Hello Everyone,

I'm writing from the same internet cafe as two nights ago.

Yesterday I went to the world famous caves of Ajanta - picture of outside here. These caves were very interesting. Much older, and still with some paintings in them. Some of these are 2-3oo BC, while another batch are later, maybe 4th or 5th century AD. All Buddhist. Interestingly, the story goes that all these caves were lost to humanity for over a thousand years until an indian scout working for a British hunting party spotted one. I don't believe this story. But I believe that it may have been advantageous to hide the caves existence during more strict Muslim reigns. Anyways, the caves are very dark, much darker than Ellora, and generally a bit smaller, and built on a steeper slope. The biggest difference is that many of the paintings still exist. This is pretty cool, and why I think these caves seem to get more attention from the Indian government. Anyways, the paintings tell scenes of every day life, and also scenes from the Buddha's life, and also, interestingly to me, they have Jatakas (scenes from previous incarnations of the Buddha). I didn't even know that Buddha had previous incarnations. It seems like the more I learn the more confusing things get. Plus, especially confusing since in Hinduism Buddha is a previous avatar of Vishnu, and both Buddha's previous lives and Vishnu's previous lives they take the form of animals, including a bull. So I'm trying to sort out if these two stories accomodate one another.

Also, on my tour yesterday, and then at my dinner table, was a Polish woman and Vedic scholar/philosopher/university professor. I was speaking to her about the Vedic texts, her area of specialty, and why a pole might be interested in them. So what are these Vedas? The Vedas are ancient texts, many think coming from Central Europe in the first millenium before the birth of Christ. They are thought to form the basis of Hindu thought by many. They are written largely in Sanskrit I believe. The Vedas include the Upanishads, which are thought to be written later, as well as the Rig Veda, a very important text. It is later, after the Vedas, that the other three main pieces of literature the Mahabharata (more or less the story of Krishna but way more complicated and also including the Bhagavad Vita), the Ramayana (the story of Rama, Sita, and Hanuman and their battle agaist the demon king Ravana), and the Puranas (a series of treatises on many subjects including the now-famous Kama Sutra). In the Vedas you are dealing with older gods, gods like Varuna, Agni, etc. Most think that one of the early Vedic gods, Dyaus, is the same god as Zeus of the greeks (these Aryans got around!). These early gods either morphed to form other gods (somehow in here we got the trimurta of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) or fell out of popularity as the new gods rose (even Brahma, supposedly the creator of everything, the one without whom none of the others can supposedly exist, the big boss, is hardly worshipped at all in India these days). So, again, why would a Pole be interested? Well, maybe you can guess better now. Apparently there are alot of linguistic similarities to Polish and Sanskrit (most notably an alphabetic character for the sounds "s", "h", and "sh" whereas we simply have the "s" and the "h" and combine them to make the "sh". I was asking her what scholars know about pre-Christian Polish belief systems, and she said that sadly nobody really knows for sure because Christianity so ruthlessly destroyed any evidence of other religions. Another interesting thing about religion, languge and symbology: the Ramayana and Mahabharata did not get really popular until in the 2nd millenium when they were translated from Sanskrit to a language people could read (I think Hindi). Before that, it was all in the hands of the Brahmin priests, and this in essence released these ideas and allowed them to really get into the hearts and minds of Indians, making it more than ever a people's religion. We had an interesting discussion last night (me, the Pole, a German, and a Frenchmen - I know it sounds like the start of a joke), about Ajanta and other things, but a main thread being the way we interpret ancient texts and artifacts. The frenchmen was saying he felt at Ajanta that the message of alot of these drawings was completely unfathomable to him, and was arguing that by extension they were probably so for contemporaries, and on purpose (thus helping to consolidate the power and influence of the priests).

Further confusing things about the Vedas are newer ideas, mostly by Indian researchers, claiming that this idea that all the Vedas came from Europe is hooey. They claim, based on references in the Vedas, that they had to be in the area of India. For example, the Vedas reference the Saraswati river, which is one of the famous (many thought it mythical, or underground) rivers of Indian folklore. Now, however, using evidence of climate and elevation shifts, they are thinking the Saraswati actually simply ran dry, and using modeling techniques they have figured over 10,000 possible archaeological dig sites of which only a few apparently have been tested. Plus, there is now a school of thought that there was a large city called Meghar, or Meghara, or something like that, that predates what was thought to be the earliest Indian large civilization (the Harappans who were thought to start up around 3500 BC, around the time of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians). A guy told me some place Meghar at almost 6000 BC. I know nothing about this, but they also claim that Meghar may have some connection to the Vedas as well. So, I want to learn more about this.

Anyways, I digress. Also look at this yummy dhosa I had the other night. Mmmm.

Off to Mumbai tonight on the overnight train!

Love,

John