November 2008 Archives

There it is. The Taj Mahal. A building much talked about, and within the dreams of many travelers who wish to one day lay their eyes upon this sight. For its beauty, splendor, waste, and perhaps even a sort of love as well.

Recently, I saw a rather great program on PBS about the Taj, where experts explained away the Surahs on the buildings what the meant and why. All rather amazing, and all rather different than I had once imagined.

Previously, I was led to believe that the structure was a massive tomb for Shah Jahan's wife. However, the building may have served dual purposes. The second purpose less well known, although not verified was that the massive structure and the surrounding gardens were a model of the thrown of the seat of god, a virtual heaven on earth, by which devout Muslims might realize the world beyond.

This connected quite well to a manuscript Shah Jahan's father held detailing the perceived afterlife heaven, while the Shah's father was rather devoid of religious fervor the Shah was quite the opposite, thus making it at least likely that the Shah at some point in his life saw the manuscript, and then in later life perhaps connected it to the massive palace structure.

Throughout the buildings that encompass the immensity of the Taj there are Surahs written all over the building, as in Islamic practice no images of Allah are permitted, besides a strong aversion to any religious images, thus was born many years before the Taj the artistic calligraphy in Arabic, which survives in all its beauty today.

The last Surah that one sees before venturing into the garden's is the Al Fajr Surah 89. The Dawn, Daybreak. This Surah is especially liberal considering, and you can read it here at Muslim Access. The Surah is assuring in that it promosises the viewer that if they live a good life, then they will be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven. One of the most positive verses you may ever read, or perhaps even understand from the Qur'an, of which much is very difficult to understand in Arabic or in English.

Islam in India has always been quite a mix. In my next entry I plan to write a little about the Sufi Muslims just to give you a taste of what it is all about, a rather interesting little tidbit of information to know when traveling to India. I wish I could make it there, even in light of the recent attacks from Pakistan.

(Image courtesy Wikipedia Wikimedia Commons. )

Victor Huliganov explains about Prepositional Stranding

In case you were wondering I've put an embedded map so both you and I can await the results of the election...

I've been so lost recently in my school work. I've learned quite a bit this semester, and gained an untold amount of information about a lot of things that interest me.

I've been battling stress and sickness within my stomach quite literally. I've had a lot of stomach pain, which I have not been able to completely solve, but the use of bacteria cultures has helped.

I've learned more and more about linguistics in my online linguistics course. However, the professor seems to be involved in his own work and research, without concern for what his students should be learning, but perhaps I am wrong. If that is that case he certainly could learn to listen to his students, and be more attentive to the fact that there are lots of things missing from the text, because it lacks a concise nature to it, besides being a sort of novel text that I don't enjoy reading.

In my political science course I have been focusing a great deal of time on reading many many pages worth of material about International Relations theory, and it is really fascinating, but I can tell that as much as it fascinates me it is not something that I would want to study all the time. My Spanish course is going well, and I'm satisfied with the small amount I've learned in the course, although I generally tend to refer to it as the "Gran repaso" (big review).

On another note, the reason for which I am writing this blog is to write about some interesting things I learned in my Mesoamerican Archaeology class. The professor is quite good at sharing the stories that are known etc. etc. I really like stories and anything that sheds light on peoples that lived not so long ago, but seem so foreign and mystical to me. I've always been so enamored with these cultures that are so radically differet, yet so adept in some ways to things that our modern world cannot comprehend.

The view of time is one of the essentially different characteristics between the Mesoamerican view and the view of today. It is understandable that each culture has an essentially different paradigm into how time is percieved and happens to pass. For the mesoamerican cultures the Mayans and Aztecs it worked with the nromal 360 days calendar minus a few days, and then a ritual calendar with 260 calendar days. The 260 day calendar was the centerpiece of religion, and it was tied to nature with animal symbols. The day a child was born was pivotal in the traits the child would have later in life, it was so telling that even when the child was born, they would delay the birth day ceremonies until a better day passed, meaning that the official birth date would be on the most auspicious day.

These customs extended also to fear that the world would end. According to belief the world had been created and destroyed 4 times. The destruction was all encompassing. Disaster struck with giant jaguars eating everyone up, floods, and other miscellanous tortures abruptly ending the last era. In the current world the 5th world it was foretold that it would ending with earthquakes and then creatures from the sky that would devour anything that lived after the giant quakes. The image above depicts this. At the center you can see the 5th and present era represented with the 4 previous eras depicted upper and lower to the center era, and symbols representing how these eras ended.

But for the Mexica people, also know as the Aztecs, the end of the world was not certain. People could influence it through their actions, mostly to the gods, and mostly through sacrifice and sacrificial blood letting. Every 52 years when the two calendars aligned all the fires within the city/village were extinguished. On this day world's end was within sight. They chose a man to sacrifice, and led him to a cave. The man was of course sacrified his internal organs removed and opened his chest cavity. If the people could start a fire within the empty cavity, then the world would not end, but if they could not then the end of the world was certain.

Well, I've finally written something so I hope you enjoyed it. I'll be back to writing once again when things slow down. Probably around December. If there are enough interesting things out there, then I will try to write a few blogs in advance to prevent deficiency in the Spring semester.