Pride of Hinduism - Views of foreigners

[talwan]

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John Moffitt ( ) a graduate of Princeton and the Curtis Institute of Music, was a monastic member of the order of Ramakrishna for 25 years and then became a Catholic. In his book, Journey to Gorakhpur he gently leads the Westerner to shed his cultural imperialism in an encounter with the ongoing vitality of Indian tradition. He said that Christians must guard against a premature assumption that God intended everyone in the East to become a professing Christian.
"The majority of the people in the West have largely misunderstood both (Hinduism and Buddhism) religions. Up till now these ancient faiths have been devoutly misrepresented by most scholars who are professing Christians."
"Hinduism's doctrine of the "divinity" of the soul, the non duality of the Godhead, the unity of existence, and the harmony of religions were strongly appealing and he joined the Ramakrishna Order of India, working at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York under the direction of Swami Nikhilananda."

 

[talwan]

Samuel Johnson (1822- 1882) went to private schools, Harvard, and then Harvard Divinity School from which he graduated in 1846. Among his class mates were Octavius Brooks B Frothingham and his lifelong friend Samuel Longfellow, brother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Johnson was a minor Transcendentalist whose faith was centered in naturalism, and he rejected much of Christian tradition as revelatory, and held little faith in established institutions always refusing to join any organized groups. His later years were devoted to study and writing. He often looked outside of Christianity for his inspiration. In his hymn. “Life of Ages,” he writes, “never was to chosen race that unstinted tide confined.” His work on eastern religions was especially important. He published three volumes of his Oriental Religions. These were India (1872), China (1877) and Persia (1885).
Johnson shared characteristics with Emerson’s Transcendentalism; like Emerson, Thoreau, he was capable of seeing daily life in terms of Hinduism.
He criticizes the West and contemporary Western society and wrote in his essay “Fulfillment of Functions” begins with words “Doing one’s own duty badly is better than doing another’s well - The Hindu concepts of Svadharma, which can be translated as “fulfillment of functions.”
The terms of disease and corruption clearly show Johnson’s dissatisfaction with current America , and at the end of the essay he exhorts:
“Let us educate for this principle (svadharma). Let us flood these torch-light politics, this pitchy trade, these pyrotechnic manners, with its simple, open day. Let us substitute it for the herded dependence and noisy Baal-worship that is called religion, and vindicate the name that is broader and more beautiful than Christianity itself. For this is the prophecy in the struggling heart of humanity today.”

 

[talwan]

Willy Haas (1891- 1973) German writer and contemporary of Heinrich Zimmer and Herrmann Goetz once stated that:
“At its culminating point, Indian art does not attempt to represent eternity through the fleeing moment, duration through change or god through nature, on the contrary: it makes change appear through permanence, the variable through identity."
“As an example he quotes the Trimurti at Elephanta, where the triple-faced head of Shiva shows the three aspects of Shiva as Brahma (the creator), as Vishnu (the preserver), and as Rudra (the destroyer), thereby achieving the ever sought after identity of form and content.
This old quest for the perfect harmony of form and content was forged into a grand image by Rabindranath Tagore in our times “I plunge into the very depths of the ocean of forms, hoping to find the perfect and formless pearl.”
(source: Treasures of Indian Art: Germany's Tribute to India's Cultural Heritage - National Museum p. foreword by Dr. Georg Lechner, Director Goethe – Institut Muechen.

 

[talwan]

Martin Gray ( ) is an anthropologist and photographer specializing in the study of sacred sites and pilgrimage traditions around the world. His father was in the US diplomatic service and was privileged to travel widely around the world. When he was twelve years old his family moved to India for four years. During this period he went on frequent journeys, both alone and in the company of wandering holy men, to the temples, mosques and sacred caves of India , Nepal and Kashmir . Reading widely in the fields of Buddhism and Hinduism, he became intrigued with the beauty and mystery of the sacred places of India. During the past eighteen years, Martin has visited and photographed over 1000 sacred sites in seventy countries. His efforts culminate with a beautiful website called Places of Peace and Power, which can be found at: www.sacredsites.com.
He has remarked that:
"In India we find the oldest continually operating pilgrimage tradition in the entire world. The practice of pilgrimage in India is so deeply embedded in the cultural psyche and the number of pilgrimage sites is so large that the entire subcontinent may actually be regarded as one grand and continuous sacred space."

 

[talwan]

Satyanand Stokes aka. Samuel Evans Stokes (1882-1946), was the son of a wealthy Philadelphian engineer-businessman of Quaker antecedents, well-known for his contribution to the elevator technology. Young Samuel was not interested in following his father into business, and at 22 gave up his studies at the University of Yale, and opted to serve mankind. He set for sail to India and arrived at the leper home in Sabathu in 1905. He was sent for relief work to Kangra, then devastated by a severe earthquake. Thereafter, he came to the Christian Mission House at Kotgarh.
In 1910, he bought a derelict tea garden, got married and made Barubagh in Kotgarh his home. But Stokes was of a reflective and enquiring mind and although he described himself as a "lover of Christ" he could not shut his mind to Indian metaphysical thought. He learnt Sanskrit, studied eastern and western thought, and expounded his philosophy of life in a book entitled Satyakam.
In 1932, under the aegis of Arya Samaj, he became a Hindu, and converted from Samuel Evans to Satyanand.

 

[sundachu]

It is an iron that most of the Hindus question the very faith of it without any attachment to it. Foreigners admire ,we denounce.

 

[talwan]

Dr. Hilda Raja ( ) was a professor at Queen Mary's College, Chennai. She has held an advisory position in the Catholic Bishops Conference in India. She was a sociology professor at Stella Maris College, Chennai. . Her writings are forthright but balanced, precise, incisive, thought provoking and informative. Apart from being a practicing Catholic Christian, she is a true nationalist, who values the cultural heritage of this great country and respects the Hindu tradition too. [SIZE=-1]She is Catholic by religion and an outspoken critic of religious conversion as it is practiced by Christian missionaries in India.[/SIZE][SIZE=-1] [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Ms. Raja writes on her blog that: "There is no place for conversion because this ancient land of ours was already oriented to its Creator and the people had connected to the Supreme being of the Cosmos. Much before Christianity / Islam appeared our forefathers had their religion. It was their openness and utterly secular outlook which enabled all world religions to make India their home. To me India and all that it holds is sacred."[/SIZE]

 

[talwan]

Walter Raymond Drake (1913 - 1989), a British disciple of Charles Fort (1874 - 1932) published nine books on the ancient astronaut theme, the first four years earlier than Erich Von Däniken's bestseller Chariots of the Gods. In his book Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East, he wrote: "The oldest source of wisdom in the world must surely spring from India , whose initiates long ago probed the secrets of heaven, the story of Earth, the depths of Man’s soul, and propounded those sublime thoughts which illumined the Magi of Babylon, inspired the philosophers of Greece and worked their subtle influence on the religions of the West."
“Today we tend to belittle the past and boast our age as the highest peak in human culture, despite its sadly apparent short-comings; the common man in the West certainly lives more princely than many a King centuries ago and enjoys marvels of genius which would have amazed the old magicians, yet the literature of Eastern peoples shows that the Ancients sometimes surpassed us in the very things of which we are proud. The Indian lyricise of spaceships faster than light and missiles more violent than H-bombs; their Sanskrit texts describe aircraft apparently with radar and cameras; the wonderful ‘Mahabharat’ rivals the ‘Iliad’, the ‘Odyssey’…”

 

[talwan]

Daniel Joseph Boorstin (1914 - 2004) was the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants, American historian, lawyer, professor, Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987, prize-winning author of several books including The Discovers, The Creators and The Seekers wrote this about Hinduism: “The Hindus have left an eloquent history of their efforts to answer the riddle of Creation. The Vedas, sacred hymns in archaic Sanskrit from about 1500 to 900 BC do not depict a benevolent Creator, but record a man’s awe before the Creation as singers of the Vedas chant the radiance of this world. Their objects of worship were devas (cognate with Latin dues, god) derived from the old Sanskrit div, meaning brightness. Gods were the shining ones. The luminosity of their world impressed the Hindus from the beginning. Not the fitting-together-ness, not the hierarchy of beings or the order of nature, but the blinding splendor, the Light of the World. How the world once came into being or how it might end seemed irrelevant before the brightness of the visible world.

 

[talwan]

Gene D Matlock ( ) is author of several books including India Once Ruled the Americas and Jesus and Moses Are Buried in India, Birthplace of Abraham and the Hebrews. In his book, Yishvara 2000

he has remarked that : "In ancient times, the country we of today call India was not confined to the Indian subcontinent alone. Its northern limit was the Artic Circle or North Polar regions. Its human inhabited parts began in the northeastern extreme of Siberia, including Alaska, extending downward through what are now Russia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and every other nation in those regions not named down to and including Antarctica or the uninhabited South Polar regions. The Indians in the North Polar regions down to Iran were called Scythians. These Scythians also extended as far west as the British Isles and eastward into China. They gave their name to Scotland. The Indians south of today's Iran were and still are, called Bharatiya.
As far as we know, everyone originally spoke Sanskrit dialect, also such North Indian languages as Brahma Bhasha or Balhika Bhasha. We are told that Sumerian was the world's first civilized nation. The "Outer Space" cultists like to say that astronauts from other planets founded the Sumerian civilization because it seemed to "spring up all at once." According to them, this proves that someone from outside this planet flew in suddenly, landed, and left civilized people behind. They're going to be disappointed to find out that a highly developed civilization existed in India at least two millenniums before the Sumerian civilization, from 8,000 to 6,000 BC, in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet and Kashmir. According to Hindu tradition, a privilege few in that society even owned flying machines....""The citizen of that region of Northern India were known as Yadvas, Yadu, Yahu-Deva, Yauda, Yahuda etc.

 

[talwan]

Jerry Earl Johnston ( ) two-time winner of the national Wilbur Award. He is a columnist, critic, and feature writer for the Deseret News. He has won awards from the Associated Press, Reader's Digest, Society of Professional Journalists, and the Utah Arts Council. He is also the author of Dads and Other Heroes. He has observed that: "Of the five major world religions -- Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Islam and Hindu -- Hinduism is likely the least understood by Westerners. People see aspects of it -- the bathing in the Ganges River, Yogis in meditation, the Hare Krishnas -- but they seem like so many random puzzle pieces.

That's because Hinduism exists as a series of unlinked pieces.

 

[talwan]

Charles Michael Byrd aka Charukrishna (1952 ) who describes himself as being “of black, white and Cherokee heritage,” made a name as the editor and publisher of Interracial Voice Web site from 1995 to 2003. In his first book, The Bhagavad-Gita in Black and White: From Mulatto Pride to Krishna Consciousness, Byrd, whose Krishna name is Charukrishna, has said he found the answer to his lifelong quest of transcending race, ethnicity, religion and other physical categories to ascend to a higher, universal identity. This book is primarily aimed at the multiracial population in America, and any American who wants to avail him or herself of the Vedic knowledge and how it might apply to the current situation of race consciousness in the United States.
"The Bhagavad Gita is an important source book on yoga, is the essence of India's Vedic wisdom, and is one of the great spiritual and philosophical classics of the world. Remarkably, however, the setting for this best known classic of spiritual literature is an ancient Indian battlefield - in the land of Kurukshetra." "At the last moment before entering battle, the great warrior Arjuna begins to wonder about the real meaning of his life. Why should he fight against his friends and relatives? Why does he exist? Where is he going after death? In the Bhagavad Gita, the 'Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Kirshna - Arjuna's friend and spiritual master - brings His disciple from perplexity to spiritual enlightenment through instruction in the science of self-realization. In the course of doing so, Krishna concisely but definitively explains transcendental knowledge - karma-yoga (the path of God realization through dedicating the fruits of one's work to God), jnana-yoga (the path of spiritual realization through a speculative philosophical search for truth), and bhakti-yoga (linking with the Supreme Lord through devotional service).

 

[talwan]

Professor Dean Brown ( ) an eminent Theoretical Physicist, cosmologist, philosopher and Sanskrit scholar, whose translation of the Upanishads was published by the Philosophical Research Society. In an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove of Thinking Allowed TV show brings about an interesting co-relation of Sanskrit & Physics.
He has pointed out that most European languages can be traced back to a root language that is also related to Sanskrit – the sacred language of the ancient Vedic religions of India . Many English words actually have Sanskrit origins. Similarly, many Vedic religious concepts can also be found in Western culture.
He discusses the fundamental idea of the Upanishads – that the essence of each individual, the atman, is identical to the whole universe, the principle of Brahman. In this sense, the polytheistic traditions of India can be said to be monistic at their very core.

 

[talwan]

Erich von Daniken (1935 - ) known as the father of the ancient astronaut theory and Swiss author of many books including Chariots of the Gods has extensively written about the flying apparatus, the Vimanas in the epics of India thus: The 'Ramayana' telling in magic imagery the quest of Rama for his stolen wife, Sita, has thrilled the people of India, for thousands of years; generations of wandering story-tellers have recited its 24,000 verses to marveling audiences captivated by this brilliant panorama of the fantastic past, the passions of heroic love, tragedies of dark revenge, aerial battles between Gods and demons waged with nuclear bombs; the glory of noble deeds; the thrilling poetry of life, the philosophy of destiny and death.
This wonderful epic of the 'Ramayana,' the inspiration of the world's great classic literature, intrigues us most today by its frequent allusions to aerial vehicles and annihilating bombs, which we consider to be inventions of own twentieth century impossible in the far past. Students of Sanskrit literature soon revise their preconceived ideas and find that the heroes of Ancient India were apparently equipped with aircraft and missiles more sophisticated than those we boast today. The thirty-first chapter of the Samasranganasutradhara, ascribed to King Bhojadira in the 11th century, contains descriptions of remarkable flying ships such as the elephant-machine, wooden-bird-machine traveling in the sky, wooden-vimana-machine flying in the air, door-keeper-machine, soldier-machine, etc. denoting different types of craft for different purposes.
" In the Indian national epic the Mahabharata, dating from the pre-Christian past, one of the 80,000 couplets gives philosophical expression to the immensity of time.
'God embraces space and time.
Time is the seed of the universe.'

 

[talwan]

Steven J Rosen aka Satyaraja Dasa (1955 - ) Was initiated disciple of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He is the founding editor of The Journal of Vaishnava Studies. He is also an associate editor of Back to Godhead, the magazine of the Hare Krishna Movement. He has said in his book, The Hidden Glory of India:
"Spirituality informs all aspects of Indian culture. It permeates family and social life, as well as, many major political movements. To the average person living in India, religion is an expression of universal truth, a profound complex outgrowth of the soul. Indian religions is so all-encompassing that it engages practitioners differently from the Western religious traditions.
"India's timeless spiritual teachings have an allure that has beckoned millions: from seekers trekking high in the snowy Himalayas to austere mendicants meditating on the serene banks of the Ganges. "
(source: The Hidden Glory of India - By Steven J Rosen p 1 - 8).

 

[talwan]

Theos Casimir Bernard (1908 - 1947) was an accomplished American practitioner of Yoga and a scholar of religion and explorer. Bernard pioneered Indian and Tibetan studies at Columbia University. He published several accounts of the theory and practice of the religions of India and Tibet, including his PhD dissertation on Hatha Yoga. In his book Hindu Philosophy he writes that:
"There is an innate in the human heart a metaphysical hunger to know and understand what lies beyond the mysterious and illusive veil of nature. This is true from savage to savant. Each in his own way, according to his own capacity, tries to fathom the eternal mystery of life. From the beginning of time, teachers have endeavored to bridge the gap between the seen and the unseen and to show cause for the inescapable experiences of sorrow and suffering that engulf mankind. In the West, man's perceptual knowledge of the external world has been his measuring rod, his basis for theorizing.

 

[talwan]

George (Augustine) Thundiparambil columnist has written some articles including 'Why this war on Hinduism?, The Source of Bias against Hindus and The Vedas and the Original Sin. He has observed in his article, Sanatana Dharma: Beacon of Human Consciousness: "The awareness of dharma as the underlying principle of all nature is the basic characteristic of a Hindu. Every other principle is considered subordinate to this. There are many definitions of this word and various translations that include “righteousness,” “justice,” “duty,” “religion,” etc., but any or all of these indicate parts of it and consist of something more. Dharma transcends belief. For a Hindu, it is an inner certitude. It arises from the certainty that upholding dharma is not only the right way, but the only natural way to think and act. Dharma is ethical and adharma, which is the absence of dharma, is unethical and is termed ‘paapa’ (sin). One upholds dharma by rightful conduct; by doing the right thing at the right time at the right place. Dharma is directly related to one’s consciousness. One can sense dharma in every situation and in every stage and station of our life. It manifests as one’s awareness of a transcendental ideal that prompts us to make decisions and act in a certain way."

 

[talwan]

J D (Jerome David) Salinger (1919-2010), born to a Polish Jew and in New York, an American novelist and short story writer, best known as the author of The Catcher in the Rye was regarded by many as a Hindu. Although he was an experimenter in spirituality, he had deep respect for Hinduism and yoga, and also well versed in the Advaita Vedanta philosophy. [FONT=&quot] Salinger was a Jewish Catholic by birth, but as an adult did not follow any of these family faiths. [/FONT] Like Somerset Maugham of The Razor's Edge and Herman Hesse (Siddhartha and others), his fiction drew explicitly from Eastern spirituality.
[FONT=&quot] A determined seeker and a practitioner of the spiritual arts, Salinger studied Zen after his traumatic service in World War II, and segued to the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism in the early 50s after publishing [FONT=&quot]The Catcher in the Rye[/FONT], that masterpiece of youthful yearning for higher meaning. He was a regular at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where the great mythologist Joseph Campbell also learned important lessons early in his scholarly career. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] He was highly influenced by [/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa[/FONT][FONT=&quot]'s explanation of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism advocating various Hindu beliefs with emphasis on karma, reincarnation, celibacy for the seekers truth and enlightenment, and detachment from worldliness.[/FONT]

 

[talwan]

Julia Roberts (1967 - ) is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman movie. The American actress grew up in Georgia, the US's famous 'bible belt' and was born to a Catholic mother and Baptist father. Roberts, who recently converted to Hinduism, says she took up the religion because she was intrigued by it. The 43-year-old beauty, who recently revealed she was a convert to Hinduism, confesses she has become interested in the spirituality of the faith because it is more than a “mere religion.”
She told The Times of India: “Ever since I developed my liking and fondness for Hinduism, I have been attracted and deeply fascinated by many facets of the multi dimensional Hinduism… spirituality in it transcends many barriers of mere religion.”
[FONT=&quot] Academy Award winning Hollywood actor Julia Roberts, who recently converted to Hinduism, reconfirmed her faith in Hinduism while commenting that her "opting for Hinduism is not a religious gimmick". Roberts said: "It is similar to Patsy of Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. We share a common aspect of finding peace and tranquility of mind in Hinduism, one of the oldest and respected religions of civilization". [/FONT]

 

[talwan]

Alexander Gorbovsky (1930 - 2003) an expert at the Russian Munitions Agency has written about India's grand Epic:“The Mahabharata - an ancient Indian epic compiled 3000 years ago - contains a reference to a terrible weapon. Regrettably, in our age of the atomic bomb, the description of this weapon exploding will not appear to be an exaggeration:
".... a blazing shaft possessed of the effulgence of a smokeless fire (was) let off...'. That was how this weapon was perceived. The consequences of its use also evoke involuntary associations. '... This makes the bodies of the dead unidentifiable. ... The survivors lose their nails and hair, and their food becomes unfit for eating. For several subsequent years the Sun, the stars and the sky remain shrouded with clouds and bad weather'.
"This weapon was known as the Weapon of Brahma or the Flame of Indra......".
(source: Riddles of Ancient History - Alexander Gorbovsky, The Sputnik Magazine, Moscow, Sept. 1986, p. 137).

 

[talwan]

Mrs. Charlotte Speir Manning ( ? ) author of Life in Ancient India wrote eloquently about India in 1856: "India, the land of gold and sunshine, has ever been regarded as a region of Romance. In the tales of our childhood magicians and jugglers move amid scenes oppressed by the luscious scents, gay with the flowers, and sparkling with the precious gems and fabrics of India. In the classic pages, India is the mysterious bourn to which point the fabulous expeditions of Bacchus and Sesostrius; and when history emerges from primeval haze, we see India as the gorgeous eastern boundary of Earth, where princes enthroned on elephants offer tribute in solid gold. Nor is there less romance in India’s natural history and geography; in the golden ant-hills of Herodotus, in the tree he notes as sheltering ten thousand troops, or his rivers too wide for the eye to reach across. Romance is inherent in the country, steeping even the science, meta-physics, and mythology of this wonderful country in its rainbow-tinted hues."
"In metaphysics we have had occasion to to notice the ingenuity and perseverance of Hindu speculation."
"Ancient Hindus were men of intellect; their institutions devoted a large portions of their society to contemplation and the result is, that religion was ever the strongest point of interest in their history."

 

[talwan]

Philip Goldberg (?) is a spiritual counselor, Interfaith Minister, and author or coauthor of numerous books, including Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path. His latest work, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West.
[FONT=&quot]He has observed that:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] "Most of the Hindu gurus, Yoga masters, Buddhist monks and other Asian teachers who came to the West framed their traditions in a science-friendly way. Emphasizing the experiential dimension of spirituality, with its demonstrable influence on individual lives, they presented their teachings as a science of consciousness with a theoretical component and a set of practical applications for applying and testing those theories. Most of the teachers were educated in both their own traditions and the Western canon; they respected science, had actively studied it, and dialogued with Western scientists, many of whom were inspired to study Eastern concepts for both personal and professional reasons."[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] "The interaction of Eastern spirituality and Western science has expanded methods of stress reduction, treatment of chronic disease, psychotherapy and other areas. But that is only part of the story. Hindu and Buddhist descriptions of higher stages of consciousness have expanded psychology's understanding of human development and inspired the formation of provocative new theories of consciousness itself. "[/FONT]

 

[talwan]

President Barack Hussein Obama (1961 - ) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In his trip to India he noted: “….Indians unlocked the intricacies of the human body and the vastness of our universe. And it is no exaggeration to say that our information age is rooted in Indian innovations—including the number zero. India not only opened our minds, she expanded our moral imagination. With religious texts that still summon the faithful to lives of dignity and discipline.”
“And we believe that when countries and cultures put aside old habits and attitudes that keep people apart, when we recognize our common humanity, then we can begin to fulfill the aspirations we share. It’s a simple lesson contained in that collection of stories which has guided Indians for centuries—the Panchtantra. And it’s the spirit of the inscription seen by all who enter this great hall:
‘That one is mine and the other a stranger is the concept of little minds. But to the large-hearted, the world itself is their family.” is a translation of a Sanskrit subhashita:

“Ayam nija paro vedi gananam laghu chetasam
Udaara charitanam tu vasudaiva kutumbakam”. - Maha Upanishad, Verse 71.

 

[talwan]

Jack Hebner (1946 - ) aka Swami B G (Bhakti Gaurava) Narasingh - is a Hindu monk, author, photographer, videographer, and documentarian. He currently resides in India at Sri Narasingha Chaitanya Matha. The books by SBGN include 'Kumbha Mela', Vaishnava India, Gayatri-nigudhartha, Saraswata Parampara, Evolution of Theism, and Prakrta-rasa-aranya-chedini. His numerous articles on the topics of archaeology, history, architecture. He has produced many documentaries on India highlighting Indian tradition and culture and bringing to the fore some of the social issues and is the author of the book, Kumbha Mela in which hehas written about the Kumbha Mela as:
" The world's most massive act of faith."

 

[talwan]

Dr. Hiro G Badlani ( ? ) practiced opthmalogy for 40 years in Mumbai, India. After retiring he moved to the US to join his children. In his recent book, Hinduism: Path of the Ancient Wisdom he notes that: "Unlike the Western concept of linear time, the Hindus accept time as cyclical, with neither beginning nor end. At first, the concept of Vedic Kalpas (time units) might seem absurd, but when these figures are compared with modern astronomical scientific data, it is amazing to notice the patterns of similarity between the two. How could it have been possible to discover all this without any technology, without instruments, and without any computers? Ancient Hindu seers or Rishis, who are credited with having invented the zero and decimal phenomenon, seem to have had a deep insight of cosmic events, based on the fundamental principle of harmony. "