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The Dhaarmik Traditions - Indic Studies Foundation

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story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization<br />

is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any<br />

moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying<br />

from within…<strong>The</strong> bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that<br />

eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but<br />

keep its powder dry."<br />

We feel that a part of the process of keeping our powder dry is for the <strong>Indic</strong>sto<br />

be well armed with an accurate rendering of our traditions (which we have<br />

largely relegated to people other than of <strong>Indic</strong> origin in the last two centuries).<br />

This book is part of my humble endeavors to swing the pendulum back into the<br />

center and thereby, arm the <strong>Indic</strong> with accurate sources of his or her own<br />

tradition<br />

<strong>The</strong> situation is fraught with far more contradictions or as the social scientist<br />

would put it ‘cognitive dissonances’, than may appear at first sight. On the one<br />

hand inordinate attention is paid to preventing India from achieving a modicum<br />

of military power. No nation has suffered the plethora of sanctions and<br />

condemnation for such a length of time as has India, ostensibly for the crime of<br />

breaking the nuclear monopoly of the UN Security Council Permanent 5. In<br />

Greek Mythology Prometheus is the God of Fire, chained to a craggy rock in the<br />

Island of Scythia. His crime – Prometheus had shared the secret of fire with<br />

mankind, thereby giving them the means for sustenance, warmth and to provide<br />

3

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