Himalayan Bridge - Softcover
The centrality of the Himalayas as a connecting point or perhaps a sacred core for the Asian continent and its civilisations has captivated every explorer and scholar. The Himalaya is the meeting point of two geotectonic plates, three biogeographical realms, two ancient civilisations, two different language streams and six religions. This book is about the determinant factors which are at work in the Himalayas in the context of what it constitutes in terms of its spatiality, legends and myths, religious beliefs, rituals and traditions. The book would suggest that there is no single way for understanding the Himalayas. There are layers of structures, imposition and superimposition of human history, religious traits and beliefs that continue to shape the Asian dynamics. An understanding of the ultimate union of the Himalayas, its confluences and its bridging role is essential for Asian balance. This book is a collaborative effort of an internationally acclaimed linguist, a diplomat-cum-geopolitician and a young Asianist. The book provides countless themes that will be intellectually stimulating to scholars and students with varied interests.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Editors
Niraj Kumar is the author of a magnum opus on Asian Integration--Arise Asia: Respond to White Peril (2002). His recent works include Sriyantra and Geophilosophy of India (2014), Asia in Post-Western Age (2014) and Rainbow of Indian Civilization (2015). He received initiation from Swami RanganathanandajiMaharaj of the Ramakrishna Mission in 1992 and is associated with the Society for Asian Integration (SAI).
George van Driem is the Director of the Linguistics Institute at the University of Bern in Switzerland, where he holds the Chair of Historical Linguistics. He has conducted field research in Bhutan, Nepal, northeastern India and the western Indian Himalayas since 1983. In 2001, he produced the first major ethnolinguistic synthesis of the Greater Himalayan region--extending from Central and South Asia to Southeast and East Asia--Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language (2 vols). Nowadays, he is working on the Asian populations' prehistory in collaboration with linguists and population geneticists in order to finally reconstruct the prehistory of the human population.
Ambassador Phunchok Stobdan is a distinguished academician, diplomat, national security expert and Senior Fellow at IDSA. Ambassador Stobdan is a specialist on Asian affairs covering Central Asia and Inner Asia--including Xinjiang, Tibet, Myanmar and the Himalayan region. He served in Central Asia twice: first, as Director at the Embassy of India, Almaty (1999 and 2002) and then as the Ambassador at the Embassy of India, Bishkek (2010-2012). He has also served as Joint Director in the Indian National Security Council. He has established the Ladakh International Centre (LIC) at Leh to promote research on Himalayas.
Review:
Niraj Kumar is the author of a magnum opus on Asian Integration--Arise Asia: Respond to White Peril (2002). His recent works include Sriyantra and Geophilosophy of India (2014), Asia in Post-Western Age (2014) and Rainbow of Indian Civilization (2015). He received initiation from Swami RanganathanandajiMaharaj of the Ramakrishna Mission in 1992 and is associated with the Society for Asian Integration (SAI).
George van Driem is the Director of the Linguistics Institute at the University of Bern in Switzerland, where he holds the Chair of Historical Linguistics. He has conducted field research in Bhutan, Nepal, northeastern India and the western Indian Himalayas since 1983. In 2001, he produced the first major ethnolinguistic synthesis of the Greater Himalayan region--extending from Central and South Asia to Southeast and East Asia--Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language (2 vols). Nowadays, he is working on the Asian populations' prehistory in collaboration with linguists and population geneticists in order to finally reconstruct the prehistory of the human population.
Ambassador Phunchok Stobdan is a distinguished academician, diplomat, national security expert and Senior Fellow at IDSA. Ambassador Stobdan is a specialist on Asian affairs covering Central Asia and Inner Asia--including Xinjiang, Tibet, Myanmar and the Himalayan region. He served in Central Asia twice: first, as Director at the Embassy of India, Almaty (1999 and 2002) and then as the Ambassador at the Embassy of India, Bishkek (2010-2012). He has also served as Joint Director in the Indian National Security Council. He has established the Ladakh International Centre (LIC) at Leh to promote research on Himalayas.
More Than Just a Mountain SpreadBy Priyadarshi Dutta
The Himalayas are more than a formidable mountain range. They constitute a spiritual, cultural, geological, geopolitical, botanical, zoological, ethnological, linguistic and an artistic phenomenon. The Himalayas have a perennial character that belongs to entire India--it is at once unapproachable yet universal. Physicist and botanist Sir J C Bose used to wonder during his childhood from where the Ganga descended. The intuitive reply he got was that from the locked hair of Lord Shiva. As a grown-up man, Sir Bose ventured into Uttarakhand to discover the source of the Ganga. What he saw at Nandadevi and Trishul massif was a supernal site of the glaciers. He understood the metaphorical truth of the river descending from the locked hair of Lord Shiva. He went as a scientist, returned as a seer. That is the magic of the Himalayas.
The Himalayas have loomed over the Indians since time immemorial. But they became a subject of exploration, expedition and documentation since the British times. It is indeed a challenging task to quantify all aspects of the mountain range. But Himalayan Bridge, edited by Niraj Kumar, George van Driem and Ambassador P Stobdan, is an appreciable enterprise. The cover shows a stylised ford with a ball rolling over it. The ball shows Indian and Chinese standards in yin-yang mode. The Himalayas are indeed hedged between two great political powers, fortunately not culturally incompatible.It features 24 essays divided into five segments contributed by experts on various subjects. His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa's essay traces the legacy of the ancient Vajrayana master Naropa in the Himalayan region. Renowned linguistic van Driem shows how the eastern Himalayas have served as a cradle for ethnogenesis of a number of major language families like Uralo-Siberian and East Asian languages. The essay by late Pema Dorjee, the renowned Tibetan physicist, describes Sowa Rigpa, the traditional system of medicine, in the Himalayas.
Nitin A Gokhale, strategic affairs writer, tells why Siachen is so vital to India's security. Niraj Kumar and Chingngaih Biak discover a pattern in textile, text, terracing and territoriality of the eastern Himalayas to weave Pan-Himalayan identity. The costume patterns become a figure of thought. Prof. Jyoti Prakash Tamang demonstrates how the food culture of the Himalayas is unique, rather a blend of soybean-alcohol-consuming Chinese culture from the north and milk-vegetable-eating Hindu culture from the south. Namrata Neog documents various challenges to the tradition of Kangra miniature paintings. While the Vaishnavite dance form of Manipur is considered classic, Sinam Basu Singh describes a host of pre-Vaishnavite dance forms and post-Vaishnavite derivatives.
Namrata Goswami has tracked the drug and arms flow in the volatile eastern Himalayan region. Tsering Choldan's essay on the Buddhist identity politics in democratised Nepal makes an interesting reading on a less-known subject.
Stobdan's essay delineates the scope for cooperation between India and China in the Himalayan region. Akhilesh Suman, in a similar vein, feels that attempts to find military solutions to politico-territorial problems in the region would be futile. ...
In the concluding chapter, Swami Paranand Tirth has delved into the sacred geography. He describes the mythological and esoteric significance of a number of Himalayan peaks. The western knowledge production, as J C Bose says, follows a categorisation approach. The knowledge, compartmentalised, is pursued ad infinitum. Thus there is eternal pursuit (sadhana) but no realisation (siddhi) of the integral truth. But this book with its integrated approach has not lost sight of siddhi while doing diligent sadhana.
Source: newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/books/More-Than-Just-a-Mountain-Spread/2016/02/13/article3272255.ece
The Himalayas are more than a formidable mountain range. They constitute a spiritual, cultural, geological, geopolitical, botanical, zoological, ethnological, linguistic and an artistic phenomenon. The Himalayas have a perennial character that belongs to entire India--it is at once unapproachable yet universal. Physicist and botanist Sir J C Bose used to wonder during his childhood from where the Ganga descended. The intuitive reply he got was that from the locked hair of Lord Shiva. As a grown-up man, Sir Bose ventured into Uttarakhand to discover the source of the Ganga. What he saw at Nandadevi and Trishul massif was a supernal site of the glaciers. He understood the metaphorical truth of the river descending from the locked hair of Lord Shiva. He went as a scientist, returned as a seer. That is the magic of the Himalayas.
The Himalayas have loomed over the Indians since time immemorial. But they became a subject of exploration, expedition and documentation since the British times. It is indeed a challenging task to quantify all aspects of the mountain range. But Himalayan Bridge, edited by Niraj Kumar, George van Driem and Ambassador P Stobdan, is an appreciable enterprise. The cover shows a stylised ford with a ball rolling over it. The ball shows Indian and Chinese standards in yin-yang mode. The Himalayas are indeed hedged between two great political powers, fortunately not culturally incompatible.It features 24 essays divided into five segments contributed by experts on various subjects. His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa's essay traces the legacy of the ancient Vajrayana master Naropa in the Himalayan region. Renowned linguistic van Driem shows how the eastern Himalayas have served as a cradle for ethnogenesis of a number of major language families like Uralo-Siberian and East Asian languages. The essay by late Pema Dorjee, the renowned Tibetan physicist, describes Sowa Rigpa, the traditional system of medicine, in the Himalayas.
Nitin A Gokhale, strategic affairs writer, tells why Siachen is so vital to India's security. Niraj Kumar and Chingngaih Biak discover a pattern in textile, text, terracing and territoriality of the eastern Himalayas to weave Pan-Himalayan identity. The costume patterns become a figure of thought. Prof. Jyoti Prakash Tamang demonstrates how the food culture of the Himalayas is unique, rather a blend of soybean-alcohol-consuming Chinese culture from the north and milk-vegetable-eating Hindu culture from the south. Namrata Neog documents various challenges to the tradition of Kangra miniature paintings. While the Vaishnavite dance form of Manipur is considered classic, Sinam Basu Singh describes a host of pre-Vaishnavite dance forms and post-Vaishnavite derivatives.
Namrata Goswami has tracked the drug and arms flow in the volatile eastern Himalayan region. Tsering Choldan's essay on the Buddhist identity politics in democratised Nepal makes an interesting reading on a less-known subject.
Stobdan's essay delineates the scope for cooperation between India and China in the Himalayan region. Akhilesh Suman, in a similar vein, feels that attempts to find military solutions to politico-territorial problems in the region would be futile. ...
In the concluding chapter, Swami Paranand Tirth has delved into the sacred geography. He describes the mythological and esoteric significance of a number of Himalayan peaks. The western knowledge production, as J C Bose says, follows a categorisation approach. The knowledge, compartmentalised, is pursued ad infinitum. Thus there is eternal pursuit (sadhana) but no realisation (siddhi) of the integral truth. But this book with its integrated approach has not lost sight of siddhi while doing diligent sadhana.
Source: newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/books/More-Than-Just-a-Mountain-Spread/2016/02/13/article3272255.ece
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherK W Publishers Pvt Ltd
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 9383649712
- ISBN 13 9789383649716
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages454
- EditorKumar Niraj, Driem George Van, Stobdan Phunchok
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