Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children Book Cover.webp

In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


This book is the result of four years of rigorous research and academic peer-review, reflecting our ongoing commitment at Hindupedia to challenge the representation of Hindu Dharma within academia.

Aṣṭaka

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Aṣṭaka literally means ‘of eight parts’.

The Rgveda, the first and the foremost of the four Vedas, consists of 10,552 mantras or verses. There are two well-known systems of dividing these mantras into books, sections or chapters.

As per the first system which groups the mantras according to the deities, topics and meters, the Rgveda is divided into ten ‘maṇḍalas,’ each maṇḍala being subdivided again into ‘anuvāka’ and ‘sukta.’ Though this method is good from the standpoint of study, it is not good from the standpoint of memorization (which had a supreme place in ancient Vedic studies) since there is a large variation in the number of mantras in each maṇḍala. Hence an attempt was made later to divide the whole of the Rgveda into eight sections, each called as an ‘aṣṭaka,’ keeping the total number of mantras in each aṣṭaka almost the same.

Each aṣṭaka was again subdivided into eight ‘adhyāyas’ or chapters and the adhyāyas into ‘vargas’ or groups. The vargas consisted of the mantras. Due care has been taken to maintain same number of the total number of akṣaras or letters in each aṣṭaka, since some mantras are in longer meters. The following table gives an idea of this division:


-
Aṣtaka Adhyāyas Vargas Mantras Akṣaras
1 8 265 1370 48931
2 8 221 1147 51718
3 8 225 1209 47636
4 8 250 1289 49762
5 8 238 1263 47562
6 8 331 1730 51456
7 8 248 1263 47562
8 8 246 1281 52178
Total 64 2024 10552 397265


References[edit]

  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore