Review of Tales from India by Jamila Gavin

Namaste,

Tales from India by Jamila Gavin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a really beautiful picture book. The illustrations are enchanting.

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Review of Klaus K. Klostermaier's A Short Introduction to #Hinduism

Namaste,

A Short Introduction To Hinduism by Klaus K. Klostermaier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read Klaus K. Klostermaier's A Short Introduction to Hinduism after reading Kim Knott's Hinduism A Very Short Introduction. Klostermaier's book is far superior to Knott's book.

The book introduces the main topics about Hinduism and is dense in content. It provides the most sympathetic treatment of Hindutva and the aspirations of Hindu nationalists that I've read.

The book introduces many Sanskrit terms that I didn't know. A glossary (complete with Devanagari and transliteration) would have been helpful. I take exception to Klostermaier's definition of samadhi as "trance." This definition is too simplistic for a state that's properly reached through discipline. "Trance" is often something a person stumbles upon.

Despite these quibbles, Klostermaier's A Short Introduction to Hinduism is a great survey of topics related to Hinduism. I want to buy this book for my collection.

Both Knott's and Klostermaier's books are listed as "for further reading" for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies's online course Introduction to Hinduism: History, Text, Philosophy.




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Review of Kim Knott's Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction

Namaste, 

Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction by Kim Knott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After reading Klaus K. Klostermaier's book A Short Introduction to Hinduism, I downgraded my rating of Kim Knott's Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction from 3 stars to 2 stars.

I was wary about the chapter on women and dalits, as the treatment of women and dalits has been a cudgel to beat Hindu society. The chapter also plays into the Western stereotype of India as "caste, curry, and cows." I think that Knott included the chapter as her Western audiences associate Hinduism and caste.

I want to point out that the Indian Constitution bans untouchability. Subsequent laws criminalize violence against dalits. A contentious issue now is reservations, akin to affirmative action. Thus, discrimination against dalits is social, not legal.

The chapter cites Manusmriti as the source for the attitudes toward women and dalits. While the chapter outlines the responses of women and dalits toward their marginalization, it does not cover modern critical examination by Hindu leaders of the place of Manusmriti in the body of Hindu texts.

Knott lost me on the comparison between the cow and Hinduism at the end of the book. I thought that her likening Hinduism to a family, often with contentious relations among members, was useful.

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Get social with the Bahu of Bengal

Namaste, 

In addition to my Twitter account @BahuOfBengal, I've set up a Bahu of Bengal community page on Facebook.   The FB page complements the Bahu of Bengal blog with news and other items of interest found across the web, as curated by me!  Log in to Facebook to see the growing number of FB pages that I like: maybe there will be pages among them that you will like!

The web address for the Bahu of Bengal community page on Facebook is: www.facebook.com/pages/Bahu-of-Bengal/161615384026398.  I invite you to like The Bahu of Bengal community page on Facebook.

A Brief History of India, by Alain Daniélou

A Brief History of India by Alain Daniélou
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Alain Daniélou was a famous Indologist. He had an amazing life: read Shiv Sharan: Not Your Typical French Hindu.

I have read Part 1: Origins, which covers:

* The First Civilization: the Proto-Australoids (Munda)
* The Second Civilization: the Dravidians
* The Third Civilization: the Aryans

I have to say it's rather fanciful. Daniélou states that Shaivism predates the Vedas, whereas all other sources that I've read indicate the opposite. Furthermore, he perpetuates the Aryan Invasion Theory myth. He characterizes the Aryans as more primitive than the Dravidians. If the Aryans were that primitive, how did they develop a language as evolved as Sanskrit? Furthermore, he employs what I think is dubious etymology.

My other criticism is about Daniélou's characterization of the Mahabharata War. He describes it as a war between the (good) Dravidians, as represented by the Pandavas (of the Pandya dynasty) and the (bad) Aryans, as represented by Kauravas. Later on, however, he writes [p. 43]:

It appears that by the time of the Mahabharata war, the Aryans had already largely assimilated the ancient Dravidian civilization, and the Dravidians the Aryan institutions. The conflict was social, rather than cultural.

As I continue reading this book, I will share more insights with you.



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Simon Winchester's Calcutta

Simon Winchester's Calcutta by Simon Winchester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first part of Simon Winchester's Calcutta includes a history of Calcutta (Kolkata) written by Simon Winchester. Some readers might be turned off by Winchester's characterization of freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as "buffoonish" and "one of the great villains." However, his assessment of Mother Theresa, which draws upon the work of Aroup Chatterjee and the late Christopher Hitchens, is spot on.

The second part of the book features excerpts about Calcutta from the works of a diverse group of writers that include N.C. Chaudhuri, William Dalrymple, Gunther Grass, V.S. Naipaul, Paul Theroux, Vikram Seth, Tagore, and Mark Twain. The different perspectives from these writers make this book worth reading.

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China turns down India's proposal for joint mechanism on Brahmaputra - The New Indian Express

I feel a connection to the Brahmaputra River. In 1995, my husband and I visited Assam and even took a rafting trip on one of the Brahmputra's tributaries.  In 1998, I had the privilege of going to Tibet, where I traveled along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, as the river is known in its upper reaches.  Water issues concerning the river basin have since been of interest to me.

As I wrote in a previous post, Brahma Chellaney dedicated a whole chapter on the Tibetan Plateau in his book  Water: Asia's New Battleground.  He also discussed China's unwillingness to participate in transnational water commissions or international agreements.  It should come as no surprise then that China turns down India's proposal for joint mechanism on Brahmaputra.

The Ganges Brahmaputra River Basin area was created from the data set Hydrological basins in Southeast Asia.

The majority of the linework of the map was obtained by delineating drainage basin boundaries from hydrologically corrected elevation data with a resolution of 15 arc-seconds. The elevation dataset was part of a mapping product, HydroSHEDS, developed by the Conservation Science Program of World Wildlife Fund. Original input data had been obtained during NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Areas north of the SRTM extent, 60 degrees N, were obtained by merging with the HYDRO1k basin layer.

You may download a JPEG, PDF, or ArcMap document of the Ganges Brahmaputra River Basin.

India earthquake zone map

This map was creating by warping or rectifying a non-georeferenced map to Google Maps. The source (before warping or rectification) of the earthquake zone map is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_earthquake_zone_map_en.svg (reference article:Earthquake hazard zoning of India). Warping or rectification was done through Harvard's World Map Warper. Control points:

• Kolkata 
• New Delhi 
• Mumbai 
• Chennai 
• Srinagar 
• Thiruvananthapuram 
• Guhawati

To view the warped map (as KML) in Google Maps, go to https://maps.google.com/?q=http://warp.worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/1722.kml.

Map of projected population in #India 2015

Here is a map that I created that shows projected population in India in 2015.  The data comes from the Population Count Grid, Future Estimates of the Gridded Population of the World, Version 3 (GPWv3). Future Estimates consists of estimates of human population for the years 2005, 2010, and 2015 by 2.5 arc-minute grid cells and associated data sets dated circa 2000. For more information, view the metadata.

As with my other maps, I created this map using Esri ArcMap 10. Each 2.5-min cell contains a value of the estimated population for that area in 2015.   I have overlayed the population layer on top of the Ganges-Brahmaputra River Basin layer.

Unfortunately, I was not able to create a legend for this map. I have shared an ArcMap document (.mxd), a PDF file, and JPEG image via Google Drive. By selecting the population layer in the .mxd file and using the identification arrow, you can find out the population for that 2.5-min cell..

Citation:

Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)/Columbia University, United Nations Food and Agriculture Programme (FAO), and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT). 2005. Gridded Population of the World, Version 3 (GPWv3): Population Count Grid, Future Estimates. Palisades, NY: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/gpw-v3-population-count-future-estimates. Accessed 09 April 2013.

Map of West Bengal #India

If you've noticed, I added a TripIt badge to the sidebar, which shows that I'm going to Kolkata (Calcutta) on Thursday.  This inspired me to create a map of West Bengal, complete with inset map showing the location of West Bengal in India:

I used two data layers, one for the map of West Bengal, and the other for the inset map.

You may download a zip file containing the map of West Bengal in JPEG, PDF, and ArcMap (.mxd) formats.

#India: areas under irrigation map

After being unhappy with the maps in Brahma Chellaney’s book Water: Asia's New Battleground, I decided to create my own map of areas under irrigation in India.

For this map, I used irrigation data from the global map of irrigation areas from AQUASTAT, the FAO's global information system on water and agriculture.  Data shows the percentage of irrigated land per 5 arcmin cell, which is approximately 8547 hectares: someone check my calculations!

Source: Stefan Siebert, Petra Döll, Sebastian Feick, Jippe Hoogeveen and Karen Frenken (2007) Global Map of Irrigation Areas version 4.0.1. Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany / Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy

The number of cells in the AQUASTAT data set is huge: 4320 columns x 1260 rows = 5,443,200 cells.  To bring this down to size, I clipped the map to the area of India.  Even so, I had more data than ArcMap could handle (max: 10,000 items) in computing equal percentage intervals (see the map legend).  Nonetheless, the resulting map corresponded well to the Global Map of Irrigated Ares.  The Ganges River basin is the most irrigated area in the world.

You may download the map of irrigated areas in India in JPEG format or the map of irrigated areas of India in PDF format. Alternatively, if you would like to muck around with the map itself, download the ArcMap document showing irrigated areas of India.

Rivers of India with Landsat imagery

Here is another map I created of the rivers of India, this time with Landsat imagery:

You may download the map of the rivers of India in JPEG format or the map of the rivers of India in PDF format. Alternatively, if you would like to play around with the map itself, download the ArcMap document showing the rivers of India.

Tales from River Brahmaputra

Source: amazon.com via Julie on Pinterest

Namaste, 

I'm only on page 60, and Tales from River Brahmaputra by Tiziana Baldizzoni is already proving to be a better book than Rivers of India. It has a superior pressing and stunning photos. It's easy to overlook the text, which is filled with lore about the Brahmaputra.

It seems to be a little thin on the coverage of the river's course through India.

Reproductions of antique maps are provided on the back side of the front and back covers.

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Rivers of India

Rivers of India by Sunil Vaidyanathan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cheap pressing. Simplistic text. Single fold-out map features rivers symbolized with thick blue lines. Would have liked more detailed maps for each of the chapters.


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OK, I would have liked better maps, so I created my own with data in ArcMap, using free data from Esri:

Rivers of India

The map has been formatted to a standard 8.5" x 11" sheet (US).

You may download the JPEG image of Rivers of India or the PDF file of Rivers of India from Google Drive.  One problem is the overprint of place names, but I couldn't toggle the options on and off. :-(

Alternatively, if you would like to play around with the data itself download the Rivers of India ArcMap document (.mxd). 

Review of India: A Sacred Geography

India: A Sacred Geography by Diana L Eck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

India: A Sacred Geography is a lyrical account of the sacred places in India. Although it was not Eck's intent (and she expresses anguish at Hindu nationalism), she inadvertently proves that India is a nation based in Hindu culture by highlighting the interconnectedness of sacred places in India.

Each chapter is illustrated by maps with a level of detail appropriate to the subject matter. I have faulted other books on India for their poor maps, but not this book.

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Review of Water: Asia's New Battleground

Water: Asia's New Battleground by Brahma Chellaney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an ambitious, nay, overly ambitious book. Brahma Chellaney covers inter- and intra-state water conflicts across Asia (including the Middle East!)

Riverine issues have interested me since I traveled along the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River in Tibet and India. No wonder why Tibet matters so much to China: by controlling Tibet, China controls the headwaters of the great rivers of Asia. Chellaney devotes a whole chapter to the Tibetan Plateau. Sadly, but in time-honored Indian fashion, India ceded its advantages to India.

The maps in this book are not particularly useful and illustrative of the text.

Water: Asia's New Battleground won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

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