HPI, November 14, 2006

November 15, 2006

Hare Krishna,

November 14, 2006

Maharashtra Government Proposes to Take Over Religious Shrines

British Royal Academy Honors Chola Dynasty Bronze Sculptures Including Lord Siva Nataraja

Ancient Crash, Epic Wave and Flood Mythology

1. Maharashtra Government Proposes to Take Over Religious Shrines

MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, November 13, 2006: The Maharashtra government is proposing legislation which will empower the state to take over all religious shrines. If the legislation is enacted it will place all Hindu, Jain, Christian and Buddhist shrines under government control. The law, however, makes no mention of Aukaf land (Muslim religious bequests) which are located all over the state.The intended purpose of the proposal, according to the government, is to curb corruption at the temples. At the present time, some shrines are under government control from which the state is getting two per cent of the total income. In the new bill the provision is made to take 12 to 15 per cent of the total income. According to senior government officials, the proposed legislation will add approximately US$890,000 in yearly revenues to the government. In Mumbai alone, there are 60,000 - 70,000 religious shrines. Most of these are involved in various controversies

and more than 75,000 litigations related to them are pending with the Charity Commissioner's office. The officials feel that this particular legislation will reduce the litigations and will provide a way out of the long pending problems.

2. British Royal Academy Honors Chola Dynasty Bronze Sculptures Including Lord Siva Nataraja

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, November 7, 2006: The Royal Academy is honored to host more than 40 sculptural Indian art pieces on display until February 25, 2007. Loaned from international institutions such as India's National Museum in Delhi and the Government Museum in Chennai as well as from private collections, the exhibition features bronze sculptures from the Chola Dynasty. "The Cholas were a Tamil dynasty that emerged in the ninth century after the capture of Thanjavur - located in the present-day state of Tamil Nadu - in 850 and ruled for the next 400 years. During their reigns, the Chola kings controlled much of southern India, extending as far as the islands of Sri Lanka, the Maldives and parts of Indonesia," the news release explained. A Royal Academy representative said, "The exhibition will show UK art lovers for the first time that the Cholas were great patrons of the arts, who oversaw an extensive program of temple construction. " Tickets for the

exhibition can be purchased online here.

3. Ancient Crash, Epic Wave and Flood Mythology

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, November 14, 2006: At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan - approximately 23 square miles - with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high - 319 meters. On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction -- toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface. The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world's population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The

wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land. Scientists in the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say the evidence for such impacts during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to one million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.About 900 miles southeast from the Madagascar chevrons, in deep ocean, is Burckle crater, which Dr. Abbott, an adjunct research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N. Y., discovered last year. Although its sediments have not been directly sampled, cores from the area contain high levels of nickel and magnetic components associated with impact ejecta. Burckle crater has not been dated, but Dr. Abbott estimates that it is 4,500 to 5,000 years old. It would be a great help

to the cause if the National Science Foundation sent a ship equipped with modern acoustic equipment to take a closer look at Burckle, said Dr. Ryan, a marine geologist at the Lamont Observatory. "If it had clear impact features, the nonbelievers would believe," he said. But they might have more trouble believing one of the scientists, Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He thinks he can say precisely when the comet fell: on the morning of May 10, 2807 B. C. Dr. Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions. Among other evidence, he said, 14 flood myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C. Half the myths talk of a torrential downpour, Dr. Masse said. A third talk of a tsunami. Worldwide they describe hurricane force winds and

darkness during the storm. All of these could come from a mega-tsunami. Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, Dr. Masse said, "and we're not there yet."

Daily Inspiration

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