1. Fiji's Biggest Temple Holds 12th Year Rededication
2. Omkareshwar Temple Limits Offerings to Preserve Siva Lingam
3. Famed Bharata Natyam Dance Teacher Passes Away
4. Origin of Indian Civilization Subject of US Conference

1. Fiji's Biggest Temple Holds 12th Year Rededication

www.fijitimes.com

NADI, FIJI, July 3, 2006: At least 5,000 Hindu devotees were at the Sri Siva Subramanya Swami Temple, in Nadi, yesterday to be part of their 12th year Mahakumbhabhishekam celebration. The festivities and the religious ceremonies, which began on Wednesday, ended yesterday with the final re-consecration of the temple at the Suva end of the Nadi Town. Temple president Dorsami Naidu said this was done to mark the completion of the renovation of the temple. The renovation is done every 12 years, he said. The large temple was built in 1994 after being moved from the opposite end of Nadi where the original small temple had been built in 1920. There were 21 priests from India joining local pundits led by chief priest Sri Ravi Gurukkal of Tituttani, Chennai, in India, who performed the traditional Vedic and Agamic rites. Mr. Naidu said the reconsecration was the process of infusing divinity and spiritual power into the vigrahas or images of Deities of a temple. Mr. Naidu said in order to facilitate the renovations of the temple, there was a ritual by which their divinity could be transferred into vessels of holy water. Once the renovations are done, we will re-infuse the divinity back into the Deities and the Divine returns to the sanctum sanctorum, he said. Mr. Naidu said though the religious events would be over, they would still have 45 days of mandalabhishekam or the closing part of the ceremonies. In addition to the religious events, there are cultural and educational events going on in parallel, he said.

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2. Omkareshwar Temple Limits Offerings to Preserve Siva Lingam

inwww.rediff.com

BHOPAL, INDIA, July 2, 2006: Offerings of milk, curd, water and other traditional materials on the sacred Jyotir Lingam at the famous Omkareshwar temple has been with banned to save the symbol of Lord Siva from further erosion, officials said Sunday. The Khandwa district administration took the decision Saturday on the advice of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), the officials said. "The damage is being caused due to the offerings made on the Siva Lingam which is made of sandstone - a comparatively soft material," said ASI deputy superintendent Ashok Kumar Pandey who had inspected the damaged Lingam. The Jyotir Lingam at Omkareshwar, 350 km from here, is one of the 12 major Siva Lingams in India and Nepal. "A crack had been found in the one-foot high Siva Lingam a few days ago and was repaired using a locally made paste but it did not prove effective," said Swami Tejanand, chief priest of the Omkareshwar Temple Trust that looks after the temple. "The Jyotir Lingam has suffered damage because a large number of devotees touch it every day during rituals," he said. "The trust is seriously considering the installation of a new Jyotir Lingam after submerging the existing Siva Lingam in the holy Narmada river some time after August. Swami Jayendra Saraswati of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham is being consulted on the issue," the priest said. However, Khandwa district collector Nikunj Kumar Shrivastava said the administration was consulting the ASI to preserve the Lingam and there were no plans to install a new one. Meanwhile, the temple trust is planning to place a transparent cover over the present Siva Lingam till a new one is installed.

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3. Famed Bharata Natyam Dance Teacher Passes Away

inwww.rediff.com

MUMBAI, INDIA, June 28, 2006: Renowned Bharatnatyam Guru Shri Mani passed away this morning after a prolonged illness, his family said today. He was 84. He was one of the persons responsible for the growth of Bharatnatyam in the city and founded the Kalasadan Institute of Fine Arts in 1954 at Sion in central Mumbai. He was hospitalized for 20 days at a hospital in Chembur, his artist son Nataraj Gopal said. He is survived two sons, three daughters and wife Meenakshi Mani.

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4. Origin of Indian Civilization Subject of US Conference

bsingh@umassd.edu

DARTMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS, July 3, 2006: (HPI note: This is a press release received from Bal Ram Singh (e-mail above), Ph.D., Director, Center for Indic Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)

Comprehensive population genetics data along with archeological and astronomical evidence presented at June 23-25, 2006 conference in Dartmouth, MA, overwhelmingly concluded that Indian civilization and its human population is indigenous. In fact, the original people and culture within the Indian Subcontinent may even be a likely pool for the genetic, linguistic, and cultural origin of most of the rest of the world, particularly Europe and Asia. Leading evidences come from population genetics, which were presented by two leading researchers in the field, Dr. V. K. Kashyap, National Institute of Biologicals, India, and Dr. Peter Underhill of Stanford University in California. Their results generally contradict the notion Aryan invasion/migration theory for the origin of Indian civilization. Underhill concluded "the spatial frequency distributions of both L1 frequency and variance levels show a spreading pattern emanating from India," referring to a Y chromosome marker. He, however, put several caveats before interpreting genetic data, including "Y-ancestry may not always reflect the ancestry of the rest of the genome" Dr. Kashyap, on the other hand, with the most comprehensive set of genetic data was quite emphatic in his assertion that there is "no clear genetic evidence for an intrusion of Indo-Aryan people into India, [and] establishment of caste system and gene flow."

Michael Witzel, a Harvard linguist, who is known to lead the idea of Aryan invasion/migration/influx theory in more recent times, continued to question genetic evidence on the basis that it does not provide the time resolution to explain events that may have been involved in Aryan presence in India. Dr. Kashyap's reply was that even though the time resolution needs further work, the fact that there are clear and distinct differences in the gene pools of Indian population and those of Central Asian and European groups, the evidence nevertheless negates any Aryan invasion or migration into Indian Subcontinent. Witzel refused to present his own data and evidence for his theories despite being invited to do so. He was nevertheless present in the conference and raised many questions. Some of his commentaries questioning the credibility of scholars evoked sharp responses from other participants.

Rig Veda has been dated to 1,500 BC by those who use linguistics to claim its origin as Aryans coming out of Central Asia and Europe. Archaeologist B.B. Lal and scientist and historian N.S. Rajaram disagreed with the position of linguists, in particular Witzel who claimed literary and linguistic evidence for the non-Indian origin of the Vedic civilization. Dr. Narahari Achar, a physicist from University of Memphis clearly showed with astronomical analysis that the Mahabharata war in 3,067 BC, thus poking a major hole in the outside Aryan origin of Vedic people. Interestingly, Witzel stated, for the first time to many in the audience, that he and his colleagues no longer subscribe to Aryan invasion theory.

Dr. Bal Ram Singh, Director, Center for Indic Studies at UMass Dartmouth, which organized the conference was appalled at the level of visceral feelings Witzel holds against some of the scholars in the field, but felt satisfied with the overall outcome of the conference. "I am glad to see people who have been scholarly shooting at each other for about a decade are finally in one room, this is a progress," said Singh. The conference was able to bring together in one room for the first time experts from genetics, archeology, physics, linguistics, anthropology, history, and philosophy. A proceedings of the conference is expected to come out soon, detailing various arguments on the origin of Indian civilization.

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