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Tiahuanaco
Tiahuanacu (also called Tiwanaku) is a mystery because of its age (estimated to be 17,000 years) and the peculiar stone technology.
Today there is little doubt that Tiahuanaco was a major sacred ceremonial centre and focal point of a culture that spread across much of the region. The ancient people built a stone pyramid known as the Akapana
Gateway of the Sun, Tiahuanaco
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)
Entrance to Kalasayaya temple, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)
That structure dominates the bottom half of this aerial photo.
When first discovered the pyramid was largely covered with soil. After several decades of excavation some of the walls have been uncovered and treasure hunters opened a depression in the top. This was built originally to open towards the east. The dark line across the lower part of the picture is the railway line from a lakeside port to La Paz, the Bolivian capital. The rectangular outline just ‘above and to the left ‘ of the Akapana is a terreplein. known as the Kalasasaya. The lighter patch with an indistinct outline ‘above’ the Akapana is where an excavated semi-subterranean ‘temple’ has been discovered. Other features are visible but most of the ‘patches’ are fields. The upper part of the picture is crossed by the road from the the village of Tiwanaku leading eastwards to La Paz. (taken from ‘Pathways to the Gods’ by Tony Morrison 1978).
Pumapunku (Puma Punka)
Just out of the picture (above) to the bottom left is the site of the Puma Punku.
This is another ‘temple area’ with many finely cut stones some weighing over 100 tonnes. Its position to the south of the Akapana may have been important because
it gave a good view to a sacred mountain far to the east. Of course there is no certainty that this was the reason as the ancient builders left no written records.
All the legends have been handed down through the generations.
Puma Punku ruins, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia
(courtesy of www.sacredsites.com and Martin Gray)
Puma Punku, truly startles the imagination. It seems to be the remains of a great wharf (for Lake Titicaca long ago lapped upon the shores of Tiahuanaco) and a massive, four-part, now collapsed building. One of the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several other blocks laying about are between 100 and 150 tons. The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats, could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure.
How were these monstrous stones moved and what was their purpose?
Posnansky suggested an answer, based upon his studies of the astronomical alignments of Tiahuanaco, but that answer is considered so controversial, even impossible, that it has been ignored and censured by the scientific community for fifty years.
Carved stone block at Puma Punku. This precision-made 6 mm wide
groove contains equidistant, drilled holes. It seems impossible that this
cuts were made with use of stone or copper tools.
The so-called Gate of the Sun seen at the back side.
Made of one piece of hard rock. Possibly it was a part of a large wall.
By the courtesy of www.inkatour.com, nr. 3696Puma Punku doesn’t look impressive: a hill as remains of an old pyramid and
a large number of megalithic block of stone on the ground, evidently smashed by a devastating earthquake. However, closer inspection shows that these stone blocks have been fabricated with a very advanced technology. Even more surprising
is the technical design of these blocks shown in the drawing below.
All blocks fit together like interlocking building blocks.Source: Jean-Pierre Protzen & Stella E.Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture”, Jpurnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, Nr.3, 2000, pp. 358-371
Artistic interpretation © World-Mysteries.com
Artistic interpretation © World-Mysteries.comA wall of the Akapana, the pyramid of Tiahuanacu, shows similar modular design.
Blocks that are piled one on top of the other but the underside of the upper stone is cut at an angle. The top of the standing stone is cut at the same angle, as shown on the figure below.
Source: Jean-Pierre Protzen & Stella E.Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture”, Jpurnal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 59, Nr.3, 2000, pp. 358-371
This stone technology plainly contradicts what official archaeology suggests about the general state of development of the ancient peoples of South-America.
Martin Gray
Tiahuanaco, Archaeoastronomy and Cataclysmic Myths
by Martin Gray
© Copyright Martin Gray
Reprinted with permission.Anthropologist and photographer Martin Gray specializes in the study of sacred sites and power places around the world, having visited more than 1000 of these magical sites in 80 countries. Each year he also guides group pilgrimages to different countries and this year is offering magical journeys to Peru/Bolivia in June and Greece in October. More articles by Martin Gray on our web site. For more information, see Martin’s web site at www.sacredsites.com
Early in January of 1998, I bought an old Volkswagen van and began a long drive to the lower reaches of South America. Over the next year, rambling 22,000 miles on rough mountain roads and muddy jungle tracks, I visited and photographed more than 150 sacred sites and power places in fourteen different countries. Along the way, I had fascinating experiences, ranging from the scary to the sublime. There were five robberies (three by the police), dramatic encounters with Columbian guerilla fighters, meetings with authentic shamans, nights of wild dancing at Latin discos, and splendid days exploration and meditation at the sacred places.
Eight months into the journey, I ascended the altiplano region of Peru and Bolivia to spend ten weeks criss-crossing the Andean mountains. The Andes birthed several great cultures, including the Inca and that of Tiahuanaco. While the Inca empire is better known and its sites more numerous and visually remarkable, Tiahuanaco is the true sacred center of Andean region. Now almost entirely in ruins, it is to South America what the Great Pyramid is to Egypt and Avebury stone ring is to England. Twelve miles from the coast of sacred Lake Titicaca, Tiahuanaco was the source of the creation myths, the social order, and the extraordinary preoccupation with astronomy that underwrote thousands of years of Andean culture. Yet, for all its importance, Tiahuanaco remains an enigma. This is not because the ruins have not been excavated or studied. Rather, the reason for the enduring mystery of Tiahuanaco derives from some of its structures – and the astronomical alignments of those structures – that indicate a probable construction period far more ancient than any other monumental archaeological site in all of South America.
Driving to Tiahuanaco from Lake Titicaca (where I had spent several days camping on the islands of the Sun and Moon), I found myself again thinking about several questions that had been with me during my long travels from Sedona. Was South America originally inhabited by Paleo-Indians walking across the Bering land bridge during past ages of polar glaciation (the orthodox assumption) or had there been pre-existing sophisticated cultures that had mysteriously disappeared (the alternative theory)? Was there any factual reality behind the many Andean myths of great cataclysms and enormous floods in archaic times? Who was the legendary hero/savior Viracocha that supposedly re-seeded civilization into the Andean regions following the cataclysm? And what is the meaning behind the astonishing stories of contact, indeed settlement, from the mythic land of Atlantis?
Here is one variant of the myth of Viracocha. Long ago in a forgotten time the world experienced a terrible storm with tremendous floods. The lands were plunged into a period of absolute darkness and frigid cold, and humankind was nearly eradicated. Some time after the deluge, the creator god Viracocha arose from the depths of Lake Titicaca. Journeying first to the island of Titicaca (now called Isla del Sol or the Island of the Sun), Viracocha commanded the sun, moon, and stars to rise. Next going to Tiahuanaco (whose original name, taypicala, meant ‘the rock in the center’), Viracocha fashioned new men and women out of stones and, sending them to the four quarters, began the repopulation of the world. With various helpers, Viracocha then traveled from Tiahuanaco (also written as Tiwanaku), bringing civilization and peace wherever he went. Known by other names including Kon Tiki and Tunupa, he was said to have been a bearded, blue-eyed, white man of large stature. A teacher and a healer, a miracle worker and an astronomer, Viracocha is also credited with introducing agriculture, writing, and metallurgy.
I had been reading about Viracocha’s pilgrimage to Tiahuanaco for twenty years and was enchanted to have finally arrived myself. The first thing I noticed is that Tiahuanaco is not a grand visual spectacle such as the ruins of Machu Picchu, Palenque or Teotihuacan. The excavated central part of the city is relatively small and one can walk across it in fifteen minutes. Additionally, there are not a large number of structures to be seen, because so much has been stolen and carted away over the centuries. The next thing I noticed was that the site appeared to be much, much older than the primary construction and habitation period postulated in orthodox archaeology theory. This conventional interpretation theory assumes that the civilization that spawned Tiahuanaco rose around 600 BC and fell into decline sometime soon after 1000 AD. Yet, something about this relatively recent dating didn’t fit with my impression of the place. With more than thirty years of experience exploring and photographing many hundreds of archaeology ruins I have developed something of a sense for gauging the antiquity of these places, and the remains of Tiahuanaco felt very much older than just 2500 years. The orientation of the site was different too; it had a most unusual style. It seemed to have been designed and crafted by a people with artistic, scientific and philosophic sensibilities distinctly different than that of other pre-Columbian cultures.
This same sort of feeling is what motivated Arthur Posnansky, a German-Bolivian scholar, to exhaustively study Tiahuanaco for almost fifty years. Living at the ruins and intimately familiar with them, Posnansky noticed dozens of things that could not be explained by the conventional archeological theory nor slotted into its chronological framework. For example, all over the site were enormous blocks of stone that no known pre-Columbian culture had the technology to fashion or transport. Even more astonishing, the spatial arrangement of these structures – relative to one another and to the stars above – indicated that the initial site engineers had a highly sophisticated knowledge of astronomy, geomancy and mathematics. Let us take a brief tour of some of these structures and reflect on their remarkable qualities.
Tiahuanaco has four (surviving) primary structures, called the Akapana pyramid, the Kalasasaya platform, the Subterranean temple, and the Puma Punku. The ceremonial core of Tiahuanaco was surrounded by an immense artificial moat that archaeologist Alan Kolata believes was “not to provide the Tiwanaku elite with a defensive structure…but rather evoked the image of the city core as an island, not a common, generic island, but the sacred island of Titicaca, the mythic site of world creation and human emergence.” Further commenting on this idea of the mythic centrality of Tiahuanaco, Kolata explains that, “the true name of Tiwanaku was Taypikhala, ‘the stone in the center.’ Such a name had a geocentric and ethnocentric meaning signifying that the city was conceived not only as the political capital of the state but also as the central point of the universe.”
The Akapana pyramid, sometimes called the sacred mountain of Tiahuanaco, is a much eroded, seven-level pyramid measuring some 200 meters on a side and nearly 17 meters tall. Like the nearby Subterranean Temple and the Kalasasaya, the Akapana is precisely oriented to the cardinal directions. Each of the seven levels is constructed with beautifully cut and precisely joined blocks that were faced with panels once covered with metal plaques, carvings, and paintings. In the center of the Akapana’s flat summit is a small, sunken courtyard laid out in the form of a square superimposed over a perfect cross; this courtyard is also oriented to the cardinal directions. Recent excavations of this courtyard, the interior of the pyramid, and the grounds beneath it have revealed an unexpected, sophisticated, and monumental system of interlinked surface and subterranean channels. These channels brought water collected upon the summit down and through the seven levels, where it exited below ground level, merged into a major subterranean drain system underneath the civic/ceremonial core of Tiwanaku, and ultimately flowed into Lake Titicaca.
Commenting on this magnificent engineering, Kolata states, “It is apparent that the complex system of draining the Akapana was not a structural imperative. A much simpler and smaller set of canals could have drained the accumulated water from the summit. In fact the system installed by the architects of Akapana, although superbly functional, is over-engineered, a piece of technical stone-cutting and joinery that is pure virtuosity.” Kolata goes on to wonder about why all this work was done and concludes that, “the Akapana was conceived by the people of Tiwanaku as their principal emblem of the sacred mountain, a simulacrum of the highly visible, natural mountain huacas (sacred places) in the Quimsachata range….The Akapana was Tiwanaku’s principal earth shrine, an icon of fertility and agricultural abundance. It was the mountain at the center of the island-world and may even have evoked the specific image of sacred mountains on Lake Titicaca’s Island of the Sun. In this context, the Akapana was the principal huaca of cosmogenic myth, the mountain of human origins and emergence, which took on specific mytho-historic significance.”
The structure known as the Puma Punka also startles the imagination. It seems to be the remains of a great wharf and a massive, four-part, now collapsed building, and this makes eminent sense for Lake Titicaca long ago lapped upon the shores of Tiahuanaco city, now inland from the lake twelve miles. One of the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several other blocks are between 100 and 150 tons. The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in the ancient Andean world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats, could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure. How were these monstrous stones moved and what was their purpose? Posnansky suggested an answer, based upon his studies of the astronomical alignments of Tiahuanaco, but that answer is considered so controversial, even impossible, that it has been ignored and censured by the scientific community for fifty years. As such it hasn’t made in into the mainstream history books and therefore hardly anyone knows of the astonishing implications of Posnansky’s findings.
Nearby the Puma Punka and the Akapana pyramid are the Kalasasaya compound and the so-called subterranean temple. It was in these structures that Posnansky made the discoveries that led him to suggest both a great antiquity for Tiahuanaco and an extraordinary use. As part of his studies, Posnansky had conducted precise surveys of all the principal structures of Tiahuanaco. The Kalasasaya structure, a rectangular enclosure measuring about 450 feet by 400 feet, was delineated by a series of vertical stone pillars (the name Kalasasaya means “the standing pillars”) and had an east-west orientation. Utilizing his measurements of the lines of sight along these stone pillars, the orientation of the Kalasasaya, and the purposely-intended deviations from the cardinal points, Posnansky was able to show that the alignment of the structure was based upon an astronomical principle called the obliquity of the ecliptic.
This term, the obliquity of the ecliptic, refers to the angle between the plane of the earth’s orbit and that of the celestial equator, equal to approximately 23 degrees and 27 minutes at the present. The tilt of the obliquity, however, changes very slowly over great periods of time. Its cyclic variation ranges between 22 degrees, 1 minute and 24 degrees, 5 minutes over a period of 41,000 years or 1 degree in 7000 years (this cycle is not to be confused with the better known precessional cycle of 25,920 years or 1 degree of movement every 72 years). The figure that Posnansky determined for the obliquity of the ecliptic at the time of the building of the Kalasasaya was 23 degrees, 8 minutes, and 48 seconds. Based on these calculations, Posnansky was thereby able to date the initial construction of the Kalasasaya and Tiahuanaco to 15,000 BC. This date was later confirmed by a team of four leading astronomers from various prestigious universities in Germany.
This initial construction date, being vastly older than that deemed possible by the prevailing paradigm of history, was (and still is) ridiculed by mainstream archaeologists and prehistorians. But it is not so easy to dismiss Posnansky’s findings as there are other mysteries concerning Tiahuanaco that seem to confirm the great antiquity of the site. Among these are the ancient myths of Tiahuanaco (from throughout the Andean region) that tell of its founding and use in a pre-flood time; the scientific studies that prove a cataclysmic flood did indeed occur some twelve thousand years ago; the utensils, tools, and the fragments of human skeletons that are mixed in with the deepest layers of the flood alluvia (indicating human use of the site prior to the great flood); and the strange carvings of bearded, non-Andean people that are found around the site (replete with sculptural and iconographic details that are completely unique in the western hemisphere).
Posnansky, and other writers such as Graham Hancock, Zecharia Sitchin and Ivar Zapp, have suggested that these findings and the astronomical alignments of the site, strongly point to the likelihood that the original Tiahuanaco civilization flourished many thousands of years before the period assumed by conventional archaeologists. Rather than rising and falling during the two millennia around the time of Christ, Tiahuanaco may have existed during the vastly older time of the last Ice Age, some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. The implications of this are truly stunning. Tiahuanaco may be (along with Teotihuacan in Mexico, Baalbeck in Lebanon, and the Great Pyramid in Egypt) a surviving fragment of a long lost civilization.
Who were the people of this lost civilization, and where was it located? Readers interested in exploring these mysteries will enjoy Hancock’s fascinating book, Fingerprints of the Gods. In support of his radical ideas concerning the great antiquity of Tiahuanaco, Hancock gives startling proof that the coastline of South America was mapped in extraordinarily accurate detail long before that continent was “discovered” by Europeans. Maps such as Piri Reis map of 1513 and the Oronteus Finaeus map of 1531, depict the coastline of southern South America and – on the same map – accurately show the sub glacial topography of nearby Antarctica beneath its great layer of ice. (Both these maps have notes on their borders saying they were copied from much earlier sources.) Simply stated, this means that some unknown civilization had explored and precisely mapped the then ice-free continent of Antarctica thousands of years before Europeans first sighted it in 1818.
Did these same shadowy people construct and use the enigmatic city of Tiahuanaco? And, if so, what became of them? Is it not highly significant that both ancient myths and modern day geological studies tell of great floods that swept the high Andean altiplano some twelve thousand years ago? There are parallel myths of civilization-destroying floods found in nearly all the ancient cultures of the world, from the same time period. What was the nature of these floods? What caused them? Using the calendrical mathematics of archaeoastronomy to decode the myths, we can discern specific times of comets and continent-shifting earthquakes that impacted human civilization in prehistoric times.
Velikovsky has theorized that an enormous chunk of rock was spun off from the planet Jupiter and that it rampaged as a comet through the inner solar system, nearly colliding with the earth and causing catastrophes spoken about in numerous ancient mythologies. More recently, other scientists have suggested possible causes for the great cataclysms such as the three major periods of glacial melting inundation between 13,000 and 8000 BC, the phenomena of crustal displacement in 9600 BC, and the seven cometary impacts of 7460 BC. In a future issue of Four Corners magazine, I will examine each of these fascinating matters in more detail. As the following quote from Plato reminds us, great catastrophes have visited the earth many times in ages past and will surely do so again.
…with you and other peoples again and again life has only recently been enriched with letters and all the other necessaries of civilization when once more, after the usual period of years, the torrents of heaven sweep down like a pestilence leaving only the rude and unlettered among you. And so you start again like children, knowing nothing of what existed in ancient times, here or in your own country.
Anthropologist and photographer Martin Gray specializes in the study of sacred sites and power places around the world, having visited more than 1000 of these magical sites in 80 countries. Each year he also guides group pilgrimages to different countries and this year is offering magical journeys to Peru/Bolivia in June and Greece in October. More articles by Martin Gray on our web site. For more information, see Martin’s web site at www.sacredsites.com
© Copyright Martin Gray
Reprinted with permission
MYTHOLOGY – HISTORY
The ruins of Tiahuanaco city and centre of worship are located on the Altiplano in today’s Bolivia, ca 4000 m from water level, and 21 km north-east from Lake Titicaca. Tiahuanaco was a capital of a theocratic state governed by priest kings. The state exerted its influence on the development of the whole southern part of Peru in the closing centuries of the last millennium, expanding its influence in a peaceful manner on the vast highland as well as coastal territory.
Tiahuanaco, therefore, carried out a pacifistic cultural mission quite different from that of its contemporary militant country of Huari (Wari) in the Peruvian Andes. The religious sources of this period are first and foremost archaeological findings, but to a great extent also the recordings of the 16th century chroniclers.
The religion of Tiahuanaco centred around the cult of a sky and thunder god Viracocha. The deity was generally depicted as having staves in both of his hands and an aureole around his head. The aureole suggests the qualities of a sun god, represented on the bas-relief in the upper part of the famous Sun Gate in Tiahuanaco as well as on ceramic.
The staves, on the other hand, suggest Viracocha’s distant ancestry from the nearly thousand years older Chavín sky god in North Peru. His attendants were ranking deities in the shapes of cougar, condor, falcon and snake. Viracocha was worshipped as the main god in Huari as well; there his characteristics were apparently more militant. A head of Tiahuanaco state functioned both as a king and the arch-priest and he was revered as Viracocha’s embodiment on earth (Kelm 1990: 524-528).
The chronicle records describe the citizens of Tiahuanaco as «the Viracochas», who were fair-skinned and wore white long robes. Viracocha is also described as a man with fair skin and white beard, attired in a long robe and sandals, wearing a staff, with a cougar lying at his feet. He was a kind and peace-loving god who had also subjected the dreadful jaguar-god to his power.
The idea might refer to the Tiahuanaco’s peaceful mission among the distant warrior cultures of Peru. According to the legend, however, evil people in short clothes came to the sacred lake and forced Viracocha to leave to north. On his departure they mocked and taunted him for his long robe and lenient disposition. Eventually, he had descended from the highlands to the coast and left over the ocean, promising to return some day
In 1921 one of the leading researchers of Peruvian cultures from the first part of this century José de la Riva Agüero y Osma, who had also studied the chronicle records as well as linguistic and archaeological data for nearly 25 years, published his «theory of the paleo-Quechuan empire».
The theory focused on the hypothesis that Tiahuanaco was originally the cradle and home of the Inca Empire, and the Inca themselves the upper class of the once emigrated Tiahuanaco people. He also argued that the Quechuans, Aymarans and Araucanians had to originate from the same ancient and anthropologically close ancestral nation who spoke a language related to theirs, and was developed to a degree that could influence them, the younger peoples. Riva-Agüero’s term for such ancestors was ‘paleo-Quechuans’ (Busto I s.a.: 186-194).
Even today the Aymarans inhabit the surroundings of Lake Titicaca. They have preserved heritage on their ancient migration and the subjugation of the town people who were driven from the city. Also, the archaeological data supports the idea of the late arrival of the Aymarans. Riva-Agüero speculates that the paleo-Quechuans were now forced to leave among other places for the Cuzco Valley, the later settlement of the Inca.
A chronicler informs us that the first king of the Inca Manco Capac came from Tiahuanaco (Vega 1988: 34-37). We also know that the relationship between the Quechuans and the Aymarans could be characterised by a constant feud which might have been caused by the fugitives’ anger towards the invaders.
Agüero also argues that the affinity of the Quechuan and Aymaran languages is due to the existence of a common primal language, possibly the paleo-Quechuan. The archaeological data also confirms the Aymaran immigration.
The chullpa’s, or the burial towers around Titicaca belonged supposedly to the Aymarans; still, the earliest settlers of Tiahuanaco mummified their dead similarly to the Inca, similarities could be found also between the pottery from the golden age of Tiahuanaco and that of the Inca – the ceramic ware of Aymarans is considerably different.
The clothing of the Aymarans differed as well, being shorter than the Quechuan dress, which once again supports the legend about the departure of the long-robed Tiahuanacos.
Montesinos, the chronicler, informs us that the priest kings of Tiahuanaco, or los amautas as they were called, fled the country trying to save the cult of their own gods (Busto I s.a.: 191). This is another evidence proving that the Inca originated from the upper class who were forced to leave Tiahuanaco by the militant Aymarans, or los piruas.
The idea of the Inca having been militant aroused from the new circumstances.
The Inca regarded the surroundings of Titicaca as their former home and revered Viracocha as a god who had told them to build the city of Cuzco. Later, the mythology related to Viracocha acquired an important role in the Inca religion.
Thus, we might reason that the founders of the Tiahuanaco culture were the common ancestors of the Quechuans and Aymarans, i.e. the paleo-Quechuans. Presumably, the militant Aymarans crushed Tiahuanaco in the 10th-11th century and forced the majority of the upper class flee northward to the mountain valleys inhabited by other Quechuan kin tribes.
The Aymarans could not destroy the powerful civilisation all at once and founded the kingdom of Colla, which in the 15th century was incorporated into the state of the same Inca who were once driven from their homeland by the Collas. Thus, the hypothesis of Riva-Agüero expanded to a theory which is acknowledged by most of the historians in Peru.
Consequently, the Inca were the genetic and cultural successors of the Tiahuanaco people. According to the archaeological data these Quechuan emigrants arrived at their kin tribes in the Cuzco Valley at the beginning of the 12th century and founded their city-state on the spot.
Since 1538 the Inca ruler Pachacutek Yupanqui employed the necessity of defeating the militant Chancas, subjugated other Quechuan city-states and merged them into the empire that reigned the whole of Peru, northern Chile, northern Bolivia and southern Ecuador until the invasion of Spanish conquistadors.
The archaeological material for the religion of this period is abundant, and can be compared to the detailed accounts of the 16th-17th century Spanish chronicles (Kauffmann Doig 1991: 78).
The highest ranking deity of the Inca was a celestial supreme being who was first known under the name Viracocha, later also as Pachacamak. Originally, Pachacamak was a sky god of the Lurín Valley in central Peru whose name was later given to the sky god of the Inca.
The main god of the Inca state religion was the sun god Inti, who might have been a nature totem of the Quechua or a god of a certain tribe. Another significant deity in the Inca pantheon was the thunder god Illapu who was apparently distinctive from the Tiahuanaco sky god, but was named after a thunder god of the central Peruvian tribes.
Viracocha became the culture hero of the Inca who was said to have brought culture to people, then set off to the Pacific and promised to return. (Kulmar 1999: 101-109).
The Inca myths can be divided in two groups:
- the creation myths
- the origin myths
Creation Myths
The world was created by Viracocha near Lake Titicaca. After the great deluge or the receding of chaotic floodwaters Viracocha descended to earth and created plants, animals and men to the empty land; he built the city of Tiahuanaco and appointed 4 world rulers of whom Manco Capak became the superior of the Ursa Major world, i.e. the north horizon (Busto II 1981: 7).
Origin Myths
Myths about the Ayar brothers
Four pairs of brothers-sisters created by Viracocha to rule the world left the cave of Mountain Pacaritambo. The whole world was living in an uncivilised and ignorant manner. The newcomers began with organising the mankind and divided people into ten large communities.
Leading the tribes the brothers set off in search of enough fertile land to sustain themselves. They carried Sunturpaucar, a long staff adorned with colourful feathers, a cage with a sun-bird who could give good advice and other sacred objects in front of them.
Making shorter and longer stops they moved towards Cuzco. In the course of the long journey the group became smaller: the rivalling brothers confined one of their companions to a cave, two others wished to break away but were turned into stones. The only surviving brother Ayar Manco a.k.a. Manco Capak accompanied by his sister and wife Mama Ocllo and his brothers’ wives, founded the city of World Pole in the name of Viracocha the Creator and Inti the Sun God, and settled there with his people.
A myth of Manco Capak and Mama Ocllo
A long time ago when the world was filled with savages, misery and poverty, a brother and a sister, a married couple Manco Capak and Mama Ocllo left Lake Titicaca. Inti, the sun god had sent them to refine the surrounding peoples, and gave them a golden stick for testing the land for cultivation and then settling in the suitable place.
Having found such a place they had to found the state, teach the people how to live proper lives and advocate the worship of the sun god. The journey took a long time. Eventually, in the Cuzco Valley the golden stick disappeared into the ground, and they could start with their mission.
Manco Capak taught his people the cultivation and irrigation of land and handicraft, Mama Ocllo taught women spinning, weaving and sewing. The tribe of Manco Capak became to be called by the name of Hanan Cuzco (High Cuzco) and the relatives of Mama Ocllo by the name of Hurin Cuzco (Lower Cuzco).
The city and the state was founded in the name of Viracocha and Inti the sun god, also the Sun Temple was built in Cuzco (Busto II 1981: 10-17).
How to interpret the myths?
María Rostworowski de Díez Canseco argues that the creation of the Inca state is introduced already in the creation myths (Rostworowski 1988: 31-34). Although originally they seemed to function as creation stories about Tiahuanaco culture, they were later apparently customised by the Inca for ideological purposes. The origin of the Inca from the cultural centre around Lake Titicaca has been supported by archaeological data. Editing seems most apparent in accounts of introducing the first legendary ruler Manco Capak, on the one hand, and in dividing the world in four parts, on the other. The Inca state Tahuantinsuyu was also divided into four large provinces ruled by governors.
Recent customisation is even more apparent in the origin myths. Today’s scholars argue that both the myth of the Ayar brothers as well as the myth about Manco Capak comes from the same source, whereas the former is older and less edited, the latter more recent and also more edited.
Both versions say that the main character Ayar Manco or Manco Capak had arrived from south and settled in the Cuzco Valley. The part of the story suggests the Tiahuanaco origin of the Inca as well as the flight of the Quechuan elite from the Aymaran invaders.
Leaving Lake Titicaca could serve as a hypothesis that the home of the Inca was located on the Isle of Sun (La Isla del Sol) in Lake Titicaca – according to archaeologists it might have been one of the residences of the upper class Tiahuanaco people. The hypothesis would also explain why Manco Capak was sent by the sun god, as the island became to be called the Isle of Sun only after the sun worship had become the Inca state religion.
In the original version the brothers are sent to refine people by Viracocha, which suggests even the earlier modification of the story from the time when Viracocha was revered as the main god.
The four pairs of brothers-sisters in the original version refers to the four Quechuan tribes who left Tiahuanaco. The married couple consisting of a brother and a sister, in its turn, could be explained by the fact that the Quechuan tribe was exogamous and consisted of two fraterias: in exogamous societies men belong to one frateria and women to another. This could be inferred also from the myth version concerning the division of Cuzco in two – the High and Lower fraterias.
The disposing of all the other Ayar brothers on the journey in the original version refers either to their settling to different places or the feud between the tribes of Manco and the rest of his brothers.
Different accounts confirm that the Inca led to the Cuzco Valley by Manco Capak had to drive local tribes from the land in order to establish themselves there. People from the droughty Altiplano had to search for humid soils necessary for cultivating corn. Therefore, Manco’s golden stick was supposed to point to the land where corn could be grown. For settling in the new place a fight was put up, and we all know the outcome of the attack. In fact, chronicler Sarmiento do Gamboa’s expression «gloomy and fertile» might refer to the gory battles fought for the fertile valley.
Both versions end with the account of building the city by Manco in the name of Viracocha the Creator and Inti the sun god. The former was originally the sky god of the ancient Tiahuanaco people, whose cult was later abandoned. Inti, on the other hand, was the tribal deity of the Inca who later became the highest ranking god in the pantheon.
The fact that in the later version the instigator of refining people was Inti, and also that a temple to the sun god was first erected in Cuzco suggests that the journey from Altiplano to the Cuzco Valley must have taken a long time, at least a couple of centuries (archaeological data supports the fact that Tiachuanaco was destroyed by the Aymarans in the 10th century, and the Inca reached the Cuzco Valley at the end of the 12th century).
Thus, during this period one deity was substituted for another: Viracocha became deus otiosus, Inti, on the other hand became so popular that the first temple was built for him.
As I mentioned before, the supreme god was given a new name – Pachacamak. From then on, Viracocha was associated with the myth of a culture hero, because:
- the fact that the Tiachuanaco people had spread the cult of Viracocha widely in Peru was never forgotten;
- the sc. civilisational emigration of the Inca really did take place;
- the abandoning of the sky god’s cult is reflected by the account of Viracocha’s set-off to the ocean;
- Viracocha’s promise to return refers to the fact that the sky god’s cult never really disappeared, and in greatest troubles the Inca still addressed their sky god, as is common for deus otiosus (Kulmar 1999: 101-109).
Thus, Manco Capak who supposedly ruled the Inca at the time of their arrival at the Cuzco Valley, became the first half-legendary ruler of the country and started the official Inca dynasty. Certainly, he was nothing more than a tribal chief – it took another two centuries for the Inca civilisation to reach its golden era under the rule of the first emperor Pachacutek Yupanqui (Busto II 1981: 22).
The founding of city in the name of two gods could be interpreted in a manner uniquely provident and theocratic for the history of the Andean state Tahuantinsuyu: the supreme god Viracocha had provided that Manco’s tribe will rule the world, and Manco started to carry it out at the will and guidance of Inti, the sun god. Thus, the civilisational mission of the Inca found a theological explanation as well (see also Soriano 1990: 483-499).
Finally, these origin myths also reveal the ethnocentric world-view of the Quechuans: the Inca believed in the inherent superiority and wisdom of their own people, thinking they were destined to refine the mankind whether other peoples accepted it or not. That could be inferred also from the names of the country and its capital. The name of the Inca empire Tahuantinsuyu stands for «the country of four points of compass» (Vega 1988: 17). Most chroniclers (except for Sarmiento) argue that Cuzco means «pole» (Busto II 1981: 8), i.e. the centre of the world or the world pole.
The analysis of the history and society of the Inca state has confirmed that it was the first and only totalitarian state on the American continent and Pre-Columbian America (Kulmar 1989: 74-76; Soriano 1990: 483-499). The ethnocentric and imperialist origin myth formed the ideological foundation for establishing such a scheme of society, determining also the mentality of its nation by education and in everyday life.
Thus, the Inca built their historical studies and regulations on the ancient Tiahuanaco myths, having customised them according to their own need.
BOOKS
The Tiwanaku : Portrait of an Andean Civilization (Peoples of America)
by Alan L. Kolata
Kolata’s book shows how, contrary to their implicit racism, the indigenous people of the Titicaca basin were more than ingenious enough to come up with ways to construct major monuments, carve incredible fantastic stone sculptures, and make the high arid plain of the altiplano bloom with potatoes, tubers and quinoa. These people had indoor plumbing and public sewage systems 1500 years ago! The Tiwanaku is a bit simplistic and general for the Andean or archaeological specialist; it is more appropriate for the first year University student or educated layman. Nonetheless, it brings together the current general state of knowledge about this important civilization in a highly readable fashion. Valley of the Spirits : A Journey into the Lost Realm of the Aymara
by Alan L. KolataA millennium before the Incas built their empire, the city of Tiahuanaco sat at the center of a great empire of its own. Located on Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest at 13,000 feet, in what is now Bolivia, at the very limits of agriculture, the people of Tiahuanaco developed an ingenious system of cultivation based on raised planting beds alternating with trenches that served as irrigation ditches. From A.D. 400 to 800, the temples of Tiahuanaco glittered with gold and the empire supported as many as 250,000 people. Kolata, who has spent more than 17 years excavating the empire’s ruins, weaves together the story of Tiahuanaco and the region’s modern inhabitants, the Aymara. Lukurmata
by Marc BermannHousehold archaeology, together with community and regional settlement information, forms the basis for a unique local perspective of Andean prehistory in this study of the evolution of the site of Lukurmata, a pre-Columbian community in highland Bolivia. First established nearly two thousand years ago, Lukurmata grew to be a major ceremonial center in the Tiwanaku state, a polity that dominated the south-central Andes from a.d. 400 to 1200. After the Tiwanaku state collapsed, Lukurmata rapidly declined, becoming once again a small village. In his analysis of a 1300-year-long sequence of house remains at Lukurmata, Marc Bermann traces patterns and changes in the organization of domestic life, household ritual, ties to other communities, and mortuary activities, as well as household adaptations to overarching political and economic trends. Prehistorians have long studied the processes of Andean state formation, expansion, and decline at the regional level, notes Bermann. But only now are we beginning to understand how these changes affected the lives of the residents at individual settlements. Presenting a “view from below” of Andean prehistory based on a remarkably extensive data set, Lukurmata is a rare case study of how prehispanic polities can be understood in new ways if prehistorians integrate the different lines of evidence available to them. Household archaeology, together with community and regional settlement information, forms the basis for a unique local perspective of Andean prehistory in this study of the evolution of the site of Lukurmata, a pre-Columbian community in highland Bolivia. First established nearly two thousand years ago, Lukurmata grew to be a major ceremonial center in the Tiwanaku state, a polity that dominated the south-central Andes from a.d. 400 to 1200. After the Tiwanaku state collapsed, Lukurmata rapidly declined, becoming once again a small village. In his analysis of a 1300-year-long sequence of house remains at Lukurmata, Marc Bermann traces patterns and changes in the organization of domestic life, household ritual, ties to other communities, and mortuary activities, as well as household adaptations to overarching political and economic trends. Prehistorians have long studied the processes of Andean state formation, expansion, and decline at the regional level, notes Bermann. But only now are we beginning to understand how these changes affected the lives of the residents at individual settlements. Presenting a “view from below” of Andean prehistory based on a remarkably extensive data set, Lukurmata is a rare case study of how prehispanic polities can be understood in new ways if prehistorians integrate the different lines of evidence available to them.
Lust!
You are more than just a wish come true,
The pain in my heart on your touch flew
Yes, I was burnt reduced to dust
In place of love
All I saw was lust
Just a word a caressing feeling I needed
Not a bunch of lies on which I fed
A soul so lonely so drenched
In tears of longing, guilts that stench
and yet through the darkness
A beam of sparkling light
Your face holds for me a halo, an aura
The enthralling smell of the lovely flora
Your each word on which I hang
You put your finger on each of my pangs
and liberate a part of my wounded heart
Of memories, of hurt and of depart
The freshness of the morning dew on the lush green grass
you are my 24 carat gold and not just brass
the beauty of the moments
when I just look at you
the special little things that we do
and the exotic momeny when you touch me
The shy closing of your eyes
The warmth of your embrace
Oh! How I capture each expression on your face
The process of buttoning your shirt
More precious than diamonds that piece of cloth
When it hangs loosely on my skin
I can loose anything for these things I win
Although me and life play a squirrel game,
Of love, of pleasure, of pain and all the things insane
The cyclic nature of everything around
Static I want to keep what I have found
The guy in front of whom I can be me
A little hive of ours, yes I am your bee
And all I desire,
You add new meaning to my life, my fire
Stop not thee, my love ever
For I had stopped believing in forever
You made a beggar, a millionaire
Rich in happiness and fee
Author: Neha Rautela(neha_rautela@yahoo.com)
Tajo Mahalaya
The Tajmahal is Tejomahalay
A Hindu Temple
By P.N.Oak
Probably there is no one who has been duped at least once in a life time. But can the whole world can be duped? This may seem impossible. But in the matter of indian and world history the world can be duped in many respects for hundreds of years and still continues to be duped. The world famous Tajmahal is a glaring instance. For all the time, money and energy that people over the world spend in visiting the Tajmahal, they are dished out of concoction. Contrary to what visitors are made to believe the Tajmahal is not a Islamic mausoleum but an ancient Shiva Temple known as Tejo Mahalaya which the 5th generation moghul emperor
Shahjahan commandeered from the then Maharaja of Jaipur. The Tajmahal, should therefore, be viewed as a temple palace and not as a tomb. That makes a vast difference. You miss the details of its size, grandeur, majesty and beauty when you take it to be a mere tomb. When told that you are visiting a temple palace you wont fail to notice its annexes, ruined defensive walls, hillocks, moats, cascades, fountains, majestic garden, hundreds of rooms archaded verendahs, terraces, multi stored towers, secret sealed chambers, guest rooms, stables, the trident (Trishul) pinnacle on the dome and the sacred, esoteric Hindu letter “OM” carved on the exterior of the wall of the sanctum sanctorum now occupied by the centotaphs. For detailed proof of this breath taking discovery,you may read the well known historian Shri. P. N. Oak’s celebrated book titled ” Tajmahal : The True Story“. But let us place before you, for the time being an exhaustive summary of the massive evidence ranging over hundred points:
NAME
1.The term Tajmahal itself never occurs in any mogul court paper or chronicle even in Aurangzeb’s time. The attempt to explain it away as Taj-i-mahal is therefore, ridiculous.
2.The ending “Mahal”is never muslim because in none of the muslim countries around the world from Afghanistan to Algeria is there a building known as “Mahal”.
3.The unusual explanation of the term Tajmahal derives from Mumtaz Mahal, who is buried in it, is illogical in at least two respects viz., firstly her name was never Mumtaj Mahal but Mumtaz-ul-Zamani and secondly one cannot omit the first three letters “Mum” from a woman’s name to derive the remainder as the name of the building.
4.Since the lady’s name was Mumtaz (ending with ‘Z’) the name of the building derived from her should have been Taz Mahal, if at all, and not Taj (spelled with a ‘J’).
5.Several European visitors of Shahjahan’s time allude to the building as Taj-e-Mahal is almost the correct tradition, age old Sanskrit name Tej-o-Mahalaya, signifying a Shiva temple. Contrarily Shahjahan and Aurangzeb scrupulously avoid using the Sanskrit term and call it just a holy grave.
6.The tomb should be understood to signify NOT A BUILDING but only the grave or centotaph inside it. This would help people to realize that all dead muslim courtiers and royalty including Humayun, Akbar, Mumtaz, Etmad-ud-Daula and Safdarjang have been buried in capture Hindu mansions and temples.
7.Moreover, if the Taj is believed to be a burial place, how can the term Mahal, i.e., mansion apply to it?
8.Since the term Taj Mahal does not occur in mogul courts it is absurd to search for any mogul explanation for it. Both its components namely, ‘Taj’ and’ Mahal’ are of Sanskrit origin.
TEMPLE TRADITION
9.The term Taj Mahal is a corrupt form of the sanskrit term TejoMahalay signifying a Shiva Temple. Agreshwar Mahadev i.e., The Lord of Agra was consecrated in it.
10.The tradition of removing the shoes before climbing the marble platform originates from pre Shahjahan times when the Taj was a Shiva Temple. Had the Taj originated as a tomb, shoes need not have to be removed because shoes are a necessity in a cemetery.
11.Visitors may notice that the base slab of the centotaph is the marble basement in plain white while its superstructure and the other three centotaphs on the two floors are covered with inlaid creeper designs. This indicates that the marble pedestal of the Shiva idol is still in place and Mumtaz’s centotaphs are fake.
12.The pitchers carved inside the upper border of the marble lattice plus those mounted on it number 108-a number sacred in Hindu Temple tradition.
13.There are persons who are connected with the repair and the maintainance of the Taj who have seen the ancient sacred Shiva Linga and other idols sealed in the thick walls and in chambers in the secret, sealed red stone stories below the marble basement. The Archaeological Survey of India is keeping discretely, politely and diplomatically silent about it to the point of dereliction of its own duty to probe into hidden historical evidence.
14.In India there are 12 Jyotirlingas i.e., the outstanding Shiva Temples. The Tejomahalaya alias The Tajmahal appears to be one of them known as Nagnatheshwar since its parapet is girdled with Naga, i.e., Cobra figures. Ever since Shahjahan’s capture of it the sacred temple has lost its Hindudom.
15.The famous Hindu treatise on architecture titled Vishwakarma Vastushastra mentions the ‘Tej-Linga’ amongst the Shivalingas i.e., the stone emblems of Lord Shiva, the Hindu deity. Such a Tej Linga was consecrated in the Taj Mahal, hence the term Taj Mahal alias Tejo Mahalaya.
16.Agra city, in which the Taj Mahal is located, is an ancient centre of Shiva worship. Its orthodox residents have through ages continued the tradition of worshipping at five Shiva shrines before taking the last meal every night especially during the month of Shravan. During the last few centuries the residents of Agra had to be content with worshipping at only four prominent Shiva temples viz., Balkeshwar, Prithvinath, Manakameshwar and Rajarajeshwar. They had lost track of the fifth Shiva deity which their forefathers worshipped. Apparently the fifth was Agreshwar Mahadev Nagnatheshwar i.e., The Lord Great God of Agra, The Deity of the King of Cobras, consecrated in the Tejomahalay alias Tajmahal.
17.The people who dominate the Agra region are Jats. Their name of Shiva is Tejaji. The Jat special issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India (June 28,1971) mentions that the Jats have the Teja Mandirs i.e., Teja Temples. This is because Teja-Linga is among the several names of the Shiva Lingas. From this it is apparent that the Taj-Mahal is Tejo-Mahalaya, The Great Abode of Tej.
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
18. Shahjahan’s own court chronicle, the Badshahnama, admits (page 403, vol 1) that a grand mansion of unique splendor, capped with a dome (Imaarat-a-Alishan wa Gumbaze) was taken from the Jaipur Maharaja Jaisigh for Mumtaz’s burial, and the building was known as Raja Mansingh’s palace.
19. The plaque put the archealogy department outside the Tajmahal describes the edifice as a mausoleum built by Shahjahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal , over 22 years from 1631 to 1653. That plaque is a specimen of historical bungling. Firstly, the plaque sites no authority for its claim. Secondly the lady’s name was Mumtaz-ulZamani and not Mumtazmahal. Thirdly, the period of 22 years is taken from some mumbo jumbo noting by an unreliable French visitor Tavernier, to the exclusion of all muslim versions, which is an absurdity.
20. Prince Aurangzeb’s letter to his father,emperor Shahjahan,is recorded in atleast three chronicles titled `Aadaab-e-Alamgiri’, `Yadgarnama’, and the `Muruqqa-i-Akbarabadi’ (edited by Said Ahmed, Agra, 1931, page 43, footnote 2). In that letter Aurangzeb records in 1652 A.D itself that the several buildings in the fancied burial place of Mumtaz were seven storeyed and were so old that they were all leaking, while the dome had developed a crack on the northern side.Aurangzeb, therefore, ordered immediate repairs to the buildings at his own expense while recommending to the emperor that more elaborate repairs be carried out later. This is the proof that during Shahjahan’s reign itself that the Taj complex was so old as to need immediate repairs.
21. The ex-Maharaja of Jaipur retains in his secret personal `KapadDwara’ collection two orders from Shahjahan dated Dec 18, 1633 (bearing modern nos. R.176 and 177) requestioning the Taj building complex. That was so blatant a usurpation that the then ruler of Jaipur was ashamed to make the document public.
22. The Rajasthan State archives at Bikaner preserve three other firmans addressed by Shahjahan to the Jaipur’s ruler Jaising ordering the latter to supply marble (for Mumtaz’s grave and koranic grafts) from his Makranna quarris, and stone cutters. Jaisingh was apparently so enraged at the blatant seizure of the Tajmahal that he refused to oblige Shahjahan by providing marble for grafting koranic engravings and fake centotaphs for further desecration of the Tajmahal. Jaising looked at Shahjahan’s demand for marble and stone cutters, as an insult added to injury. Therefore, he refused to send any marble and instead detained the stone cutters in his protective custody.
23. The three firmans demanding marble were sent to Jaisingh within about two years of Mumtaz’s death. Had Shahjahan really built the Tajmahal over a period of 22 years, the marble would have needed only after 15 or 20 years not immediately after Mumtaz’s death.
24. Moreover, the three mention neither the Tajmahal, nor Mumtaz, nor the burial. The cost and the quantity of the stone also are not mentioned. This proves that an insignificant quantity of marble was needed just for some supercial tinkering and tampering with the Tajmahal. Even otherwise Shahjahan could never hope to build a fabulous Tajmahal by abject dependence for marble on a non cooperative Jaisingh.
EUROPEAN VISITOR’S ACCOUNTS
25. Tavernier, a French jeweller has recorded in his travel memoirs that Shahjahan purposely buried Mumtaz near the Taz-i-Makan (i.e.,`The Taj building’) where foriegners used to come as they do even today so that the world may admire. He also adds that the cost of the scaffolding was more than that of the entire work. The work that Shahjahan commissioned in the Tejomahalaya Shiva temple was plundering at the costly fixtures inside it, uprooting the Shiva idols, planting the centotaphs in their place on two stories, inscribing the koran along the arches and walling up six of the seven stories of the Taj. It was this plunder, desecrating and plunderring of the rooms which took 22 years.
26. Peter Mundy, an English visitor to Agra recorded in 1632 (within only a year of Mumtaz’s death) that `the places of note in and around Agra, included Taj-e-Mahal’s tomb, gardens and bazaars’.He, therefore, confirms that that the Tajmahal had been a noteworthy building even before Shahjahan.
27. De Laet, a Dutch official has listed Mansingh’s palace about a mile from Agra fort, as an outstanding building of pre shahjahan’s time. Shahjahan’s court chronicle, the Badshahnama records, Mumtaz’s burial in the same Mansingh’s palace.
28. Bernier, a contemporary French visitor has noted that non muslim’s were barred entry into the basement (at the time when Shahjahan requisitioned Mansingh’s palace) which contained a dazzling light. Obviously, he reffered to the silver doors, gold railing, the gem studded lattice and strings of pearl hanging over Shiva’s idol. Shahjahan comandeered the building to grab all the wealth, making Mumtaz’s death a convineant pretext.
29. Johan Albert Mandelslo, who describes life in agra in 1638 (only 7 years after mumtaz’s death) in detail (in his `Voyages and Travels to West-Indies’, published by John Starkey and John Basset, London), makes no mention of the Tajmahal being under constuction though it is commonly erringly asserted or assumed that the Taj was being built from 1631 to 1653.
SANSKIRT INSCRIPTION
30. A Sanskrit inscription too supports the conclusion that the Taj originated as a Shiva temple. Wrongly termed as the Bateshwar inscription (currently preserved on the top floor of the Lucknow museum), it refers to the raising of a “crystal white Shiva temple so alluring that Lord Shiva once enshrined in it decided never to return to Mount Kailash his usual abode”. That inscription dated 1155 A.D. was removed from the Tajmahal garden at Shahjahan’s orders. Historicians and Archeaologists have blundered in terming the insription the `Bateshwar inscription’ when the record doesn’t say that it was found by Bateshwar. It ought, in fact, to be called `The Tejomahalaya inscription’ because it was originally installed in the Taj garden before it was uprooted and cast away at Shahjahan’s command.
A clue to the tampering by Shahjahan is found on pages 216-217, vol. 4, of Archealogiical Survey of India Reports (published 1874) stating that a “great square black balistic pillar which, with the base and capital of another pillar….now in the grounds of Agra,…it is well known, once stood in the garden of Tajmahal”.
MISSING ELEPHANTS
31. Far from the building of the Taj, Shahjahan disfigured it with black koranic lettering and heavily robbed it of its Sanskrit inscription, several idols and two huge stone elephants extending their trunks in a welcome arch over the gateway where visitors these days buy entry tickets. An Englishman, Thomas Twinning, records (pg.191 of his book “Travels in India A Hundred Years ago”) that in November 1794 “I arrived at the high walls which enclose the Taj-e-Mahal and its circumjacent buildings. I here got out of the palanquine and…..mounted a short flight of steps leading to a beautiful portal which formed the centre of this side of the `COURT OF ELEPHANTS” as the great area was called.”
KORANIC PATCHES
32. The Taj Mahal is scrawled over with 14 chapters of the Koran but nowhere is there even the slightest or the remotest allusion in that Islamic overwriting to Shahjahan’s authorship of the Taj. Had Shahjahan been the builder he would have said so in so many words before beginning to quote Koran.
33. That Shahjahan, far from building the marble Taj, only disfigured it with black lettering is mentioned by the inscriber Amanat Khan Shirazi himself in an inscription on the building. A close scrutiny of the Koranic lettering reveals that they are grafts patched up with bits of variegated stone on an ancient Shiva temple.
CARBON 14 TEST
34. A wooden piece from the riverside doorway of the Taj subjected to the carbon 14 test by an American Laboratory, has revealed that the door to be 300 years older than Shahjahan,since the doors of the Taj, broken open by Muslim invaders repeatedly from the 11th century onwards, had to b replaced from time to time. The Taj edifice is much more older. It belongs to 1155 A.D, i.e., almost 500 years anterior to Shahjahan.
ARCHITECHTURAL EVIDENCE
35. Well known Western authorities on architechture like E.B.Havell, Mrs.Kenoyer and Sir W.W.Hunterhave gone on record to say that the TajMahal is built in the Hindu temple style. Havell points out the ground plan of the ancient Hindu Chandi Seva Temple in Java is identical with that of the Taj.
36. A central dome with cupolas at its four corners is a universal feature of Hindu temples.
37. The four marble pillars at the plinth corners are of the Hindu style. They are used as lamp towers during night and watch towers during the day. Such towers serve to demarcate the holy precincts. Hindu wedding altars and the altar set up for God Satyanarayan worship have pillars raised at the four corners.
38. The octagonal shape of the Tajmahal has a special Hindu significance because Hindus alone have special names for the eight directions, and celestial guards assigned to them. The pinnacle points to the heaven while the foundation signifies to the nether world. Hindu forts, cities, palaces and temples genrally have an octagonal layout or some octagonal features so that together with the pinnacle and the foundation they cover all the ten directions in which the king or God holds sway, according to Hindu belief.
39. The Tajmahal has a trident pinncle over the dome. A full scale of the trident pinnacle is inlaid in the red stone courtyard to the east of the Taj. The central shaft of the trident depicts a “Kalash” (sacred pot) holding two bent mango leaves and a coconut. This is a sacred Hindu motif. Identical pinnacles have been seen over Hindu and Buddhist temples in the Himalayan region. Tridents are also depicted against a red lotus background at the apex of the stately marble arched entrances on all four sides of the Taj. People fondly but mistakenly believed all these centuries that the Taj pinnacle depicts a Islamic cresent and star was a lighting conductor installed by the British rulers in India. Contrarily, the pinnacle is a marvel of Hindu metallurgy since the pinnacle made of non rusting alloy, is also perhaps a lightning deflector. That the pinnacle of the replica is drawn in the eastern courtyard is significant because the east is of special importance to the Hindus, as the direction in which the sun rises. The pinnacle on the dome has the word `Allah’ on it after capture. The pinnacle figure on the ground does not have the word Allah.
INCONSISTENCIES
40. The two buildings which face the marble Taj from the east and west are identical in design, size and shape and yet the eastern building is explained away by Islamic tradition, as a community hall while the western building is claimed to be a mosque. How could buildings meant for radically different purposes be identical? This proves that the western building was put to use as a mosque after seizure of the Taj property by Shahjahan. Curiously enough the building being explained away as a mosque has no minaret. They form a pair af reception pavilions of the Tejomahalaya temple palace.
41. A few yards away from the same flank is the Nakkar Khana alias DrumHouse which is a intolerable incongruity for Islam. The proximity of the Drum House indicates that the western annex was not originally a mosque. Contrarily a drum house is a neccesity in a Hindu temple or palace because Hindu chores,in the morning and evening, begin to the sweet strains of music.
42. The embossed patterns on the marble exterior of the centotaph chamber wall are foilage of the conch shell design and the Hindu letter “OM”. The octagonally laid marble lattices inside the centotaph chamber depict pink lotuses on their top railing. The Lotus, the conch and the OM are the sacred motifs associated with the Hindu deities and temples.
43. The spot occupied by Mumtaz’s centotaph was formerly occupied by the Hindu Teja Linga a lithic representation of Lord Shiva. Around it are five perambulatory passages. Perambulation could be done around the marble lattice or through the spacious marble chambers surrounding the centotaph chamber, and in the open over the marble platform. It is also customary for the Hindus to have apertures along the perambulatory passage, overlooking the deity. Such apertures exist in the perambulatories in the Tajmahal.
44. The sanctom sanctorum in the Taj has silver doors and gold railings as Hindu temples have. It also had nets of pearl and gems stuffed in the marble lattices. It was the lure of this wealth which made Shahjahan commandeer the Taj from a helpless vassal Jaisingh, the then ruler of Jaipur.
45. Peter Mundy, a Englishman records (in 1632, within a year of Mumtaz’s death) having seen a gem studded gold railing around her tomb. Had the Taj been under construction for 22 years, a costly gold railing would not have been noticed by Peter mundy within a year of Mumtaz’s death. Such costl fixtures are installed in a building only after it is ready for use. This indicates that Mumtaz’s centotaph was grafted in place of the Shivalinga in the centre of the gold railings. Subsequently the gold railings, silver doors, nets of pearls, gem fillings etc. were all carried away to Shahjahan’s treasury. The seizure of the Taj thus constituted an act of highhanded Moghul robery causing a big row between Shahjahan and Jaisingh.
46. In the marble flooring around Mumtaz’s centotaph may be seen tiny mosaic patches. Those patches indicate the spots where the support for the gold railings were embedded in the floor. They indicate a rectangular fencing.
47. Above Mumtaz’s centotaph hangs a chain by which now hangs a lamp. Before capture by Shahjahan the chain used to hold a water pitcher from which water used to drip on the Shivalinga.
48. It is this earlier Hindu tradition in the Tajmahal which gave the Islamic myth of Shahjahan’s love tear dropping on Mumtaz’s tomb on the full moon day of the winter eve.
TREASURY WELL
49. Between the so-called mosque and the drum house is a multistoried octagonal well with a flight of stairs reaching down to the water level. This is a traditional treasury well in Hindu temple palaces. Treasure chests used to be kept in the lower apartments while treasury personnel had their offices in the upper chambers. The circular stairs made it difficult for intruders to reach down to the treasury or to escape with it undetected or unpursued. In case the premises had to be surrendered to a besieging enemy the treasure could be pushed into the well to remain hidden from the conquerer and remain safe for salvaging if the place was reconquered. Such an elaborate multistoried well is superflous for a mere mausoleum. Such a grand, gigantic well is unneccesary for a tomb.
BURIAL DATE UNKNOWN
50. Had Shahjahan really built the Taj Mahal as a wonder mausoleum, history would have recorded a specific date on which she was ceremoniously buried in the Taj Mahal. No such date is ever mentioned. This important missing detail decisively exposes the falsity of the Tajmahal legend.
51. Even the year of Mumtaz’s death is unknown. It is variously speculated to be 1629, 1630, 1631 or 1632. Had she deserved a fabulous burial, as is claimed, the date of her death had not been a matter of much speculation. In an harem teeming with 5000 women it was difficult to keep track of dates of death. Apparently the date of Mumtaz’s death was so insignificant an event, as not to merit any special notice. Who would then build a Taj for her burial?
BASELESS LOVE STORIES
52. Stories of Shahjahan’s exclusive infatuation for Mumtaz’s are concoctions. They have no basis in history nor has any book ever written on their fancied love affairs. Those stories have been invented as an afterthought to make Shahjahan’s authorship of the Taj look plausible.
COST
53. The cost of the Taj is nowhere recorded in Shahjahan’s court papers because Shahjahan never built the Tajmahal. That is why wild estimates of the cost by gullible writers have ranged from 4 million to 91.7 million rupees.
PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION
54. Likewise the period of construction has been guessed to be anywhere between 10 years and 22 years. There would have not been any scope for guesswork had the building construction been on record in the court papers.
ARCHITECTS
55. The designer of the Tajmahal is also variously mentioned as Essa Effendy, a Persian or Turk, or Ahmed Mehendis or a Frenchman, Austin deBordeaux, or Geronimo Veroneo, an Italian, or Shahjahan himself.
RECORDS DON’T EXIST
56. Twenty thousand labourers are supposed to have worked for 22 years during Shahjahan’s reign in building the Tajmahal. Had this been true, there should have been available in Shahjahan’s court papers design drawings, heaps of labour muster rolls, daily expenditure sheets, bills and receipts of material ordered, and commisioning orders. There is not even a scrap of paper of this kind.
57. It is, therefore, court flatterers,blundering historians, somnolent archeologists, fiction writers, senile poets, careless tourists officials and erring guides who are responsible for hustling the world into believing in Shahjahan’s mythical authorship of the Taj.
58. Description of the gardens around the Taj of Shahjahan’s time mention Ketaki, Jai, Jui, Champa, Maulashree, Harshringar and Bel. All these are plants whose flowers or leaves are used in the worship of Hindu deities. Bel leaves are exclusively used in Lord Shiva’s worship. A graveyard is planted only with shady trees because the idea of using fruit and flower from plants in a cemetary is abhorrent to human conscience. The presence of Bel and other flower plants in the Taj garden is proof of its having been a Shiva temple before seizure by Shahjahan.
59. Hindu temples are often built on river banks and sea beaches. The Taj is one such built on the bank of the Yamuna river an ideal location for a Shiva temple.
60. Prophet Mohammad has ordained that the burial spot of a muslim should be inconspicous and must not be marked by even a single tombstone. In flagrant violation of this, the Tajamhal has one grave in the basement and another in the first floor chamber both ascribed to Mumtaz. Those two centotaphs were infact erected by Shahjahan to bury the two tier Shivalingas that were consecrated in the Taj. It is customary for Hindus to install two Shivalingas one over the other in two stories as may be seen in the Mahankaleshwar temple in Ujjain and the Somnath temple raised by Ahilyabai in Somnath Pattan.
61. The Tajmahal has identical entrance arches on all four sides. This is a typical Hindu building style known as Chaturmukhi, i.e.,four faced.
THE HINDU DOME
62. The Tajmahal has a reverberating dome. Such a dome is an absurdity for a tomb which must ensure peace and silence. Contrarily reverberating domes are a neccesity in Hindu temples because they create an ecstatic dinmultiplying and magnifying the sound of bells, drums and pipes accompanying the worship of Hindu deities.
63. The Tajmahal dome bears a lotus cap. Original Islamic domes have a bald top as is exemplified by the Pakistan Embassy in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, and the domes in the Pakistan’s newly built capital Islamabad.
64. The Tajmahal entrance faces south. Had the Taj been an Islamic building it should have faced the west.
TOMB IS THE GRAVE,NOT THE BUILDING
65. A widespread misunderstanding has resulted in mistaking the building for the grave.Invading Islam raised graves in captured buildings in every country it overran. Therefore, hereafter people must learn not to confound the building with the grave mounds which are grafts in conquered buildings. This is true of the Tajmahal too. One may therefore admit (for arguments sake) that Mumtaz lies buried inside the Taj. But that should not be construed to mean that the Taj was raised over Mumtaz’s grave.
66. The Taj is a seven storied building. Prince Aurangzeb also mentions this in his letter to Shahjahan. The marble edifice comprises four stories including the lone, tall circular hall inside the top, and the lone chamber in the basement. In between are two floors each containing 12 to 15 palatial rooms. Below the marble plinth reaching down to the river at the rear are two more stories in red stone. They may be seen from the river bank. The seventh storey must be below the ground (river) level since every ancient Hindu building had a subterranian storey.
67. Immediately bellow the marble plinth on the river flank are 22 rooms in red stone with their ventilators all walled up by Shahjahan. Those rooms, made uninhibitably by Shahjahan, are kept locked by Archealogy Department of India. The lay visitor is kept in the dark about them. Those 22 rooms still bear ancient Hindu paint on their walls and ceilings. On their side is a nearly 33 feet long corridor. There are two door frames one at either end ofthe corridor. But those doors are intriguingly sealed with brick and lime.
68. Apparently those doorways originally sealed by Shahjahan have been since unsealed and again walled up several times. In 1934 a resident of Delhi took a peep inside from an opening in the upper part of the doorway. To his dismay he saw huge hall inside. It contained many statues huddled around a central beheaded image of Lord Shiva. It could be that, in there, are Sanskrit inscriptions too. All the seven stories of the Tajmahal need to be unsealed and scoured to ascertain what evidence they may be hiding in the form of Hindu images, Sanskrit inscriptions, scriptures, coins and utensils.
69. Apart from Hindu images hidden in the sealed stories it is also learnt that Hindu images are also stored in the massive walls of the Taj. Between 1959 and 1962 when Mr. S.R. Rao was the Archealogical Superintendent in Agra, he happened to notice a deep and wide crack in the wall of the central octagonal chamber of the Taj. When a part of the wall was dismantled to study the crack out popped two or three marble images. The matter was hushed up and the images were reburied where they had been embedded at Shahjahan’s behest. Confirmation of this has been obtained from several sources. It was only when I began my investigation into the antecedents of the Taj I came across the above information which had remained a forgotten secret. What better proof is needed of the Temple origin of the Tajmahal? Its walls and sealed chambers still hide in Hindu idols that were consecrated in it before Shahjahan’s seizure of the Taj.
PRE-SHAHJAHAN REFERENCES TO THE TAJ
70. Apparently the Taj as a central palace seems to have an chequered history. The Taj was perhaps desecrated and looted by every Muslim invader from Mohammad Ghazni onwards but passing into Hindu hands off and on, the sanctity of the Taj as a Shiva temple continued to be revived after every muslim onslaught. Shahjahan was the last muslim to desecrate the Tajmahal alias Tejomahalay.
71. Vincent Smith records in his book titled `Akbar the Great Moghul’ that `Babur’s turbulent life came to an end in his garden palace in Agra in 1630′. That palace was none other than the Tajmahal. 72. Babur’s daughter Gulbadan Begum in her chronicle titled `Humayun Nama’ refers to the Taj as the Mystic House.
73. Babur himself refers to the Taj in his memoirs as the palace captured by Ibrahim Lodi containing a central octagonal chamber and having pillars on the four sides. All these historical references allude to the Taj 100 years before Shahjahan.
74. The Tajmahal precincts extend to several hundred yards in all directions. Across the river are ruins of the annexes of the Taj, the bathing ghats and a jetty for the ferry boat. In the Victoria gardens outside covered with creepers is the long spur of the ancient outer wall ending in a octagonal red stone tower. Such extensive grounds all magnificently done up, are a superfluity for a grave.
75. Had the Taj been specially built to bury Mumtaz, it should not have been cluttered with other graves. But the Taj premises contain several graves atleast in its eastern and southern pavilions.
76. In the southern flank, on the other side of the Tajganj gate are buried in identical pavilions queens Sarhandi Begum, and Fatehpuri Begum and a maid Satunnisa Khanum. Such parity burial can be justified only if the queens had been demoted or the maid promoted. But since Shahjahan had commandeered (not built) the Taj, he reduced it general to a muslim cemetary as was the habit of all his Islamic predeccssors, and buried a queen in a vacant pavillion and a maid in another idenitcal pavilion.
77. Shahjahan was married to several other women before and after Mumtaz. She, therefore, deserved no special consideration in having a wonder mausoleum built for her.
78. Mumtaz was a commoner by birth and so she did not qualify for a fairyland burial.
79. Mumtaz died in Burhanpur which is about 600 miles from Agra. Her grave there is intact. Therefore ,the centotaphs raised in stories of the Taj in her name seem to be fakes hiding in Hindu Shiva emblems.
80. Shahjahan seems to have simulated Mumtaz’s burial in Agra to find a pretext to surround the temple palace with his fierce and fanatic troops and remove all the costly fixtures in his treasury. This finds confirmation in the vague noting in the Badshahnama which says that the Mumtaz’s (exhumed) body was brought to Agra from Burhanpur and buried `next year’. An official term would not use a nebulous term unless it is to hide some thing.
81. A pertinent consideration is that a Shahjahan who did not build any palaces for Mumtaz while she was alive, would not build a fabulous mausoleum for a corpse which was no longer kicking or clicking.
82. Another factor is that Mumtaz died within two or three years of Shahjahan becoming an emperor. Could he amass so much superflous wealth in that short span as to squander it on a wonder mausoleum?
83. While Shahjahan’s special attachment to Mumtaz is nowhere recorded in history his amorous affairs with many other ladies from maids to mannequins including his own daughter Jahanara, find special attention in accounts of Shahjahan’s reign. Would Shahjahan shower his hard earned wealth on Mumtaz’s corpse?
84. Shahjahan was a stingy, usurious monarch. He came to throne murdering all his rivals. He was not therefore, the doting spendthrift that he is made out to be.
85. A Shahjahan disconsolate on Mumtaz’s death is suddenly credited with a resolve to build the Taj. This is a psychological incongruity. Grief is a disabling, incapacitating emotion.
86. A infatuated Shahjahan is supposed to have raised the Taj over the dead Mumtaz, but carnal, physical sexual love is again a incapacitating emotion. A womaniser is ipso facto incapable of any constructive activity. When carnal love becomes uncontrollable the person either murders somebody or commits suicide. He cannot raise a Tajmahal. A building like the Taj invariably originates in an ennobling emotion like devotion to God, to one’s mother and mother country or power and glory.
87. Early in the year 1973, chance digging in the garden in front of the Taj revealed another set of fountains about six feet below the present fountains. This proved two things. Firstly, the subterranean fountains were there before Shahjahan laid the surface fountains. And secondly that those fountains are aligned to the Taj that edifice too is of pre Shahjahan origin. Apparently the garden and its fountains had sunk from annual monsoon flooding and lack of maintenance for centuries during the Islamic rule.
89. The stately rooms on the upper floor of the Tajmahal have been striped of their marble mosaic by Shahjahan to obtain matching marble for raising fake tomb stones inside the Taj premises at several places. Contrasting with the rich finished marble ground floor rooms the striping of the marble mosaic covering the lower half of the walls and flooring of the upper storey have given those rooms a naked, robbed look. Since no visitors are allowed entry to the upper storey this despoilation by Shahjahan has remained a well guarded secret. There is no reason why Shahjahan’s loot of the upper floor marble should continue to be hidden from the public even after 200 years of termination of Moghul rule.
90. Bernier, the French traveller has recorded that no non muslim was allowed entry into the secret nether chambers of the Taj because there are some dazzling fixtures there. Had those been installed by Shahjahan they should have been shown the public as a matter of pride. But since it was commandeered Hindu wealth which Shahjahan wanted to remove to his treasury, he didn’t want the public to know about it.
91. The approach to Taj is dotted with hillocks raised with earth dugout from foundation trenches. The hillocks served as outer defences of the Taj building complex. Raising such hillocks from foundation earth, is a common Hindu device of hoary origin. Nearby Bharatpur provides a graphic parallel.
Peter Mundy has recorded that Shahjahan employed thousands of labourers to level some of those hillocks. This is a graphic proof of the Tajmahal existing before Shahjahan.
93. At the backside of the river bank is a Hindu crematorium, several palaces, Shiva temples and bathings of ancient origin. Had Shahjahan built the Tajmahal, he would have destroyed the Hindu features.
94. The story that Shahjahan wanted to build a Black marble Taj across the river, is another motivated myth. The ruins dotting the other side of the river are those of Hindu structures demolished during muslim invasions and not the plinth of another Tajmahal. Shahjahan who did not even build the white Tajmahal would hardly ever think of building a black marble Taj. He was so miserly that he forced labourers to work gratis even in the superficial tampering neccesary to make a Hindu temple serve as a Muslim tomb.
95. The marble that Shahjahan used for grafting Koranic lettering in the Taj is of a pale white shade while the rest of the Taj is built of a marble with rich yellow tint. This disparity is proof of the Koranic extracts being a superimposition.
96. Though imaginative attempts have been made by some historians to foist some fictitious name on history as the designer of the Taj others more imaginative have credited Shajahan himself with superb architechtural proficiency and artistic talent which could easily concieve and plan the Taj even in acute bereavment. Such people betray gross ignorance of history in as much as Shajahan was a cruel tyrant ,a great womaniser and a drug and drink addict.
97. Fanciful accounts about Shahjahan commisioning the Taj are all confused. Some asserted that Shahjahan ordered building drawing from all over the world and chose one from among them. Others assert that a man at hand was ordered to design a mausoleum amd his design was approved. Had any of those versions been true Shahjahan’s court papers should have had thousands of drawings concerning the Taj. But there is not even a single drawing. This is yet another clinching proof that Shahjahan did not commision the Taj.
98. The Tajmahal is surrounded by huge mansions which indicate that several battles have been waged around the Taj several times.
99. At the south east corner of the Taj is an ancient royal cattle house. Cows attached to the Tejomahalay temple used to reared there. A cowshed is an incongruity in an Islamic tomb.
100. Over the western flank of the Taj are several stately red stone annexes. These are superflous for a mausoleum.
101. The entire Taj complex comprises of 400 to 500 rooms. Residential accomodation on such a stupendous scale is unthinkable in a mausoleum.
102. The neighbouring Tajganj township’s massive protective wall also encloses the Tajmahal temple palace complex. This is a clear indication that the Tejomahalay temple palace was part and parcel of the township. A street of that township leads straight into the Tajmahal. The Tajganj gate is aligned in a perfect straight line to the octagonal red stone garden gate and the stately entrance arch of the Tajmahal. The Tajganj gate besides being central to the Taj temple complex, is also put on a pedestal. The western gate by which the visitors enter the Taj complex is a camparatively minor gateway. It has become the entry gate for most visitors today because the railway station and the bus station are on that side.
103. The Tajmahal has pleasure pavillions which a tomb would never have.
104. A tiny mirror glass in a gallery of the Red Fort in Agra reflects the Taj mahal. Shahjahan is said to have spent his last eight years of life as a prisoner in that gallery peering at the reflected Tajmahal and sighing in the name of Mumtaz. This myth is a blend of many falsehoods. Firstly,old Shajahan was held prisoner by his son Aurangzeb in the basement storey in the Fort and not in an open,fashionable upper storey. Secondly, the glass piece was fixed in the 1930′s by Insha Allah Khan, a peon of the archaelogy dept.just to illustrate to the visitors how in ancient times the entire apartment used to scintillate with tiny mirror pieces reflecting the Tejomahalay temple a thousand fold. Thirdly, a old decrepit Shahjahan with pain in his joints and cataract in his eyes, would not spend his day craning his neck at an awkward angle to peer into a tiny glass piece with bedimmed eyesight when he could as well his face around and have full,direct view of the Tjamahal itself. But the general public is so gullible as to gulp all such prattle of wily, unscrupulous guides.
105. That the Tajmahal dome has hundreds of iron rings sticking out of its exterior is a feature rarely noticed. These are made to hold Hindu earthen oil lamps for temple illumination.
106. Those putting implicit faith in Shahjahan authorship of the Taj have been imagining Shahjahan-Mumtaz to be a soft hearted romantic pair like Romeo and Juliet. But contemporary accounts speak of Shahjahan as a hard hearted ruler who was constantly egged on to acts of tyranny and cruelty, by Mumtaz.
107. School and College history carry the myth that Shahjahan reign was a golden period in which there was peace and plenty and that Shahjahan commisioned many buildings and patronized literature. This is pure fabrication. Shahjahan did not commision even a single building as we have illustrated by a detailed analysis of the Tajmahal legend. Shahjahn had to enrage in 48 military campaigns during a reign of nearly 30 years which proves that his was not a era of peace and plenty.
108. The interior of the dome rising over Mumtaz’s centotaph has a representation of Sun and cobras drawn in gold. Hindu warriors trace their origin to the Sun. For an Islamic mausoleum the Sun is redundant. Cobras are always associated with Lord Shiva.
FORGED DOCUMENTS
109. The muslim caretakers of the tomb in the Tajmahal used to possess a document which they styled as “Tarikh-i-Tajmahal”. Historian H.G. Keene has branded it as `a document of doubtful authenticity’. Keene was uncannily right since we have seen that Shahjahan not being the creator of the Tajmahal any document which credits Shahjahn with the Tajmahal, must be an outright forgery. Even that forged document is reported to have been smuggled out of Pakistan. Besides such forged documents there are whole chronicles on the Taj which are pure concoctions.
110. There is lot of sophistry and casuistry or atleast confused thinking associated with the Taj even in the minds of proffesional historians, archaelogists and architects. At the outset they assert that the Taj is entirely Muslim in design. But when it is pointed out that its lotus capped dome and the four corner pillars etc. are all entirely Hindu those worthies shift ground and argue that that was probably because the workmen were Hindu and were to introduce their own patterns. Both these arguments are wrong because Muslim accounts claim the designers to be Muslim,and the workers invariably carry out the employer’s dictates.
The Taj is only a typical illustration of how all historic buildings and townships from Kashmir to Cape Comorin though of Hindu origin have been ascribed to this or that Muslim ruler or courtier.
It is hoped that people the world over who study Indian history will awaken to this new finding and revise their erstwhile beliefs.
Those interested in an indepth study of the above and many other revolutionary rebuttals may read this author’s other research books.
Tajmahal The True Story authored by Shri P.N. Oak can be ordered from :
- A. Ghosh Publisher
5720, W. Little York #216
Houston, Texas 77091
Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes
On February 12th, the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, the
British poet Ruth Padel, his great great grand-daughter, published
Darwin: A Life in Poems. Enthusiastically received in the U.K. as an
essential life of the great man, the book now appears here, and Padel
is visiting our shores, to read at the New York Botanical Gardens this
weekend, and New York University in the coming week (links below). Her
sparkling poems tell the story: Darwin’s early loss of his mother, his
precocious collector’s instinct and passion for animals, the five-year
voyage on the HMS Beagle which set him on his path as a scientist, the
tensions and joys of his marriage to his cousin Emma and their rearing
of ten children, several of whom did not survive. Hard to reproduce in
this email format are the informative marginal notes that run
alongside Padel’s verses, which supply some basic chronology and
factual background for each poem. For example, in the top left margin
of the poem reproduced below, we are given the following setup:
“January, 1832, St. Jago, Cape Verde Islands. Darwin’s first glimpse
of tropical vegetation”; and, a bit further down, “One of Darwin’s
great inspirations was the work on South America by Alexander von
Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equatorial Regions of
the New Continent.”****************************************
British poet Ruth Padel, his great great grand-daughter, published
Darwin: A Life in Poems. Enthusiastically received in the U.K. as an
essential life of the great man, the book now appears here, and Padel
is visiting our shores, to read at the New York Botanical Gardens this
weekend, and New York University in the coming week (links below). Her
sparkling poems tell the story: Darwin’s early loss of his mother, his
precocious collector’s instinct and passion for animals, the five-year
voyage on the HMS Beagle which set him on his path as a scientist, the
tensions and joys of his marriage to his cousin Emma and their rearing
of ten children, several of whom did not survive. Hard to reproduce in
this email format are the informative marginal notes that run
alongside Padel’s verses, which supply some basic chronology and
factual background for each poem. For example, in the top left margin
of the poem reproduced below, we are given the following setup:
“January, 1832, St. Jago, Cape Verde Islands. Darwin’s first glimpse
of tropical vegetation”; and, a bit further down, “One of Darwin’s
great inspirations was the work on South America by Alexander von
Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equatorial Regions of
the New Continent.”****************************************
Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes
He’s standing in Elysium. Palm feathers, a green
dream of fountain against blue sky. Banana fronds,
slack rubber rivulets, a canopy of waterproof tearstain
over his head. Pods and racemes of tamarind.
Follicle, pinnacle; whorl, bole and thorn.
‘I expected a good deal. I had read Humboldt
and was afraid of disappointment.’
What if he’d stayed at home? ‘How utterly vain
such fear is, none can tell but those who have seen
what I have today.’ A small rock off Africa –
alone with his enchantment. So much and so unknown.
Like taking a newborn baby in your arms. ‘Not only the grace
of forms and rich new colours: it’s the numberless –
& confusing – associations rushing on the mind!’
He walks through hot damp air
and tastes it like the breath of earth, like blood.
He is possessed by chlorophyll. By the calls of unknown birds.
He wades into sea and scares an octopus. It puffs black hair
at him, turns red – as hyacinth – and darts for cover.
He sees it watching him. He’s discovered
something wonderful! He tests it against coloured card
and the sailors laugh. They know that girly blush!
He feels a fool – but look, he’s touched tropical Volcanic rock
for the first time. And Coral on its native stone.
‘Often at Edinburgh have I gazed at little pools
of water left by tide. From tiny Corals of our shores
I pictured larger ones. Little did I know how exquisite,
still less expect my hope of seeing them to come true.
Never, in my wildest castles of the air, did I imagine this.’
Lava must once have streamed on the sea-floor here,
baking shells to white hard rock. Then a subterranean force
pushed everything up to make an island.
Vegetation he’s never seen, and every step a new surprise.
‘New insects, fluttering about still newer flowers. It has been
for me a glorious day, like giving to a blind man eyes.’
Sarcasm-2
» Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
» It’s always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.
- Paul Newman
» It’s a catastrophic success.
» I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.
- Stephen Bishop
» History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban
» No, Groucho is not my real name. I am breaking it in for a friend.
» I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.
» I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
» I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
» I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up.
- Groucho Marx
» The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
- Frank Zappa
» The 100% American is 99% idiot.
» The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
- George Bernard Shaw
» He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
- Oscar Wilde
» He was happily married – but his wife wasn’t.
- Victor Borge
I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
- Mark Twain
» I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
- Clarence Darrow
» If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?
- Charles Pierce
» You have delighted us long enough.
- Jane Austen
“ADDICTION”
I did it to myself. It wasn’t society… it wasn’t a pusher, it wasn’t being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
To my purist trout fishing friends, bass are lowly green fish and brown fish. To me, bass are bent rods and aching arms. To my ex-wife, bass are the bewilderment of addiction.
I did it to myself. It wasn’t society… it wasn’t a pusher, it wasn’t being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”
“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some bline, random disaster, or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He’s taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of death from being a total suprise.”
“Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?”
Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs, they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.
There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs, they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.
Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know – I’ve been using it for years.
