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The Amarakosha describes a Purana as having 5 characterestics. Only the Vishnu Purana comes anywhere near that description. After examining all the Puranas, Wilson and other scholars arrived at the conclusion that the VP was the Purana that was least tampered with. However, not everything is fine. The Matsya Purana briefly describes each Purana along with its size. Though the Matysa's definition of the VP matches, it says the VP consists of 23000 verses, in reality the Purana contains only 7000 verses. But the VP has a proper beginning , an ending and flows uniformly showing no signs of missing portions. How? Other Puranas like the Brahma-vaivarta, Bhagavatam, etc., have been practically overwritten. The Bhagavatam's description from the Matsya says it contains the story of the Asura Vritra and events from the Sarawasta kalpa. This is nowhere close to the present Bhagavatam which has Krishna as its main theme. It may also explain why Shankara and Ramanuja did not quote from it as it was not yet rewritten during their time. After coming a full circle, the VP is the closest to an authentic Purana. Cheers

Guruvani, You are the perfect example of a pot calling the kettle black. Your own belief system is replete with holes and is incapable of sustaining any serious enquiry. But you cunningly ignore that and talk nonsense. You have commited Shaiva Aparadha and are hereby sentenced to time in Shaiva Hell with no option for Parole. If you are not familiar with the concept, please look up Vaishnava Aparadha in your Gaudiya scriptures. The torturers in Vaishnava Hell wear vertical nama-s and their counterparts in in Shaiva Hell wear horizontal stripes of ash on their foreheads. Otherwise, the two systems are identical. Many Shaivas are vedic too. Shrikanta from the 13th century or thereabouts, wrote a commentary on the Brahma sutras and interpreted it to mean Shiva. Dr Sharma, the late Dvaita scholar comments that Shrikanta did a good job of providing a Shaiva interpretation. Today, plenty of Iyers in Tamilnadu are Shaiva and they are as vedic as it can possbly get. Vyasa's problem would have persisted in the dream too. When he appeared in the dreams of a Gaudiya Vaishnava Guru, he would have fallen into a trance before he said the name and the Guru would not know what Vyasa was trying to do. So the way out of this dilemma is to posit the existance of a third party. This person saw Vysas's problem and then appeared in a Gaudiya Vaishnava Guru's dream and told him about it. That is how the Gaudiyas (and no one else) have Radha today. However, I had heard this story a little differently. When Sukha was reciting the Bhagavatam, he would fall into Samadhi when he started to say her name and that is why she is absent from the text. It is a pity that the audience did not have access to modern day technology. Else, they could have strapped Shukha to an interrogation chair and setup a decent voltage. Everytime, he started to go into Samadhi, he would have received a jolt with people in the background screaming "say it, say it!" and that way Radha would have found a mention in the Bhagavatam. Oops! Did I just commit Vaishnava Aparadha? If I were a Sai baba devotee, I would have used this excuse to defend the avatarhood of my Guru. Whenever Shukha started to say out the divine, nectar-like name of Sai baba, he would fall into a trance. It would be so deep that the audience had buckets of cold water handy and would throw several pails of water on him before he would come out of his trance (At one point, so much water was thrown on him that he had to take a break from his discourse due to pneumonia). How do we know this? Through the dreams of a devotee, of course. Cheers

Are you so sure that he is the ignorant one? Have you actually seen a Sadhak display a siddhi in a convincing manner? A display of something that defies nature's laws (as we known them) and was not a trick? I can tell you this...you can search high and low; you will not find a single example. A display of divine magic is always something that is seen by someone else, somewhere else, but never seen by you firsthand. Sure, you can get to see some cheap tricks available from some self professed godmen such as pulling a ladoo out of thin air, or a ring or a pinch of sacred ash. These are third grade tricks that can be successfully performed by an amateur magician. As for slightly complex levels of magic such as converting water into Chardonnay, they always happen somewhere else and can never be witnessed by you. Really appreciable miracles such as eradicating disease from the world or poverty or saving the starving kids in Africa are out of the question. Most miracles do not go beyond the ladoo/ring/ash level. Shankara from 1300 years ago writes that miracles do not happen in his time and this is from someone who was living in a time and place where every Tom Dick and Harry was making up stories of divine miracles. If he was not living in primitive oil lamp, clay pot times and had access to the internet, he would have not objected to throwing a similar challenge as Randi. James Randi knows exactly what he is talking about and there will be no takers for those million dollars. This is real life and in real life sarees do not come out of thin air nor do blind people get cured through miracle touches. These stories - sorry to break the bubble - are strictly for the gullible. If you have not realized it, siddhis and miracles play no role in Bhakti and spiritual progress. They are totally irrelevant and I bet there are some religious people right on this forum who will agree with this (althought not outwardly, perhaps). Cheers

The traditional position is Vedas are eternal. Eternal is not just without an end; it is without beginning too. That is why they are not created. The Mimaamsa school goes into details on establishing "unauthoredness" which is why these words (Vedas) hold value. This Mimaamsa position is borrowed in full by the schools of Vedanta. From a modern perspective, none of this holds good. It is obvious that they were authored by humans over several generations and are prayers to now defunct Gods like Indra, et al. Philology, archaeology,etc., have helped narrow down and assign a reasonable period of time for the creation of the Vedas. Cheers

From time to time? If I tell people a few mantras were revealed to me last night after dinner, who will accept that? It is generally accepted mantras will not be revealed anymore. So no one is going to believe any new revelations. Cheers

In your post! Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu who is mentioned in your description of the Rig-veda. Cheers

UG died a couple of weeks ago. The body was cremated without fanfare and without any form of funeral rites. Those of us who hit a chord with his negations are indebted to him. An obituary has been posted at http://www.well.com/~jct/Final_Remembering.htm You have to be saved from the very idea that you have to be saved. You must be saved from the saviors, redeemed from the redeemers - UG Cheers

What can I say? We all call our grandfathers monkeys when we are mad at them. Though Darwin may have called his grandfather a monkey, it does not mean he stopped loving him. Cheers

How did these items end up in a US auction? One one end we have patriotic Indians complaining about the British carting away artifacts such as the Kohinoor to their country during their rule. And here we have $4 million worth sculptures going out of the country voluntarily which must have been approved by desi authorities. If the Shiv Sena folks hear about this, there will be a song and dance. Cheers

To use my favorite example, it is like Santa Claus. Do you feel like you are having faith that Santa does not exist? Or a square circle? To use another example, you say there exists a green colored elephant in Iowa that can sing and dance, but you cannot prove its existence. In response, I say based on our knowledge of the anatomy of elephants, it is impossible for an elephant to have green pigmented skin or to have a voice box and since you cannot offer evidence to substantiate your claim, I am inclined to dismiss it as false. Show me concrete evidence and I will accept your claim as true. It is a case of Occam's razor - if you have a conflict between 2 options, then the one which requires lesser assumptions is the correct one. This can change in future if we acquire more relevant information, but until then this is the correct choice. For example, the earth was flat until it became a globe a few centuries ago. In the above case, it is easy to define what constitutes acceptable evidence. Check if the elephant is naturally green (no paint) and hear it sing and ensure there is no audio device stuck its body somewhere. If yes, then your claim was true. In the case of God, it is impossible to even define a set of acceptable evidence. How then can we enter into a logical argument? That is my point. it is totally a matter of faith and the absence of this faith is atheism. Cheers

I am inclined to agree with you. What does pushing the Vedas mean exactly? Brahmins are made out to be villains for things they are not really interested in or have any knowledge of, in my opinion. This is the 21st century and Brahmins - just like other Indians - are more interested in upgrading their mobile phones to the latest models and buying Santro cars. The majority of them have no clue on the teachings of their respective affiliations and more importantly they do not care. They have more interesting things to spend their time on and there is nothing wrong in that. It is a very different world that we live in today compared to just 300 years ago. "Pushing the Vedas" is a complaint that may have been valid a few centuries back, but is totally out of place in today's world. When dealing with topics such as Brahman oppression, we need to be aware that a lot of them originated when times were very different and are no longer applicable. Let us not lose sight of reality. Cheers

It depends on the forum. If it is a spiritual forum existing to bring theists together as a community for discussion on theistic topics, then atheists should be kept out with a clear message in Red colored, size 20 arial font. They do not belong there. On the other hand if the moderators think atheism has a place in their forums (apparently some moderators do), then this kind of thing is inevitable. The basic point is theism is founded on faith and atheism is founded on lack of faith. There really is no common ground for arguments. In my experience, I have seen that some people prefer reasoning over faith and are more comfortable being agnosts or atheists. Others prefer faith over reasoning and are more comfortable being theists. The fact is, the world has more theists than atheists. Faith is a personal/emotional thing and it is really not something that can be cultivated through logic and reasoning. Hence logical arguments with atheists are a waste of time for both parties. Cheers

I think we are almost alike in our thinking here - except for the avatar part. I am not saying Krishna and Rama are fake Gods. It is clear that Krishna and Rama are not mentioned anywhere in the Vedas, but are big names in the Purana literature. So either they came after the Vedas or were already well established as divine personalities in non-Brahmana religions. Eventually they all came together in some fashion to form the new evolved religion which we now call Hinduism. I say Krishna and Rama were turned into avatars at this point by the Brahmanas just like they tried the same with the Buddha and other local Gods too. I think you will disagree with this one, but this is my theory. We have seen this happen in more recent times too where every Guru (Shankara, Madhva, Chaitanya, Sai Baba...) is avatarized by their followers. It is also of interest that the ISKCON position that Krishna is *not* an avatar of Vishnu, but everything including Vishnu come from Krishna existed even before the formation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In other words, there was at least one group that rejected the popular list of Vishnu's avatars. The chief objective of the Gita is to motivate Arjuna to work. That way the Gita is primarily a Karma yoga text. This is why I say it is very likely that it was not a full blown religious text originally. The Puranas were primarily history and folklore - unlike the heavy religious bodies that they are today. The Brahmanas used the Puranas as a medium to disseminate the new form of their religion. Purana research is an intriguing topic and like I said earlier you can consult Pargiter, RC Hazra, Dasgupta, et al., for a critical view of their development into the present state. Cheers

Here is my take on this.Pancharatra and such other beliefs are never considered part of the Vedas (and are therefore not Vedic). However, certain portions of these belief structures were borrowed by the Brahmanas to evolve their religion. More details below in points. 1. The Brahmanas were always a minority. They make up less than 4% of the country’s population today and it cannot have been very different back then. 2. As everyone knows the mantras were restricted to Brahmanas only. They worshipped Indra, Mitra, Varuna, sacrificed animal products such as flesh and ghee (clarified butter) into fires and drank intoxicating soma juice. 3. The general non-Brahmana public had other beliefs like Pancharatra, Bhagavata, Pashupata, Jainism, Buddhism and a number of such beliefs. The Lalita Vistara – a biography of the Buddha – lists 63 beliefs* that existed during the Buddha’s time. in reality, there were probably a lot more. 4. The sacrificial style religion of the Brahmanas became obsolete and gave way to the speculative Upanishadic style of thinking. But even this clearly was not for everyone. They realized they had to come up with something that appealed to the majority and was easily available to the majority. 5. To this end, the Brahmanas decided to shop around and borrow elements from other religions - not very different from Cisco buying WebEx. From other existing beliefs, they borrowed popular Gods such as Shiva, Vasudeva, Krishna, Rama, etc., mapped them to Rudra and Vishnu of the Vedas, introduced the concept of avatars and initiated the birth of a new form of religion which has evolved in to Hinduism consisting of idol worship, temples and Bhajans. 6. Since the Vedic canon was sacrosanct and frozen in time, the Brahmanas could not make any changes there. Hence, they created material along this new direction and inserted this religious material into Puranas**, the Mahabharata and made them available to non-Brahmanas. 7. Their key accomplishment in developing Hinduism was to map most local Gods to either Vishnu or Shiva thus automatically making these indigenous beliefs a part of Hinduism too (some of the more daring ones attempted to map the Buddha to Vishnu too without much success). *See A History of Early Vedanta by Hajime Nakamura. **See Ancient Indian Historical Tradition by F E Pargiter. The Puranas were originally a set of stories of Royal lineages, along with the glories and accomplishments of kings. These stories were orally maintained by the Sutas for many generations. At some point, the Brahmanas decided to take over and write them down and in the process inserted religious material turning them into a set of religious texts. It is still a mystery as to why they wrote so many of them with conflicting material. The Gita was very likely a smaller text without the irrelevant descriptions of Sankhya, Yoga and other totally-out-of-context material. These were later embellishments added in the process of modifying it into a religious text. Anyway, why is the Bhagavad Gita such a big deal and the Anu Gita given no importance? Did Shankara comment on the BG because it was a popular text or did the BG become popular because Shankara commented on it? The question lingers….but we will never know the answer. Cheers

If I understand correctly, the time and circumstance argument used by Chaitanya followers states that all teachings come with an expiry date. 1. Buddhism's expiry date was set to the time of Shankara. This means Buddhism had a lifespan of (800 AD - 600 BC) = 1400 years 2. Advaita's expiry date was set to the time of Madhvacharya. Lifespan = 1300 AD - 800 AD = 500 years 3. Madhvacharya's impure Bhakti system was set to expire at the time of Chaitanya. Lifespan = 1600 AD - 1300 Ad = 300 years approx. The question is, what is the expiry date of the Chaitanya system? I am guessing it has no expiry date - just like groceries sold in Indian stores in the US! In other words, all religions are bound by the limitations of time and circumstances, but Gaudiya Vaishnavism has no bounds. of course, this is a belief held by GVs only, but even there it is surprising that one can actually believe in such ideas. Anyway, to each his own. As long as you are having fun, everything is fine in my opinion. Cheers

I had to visit Shanghai a few times over the last few years. I learnt something curious about naming there which may be relevant to this thread. The chinese have chinese names for every location and that is what the locals know. For example, the Radisson hotel is not known as Radisson among the locals of Shanghai. For every foreign name, they find a list of Chinese words which sound like the foreign name and then pick the one which has the most beautiful meaning. Telling a cab driver to take you to the Hyatt will not work. You will have to have the chinese name of the place written down in their script and that is the only way of communicating with the cab driver. This type of alternate naming is not found in India where Radission and the Hyatt are known to locals by their original names - most likely because english is more widely adopted in India than in PRC. You may want to try something similar. Create a list of sanskrit nouns sounding similar to your name and then pick the one with the most beautiful meaning. Cheers

That is interesting. Conversely, will the slaughtered animal be born as a human? Most meat-eaters eat a variety of species. Exactly which species will they take birth in? Don't guess, please. And anyway, what is the punishment in being born as an animal? The animal does not remember anything of its meat-eating past. Does not sound logical... In the Vedas, there are detailed descriptions of killing and sacrificing different parts of animals into the holy fire. The excuse was, the animal would get a one-way ticket to heaven. If we take that approach, then we can probably justify killing turkeys too. Look at it this way. 1. The huge demand for meat in the world (the majority of the world is not vegetarian) has resulted in farms raising animals which they would not if the world was vegetarian. This gives a chance for several souls to take birth and work off some karma. 2. Slaughter of animals gives them a chance to take birth as humans and progress spiritually which they cannot do as animals or as souls not getting a chance to be born. Slaughter quickens the process. Meat eating actually has some high-level benefits as described above. So let us praise Jesus, praise Allah and let them continue with their slaughter as in vedic India to transport the animals to a higher destiny. They are actually helping out a lot of souls. Vegetarians do not have to feel bad that they are not providing such a service. We are killing and eating lots of plants too. Not to mentions countless forms of lower life like bacteria in yogurt, etc. Cheers

I have some things to say here, but that would be construed as an argument set towards 'defeating' you, which the admin is not happy about. I am not sure if I should respond or not...Let me think about it. Cheers

Read my post again. I am giving the example of fruits and vegetables (nothing on rice & grains) to illustrate a point. The point is honesty. Stop trying to use the Gita as a one stop shop for everything under the sun by misinterpreting and bringing in non-extant material into the verses which make no sense. Especially when there are other texts which are just as valid as the Gita and have explicit material on the sins of slaughter and meat consumtiion. The fact is the Gita says nothing about the effects of meat eating and it is a simple thing to acknowledge this and direct people to other texts instead of trying to find an answer for everything inside the Gita. Since I see nothing wrong with what I have written, I fail to understand what turned you off. Cheers

I will play my Santa Claus card... Can you replace God by Santa Claus in the above statement and explain what the diference is? If there is none, would you say the scientist needs to keep an open mind on the existence of Santa Claus and not dismiss the concept outright for lack of evidence? I would also object to the use of 'immediately jump to the conclusion that there is no God' as we have 1000s of years of evidence to show how life works. It is not a momentary, impulsive decision to drop a certain hypothesis. A square circle is an impossiblity that can be accepted without requests for evidence. The presence of a mango tree in the north pole is a similar impossiblity where one would not challenge the statement for lack of evidence. If one posits a God, with no evidence, it raises a billion other questions and instead of solving the problem of origin, it only aggravates it. Such a baseless hypothesis is rejected outright as science would prefer to work towards a solution and not away from it. It is a matter of being realistic to only consider theories which have reasonably good possiblities of turning into reality. For all the above reasons, a scientist of this time will not attach any value to religious stories which have no semblance of reasonable hypothesis. No scientific progress can be made with the concept of a God as no evidence can be collected to support this claim and so only one of these two things can be done with it -- either accept it as a blind artice of faith or reject it. Rejecting such a hypothesis is obviously not an indication of a closed, narrow mind as can be explained by the Santa Claus example. It comes after careful evaluation of what is seen and perceived. Cheers

The same logic applies to fruits and vegetables. The moment they are harvested, they start rotting and by the time they hit the supermarkets they are at least a day old which by your logic is Tamasic and should not be consumed. What you are essentially saying is you cannot eat anything that you have not plucked off a tree or a plant yourself. And of course, where does Krishna specify the 3-hour constraint?? He does not say anything about rice, pasta and bread either. So does this mean he will not accept them? Do you know anyone who eats fruits for breakfast, leaves for lunch and drinks a couple of glasses of water for dinner? The point is stop loose interpretations of texts to suit your beliefs. Someone else can do the same for an entirely different set of beliefs thus causing these texts to lose their significance. Cheers

Some back up information... 1. A Ghost can be defined as a soul without a physical body. If you think about this, the implications of not having a body run deep. Everything that is happening to us including thinking, seeing, feeling and staying alive is tied to one or more organs of the body. For this reason, if we accept the possible existence of a Ghost, then it is something completely inconceivable for humans and there is no way we can know about its existence. See this from a practical perspective and it is the same as saying Ghosts do not exist. At this point it reduces to this. I have never known a ghost. So ghosts exist if I believe in people who claim to have known ghosts or if I choose not to believe in them, then ghosts do not exist. Depending on how we think we will pick option one or option two. It is now a matter of faith. 2. It is time to suggest practical remedies to Teja as this person has already worked his/her way through Bhajans, prayers and Mantras with no positive result. It is very simple - if Krishna will not cure your headache, you need to see a doctor. Cheers

The Gita does not talk about the consequences of meat eating. This should not be taken to mean the Gita endorses eating meat. You will have to look elsewhere. Cheers

Most people here will not like it, but someone has to do this. There are no such things as ghosts. A ghost is a physical impossibility. You have a vivid imagination blurring the lines between the real and the unreal which happens to some people. You will have to use logic to solve this problem. Basic questions...How can a ghost have a voice? There can be no voice without a physical voice box. Has it ever tried to communicate with you? Have you tried to communicate with it? If not, you should. You said earlier that you cannot see it. How then do you know it goes away for the mantras? Also look into your past. You were most likely exposed to ghost stories and haunted house stories which had a profound impact on you. If you can understand that you are creating the ghost, then your problem will be solved. Try watching movies like a beautiful mind and flightplan. Else, you can consult a doctor. Good luck

It can be interpreted to mean Shankara was respectful of all castes, but was also clear that no caste should step out of line and should abide by rules. However, we should differentiate between his literature and his biography. His literature was written by himself while his biography was written by someone else - someone who was most likely an avid disciple of Shankara and was thus inspired and motivated to add color to the story of a regular human in an attempt to distinguish his personality. For example, Shankara's biography abounds with miracles (as was the trend back then) such as gold coins out of thin air, encounter with Vyasa, etc. Yet, Shankara in his BSB says in one place "the fact that miracles do not happen today does not mean they were not happening in the past". Thus, in Shankara's own words, much of the events of his biography are to be discredited. In short, attach more importance to literature than the biography. Cheers