had established themselves in India with sufficient firmness to
permit missionary activity within their realm. The
victory of the British, and by proxy of Christianity, produced its
own chain of consequences. The fact that the British had defeated
both the Hindus and Muslims and now ruled over both could have
created an interesting consequence – uniting the two communities
in a common cause against the British/Christian enemy. The mutiny
against the British in 1857-1858 and the Gandhian movement in its
early phase raised such hopes, but they were never realized, for
the country was partitioned represented the religious consequence
of two defeats – at the hands of the Muslims as well as the
Christians.
On the whole it can be said that Hinduism fared better in its
encounter with Christianity than in its clash with Islam. Islamic
rule over the Hindus was longer (approximately 700
hundred years) and more successful in the sense that a
quarter of the Hindu population was converted to Islam.
One major religious consequence of the Christian presence in
India as a result of military defeat of the Hindus was the
projection of the Bhagavad Gita
as the central scripture of modern Hinduism within a century. One
would have expected such a development within Hinduism when it
faced the people with the book – the Muslims – but it was
curiously delayed until the encounter with another people of the
book – the Christians.
One
religious consequence of freedom - was the partition of the
country into India and Pakistan on religious grounds. While
Pakistan was conceptually created as a homeland for Indian
Muslims, India was not visualized as the homeland of the Hindus.
Thus a "theocratic" Pakistan and a secular India. This
development was further facilitated by the pluralistic nature of
Hinduism.
(source:
Our
Religions - edited Arvind Sharma p. 50-52).
Refer to Heroic
Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By
Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.
Mopla
Rebellion
B.
R. Ambedkar
wrote, in his book, Thoughts
on Pakistan:
“Beginning
with the year 1920 there occurred ... in Malabar what is known as
the Mopla Rebellion. It was a result of the agitation carried out
by two Muslim organisations, Khuddam-i-Kaba and the Central
Khilafat Committee.
The
agitations actually preached the doctrine that India under the
British government was Dar-ul-Harab and that the Muslims must
fight against it and if they could not, they must carry out the
alternative principle of Hijrat.”
The
rebellion against the British found ready victims in Hindus.
In
Ambedkar’s words: “The Hindus were visited by a dire fate at
the hands of the Moplas. Massacres, forcible conversions,
desecration of temples, foul outrages upon women, such as ripping
open pregnant women, pillage, arson and destruction — in short,
all the accompaniments of brutal and unrestrained barbarism, were
perpetrated freely by the Moplas upon the Hindus… The number of
Hindus who were killed, wounded or converted is not known. But the
number must have been enormous.”
(source:
Writings
and Speeches - By B R Ambedkar
Volume 8 p. 163). Refer
to Heroic
Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By
Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.
Top of Page
Conclusion
When
elites eschew defense: The case of India - By Ed Katz
How
the loss of Kshatriya virtues, and in the last century, the rise
of Gandhian cowardice, have hurt Hindus.
The
blood from the innocent victims was barely dry when journalists
published articles,
not about the vicious killers, but about the dangers of a
"rightward tilt" in
India
.
Refer
to the
Islamic terrorist attack - November 2008 in Mumbai in chapter
under Glimpses XXI.
***
The
"progressive" Western press disparages Hindu warriors as
dangerous right wingers, thus betraying their bottomless naiveté
concerning
India
's aggressive Muslim neighbors, past and present.
Bharat
Mata, or "Mother India," the birthplace of the glorious
Upanishads
as well as Prince Siddhartha, has been sucker punched by 21st
century monsters. The blood from
the innocent victims was barely dry when journalists
published articles,
not about the vicious killers, but about the dangers of a
"rightward tilt" in
India
. The rise of Hindu nationalism however began as a response
to a perceived lack of "manliness" in the Hindu warrior
the result of which was an open door to centuries of foreign
persecution and terror in
India
.
When
explaining the "root" causes of the massacre in Mumbai
we will hear plenty in the coming weeks about disaffected Muslims
living in
India
, or about the menacing American war on terror, or about the
situation in
Kashmir
.
What the literati in the media will probably
miss however is a profound and paradoxical thread stitched into
the very fabric of Hindu culture: what does it means to be a
"man?"
In other
words, is the true "male" the Kshatriya
caste warrior or the Brahmin
caste renunciant? Was it the Hindu patriot and warrior-hero Shivaji
Bhosle, the 17th century equivalent to
Scotland
's William
Wallace, who organized the first successful guerilla campaign
against Muslim rule in
India
? Or is the "real man" the gentle, transnational
and priestly archetype embodied in figures such as Mohandas
Gandhi, who renounces violence in the name of universal love?
Simply put,
Hinduism's masculinity crisis is deeply embedded in its social
structure, in its ancient texts, and in the language of modern
Hindu nationalists such as Swami Vivekenanda
and Lala
Lajpat Rai. Both men would have identified the
complexities of caste as the "root cause" of over 800
years of Muslim and then British rule in
India
. That is, when searching for the reasons why Hindus have
been traditionally defenseless in the face of foreign invaders
Hindu nationalists tend to see their own
culture and traditions as the culprit. Beginning with
British rule in the early 18th century, Hindu
nationalists began some serious soul searching concerning their
inability to protect Mother India from subjugation.
Lala
Lajpat Rai (1865-1928)
freedom fighter spoke for many Hindus when he speculated back in
1907:
"A question that has often haunted us,
asleep or awake, as to why is it that notwithstanding the presence
among us of great, vigorous, and elevating truths, and of the very
highest conception of morality, we Hindus have been a subject
race, held down for so many centuries by sets of people who were
neither physically nor spiritually nor even intellectually so
superior to us as to demand our subjugation."
Trying
to explain why a handful of foreigners coming from six thousand
miles away in
England
could become
India
's masters became the focus of an intense amount of scholarly
activity among Hindu intellectuals. Profound thinkers like Aurobindo
Ghose, India's greatest
20th century philosopher, argued that the
"ascetic ideal" etched into Hindu identity became
oppressively "top heavy" in India and smothered the more
warlike themes in Hindu tradition and culture.
(source:
When
elites eschew defense: The case of India - By Ed Katz - americanthinker.com).
Koenraad Elst,
Belgian scholar has rightly pointed out:
"The real harm done
to Hinduism and Hindu society (by the Islamic onslaught) is not the
loss of stone structure, which are but the outermost layer of the real
harm done to Hindu society. There has been a loss of vast territories
- they may be claimed back, but that would hardly be any less superficial. Far
more fundamental is the moral damage that has been
done: the loss of self confidence, the unprecedented and harsh enmity
within Hindu society (internal enmity and bitterness typically occurs in
powerless groups), the boot-licking attitude among the
Hindu intelligentsia, the negative self-image. The moral damage again
is partly due to a loss of knowledge and memory: the Hindu educational system
has been destroyed, and the Hindus are helpless in the face of concerted efforts
to disinform them and destroy their soul."
(source: Ayodhya
and After - By Koenraad Elst Voice of India SKU: INBK2650
p. 21).
Top of Page
Articles
The
Invasion of India by the Muslim Hoards
By Dr. Babasaheb
Ambedkar
Historically, Pakistan was part of India when Chandragupta
was the ruler; it continued to be part of India when Hsuan Tsang, the Chinese
pilgrim, visited India in the 7th century A.D. In his diary, Hsuan
Tsang has recorded that India was divided into five divisions.
(* The writers of the Puranas divided India into nine
divisions). It is also true that when Hsuan Tsang came, not only the Punjab but
what is now Afghanistan was part of India and further, the people of the Punjab
and Afghanistan were either Vedic or Buddhist by religion. But what happened
since Hsuan Tsang left India?
 The first Muslim invasion of India came from the north-west
by the Arabs who were led by Mahommad Bin Qasim. It took place in 711 A.D. and
resulted in the conquest of Sind. This first Muslim invasion did not result in a
permanent occupation of the country because the Caliphate of Baghdad, by whose
order and command the invasion had taken place, was obliged by the middle of 9th
century A.D. to withdraw its direct control from this distant province of Sind.
Soon after this withdrawal, there began a series of terrible invasions by
Muhammad of Ghazni in 1001 A.D. Muhammad died in 1030 A.D., but within the short
span of 30 years, he invaded India 17 times. He was followed by Mahommed Ghori,
who began his career as an invader in 1173. He was killed in 1206. For thirty
years Muhammad of Ghazni ravaged India and for thirty years Mahommad Ghori
harried the same country in the same way.
Then followed the incursions of the Moghul hordes of Chenghiz
Khan. They first came in 1221. They then stayed on the border of India but did
not enter it. Twenty years later, they marched on Lahore and sacked it. Of their
inroads, the most terrible was under Timur in 1398. Then comes on the scene a
new invader in the person of Babar who invaded India in 1526. The invasion of
India did not stop with that of Babar. There occurred two more invasions. In
1738 Nadir Shah’s invading host swept over the Punjab like a flooded river
“furious as the ocean”. He was followed by Ahmad Shah Abdali who invaded
India in 1761, smashed the forces of the Maharthas at Panipat and crushed for
ever the attempt of the Hindus to gain the ground which they had lost to their
Muslim invaders.
These Muslim invasions were not undertaken merely out of lust
for loot or conquest, but also to strike a blow at the idolatry and polytheism
of Hindus and establishing Islam in India. In one of his dispatches to Hajjaj,
Mahommad bin Qasim is quoted to have said:
“ The nephew of Raja Dahir, his warriors and principal
officers have been dispatched, and the infidels converted to Islam or destroyed.
Instead of idol-temples, mosques and other places of worship have been created,
the Kutbah is read, the call to prayers is raised, so that devotions are
performed at stated hours.”
Muhammad of Ghazni also looked upon his numerous invasions of
India as the waging of a holy war. Al’Utbi, the historian of Muhammad,
describing his raids writes:
“He demolished idol temples and established Islam. He
captured ……cities, destroyed the idolaters, and gratifying Muslims. He then
returned home and promulgated accounts of the victories obtained for
Islam……..and vowed that every year he would undertake a holy war against
Hind.”
Mahummad Ghori was actuated by the same holy zeal in his
invasions of India. Hasan Nizami, his historian, describes his work in the
following terms:
“He purged by his sword the land of Hind from the filth of
infidelity and vice, and freed the whole of that country from the thorn of
God-plurality and the impurity of idol-worship, and by his royal vigor and
intrepidity left not one temple standing.”
Taimur has his Memoir explained what led him to invade India.
He says:
“My object in the invasions of Hindustan is to lead a
campaign against the infidels, to convert them to the true faith according to
the command of Muhammad (on whom and his family be the blessing and peace of
God) to purify the land from the defilement of misbelief and polytheism, and
overthrow the temples and idols, whereby we shall be Ghazis and Mujahdis,
companions and soldiers of the faith before God.”
These Muslim invaders were Tartars, Afghans, and Mongols.
Mahommad bin Qasim’s first act of religious zeal was forcibly to
circumcise the Brahmins of the captured city of Debul; but on discovering that
they objected to conversion, he proceeded to put all above the age of 17 to
death, and to order all others, with women and children, to be led into slavery.
The temple of the Hindus was looted, and the rich booty was divided equally
among the soldiers, after one-fifth, the legal portion for the government, had
been set aside.
Muhammad of Ghazni from the first adopted those plans that
would stike terror into the hearts of the Hindus. After the defeat of Raja
Jaipal in A.D. 1001, Muhammad ordered that Jaipal “be paraded about in the
streets so that his sons and chieftains might see him in that condition of
shame, bonds and disgrace; and that fear of Islam might fly abroad through the
country of the infidel.”
“The slaughtering of ‘infidels’ seemed to be one thing
that gave Muhammad particularly pleasure. In one attack on Chand Rai, in A.D.
1019, many infidels were slain or taken prisoners, and the Muslims paid no
regard to booty until they had satiated themselves with the slaughter of the
infidels and worshippers of the sun and fire. The historian naively adds that
the elephants of the Hindu armies came to Muhammad of their own accord, leaving
idols, preferring the service of the religion of Islam.”
The slaughter of the Hindus, gave a great setback to the
indigenous culture of the Hindus, as in the conquest of Bihar by Muhammad
Bakhtyar Khilji. When he took Nuddea (Bihar) the Tabaquat-I-Nasiri informs us
that:
“ great plunder fell into the hands of the victors. Most of
the inhabitants were Brahmins with shaven heads. They were put to death. Large
number of books were found…..but none could explain their contents as all the
men had been killed, the whole fort and city being a place of study.”
Summing up the evidence on the point, Dr. Titus, author of
Indian Islam p. 22, says:
“ Of the destruction of temples and the desecration of
idols we have an abundance of evidence. Mahommad bin Qasim carried out his plan
of destruction systematically in Sind, but he made an exception of the famous
temple of Multan for purposes of revenue, as this temple was a place of resort
for pilgrims, who made large gifts to the idol. Nevertheless, while he thus
satisfied his avarice by letting the temple stand, he gave vent to his malignity
by having a piece of cow’s flesh tied around the neck of the idol.”
“ Minhaj-as-Siraj further tells us how Mahommad became
widely known for having destroyed as many as thousand temples, and of his great
feat in destroying the temple of Somnath and carrying off its idol, which he
asserts was broken into four parts. One part he deposited in the Jami Masjid of
Ghazni, one he placed at the entrance of the royal palace, the third he sent to
Mecca, and the fourth to Medina.”
Lane Poole, author of Medieval India p. 26, has said that
Mahommad of Ghazni:
“who had vowed that every year should see him wage a holy
war against the infidels of Hindustan” could not rest from his idol-breaking
campaign so long as the temple of Somnath remained inviolate. It was for this
specific purpose that he, at the very close of his career, undertook his arduous
march across the desert from Multan to Anhalwara on the coast, fighting as he
went, until he saw at last the famous temple:
“There were a hundred thousand pilgrims were wont to
assemble, a thousand Brahmins served the temple and guarded its treasures.
Within stood the famous Shiva linga, adorned with gems and lighted by jeweled
candelebra which were reflected in rich hanings, embroidered with precious
stones like stars, that decked the shrine….The foreigners nothing daunted,
scaled the walls, fifty thousand Hindus suffered for their faith and the sacred
shrine was sacked to the joy of the true believers. The great stone was down and
its fragments were carried off to grace the conquerors’ palace. The temple
gates were set up at Ghazni and a million pounds worth of treasure rewarded the
iconoclast.”
Dr. Titus writes, that Quatb-ud-Din Aybak, also destroyed a
thousand temples, and then raised mosques on their foundations. He also built
the Jami Masjid, Delhi, and adorned it with stones and gold obtained from the
temples which had been demolished by elephants and covered it with inscriptions
(from the Koran) containing the divine commands. In his conquest of South India
the destruction of temples was carried out by Ala-ud-Din as it had been in the
north by his predecessors.
“The Sultan Firoz Shah, in his
Futuhat, graphically
describes how he treated Hindus who had dared to built new temples. I killed
these leaders of infidelity and punished others with stripes, until this was
entirely abolished and where infidels and idolaters worshipped idols. “
Even in the reign of
Shah Jahan, we read of the destruction
of the temples that the Hindus had started to rebuild, and the account of this
direct attack of the piety of the Hindus is thus solemnly recorded in the
Badshah-namah”
“ It has been brought to the notice of His Majesty, says
the historian, that during the late reign (of Akbar) many idol-temples had been
begun but remained unfinished at Benares, the great stronghold of infidelity.
The infidels were now desirous of completing them. His Majesty, the defender of
the faith, gave orders that at Benares and throughout all his dominions in every
place all temples that had been begun should be cast down. It was reported that
the Province of Allahbad that 76 temples had been destroyed in the district of
Benares.”
 It was left to Aurangzeb to make a final attempt to overthrow
idolatry. The author of “Ma”athir i-Alamgiri dilates upon his efforts to put
down Hindu teaching, and his destruction of temples in the following terms:
“ In April, A.D. 1669, Aurangzeb learned that in the
provinces of Thatta, Multan and Benares, but especially in the latter, foolish
Brahmins were in the habit of expounding frivolous books in their schools, and
that learners, Muslims as well as Hindus, went there for long distances…..The
‘Director of the Faith’ consequently issued orders to all the governors of
provinces to destroy with a willing hand the schools and temples of the
infidels; and they were enjoined to put an entire stop to the teaching and
practicing of idolatrous worship….Later it was reported to his religious
Majesty that the Government officers had destroyed the temple of Vishvanath at
Benares.”
Dr. Titus observes:
“Such invaders as Muhammad and Timur seem to have more
concerned with iconoclasm, the collection of booty, the enslaving of captives,
and the sending of infidels to hell with the ‘proselytizing sword’ than they
were with the conversion of them even by force. But when invaders/rulers were
permanently established the wining of converts became a matter of supreme
urgency. It was a part of the state policy to establish Islam as the religion of
the whole land.”
“Qutb-ud-Din, whose reputation for destroying temples was
almost as great as that of Muhammad, in the latter part of the twelfth century
and early years of the thirteenth, must have frequently resorted to force as an
incentive to conversion. One
instance may be noted : when he approached Kiol (Aligarh) in A.D. 1194, ‘those
of the garrison who were wise and acute were converted to Islam, but the others
were slain with the sword.”
“ One pathetic case is mentioned in the time of the reign
of Firoz Shaha (A.D. 1351-1388). An old Brahmin of Delhi was burnt to death for
refusing to give up his faith.”
Muhammad not only
destroyed temples but also made it a policy to make slaves of the Hindus he
conquered.
“Not only was slaughter of the infidels and the destruction
of their temples resorted to in earlier period of Islam’s contact with India,
but as we have seen, many of the vanquished were led into slavery. The dividing
up of booty was one of the special attractions, to the leaders as well as to the
common soldiers in these expeditions. Muhammad seems to have made the slaughter
of infidels, the destruction of the temples, the capturing of slaves, and the
plundering of the wealth of the people, particularly the temples and the
priests, the main object of his raids. On the occasion of his first raid he is
said to have taken much booty, and half a million Hindus, ‘beautiful men and
women’ were reduced to slavery and taken back to Ghazni.”
When Muhammad later took Kanauj, in A.D. 1017, he took so
much booty and so many prisoners that ‘ the fingers of those who counted them
would have tired.’ Describing how common Indian slaves had become in Ghazni
and Central Asia after the campaing of A.D. 1019, the historian of the times
says:
“The number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact
that each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to
Ghazni,and merchants came from far distant cities to purchase them; …and the
fair and the dark, the rich and the poor were commingled in one common slavery.
“In the year A.D 1202, when Qutb-ud-Din captured Kalinjar,
after the temples had been converted into mosques, and the very name of idolatry
was annihilated, fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the
plain became black as pitch with Hindus.”
Slavery was the fate of those Hindus who were captured in the
holy war.
(source: Pakistan or The Partition
of India – By B. R. Ambedkar AMS Press ISBN 0404548016 p. 53-66)
Refer to Ignore
this genocide, we're secular - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com). Refer
to Heroic
Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By Sita Ram Goel.
Voice of India, New Delhi.
Top of Page
 Did You Know?
Takshasila:
World's first
University
 The World's first university was established
in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than
60 subjects. Taxila, stood on the banks of the river Vitasa in the northwest of
the Indian subcontinent. The campus
accommodated 10,500 students and offered over sixty different courses in various
fields, such as science, mathematics, medicine, politics, warfare, astrology,
astronomy, music, religion, and philosophy. The minimum age for admission was 16
years and students from as far as Babylonia, Greece, Syria, Arabia, and China
came to study at the university.
Panini,
the great Sanskrit grammarian, Charaka, the author of famous treatise on
medicine, and Chanakya, writer of Artha Shastra -- these august names are
associated with Taxila. Promising minds from far flung regions converged there
to study the Vedas and all branches of secular knowledge.
Takshasila or Taxila, as the
Greeks called it over 2,000 years ago, was at one of the entrances to the
splendor that was India. Its antiquity is rooted both in epic texts
like the
Ramayana, Mahabharata
and the other
Puranas.....Taxila
was destroyed by White Huns in 499 A.D
University of Nalanda
 The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BCE was one of the greatest
achievements of ancient India in the field of education. Buddha visited Nalanda several
times during his lifetime. The Chinese scholar and traveler Hiuen Tsang
stayed here in the
7th century, and has left an elaborate description of the excellence, and purity of
monastic life practized here. About 2,000 teachers and 10,000 students from all over the
Buddhist world, lived and studied in this international university. In this
first residential international university of the world, 2,000 teachers and
10,000 students from all over the Buddhist world lived and studied here. The
Gupta kings patronized these monasteries, built in old Kushan architectural
style, in a row of cells around a courtyard. Ashoka and Harshavardhana were some
of its most celebrated patrons who built temples and monasteries here. Recent
excavations have unearthed elaborate structures here. Hiuen Tsang had left
ecstatic accounts of both the ambiance and architecture of this unique
university of ancient times.
The Nalanda university counted on
its staff such great thinkers as Nagarjuna,
Aryadeva, Vasubhandu, Asanga, Sthiramati, Dharmapala, Silaphadra, Santideva and
Padmasambhava. The ancient universities were the sanctuaries of the inner life
of the nation.
Nalanda, Vikramshila,
Odantapura, and Jagddala as the universities destroyed by Mohammed Bakhtiar
Khilji around 1200 A.D.
These universities
were sacked, plundered, looted by the Islamic onslaught.
The Moghuls neglected practical
and secular learning, especially the sciences. Throughout
their long rule, no institutions was established comparable to modern
university, although early India had world-famous centers of learning such as
Taxila, Nalanda and Kanchi. Neither the
nobles nor the mullas were stirred into learning...
(For more information,
refer to chapter on Education
in Ancient India).
Akbar
was illiterate. So were most of the Muslim rulers. They did not
build one good college in eight centuries, complains Nehru.
Naturally, the Muslim invaders saw no good in the two great
universities of India—Taxila and Nalanda. They destroyed them. Peter
Mansfield, historian of the Middle East, writes:
“The great movements of ideas in western Europe from the
Reformation through the Renaissance and counter-Reformation left
the Ottoman world almost untouched.” The French and Russian
revolutions were not different. They made little impact on the
thinking of the Muslim world.
(source: Knowledge
is suspected in Islam
- By M. S. N. Menon).
Refer to Heroic
Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD) - By
Sita Ram Goel. Voice of India, New Delhi.
Refer
to Muslim
contribution to civilisation
- By Dr
Farrukh Saleem - Twenty-two
per cent of humanity is Muslim, at least 1.4 billion followers of
Islam. Omar al-Khayyam has been dead for 833 years, and since then
Muslims have contributed next to nothing to physics, chemistry,
medicine, literature or economics.
***
Law of Gravity
In the Surya Siddhanta, dated 400-500 A.D. the ancient Hindu astronomer
Bhaskaracharya
states,
"Objects fall on the earth due to a force of attraction by the earth.
Therefore, the earth, planets, constellation, moon, and sun are held in orbit due to this
force."
Approximately 1200 years later Isaac Newton rediscovered this phenomenon and
called it the Law of Gravity!
(For more information please
refer to chapter on Hindu
Culture). Refer to chapter on Survarnabhumi
and Sacred
Angkor
Top of Page
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