Ben Hur Roman

5 Responses to “Ben Hur Roman”

hhemphhemp, on August 21st, 2010 at 11:01 pm Said:
Testing comment
Laika, on September 19th, 2010 at 4:18 pm Said:
Can I be the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ apologist? I saw it recently, with the lowest possible expectations (that may in part explain my reaction). It may be a head-slapper for a best picture win, and a preachy social-message movie of a kind that seems pretty alien to modern film viewers, but I think it’s a pretty intelligent and interesting film of it’s type. It has a surprisingly thorough approach to the subject of anti-semitism, tackling it from as many angles as it can think of, and in the process raises a whole series of issues that may now seem old hat but were less familiar (and more discomforting) then – institutional racism, self-loathing, liberal complicity. Of course it would be a more interesting film if the ethics of Peck’s actions were interrogated a little more thoroughly (you’d think his secretary, at least, would be furious), and only about half the scenes work. Still, the gradual but relentless pressure that is brought to bear on Dorothy McGuire’s character carries a lot of the film’s other weaknesses for me, particularly as she begins to crack in an interestingly self-pitying, self-serving way. If Peck’s character had a few of the same feelings, and someone took him to task over his deception, you might really have a movie. As it is, I’d rather watch it than ‘Going My Way’ or ‘All the King’s Men’ any day of the week, or any of the inflated fifties spectacles, up to and including ‘Ben-Hur’.
azkeyz, on September 25th, 2010 at 3:19 pm Said:
Seriously, the breaking of Saruman's staff was a symbolic way to show that he was expelled from the order of the Istari, thus losing even more of his Maia power.
Rakesh Simha, on September 30th, 2010 at 2:22 am Said:
For all of you who doubt India’s achievements in science and art, here’s news.
Ever heard of Indian scientists and mathematicians such as Lagadha, Baudhayana, Panini, Pingala, Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Madhava, Nilakantha, whose ideas have shaped the world?
Lagadha wrote the first astronomical text in 1300 BC.
Baudhayana (800 BC) gave the 'Pythagoras theorem' centuries before the Greek.
Panini (400 century BC) has been called the greatest genius who ever lived: his grammar of the Sanskrit language is exhaustive and yet it uses only 4,000 computer program-like rules.
Pingala (400 BC) invented the binary number system (counting by 0s and 1s) that 2,500 years later, turned out to be basic to computer operations.
Aryabhata (500 AD) took the earth to spin on its axis and he described the planet periods with reference to the sun. He calculated the circumference of the earth to be 40,000 km, and was off by just 500 km! He also took the solar system to be several hundred million miles across. In all of these things he was ahead of the rest of the world by more than a thousand years.
Bhaskara (12th century) was a brilliant mathematician.
The last two names belong to the amazing Kerala school of mathematics and astronomy.
Madhava (c 1340-1425) and Nilakantha (c 1444-1545), who made fundamental contributions to power series, calculus and astronomy, are amongst the greatest scientists who have ever lived. Their invention of calculus came two hundred years before Newton and Leibnitz.
Three British historians have recently suggested that Kerala mathematics may have provided key ideas for the scientific revolution in Europe. The need for clocks to keep accurate time on ships became of critical importance after the colonisation of America. There were significant financial rewards for new navigation techniques. These historians argue that information was sought from India due to the prestige of the eleventh century Arabic translations of Indian navigational methods. They suggest that Jesuit missionaries were the intermediaries in the diffusion of Kerala mathematical ideas into Europe.
The only rational explanation for leaving out mention of India's great scientists from schoolbooks appears either to be bureaucratic sloth in the centralised textbook writing agency or the internalisation by Indians of the ideology of British colonialists who justified the Empire on the ground that India had a lot of religion but no science, thus being incapable of self-rule.
India's contributions to science, technology and crafts are well documented, if not widely known. For example, before the British arrived, Indians had a system of inoculation against smallpox; year-old live smallpox matter was used, and it was very effective. Tikadars would fan out into the country before the smallpox season in the winter. The British doctor JZ Holwell wrote a book in 1767 describing the system and how it was safe. European medicine did not have any treatment against this disease at that time.
Inoculation against smallpox using cowpox was demonstrated by Edward Jenner in 1798 and it became a part of Western medicine by 1840. No sooner did that happen that the British in India banned the older method of vaccination, without making certain that sufficient number of inoculators in the new technique existed. Smallpox in India became a greater scourge than before.
(The above information is taken from an amazing website called kuttyjapan.com). I couldn’t find the author’s name on the site, but whoever, he/she/they are, hats off to you!
The bottomline: Don’t judge India by what it did or did not do in the past 200 years. The short British interregnum was a black phase – a dark age – because after the depredations of the Islamic conquests we had kind of lost direction.
However, the Islamic period wasn’t entirely devoid of progress. Though parts of India were ruled by a small Muslim minority, there were large swathes like of Rajasthan, MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra, south India etc where the Islamic influence barely penetrated the surface. There was indeed proselytizing by the mullahs and they treated Hindus very cruelly but there was always a limit. After all they had to live among Hindus and the only way out was by consensus.
However, the British has no such qualms – they came here solely for empire. They came here to loot and destroy. The reason they could not do it the way Cortez did to Montezuma – wiping out a thousand year old civilization in 24 hours! – was because India was far too strong. We still had strong kingdoms and a population that believed we were right, that we were inheritors of a substantial civilization, a body of knowledge that represented the truth.
Of course, unity was never a strong point at that point of time and it was almost easy for the British to divide and rule. They would ‘help’ one king defeat another ‘king’ and then gobble up both.
Let’s not forget one thing – don’t judge a culture by a few buildings or some such things. At the end of the day it’s the legacy you leave behind that matters. Did the pyramids that the Egyptians built help the original Egyptians? Hardly. Remember that the pyramid building Egyptians were a completely different nation and race. The current population is 95% Arab with a few traces of Negroid blood. There’s a tiny Christian minority – the Copts and these are the descendants of the people who built the pyramids and pickled their pharaohs. What are the Copts today?
Do the Greeks and the Persians, despite their huge ancient achievements, have any sizeable role in world affairs? Alexander stretched the Greek empire to India’s border, but what’s Greece doing now? And the Romans? They can’t even win the Serie A!
That’s where we come to India. I have read books that take India’s history to 80,000 BC but since our communist historians won’t be unseated from the university chairs for another 20 years, our universities won’t be allowed to examine such evidence.
Believe me, these texts left my head spinning. They may or may not be available in public libraries, and I read them thanks to my affiliations with a certain satsang that is making a major difference to mankind.
I’m digressing but let me give you an example of ancient India’s past. One of India’s greatest kings, Rama, has become a major cause of friction in modern India. He was controversial in his own time too (because in his quest for consensus he let his father, stepmother and his subjects dictate matters at the cost of his personal life).
India’s leftists who profess to hate Hinduism say he never existed. A Bengali chief minister by the name of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya says Rama never existed. OK, this communist can say what he wants because our democracy allows him to say that. It also allowed Hindu communists to openly side with China when it attacked India in 1962. I bet Chinese communists are slightly more patriotic, but that’s another story.
Now, until archaeologists conclusively prove Rama’s existence it, I won’t get into that area. But in the Ramayana, which was written at the time of Rama, the sage Valmiki makes a mention of the position of stars and planets in the sky the night that Rama was born.
Feed those bearings into a simple computer with astrological software, and you get the date – 5795 BC. Now is that some Hindu plot to subvert the on-going court case in India? Did some Rama worshipper get into some sort of time machine and scribble that into the Ramayana while Valmiki wasn’t looking? You be the judge.
OK, back to India’s achievements. In 1600 AD, the year the first Englishman landed on Indian soil, India’s GNP was 22% of the world economy (TIME magazine, August 2007). By the time the last of them were kicked out, that figure was down to 2.5%.
The British became masters of India at a very opportune time. First, they cut off India's export markets. Soon the innovations of the dawning industrial revolution gave their products a cost advantage that became permanent in the absence of new investments to upgrade Indian factories.
As India became de-industrialised, it turned into a huge monopoly market for British products. There were 10,000 iron and steel furnaces operating in the eighteenth century India. Imagine! India was highly industrialized even then, and one of the hallmarks of an Indian village was that it was entirely self-sufficient.
Also, a huge amount of gold flowed into India because the world had an insatiable demand for Indian good. There are Romans records that talk about the senators complaining about the drain of wealth from Rome to India!
Come one guys, and girls, don’t feel bad about India. It is the only country that never invaded another country in the past 5000 years. And maybe more!
Oh speaking of war, do you remember the scythed chariot in Ben Hur that the Roman Messala uses against his opponents in the chariot race? Well, the scythed chariot was invented by Ajatashatru, the king of Magadha in 475 BC. And rockets were used for the first time in battle in southern India.
Speaking of Magadha, Chandragupta Maurya had a standing army of 600,000 infantry, 40,000 cavalry, 30,000 chariots, and 30,000 elephants. This is reported by Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the court of Chandragupta. I can’t think of any empire ever that had such a huge army. And come to think of it, this was a volunteer army, paid for and run by funds from a central treasury.
Also, the previous rulers of Magadha, the Nandas, had a much smaller army. But even that was impressive. It was sufficiently large enough to force rebellion in Alexander’s army, which was petrified at the thought of fighting the Nanda army.
And what about King Porus, the ruler of Pauravaa, who nearly killed Alexander in the Battle of the Hydaspes River in 326 BC.
The battle is often considered to be Alexander's hardest fought battle, so hard that it caused his army to mutiny against him afterwards. The reason was there very heavy casualties on both sides, and even Greek historians consider it a Pyrrhic victory.
But the cold fact was that Porus was – by Indian standards of the day – an extremely minor king. His army was much smaller than Alexander’s, which had swollen to around 135,000 soldiers from conquered kingdoms like Persia. However, only 40,000 or so took part in the actual fighting with Porus, who had an army of 20,000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, 1000 chariots and 200 elephants.
To be sure, the Greeks were extremely fighting fit. It was a well-honed war machine that knew the art of fighting aggressive attacking battles. They had prepared for war (much like the US is today) for at least a decade and had perfected the art of war and siege.
The Indians’ cavalry was not used very innovatively mainly because cavalry wasn’t considered a very heroic arm of the army those days. The pride of place went to the chariots and the infantry. However, the chariots were already on the decline as was seen in the battle with the Persians in Gaugamela. The Indian charioteers used to blitzkrieg style attacks got stuck in the mud caused by the heavy rain.
The Indian infantry fought brilliantly and bravely but the Greek cavalry carried the day. Also, Alexander was brilliant as always.
But one thing that scared the hell out of the Greeks was the use by the Indians of the elephants. These war animals were like modern tanks. Heavily protected by armour on all sides they had spear wielding soldiers atop them who would pick out the Greek soldiers with surgical precision. As the elephants rushed into the Greek ranks, the hoplites just lost it. The famed Greek phalanx, which had been all but invincible up to that point, just ran because the alternative was either be trampled or get speared. They were chased by the Indian infantry that cut down the Greeks and almost won he battle when Alexander sent in the cavalry.
Porus had just 200 elephants. Today, a decent temple in south India would have that many! Further east, which was where Alexander wanted to go, there were waiting the Nandas, who had an elephant force of 5000. Imagine the carnage waiting the Greeks. No wonder they finally rebelled. Alexander’s life itself was under threat as he was dragging the Greeks to certain death. Aristotle writes that there was the very real danger that Alexander could have been assassinated by his own soldiers, so frightened they were of the prospect of facing larger better trained Indian armies. Not one would have returned home alive to enjoy the loot from Persepolis, which was substantial.
The Nandas had already got wind of Alexander’s plans. They were not a popular bunch but they were ruthless when it came to matters of statecraft and had already begun to marshal resources. If you think ancient Indians didn’t think far, just know that there was a strong Indian cavalry fighting alongside the Persians in Gaugamela.
Indians can be proud of the fact that the only fighting force of Darius in that famous battle that managed to break through the Greek defence and reach their camp and stores was the Persian and Indian cavalry.
The Persian and Indian cavalry units stationed in the centre with Darius broke through the Greek ranks but instead of taking the phalanx or his No.2, Parmenion, in the rear, they continued on towards the camp to loot. They also tried to rescue Queen Mother Sisygambis but she refused to go with them. On their way back, the Indians killed a large number of Greeks, but by then Darius had fled.
Also, unlike the Persians, the Hindus behaved differently. In a famous meeting with Porus – who had suffered many arrow wounds in the battle and had lost his sons, who all chose death in battle rather than surrender – Alexander asked him, “How would you like to be treated?” Porus replied, “As befits a king.” Alexander was so impressed by the brave and powerful response of King Porus that he released him back to his kingdom.
Alexander the Great had finally met people as great as he was.
Let me end this overly long entry with this para about the Hindu sages Alexander met in Taxila. Alexander, influenced as he was by the great Aristotle, always liked meeting holy men. Of course, in this case the holy men were brought before him because they had incited Indian kings and tribes to rebel.
They were the reason Alexander to fight pitched battles all along his journey down to the mouth of the Indus. So he appointed one of them as judge and said Alexander would ask each one a question and the judge would have to decide which was the worst answer. The sage giving the worst answer would be put to death.
The first sage, being asked which, in his opinion, were more numerous, the living or the dead, said that the living were, since the dead no longer existed.
The second, being asked whether the earth or the sea produced larger animals, said the earth did, since the sea was but a part of the earth.
The third, being asked what animal was the most cunning, said: “That which up to this time man has not discovered.”
The fourth, when asked why he had induced Sabbas to revolt, replied: “Because I wished him either to live nobly or to die nobly.”
The fifth, being asked which, in his opinion, was older, day or night, replied: “Day, by one day”; and he added, upon Alexander expressing amazement, that hard questions must have hard answers.
Passing on, then, to the sixth, Alexander asked how a man could be most loved; “If,” said the philosopher, “he is most powerful, and yet does not inspire fear.”
Of the three remaining, he who was asked how one might become a god instead of man, replied: “By doing something which a man cannot do”; the one who was asked which was the stronger, life or death, answered: “Life, since it supports so many ills.”
And the last, asked how long it were well for a man to live, answered: “Until he does not regard death as better than life.”
So, then, turning to the judge, Alexander bade him give his opinion. The judge declared that they had answered one worse than another. “Well, then,” said Alexander, “thou shalt die first for giving such a verdict.” “That cannot be, O King,” said the judge, “unless thou falsely said that thou would put to death first him who answered worst.”
It’s people such as the sages that make India unique – it’s the kind of greatness that won’t ever be eclipsed by anything. We’ll send a man to the moon in a few years. We’ll have the tallest buildings in the world soon? Our economy will be the world’s largest in 20 years. But can any nation ever produce men who can match the intellect of these wise men?
Greatness is the achievement of intellect – the knowledge and the acceptance that all men are the same. Is it any wonder that the world’s four greatest religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism – originated in India? By greatness I mean none of these four religions preach simple conversion as the path to God. All four teach that the path to Godhead is through meditation. The achievements of India can be distilled into one simple thought – See The World With A Friendly Eye. What could be more civilised?
josearonrojas, on November 10th, 2010 at 8:52 am Said:
Perfecto. Lo mejor.

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