Indology Conference and Festival

This year, instead of our usual Pechu Kacheri, Tamil Heritage Trust will host an Indology conference, entirely online. The driving force for this conference is Dr Vilayanur Ramachandran, the famous neuroscientist, author of “Phantoms in the Brain”. Several years ago, Prof Swaminathan, Sri Kannan, Dr Sri Annamalai, Sri Badri Seshadri, Sri TK Ramachandran and others attended one of his lectures, at the end of which they decided to start Tamil Heritage Trust. Ramachandran gave a talk at THT on Art and the Brain a couple of years later. For the last four years he met us every December and tried to get this going. In January 2019 he announced it a THT lecture. Earlier this year, he announced it to a much larger audience at the Indian Science Festival, Pune, organized by Varun Agarwal of Aspiring Minds. We made plans for a conference in February, but the corona lockdowns convinced us that it wasn’t feasible this year. But several persuasive emails from Ramachandran, and a very forceful argument by Shyam Raman at one of our discussions, convinced us to conduct this and we are on!

Audience at Pechu kacheri on Pandyas December 2019

I hardly knew anything about Indology ten years back. The interest in Indian heritage kindled by Kalki, and enhanced by the lectures of Dr Chitra Madhavan and Prof Swaminathan, was sustained by the monthly lectures of THT, and enhanced by Site seminars. In fact, for most of the volunteers and organizers of THT, these were the entry points and stepping stones. One of our desires, especially for Prof Swaminathan, is that every city and town and village in India have such organizations like THT, interested in learning about India and its past, their own town or state or community and its history and culture, and so on. Quite a few such organizations exist all over India, started by Indians, but usually confined to certain fields – say  poetry, music, architecture, engineering, business, religion, politics, environment, food, social reform etc. The corona lockdown and the wide availability of Zoom, Google Meet etc, the free nature of social media like Whatsapp and Facebook in spreading messages and program notifications, the large number of domain experts who are eager and willing to share their knowledge has been a boon in this area.

For the last couple of centuries, Indology and associated subjects like archaeology, history, classical arts, etc have been the domain of academics, or a small class of people with either passion or leisure or both. Such a class is not elite by wealth, power or social status, as is quite common in most countries, including India, but by curiosity and eagerness.  The academic community worldwide and especially in India have a strong leftist bias (which bias is really barely a century old – religion dominated academia for millennia). For the last thirty years, there have been nationalistic and rightwing resurgences politically in many countries, and clearly so in India. Unable to capture academia, deeply skeptical of some of their leftist narrative, and fully availing of social media, different groups of rightwingers have challenged the narrative forced upon the public in textbooks and mainstream media. This has led to extreme factions in both groups, besides such extremely nonsensical but popular narratives like ancient aliens. Ramachandran’s vision, shared by Tamil Heritage Trust, is to look at the past and its meaning without such political filters, objectively. For that he believes, we need a new Indology Society, along the lines of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, established by Sir William Jones, is needed. And in his opinion THT is the foundation on which such a society can be built. “There are two people I admire, William Jones and Swaminathan,” stated Ramachandran. High praise, indeed!

Whether it is possible for anyone to have any opinion which conflicts with his or her political social economic or other such ideological prejudices, is not clear. But several attendees of our many programs have been quite delighted. Granted this is a small number. But their repeated patronage and attendance has been very encouraging. Our lectures during the lockdown have attracted an audience from all acorss India, not just Tamilnadu, and Tamils across the world. India Science Festival, based in Delhi, has expressed a desire to collaborate with us. Badri and I presented a lecture on Indian mathematics at their forum, in January. Swaminathan delivered a talk on Ajanta. Academics and professionals from across the world who attended these, and Ramachandran’s announcement of the society, endorsed and expressed a desire to participate. VS Ramachandran, Dr Rajesh Rao (one of the speakers at this Indology Fest) and I also participated in a panel discussion on Indian history and science. 

My real interest in some of the early history and discoveries of Indology was provoked by Charles Allen’s book Buddha and the Sahebs. The British and European scholars who created institutions to scientifically and systematically study Indology lit for not just the world, but for Indians as well, a lamp of knowledge, methodology, curiosity and aesthetic appreciation, that has been carried on a large number of people both Indians, and other nationals, which we hope to continue. I write this after having watched on television, the lamp lit at Tiruvannamalai earlier this evening, and an array of lamps lit in a million houses across my city and state on this night of Karthikai deepam. How delightfully apt!

Here is an letter in Tamil about this conference (இந்தியவியல் திருவிழா), written by J Ramki, published in writer Jayamohan’s website. Incidentally, Jayamohan was the inaugaral speaker of our first Pechu Kacheri in 2011.

I hope you attend the lectures of the Indology conference which we are celebrating like a festival. They will be online and available as recorded video also. The invitation, schedule and topics are in the THT website and also shown here. Please register in the website and spread the word.

 

Related Links

"VichitraChitta" Swaminathan

Art and the Brain - Notes from a lecture by VS Ramachandran

William Jones and Indology

இந்தியவியல் திருவிழா - Tamil Essay by J Ramki on the Indology festival 

மாமல்லபுரம் - 2016 பேச்சுக் கச்சேரி

காஞ்சி மகாமணி - 2017 பேச்சுக் கச்சேரி

நெடும் செழியர் கலைத் தென்றல் 2019 பேச்சுக் கச்சேரி

VichitraChittha Swaminathan

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.

-          from The Walrus and the Carpenter, by Lewis Carroll

Unlike the walrus, few people can talk of such a variety of things. I have heard Prof Swaminathan talk of shoes and socks in Ajanta paintings, ships that sailed between England and India, the Fibonacci patterns of leaves in cabbages, and many a king including Mahendra Varma Pallava -the maverick who called himself Vichitrachitta, the innovative and exotic thinker who unleashed the era of sculptures and architecture in Tamil country. If I had studied mechanical engineering in IIT Delhi, I am sure I would have heard him speak about sealing wax, too.

To talk about such a variety of things, one must first have an abundant curiosity and the intellectual discipline to understand what they have to offer. In short he must be an AtyantaKaama and a TattvaVedi. Which he is, to our good fortune.

Our VichitraChittha Swaminathan can not only talk about them, but talk about them in interesting ways, and provoke the listener’s curiosity and instigate a sense of wonder.

Most Indians, unlike Isaac Newton, stand not on the shoulders of giants, but surrounded by the wonders wrought upon this many splendored land by innumerable generations of giants, intellectual artistic and indefatigable. Sadly most of us see this treasure trove not with eyes not always appreciative but sometimes ignorant, often apathetic, even blasé. Even the curious and the restless among us, often need a spark, a shaft of light, a steady lamp to look long and deep and absorb the essence of such wonders, waiting to be discovered. Such a spark, a lighthouse is Swaminathan.

The few paragraphs above are the introductory passages to my essay on him, which will be part of the book we, Tamil Heritage Trust, have compiled on his work and dreams, and will release on September 8, 2019 when we salute his achievements.

Of his days in Delhi and upto the recent period until I met him in 2009 or so I can say very little.I first noticed him at a lecture on history at the Musiri house in Oliver Road, by Dr Chitra Madhvan. A few months later he gave a series of talks on The Story of Scripts, about the various writing systems of the world. It was quite a dazzling and eye opening experience. I had only recently learnt of Brahmi from a lecture by Iravatham Mahadevan, and had some minor interest in linguistics after having read Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. This Swaminathan, I realized, was truly a scholar, and a marvelous accumulator and presenter of facts.

This series was later followed by a five part series on the Oral Tradition of Sanskrit. Not Sanskrit literature, mind you, but its orality. What does that even mean? He began with a long explanation about the power of human memory, and an account of an ashtavadani, a special kind of scholar, who can do eight (ashta) different tasks (avadaanam) simultaneously. Having established the stupendous feats the human mind can accomplish, he went on to demonstrate that the Sanskrit alphabet was a marvel, a logical, analytical organization of the sounds of the language. Then followed an explanation of Siva Sutras and how Panini used them crisply to write a grammar simply but crisply.

To say my mind was blown away at this point, is an understatement. Jared Diamond and Kalki had done it in 1999. The Kanchi Kailasanatha and Ellora Kailasanatha temples blew my mind in 2005 and 2006. And Swaminathan and Panini blew my mind then. If Sivakamiyin Sabatham was a paradigm shift about technology, the two Kailasanathas about engineering and art, Swaminathan on Sanskrit was an paradigm shift about linguistics. I started an email conversation with him about Sanskrit and its alphabet (basically arguing that the Tamil alphabet was better in someways and more sensible) and he responded point by point.

Shortly after this, I realized that he had started the Tamil Heritage Trust and I began attending its monthly lectures. Then I was pulled into THT as a potential contributor by V Chandrasekhar, for the next THT experiment, a site seminar in Mamallapuram in January 2010. The inaugural Mamallapuram lecture was another dazzler. Not only me, even Kalki was blind about Mamallapuram, I realized. I made a lot of learned friends, and became a part of the THT family – it feels more a family than an trust.

I have written earlier about two of Swaminathan’s contributions - Powerpoint Literature and Bulletpoint Literature. He has so much more in his repertoire, and so few of us to learn and carry these forward. Fortunately we are growing in strength.

I won’t talk about the various activities of THT at this point, as we do that at the beginning of every monthly lecture. But I played a useful role, and my loooong talk on Pallava Grantham as a preparatory lecture, was appreciated by KRA Narasiah. What a boost! Later in 2010, I borrowed Swaminathan’s manuscript about Ajanta, which was even more mind blowing than the Mamallapuram book. When I returned it, he said I was the first person to read it (besides his brother, the writer Calcutta Krishnamurthy, who only proof read it).

We used to meet the evenings of the last Saturdays at Gandhi center in Thakkar Bapa Vidyalaya, to discuss future programs. While most suggestions focused on art, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, etc., I suggested science and commerce, like astronomy. He immediately responded by asking me to give a talk on astronomy; and even gave a book to start my research. If I thought Sanskrit had a lot in linguistics, its astronomy and mathematics just blew me away.

My father Rangarathnam was ill, he suffered from mild dementia for a couple of years, but in the last few months of 2010 he really suffered. He was hospitalized in September, eerily on the anniversary of my mother’s death in 1981. My dad survived, but was put on severe restrictions including feeding from a Ryles tube, via his nose, rather than his mouth. It was devastating. Then on October 5, he just passed away. The next day, I joined Nagupoliyan Balasubramanian’s Sanskrit classes, which he just started, perhaps to the shock of some friends. The next month was spent preparing for the astronomy lectures, and the next hundred weekends learning Sanskrit.

Sanskrit and astronomy helped me cope with my father’s loss. Swaminathan served as a father figure. So did Balasubramanian and Narasiah…. I lost one father, and these three took their place in a fashion which I can’t explain in words. One thrill and amazing opportunity, was to spend a Teacher’s Day, giving a talk to the teachers of a school, with these three gurus in the audience.

Later in October, Jayaram and I went to Hyderabad with Swaminathan and his wife Uma. With my Hyderabad friends Balaji and Bina, we had arranged two of his talks on Sanskrit and Music. Balaji was my roommate in Texas and later, colleague in Microsoft. When we went to check on them in the train, Uma mami spotted us and returned telling her husband, “The children are here (குழந்தைகள் வந்திருக்கா).” (I was forty. Some child!) But that’s how she saw us. My first Astronomy talk in November went better than I hoped (and also, very very long).

By this time THT had become established, and steady. In December 2010, Swaminathan was requested to conduct a tour of Mamallapuram by the ASI for the local panchayat school students, and he invited myself, Ashok Krishnaswami and Selvam to accompany him. I went from student to guide practically overnight. Later in December, we also accompanied him to Pudukottai for  a dream project of his, Project Sittannavasal, along with VSS Iyer and Kanaka Ajita Doss. We met the Collector, discussed a few things, saw Sittannavasal, Kodumbalur, Kudumiyan Malai, etc. In January, we went to Ajanta and Ellora. We had frequent, almost weekly gettogethers in my house in Kodambakkam, discussing and showcasing photos of Nageshvaram and Pullamangai, Ajanta, a plan to curate a series of TED talks, record some TED like talks on Indian art, and a whole host of projects, several of which never came to fruition.

With Walter Spink,
Fardapur resort, Ajanta

He introduced me to artist Maniam Selvan, whom we visited, and who talked raptorously about the scene in Sivakamiyin Sabatham, where Paranjothi crosses the mountain ravine. Chills! He took me to meet publisher Vellayampattu Sundaram and later interview him. I missed a chance to meet Iravatham Mahadevan. Then we went to chat with Narasiah…

Uthiramerur 

Jayaram and I went with the Swaminathan and Uma mami to Uthiramerur and Kanchi, including my first guided visit to Kailasanatha temple. Swaminathan was a kid in a candy shop. A couple of years later he asked me to give a talk on the temple. Then he introduced me to Dr Nagaswamy and asked me to prepare a lecture about his selected works.

There are several stories more to tell. But I wonder if these personal remembrances would be of interest to anyone but the two of us.

I’ll wrap up with a couple: conversations with him. He kept telling me a few times that Indians were empirical while Europeans were analytical. It took me a long time to understand what he meant; I don’t entirely agree, but my God, what a bold and brilliant statement. The other is a question he asked – Is there an Indian way of thinking? It took me many years to understand what an enormously loaded and sweeping question he was asking. And no one seems to be engaging him in this conversation. Or even contemplation.

Our most recent large intellectual engagement is with Vilayanur Ramachandran, who stated in January that two persons he admires are William Jones and Swaminathan. And that he hopes that Tamil Heritage Trust can be a new Asiatic society. What could be more delightful, a more fitting cap in the feather of our Vichitrachitta?

பேராசிரிய சுவாமிநாதனுடன் ஒரு நேர்காணல்

நம் விருந்தினர்  - பொதிகை டிவி

Art of Amaravati

This essay makes two points. The first is to introduce the art of Amaravati, in the words of Prof Swaminathan, in a document prepared to suggest improvements to the Amaravati Gallery in the Egmore Museum. The second is to highlight how exquisitely those words have been chosen and what a marvel the document itself is. I wrote earlier that Prof Swaminathan had developed a new form of literature – Powerpoint Literature. This perhaps could be called Bulletpoint Literature. It shows how marvelously and concisely a document can be drafted, while comprehensively capturing the historical, artistic, aesthetic significance of the subject, and also mentioning its unique aspects.

Amaravati was the location of one of the most magnificent Buddhist stupas in India, and perhaps the most magnificent in South India. It’s believed to be near Dhanyakataka, a capital of a Pallava dynasty (related to the more famous later Pallava dynasty that ruled from Kanchipuram in Tamilnadu). It’s near Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. Very little of the stupa, called a mahacetiya, remains today, except a large brick mound, and a few of the limestone panels that decorated it. In the early 19^th century, Colin Mackenzie rescued some of the panels from a local zamindar, which he then shipped to Calcutta. The best preserved of these were then shipped to the British Museum in London (like the more famous Elgin Marbles). A number of damaged panels called the Eliot Marbles, after Walter Eliot of the Madras Literary Society, were then shifted to the Egmore Museum in Madras by the museum’s founder Edward Balfour.

What's left of the Amaravati Stupa

Remaining panels at the Amaravati Stupa

Amaravati Gallery at Egmore Museum, Madras

Here, verbatim, is Swaminathan’s comments on the Importance and Uniqueness of Amaravati

The art of Amaravati is a treasure for the following reasons:

·         Here we witness the earliest lithic work of any significance in the southern part of the peninsula

·         Even this earliest attempt exhibits an astounding creative maturity, and represents the perfection of the art of sculpture

·         The beginning of Indian classicism is seen here whose thread is to be followed by the Guptas in the North and the Pallavas in the South

·         It is here we see the greatest efflorescence of Buddhist art in the medium of stone

·         There are jatakas that are narrated here have not been handled elsewhere

·         The quintessence of Amaravati art is subtle suggestion, and emphasis through contrast, in depicting the fight of conscience against sin, in showing in the same frame a king who becomes a monk, almost in sutra form

·         The technique used makes even hackneyed theme which has to be repeated is given an artistic twist to make it lively

·         The themes are as many, the decorative element is as diverse, as are the different technical methods adopted render the scenes effectively

·         A synoptic method is adopted for narrating a long Jataka tale in a short compass the Amaravati sculptor has few equals, like narrating the story of Shaddanta

·         The sculptor possessed with masterly knowledge of composition and balance and sequences, and here for the first time lighter and deeper etching, differentiated planes, perspective and distance, and foreshortening are successfully introduced.

·         It is puzzling to find inventiveness of the sculptor who has devised his own way of presentation and the cumulative effect has created a unique language

·         The charm of this effective language has compelled the attention of subsequent schools not only in India but even in faraway places like Java

·         Even the assimilation of foreign elements has been subtle is not blatant as in Gandhara, Mathura and Kushana 

·         The four periods of the Amaravati art, starting with 200 BCE to 250 CE, is not only a long stretch but also is important in the chronology of Indian art tradition

Other related blogs that may interest you

1. The stupa at Vaishali
2. Mandhata– An Amaravati sculpture (in Tamil) மாந்தாதா – ஒரு அமராவதி சிற்பம் 
3. Swaminathan’s Powerpoint Literature
4. Purnagiri
5. Samrat Asoka – book release speeches 
6. History of Amaravati – Kishore Mahadevan & Nalagiri sculpture –Artist Chandru (video) 

Artist Chandru explains a design,
 inspired by a flower, to Prof Swaminathan

The Botany of Mamallapuram

Mamallapuram is famous for its sculptures and monuments of the Pallava era, but its botany is quite interesting.

The native vegetation around ‪Mamallapuram‬ (better known as Mahabalipuram, also called Mallai) is of a category called Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF). This is a special kind of forest found along a narrow strip of the coast of Tamilnadu.

Most evergreens are temperate - this is one in the Tropics!

Most evergreens are in rainforests. This one is *dry*, it only rains a couple of months in these parts. The original vegetation had evolved to absorb moisture from the coastal air in the dry months. These trees never - or rarely - shed leaves. One leaf of a specific tree was marked with ink and it was still on the tree fifteen years later!

Prof Swaminathan remarked in 2010 that Mamallapuram has the only creeper (not tree) of the ficus family that he knows of. There are a few other TDEF along the coast of Tamilnadu.

Other vegetation has invaded these regions though.

Udaykumar, a professor of botany from Presidency college, Madras, explained these during the first THT Site Seminar. In this photo, behind him is a creeper called "yaanaikodi" wrapped around a neem tree. "Yaanaikodi" translates as "Elephant creeper" - it is the only vine strong enough to hold an elephant - usually that needs iron chains.

Yaanaikodi - elephant creeper - யானைக்கொடி

The dwarf palm in the centre of the picture below, called ciRReecal in Tamil, is about 150 years old estimates Udayakumar! You can see several of these in Mallai.

Dwarf palm -  சிற்றீச்சல்

"korai" கோரை

 The tree here is called "eerkolli" which can be translated as "LiceKiller" or "Dandruff killer". It's timber is wonderfully sculptuable, and used to be made into combs with very fine teeth, used to crush lice and eggs of lice in hair, before plastic combs and medical shampoos reduced its popularity.

"LiceKiller" ஈர்கொல்லி மரம்

சோழமண்டல தாழம்பூ

This photo is of the last of the Coromandel Thazhampoo (screw pine?) at Mallai.

Powerpoint Literature

We think of epics, poems, grand novels, perhaps great plays, as literature. The earliest literature was usually oral and set down in writing, after writing was invented. Of the world’s  6000 languages, very few have a script, even fewer boast of written literature, and barely a dozen are classical. The globalizations of paper, and literacy, and most recently, computers, have given rise to new forms of writing, and new versions of literature. 

Detective stories, science fiction, comics, newspaper essays are the great new forms of literature of the last 200 years. Advertisements and roadside banners will someday be stride the worlds of literature and art. In a speech, Tiruppur Krishnan, editor of the magazine AmudhaSurabhi, lauded the Question and Answer section in Tamil magazines as a form of literature.

SMS, blogs and tweets, the latest entrants to the field of writing, are often criticized as ruining the felicity, grammar and spelling of languages; but some are already more famous than most books, poems, plays or speeches.

I propose PowerPoint presentations as a form of literature. Specifically, the works of Swaminathan, retired IIT Delhi professor and founder of the Tamil Heritage Trust.

Most Powerpoints are a slapdash of ideas, themes, photos, doodles, graphs and tables. They are meant to be supplement the speaker, or his message. They seem primarily a business tool or a teaching aid. Rarely are they works of art, to be savored for themselves. This is where I believe Prof Swaminathan’s PowerPoint presentations stand out.

Topic They are about art, language, culture, heritage, history. Not business or technical education.

Structure They have an introduction, a theme, sections, and a flow of narrative.

Purpose They are meant to inspire you to discover what they discuss, perhaps visit the monuments described, or the history narrated or in some way get involved in the subject.

Elegance Photos, words, numbers, tables are presented in an elegant, inherently beautiful way. In the last few years I have learn something about the use of space in an artistic composition, its tone and balance. He uses space superbly and there is an inherent balance to the slides. The choice of colors for the text, the location of a photo, what feature is highlighted, and how each aspect is explained is marvelous. I’ll explain below with images.

Usage Here is the killer touch. Unlike most PowerPoints, you can go through them on your computer, without his assistance or commentary, because they are complete and self-explanatory.

It is in these two aspects, Elegance and Usage, that I believe his presentations transcend the plane of ordinariness and ascend to literature.

Take this slide, from his presentation on Indian Musical Heritage. He has compactly represented the Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni Sa notes with first letters, in upper case. By subtly using lower case letters, he has also shown that there are 12 svaras, not 7 in Carnatic music, 5 of which are considered slight variations. A touch of grace is added by the yellow sketch in the corner.

In a later slide, he explains the Sankara-bharanam raga, uses a piano keyboard layout to show the various svaras of the Sankarabhranam raga.  He compares them to other forms of classical music, namely Ancient Greek, Western Classical, Hindustani, and Ancient Tamil. The yellow sketch in the corner gives a feel of continuity to this theme.

In a presentation on the Pallava cave temple in Rockfort, Tiruchi, he uses other similar sculptures to compare and contrast. The Gangadhara panel in Elephanta is used first, highlighting the position of descending Ganga, devoted Bhageeratha, coy Parvati, and various other Gods. The use of alternating colors in the text and faded background sculpture are typical. The text here is simple and descriptive.

Whereas, the text in this slide is concise and very informative. You are informed that this is the earliest Gangadhara in Tamilnadu. The composition is described as a puzzle. The further slides explain the puzzle.

Another aspect is the effort he takes in preparing very illustrative slides. Take this from Oral Tradition of Sanskrit. The title alone should pique one's curiosity. But the presentation here is well thought out. First the sloka; then the individual letters of the sloka, grouped by verse; then syllables with the letters L & H showing which is Light (laghu) and which is Heavy (guru). This technique brilliantly illustrates the intricacy of candas, i.e. metres of Vedic poems.

From his Story of Scripts, the first series I had the pleasure of attending in 2008, this slide introduces Brahmi and Kharoshti, the two oldest known scripts of Sanskrit. Here he uses a story telling technique: foreshadowing. The gold coin in the upper right corner contains a Kharoshti inscription. The entire border of the slide on all four sides are filled with segments of Brahmi script. Note again the brilliant use of space. The text is sparse and powerful.

As a final example, consider this one. The Brahmi border continues. The background subtly shows the showcased script. The vattezhuthu, which is unfamiliar to most people, is shown letter by letter, with the modern Tamil and Roman characters in corresponding places.

I have merely used the slides in a demonstrative manner. They are best seen and understood, in proper context. Two of his masterpieces are the presentations on Mamallapuram and Ajanta. I have included the PowerShow links to his presentations, but you can login to GMail with 

UserID: mamallai
Password : swaminathan

to download his PPTs.

Email him at sswami99@gmail.com for more information. Or regularly attend our programs. Best of all, catch him in person: this week (November 2014), he will be presenting a lecture on Pudukottai monuments, at 4pm at Tamil Virtual Academy, Kotturpuram, Chennai.

Links to Prof Swaminathan's Powerpoints

1. Mahabalipuram Monuments - Part 1 (Introduction) 
2. Ajanta – An overview
3. Story of scripts – Part 2 Sumerian Cuneiform
4. Sittannavasal monuments 
5. Ajanta - Mahajanaka Jataka

Age of the Mantras - Book discussion by Prof Swaminathan

"Life in Ancient India - Age of the Mantras" is a book written by PT Srinivasa Iyengar, a historian, of whom the general public and a few historians may be unaware.

Prof Swaminathan will discuss this book at 6.45 pm on Wednesday July 17th at Gandhi Centre, Thakkar Bapa Vidyalaya. This hall can be reached from the Venkatnarayana Road entrance to the school.

The Age of the Mantras refers to the earliest time period of the Vedic age.