FOUNDATION COURSE LESSON-3

1. Bcom-1
lesson-3
Asst Professor English
Dr Neeta Sharma
SSMV,Junwani,Bhilai

2. The Wonder That was India
A.L.Basham
• Hinduism developed from the religion that
the Aryans brought to India with them in
about 1500 BC. Its beliefs and practices are
based on the Vedas, a collection of hymns
(thought to refer to actual historical events)
that Aryan scholars had completed by about
800 BC.

3. What culture did Hinduism grow from?
• Based on this evidence, it seems that when
the people from central Asia settled in India,
their Vedic beliefs were mingled with the
beliefs of indigenous Indians. Thus, it is likely
that the Indus Valley tradition and Vedic gods
and beliefs combined to form the foundations
of Hinduism.

4. Hindu mythology
• Hindu mythology are narratives found
in Hindu texts such as
the Vedic literature, epics like Mahabharata an
d Ramayana, the Puranas the regional
literatures like Periya Puranam. Hindu
mythology is also found in widely translated
popular texts such as
the Panchatantra and Hitopadesha, as well as
Southeast Asian texts.

5. Story of Dushyanta& Shakuntala
• King Dushyanta first
encountered Shakuntala while travelling
through the forest with his army. He was
pursuing a male deer wounded by his
weapon. Shakuntala and Dushyanta fell in
love with each other and got married as per
Gandharva marriage system.

6. Barbarous hecatombs' of the Vedic age
• Animal sacrifice
• Widows forced to burnt on husband pyres.
• Child marriage.
• Caste system
• Cultural change.
• Joint family system

7. Culture from India
• The whole of South-East Asia received most of
its culture from India
• In the fifth century colonist from Western
India settled in Ceylon which was finally
converted into Buddhism in the reign of
Asoka.
• The first Indians to go the South East Asian
countries were the colonist from the western
part of India

8. Touching feet
• The main reason behind this gesture is to bow
down and show respect to the elder. The
person, whose feet are being touched, blesses
the young person touching feet with long life,
good luck and wisdom, as an
acknowledgement or appreciation in return.

9. Greater India
• Greater India, or Indian cultural sphere is an
area composed of many countries and regions
in South and Southeast Asia that were
historically influenced by Indian culture. The
Indian historians called as Greater India by
South East Asia.

10. Gandhi ji Influence on the West
• Noncooperation movement, unsuccessful
attempt in 1920–22, organized by Mohandas
(Mahatma) Gandhi, to induce the British
government of India to grant self-government,
or swaraj, to India. It was one of Gandhi's first
organized acts of large-scale civil disobedience
(satyagraha).

11. Indian literature influenced the west
• SANSKRIT: artha, avatara, dharma, kala, kama,
karma, moksha, nirvana, shanti
• ENGLISH; absolution (of sins), blasphemy,
guilt, heaven, hell, incarnation, irony, miracle,
religion, resurrection, secular, sin, tragedy

12. Indian philosophy
• This very much affects how Indian philosophy is
represented in Western literature. Words that cannot be
translated are given a description that may not represent
the true intention or its value within Indian culture. Plus,
we may attribute some of our cultural concepts to make
meaning of theirs, when actually those concepts may not
even exist in the original context. For example, Indian
philosophy has no word for “miracle” in Sanskrit or any of
the Indian languages. Miracles cannot happen because
nothing in this world of matter and karma operates outside
the orbit of matter and karma. Hindu gods have notoriously
clay feet and are subject to the laws of cause and effect as
are we poor mortals. The gods we worship are the gods we
create; we cannot worship the God who creates us.

13. Western authors
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Transcendentalist essayist and poet
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) did not effect much
change in his borrowing from India in his poem
“Brahma,” which originated from an extract in his
journal for 1845. The extract is from H. H. Wilson’s
Vishnu Purana: “What living creature slays, or is slain?
What living creature preserves, or is preserved? Each is
his own destroyed or preserver, as he follows good or
evil.” “Brahma” first appeared in The Atlantic
Monthly for November 1857, the year of what the
British called the Indian Mutiny.

14. Hindu Philosophy
• Hindu mythology portrays the deities Brahma,
Vishnu and Shiva. This mythology has influenced
Indian literary texts, from Sanskrit literature to
modern literature in Indian English.
This influence continues even till the present day.
... Both these epics have always
fascinated Indian novelists.
•

15. Features of Indian Literature
• The first characteristic we notice about Indian
literature is that it is based on moiety, a
deeply religious spirit. The Indians believed
that a knowledge of God and a strong belief in
Hinduism is necessary to save mankind. Their
earliest poems, the Vedas, are the Bible of the
Indians.

16. Continued…
• The second characteristic we notice about Indian
literature is that the Indian literary masterpieces
written in the form of epics, correspond to great
epochs in the history of India. The Ramayana an the
Mahabharata are the most importatant epics of India;
the latter is the longest found in the world literature.
The Indians believe in reincarnation, meaning that the
soul of a person after death returns to the earth in the
body of another person, animal or even a plant.
Consequently, they believe in kindness to other people
and to animals. They also abstain from destroying
plants because in that plant might be reincarnated
one’s dead elative

17. Continued
• The Mahabharata is considered the greatest
epic of India. It tells the story of a civil war
that might have taken place in the early years
of the Aryan occupation of India. Obviously,
the products of many centuries and many
hands, it is a long poem, almost as long as the
combined epics of all Europe.

18. The Ramayana
• The Ramayana recounts the adventures of
Rama and his wife Sita. Legend has it that Sita
was born of a furrow, the child of Mother
Earth. Sita is regarded by the woman of India
as the perfect sumbol of wifely devotion and
self-sacrifice for the beloved.

19. Paragraph Writing
• Influence of ancient Indian religious literature
through philosophy