108 and its Significance

I have always been fascinated by people obsessed with few numbers and letting those numbers dominate their life. I remember one of the richest guy in my locality was obsessed with the number 9, he had fleet of car and some vans and buses all had the same number 9999 or something which sums up to 9. May be I am fascinated with the number themselves than the obsessed people, this fascination guided me into Numerology and related things.

There are few Numbers we come across very often, like 786,666,108, and so on...

I already have dedicated 2 of my posts for 666(Antichrist and Beast and its beauty) , so thought of writing about something else, Number 108, very popular in Oriental religions, like Hinduism , Buddhism, Jainism, etc.

This number as such is mainly cardinal count of Upanishads, or the count of rosary beads in the japamala. Today we will look into the other things regarding this mysterious oriental number.

In Hinduism there are(were actually) two major divisions, shaivism and vaishnavism, this number has been of importance in both the partitions equally. In shaivism, Lord Nataraja(shiva) is the cosmic dancer and according to Natyashastra there are about 108 karanas (karanas are dance units) we can find this relation in the popular Chidambaram temple in TN. For Vaishnavas it is the number of gopis lord Krishna danced with.

It is said that there are 108 marmas (energy points) where the nadis passes through and gives prana, a person is alive because prana flows through these marmas. Marmas can also be imagined as the intersection of ethereal body and the physical body where the prana flows into the living beings. This is in line with the practice of acupuncture, which also talks about 108 pressure points. There are 108 energy lines passing through the Anahata (heart chakra).

Mathematical beauty

1*2*2*3*3*3 = 108

Also

2 sin(108/2) = golden ratio

6*6+6*6+6*6 = 108

108 is said to be the distance between ourself to the inner god and that is the reason yogis do 108 surya namaskara. This is the same reason why mantras are chanted 108 times. For the same reason, the rosary has 108 beads, with each bead we move one step closer to god.

There are 108 pithas (pilgrim centres) in india, just like the 108 energy centres in our body.

There are 108 sacred stars in Chinese astrology. In Indian astrology there are 27 nakshatra which when multiplied with 4 padas (quarters) gives 108. One more interesting thing is there are 12 houses in astrology and 9 planets travel through these houses, the product of these two numbers is also 108.

There are said to be 108 desires and delusions humans have to overcome to have self-realization. There are 54 alphabets in Sanskrit, each having sakthi and shiva part (male and female part with them) which comes to 108. In similar lines there are 54 intersecting points on sri yantra, which again represent male and female, so which again gets the count as 108, after doubling the number 54.

In Indian numerology 1 represents the supreme one, the god etc... 0 represents emptiness and 8 represents infinity or eternal. So 108 represents the universe completely. The diameter of the sun multiplied by the sacred number 108 gives the distance between the sun and earth. This could also be the reason for 108 surya namaskara.

According to Tantra, there are about 21,600 breaths per day, of which 10800 are solar breaths and 10800 are lunar breaths.

In Jainism there are 5 categories of holy men , they have the following numbers of virtues, 12, 8, 36, 25, 27, which sum up to again 108.

So these are some of the places where we find the number 108 in eastern civilization.

Thugees

This post was supposed to be about Zeus but to sticking to a topic only leads to boredom. So today we will see about thugs. a killer cult in india during the british raaj. Thug is synonymous to theif or a cheat. The etymology of the word has its root in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit word sthag (scoundrel) is the root for the word thug.
Today the word has been imported to English dictionary through the British raaj in India.
It could mean,

Thug, (ठग), a member of the defunct Indian cult Thuggee
Thug, slang for a gangster, a petty thief, or a minor villain, deriving from the above cult
Thug, a gardening term meaning an over-vigorous plant that spreads excessively.

But the Thugees were(are) not minor villain. Nowadays however the number of Thugees are very few. They are the ones who cheat the travelers. They befriend the travelers and poison them and loot their property. However they may seem to be benign today, but this was not the case always. In the past they were a network of robbers who killed people and looted the possessions. Killings was even more important than robbery for them.
They had their own ritual and most important part of the killings is that there should not be any bloodshed, so they used to strangle the victim to death. They used a yellow rumaal (handkerchief) with a coin tied to it….

Modus operandi

Thuggee groups practiced large-scale robbery and murder of travellers. Their modus operandi was to befriend unsuspecting travellers and win their trust; when the travellers allowed the thugs to join and walk with them (sometimes for hundreds of miles), the group of thugs killed them at a suitable place and time before robbing them. Their method of killing was very often strangulation throwing a yellow scarf or Rumaal around the neck. Usually two or three thugs were used to strangle one traveller. Because they used strangulation as the method of murder they were also frequently called "Phansigars", or "noose-operators." The thugs hid the corpses, often by burying them or by throwing them into wells.

Thuggee groups consisted of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims though their patron was the Hindu Goddess Kali whom they often called Bhawani. Some historians classify the thugs as a cult or sect.

Thugs killed their victims usually in darkness while the thugs made music or noise to escape discovery. Each member of the group had its own function, like luring travellers with charming words or that of guardians to prevent escape of victims while the killing took place. The leader of a gang was called jamaadaar.

Origin and recruitment

The earliest authenticated mention of the Thugs is found in the following passage of Ziau-d din Barni's History of Firoz Shah (written about 1356):

In the reign of that sultan (about 1290), some Thugs were taken in Delhi, and a man belonging to that fraternity was the means of about a thousand being captured. But not one of these did the sultan have killed. He gave orders for them to be put into boats and to be conveyed into the lower country, to the neighbourhood of Lakhnauti, where they were to be set free. The Thugs would thus have to dwell about Lakhnauti and would not trouble the neighbourhood of Delhi any more." (Sir HM Elliot's History of India, iii. 141).

Though they themselves trace their origin to seven Muslim tribes, the Hindu followers only seem to be related during the early periods of Islamic development; at any rate, their religious creed and staunch worship of Kali, one of the Hindu Tantric Goddesses, showed no Islamic influence. The practice of Thuggee was categorically stamped out by the British by the early 19th century. It should be noted that even at the time, a very small minority of the followers of Kali were Thuggees, whereas the majority of followers did not share the Thuggee viewpoint.

Induction was sometimes passed from father to son; the leaders of the thug groups tended to come from these hereditary lines. Sometimes the thugs did not kill the young children of the travellers and groomed them to become thugs themselves. Some men became thugs to escape great poverty. A fourth way of becoming a thug was by learning it from a guru.


Beliefs and practices

The murdering was done according to certain ancient and rigidly prescribed forms, and after the performance of special religious rites, in which the consecration of the pickaxe and the sacrifice of jaggery or gur formed a prominent part. The pickaxe was a necessary tool to dig graves.

According to 19th century writings about Thuggee, the will of the goddess by whose command and in whose honour they followed their calling was revealed to them through a very complicated system of omens. When the deed was done, rites were performed in the deity's honour, and a significant portion of the spoils was set apart for Her.

Number of victims


A group of thugs, ca. 1863

Estimates of the total number of victims depend heavily on the estimated length of existence of the thugs for which there are no reliable sources. According to the Guinness Book of Records the Thuggee cult was responsible for approximately 2,000,000 deaths. The British historian Dr. Mike Dash estimated that they killed 50,000 persons in total, based on his assumption that they only started to exist 150 years before their eradication in the 1830s.

Yearly figures for the early 19th century are better documented, but even they are inaccurate estimates. For example, gang leader Behram has often been considered to be the world's most prolific serial killer with 931 killings between 1790 and 1830 attributed to him. Reference to contemporary manuscript sources, however, shows that Behram actually gave inconsistent statements regarding the number of murders he had committed, and that while he did state that he had "been present at" 931 killings committed by his gang of 25 to 50 men, elsewhere he admitted that he had personally strangled around 125 people. Having turned King's Evidence and agreed to inform on his former companions, furthermore, Behram never stood trial for any of the killings attributed to him, the total of which must thus remain a matter of dispute.

British destruction of the secret society


Maps showing the possessions of the British East India Company in 1765 and 1805

The Thuggee cult was suppressed by the British rulers of India in the 1830s, due largely to the efforts of the civil servant William Sleeman, who started an extensive campaign involving profiling and intelligence. A police organisation known as the 'Thuggee and Dacoity Department' was established within the Government of India, with William Sleeman appointed Superintendent of the department in 1835. Thousands of men were either put in prison, executed, or expelled from British India.The campaign was heavily based on informants recruited from captured thugs who were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew. By the 1870s, the Thug cult was extinct, but the concept of 'criminal tribes' and 'criminal castes' is still in use in India. The Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by the Central Criminal Intelligence Department. The defeat of the Thuggees played a part in securing Indian loyalty to the British Raj.

Previous attempts at prosecuting and eliminating the thugs had been largely unsuccessful due to the lack of evidence for their crimes. The thugs' modus operandi yielded very little evidence: no witnesses, no weapons, and no corpses. Besides, the thugs usually made no confessions when captured. Another main reason was the fact that thug groups did not act locally, but all over the Indian subcontinent, including territories that did not belong to British India in combination with the fact that there was then no centralised criminal intelligence agency, but only local, often corrupt police.

Possible misinterpretation of Thuggee by the British

In her book The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India (2002), Martine van Woerkens suggests that evidence for the existence of a Thuggee cult in the 19th century was in part the product of "colonial imaginings" — British fear of the little-known interior of India and limited understanding of the religious and social practices of its inhabitants.


Thugs today

Many people believe that thugs still operate on the train routes near Mugal sarai and Varanasi but no evidence and they are not murderous now.

Aghori Sadhus

What kind of feelings does the word cannibalism arouses? Well most of us would get disgusted, but there are people who follow cannibalism in India even now.

India land of oldest society, oldest civilization, but all this time in the Indian history there was a sect dedicated to Shiva was involved in cannibalism and other very crude animal behavior. The aghori or aghouri sect has its origin in ancient Vedic system, even though these people don’t follow the main stream Vedic system but the root is the same. The word aghori in Sanskrit means non terrifying, ‘a’-‘ghori’ most of the Hindi speaking people would have heard the phrase ghor kaliyug, ghor paap, etc.. it is the same ghor, theoretically these people don’t attach themselves to anything mortal. They do things which a common man finds to be terrifying, so they overcome this terror by going through it, since they do it regularly it is a common thing for them.

In Hinduism, “there is no evil, everything is emanated from ‘Brahman’, so how could anything in this universe be impure”? this is the kind of philosophy the aghori babas follow. According to them anything in this universe is the manifestation of god itself, so everything is as pure as god and is god like, so abandoning anything is like abandoning god itself.

The aghori mainly worship lord Shiva, according to the sect every human is a ‘shava’(dead body) with emotions and they should try to become ‘Shiva’ by denying the human pleasures and involving in the aghori rituals.

Ghauri Shankar Mishra an aghori drinking liquor in a kapala(skull cup).

The root of aghoris are as old as Hinduism itself, but the sect in its present form has its origin in Kinaram, he was an aghori ascetic and lived for about 150yrs. He was believed to be the incarnation of lord Shiva. He attained many siddhis through tapas and rituals and then helped the people with his siddhis. There is a temple in Varanasi for this baba and is the most sacred for the aghoris. Some also trace the root to Dattatreya.

Bhola Giri Naga Baba blowing the Nagaphani.

The aghori is a human symbol of lord Shiva himself. The aghori lives in cemetery (shmashana), the living place for lord Shiva, this is the representation that the final abode for everyone is the cemetery. And many of the aghoris roam around naked, representing the true humans and their detachment from this world of mortals who live in the world of illusion. By this they transcend beyond human feelings of love, hatred, jealousy, pride etc..

There are many aghoris walking the streets of northern India with kapala(skull cup). These aghoris eat anything, when I said anything, it really meant anything like rotten food, food from the dumps, the animal faeces, animal urine.. etc they regularly perform rites(some are so crude that it cant be explained here) to attain the highest level in aghoratva, the enlightenment. The final part of the ritual requires a minimum of one eating of putrid human flesh, and also meditating on(sitting) the dead corpse. This is the symbolic of their rise from shava to Shiva. They follow the simple rule that the universe resides in them and they try to attain enlightenment by self realization.

As the ascetic advance in his search, he attains many siddhis. Slowly they gain control over the environment. They seem to posses powers to cause a rain or to stop one. This is disturbing but this is true, even though they possess this kind of powers they will not use it, for the basic rule of aghori itself is to deny human pleasure so the change in climate is an event which should happen on its own. Whatever the ascetic says happens, I have met people who have had direct relation with the ascetic, and I cannot question the veracity of the datas. It is also said that when he curses someone, every wish of the person comes true.

There have been many aghoris in the past. Some of them being Dattatreya, Kinaram, Tailanga swamy, Aghoreshwar Mahaprabhu Baba Bhagwan Ram.

Some stories

Tailanga swami

Tailanga Swami of Benaras was a very powerful Aghori, and perhaps the
only one who performed worship of Shiva at the Kashi Vishwanath
temple using his own filth. And Tailanga Swami could do so because he
had full realization that filth is as much a part of the Universal
Soul as roses, holy water etc. The priest who saw Tailanga Swami
doing such "dirty things" slapped him and ordered him out. But at the
same night, Shiva appeared in a dream to the king of Benaras and told
the king about his anger since someone insulted Tailanga Swami, who's
Shiva's very essence. The King then set out to find the priest and
punish him, but the priest was mysteriously found dead.

Dhuni wale baba

This refers to an incident which a man narrated to Ambar joshi about an Aghori Baba who lived in Burhanpur (near Khandwa,MP).This is what he narrated---There used to be an old Baba .People used to call him Dhuni wale baba. Now there is a samadhi of Dhune wale bab in Khandwa whre people still throng in large numbers to worship him.He used to stay ther and roamed the adjoining areas ,use to eat whatever came his way- rotten food or thrown away food .He used to utter obscenities if anyone talked to him or disturbed him even while he seemed to be doing nothing. He used to stare into the sky for hours and talk to himself. One day i saw a person come up to him and touch his feet and ask him to bless his daughter who had not been married in spite of their best efforts. The Baba uttered obscenities on him. Cursed his mother and family members and said that his daughter would go to hell. Then the man went away contented and after three days he came with some sweets and gave to the Baba who again uttered obscenities on him. I intercepted him on the way back and asked him why he respected a useless mad old man. The man remarked he is a great Baba and has cured many peoples problems. If he curses you then your problem is bound to get solved. Aghori Babas are like that he said and offered me a piece of burfi(An Indian sweet)which I gladly ate. Then I saw many other instances when the Baba uttered obscenities, people used to still go behind him even while he used to answer the call of nature. He used to throw his faeces all over people who came behind him and they used to collect it and take home as prasad.(holy).

Maldevata incident taken from ‘The Week’

Maldevta is a popular picnic spot near Dehra Dun. Thirst overtook us while trekking to Maldevta and we decided to ask for some water at a small thatched hut about a eight hundred scrubby hundred yards from the canal we were following. A dusky, well built man wearing a skimpy loin cloth emerged from the dark interior of the hut. Why, of course, we could have water, he answered. He didn't have that much left, just a couple of glasses, as he'd just finished cooking, but we were most welcome to it. Was this his permanent residence, we asked him conversationally? Oh no, he had no fixed place of stay. There was a cremation ground just a stone's thrown away, and he'd built this hut as he had been waiting for a lawaris body (homeless person's body which is generally cremated by a philanthropic organization or trust). As luck would have it, after waiting for some three months, such a body had arrived just yesterday, and he'd been able, in exchange for a good luck charm, to obtain the head of the dead man. In fact, he'd almost run out of water as he had used most of it for cooking the dead man's brain with some rice.

He brought out a blackened pot and showed us the contents. He'd already had one portion of it, and would have to space out eating the cooked brain and rice over the next three days. Repelled, chilled, yet curious, we asked him who he was. He was an aghori, he said, and Calcutta was his birthplace. After early initiation when he was just nine years old into Tantric Kali worship, he'd moved into other deeper sadhnas (disciplines), but always, it was with the forces of the dark. The rules and demands of the search for power in which he was now engaged ordained that he had to eat at least one human brain annually. Already, he had acquired the ability of divining the future. He could actually show us our future, in case we were interested. Why didn't we come in?

Fascinated yet afraid that at this isolated spot we might end up becoming his annual meal, we left somewhat hastily, forgetting all our lessons in politeness. Over the next few days, I couldn't get the aghori out of my mind. When a brigadier and his wife came to seek a reading from the cards as they were in deep trouble with a court martial looming on the horizon, it gave me the opportunity to go back to the aghori, with the anxious brigadier and his wife in tow. After all, he had said he could show one the future. What better way of testing the claim ? He was still there, at the peak of his powers, he informed us, as he'd recently consumed the human brain. This time, we entered his hut and our eyes soon became accustomed to the dimness. The aghori requested us to sit, and as we sat cross-legged on the earthern floor, placed a lota (container) of water before us. "Look into the water" he commanded. And in the water, we saw the brigadier, older, dressed in civilian clothes. After several sequences, we saw the brigadier with the Supreme Court clearly visible in the background, and he was wearing a dark blue suit and distributing sweets to a group of people who were with him.

Some months after this amazing incident, the brigadier wanted to take a friend to meet the aghori, but when we reached there we found the hut in a sad state : it was just a bundle of grass and straw and twigs strewn on the ground. Enquiries at the cremation ground revealed that the aghori had been driven away by irate residents of Raipur, a nearby suburb. Seven years passed with only occasional meetings with the brigadier, who was no longer in active service and was fighting his case in the civil courts. One day I received a message from him. The Supreme Court was to give the verdict on his case. And when I went on the appointed day, apart from other settings, there, outside the imposing Supreme Court building, was the Brigadier, dressed in a dark blue suit, distributing sweets just as he had been seven years ago in the lota of water the cannibal aghori had placed before us.

Philosophy behind this: Aghoris are indifferent to everything. For them there is nothing good ,ideal or bad. Everything that exists in this world is essentially made up of same thing. Hence they utter obscenities, may take liqour, eat Dead human flesh and do other things which might appear to be 'uncivilised' to us.

We should respect the way chosen by these people for enlightenment. After all lord shiva is also an aghori, yes it was his another name. Many people think that aghori babas kill humans for their rituals, but there is no strong evidence for this. Since this sect has most of its rites and rituals a secret, we don’t have exact number of aghoris present in India, but you can always find few aghoris in the Kinaram aghori temple in Varanasi.

why should we be proud of india?

Facts About Ancient India:

• It is the only society in the world which has never known slavery.

• India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.

• The World's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda(later destroyed by mogul emperors and we lost most of the scientific knowledge we had) built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

• Sanskrit is considered the mother of all higher languages. Sanskrit is the most precise, and therefore suitable language for computer software - a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987.

• Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in our civilization. It is the only system which takes the holistic view of the person being treated.

• Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by her wealth and was looking for route to India when he discovered American continent by mistake.

• The art of Navigation was born in the river Sindh 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit 'Nou'.

• Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365.258756484 days.

• The value of "pi" was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians.

• Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were propounded by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10*53(10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 BC during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera: 10*12(10 to the power of 12).

• According to the Gemological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world.

• The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra. According to Saka King Rudradaman I of 150 BC a beautiful lake aptly called 'Sudarshana' was constructed on the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya's time.

• Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was reportedly invented in India.

• Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery.

• Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipments were used. Detailed knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.

• When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in the Sindhu Valley Civilization.

• The name `India’ is derived from the River Indus, the valleys around which were the home of the early settlers. The Aryan worshippers referred to the river Indus as the Sindhu.

• The Persian invaders converted it into Hindu. The name `Hindustan’ combines Sindhu and Hindu and thus refers to the land of the Hindus.

• The World's First Granite Temple is the Brihadeswara temple at Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The shikhara is made from a single ' 80-tonne ' piece of granite. Also, this magnificient temple was built in just five years, (between 1004 AD and 1009 AD) during the reign of Rajaraja Chola

• India is.......the Largest democracy in the world, the 6th largest country in the world AND one of the most ancient and living civilizations (at least 10, 000 years old).

• The game of snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called 'Mokshapat.' The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. The game was played with cowrie shells and dices. Later through time, the game underwent several modifications but the meaning is the same i.e good deeds take us to heaven and evil to a cycle of re-births.

• The world's highest cricket ground is in Chail, Himachal Pradesh. Built in 1893 after levelling a hilltop, this cricket pitch is 2444 meters above sea level.

• India has the most post offices in the world !

• The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people !.

• The Baily Bridge is the highest bridge in the world. It is located in the Ladakh valley between the Dras and Suru rivers in the Himalayan mountains. It was built by the Indian Army in August 1982.

• There is no religion as Hinduism, there was this vedic system of life and people had freedom to choose their own god. This vedic system or sanatana dharma was just a way of life and the name hindu came from the sindhu river, which means people who live beyond river sindhu, so anyone living in India is literally hindu, but now this does not hold any value. We have divided our system to a great extent to be repaired.

• The real name of India(as in satyuga) is Bharat or Bharatvarsha.

And there is the story(was forwarded through emails some 2 yrs back) of Mr.Vaidyaraj an alleged descendant of krishnadevaraya found a couple of diamonds, each one 4600 carats, and is supposedly kept in swiss bank and was taken under cover for security reasons. The worst thing is the cost of this single diamond is way higher than the GDP of America and UK.

A single diamond of it equals 10 times the wealth of bill gates at the time of its discovery (somewhere in 2005 and at that time the property of bill gates valued approximately 95 billion dollars)

This diamond can buy 7 developing nations or a single diamond can clear the debts of Indian debts in world bank three times. Even the world bank has not enough money to buy these diamonds.

The problem with this mail I got is that there is no verifiable data, except that it mentioned that Star tv aired a 115 min documentary about this diamond and hindu had a half page article about this, and since after the news it was classified, surely there is no way to check the authenticity of the news.

Infact India is richer than what meets the eye, there is enough money in the swiss banks under the accounts of indian nationals to provide job for all Indians and raise them above poverty line.

This is a really long list of why should we be proud of being Indians, and many things not added for that would only add to the length of the post and nothing more.

India has a rich past, but what is the use? This past does not help us to curb the poverty or stop the trend of farmer suicides. The Indians feel proud of their heritage and language.. but how many scholars do we have in Sanskrit?

Why are we trying to prove that we were rich and knowledged?

Do we feel inferior to the western culture and their advancement in science and economics?

Yes we do, we feel that we were a great nation and now we were robbed of the greatness, when the Kohinoor was taken away, people were furious, but why? What difference does that makes. Even if we had Kohinoor, we will never sell it and it will have no monetary value.

Now since we are not developed enough in the period of 60yrs of independence, we blame the foreigners, the politicians.

I think its time for us to stop being proud of India and make India proud.

take care

blessed be