Exploring the different aspects of our heritage and understanding the nuances of owning it and expounding it.
Dr D K Hari and Dr Hema Hari, Founders & Trustees of Bharath Gyan and authors of several books, jointly delivered the lecture as part of the Fifth R K Swamy Memorial Lecture.
For more than 5000 years, we have used signages. We can spot the world’s oldest signboard in a place called Dholavira. We find these signs along the entire stretch from Tahiti to Phoenicia. Interestingly, in all these areas, we find a lot of the influence of the Bhartiya civilization. Unfortunately, many people think that Indian civilization is very limited, geographically.
Today we find difficulty in communicating across states. But 5000 years ago, Indians were communicating across continents and across ages. There is a lot of similarity between the Rongorongo Easter Island script in Tahiti and the Indus Valley Harappan script. Phoenicia at the other end is supposed to have been the source for the Western alphabets, which is why we have words like phony, phonetics, etc. It was a precursor for Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and then English.
In the English, Roman or Arabic alphabets, you do not have a solid explanation for the sequence. For instance, why does A come first, followed B, C and D? But the sequence of all our Indian languages has a clear, logical basis. We have vowels and consonants. They are based on the sounds that come out unobstructed from any of the contours of our mouth. If we want to say ‘ka,’ we have to modulate it with the parts of our mouth. Our ancestors understood the anatomy of the buccal cavity and how the sound comes for each letter. People who tried to trace the source of the alphabets and their sequence compared it with the Indian alphabets and concluded that it was the Indian alphabets, which have travelled to Phoenicia. A couple of swaps have happened, which therefore have yielded the order of ABCD that we see today. You can find that in a paper written by Wim J Borsboom. He says that while copying, there were two errors of historic proportion.
Mesmerising Swaras and Our Notations
Yet another beautiful example is the saptha swara. Music is very natural and everybody can sing and make melodious sounds. But science comes when we want to translate that sound into a written form that we can read, recall and reproduce. That is when we need the notations to represent the melodious notes. In India, we talk about the seven notes of sa re ga ma pa tha ni. Similarly, in the western music, we have Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si. Why are they so similar? Who got it from where?
Interestingly, in India, we are able to explain scientifically the logic behind the notes. Our ancestors figured out where the sound originates from inside our body. They picked up animals, whose sounds if we imitate, we can create the same resonance. When you try to sing ‘sa,’ you have to get the sound out from your navel and you can equate it with the sound of a peacock that comes from its navel. They named the first note as Shadja. It means ‘born six times.’ When we sing ‘sa,’ the sound passes through six nodes -the navel, chest, throat, tongue, teeth and lips. They understood the logic of sound, music, script and everything about the vocal cord system, so scientifically.
For the western notes, they trace it to a hymn of St. John. Even with the Japanese music notes, they trace it to the starting letters of certain hymns. The point is, in Western classical music, you don’t have any explanation. It’s got a glass ceiling whereas in the Indian thought, it goes all the way up to nature or prakriti.
We have named our land Bharat and it has many meanings. One of them means speech. We decided that we won’t stop with speech, but wanted to preserve the speech. We went into the mode of writing. It is a myth that in India, every knowledge was given orally. Today, we have difficulty in communicating between one state in India and the other state. 4000 years ago, our traders went and traded from Tahiti to Phoenicia and communicated with people. They didn’t know the language of other people, but still they were successful. They used symbols and signages. They used aksharam, with which they wrote literature.
Mind and Matter
They used the word ‘shreni’ for a trader. He is an aggregator in Indian context. Traders aggregated produce from various small-scale units all over the land. We have been a decentralized land. Figuratively, they used the symbol of a squirrel to represent a trader. A sword was denoted by slashes, because slashes represent cuts.
We had Mudra for hand signs; Karana for Abhinaya. For the face signs, we had the rasa -the navarasas. For music, we organized it into melodies and ragam. For words, we had vakh. That’s idea and this has been the language of the Vedas as well. We had the symbols and also symbolism. We have addressed the various layers in and had a good handle in communication. We approached it all the way from ‘Om’ which is Pranava or the subtle. From the subtle, we moved to our written scripts and alphabets which is the gross.
We transcend both mind and matter. Today people talk about mindfulness. But we have been elaborating it for 5000 years. We’ve had different mediums and based on the need, we have chosen the mediums. We have written certain things on cloths, some on manuscripts and some on stone.
India’s Role in Global GDP
Phoenicia is the Eastern Mediterranean. The ancient Phoenicia had places like Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arwad. The word ‘book’ has its origin in Byblos. The words like Bible, Bibliotech and Bibliography all have roots in Byblos. In Europe, they wanted to understand how the Eastern, Asian and Oriental countries fared in economy vis-à-vis- the economies of the West. British economist Angus Madison in his report writes that one-third of the world trade happened from India for about 1700 years -from the year one to 1700. No other country has held sway for 1700 years, getting one-third of the world’s GDP. Sadly, today, if you go and look for such reports, you will find graphs that show our economy collapsing and on the decline. But in reality, we have grown from to 1 and steadily been at 33% for 1700 years. Only due to various invasions, our decline started much later.
For our successful stint in trade and commerce, our communication skill was one big factor. We were also good in accounting. We traded not just spices but also steel, zinc, copper and various alloys, cotton and silk, dyes- indigo and madder red, besides sugar and diamonds as well. We had large ships for logistics. Not only did we build ships, but also, exported them. We have heard of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare. The merchants of Venice were, in fact, trading and making profit using Indian sugar. Though sugar is sweet, the story behind sugar is bitter. Indian sugar has influenced the world’s demography. We always talk about silk route. But we had a 5000-year-old metal route from India, all the way from Hanoi in the east to Haifa in the West. Sadly, we never speak about it, which was our strength.
Trading, A Noble Profession
The word navigate comes from our word ‘navi.’ To refer to trade and commerce, we used the word, ‘vanijyam.’ It means that in speaking, you have to be sweet. A trader was called ‘shreni’ or ‘shreshta’. It means ‘noble.’ While in the west, they said, ‘buyer beware,’ implying that traders would cheat. Whereas ancient India considered traders as noble people, who spoke sweet words and the truth and delivered quality goods. We also call ‘shubh labh’ or auspicious gains.
We have had various ways of communication and excelled in communication. We brought in science to the art of writing and sounds. We resorted to symbols and signs to convey a larger concept, rather than speaking too many words. One of the best examples is Sri Sukha Brahma Rishi. He is depicted like a human with a parrot face. Why does he have a parrot face?
He is the son of Veda Vyasa who compiled the Vedas. Sukha Brahma Rishi transmitted that to the rest of the world. You needed somebody with the ability of a parrot, to listen and to take in all that and then just repeat that without any distortion. Sukha Brahma Rishi stands not just for the idea of transmission, but transmission without distortion.
These are just some of the aspects of our heritage and our pride. First, we have to know our heritage; then we have to own it or stake claim to it; and then we have to expound it. Bharat also means a land of knowledge. No other country calls themselves a land of knowledge.
Q & A
Q: How can technology be leveraged to preserve and promote cultural heritage?
Dr Hema Hari: There are several layers of technology. We can use it to showcase our heritage and also to lay claim to our heritage. We can use technology to further our own knowledge by looking at relevant applications. We talk about five A’s: Awareness; Appreciation; Absorption; Adaptation and Application. In all these five As, technology can play a role.
Q: Our water bodies have been our pride. But have we not abused them?
Dr Hari: The British realised that water bodies are our backbone and they wanted to break it. The water bodies were maintained by the local people and especially, women of the land. The British created the Public Works Department (PWD) and took over all the water bodies into the department. 100 years later, in the name of secularisation, we de-divinised our water bodies. These twin blows led to diminishing of all our water bodies and uncontrolled pollution of the water bodies, right from river Ganga. Cleaning and maintaining the water bodies must be a national discourse. We must take care of them and recover them for the next century.
Q: How can we tell our heritage stories to future generations?
Dr Hema Hari: We find lots of tools, both for presenting online and also for experiencing them digitally, like VR, AR and so on. The foundation that we manage- Bharat Gyan has the tagline, ‘Experience the knowledge of India.’ There is no authentic Indic narrative about our own civilization. We have got into the act of collecting the data and documenting everything. We have made over 780 short films, each of 150 to 200 seconds duration, which are quite popular.
Q: How can education play a role in instilling a sense of pride and appreciation for one’s cultural heritage? Do you think it should be included as part of school and college level education?
Dr Hema Hari: We have conducted courses on heritage and offered them for free. We have spoken to so many people and talked about including heritage in the curriculum. There is acceptance of the idea but beyond that, not much has happened. Unless there is compulsion, people may not be willing to study these information. Fortunately, the new education policy has brought Indian knowledge system to the school level and also for colleges. It is a very good initiative. Hopefully, it will pave the way for the knowledge to get into the system and in the community.
Q: What has been ancient India’s role in promoting navigation?
Dr Hari: The Star-Spangled Banner is the US Nation Anthem. It was written in the Boston Harbour, on an Indian ship. Indian ships had travelled to Europe and from there, across the Atlantic to East Coast of America and to the West Coast. We were not only transporting our goods but also, selling our ships. The oak ships had 30 to 40 years of marine life. But Indian ships made of teak wood had 100 plus years of life and they were ten times larger than the ships made by others. We’ve been excelling in navigation from more than 5000 years. We have records of the Greek talking about the iron that came from India, for the arrow heads in their battles. We sometimes jokingly say that we were the arms dealer of the yesteryears. When the Colonials came, they saw our skills and exploited them for their own needs. They took our ships and colonized the world. Britain could not have colonized the world but for the Indian ships, Indian sailors and the Indian metallurgy.
Dr Hema Hari: In 1453, the Turks took over Constantinople. Till then, the Byzantine Empire was there and it was favourable to the west. All our products used to go from Tahiti to Phoenicia through the straight of Turkey. The Turks blocked this route and cut the west from the east. The western countries were starving for our goods. They wanted to find a route and started travelling. Till then, they never came to India and it was only the Arabs who had been to India.
In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the southern tip of Africa in the hope of finding India. That is why, the southern tip of Africa is called the Cape of Good Hope. At that point, his ship sank. In 1490s, when they discovered that the world is round, Christopher Columbus sailed westwards to find India. He circumnavigated the globe, taking the biggest ship and landed in Canary Islands. The first landmass that he encountered, he wrongly thought was India. That is how, the name West Indies came. The people there were called Red Indians.
In 1497, Vasco de Gama took the largest ship from Portugal and he came up to the Cape of Good Hope. There he saw Indian ships that were 10 times the size of his ship. Escorted by these Indian ships, he sailed past the Cape of Good Hope and reached Calicut. There he was welcomed by Samudra Raja- the king of Calicut. As they were not able to pronounce his name, Samudra Raja became ‘Zamorin.’ So, that is our proud history and heritage. Finding India was a hope for the world and hence the name ‘Cape of Good Hope.’
