VANDE BHARATAMATRAM

VANDE BHARATAMATRAM



Ratnakaradhautapadam Himalyakirtitinim I

Brahmarajarsiratnamdhyam vande Bharatamataram II

I pay my obeisance to mother Bharata, whose feet are being awashed by the ocean, who wears the mighty Himalaya as her crown, and who isexuberantly adorned with the gems of traditions set by Brahmarsis and Rajarsis.

The word BHARATAMATRAM is evocative and endowed with rich connotation: Geographically it refers, to quote, Barhaspatya Samhita, “Himalayaad aarabhya yaavad indu sarovaraparyantam tam deva nirmitam desham hindusthaanam prachakshate”—“that land created by God and stretching from the Himalayas up to the Indian Ocean is known as Bharatavarsha.”

Spiritually India is a dream embracing the whole of humanity, the dream of man’s striving for perfection, a passionate search for the deathless, ever embarking on an eternal journey, a path of nectar, of immortality, stretching from eternity to eternity, a constant endeavour to realize God-in-man, bonding with the lowest and the lowliest, through selfless service raising them to the equality and freedom of life divine.

Amritasya putrah, .Oh, sons of the immortal! – only those who have heard this call are truly children of Mother India, may they be born anywhere on the earth – in any country, in any century; in the past or in the future: Eternal ever-flowing Ganga welcomes them all in her lap to a happy reunion, including all those estranged by design or accident.

Culturally India is a diversity in unity; with its hundred identities and a hundred tongues, a thousand religions and three hundred thirty three million gods. One all-permeating cultural substratum binds them all.

Bharatamatram is a living organism and synonymous with the physical body of every Indian who must live this vision of Indianness in every moment of his life. So has the seer proclaimed: “I am India. The Indian nation is my body. Kanyakumari is my foot and the Himalayas my head. The Ganges flow from my thighs. My left leg is the Coromandal Coast, my right is the Coast of Malabar. I am this entire land. East and West are my arms. How wondrous is my form! When I walk I sense all India moves with me. When I speak, India speaks with me. I am India. I am Truth, I am God, I am Beauty.”

Due to these unique attributes Bharatamatram at the dawn of human history became cradle of culture and the roof and crown of the human race. Even in the years of decline the torch lit by our ancient sages and seers has continued to burn, however feeble at times, but never putout. Every time new crop of martyrs lighted the lamp with their blood, sweat and tears and when providence willed, keeping the torch aloft marched to the gallows for the sake of freedom. This way alone every generation must preserve its hard-earned freedom.

INDIA:FACT FILE

INDIA:FACT FILE

We owe a lot to Indians

who taught us how to count,

without which no worthwhile

scientific discovery could

have been made.

Albert Einstein

After the conversations about Indian

philosophy, some of the ideas of

Quantum Physics that had seemed so

crazy suddenly made much more sense.

Werner Heisenberg

What we shall find in Modern Physics is an

exemplification, an encouragement and a

refinement of old Hindu wisdom.

Julius R. Oppenheimer

Some blood transfusion from the

East to the West is must to save

Western science from spiritual

anaemia.

Erwin Schroedinger

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from

the banks of the Ganga — Astronomy, Astrology,

Spiritualism, etc.

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the

least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganga to learn

Geometry...

But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange

journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not

been long established in Europe...

Francois M. Voltaire

The motion of the stars calculated by

the Hindus before some 4500 years

vary not even a single minute from the

modern tables of Cassine and Meyer.

Jean-Sylvain Bailly

It is, indeed, a remarkable circumstance that when

Western civilization discovers ‘ Relativity

Theory’ it applies it to the manufacture of

atom-bombs, whereas Oriental civilization

applies it to the development of new states of

consciousness.

Alan Watts

The vastest knowledge of today cannot

transcend the buddhi (intellect) of the Rishis in

ancient India; and science, in its most advanced

stage now, is closer to Vedanta

than ever before.

Alfred North Whitehead

To the Indian Rishis the ‘Divine play’ was the

evolution of the cosmos through countless aeons.

They say, there is an infinite number of creations in

an infinite universe. The Rishis gave the name

kalpa to the unimaginable span of time between the

beginning and the end of creation.

Fritjof Capra

India - the land of Vedas, the remarkable

works contains not only religious ideas for

a perfect life, but also facts which science

has proved true. Electricity, radium,

electronics, airship, all are known to the

seers who founded the Vedas.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Hinduism is the only one of the world’s

greatest faiths dedicated to the idea that the

Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed

an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is

the only religion in which the time scales

correspond to those of modern scientific

cosmology.

Dr. Carl Sagan

Mankind's origins can be traced to India, where

the human mind got the first shapes of wisdom

and virtue with a simplicity, strength and

sublimity which has - frankly spoken - nothing,

nothing at all equivalent in our philosophical,

cold European world.

Johann Gottfried Herder

The Hindu systems of astronomy are by

far the oldest and that from which the

Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the

Jews derived from the Hindus their

knowledge.

Jean-Sylvain Bailly

It is India that gave us the ingenious method

of expressing all numbers by ten symbols,

each receiving a value of position as well as

an absolute value, a profound and important

idea which appears so simple to us now that

we ignore its true merit.

Pierre Simon de Laplace

The Vedanta and the Sankhya hold the key to

the laws of mind and thought process which

are co-related to the Quantum Field, i.e. the

operation and distribution of particles at

atomic and molecular levels.

Brian David Josephson

To the philosophers of India, however, ‘Theory of

Relativity’ is no new discovery, just as the concept

of light years is no matter for astonishment to

people used to thinking of time in millions of

kalpas, (one kalpa is about 4,320,000 years).

Alan Watts

Yoga, as a 'science' of achieving this

transformation of finite man into the infinite,

One has to be recognized as something

intrinsically Indian or, as 'a specific dimension

of the Indian mind.

Mircea Eliade

Wherever we direct our attention

to Hindu literature, the notion of

infinity presents itself.

Sir William Jones

It is the ancient Indian culture that has

regarded the science of numbers as the

noblest of its arts...

A thousand years ahead of Europeans,

Indian Savants knew that the zero and

infinity were mutually inverse notions.

Georges Ifrah

Ancient India gave to the world its religions and

philosophies. Egypt and Greece owe India their wisdom

and it is known that Pythagoras went to India to study

under Brahmins, who were the most enlightened

of human beings.

Pierre Sonnerat

Nearly all the philosophical and mathematical doctrines

attributed to Pythagoras are derived from India.

Leopold von Schroeder

The most important characteristic of the Eastern world

view - one could almost say the essence of it - is the

awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all

things and events, the experience of all phenomena in

the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things

are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts

of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the

same ultimate reality.

Fritjof Capra

The atomic structure of matter is mentioned in

the Hindu treatises Vaisesika and Nyaya. The

Yoga Vasishta says: ----- there are vast worlds

within the hollows of each atom, multifarious as

the specks in a sunbeam ----- which we have

assumed now as true.

Andrew Tomas

India was China's teacher in religion and

imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in

Trigonometry, Quadratic Equations, Grammar,

Phonetics, Arabian Nights, Animal fables, chess, as

well as in philosophy, and that she inspired

Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer,

Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.

Dr. Lin Yutang

Long before it became a scientific

aspiration to estimate the age of the earth,

many elaborate systems of the world

chronology had been devised by the sages

of antiquity.

Professor Arthur Holmes

We catch a glimpse of the great river of science

which never ceases to flow in India. For India

has carried and scattered the data of

intellectual progress for the whole world, ever

since the pre-Buddhist period when she

produced the Sankhya philosophy and the

atomic theory.

Professor Kakuzo Okakura

Have we not here the whole of Darwinian evolution confirmed by

geology and foreseen at least 6,000 years ago? On the other

hand, is this not the theory of Akasa which we more clumsily call

the ether, the sole source of all substances, to which our science

is returning? But the scientific ether is not precisely the Hindu

Akasa which is much more subtle and immaterial being a sort of

spiritual element or divine energy, space uncreated,

imperishable, and infinite.

Count Maurice Maeterlinck

VANDE MATRAM

VANDE MATRAM

May we all surrender unto holy feet of Bharat Mata

Lyrics of Vande Mataram

वन्दे मातरम्

सुजलां सुफलां मलयजशीतलाम्

शस्यशामलां मातरम् ।

शुभ्रज्योत्स्नापुलकितयामिनीं

फुल्लकुसुमितद्रुमदलशोभिनीं

सुहासिनीं सुमधुर भाषिणीं

सुखदां वरदां मातरम् ।। १ ।। वन्दे मातरम् ।

कोटि-कोटि-कण्ठ-कल-कल-निनाद-कराले

कोटि-कोटि-भुजैर्धृत-खरकरवाले,

अबला केन मा एत बले ।

बहुबलधारिणीं नमामि तारिणीं

रिपुदलवारिणीं मातरम् ।। २ ।। वन्दे मातरम् ।

तुमि विद्या, तुमि धर्म

तुमि हृदि, तुमि मर्म

त्वं हि प्राणा: शरीरे

बाहुते तुमि मा शक्ति,

हृदये तुमि मा भक्ति,

तोमारई प्रतिमा गडि

मन्दिरे-मन्दिरे मातरम् ।। ३ ।। वन्दे मातरम् ।

त्वं हि दुर्गा दशप्रहरणधारिणी

कमला कमलदलविहारिणी

वाणी विद्यादायिनी, नमामि त्वाम्

नमामि कमलां अमलां अतुलां

सुजलां सुफलां मातरम् ।। ४ ।। वन्दे मातरम् ।

श्यामलां सरलां सुस्मितां भूषितां

धरणीं भरणीं मातरम् ।। ५ ।। वन्दे मातरम् ।।

Translation by Shree Aurobindo

Mother, I bow to thee!

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

bright with orchard gleams,

Cool with thy winds of delight,

Dark fields waving Mother of might,

Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreams,

Over thy branches and lordly streams,

Clad in thy blossoming trees,

Mother, giver of ease

Laughing low and sweet!

Mother I kiss thy feet,

Speaker sweet and low!

Mother, to thee I bow.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands

When the sword flesh out in the seventy million hands

And seventy million voices roar

Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?

With many strengths who art mighty and stored,

To thee I call Mother and Lord!

Though who savest, arise and save!

To her I cry who ever her foeman drove

Back from plain and Sea

And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,

Thou art heart, our soul, our breath

Though art love divine, the awe

In our hearts that conquers death.

Thine the strength that nervs the arm,

Thine the beauty, thine the charm.

Every image made divine

In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,

With her hands that strike and her

swords of sheen,

Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,

And the Muse a hundred-toned,

Pure and perfect without peer,

Mother lend thine ear,

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleems,

Dark of hue O candid-fair

In thy soul, with jewelled hair

And thy glorious smile divine,

Lovilest of all earthly lands,

Showering wealth from well-stored hands!

Mother, mother mine!

Mother sweet, I bow to thee,

Mother great and free!

vande matram

INDIA:FACTFILE

INDIA:FACTFILE


• The World's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. Students from all over the World studied more than 60 subjects.


• The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.


• Sanskrit is considered the mother of all higher languages. Sanskrit is the most precise, and therefore suitable language for computer software - a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987.


• Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in civilization.


• Maharshi Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like caesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery.


• Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipments were used.


• Detailed knowledge of anatomy, physiology, aetiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.


• India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.


• Aryabhatta was the first to explain spherical shape, size, diameter,rotation and correct speed of Earth in 499 AD.


• Aryabhatta also propounded the Heliocentric theory of gravitation, thus predating Copernicus by almost one thousand years.


• In Siddhanta Siromani (Bhuvanakosam 6) Bhaskaracharya II described about gravity of earth about 400 years before Sir Isaac Newton. He also had some clear notions on differential calculus, and the Theory of Continued Fraction.


• Govindaswamin discovered Newton Gauss Interpolation formula about 1800 years before Newton.


• Vateswaracharya discovered Newton Gauss Backward Interpolation formula about 1000 years before Newton.


• Parameswaracharya discovered Lhuiler’s formula about 400 years before Lhuiler.


• Positive and Negative numbers and their calculations were explained first by Brahmagupta in his book Brahmasputa Siddhanta.


• Nilakanta discovered Newton’s Infinite Geometric Progression convergent series.


• Indians discovered Arithmetic and Geometric progression. Arithmetic progression is explained in Yajurveda.


• Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were propounded by Sridharacharya in the 11th century.


• The value of "pi" was first calculated by Boudhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians. This was ‘validated’ by British scholars in 1999.


• The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 1053 with specific names as early as 5000 BC during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera: 1012.

‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindustan’ in the Puranas

‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindustan’ in the Puranas


Defining who is the real'Hindu' Birhannaradi Purana (found many centuries ago in Hoshiarpur) contains the verse:

Himalayam samarabhya yavat bindusarovaram
Hindusthanamiti qyatan hi antaraksha-rayogatah

"The country between Himalayas and Bindu Sarovar (Cape Commorin Sea) is Hindusthan derived by combining the first letter 'Hi' of Himalayas and the last compound letter 'ndu' of the word Bindu."

Other instances are cited in Vishnu Purana, Padma Purana and the Brihaspati Samhita:

Aaasindo sindhu paryantham yasyabharatha bhoomikah
Mathrubhuh pithrubhoochaiva sah vai hindurithismrithaah

"Whoever considers the land of Bharatha Bhoomi between Saptha Sindhu and the Indian Ocean as his motherland and fatherland is known as Hindu."

Again VishNu Purana, 2.3.1:

Uttaram yat samudrasya, Himadreschaiva dakshinam |
Varsham tad Bharatam nama Bharati yatra santatih ||

"Bharat is the name of country situated to the north of the sea and south of the Himalayas and its progeny is known as Bharati."

VANDE BHARATMATRAM

“This is India!
The land of dreams and romance,
of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty,
of splendor and rags,
of palaces and hovels,
of famine and pestilence,
of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps,
of tigers and elephants,
the cobra and the jungle,
the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues,
of a thousand religions and two million gods,
cradle of the human race,
birthplace of human speech,
mother of history,
grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition,
whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations
– the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons,
for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor,
bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see,
and having seen once, by even a glimpse,
would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.
Even now, after a lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me and I hope it never will.”

Mark Twain,
American Author
(1835-1920)


"India was the motherland of our race,
and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages;
she was the mother of our philosophy;
mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics;
mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity;
mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy.
Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all".

“Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and spoilation,
India will teach us
the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind,
the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul,
the calm of the understanding spirit,
and a unifying, a pacifying love for all living things.”

Will Durant,
American historian,
(1885-1981)



"India, what can it teach us?,

"If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow, in some parts a very paradise on earth,
I should point to India.

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most developed some of it choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has found solutions of some of them which will deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant,
I should point to India.

And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, who have been nurtured most exclusively on the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans and of the Semitic race and the Jewish may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more comprehensive, more universal, in fact a more truly human life, again,
I should point to India".

Professor Max Muller,
(1823-1900)


"Man must have an original cradle land whence the peopling of
the earth was brought about by migration.
As to man’s cradle land, there have been many theories but the
weight of evidence is in favour of Indo-Malaysia.”

"If there is a country on earth which can justly claim the honour of having been the cradle of the Human race or at least the scene of primitive civilization, the successive developments of which carried into all parts of the ancient world and even beyond, the blessings of knowledge which is the second life of man, that country is assuredly India.“

The Encyclopaedia Britannica



“India was China’s teacher in religion and imaginative literature,
and world’s teacher in Trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess as well as in philosophy, and she inspired Boccasccio, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Emerson."

Lin Yutang,
Chinese writer,
(1895-1976)


“After a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world,
I find none so perfect, none so scientific, none so philosophical and none so spiritual than the great religion known by the name of Hinduism.

Make no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future.

Hinduism is the soil in to which India's roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out from its place.

And if Hindus do not maintain Hinduism
- who shall save it?
If India's own children do not cling to her faith
- who shall guard it?
- India alone can save India and India and Hinduism are one.”

Annie Wood Besant,
British Theosophical Society,
(1847-1933)


“Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity.
The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time,
but the infinitely vast time cycles of India
suggested that the world was much older than anything the Bible spoke of.
It seem as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the
chronological mutations of
Darwinian evolution and astrophysics.”

Guy Sorman,
author of “Genius of India”

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

May the dawning of this New Year 2010,
make your days bright with new hopes
fill your heart with golden visions,
opening up new horizons
and bringing for you promises
of brighter tomorrows.

May you have a great New Year 2010,
fragrant with new opportunities,
heart happy with all-fulfilling love
fruitioning in sefless service
for motherland, for the earth family
for all of God’s children!

Happy New Year to your family and friends !


Madan G Gandhi