THE state of Veracruz, on the Gulf coast, is Mexico at its most fertile. Along the tropical coastline, vast sugar-cane plantations shimmer in the heat. Climb the mountains towards the balmier state capital of Jalapa and the landscape changes into a canopy of coffee plants and orange trees, with cattle and horses grazing. Mexicans will tell you that this natural bounty is the essence of their country.
What many fail to realise, though, is that until 500 years ago none of these crops or animals existed in Mexico. Veracruz was the gateway through which they entered, and it was Spaniards who brought them.
https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2014/12/17/on-the-trail-of-hernan-cortes
Francisco Pizarro Conquest of the Incas “Pizarro going to Peru”. Scene from a frieze decorating the US Capitol building painted in 1880.
Francisco Pizarro BACKGROUND Pizarro was born in Trujillo, Spain in In 1502 he traveled to Hispaniola (modern day DR and Haiti) and later joined an expedition to Panama in 1519.
Pizarro’s FIRST expedition - Rumors about a wealthy empire south of Panama encouraged Pizarro and two partners to embark on an expedition in the conquistador tradition. The first expedition was unsuccessful.
Who are the Conquistadors? Conquistadors were Spanish explorers and warriors who successfully conquered much of America in the 16th century. Their goal was to conquer and claim wealth, gold and glory for Spain.
Pizarro’s SECOND expedition - The second expedition brought Pizarro to a northern outpost of the Inca Empire: Tumbes Pizarro took 3 Inca youths that he planned to train as interpreters.
Pizarro’s THIRD expedition - For his third trip, Spain named him the Governor of Peru. Pizarro sailed to Tumbes with 180 men in order to claim the Incan Empire.
Inca Civil War When Pizarro arrived in Tumbes, he found that the Inca were engaged in civil war and suffering from a smallpox epidemic. The Inca leader at the time (Huayna Capac) and his heir died from the disease, leaving a power vacuum. The emperor’s two sons claimed his throne: Atahualpa and his brother Huascar.
Atahualpa wins Atahualpa controlled his father’s army and camped in modern-day Ecuador and Colombia. Huascar controlled Cuzco (he was selected to lead the Inca). They went to war with each other.
Effects of the War on the Inca - Economy destroyed Cities ravaged Population killed in battle Weak command structure. Enter Pizarro…Pizarro’s Arrival The Inca did not see Pizarro as a threat. The Inca had never seen horse before, and they did not recognize the steel weapons as threatening. Pizarro set a trap that captured Atahualpa.
Atahualpa’s Ransom Atahualpa incorrectly assumed the Spanish just wanted to raid the Inca Empire for gold, not conquest. Atahualpa offered a ransom for his release: 13,420 pounds of gold and 26,000 pounds of silver. Pizarro’s accepted…but when the money came, he changed his mind about freeing Atahualpa.
Atahualpa’s Death Pizarro’s partners recommended Atahualpa’s execution in fear that the Inca’s would rally in support of their fallen leader. Pizarro was convinced, and executed him in August 1533. Pizarro’s Next Step After executing Atahualpa, Pizarro marched to Cuzco and defeated the remaining Atahualpa forces. Pizarro consolidated control, and in 1535, he established the new city of Lima.
Internal Division Pizarro’s chief ally and partner, Almagro, turned against him. Pizarro’s brother ordered Almagro’s execution after a quick battle in Cuzco ended in Pizarro’s favor. As retribution, Almagro’s family assassinated Pizarro in 1541. Spanish response to the violence - Spain stepped in and appointed Christobal Vaca de Castro as the new Governor of Peru, and with the aid of Pizarro loyalists, ended the political crisis in the conquered Inca Empire.
Effects on the Inca – Key Points - The Inca population declined due to illness and disease. Many of those remaining were enslaved. Many aspects of Inca culture were systematically destroyed as cities and towns were pillaged, resulting in the loss of vast amounts of traditional artwork, craft, and architecture. The introduction of Christianity greatly impacted the art of the region, which began to reflect Christian themes alongside and in place of traditional Inca designs.
Presentation on theme: "Francisco Pizarro Conquest of the Incas “Pizarro going to Peru”"— Presentation transcript. https://slideplayer.com/slide/4229918/
Presentation on theme: "Meet the Conquistadors!. The First Americans Many Native American developed highly advanced civilizations in the Americas long before the Age of Exploration."— Presentation transcript:
Meet the Conquistadors! The First Americans Many Native American developed highly advanced civilizations in the Americas long before the Age of Exploration. – South American Civilizations Olmec = mother civilization Maya = Yucatan peninsula; calendar; human sacrifice Aztec = Mexico City; human sacrifice Inca = Andes Mountains; human sacrifice; silver and gold – North American Civilizations Pueblo, Anasazi, Iroquois, Plains Indians, Cherokee, etc.
First Encounters in the Americas In 1492, explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean islands that are now called the West Indies. Columbus encountered the Taino people. – Lived in villages and grew corn, yams, and cotton – Friendly and open towards Spanish – However, things turned sour… Columbus claimed the land for the Spanish and took Tainos as prisoners.
The Conquistadors Columbus’s first meeting with Native Americans began a cycle of encounter, conquest, and death that would be repeated throughout the Western Hemisphere. – Conquistadors = Spanish conquerors who arrived in the Americas. The Conquistadors used guns, horses, and disease to take control of the Native Americans. As a result, the Native American population fell by 90% during the 1500s.
Mayan’s Description before Spanish “There was then no sickness; They had the no aching bones; They had then no high fever; They had then no smallpox; They had then no burning chest… At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here…”
Gold in Mexico? Rumors spread that the Americas were rich in gold and many conquistadors set out on expeditions. Hernan Cortés led an expedition to Mexico in 1519. – He landed on the coast and began a trek towards Tenochtitlan the capital of the Aztec Empire. Malinche = young Indian woman who served as a translator for Cortes and his men. – Cortés formed alliances with other Native American civilizations to fight the Aztecs. Moctezuma, the Aztec Emperor, thought Cortés was the Aztec god-king. – Began sending Cortés gold and silver ornaments.
Cortés Conquers Mexico Moctezuma welcomed Cortés to his capital, but their relationship soon grew strained. Cortés imprisoned Moctezuma – Forced Moctezuma to sign over his land and treasure to the Spanish – Fighting began between the Aztecs, Native Americans, and Spanish. Many Spanish were killed Many Aztec were killed in battle and because of small pox. In 1521, Cortés captured and demolished Tenochtitlan. – Built Mexico City on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. – This marked the end of the Aztec Empire.
Pizarro Takes Peru Cortés's success inspired other adventurers, such as Francisco Pizarro. Pizarro arrived in Peru in 1532, just after the Incan ruler Atahualpa had won the throne from his brother. – Pizaro was interested in the Incan Empire because they supposedly had many riches (silver and gold) Atahualpa refused to become a Spanish vassal or convert to Christianity. – So Pizarro captured him and slaughtered thousands of Ica. – Spanish demanded a huge ransom for Atahualpa and the Inca paid it, but they killed Atahualpa anyway.
Effects of the Conquistadors Within a few decades, a few hundred Europeans had conquered millions of Native Americans. This success would change the pattern of exploration to exploitation for years to come. Good for Conquistadors/Europeans – Sent treasure fleets to Spain from “New World” – Tons of slaves – Spain became the richest and greatest European power Bad for Native Americans ? – Thousands of Native Americans were killed and enslaved. – Many were converted to Christianity by Missionaries. – Many assimilated to Spanish culture (language and customs).
Ruling the Spanish Colonies The Spanish established colonies throughout the “New World.” – King established viceroys (governors appointed by King) to govern the colonies. – Missionaries spread Christianity throughout colonies – Created Encomiendas which forced Native Americans to work under brutal conditions on plantations. Bartolome de Las Casas – priest who spoke out against the Encomienda system. – New Social Classes: Peninsulares = people born in Spain Creoles = American-born descendants of Spanish settlers Mestizos = Native American and European mix Mulattoes = African and European mix.
https://slideplayer.com/slide/5967103/
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Pocahontas had nothing to do with the first Thanksgiving. She died in 1617, four years before the celebration in Plymouth. Neither did Malinche, her Mexican counterpart, who lived in the 1500s.
But I've been thinking about both women on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday. They were part of the bigger story — the clash between the Native Americans who lived on this land and the European explorers and settlers who came and conquered.
Malinche, as it happens, just made headlines in Mexico. It was otherwise a pretty typical moment in Latin television: several crisp, coiffed sports commentators having a faux outraged argument about soccer. The show was Futbol Picante, spearheaded by renowned Mexican sports journalist José Ramón Fernández.
It airs on ESPN Deportes, a network aimed primarily at Latinos in the U.S. It was early September. One of the TV sportscasters was outraged at how Mexican player Javier 'Chicharito' Hernández had been treated by the Manchester United coach. But Fernández was on Manchester United's side.
That's when the co-host threw the insult: Perhaps Fernández was a malinchista, which means a traitor to one's own people, someone who prefers a foreign culture over his own. The comment spread throughout the world of sportsblogs like wildfire. "José Ramón Fernández, ¿malinchista?" asked one op-ed. "I used to respect him, but he has turned into a crazy old malinchista!" laments one commenter on the YouTube video.
So who was this woman, Malinche, whose very name, more than 500 years after the Spanish conquest, continues to elicit such ire? Malinche was an Native American woman who aided Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, with whom she had a child. In many ways her story parallels that of Pocahontas, but she's often invoked as an Uncle Tom.
Pocahontas has a very different reputation. Thanks to Disney, the first thing that may come to mind is a scantily clad babe engaged in a forbidden romance with John Smith, a blond hunk with a helluva jawline. She was the daughter of Powhatan, chief of Tsenacommacah. English Captain John Smith arrived in Virginia in 1607, and months later was captured by her brother. The legend goes, he was set to be executed, and Pocahontas saved him.
Her real story is hard to pin down but what we do know is quite brutal. Her real name was Mataoka. Pocahontas was a nickname, which means "naughty one." She was around 10 years old when she met Smith, who is often described in historical accounts as abrasive and ambitious.
There are many theories as to why the Powhatan spared Smith, but they have little to do with an unlikely romance with Pocahontas. Historians think Smith was simply more valuable alive than dead to broker relations between the English and the Powhatans.
In 1612, around the age of 17, Pocahontas was held hostage for a year. In The True Story of Pocahontas, The Other Side of History Dr. Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow writes the oral history of the Mattaponi tribe, which states that Pocahontas was raped during captivity. She was married off to John Rolfe, a widower nearly twice her age. (He's responsible for commercializing tobacco.)
According to several sources, she was already married to an Indian warrior, with whom she'd had a child. In any case, she was renamed Rebecca Rolfe and taken to England.
Pocahontas died at age 21, on a ship back to Virginia. Like Pocahontas, Malinche is a woman of many names. She's also known as Malintzin and was later renamed Marina by the Spanish.
The facts about Malinche are also obscured by myth, and by the interests of the men who wrote her into history. She's believed to have been born sometime around the early 1500s. She was among twenty women given to the Spaniard in 1519 by a Mayan lord. Bernal Diaz Del Castillo, who traveled with Cortés wrote:
"What the other women were named, I do not know, cannot remember all the names, and it isn't important ... Cortés allotted one of them to each of his captains and Doña Marina, as she was pretty, engaging, and hardy, he gave to Alonzo Hernández Puertocarrero."
After Puertocarrero was sent back to Spain, Cortés kept Malinche by his side as an interpreter. They had a child, named Martin Cortés. (Strangely, Cortes also gave this name to his second child, with a Spanish woman.) Later on she married a Spaniard, Juan Jaramillo, and had a daughter.
Malinche's translating services are described in various texts as instrumental to the Spanish conquest. Cortés, who like John Smith, had a nasty reputation, only mentioned her twice, briefly, in correspondence with the Spanish crown. "La lengua...que es una India desta tierra": "the tongue (translator)... who is an Indian from this land."
Iconic Mexican writer Octavio Paz wrote about Malinche as both a victim and a traitor: "It is true that she gave herself voluntarily to the conquistador, but he forgot her as soon as her usefulness was over.
Doña Marina becomes a figure representing the Indian women who were fascinated, violated or seduced by the Spaniards. And as a small boy will not forgive his mother if she abandons him to search for his father, the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal."
In English, no one would say you're "pulling a Pocahontas" if you help someone who is not to be trusted. So why is malinchismo thrown around as an insult? To find out, I reached out to Sandra Cypess, professor emeritus of Latin American history at the University of Maryland. She's the author of La Malinche In Mexican Literature: From History To Myth.
Cypess told me to take a look at the Mexican painter Jose Orozco's most famous work, in which Malinche and Cortes are portrayed as Adam and Eve. The negative image that Malinche has is due to "the influence of Catholicism" on Mexican culture, she explains.
"All the information about Eve as a bad person falls on the shoulders of Malinche. She is the Mexican Eve." Cypess also points out that Malinche's bad reputation is not as old as her story: When Mexico broke free of Spain, she began to be cast in novels and popular culture in an evil light, as the traitor.
"The real Malinche, of flesh and bone, must have been very intelligent." Cypess tells me. "Here's something interesting: In the Catholic faith women were not supposed to talk in public. And she talked. In Aztec culture, Moctezuma, was the Aztec ruler, known also as Tlatoani, or 'he who speaks.' Only the powerful spoke. And this slave woman broke the rules when she became a translator."
Ultimately, Cypess points out, characterizing Malinche as a traitor and Pocahontas as a heroine gives the women a free will they didn't really have. Becoming a savior or a villain, taking on a lover or rejecting him — these are choices. Neither woman had much say in her fate.
In the '60s and '70s feminist movements, especially in Chicano literature, started rescuing Malinche's reputation. They saw her as a woman who survived a life trapped between two cultures, and ultimately, "mother of all mestizos."
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/11/25/457256340/despite-similarities-pocahontas-gets-love-malinche-gets-hate-why
The most famous capital in the New World finally succumbed to Spanish conquistadors on August 13, 1521. After nearly two centuries as the center of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan fell to Hernan Cortes – and would soon be destroyed in favor of a city built along the lines of European design.
Once complete, the reconstructed streets and buildings would form the center of colonial government, giving rise to the most populous metropolis in the world: Mexico City.
When the Aztecs arrived in the Mexico Valley around 1200 CE, the lush lakeside land had been occupied for thousands of years. Having come from arid plains – the southwestern United States and northern Mexico today – they hoped to displace the resident Chichimecs and take advantage of the resources available to stabilize their own society.
Nestling on Chapultepec, a steep hill with poor terrain for agriculture, the Aztecs quickly found themselves servants of the nearby kingdom of Culhuacan. Forced to leave the land after a fierce battle, legend has it the Aztecs wandered out into the desert in search of a new home.
With little food and water, leaders prayed and sacrificed to their gods in search of favor until a vision appeared: the god Huitzilopochtli directed them to search for a land where an eagle clasped a snake in its beak while resting on a cactus. In 1325, the Aztecs found just such a place – an island jutting above heavy swampland in Lake Texcoco.
Despite the engineering challenges, the new city of Tenochtitlan grew quickly, fortified by the seemingly poor ground from which it sprang up. (Historians believe the marshes acted as a sort of extended moat, as the city could only be accessed by boat.)
Tenochtitalan grew to a population of more than 200,000 by the time Cortes and his men arrived, due in large part to careful planning. Divided into four zones, each with 20 districts, the Aztecs took great care to ensure every part of Tenochtitlan was accessible by both canoe and via walking paths.
Radiating from a center housing the Templo Mayor and the palace of the royal family, three main avenues wide enough for ten horses extended to the edges of the island.
From there, dozens of residential areas sprouted up around large markets, tlatchti courts (a sport involving a ball played through a stone loop near the top of a wall) and minor temples for residents to offer sacrifices.
In late 1519, King Moctezuma II presided over a ceremony welcoming Cortes to the island. Following Aztec tradition, the conquistador received extravagant gifts – gold and fine pottery – and a tour of the heart of Tenochtitlan.
Cortes later stated he felt the reception a case of mistaken identity, that the Aztecs believed him to be a representative or even an incarnation of Quetzlcoatl, their feathered serpent god.
Evidence suggests it might instead have been viewed by the Aztecs as an opportunity for Moctezuma to spy on the new arrivals — the Spanish had massacred thousands along the way to Tenochtitlan — in order to determine their weaknesses.
Over the course of the following six months, Cortes would eventually flee the city as Moctezuma was stoned to death by his people. The Noche Triste, as the night of June 30, 1520 would come to be called, ended with the Spaniards barely making it out of Tenochtitlan – and only after losing hundreds of men. The Aztecs and Spanish were now engaged in an all-out conflict.
Receiving reinforcements from Cuba and allied tribes in the region, Cortes methodically cut off supply routes to the massive city. On August 13, 1521 – following more than a year of battles with the Aztecs – Cortes captured King Cuauhtemoc and marched to the center of Tenochtitlan. The native empire had been officially engulfed, with the Spanish explorer claiming the land for his country and renaming it Mexico City.
https://www.mapsofworld.com/on-this-day/august-13-1521-ce-hernan-cortes-conquers-the-aztec-capital-of-tenochtitlan/
In our fast-moving world, rituals have the power to ground and stabilize us, and keep us focused and purposeful. They increase confidence, provide us with a sense of security, alleviate the weight of grief and help reduce anxiety. And, above all, rituals are a sure fire way to increase happiness.
St. David's Island is one of the main islands of Bermuda. It is located in the far north of the territory, one of the two similarly sized islands that make up the majority of St. George's Parish.
The island was originally 503 acres (2.04 square kilometres) in size. During World War II, in 1942 it was enlarged by reclamation, and by absorbing Long Bird Island and Cooper's Island, to 650 acres (263.0 hectares), in order to allow room for a US military base (originally the US Army's Fort Bell/Kindley Field, operated jointly during the war with the British RAF). This was later renamed as Kindley Air Force Base and USNAS Bermuda, which occupied more than half the island's land under a 99-year lease.
The base was closed in 1995 and returned to Bermuda. Much of its facilities are used as part of L.F. Wade International Airport. Cooper's Island is now attached physically to southeast St. David's, although the two islands are still widely regarded as if they were separate entities.
The island was named by British colonists in honour of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, as the similarly sized St. George's Island, to the north, had been named for the patron saint of England. The two islands are separated by two bodies of water - Ferry Reach in the south-west and St. George's Harbor in the north-east. St. David's is separated from the Bermudian mainland by the waters of Castle Harbor in the south, but is joined to it by road via The Causeway.
Notable features of the island include St. David's Head, Bermuda's easternmost point, and the nearby St. David's Battery, on Great Head (Great Head is the more prominent of two headlands that comprise St. David's Head); L.F. Wade International Airport; St. David's Lighthouse; and Annie's Bay on Cooper's Island.
St. David's Island is connected to the United States by an Atlantic fiber optic cable known as 360 Americas. As with the rest of Bermuda, the St. David's islanders were established from a diverse group of immigrants, beginning in the 17th century.
These included indentured servants from England, Spanish-speaking Blacks from the West Indies, and Black African, Native American, Irish, and Scottish slaves. The last three groups were largely composed of prisoners-of-war and others who were deported by the English from their homelands in ethnic cleansing that followed wars of conquest.
Although hundreds of Native American slaves were absorbed into the total population of Bermuda, some Bermudians have long referred to St. David's islanders (disparagingly) as 'Mohawks'. Only two Mohawk boys were recorded as having been imported to Bermuda following Dutch-Mohawk wars.
To many English in the late 17th and 18th centuries, however, the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk were the best-known Native American people, as they were a powerful tribe in eastern New York. Some English of the period referred to any Native American as a Mohawk.
Today, many St. David's islanders are proud to be called Mohawks. They are actively re-establishing links to the Wampanoag, Pequot and other Algonquian nations that contributed the most members to Bermuda's early settlement. Since the joining of the Island to the rest of Bermuda by the US Army in the 1940s, the former relative isolation of St. David's has ended.
The subsequent influx of other Bermudians to what is seen as a more affordable part of Bermuda to buy property, which increased dramatically after the closure of NAS Bermuda in 1995, has eroded the unique character of the islands population. They were once distinguishable by accent and appearance.
St. David's Preschool and Primary School are both on the island. Clearwater Middle School is also located on St. David's. It opened on September 6, 1997 in the former Roger B. Chaffee High School with 155 students, formerly from the St. George's Secondary School.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._David%27s_Island,_Bermuda
During this episode, she expressed that she is a fan of TWICE and even sang "TT" a little bit for the cast. Also, the MCs asked cautiously about the dating rumors that occurred between her and F.T. Island's Hongki couple years ago.
She replied that they were good friends and that she didn't get a chance to contact him this time but do talk to each other from time to time. Ai?Shinozaki is a famous actress, singer, and a model based in Japan. She is currently in Korea to attend and receive an award for a magazine she participated in last year.
https://www.allkpop.com/article/2017/06/ai-shinozaki-appears-on-section-tv-and-says-shes-a-fan-of-twice-talks-dating-rumors-with-hongki
On one fateful day ten years ago, a talent scout approached Ai Shinozaki and her friend while they were out shopping. When asked if she had any interest in the entertainment industry, Ai said no and walked away from the scout. Her story could have ended there.
However, it didn’t. Because thankfully her friend saw the opportunity she had been given and gave the scout her name and home phone number. 3 days later she was flown to Cebu Island by herself to film her first photobook and image DVD.
On June 26th, 2016, Ai Shinozaki held a dinner show in Ginza to celebrate her 10 years in the business. It was titled “Ai Shinozaki 10th Anniversary Party ~Do you promise to love me forever~”.
Now, you may think that sounds an awfully lot like something you would hear at a wedding. And, you would be right. Before Ai made her entrance, we were informed that an actual Priest had been called for the event and we were all going to swear our love to Ai.
As Ai entered, the crowd gasped. She wore a real wedding dress and we were all allowed to take pictures of her as she walked down the aisle. Upon arriving to the stage, cameras closed and the commitment ceremony began.
It was interesting to hear traditional wedding vows read out to the audience. When asked if we would swear our love to her, the answer was a resounding “Yes!”
That was our role after all. It was whether or not Ai would swear her love back that was the worry. Anyone who has met Ai knows that she is quite the sharp-tongued woman and a “no” wasn’t that unimaginable. But, we needn’t worry, the answer from her was also a cheerful “Yes.” And so, we swore to love Ai forever.
After the Priest left, we were allowed once again to take photos for a short period of time. I was able to get some good shots of her at this time. Unfortunately, I don’t yet possess a super expensive camera like many of her fans do, so I apologize that these were the clearest shots I could get.
Once cameras were put away for good, the event continued. There was a lot of talk about how Ai got her start, her transfer to a different agency (which led to her participation in the idol group AeLL) and some of the first events the group held with fans.
One of those events was a Fuji mountain climb with fans. The climb was planned to reach the 8th Level and do goods sales there, however no one made it that far.
After making it around half-way there, the group turned around and went back down to the starting point at Level 5, where an exhausted Ai sold goods to exhausted fans. Ai thanked fans from her early days for putting up with such ridiculous staff-planned events.
Of course, no anniversary event would be complete without messages from people close to her. First came a message from a magazine editor she has worked with for many years, then a cameraman, and finally her high school teacher.
Her high school teacher seemed more interested in having her give his regards to other celebrities than talking about Ai herself. In rehearsal, Ai had heard that there would be four video messages. However, that was a lie.
The comedian who acted as emcee that day said they had a message from her mother. At this, Ai asked if it was really from her mother. The emcee explained that staff had pulled a prank on her before where they said her mother wrote a letter but the letter at that time was an obvious fake.
No, this one was real. The letter itself wasn’t too spectacular in its content towards Ai, but it still moved Ai and her fans. The most striking thing was that Ai’s mother referred to the fans in her letter and thanked all of her daughter’s fans for supporting her for so long. Of course, it made Ai cry.
After composing herself, Ai went on to sing two songs with piano accompaniment. She sang her second single that was only released digitally, “Hikari” and then one of the coupling songs to her debut single “Again”, a song called “Rainy Blue”. Now it was time for Ai to get changed for the second half of the event. Before doing so, she went around to each table and took a commemorative photo that should be arriving on fan’s doorsteps soon.
Around 20 minutes passed before Ai returned. And when she returned, she was no longer wearing a wedding dress. In fact, the dress she now wore was longer pure white. It was passionate red. The second half of the event started with an upbeat performance of her debut single, “Again”. This was followed by a talk on stage where she revealed that the dress she now wore was what she will be wearing in her major debut single from Sony.
It was first revealed that she would be making a summer debut with Sony back at her birthday party event in February. But at that time, there were no details given. Now, we were told that her major debut would be on August 24th with a single titled “Kuchi no warui onna.” I suppose there are many ways you could translate this.
For now, I’ll go with “A sharp-tongued woman” as all of the other ways I thought of had too negative of a feel. Of course, the title drew a laugh from the audience as we all know exactly how well this title fits Ai Shinozaki.
On stage, it was joked that the title may as well have been “A woman who loves to eat” as Ai is constantly posting pictures of the food she eats on her social media accounts. Alas, that title was deemed not catchy enough.
Fans at the event got to see the first performance of this debut single and it is certainly catchy. It is a Latin-flavored upbeat pop song with a catchy chorus that all of the fans can sing and dance along to. The lyrics certainly are sharp-tongued and are certain to amuse both old and new fans alike when the song is reveled to the public. For now, I will leave it to you to imagine the sort of lyrics that could go along with an outfit as passionate as the one above.
To finish off the event, Ai sang one of the most popular songs from her mini-album released last year, titled “Memorize.” And then we were given postcards on the way out with hand-written messages thanking us for coming and supporting her. It was a very enjoyable night and I am certainly looking forward to seeing where this major debut takes her.
http://a-to-jconnections.com/idol/-do-you-promise-to-love-me-forever-ai-shinozai-10-years-a-gravure-idol
Singapore is a multiracial and multicultural country with ethnic Chinese (76.2% of the citizen population), Malays (15.0%), and ethnic Indians (7.4%), Chinese making up the majority of the population. There are also Eurasians in Singapore. The Malays are recognised as the indigenous community.
After Algeria became independent in 1962, about 800,000 Pieds-Noirs of French nationality were evacuated to mainland France, while about 200,000 remained in Algeria. Of the latter, there were still about 100,000 in 1965 and about 50,000 by the end of the 1960s.
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Largest cities in overseas France - Saint-Denis (Réunion): 197,256 (in 2013) Fort-de-France (Martinique): 171,628 (in 2008) Nouméa (New Caledonia): 163,723 (in 2009) Saint-Pierre (Réunion): 148,273 (in 2008).
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Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72 degrees north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It includes the Chukchi Sea, the Bering Sea, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi and Kamchatka Peninsulas in Russia as well as Alaska in the United States.
The area includes land lying on the North American Plate and Siberian land east of the Chersky Range. Historically, it formed a land bridge that was up to 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) wide at its greatest extent and which covered an area as large as British Columbia and Alberta together, totaling approximately 1,600,000 square kilometres (620,000 square miles).
Today, the only land that is visible from the central part of the Bering land bridge are the Diomede Islands, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, St. Lawrence Island, and King Island.
The term Beringia was coined by the Swedish botanist Eric Hultén in 1937. During the ice ages, Beringia, like most of Siberia and all of North and Northeast China, was not glaciated because snowfall was very light. It was a grassland steppe, including the land bridge, that stretched for hundreds of kilometres into the continents on either side.
It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum before expanding into the settlement of the Americas sometime after 16,500 years BP. This would have occurred as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted, but before the bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 years BP.
Before European colonization, Beringia was inhabited by the Yupik peoples on both sides of the straits. This culture remains in the region today along with others. In 2012, the governments of Russia and the United States announced a plan to formally establish "a transboundary area of shared Beringian heritage".
Among other things this agreement would establish close ties between the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and the Cape Krusenstern National Monument in the United States and Beringia National Park in Russia.
The remains of Late Pleistocene mammals that had been discovered on the Aleutians and islands in the Bering Sea at the close of the nineteenth century indicated that a past land connection might lie beneath the shallow waters between Alaska and Chukotka. The underlying mechanism was first thought to be tectonics, but by 1930 changes in the icemass balance, leading to global sea-level fluctuations, were viewed as the cause of the Bering Land Bridge.
In 1937, Eric Hultén proposed that around the Aleutians and the Bering Strait region were tundra plants that had originally dispersed from a now-submerged plain between Alaska and Chukotka, which he named Beringia after Vitus Bering who had sailed into the strait in 1728.
The American arctic geologist David Hopkins redefined Beringia to include portions of Alaska and Northeast Asia. Beringia was later regarded as extending from the Verkhoyansk Mountains in the west to the Mackenzie River in the east. The distribution of plants in the genera Erythranthe and Pinus are good examples of this, as very similar genera members are found in Asia and the Americas.
During the Pleistocene epoch, global cooling led periodically to the expansion of glaciers and lowering of sea levels. This created land connections in various regions around the globe. Today, the average water depth of the Bering Strait is 40–50 m (130–160 ft), therefore the land bridge opened when the sea level dropped more than 50 m (160 ft) below the current level.
A reconstruction of the sea-level history of the region indicated that a seaway existed from c.?135,000 – c.?70,000 BP, a land bridge from c.?70,000 – c.?60,000 BP, intermittent connection from c.?60,000 – c.?30,000 BP, a land bridge from c.?30,000 – c.?11,000 BP, followed by a Holocene sea-level rise that reopened the strait. Post-glacial rebound has continued to raise some sections of coast.
During the last glacial period, enough of the earth's water became frozen in the great ice sheets covering North America and Europe to cause a drop in sea levels. For thousands of years the sea floors of many interglacial shallow seas were exposed, including those of the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea to the north, and the Bering Sea to the south.
During the last glacial period, enough of the earth's water became frozen in the great ice sheets covering North America and Europe to cause a drop in sea levels. For thousands of years the sea floors of many interglacial shallow seas were exposed, including those of the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea to the north, and the Bering Sea to the south.
Other land bridges around the world have emerged and disappeared in the same way. Around 14,000 years ago, mainland Australia was linked to both New Guinea and Tasmania, the British Isles became an extension of continental Europe via the dry beds of the English Channel and North Sea, and the dry bed of the South China Sea linked Sumatra, Java, and Borneo to Indochina.
The last glacial period, commonly referred to as the "Ice Age", spanned 125,000–14,500 YBP and was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age, which occurred during the last years of the Pleistocene era.[24] The Ice Age reached its peak during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets began advancing from 33,000 YBP and reached their maximum limits 26,500 YBP.
The last glacial period, commonly referred to as the "Ice Age", spanned 125,000–14,500 YBP and was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age, which occurred during the last years of the Pleistocene era.[24] The Ice Age reached its peak during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets began advancing from 33,000 YBP and reached their maximum limits 26,500 YBP.
Deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere approximately 19,000 YBP and in Antarctica approximately 14,500 years YBP, which is consistent with evidence that glacial meltwater was the primary source for an abrupt rise in sea level 14,500 YBP[25] and the bridge was finally inundated around 11,000 YBP. The fossil evidence from many continents points to the extinction of large animals, termed Pleistocene megafauna, near the end of the last glaciation.
During the Ice Age a vast, cold and dry Mammoth steppe stretched from the arctic islands southwards to China, and from Spain eastwards across Eurasia and over the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon where it was blocked by the Wisconsin glaciation. The land bridge existed because sea-levels were lower because more of the planet's water than today was locked up in glaciers.
During the Ice Age a vast, cold and dry Mammoth steppe stretched from the arctic islands southwards to China, and from Spain eastwards across Eurasia and over the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon where it was blocked by the Wisconsin glaciation. The land bridge existed because sea-levels were lower because more of the planet's water than today was locked up in glaciers.
Therefore, the flora and fauna of Beringia were more related to those of Eurasia rather than North America. Beringia received more moisture and intermittent maritime cloud cover from the north Pacific Ocean than the rest of the Mammoth steppe, including the dry environments on either side of it.
This moisture supported a shrub-tundra habitat that provided an ecological refugium for plants and animals.[27][28] In East Beringia 35,000 YBP, the northern arctic areas experienced temperatures 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) degrees warmer than today but the southern sub-Arctic regions were 2 °C (4 °F) degrees cooler. During the LGM 22,000 YBP the average summer temperature was 3–5 °C (5–9 °F) degrees cooler than today, with variations of 2.9 °C (5.2 °F) degrees cooler on the Seward Peninsula to 7.5 °C (13.5 °F) cooler in the Yukon.
In the driest and coldest periods of the Late Pleistocene, and possibly during the entire Pleistocene, moisture occurred along a north–south gradient with the south receiving the most cloud cover and moisture due to the air-flow from the North Pacific.
In the Late Pleistocene, Beringia was a mosaic of biological communities. Commencing from c.?57,000 BP (MIS 3), steppe–tundra vegetation dominated large parts of Beringia with a rich diversity of grasses and herbs. There were patches of shrub tundra with isolated refugia of larch (Larix) and spruce (Picea) forests with birch (Betula) and alder (Alnus) trees. It has been proposed that the largest and most diverse megafaunal community residing in Beringia at this time could only have been sustained in a highly diverse and productive environment.
In the Late Pleistocene, Beringia was a mosaic of biological communities. Commencing from c.?57,000 BP (MIS 3), steppe–tundra vegetation dominated large parts of Beringia with a rich diversity of grasses and herbs. There were patches of shrub tundra with isolated refugia of larch (Larix) and spruce (Picea) forests with birch (Betula) and alder (Alnus) trees. It has been proposed that the largest and most diverse megafaunal community residing in Beringia at this time could only have been sustained in a highly diverse and productive environment.
Analysis at Chukotka on the Siberian edge of the land bridge indicated that from c.?57,000 – c.?15,000 BP (MIS 3 to MIS 2) the environment was wetter and colder than the steppe–tundra to the east and west, with warming in parts of Beringia from c.?15,000 BP. These changes provided the most likely explanation for mammal migrations after c.?15,000 BP, as the warming provided increased forage for browsers and mixed feeders. Beringia did not block the movement of most dry steppe-adapted large species such as saiga antelope, woolly mammoth, and caballid horses.
However, from the west, the woolly rhino went no further east than the Anadyr River, and from the east North American camels, the American kiang-like equids, the short-faced bear, bonnet-headed muskoxen, and American badger did not travel west.
At the beginning of the Holocene, some mesic habitat-adapted species left the refugium and spread westward into what had become tundra-vegetated northern Asia and eastward into northern North America.
The latest emergence of the land bridge was c.?70,000 years ago. However, from c.?24,000 – c.?13,000 BP the Laurentide Ice Sheet fused with the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which blocked gene flow between Beringia (and Eurasia) and continental North America.
The Yukon corridor opened between the receding ice sheets c.?13,000 BP, and this once again allowed gene flow between Eurasia and continental North America until the land bridge was finally closed by rising sea levels c.?10,000 BP.
At the beginning of the Holocene, some mesic habitat-adapted species left the refugium and spread westward into what had become tundra-vegetated northern Asia and eastward into northern North America.
The latest emergence of the land bridge was c.?70,000 years ago. However, from c.?24,000 – c.?13,000 BP the Laurentide Ice Sheet fused with the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which blocked gene flow between Beringia (and Eurasia) and continental North America.
The Yukon corridor opened between the receding ice sheets c.?13,000 BP, and this once again allowed gene flow between Eurasia and continental North America until the land bridge was finally closed by rising sea levels c.?10,000 BP.
During the Holocene, many mesic-adapted species left the refugium and spread eastward and westward, while at the same time the forest-adapted species spread with the forests up from the south. The arid adapted species were reduced to minor habitats or became extinct.
Beringia constantly transformed its ecosystem as the changing climate affected the environment, determining which plants and animals were able to survive. The land mass could be a barrier as well as a bridge: during colder periods, glaciers advanced and precipitation levels dropped. During warmer intervals, clouds, rain and snow altered soils and drainage patterns.
Beringia constantly transformed its ecosystem as the changing climate affected the environment, determining which plants and animals were able to survive. The land mass could be a barrier as well as a bridge: during colder periods, glaciers advanced and precipitation levels dropped. During warmer intervals, clouds, rain and snow altered soils and drainage patterns.
Fossil remains show that spruce, birch and poplar once grew beyond their northernmost range today, indicating that there were periods when the climate was warmer and wetter. The environmental conditions were not homogenous in Beringia.
Recent stable isotope studies of woolly mammoth bone collagen demonstrate that western Beringia (Siberia) was colder and drier than eastern Beringia (Alaska and Yukon), which was more ecologically diverse.
Recent stable isotope studies of woolly mammoth bone collagen demonstrate that western Beringia (Siberia) was colder and drier than eastern Beringia (Alaska and Yukon), which was more ecologically diverse.
Mastodons, which depended on shrubs for food, were uncommon in the open dry tundra landscape characteristic of Beringia during the colder periods. In this tundra, mammoths flourished instead.
The extinct pine species Pinus matthewsii has been described from Pliocene sediments in the Yukon areas of the refugium. The paleo-environment changed across time. Below is a gallery of some of the plants that inhabited eastern Beringia before the beginning of the Holocene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia
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The extinct pine species Pinus matthewsii has been described from Pliocene sediments in the Yukon areas of the refugium. The paleo-environment changed across time. Below is a gallery of some of the plants that inhabited eastern Beringia before the beginning of the Holocene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia
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Much attention and condemnation has been directed towards the tragedy of the African slave trade , which took place between the 16 th and the 19 th centuries. However, another equally despicable trade in humans was taking place around the same time in the Mediterranean.
It is estimated that up to 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary corsairs , and their lives were just as pitiful as their African counterparts. They have come to be known as the white slaves of Barbary.
Slavery is one of the oldest trades known to man. We can first find records of the slave trade dating back to The Code of Hammurabi in Babylon in the 18th century BCE. People from virtually every major culture, civilization, and religious background have made slaves of their own and enslaved other peoples.
However, comparatively little attention has been given to the prolific slave trade that was carried out by pirates, or corsairs, along the Barbary coast (as it was called by Europeans at the time), in what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, beginning around 1600 AD.
Anyone travelling in the Mediterranean at the time faced the real prospect of being captured by the Corsairs and taken to Barbary Coast cities and being sold as slaves.
However, not content with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also sometimes raided coastal settlements in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, and even as far away as the Netherlands and Iceland. They landed on unguarded beaches, and crept up on villages in the dark to capture their victims.
Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were taken in this way in 1631. As a result of this threat, numerous coastal towns in the Mediterranean were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants until the 19 th century.
The Sacking of Baltimore - The raiding of the coastal village of Baltimore on Ireland’s South West coast is one of the more horrific acts performed by the Barbary corsairs.
At 2.00am on 20 June, 1631, over 200 corsairs armed with muskets, iron bars and sticks of burning wood landed on the shore of Baltimore and silently spread out, waiting at the front doors of the cottages along the shoreline and the homes in the main village.
When a signal was given, they simultaneously charged into the homes, pulling the sleeping inhabitants from their beds. Twenty men, 33 women and 54 children were dragged into ships and began the long voyage back to Algiers.
Upon arrival, the citizens of Baltimore were taken to slave pens before being paraded before prospective buyers, chained and nearly naked. Men were typically used for labor and women as concubines, while children were often raised as Muslims, eventually forming part of the slave corps within the Ottoman army.
In the 13th and 14th centuries, it was Christian pirates, primarily from Catalonia and Sicily, that dominated the seas, posing a constant threat to merchants. It was not until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the 15 th century that the Barbary corsairs started to become a menace to Christian shipping.
Around 1600 AD, European pirates brought advanced sailing and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary Coast, which enabled the corsairs to extend their activities into the Atlantic Ocean, and the impact of Barbary raids peaked in the early to mid-17th century.
While the Barbary slave trade is typically portrayed as Muslim corsairs capturing white Christian victims, this is far too simplistic. In reality, the corsairs were not concerned with the race or religious orientation of those they captured. Slaves in Barbary could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim.
And the corsairs were not only Muslim; English privateers and Dutch captains also exploited the changing loyalties of an era in which friends could become enemies and enemies friends with the stroke of a pen.
"One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature,” said historian Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy . “But that is not true," he added.
In comments which may stoke controversy, Davis claims that white slavery had been minimised or ignored because academics preferred to treat Europeans as evil colonialists rather than as victims.
The slaves captured by the Barbary pirates faced a grim future. Many died on the ships during the long voyage back to North Africa due to disease or lack of food and water. Those who survived were taken to slave markets where they would stand for hours while buyers inspected them before they were sold at auction.
After purchase, slaves would be put to work in various ways. Men were usually assigned to hard manual labor, such as working in quarries or heavy construction, while women were used for housework or in sexual servitude.
At night the slaves were put into prisons called 'bagnios' that were often hot and overcrowded. However, by far the worst fate for a Barbary slave was being assigned to man the oars of galleys.
Rowers were shackled where they sat, and never allowed to leave. Sleeping, eating, defecation and urination took place at the seat. Overseers would crack the whip over the bare backs of any slaves considered not to be working hard enough.
Corsair activity began to diminish in the latter part of the 17th century, as the more powerful European navies started to force the pirates to cease attacking their shipping.
However, it wasn’t until the first years of the 19th century, that the United States of America and some European nations began to fight back more fervently against the Barbary pirates.
Algiers was frequently bombarded by the French, Spanish and Americans, in the early 19th century. Eventually, after an Anglo-Dutch raid in 1816 on Algiers, the corsairs were forced to agree to terms which included a cessation of the practice of enslaving Christians, although slave trading of non-Europeans was allowed to continue.
Occasional incidents continued to occur until another British raid on Algiers in 1824, and finally, a French invasion of Algiers in 1830, which placed it under colonial rule.
Tunis was similarly invaded by France in 1881. Tripoli returned to direct Ottoman control in 1835, before finally falling into Italian hands in the 1911 Italo-Turkish War. The slave trade finally ceased on the Barbary coast when European governments passed laws granting emancipation to slaves.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/white-slaves-barbary-002171
Widely known as the creator and host of the YouTube web-series Only In Japan. He has gained popularity on his YouTube channel of the same name for documenting Japan's various cultural facets through the eyes of a foreigner. He first traveled to Japan in 1998 to teach schoolchildren English.
He then traveled throughout Japan from 1999 to 2004 to help rehabilitate the educational system. He has served as a reporter for the NHK Tokyo Eye TV show since 2008. He has earned more than 1.2 million subscribers and 147 million total views to his YouTube channel. He was born and raised in the United States originally.
https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/john-daub.html
1. They weren’t always slaves - Not all gladiators were brought to the arena in chains. While most early combatants were conquered peoples and slaves who had committed crimes, grave inscriptions show that by the 1st century A.D. the demographics had started to change.
Lured by the thrill of battle and the roar of the crowds, scores of free men began voluntarily signing contracts with gladiator schools in the hope of winning glory and prize money. These freelance warriors were often desperate men or ex-soldiers skilled in fighting, but some were upper-class patricians, knights and even senators eager to demonstrate their warrior pedigree.
2. Gladiatorial bouts were originally part of funeral ceremonies - Many ancient chroniclers described the Roman games as an import from the Etruscans, but most historians now argue that gladiator fights got their start as a blood rite staged at the funerals of wealthy nobles.
When distinguished aristocrats died, their families would hold graveside bouts between slaves or condemned prisoners as a kind of macabre eulogy for the virtues the person had demonstrated in life. According to the Roman writers Tertullian and Festus, since the Romans believed that human blood helped purify the deceased person’s soul, these contests may have also acted as a crude substitute for human sacrifice.
The funeral games later increased in scope during the reign of Julius Caesar, who staged bouts between hundreds of gladiators in honor of his deceased father and daughter. The spectacles proved hugely popular, and by the end of the 1st century B.C., government officials began hosting state-funded games as a way of currying favor with the masses.
When distinguished aristocrats died, their families would hold graveside bouts between slaves or condemned prisoners as a kind of macabre eulogy for the virtues the person had demonstrated in life. According to the Roman writers Tertullian and Festus, since the Romans believed that human blood helped purify the deceased person’s soul, these contests may have also acted as a crude substitute for human sacrifice.
The funeral games later increased in scope during the reign of Julius Caesar, who staged bouts between hundreds of gladiators in honor of his deceased father and daughter. The spectacles proved hugely popular, and by the end of the 1st century B.C., government officials began hosting state-funded games as a way of currying favor with the masses.
3. They didn’t always fight to the death - Hollywood movies and television shows often depict gladiatorial bouts as a bloody free-for-all, but most fights operated under fairly strict rules and regulations. Contests were typically single combat between two men of similar size and experience.
Referees oversaw the action, and probably stopped the fight as soon as one of the participants was seriously wounded. A match could even end in a stalemate if the crowd became bored by a long and drawn out battle, and in rare cases, both warriors were allowed to leave the arena with honor if they had put on an exciting show for the crowd.
Since gladiators were expensive to house, feed and train, their promoters were loath to see them needlessly killed. Trainers may have taught their fighters to wound, not kill, and the combatants may have taken it upon themselves to avoid seriously hurting their brothers-in-arms. Nevertheless, the life of a gladiator was usually brutal and short. Most only lived to their mid-20s, and historians have estimated that somewhere between one in five or one in 10 bouts left one of its participants dead.
Referees oversaw the action, and probably stopped the fight as soon as one of the participants was seriously wounded. A match could even end in a stalemate if the crowd became bored by a long and drawn out battle, and in rare cases, both warriors were allowed to leave the arena with honor if they had put on an exciting show for the crowd.
Since gladiators were expensive to house, feed and train, their promoters were loath to see them needlessly killed. Trainers may have taught their fighters to wound, not kill, and the combatants may have taken it upon themselves to avoid seriously hurting their brothers-in-arms. Nevertheless, the life of a gladiator was usually brutal and short. Most only lived to their mid-20s, and historians have estimated that somewhere between one in five or one in 10 bouts left one of its participants dead.
4. The famous “thumbs down” gesture probably didn’t mean death - If a gladiator was seriously wounded or threw down his weapon in defeat, his fate was left in the hands of the spectators. In contests held at the Colosseum, the emperor had the final say in whether the felled warrior lived or died, but rulers and fight organizers often let the people make the decision.
Paintings and films often show the throngs giving a “thumbs down” gesture when they wanted a disgraced gladiator to be finished off, but this may not be accurate. Some historians think the sign for death may have actually been the thumbs up, while a closed fist with two fingers extended, a thumbs down, or even a waved handkerchief might have signaled mercy.
Whatever gesture was used, it was typically accompanied by ear-piercing cries of either “let him go!” or “slay him!” If the crowd willed it, the victorious gladiator would deliver a grisly coup de grace by stabbing his opponent between the shoulder blades or through the neck and into the heart.
Paintings and films often show the throngs giving a “thumbs down” gesture when they wanted a disgraced gladiator to be finished off, but this may not be accurate. Some historians think the sign for death may have actually been the thumbs up, while a closed fist with two fingers extended, a thumbs down, or even a waved handkerchief might have signaled mercy.
Whatever gesture was used, it was typically accompanied by ear-piercing cries of either “let him go!” or “slay him!” If the crowd willed it, the victorious gladiator would deliver a grisly coup de grace by stabbing his opponent between the shoulder blades or through the neck and into the heart.
5. They were organized into different classes and types - By the time the Colosseum opened in 80 A.D., gladiator games had evolved from freewheeling battles to the death into a well-organized blood sport. Fighters were placed in classes based on their record, skill level and experience, and most specialized in a particular fighting style and set of weaponry.
Most popular were the “thraeces” and “murmillones,” who fought with sword and shield, but there were also the “equites,” who entered the arena on horseback; the “essedarii,” who battled from chariots; and the “dimachaerus,” who may have wielded two swords at once.
Of all the popular gladiator types, perhaps the most unusual was the “retiarius,” who was armed with only a net and a trident. These warriors tried to ensnare their opponents with their net before moving in for the kill, but if they failed, they were left almost entirely defenseless.
Most popular were the “thraeces” and “murmillones,” who fought with sword and shield, but there were also the “equites,” who entered the arena on horseback; the “essedarii,” who battled from chariots; and the “dimachaerus,” who may have wielded two swords at once.
Of all the popular gladiator types, perhaps the most unusual was the “retiarius,” who was armed with only a net and a trident. These warriors tried to ensnare their opponents with their net before moving in for the kill, but if they failed, they were left almost entirely defenseless.
6. They only rarely fought against animals - The Colosseum and other Roman arenas are often associated with gruesome animal hunts, but it was uncommon for the gladiators to be involved. Tangling with wild beasts was reserved for the “venatores” and “bestiarii,” special classes of warrior who squared off against everything from deer and ostriches to lions, crocodiles, bears and even elephants.
Animal hunts were typically the opening event at the games, and it wasn’t unusual for scores of unfortunate creatures to be slaughtered in a single exhibition. Nine thousand animals were slain during a 100-day ceremony to mark the opening of the Colosseum, and another 11,000 were later killed as part of a 123-day festival held by the Emperor Trajan in the 2nd century A.D.
While most animals were merely slaughtered for sport, others were trained to do tricks or even pitted against one another in fights. Wild animals also served as a popular form of execution. Convicted criminals and Christians were often thrown to ravenous dogs, lions and bears as part of the day’s entertainment.
Animal hunts were typically the opening event at the games, and it wasn’t unusual for scores of unfortunate creatures to be slaughtered in a single exhibition. Nine thousand animals were slain during a 100-day ceremony to mark the opening of the Colosseum, and another 11,000 were later killed as part of a 123-day festival held by the Emperor Trajan in the 2nd century A.D.
While most animals were merely slaughtered for sport, others were trained to do tricks or even pitted against one another in fights. Wild animals also served as a popular form of execution. Convicted criminals and Christians were often thrown to ravenous dogs, lions and bears as part of the day’s entertainment.
7. Women also fought as gladiators - Female slaves were regularly condemned to the arena alongside their male counterparts, but a few citizens took up the sword of the own free will. Historians are not sure when women first suited up to fight as gladiators, but by the 1st century A.D. they had become a common fixture at the games.
These lady warriors may not have been taken seriously in the patriarchal Roman culture—the Emperor Domitian enjoyed pitting women against dwarves—but a few appear to have proven themselves in single combat. A marble relief dating to around the 2nd century A.D. depicts a bout between two women dubbed “Amazon” and “Achillia,” whom the inscription says fought to an honorable draw.
Women also joined in the animal hunts, but their stint in the arena may have come to an end around 200 A.D., when the Emperor Septimius Severus banned their participation in the games.
These lady warriors may not have been taken seriously in the patriarchal Roman culture—the Emperor Domitian enjoyed pitting women against dwarves—but a few appear to have proven themselves in single combat. A marble relief dating to around the 2nd century A.D. depicts a bout between two women dubbed “Amazon” and “Achillia,” whom the inscription says fought to an honorable draw.
Women also joined in the animal hunts, but their stint in the arena may have come to an end around 200 A.D., when the Emperor Septimius Severus banned their participation in the games.
8. Some gladiators organized themselves into trade unions - Though they were regularly forced to come to blows in life-or-death combat, gladiators viewed themselves as a kind of brotherhood, and some even organized into unions, or “collegia,” with their own elected leaders and protector deities.
When a warrior fell in battle, these groups would ensure that their comrade received a proper funeral and grave inscription honoring his achievements in the arena. If the deceased had a wife and children, they would also see that the family received monetary compensation for their loss.
When a warrior fell in battle, these groups would ensure that their comrade received a proper funeral and grave inscription honoring his achievements in the arena. If the deceased had a wife and children, they would also see that the family received monetary compensation for their loss.
9. Several Roman emperors participated in staged gladiatorial bouts. Hosting gladiator games was an easy way for Roman emperors to win the love of the people, but a few took it a step further and actually participated in combat. Several rulers performed in the arena including Caligula, Titus and Hadrian—though most likely under highly controlled conditions or with dull blades.
A deadeye with a spear, the deranged Emperor Commodus often tried to wow the crowds by killing bears and panthers from the safety of a raised platform. He also competed in a few gladiator fights, though usually against inexperienced fighters or even terrified and poorly armed members of the audience. When he inevitably won the contests, Commodus made sure to reward himself with the massive sum of one million Roman sesterces.
A deadeye with a spear, the deranged Emperor Commodus often tried to wow the crowds by killing bears and panthers from the safety of a raised platform. He also competed in a few gladiator fights, though usually against inexperienced fighters or even terrified and poorly armed members of the audience. When he inevitably won the contests, Commodus made sure to reward himself with the massive sum of one million Roman sesterces.
10. Gladiators often became celebrities and sex symbols - Though often dismissed as uncivilized brutes by Roman historians, the gladiators won massive fame among the lower classes. Their portraits graced the walls of many public places; children played with gladiator action figures made of clay; and the most successful fighters even endorsed products just like the top athletes of today.
They were also renowned for their ability to make Roman women swoon. Graffiti from Pompeii describes one fighter who “catches the girls at night in his net” and another who is “the delight of all the girls.” Many women wore hairpins and other jewelry dipped in gladiator blood, and some even mixed gladiator sweat—then considered an aphrodisiac—into facial creams and other cosmetics.
They were also renowned for their ability to make Roman women swoon. Graffiti from Pompeii describes one fighter who “catches the girls at night in his net” and another who is “the delight of all the girls.” Many women wore hairpins and other jewelry dipped in gladiator blood, and some even mixed gladiator sweat—then considered an aphrodisiac—into facial creams and other cosmetics.
https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-roman-gladiators
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Gladiator is the story of a Roman soldier who became a slave, trained as a gladiator, and rose to challenge the empire. Which is basically Spartacus, only Gladiator is set 250 years after the death of Spartacus. Russell Crowe channelled pure manliness for two and a half hours as Maximus, the gladiator of the title. The results included five Oscars, and greenlights all over the place for swords-and-sandals flicks like Troy, Alexander and 300.
Audiences may not thank it for that, but eight years after its release Gladiator remains remarkably watchable, and hotly debated. Despite Scott's legion of on-set historians, there are several websites devoted to its many supposed flaws.
It's 180 AD in Germania, and the nearly dead Emperor Marcus Aurelius is watching his army lay waste to the barbarians. His fictional general, Maximus (Crowe), clunks on to the screen in armour and wolfskins, growling: "On my signal, unleash hell." There is a slight twang of Bondi beach to the accent, but then again everyone is speaking modern English. A moderately credible battle follows.
After the victory, Marcus Aurelius takes Maximus aside and offers to leave him the empire, disinheriting his nasty son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Not completely unbelievable: some sources do suggest that Marcus Aurelius had doubts about his successor. The film's claim that he wanted instead to revive the republic and make Rome democratic is more 21st century than 2nd century.
Aside from various plot-facilitating errors (his reign of 12 years is elided into what seems like a couple of weeks), the main problem with Commodus is that he's nowhere near bad enough. The real Commodus's pastimes included herding women, snogging men, killing rare animals, cross-dressing, boozing, coprophagy, being afraid of hairdressers, feeding his guards poisoned figs, and forcing people to beat themselves to death with pinecones.
Despite, or perhaps because of, all this, he was popular with the people and the army alike. Phoenix's Commodus is a lightweight, indulging in little more than mild incest and the occasional bout of sneering. And patricide. A reasonable allegation: Cassius Dio, who knew Commodus personally, recorded that Marcus Aurelius was murdered by his doctors so that Commodus could become emperor.
Despite, or perhaps because of, all this, he was popular with the people and the army alike. Phoenix's Commodus is a lightweight, indulging in little more than mild incest and the occasional bout of sneering. And patricide. A reasonable allegation: Cassius Dio, who knew Commodus personally, recorded that Marcus Aurelius was murdered by his doctors so that Commodus could become emperor.
Following Commodus's coup, his guards bungle an attempt to bump Maximus off. Maximus escapes and rides back to his home in Hispania to find his family crucified by Commodus's agents. Exhausted and wounded, he collapses in the dust, whence he is abducted by slave traders. Considering that around a quarter of the empire's population was enslaved at this point, why would Mauritanian slavers be wandering around rural Hispania looking for half-dead men who need to be nursed gently back to health? Oh, these must be the nice slave traders.
Maximus is sold to a gladiatorial impresario, and Scott doesn't flinch from spilling the guts of life in the arena. He allows the audience to retain its superiority about how sick the Romans must have been to watch people being stabbed with a trident, sliced in half by a scythed chariot, or socked in the face with a spiked ball flail for entertainment, while simultaneously watching exactly that for entertainment.
Finally, Commodus and Maximus come face to face in the Flavian Amphitheatre. The real Commodus fought in gladiatorial events several hundred times, but was strangled in his bath by a hired wrestler called Narcissus. Apparently that name, which appeared in early drafts of the script, seemed a bit too fey for Crowe's character.
Combining the stories of Spartacus and Commodus makes for an atmospheric film, so long as its implicit claims of authenticity don't lull you into, say, basing a piece of coursework on it. Scott receives a respectable C grade for getting a reasonable amount right in spirit, if not in detail. No need to beat himself to death with a pinecone over that.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/jul/24/gladiator.crowe
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As in many ancient civilizations, slavery played a big part in the culture of Rome. Slaves performed much of the labor and hard work that helped to build the Roman Empire and keep it running. A fairly large percentage of the people living in Rome and Italy were slaves.
Historians aren't sure of an exact percentage but somewhere between 20% and 30% of the people were slaves. During the early parts of the Roman Empire, as many as one third of the people in Rome were slaves.
Most slaves were people captured in times of war. As the Roman Empire expanded, they often captured slaves from new lands they conquered. Other slaves were bought from slave traders and pirates who captured people from foreign lands and brought them to Rome. Children of slaves also became slaves. Sometimes criminals were sold into slavery. A few people even sold themselves into slavery in order to pay their debts.
Slaves did all sorts of work throughout the empire. Some slaves worked hard labor in the Roman mines or on a farm. Other slaves worked skilled jobs such as teaching or business accounting. The type of work generally depended on the previous education and experience of the slave. There were two main types of slaves: public and private.
Public slaves (called servi publici) were owned by the Roman government. They might work on public building projects, for a government official, or in the emperor's mines. Private slaves (called servi privati) were owned by an individual. They worked jobs such as household servants, laborers on farms, and craftsmen.
How a slave was treated depended upon the owner. Some slaves were likely beaten and worked to death, while others were treated almost like family. In general, slaves were considered valuable property and it made sense to treat them well. Sometimes slaves were paid by their owners if they worked hard.
Yes, slaves were sometimes set free by their owner (called "manumission"). Sometimes slaves were able to purchase their own freedom. Freed slaves were called freedmen or freedwomen. Although they were free, they still had the status of a "freed slave." Freed slaves were considered Roman citizens, but couldn't hold public office.
Yes, slaves were sometimes set free by their owner (called "manumission"). Sometimes slaves were able to purchase their own freedom. Freed slaves were called freedmen or freedwomen. Although they were free, they still had the status of a "freed slave." Freed slaves were considered Roman citizens, but couldn't hold public office.
The slaves of Rome banded together and rebelled several times during the history of Ancient Rome. There were three major rebellions called the "Servile Wars." Perhaps the most famous of these was the Third Servile War led by the gladiator Spartacus. Interesting Facts About Slavery in Ancient Rome - The children of freed slaves could hold public office.
It was against Roman law to help a runaway slave. Captured runaways were punished severely and sometimes killed as an example to the other slaves. The Emperor Pertinax was the son of a freedman. He was only emperor for a few months, however, before he was assassinated. During the Roman festival Saturnalia, roles were often reversed between masters and slaves. The masters sometimes served their slaves a fancy banquet and treated them as equals.
https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_rome/slaves.php
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Native American reservations cover just 2 percent of the United States, but they may contain about a fifth of the nation’s oil and gas, along with vast coal reserves. Now, a group of advisors to President-elect Donald Trump on Native American issues wants to free those resources from what they call a suffocating federal bureaucracy that holds title to 56 million acres of tribal lands, two chairmen of the coalition told Reuters in exclusive interviews.
The group proposes to put those lands into private ownership - a politically explosive idea that could upend more than a century of policy designed to preserve Indian tribes on U.S.-owned reservations, which are governed by tribal leaders as sovereign nations.
The tribes have rights to use the land, but they do not own it. They can drill it and reap the profits, but only under regulations that are far more burdensome than those applied to private property. “ We should take tribal land away from public treatment,” said Markwayne Mullin, a Republican U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and a Cherokee tribe member who is co-chairing Trump’s Native American Affairs Coalition. “As long as we can do it without unintended consequences, I think we will have broad support around Indian country.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The plan dovetails with Trump’s larger aim of slashing regulation to boost energy production. It could deeply divide Native American leaders, who hold a range of opinions on the proper balance between development and conservation.
The proposed path to deregulated drilling - privatizing reservations - could prove even more divisive. Many Native Americans view such efforts as a violation of tribal self-determination and culture. “Our spiritual leaders are opposed to the privatization of our lands, which means the commoditization of the nature, water, air we hold sacred,” said Tom Goldtooth, a member of both the Navajo and the Dakota tribes who runs the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Privatization has been the goal since colonization - to strip Native Nations of their sovereignty.”
Reservations governed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs are intended in part to keep Native American lands off the private real estate market, preventing sales to non-Indians. An official at the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. The legal underpinnings for reservations date to treaties made between 1778 and 1871 to end wars between indigenous Indians and European settlers. Tribal governments decide how land and resources are allotted among tribe members.
Leaders of Trump’s coalition did not provide details of how they propose to allocate ownership of the land or mineral rights - or to ensure they remained under Indian control. One idea is to limit sales to non-Indian buyers, said Ross Swimmer, a co-chair on Trump’s advisory coalition and an ex-chief of the Cherokee nation who worked on Indian affairs in the Reagan administration.
“It has to be done with an eye toward protecting sovereignty,” he said. $1.5 trillion in reserves. The Trump-appointed coalition’s proposal comes against a backdrop of broader environmental tensions on Indian reservations, including protests against a petroleum pipeline by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters in North Dakota.
On Sunday, amid rising opposition, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it had denied a permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline project, citing a need to explore alternate routes. The Trump transition team has expressed support for the pipeline, however, and his administration could revisit the decision once it takes office in January.
Tribes and their members could potentially reap vast wealth from more easily tapping resources beneath reservations. The Council of Energy Resource Tribes, a tribal energy consortium, estimated in 2009 that Indian energy resources are worth about $1.5 trillion. In 2008, the Bureau of Indian Affairs testified before Congress that reservations contained about 20 percent of untapped oil and gas reserves in the U.S.
Deregulation could also benefit private oil drillers including Devon Energy Corp, Occidental Petroleum, BP and others that have sought to develop leases on reservations through deals with tribal governments. Deregulation could also benefit private oil drillers including Devon Energy Corp, Occidental Petroleum, BP and others that have sought to develop leases on reservations through deals with tribal governments.
Those companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump’s transition team commissioned the 27-member Native American Affairs Coalition to draw up a list of proposals to guide his Indian policy on issues ranging from energy to health care and education.
The backgrounds of the coalition’s leadership are one sign of its pro-drilling bent. At least three of four chair-level members have links to the oil industry. Mullin received about eight percent of his campaign funding over the years from energy companies, while co-chair Sharon Clahchischilliage - a Republican New Mexico State Representative and Navajo tribe member - received about 15 percent from energy firms, according to campaign finance disclosures reviewed by Reuters.
Swimmer is a partner at a Native American-focused investment fund that has invested heavily in oil and gas companies, including Energy Transfer Partners - the owner of the pipeline being protested in North Dakota. ETP did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The fourth co-chair, Eddie Tullis, a former chairman of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama, is involved in casino gaming, a major industry on reservations.
Clahchischilliage and Tullis did not respond to requests for comment. Several tribes, including the Crow Nation in Montana and the Southern Ute in Colorado, have entered into mining and drilling deals that generate much-needed revenue for tribe members and finance health, education and infrastructure projects on their reservations.
But a raft of federal permits are required to lease, mortgage, mine, or drill - a bureaucratic thicket that critics say contributes to higher poverty on reservations. As U.S. oil and gas drilling boomed over the past decade, tribes struggled to capitalize. A 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office found that poor management by the Bureau of Indian Affairs hindered energy development and resulted in lost revenue for tribes.
“The time it takes to go from lease to production is three times longer on trust lands than on private land,” said Mark Fox, chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes in Forth Berthold, North Dakota, which produces about 160,000 barrels of oil per day.
“If privatizing has some kind of a meaning that rights are given to private entities over tribal land, then that is worrying,” Fox acknowledged. “But if it has to do with undoing federal burdens that can occur, there might be some justification.” The contingent of Native Americans who fear tribal-land privatization cite precedents of lost sovereignty and culture.
The Dawes Act of 1887 offered Indians private lots in exchange for becoming U.S. citizens - resulting in more than 90 million acres passing out of Indian hands between the 1880s and 1930s, said Kevin Washburn, who served as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior from 2012 until he resigned in December 2015.
“Privatization of Indian lands during the 1880s is widely viewed as one of the greatest mistakes in federal Indian policy,” said Washburn, a citizen of Oklahoma’s Chickasaw Nation. Congress later adopted the so-called “termination” policy in 1953, designed to assimilate Native Americans into U.S. society. Over the next decade, some 2.5 million acres of land were removed from tribal control, and 12,000 Native Americans lost their tribal affiliation.
Mullin and Swimmer said the coalition does not want to repeat past mistakes and will work to preserve tribal control of reservations. They said they also will aim to retain federal support to tribes, which amounts to nearly $20 billion a year, according to a Department of Interior report in 2013. Mullin said the finalized proposal could result in Congressional legislation as early as next year.
Washburn said he doubted such a bill could pass, but Gabe Galanda, a Seattle-based lawyer specializing in Indian law, said it could be possible with Republican control of the White House and the U.S. House and Senate.
Legal challenges to such a law could also face less favorable treatment from a U.S. Supreme Court with a conservative majority, he said. Trump will soon have the chance to nominate a Supreme Court justice to replace Antonin Scalia, a conservative member who died earlier this year. “With this alignment in the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court,” he said, “we should be concerned about erosion of self determination, if not a return to termination.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/05/trump-advisors-aim-to-privatize-oil-rich-indian-reservations.html
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The religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans, known as the Vedic religion (1500 BCE to 500 BCE) were written down and later redacted into the Samhitas, four canonical collections of hymns or mantras, called the Veda, in archaic Sanskrit.
The Late Vedic age (9th to 6th centuries BCE) marked the beginning of the Upanisadic or Vedantic phase. This epoch heralded the start of what became classical Hinduism, with the composition of the Upanishads, later the Sanskrit epics, still later followed by the Puranas. The Sanskrit term Upanishad arose from upa- (nearby), ni- (at the proper place, down) and şad (to sit) thus: "sitting down near"), implying sitting near a teacher to get instruction.
The Upanishads are the philosophical account deemed to be the earliest source of Hindu religion. Out of more than 200 Upanishads the first dozen or so were the oldest and most important.
The Brihadaranyaka, Jaiminiya and Chandogya Upanishads were composed during the pre-Buddhist era while the Taittiriya, Aitareya and Kausitaki, which showed Buddhist influence, must have been composed after the 5th century BC. All Upanishads had been passed down in oral tradition.
The Puranas (meaning "of ancient times") were a genre of important Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religious texts, with stories of the history of the universe from creation to destruction, genealogies of kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, and descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography. Early references to the Puranas are found in the Chandogya Upanishad (7.1.2) (500BCE).
Vedic religion had a strict code of rituals where the kings, the aristocrats and the rich merchants would contribute as the cost of organising such worship was very high and time-consuming.
The mode of worship was prayer to the elements like fire and rivers, worship of heroic gods like Indra, chanting of hymns and carrying out sacrifices. Sacrifice was the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals to the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.
In Vedic times, Yagya commonly included the sacrifice of milk, ghee, curd, grains, and the soma plant—animal offerings were less common.
Preparation of a Vedic ritual - Priests were trained for the ritual and they had to get proficient in its practice. The specialization of roles focused on the elaboration and development of the ritual corpus over time.
Over time a full complement of sixteen priests became the custom for major ceremonies. The sixteen consisted of four chief priests and their assistants, with each of the four chief priests playing a unique role:
The hotri was the reciter of invocations and litanies. These could consist of single verses, or entire hymns (sukta), drawn from the Rig-Veda. As each phase of the ritual required an invocation, the hotri had a leading or presiding role.
The adhvaryu was in charge of the physical details of the sacrifice. According to Monier-Williams, the adhvaryu "had to measure the ground, to build the altar, to prepare the sacrificial vessels, to fetch wood and water, to light the fire, to bring the animal and immolate it," among other duties. Each action was accompanied by supplicative or benedictive formulas (yajus), drawn from the Yajur-Veda.
The udgātri was a chanter of hymns set to melodies (sāman) drawn from the Sāma-Veda. This was a specialized role in the major soma sacrifices: a characteristic function of the udgātri was to sing hymns in praise of the energizing properties of the freshly pressed juice of the soma plant.
The brahman was superintendent of the entire performance, and responsible for correcting mistakes by means of supplementary invocations, usually from the Atharva-Veda.
Those who had paid for & participated in such rituals prayed for abundance of children, rain, cattle (wealth), long life & an afterlife in the heavenly world of the ancestors.
Those who had paid for and participated in such rituals prayed for abundance of children, rain, cattle (wealth), long life and an afterlife in the heavenly world of the ancestors. This mode of worship has been preserved even today in Hinduism, which involves recitations from the Vedas by a purohita (priest), for prosperity, wealth and general well-being.
Sacrifice was done in several ways: First, there was simply the gift-offering. It was seen as a way of pleasing the gods and gaining their favour in contrast to those who did not sacrifice (e.g. Rig 1.110.7 “those who pour no offering forth”). In the soma offering it was the priests offering the gods the juice that gave them pleasure and strength to win wealth and help from the gods for those who offered the Soma.
Narration in the epic on Vedic ritual - There was an ornate description of the Vedic rites performed at the royal bidding in Kosala. At the prologue of the Ramayana, King Dasaratha was getting ready to perform a grand yagna to have a son.
After some time, when the sweet vernal season appeared, King Dasaratha thought of carrying out the ritual […] to get sons to keep up his lineage. King Dasaratha, addressing his prime minister, said, O Sumantra, summon priests versed in the Vedas and the Vedangas.
When they arrived, Dasaratha, after showing due respect to them, said, having no son I have no happiness in life. Hence, I intend to perform an Asvamedha Yagna. By the blessings of holy Sage Rishyasringa, I am sure, I shall attain my intent. They fully agreed to his words.
The priests erected the sacrificial fireplace with bricks. The fireplace consisting on three sides of eighteen bricks looked like a golden-winged Garuda, the celestial carrier of Vishnu. For the purpose of sacrifice, horses, beasts and birds, reptiles and aquatic animals were collected. To those Yupas (posts) were tied hundreds of animals as well as the horse of the king.
Animal sacrifice was very apparent in the Vedas as a part of the rituals. The Rig-Veda had several clear references to animal sacrifices. In a reference to the sacrifice of a goat it held (1.162.2) “The dappled goat went straight to heaven, bleating to the place dear to Indra and to Pusan.”
In one of the hymns to the horse (1.162.9-11) it said, “What part of the steed’s flesh the fly did not eat or was left sticking to the post or hatchet, or to the slayer’s hands and nails adhered, among the Gods, too may all this be with thee.
Food undigested steaming from his belly and any odour of raw flesh that remained let the immolators set in order and dress the sacrifice with perfect cooking.
What from thy body which with fire was roasted when thou art set upon the spit distilled let not that lay on earth or grass neglected, but to the longing Gods let all be offered.” As well, the non-vegetarian aspect was clear that when this horse was sacrificed, it was distributed to those who were eagerly waiting.
The meat was tested with a trial fork and then distributed (Rig 1.162.12ff). The Yajur-Veda was full of many more references to animal sacrifices, clear and often repeated references to animal sacrifices, mainly in association with the full moon rite, the Soma sacrifice and its supplement.
There was an entire section of the Yajur-Veda devoted to optional animal sacrifices (ii.1): “To the Asvins he sacrifices a dusky, to Sarasvati a ram, to Indra a bull” (Yajur 1.8.21.e). Asvamedha Yagna - The Ashvamedha, horse sacrifice, was one of the most important royal rituals of Vedic religion, described in detail in the Yajur-Veda. The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king.
Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom. The ceremony narrated in the Ramayana was a departure from the Vedic text as the king wished to perform the ritual for being blessed with sons.
The horse to be sacrificed had to be a stallion, more than 24, but less than 100 years old. The horse was sprinkled with water, and the chief priest whispered mantras into its ear. Anyone who detained the horse was ritually cursed, and a dog was killed, symbolic of the punishment for the sinners.
The horse was yoked to a gilded chariot, together with three other horses, and RV 1.6.1, 2 (Y.V. 23.5, 6) was recited. The horse was then driven into water and bathed. After this, the chief queen and two other royal consorts anointed it with ghee (clarified butter). They also adorned the horse's head, neck, and tail with golden ornaments.
After this, the horse, a hornless he-goat and a wild ox were tied to sacrificial stakes near the fire, and seventeen other animals were fastened to the horse. A great number of animals both tame and wild were tied to other stakes, according to a commentator, 609 animals in total.
The chief queen ritually called on the king's fellow wives for pity. The queens walked around the dead horse reciting mantras. The chief queen then had to mimic coitus with the dead horse, while the other queens ritually uttered obscenities.
On the next morning, the priests lifted up the queen from the place where she had spent the night with the horse. The three queens with a hundred golden, silver and copper needles pointed to the lines on the horse's body along which it would be dissected. The horse was dissected, and its flesh roasted. Various parts were offered to a host of deities.
Now, to get back to the narration in the epic: a scholarly analysis put forward as under: ‘According to the text available to us, it seemed that the queen did not spend the entire night with the horse.
Typically, she lay down with the horse and was covered with an upper cloth; at this time she was symbolically said to unite with the horse. Some words suggestive of copulation and fertility were spoken over her and the dead horse.
There were many ambiguities and discords between the different sections of the Veda, often causing clashes between members of the priestly class.
Wilson, the eminent Vedic scholar, held: […] As was detailed in the Yajur-Veda 22.26, and more particularly in the Sutras of Katyayani (Asvamedha 1-210), the object was the same as that of the Ramayana, or posterity, as one step towards which the principal queen, Kausalya, in the poem, was directed to lie all night in closest contact with the dead steed; in the morning,
when the queen was released from the disgusting, and in fact, impossible, contiguity, a dialogue, as given in the Yajus, and in the Asvamedha section of the Satapatha Brahmana, and as explained in the Sutra, took place between the queen and the females accompanying or attending upon her, and the principal priest, which though brief, was in the highest degree both silly and obscene[…]
We came across no vestige, however, of these revolting impurities in the Rig-Veda[…] no reasonable doubt could be entertained that the early ritual of the Hindus did authorize the sacrifice of a horse, the details and objects of which were very soon grossly amplified and distorted;
at the same time it was to be remarked that these two hymns were the only ones in the Rich that related especially to the subject; from which it might be inferred that they belonged to a different period[…]
As the solemnity appeared in the Rich, it allowed a less poetical, a more barbaric character, and it might have been a relic of an ante-Vedic period, imported from some foreign region, possibly from Scythia, where animal victims, and especially horses, were commonly sacrificed (Herod IV 71).
There were many ambiguities and discords between the different sections of the Veda, often causing clashes between members of the priestly class. Further, they spoke of the rewards of carrying out costly rites and rituals. Often, the different sections of the Veda contradicted each other, confusing the common man as to what to believe.
To sum up, the attitude of the Vedic Aryan to unseen forces was simple yet primitive. The gods were thirty-three to begin with. They had no icons. Fire was their emissary. The Aryan man killed an ox, a sheep, a goat, at times, a horse and offered its meat and fat together with milk and butter, barley bread and the intoxicating drink soma by the fire to his gods.
The gods were gratified with these offerings of food and drink and in return, they gave the worshipper what he wished for, viz. wealth, sons, long life and victory over enemies. This was the Vedic Aryan ritual of homa or fire-worship.
Basic concepts of religion in the Veda - The gods in the Rig-Veda were mostly personified concepts, who fell into two categories: the devas – who were gods of nature – such as the weather deity Indra (who was also the king of the gods), Agni (fire), Usha (dawn), Surya (sun) and Apas (waters) on the one hand, and on the other hand the asuras – gods of moral concepts
– such as Mitra (contract), Aryaman (guardian of guest, friendship and marriage), Bhaga (share) or Varuna, the supreme Asura (or Aditya). While Rig-Vedic deva was variously applied to most gods, including many of the Asuras, the Devas were characterized as Younger Gods while Asuras were the Older Gods (pūrve devāh). In later Vedic texts, the Asuras became demons.
The Rig-Veda had 10 Mandalas (books). There was essential variation in the language and style between the older family books (RV books 2–7), book 8, the Soma Mandala (RV 9), and the more recent books 1 and 10. The older books shared many aspects of common Indo-Iranian religion and were an important source for the reconstruction of earlier common Indo-European traditions. Especially RV 8 had striking similarity to the Avesta, containing allusions to Afghan Flora and Fauna, e.g. to camels uštra- = Avestan uštra).
Many of the key religious terms in Vedic Sanskrit had cognates in the religious vocabulary of other Indo-European languages (deva: Latin deus; hotar: Germanic god; asura: Germanic ansuz; yajna: Greek hagios; brahman: Norse Bragi or perhaps Latin flamen etc.). Above all notable is the fact that in the Avesta Asura (Ahura) was known as good and Deva (Daeva) as evil entity, quite the opposite of the Rig-Veda.
Leaving aside the question of the primary religion of the Hindus at a later section of this essay, let it be made clear that the Veda did not deal with religion alone throughout the volumes one went over. It had been a favourite notion of many scholars that at the time of composition of the hymns of the Veda there were a nomadic and pastoral people. Such an opinion rested solely upon frequent solicitations for food, and for horses and cattle, found right in the hymns.
That those people were not nomads became evident from the repeated allusions to fixed dwellings, villages and towns. Also there were references to overthrow of enemies and destruction of their cities after long-drawn-out battles. Not only the hymns were familiar with the ocean, there were merchants sailing to distant places for the sake of grain.
There was a naval expedition against a continent, frustrated by a shipwreck. Most curious was the prayer in the Rig-Veda (I.11.7.14), from the peculiar expression used on more than one occasion, in soliciting long life, when the worshipper asked for a hundred winters (himas), a boon not likely to have been desired by the natives of hot climate like north-western part of India, Iran and so on.
People coming over at that distant epoch towards India appeared to have been fair-complexioned as one hymn (I.15.7.18) declared that Indra, the supreme God, divided the conquered fields to his white-complexioned people, after destroying the native barbarian races, the term being Dasyu.
Synthesis of Harappa, Vedic & Hindu religions - Hinduism is a label for a wide variety of related religious traditions native to India. Historically, it includes the development of religion in India since the Iron Age traditions, which in turn harks back to prehistoric religions such as that of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization followed by the Iron
The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) that was located in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent. The mature phase was known as the Harappan Civilization, as the first excavated city was the one at Harappa in modern Pakistan, in the 1920s CE. Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned.
In 1953 CE, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia called the Aryans. Because of language similarities those Aryans were associated particularly with the Iranians and even further back with the origins of the Indo-European language group.
The general consensus seemed to be that this culture must have begun somewhere in the Russian steppes and Central Asia about 2000 BCE. The branch of these speakers, who came to India under the name Aryans, meaning noble ones, was the Indo-Iranian group. In fact "Iran" drew from the Persian cognate of the word for Aryan.
However, the Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization could be found in later cultures. Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow pointed to the late Harappan settlement of Pirak, which thrived continuously from 1800 BCE to the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great in 325 BCE.
Pirak was located in Baluchistan, Pakistan. After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately associated with the indigenous Dasyu, inimical to the Rig-Vedic tribes in numerous hymns of the Rig-Veda.
Religion of Indus valley civilization was a theme not found in any ancient accounts. Seals, images and other materials had been unearthed by various archaeologists. Scholars were unable to draw any inference about those people.
Well over 400 distinct Indus symbols (some say 600) had been found on seals, small tablets, or ceramic pots and over a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira. It was one of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India in the Kutch Desert Wildlife Sanctuary of Gujarat, India.
Typical Indus inscriptions were no more than four or five characters in length, most of which (aside from the Dholavira "signboard") were exquisitely tiny; the longest on a single surface, which was less than 1 inch (2.54 cm) square, was 17 signs long; the longest on any object (found on three different faces of a mass-produced object) had a length of 26 symbols.
Each script was written from right to left. However, the script had not been deciphered as yet. It was believed that they used ideograms i.e., a graphic symbol or character to convey the idea directly.
Indus Valley Civilization was often believed as a literate society on the evidence of such lettering. Even so, Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel (2004) argued that the Indus system did not encode language; it was instead similar to a variety of non-linguistic sign systems used widely in the Near East and other societies.
Others had claimed on occasion that the symbols were used for economic transactions, but this claim left unexplained the appearance of symbols on many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced in moulds. No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions were known in any other early ancient civilizations.
Several pottery figurines called to mind that female deities had been worshipped. Probably it represented the Mother-Goddess worshipped in the near and Middle East in ancient times. Clay figures resembled the horns of a goat or bull that traced that animal worship was common.
The seal amulets and talismans of stone and pottery did indicate the religious attitude of the Harappa people. A nude image of a deity with horns and three faces, seated on a stool with heals closely pressed together pointed to some ritualistic posture. Animals like deer, antelope, rhinoceros, elephant, tiger and buffalo encircled him. Arms were adorned with large number of bangles.
Another seal-amulet showed a horned goddess in the midst of a Peepul or sacred fig-tree before which one more horned deity was kneeling and doing obeisance. A row of female deities occupied the whole of the lower register of the seal-amulet, each figure wearing a spring on the head, a long pigtail behind. Stone objects made out that veneration was paid to phallic symbols.
Several steatite seals discovered at Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1700 BCE) sites portrayed figures in a yoga- or meditation-like posture, "a form of ritual discipline, suggesting a precursor of yoga", according to Indus archaeologist Gregory Possehl.
He pointed out sixteen specific "yogi glyptics" in the corpus of mature Harappan artefacts that suggested Harappan devotion to "ritual discipline and concentration", and that the yoga pose "may have been used by deities and humans alike." Some type of connection between the Indus Valley seals and later yoga and meditation practices was supported by many other scholars.
Karel Werner held that "Archaeological discoveries allowed us therefore to speculate with some justification that a wide range of Yoga activities was already known to the people of pre-Aryan India." A seal recently (2008) uncovered in the Cholistan desert was described by Dr. Farzand Masih, Chairman, Archaeology Department, Punjab University, as depicting a "yogi".
Thomas McEvilley noted that "The six mysterious Indus Valley seal images...all without exception showed figures in a position known in hatha yoga as mulabhandasana or possibly the closely related utkatasana or baddha konasana...."
Reaction to austere ritualistic religion - From early times, there were those who denied faith in divine beings. Even the Vedic hymns referred sharply to scoffers and unbelievers. Those hymns, usually ascribed to Brihaspati, a son of Loka, put into words the first protests against just a study of the Veda and upheld that a man who tried to soak them up was far superior to the reciting priest.
Although there was no special animal fable in Vedic literature, in the Rig-Veda there was all the variety of a story. It pointed to the fondness of the Vedic Aryan for tales of all sorts. There was one song in the Rig-Veda where Brahmins singing at a holy offering were compared to croaking frogs. Prof. Max Muller said that this famous hymn was a satire on Vedic priesthood, or better still, on the manner of hymn chanting.
Aitereya Aranyaka put forth, why should we repeat the Vedas or offer this kind of oblation? To offset such negative analyses, the cynics adopted the doctrine of svabhava (nature) as the next stage. This doctrine held that all things were self-existent.
They did not create themselves nor any cause created them. For instance, there was no cause for the delicate web of the lotus or the eye-like marks on the peacock’s tail. As the cause was not there, they indeed existed on their own. Such was the case with this changing universe. In the same way, feelings like pleasure, pain etc. had no cause, as they were fleeting.
With its claim of pratyaksa or perception as the only means of learning, and physical pleasure being the central object of life, this system was widespread in ancient India. Thus, its name was Lokayata, literally meaning a doctrine spread among the people (loka).
The Vratyas, who were the Aryans from later migrations, came slowly into this belief. Like the Lokayatikas, they too defied everything, including the caste system, sacrifices and the Veda. Drawing upon such generous support, the Lokayatikas exhorted people to strain every nerve for instant earthly welfare rather than striving for a heaven one could not prove existed. Kama or the fulfilment of desire was the central theme of human life.
The result of such activity was an urge for freedom—freedom for the individual as well as for society, for the woman as well as for the man, for the poor as well as for the rich. One unique outcome of this struggle for freedom was the rise of the Buddhist culture.
Buddha’s views against Vedic sacrifices, memorising verses and the fruitless repetition of Vedic mantras, gory ritual of animal sacrifice, the caste system, the authority of the Veda and the worship of the deities and the magic rites, all had counterparts in the views of the Lokayatikas.
Message of the Upanishads - Vedanta was in earlier times a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name was a form of Veda-anta = Veda-end = the appendix to the Vedic hymns.
It was inferred that Vedanta stood for the purpose or goal [end] of the Veda. Vedanta was not restricted or confined to one book and there was no sole source for Vedantic philosophy.
Vedic religion gradually evolved into Vedanta, which was viewed by some as the primary institution of Hinduism. Vedanta deemed itself the 'essence' of the Veda.
All forms of Vedanta were drawn primarily from the Upanishads, a set of philosophical and instructive Vedic scriptures. The Upanishads were commentaries on the Veda. They were considered the fundamental essence of all the Veda. Some segment of Vedantic thought was also derived from the earlier aranyakas.
The Aranyakas were called the forest texts, because ascetics retreated into the forest to study the spiritual doctrines with their students, leading to less emphasis on the sacrificial rites that were still performed in the towns.
These writings were transitional between the Brahmanas and the Upanishads in that they still discussed rites and had magical content, dull lists of formulas and some hymns from the Veda. The sages who took in students in their forest hermitages were not as wealthy as the priests in the towns who served royalty and other wealthy patrons.
The primary philosophy weighed up in the Upanishads that of one absolute reality termed as Brahman was the main tenet of Vedanta. The sage Vyasa was one of the major proponents of this philosophy and author of the Brahma Sūtras based on the Upanishads.
The concept of Brahman – the eternal, self-existent, immanent and transcendent Supreme and Ultimate Reality which was the divine view of all being - was central to most schools of Vedānta. The notion of God or Ishvara was also there. Vedantic sub-schools differed mainly in how they would identify God with Brahman.
The Upanishads were works of various authors living in different ages. They were the words of spiritual-minded people, who got glimpses of the highest truth by observation and were not necessarily part of a consistent system of philosophy.
Their ways were intuitive rather than logical and they dealt with topics like God, man, destiny, soul etc. There were so many hints, suggestions and implications in the Upanishads and so varied that subsequent founders of almost all religions and religious sects in India had been able to quote one or more of these as authority.
In spite of the brilliance of such ideas, they were not adequate for the religious needs of the people. Their appeal lay with the intelligentsia, not with the ordinary man to whom attainment of such profound knowledge appeared a distant dream. Upanishadic philosophers soared to dizzy heights and laid the basis on which Indian thoughts were to be refined in later years.
India stirred up with freethinking views and the Buddha was the result of this freedom. No man ever lived such a godlike life, without ever talking of a god. The Vishnu Purana had a record of this stage of the school. It alluded to a set of people of very ancient origin who were free to live wherever they liked, unworried by conventions, pure at heart and blameless in action.
Virtue or vice they had none; they lived in an ambience of perfect freedom in which men could move without fear of disobeying traditional dogmas of religious and social usage. Still, the ordinary devoted followers were not satisfied merely with social and religious freedom. As the Lokayatikas captured the hearts of the cultured as well as the common people, all were set on working out their immediate earthly welfare.
Before proceeding further on the topic it is necessary to recall certain basic tenets touched upon so far with a view to link with development of a few major religions in India during the coming centuries.
The Upanishads were like a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy corridors of power of the Vedic Brahmanism. They were noticed by the priestly authorities because the yogis did not owe allegiance to any established religion or mode of thought.
They were very largely saying what may well have been current among other sramanic groups at that time. Such an atheistic doctrine was evidently very acceptable to the authors of Upanishads, who made use of many of its concepts.
The end of the Vedantic period was around the 2nd century CE. In the latter period, several texts were composed as summaries/attachments to the Upanishads. These texts collectively called as Puranas allowed for a divine and mythical interpretation of the world, not unlike the ancient Hellenic or Roman religions. Legends and epics with a multitude of gods and goddesses with human-like characteristics were composed.
Two of Hinduism's most revered epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were compositions of this period. Devotion to particular deities was reflected from the composition of texts composed to their worship. For example, the Ganapati Purana was written for devotion to Ganapati (or Ganesha). Popular deities of this era were Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, Surya, Skanda, and Ganesh (including the forms/incarnations of these deities.)
Unlike the early Vedic religion neither the Brahmanic rituals nor the spiritualism of the Upanishads could somehow become popular. A religion, in order that it might become popular, needed a simple and uniform creed, a good deal of mythology, certain easy practices of worship.
The failure of the Vedic Brahmanas and the Upanishads in this respect resulted in an indirect support to the non-Vedic religious thought. Non-Vedic religious systems such as Buddhism and Jainism quickly spread. They adopted the mythology, worship of the deities and intelligent speculation of a variety of Upanishads. At the same time they steered clear of the weak points in them.
Shramana tradition - Vedic religion of Iron Age India co-existed and closely interacted with the parallel non-Vedic shramana traditions.
These were not direct outgrowths of Vedism, but separate movements that influenced it and were influenced by it. The shramanas were wandering ascetics. Buddhism and Jainism were a continuation of the shramana custom, and the early Upanishadic movement was influenced by it.
As a rule, a shramana was one who renounced the world & led an ascetic life for the purpose of spiritual development & liberation. As a rule, a shramana was one who renounced the world and led an ascetic life for the purpose of spiritual development and liberation.
They asserted that human beings were responsible for their own deeds and reaped the fruits of those deeds, for good or ill. Liberation from such anxiety could be achieved by anybody irrespective of caste, creed, colour or culture.
Yoga was probably the most important shramana practice to date. Elaborate processes were outlined in Yoga to achieve individual liberation through breathing techniques (Pranayama), physical postures (Asanas) and meditation (Dhyana).
The movement later received a boost during the times of Mahavira and Buddha when Vedic ritualism had become the dominant belief in certain parts of India.
Shramanas adopted a path alternate to the Vedic rituals to achieve liberation, while renouncing household life. They typically engaged in three types of activities: austerities, meditation, and associated theories (or views).
At times, a shramana was at variance with traditional authority, and he often recruited members from priestly communities as well. Mahāvīra, the 24th Jina, and Gautama Buddha were leaders of their shramana orders. According to Jain literature and the Buddhist Pali Canon, there were also some other shramana leaders at that time.
Indian philosophy was a confluence of shramanic (self-reliant) traditions, Bhakti traditions with idol worship and Vedic ritualistic nature worship. These co-existed and influenced each other. Śramanas held a view of samsara as full of suffering (or dukkha). They practiced Ahimsa and rigorous ascetism. They believed in Karma and Moksa and viewed re-birth as undesirable.
Vedics, on the contrary, believed in the efficacy of rituals and sacrifices, performed by a privileged group of people, who could improve their life by pleasing certain gods.
The Sramanic ideal of mendicancy and renunciation, that the worldly life was full of suffering and that emancipation required abandoning desires and withdrawal into a solitary contemplative life, was in stark contrast with the Brahminical ideal of an active and ritually punctuated life.
Traditional Vedic belief held that a man was born with an obligation to study the Vedas, to procreate and bring up male offspring and to perform sacrifices. Only in later life would he meditate on the mysteries of life.
The idea of devoting one's whole life to mendicancy seemed to disparage the whole process of Vedic social life and obligations. Because the shramanas rejected the Vedas, the Vedics labelled their philosophy as "nastika darsana" (heterodox philosophy).
Astika and nastika were sometimes used to categorise Indian religions. Those religions that believed that God was the central actor in this world were termed as astika. Those religions that did not believe that God was the prime mover were classified as nastika. From this point of view the Vedic religion (and Hinduism) was an astika religion, whereas Buddhism and Jainism were nastika religions.
Note: This article contains text passages from various Wikipedia articles on the subject, copied under the Creative Commons Share Alike license. Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication.
https://www.ancient.eu/article/238/initiation-of-religions-in-india/
The Louisiana Purchase encompassed 530,000,000 acres of territory in North America that the United States purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million. As the United States spread across the Appalachians, the Mississippi River became an increasingly important conduit for the produce of America’s West (which at that time referred to the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi).
Since 1762, Spain had owned the territory of Louisiana, which included 828,000 square miles. The territory made up all or part of fifteen modern U.S. states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
Napoleon threatened to expand the French Empire North America - The Pinckney treaty of 1795 had resolved friction between Spain and the United States over the right to navigate the Mississippi and the right for Americans to transfer their goods to ocean-going vessels at New Orleans.
With the Pinckney treaty in place and the weak Spanish empire in control of Louisiana, American statesmen felt comfortable that the United States’ westward expansion would not be restricted in the future.
This situation was threatened by Napoleon Bonaparte’s plans to revive the French empire in the New World. He planned to recapture the valuable sugar colony of St. Domingue from Toussaint Louverture, and then use Louisiana as the granary for his empire.
Louverture not only led the original revolt but had become the governor of Saint Domingue and had declared self-rule in 1801. France acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1800 and took possession in 1802.
France wanted to end Louvertre's rule and reinstate slavery. Napoleon sent a massive 30,000 troops French expeditionary force commanded by his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to St. Domingue to accomplish this goal.
The size of the French force suggests that the army was not just sent to take control of St. Domingue, but Napoleon clearly wanted the army to occupy the Lousiana Purchase for France. This army put France directly at odds with the United States's ambitions.
Leclerc's Haitian Expedition - Westerners became very apprehensive about having the more-powerful French in control of New Orleans: President Thomas Jefferson noted, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy.
It is New Orleans.” In addition to making military preparations for conflict in the Mississippi Valley, Jefferson sent James Monroe to join Robert Livingston in France to try to purchase New Orleans and West Florida for as much as $10 million. Failing that, they were to attempt to create a military alliance with England.
Unfortunately for France, yellow fever decimated Napoleon's army of 30,000 troops in St. Domingue (Haiti) during its expedition. Similarly, British troops, ten years earlier, suffered a similar fate on the island and had casualty rates as high as 70%. France was utterly unprepared to deal with yellow fever.
Additionally, war between France and England posed still a serious threat to French ambitions in North America. The deadly outbreak of yellow fever ultimately ended Napoleon's North American dreams.
He decided to give up his plans for Louisiana and offered a surprised Monroe and Livingston the entire territory of Louisiana for $15 million. Although this far exceeded their instructions from President Jefferson, they agreed.
When news of the sale reached the United States, the West was elated. President Jefferson, however, was in a quandary. He had always advocated strict adherence to the letter of the Constitution, yet there was no provision empowering him to purchase territory.
Given the public support for the purchase and the obvious value of Louisiana to the future growth of the United States, Jefferson decided to ignore the legalistic interpretation of the Constitution and forgo the passage of a Constitutional amendment to validate the purchase. This decision contributed to the principle of implied powers of the federal government.
https://dailyhistory.org/Why_did_France_sell_the_Louisiana_Purchase_to_the_United_States%3F
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/05/trump-advisors-aim-to-privatize-oil-rich-indian-reservations.html
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The religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans, known as the Vedic religion (1500 BCE to 500 BCE) were written down and later redacted into the Samhitas, four canonical collections of hymns or mantras, called the Veda, in archaic Sanskrit.
The Late Vedic age (9th to 6th centuries BCE) marked the beginning of the Upanisadic or Vedantic phase. This epoch heralded the start of what became classical Hinduism, with the composition of the Upanishads, later the Sanskrit epics, still later followed by the Puranas. The Sanskrit term Upanishad arose from upa- (nearby), ni- (at the proper place, down) and şad (to sit) thus: "sitting down near"), implying sitting near a teacher to get instruction.
The Upanishads are the philosophical account deemed to be the earliest source of Hindu religion. Out of more than 200 Upanishads the first dozen or so were the oldest and most important.
The Brihadaranyaka, Jaiminiya and Chandogya Upanishads were composed during the pre-Buddhist era while the Taittiriya, Aitareya and Kausitaki, which showed Buddhist influence, must have been composed after the 5th century BC. All Upanishads had been passed down in oral tradition.
The Puranas (meaning "of ancient times") were a genre of important Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religious texts, with stories of the history of the universe from creation to destruction, genealogies of kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, and descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography. Early references to the Puranas are found in the Chandogya Upanishad (7.1.2) (500BCE).
Vedic religion had a strict code of rituals where the kings, the aristocrats and the rich merchants would contribute as the cost of organising such worship was very high and time-consuming.
The mode of worship was prayer to the elements like fire and rivers, worship of heroic gods like Indra, chanting of hymns and carrying out sacrifices. Sacrifice was the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals to the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.
In Vedic times, Yagya commonly included the sacrifice of milk, ghee, curd, grains, and the soma plant—animal offerings were less common.
Preparation of a Vedic ritual - Priests were trained for the ritual and they had to get proficient in its practice. The specialization of roles focused on the elaboration and development of the ritual corpus over time.
Over time a full complement of sixteen priests became the custom for major ceremonies. The sixteen consisted of four chief priests and their assistants, with each of the four chief priests playing a unique role:
The hotri was the reciter of invocations and litanies. These could consist of single verses, or entire hymns (sukta), drawn from the Rig-Veda. As each phase of the ritual required an invocation, the hotri had a leading or presiding role.
The adhvaryu was in charge of the physical details of the sacrifice. According to Monier-Williams, the adhvaryu "had to measure the ground, to build the altar, to prepare the sacrificial vessels, to fetch wood and water, to light the fire, to bring the animal and immolate it," among other duties. Each action was accompanied by supplicative or benedictive formulas (yajus), drawn from the Yajur-Veda.
The udgātri was a chanter of hymns set to melodies (sāman) drawn from the Sāma-Veda. This was a specialized role in the major soma sacrifices: a characteristic function of the udgātri was to sing hymns in praise of the energizing properties of the freshly pressed juice of the soma plant.
The brahman was superintendent of the entire performance, and responsible for correcting mistakes by means of supplementary invocations, usually from the Atharva-Veda.
Those who had paid for & participated in such rituals prayed for abundance of children, rain, cattle (wealth), long life & an afterlife in the heavenly world of the ancestors.
Those who had paid for and participated in such rituals prayed for abundance of children, rain, cattle (wealth), long life and an afterlife in the heavenly world of the ancestors. This mode of worship has been preserved even today in Hinduism, which involves recitations from the Vedas by a purohita (priest), for prosperity, wealth and general well-being.
Sacrifice was done in several ways: First, there was simply the gift-offering. It was seen as a way of pleasing the gods and gaining their favour in contrast to those who did not sacrifice (e.g. Rig 1.110.7 “those who pour no offering forth”). In the soma offering it was the priests offering the gods the juice that gave them pleasure and strength to win wealth and help from the gods for those who offered the Soma.
Narration in the epic on Vedic ritual - There was an ornate description of the Vedic rites performed at the royal bidding in Kosala. At the prologue of the Ramayana, King Dasaratha was getting ready to perform a grand yagna to have a son.
After some time, when the sweet vernal season appeared, King Dasaratha thought of carrying out the ritual […] to get sons to keep up his lineage. King Dasaratha, addressing his prime minister, said, O Sumantra, summon priests versed in the Vedas and the Vedangas.
When they arrived, Dasaratha, after showing due respect to them, said, having no son I have no happiness in life. Hence, I intend to perform an Asvamedha Yagna. By the blessings of holy Sage Rishyasringa, I am sure, I shall attain my intent. They fully agreed to his words.
The priests erected the sacrificial fireplace with bricks. The fireplace consisting on three sides of eighteen bricks looked like a golden-winged Garuda, the celestial carrier of Vishnu. For the purpose of sacrifice, horses, beasts and birds, reptiles and aquatic animals were collected. To those Yupas (posts) were tied hundreds of animals as well as the horse of the king.
Animal sacrifice was very apparent in the Vedas as a part of the rituals. The Rig-Veda had several clear references to animal sacrifices. In a reference to the sacrifice of a goat it held (1.162.2) “The dappled goat went straight to heaven, bleating to the place dear to Indra and to Pusan.”
In one of the hymns to the horse (1.162.9-11) it said, “What part of the steed’s flesh the fly did not eat or was left sticking to the post or hatchet, or to the slayer’s hands and nails adhered, among the Gods, too may all this be with thee.
Food undigested steaming from his belly and any odour of raw flesh that remained let the immolators set in order and dress the sacrifice with perfect cooking.
What from thy body which with fire was roasted when thou art set upon the spit distilled let not that lay on earth or grass neglected, but to the longing Gods let all be offered.” As well, the non-vegetarian aspect was clear that when this horse was sacrificed, it was distributed to those who were eagerly waiting.
The meat was tested with a trial fork and then distributed (Rig 1.162.12ff). The Yajur-Veda was full of many more references to animal sacrifices, clear and often repeated references to animal sacrifices, mainly in association with the full moon rite, the Soma sacrifice and its supplement.
There was an entire section of the Yajur-Veda devoted to optional animal sacrifices (ii.1): “To the Asvins he sacrifices a dusky, to Sarasvati a ram, to Indra a bull” (Yajur 1.8.21.e). Asvamedha Yagna - The Ashvamedha, horse sacrifice, was one of the most important royal rituals of Vedic religion, described in detail in the Yajur-Veda. The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king.
Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom. The ceremony narrated in the Ramayana was a departure from the Vedic text as the king wished to perform the ritual for being blessed with sons.
The horse to be sacrificed had to be a stallion, more than 24, but less than 100 years old. The horse was sprinkled with water, and the chief priest whispered mantras into its ear. Anyone who detained the horse was ritually cursed, and a dog was killed, symbolic of the punishment for the sinners.
The horse was yoked to a gilded chariot, together with three other horses, and RV 1.6.1, 2 (Y.V. 23.5, 6) was recited. The horse was then driven into water and bathed. After this, the chief queen and two other royal consorts anointed it with ghee (clarified butter). They also adorned the horse's head, neck, and tail with golden ornaments.
After this, the horse, a hornless he-goat and a wild ox were tied to sacrificial stakes near the fire, and seventeen other animals were fastened to the horse. A great number of animals both tame and wild were tied to other stakes, according to a commentator, 609 animals in total.
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The chief queen ritually called on the king's fellow wives for pity. The queens walked around the dead horse reciting mantras. The chief queen then had to mimic coitus with the dead horse, while the other queens ritually uttered obscenities.
On the next morning, the priests lifted up the queen from the place where she had spent the night with the horse. The three queens with a hundred golden, silver and copper needles pointed to the lines on the horse's body along which it would be dissected. The horse was dissected, and its flesh roasted. Various parts were offered to a host of deities.
Now, to get back to the narration in the epic: a scholarly analysis put forward as under: ‘According to the text available to us, it seemed that the queen did not spend the entire night with the horse.
Typically, she lay down with the horse and was covered with an upper cloth; at this time she was symbolically said to unite with the horse. Some words suggestive of copulation and fertility were spoken over her and the dead horse.
There were many ambiguities and discords between the different sections of the Veda, often causing clashes between members of the priestly class.
Wilson, the eminent Vedic scholar, held: […] As was detailed in the Yajur-Veda 22.26, and more particularly in the Sutras of Katyayani (Asvamedha 1-210), the object was the same as that of the Ramayana, or posterity, as one step towards which the principal queen, Kausalya, in the poem, was directed to lie all night in closest contact with the dead steed; in the morning,
when the queen was released from the disgusting, and in fact, impossible, contiguity, a dialogue, as given in the Yajus, and in the Asvamedha section of the Satapatha Brahmana, and as explained in the Sutra, took place between the queen and the females accompanying or attending upon her, and the principal priest, which though brief, was in the highest degree both silly and obscene[…]
We came across no vestige, however, of these revolting impurities in the Rig-Veda[…] no reasonable doubt could be entertained that the early ritual of the Hindus did authorize the sacrifice of a horse, the details and objects of which were very soon grossly amplified and distorted;
at the same time it was to be remarked that these two hymns were the only ones in the Rich that related especially to the subject; from which it might be inferred that they belonged to a different period[…]
As the solemnity appeared in the Rich, it allowed a less poetical, a more barbaric character, and it might have been a relic of an ante-Vedic period, imported from some foreign region, possibly from Scythia, where animal victims, and especially horses, were commonly sacrificed (Herod IV 71).
There were many ambiguities and discords between the different sections of the Veda, often causing clashes between members of the priestly class. Further, they spoke of the rewards of carrying out costly rites and rituals. Often, the different sections of the Veda contradicted each other, confusing the common man as to what to believe.
To sum up, the attitude of the Vedic Aryan to unseen forces was simple yet primitive. The gods were thirty-three to begin with. They had no icons. Fire was their emissary. The Aryan man killed an ox, a sheep, a goat, at times, a horse and offered its meat and fat together with milk and butter, barley bread and the intoxicating drink soma by the fire to his gods.
The gods were gratified with these offerings of food and drink and in return, they gave the worshipper what he wished for, viz. wealth, sons, long life and victory over enemies. This was the Vedic Aryan ritual of homa or fire-worship.
Basic concepts of religion in the Veda - The gods in the Rig-Veda were mostly personified concepts, who fell into two categories: the devas – who were gods of nature – such as the weather deity Indra (who was also the king of the gods), Agni (fire), Usha (dawn), Surya (sun) and Apas (waters) on the one hand, and on the other hand the asuras – gods of moral concepts
– such as Mitra (contract), Aryaman (guardian of guest, friendship and marriage), Bhaga (share) or Varuna, the supreme Asura (or Aditya). While Rig-Vedic deva was variously applied to most gods, including many of the Asuras, the Devas were characterized as Younger Gods while Asuras were the Older Gods (pūrve devāh). In later Vedic texts, the Asuras became demons.
The Rig-Veda had 10 Mandalas (books). There was essential variation in the language and style between the older family books (RV books 2–7), book 8, the Soma Mandala (RV 9), and the more recent books 1 and 10. The older books shared many aspects of common Indo-Iranian religion and were an important source for the reconstruction of earlier common Indo-European traditions. Especially RV 8 had striking similarity to the Avesta, containing allusions to Afghan Flora and Fauna, e.g. to camels uštra- = Avestan uštra).
Many of the key religious terms in Vedic Sanskrit had cognates in the religious vocabulary of other Indo-European languages (deva: Latin deus; hotar: Germanic god; asura: Germanic ansuz; yajna: Greek hagios; brahman: Norse Bragi or perhaps Latin flamen etc.). Above all notable is the fact that in the Avesta Asura (Ahura) was known as good and Deva (Daeva) as evil entity, quite the opposite of the Rig-Veda.
Leaving aside the question of the primary religion of the Hindus at a later section of this essay, let it be made clear that the Veda did not deal with religion alone throughout the volumes one went over. It had been a favourite notion of many scholars that at the time of composition of the hymns of the Veda there were a nomadic and pastoral people. Such an opinion rested solely upon frequent solicitations for food, and for horses and cattle, found right in the hymns.
That those people were not nomads became evident from the repeated allusions to fixed dwellings, villages and towns. Also there were references to overthrow of enemies and destruction of their cities after long-drawn-out battles. Not only the hymns were familiar with the ocean, there were merchants sailing to distant places for the sake of grain.
There was a naval expedition against a continent, frustrated by a shipwreck. Most curious was the prayer in the Rig-Veda (I.11.7.14), from the peculiar expression used on more than one occasion, in soliciting long life, when the worshipper asked for a hundred winters (himas), a boon not likely to have been desired by the natives of hot climate like north-western part of India, Iran and so on.
People coming over at that distant epoch towards India appeared to have been fair-complexioned as one hymn (I.15.7.18) declared that Indra, the supreme God, divided the conquered fields to his white-complexioned people, after destroying the native barbarian races, the term being Dasyu.
Synthesis of Harappa, Vedic & Hindu religions - Hinduism is a label for a wide variety of related religious traditions native to India. Historically, it includes the development of religion in India since the Iron Age traditions, which in turn harks back to prehistoric religions such as that of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization followed by the Iron
The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) that was located in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent. The mature phase was known as the Harappan Civilization, as the first excavated city was the one at Harappa in modern Pakistan, in the 1920s CE. Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned.
In 1953 CE, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia called the Aryans. Because of language similarities those Aryans were associated particularly with the Iranians and even further back with the origins of the Indo-European language group.
The general consensus seemed to be that this culture must have begun somewhere in the Russian steppes and Central Asia about 2000 BCE. The branch of these speakers, who came to India under the name Aryans, meaning noble ones, was the Indo-Iranian group. In fact "Iran" drew from the Persian cognate of the word for Aryan.
However, the Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization could be found in later cultures. Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow pointed to the late Harappan settlement of Pirak, which thrived continuously from 1800 BCE to the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great in 325 BCE.
Pirak was located in Baluchistan, Pakistan. After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately associated with the indigenous Dasyu, inimical to the Rig-Vedic tribes in numerous hymns of the Rig-Veda.
Religion of Indus valley civilization was a theme not found in any ancient accounts. Seals, images and other materials had been unearthed by various archaeologists. Scholars were unable to draw any inference about those people.
Well over 400 distinct Indus symbols (some say 600) had been found on seals, small tablets, or ceramic pots and over a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira. It was one of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India in the Kutch Desert Wildlife Sanctuary of Gujarat, India.
Typical Indus inscriptions were no more than four or five characters in length, most of which (aside from the Dholavira "signboard") were exquisitely tiny; the longest on a single surface, which was less than 1 inch (2.54 cm) square, was 17 signs long; the longest on any object (found on three different faces of a mass-produced object) had a length of 26 symbols.
Each script was written from right to left. However, the script had not been deciphered as yet. It was believed that they used ideograms i.e., a graphic symbol or character to convey the idea directly.
Indus Valley Civilization was often believed as a literate society on the evidence of such lettering. Even so, Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel (2004) argued that the Indus system did not encode language; it was instead similar to a variety of non-linguistic sign systems used widely in the Near East and other societies.
Others had claimed on occasion that the symbols were used for economic transactions, but this claim left unexplained the appearance of symbols on many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced in moulds. No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions were known in any other early ancient civilizations.
Several pottery figurines called to mind that female deities had been worshipped. Probably it represented the Mother-Goddess worshipped in the near and Middle East in ancient times. Clay figures resembled the horns of a goat or bull that traced that animal worship was common.
The seal amulets and talismans of stone and pottery did indicate the religious attitude of the Harappa people. A nude image of a deity with horns and three faces, seated on a stool with heals closely pressed together pointed to some ritualistic posture. Animals like deer, antelope, rhinoceros, elephant, tiger and buffalo encircled him. Arms were adorned with large number of bangles.
Another seal-amulet showed a horned goddess in the midst of a Peepul or sacred fig-tree before which one more horned deity was kneeling and doing obeisance. A row of female deities occupied the whole of the lower register of the seal-amulet, each figure wearing a spring on the head, a long pigtail behind. Stone objects made out that veneration was paid to phallic symbols.
Several steatite seals discovered at Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1700 BCE) sites portrayed figures in a yoga- or meditation-like posture, "a form of ritual discipline, suggesting a precursor of yoga", according to Indus archaeologist Gregory Possehl.
He pointed out sixteen specific "yogi glyptics" in the corpus of mature Harappan artefacts that suggested Harappan devotion to "ritual discipline and concentration", and that the yoga pose "may have been used by deities and humans alike." Some type of connection between the Indus Valley seals and later yoga and meditation practices was supported by many other scholars.
Karel Werner held that "Archaeological discoveries allowed us therefore to speculate with some justification that a wide range of Yoga activities was already known to the people of pre-Aryan India." A seal recently (2008) uncovered in the Cholistan desert was described by Dr. Farzand Masih, Chairman, Archaeology Department, Punjab University, as depicting a "yogi".
Thomas McEvilley noted that "The six mysterious Indus Valley seal images...all without exception showed figures in a position known in hatha yoga as mulabhandasana or possibly the closely related utkatasana or baddha konasana...."
Reaction to austere ritualistic religion - From early times, there were those who denied faith in divine beings. Even the Vedic hymns referred sharply to scoffers and unbelievers. Those hymns, usually ascribed to Brihaspati, a son of Loka, put into words the first protests against just a study of the Veda and upheld that a man who tried to soak them up was far superior to the reciting priest.
Although there was no special animal fable in Vedic literature, in the Rig-Veda there was all the variety of a story. It pointed to the fondness of the Vedic Aryan for tales of all sorts. There was one song in the Rig-Veda where Brahmins singing at a holy offering were compared to croaking frogs. Prof. Max Muller said that this famous hymn was a satire on Vedic priesthood, or better still, on the manner of hymn chanting.
Aitereya Aranyaka put forth, why should we repeat the Vedas or offer this kind of oblation? To offset such negative analyses, the cynics adopted the doctrine of svabhava (nature) as the next stage. This doctrine held that all things were self-existent.
They did not create themselves nor any cause created them. For instance, there was no cause for the delicate web of the lotus or the eye-like marks on the peacock’s tail. As the cause was not there, they indeed existed on their own. Such was the case with this changing universe. In the same way, feelings like pleasure, pain etc. had no cause, as they were fleeting.
With its claim of pratyaksa or perception as the only means of learning, and physical pleasure being the central object of life, this system was widespread in ancient India. Thus, its name was Lokayata, literally meaning a doctrine spread among the people (loka).
The Vratyas, who were the Aryans from later migrations, came slowly into this belief. Like the Lokayatikas, they too defied everything, including the caste system, sacrifices and the Veda. Drawing upon such generous support, the Lokayatikas exhorted people to strain every nerve for instant earthly welfare rather than striving for a heaven one could not prove existed. Kama or the fulfilment of desire was the central theme of human life.
The result of such activity was an urge for freedom—freedom for the individual as well as for society, for the woman as well as for the man, for the poor as well as for the rich. One unique outcome of this struggle for freedom was the rise of the Buddhist culture.
Buddha’s views against Vedic sacrifices, memorising verses and the fruitless repetition of Vedic mantras, gory ritual of animal sacrifice, the caste system, the authority of the Veda and the worship of the deities and the magic rites, all had counterparts in the views of the Lokayatikas.
Message of the Upanishads - Vedanta was in earlier times a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name was a form of Veda-anta = Veda-end = the appendix to the Vedic hymns.
It was inferred that Vedanta stood for the purpose or goal [end] of the Veda. Vedanta was not restricted or confined to one book and there was no sole source for Vedantic philosophy.
Vedic religion gradually evolved into Vedanta, which was viewed by some as the primary institution of Hinduism. Vedanta deemed itself the 'essence' of the Veda.
All forms of Vedanta were drawn primarily from the Upanishads, a set of philosophical and instructive Vedic scriptures. The Upanishads were commentaries on the Veda. They were considered the fundamental essence of all the Veda. Some segment of Vedantic thought was also derived from the earlier aranyakas.
The Aranyakas were called the forest texts, because ascetics retreated into the forest to study the spiritual doctrines with their students, leading to less emphasis on the sacrificial rites that were still performed in the towns.
These writings were transitional between the Brahmanas and the Upanishads in that they still discussed rites and had magical content, dull lists of formulas and some hymns from the Veda. The sages who took in students in their forest hermitages were not as wealthy as the priests in the towns who served royalty and other wealthy patrons.
The primary philosophy weighed up in the Upanishads that of one absolute reality termed as Brahman was the main tenet of Vedanta. The sage Vyasa was one of the major proponents of this philosophy and author of the Brahma Sūtras based on the Upanishads.
The concept of Brahman – the eternal, self-existent, immanent and transcendent Supreme and Ultimate Reality which was the divine view of all being - was central to most schools of Vedānta. The notion of God or Ishvara was also there. Vedantic sub-schools differed mainly in how they would identify God with Brahman.
The Upanishads were works of various authors living in different ages. They were the words of spiritual-minded people, who got glimpses of the highest truth by observation and were not necessarily part of a consistent system of philosophy.
Their ways were intuitive rather than logical and they dealt with topics like God, man, destiny, soul etc. There were so many hints, suggestions and implications in the Upanishads and so varied that subsequent founders of almost all religions and religious sects in India had been able to quote one or more of these as authority.
In spite of the brilliance of such ideas, they were not adequate for the religious needs of the people. Their appeal lay with the intelligentsia, not with the ordinary man to whom attainment of such profound knowledge appeared a distant dream. Upanishadic philosophers soared to dizzy heights and laid the basis on which Indian thoughts were to be refined in later years.
India stirred up with freethinking views and the Buddha was the result of this freedom. No man ever lived such a godlike life, without ever talking of a god. The Vishnu Purana had a record of this stage of the school. It alluded to a set of people of very ancient origin who were free to live wherever they liked, unworried by conventions, pure at heart and blameless in action.
Virtue or vice they had none; they lived in an ambience of perfect freedom in which men could move without fear of disobeying traditional dogmas of religious and social usage. Still, the ordinary devoted followers were not satisfied merely with social and religious freedom. As the Lokayatikas captured the hearts of the cultured as well as the common people, all were set on working out their immediate earthly welfare.
Before proceeding further on the topic it is necessary to recall certain basic tenets touched upon so far with a view to link with development of a few major religions in India during the coming centuries.
The Upanishads were like a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy corridors of power of the Vedic Brahmanism. They were noticed by the priestly authorities because the yogis did not owe allegiance to any established religion or mode of thought.
They were very largely saying what may well have been current among other sramanic groups at that time. Such an atheistic doctrine was evidently very acceptable to the authors of Upanishads, who made use of many of its concepts.
The end of the Vedantic period was around the 2nd century CE. In the latter period, several texts were composed as summaries/attachments to the Upanishads. These texts collectively called as Puranas allowed for a divine and mythical interpretation of the world, not unlike the ancient Hellenic or Roman religions. Legends and epics with a multitude of gods and goddesses with human-like characteristics were composed.
Two of Hinduism's most revered epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were compositions of this period. Devotion to particular deities was reflected from the composition of texts composed to their worship. For example, the Ganapati Purana was written for devotion to Ganapati (or Ganesha). Popular deities of this era were Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, Surya, Skanda, and Ganesh (including the forms/incarnations of these deities.)
Unlike the early Vedic religion neither the Brahmanic rituals nor the spiritualism of the Upanishads could somehow become popular. A religion, in order that it might become popular, needed a simple and uniform creed, a good deal of mythology, certain easy practices of worship.
The failure of the Vedic Brahmanas and the Upanishads in this respect resulted in an indirect support to the non-Vedic religious thought. Non-Vedic religious systems such as Buddhism and Jainism quickly spread. They adopted the mythology, worship of the deities and intelligent speculation of a variety of Upanishads. At the same time they steered clear of the weak points in them.
Shramana tradition - Vedic religion of Iron Age India co-existed and closely interacted with the parallel non-Vedic shramana traditions.
These were not direct outgrowths of Vedism, but separate movements that influenced it and were influenced by it. The shramanas were wandering ascetics. Buddhism and Jainism were a continuation of the shramana custom, and the early Upanishadic movement was influenced by it.
As a rule, a shramana was one who renounced the world & led an ascetic life for the purpose of spiritual development & liberation. As a rule, a shramana was one who renounced the world and led an ascetic life for the purpose of spiritual development and liberation.
They asserted that human beings were responsible for their own deeds and reaped the fruits of those deeds, for good or ill. Liberation from such anxiety could be achieved by anybody irrespective of caste, creed, colour or culture.
Yoga was probably the most important shramana practice to date. Elaborate processes were outlined in Yoga to achieve individual liberation through breathing techniques (Pranayama), physical postures (Asanas) and meditation (Dhyana).
The movement later received a boost during the times of Mahavira and Buddha when Vedic ritualism had become the dominant belief in certain parts of India.
Shramanas adopted a path alternate to the Vedic rituals to achieve liberation, while renouncing household life. They typically engaged in three types of activities: austerities, meditation, and associated theories (or views).
At times, a shramana was at variance with traditional authority, and he often recruited members from priestly communities as well. Mahāvīra, the 24th Jina, and Gautama Buddha were leaders of their shramana orders. According to Jain literature and the Buddhist Pali Canon, there were also some other shramana leaders at that time.
Indian philosophy was a confluence of shramanic (self-reliant) traditions, Bhakti traditions with idol worship and Vedic ritualistic nature worship. These co-existed and influenced each other. Śramanas held a view of samsara as full of suffering (or dukkha). They practiced Ahimsa and rigorous ascetism. They believed in Karma and Moksa and viewed re-birth as undesirable.
Vedics, on the contrary, believed in the efficacy of rituals and sacrifices, performed by a privileged group of people, who could improve their life by pleasing certain gods.
The Sramanic ideal of mendicancy and renunciation, that the worldly life was full of suffering and that emancipation required abandoning desires and withdrawal into a solitary contemplative life, was in stark contrast with the Brahminical ideal of an active and ritually punctuated life.
Traditional Vedic belief held that a man was born with an obligation to study the Vedas, to procreate and bring up male offspring and to perform sacrifices. Only in later life would he meditate on the mysteries of life.
The idea of devoting one's whole life to mendicancy seemed to disparage the whole process of Vedic social life and obligations. Because the shramanas rejected the Vedas, the Vedics labelled their philosophy as "nastika darsana" (heterodox philosophy).
Astika and nastika were sometimes used to categorise Indian religions. Those religions that believed that God was the central actor in this world were termed as astika. Those religions that did not believe that God was the prime mover were classified as nastika. From this point of view the Vedic religion (and Hinduism) was an astika religion, whereas Buddhism and Jainism were nastika religions.
Note: This article contains text passages from various Wikipedia articles on the subject, copied under the Creative Commons Share Alike license. Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication.
https://www.ancient.eu/article/238/initiation-of-religions-in-india/
The Louisiana Purchase encompassed 530,000,000 acres of territory in North America that the United States purchased from France in 1803 for $15 million. As the United States spread across the Appalachians, the Mississippi River became an increasingly important conduit for the produce of America’s West (which at that time referred to the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi).
Since 1762, Spain had owned the territory of Louisiana, which included 828,000 square miles. The territory made up all or part of fifteen modern U.S. states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
Napoleon threatened to expand the French Empire North America - The Pinckney treaty of 1795 had resolved friction between Spain and the United States over the right to navigate the Mississippi and the right for Americans to transfer their goods to ocean-going vessels at New Orleans.
With the Pinckney treaty in place and the weak Spanish empire in control of Louisiana, American statesmen felt comfortable that the United States’ westward expansion would not be restricted in the future.
This situation was threatened by Napoleon Bonaparte’s plans to revive the French empire in the New World. He planned to recapture the valuable sugar colony of St. Domingue from Toussaint Louverture, and then use Louisiana as the granary for his empire.
Louverture not only led the original revolt but had become the governor of Saint Domingue and had declared self-rule in 1801. France acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1800 and took possession in 1802.
France wanted to end Louvertre's rule and reinstate slavery. Napoleon sent a massive 30,000 troops French expeditionary force commanded by his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to St. Domingue to accomplish this goal.
The size of the French force suggests that the army was not just sent to take control of St. Domingue, but Napoleon clearly wanted the army to occupy the Lousiana Purchase for France. This army put France directly at odds with the United States's ambitions.
Leclerc's Haitian Expedition - Westerners became very apprehensive about having the more-powerful French in control of New Orleans: President Thomas Jefferson noted, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy.
It is New Orleans.” In addition to making military preparations for conflict in the Mississippi Valley, Jefferson sent James Monroe to join Robert Livingston in France to try to purchase New Orleans and West Florida for as much as $10 million. Failing that, they were to attempt to create a military alliance with England.
Unfortunately for France, yellow fever decimated Napoleon's army of 30,000 troops in St. Domingue (Haiti) during its expedition. Similarly, British troops, ten years earlier, suffered a similar fate on the island and had casualty rates as high as 70%. France was utterly unprepared to deal with yellow fever.
Additionally, war between France and England posed still a serious threat to French ambitions in North America. The deadly outbreak of yellow fever ultimately ended Napoleon's North American dreams.
He decided to give up his plans for Louisiana and offered a surprised Monroe and Livingston the entire territory of Louisiana for $15 million. Although this far exceeded their instructions from President Jefferson, they agreed.
When news of the sale reached the United States, the West was elated. President Jefferson, however, was in a quandary. He had always advocated strict adherence to the letter of the Constitution, yet there was no provision empowering him to purchase territory.
Given the public support for the purchase and the obvious value of Louisiana to the future growth of the United States, Jefferson decided to ignore the legalistic interpretation of the Constitution and forgo the passage of a Constitutional amendment to validate the purchase. This decision contributed to the principle of implied powers of the federal government.
https://dailyhistory.org/Why_did_France_sell_the_Louisiana_Purchase_to_the_United_States%3F
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