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Power connector

Power connector may refer to:

 * AC power plugs and sockets, devices that allow electrically operated equipment to be connected to the primary alternating current (AC) power supply in a building
 * NEMA connector, the standard for much of the Americas and Japan for such plugs and sockets
 * Industrial power plug
 * DC connector, an electrical connector for supplying direct current (DC) power
 * Blade connector, commonly found in cars for quick connection of wiring to electrical components
 * IEC 60309 (BS 4343), so-called "Commando" plug and socket
 * IEC 60320, connectors for power supply cords to electrical appliances
 * Molex connector, four-pin hard disk drive (HDD) connectors, also used for powering CD-ROM drives, burners etc.
 * Berg connector, smaller four pin floppy disk drive (FDD) connectors, also used by some hard drives, and carrying the same power supplies as the HDD connectors

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Penal law (British)

In English history, the penal laws were a series of laws that sought to enforce the State-decreed religious monopoly of the Church of England and, following the 1688 revolution, of Presbyterianism in Scotland, against the continued existence of illegal and underground communities of Catholics, nonjuring Anglicans, and Protestant nonconformists. The Penal laws also imposed various forfeitures, civil penalties, and civil disabilities upon recusants from mandatory attendance at weekly Sunday services of the Established Church. The penal laws in general were repealed in the early 19th-century due to the successful activism of Daniel O'Connell for Catholic Emancipation. Penal actions are civil in nature and were not English common law.

Marian persecutions
In 1553, following the death of her half-brother, Edward VI, and deposing his choice of successor, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I of England seized the throne, and soon after repealed the religious legislation of her brother and father, Henry VIII, through the First Statute of Repeal (1 Mar. Sess. 2. c. 2). Restoring England, Wales and Ireland to the Roman Catholic Church.

An English inquisition was established to identify, exile, convert, or prosecute non-conforming Catholics, with over 300 Protestant dissenters branded heretics, and killed, and many more exiled in her five-year reign. A list of Protestant martyrs of the English Reformation was published soon after her death.
 * November 1554 - Mary revived the Heresy Acts (1 & 2 Ph. & M. c. 6), outlawing all Protestant literature and believers, it would be repealed a year after her death.

Elizabethan

 * The Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1), confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and imposed an Oath of Supremacy which required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. It also made it a crime to assert the authority of any foreign prince, prelate, or other authority, and was aimed at abolishing the authority of the Pope in England. All who maintained the spiritual or ecclesiastical authority of any foreign prelate were to forfeit all goods and chattels, both real and personal, and all benefices for the first offence, or in case the value of these was below 20 pounds, to be imprisoned for one year; they were liable to the forfeitures of praemunire for the second offence. The penalties of praemunire were: exclusion from the sovereign's protection, forfeiture of all lands and goods, arrest to answer to the Sovereign and Council.

 * The Act of Uniformity 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 2) set the order of prayer to be used in the English Book of Common Prayer and required all persons to go to church once a week or be fined. It punished all clerics who used any other service by deprivation and imprisonment.

 * The Supremacy of the Crown Act 1562 (5 Eliz. 1. c. 1) made a second offence of refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy treason.

Response to Regnans in Excelsis
In 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, citing as his reasons heresy, Caesaropapism, and the religious persecution by the State of the illegal and underground Catholic Church in England and Wales, and in Ireland, by releasing the Papal bull Regnans in Excelsis. In response:

 * 13 Eliz. 1. c. 1 made it high treason to affirm that the queen ought not to enjoy the Crown, or to declare her to be a heretic or schismatic;
 * 13 Eliz. 1. c. 2, which made it high treason to put into effect any papal Bull of absolution, to absolve or reconcile any person to the Catholic Church, or to be so absolved or reconciled, or to procure or publish any papal Bull or writing whatsoever. The penalties of praemunire were enacted against all who brought into England or who gave to others "Agnus Dei" or articles blessed by the pope or by any one through faculties from him.
 * 13 Eliz. 1. c. 3, was designed to stop Catholics from taking refuge abroad, and declared that any subject departing the realm without the queen's license, and not returning within six months, should forfeit the profits of his lands during life and all his goods and chattels.
 * The Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their obedience (23 Eliz. 1. c. 1), passed in 1581. This made it high treason to reconcile anyone or to be reconciled to "the Romish religion", prohibited Mass under penalty of a fine of two hundred marks and imprisonment for one year for the celebrant, and a fine of one hundred marks and the same imprisonment for those who heard the Mass. This act also increased the penalty for not attending the Anglican service to the sum of twenty pounds a month, or imprisonment till the fine be paid, or till the offender went to the Anglican Church. A further penalty of ten pounds a month was inflicted on anyone keeping a schoolmaster who did not attend the Anglican service. The schoolmaster himself was to be imprisoned for one year.

 * The Jesuits, etc. Act 1584 commanded all Roman Catholic priests to leave the country in 40 days or they be punished for high treason, unless within the 40 days they swore an oath to obey the Queen. Those who harbored them, and all those who knew of their presence and failed to inform the authorities would be fined and imprisoned, or where the authorities wished to make an example of them, they might be executed. This statute, under which most of the English martyrs suffered, made it high treason for any Jesuit or any seminary priest to be in England at all, and felony for any one to harbour or relieve them. The penalties of praemunire were imposed on all who sent assistance to the seminaries abroad, and a fine of 100 pounds for each offence on those who sent their children overseas without the royal licence.

Clarendon Code
While some of the Penal Laws were much older, they took their most drastic shape during the reign of Charles II, especially the laws known as the Clarendon Code and the Test Act.

The four penal laws collectively known as Clarendon Code are named after Charles II's chief minister Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, though Clarendon was neither their author nor fully in favour of them. These included:

 * the Corporation Act 1661 required all municipal officials to take Anglican communion, and formally reject the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. The effect of this act was to exclude nonconformists from public office. While the legislation was not rescinded until 1828, the legal power to enforce it lapsed in 1663, and therefore many evicted officials were able to regain their positions after a few years.
 * the Act of Uniformity 1662 made use of the Book of Common Prayer compulsory in religious service. Over two thousand clergy refused to comply and so were forced to resign their livings (the Great Ejection). The provisions of the act were modified by the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, of 1872.
 * the Conventicle Act 1664 forbade conventicles (a meeting for unauthorized worship) of more than five people who were not members of the same household. The purpose was to prevent dissenting religious groups from meeting.
 * the Five Mile Act 1665 forbade nonconformist ministers from coming within five miles of incorporated towns or the place of their former livings. They were also forbidden to teach in schools. Most of the Act's effects were repealed by 1689, but it was not formally abolished until 1812.

Combined with the Test Act 1673, the Corporation Act 1661 excluded all nonconformists from holding civil or military office, and prevented them from being awarded degrees by the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.

Further penal laws in Great Britain
In the late 17th and 18th centuries, many non-conformist Protestants successfully evaded the political disabilities imposed by the Test Act by taking communion in the Church of England as required, while otherwise attending non-conformist meetings. High churchmen and Tories, empowered late in Queen Anne's reign, sought to close this loophole with the passing of the Occasional Conformity Bill in 1711, however the Act was repealed after the Hanoverian Succession with the return to power of the Whig political party, who were generally allied with non-conforming Protestants. This led, as well, to a systematic political purge of both real and suspected Tories.

In the wake of the Jacobite Rising of 1715, the British parliament also passed the Disarming Act of 1716.

The Papists Act 1732 (6 Geo. 2. c. 5) was an Act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the reign of George II. Its long title was "An Act for allowing further time for the Inrolment of Deeds and Wills made by Papists, and for Relief of Protestant Purchasers and Lessees".

The Whig single party state would continue to dominate the political and religious life of the British Empire until King George III ascended to the throne and allowed the Tories back into the Government in 1763. Even then, the Whig party remained a political monolith and only fragmented in response to the American and French Revolutions.

Penal laws in Ireland
The Penal Laws were introduced into Ireland in the year 1695, disenfranchising nonconformists in favour of the minority established Church of Ireland, aligned with the Protestant Church of England. The laws' principal victims were members of the Catholic Church, numbering over three quarters of the population in the south, and adherents of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, a majority of the population in Ulster. These laws included:
 * Education Act 1695
 * Banishment Act 1697
 * Registration Act 1704
 * Popery Act 1704 and 1709
 * Disenfranchising Act 1728

The laws were eventually repealed, beginning in the 1770s by the 1774 Quebec Act and the Papists Act 1778. The British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 was followed in Ireland in 1793. Finally in 1829 Catholic emancipation was enacted, largely due to Irish political agitation organised under Daniel O'Connell in the 1820s. Sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants persisted through the 20th century, and its effects can still be seen, particularly in Northern Ireland, today.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Penal law (British)


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Kai Nielsen (philosopher)

Kai Nielsen (May 15, 1926 – April 7, 2021) was an American professor, latterly emeritus, of philosophy at the University of Calgary. He specialized in naturalism, metaphilosophy, ethics, analytic philosophy, social and political philosophy. Nielsen also wrote about philosophy of religion, and was an advocate of contemporary atheism. He was also known for his defense of utilitarianism, writing in response to Bernard Williams's criticism of it.

Biography
Born on May 15, 1926, in Marshall, Michigan, near Battle Creek, Michigan, Kai Edward Nielsen was raised in Moline, Illinois.

His father was from Copenhagen, Denmark, and spoke Danish and Swedish. As he said about his father later, "My father was a Danish immigrant who came to New York City when he was fifteen. He didn’t know a word of English then. They put him into the first grade in school and he hated it. What could he do? He couldn’t speak any English and here he was with these little English-speaking kids. He was fifteen and they were five or six. He left school and just sort of made it on his own, as you could still do then."

His mother was American but according to Nielsen she "was Métis. Her mother came from Lac St. Jean, though she herself never spoke French. Her mother immigrated early to the United States before she could speak." He told the following story to illustrate the difference between his mother and his father: "A few years before the Second World War, a friend of my father, who was his subordinate in an insurance company where my father was a superintendent, was invited to our summer home. This was during the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling boxing match. We were at our summer house, which had a big American flag on one wall and a big Danish flag on the other. This friend of my father, whom I called Uncle Percy, began to talk about Hitler – the Louis/Schmeling fight was a big German-American affair – and he said, “Well, there was one good thing Hitler did. He got after the Jews.” My mother got up and walked out of the room and, after he had left, she told my father to never let Uncle Percy into the house again."

Upbringing
In an interview given later in his life, Nielsen explained what had moved him to the "left (I would never have so called it then)" by telling two stories from his childhood about class and race: "I grew up in a little Midwestern American town during the Great Depression where I saw, as a little boy, a number of things that left their mark on me. My parents did financially well during the Depression, as they had before and did after it. For example, we had a maid to pick up after us, particularly me. But across the ravine from our house lived a bunch of poor people and, as you know kids will do, I used to go home after school with some of my schoolmates to play ball with them. In one of the houses I visited, the only ball they had was something they had tied together with string. I remember that the house was unheated and the mother’s face looked ravaged. There was almost no furniture. The father was away on the road looking for work. Many of the houses in our town were like that. But when I came home, I had a maid that picked up my clothes and books wherever I threw them. I had warmth and comfort and plenty to eat. I couldn’t believe that this difference could be right. I realized then there was something wrong with the kind of society that would allow this. I had various awarenesses of this. Seeing, for example, people that worked on Work Projects Administration (the Roosevelt Administration’s project for creating jobs), standing in lines leaning on their shovels. I remember asking my father (who was conservative, though I, in those days, never thought about this) as we drove by our big car – a predecessor of the Cadillac – “Who are these people?” And he said, “People hired by Roosevelt for the Works Project Administration. They could get real jobs if they wanted them. They don’t have to live off the dole.” It was experiences like this that impressed me and rooted what would become my turn to the left, later my firm socialism. If only my father would have read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Another example, this one racial: One of my close schoolboy friends was black – a Negro, as we said then. One day after school, I invited him to come home with me to play. I noticed when we entered the house that our maid, who was Swedish, looked startled when she saw him. When he left, my mother came to me and said, “Don’t ever bring George back here again.” And my father, to stamp this in, called up George’s father and told him not to allow George to come back."

Education
Nielsen went to middle school, and high school for two years, in Moline. He then switched to St. Ambrose Academy, part of St. Ambrose College (now St. Ambrose University (since 1987)), in nearby Davenport, Iowa, because he wanted to play on their basketball team. After graduating from high school, he spent three months in officers' training school and served the last two years of the Second World War in the merchant marine, in the Pacific, on a merchant ship. They were attacked once by a Japanese plane but were not hit. After the war, he attended St. Ambrose College for two years. St. Ambrose was a Catholic school. Nielsen was struggling with religious bel belief at the time, after having read some philosophy during the war: "After the war, I went back to St. Ambrose for two years of college before I transferred to the University of North Carolina. So my first college (university) was a Catholic school. There were two people who influenced me there. One was a priest who knew a lot about literature and talked about it in a really interesting way. The other was a layman who came from Montreal and had studied at the University of Toronto – at St. Michael’s College – with Gilson and Maritain. His name was Frederich Flynn and he taught philosophy at this small Catholic college. You had to take a lot of philosophy in Catholic schools back then. Perhaps you still do. It was required and most of the students – most of them Catholics – hated it. Most of these courses at that school were unbelievably boring, taught by priests from scholastic manuals and most of these priests were not very interested in philosophy. I took a course from Flynn who taught Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. He was very different from the rest. When he talked about Aquinas, instead of just saying the proofs work, he said there were problems with them. And we talked about them and he found that I had an interest in these things. I was by then struggling with religion and he told me I should also read some Scotus, Ockham, and Maimonides and to read the philosophers themselves, not just the manuals. He impressed me and made me interested in philosophy. It was at this time that I also read Santayana and that had a secularizing effect on me. My previous wartime reading of Nietzsche and Dewey had a similar effect. At that time in my life, there were lots of conflicting currents tumbling around in me."

Nielsen then transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, with an honors thesis on James Joyce. During his time at Chapel Hill, Nielsen became radicalized: "The University of North Carolina was not only segregated by race but by gender as well. There were only male students at UNC initially (except for graduate school). This was also the case when I taught at Hamilton College and Amherst College. I guess there are only two all-male schools left in the United States now [2012], but back then there were a lot of them. But there was also racial segregation in North Carolina, including at the liberal University of North Carolina. The University of North Carolina and Duke University had no black students at all. That was called “separate but equal.” But that, of course, was not true. By that time, I was sensitized to this, so I joined various challenging movements, particularly radical ones, though in the eyes of the establishment, they were all radical movements. It was a period during which I quickly became very radical."

In the same interview, Nielsen described being the victim of a racist intimidation: "During a U.S. presidential race, Henry Wallace (not George Wallace), who had been vice president under Truman, formed a new party and ran for president. I joined a student movement supporting Wallace. (Wallace was a kind of social democrat but his party made the tactical mistake of accepting help from the American Communist Party and that finished them.) Paul Robeson, a black and prominent member of the Communist Party, was an articulate supporter of Wallace. I had seen Paul Robeson play the lead part in Othello in San Francisco during the war when I was still in the service. I remember responding then, “Jesus, what is this?” I was spellbound. We students at Chapel Hill arranged for Paul Robeson to come to campus to talk in support of Wallace and this third party. But he was a member of the Communist Party and by that time had been blacklisted. The university, after a lot of liberal dithering, finally said we could not meet in the lecture hall we had planned for and with their initial agreement. So we went to an empty lot that belonged to a gas station in downtown Chapel Hill that had closed for the evening. I introduced Robeson and he talked there. For that I got a cross burned in front of my house that night."

Nielsen went to graduate school in philosophy at nearby Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, and received his PhD from Duke in 1959. During those years at university he also published a novel.

Teaching career
Nielsen taught at Hamilton College before getting hired at Amherst College, where he taught for three years in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. After a meeting with Sidney Hook at Amherst, he was invited to join the philosophy department at New York University, where he eventually became chair of the department. During the Vietnam War, he moved to the University of Calgary.

Nielsen was a member of the Royal Society of Canada and a past president (in 1983) of the Canadian Philosophical Association.

Nielsen was also one of the founding members of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

In 1973 Nielsen was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.

He wrote or edited over 40 books on topics such as Marxism, metaphilosophy and ethical and political theory.

In 2007, Reason and Emancipation: Essays on the Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, edited by Michel Seymour and Matthias Fritsch, was published, with contributions from Anthony Kenny, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Rorty, and Steven Lukes, among others. This book was published after a conference in honor of Nielsen was held in October 2003 at Concordia University.

Nielsen died in April 2021 at the age of 94.

Books

 * Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, Edited by David Rondel and Alex Sager, 2012. ISBN 978-1-55238-530-2
 * Wittgensteinian Fideism? (with D. Z. Philips), 2006. ISBN 0-334-04005-1
 * Atheism And Philosophy, 2005. ISBN 1-59102-298-3
 * Globalization And Justice, 2002. ISBN 1-59102-054-9
 * Naturalism and Religion, 200., ISBN 1-57392-853-4
 * Exploitation, 2001. ISBN 0-391-04000-6
 * Why Be Moral?, 1997. ISBN 0-87975-519-9
 * Naturalism Without Foundations, 1996. ISBN 1-57392-076-24
 * On Transforming Philosophy: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry. 1995, ISBN 0-8133-0666-3
 * Does God Exist?: The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (with J. P. Moreland), 1993. ISBN 978-0879758233
 * God and the Grounding Of Morality, 1991. ISBN 0-7766-0328-0
 * After the Demise of the Tradition: Rorty, Critical Theory, and the Fate of Philosophy, 1991. ISBN 0-8133-8044-8
 * Ethics without God, 1990. ISBN 0-87975-552-0
 * God, Skepticism and Modernity, 1989. ISBN 0-7766-0241-1
 * Marxism and the Moral Point of View: Morality, Ideology, and Historical Materialism, 1989. ISBN 0-8133-0653-1
 * Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism, 1986. ISBN 0-8476-7516-5
 * Philosophy and Atheism, 1985. ISBN 0-87975-289-0
 * An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 1983. ISBN 0-312-43310-7
 * Marx and Morality, 1981. ISBN 0-919491-01-4
 * Scepticism, 1973. ISBN 0-333-10263-0
 * Ethics Without God, 1973, revised edition 1990. ISBN 978-0879755522
 * Reason and Practice: A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, 1971. ISBN 0-06-044836-9
 * Contemporary Critiques of Religion, 1971. ISBN 0-333-06963-3
 * Ethics Without God, 1971. ISBN 0-301-73021-0

Articles and book chapters
see listings at Nielsen's personal home page, Calgary home page, and details at Philpapers.

Books on Nielsen

 * Reason and Emancipation: Essays on the Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, edited by Michel Seymour and Matthias Fritsch, 2007, ISBN 978-1-59102-418-7

title: Kai Nielsen (philosopher)


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Talk:Five Mile Act 1665

What are "incorporated" and chartered towns? The linked article (Corporation) doesn't have any related information!

Date of repeal
According to the Chronological Table of the Statutes (HMSO) this Act was repealed by section 1 of the Places of Religious Worship Act 1812 (c.155) —Preceding unsigned comment added by James500 (talk • contribs) 17:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:42, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Coat of Arms of England (1660-1689).svg

title: Talk:Five Mile Act 1665


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Pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is a form of pseudoscholarship that attempts to distort or misrepresent the historical record, often by employing methods resembling those used in scholarly historical research. The related term cryptohistory is applied to pseudohistory derived from the superstitions intrinsic to occultism. Pseudohistory is related to pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology, and usage of the terms may occasionally overlap. Although pseudohistory comes in many forms, scholars have identified many features that tend to be common in pseudohistorical works; one example is that the use of pseudohistory is almost always motivated by a contemporary political, religious, or personal agenda. Pseudohistory also frequently presents sensational claims or a big lie about historical facts which would require unwarranted revision of the historical record.

Another hallmark of pseudohistory is an underlying premise that scholars have a furtive agenda to suppress the promotor's thesis—a premise commonly corroborated by elaborate conspiracy theories. Works of pseudohistory often point exclusively to unreliable sources—including myths and legends, often treated as literal historical truth—to support the thesis being promoted while ignoring valid sources that contradict it. Sometimes a work of pseudohistory will adopt a position of historical relativism, insisting that there is really no such thing as historical truth and that any hypothesis is just as good as any other. Many works of pseudohistory conflate mere possibility with actuality, assuming that if something could have happened, then it did.

Notable examples of pseudohistory include British Israelism, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the Irish slaves myth, the witch-cult, Armenian genocide denial, Holocaust denial, the clean Wehrmacht myth, the 16th- and 17th-century Spanish Black Legend, and the claim that the Katyn massacre was not committed by the Soviet NKVD.

Definition and etymology
The term pseudohistory was coined in the early nineteenth century, which makes the word older than the related terms pseudo-scholarship and pseudoscience. In an attestation from 1815, it is used to refer to the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, a purportedly historical narrative describing an entirely fictional contest between the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod. The pejorative sense of the term, labelling a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation. Pseudohistory is akin to pseudoscience in that both forms of falsification are achieved using the methodology that purports to, but does not, adhere to the established standards of research for the given field of intellectual enquiry of which the pseudoscience claims to be a part, and which offers little or no supporting evidence for its plausibility.

Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman define pseudohistory as "the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes". Other writers take a broader definition; Douglas Allchin, a historian of science, contends that when the history of scientific discovery is presented in a simplified way, with drama exaggerated and scientists romanticized, this creates wrong stereotypes about how science works, and in fact constitutes pseudohistory, despite being based on real facts.

Characteristics
Robert Todd Carroll has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo-historic works. He states that:

"Pseudohistory is purported history which:
 * Treats myths, legends, sagas and similar literature as literal truth
 * Is neither critical nor skeptical in its reading of ancient historians, taking their claims at face value and ignoring empirical or logical evidence contrary to the claims of the ancients
 * Is on a mission, not a quest, seeking to support some contemporary political or religious agenda rather than find out the truth about the past
 * Often denies that there is such a thing as historical truth, clinging to the extreme skeptical notion that only what is absolutely certain can be called 'true' and nothing is absolutely certain, so nothing is true
 * Often maintains that history is nothing but mythmaking and that different histories are not to be compared on such traditional academic standards as accuracy, empirical probability, logical consistency, relevancy, completeness, fairness or honesty, but on moral or political grounds
 * Is selective in its use of ancient documents, citing favorably those that fit with its agenda, and ignoring or interpreting away those documents which do not fit
 * Considers the possibility of something being true as sufficient to believe it is true if it fits with one's agenda
 * Often maintains that there is a conspiracy to suppress its claims because of racism, atheism or ethnocentrism, or because of opposition to its political or religious agenda"

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke prefers the term "cryptohistory". He identifies two necessary elements as "a complete ignorance of the primary sources" and the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims".

Other common characteristics of pseudohistory are:
 * The arbitrary linking of disparate events so as to form – in the theorist's opinion – a pattern. This is typically then developed into a conspiracy theory postulating a hidden agent responsible for creating and maintaining the pattern. For example, the pseudohistorical The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail links the Knights Templar, the medieval Grail Romances, the Merovingian Frankish dynasty and the artist Nicolas Poussin in an attempt to identify lineal descendants of Jesus.
 * Hypothesising the consequences of unlikely events that "could" have happened, thereby assuming tacitly that they did.
 * Sensationalism, or shock value
 * Cherry picking, or "law office history", evidence that helps the historical argument being made and suppressing evidence that hurts it.

Categories and examples
The following are some common categories of pseudohistorical theory, with examples. Not all theories in a listed category are necessarily pseudohistorical; they are rather categories that seem to attract pseudohistorians.

Alternative chronologies
An alternative chronology is a revised sequence of events that deviates from the standard timeline of world history accepted by mainstream scholars. An example of an "alternative chronology" is Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology, which claims that recorded history actually began around AD 800 and all events that allegedly occurred prior to that point either never really happened at all or are simply inaccurate retellings of events that happened later. One of its outgrowths is the Tartary conspiracy theory. Other, less extreme examples, are the phantom time hypothesis, which asserts that the years AD 614–911 never took place; and the New Chronology of David Rohl, which claims that the accepted timelines for ancient Egyptian and Israelite history are wrong.

Historical falsification

In the eighth century, a forged document known as Donation of Constantine, which supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope, became widely circulated. In the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth published the History of the Kings of Britain, a pseudohistorical work purporting to describe the ancient history and origins of the British people. The book synthesises earlier Celtic mythical traditions to inflate the deeds of the mythical King Arthur. The contemporary historian William of Newburgh wrote around 1190 that "it is quite clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, or indeed about his predecessors from Vortigern onwards, was made up, partly by himself and partly by others".

Historical revisionism
The Shakespeare authorship question is a fringe theory that claims that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Another example of historical revisionism is the thesis, found in the writings of David Barton and others, asserting that the United States was founded as an exclusively Christian nation. Mainstream historians instead support the traditional position, which holds that the American founding fathers intended for church and state to be kept separate.

Confederate revisionists (a.k.a. Civil War revisionists), "Lost Cause" advocates, and Neo-Confederates argue that the Confederate States of America's prime motivation was the maintenance of states' rights and limited government, rather than the preservation and expansion of slavery.

Connected to the Lost Cause is the Irish slaves myth, a pseudo-historical narrative which conflates the experiences of Irish indentured servants and enslaved Africans in the Americas. This myth, which was historically promoted by Irish nationalists such as John Mitchel, has in the modern-day been promoted by white supremacists in the United States to minimize the mistreatment experienced by African Americans (such as racism and segregation) and oppose demands for slavery reparations. The myth has also been used to obscure and downplay Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

Historical negationism
While closely related to previous categories, historical negationism or denialism specifically aims to outright deny the existence of confirmed events, often including various massacres, genocides, and national histories.

Some examples include Holocaust denial, Armenian Genocide denial, as well as Nakba Denial in the 1984 work From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters.

Psychohistory
Mainstream historians have categorized psychohistory as pseudohistory. Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its stated goal is to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. It also states as its goal the combination of the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present.

Pseudoarchaeology
Pseudoarchaeology refers to a false interpretation of records, namely physical ones, often by unqualified or otherwise amateur archeologists. These interpretations are often baseless and seldom align with established consensus. Nazi archaeology is a prominent example of this technique. Frequently, people who engage in pseudoarchaeology have a very strict interpretation of evidence and are unwilling to alter their stance, resulting in interpretations that often appear overly simplistic and fail to capture the complexity and nuance of the complete narrative.

Various examples of pseudohistory
(These following examples can belong to a variety of the above mentioned categories, or ones not mentioned as well).

Ancient aliens, ancient technologies, and lost lands
Immanuel Velikovsky's books Worlds in Collision (1950), Ages in Chaos (1952), and Earth in Upheaval (1955), which became "instant bestsellers", demonstrated that pseudohistory based on ancient mythology held potential for tremendous financial success and became models of success for future works in the genre.

In 1968, Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods?, which claims that ancient visitors from outer space constructed the pyramids and other monuments. He has since published other books in which he makes similar claims. These claims have all been categorized as pseudohistory. Similarly, Zechariah Sitchin has published numerous books claiming that a race of extraterrestrial beings from the Planet Nibiru known as the Anunnaki visited Earth in ancient times in search of gold, and that they genetically engineered humans to serve as their slaves. He claims that memories of these occurrences are recorded in Sumerian mythology, as well as other mythologies all across the globe. These speculations have likewise been categorized as pseudohistory.

The ancient astronaut hypothesis was further popularized in the United States by the History Channel television series Ancient Aliens. History professor Ronald H. Fritze observed that the pseudohistorical claims promoted by von Däniken and the Ancient Aliens program have a periodic popularity in the US: "In a pop culture with a short memory and a voracious appetite, aliens and pyramids and lost civilizations are recycled like fashions."

The author Graham Hancock has sold over four million copies of books promoting the pseudohistorical thesis that all the major monuments of the ancient world, including Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids, and the moai of Easter Island, were built by a single ancient supercivilization, which Hancock claims thrived from 15,000 to 10,000 BC and possessed technological and scientific knowledge equal to or surpassing that of modern civilization. He first advanced the full form of this argument in his 1995 bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods, which won popular acclaim, but scholarly disdain. Christopher Knight has published numerous books, including Uriel's Machine (2000), expounding pseudohistorical assertions that ancient civilizations possessed technology far more advanced than the technology of today.

The claim that a lost continent known as Lemuria once existed in the Pacific Ocean has likewise been categorized as pseudohistory.

Furthermore, similar conspiracy theories promote the idea of embellished, fabricated accounts of historical civilizations, namely Khazaria and Tartaria.

Antisemitic pseudohistory
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a fraudulent work purporting to show a historical conspiracy for world domination by Jews. The work was conclusively proven to be a forgery in August 1921, when The Times revealed that extensive portions of the document were directly plagiarized from Maurice Joly's 1864 satirical dialogue The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, as well as Hermann Goedsche's 1868 anti-Semitic novel Biarritz.

The Khazar theory is an academic fringe theory that postulates the belief that the bulk of European Jewry is of Central Asian (Turkic) origin. In spite of the mainstream academic consensus which conclusively rejects it, this theory has been promoted in Anti-Semitic and some Anti-Zionist circles, they argue that Jews are an alien element in both Europe and Palestine.

Holocaust denial in particular and genocide denial in general are widely categorized as pseudohistory. Major proponents of Holocaust denial include David Irving and others, who argue that the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Greek genocide and other genocides did not occur, or accounts of them were greatly exaggerated.

Ethnocentric or nationalist revisionism
Most Afrocentric (i.e. Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories, see Ancient Egyptian race controversy) ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical, alongside the "Indigenous Aryans" theories published by Hindu nationalists during the 1990s and 2000s. The "crypto-history" developed within Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism has likewise been placed under this categorization. Among leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is believed to have been influenced by occultism and according to one theory, developed the SS base at Wewelsburg in accordance with an esoteric plan.

The Sun Language Theory is a pseudohistorical ideology which argues that all languages are descended from a form of proto-Turkish. The theory may have been partially devised in order to legitimize Arabic and Semitic loanwords occurring in the Turkish language by instead asserting that the Arabic and Semitic words were derived from the Turkish ones rather than vice versa.

A large number of nationalist pseudohistorical theories deal with the legendary Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. British-Israelism, also known as Anglo-Israelism, the most famous example of this type, has been conclusively refuted by mainstream historians using evidence from a vast array of different fields of study.

Another nationalistic pseudohistorical theory is Antiquization or Ancient Macedonism, which postulates direct demographic, cultural and linguistic continuity between ancient Macedonians and the main ethnic group in present-day North Macedonia. The Bulgarian medieval dynasty of the Komitopules, which ruled the First Bulgarian Empire in late 10th and early 11th centuries AD, is presented as "Macedonian", ruling a "medieval Macedonian state", because its capitals were located in what was previously the ancient kingdom of Macedonia. North Macedonian historians often replace the ethnonym "Bulgarians" with "Macedonians", or avoid it.

Dacianism is a Romanian pseudohistorical current that attempts to attribute far more influence over European and world history to the Dacians than that which they actually enjoyed. Dacianist historiography claims that the Dacians held primacy over all other civilizations, including the Romans; that the Dacian language was the origin of Latin and all other languages, such as Hindi and Babylonian; and sometimes that the Zalmoxis cult has structural links to Christianity. Dacianism was most prevalent in National Communist Romania, as the Ceaușescu regime portrayed the Dacians as insurgents defying an "imperialist" Rome; the Communist Party had formally attached "protochronism", as Dacianism was known, to Marxist ideology by 1974.

Matriarchy
The consensus among academics is that no unambiguously and strictly matriarchal society is known to have existed, though many societies are known to have or have had some matriarchal features, in particular matrilineality, matrilocality, and/or matrifocality. Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs, which is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology. Some societies that are matrilineal or matrifocal may in fact have patriarchal power structures, and thus be misidentified as matriarchal. The idea that matriarchal societies existed and they preceded patriarchal societies was first raised in the 19th-century among Western academics, but it has since been discredited.

Despite this however, some second-wave feminists assert that a matriarchy preceded the patriarchy. The Goddess Movement and Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade cite Venus figurines as evidence that societies of paleolithic and neolithic Europe were matriarchies that worshipped a goddess. This belief is not supported by mainstream academics.

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories
Excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas and other reputable scholarship, most theories of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact have been classified as pseudohistory, including claims that the Americas were actually discovered by Arabs or Muslims. Gavin Menzies' book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America, has also been categorized as a work of pseudohistory.

Racist pseudohistory
Josiah Priest and other nineteenth-century American writers wrote pseudohistorical narratives that portrayed African Americans and Native Americans in an extremely negative light. Priest's first book was The Wonders of Nature and Providence, Displayed (1826). The book is regarded by modern critics as one of the earliest works of modern American pseudohistory. Priest attacked Native Americans in American Antiquities and Discoveries of the West (1833) and African-Americans in Slavery, As It Relates to the Negro (1843). Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Thomas Gold Appleton, in his A Sheaf of Papers (1875), and George Perkins Marsh, in his The Goths in New England, seized upon false notions of Viking history to promote the superiority of white people (as well as to oppose the Catholic Church). Such misuse of Viking history and imagery reemerged in the twentieth century among some groups promoting white supremacy.

Soviet communist pseudohistory
Supporters of Soviet communist pseudohistory claim, among other things, that Joseph Stalin and other top Soviet leaders did not realize the scope of mass killings perpetrated under the Stalin regime, that executions of prisoners were legally justifiable, and that prisoners in Soviet gulags performed important construction work that helped the Soviet Union economonically, particularly during World War II. Scholars point to overwhelming evidence that Stalin directly helped plan mass killings, that many prisoners were sent to gulags or executed extrajudicially, and that many prisoners did no productive work, often being isolated in remote camps or given pointless and menial tasks.

Israeli pseudohistory
In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, gave Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders the idea for the Holocaust. Historians across the world, along with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the German government, characterized the claim as historically baseless. The PLO and the Zionist Union said the statement was politically motivated because it wrongly places blame for the Holocaust on Palestinian nationalists, whom Netanyahu opposes, while implicitly absolving Hitler.

Anti-religious pseudohistory
The Christ myth theory claims that Jesus of Nazareth never existed as a historical figure and that his existence was invented by early Christians. This argument currently finds very little support among scholars and historians of all faiths and has been described as pseudohistorical.

Likewise, some minority historian views assert that Muhammad either did not exist or was not central to founding Islam.

Religious pseudohistory
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln is a book that purports to show that certain historical figures, such as Godfrey of Bouillon, and contemporary aristocrats are the lineal descendants of Jesus. Mainstream historians have widely panned the book, categorizing it as pseudohistory,      and pointing out that the genealogical tables used in it are now known to be spurious. Nonetheless, the book was an international best-seller and inspired Dan Brown's bestselling mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code.

Although historians and archaeologists consider the Book of Mormon to be an anachronistic invention of Joseph Smith, many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) believe that it describes ancient historical events in the Americas.

Searches for Noah's Ark have also been categorized as pseudohistory.

In her books, starting with The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), English author Margaret Murray claimed that the witch trials in the early modern period were actually an attempt by chauvinistic Christians to annihilate a secret, pagan religion, which she claimed worshipped a Horned God. Murray's claims have now been widely rejected by respected historians. Nonetheless, her ideas have become the foundation myth for modern Wicca, a contemporary Neopagan religion. Belief in Murray's alleged witch-cult is still prevalent among Wiccans, but is gradually declining.

Hinduism
The belief that Ancient India was technologically advanced to the extent of being a nuclear power is gaining popularity in India. Emerging extreme nationalist trends and ideologies based on Hinduism in the political arena promote these discussions. Vasudev Devnani, the education minister for the western state of Rajasthan, said in January 2017 that it was important to "understand the scientific significance" of the cow, as it was the only animal in the world to both inhale and exhale oxygen. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a gathering of doctors and medical staff at a Mumbai hospital that the story of the Hindu god Ganesha showed genetic science existed in ancient India. Many new age pseudohistorians who focus on converting mythological stories into history are well received among the crowd. Indian Science Congress ancient aircraft controversy is a related event when Capt. Anand J. Bodas, retired principal of a pilot training facility, claimed that aircraft more advanced than today's versions existed in ancient India at the Indian Science Congress.

As a topic of study
Courses critiquing pseudohistory are offered as undergraduate courses in liberal arts settings, one example being in Claremont McKenna College.

title: Pseudohistory


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Rhizome

In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.

A rhizome is the main stem of the plant that runs underground horizontally. A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but a stolon sprouts from an existing stem, has long internodes, and generates new shoots at the end, such as in the strawberry plant. In general, rhizomes have short internodes, send out roots from the bottom of the nodes, and generate new upward-growing shoots from the top of the nodes.

A stem tuber is a thickened part of a rhizome or stolon that has been enlarged for use as a storage organ. In general, a tuber is high in starch, e.g. the potato, which is a modified stolon. The term "tuber" is often used imprecisely and is sometimes applied to plants with rhizomes.

The plant uses the rhizome to store starches, proteins, and other nutrients. These nutrients become useful for the plant when new shoots must be formed or when the plant dies back for the winter. If a rhizome is separated, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. This is a process known as vegetative reproduction and is used by farmers and gardeners to propagate certain plants. This also allows for lateral spread of grasses like bamboo and bunch grasses. Examples of plants that are propagated this way include hops, asparagus, ginger, irises, lily of the valley, cannas, and sympodial orchids.

Stored rhizomes are subject to bacterial and fungal infections, making them unsuitable for replanting and greatly diminishing stocks. However, rhizomes can also be produced artificially from tissue cultures. The ability to easily grow rhizomes from tissue cultures leads to better stocks for replanting and greater yields. The plant hormones ethylene and jasmonic acid have been found to help induce and regulate the growth of rhizomes, specifically in rhubarb. Ethylene that was applied externally was found to affect internal ethylene levels, allowing easy manipulations of ethylene concentrations. Knowledge of how to use these hormones to induce rhizome growth could help farmers and biologists to produce plants grown from rhizomes, and more easily cultivate and grow better plants.

Some plants have rhizomes that grow above ground or that lie at the soil surface, including some Iris species as well as ferns, whose spreading stems are rhizomes. Plants with underground rhizomes include gingers, bamboo, snake plant, the Venus flytrap, Chinese lantern, western poison-oak, hops, and Alstroemeria, and some grasses, such as Johnson grass, Bermuda grass, and purple nut sedge. Rhizomes generally form a single layer, but in giant horsetails, can be multi-tiered.

Many rhizomes have culinary value, and some, such as zhe'ergen, are commonly consumed raw. Some rhizomes that are used directly in cooking include ginger, turmeric, galangal, fingerroot, and lotus.

title: Rhizome


text:
User:Arvindn/notes

Indus valley civilization

 * The Indus people had significant maritime activities.
 * Objects resembling scales and weights have been found (==> trade)
 * Buildings were made of sun-dried bricks
 * No direct evidence of use of currency.
 * They had a cyclic concept of time. Indeed, Hinduism has the concept of the 4 yugas: Satya, Trata, Dvapara and Kali. After Kali is the pralaya (destruction) which leads back to Satya.
 * Fertility rites were common.
 * They believed in a connection between the productivity of land and humans. Accordingly one of their rites was to copulate on the field.
 * We have found many phallic symbols, thought to represent proto-Shiva.
 * Bronze statue of dancing girl in extrmenely provocative posture. (Remark: even today female statues/idols have enlarged mammaries and hips)
 * They worshipped a mother-Goddess.
 * Abandoned skeletons are found (?).
 * Indus remains suggest 4 diffent ethnic backgrounds:
 * Caucasian
 * Proto-meditteranean
 * Mongoloid
 * Negroid
 * Possible causes for decline
 * Floods
 * Deforestation
 * Tectonic movement
 * Malaria

 * The earliest scripts that are known are the following
 * Harappan
 * Hitite
 * Sumerian
 * Egyptian
 * Chinese
 * Cretan
 * Ilamite

 * The Harappan script alone has not been deciphered. It can be classified as pictography/logography/ideography
 * Evolution of syllablic scripts lead to decrease in the number of characters.
 * The H. script is found in seals, pot shards and bronzes.
 * The Egyptian script was deciphered using bilingual stones. The other language in the stones was proto-Greek.
 * The stratum in which the artifact is found gives clues about the date.
 * Animals known to the Indus people: Bull, elephant, rhino, tiger, buffalo.
 * Animals not known: horse, lion, camel.
 * Since the script has not been deciphered, in practice it is prehistory even though we call it history.
 * 4000 seals of the Indus civ have been found.
 * 400-450 characters of the script have been identified.
 * The average inscription has 5 chars. The longest has 26.
 * The margins are to the right. We find cramped characters on the left.
 * 83% of the time they wrote R to L. 7-8% of the time R to L followed by L to R.
 * Boustrophedon mode of writing
 * Brevity may indicate that inscriptions may refer to names of owners. Thus it might not teach us much about the civ even if the script is deciphered.

Vedic Cilvilization
(Note: lots of Sanskrit words ahead. In italics.)

Early Vedic

 * Rig Vedic society was tribal in nature (Indus: Urban).
 * Main occupation was cattle rearing
 * Rajan: ruler
 * Visvamitra was a prohita, a rajaguru
 * Panchajana - the confederacy
 * The Dasa or Dasyus
 * Were thought to be pre-vedic/pre-aryan people by earlier historians
 * They were dark complexioned, did not worship Vedic deities, spoke a non-sanskritic language, had woolly hair etc.
 * Some scholars contend the gap was cultural rather than racial and say that Dasyus were earlier Aryans
 * Vyasa had a fisherman background, and Agastya is descibed as being short.
 * Casteism as we know it wsa not found in the early Vedic times.
 * Gavishti - cattle rites.
 * Prohit: advisor and religious head. Not a brahmin in the modern sense
 * Senani: led the tribe in war.
 * Entire tribe had a right to bear arms
 * King often got a ceremonial gift - bali from the people
 * The polity of the Rg Veda was none too complex
 * Food. The Early Aryans ate meat.
 * Cow is described as aghnya (that which cannot be killed)
 * However, there is reference to goghnya (one whose job is to kill cows)
 * Most likely explanation of the paradox: cows were a valuable resource, and were to be used sparingly.
 * Irrefutable evidence in later vedic text of author, who was one the major saints of the Upanishads, enjoying tender calf.
 * Vegetarianism became an important part of Brahminical tradition after Buddha.
 * Shastras mention how to apportion meat of sacrifieced horse.
 * No reference in Rg Veda of prayers for better crops, only better Pasu (cattle).
 * Sidenote: D. N. Jha wrote a book about this subject and the VHP managed to prevent its publication by terrorizing the publisher.
 * Wheat was not known. Godhma is referred to only in later Vedic texts.
 * Gambling was a common pastime
 * In the Rg veda there is the lament of a gambler
 * Learning was by rote
 * Students learning verses are compared in the literature of the period to croaking frogs.
 * Poverty and plenty were both common
 * Religion
 * Worship of nature.
 * Fear of the unknown and unfamiliar.
 * The terrifying forces of nature were deified
 * Dharma was supposed to be eternal and its practice ensured standing
 * Great emphasis on social and moral conservativeness
 * Fear of disharmony and chaos
 * Deities: Indra, Varuna, Vayu, Surya, Mitra, Agni, Soma.
 * Deities were not viewed as all-powerful
 * Relationship between devotee and deity was one of transaction
 * At any given point, one particular deity was superior to all others
 * Each had a specific role
 * rth - the cosmic order
 * Mode of worship: sacrifices, chanting of verses
 * They prayed for longeivity of life, plentiful procreation and cattle.
 * No reference to moksha in the Rg.
 * Visvamitra = friend of the Vis. hence he was probably not of Vedic origin.

Later Vedic

 * Agriculture emerged as an important economic activity.
 * More free time
 * Artisans and craftsmen were more numerous
 * Varna was more rigid, but not yet watertight
 * Trade increased; was by and large barter
 * No unanimous view on the existense of money
 * The people had moved to a more congenial area, favorable climatic conditions, more rainfall and alluvial soil
 * Small hamlets were established along the Gangetic valley
 * Aryavarta the land acquired a sacred connotation
 * All the sacred sites are found along the Gangetic valley
 * Early ruler was called the Gopa (protector of cows), now becomes chakravrtin - possessor (protector ?) of land
 * Importance of cattle rearing seems to have waned
 * Janas fought among themselves and claimed the land
 * Jana --> Janapathi
 * Rashtra (state) occurs extensively in later literature
 * Rituals, organization and ceremony become important
 * Elaborate crowning/coronation rituals -- major social occasion
 * The king symbolically tilled the land
 * Various officers, in addition to the prohit and senani emerged
 * Wars occur in order to acquire more land. (e.g Kurukshetra)
 * Ruler who brings more land under his rule called himself Ekarat, Samrat, Chakravartin etc.
 * Yagnyas: Vajapeya, Rajasuya, Asvamedha
 * Much forest land had to be cleared
 * however, the Brahmin received gifts in Go, not Bhu
 * Land surveys, revenue, etc. are common
 * Kshartiyas and Brahmanas did not contribute to the economy and had to be supported by the other classes
 * Many rituals emerged to strengthen the alliance between these two groups
 * Internal divisions became marked (?)
 * Jaya - 8800 verses; Bharata - 24000 verses, Mahabharata - > 10^5 verses
 * Social division exists but caste system had not fully emerged
 * To strengthen their position, the Brahmanas proliferated a large number of sacrifices and increased their importance
 * Improper performance of sacrifices/chanting of verses was supposed to bring ruin
 * Vak, the goddess of learning became a deity in order to ensure the proper enunciation of verses
 * Kshatriyas amassed wealth
 * Yajamana - the one who commissioned the sacrifice (sponsor)
 * Specialization of an extreme order developed among the Brahmanas
 * Dana (gift) gave way to Dakshina (fee)
 * Matsya Nyaya - smaller states being absorbed by bigger ones. (Matsya = fish; Nyaya = approx. rule; think smaller fish being eaten by bigger ones).
 * Janapadas: 16 became Mahajanapadas
 * The lot of the lower Varnas declined and became miserable (the literature is clear on this point)
 * Dha (root of dharma) : firm, strong, unshakeable
 * Less equitable distribution of wealth
 * Rule of primogeniture was not well established
 * Hereditary monarchy was emerging
 * Rg mentions Gana, sabha, samiti, vidhata. Now becomes merely royal court. (==> Participation of people decreased)
 * Women were given a distinctly lower status
 * No child marriage
 * Brahmacharya was exhorted but spinsters were frowned upon
 * Concept of property and inheritance increases, therefore women's status decreases
 * Priestly class put forth the concept that proper carrying out of yagnyas led to victory.
 * Competition everywhere; survival of the fittest.
 * Many were upset about the economic and social differences instead of the egalitarian values of the tribal society.
 * Some wanted to opt out of the race
 * These people meditated on the philosophical aspects of life; their musings are recorded in the Aranyakas of the Upanishads
 * This was a natural response to transition and uncertainty.
 * They looked for certitude of position
 * Matsya nyaya evoked condemnation from these people. They scorned wealth
 * The above information is based on socio-psychological analysis based on later vedic literature by contemporary scholars
 * This was a protest movement. If it became widespread, economy and society would come to a grinding halt.
 * Therefore the 4 ashramas: Brahmacharya, Grihasta, Vanaprasta and Sanyasa.
 * Thus sanyasa is legitimized but placed at the fag end so that it does not affect the average citizen
 * Karma and punarjanma - two important concepts.
 * Karma = balance sheet of good and bad, punarjanma = afterlife/rebirth.
 * Sidenote: compare the psychological response of emigrant Indians to unfamiliar territory. Some become ultraconservative, others become highly liberal. The former are the group that funds the Hindu fundamentalists/terrorists like VHP. The latter try hard to become assimilated into the new society.
 * Karma makes you accept your failure and makes you feel responsible for it instead of attributing it to external forces
 * Vedas were considered axiomatic. But starting from there they reasoned logically in the Upanishads.
 * A true believer in Karma would not be a fatalist
 * A call for action without getting too caught up in the outcome
 * Moksha is freedom from good and bad, which are though to be subjective
 * Reference: Romila Thapar - "Asceticism as a protest movement in Ancient India" in "Essays on early Indian history".

title: User:Arvindn/notes