I was reading this article about the top 20 historical myths.
It is often said that history is fabrictaed version of the actual events by the conquerors. Whats your view on this.
Is history really fabrictaed. Which paticular historical event do you think is a myth or misconception?
Re: Historical Myths - Your View
Very interesting read.
Myth - caste system has been an evil force in India for centuries
Fact as read in a book recently (and the kaur, kaka in usa or for that matter Muqawwee are more knowledgeable and are wecome to correct)
caste was just to assign various tasks to the citizenry. One could move from one caste to another based on one's profession. The British fixed it such that a person from one caste cannot move to the other. (I can give reference - too lazy to look for it now).
Re: Historical Myths - Your View
Nice point Southie uncle. Even the reason mentioned in Quran for distributing humans into tribes and casts is just for identification purposes. I don't know much about Vedic books. Is there anything mentioned that makes Brahman superior to others?
Re: Historical Myths - Your View
texts of hinduism are self contradictory, both rigveda and geeta mentions "chaturguno chaturvibhaga" means four qualities makes more sections, and each section has dharma,duty, to perform. brahman dharma, rajdharma etc. In fact, valimiki the writer of sanskrit ramayan upgraded from shudra status to brahmrishi, similar is the case of brahmrishi vishwamitra who was Kshatriya. the discrimination is mention in the other text called "manusmriti" literally memoirs of manu, rough equivalent of Adam and it makes brahmin superior to everyone
the central theme of Hinduism is its sanatan character, sanatan means ever existing and ever evolving, every single text has been formed on a specific time hence different form each other. religion is idolatry,polytheistic and also monotheistic. nothing is absolute in hinduism neither caste nor Hindu society.
Word Hindu itself doesn't exist in the hinduism, nor their is any word equivalent to religion, dharma means duty and now it connotes religion, Hinduism consider every one as hindu and part of ,vasudhaiv kutumbkam, entire universe is home for everyone, word "Naastik" is equally loose term whose meaning is ranging from non believer in hinduism to non believer in god.
most mystical and indeed beautiful religion
it has manusmriti, four vedas, eighteen purans including two mahakavyas, and many upnishadas
mahkavya means Ramayan and mahabharat, they are written in poetic form comprising viz 24000 and 1 lakh shlokas
Re: Historical Myths - Your View
Nice information. :k:
I think the word Hindh has connection with River Indus.
Re: Historical Myths - Your View
Indeed, hindu scriptures refers to the location, gandhar(kandhar) to lanka(Sri Lanka). Arabs used to pronounce Sindhu river as Hindu hence the name, Its area of Saptasindhu, modern day punjab where it is said that vedas emerged out of river Saraswati, Saraswati later went back to heaven and reside with her father Brahma(supreme god of creation). Sarswati is hindu goddess of knowledge. It actually refers to end of water in saraswati, four prominent river originates from Kailash Mansarovar(abode of bhagwan shiv, destroyer of universe) Indus, Ganga, Brahmputra and Sarswati.
Re: Historical Myths - Your View
Marco Polo ‘never went to China and picked up tales of the Orient from other travellers’
Marco Polo, one of history’s greatest explorers, may in fact have been a conman, it was claimed yesterday.
Far from being a trader who spent years in China and the Far East, he probably never went further east than the Black Sea, according to a team of archaeologists. **They suspect the Venetian adventurer picked up stories about the mysterious lands of the Orient from fellow traders around the Black Sea who related tales of China, Japan and the Mongol Empire in the 13th century.
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He then put the stories together in a book which purports to be his account of his travels between 1271 and 1291. It details his relations with Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler. But now an Italian team of archaeologists studying in Japan have cast doubts about one of their country’s national heroes - although there have been competing claims to him from Croatia, which argues he was born there.
Following the research, Professor Daniele Petrella of the University of Naples told Italian history magazine Focus Storia there were many inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Marco Polo’s description of Kublai Khan’s invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281.
‘He confuses the two, mixing up details about the first expedition with those of the second,’ Professor Petrella said. ‘In his account of the first invasion, he describes the fleet leaving Korea and being hit by a typhoon before it reached the Japanese coast,’ said Professor Daniele Petrella of the University of Naples, the leader of the archaeology team. 'But that happened in 1281 – is it really possible that a supposed eye witness could confuse events which were seven years apart?’
Polo’s description of the Mongol fleet did not square with the remains of ships the archaeologists excavated in Japan, as he had written of ships with five masts, while those which had been found had only three. ‘It was during our dig that doubts began to emerge about much of what he wrote,’ added Professor Petrella.
'When he describes Kublai Khan’s fleet he talks about the pitch that was used to make ships’ hulls watertight. He used the word 'chunam’, which in Chinese and Mongol means nothing.
‘In fact, it is the Persian word for pitch. It’s also odd that instead of using, as he does in most instances, local names to describe places, he used Persian terms for Mongol and Chinese place names.’
The explorer claimed to have worked as an emissary to the court of Kublai Khan, but his name does not crop up in any of the surviving Mongol or Chinese records.
The famous travel book was said to have been dictated by Polo to a fellow prisoner named Pisa while he was in jail after returning from his adventures, and to be fair to Polo, it is thought Pisa embellished many of the stories.
But the latest claims back those made in a book by British academic Frances Wood in 1995 entitled ‘Did Marco Polo go to China?’. She argued he never got beyond the Black Sea and that his famed account was a collection of travellers’ tales.