Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Origin and Meaning of Symbols in Hindu Culture

Project Synopsis
In the history, nothing is born without meaning but many meanings are forgotten over times and what's left is only the subject will little or no reverence.

Symbols are integral part of any religion and same goes for Hinduism, one of the oldest and third most followed religion in the world. But with time much of these symbols were forgotten and those who survived had lost their origin and true meaning to the world.

Even those who have survived this long have started suffocating in the absence of their true meaning and origin. People have started questioning their relevance and discarding them in absence of any satisfactory explanation.

Today much of the knowledge on the subject either resides with few eminent in the field or lie trapped in books at libraries rarely visited.

The basic objective of the project will be to collect these knowledge, organize and map them in such a way that it becomes relevant to questioning minds and answer their queries.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hi HARRY

good reading your proposal ;-) i was surprised by your selection of this topic and i realized -again- how little i know & understand...
SYMBOLS are always very enticing as they contain ESSENCE in smaller/larger dosage in higher or lower sensibilities... i see a connection to ARNAB's approach/proposal on traditional medicine. in HOMEOPATHY for example our superficial common sense is questioned up-side-down by the understanding, that medication is more potent the lower the dosage is- in fact the whole concept builds on the recognition that substance, once relieved from its MATERIAL support (in physical measurements: non-traceable/non-existant) reveals essential powers... -> MATTER
successful application requires however a complimentary deep/complete/integral understanding of the situation/anamnesis to be dealt with.
i suspect that symbols work in a similar way.
and their purpose is not necessarily to be SEEN/EXPOSED. masons kept the most complete once strictly guarded form any simply curious observer...
GOOGLE seems to make all this obsolete. the concept of COMMUNICATION/SHARING has been flattened out -
i wonder if you could find an approach which considers these issues in a productive way-
also coming to mind is the project by prof RANJAN - he showed me his/his wife's book just before leaving: i felt that it would be a great and worthwhile challenge to make the knowledge presented in this book accessible/available/actable to many different people/contexts... that might lead back to the issue of symbols in a deeper/more pragmatic sense ;-)

cheers, andreas