It was news to me when I received an email with a link from the North East Reader that the Evangelists are engaged in Child trafficking, moving children way from North east India to the Southern States of India, to get Grants from the Churches!
The Churches in turn get Grants from the Vatican and other Christian Groups Funds marked for religious conversion.
Please read my posts on this under Christianity.
The phenomenon may be new to India.
But it is rampant in Africa and I am providing a Link towards the end of this post.
“New Delhi, Aug 6 : Promising proper education, pastors are trafficking children from the north-eastern states to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with an oblique motive to get grants from churches and abroad, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights said in a damning report to the Supreme Court.
Inquring into recent rescue of hundreds of children trafficked from the NE states and housed in Homes illegally run by pastors in the southern states, NCPCR found that girls were even asked to give massage to the directors of these Homes and molested.
Analysing the situation in a detailed report, NCPCR said insurgency coupled with the virtual absence of government officials at the sub-district and block level to address the education, health and developmental problems have made the entire north-east an easy hunting ground for middlemen to lure out children from parents in the name of providing them proper education.
“All-out effort are being made by pastors and other category of persons who are reaching out to source areas through middlemen for getting children in order to obtain financial support from churches within the country or donations from outside,” the NCPCR said in response to a direction from the apex court to inquire into the incidents.
The source areas for the pastors are Tamnglong, Senapati, Chandel, Bishnupur, Churachandpur and Imphal in Manipur, North Cachar Hills in Assam and Meghalaya. The destination states are TN, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
“The main reason for children being sent out by the poor parents to far off places in southern states is due to their high expectation of quality education for their children which is not available at their own places,” the Commission said.
The other main reasons for the parents agreeing to send their children far away were no easy access to schools; lack of basic infrastructure such as road connectivity, power and hospitals; insurgency and lack of a sense of security among parents to send children walking to schools; poor financial status of parents preventing them from putting children in boarding schools; and absence of governance in sub-district and block level to address education, health and developmental problems of vulnerable families.
This provides a perfect opportunity for middlemen to exploit the situation and is being taken advantage of by pastors. But, the children get caught between the devil at home and the deep sea in the Homes in southern states, NCPCR said.
..”The book opens with a literally earth shaking event: the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti and the rush to adopt it engendered. Joyce focuses immediately on the infamous case of Laura Silsby’s band of bible-thumping pseudo missionaries from Idaho who were arrested trying to leave Haiti with 33 children and charged with kidnapping. Silsby and her Reverse Robinhoods felt justified and self-righteous, about taking from the poor to give to the rich, even building a resort in the Dominican Republic for adopters. A fit beginning to describe the zealousness that drives evangelicals to “save” children physically and spiritually.
In the end, many if not most churches dissociated themselves from Silsby after she was charged with kidnaping. The adoption industry and adoption advocates put the incident, like all adoption horror stories, in a neat little box labeled anomalies and continue right along, business as usual simply moving from country as they close adoptions in order to end the corruption. Not unlike claims that women cannot get pregnant from “legitimate” rape, Chuck Johnson at the Saddlebrook Church, argued that claims of fraud had been blown out of proportion, saying: “We have no indication of real, true corruption.”
Petra , an ancient city , which belonged to the Greeks earlier,excavated in Jordan is considered as one of the wonders of the world.
Al Khazneh,Petra Image source Wikimedia Commons.
This city had the imprint of Constantine as well.
‘In a recently conducted Internet poll, Petra was voted by internet users as one of the ‘seven wonders of the modern world’. In this abandoned city, which lies hidden behind impenetrable mountains and gorges, magnificent rock-cut temples and palaces have been carved into towering cliffs of red and orange sandstone. The most famous of these structures is the ‘Al Khasneh’ (or the ‘Treasury’), which was made famous in an Indiana Jones film.
Sometime during the 3rd century BC, the Nabataeans began to decorate their capital city with splendid rock-cut temples and buildings. [Right: The Khasneh or “Treasury”] Their economic prosperity and architectural achievements continued unabated even after they came under the control of the Roman Empire in 106 CE. The neglect and decline of Petra started soon after Emperor Constantine declared Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 324 CE. A series of earthquakes crippled the region in the 7th – 8th centuries and Petra disappeared from the map of the known world, only to be rediscovered centuries later in 1812, by a Swiss explorer named Johann Burckhardt…
A baetyl physically marked a deity’s presence. It could be a square [Above, left] or rounded like a dome [Above, right]. Some baetyls’ were depicted with a lunar crescent on the top. The Nabataeans also appear to be snake worshippers. One of the most prominent structures in Petra is the snake monument, which shows a gigantic coiled-up snake on a block of stone. [Below]Within the temple of Al Deir, the largest and most imposing rock-cut temple in Petra, is present an unworked, black, block of stone, like an obelisk, representing the most important deity of the Nabataeans — Dushara.
The term Dushara means ‘Lord of the Shara’, which refers to the Shara mountains to the north of Petra. The symbolic animal of Dushara was a bull. All over Petra, Dushara was represented symbolically by stone blocks.
At the entrance of Petra there are three massive standing blocks of stone, known as Djin blocks, which were sacred to the inhabitants. There are nearly 40 such Djin blocks present throughout Petra. In addition, at religious sites throughout the city, the Nabataeans carved a standing stone block called a baetyl, literally meaning ‘house of god’…
Petra remains
This unusual array of symbolic elements associated with the chief god of the Nabataeans, Dushara, may have confounded historians, but to anyone familiar with the symbolism of the Vedic deity Shiva, the similarities between Dushara and Shiva will be palpable.
Shiva is still worshipped all over India in the form of a black block of stone known as a Shiva Linga. A Shiva Linga, which is essentially a ‘mark’ or ‘symbol’ of Shiva, sometimes appears as an unworked block of stone, much like the idol of Dushara in the temple of Al Deir; but typically it is represented by a smooth, rounded stone which resembles some of the rounded, dome-shaped, baetyls that we find in Petra.
[Above, left: Idol of Al-Uzza, found in the Temple of the Winged Lions Middle: One of the two reliefs of lion of the Lion Triclinium in Petra, Jordan Right: Durga on a Lion, slaying Mahisarura who has taken the form of a bull. Aihole temple complex, Karnataka, dating from the 6th century CE.]Shiva is also associated with the mountains; his residence is supposed to be in the Kailash Mountain in the Himalayas, to the north of India, where he spends most of his time engaged in rigorous asceticism. His symbolic animal is a bull, named Nandi, which is commonly depicted kneeling in front of the Shiva Linga. Pictorial depictions of Shiva always show a crescent-shaped moon in his matted locks, much like the lunar crescent that appears on top of certain baetyls in Petra; and on top of the Shiva Linga is present a coiled-up serpent, bearing a strong resemblance to the serpent monument of Petra. It is evident that Shiva and Dushara are symbolically identical, leaving little scope for doubt that Dushara must indeed be a representation of the Vedic deity Shiva.
At Petra, an elaborate processional way leads from the center of the city to the temple of Al Deir. In front of the temple there is a massive, flat, courtyard, capable of accommodating thousands of people. This has led historians to suggest that the Al Deir temple may have been the site of large-scale ceremonies. It is possible that this was a celebration of Dussehra, since Al-Uzza was the ‘goddess of the people’ and Dussehra is the celebration of the victory of the goddess over the forces of evil.
It is not unlikely that the presiding god of the Nabataeans, Dushara, may have obtained his name from the festival Dussehra. The cult of Shiva-Shakti represented the sacred masculine and feminine principles, and the worship of Shiva has always been inextricably linked with the celebrations of the divine feminine. Even now in rural Bengal in India, the final day of celebration of Dussehra (Basanti Puja) is followed by an exuberant worship of Shiva. For these people, it remains the most important festival of their annual religious calendar.
It is unclear to historians whether all the representations of the female goddess found in Petra refer to Al-Uzza or to the Nabataean goddess triad of Al-Uzza, Al-lat and Manat. Although it is has been supposed that the consort of Dushara may be Al-Uzza, the depictions of Al-Uzza in other places of Arabia do not support such an association.
Al-Uzza (the ‘Strong One’) was the goddess of the morning and evening star. Isaac of Antioch referred to her as Kaukabta, ‘the Star’. She was sometimes depicted riding a ‘dolphin’ and showing the way to sea-farers. She is, thus, the counterpart of the Indo-European goddess of dawn, Ostara, and the Vedic ‘Usas’.
In the Rig Veda, there are around 20 hymns dedicated to the Usas, the goddess of dawn, who appears in the east every morning, resplendent in her golden light, riding a chariot drawn by glorious horses, dispelling the darkness, awakening men to action, and bestowing her bounty and riches on all and sundry.
Source: including Images other than the top most from
Though Kannada is grouped among the Dravidian Languages, the Sanskrit and Prakrit is very high in Kannada,as in Telugu, unlike Tamil where the influence of Sanskrit is the least.
And the influence of Tamil can also be seen.
Kannada lends itself for study by being classified into,
578 CE Mangalesa Kannada inscription in Cave temple # 3 at BadamiThe Tamil inscription of Rashtrakuta king Krishna-III of 10th century CE found at Melpadi village in Tamil Nadu by K. Kumar, Archaeologist. in October 2011. Photo: K. Kumar
A possibly more definite reference to Kannada is found in the ‘Charition mime‘ of the 1st or 2nd century CE. The farce, written by an unknown author was discovered in early 20th century at Oxyrynchus in Egypt.[34][35] The play is concerned with a Greek lady named Charition who has been stranded on the coast of a country bordering the Indian Ocean. The king of this region, and his countrymen, sometimes use their own language, and the sentences they spoke include Koncha madhu patrakke haki (lit having poured a little wine into the cup separately) and paanam beretti katti madhuvam ber ettuvenu (lit having taken up the cup separately and having covered it, I shall take wine separately).[36] The language employed in the papyrus indicates that the play is set in one of the numerous small ports on the western coast of India, between Karwar and Mangalore.[36]
The written tradition of Kannada begins in the early centuries of common era. The earliest examples of a full-length Kannada language stone inscription (shilashaasana) containing Brahmi characters with characteristics attributed to those of proto-Kannada in Hale Kannada (litOld Kannada) script can be found in the Halmidi inscription, usually dated c. 450 C.E., indicating that Kannada had become an administrative language at that time. The Halmidi inscription provides invaluable information about the history and culture of Karnataka.[37][38][39][40] The 5th century Tamatekallu inscription ofChitradurga and the Chikkamagaluru inscription of 500 AD are further examples.[41][42][43] Recent reports indicate that the Old KanandaNishadi Inscription discovered on the Chandragiri hill, Shravanabelagola, is older than Halmidi inscription by about fifty to hundred years and may belong to the period 350–400 CE.[44] The noted archaeologist and art historian S. Settar is of the opinion that an inscription of the Western Ganga King Kongunivarma (c.350 – 370) is also older than the Halmidi inscrption.[45]..
The oldest existing record of Kannada poetry in tripadi metre is the Kappe Arabhatta record of 700 CE.[59]Kavirajamarga by King Nripatunga Amoghavarsha I (850 CE) is the earliest existing literary work in Kannada. It is a writing on literary criticism and poetics meant to standardise various written Kannada dialects used in literature in previous centuries. The book makes reference to Kannada works by early writers such as King Durvinita of the 6th century and Ravikirti, the author of the Aihole record of 636 CE.[60][61] Since the earliest available Kannada work is one on grammar and a guide of sorts to unify existing variants ofKannada grammar and literary styles, it can be safely assumed that literature in Kannada must have started several centuries earlier.[60][62] An early extantprose work, the Vaddaradhane by Shivakotiacharya of 900 AD provides an elaborate description of the life of Bhadrabahu of Shravanabelagola.[63]
Kannada works from earlier centuries mentioned in the Kavirajamarga are not yet traced. Some ancient texts now considered extinct but referenced in later centuries are Prabhrita (650 CE) by Syamakundacharya, Chudamani (Crest Jewel—650 CE) by Srivaradhadeva, also known as Tumbuluracharya, which is a work of 96,000 verse-measures and a commentary on logic (Tatwartha-mahashastra).[64][65][66] Other sources date Chudamani to the 6th century or earlier.[67][68] The Karnateshwara Katha, a eulogy for King Pulakesi II, is said to have belonged to the 7th century; the Gajastaka, a work on elephant management by King Shivamara II, belonged to the 8th century,[69] and the Chandraprabha-purana by Sri Vijaya, a court poet of King Amoghavarsha I, is ascribed to the early 9th century.[70] Tamil Buddhist commentators of the 10th century CE (in the commentary on Nemrinatham, a Tamil grammatical work) make references that show that Kannada literature must have flourished as early as the 4th century CE.[71]
The late classical period gave birth to several genres of Kannada literature, with new forms of composition coming into use, including Ragale (a form of blank verse) and meters like Sangatya and Shatpadi. The works of this period are based on Jain and Hindu principles. Two of the early writers of this period areHarihara and Raghavanka, trailblazers in their own right. Harihara established the Ragale form of composition while Raghavanka popularised the Shatpadi (six-lined stanza) meter.[72] A famous Jaina writer of the same period is Janna, who expressed Jain religious teachings through his works.[73]
The Vachana Sahitya tradition of the 12th century is purely native and unique in world literature, and the sum of contributions by all sections of society. Vachanas were pithy poems on that period’s social, religious and economic conditions. More importantly, they held a mirror to the seed of social revolution, which caused a radical re-examination of the ideas of caste, creed and religion. Some of the important writers of Vachana literature include Basavanna, Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi.[74
I was born in Tamil Nadu ,but I have spent about 20 years in Karnataka, with the curious result with the Tamils calling me a non Tamil and Kannadigas, a Non Kannadiga!
Be that it may, I am interested in the Language and literature of Kannada.
Unfortunate fact is that while it is highlighted that there are Kannada zealots, it is sad to note that Kannada is being neglected in Karnataka.
It will be obvious to any one living in Karnataka,while in Bangalore it is the Telugu,Tamil and North Indian Community leading the Population, you will find the Belgaum area calling Maharashtra is Their Home, Raichur, Gulbarga, Bidar as belonging to Old Hyderabad,South Canara and Kodagu stating that Kannada has dominated and ruined their language,Mysore remains an Island of sorts,Hubli,Dharwar not really bothering about the rest of the State!
Part of the mistake lies in governance,because people in Bangalore think, Bangalore is Karnataka and all the developmental activities are focused in the area with a bit thrown out for Mysore.
Net result is that you do not find as any second cities as in Tamil Nadu, which has Madurai,Tiruchi,Salem,Tirunelveli,Erode,Coimbatore.
People can recall Mysore,Brindavan Gardens,Hampi,Beluru,Halebid,Sravana Belagola,aprt from Bangalore in Karnataka
You may notice that these are essentially tourist spots of interest.
The sad part or the heartwarming fact is that Kannada is at least 2000 years old, if not older, a classical language of India and is spoken by at least 38 Million people.
Yet I find Kannada speaking people in Public a rarity in Bangalore!
In a couple of posts I will be highlighting the antiquity of the Kannada Language.
West ,Maharashtra and Gujarat uses more of ground nut Oil.
Here I have excluded the use of Sun Flower oil as I am posting on traditional cooking.
4.North indian foods have more of fat and Protein while the South has more of Carbohydrates to suit the climate.
5.Normally in the South people take a full meal in the morning and, in the North breakfast(now the South has changed by switching over to meals at noon)
6.In North India chillies, saffron, milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese and ghee (clarified butter) are hot favorites while in the South, folks love pepper, tamarind and coconut.
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