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In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


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Āhavaniya

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Āhavaniya literally means ‘to be offered as an oblation’.

Anyone who establishes the Vedic fires normally maintains three fires :

  1. Gārhapatya
  2. Āhavaniya
  3. Dakṣiṇāgni.

Most of the special sacrifices are performed in the āhavaniya which is kindled by the fire brought from the gārhapatya. The mound of āhavaniya is square and is situated on the eastern side of the sacrificial shed at a distance of twenty four padas or steps from the gārhapatya mound.

The fire is established at dawn when half of the sun’s disc has risen above the horizon. The adhvaryu lights a few fuel sticks on the gārhapatya fire and carries them in a vessel containing sand to the āhavaniya mound chanting the appropriate mantras. After establishing the fire it is propitiated with oblations of clarified butter and fuel sticks.

In case the fire goes out, prescribed prāyaścittas or expiations should be undergone. Reverencing it before death is believed to confer celestial worlds on the sacrificer.


References[edit]

  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

Contributors to this article

Krishna Maheshwari, Deval Sancheti

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