Week 223: Educational Books, Greek Dharma, Aggravating Reading, Aesthetic!
03/23/2024 - Modern Hindu Content
Welcome to Eternal Path! This week we feature: a list of educational books on Hinduism, Greek ideas of “dharma”, Hinduphobic professors, and an aesthetic!
Reading Highlight: MT’s Educational Books Highlight
Via Manasataramgini (https://twitter.com/blog_supplement/)
Comparative Religion Highlight: Dharma vs Eusebeia
We’ve covered the topics of the Indo-Greek Kingdoms, relations between Ancient Indian and Greek Kingdoms, and comparisons between Hinduism and the historical Greek religion in quite a few previous issues (Week 2, Week 20, Week 42, Week 51, Week 71, Week 127, Week 157, Week 188, Week 192). Curwen Robinson recently shared an interesting infographic in response to a @blog_supplement [Manasataramgini] tweet, that chronicled the similarities in the idea of “cosmic duty” among Indo-European religions.
The idea of dharma in Hinduism gets translated into Greek as eusebeia, defined below:
Its interesting because a lot of people claim Hinduism is a “way of life” and its clear from the conflation of “piety” (eusebeia) and “duty” (dharma) that piety can be thought of as adherence to one’s duties (to the Gods, to family, to religion, etc). The prime historical example of that conflation was under Indian King Ashoka, who used Greek and Aramaic for his edicts that were carved into rock in Kandahar.
Okar Research, a Buddhist blog, gives a little more insight into why this translation from Sanskrit to Greek makes sense in the shared religious context.
Hinduphobia Highlight: “South Asia” Expert redux
These are the people teaching your children or your peers about India and Hindus in American colleges. Cranks reading books of falsehoods by bigots like Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd. Are you prepared to refute what people are “learning”?
We’ve covered incidents and pieces involving Truschke in: Week 69, Week 96, and Week 120.
Aesthetic: Karnataka Temple
