Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

[death metal black metal]

Interesting parallels:

Similarly, in Kurukshetra, the scene of the great Mahabharata war, Iron arrows and spearheads have been excavated and dated by thermoluminence to 2,800 B.C.E., the approximate date of the war given within the Mahabharata itself.

The Mahabharata also describes three cities given to the Pandavas, the heroes of the Mahabharata, after their exile:

Paniprastha, Sonaprastha & Indraprastha, which is Delhi's Puranaqila. These sites have been identified and yielded pottery & antiquities, which show a cultural consistency & dating consistent for the Mahabharata period, again verifying statements recorded in the Vedic literatures.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the famed German philosopher and writer, wrote that: I "...encounter [in the Vedas] deep, original, lofty thoughts... suffused with a high and holy seriousness."

The well-known early American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, read the Vedas daily. Emerson wrote: "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavat-Gita"

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/scientific-verif-vedas.html

It's worth reading the Bhagavad-Gita if you have not already; if you read it with D.T. Suzuki's introduction to Zen Buddhism and a Pagan work like the elder eddas, you get a rounded picture of the primordial, eternal, self-generating adaptive spirituality of higher-intelligence humans.

[Jim Necroslaughter]

Is there an edition/translation of the Bhagavad-Gita you would recommend in particular?

Or even better, could you recommend which of these on Amazon are the better choices?

[HessianObscura]

Is there an edition/translation of the Bhagavad-Gita you would recommend in particular?

Or even better, could you recommend which of these on Amazon are the better choices?

Edwin Arnold's translation remains the most epic and theatrical rendering of the Gita without sacrificing metaphysical elucidation.

Eknath Easwaran seeks philosophical clarity in his translation, which makes it read like other deep chapter's of the Mahabharata that explore the inner and outer worlds.

Prabhavananda and Isherwood's translation is the simplest, most accesible translation, guiding the reader through key concepts of Vedanta which find their source in texts such as the Gita and Upanishads.

The most popular translation of the Gita is Prabhupada's translation of the Gita 'As It Is' and is probably the least useful version of the Gita as it does not allow the reader to think for himself during any stage of the text. The purports are constant attempts to force the submissive, dualistic Hare Krishna worldview, based on erroneous interpretations and mistranslated words. For example, Brahman is subordinated to the concept of Krishna as 'The Supreme Personality of Godhead', whenever a term like 'Bhagavan' (or even 'Brahman' itself) appears. In this context, the ancient Sanskrit texts define 'Bhagavan' as a monistic principle in accordance with the Vedic knowledge of the principal Upanishads. These nondualistic (Advaita) texts, like the Bhagavata Purana are central to the sect of Vaishnavism which all Krishna-cults are manifestations of. However, as the Hindu empire was being weakened through the Medieval times, the popularity of purely devotional (the lowest of the four Yoga's), personality-fixated Vaishnava cults grew (and actually safeguarded Hinduism against the dominion of Islam for quite some time), of which specifically the Hare Krishna/ISKON movement descends. In the Advaita Vedanta tradition according to Sri Sankaracharya, the idea of Brahman as some kind of supreme personality only arises if perception still clings to unreality and transient appearances. This perception of Brahman as 'Iswara' - a personal God, is valid for those some way from the peak of Enlightenment, but is not the highest principle of reality - the Parabrahman. The highest Brahman is reality without attributes, devoid of any personal/'human' qualities which the ego projects onto the extent of the world that he can conceive.

[istaros]

Many thanks, HO!

[Grim Morrison]

HessianObscura - Isn't Vaishnavism/ISKON a Dvaita or dualistic school and not Advaita as you have stated? The personality cult of Krishna created by these seems to fit in with the idea of dualism.

[HessianObscura]

HessianObscura - Isn't Vaishnavism/ISKON a Dvaita or dualistic school and not Advaita as you have stated? The personality cult of Krishna created by these seems to fit in with the idea of dualism.

The Bhagavata Purana - the key text of Vaishnavism - asserts the supremacy of Brahman and the realisation of Brahman/Atman as liberation. Vaishnava groups after the formalisation of Dvaita philosophy by the likes of Madhvacharya emphasise the Atman as Jiva, an individual soul seperate from the Absolute.