I shall be posting on each of this controversial views.
Meanwhile there is an interesting story about Viswamitra and Vasishta.
However there seems to be reference to this in the Puranas.
I am posting this as it contains some important information about Sradha.
“Once Vasistha invited his arch enemy Vishwamitra for a feast on a Srardha day. On the day of Srardha, the departed souls are propitiated.
Brahmins and saints were fed on the day.
The guests are worshipped as the representatives of the departed souls.
Vishvamitra promised to participate on one condition.
He insisted that he must be served with 1008 curries (side dishes).
Vasishta knew what he was up to. He told him that he would inform his wife Arundhati.
Vasishta informed Arundhati the condition laid by Vishwamitra.
She did not bother. On the day of Srardha , Vishwamitra came and sat at the dining hall.
But to his disappointment he saw only 10+ curries on the plate (plantain leaf). When he angrily questioned Vasishta, he told him to put the question to Arundhati as she was in charge of the ceremony.
Before Vishwamitra questioned her, Arundhati recited a popular sloka (couplet) which made Vishwamitra speechless.
What did Arundhati tell him?
कारवल्लि शांत चैव वज्र वल्लि शतत्रयं
पनसं षट् शतंचैव श्रार्धकाले विधीयते
“If someone serves at the time of Srardha, karela/bitter gourd that is equal to 100 items, Pirandai that is equal to 300 curry items and the Jack fruit that is equal to 600 items. That is the rule for the ceremony.”
Srardha= ceremony to pay obeisance to the departed souls.
Vajravalli/Pirandai = Cissus quadrangula Vitis quadrangularis
She served these three vegetable dishes along with 8 more items on the plate.
Lord Ram, as ordained by his father Dasaratha, at the behest of Janaka, Father of Seetha, takes the Shiva Dhanus playfully in his hands, which as a child
Seehta too lifted playfully when she was a child, strings it and it breaks.
Rama breaks Shiva Dhanus, Ravi Verma painting. image from wiki.
What is the size, measurement of this Shiva Dhanus?
“A bow has a definite height and it is a measure of length, from the ages even up to the age Kautilya, who gave many accounts for weights and measures, in his ‘Artha Shaastra’ a Penguin re-publication.
Four aratni-s cubits are one dhanu, a bow-length, where one aratni is 18 inches, thus a bow-length is 6 feet and above, taking the standard size of archer as a six-footer and a little above.
The bow’s height is the height of the archer plus one measure of his head’s height, as the upper end has to tower the archer’s head.
That being so, this bow belongs to Shiva and its height must be placed more than the human measure of 6 feet, and then it must be some 8 to 10 feet.
And ‘Rama is no crane-legged boy, as his physique is sad to be of ‘medium’ size, and then how a boy of, say of 4, 41/2 feet, could catch the upper end of 8-10 feet bow to bend it…’ is the objection.
An archer has to stand the bow on ground, clutch its lower end under big toe, and with one hand, he has to bend it, while with the other he catches the bowstring to string the other end.
He is not supposed to handle it like a holdall or a briefcase. For this objection it is said in a way that the poet is using the adjectivemahaatmaa to Rama, ‘ an unfathomable one with an equally unfathomable soul… inasmuch as his duty is concerned…’ The minute he touched the bow, it became a spongy stick and it listened to him and bent as he wished.
Other way round, Rama is an ambidextrous archer and furthered is his skill by his possession of some divine missiles as given by Vishvamitra.
Hence, his dexterity is now multiplied and he can handle any divine or human bow ‘effortlessly.”
The action of Sri Ramachandra was so swift that Kamban in Tamil Kambaramayanam describes it best,
‘எடுத்தது கண்டார் ;இற்றது கேட்டார் .”
“people saw the Lifting of the Bow, then heard the sound of it breaking’
What was the sound like?
Valmiki describes it thus in Bala Kanda Sarga 67.
“Further, that dextrous one has stringed that bow with bowstring and started to stretch it up to his ear to examine its tautness, but that glorious one who is foremost among men, Rama, broke that bow medially…
Then there bechanced an explosive explosion when the bow is broken, like the explosiveness of down plunging thunder, and the earth is tremulously tremulous, as it happens when a mountain is exploding.”
”
Bewildered by that raucous caused by the breakage of bow, all the people swooned, except for that eminent-saint Vishvamitra, king Janaka, and those two Raghava-s, namely Rama and Lakshmana. While the people are being reaccustomed after their undergoing the shock, at that moment that sententious king Janaka, whose discomfiture has completely departed by now has said this to the eminent-saint Vishvamitra with a reverent palm-fold.
“Oh, godly sage, the gallantry of Dasharatha’s Rama is evidently seen… and the whys of this boy and wherefores of his stringing that massive bow are unimaginable to me! More so, humans lifting it! How so? This is an unhoped-for incident for me, besides, breaking it! This a is highly wondrous experience for me… My daughter Seetha on getting Dasharatha’s Rama as her husband, she will bring celebrity to the lineage of Janaka-s..”
There is an interesting explanation about the sound the Shiva Dhanus created while breaking.
”
We can write more words for the above sound as, ‘Dhaam, Dhiim, Phut, and DiSkuu…’ etc., as long as thesaurus permit. But all that will be nonsensical.
An ear-splitting sound has come but it is “OM” the auspicious sonus prima grata, produced once upon a time by Shiva’s drum, in order to emanate words through maheshvara suutraaNi, which were unintelligible even for the sages like Sanaka, Sananda, Sanat Kumaara et al., and which were deciphered by Nandi, the Holy Bull vehicle of Shiva, to those sages.
Here it is Shiva’s bow and name of Shiva and all letters that attaches to Him are sha.m, sha.nkara, sha.mbhava, are peace-making letters, as codified in ˜um nama× þambhave ca mayo bhave ca nama× þaðkar˜ya ca mayaskar˜ya ca nama× þiv˜ya ca þivatar˜ya ca | – rudram – soma s¨kta – yajur ( Sri Rudram)
Hence the real sound of Om is audible and it is ear-splitting for ordinary audience, since ordinary people cannot possibly face realities, and it is a regularly audible sound for the other four who have not swooned.
By the way, it will be impossible for us to listen the chanting of Veda-s, even in these days, in any Vedic school for at least half an hour, as our ears are untuned to their ghana paaTha or jaTa or other sorts of chanting.
We feel stranded in some audio studio with fully loaded sound FX.
And the pacemaker Rama lifted the bow of the peacemaker Shiva, where the bow itself is “Om”.
The legendary Indian bow is composed of three parts, unlike Robin Hood’s single-piece bow.
The lower bowing part, upper bowing part combined by a grip handle, and the bowstring.
The three pieces are comparable to the three letters syllabified “Om” – a u ma, where a is upper bowing piece of bow,u, the lower end, and ma, the bowstring.
The painters usually paint this bow-breaking scene, where Rama will be still handling the upper end in his hand, while the lower part will be falling, and the bowstring will be still dangling onto the upper end.
The upper part of bow is a and this a is Vishnu akaara artho viSNuH, and the dangling bowstring is ma Goddess Lakshmi, loka maataa maa ramaa mangala devataa, dangling on the Supreme Person through thick and thin, and the detached-un-detached lower end is u, Lakshmana, or any other adherer.
A lengthy account of this trilogy is provided in Aranya Kanda, Ch. 11, first verse.
And the pacemaker Rama is marrying the world with peace, by stringing the bowstring of peacemaker’s bow, and it is not a mere marriage of some prince charming, with a charmy princess.
Thus, this sound is the initial impact, impetus, brunt, or whatever, for universal peace, and that way this marriage attains a legendary significance in peace process, though by force”
Indian tradition states that the intermingling of people from the North and South, separated by the Vindhya Mountains , started taking place during the time when Sage Viswamitra lived.
Sage Viswamitra banished his 56 children to the ‘Dravida‘ ,meaning South of Vindhya Mountains, as they disobeyed him.
They moved to the South, found a culturally rich civilization , married integrated the Veda and Dravidian Customs and formed the Agamas.
Sage Apasthamba compiled the Vedas for those living south of the Vindhyas , comprising the best of both the Cultures and gave the Apasthamba Sutra,.
This is practiced in the South even today.
Recent studies date this period around 4000 years earlier from now.
This roughly corresponds to the beginning of Kali Yuga of Indian calendar.
The characteristics and specific issues are elaborated in the Tholkappiyam Agathiyam, the ancient works in Tamil.
Each area had its own God’s,Profession and social Mores.
Cowherds lived in Mullai,farmers in Marutham, Hunters in Kurinji,Fishermen in Neyadal and Kallars in Palai.
There were injunctions against marrying from different geographical group.
So the Caste system is not because of the mingling from the North.
The Study at best conveys the fact that people from the North started mingling with each other , that’s all.
This does not mean that Caste has been imported to South from the North.
This confusion or deliberate misinformation is because of the Myth of Aryan Invasion of the South.
Please read my posts on Aryan Invasion Myths and On Viswamitra.
The name Viswamitra appears in all the Four Yugas, or the Time Scale of the Hindus,
it is difficult to assign a time for him.
And Viswamitra is a Nom de plume, meaning ‘friend of the Universe ‘.
The name of the Viswamitra as it appears in the Ramayana, which took place in the Treta Yuga, is Kausika.
And the Viswamitra of Dwapara Yuga can not be same as the Yugas are separated by thousands of Years.
Unless people were living for very long period of time, which, in my opinion, is possible.
More important is the concept of Time in Hinduism.
Human Migration.
Read my post on Time.
There is another anomaly in the study.
It says the intermingling of the North and South stopped about 2000 years ago.
Are there not marriages today between the people of the north and the South?
Some more doubts on Viswamitra,
“I had some confusion about Sage Vishwamitra. We hear
about Sage Vishwamitra in many places:
[1] Much before the Lord Rama came down to the earth.
(Vishwamitra was the one who build the heaven for the
ancestor of Lord Rama, Satyavrata, later called as
Trishanku).
[2] Then Vishwamitra went into penance with an enimity
with Sage Vasista. Thats when Gayathri mantra was
given to us.
[3] During the penance Menaka comes down and from them
is born the Bharatha dynasty king – Dushyant. So does
that mean while Lord Rama’s dynasty (SuryaVamsa) were
ruling in Treta Yuga, the seed for the Bharatha’s
dynasty (ChandraVamsa) was sown and set to begin in
Dwapara Yuga? in which Yugas did the Chandra Vamsa and
Surya Vamsa dynasties gain importance?…
I cannot provide you with a religious/spiritual answer, but as far as chronology
is concerned – here is my answer:
If you please refer to my ‘Royal Chronology of India’ at
(http://www.newdharma.org/India_Chron.zip) you’ll see the name Vishvamitra come
up many times (as you will also see with Vasishtha) because these are not one
person. They represent an incredible lineage of Rsis going back thousands of
years. These priests have been mentioned in our scriptures by their family
names (“last names”) and on a few occassions their first names are also
mentioned.
”
Analysis of mtDNA Suggests a Proto-Asian Origin ofIndians
MtDNA HVR1 genetic distances between caste populations and Africans, Asians, and Europeans are significantly different from zero (p<0.001) and reveal that, regardless of rank, each caste group is most closely related to Asians and is most dissimilar from Africans (Table (Table1).1). The genetic distances from major continental populations (e.g., Europeans) differ among the three caste groups, and the comparison reveals an intriguing pattern. As one moves from lower to upper castes, the distance from Asians becomes progressively larger. The distance between Europeans and lower castes is larger than the distance between Europeans and upper castes, but the distance between Europeans and middle castes is smaller than the upper caste-European distance. These trends are the same whether the Kshatriya and Vysya are included in the upper castes, the middle castes, or excluded from the analysis. This may be owing, in part, to the small sample size (n=10) of each of these castes. Among the upper castes the genetic distance between Brahmins and Europeans (0.10) is smaller than that between either the Kshatriya and Europeans (0.12) or the Vysya and Europeans (0.16). Assuming that contemporary Europeans reflect West Eurasian affinities, these data indicate that the amount of West Eurasian admixture with Indian populations may have been proportionate to caste rank.”
“India’s caste system, says a new genetic study, began about 2,000 years ago. The study adds that people from different genetic populations — from the North and the South — began to mix with each other about 4,200 years ago but that the mixing stopped about 2,000 years ago.
The study was carried out by Harvard Medical School and the CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad. David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, said that the caste system in India has been around for a long time, but that it had certainly not begun right at the very beginning.
Indians
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