Will Durant ( famous American scholar): Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all

by Guest Thu Aug 28, 2014 5:58 pm

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.

http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_Durant

by ashdoc Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:07 am

he has called the islamic conquest of india ' the bloodiest story in civilization ' .

by Guest Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:08 am

ashdoc wrote:he has called the islamic conquest of india ' the bloodiest story in civilization ' .

Not really.

by ashdoc Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:11 am

Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:he has called the islamic conquest of india ' the bloodiest story in civilization ' .

Not really.

"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- So wrote Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the[Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans[of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

http://quotingislam.blogspot.in/2011/06/mohammedan-conquest-of-india-is.html

by Guest Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:27 am

ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:he has called the islamic conquest of india ' the bloodiest story in civilization ' .

Not really.
"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- So wrote Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the[Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans[of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

http://quotingislam.blogspot.in/2011/06/mohammedan-conquest-of-india-is.html

I have read this book and in fact have it in my possession. I do not remember reading the first sentence in the passage you give. It sounds too extreme. Wars and conquests have always been brutal all over the world.
It is true, however, that Durant adopts a somewhat negative attitude towards the Muslim rulers of India by and large ( the noticeable exception being Akbar) in his book. The reason for this is that he wrote this book in pre-partition India and the only sources available to him dealing with the coming of Islam to India and about Muslim rulers were those written by British colonial historians who had an agenda to highlight and exaggerate (and even occasionally lie about) the brutality of the Islamic conquest and any shortcomings of Muslim rule of India so that the British empire would be on a firmer foundation. I am referring here to the Divide and Rule policy.

About 20-25 years later Durant wrote a book called the "Age of Faith" in which he adopts a very positive attitude towards Islam and Muslim kings in the Middle East. In this book he writes about ( among other things) the Islamic contribution to world culture.

---

by Guest Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:39 am

The fact that Durant cannot be taken as the last word on Indian history is borne by the fact that he takes a negative view of Jahangir ( Akbar's son) since British colonial historians who were his sources had taken a negative view of Jahangir. But modern historians rate Jahangir very highly. Jahangir is praised for being one of the greatest kings of India in the cultural sphere, and he was a a great connoisseur of paintings so that the paintings of his court painters reached a high point in the history of paintings in India. Jahangir is also praised for leaving behind a very readable autobiography. He is also praised for his love of justice.

by Kayalvizhi Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:00 am

"Massacre of unarmed Tamil protesters agaimst Hindi imposition in February 1965 was the bloodiest assault on its own civilian population by a "democracy" as of that time"

by Hellsangel Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:04 am

Kayalvizhi wrote:"Massacre of unarmed Tamil protesters agaimst Hindi imposition in February 1965 was the bloodiest assault on its own civilian population by a "democracy" as of that time"

You are absolutely right, Trollus. "We" will not stand for it.

by ashdoc Fri Aug 29, 2014 1:11 pm

Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:he has called the islamic conquest of india ' the bloodiest story in civilization ' .

Not really.
"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- So wrote Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the[Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans[of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

http://quotingislam.blogspot.in/2011/06/mohammedan-conquest-of-india-is.html

I do not remember reading the first sentence in the passage you give.

---

you only remember what you want to , don't you Rolling Eyes

by Guest Fri Aug 29, 2014 1:22 pm

ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:he has called the islamic conquest of india ' the bloodiest story in civilization ' .

Not really.
"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- So wrote Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the[Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans[of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

http://quotingislam.blogspot.in/2011/06/mohammedan-conquest-of-india-is.html

I do not remember reading the first sentence in the passage you give.

---
you only remember what you want to , don't you

Nothing like that. Incidentally, I would urge you to read the views of the famous Hindu saint Swami Sivananda on Islam. Sivananda has given a great account of Islam from a Hindu perspective.

by ashdoc Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:01 pm

Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:

Not really.
"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- So wrote Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the[Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans[of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

http://quotingislam.blogspot.in/2011/06/mohammedan-conquest-of-india-is.html

I do not remember reading the first sentence in the passage you give.

---
you only remember what you want to , don't you

Nothing like that. Incidentally, I would urge you to read the views of the famous Hindu saint Swami Sivananda on Islam. Sivananda has given a great account of Islam from a Hindu perspective.

who is going to argue with you ?

you got more time than i have for internet battles .

by Guest Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:14 pm

ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- So wrote Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the[Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans[of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

http://quotingislam.blogspot.in/2011/06/mohammedan-conquest-of-india-is.html

I do not remember reading the first sentence in the passage you give.

---
you only remember what you want to , don't you

Nothing like that. Incidentally, I would urge you to read the views of the famous Hindu saint Swami Sivananda on Islam. Sivananda has given a great account of Islam from a Hindu perspective.
who is going to argue with you ?

you got more time than i have for internet battles .

I am only guiding you in the right direction. In the limited time you have you should be reading sensible stuff so as to become a model Indian citizen. You should consider yourself lucky that I am here to guide you towards the correct path.

by ashdoc Sat Aug 30, 2014 11:14 am

Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:
ashdoc wrote:
Rashmun wrote:

I do not remember reading the first sentence in the passage you give.

---
you only remember what you want to , don't you

Nothing like that. Incidentally, I would urge you to read the views of the famous Hindu saint Swami Sivananda on Islam. Sivananda has given a great account of Islam from a Hindu perspective.
who is going to argue with you ?

you got more time than i have for internet battles .

I am only guiding you in the right direction. In the limited time you have you should be reading sensible stuff so as to become a model Indian citizen. You should consider yourself lucky that I am here to guide you towards the correct path.

look at the ego of this guy !! Laughing

he considers himself to be a guru.... tongue

guide me to the right path---ha ha ho ho Twisted Evil

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Will Durant ( famous American scholar): Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all